Official Discussion Thread for Crown Crates

wayfarerx

Dromede wrote: »

It breaks my heart how beautifully Pacrooti interactions/animations are handled...

Can you imagine how awesome it would be if they scrapped this crown crate nonsense and instead put Pacrooti in the outlaws refuges and let you play the same little game except for gold instead of crowns and you could win anything from dropped potions to gold tempers? I would be so broke all the time!

Surely @ZOS_RichLambert, when you guys inevitably talk about how much we all hate the crown crates in an upcoming meeting, you could float this idea as a way to ditch the crates without throwing out all the related development work too, right? Or is this train already too far off the tracks to stop?

Khaos_Bane

Terrible. Spend tons of money to fill your inventory with consumables. Have to spend 100's $ to get that mount you want. What a joke.

Nestor

Dromede wrote: »

But what else can we do?

Me, I am just not going to buy any of the crates. I will probably keep my sub, the Crafting Bag is to useful.

Elsonso

.

Nestor wrote: »

Dromede wrote: »

But what else can we do?

Me, I am just not going to buy any of the crates. I will probably keep my sub, the Crafting Bag is to useful.

Yup. They have not trashed the game, yet. Worth at least another 6 months.

Preyfar

Day 3 - opened up 13 more crates, got a Storm Atro Guar and a Golden Eye Guar. Only gained 48 gems, and I'm still feeling like the exchange rate is nothing but awful.

EDIT: I'm also rather disappointed ZOS hasn't said anything on this thread. Like a "hey, we're listening" or a "we're monitoring the rewards" or something. I've not seen a single person who was like "Y'know, these creates are alright."

Danikat

Kendaric wrote: »

Vrath wrote: »

SWTOR is fine, it is restrictive in F2P with silly stuff but you can play 8 class stories for free not a lot to a argue against. However the cash shop, in particular - hypercrates, in addition to subs have made them successful financially and the community has very little outcry certainly not like this. That is a good thing for those that love the game and one cant fault players for supporting a game they love and enjoy good for them! The RNG boxes are unique to MMOs they are popular in many games and formats, if they weren't they wouldn't be implemented so often.

You must have missed the huge outcry during SWTOR's f2p transition.

But that is beside the point, what makes SWTOR's crates bearable is the fact that you can sell everything in them on GTN. Sure, the items are expensive as hell, but you can get every item without ever purchasing a single crate from the cartel market (at least as subscriber. for the f2p player the prices are way beyond their credit limit).
That, however, is not an option in ESO.

That's also what makes GW2's RNG boxes not entirely terrible. (That and you can get them for free, either directly in certain places or by purchasing cash-shop currency with gold.) All the items in them are either tradable or can be purchased directly in the cash shop. So if you want a specific item you can just buy it, you only need to get the boxes if you want to gamble. (Or because someone believes they're the exception to the rule and will get the rarest items in a reasonable number of tries.)

I've thought about suggesting that here, but I'm worried it would create an indirect pay-to-win system: buy crowns, buy boxes, sell contents for gold, use gold to buy Best-in-Slot equipment. That's not really an issue in GW2 because the whole game is designed to be a 'level playing field' where your equipment doesn't make much of a difference. I'm not so sure about ESO because I've not gotten as far as figuring out end-game gear.

VerboseQuips

silvereyes wrote: »

To get a little philosophical, I find it interesting that people (not me) are willing to sink a ton of *time* into collecting RNG cosmetics in-game (e.g. soul shriven skin), but aren't willing to sink a ton of real-world *money* into attaining a potentially much larger collection of RNG cosmetics. I would argue that time is a more limited resource for most folks, and therefore *should* be more valuable.

Is it's because we don't like our jobs, so the time we spend earning money there seems more valuable than time playing a game we like? Or maybe it's that real-world money always seems like a higher short-term priority? Or is it because of a deep-seated fear of death that we avoid thinking about the limited nature of time?

Pondering....

I agree. I have read a blog post somewhere (maybe from Belgian author Ploum?) where the author recommanded to stop thinking about how much money you spend, and instead think about how many hours/days of your life you had to work to get this money. Basically, this replaces "I spend x€ to get this item or service, is it worth it?" by "I spend x hours/days of my life to get this item or service, is it worth it?"

