The ESO Craft Bag: A Convenience or a Gatekeeper to Enjoyable Gameplay?

DigiAngel

Convenience. Storage chests are available in game..takes a while but useful. I had 10 toons, stash was at around 140 usually.

Erickson9610

fizzylu wrote: »

I'm also tired of hearing the "they have to make money somehow" comment said about a game as heavily monetized as this one.

The game is dirt cheap to buy, and the subscription is optional. Yes, ZOS needs to make money somehow.

Honestly, I'm tired of hearing people complain about the monetization and asking for everything to be free earnable in-game.

Playnice

Savina wrote: »

"The ESO Craft Bag: A Convenience or a Gatekeeper to Enjoyable Gameplay?"

It is a convenience that comes with a ESO+ subscription. If you want it subscribe. If you do not want to subscribe or can't afford to subscribe then learn effective ways to manage your inventory. Or go find a game that gives you what you think you are entitled to at the price you are willing to pay. It really is that simple.

Why start a thread as if you have an actual interest in the question, when in reality your mind is already made up and you already know your answer is the only right one? Entitlement is a ugly thing.

If you bothered to read any of the replies, you would have seen that I previously stated that opting to use Craft Bag was a valuable asset to my gameplay experience. I have been an ESO+ subscriber for almost the entirety of the game's existence so you don't need to school me on entitlements, thanks for the lesson though.

vsrs_au

The_Meathead wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

The crafting bag is probably the most toxic thing that I've encountered in any game.

It's effective, but I wouldn't label it as "toxic." I feel like that's a vast overstatement.

The Crafting Bag is arguably the single biggest perk of a continued subscription, certainly, but it's not like you can't play the game without it if you're truly intent on not paying a penny - as in none, as in totally free and without cost.

If anything, I'd say the constraints placed upon a non-paying player are surprisingly minimal and if the very overt Crafting Bag is the bait used to lure us to pay, that's not bad at all.

It depends on what you mean by "cost". Some of us regard hours spent on inventory management as a cost, i.e. not all costs are monetary.

Playnice

The_Meathead wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

The crafting bag is probably the most toxic thing that I've encountered in any game.

It's effective, but I wouldn't label it as "toxic." I feel like that's a vast overstatement.

The Crafting Bag is arguably the single biggest perk of a continued subscription, certainly, but it's not like you can't play the game without it if you're truly intent on not paying a penny - as in none, as in totally free and without cost.

If anything, I'd say the constraints placed upon a non-paying player are surprisingly minimal and if the very overt Crafting Bag is the bait used to lure us to pay, that's not bad at all.

That's a great way to look at it.

It’s hard to imagine someone being so eager to play the game yet refusing to spend anything on it, ultimately missing out on the best experience. Personally, I won’t play without ESO+. You’re right that it’s essentially "the bait" for many players to subscribe, and I’m fine with that. Occasionally, I let my subscription lapse when I’m not logging in much, but as soon as my friends are online and ready to play ESO, I renew it without hesitation—if only for the craft bag—and I’m perfectly okay with that.

DreamyLu

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

My thinking is jump into the game for free and see if you like it. If so, then do ESO+ and enjoy the benefits. Game's gotta make money somehow and I find ESO+ a decent value.

I agree and I bring an additional approach: cost free online games partially survive thanks to players who regularly invest into merchandizing.
For me, it's logic that players who can afford investing some money into the game, support it by purchasing/paying regularly. This is what allows that the game keeps being cost free, so that players who can't afford putting money in games still keep playing and enjoy, even if it's a less comfortable version of the game.

I'm lucky enough to be able to afford investing some money. So maybe I'm an idiot, but I feel like it's sort of my duty to contribute. That way, I support a game that I enjoy on a daily basis and it helps others too. Fair enough to my eyes.

Side note: However, this doesn't change the fact that my personal thinking is that several crown store items are overpriced. Fortunately, none of those are needed to play. They''re only "cosmetic".

fizzylu

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Honestly, I'm tired of hearing people complain about the monetization and asking for everything to be free earnable in-game.

I never said everything should be free and I even stated that I myself think the subscription is worth it's price.... but I can also acknowledge that locking things like the craft bag behind it is just a sales tactic to push people who went the route of buying the DLCs flat-out to still have to pay for the sub.
And the point of things being earnable in-game isn't just about a desire to get things for free, but because some gamers can understand that having a company design actually playable content with earnable rewards increases the quality of the game and life within it more than making it so people just have to swipe a card for things. I mean, seriously; look at even the threads about Golden Pursuits and how many people aren't happy to just be given free stuff, because surprisingly, saying there should be more earnable rewards isn't just about wanting free junk.

