Like many MMOs, Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) features crafting. One of the distinguishing features of ESO is the PC platform also allows third-party AddOns. This has provided an interesting opportunity to see just what the pain points in the game are, based on how comprehensively AddOns address them. And there are some remarkable AddOns that basically automate a lot of daily crafting "quests" in the game -- demonstrating the "minigame" of crafting for the daily quests is not fun and in fact tedious.
Because game console players do NOT have access to AddOns, it has also created a great disparity between the two platforms in terms of what can be accomplished. Whereas PC players can do the full array of daily crafting quests on the maximum number of toons, to do the same takes much longer and is prone to more error, such that many players only do it on a few toons on their account.
This article will examine the Daily Crafting quests (Crafting Writs) as well as the special opportunity quests (Master Writs), and recommend changes that learn from the most popular AddOns and which would be fair for both PC and Console if implemented on both sides.
In particular, the key AddOns for automating crafting are Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter, and WritWorthy. By "automating" it is exactly that: You go to the appropriate crafting station, and the AddOn does it for you. They are not only time-savers but "think-savers" -- No need to check your work, it's done automatically and correctly. When you are doing as many as 7 quests per day on each of up to 18 toons (126 quests per day) think-savers remove the most tedious aspect of the quests.
Daily Crafting Writs
For our purposes, there are basically two types of Daily Crafting Writs: Those which can be Prepared Ahead of time, and those which typically are Not Prepared Ahead, mostly because they take up too much storage.
Prepared Ahead: Alchemist and Provisioner Writs
Not Prepared Ahead: Blacksmith, Clothier, Enchanter, Jewelry Crafting, and Woodworker Writs
The key difference is the items stack for Alchemist and Provisioner Writs can combine into large stacks, so players an make ahead all the possible combinations, and simply pick up what they need for the particular day and turn in the quest right away -- all this even without AddOns. And they still use AddOns to automate picking up exactly what they need and in the quantity they need from their bank storage.
This sets the standard very low for the effort-to-reward ratio, when the rewards are actually very good: Crafting materials, crafting skill advancement, experience points for general character levelling, and currency (gold).
In contrast, the Not Prepared Ahead crafts, while they also give an array of good rewards, cost much more time because typically each quest has to be repeated daily for the various items they require. And here is the pain point: Players want the rewards so they want to do as many of the daily quests as possible. But it's time consuming and tedious, so they are essentially using an AddOn that works like a macro cheat or bot. And it's allowed by the game. Even though Console does not have anything near that advantage.
Clearly the convenience and automation are greatly desired by players, so our recommendation will involve those. To ignore this play pattern would simply invite more AddOns to address the issue and again leave Console players behind.
Other deficiencies in the system include the need to stockpile materials for the daily crafting, sometimes leading to inventory storage issues and/or continual sourcing of materials. And a focus on combat-related goods whereas crafting involves many other aspects.
Recommended Change
Instead of the current narrow context of fulfilling specific orders, we recommend that Daily Writs be completely changed to the character Having A Job.
This involves going into one of the major towns and clicking some kind of interaction to "start working". For example, the existing daily writ boards could be converted into a "job postings" board to start this interaction.
This "work" would look like a series of emotes related to the crafts, such as the looping animations when a crafting station is used. During this period, the character would automatically work all the crafts that they are "certified" (an introductory quest that qualifies them to accept the Daily Writ quests in the first place). For each craft, after a period of time "working" at it, they are awarded a basic reward.
This quest model essentially exchanges time for reward and is a substantial change from the current model:
Currently, players at the highest level of proficiency with a crafting skill may receive a "Master Writ" as part of their Daily Writ quest reward. Each is basically a special assignment to craft something. There are many peculiarities with the current model:
The number of Writ Vouchers awarded depends on their Knowledge Score for the craft, which is a sum of relevant factors for that particular craft, such as the number of recipes for Provisioner, for example.
