The Evolution of the Crown Store

Pandorii

TLDR: ZOS has been really smart at making me spend.

August 2015, I bought ESO digital edition for full retail price on the PS4. The Imperial City DLC came out a few weeks later, but I was still too noob to venture there. However, I found a great group of people to play with and guild to show me the ropes so I quickly fell in love with the game. Eventually, I had to make my first spending decision: (a.) subscribe for $15 a month or (b.) buy a crown bundle and get the DLCs. The former seemed like the most economic option for someone who planned to be around for a short while. The latter seemed like the greater long-term investment. As a sign of loyalty, I decided I would buy the DLCs instead of rent them. I got enough crowns to buy the Imperial City DLC (missed the bundle – horse and skin) and the adventurer’s pack (any faction/any race). *Note: At the time, the only difference between the subscription and outright purchase of the DLCs was extra experience, coins, and inspiration gains.

I remember being very excited about the Orsinium DLC. I had missed the Imperial City DLC bundle, but I really wanted to brown bear mount. I thought it would go great with my Nord main. *Note: At the time, there was no such thing as reskins. The brown bear was a unique thing that everyone was excited about. Since I had already made the decision to invest in ESO through purchasing the DLCs, rather than rent, I bought the Orsinium bundle and got the brown bear. A few weeks later, the limited edition white bear mount was released. Had I known there would have been such a thing, I would have just gotten the basic DLC and spent some crowns on the white bear, but ZOS wanted us to buy the bundle and then buy the white bear later b/c it was clearly better in quality than the default. Needless to say, I did not buy the white bear mount, and I had intense buyers remorse about the brown bear, because it runs very strange. It’s one of my least used mounts to date.

November 2015, the first Black Freda special rolled along. Given the place I was developmentally character-wise, it was a great deal: an inexpensive mounts, a good amount of experience scrolls, and some consumables that were decent considering I wasn’t a master crafter yet. I got it without a second though. The guar that came with it is also one of my least used mounts. Forgotten when I got the Hist Guar from the Shadow of the Hist DlC bundle. Out of impulse, I bought the Frida's special this year too, thinking that it's as good of a deal as you're going to get on ESO. But I had serious buyers remorse when the crown experience scrolls seemed less useful now that I was at max CP compared to last year. I didn't really like the white camel mount either. Camels run funny, and they're not really that pretty.

2016 rolls along and the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood DLCs release. At this point, I’ve learned about the reskin scheme and just settled for buying the DLCs outright, without the bundle. I was pleasantly surprised when they decided to give loyalty pet rewards to DLC owners after the fact. That was really nice of ZOS…

But things started to go downhill from here.

ZOS released the absurdly overpriced banker and assistant, a luxury good for only the wealthiest and most devoted players. Most upsetting was that the banker did not grant access to the guild bank, and the merchant did not repair armor. Still the little glimmer of utility was enough to sway some to make the investment. I did not. I also vividly remember the banker bug that allowed players to endlessly reuse a crafting survey to amass loads of materials. Some got temporarily banned, but many escaped their radar.

They implemented the crafting bag and costume dying as subscription benefits, which really stabbed me in the back. It essentially made players like me, who had made the greater investment (to buy the DLCs), also have to sub, despite getting less benefit that those who had not purchased the DLCs. How did I deal with this? I’d sub every here and now. I’d play the inventory maintenance game when I wasn’t subbed. To this day, I wish I had just saved all those crowns I had spent on bundles and DLCs to use to buy vanity items and keep my sub since the day I started playing. It’s too late for me though.

Next, they released the super luxurious and glorious Dro’Mathra Senche for 4,000 crowns, an unheard of expensive price. It has a really nice animation and looks beautiful, so I can see why they would charge more for it. It really was just a reskin of the black senche though. Never would I have guessed they would release something so basic – the elk mount – and charge an even higher price. But fine. It’s just a vanity item. I don’t have to buy it.

