Let us purchase crafting bag as digital game upgrade

GuuMoonRyoung

Let's say a 200$ game digital upgrade that would unlock crafting bag for the account. 200$ is quite the investment, especially since 2 years of eso plus cost almost the same but eso plus provides many services and even provides hefty amount of crowns. I think a 200$ price tag for crafting bag would be a fair exchange.

TechMaybeHic

So you want to basically pay for just over a year subscription. They might offer than when they think they might shut the game down in a year an a half. If they plan to operate longer than that, it would be a bad business decision for them. It might be their biggest draw for subscription

Necrotech_Master

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

So you want to basically pay for just over a year subscription. They might offer than when they think they might shut the game down in a year an a half. If they plan to operate longer than that, it would be a bad business decision for them. It might be their biggest draw for subscription

this, its about 75% of the reason i still use the sub lol

the other 25% is mainly for the housing space, bank space, transmute space (which honestly is not enough, this should be unlimited transmute storage with sub), and other minor bonuses

Tsuriel

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

So you want to basically pay for just over a year subscription. They might offer than when they think they might shut the game down in a year an a half. If they plan to operate longer than that, it would be a bad business decision for them. It might be their biggest draw for subscription

Shouldn't that be alarming enough though??
That a game's survival relies so heavily on something like a crafting bag, house/bank space and transmute storage instead of the game's quality and depth??

To me at least it raises the question whether ZOS should perhaps re-consider their business model to, I don't know - rely on how good the game is, instead of relying on what I mentioned above??

Necrotech_Master

Tsuriel wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

So you want to basically pay for just over a year subscription. They might offer than when they think they might shut the game down in a year an a half. If they plan to operate longer than that, it would be a bad business decision for them. It might be their biggest draw for subscription

Shouldn't that be alarming enough though??
That a game's survival relies so heavily on something like a crafting bag, house/bank space and transmute storage instead of the game's quality and depth??

To me at least it raises the question whether ZOS should perhaps re-consider their business model to, I don't know - rely on how good the game is, instead of relying on what I mentioned above??

servers are a constant cost, i rather this not turn into a crown store only game supported entirely by a few whale players

TechMaybeHic

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Tsuriel wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

So you want to basically pay for just over a year subscription. They might offer than when they think they might shut the game down in a year an a half. If they plan to operate longer than that, it would be a bad business decision for them. It might be their biggest draw for subscription

Shouldn't that be alarming enough though??
That a game's survival relies so heavily on something like a crafting bag, house/bank space and transmute storage instead of the game's quality and depth??

To me at least it raises the question whether ZOS should perhaps re-consider their business model to, I don't know - rely on how good the game is, instead of relying on what I mentioned above??

servers are a constant cost, i rather this not turn into a crown store only game supported entirely by a few whale players

I agree with this. Its part of the way games deal with going buy to play and last. Some, gate you to how often you can do certain things, or even how many hot keys you can bind. At least I can play without the crafting bag. I just can sell my overflow material

Dagoth_Rac

Tsuriel wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

So you want to basically pay for just over a year subscription. They might offer than when they think they might shut the game down in a year an a half. If they plan to operate longer than that, it would be a bad business decision for them. It might be their biggest draw for subscription

Shouldn't that be alarming enough though??
That a game's survival relies so heavily on something like a crafting bag, house/bank space and transmute storage instead of the game's quality and depth??

To me at least it raises the question whether ZOS should perhaps re-consider their business model to, I don't know - rely on how good the game is, instead of relying on what I mentioned above??

For an optional subscription game you basically need to make game enough of a pain in the neck without a subscription that most serious players feel compelled to subscribe. If you make the greatest game in the world with all kinds of quality and depth and then ask players to optionally subscribe as a thank you for a great game, you end up with a beloved game that makes no money.

And making one of the primary QOL features of the subscription available as a one-time purchase upgrade means you end up with a big burst of revenue as everyone buys the upgrade ... and then subscription revenue plummets and after a year or two company profits end up much worse.

