Posting this here as well:

To be honest I am worried by this line of thinking and policy. Little by little we get used to living in a bubble in our own world, with players around us being nothing more than ghosts, except when we choose to interact with them by pressing a button to achieve a goal we need.

And I ask everyone here.
Was it so terrible for you not to be able to loot every single barrel or crate you came across? Was it so awful to have someone else looting some meager crafting materials just before you looted it?

For me it's the opposite. I enjoyed sharing these containers with other people because it was essentially a clue that the world around me was alive and breathing. I chuckled every time someone got to the barrel a little faster and I looked forward for the next one instead.

For me instanced loot, makes looting containers, a dull, repetitive process of mouse clicks. Every time I see people searching boxes but not taking anything from them, the world around me becomes a little more fake than it was before.

no it wasnt terrible I actually prefer it the other way around it was fun and challenging to beat others to that cool item in the chest I actually found a blue once

Well to be fair lootable world stuff isn't instanced, only quest related stuff is and monster loot if you helped killing said monster, the rest is fair game to whoever catches it.

I couldn't honestly care. Next people will be complaining about not being able to look down and see their feet in 1st person mode. IMO we're now reaching the limit of nit-pickery.

i hadnt even noticed it was a competition to get there first except for the locked chests

so i guess to me it doesnt really matter much, unless if this also means the loot is less valuable, which i guess it could be when everyone has their own

I agree... It is frustrating when it happens with a chest or something but I also liked the competition.

In general I am against to much instancing and phasing, when used right it is great but too much is not good.

Like when it prohibits you to play with your friends. That is the case in World of Warcraft quite a lot thanks to phasing and I hated it.

Same in EOS just a little different. I was planning on questing with my girlfriend but the way it works here this is REALLY hard.

Not after this patch it seems. It says that every container is now instanced.

Looting and the ambudance of containers was always a signature feature of TES and a quite imrpotant one. If you consider this nit-picking then good for you.

And than you'll find out that some chars have better sprinting, jumping or teleporting abilities. You learn that is you want to pick locks in an open environment, you better don't play Templar, ranger or whatever. And eventually all these abilities have to be nerfd because the people playing these chars without these abilities come to the forum complaining by the thousands.

i never actually found a crate or box that i could loot, everything was taken. from level 1 to 17 in last weekend beta.

the new system is the only way in a new MMO that will have millions and millions of players grabbing everything and all they get their hands on with.

I doubt every container will be instanced, I really hope you misread it, a link would help if you dont mind.

Also most likely they were referring to public dungeons or instanced dungeons where there are loose chests that people would rush to instead of going with the group, so there I agree with this, but in the open world having everything instanced makes no sense.

EDIT: also forgot to say that it sounds impossible to do that without making loot client side, because every time a player would walk into a possible loot location the server would have to be "contacted" and say "yea where you are there is a plant for you" and do that for MILLIONS of players, OR to save this load make it FULL client side and let it be easily hacked and have infinite loot, trust me client side monsters/loot is the easiest crapfest to hack ever invented.

I really, really really think it's HIGHLY unlikely that open world containers will be instanced, its just not possible without causing the server TREMENDOUS load issues.

And that's because of what?

Because EVERYONE must get EVERYTHING? You can still loot everything, is it really so terrible if sometimes someone gets to it first?

That's impossible. Even in stress tests where the areas were literally flooding with people I could still loot at least 1/3 of the things I came across!

It is mentioned in the 1.7 patch notes, exactly as I quoted it.

no every crate/barrel is in fact instanced to the person opening it.....

While I don't care about getting my own loot (experience has shown me that I will always get what I need least/can't use anyway One big reason I'm thankful for a decent crafting system) one thing I've gotten very sick of hearing over the years are the cries of ninja-looter or X stole MY sword/potion/resource/pony. Nothing kills the immersion for me quicker than two grown men arguing over some pixels. It's embarrassing to be completely honest.

Then on top of that you have the jerks who simply have to get to the loot before anyone else to hell with what's happening around them (and everyone else is doing the actual work). Or in the most extreme case, have programs to do the rapid looting for them.

So while I agree with you that non-instanced loot is fine by me, I can fully understand why they would have gone in a different direction. Most people simply cannot be trusted to not be antisocial.

