[Screenshot] 50% "Experience Booster" - ZOS, can we get a confirmation or further details?

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO

Rune_Relic wrote: »

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

Rune_Relic wrote: »

Shehriazad wrote: »

I still fail to see how 50% XP potions are pay to win.

Grinding XP faster =/= Turning you into a winner


Sure...if the person spams those pots until he reaches 3600 CP...he will get there faster than a non paying person...but let's be real...you are still looking at hundreds to thousands of hours of playtime, aye?

Not to mention CPs have diminishing returns. The difference between someone with 2400 CP vs someone with 3600 is pretty much 0 in a battle situation.

Since at some point you will have to skill CPs that are useless to you and don't actually make you stronger in battle. So what's the point?

Yes...someone spending a few hundred $ a month will be at the new insane CP cap faster than you...but does he get something youc an't get? No.

Will he be way stronger in battle than you? Hell no.


I'd say after like 1000 CP or so the BATTLE stat difference for ANY given build should be somewhere between 0-1%.

And what of the stamina/health/magicka you also gain from CP points ?
This is a dynamic resource game at the end of the day.
You know when you hit 1000 points you have 48% more magicka stamina then 0 points ?

Where do you get stamina from in the CP tree? I only see stamina regen.

http://asolutionaday.com/elder-scrolls-calculators/elder-scrolls-online-stamina-calculator-tower-tree-champion/
Base Max stamina/magicka/health increase for every point allotted into CS.

Well this certainly is not official and also not working in the game. I have the same stamina I had when I had 70 points as I do when I have 105 points. Also even by your own calculator if I have 1000 points in one tree (which means I have 3000 total) that puts me from 17k to 22k. Hardly the 48% difference you say.

DDuke

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

I think it is unreasonable to ask them to change the entire champion system. In the end only people who dont have alot of time to play will use these to catch up. I see no issue with it.

I'd like you to explain how you came by this conclusion.

Let me quote myself:

You have to understand that people can't take "it's not P2W" arguments seriously when you fail to logically explain them.

What I expect from people is cold hard evidence that supports their claims, which is what I always try to provide and it'd be respectful of others to do the same (if only for the sake of having a functional argument).

There is nothing that supports your argument.

Quite the contrary in fact, it will be the competitive players, who's best interest it is to maintain that statistical edge, who would drink these potions non-stop. Failing to do so would mean losing to competition.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO

DDuke wrote: »

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

I think it is unreasonable to ask them to change the entire champion system. In the end only people who dont have alot of time to play will use these to catch up. I see no issue with it.

I'd like you to explain how you came by this conclusion.

Let me quote myself:

You have to understand that people can't take "it's not P2W" arguments seriously when you fail to logically explain them.

What I expect from people is cold hard evidence that supports their claims, which is what I always try to provide and it'd be respectful of others to do the same (if only for the sake of having a functional argument).

There is nothing that supports your argument.

Quite the contrary in fact, it will be the competitive players, who's best interest it is to maintain that statistical edge, who would drink these potions non-stop. Failing to do so would mean losing to competition.

Its called my opinion and I dont need to support it.

Gorthax

everyone is aware that WoW has a feature where you can pay 60 dollars to have a max level character right? They still have 10 million subs (to which I am sure 8 million are more than likely gold sellers and bots). They seem to be doing pretty well over on that side of the fence.

Bc1151

@Gorthax , If they put these things in the game me along with more than half their paying players would quit. P2W is something that you can't double back on. You either build your community on people that are ok with P2W or that are not. Choosing one then going to the other will put ESO in financial troubles because they have a base community that does not want it, and they may very well quit because of it.

Yes, I along with many other people understand your frustrations; But it is simply not a option.

Just some thoughts,

-Bc

HeWhoCaresNot

After a grueling week of grinding from vr5- 10, I am salivating at this xp pot right now.

I could understand it being a problem when it comes to CP, but c'mon...please please gimme for Vr leveling.

