Official Discussion Thread for "Update 11 Guide: ESO Style Parlor"

Levi

The pricing is insane. I didn't expect it to be super cheap, but I did expect it to be reasonable.

Changing looks and names is no big deal. That was the choice made by the player with no side effects, but to charge $25 to change the race! Ridiculous!

ZoS, you changed the game when it comes to races. With softcaps, races barely mattered. Now it matters a lot. Then you take the best parts of my Argonian tank and give those things to the Orc. Fine, but then charging me $25 to get back what you took. Not cool.

I know you have been good about looking to what your player base wants. I'm hoping that you will do so here as well. I understand that you don't want people to do race changes without thought. I get that, and I agree with it. I'm not looking to just get to change my characters whenever the feeling hits me. I'm looking to correct problems. So, I believe that there is a solution: For the reason that the game has been changed, I think it would be fair to give each player a couple race change tokens to correct problems made by your changes. Then keeping the prices the same would be fair in my opinion.

mistermacintosh

@ZOS_GinaBruno: Can you put a ZOS t-shirt on this guy?

Lara1701

I maintain that itemized charges for appearance re-customization makes more sense than an exorbitant flat rate. A change to the eyes? 30 crowns. Adjust the height slider? 50 crowns. Re-do aging? 25 crowns. Let every single change be equal to 1,000 crowns if you must; but there is no logical or reasonable reason why there should be such a high flat rate.

moonbat

10$ USD for a freaking CHANGE OF HAIR COLOUR is insanely overpriced. I can dye my hair in real life for 2$.

This is absurd and I will not be partaking.

notimetocare

argouru wrote: »

Way too expensive for a race-change. If it gave 2 or more tokens it would be reasonable, but it'd be better to simply scrap a character and start over from scratch with how much that would cost. $25 just to change the race of a single character is too much to ask.

Same basic price as every other game that offers race changes (referring to games where race has a performance component).

notimetocare

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

YoshinJaa wrote: »

1000 Crowns to change your Appearance.
3000 Crowns for Race change (and Appearance as well).
2500 Crowns for Name change (lol)

200 Crowns per each premium hairstyle, adornment, etc.

3500 Crowns for a Complete change (first 3 listed). Best value (due to pricing) if considering to buy the Race or Name change.

Not sure why these prices are that high, but not a fan of them at ALL.

Sounds about right to me. Not too cheap that it encourages repeated usage, but cheap enough that for those to whom this matters, they will be able to afford it.

1000 Crowns is about $10, cheaper than WoW.
3000 Crowns is $25, same as WoW.
2500 is a bit steep (WoW's name change is only $10), but they really missed a trick by not including name change as part of appearance and race change, rather than as something separate, which I think is their biggest mistake.
Agreed. In those situations, the price is too high for fixing something that was caused by a bug. A reduced-cost token would be nice for any character created while there were bugs affecting character creation.

@Enodoc
This isn't WoW and ESO is no where close to that level of success, quality nor does it offer that level of customization for the time it was released. Let's make sure we are comparing apples to apples and WoW is not that but as results of poor design and awful visuals for creation, the cost is disrespectful.

Bah, whatever. I was only trying to see what other MMOs charged for the same things, and WoW was the first one I though of. Success and quality was not relevant for what I was looking at; one MMO, and another MMO, was all I was interested in.

But it's not even similar because basic cosmetic changes in WoW don't cost real money.

Fair enough, but I wasn't looking for basic cosmetic changes, I was looking for "Appearance Change", "Race Change" and "Name Change", and those match in functionality (changing 'every aspect of a character's physical appearance') between WoW and ESO, except that WoW's Appearance and Race tokens include a Name Change and ESO's don't.

The primary difference then is not between the tokens, but as you say, based on the cosmetic changes. If the Crown Store Appearance Collectibles (hairstyles, adornments, etc) were available with in-game gold rather than Crowns, that would match WoW, but I wasn't talking about those.

I think you're missing it.

ZOS intertwined what should be in-game gold with all real money requirements.
That alone makes it far more expensive than WoW in your comparison and by specifics it's exponentially more expensive.

I change my hair and stuff in wow a lot. Prob 25-30 times per character in the last 2 years. I've paid once for a server transfer and have never paid for a name change, etc.

For me, WoW is also too expensive for what's really a cosmetic edit.
So understanding that many others expressed to WoW that their costs were too high, using that to justify these prices is off base. Heck this game doesn't have the different servers and the character creation has more options, therefore the company is overcharging or taking advantage of poor character creation menus and options by charging for edits without addressing the issues of why the edits are necessary.

