Due to extensive pillaging, many containers in Mzeneldt (the Dwemer ruins from the Fighters Guild questline) and Avanchnzel (the Dwemer delve located in the Rift) have been ransacked, causing many of them to be emptier than before.

Sorry, I don't believe there will be an increase in the other Dwemer delves as if there was, you would have done that before nerfing Avanchnzel. If you had wanted to keep players happy, you would have already increased the other delves containers before eliminating the drops in Avanchnzel. That would been logical if you wanted people not to think it was a crown shop ploy.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Oh well, I guess Avanchnzel was really too good to be left alone. Pity they waited long enough to make players angry for "balancing" it.

That's kind of the point though. It has been well known ever since the Dwemer pages came into game that those places had more lootable objects than any other ruin.. yet they do nothing about it until the book is available in the crown store.

This was not a concern for months... yet (once the motifs are available for crowns) they are concerned enough now to remove them BEFORE they also implement the balance of adding containers to ruins. Why couldn't we have waited until next week (or whenever) so they could also implement adding extra containers to other ruins at the same time?

[EDIT] I'm just a bit frustrated with the terrible timing. If it wasn't important enough to deal with previously, why must you implement it NOW rather than waiting and implementing the full fix. (Full fix = balancing.. so also adding more containers elsewhere)

Well, everyone on EU server have until now till 3 am London time to rush to Avanchnzel, collect motifs, keep them for a week or two and... make a fortune in game gold !

@ZOS_GinaBruno : Thanks for taking the time to explain it again, but your first explanation was clear too and it doesn't change the fact that it seems extremely coincidental. You (well, not *you*, the devs...) should have waited until tests are completed to put the complete rebalance out for all dungeons, imho.

Giraffon wrote: »

Still waiting on solution to PvP Meteor spamming though.

Still waiting on patch notes that include anything related to Cyrodiil/PvP

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

You guys believe they didnt nerf the drop rates so people would spend $50 on the motif you are all crazy. I know they would never admit it but with them being easy to get basically they had to stop it. They said it "had" to be normalized. no it didnt. It needed to be nerfed because people arent buying the dwemer motif.

God forbid you up the containers in other areas NOW rather than "sometime in the future". We all know sometime in the future means never lol. How stupid do they think we are?

Unfortunately I have to agree. There is NO reason to remove motifs and only make a vague promise about adding it elsewhere in the future unless it is to bolster Crown Store sales. Perception is reality ZOS.

post contents deleted

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Iluvrien wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

xMovingTarget wrote: »

tengri wrote: »

Due to extensive pillaging, many containers in Mzeneldt (the Dwemer ruins from the Fighters Guild questline) and Avanchnzel (the Dwemer delve located in the Rift) have been ransacked, causing many of them to be emptier than before.

Wow. Just wow.
A very subtile approach to start pushing sales of the Dwemer Motifs in the Crown Store...

Thats exactly what I thought too.

We understand why you may think that, but these two areas had many more containers than other Dwemer locations and needed to be normalized. It had nothing to do with what's available in the Crown Store. Also, the other part of that note was left out of the quote, and we want to make sure that part isn't forgotten as it's important - we are planning to increase the number of containers in other Dwemer locations in the near future to compensate.

And yet I am afraid it still doesn't make a great deal of sense.

The logic that seems to be outlined above suggests that because that location was overly productive it had to be "normalized"... ok, I follow you so far... but then you go on to mention that to compensate for this you will be increasing the number of containers in other locations... at which point that particular logical progression runs into a O.o

If, roughly, the same amount (or even greater) capacity is going to exist then what is the logic behind it? I can see a couple of possibilities, some good and some bad:
<snip>

Option 5: I did a poor job explaining.

The amount of containers across all Dwemer locations varies quite a bit. We increased the amount of empty containers in Mzendeldt and Avanchnzel, and we also plan to boost the amount of containers from some locations that currently don't have as many. There isn't a set number of containers in every Dwemer space, but more like a general range. So, the two reductions today will bring them more in line with others, and the locations that don't have as many will be brought up. Does that make more sense?

Also, as for why we didn't do the increase in today's patch, we simply haven't gotten all the boosted locations thoroughly tested yet. We do intend to have this go into a future incremental patch, though (as opposed to the next major update).