During the Dark Brotherhood PTS, we saw an awesome much asked for barber shop and small appearance items like tattoos and adornments. Remember when we all thought that the hairstyle bundle would include the new hairstyles? Yea right. ZOS releases the ‘old’ hairstyle bundle in one month and waits to release any new hairstyles until the following month, hoping people will buy the old and the new ones, I’m sure. Ironically, they only released one or two new hairstyles each month, as late as November, despite the community thinking they would all be part of the barbershop update that coupled the Shadow of the Hist DLC.

This also included the pesky race change, name change and appearance change tokens. Specifically, the absurd absolute cost of just getting a name change, which incentivized buying the bundle. Imagine having an argonian-inspired themed name, and you decide to change its race, but that means you have to pay $20 to also change its name?

Instead of giving us a real DLC (like Orsinium, Imperial City, Thieves Guild, or Dark Brotherhood), we are sold a two dungeon pack for 2000 crowns. That was a let down, to say the least.

Then around the time when the anniversary of the Imperial City DLC. ZOS promoted the DLC bundle again to new players, but the horse and skin were not included separately (because they would be in the crown store, duh). Why? Most people would eventually have to sub anyway to have access to the so useful crafting bag. Because a few weeks later they would sell the gold edition of the game, which would include all DLCs to date (including the Imperial City DLC they just got you to buy, excluding the Shadow of the Hist DLC). Imagine that? You’re new. You see marketing for a bundle of a DLC. You buy it. Two weeks later, you are offered a deal for all the DLCs, and you will probably buy it even though you’re rebuying the dlc you bought two weeks ago.

Since then, ZOS has released the scandalous and widely rejected crown crates. We all know how much that has sucked. Specifically, the added an impossible to acquire item in-game to justify keeping an alluring item in the crates – the 150 experience scroll. They’ve introduced crown store exclusive motifs, not to mention that the second one came with 50 less mimic stones for 200 crowns less cost. Motifs that can only be crafted with crown specific mimic stones! They added crown store exclusive dyes. And now they’re selling a 4500 crown elk for the holiday season. Housing will be laden with crown store alternatives and exclusive items. Suspiciously, the housing update will not include storage, perhaps from fear that it’ll reduce the necessity to sub for the crafting bag.

Pardon me if I question the morality of the company.

Sigtric

Edit: nevermind I figured out my question about this and it was off topic

Pandorii

@Sigtric the first time they did something nice haha

The echatere pet and jackal that came with Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood DLC.

Sigtric

Pandorii wrote: »

@Sigtric the first time they did something nice haha

The echatere pet and jackal that came with Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood DLC.

Heh yeah, I had forgotten they weren't originally in the DLCs. I was confused

leepalmer95

You missed the RNG crates

Pandorii

leepalmer95 wrote: »

You missed the RNG crates

They're just so awful, I figured it spoke for itself. xD

HatchetHaro

I wholeheartedly agree that ZOS is becoming a bunch of cash-grabbing fetchers. I seriously hope they rethink what exactly they are doing to the game and their loyal playerbase.

Thornen

Here is a 100% accurate graph that predicts future pricing with 0 margin of error.

Pandorii

Thornen wrote: »

Here is a 100% accurate graph that predicts future pricing with 0 margin of error.

Haha. You must have access to super secret data.

alexkdd99

How awful that a company would run a business to make profits. How dare they do such a thing.

I guess every for profit company out there is immoral and should be ashamed.

Zos, you and every other business need to throw profits out the window since apparently that is shameful to increase profit.

Pandorii

alexkdd99 wrote: »

How awful that a company would run a business to make profits. How dare they do such a thing.

I guess every for profit company out there is immoral and should be ashamed.

Zos, you and every other business need to throw profits out the window since apparently that is shameful to increase profit.

I honestly think they could have sold double the elk mounts if they had marked it at 2500, netting them an overall higher profit. I also think that customer loyalty and trust play a factor in determining whether or not to buy. In my experience, ZOS has been, at the very least, inconsistent with prices.

Every month they release a crown store showcase and people beg to know the prices of things in advance so they know how much to save. Each month people are disappointed when they find out they didn't save enough because ZOS hikes the items up beyond imagination and sells them for a limited time that may conflict with their real life income cycles.

Korah_Eaglecry

alexkdd99 wrote: »

How awful that a company would run a business to make profits. How dare they do such a thing.