[snip]
[edited for baiting]

shadyjane62

I'm giving my craft bag up at my Eleventh Anniversary here. It is an addiction I vow to kick.

katanagirl1

BlueRaven wrote: »

Craft bag did not ship with the game.

Before ESO+ the game was designed for you to keep crafting mats in your bank. Just as it is now, with non eso+ accounts. So you are just playing this now as it was originally designed. (We also could not just summon a banker either.)

Since its inception eso+ has lost a lot of its value. The only real reason to keep it is the craft bag.

Glad to see someone else posted this. It would be toxic if it was part of the game and then pulled into eso+ as a paid feature.

Like others I have been happy to pay a sub for the craft bag for housing and crafting ease. It has been a great value for someone like me who spends so much time playing. I hope that the changes in store for us next year will allow me to continue to do so.

Sakiri

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Easy call for me. I subscribe to ESO+ since I play a lot and 99% of my game time is in ESO. So I definitely get my money's worth for the sub. If I wanted to play several such games, it would not be such a simple call.

My thinking is jump into the game for free and see if you like it. If so, then do ESO+ and enjoy the benefits. Game's gotta make money somehow and I find ESO+ a decent value.

Yup. I was playing when it was sub only. When I play a game with sub available, I do so. Free experience is never good enough and even without the craft bag you get a ton with it.

Plus, I spend money on my hobbies. Eso is a hobby.

thorwyn

My ISP is charging way more for a 250 MBit/s line than for the basic 50MBit/s line. [snip]

[edited for bashing]

OsUfi

The only other game I’ve played with a similar craft bag feature is Fallout 76. There, you can comfortably manage with 100 slots out of the 400 in the stash box, even without Fallout First. Occasionally, I’d grab First, fill the material box, and move on without a second thought.

In Elder Scrolls Online, it’s a completely different story. There are far more materials than bank space allows, and the wide range of prices and rarity makes it nearly impossible—without addons—to decide what to sell or keep. Without ESO+ and the craft bag, inventory management in ESO becomes a frustrating, headache-inducing experience.

Tommy_The_Gun

Convenience aside, what is kinda worrying aspect of Craft Bag is that it technically allows just one account to basically "buy all of the market supplies" (as you can store unlimited amounts) of crafting materials and cause prices to temporarily go up significantly.

The other issue that rose over the years, is that game has changed, but regular normal bank space still remains capped at 240 slots. In fact, it was quite literally never touched since 2014. It is still the same after 10+ years. Even system requirements of ESO had changed (it originally was working on Windows XP lol). So while craft bag was a "Convenience" in the past, it no longer is, but over the time it kinda became a "necessity" or a way to simply avoid wasting time & play annoying mini game called: "inventory slots switcher puzzle 2027".

In a way, inventory management in ESO is designed kinda like in a mobile games that are designed arround buying micro transactions just to do basic stuff. At 1st you don't see it, but if you will play & invest some time in the game, then it hits you, but only once you reach early end game.

My point is that nowadays we have way more crafting material than it used to be (even base game only). So even if you would only keep one stack of top tier crafting materials in your bank - that 240 slots is way too little. It is not about storing 999 of certain items but rather the amount of type of items. This is getting very problematic & should be adressed at some point.

Housing storage for instance could be made "visible" for crafting stations and this would solve a lot of issues without impacting server performance or amount of data stored at the server.

opalcity

What really bugs me is the predatory way they give a free eso+ trial right before an event with lots of inventory bloat in the rewards.

I'm not just taking about the current New Life, it has happened several times before and I'm sure it's not a coincidence. Subtle coercion to encourage people to spend money.

randconfig

They have to make ESO+ have some incentive to get people to buy it, otherwise, there's no money to pay the employees, to develop new content, and to keep the server online....

Orbital78

You will learn about it quickly if you stick with the game, but it is the main reason I didn't play FO76. I cannot imagine playing two inventory management MMO's. It is by design, sadly consoles don't have the addons to help sort things. Advance loot tools to only loot valuables from enemies, chests and other containers helps. The biggest thing is to just sell everything you don't think has enough value on the guild trader. Most of those hundreds of style mats barely have value currently. Sell it all and don't break it down.