I think it is probably a very good piece of advice.

laurajf

I opened the boxes today and have the same feelings as everyone else. Worthless stuff I won't use, stuff I didn't buy to begin with because I didn't want it, and duplicates for which I received a paltry amount of trade-in gems. I don't need to open any more. I got my answer.

My big issue here is that under the guise of giving us something new, you're actually taking something away from us. You've been giving us your new items in the store every month. We look forward to it. We buy the stuff that makes us happy. Now you're introducing new items but we basically can't have them unless we gamble, which means we're not going to get them. You may still put some stuff on the store but it really doesn't matter because now there is stuff that you have already made, stuff you will still make, stuff that will exist, stuff we will want and can't have because many of us are not foolish enough to fall for this, especially those of us who have fallen for it in other games and had to learn the hard way.

That happened to me in Rift. I uninstalled that game and never looked back because of those boxes and the fact that so much stuff that existed in that game was basically a complete waste of designer/artist talent because hardly anyone had it. Oh, but it makes it more special, they said. No, no it does not. It makes for resentful customers and then no customers.

I have looked forward to housing forever but if this game and its items locked in RNG boxes start making me feel that same resentment I felt for Rift, I will have no problem doing the same with ESO that I did with Rift.

Moloch1514

lordrichter wrote: »

.

Nestor wrote: »

Dromede wrote: »

But what else can we do?

Me, I am just not going to buy any of the crates. I will probably keep my sub, the Crafting Bag is to useful.

Yup. They have not trashed the game, yet. Worth at least another 6 months.

But that Red Wolf mount though! Take my money in a direct purchase ZOS......or leave it in the Crates and get $0!!

zulikab14_ESO

I have been checking all the info I can find hoping that a look at the process in action would calm my fears about it going too far down the slippery slope. However, the PTS vids have convinced me that it is more likely better a better choice to cut my losses and move on from both TESO and TES: Legends.

I have not logged into the game since I learned of the details about the crates, and immediately felt all mutual trust had evaporated, but I was still hopeful.

I did log into my account to cancel my sub. I was just over a month in on a 6 month sub, after a hiatus

Many thanks to the creative and support teams who have worked on this game. I have enjoyed many hours in it and I feel the support/CM teams have done a great job with the tools & resources made available to them - I know those tools were very rough at launch.

VerboseQuips

Tavore1138 wrote: »

A few points:

[...]
[*] The drop rates are not announced so ZOS *could* actually tailor them to drop less frequently for people who have been known to spend more money - the lack of transparency makes this worse than playing a slot machine.
[...]

This is what I tried to explain in the unofficial discussion thread (you know, the hundred-pages one, which apparently wasn't enough for the devs who decided to open this one so they can remain silent in two places instead of one). I cut and paste here what I wrote in a (much longer) post there:

[...]

I have seen many times in this thread and now in the official PTS one a comparison between lottery and Crown Crates. I think this comparison hides a very hideous aspect of the Crown Crates. I will emphasize.

Crown Crates are not a lottery.

The key difference between Crown Crates and lottery is that in a lottery, everyone has the same probability of winning. But we do not know how Crown RNG will work. The "everyone the same odds" model is a mere assumption, one that is based on nothing, impossible to test and one that can be dangerous.
@Lysette and I mentioned in this thread that we received a mail offering an 'exclusive gifting offer' - an experimental stuff allowing us to offer Crown items to another player. This makes me think that ZOS already identified possible whales, probably from our spending patterns. But ZOS doesn't only rely on data about our spending patterns. They are sitting on a throve of data about our psychological behaviours. What kind of choices do we do during quests? What kind of words do we use in chat? How long do we persevere when facing RNG-generated adversity before giving up? All these data would allow them, if so they wish, to create a quite accurate psychological portrayal of their customers.
If ZOS want to go full evil, they will use that psychological data to extort as much money as they can from their playerbase.
I try to explain how this could be done in the next spoiler.