Gorthax

@Bc1151 I am not frustrated lol I honestly dont care what ZoS does anymore. Why? Because my opinion holds no grounds with them. I am saying if they want to make people who are worried about p2w items not so worried then make it so the xp pots do not count towards CP gain. No matter what they decide to do, I am still gonna be playing until they pull the plug on the servers.

EDIT: and happily paying a 15/month sub. Been doing it since early access, and will continue to do so WHILE buying the things I like from the crown store

Xelphos

Bc1151 wrote: »

@Gorthax , If they put these things in the game me along with more than half their paying players would quit. P2W is something that you can't double back on. You either build your community on people that are ok with P2W or that are not. Choosing one then going to the other will put ESO in financial troubles because they have a base community that does not want it, and they may very well quit because of it.

Yes, I along with many other people understand your frustrations; But it is simply not a option.

Just some thoughts,

-Bc

ROFL.

Do you have any proof that you speak for half of the paying community? Cause I don't see any. There are more people paying for the bonuses of ESO Plus than those paying to support the game, and those people paying for the bonus will pay for the potions.

The XP potions won't hurt the game. A few elitists will leave the game, but people willing to buy these potions will replace them.

EDIT: I hate forums that automatically save drafts.

Attorneyatlawl

The champion system's great and adds a nice progression as you play over time. It's added a lot to the game by giving a reason to care about playing through content that doesn't give you great gear anymore since you still gain experience points, or that you might otherwise not care to bother with because you could do another specific thing and get better drops. The problem is having RMT be the defining factor of your character progress, rather than gameplay. VR14 is an easy mark to reach in a month's time, and everyone's on a level playing field in doing so. XP potions in the mix? You either plunk down cash or you may as well not bother: you'll always be an ever-growing amount further behind.

If you take XP potions and put them into the equation that you must buy with cold hard cash to progress at the base tier of XP gain for anything you do in the game (and let's get real, when a severely beneficial buy-to-win item like a 50-60%+ XP boost comes into play in a long-term progression system, you aren't choosing whether to pay up or not to have "convenience". You're choosing whether to smell the roses or be competitive at the baseline that everyone else is using.), it becomes essentially impossible to ever catch up due to the disparity in rewards you get for playing as a result if you aren't using them. That makes it the baseline, and you take a large penalty if you don't pay up constantly.

If two guys are good players, and generally play an average of 3-4 hours a day as "softcore" competitors ie those who want to do as well as possible but don't have the time to sit there all day, unless the guy not paying up constantly for boosters plays an extra couple of hours a day, he will continually and perpetually fall further and further behind as time goes on due to that 60% gap. Using the 4 hour number, paying through the official RMT cash shop system would make the person not coughing it up have to play for around 6.5 (six and a half) hours just to make the same progress. That brings it from instead of playing a moderate amount and having a level playing field based on skill, to "who is both willing to pay for a constant XP boost with cash and is skilled" instead. Similar to those cutesy little mobile games with multiplayer that sell achievement unlocks and currency, the game integrity is out the window completely. It goes from "he played to earn that" to "That's pretty neat... assuming he didn't just pay to get it easily".

Some people then posit that simply having started playing earlier is the same as just having bought the power with money, another disingenuous argument that doesn't reflect reality whatsoever. No one can control when some random person decides they want to take up playing game X, Y, or Z. The "joining late" thing is the same in any game you play, be it an FPS where you simply don't know the maps and sight lines until you've played a long time, to an RTS where you won't be skilled in the meta without playing a long time to catch up to speed.

Leveling systems are fine and well-accepted in MMORPG's, and "soft resets" are pretty frequently made in them (for example WOW's expansions add hard levels making all of the gear previously earned basically irrelevant as it's all replaced or equaled with quest greens as you level to the new cap. ESO has done this arguably three times already in the year it's been live, between adding VR12, then VR14, and then the champion system itself while only back-crediting a very low amount for existing players (70 points, or around one endgame-leveled character, regardless of how long they'd had it, how many they had, or how much they'd done in-game previously).


