Coexisting with Crown Crates

Zabernat

As a community member, I hate to see things like the new crown crates being introduced to ESO but I am not ready to give up on the game either. ZOS put enough work into them and ignored players enough in the process that the crates likely are not going away any time soon, so I am suggesting a few alterations that would help me coexist with them:

1. In-game crate earning potential, making these an option to earn legitimately in game (not a 0.0000001% random drop like crafting mats for the new xp potions, but a guaranteed earning option that players could cash in on reliably a few times per week). This does not eliminate the scummy crates from the game, but it at least encourages people to play the game and makes the crates less of a gamble in general.
2. Less crate exclusives: making the enormous amount of crate exclusives that currently exist is rather discouraging to players who begrudgingly pay significant amounts of real money for direct purchases in the crown store.
3. More in-game items and WAY better drop chances for them. As I have mentioned before, the current drop chances for the new xp potion materials are essentially non-existent, far less frequent than drops for items like daedric/primal/barbaric/imperial motifs or even perfect roe. When the most dedicated crafters I know have zero plans to craft the potions because they cannot farm the mats, there is a problem.

I hope many other community members will comment on this thread with agrrement/disagreement and suggestions of your own. Hopefully ZOS devs and community managers will notice.

Martan

I think the crates are fine. I've gotten more from my 10k crowns spent on crates than I would have gotten if I purchased stuff normally from the crown store. ZOS also gave us the option to redeem the consumables for crown gems and everything you can buy for the gems is obtainable straight from the crate.

Quantact

I've been on online gaming a long time, and I think there is a process involved in most online hangouts/games: start off really player-friendly and tone down the marketing (especially crazy marketing) to build up a player base... and then, once there are enough players, expand the marketing to make more and more money.

I think the Crown Store model has been uniformly excellent before because of the Crown discount sales and the fact that a lot of things in the Crown Store could be gotten in-game in some way. Some items could only be gotten in Crown Store, but the prices were mostly doable. You might buy a costume you like, but you don't need to pay crazy prices for them, and you get what you pay for.

I think the crates are a terrible idea because they introduce gambling and if they remain a number of the best items will only be gotten through them. This is not good because it moves away from the squeaky-clean top-MMORPG model that ESO has had thus far and towards hated sleazefests like Maple Story's Gachopon. If a person has to squander hundreds of dollars to get some mount, yeah, the game company will make a bunch of money, but I can't imagine it'll keep its present reputation.

You shouldn't have to gamble to get items. It 1. clogs up your inventory with stuff you'd never normally pay for and 2. makes the best items inaccessible to a lot of people, which from experience with other games I know will seriously *** a lot of people off and breed long-lasting resentment.

I personally hope the crates do badly and ESO moves back to the way it was before them. It's a successful game with a good reputation, I hope it'll stay that way.

Zabernat

Martan wrote: »

I think the crates are fine. I've gotten more from my 10k crowns spent on crates than I would have gotten if I purchased stuff normally from the crown store. ZOS also gave us the option to redeem the consumables for crown gems and everything you can buy for the gems is obtainable straight from the crate.

What exactly were you wanting from them though and how many of those items would you have been able to get if they hadn't randomly been included in your crates? That's why this is clearly gambling, especially if someone wanted to buy all of the "premier" Mounts. Also, what happens when the drop chances are reduced again to original PTS values?

The system is fine for you personally but for huge numbers of dedicated players it is entirely unacceptable.

Zabernat

I personally hope that the crates will be removed next quarter, but with even small numbers of players buying 10k-20k worth of crates, they are far more likely to stay and become scummier than they already are.