So no more waiting in stealth for a player to engage the monsters and then make a dash to the chest before they finish the mobs off?

Doesn't really bother me that much to be honest its not like we can carry everything at the start of the game. Fill up your inventory with rubbish and you spend the next 5 minutes sorting it to finish a quest because there are no overflow options in the game.

Yes it is. Especially when he brags in the chat about what he found before you got there on turtle speed. That is just reality.

Instanced containers was the case in the last beta weekend too, if you've only just noticed it then it likely didn't affect your experience much last time.

Also we are not talking here about an abundance of containers, which of course is a signature of TES, and there are plenty of them in ESO - the point of your thread was to complain that you didn't like lack of competition for those containers which is a different issue - so make up your mind about the point you wish to make.

Also please note that it only applies to low level loot containers, not pickable chests.

Nope, had zero lootable containers boxes or food crates.

Only thing i could loot was chests i picklocked 1st. but those were also very rare, and camped in many places. (fixed spawns).

When the game goes retail and all the millions of players focuses even more to the looting of stuff, there would not be anything for the people who are not HC grinders. Getting one box per hour is not something i look into in ESO.

Also coldharbor was 100% looted, nothing to loot there, only thing i got from there was the starter weapon and mob loot, 1gp per mob x20, and then i was off Coldharbor. (all my friends had this also, altho they were in their own instances and sometimes they got a new phase spawning and got lucky and could loot some containers for food items).

in some distant dungeons i found bread and couple of buff potions, but that was all.

I played around 40h on last beta weekend.

I prefer this. I HATE when I am fighting something to get that chest then someone's like 'lol mine now' or when I am going to gather that wood and hey! That guy just spawned in and took the stuff because (s)he spawned in, saw it and grabbed it when I was on my way. Everything like that should be instanced. I don't know how people would have FUN seeing someone just take stuff while you were needing to fight/move over to it... And not to mention it will stop people instanced together from not fighting just to grab the stuff before anyone else gets the chance.

Also: Yes, the times I went through cold harbor? Everything gone except on the one character I managed to get on when no one else was on, thanks to my wonky work schedule that day.

Patch notes don't seem to make that distinction. Also I couldn't play last weekend, don't conveniently assume anything you want. I am very clear in what I am saying, wrote a few paragraphs about it and others seem to understand the point I am making just fine, sorry you don't.

Sigh... really? No offense, but are you still in the first grade to let something like that (which I imagine will happen quite rarely) bother you?

As is stated several times; When I'm fighting mobs around a certain chest and somebody steps in to just loot it, bragging about his loot will certainly piss me off. Call me what you want. I have a thick skin.

Last patch was fine, intitially everything was looted, as expected, but after that I found that they dramatically increase respawn rate of stuff, especially noticeable in coldharbor, and stros m'kai. Afaik nothing was instanced then.

If they instance it now, it will only be in instanced dungeons probably, no idea where you actually read all of this, looked for it, didn't seem to find it.

Oi, there's really no need to start getting snarky you know, we're all here for a similar reason aren't we?

Fact is you're reading patch notes that are already a month old, were tested in the last test, and a lot of people (myself included) are fine with it.

This is just old news, and I doubt that many people care about whether a barrel containing a piece of pork is instanced to each player, or the subject of hot competition to get there first.

I played with this last beta test, and it is only low level containers - barrels, sacks, and crates - not chests or anything containing good loot. If you want to fight over a lump of cornmeal or a piece of meat then I think you're making a fuss about nothing of much importance. In my opinion.

Hmm. In the case of crates and barrels I don't think it's a big deal to compete for them, because typically all they contain is provisioning ingredients.

However, I also don't think that having them instanced is going to affect my social experience of the game one iota

I interact with the characters around me because there are people behind them, not because they beat me to a crate (or didn't).

Erm...that was already in the last beta if I remember correctly. The only odd thing is they decided to instance those but not treasure chest.

Some of us have certain things to take care of in real life, so you will excuse me if it's "old news".

It seems some get pretty frantic over that piece of pork. For me it's not about the piece of pork. It's about the immersion of not having everything to myself while there are a hundred more people running around and looting - as I already explained in the OP.

The respawn rate was that fast that many containers could still be looted. I found it in the patch notes in the beta forums.