Costume Dying Should Be Free! (RANT)

Holycannoli

Transairion wrote: »

Last I heard Guild Wars 2, another actual B2P MMO, is still going strong with nothing to support it but cash shop and DLC. Almost all of SWTOR's income is based off their cash shop/RNG Boxes, much to the neglect of the rest of the game.

NO to RNG boxes!!

Vangy

notimetocare wrote: »

Vangy wrote: »

1. Costume dyeing dosent need to be free. We all bought costumes knowing full and well that costume dyeing may never be possible.

2. That being said, the way the implemented the pay to dye system is bullcrap. Why not let people buy a token to let them dye a costume once with any of the dyes they have unlocked??? Why complicate matters with the whole dye pack system... So much man-hours wasted on a cash-grab......

This is coming from a ESO+ sub.....

Eh, if you really want it simple just make costume dying 100% sub only. No need for dyepacks in the crownstore or as drops. No need for an extra token to let someone dye a costume.

Sweet lord... Can you imagine the rain/flood/tsunami of tears and QQ that would flow and drown us all here on the forums? The first 5 pages of forums will be filled with wah wah posts about how costume dyeing is locked only to subs and ESO will become a wasteland of tears.... No thanks please.

Transairion

NO to RNG boxes!!

Oh of course, if ESO ever goes the path of SWTOR and throws itself under the bus to focus on the Cash Shop I'll leave here as well. Thankfully, ESO hasn't gone there yet. But stuff like Costume Dyeing, which is really just a QoL change, being a Paid Feature is putting ESO on the slippery slope of $ > everything SWTOR went. I hope I'm wrong, I really do. We don't want to become what SWTOR has become.

They literally went sub only -> free to play option -> paid DLC's -> "free" sub only DLC (1 hour of non-repeatable content) per month. It's basically gone full circle but you're getting LESS for your money!

petraeus1

Francis_Toliver wrote: »

petraeus1 wrote: »

Edit:
I thought about your movietheater analogy, and I propose an adjustment.

I bought tickets to a movie. Not the best seating tickets, those are reserved for club members, but hey, tickets for a movie. During the break I go out to buy some popcorn. Turns out they don't have any salt or sugar, but they'll get some later. I should come back during the second break.

So I do. I already bought the popcorn 'as is', but when I return the employees at the counter say I have to pay extra for the sugar or salt. I also have to pay extra if I want ice cubes with my drink. I can't return my ticket cause I've already seen half of the movie, in fact I'd have to return multiple tickets because I also purchased access to its sequals.

Other customers berate me: the popcorn didn't come with salt at first, did it? The drink said nothing about ice cubes. It's only a matter of flavour anyway. The ticket doesn't mean anything, be glad they even let you have a seat and decided to sell food during the breaks! They got to make money. Don't be cheap. You should become a club member, they say: you get all the benefits then!

The problem with your analogy is that ZOS never suggested you would be able to dye your costumes. It was never an "expectation" that later we would get to dye our costumes for free or otherwise. YOU may have had that expectation, but ZOS never stated this. I certainly never expected it. You may have hoped for it, but to expect it? And be upset that it didn't happen as you assumed it would? What do they say about assumptions?

So, no you are not being denied salt and butter on your popcorn. You are being told caramel corn is now available and you may purchase some if you like. Or you may join the cool club members and it will be offered as a perk for that membership. Or you may continue to eat your normal popcorn with salt and butter.

Or you may continue to complain about the fact that the cool club members are getting free caramel corn and how unjust that is. I doubt that will get you free caramel corn. Or anyone's sympathy.

I am pretty sure they did say they would implement costume dyes, but even if they did not, it does not change my stance.

Again, no one said they are logically or morally obliged to make them free. Assumptions, though often misleading, are not necessarily unreasonable.

What I dislike is being nickle-and-dimed. Just like I'd say 'Never mind' if they'd charge me extra for salt and butter on my popcorn, similarly I dislike that cosmetic systems are 1) gimped 2) locked behind payment, when the game already asks a box price, paid DLC and a rather high price for the costumes to which these dyes apply.

Is that reasonable? Strictly speaking they could charge for anything, and since they did not give details beforehand, it would never be reasonable to complain about business models. It's ZOS' decision after all.

