Official Discussion Thread for Crown Crates

Acharnor

Even though there is not a lot of feedback yet, it is not encouraging. I can't imagine too many people want the vast majority of the consumables other than maybe repair kits. Based on what I am reading here I would not buy one. I'd rather just buy a thing I guess especially if the chances of getting a thing are so stupidly low. And 400 crowns - no way. 150 - maybe I'd take a chance.

arkansas_ESO

Honestly, really bummed. I wasn't thrilled at the thought of paying money for a chance at getting the cosmetic item I wanted, but I had hope ZOS would at least do it tastefully. But these crates are just awful. If I pay 400 crowns (nearly $5) for a crate, I expect at least one cosmetic item out of it. I have no interest in the potions, or the XP scrolls, repair kits, or the riding lessons. They're a waste of money to me. Only getting 5 gems per duplicate is really, really disappointing. If I get a duplicate pet, I should get enough gems to buy a pet of my choice from the gem store, the same goes for costumes and mounts.

Also, only 5 potions per card? Only one mimic stone per card? On live, I usually pay 10k gold for a stack of 100 spell power pots (the crafted equivalent to Spellcaster's Elixir.) Using this figure of 100 gold per potion, that means I could get 4 potion cards from my crown crate and walk away with 20 potions, worth about 2000 gold. For 400 crowns, this is completely unacceptable. I'd highly suggest removing these consumables entirely and replacing them with things race, name, and appearance change tokens, and buffing the drop rate on XP scrolls (and removing the grand crate XP scroll, as being able to buy something that's outright superior to anything available through just playing the game is pretty much the textbook definition of pay-to-win.)

StopDropAndBear

A single soul gem? One mimic stone? Are you kidding me?
The terrible Crown consumables are gonna do nothing but clutter my inventory. Could you at least give them a vendor value so I don't feel like I'm getting completely and utterly ripped off?

The artists did a fantastic job on the Atronach mounts, it's a shame I'll never get one. I would have bought one outright, I had no qualms buying the 4000 dromathra senche!

Mix

Oh! We get more crowns each day, I was wondering how we were going to test it well with so few crowns:D

The interface with Pacrooti and the cards is really neat.

I opened 13 crates and rec'd the following:

Potions: 25 invisibility, 40 spellcaster, 10 survival, 25 tripot, 15 warrrior = 115
Poison: 350
Pet: 3 (daedric scamp, helstrom ancestor lizard, shornhelm shephard)
Mount: 1 (clouded senche-leopard)
Costume: 4 (brilliance brocade robes, battlemage palatine armor, battlemage scout captain uniform, evening dress)
Style material: 29 crown mimic stone
Food: 51
Drink: 51
Hair: 2
Hat: 1 ("Clever Man" Wizard Hat)
Crown Items: 10 exp scroll, 11 major exp scroll, 10 grand exp scroll, 25 capacity riding lesson, 28 speed lessons, 25 stamina lessons.
3 speed lessons
One crate has a Bonus card (so 5 instead of 4)

EDIT: 25 riding lessons were in another box on the pre-mades (sorry!)
EDIT 2: I think the Food, Drink and Mimic Stone numbers are wrong too after opening a second 13 crates and only seeing 1 per reward...unless there is a chance to get more?

Dominoid

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

SantieClaws wrote: »

Khajiit would like some clarification yes. Which of the items available for gems are crate exclusive and which are meant to represent items previously in the store?

Khajiit sees one of two things she would like, however the rate of gems given for duplicate items seems very low.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

I want to know this too.

The "Apex Rewards" are Crown Crates exclusives, right? What about the stuff in the other tiers that were not released yet? Red Pit Wolf, Black Mane Lion? Are these Crown Crates exclusives or will they be sold directly eventually?

Any item that's a Crown Crate exclusive should say so in the tooltip (it says something along the lines of "Available for purchase in Crown Crates").

I did not see a single item with this wording.

Luigi_Vampa

I'm curious what I'll reach first on the PTS: enough Crown Gems to buy a Storm Atronach mount or $1,000 worth of Crowns spent.