The fact of the matter is that the kind of player who would want to get up to speed on a game coming in later after launch is going to already research the best ways to do so and will find they can hit level 50 inside of 20 hours rather readily, and then go through Cadwell's Almanac for extra skill points and xp plus champ xp, knowing they will end up with enough skill points for their builds anyways as they have read up on the facts. This player will spend perhaps an additional 60 to 70 hours of gameplay including earning undaunted line xp for the 6% health, magicka, and stamina passive, to reach vr14, saving their pledge gold keys to use when they reach vr14 to get chances at max rank shoulder items. Then they will leap into trials, pvp, vDSA, and other stuff on a strong footing, buying some crafted gear to fill in until they get the things they want.

The kind of player that thinks giving everyone buy to win xp potions that help skilled players advance even faster who are already playing, will act as a catch up mechanism... well, to be blunt, they probably don't really know or care what it takes to get up to the higher tiers of gameplay in the first place. The 'mursion quester everyone runs to defend (not intended as a bad term, but rather as a label for completionists and lore hounds )? He certainly doesn't care, he's already out-leveling the zones he's trying to complete and play fully.

If they go with this whole pay to win thing, they may as well have just kept the subscription requirement, which left everyone level on the in-game field of what they can do and was up-front with the fees. I don't think anyone had much problem with that or has in any game. Selling character power near-directly? Yeah, that's disliked enough there's a term for it and a commonly-known acronym: P2W. And those games get avoided by new players like the plague for good reason, leaving the existing playerbase withering and dying as people seek a better game rather than buying every new booster the company maintaining it dishes out. Life's not fair, of course; but that doesn't make selling an artificial gap-booster and progression gain not earned by gameplay okay.

What you write here directly affects the corporate risk-gain analysis and research. Saying you're happy to pay up to add a broken system to ESO is a jumbo green light sign to add to their numbers and determinations. Humorously enough, the solution players should be looking for isn't to leave the EXP in-game at the roughly-25%-of-what-it-was level and then clamor to pay real cash to get to a whopping 37.5%-of-what-it-was level (by adding half of that 25% to your play). It's to demand for the nerfs to be reverted to where it was, and instead deliver actual content to pay for worth our while such as zones/stories, new aesthetics, horizontal progression setups, additional dungeons, etc.

How anyone's happy to have ZOS swing the gameplay down to 1/4th the previous progression speeds and then ask you to buy regularly-paid RMT potions to make it a little less painful again rather than fixing what they've broken, is a mystery of the human mind that I'm sure psychologists and market analysts in the future will have a field day with when designing new ways to monetize their software.

Ley

You're 50% guesstimation made me laugh. I doubt 50% of players will even care about exp pots one way or another.

Bc1151

Ley wrote: »

You're 50% guesstimation made me laugh. I doubt 50% of players will even care about exp pots one way or another.

Its a number, and it is un-graphed guess, 50 is a easy number. Even if i said 1, it would be just as wrong as 50 because it is not polled. If you want actual numbers do a poll or something... of course its wrong, this is a forum not a Nationalsozialismus stats commission. xD

Bc1151

Bc1151 wrote: »

Ley wrote: »

You're 50% guesstimation made me laugh. I doubt 50% of players will even care about exp pots one way or another.

Its a number, and it is un-graphed guess, 50 is a easy number. Even if i said 1, it would be just as wrong as 50 because it is not polled. If you want actual numbers do a poll or something... of course its wrong, this is a forum not a Nationalsozialismus stats commission. xD

Oh and I should point out that a game called Runescape did the same thing and lost more than 80% of their paying community, so..... yeah.

whvice

-> makes leveling progression slow as snail to the point players (not you, but like, other players (they exist!)) start feeling depressed/demotivated about playing the game

-> introduces happy pills in the form of real-money exp boosters

= players rejoice + "they heard our pleas" + "praise Zenitharmax" + "best game ever" + "10/10 non-stop improving since release 1 year ago"+ investors throwing their hands up high like they're on a roller coaster

BRILLIANT

Attorneyatlawl

Bc1151 wrote: »

Bc1151 wrote: »

Ley wrote: »

You're 50% guesstimation made me laugh. I doubt 50% of players will even care about exp pots one way or another.

