About next Seasons: wouldn't enabling purchase with crowns incentivize ESO+ subscriptions?

SkaiFaith · December 10

We've seen the backlash from players about the higher pricing for the new Season Pass model in 2025.

My suggestion is: Instead of purchasing through platform store with IRL currencies, let us purchase 1 year of Season Pass (4 content updates) immediately on launch day with crowns - 6.500 crowns all base content for the year; 7.500 crowns all collector's edition for the year.

This would incentivize people to subscribe to ESO Plus for 12 Months in advance (or at least 6). Or, it would make people buy crowns anyway and once they have them they have no reason to not go spend the remaining in the store - making them actively open the in-game store, which I suspect Zos really wants XD

Also, I feel this would improve players' sentiment.

*For those not wanting access to all types of content released, there could be 2 mini-bundles: 4.000 crowns for the 2 dungeons packs and 4.000 crowns for 2 questing packs (THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE; we don't know yet how new content will be scheduled)

Players! What's your opinion?
Devs! Please consider...

PeacefulAnarchy · December 10

From a playwr perspective, sure, from a dev perapective where's the advantage?
1. People who buy eso+ and the season now would use their existing crowns: less money for zos.
2. People who buy eso+ but not season: no extra money more people have season
3. People who buy season but not eso+: will now have an extra step of buying crowns or eso+, will probably buy crowns at discount if they don't value eso+: less money for zos
4. People who buy neither: maybe get it from gifting or no change.

ZOS has specifically had chapters/seasons as real money non-crown things so that people don't just use eso+ crowns for them.

Ph1p · December 10

I don’t know how many crowns still sit idly in people’s accounts, but I suspect that this would lead to a significant drop in incremental revenue for ZOS. So highly doubt they’d go for it.

SkaiFaith · December 10

The idea behind the reasoning was: a bigger number of ESO+subscribers (months in advance payment) to show to investors is a bonus easy for said investors to understand XD

How it would translate in income is for them to calculate, but as I said, for sure it would bring in more happy players instead of pushing them away to the death (depopulation) of the game...

SummersetCitizen · December 10

They would make very little money upon its release as people would just use banked crowns or buy it from Crown sellers for gold.

Soarora · December 10

As nice as it’d be for players, I think it’d lose ZOS money. Crown sellers. People who would’ve bought the expansion with money might turn to crown sellers: people who bought crowns on sale, sell their eso+ crowns, or do RMT.

Ishtarknows · December 10

How do these Crown Sellers come by their crowns? They buy them*.
Why is it ok for me to spend ££ to buy the Pass, but different for Crown Seller to buy crowns for ££ to sell them to me for gold ?

* Obviously some players sell their ESO+ crowns, but that's only ~20k per year. Most sellers sell more than that.

SkaiFaith · December 10

Soarora wrote: »

As nice as it’d be for players, I think it’d lose ZOS money. Crown sellers. People who would’ve bought the expansion with money might turn to crown sellers: people who bought crowns on sale, sell their eso+ crowns, or do RMT.

Admittedly, I had not thought about that

Renato90085 · December 10

maybe buy 1 year plus can gift us a free season pass

Avran_Sylt · December 10

I mean yeah.

Warframe has a thriving platinum market that more or less lets whales (and/or players in a country with better minimum wage) subsidize players that don't have as great of an income, trading their time for the whales money.

Making a coffee might take around same time around the world, but asking a barista for 10$ in Luxembourg ($3,124 monthly minimum wage) vs a country with about $1-$2 monthly minimum wage is going to hit different.

I like steam for that very reason in that they will support and enforce publisher's regional pricing (should the publisher decide to do so, but this is ripe for potential abuse).

xR3ACTORx · December 10

Ph1p wrote: »

I don’t know how many crowns still sit idly in people’s accounts, but I suspect that this would lead to a significant drop in incremental revenue for ZOS. So highly doubt they’d go for it.

I think it's also likely that the release of a bugged content pass 2025 can also lead to less revenue for ZOS when releasing a new content pass in 2026.

Avran_Sylt · December 10

SummersetCitizen wrote: »

They would make very little money upon its release as people would just use banked crowns or buy it from Crown sellers for gold.