Khenarthi

I tested the crates just now, and got a bunch of junk I'd never use on Live:

- Potions, poisons, food and drink: I'd rather craft my own in game (better stats, and more immersive).
- Crown XP scrolls... no thanks, I'm already well over CP cap for the next 2 years at least, XP is meaningless to me.
- Mimic stones and soul gems: meh, not planning on using them. In-game alternatives are more immersive as my characters actually earn them.
- Crow repair kits: these I may use, in a pinch, but as a crafter I have 200 of the regular kits in my bank from doing writs. I also have the banker, so they are available to me even after several wipes at the boss end of a dungeon.
- mount training: by the time this goes live, I will have 8 characters completely maxed, and the other youngest 4 only needing some stamina or capacity days. While I could use the training on that if it drops, it still feels like rubbish because I am not in a hurry to get to max stats - patience could be my middle name.
- I have 12 Khajiit characters so for me any hairstyle and adornment which is non-Khajiit is rubbish. Also, I play with helmet hidden... so got no use for hats.
- costumes, mounts and pets: these are generally welcome. I hate dogs though, and dog pets are abundant - so these would also be very unwelcome as I will never ever use them.

Suggestion: give us the possibility to return any item whether we already have it not not, for 5 gems each. This way it would still take us buying 5 crates for a legendary reward (2000 crowns spent) or 20 for an apex reward (a whopping 8000 crowns). Reason being, each "bad" crate (with stuff one would not use - even if some people may choose to keep some items) would be worth 20 gems.

phreatophile

I've followed the discussions here and elsewhere regarding drop rates and gem conversion rates. From what I've seen, I'm not bothering to download the PTS for this noise. A few observations.

By keeping the price at 400cr on the PTS it makes usable sample sizes for testing next to impossible to get, this is probably by design. You can pop the hood, but just a peak, no poking around under there.

400 crowns is too expensive for the value of what drops the majority of the time. Most of the time 400cr will net 100cr-200cr worth of (store value) consumables that are less than worthless because the stats are garbage.

The Gem return on duplicates is exploitative, they should drop a number of gems equal to the duplicate items value.

I know nobody in marketing gets this, but nobody wants crown potions, food, or drink because (for good reason) the functionality of these items is much less than what's available in game. So most of what people receive is so insultingly worthless that it will drive people away. This is part of the problem with this game's RNG in general, receiving a useless version of what you want is worse than getting nothing at all, it adds insult to injury.

A crown gem conversion for the junk consumables would go a long way towards making this less of an affront.

The current drop rate for Gems would have someone spend in the neighborhood of 40,000cr to 50,000cr to get a mount they want assuming it doesn't drop along the way, which isn't an outside the realm of possibility (think sharpened VMA staffs). Even with crowns on sale, that's between $174 - $218 (US). At normal prices it's between $290 - $363 (US). Both sets assume cheapest per crown bundle purchase. Spend that kind of money on pixels?

There are ways to make a scheme like this make a lot of money and not alienate your customers. The key is to cheat people without making them feel cheated, that's not what's happening here. You are selling a resource but not a limited one, these items are just pixels. 1000 of them are not any more expensive than 100. If the crown box buyer feels like they are getting some value for their money they'll keep spending it.

I've bought a lot of crowns. Heck, I bought many of the more outrageously priced crown items, because I was able to make the judgement that what I was getting was of sufficient value to me to justify the expense. I would buy a 3 of those mounts at 5k crowns each before I spent 400 crowns for an abysmal chance at one of them and a handful of junk potions. This thing simply doesn't have an acceptable return on investment for my money.

Abeille

Dominoid wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

SantieClaws wrote: »

Khajiit would like some clarification yes. Which of the items available for gems are crate exclusive and which are meant to represent items previously in the store?

Khajiit sees one of two things she would like, however the rate of gems given for duplicate items seems very low.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

I want to know this too.

The "Apex Rewards" are Crown Crates exclusives, right? What about the stuff in the other tiers that were not released yet? Red Pit Wolf, Black Mane Lion? Are these Crown Crates exclusives or will they be sold directly eventually?

Any item that's a Crown Crate exclusive should say so in the tooltip (it says something along the lines of "Available for purchase in Crown Crates").