Let's assume each players recieves 3 'intrinsic' values : susceptibility, perseverance and wealth.
Susceptibility would be a measure of how easily they are influenced by other players. If they see someone on a special mount, will they want the same mount too? How much will they want it?
Perseverance would measure how long they'll keep trying before giving up.
Wealth would be an estimate of how much a player can spend on the game, from the history of their Crown purchases.

Now add to this some data about the network/ecosystem in which Player A lives. Whenever a player B meets A, B's values are checked. Is he susceptible and perseverant? Is he rich? Did B already see any of the new mounts and pets, or has B failed to meet them in-game so far? If B saw one already, how long ago was it? This generates an 'influence' value for A, and the influence adds up as A plays.

Now A wants to buy a Crown Crate (bad idea, but let's make the hypothesis he does).

If A has a high influence value, he'll get a higher probability of getting an Atronach mount - but if he does, other players will have more opportunity to see the Atronach mounts, so that other players' influence in A's ecosystem will drop, as well as A's influence itself.

If A has a high perseverence, then the last 10 Gems needed to buy the 400-gem mount A really wants might very well cost him as much as the first 100.

Now add those four values in some equation to determine the drop rates, then fine-tune the parameters following some market theory in order to maximize profit.

This is just an example and I don't know how much resource would be needed to compute those four values for every player - so I don't know whether it's technically feasible. My point is, we should not expect it to be as "equalitarian" as a lottery. ZOS has weapons to make it much more unfair, if so they wish.

At this point, ZOS's sense of ethics can and should be questioned.

At this point, you could call me paranoid. But after having heard Pacrooti's lines, I now question ZOS's sense of ethics and the hypothesis of a full-evil ZOS cannot be just ruled out a priori anymore. Stuff like "The next try might be the one", really? We're talking about in-game incitement to gamble with real-world money, here! How can you fall so low?

There have been arguments in this thread - by @SantieClaws if I remember well - stating that this RNG system is not as bad as in another MMO (I don't remember which one), because the other MMO provided locked boxes in-game and the player had to buy the key. This was a worse way to implement it, as the fact of refusing to buy a key equated, on a psychological level, to trashing something possibly valuable that you already have.
But now I see that ZOS also does in-game incitement. I find it utterly disgusting. Tu quoque, ZOS!

The 'fifth card' animation bugged me in one of the videos. Considering the route ZOS has taken, it wouldn't astonish me, now, that we would see Pacrooti's tokens with Update 13. You loot a chest, kill a boss or pickpocket a rogue citizen and bam! Pacrooti's token. The in-game description would read "This precious memory was lost by Pacrooti when he was robbed by a group of bandits. Bring it to him the next time you'll meet him, and he'll surely thank you by giving you a fifth card!". Nearly the same effect as the locked boxes : you'd get the feeling of trashing something possibly valuable when you refuse to buy a crate to use it. Pure speculation, of course. But seeing how it already works on launch, this wouldn't surprise me.

[...]

Elsonso

aheck1111_ESO wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

.

Nestor wrote: »

Dromede wrote: »

But what else can we do?

Me, I am just not going to buy any of the crates. I will probably keep my sub, the Crafting Bag is to useful.

Yup. They have not trashed the game, yet. Worth at least another 6 months.

But that Red Wolf mount though! Take my money in a direct purchase ZOS......or leave it in the Crates and get $0!!

I can live without the Red Wolf Mount. I expect that they will put a lot of things I would buy behind the Crown Crates and I will never get them. I think it will mean that I will spend less in the Crown Store, which means that I will spend less real money on Crowns. The same will happen if they decide to jack up the price of direct purchase items. I did not buy the Personality because 1200 Crowns is more than it is worth to me. They might have had me at 1000 Crowns, but we will never know. I can live without the Drunk Personality, too.

I can live without ESO Plus, but I don't have to. For now.

Forztr

VerboseQuips wrote: »

Tavore1138 wrote: »

A few points:

[...]
[*] The drop rates are not announced so ZOS *could* actually tailor them to drop less frequently for people who have been known to spend more money - the lack of transparency makes this worse than playing a slot machine.
[...]

This is what I tried to explain in the unofficial discussion thread (you know, the hundred-pages one, which apparently wasn't enough for the devs who decided to open this one so they can remain silent in two places instead of one). I cut and paste here what I wrote in a (much longer) post there:

[...]