Its a number, and it is un-graphed guess, 50 is a easy number. Even if i said 1, it would be just as wrong as 50 because it is not polled. If you want actual numbers do a poll or something... of course its wrong, this is a forum not a Nationalsozialismus stats commission. xD

Oh and I should point out that a game called Runescape did the same thing and lost more than 80% of their paying community, so..... yeah.

People don't like playing "War of the bulging Wallets"?! What a shock!

Cherryblossom

I don't normally have any issue with XP Boosts as generally these help you to level Alts in most normal MMO, where you want to avoid as much of the repetitive Quests and Story you have already been through once. (more so in this game as it doesnt' matter which faction you started in due to lazy development we have to do all the other stories on the same toon).

But in this game we have CP which make you better and having looked through the CP extra's we must agree that someone with more CP is better than someone with less. This in my opinion is already an issue as it is impossible for a new player who plays the same amount as an old player to ever catch up (EVER.). So someone who plays less will always be lagging behind (ALWAYS.) so there is a distinct power difference between Hardcore and Casual players.

Now Casual players could use the XP Boost to try and catch up, but the issue is Hardcore players will also use these because they need to stay competitive against other Hardcore players.

This game will be divided into many tiers of players as the game progresses over time as there will be different levels of CP points which will not be effected by diminishing returns as they NEED progression (so more skill trees added over time), if a character stops progressing what is the point of playing it!

But in the game there is nothing to separate these different players, I mean they can't get the LFG to work now, imagine how hard it would be to align the right power of player to the right level of Dungeon (if they create harder content!). PVP if it ever works well, how unbalanced will that get over time!

redsteelb16_ESO

if ZoS creates a system that requires players to grind
and then adds a method to counter act that system, that required people to pay money.

All the ingredients of a P2W are there.

The only thing left to bake this sweetroll is to have content in this game that requires a certain amount of progression into the champion system in order to access that content. I'm sure players will feel force (or strongly compelled) to buy these exp. boost.

To me, that would be a true P2W system.

Varicite

Gorthax wrote: »

everyone is aware that WoW has a feature where you can pay 60 dollars to have a max level character right? They still have 10 million subs (to which I am sure 8 million are more than likely gold sellers and bots). They seem to be doing pretty well over on that side of the fence.

It's not the same thing you're comparing, though. Max level means absolutely nothing in WoW, just like lv50 means absolutely nothing here.

In WoW, the majority of your stats come from gear. In ESO, the majority of your stats come from skill points / attribute points / CP. All of those are gained directly from XP.

A more direct comparison to this would be if they were to put top of the line 25-man raid gear on the Blizzard Store. After all, it's something that anybody can obtain given enough time, just like CPs.

Xelphos wrote: »

The XP potions won't hurt the game. A few elitists will leave the game, but people willing to buy these potions will replace them.

The XP potions will probably hurt the game if they effect CP gain, because of the direct ties between CP and character strength.

And those "elitists", as you call them are the reason there is still a game for you to play for free today, as they have supported and bug tested everything for the past year, finding numerous mechanical and balance issues that devs were unaware of. But yeah, let's get rid of those guys in favor of P2W kiddies.

All that cool content that's ready to be pushed to the Crown store? Yeah, our subs funded that stuff. I know this because the devs have shown us sneak peeks and showcased all of these things a year ago to let us know what our money was going toward.

Guar mounts? Yeah, those elitists paid for those. Tigers? Same. Wrothgar? Imperial City? Justice System? Yep, those elitists paid for those too.

But you're right, they WILL be replaced when they leave. And the game will very likely NOT be better for it.

/shrug

Craven_Killmore

please look at tera or archeage then report back to me, we don't need 26 pages of tears from those who don't want to pay.

isailandshootub17_ESO

Someone mentioned in a thread that has been merged with this one that it doesn't matter how much xp bonus occurs with the yet to be released xp potion, it will not be a 'Pay to win" formula if they remove CP bonuses. I agree.