True, it does come down to how players are able to source crowns.

However, what other way, aside from paying ZoS money, are crowns sourced from?

If you say other players, those players needed to get those crowns from elsewhere, meaning having paid ZoS money.

In all seriousness, if they made crowns an actual tradeable currency, like platinum in Warframe, you might see an uptick in players spending on crowns. Though, like in Warframe, this would completely invalidate the Gold/Credits as a player trading currency. And unlike Warframe, ESO is currently entirely based on gold trading for its player trading economics (outside of IRL trades).

AzuraFan · December 10

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

However, what other way, aside from paying ZoS money, are crowns sourced from?

If people are willing to pay for crowns, why wouldn't they be willing to pay for the content pass directly?

Also, as has already been said, a lot of ESO+ subscribers would use the crowns they get with their subscription. So sure, we pay for ESO+, but right now we also have to pay real money for the content pass. If we could use crowns we get under our sub, we'd get the pass for free or close to free. That would be a revenue drop for ZOS.

SkaiFaith · December 10

AzuraFan wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

However, what other way, aside from paying ZoS money, are crowns sourced from?

If people are willing to pay for crowns, why wouldn't they be willing to pay for the content pass directly?

Also, as has already been said, a lot of ESO+ subscribers would use the crowns they get with their subscription. So sure, we pay for ESO+, but right now we also have to pay real money for the content pass. If we could use crowns we get under our sub, we'd get the pass for free or close to free. That would be a revenue drop for ZOS.

The idea is exactly that, to make unsubscribed players subscribe. No one is arguing people already subscribed would result in paying more/same... It's about augmenting the number of subscribed players my point. Point that all these comments kinda prove right "this way the Pass would end up included in ESOPlus" - yes, if you decide to spend your subscription crowns on it; it's added value to incentivize unsubscribed players to subscribe.
Thought I made it clear...

Making us pay for one-time IRL purchases is not the only way for a company to generate profit. I'd think that the revenue we provide is less important than whatever value investors decide to attribute to the game. Hence why I'd focus on improving the stats companies so much love to share every quarter.

A trendy term since couple of years is "engagement". It seems it has more value than anything, in the sphere of GaaS.

wolfie1.0. · December 11

SkaiFaith wrote: »

AzuraFan wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

However, what other way, aside from paying ZoS money, are crowns sourced from?

If people are willing to pay for crowns, why wouldn't they be willing to pay for the content pass directly?

Also, as has already been said, a lot of ESO+ subscribers would use the crowns they get with their subscription. So sure, we pay for ESO+, but right now we also have to pay real money for the content pass. If we could use crowns we get under our sub, we'd get the pass for free or close to free. That would be a revenue drop for ZOS.

The idea is exactly that, to make unsubscribed players subscribe. No one is arguing people already subscribed would result in paying more/same... It's about augmenting the number of subscribed players my point. Point that all these comments kinda prove right "this way the Pass would end up included in ESOPlus" - yes, if you decide to spend your subscription crowns on it; it's added value to incentivize unsubscribed players to subscribe.
Thought I made it clear...

Making us pay for one-time IRL purchases is not the only way for a company to generate profit. I'd think that the revenue we provide is less important than whatever value investors decide to attribute to the game. Hence why I'd focus on improving the stats companies so much love to share every quarter.

A trendy term since couple of years is "engagement". It seems it has more value than anything, in the sphere of GaaS.

The content already ends up in ESO+ though. Its just well after the fact.

The problem is that often people that are willing and able to pay for consistent crowns and ESO+ are not always the same group of players that are willing to pay $50 for an expansion.

As for making investors happy. Even if ZOS made $500 million next year it would still be a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of Microsofts revenue.

AzuraFan · December 11

SkaiFaith wrote: »

The idea is exactly that, to make unsubscribed players subscribe. No one is arguing people already subscribed would result in paying more/same... It's about augmenting the number of subscribed players my point.

If they're not subscribers, why would they pay a subscription fee rather than just buy the content pass outright? It's a bit convoluted to think, "I want the content pass, so I'll subscribe to ESO+ and pay for it with crowns, rather than just pay for it." If they wanted to subscribe, they'd subscribe. And if the only reason they're subscribing is to get the content pass with ESO+ crowns, why wouldn't they unsubscribe as soon as they have enough crowns to get it?