I did not see a single item with this wording.

It only appears after you get it. Literally all the items I received from the boxes that were not made available through direct purchase yet had that written:



Only the ones I got that are retired items have "Purchased on the Crown Store" too, above "Available in Storm Atronach Crown Crate".

So since that's the case with the Black Mane Lion, and I imagine also with the Red Pit Wolf, I assume this will also the case with the Ice Wolf. One of my characters I have been working on for the entire year is now ruined.
This is the worst game-related news I got on the last few years. I made me genuinely sad.
Really, I could have find it less horrible if only the Atronach mounts were Crown Crate exclusive, but this pretty much spells "no more direct purchases after Crown Crates are introduced". It is disgusting.

Faulgor

I didn't get a chance to log in yet, but I'm so sad to see the new hats I was looking forward to being Crate-exclusive. Definitely won't get them now.

I get that to a lot of people it's "just cosmetics", but for role playing in a role playing game these things are absolutely essential. Really, so disappointed.

FLuFFyxMuFFiN

I am pretty excited for the items you can get out of these crates. However, I opened 13 of them today and aside from the few hats and character customization options I got, I mostly just got potions and poisons which concerns me. I am not against these crates but after seeing the amount of consumables I got compared to the actual cosmetics I would actually use I am not sure I will be buying the crates very often. I can understand that some things such as the mounts should have a lower drop rate but the amount of consumables you get seems very high and should be looked at. I am not asking for the cosmetics to have high drop rates, but the crates should have a guaranteed drop of at least one cosmetic to make the 400 crowns more justifiable in my opinion.

StopDropAndBear

My biggest issue with the Crown consumables is now it seems like there are suddenly three times as many potions you can get, making it that much harder to get your paltry extra 5 crown gems for a duplicate lizard or something. Now there are crown potions that make you invisible, but also crown potions that make you invisible AND give you health regen, so it's a different potion?
I second the idea of letting us trade in garbage consumables for gems. I don't mind chasing the carrot on the stick if I at least know there's a hard limit to how long I'm gonna have to chase it.

MissBizz

@Abeille I had to go back to work so if you don't mind could you check something? Does the wording you show/mentioned show when mousing over items in the gem store and/or the "contents list"? Or only there after you collected it?

Abeille

Faulgor wrote: »

I didn't get a chance to log in yet, but I'm so sad to see the new hats I was looking forward to being Crate-exclusive. Definitely won't get them now.

I get that to a lot of people it's "just cosmetics", but for role playing in a role playing game these things are absolutely essential. Really, so disappointed.

Yup. Not even on my worst predictions I imagine that they would put that many Crown Crate exclusives. And I was really negative about the whole thing from the start.

MissBizz wrote: »

@Abeille I had to go back to work so if you don't mind could you check something? Does the wording you show/mentioned show when mousing over items in the gem store and/or the "contents list"? Or only there after you collected it?

Only after you collect it, when you mouse over the item in your collections.

Recremen

phreatophile wrote: »

I've followed the discussions here and elsewhere regarding drop rates and gem conversion rates. From what I've seen, I'm not bothering to download the PTS for this noise. A few observations.

By keeping the price at 400cr on the PTS it makes usable sample sizes for testing next to impossible to get, this is probably by design. You can pop the hood, but just a peak, no poking around under there.

400 crowns is too expensive for the value of what drops the majority of the time. Most of the time 400cr will net 100cr-200cr worth of (store value) consumables that are less than worthless because the stats are garbage.

The Gem return on duplicates is exploitative, they should drop a number of gems equal to the duplicate items value.

I know nobody in marketing gets this, but nobody wants crown potions, food, or drink because (for good reason) the functionality of these items is much less than what's available in game. So most of what people receive is so insultingly worthless that it will drive people away. This is part of the problem with this game's RNG in general, receiving a useless version of what you want is worse than getting nothing at all, it adds insult to injury.

A crown gem conversion for the junk consumables would go a long way towards making this less of an affront.