I have seen many times in this thread and now in the official PTS one a comparison between lottery and Crown Crates. I think this comparison hides a very hideous aspect of the Crown Crates. I will emphasize.

Crown Crates are not a lottery.

The key difference between Crown Crates and lottery is that in a lottery, everyone has the same probability of winning. But we do not know how Crown RNG will work. The "everyone the same odds" model is a mere assumption, one that is based on nothing, impossible to test and one that can be dangerous.
@Lysette and I mentioned in this thread that we received a mail offering an 'exclusive gifting offer' - an experimental stuff allowing us to offer Crown items to another player. This makes me think that ZOS already identified possible whales, probably from our spending patterns. But ZOS doesn't only rely on data about our spending patterns. They are sitting on a throve of data about our psychological behaviours. What kind of choices do we do during quests? What kind of words do we use in chat? How long do we persevere when facing RNG-generated adversity before giving up? All these data would allow them, if so they wish, to create a quite accurate psychological portrayal of their customers.
If ZOS want to go full evil, they will use that psychological data to extort as much money as they can from their playerbase.
I try to explain how this could be done in the next spoiler.

Let's assume each players recieves 3 'intrinsic' values : susceptibility, perseverance and wealth.
Susceptibility would be a measure of how easily they are influenced by other players. If they see someone on a special mount, will they want the same mount too? How much will they want it?
Perseverance would measure how long they'll keep trying before giving up.
Wealth would be an estimate of how much a player can spend on the game, from the history of their Crown purchases.

Now add to this some data about the network/ecosystem in which Player A lives. Whenever a player B meets A, B's values are checked. Is he susceptible and perseverant? Is he rich? Did B already see any of the new mounts and pets, or has B failed to meet them in-game so far? If B saw one already, how long ago was it? This generates an 'influence' value for A, and the influence adds up as A plays.

Now A wants to buy a Crown Crate (bad idea, but let's make the hypothesis he does).

If A has a high influence value, he'll get a higher probability of getting an Atronach mount - but if he does, other players will have more opportunity to see the Atronach mounts, so that other players' influence in A's ecosystem will drop, as well as A's influence itself.

If A has a high perseverence, then the last 10 Gems needed to buy the 400-gem mount A really wants might very well cost him as much as the first 100.

Now add those four values in some equation to determine the drop rates, then fine-tune the parameters following some market theory in order to maximize profit.

This is just an example and I don't know how much resource would be needed to compute those four values for every player - so I don't know whether it's technically feasible. My point is, we should not expect it to be as "equalitarian" as a lottery. ZOS has weapons to make it much more unfair, if so they wish.

At this point, ZOS's sense of ethics can and should be questioned.

At this point, you could call me paranoid. But after having heard Pacrooti's lines, I now question ZOS's sense of ethics and the hypothesis of a full-evil ZOS cannot be just ruled out a priori anymore. Stuff like "The next try might be the one", really? We're talking about in-game incitement to gamble with real-world money, here! How can you fall so low?

There have been arguments in this thread - by @SantieClaws if I remember well - stating that this RNG system is not as bad as in another MMO (I don't remember which one), because the other MMO provided locked boxes in-game and the player had to buy the key. This was a worse way to implement it, as the fact of refusing to buy a key equated, on a psychological level, to trashing something possibly valuable that you already have.
But now I see that ZOS also does in-game incitement. I find it utterly disgusting. Tu quoque, ZOS!

The 'fifth card' animation bugged me in one of the videos. Considering the route ZOS has taken, it wouldn't astonish me, now, that we would see Pacrooti's tokens with Update 13. You loot a chest, kill a boss or pickpocket a rogue citizen and bam! Pacrooti's token. The in-game description would read "This precious memory was lost by Pacrooti when he was robbed by a group of bandits. Bring it to him the next time you'll meet him, and he'll surely thank you by giving you a fifth card!". Nearly the same effect as the locked boxes : you'd get the feeling of trashing something possibly valuable when you refuse to buy a crate to use it. Pure speculation, of course. But seeing how it already works on launch, this wouldn't surprise me.

[...]