Tommy_The_Gun

Craft bag imho is one of those things that in general (at least in larger picture) is actually more harmful than beneficial for the game. Think about it.
- Inventory management is fine if you are a new player. Once you reach the beginning of an end game you start to struggle with inventory management.
- In other words: Inventory management is designed around rental fee (sub = rental fee). What is worse, it is done in a "mobile game style" you don't struggle, until you invents a lot of time into the game.
- Once you pay just once for the ESO+, then your invetory management is kinda "held hostage" behind rental fee.
- Craft bag also arguably has a tradeing system breaking potential, as you can keep infinite amount of crafting materials. This means that just one account can buy off entire supply of crafting materials & dictate prices.
- The only non-rental inventory increase we ever had was either inventory pets (paid) or housing storage (which is not visible by crafting stations).
- With every new DLC / Chapter we get TONS of new crafting material types, while max bank space slots remain unchanged since 2014.

I think that what should be done is that Bank space should be increase as even counting only base game crafting items, the amount of types of those vastly increased while max bank space did not. So, increasing max bank space seems like a best way to solve the issue (assuming zos wants to solve it). Also it is a win-win since ESO+ users are getting double of that anyway.

GuuMoonRyoung

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Tsuriel wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

So you want to basically pay for just over a year subscription. They might offer than when they think they might shut the game down in a year an a half. If they plan to operate longer than that, it would be a bad business decision for them. It might be their biggest draw for subscription

Shouldn't that be alarming enough though??
That a game's survival relies so heavily on something like a crafting bag, house/bank space and transmute storage instead of the game's quality and depth??

To me at least it raises the question whether ZOS should perhaps re-consider their business model to, I don't know - rely on how good the game is, instead of relying on what I mentioned above??

servers are a constant cost, i rather this not turn into a crown store only game supported entirely by a few whale players

Many game developers have commented on the server cost, the best of the best gaming servers cost 2$ per player per month, even less if they rent for 5 years.

Not my words, I read it on multiple gaming news media interviews.

Servers are not the main cost of game development, marketing and advertisement is.

GuuMoonRyoung

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

So you want to basically pay for just over a year subscription. They might offer than when they think they might shut the game down in a year an a half. If they plan to operate longer than that, it would be a bad business decision for them. It might be their biggest draw for subscription

I somewhat agree with you, if they do add a digital game upgrade, that could easily mean that they are at the end of their ropes and want to desperately make enough money before shutting down.

On the other hand, this game's main income is the cash shop and gambling crates. The game is basically supported by people who are spending an enormous amount of money in cash shop, rather than the subscribers.

I am of course guessing based on the five guilds I am on where barely a handful are subscribers but many of them spend money in cash shop. And also, the way ZOS brings in more and more stuff in cash shop that can not be found in game, it is clear they also consider the cash shop their bread and butter.

So I am not sure if having a crafting bag digital upgrade would be alarming or a good thing.

GuuMoonRyoung

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Craft bag imho is one of those things that in general (at least in larger picture) is actually more harmful than beneficial for the game. Think about it.
- Inventory management is fine if you are a new player. Once you reach the beginning of an end game you start to struggle with inventory management.
- In other words: Inventory management is designed around rental fee (sub = rental fee). What is worse, it is done in a "mobile game style" you don't struggle, until you invents a lot of time into the game.
- Once you pay just once for the ESO+, then your invetory management is kinda "held hostage" behind rental fee.
- Craft bag also arguably has a tradeing system breaking potential, as you can keep infinite amount of crafting materials. This means that just one account can buy off entire supply of crafting materials & dictate prices.
- The only non-rental inventory increase we ever had was either inventory pets (paid) or housing storage (which is not visible by crafting stations).
- With every new DLC / Chapter we get TONS of new crafting material types, while max bank space slots remain unchanged since 2014.

I think that what should be done is that Bank space should be increase as even counting only base game crafting items, the amount of types of those vastly increased while max bank space did not. So, increasing max bank space seems like a best way to solve the issue (assuming zos wants to solve it). Also it is a win-win since ESO+ users are getting double of that anyway.

Creating a problem and selling the solution, that is how game monetization goes these days. I don't see it changing any time soon considering how no govt. still wants to put a leash on gambling boxes in online games.

Danikat

If the only part of a subscription which appeals to you is the craft bag you probably don't need to subscribe all the time and could just buy a month (annoyingly it can't be less than that) whenever you feel like your storage space is filling up.

And if you're filling up all the space you have with materials in less than 2 months it might be worth thinking about why you're getting so much more stuff than you're using and what you could do to either reduce what's coming in or use/sell more of it, because having it all just piling up without ever being used is pointless. (I've been thinking about this after realising during the last free trial that I have over 2,000 of most cooking materials. I'm clearly never going to use that much, so I can probably stop picking them up or just sell them to NPC merchants if I don't have space in my guild store.)