Akaviri motif overpriced by ZOS

Ourorboros

In a recent thread explaining why the cost of Alliance skills was being drastically reduced, ZOS stated the average player earns around 10k AP/day. Disregarding the source or accuracy of these numbers, if they used that figure to make changes to obtain Alliance skills, then why did ZOS make Akaviri chapters so steep? Ballpark figures, buying all Akaviri chapters cost over 4 million AP. If average players only make 10k AP/day, it would take an average player around 400 days to get all the Akaviri chapters. It would also require another 70 days to buy the style mats to make a full set. Of course even this math assumes ALL earned AP goes to motifs, nothing spent on siege, etc. By comparison to other motifs, I was able to buy, find, trade full sets of Glass, Xivkyn, Ancient Orc, and Mercenary for less than 1 million gold for all of them. Akaviri is the only motif I haven't learned, and the sole reason is because it is over-priced. What I don't understand, using the AP gains for players that ZOS posted, is why this motif was singled out to cost so much more than other motifs. Was this some over-sight? Did they use a different AP gain number when they set the motif price than they did to adjust the cost of Alliance skills? I hate to think this situation has anything to do with the crown store. If it takes so long for the average player to be able to obtain this motif, will anyone even care about it? After all, we have more and more new motifs being introduced into the game with upcoming DLCs. Akaviri seems destined to be ignored.

ZOS LOGIC:

Jura23

Maybe they want important stuff like sets and skills to be accessible while fluff can be expensive so ppl have something to work towards? I think that makes perfct sense.

Dread_Guy

I think timing also had to do with it. Akaviri came out after IC and people were just sitting on a ton AP because none of the PvP vendors were selling v16 gear and IC introduced Tel Vars currency. Before this AP vendor announcement, there was nothing but seige, repair kits, and the occasional sigil to repeat to buy. People were asking for an AP dump and then we got Akaviri.

I hadn't even heard of this AP vendor that sells monster helms until I had bought the majority of akaviri. It doesn't really take that long to get a lot of AP though

Zyle

It's because the motifs were designed to be an AP sink. Wrobel quite literally confirmed this type of thinking when he came out and said people have too much AP

Ourorboros

Jura23 wrote: »

Maybe they want important stuff like sets and skills to be accessible while fluff can be expensive so ppl have something to work towards? I think that makes perfct sense.

So they want players to have all the PVP skills, but only want dedicated PVPers to be able to obtain Akaviri without using the crown store? At the same time, it's comparatively easy to get all the other motifs? Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Ourorboros

Dread_Knight_N7 wrote: »

I think timing also had to do with it. Akaviri came out after IC and people were just sitting on a ton AP because none of the PvP vendors were selling v16 gear and IC introduced Tel Vars currency. Before this AP vendor announcement, there was nothing but seige, repair kits, and the occasional sigil to repeat to buy. People were asking for an AP dump and then we got Akaviri.

bchulettub17_ESO wrote: »

It's because the motifs were designed to be an AP sink. Wrobel quite literally confirmed this type of thinking when he came out and said people have too much AP

So did ZOS bend the truth about how much AP is being earned by average players? If 10k AP/ day is truly the average, the Akaviri price is a hinderance and nearly out of reach for most players, not an AP sink. 10k AP isn't enough to buy a supportive amount of siege. And an AP sink still doesn't justify setting the Akaviri price so high compared to other motifs. There is a disconnect somewhere.

Zyle

Ourorboros wrote: »

Dread_Knight_N7 wrote: »

I think timing also had to do with it. Akaviri came out after IC and people were just sitting on a ton AP because none of the PvP vendors were selling v16 gear and IC introduced Tel Vars currency. Before this AP vendor announcement, there was nothing but seige, repair kits, and the occasional sigil to repeat to buy. People were asking for an AP dump and then we got Akaviri.

bchulettub17_ESO wrote: »

It's because the motifs were designed to be an AP sink. Wrobel quite literally confirmed this type of thinking when he came out and said people have too much AP

So did ZOS bend the truth about how much AP is being earned by average players? If 10k AP/ day is truly the average, the Akaviri price is a hinderance and nearly out of reach for most players, not an AP sink. 10k AP isn't enough to buy a supportive amount of siege. And an AP sink still doesn't justify setting the Akaviri price so high compared to other motifs. There is a disconnect somewhere.