It is ZOS' decision, but I can still be discontent and that discontent can still be reasonable. I can have reasonable expectations on a business model based on comparison with business models of similar products and companies and the general quality of the product offered. That's how everything works in life. When I go to a bakery and the baker tells me that cutting the bread costs extra, I'll tell him I'll go to any other baker in town. Does that exclude from him the right to use that business model? No.

The difference with MMOs is that they require a lot of time and money investment of players. You don't just go to the other bakery after spending hundreds of hours or thousands of Crowns on a game. Which is a weak position. I want to get value for money, though.

In the end, for me it's about the precedent and trusting ZOS to not gimp future features or try to cut them into pieces to get more money. I don't feel valued as a customer with such practices. With many other products, I would just walk away. I don't stand alone in my dislike. There's a reason many dislike first-day DLC, or things like Crusader Kings II Steam Store page. But I invested a lot already, so part of me does not want to just leave.

What makes it annoying is that with a B2P game with paid DLC, I hoped to avoid a cash shop with a seemingly ever increasing amount of microtransactions. A wrong assumption, but not an unreasonable one, given many MMOs survive off much less than ESO. So it comes across as greed.

Does this mean ZOS can't do it? No. ZOS can do whatever it want, and I can give my feedback right here. I don't care for anyone's sympathy, but it does annoy me that some ESO+ members berate critical but spending customers as being cheap and in some cases even try to shoo them off the forums. We should be able to critically evaluate Crown Store development, just as any other part of the game. Of course ZOS can technically put anything they ever newly develop behind a paywall (they could have, from your perspective, even have made dye stamps the only way to dye costumes and not make it an ESO+ perk), that does not mean we have to agree with it. If that makes me cheap or entitled or a whining jerk, so be it.

Daraugh

Having purely cosmetic items in the store works perfectly. Having the ability to change the cosmetic appearance of those items hits the nail right on the head as far as balance between what should and should not be in the store. It's something that provides zero gameplay advantage while still being desirable. It adds value to a sub without giving any advantage. It's the correct sort of thing to have as both a perk and as a crown store item, a cosmetic change to a cosmetic item.

ScottK1994

I'd have access to dyes either way but I do agree. Then again it's purely cosmetic. Which is basically non essential

AmberLaTerra

Kind of funny how the defenders of everything free or in crown store site games that are P2W, yet rage all the time about not wanting ESO to go P2W.

You can't site P2W games for comparison and expect to win your argument when wanting things free here and not wanting P2W in the crown store.

P2W is a bad system and it what drove me out of Guild Wars 2, and SWTOR.

As for those millions of other games? You do realize single player games do not require massive servers for play? you play them on your own system with that system handling 100% of the data no server needed by the gaming company.

Shadesofkin

Personally I continue to think it's a fine and dandy way to introduce costume dying.

Then again I do directly benefit from an ESO+ membership.

Pheefs

No, it should NOT be free.

I get it that some of us don't like the dye packs... cause reasons.
but anything that will get people to subscribe for a month & then maybe keep subscribing is good news for ESO!

& I agree if the packs gave you one time access to the full dye system instead of the fixed three colors thing, it wouldn't have the accessory Rage attached, AND they'd sell lots more of the crown store option.

Aelthwyn

Transairion wrote: »

Zenimax loses out on making MORE money and here's why:

2) Instead of potentially every player being able to buy costumes (to then dye, even if they don't like the original color you can dye it something else) this is limited to ESO+ members only. Non ESO+ members won't bother. There's load of costumes I'd buy if I could dye them freely but I'm not paying twice (either to sub or to buy some terribly stamp) for that "right", so I just won't buy them. It's the entire reason I skimped over Altmer Hero, it's colors looked terrible ingame

Exactly this. It seems to me that being able to dye costumes would entice more people, both subscribers and non-subscribers, to buy more costumes - much more than it will entice non-subscribers to subscribe.

Ep1kMalware

Pheefs wrote: »

No, it should NOT be free.

I get it that some of us don't like the dye packs... cause reasons.
but anything that will get people to subscribe for a month & then maybe keep subscribing is good news for ESO!

& I agree if the packs gave you one time access to the full dye system instead of the fixed three colors thing, it wouldn't have the accessory Rage attached, AND they'd sell lots more of the crown store option.

I agree, if it gets you to buy a sub then it's good for the game. I like eso, I wanna see myself pkaying eso for a while.