How about you don't nerf one area until you can boost another? You didn't have to rush in the nerf with this patch...

By the way, excellent politician speak "increasing the number of empty containers" - it's an increase so it must be good!

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Iluvrien wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

xMovingTarget wrote: »

tengri wrote: »

Due to extensive pillaging, many containers in Mzeneldt (the Dwemer ruins from the Fighters Guild questline) and Avanchnzel (the Dwemer delve located in the Rift) have been ransacked, causing many of them to be emptier than before.

Wow. Just wow.
A very subtile approach to start pushing sales of the Dwemer Motifs in the Crown Store...

Thats exactly what I thought too.

We understand why you may think that, but these two areas had many more containers than other Dwemer locations and needed to be normalized. It had nothing to do with what's available in the Crown Store. Also, the other part of that note was left out of the quote, and we want to make sure that part isn't forgotten as it's important - we are planning to increase the number of containers in other Dwemer locations in the near future to compensate.

And yet I am afraid it still doesn't make a great deal of sense.

The logic that seems to be outlined above suggests that because that location was overly productive it had to be "normalized"... ok, I follow you so far... but then you go on to mention that to compensate for this you will be increasing the number of containers in other locations... at which point that particular logical progression runs into a O.o

If, roughly, the same amount (or even greater) capacity is going to exist then what is the logic behind it? I can see a couple of possibilities, some good and some bad:
<snip>

Option 5: I did a poor job explaining.

The amount of containers across all Dwemer locations varies quite a bit. We increased the amount of empty containers in Mzendeldt and Avanchnzel, and we also plan to boost the amount of containers from some locations that currently don't have as many. There isn't a set number of containers in every Dwemer space, but more like a general range. So, the two reductions today will bring them more in line with others, and the locations that don't have as many will be brought up. Does that make more sense?

Also, as for why we didn't do the increase in today's patch, we simply haven't gotten all the boosted locations thoroughly tested yet. We do intend to have this go into a future incremental patch, though (as opposed to the next major update).

Except... it will never happen. Or to put this in a realistic perspective, taking into account content update speed, in a year, maybe. Another win for exploiters who were allowed to pillage these locations for weeks. The rest of us can use cash to buy it for convenience. For a mere 30 EUR!

MissBizz wrote: »

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Oh well, I guess Avanchnzel was really too good to be left alone. Pity they waited long enough to make players angry for "balancing" it.

That's kind of the point though. It has been well known ever since the Dwemer pages came into game that those places had more lootable objects than any other ruin.. yet they do nothing about it until the book is available in the crown store.

This was not a concern for months... yet (once the motifs are available for crowns) they are concerned enough now to remove them BEFORE they also implement the balance of adding containers to ruins. Why couldn't we have waited until next week (or whenever) so they could also implement adding extra containers to other ruins at the same time?

[EDIT] I'm just a bit frustrated with the terrible timing. If it wasn't important enough to deal with previously, why must you implement it NOW rather than waiting and implementing the full fix. (Full fix = balancing.. so also adding more containers elsewhere)

While the timing IS terrible and does certainly point to the Crown Store, the farming of these instances was nearing being considered an exploit. There's basically no risk to the lower level instances and you can fly through them in a few minutes. Over the weekend, one guy was selling three complete sets of all Dwemer chapters for 100k per set and said it would be his 43rd sale, which would mean he has 4.3 million gold available. That also means he was able to farm 602 motif pages. Neither his income nor the sheer number of pages collected seem overly inflated to you?

Prices on everything go up when more people farm these motifs and the gold starts building up on a select group of players who are then able to pay way higher prices for things, which then brings the price of those other things up. If somebody is advertising in chat that they'll buy a Shadow Walker band for 500k to get one ASAP because they have more money than they can spend, people are going to see that and start requesting closer to 500k for them and everybody else suffers. People use price checks to figure out a "fair" value based on recent sales and this would cause a swing in the price. Yes, this is the case with an in-game economy anyway, but any time there's something like this that can easily be abused for extreme incomes that are way out of sync compared to other methods, it makes it much worse.