They've already done something a little underhand like this before. When thieves guild launched the respawn time on the troves was "bugged" you'd stumble across them all over the place. But obviously you needed to be a sub or buy the DLC to get the loot. A few days later the respawn was fixed. I went from seeing 10-20 an hour questing to not seeing one for several weeks. It was a great marketing trick, intended or not as it got me to buy the DLC, I just had to see what was in the box.

Mx13

VerboseQuips wrote: »

A few points:
I have seen many times in this thread and now in the official PTS one a comparison between lottery and Crown Crates. I think this comparison hides a very hideous aspect of the Crown Crates. I will emphasize.

Crown Crates are not a lottery.

The key difference between Crown Crates and lottery is that in a lottery, everyone has the same probability of winning. But we do not know how Crown RNG will work. The "everyone the same odds" model is a mere assumption, one that is based on

This is implying that lotteries can't be rigged...

VerboseQuips

Mx13 wrote: »

VerboseQuips wrote: »

A few points:
I have seen many times in this thread and now in the official PTS one a comparison between lottery and Crown Crates. I think this comparison hides a very hideous aspect of the Crown Crates. I will emphasize.

Crown Crates are not a lottery.

The key difference between Crown Crates and lottery is that in a lottery, everyone has the same probability of winning. But we do not know how Crown RNG will work. The "everyone the same odds" model is a mere assumption, one that is based on

This is implying that lotteries can't be rigged...

Well, yes, I guess it was too strong an assumption as well.

Moloch1514

lordrichter wrote: »

aheck1111_ESO wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

.

Nestor wrote: »

Dromede wrote: »

But what else can we do?

Me, I am just not going to buy any of the crates. I will probably keep my sub, the Crafting Bag is to useful.

Yup. They have not trashed the game, yet. Worth at least another 6 months.

But that Red Wolf mount though! Take my money in a direct purchase ZOS......or leave it in the Crates and get $0!!

I can live without the Red Wolf Mount. I expect that they will put a lot of things I would buy behind the Crown Crates and I will never get them. I think it will mean that I will spend less in the Crown Store, which means that I will spend less real money on Crowns. The same will happen if they decide to jack up the price of direct purchase items. I did not buy the Personality because 1200 Crowns is more than it is worth to me. They might have had me at 1000 Crowns, but we will never know. I can live without the Drunk Personality, too.

I can live without ESO Plus, but I don't have to. For now.

The Drunk personality price was crazy. For 1500 you can get the Heroic personality and 2 dungeons in Shadows of the Hist! That's 300 crowns for 2 dungeons at the 1200 crowns for Personalities rate! Crazy!

Lumenn

Sooo coming up on the end of day 3(here in the U.S.) with no official comment here or the 100+ thread. ZOS? Anyone there? With the work that went into this I'm pretty sure your P.R. had SOME kinda spin prepared for the negativity no? You had 100+ pages to prepare, open an OFFICIAL thread, then...nothing? "we're making adjustments" "we're reading the feedback and discussing ways to improve it" "you're all wrong and we're doing this as is" anything? The silence alone makes a pretty strong comment when so many customers seem....concerned.

ArtOfShred

silvereyes wrote: »

To get a little philosophical, I find it interesting that people (not me) are willing to sink a ton of *time* into collecting RNG cosmetics in-game (e.g. soul shriven skin), but aren't willing to sink a ton of real-world *money* into attaining a potentially much larger collection of RNG cosmetics. I would argue that time is a more limited resource for most folks, and therefore *should* be more valuable.

Is it's because we don't like our jobs, so the time we spend earning money there seems more valuable than time playing a game we like? Or maybe it's that real-world money always seems like a higher short-term priority? Or is it because of a deep-seated fear of death that we avoid thinking about the limited nature of time?

Pondering....

It's likely for the same reason people have only a certain amount of close friends they can continue to interact with on a strong level. The mind is simply not capable of keeping track of so many things/people at once. In the real world there is a near infinite amount of things you could obsess over collecting, and the value of some of these things would be far greater than even having to spend a few thousand dollars on ingame collectables. With ingame collectables, there is a somewhat reasonable and finite list of things someone can strive to collect and complete.