I don't think they bent the truth per say, I think the motifs were released prior to that mentality and therefore subject to Wrobel's ideas. That's why I was suggesting they were an AP sink because that would be inline with his type of mentality of the subject.

I also don't think those numbers that Rich provided are accurate. He claimed they were 8 week averages: there is a huge difference between 8 weeks worth of time and how much time within the 8 weeks was actually playing. I think they just straight up divided by 8 weeks worth of time

Ourorboros

bchulettub17_ESO wrote: »

Ourorboros wrote: »

Dread_Knight_N7 wrote: »

I think timing also had to do with it. Akaviri came out after IC and people were just sitting on a ton AP because none of the PvP vendors were selling v16 gear and IC introduced Tel Vars currency. Before this AP vendor announcement, there was nothing but seige, repair kits, and the occasional sigil to repeat to buy. People were asking for an AP dump and then we got Akaviri.

bchulettub17_ESO wrote: »

It's because the motifs were designed to be an AP sink. Wrobel quite literally confirmed this type of thinking when he came out and said people have too much AP

So did ZOS bend the truth about how much AP is being earned by average players? If 10k AP/ day is truly the average, the Akaviri price is a hinderance and nearly out of reach for most players, not an AP sink. 10k AP isn't enough to buy a supportive amount of siege. And an AP sink still doesn't justify setting the Akaviri price so high compared to other motifs. There is a disconnect somewhere.

I don't think they bent the truth per say, I think the motifs were released prior to that mentality and therefore subject to Wrobel's ideas. That's why I was suggesting they were an AP sink because that would be inline with his type of mentality of the subject.

I also don't think those numbers that Rich provided are accurate. He claimed they were 8 week averages: there is a huge difference between 8 weeks worth of time and how much time within the 8 weeks was actually playing. I think they just straight up divided by 8 weeks worth of time

I don't really buy the 10k AP number either. I pretty much suck at PVP, but I've earned around 3 million AP since January when I started doing Cyrodiil daily. Even if Akaviri was priced to be an AP sink, it still doesn't justify making it so much harder and costly to obtain compared to every other motif.

Jura23

Ourorboros wrote: »

Jura23 wrote: »

Maybe they want important stuff like sets and skills to be accessible while fluff can be expensive so ppl have something to work towards? I think that makes perfct sense.

So they want players to have all the PVP skills, but only want dedicated PVPers to be able to obtain Akaviri without using the crown store? At the same time, it's comparatively easy to get all the other motifs? Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

I fully expect them to continue this trend with PvP rewards in future and add more expensive "fluff" rewards. Could be motive or something else, who knows.

Heindrich

10k AP daily average is BS. Zenimax probably included all the people who logged into a campaign on a given day and calculated their average AP... but for example one of my characters lives in Cyrodil even though I haven't played on him for months and only log in occasionally for inventory management and horse training.

Akaviri motif pricing is fair, there is nothing else to buy with AP anyway. Or gold for that matter.

Skinzz

Let me get this straight.. zos is saying the average player gains 10k ap a day but theyre also saying players have too much AP saved up? Wtf.

Ourorboros

Heindrich wrote: »

10k AP daily average is BS. Zenimax probably included all the people who logged into a campaign on a given day and calculated their average AP... but for example one of my characters lives in Cyrodil even though I haven't played on him for months and only log in occasionally for inventory management and horse training.

Akaviri motif pricing is fair, there is nothing else to buy with AP anyway. Or gold for that matter.