I'm sure they are making plenty of funds from the chapters and all those $50-100 homes. But yes it is part of the design to make more money for the company, without a doubt.

Kessra

ESO+ IMO is mostly a convenience thing. You could buy 10 accounts at Steam for 5€ each and run 5 private guild banks à 500 slots each after leveling toons to level 10 at least to form private guilds. You never have to pay anything extra and have access here to at least 2500 storage plus what you have on the respective toons and the like. There are clearly ways to circumvent storage space limitations in the end it therefore boils down to convenience. Resources in the crafting bag stack up to basically infinity while in guild banks you can only store stacks of up to 200 per resource. Next, you can directly craft on your whole account from that crafting bag while the management through private guild banks is for sure tedious and not time-efficient but for players that don't want to pay any additional fees that one time 50€ investment could be a means to tackle their storage space shortage.

Before the sticker book and the transmutation system storage space was even more scarce than it is now. I run basically 4 guild banks just for unbound gear with "perfect" traits just for the sake of when ZOS changes the meta and now one of those sets is in the BIS list, I don't have to farm it again. The sticker book freed up so much space IMO and now one guild bank stores all of the recipes, an other one all of the furniture stuff and plans and a third one for all that PvP stuff like repair stones, catapults and what not.

barney2525

I think it is just good business

They offer a subscription that gives an exceptional bonus - WITHOUT touching the combat aspect of the game, so it is Not PTW. Access to more zones even though you only have bought the basic games is also huge.

IMHO

Juomuuri

It depends entirely on one's playstyle - for example, I'm entirely unable to play ESO without ESO+, and that's because I can't have mules and I need all my bank slots open since I switch around tank gear between my tanks, one of each class. So even if we had craft bag without subbing, I'd lose all the 2x slots we get... So my only way to enjoy the game is to sub.

Tandor

If you don't reckon to spend money at all, either on ESO+ or Crowns, then the only way to play totally free is by not doing any strictly unnecessary hoarding, and that's the player's choice and not down to any business practice on the part of ZOS. If you're planning on spending money on Crowns, then ESO+ pays for itself with its Crowns and the crafting bag is purely a convenience. I think the terms "anti-consumer" and "toxic" are way over the top in the context of this thread.

spartaxoxo

randconfig wrote: »

They have to make ESO+ have some incentive to get people to buy it, otherwise, there's no money to pay the employees, to develop new content, and to keep the server online....

ESO+ isn't even their main revenue (at least I think it's the crown store that is given the work on it) and plenty of games get by without a sub. They don't have to do use ESO+ to keep the servers open. They do it because they figured out a way to net some money, obviously. But, the craft bag is very much just selling the solution to a problem they created.

And I think only a Plus user or someone who doesn't even want to craft to begin with can say the problem is minor.

Inventory management is a nightmare without Plus for any crafters. And crafting is one of the primary sources of coin in this game.

I have done the game with Plus and I did the game without Plus for years. I also wanted to craft. There's a massive reason that I decided to sub and it wasn't to support the game, which I was already doing by buying dlc directly alongside costumes and other items.

The_Meathead

Tandor wrote: »

I think the terms "anti-consumer" and "toxic" are way over the top in the context of this thread.

I agree.

Let's reserve such terms, along with "predatory" or the dreaded "slap in the face," for when they are truly applicable. If the same was said about Crates/gems, I'd shrug rather than disagree.

As others have stated, though, the game didn't begin with the Crafting Bag. It came after ESO+ was offered as a perk of continued subscription, rather than opting for F2P. That alone makes it a *bonus* and not a "right," and something given as incentive to purchase ESO+ that's entirely fine on any reckoning.

redlink1979

Of course it's kinda of a gate but you can play the game without the sub, the only issue is the micro management invcolved - there's numerous guides online made by players who don't sub.
For someone who plays everyday, and has a steady income, it's no big deal (12€ per month in my case) for all the perks granted.

The old days were kinda worse as you needed to sub if you wished to play the game.

spartaxoxo

redlink1979 wrote: »

Of course it's kinda of a gate but you can play the game without the sub, the only issue is the micro management invcolved - there's numerous guides online made by players who don't sub.
For someone who plays everyday, and has a steady income, it's no big deal (12€ per month in my case) for all the perks granted.