As some noted, paying to unlock edits is one thing, but paying per edit is outrageous.

That's all just on the edit piece.


Name change and race are another topic which should be less than WoW ...

Lack of faction change is upsetting too as we all do the exact same quests and have always had access to the same worlds. It's not like they are reworking anything.

WoW is also a sub game, they can offer things like haircuts for free. Given the swaths of people on this forum refusing to sub or buy from the Crown store, do you really expect anything free? Overhead is a thing in business, yet ZoS has tons playing and contributing nothing (and claiming some kind of moral highground that 'ZoS doesn't deserve it'.

Race means more in this game than it does in wow as far as combat effectiveness. Why should it be cheaper?

moonbat

notimetocare wrote: »

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

YoshinJaa wrote: »

1000 Crowns to change your Appearance.
3000 Crowns for Race change (and Appearance as well).
2500 Crowns for Name change (lol)

200 Crowns per each premium hairstyle, adornment, etc.

3500 Crowns for a Complete change (first 3 listed). Best value (due to pricing) if considering to buy the Race or Name change.

Not sure why these prices are that high, but not a fan of them at ALL.

Sounds about right to me. Not too cheap that it encourages repeated usage, but cheap enough that for those to whom this matters, they will be able to afford it.

1000 Crowns is about $10, cheaper than WoW.
3000 Crowns is $25, same as WoW.
2500 is a bit steep (WoW's name change is only $10), but they really missed a trick by not including name change as part of appearance and race change, rather than as something separate, which I think is their biggest mistake.
Agreed. In those situations, the price is too high for fixing something that was caused by a bug. A reduced-cost token would be nice for any character created while there were bugs affecting character creation.

@Enodoc
This isn't WoW and ESO is no where close to that level of success, quality nor does it offer that level of customization for the time it was released. Let's make sure we are comparing apples to apples and WoW is not that but as results of poor design and awful visuals for creation, the cost is disrespectful.

Bah, whatever. I was only trying to see what other MMOs charged for the same things, and WoW was the first one I though of. Success and quality was not relevant for what I was looking at; one MMO, and another MMO, was all I was interested in.

But it's not even similar because basic cosmetic changes in WoW don't cost real money.

Fair enough, but I wasn't looking for basic cosmetic changes, I was looking for "Appearance Change", "Race Change" and "Name Change", and those match in functionality (changing 'every aspect of a character's physical appearance') between WoW and ESO, except that WoW's Appearance and Race tokens include a Name Change and ESO's don't.

The primary difference then is not between the tokens, but as you say, based on the cosmetic changes. If the Crown Store Appearance Collectibles (hairstyles, adornments, etc) were available with in-game gold rather than Crowns, that would match WoW, but I wasn't talking about those.

I think you're missing it.

ZOS intertwined what should be in-game gold with all real money requirements.
That alone makes it far more expensive than WoW in your comparison and by specifics it's exponentially more expensive.

I change my hair and stuff in wow a lot. Prob 25-30 times per character in the last 2 years. I've paid once for a server transfer and have never paid for a name change, etc.

For me, WoW is also too expensive for what's really a cosmetic edit.
So understanding that many others expressed to WoW that their costs were too high, using that to justify these prices is off base. Heck this game doesn't have the different servers and the character creation has more options, therefore the company is overcharging or taking advantage of poor character creation menus and options by charging for edits without addressing the issues of why the edits are necessary.

As some noted, paying to unlock edits is one thing, but paying per edit is outrageous.

That's all just on the edit piece.


Name change and race are another topic which should be less than WoW ...

Lack of faction change is upsetting too as we all do the exact same quests and have always had access to the same worlds. It's not like they are reworking anything.

WoW is also a sub game, they can offer things like haircuts for free. Given the swaths of people on this forum refusing to sub or buy from the Crown store, do you really expect anything free? Overhead is a thing in business, yet ZoS has tons playing and contributing nothing (and claiming some kind of moral highground that 'ZoS doesn't deserve it'.

Race means more in this game than it does in wow as far as combat effectiveness. Why should it be cheaper?

Perhaps they should charge us 10$USD every time we use a wayshrine. Or dye our armor. Or use the bank. Or to talk in guild chat. I mean, why not just nickel and dime us on everything and just take away all of the fun! Why be reasonable!