I also don't buy the 10k AP number posited by ZOS. I also agree there is little to buy with AP. And the only real change to this will be Undaunted items. I really should have mentioned in my OP that the 10k number was also used to justify the relatively low cost for Monster helms. Which brings me back to the point I've made repeatedly......Akaviri prices are much higher compared to other motifs, and even the upcoming Monster helms. Why should a single Akaviri chapter cost more than a Monster helm?

AlnilamE

Without knowing what data they used to come up with that average, it's hard to say.

If I go into PvP for the evening, I can expect to earn about 30k AP at least, unless it's really slow.

And while you were able to find the other motifs for less than one million gold, that doesn't count the time and effort put into the pages you didn't buy, so I don't know if that's a good comparison.

Ourorboros

xskinzcity wrote: »

Let me get this straight.. zos is saying the average player gains 10k ap a day but theyre also saying players have too much AP saved up? Wtf.

Like I said:

ZOS LOGIC:

Ourorboros

AlnilamE wrote: »

And while you were able to find the other motifs for less than one million gold, that doesn't count the time and effort put into the pages you didn't buy, so I don't know if that's a good comparison.

Since January, I've been doing Cyrodiil every day with my guild for 5-6 hours. I've earned around 3 million AP. That number is a lot higher than ZOS suggests it should be. On the other hand, it took me much less effort to earn the gold or find the chapters for all the other motifs. Given the RNG in this game ( I know all about it, I am a Master Angler and have all collectibles), I learned long ago that buying from guild stores is a lot easier than finding EVERY chapter in the game. It's just a matter of waiting for prices to hit an acceptable level. And some motifs, like Mercenary and Xivkyn, were really pretty easy to find. I wasn't playing 5-6 hours a day, and I wasn't focused on getting the other motifs. By comparison, I've played hard since January, and still don't have enough AP to get a full Akaviri set (getting this set is not why I have been in Cyrodiil so much, but that's another thread ). I think it is a fair comparison of my efforts to get all of the other motifs that were released with Akaviri to how difficult it is to get this set.

redspecter23

I'm pretty sure the entire reason for implementing the Akaviri motif the way they did was an attempt to get players to dump massive amounts of stored AP to try and get them to use it up. It's likely one step in a larger plan that just didn't go over as well as they hoped. With players still stockpiling AP in anticipation of new gear coming out to spend it on, ZoS panicked and looked for an easy dump. According to recent info from ZoS, v16 AP gear isn't coming any time soon so that stored up AP is just going to keep sitting there, possibly waiting weeks at a time to buy a "good" monster helm/shoulder when it becomes available. Because this "problem" is only becoming worse, I'd expect AP to be deincentivized over time until they introduce new currencies to replace it (TV stones for starters with more to come I'm sure)

Xendyn

redspecter23 wrote: »

I'm pretty sure the entire reason for implementing the Akaviri motif the way they did was an attempt to get players to dump massive amounts of stored AP to try and get them to use it up. It's likely one step in a larger plan that just didn't go over as well as they hoped. With players still stockpiling AP in anticipation of new gear coming out to spend it on, ZoS panicked and looked for an easy dump. According to recent info from ZoS, v16 AP gear isn't coming any time soon so that stored up AP is just going to keep sitting there, possibly waiting weeks at a time to buy a "good" monster helm/shoulder when it becomes available. Because this "problem" is only becoming worse, I'd expect AP to be deincentivized over time until they introduce new currencies to replace it (TV stones for starters with more to come I'm sure)

Also, most of the PVPers I know couldn't care less about "fluff"
A lot of them don't even craft.

Ourorboros

Xendyn wrote: »

redspecter23 wrote: »

I'm pretty sure the entire reason for implementing the Akaviri motif the way they did was an attempt to get players to dump massive amounts of stored AP to try and get them to use it up. It's likely one step in a larger plan that just didn't go over as well as they hoped. With players still stockpiling AP in anticipation of new gear coming out to spend it on, ZoS panicked and looked for an easy dump. According to recent info from ZoS, v16 AP gear isn't coming any time soon so that stored up AP is just going to keep sitting there, possibly waiting weeks at a time to buy a "good" monster helm/shoulder when it becomes available. Because this "problem" is only becoming worse, I'd expect AP to be deincentivized over time until they introduce new currencies to replace it (TV stones for starters with more to come I'm sure)

Also, most of the PVPers I know couldn't care less about "fluff"
A lot of them don't even craft.