I'm glad that they're doing something about it now, regardless of when other areas will be raised. In actuality, they should have done it quite a while ago and I'm sure the Crown Store brought more visibility to the issue ("hey, we're not selling any of these") as some have suggested. I really don't think farming motif pages was ever supposed to be a 300k/day source of income though.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We understand why you may think that, but these two areas had many more containers than other Dwemer locations and needed to be normalized. It had nothing to do with what's available in the Crown Store. Also, the other part of that note was left out of the quote, and we want to make sure that part isn't forgotten as it's important - we are planning to increase the number of containers in other Dwemer locations in the near future to compensate.

I'm sure you can understand that the timing of this change fosters that impression.
It's been around for months and months. Now suddenly it needed fixing, before you could complete the 2nd step of adding them to other areas.

What conveniently fills the gap? The Crown Store.

I'll let others debate what the real intent was. But I just can't imagine what the harm (other than hurting Crown Store sales) would have been in leaving this instance alone until you'd added extra containers in other areas thus making everything normalized. Why does the error have to be in the Store's favor vs. players trying to earn an income? (For the record I don't buy, farm or sell Dwemer Motifs).

All of this is damaging to those that focus on trading. We just don't know, yet, how significant the impact will be. I really wish you'd come up with *NEW* things to sell in the store, instead of selling existing high performers for traders without adding anything new for them to replace the income with.

There's so many ways this could be executed without harming in-game trade.

Such as:
- Putting all the blue motifs in the store but not the rares
- adding older rares to the crown store as newer rares are released with new content

Can't some kind of balance be found that isn't harmful to in-game trade?

Ok, so I went to Avanchnzel today and I found a dwemer belt motif literally in the first jug. Nice bribery ZOS, but this isn't over

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Iluvrien wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

xMovingTarget wrote: »

tengri wrote: »

Due to extensive pillaging, many containers in Mzeneldt (the Dwemer ruins from the Fighters Guild questline) and Avanchnzel (the Dwemer delve located in the Rift) have been ransacked, causing many of them to be emptier than before.

Wow. Just wow.
A very subtile approach to start pushing sales of the Dwemer Motifs in the Crown Store...

Thats exactly what I thought too.

We understand why you may think that, but these two areas had many more containers than other Dwemer locations and needed to be normalized. It had nothing to do with what's available in the Crown Store. Also, the other part of that note was left out of the quote, and we want to make sure that part isn't forgotten as it's important - we are planning to increase the number of containers in other Dwemer locations in the near future to compensate.

And yet I am afraid it still doesn't make a great deal of sense.

The logic that seems to be outlined above suggests that because that location was overly productive it had to be "normalized"... ok, I follow you so far... but then you go on to mention that to compensate for this you will be increasing the number of containers in other locations... at which point that particular logical progression runs into a O.o

If, roughly, the same amount (or even greater) capacity is going to exist then what is the logic behind it? I can see a couple of possibilities, some good and some bad:
<snip>

Option 5: I did a poor job explaining.

The amount of containers across all Dwemer locations varies quite a bit. We increased the amount of empty containers in Mzendeldt and Avanchnzel, and we also plan to boost the amount of containers from some locations that currently don't have as many. There isn't a set number of containers in every Dwemer space, but more like a general range. So, the two reductions today will bring them more in line with others, and the locations that don't have as many will be brought up. Does that make more sense?

Also, as for why we didn't do the increase in today's patch, we simply haven't gotten all the boosted locations thoroughly tested yet. We do intend to have this go into a future incremental patch, though (as opposed to the next major update).

First of all, thank you for the reply!

Actually I think you did a good job of explaining as this was the meaning that I divined from your original post.

The deciding factor, I suspect, with regards to how this change is likely to be viewed in the long term will be the amount of time that elapses between this nerf and the subsequent compensation. As other posters have noted, having the compensation ready to roll out at the same time as the nerf would have added evidence to the "rebalancing" idea. Rolling out a nerf with no timeline on the compensation does make this look more dodgy than you assure us it is.

So I would suspect that if the new containers are ready by the next incremental patch (i.e. next Monday or so) then I, at least, am not likely to hold on to this as a sign of Bad Things To Come. Delay the new containers by a month, two months or until never? Then yes, this likely will stick in the mind.

The ball is, as they say, in your (ZOS's) court. Show us that you can recover this and assure us of your good intentions by following through on your statement.