EDIT: and LOTRO is free to play. You can change hair colour and style for in game gold. And people who don't sub can make Turbine points in game simply by questing.

Lara1701

moonbat wrote: »

10$ USD for a freaking CHANGE OF HAIR COLOUR is insanely overpriced. I can dye my hair in real life for 2$.

This is absurd and I will not be partaking.

Stop making sense!

I am fairly sure we all know how to re-apply our make-up and take jewelry on and off without having to pay someone for it too. As has been said, in WoW and LotRO you pay in-game gold. In TOR you pay real money, but it's itemized and cheap. There's just nothing reasonable about this.

idk

Levi wrote: »

The pricing is insane. I didn't expect it to be super cheap, but I did expect it to be reasonable.

Changing looks and names is no big deal. That was the choice made by the player with no side effects, but to charge $25 to change the race! Ridiculous!

ZoS, you changed the game when it comes to races. With softcaps, races barely mattered. Now it matters a lot. Then you take the best parts of my Argonian tank and give those things to the Orc. Fine, but then charging me $25 to get back what you took. Not cool.

I know you have been good about looking to what your player base wants. I'm hoping that you will do so here as well. I understand that you don't want people to do race changes without thought. I get that, and I agree with it. I'm not looking to just get to change my characters whenever the feeling hits me. I'm looking to correct problems. So, I believe that there is a solution: For the reason that the game has been changed, I think it would be fair to give each player a couple race change tokens to correct problems made by your changes. Then keeping the prices the same would be fair in my opinion.

@Levi
I am not arguing your point, but what was taken away from the Argonian.

Granted, the change to getting back a percentage of potion changing from 15-12% adds up in long fights, but the change to healing received from 6% to 5% is relatively small. I am not sure the poison resist still exists on PTS, but that was only situationally beneficial.

bioderm

Levi wrote: »

The pricing is insane. I didn't expect it to be super cheap, but I did expect it to be reasonable.

Changing looks and names is no big deal. That was the choice made by the player with no side effects, but to charge $25 to change the race! Ridiculous!

ZoS, you changed the game when it comes to races. With softcaps, races barely mattered. Now it matters a lot. Then you take the best parts of my Argonian tank and give those things to the Orc. Fine, but then charging me $25 to get back what you took. Not cool.

I know you have been good about looking to what your player base wants. I'm hoping that you will do so here as well. I understand that you don't want people to do race changes without thought. I get that, and I agree with it. I'm not looking to just get to change my characters whenever the feeling hits me. I'm looking to correct problems. So, I believe that there is a solution: For the reason that the game has been changed, I think it would be fair to give each player a couple race change tokens to correct problems made by your changes. Then keeping the prices the same would be fair in my opinion.

I agree with this.

MopeyHat

Perhaps they can be convinced to give tokens to players who made characters at launch on a case-by-case basis?

Personally the standalone name change price is really absurd, especially given how easily and how often name changes occur just because of reports. Am I paying 2500 crowns for the "convenience" of not having someone come up with a reason to be offended at my name and report it?

Levi

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

@Levi
I am not arguing your point, but what was taken away from the Argonian.

Granted, the change to getting back a percentage of potion changing from 15-12% adds up in long fights, but the change to healing received from 6% to 5% is relatively small. I am not sure the poison resist still exists on PTS, but that was only situationally beneficial.

The healing received. It was the reason I made the Argonian tank. It was changed to healing done.

starkerealm

DocFrost72 wrote: »

You're confusing cash grab with pay to win. ESO is far from p2w. It is looking like the norm will be ten bucks for a costume, 15-25 for a mount, and now twenty five to change my name.

I'll just buy steam games, and it'll do way more for me than one costume, even with as much as I love ESO.

No, I'm not. It's a cash grab when the T6 ships patterned off the popular T5 designs (like the Defiant, Intrepid, ect) cost the same as the T6 ships that have two specialist seats (like the command battlecruisers, pilot escorts, ect).

ESO's neither. You can choose to buy cosmetic items. They're just cosmetic. There's no force pushing you towards them. Do you want the Breton costume? Yes/No/Not for that price.

There's probably an argument to be had that the early costumes which reused in game assets (like the Knight Pack, Rogue pack, or any of the other motif based packs) were cash grabs, because there was very little dev cost associated with the items, and also why they popped up first, in the store.