Eiagra

Lumenn wrote: »

Sooo coming up on the end of day 3(here in the U.S.) with no official comment here or the 100+ thread. ZOS? Anyone there? With the work that went into this I'm pretty sure your P.R. had SOME kinda spin prepared for the negativity no? You had 100+ pages to prepare, open an OFFICIAL thread, then...nothing? "we're making adjustments" "we're reading the feedback and discussing ways to improve it" "you're all wrong and we're doing this as is" anything? The silence alone makes a pretty strong comment when so many customers seem....concerned.

I agree. A lack of communication is disconcerting to say the least. I can understand the need to form a prepared statement once things were in the players' hands... but as Lumenn has said here, there was a lot of time to prepare.

Silence isn't truly silent... while open to interpretation, in my own mind it seems to say, "We are ignoring you. You aren't precious to us. Your voices are not required -- we only created this space so you could vent."

There was a time when I would not have spoken so critically... before my faith in what I considered a sanctuary was disrupted by this kind of activity.

But hey... Skyrim is getting a facelift. So there's always that, I guess.

arkansas_ESO

Lumenn wrote: »

Sooo coming up on the end of day 3(here in the U.S.) with no official comment here or the 100+ thread. ZOS? Anyone there? With the work that went into this I'm pretty sure your P.R. had SOME kinda spin prepared for the negativity no? You had 100+ pages to prepare, open an OFFICIAL thread, then...nothing? "we're making adjustments" "we're reading the feedback and discussing ways to improve it" "you're all wrong and we're doing this as is" anything? The silence alone makes a pretty strong comment when so many customers seem....concerned.

They know there's really no way for them to win here. Marketing department is way too headstrong to agree to pulling or significantly reworking the crown crates, the devs are powerless, and if Gina, Jessica, or Kai commented with something generic like "Thanks for your feedback guys, we'll take it into consideration" it wouldn't do much to calm the collective rage of thousands of people with too much free time.

I seriously encourage everybody that has an issue with the crown crates to start voting with their wallets. Don't give ZOS money, as it shows to them that they can get away with things like this and still turn a profit. Don't buy crown crates, don't buy crowns, don't subscribe. If ZOS wants to jeopardize the experience of the majority of their customers just so that they can milk a few "whales" out of everything they're worth, then let them do it without your money in their pockets.

newtinmpls

laurajf wrote: »

We buy the stuff that makes us happy. Now you're introducing new items but we basically can't have them unless we gamble, which means we're not going to get them.

I would suspect that given that this had to have been introduced by upper management

1-research of sorts has been done by other games/companies

2-on paper, ZoS upper management expect that this will generate an increase in money from the crown store.

Given that the few either very well-off (or well-parentally-funded) and the few people with a serious gambling problem will probably spend a LOT of money, points 1 and 2 may well be right.

Likely EVEN IF the rest of us "stopped completely" or really really cut down, in the light of the above, it would not even be noticed.

Some_Guy

Eiagra wrote: »

Lumenn wrote: »

Sooo coming up on the end of day 3(here in the U.S.) with no official comment here or the 100+ thread. ZOS? Anyone there? With the work that went into this I'm pretty sure your P.R. had SOME kinda spin prepared for the negativity no? You had 100+ pages to prepare, open an OFFICIAL thread, then...nothing? "we're making adjustments" "we're reading the feedback and discussing ways to improve it" "you're all wrong and we're doing this as is" anything? The silence alone makes a pretty strong comment when so many customers seem....concerned.

I agree. A lack of communication is disconcerting to say the least. I can understand the need to form a prepared statement once things were in the players' hands... but as Lumenn has said here, there was a lot of time to prepare.

Silence isn't truly silent... while open to interpretation, in my own mind it seems to say, "We are ignoring you. You aren't precious to us. Your voices are not required -- we only created this space so you could vent."

There was a time when I would not have spoken so critically... before my faith in what I considered a sanctuary was disrupted by this kind of activity.

But hey... Skyrim is getting a facelift. So there's always that, I guess.