The current drop rate for Gems would have someone spend in the neighborhood of 40,000cr to 50,000cr to get a mount they want assuming it doesn't drop along the way, which isn't an outside the realm of possibility (think sharpened VMA staffs). Even with crowns on sale, that's between $174 - $218 (US). At normal prices it's between $290 - $363 (US). Both sets assume cheapest per crown bundle purchase. Spend that kind of money on pixels?

There are ways to make a scheme like this make a lot of money and not *** off your customers. The key is to cheat people without making them feel cheated, that's not what's happening here. You are selling a resource but not a limited one, these items are just pixels. 1000 of them are not any more expensive than 100. If the crown box buyer feels like they are getting some value for their money they'll keep spending it.

I've bought a lot of crowns. Heck, I bought many of the more outrageously priced crown items, because I was able to make the judgement that what I was getting was of sufficient value to me to justify the expense. I would buy a 3 of those mounts at 5k crowns each before I spent 400 crowns for an abysmal chance at one of them and a handful of junk potions. This thing simply doesn't have an acceptable return on investment for my money.

Your math is off on that. There is no amount of crowns someone could spend which would guarantee getting the item they want. You could spend thousands of dollars, even hundreds of thousands, and still not get it. That is how pure RNG systems work, and that is no less true even with the supplementary crown gem system.

Senk3tsu

This is going to be a little ranty, while still being respectful...

*Did you like/use the consumables you received from the Crown Crates?*

Yes, I opened over 10 crown crates to test the RNG and see what I would get. The first thing that I noticed is one appearance item PER CRATE. For 400 crowns as a price point, this is ridiculous in my opinion. The rest are consumables, while they are useful a good majority of the player base including myself do not use these as crafted consumables are better for in game use. I feel as if there needs to be more appearance items included in each crate to justify paying that many crowns for ONE APPEARANCE ITEM.

My second problem. When I got a duplicate of said item, it returned to me 5 gems. I looked to see what could be bought with these gems, that being said I was drawn to the mounts first. Their price point of 400 gems, is way too much. 5 gems per duplicate, 400 for a mount? The gap in these two amounts when you look at the return on duplicate items is far too great. This being said I did not get a duplicate pet or mount, so I cannot speak on the gem return on those duplicate items, but the prices for buying things with the gems is way to much based on this small return.

I am disappointed in how expensive these mounts are while I understand that they have a chance of dropping and that they are meant to be rare, its still too much. Either the gem return needs to be more, the crates need to have more appearance items in them, or the price of the crates needs to drop.

All this being said, look at how Overwatch did their crates, seems like a much higher chance to get skins/etc in those and the cost is appropriate seeing as you also earn them per level.

I really hope something is changed about these crates before they hit live.

rhapsodious

Abeille wrote: »

So since that's the case with the Black Mane Lion, and I imagine also with the Red Pit Wolf, I assume this will also the case with the Ice Wolf. One of my characters I have been working on for the entire year is now ruined.
This is the worst game-related news I got on the last few years. I made me genuinely sad.
Really, I could have find it less horrible if only the Atronach mounts were Crown Crate exclusive, but this pretty much spells "no more direct purchases after Crown Crates are introduced". It is disgusting.

Ugh, same. If a unique model is in the crown crates and is themed around those crates, then whatever. Spend a lot of shinies, get a shiny.

But putting the palette swap mounts in there as gamble-only is really off-putting. Come on.

Guess I'm buying the regular kagouti then, because the neater kagouti will probably be a crown crate exclusive item. This really makes me sad. I don't like what marketing is doing, at all.

Abeille

rhapsodious wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

So since that's the case with the Black Mane Lion, and I imagine also with the Red Pit Wolf, I assume this will also the case with the Ice Wolf. One of my characters I have been working on for the entire year is now ruined.
This is the worst game-related news I got on the last few years. I made me genuinely sad.
Really, I could have find it less horrible if only the Atronach mounts were Crown Crate exclusive, but this pretty much spells "no more direct purchases after Crown Crates are introduced". It is disgusting.

Ugh, same. If a unique model is in the crown crates and is themed around those crates, then whatever. Spend a lot of shinies, get a shiny.

But putting the palette swap mounts in there as gamble-only is really off-putting. Come on.