The higher the Knowledge Score, the more sought-after the character is as a craftsperson, and the more likely they will receive a difficult (and therefore more rewarding) Special Order -- which translates into more Writ Vouchers paid.
Since this change would require neither materials nor player input, Writ Voucher payouts would be reduced from the current model in exchange for the convenience. To net the most Writ Vouchers, players must accumulate a high Knowledge score on their characters.
Because game console players do NOT have access to AddOns, it has also created a great disparity between the two platforms in terms of what can be accomplished. Whereas PC players can do the full array of daily crafting quests on the maximum number of toons, to do the same takes much longer and is prone to more error, such that many players only do it on a few toons on their account.
This article will examine the Daily Crafting quests (Crafting Writs) as well as the special opportunity quests (Master Writs), and recommend changes that learn from the most popular AddOns and which would be fair for both PC and Console if implemented on both sides.
In particular, the key AddOns for automating crafting are Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter, and WritWorthy. By "automating" it is exactly that: You go to the appropriate crafting station, and the AddOn does it for you. They are not only time-savers but "think-savers" -- No need to check your work, it's done automatically and correctly. When you are doing as many as 7 quests per day on each of up to 18 toons (126 quests per day) think-savers remove the most tedious aspect of the quests.
Daily Crafting Writs
For our purposes, there are basically two types of Daily Crafting Writs: Those which can be Prepared Ahead of time, and those which typically are Not Prepared Ahead, mostly because they take up too much storage.
Prepared Ahead: Alchemist and Provisioner Writs
Not Prepared Ahead: Blacksmith, Clothier, Enchanter, Jewelry Crafting, and Woodworker Writs
The key difference is the items stack for Alchemist and Provisioner Writs can combine into large stacks, so players an make ahead all the possible combinations, and simply pick up what they need for the particular day and turn in the quest right away -- all this even without AddOns. And they still use AddOns to automate picking up exactly what they need and in the quantity they need from their bank storage.
This sets the standard very low for the effort-to-reward ratio, when the rewards are actually very good: Crafting materials, crafting skill advancement, experience points for general character levelling, and currency (gold).
In contrast, the Not Prepared Ahead crafts, while they also give an array of good rewards, cost much more time because typically each quest has to be repeated daily for the various items they require. And here is the pain point: Players want the rewards so they want to do as many of the daily quests as possible. But it's time consuming and tedious, so they are essentially using an AddOn that works like a macro cheat or bot. And it's allowed by the game. Even though Console does not have anything near that advantage.
Clearly the convenience and automation are greatly desired by players, so our recommendation will involve those. To ignore this play pattern would simply invite more AddOns to address the issue and again leave Console players behind.
Other deficiencies in the system include the need to stockpile materials for the daily crafting, sometimes leading to inventory storage issues and/or continual sourcing of materials. And a focus on combat-related goods whereas crafting involves many other aspects.
Recommended Change
Instead of the current narrow context of fulfilling specific orders, we recommend that Daily Writs be completely changed to the character Having A Job.
This involves going into one of the major towns and clicking some kind of interaction to "start working". For example, the existing daily writ boards could be converted into a "job postings" board to start this interaction.
This "work" would look like a series of emotes related to the crafts, such as the looping animations when a crafting station is used. During this period, the character would automatically work all the crafts that they are "certified" (an introductory quest that qualifies them to accept the Daily Writ quests in the first place). For each craft, after a period of time "working" at it, they are awarded a basic reward.
This quest model essentially exchanges time for reward and is a substantial change from the current model:
- Players can go AFK (away from keyboard) or simply use the time to socialize with the chat window.
- No manual interaction required: Players do not have to do any of the tedious crafting which AddOns mostly automate for PC players.
- Time exchange is in control of the developer, not a third party AddOn. A recommended time requirement is 20 seconds per craft, or approximately two minutes if all seven Crafting skills are worked.
- No materials are required. Players are working a job, so the workplace provides the facilities and materials.
- Rewards are focussed: Crafting skill experience, and gold (pay). If more rewards are to be granted, the time spent locked in this action should be extended.