ZOS would definitely experience a drop in revenue if they allowed people to pay for the content pass with crowns. Why? Because ESO+ subscribers who now pay for the content pass would no longer pay for it. And if people subscribe just until they get enough crowns to pay for the pass, and then unsubscribe, the net gain in revenue to ZOS would be zero (meaning that the $ they paid to subscribe would likely be roughly equal to the cost of the content pass, so ZOS hasn't gained any extra revenue from them subscribing). The number of subscribers is important, but revenue is probably more important.

robwolf666 · December 11

Seems to me these things are going in the same direction of everything else these days - paying more for less - you see it everywhere.

That said, right now I'm leaning heavily towards not buying another Season Pass, I don't think the one we just had was worth the cost tbh.

AllenaNightWood · December 11

it was actually cheaper for me with the season pass

twisttop138 · December 11

I know you can do a version of this in WoW where you use in game currency to pay for your subscription somehow. I don't know if a thing like that could work here like for the content pass. Though apparently this is something we may not have to worry about.

DenverRalphy · December 11

No way will ESO+ ever be purchaseable via crowns for one very simple reason... Bots would get access to ESO+ if the bot owners could simply use in game gold to purchase ESO+ subs from crown sellers.

SkaiFaith · December 11

DenverRalphy wrote: »

No way will ESO+ ever be purchaseable via crowns for one very simple reason... Bots would get access to ESO+ if the bot owners could simply use in game gold to purchase ESO+ subs from crown sellers.

But it's not ESO Plus that would be purchasable with crowns, just the Season Pass...

twisttop138 · December 11

DenverRalphy wrote: »

No way will ESO+ ever be purchaseable via crowns for one very simple reason... Bots would get access to ESO+ if the bot owners could simply use in game gold to purchase ESO+ subs from crown sellers.

I did mean for the content pass, I may not have worded it the best but I'm still unsure if something like that would be a thing they would consider. Though to be fair, they have made decisions over the years that are real shockers. People keep talking about that German stuff, if that's true then I'll be truly shocked again.

DenverRalphy · December 11

SkaiFaith wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

No way will ESO+ ever be purchaseable via crowns for one very simple reason... Bots would get access to ESO+ if the bot owners could simply use in game gold to purchase ESO+ subs from crown sellers.

But it's not ESO Plus that would be purchasable with crowns, just the Season Pass...

twisttop138 wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

No way will ESO+ ever be purchaseable via crowns for one very simple reason... Bots would get access to ESO+ if the bot owners could simply use in game gold to purchase ESO+ subs from crown sellers.

I did mean for the content pass, I may not have worded it the best but I'm still unsure if something like that would be a thing they would consider. Though to be fair, they have made decisions over the years that are real shockers. People keep talking about that German stuff, if that's true then I'll be truly shocked again.

Yeah perhaps I misspoke when I said ESO+ instead of content pass, but the premise still stands. It would give bots access to DLC zones for in game currency.

spartaxoxo · December 11

Ishtarknows wrote: »

How do these Crown Sellers come by their crowns? They buy them*.
Why is it ok for me to spend ££ to buy the Pass, but different for Crown Seller to buy crowns for ££ to sell them to me for gold ?

* Obviously some players sell their ESO+ crowns, but that's only ~20k per year. Most sellers sell more than that.

The crown seller was going to buy the crowns regardless.

The crown buyer may have purchased the expansion for real money, if it wasn't for the crown seller.

The whole reason they came up with the chapter system was to remove the latest dlc from Plus so that people would buy it separately.

Also, changing it this way incentives them to remove dlc from Plus

SkaiFaith · December 11

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Also, changing it this way incentives them to remove dlc from Plus

About this phrase, I would genuinely be curious to know how many ESO Plus regular subscribers own all DLCs...
Because I bought every non-dungeon DLC while being subscribed to ESO Plus for years without fail, and I see subscribers saying they bought Dungeons too... I am really curious about that number. (I am not assuming anything here, I have no idea).
The feeling of ownership is a necessity for many; feeling that isn't satisfied by just subscribing. But yeah, ownership in 2026, it's just a memory.