The long and the short of it is this:

If you ever nerf the droprate of something valuable to the ingame economy while simultaneously adding that same high value item to the Crown Store, modern MMO players have the upper hand because what you're doing is dirty. Now the player base who actually bother to be informed know that there is a chance that you guys pulled off a really nasty, sinister move with this patch.

You can argue the semantics of this particular decision all day long, but the simple fact of it is that ZOS gained a massive increase of the value for their Crown Store item at the players' expense. They took the ingame economy and translated it to real world dollars. This is a grey area at best.

And the decision that created that shift in the balance of power was made by those who will benefit from it the most.

I've worked on several regional political campaigns in my life, so you'll have to forgive me if this reminds me all too well of the reasons why I took an offer outside of that arena.

gotgk wrote: »

Your post indicates a very patient position, but it seems rendered as if in a vacuum. Indeed, if I compartmentalize all of the troubling things that have occurred during the life of this game, they are minor decisions which indicate nothing.

But then, taking things out of context removes the potential for observing a pattern.

Read some of my other posts. I am far less patient in my position in them.

This is actually me being patient while being aware of the other, less than flattering, elements of ZOS's recent actions.

However, and all that said, I am giving them a chance to prove to us that this isn't what it seems to be. Not by words. By actions. If they make this fix before next Monday then I will think better of them and possibly cut them a little more slack... yes, even after the P2P->B2P transition, shelving Spellcrafting, the Explorer's Pack and the Motifs in the the Crown Store etc..

Do I expect it or even hope for that proof? Not any more. I am giving them a chance to change my mind but I do not expect that they will. I may be pleasantly surprised and shocked. We will see... it is Tuesday.

ViolenceUndone wrote: »

MissBizz wrote: »

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Oh well, I guess Avanchnzel was really too good to be left alone. Pity they waited long enough to make players angry for "balancing" it.

That's kind of the point though. It has been well known ever since the Dwemer pages came into game that those places had more lootable objects than any other ruin.. yet they do nothing about it until the book is available in the crown store.

This was not a concern for months... yet (once the motifs are available for crowns) they are concerned enough now to remove them BEFORE they also implement the balance of adding containers to ruins. Why couldn't we have waited until next week (or whenever) so they could also implement adding extra containers to other ruins at the same time?

[EDIT] I'm just a bit frustrated with the terrible timing. If it wasn't important enough to deal with previously, why must you implement it NOW rather than waiting and implementing the full fix. (Full fix = balancing.. so also adding more containers elsewhere)

While the timing IS terrible and does certainly point to the Crown Store, the farming of these instances was nearing being considered an exploit. There's basically no risk to the lower level instances and you can fly through them in a few minutes. Over the weekend, one guy was selling three complete sets of all Dwemer chapters for 100k per set and said it would be his 43rd sale, which would mean he has 4.3 million gold available. That also means he was able to farm 602 motif pages. Neither his income nor the sheer number of pages collected seem overly inflated to you?

Prices on everything go up when more people farm these motifs and the gold starts building up on a select group of players who are then able to pay way higher prices for things, which then brings the price of those other things up. If somebody is advertising in chat that they'll buy a Shadow Walker band for 500k to get one ASAP because they have more money than they can spend, people are going to see that and start requesting closer to 500k for them and everybody else suffers. People use price checks to figure out a "fair" value based on recent sales and this would cause a swing in the price. Yes, this is the case with an in-game economy anyway, but any time there's something like this that can easily be abused for extreme incomes that are way out of sync compared to other methods, it makes it much worse.

I'm glad that they're doing something about it now, regardless of when other areas will be raised. In actuality, they should have done it quite a while ago and I'm sure the Crown Store brought more visibility to the issue ("hey, we're not selling any of these") as some have suggested. I really don't think farming motif pages was ever supposed to be a 300k/day source of income though.

However...

You don't have to buy them!

It's precisely the same argument that is used to defend selling them in the crown shop - they are purely cosmetic (not really because you get an achievement + dye, but...). You don't need them, they don't "improve" your capability, they don't make you more powerful, they aren't required to complete a quest. You don't have to buy them.

So if people aren't worried about them appearing in the crown shop I don't see how they can worry about farmers making ridiculous amounts of in game gold.

At least the farmers put some time and effort into getting them.

What's really unfair is that Avanchnzel is a prime VR10 grinding area for some, whereas for others you get no XP at all...