Agree 100%. This is Zenimax. This is how Zenimax handles things, and when people (like this) start pointing out their lack of communication, their go-to response typically falls under: (A) Remain silent and let it die on its own (like when I reported that my stam sorc can't receive PvP quests, and still can't), (B) Find a "reason" to close the thread and force it down, or (C) "Will fix in the next major content update" like they did with the movement speed debuff several months ago https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3349005#Comment_3349005 (Perfect example).
I think it's time that we, as a player base, accept that this is what we have, this is the customer service we have. As long as the money keeps flowing, why should anything change.
"What you allow is what will continue"

Doctordarkspawn

My advice to all the disatisfied on the thread:

Just dont buy it. Pretty soon it'll become a memory with lack of support.

SublimeSparo

Faulgor wrote: »

Acrolas wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

The crown crates are trying to turn the crown store into a collectible card game.

It's a little more sinister than that. They're trying to get people used to a system that will be the primary revenue source of Elder Scrolls Legends. Spending over and over and over again for rare cards that will entwine you even more deeply into that game and its MTX system.

Elder Scrolls Legends, a full F2P title, seems vastly more fair than this crate disaster. Even though packs are very similar to crates as it's a gamble which cards you get, you can get everything without paying a penny. Just by playing the game you get more than enough gold, crafting gems, cards and packs.

Acrolas wrote: »

And let's look behind the curtain. Is it any coincidence that Heather Powers was an MMORPG adviser on Star Wars the Old Republic when the cash shop became an issue, and is Bethesda's marketing director right as this happens?

That two of her self-founded Game Psyche consultancy services are consumer research and micro-transaction strategy?

I knew she was trouble when she randomly showed up and neutered everyone on stage at PaxEast. If the team fell so quickly and quietly to her Bethesda-blessed direction, then it's pretty much up to this community to make her Enemy Number One.

It won't be pretty but it'll be less laggy than PVP that's for *** sure.

... I'm so tempted to link to Bill ***' bit on marketing, but I don't want to risk a ban.

edit: Huh, his name gets censored, lol. Not sure why.

https://youtu.be/jemqAtxKyAo

I'll take the hit for ya

SublimeSparo

cjthibs wrote: »

AlienSlof wrote: »

Still, I doubt ZOS will listen to us and get rid of them. They just want our hard-earned money. For nothing.

...and their chicks for free?

https://youtu.be/6D6cw8Ob2sk

SlayerTheDragon

If they drop the crap potions and add:


1. XP scrolls
2. Respec scroll
3. Riding training
4. Vamp/Werewolf
5. or any of the actual useful stuff


Then maybe.....

pareidolon

Just adding my opinion here: I'm finding myself with little to no incentive to buy crown crates. I'm not angry over any aspect of it, because I don't approach appearance in a competitive way. Admittedly, I do tend to go after limited time mounts and pets, that's a marketing scheme that reels me in. But this doesn't.

One day I was on the Crown store and I bought two mounts: The Dro-M'Athra Senche was beautiful. The Tessellated Guar fit perfectly with Shuck's color scheme and how I envision him as a character. These are my reasons for buying cosmetic items. Now with a Crown Crate, I'll get probably one random cosmetic item, which most likely won't fulfill either criteria, and a bunch of consumables I won't care to use. Sure, I can buy up to an item with Crown Gems, but that means I'm forced to buy things I don't want and won't use before I can even get the gems, and it's impossible to tell how much money I'll need to spend for it in any case.

I can only have one of each cosmetic thing at a time. Realistically, I could be happy with only what I have right now. I buy more things because the items themselves draw me in. The random crate separates the purchase from the goal. That's not to speak against random rewards in other contexts, such as those found in-game. (On a side note, I wonder if many random reward purchases in other games are popular specifically because they give powerful cards or equipment, which thrive on the competitiveness of the game itself. Don't get me wrong -- I'd probably stop playing the day such a system became intertwined with in-game performance.)

So, basically, this crate system as it is won't affect how I play. Other players can use it, not use it, hate it, love it, I'll be over in the corner with my picking and choosing. And if the system comes to replace the old, I'll be sad, I'll be stingy and sad.

SlayerTheDragon

pareidolon wrote: »

Just adding my opinion here: I'm finding myself with little to no incentive to buy crown crates. I'm not angry over any aspect of it, because I don't approach appearance in a competitive way. Admittedly, I do tend to go after limited time mounts and pets, that's a marketing scheme that reels me in. But this doesn't.

