I read Myrron's Guide to Blacksmithing last week, and he detailed how if you Extract an item that you previously made, you get far fewer Inspiration points than if you Extract the same item that was made by somebody else.

I assumed he had to have encountered a bug. There was no way this was working as intended.

Sadly, he was correct. When I created a Level 4 Dagger and Extracted it, I got 27 Inspiration. When I asked a buddy to make me one and I Extracted it, I got 204. That's almost a 10x difference.

Generally, I think ESO's crafting model is very good. This, however, is TERRIBLE. Even if you convinced me that for some forced-cooperation reason that this was a good idea (good luck), the fact that the difference is almost 10 times more points is just way too much to justify.

Link to Myrron's original thread.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1489550-myrrons-blacksmithing-guide-for-eso-beta-version/

Personally I feel that makes perfect sense. You made the item yourself to begin with. Inspiration is like, it gives you ideas to create new things. In most cases, taking apart something you made yourself to begin with isn't going to give you any new ideas, so you don't really get any inspiration from it.

Who cares about making sense? Gamers like the feel of making progress.

what's so hard about trading with other players?

That's the basic argument that someone else gave me this weekend. The problem with that argument is that it's basically RP-based. As an objective mechanic, it doesn't add up. A dagger is a dagger, regardless of who made it.

What's important (to me) is the punitive nature of this design decision and the severity of the numbers. If you got 2x or maybe 3x the amount of points, I wouldn't be as worked up about it. But 10x? No.

it's not hard. but it can be very tedious. there is no global auction house. so if you want to trade you have to spam chat.

I would have to trade a TON of gear back and forth to take full advantage of this. And even then, we'd both have to be working on the SAME craft. If you want to force us to cooperate, then make it so that one skill helps another. So you potions can help my blacksmithing. (which makes every bit as much sense as the current system...)

It would break the progression of the crafting system. Generally around level 10, you're finding level 5-7 items and that's what you're breaking down and getting crafting exp for. If you can just create level 14 stuff and break that down for full experience that you would get for if you found it on a mob, you'd rocket through the levels of the crafting system pretty effortlessly. If somebody really wants to, they can do the extra work of finding a like-minded person to trade with. I certainly wasn't having any issues leveling ALL of my crafting professions without having to abuse the system like this.

Guild bank. Guild store. Guild mates. Friends.

Or make an alt and swap with them

However, I find my crafting levels at a perfectly acceptable rate just breaking down stuff I find and crafting myself new stuff. If you craft your own gear as you level, you should have no trouble keeping your crafting level up to the level of the mats you're finding.

It only becomes an issue if you're trying to powerlevel crafting... by breaking down and recreating the same iron dagger over and over. Seems clear that kind of tedious grind is exactly what the devs were trying to prevent, and it looks like they succeeded.

Edit: Or, exactly what Kuro-Pi said

I think it's a great idea that promotes cooperative crafting. My wife and I are glad that *something* in the game is done better as a group (questing sure isn't).

We're not abusing the system. We're being penalized for not having the right friends, or not finding the right trading partners when we're online.

By your logic, I should receive 10x the amount of Ingots when I extract my own weapons. After all, I built it, so I should know how to get the most out of it, right?

But it's okay to BUY L14 gear from someone and gain the extra xp for it?

Your point breaks down there.

For example, someone who buys a ton of gold from goldfarmers will be able to powerlevel their crafting, but a real crafter who makes their own stuff and spends all their money on crafting (and doesn't buy farmed gold from the goldfarmers) will level crafting slowly.

This system basically encourages this behaviour.

So now we create systems based on trying to let legitimate players keep up with people who cheat? Did not know. Don't try to use anything outside of proper game mechanics to justify your point. People who want to wreck things are going to find a way no matter what. There is no reason to let somebody master crafting by the time they hit level 20. As it was in the beta, spending my own money, finding my own ingredients and everything, I was able to keep all my crafting within a level or 2 of my base level, and I wasn't even being that diligent because I was playing with another player. Had I been alone, I could have been even more efficient. And that's with doing all 6 schools, no focus. If I had been able to disassemble everything I made for full credit, I can't even imagine what my crafting levels would have been at.

I find that assertion hard to believe, since it's pretty well documented that there simply isn't enough bag space to support all 6 crafts.

I'll use real world to justify my point, same as how you used "how it feels realistic" and the immersion thing to justify your point.

Bottom line is this is going to happen, and the system encourages it.

You simply go back to town after each quest, spend most of your gold to upgrade your bank and bag. It's not too hard, and considering how easy it is to level provisioning, you don't actually need to keep many items for that on hand at all. Aspect runes were a pain to find this beta though, so down the road I might've started to fall behind in enchanting, but the rest are pretty easy to keep up as long as you're going back to town regularly. It's a pain, but I've always done similar things in all my TES games, so I'm used to it.

I personally tried to craft but it took up so much time and worse skill points that it took me out of the story and the gameplay. Plus I couldn't keep up with the need for gold (mostly for bag and bank space) while crafting. Addding to it I could never craft anything near the level I was on. I personally don't like the crafting experience. I can only compare it to other mmo's and its much more bulky than other types of crafting. I also was not able to get the research to work right not sure why. But even if I could I am sure I will hit max level and end game content and have to go back to crafting and go through all the mundain trading and finding mats because the current system just doesn't scale well with your lvl and need for gold(and I wasn't even saving for a horse what if I was?). I was trying to see how long I'd have to grind each level and area with searching trading to make whole sets of suitable gear and it didn't matter I could always find stuff better than I made. All in all i'm not impressed with the current system.

You can't even support 3 full profession with all upgrades let alone 6 or all. Not to mention the bank is shared between characters.

Not a problem for me. I don't do alts. Still, I personally wasn't having any issues keeping my crafting up with my character level in all my professions. I can't describe to you how, because it involved a lot of inventory juggling until I got my second and third space upgrades, and sometimes running around with a pack with 40 items in it until I got the right materials for certain stretches, but I wasn't having issues keeping my crafting up with my base level. Research is one thing, but just the actual levels of the professions? I didn't find too hard.

That sounds truly awful.

Different people enjoy playing different ways. I always tend to horde items in MMOs and RPGs so I know all about inventory juggling. It gets pretty tricky at times and that makes it quite fun.

As I said, I've always played my TES games that way. Starting out that way kinda svcks, but being able to make my own armor that has better stats than any quests rewards I'm receiving, and create some of those special set items from the special crafting areas you find, really pays off. I wound up making all the armor for my friend too, so there was more purpose for me upgrading the crafting besides medium than to just sell it.

For me inventory juggling is the polar opposite of fun. It's time spent NOT PLAYING the game, staring at the insides of a bag aka a list of words, and getting bothered by having to delete stuff in the field.

Completely agree with you OP.

I'm okay with a 2x or 3x bonus in IP gained if you and a friend want to do crafting together. A 10x gain is ridiculous and seems almost exploitive.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, hopefully the IP system will see further refinement

I enjoy it well enough, but that's what happens when you want to do all 6 schools of crafting instead of focusing. I could have avoided it by focusing, but I'm a completionist, and I, as I mentioned, I don't do alts, so I'm not about to have another character for the stuff I don't specialize in. That's not to say I wouldn't like to see bigger bags/banks, I'm just against getting full exp for disassembling the super high level gear you make yourself, that's way above what you're finding for mob drops.