I guess every for profit company out there is immoral and should be ashamed.

Zos, you and every other business need to throw profits out the window since apparently that is shameful to increase profit.

You do know you get no cookie for coming to their defense right? Gina isnt going to appear and pat you on the head and personally thank you. ZOS isnt going to gift you all the shiny things for your heroic defense of their honor.

No ones begrudging them making a profit. People expect consistency and common sense when it comes to pricing. ZOS exhibits neither here. The pricing does not match the mounts perceived cost and it doesnt actually live up to anything that has been similarly priced in the past. I get the impression you've never worked in retail or any other actual services industry. At least in a way that you could actually have some insight into why things are priced the way they are. Companys get their pricing wrong on items all the time. A lot of times stubbornly so. Most likely some suit somewhere has created a lofty goal, one which probably either cant be reasonably met or only met by gouging the customers, and some poor sap in Marketing and Sales is forced to mark up items set for Crown Store release to try and hit that goal as fast and early as possible.

Ive seen no more than 2 or 3 of these things in game in the 16+ hours its been in the store, compared to the unholy army of Dro m'athra mounts that were present in game just hours into its appearance in the Crown Store. One was a cannon ball hitting the water, the other is a turd....Take a guess which one is headed for the sewers in Imperial City?

Valethar

Ahh.. White knights and their Kool-Aid. Someone should stage an intervention.

DaveMoeDee

The Dro’Mathra Senche was butt ugly.

Considering the vanity items are completely up to you to purchase, I see zero problem with the company for providing those for whatever premium people will pay. ZOS isn't charging me a cent to play except when I want to play new DLC. With no new paid DLC 2 quarters in a row and just 2 dungeons the previous quarter, that is 9 months of free play for me.

If you can't resist shiny things, that is on you.

And the assistants weren't overpriced compared to the vanity stuff. They were the first useful items crown only items.

TheValkyn

alexkdd99 wrote: »

How awful that a company would run a business to make profits. How dare they do such a thing.

I guess every for profit company out there is immoral and should be ashamed.

Zos, you and every other business need to throw profits out the window since apparently that is shameful to increase profit.

What was wrong with the sub only business model that was promised, defended and then dropped? It might not be immoral or unethical to boost profits but lying is most definitely a BIG problem with this company.

These quotes are all from previous interviews in order to hype the game for launch in late 2013/early 2014 right before pre orders went live. These things were actually said! Zenimax is a morally bankrupt organization. You should see Pete Hines' mistruths. The list is even longer.

ZOS_MattFiror wrote:

"Elder Scrolls is about being in a giant world, where you’re exploring, and you go to a dungeon, and you don’t get a paygate in front of you saying you don’t have this dungeon," Firor says. "Which means, to us, you need to monetise it outside of the game."

ZOS_MattFiror wrote:

"The reason why we don’t need F2P is we have a huge IP behind this. We’re not that worried about getting people in the door."

ZOS_MattFiror wrote:

"Our teams have already rolled off of launch content, a lot of them, and some are going to polish the launch, and some are driving straight ahead to post-launch."

ZOS_MattFiror wrote:

"Our target (for updates) is a month to six weeks,"

ZOS_MattFiror wrote:

"You go outside the game, you pay your month, you go in the game, and when you’re in the game, you’re in the game," Firor clarifies. "There’s no real world stuff reaching in to grab you." (Few things break immersion quicker than a game telling you that you can spend cash to unlock chests or get special gear.)

ZOS_MattFiror wrote:

The Elder Scrolls games are all about allowing the player to go where they want, be who they want, and do what they want. We feel that putting pay gates between the player and content at any point in game ruins that feeling of freedom, and just having one small monthly fee for 100% access to the game fits the IP and the game much better than a system where you have to pay for features and access as you play. The Elder Scrolls Online was designed and developed to be a premium experience: hundreds of hours of gameplay, tons of depth and features, professional customer support - and a commitment to have ongoing content at regular intervals after launch. This type of experience is best paired with a one-time fee per month, as opposed to many smaller payments that would probably add up to more than $14.99/month any way.