Guess I'm buying the regular kagouti then, because the neater kagouti will probably be a crown crate exclusive item. This really makes me sad. I don't like what marketing is doing, at all.

Especially with the absolutely atrocious Crown Gem conversion.

MissBizz

@ZOS_GinaBruno Can you please ask for clarification on how we are supposed to know before our purchase what is a crown crate exclusive and what is not? So far the only difference that seems to be found is after you actually get an exclusive item. In your collections there's no additional tooltip info, but it lacks the "Purchased in the Crown Store" line.

As per Abeille's posts here and here

phreatophile

phreatophile wrote: »

The current drop rate for Gems would have someone spend in the neighborhood of 40,000cr to 50,000cr to get a mount they want assuming it doesn't drop along the way, which isn't an outside the realm of possibility (think sharpened VMA staffs). Even with crowns on sale, that's between $174 - $218 (US). At normal prices it's between $290 - $363 (US). Both sets assume cheapest per crown bundle purchase. Spend that kind of money on pixels?

Recremen wrote: »

Your math is off on that. There is no amount of crowns someone could spend which would guarantee getting the item they want. You could spend thousands of dollars, even hundreds of thousands, and still not get it. That is how pure RNG systems work, and that is no less true even with the supplementary crown gem system.

I did not intend to imply a guarantee, just back of the napkin math that pretends the chances get better with a larger sample. You are correct that the reality is, in fact, much worse than that. I think I alluded to that ugly reality in the first sentence above.

Beerbong_Ginn

Don't know if this has been suggested, but what about the possibility of getting gems straight from a crate? Like a 1 in 10 chance of pulling 50 or 100 gems from a crate?

SleepyTroll

Mix wrote: »

Oh! We get more crowns each day, I was wondering how we were going to test it well with so few crowns:D

The interface with Pacrooti and the cards is really neat.

I opened 13 crates and rec'd the following:

Potions: 25 invisibility, 40 spellcaster, 10 survival, 25 tripot, 15 warrrior = 115
Poison: 350
Pet: 3 (daedric scamp, helstrom ancestor lizard, shornhelm shephard)
Mount: 1 (clouded senche-leopard)
Costume: 4 (brilliance brocade robes, battlemage palatine armor, battlemage scout captain uniform, evening dress)
Style material: 29 crown mimic stone
Food: 51
Drink: 51
Hair: 2
Hat: 1 ("Clever Man" Wizard Hat)
Crown Items: 10 exp scroll, 11 major exp scroll, 10 grand exp scroll, 25 capacity riding lesson, 28 speed lessons, 25 stamina lessons.

One crate has a Bonus card (so 5 instead of 4)

Are you trying to tell us this is what you got from 13 crates?
Also what is an xp scroll, major exp scroll and grand exp scroll?

NewBlacksmurf

When the lottery from an in-game begins to cost as much as the machine you're playing it on.....

I hope no one buys that many crow crates but it seems that 50 to 100 crates isn't out of the question based on RNG for certain items.

Eek. That's like buying a PS4 or Xbox one

Ilsabet

As someone who feels no particular need to log onto PTS to test this for myself, there's an obvious takeaway from the results that people are posting:

The stuff you're most likely to get from these crates is junk, and they are in no way worth the money.

I'd rather pay 1000 crowns for one costume that I like than toss 400 crowns at a RNG box that I know will be trash. You can try making your bank off of the people who are willing to throw hundreds of dollars down the black hole until they get that one special mount, but the much larger pool of people who might spend 400 or 800 or 1200 crowns here or there will be totally put off by the lack of decent returns. So you're left hoping to sucker in the people who haven't read or heard anything about how terrible the crates are yet, and I feel bad for anybody who spends real money on these without knowing what they're getting into.

Also something to consider with the atrocious gem conversion business is that you only get gems if you already have the item in the crate. So for people who have not been loading up on crown store cosmetics before using the crates, you have to pay to get the items you don't want first, and then continue paying to get enough gems to get the one item you actually want. Yeesh.

If ZOS is looking for ways to improve this disaster, strongly consider improving the gem return ratio, letting people trade consumable trash for gems, and letting people turn in unwanted cosmetic items for gems even if they don't already own them.