- Rewards are sharply reduced: Because we are taking away basically all the tedious manual work, a broad array of good rewards are no longer justified.
- Special rewards need to be reassigned: Currently, Daily Writs are a way to acquire many special materials, including some exclusively available through Daily Writs. These will need to be provided from another source, such as an adjustment to the Hirelings passive skill, which delivers materials daily.
Currently, players at the highest level of proficiency with a crafting skill may receive a "Master Writ" as part of their Daily Writ quest reward. Each is basically a special assignment to craft something. There are many peculiarities with the current model:
- You can receive a Master Writ you do not have the means to complete.
- Not just because you might not have the materials, but often because you do not have the required knowledge (e.g., of a special recipe for a Provisioning Master Writ).
- Without AddOns it can be convoluted to check whether a particular toon has all the required knowledge for a Master Writ. Therefore not uncommon for players not using AddOns to accidentally accept (consume) a Writ only to discover they are missing a vital component that might take days or even a month (e.g., in the case of trait research) to acquire.
- You do not have to do it promptly -- Even though would be extremely strange that a client would wait indefinitely for their order.
- You can trade it away.
- Even though the Writ was supposedly special and assigned to you.
- This also encourages players to only create one main crafter and funnel all Master Writs to that character because the cost of learning motifs is already excessive on one character. The rest are basically there to try to get lucky and get Master Writs.
- Master Writs are basically the only reason to collect a lot of motifs and research.
- A lot of gear set that players use cannot actually be crafted so when they want a certain look, they use the Outfit system anyway.
- A lot of sets (which require varying degrees of research) are used temporarily at best and ultimately replaced with sets that cannot be acquired by Crafting. So the massive investment of Writ Vouchers into making a "crafting hall" full of crafting set tables is ultimately... for Writ Vouchers.
- This all amounts to crafted gear sets mostly being useless to practical play, and instead part of a system of artificial need. While this issue specifically is not in the scope of this article, an argument can be made that players should at least not be made to spend undue amounts of time on it. Right now, simply to check whether they have enough research for the required set, have the specific requested trait researched for the gear piece, have the specific motif or recipe learned -- to find out all this without AddOns can in fact be very tedious. And the player hasn't even gotten to the part where they have to double check before crafting anything. Imagine all this multiplied by even just a dozen writs when some players have literally 100 or more Master Writs lined up at a time. It's no wonder that an AddOn such as WritWorthy was created to fully automate this process.
The Master Writs are not especially complicated, even for Blacksmith, Clothier, Jewelry Making, and Woodworking where they are a combination of styles, traits, and sets. But it is no exaggeration that in a week, players who do various Daily Writs on many crafts multiplied by many toons can have scores, even over 100 writs. When there are so many, checking each over to be careful and not waste resources on a mistake makes it tedious -- hence the invention of WritWorthy to automate the process.
Recommended Change
During the "working" period, a character that would qualify for a Master Writ instead has a chance to receive a "Special Order". This extends the "work" emote period, at the end of which the player receives additional rewards -- More Crafting skill experience, and Writ Vouchers (which are the current key reward for fulfilling a Master Writ).
The number of Writ Vouchers awarded depends on their Knowledge Score for the craft, which is a sum of relevant factors for that particular craft, such as the number of recipes for Provisioner, for example.
The higher the Knowledge Score, the more sought-after the character is as a craftsperson, and the more likely they will receive a difficult (and therefore more rewarding) Special Order -- which translates into more Writ Vouchers paid.
Since this change would require neither materials nor player input, Writ Voucher payouts would be reduced from the current model in exchange for the convenience. To net the most Writ Vouchers, players must accumulate a high Knowledge score on their characters.
Additionally, by scoring the player based on their knowledge, we can take into account their knowledge of Furnishing Plans and have Special Orders based on making furnishings instead of strictly making arms and armour. Currently, the knowledge of Furnishing Plans is basically completely ignored in the model of Crafting quests.
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