So what does this have to do with Akaviri being overpriced and harder to get compared to other motifs? From what I've seen, plenty of PVPers are willing to buy costumes, aka "fluff". I see wedding dresses and harem outfits all over Cyrodiil. But for someone like me, it takes about 50 hours to generate the 500,000 AP needed for some of the Akaviri chapters. My point all along has been that Akaviri is much harder to get comparatively, and will likely be largely overlooked due to this and due to interest shifting to the new 'shinies' coming soon to the game.

Xendyn

Ourorboros wrote: »

Xendyn wrote: »

redspecter23 wrote: »

I'm pretty sure the entire reason for implementing the Akaviri motif the way they did was an attempt to get players to dump massive amounts of stored AP to try and get them to use it up. It's likely one step in a larger plan that just didn't go over as well as they hoped. With players still stockpiling AP in anticipation of new gear coming out to spend it on, ZoS panicked and looked for an easy dump. According to recent info from ZoS, v16 AP gear isn't coming any time soon so that stored up AP is just going to keep sitting there, possibly waiting weeks at a time to buy a "good" monster helm/shoulder when it becomes available. Because this "problem" is only becoming worse, I'd expect AP to be deincentivized over time until they introduce new currencies to replace it (TV stones for starters with more to come I'm sure)

Also, most of the PVPers I know couldn't care less about "fluff"
A lot of them don't even craft.

So what does this have to do with Akaviri being overpriced and harder to get compared to other motifs? From what I've seen, plenty of PVPers are willing to buy costumes, aka "fluff". I see wedding dresses and harem outfits all over Cyrodiil. But for someone like me, it takes about 50 hours to generate the 500,000 AP needed for some of the Akaviri chapters. My point all along has been that Akaviri is much harder to get comparatively, and will likely be largely overlooked due to this and due to interest shifting to the new 'shinies' coming soon to the game.

Umm that was in response to the couple of people that are saying it was to make an AP sink. I'm saying it probably didn't work for that.

I'm supporting you here, man.

Ourorboros

Xendyn wrote: »

Ourorboros wrote: »

Xendyn wrote: »

redspecter23 wrote: »

I'm pretty sure the entire reason for implementing the Akaviri motif the way they did was an attempt to get players to dump massive amounts of stored AP to try and get them to use it up. It's likely one step in a larger plan that just didn't go over as well as they hoped. With players still stockpiling AP in anticipation of new gear coming out to spend it on, ZoS panicked and looked for an easy dump. According to recent info from ZoS, v16 AP gear isn't coming any time soon so that stored up AP is just going to keep sitting there, possibly waiting weeks at a time to buy a "good" monster helm/shoulder when it becomes available. Because this "problem" is only becoming worse, I'd expect AP to be deincentivized over time until they introduce new currencies to replace it (TV stones for starters with more to come I'm sure)

Also, most of the PVPers I know couldn't care less about "fluff"
A lot of them don't even craft.

So what does this have to do with Akaviri being overpriced and harder to get compared to other motifs? From what I've seen, plenty of PVPers are willing to buy costumes, aka "fluff". I see wedding dresses and harem outfits all over Cyrodiil. But for someone like me, it takes about 50 hours to generate the 500,000 AP needed for some of the Akaviri chapters. My point all along has been that Akaviri is much harder to get comparatively, and will likely be largely overlooked due to this and due to interest shifting to the new 'shinies' coming soon to the game.

Umm that was in response to the couple of people that are saying it was to make an AP sink. I'm saying it probably didn't work for that.

I'm supporting you here, man.

Thanks......not always easy to get the full gestalt from just text.