It harms no one for a player to have the ability to level up more quickly. The only thing keeping me playing and subscribing at the moment is the non vet PVP, and I've nearly out-leveled it again... I am thinking I will not pay to play once this character hits V1, since I play to PVP competitively, which I cannot do in the veteran campaign without investing way more time than I am willing. A 20% xp boost won't cut it for me. In fact, I want purchasable VR14s.

I wonder if the desire from the community to keep xp pots off the market is selfishness. I.E. "I had to spend thousands of hours to get my rank, therefore you must." Why not have some kindness and mercy on your friends who don't have enough time to do so?

Maybe ZOS is waiting for everyone to expend their current Crowns on other items, then release XP pots, forcing them to buy more crowns? It would be a smart way to make mo' money.

Grapdjan

Can we get these damn 100% exp potions already please?

Varicite

isailandshootub17_ESO wrote: »

I wonder if the desire from the community to keep xp pots off the market is selfishness. I.E. "I had to spend thousands of hours to get my rank, therefore you must." Why not have some kindness and mercy on your friends who don't have enough time to do so?

Pretty much nobody who has any "desire to keep xp pots off the market" cares if you get to lv50 or VR14 faster. It has absolutely nothing to do w/ wanting you to have to grind because I had to grind 6 months ago.

It has everything to do w/ nobody realistically believing that the XP potions WON'T contribute to faster CP gain, because why would you sell a pot that only gives XP when you could sell SO MANY MORE pots that give CP?

And they could even come to the forums and flat out say that they won't do that, but I could also list off quotes of other things they said they wouldn't do and most definitely turned around and did. Like the "Adventurer Pack", lol.

So instead, we shall see when the time comes just how unbalanced it makes things.

Attorneyatlawl

Craven_Killmore wrote: »

please look at tera or archeage then report back to me, we don't need 26 pages of tears from those who don't want to pay.

Those are both fine examples of pay to win games that quickly died as a result.

Varicite wrote: »

Gorthax wrote: »

everyone is aware that WoW has a feature where you can pay 60 dollars to have a max level character right? They still have 10 million subs (to which I am sure 8 million are more than likely gold sellers and bots). They seem to be doing pretty well over on that side of the fence.

It's not the same thing you're comparing, though. Max level means absolutely nothing in WoW, just like lv50 means absolutely nothing here.

In WoW, the majority of your stats come from gear. In ESO, the majority of your stats come from skill points / attribute points / CP. All of those are gained directly from XP.

A more direct comparison to this would be if they were to put top of the line 25-man raid gear on the Blizzard Store. After all, it's something that anybody can obtain given enough time, just like CPs.

Xelphos wrote: »

The XP potions won't hurt the game. A few elitists will leave the game, but people willing to buy these potions will replace them.

The XP potions will probably hurt the game if they effect CP gain, because of the direct ties between CP and character strength.

And those "elitists", as you call them are the reason there is still a game for you to play for free today, as they have supported and bug tested everything for the past year, finding numerous mechanical and balance issues that devs were unaware of. But yeah, let's get rid of those guys in favor of P2W kiddies.

All that cool content that's ready to be pushed to the Crown store? Yeah, our subs funded that stuff. I know this because the devs have shown us sneak peeks and showcased all of these things a year ago to let us know what our money was going toward.

Guar mounts? Yeah, those elitists paid for those. Tigers? Same. Wrothgar? Imperial City? Justice System? Yep, those elitists paid for those too.

But you're right, they WILL be replaced when they leave. And the game will very likely NOT be better for it.

/shrug

We may or may not be replaced. That's part of the risk analysis their accountants and market forecasters would be running right now while accounting for feedback in threads like these. The game would objectively be far worse as a game with these pay to win boosts in there turning it into Wallet Wars Online, and if they drive enough people off if they move forward with this setup, no one will come in to buy power gains in a game no one else really plays much anymore afterwards.