Sigtric

I bought 13 boxes on the PTS and by and large got a lot of absolute trash loot that I'd never consider purchasing outright, 1 pet that I might considering buying if it was available, and 15 gems.


TLDR: 13 Crown Crate Boxes, 1 pet and 6 repair kits are the only things received I'd actually use, out of 52 cards revealed.


For me, these crates need to be priced at no more than 100 crowns in their current form to even consider buying them with my actual real hard earned money.

Most importantly, the gem to gem cost ratio is so far off that it is not compelling at all to buy these. I know that over time, your likely hood of getting more gems increases as you get more items for possible duplicates, but I am just not wasting that kind of money.

Items received:
Maelstrom Ancestor Lizard pet (I'd actually consider buying this outright from the crown store)
Purple Diggerback Pet
3x Scamp pets
Golden Eye guar mount
Azure something or other circlet
Shadow stripe headband
Wizard hat x2
Soul Shriven leather costiume
Fibonaccus hat
3 mimec stones
2 crown fortifying meals
3 refreshing drinks
50 lethal poison
6 crown repair kits
15 spellcaster elixer
25 survivor elixer
20 tri pot
1 (one) whole soul gem
25 warrior elixer


Out of ALL the consumeables, the repair kits are the only ones I'd actually purchase.

In this form, these boxes are simply NOT WORTH the money or the time it takes to open them. That's my other gripe. The time. Just open the thing and give me the stuff. Why was it made to look like a card game?

Why can I not convert the trash loot I don't want to gems?

Ilsabet

Sigtric wrote: »

Items received:

Purple Diggerback Pet

Nooooo that was something I wanted and was excited to see datamined. Now I have to be sad if they're just going to be in the crates.

Sigtric

Ilsabet wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

Items received:

Purple Diggerback Pet

Nooooo that was something I wanted and was excited to see datamined. Now I have to be sad if they're just going to be in the crates.

This whole thing makes me sad.


@ZOS_GinaBruno am not opposed to RNG boxes but this is ALL wrong. 13 boxes and the only thing substantially useful to me was 6 crown repairs. I can get a stack of 10 for how many crowns?

scorpiodog

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for Crown Crates. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Did you like/use the consumables you received from the Crown Crates?
• Do you have any general feedback?

Most of the things you get from the crates are not anything I'd want to spend real money on.

Half of them I wouldn't even spend in-game gold on.

If there are items that are exclusive to the crates I just won't have those things.

One interesting thing I see happening is more cross-dressers in-game. Right now if a guy wants to wear a dress he can, but he has to more or less intend to buy that dress with real money. But I can foresee thousands of male characters getting a dress or sexy girl accessory and equipping it just solely due to the fact that they cant get rid of it.

Abeille

Ilsabet wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

Items received:

Purple Diggerback Pet

Nooooo that was something I wanted and was excited to see datamined. Now I have to be sad if they're just going to be in the crates.

I'm really sorry, I know how that feels



For comparison, this is how a pet that was previously available for direct purchase looks like when you get it from the Crown Crates:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

SantieClaws wrote: »

Khajiit would like some clarification yes. Which of the items available for gems are crate exclusive and which are meant to represent items previously in the store?

Khajiit sees one of two things she would like, however the rate of gems given for duplicate items seems very low.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

I want to know this too.

The "Apex Rewards" are Crown Crates exclusives, right? What about the stuff in the other tiers that were not released yet? Red Pit Wolf, Black Mane Lion? Are these Crown Crates exclusives or will they be sold directly eventually?

Any item that's a Crown Crate exclusive should say so in the tooltip (it says something along the lines of "Available for purchase in Crown Crates").

So, unless there is some mistake, I'm afraid we are looking at a huge number of Crown Crate exclusives in the future.

Deltia

+ Can't sell the stuff to other players
+ Has system to buy specific items
- Most items aren't useful to end game players
- The cost are insane (400 gems). Either bump up the refund rate or lower the gems. Otherwise I can't see myself spending a dime on this for a nearly $400 RNG Guar.

Otherwise it's better than SWTOR's system.

MY TAKE
https://youtu.be/tnZxJnnmUmw