But, with STO you're looking at a game where it will effectively lock you out of content unless you cough up some cash or grind until your eyes bleed... that's a cash grab. The get you invested, and then put the screws to you. Here, it's just, "want a cool lookin' thing?" Which in this case, wasn't that cool looking, according to some.

As for the race and name changes? I really think that one's as simple as, "hey, don't do this. You've been asking us for ages, now shut up." I don't think they expect many people will, and I really think the idea was to make it unpalatable.

starkerealm

moonbat wrote: »

10$ USD for a freaking CHANGE OF HAIR COLOUR is insanely overpriced. I can dye my hair in real life for 2$.

This is absurd and I will not be partaking.

To be honest, it would be really cool if the hairstyles got a dye slot option, so we could redye our hair at a station.

MornaBaine

Here is pretty much everything that is wrong with the Style Parlor. I have a hard time understanding why this was all so completely ignored by ZOS.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/165626/the-barber-shop-is-done-the-ignored-community-input-is-here/p1

Stranglehands

The prices are obscene. I think instead of coming back to the game to change my characters' appearance I might just delete the characters instead

itehache

Hey all,
I want to change my name and my appearance, I did not see the "combo" for that.
Do I still have to pay 1000 for appearance + 2500 for name change? Total being 3500 (I could change the race too xD).
Thanks for your help.

Elsonso

itehache wrote: »

Hey all,
I want to change my name and my appearance, I did not see the "combo" for that.
Do I still have to pay 1000 for appearance + 2500 for name change? Total being 3500 (I could change the race too xD).
Thanks for your help.

Yes. If you want to change Appearance and Name (changing gender, for example) then buying the Race+Name package is the same as buying Appearance and Name separately. Odd pricing, yes.

argouru

Race should NOT be the most expensive thing to change, especially with the racial changes made as part of the same update. If they want to entice people to change to a race with better benefits for their character, they should not jack up the cost like this because it kills the incentive to make use of the changes by changing a character's race, which would be the most-used change of the three for at least a while. They're kind of hurting their chances to make a large amount of profit as people seek to change character race to take advantage of the changes to the passives, but cannot afford to due to the excessive cost of the racial change token.

With name-changing, THAT I can see as being the most expensive because of the fact that a character name is unique (no one else can use that name) and the character names are tracked by ZOS for player assistance purposes.

Pheefs

I was hoping to pay crowns for unlocking account access to the style parlor, & I had minor adjustments I hoped to make on most characters.

Now, I will not be buying any tokens, unless by any chance you accidentally added a zero there & style parlor is 100 crowns per use?


no?
ah well, we can hope

blur

Xael wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_KaiSchober

For these prices some changes need to be made before you go live.

Race Changes do not include a name change.
Appearance change does not include a name change either.
This is a terrible design. Either it's a massive oversight or you are doing this on purpose as another cash-grab.


Here are reasons why this current design is bad. Let's look at these hypotheticals:

• Bill has an Argonian named like other Argonian npcs befitting nothing but an Argonian. Bill decides to race change to an Altmer. Name no longer fits. Now you have to pay for a name change along with the race change.
• Tom has a male Nord named Larry. Tom decides to get an appearance change to go female. Name no longer applies. Now Tom has to buy a name change alongside the appearance change she already purchased.

This to me screams of intentional rip off. Especially if the prices are kind of high (and they are). Keep in mind when you introduced the Banker and Merchant there were no notes in the description indicating you couldn't repair on the Merchant, use the guild bank on the Banker. Each cost 5k crowns. No refunds. Guess who bought both not knowing these little facts? Me.

Regarding the new character changes:
The 3 changes should be supersets of each other.

1. Name change
2. Name change + appearance change
3. Name change + appearance change + race change

World of Warcraft managed to get this right. So did several other MMORPGs that are older. Are you really going to gouge us like this?

This hit the nail on the head.
ZOS you should listen to this post.

Cously

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

No word on how much they want for the base game hair pack, but they gave the price for everything else.

My guess is like 4000 Crowns, since it has 90+ hair styles in it (an 18000 Crown value! ...ahem)

Whoops, that was just an oversight! The hair style pack containing all hair styles from the base game will be 1000 crowns.

Thanks for clarifying. The prices looks good and fair, maaaaaybe I'm a bit unhappy with the Name Change price but I understand the reasoning behind it. Now this hair style pack price is just very sweet!

Elsonso

Cously wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Whoops, that was just an oversight! The hair style pack containing all hair styles from the base game will be 1000 crowns.