I love this game and I love The Elder Scrolls but I'd be an absolute fool to look the other way when I'm being lied to.

Vaoh

You've summed it all up really well @Pandorii

I just wish that it wasn't like this. They could have fixed PvP and focused on the community so ESO could have a massive population. Then the Crown Store could've stayed as simple as it was back when it launched (Ex: 3 costumes for 700 Crowns).

Instead they've continually neglected their game, diminished their reputation, crushed their playerbase, and monetized everything and at higher prices to sqeeze what they can out of the players left. Console release and the concept behind One Tamriel was easily enough (with proper care) to grow ESO bigger than WoW. That's why so many players stuck with it for 6-12 months after it began going downhill.

A game like ESO had almost infinite potential, but ZOS has taken great measures in throwing it away. An inexperienced Dev team with little care for their product and no vision for the game's future. They care strictly for money through monetizing everything possible.

Everything that will come to us in 2017 has likely been almost completely finished since around 2014-2015, which is why we already have trailors/gameplay of it all. They will release this content slowly and monetize every bit of ESO in-between.

That's how ESO is now. Would love for ZOS to prove me wrong, but they know what's up as well.

Vaoh

Whether PvP is significantly revised next patch for the better is truly the last straw for me.

If it gets better - there is hope.

If it stays the same or gets worse?.... unfortunately ESO is 100% screwed and things will never improve. If this happens it is guaranteed that ZOS simply plans on letting the game die out overtime and milking our money through higher and higher Crown purchases.

Carbonised

Argument: ZOS needs to earn money, don't complain about that (i.e. the position of @alexkdd99 ).
I don't know, but are you quite young? Do you not recall the time before MMOs, before microtransactions and the nickle-and-dime-'em milking policy that has now also found its way to ESO?
'Cause I'm sure the Baldur's Gate series and Neverwinter Nights series never made any money. Hell, Final Fantasy 7, 8 & 9 - no money there either. Or for recent examples, look at Skyrim, Fallout, The Witcher. All games with horrible profits. Right, right?

Conclusion: Making money and providing an awesome gaming experience aren't exclusive phenomena. Actually, if you do the latter, you often times also achieve the former. There's a reason why all those games I have listed here are still selling, even 5, 10 or even 15 years after they were made.

I am now having my 1 year anniversary on ESO (congratulations Carbonised, oh why thank you, so nice of you to mention it), but even in that year I have seen a heavy movement from steady addition of content in the form of DLCs, as well as a nonintrusive Crown Store, much exactly as the Firor quotes that @TheValkyn mentions in his post, towards a more aggressive, manipulative and intrusive Crown Store that does indeed feel more and more like a paygate, where you get the bare minimum in the game, but have to get up your wallet every time you want something out of the ordinary. Additional content, DLCs, more areas? That has been in a steady decline this year, and will most likely continue to do so, as the company is more and more focused on their Crown Store and Crown Crates and push them aggressively onto their customers.

As much as I really enjoyed discovering Skyrim a couple years back, and as much as I have enjoyed delving deep into Tamriel and the Elder Scrolls setting, ESO is starting to sour that experience for me. In order to actually enjoy the next Elder Scrolls game (if indeed it is enjoyable and not another dumbing down from Bethesda like Fallout 4, but that is beyond this discussion), I will have to quit going farther and farther down the waste and money sink that ESO has become.
It is a pity that what started out as a great idea and a fairly decent game, has in ZOS' hands now turned into a negative, sour experience, dragging the legacy of Morrowind and Skyrim through the gutters.

UntrustedExistenz

Vaoh wrote: »

Everything that will come to us in 2017 has likely been almost completely finished since around 2014-2015, which is why we already have trailors/gameplay of it all. They will release this content slowly and monetize every bit of ESO in-between.
That's how ESO is now. Would love for ZOS to prove me wrong, but they know what's up as well.

That's the reason my real life friends don't play with me anymore. They told me 2 years ago that all new things will be added so slowly to gets every penny from players and they said back then that pvp is not giving them as much fun as intended. Didn't belive them. Today I need to rebuild my opinion about the game.
Sometimes I think the only reason I'm still here is just a blind love to Elder Scrolls games and lore.
Have hope that will not be a toxic love.