One day I was on the Crown store and I bought two mounts: The Dro-M'Athra Senche was beautiful. The Tessellated Guar fit perfectly with Shuck's color scheme and how I envision him as a character. These are my reasons for buying cosmetic items. Now with a Crown Crate, I'll get probably one random cosmetic item, which most likely won't fulfill either criteria, and a bunch of consumables I won't care to use. Sure, I can buy up to an item with Crown Gems, but that means I'm forced to buy things I don't want and won't use before I can even get the gems, and it's impossible to tell how much money I'll need to spend for it in any case.

I can only have one of each cosmetic thing at a time. Realistically, I could be happy with only what I have right now. I buy more things because the items themselves draw me in. The random crate separates the purchase from the goal. That's not to speak against random rewards in other contexts, such as those found in-game. (On a side note, I wonder if many random reward purchases in other games are popular specifically because they give powerful cards or equipment, which thrive on the competitiveness of the game itself. Don't get me wrong -- I'd probably stop playing the day such a system became intertwined with in-game performance.)

So, basically, this crate system as it is won't affect how I play. Other players can use it, not use it, hate it, love it, I'll be over in the corner with my picking and choosing. And if the system comes to replace the old, I'll be sad, I'll be stingy and sad.

The problem is that nobody actually cares what is in the crates... it's all about the EXCLUSIVE items that you buy with gems. This is what Fs the whole thing up - if those gem items were not EXCLUSE and not so epic (as if they are on another level of detail and time put into their development) it would not be half as bad.

What ZO$ is effectively doing is making you gamble for cool items - its not about the crate contents - it never was.

silvereyes

silvereyes wrote: »

I see the new Kagouti mount on the crown store, and it looks really cool. But all I can think of is how done I am with the whole thing.

The real test will come when my sub ends and I have to learn to live without the craft bag again.

My crafter/trader toon now has maxed out bags and my bank is maxed out too. I will not be re-subscribing, nor will I purchase anything else from the Crown Store unless / until this train switches tracks. I don't expect that to be anytime soon, given that the development is already a sunk cost.

This isn't really a threat. I doubt very much ZOS cares about loosing my measly several hundred dollars a year in sub + sales. But hopefully it's another story that, when added to the others on the forums, might eventually add up to something.

I still love the game and will continue to play until I exhaust all content, which should be a long, long time; especially with 1T making questing worthwhile again. I own all the DLC up through TG outright, and I can do the DB / SoH content before my sub runs out.

In other words, I will go from being a net contributor to ZOS' bottom line (albeit a small one), to joining the hordes of other players that are a net drain on the bottom line.

ZOS will not receive one cent more from me unless the following things happen:

• Crown Crates are discontinued (unlikely); OR
• The value of Crown Crates is improved dramatically (drop more gems, allow gem exchanges for unwanted drops, replace food/drink/pot drops with utility items like respecs, XP scrolls, larger packs of soul gems and repair kits); OR
• The price of Crown Crates drops to 100 crowns -AND- drop rates are published for each item. That would allow a statistical expectation (although not guarantee) of closer to $80 for an apex reward, rather than the current $320 expectation, while improving transparency into the risk buyers are taking.

Adernath

Dear Zenimax, let me give you this single advice:

Tell us that you are taking our feedback seriously, pull the emergency break and stop this sort of thing asap.

If this goes live, not only would it show that you completely ignored the opinion of the vast majority of your loyal customers regarding the most important topic this game had encountered since launch. The reputation of ES brand and in particular this game will get a significant scratch.

You are very wrong if you intend to let these threads die out, push everything on live and see the outcome of it... If you want to make a great game, you need to work constantly hard to get the trust of your playerbase.

If you intend to go the cheap way and let these threads die out, something else will die out as well: The loyal playerbase who is already questioning whether this game might be the place to spend time with. Certainly you will still have players fooling around, but they will consist more and more of game hoppers who may spend a few bucks here and there and move on to the next. The game therefore will change from what was once announced as a project to revolutionize the genre towards a good example of a big fail. Who will seriously invest his precious time of life in such a game?

In the end its all your decision, make the right one.