Thanks for clarifying. The prices looks good and fair, maaaaaybe I'm a bit unhappy with the Name Change price but I understand the reasoning behind it. Now this hair style pack price is just very sweet!

I like the Hair Pack price (1000 Crowns) but I am still hit with the realization that all this is giving me is the hair I had access to at character generation. I cannot change hair color, or anything else about the character, just the styling. Is that really worth 1k? Honestly, for this one-time purchase, would it have hurt that much to just put them into the game as a "base game feature"?

I guess so...

idk

Levi wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

@Levi
I am not arguing your point, but what was taken away from the Argonian.

Granted, the change to getting back a percentage of potion changing from 15-12% adds up in long fights, but the change to healing received from 6% to 5% is relatively small. I am not sure the poison resist still exists on PTS, but that was only situationally beneficial.

The healing received. It was the reason I made the Argonian tank. It was changed to healing done.

@Levi

And it was mostly changed back. The difference in healing received is merely 1%, from 6%-5%. Keeping up with the weekly changes to the PTS can be a challenge. Here is the link to the patch that brought back healing received to the Argonian. The change happened a few weeks ago.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/278542/pts-patch-notes-v2-5-2/p1

In the event you are aware of the adjustment, the question I have, would such a small tweak be enough to warrant a free race change?

Personally I do not think so, especially with a small tweak. It is no different that changing skills in Classes and is change is something MMO players are accustomed to.

Lysette

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

No word on how much they want for the base game hair pack, but they gave the price for everything else.

My guess is like 4000 Crowns, since it has 90+ hair styles in it (an 18000 Crown value! ...ahem)

Whoops, that was just an oversight! The hair style pack containing all hair styles from the base game will be 1000 crowns.

Now this is good news, Gina, thank you for the information.

Jah

These prices are a ripoff. All your prices are a ripoff, actually. Greed, greed, and more greed. Guess you figure that people are already paying your existing absurd prices, that everything new you add to the crown store should have an absurd price as well. Congrats on your successful scam.

Holycannoli

starkerealm wrote: »

I find it hilarious, you can call ZOS's decision a "cash grab" while discussing a game where you are prevented from gaining access to a T6 (or T5u) ship without paying money. For half of the content in STO, you literally cannot reach max level without spending cash, and are heavily encouraged to fly multiple T6 ships for their starship traits.

Add onto that you're talking about a game that charges real money currency for crafting.

But, ESO is the cash grab... right.

There's an enormous difference though: in STO you can earn everything in the cash shop just by playing the game. I literally have tens of millions of dilithium (the ingame premium currency) sitting there waiting for me to spend or convert to their cash shop currency. I bought the T6 ships I wanted with it and still have tens of millions to go. Didn't spend a dime.

And no it doesn't charge real money for crafting, and no you don't have to spend cash to reach max level. I'm not sure you quite understand the game or it's cash shop model.

ZOS' decision to not only charge for something like an appearance change but to charge $10 for it is ridiculous. And that's just one appearance change. Better get it exactly right or you have to spend another $10.

Again, race and name changes should cost real money but appearance changes should not unless you're attempting to change to a cash shop costume or hairstyle.

Verrask

When are we getting the $50.00 monocle?

Kelna

Lara1701 wrote: »

I maintain that itemized charges for appearance re-customization makes more sense than an exorbitant flat rate. A change to the eyes? 30 crowns. Adjust the height slider? 50 crowns. Re-do aging? 25 crowns.

I support this.. I would like to simply remove an adornment or face marking from one of my characters (can't remember which of those 2 she has on her) that I didn't notice while rushing to make her during release day, when I wanted to get the name before anyone else. I really shouldn't have to spend 1000 crowns to remove one item.

MornaBaine

Kelna wrote: »

Lara1701 wrote: »

I maintain that itemized charges for appearance re-customization makes more sense than an exorbitant flat rate. A change to the eyes? 30 crowns. Adjust the height slider? 50 crowns. Re-do aging? 25 crowns.

I support this.. I would like to simply remove an adornment or face marking from one of my characters (can't remember which of those 2 she has on her) that I didn't notice while rushing to make her during release day, when I wanted to get the name before anyone else. I really shouldn't have to spend 1000 crowns to remove one item.

Seriously. For that amount of money the appearance change should just be an account wide unlock. Actually, I'd pay 2,000 crowns for it without batting an eyelash. I don't know what they're thinking with this model. It is certainly hurting their image with a large portion of the playerbase, not just us squeaky wheels here in the forum.