Cinder82

.

Anoteros

Cinder82 wrote: »

PLEASE DO! I WILL BUY TONS OF THESE!!! I WILL BE PLAYING NON-STOP WITH THIS BOOST UP!! HELL YEAH.

when can i buy these

If it'll spare me from the tedious grinding which will no doubt cause me to stop playing entirely i'm all for them.
As long as they don't start selling armour sets etc

MisterBigglesworth

Anoteros wrote: »

As long as they don't start selling armour sets etc

As has been pointed out numerous times in this thread, over time this potion boost becomes the equivalent of getting a full armor set's worth of stat upgrades... dozens, possibly hundreds of hours before someone else...

even if they play as much or more than you do...

all because they decided to NOT pay for the potions and you did.

Attorneyatlawl

Anoteros wrote: »

Cinder82 wrote: »

PLEASE DO! I WILL BUY TONS OF THESE!!! I WILL BE PLAYING NON-STOP WITH THIS BOOST UP!! HELL YEAH.

when can i buy these

If it'll spare me from the tedious grinding which will no doubt cause me to stop playing entirely i'm all for them.
As long as they don't start selling armour sets etc

How to make money:

Step 1. Make game. Charge $15 per month.
Step 2. Nerf game so it takes much more time to get levels. Make game free to access after a one time purchase.
Step 3. Announce xp potions to bring you back to 1/3 or 1/2 of the previous speed.
Step 4. Let people who didn't pay any attention beg for the potions as RMT cash shop items to still be stuck leveling half-speed and paying money the whole way along that far exceeds what the basic $15/mo subscription had been.
Step 5. PROFIT! Game sinks as it becomes pay to win, but you rake in the cash as it does, while forum guys scream about how awesome it is until their game drowns,

Ley

Ever think maybe they nerfed the grinding locations because they didn't want to promote that kind of game play?
The fact that players are determined to find a grind that gets them there faster and without having to play actual content is our own fault, is it not? We're so obsessed with finding the simplest, most mindless way of doing a few simple actions over and over, that result in the most exp per hour, that we end up ruining the game. Not to mention, they did reduce the amount of exp required to gain vet levels by a considerable amount. You also failed to point out the recent increases to Trial and Cyrodiil exp. Can I put away my tinfoil hat now?

Lordwolfie

Wow if the 50% boost is real that's a TERRIBLE idea. I just purchased this game a week ago and love it. However if you allow people to level up almost double the speed they will over level content to quickly and it would make the game feel short. 10% sure that's fine but 50% sounds a bit crazy to me.

MisterBigglesworth

Ley wrote: »

Ever think maybe they nerfed the grinding locations because they didn't want to promote that kind of game play?
The fact that players are determined to find a grind that gets them there faster and without having to play actual content is our own fault, is it not? We're so obsessed with finding the simplest, most mindless way of doing a few simple actions over and over, that result in the most exp per hour, that we end up ruining the game.

It's actually more a failure of design. The developers chose to make XP gain the de facto progression system. They could have instead turned off XP gain at Level 50 and had the main form of progression be a dungeon/raid/pvp system that has built-in "seasons" or tiers of gear, weekly caps to reduce grinding/burnout, and catch up mechanics for newer players.

But they didn't do that.

farrier_ESO

Lordwolfie wrote: »

Wow if the 50% boost is real that's a TERRIBLE idea. I just purchased this game a week ago and love it. However if you allow people to level up almost double the speed they will over level content to quickly and it would make the game feel short. 10% sure that's fine but 50% sounds a bit crazy to me.

Really don't worry about it.

I've been playing since the beta, through the prerelease, to now, fairly solidly, a few hours most nights. I'm finally VR6 on just one character.

Allegedly, you can hit VR14 in a month. But you'd have to be deliberately skipping a *heck* of a lot of content, not doing any crafting, not going for any achievements, not socialising at all, not exploring...

Those people aren't playing the game for any of that stuff they're skipping, they're playing it as a contest, probably for PvP, and that's not going to go away when you hit max level.