The old days were kinda worse as you needed to sub if you wished to play the game.

You don't need a guide for things that are simple and unobtrusive.

Desiato

Depending on how one plays, the craft bag can be pretty easy to do without.

I've been something of an ESO enthusiast over the years, enjoying a wide variety of activities. Yet I will never use the vast majority of the items in my craft bag.

Consider food. If I didn't have the craft bag, I would not keep any provisioning ingredients at all and would simply buy food from players. I could apply this logic to many things and it wouldn't harm my fundamental ESO experience.

So what about someone who only plays story content in ESO? Do they need crafting at all? No, of course not. It is completely optional. Someone playing ESO like a singe player game could easily get by with dropped weapons and armor with occasional upgrades.

I went through a period of about a year during which I only logged in for daily rewards and PVP'd infrequently. I wasn't happy with ZOS, so I unsubbed. And it was fine. I just sold to merchants the stuff I didn't want to keep without a care for what it was worth in the player economy.

I think most players could do something similar if they focused only on the practicalities.

With that said, I bought ESO with the intention to pay a monthly sub and I think it's a fair price to pay for what I get out of the game.

madman65

I have tested this without ESO+ and it is manageable. All you need is all of the storage chest and coffers, use the bank as a craft bag and the storage containers as your storage for armor, jewelry and weapons. It is the hardest for the beginner but I would suggest ESO+ for the beginner until level 50 because of the XP bonus. Unless you are a completionist this will work.

radiostar

I can see both sides.

With the upcoming changes next year, maybe a game-earned "mini craft bag" should be allowed for non-Plus players that own a certain number of expansions (chapters). Not the unlimited one like Plus gives, but a smaller one that lets players have a couple or a few stacks of materials (the same mats the craft bag holds) outside the regular bank.

As the game keeps growing, more and more things that players want keep taking up inventory slots. It would offer some relief. But it might be a slippery slope that Z is trying to avoid.

Arunei

I just want to point out that you get a bunch of other stuff with a sub, including access to all past and current DLCs (including previous years' Chapters), 1,650 Crowns per month, and double bank space and furniture slots. Less important things are things like minor increases in the amount of gold you get and some discounts in the CS, as well as the monthly free thing like a painting or statute or things like the most recent Companions.

Plenty of things give the sub major value, it's NOT just the craft bag that does so. If anything, I assume most people who sub do so for things like the DLC access or double bank space. I know myself if the craft bag were made base game and free, I'd still sub for everything else, like that double bank space, and ESPECIALLY the double furniture slots. I'd be willing to bet many crafters would still sub for those things.

Sakiri

Desiato wrote: »

Depending on how one plays, the craft bag is pretty easy to do without.

I've been something of an ESO enthusiast over the years, enjoying a wide variety of activities. Yet I will never use the vast majority of the items in my craft bag.

Consider food. If I didn't have the craft bag, I would keep any provisioning ingredients at all and would simply buy food from players. I could apply this logic to many things and it wouldn't harm my fundamental ESO experience.

So what about someone who only plays story content in ESO? Do they need crafting at all? No, of course not. It is completely optional. Someone playing ESO like a singe player game could easily get by with dropped weapons and armor with occasional upgrades.

I went through a period of about a year during which I only logged in for daily rewards and PVP'd infrequently. I wasn't happy with ZOS, so I unsubbed. And it was fine. I just sold to merchants the stuff I didn't want to keep without a care for what it was worth in the player economy.

I think most players could do something similar if they focused only on the practicalities.

With that said, I bought ESO with the intention to pay a monthly sub and I think it's a fair price to pay for what I get out of the game.

I have thousands upon thousands of stacks of mats in my craft bag and the vast, vast majority are never used. If I didn't want to do writs or something I'd refine, bank the upgrade mats then sell or vendor the refined mats. There is a limit to the craft bag BTW, someone had posted it before. It's not infinite.

If they really want to sell eso+ they can up the cap on furnishings and put that there. More than it is now.

kargen27

I don't have ESO+ on one account and get by fine. I make sure all my characters craft at the same level so no need for a large variety of crafting materials. I don't let surveys and all that pile up so I get along fairly well. I don't do vet trials on that account so one less armor set each character needs and that clears up a bit of space.

I've always subbed on my main account. The way I look at it if I play three hours a month it is cheaper than a movie or just about any other form of entertainment out there.