Sigtric

Vaoh wrote: »

You've summed it all up really well @Pandorii

I just wish that it wasn't like this. They could have fixed PvP and focused on the community so ESO could have a massive population. Then the Crown Store could've stayed as simple as it was back when it launched (Ex: 3 costumes for 700 Crowns).

Instead they've continually neglected their game, diminished their reputation, crushed their playerbase, and monetized everything and at higher prices to sqeeze what they can out of the players left. Console release and the concept behind One Tamriel was easily enough (with proper care) to grow ESO bigger than WoW. That's why so many players stuck with it for 6-12 months after it began going downhill.

A game like ESO had almost infinite potential, but ZOS has taken great measures in throwing it away. An inexperienced Dev team with little care for their product and no vision for the game's future. They care strictly for money through monetizing everything possible.

Everything that will come to us in 2017 has likely been almost completely finished since around 2014-2015, which is why we already have trailors/gameplay of it all. They will release this content slowly and monetize every bit of ESO in-between.

That's how ESO is now. Would love for ZOS to prove me wrong, but they know what's up as well.

How it physically hurts me to fully agree with this

kevlarto_ESO

Other than housing, what's ahead for 2017, they did talk about small scale pvp a bit at one time. This game is heading to dropping the requirement to purchase the client, all the ducks are lining up for free to play, the crown store compared to other games is still cheap and benign I do not see the cash grab like in swtor or sto.

Where is our content ? what happened to these smaller dlc's more often, I think that whole concept kind of sucked no one is coming back for 2 hours of content. Dlc's need to be at least on the scale of wrothgar or larger something to keep you playing for a few weeks instead of a couple of hours, how much of the dev team is focused on the crown store and not making content ? a new horse skin or a guar mount is not content.

I think the store will really open up with items when housing hits, and beyond and as long as zos keeps it on the fluff side I don't care what they sell in the store as long as it is nothing I NEED to continue my game play, big difference between need and want. I wish they would add options for game play to obtain some items though play and not just the store, I bought a game to play a game not a store, if I want to play a store I log on to Amazon they got a lot of neat crap.

zos is a for profit company and if you want an elder scrolls game to play online they have to make profit some how, I think zos has a terrible PR record with it's customers, and like all mmo's they are not truthful or up front about what's going on seems to be an industry standard these days.

Where's our end of the year road ahead ?

Lord_Eomer

In life you made descions so why coplaining anyone else?

Sallington

"It's a business. They're here to make money." Every freaking one of these threads has these people.

I guess all those subscription MMOs without cash shops I used to play and love were all in my head. They should have been trying to squeeze us out of every penny and focus development time on cash store items if they wanted to be considered a real business.

In the land of MMOs, if you create quality content that keeps old users sticking around and new users coming in, people will pay a subscription and you will be successful. End of story. Name me one single MMO that has gone F2P with a cash shop, and isn't a 10x worse game now because of it. Nothing about ZOS's recent decisions screams "longevity" or "quality".

But hey, I'm sure that makes them more money or else they wouldn't have done it. Good for them I guess? We should be so lucky?

Pandorii

kevlarto_ESO wrote: »

Other than housing, what's ahead for 2017, they did talk about small scale pvp a bit at one time. This game is heading to dropping the requirement to purchase the client, all the ducks are lining up for free to play, the crown store compared to other games is still cheap and benign I do not see the cash grab like in swtor or sto.

Where is our content ? what happened to these smaller dlc's more often, I think that whole concept kind of sucked no one is coming back for 2 hours of content. Dlc's need to be at least on the scale of wrothgar or larger something to keep you playing for a few weeks instead of a couple of hours, how much of the dev team is focused on the crown store and not making content ? a new horse skin or a guar mount is not content.

I think the store will really open up with items when housing hits, and beyond and as long as zos keeps it on the fluff side I don't care what they sell in the store as long as it is nothing I NEED to continue my game play, big difference between need and want. I wish they would add options for game play to obtain some items though play and not just the store, I bought a game to play a game not a store, if I want to play a store I log on to Amazon they got a lot of neat crap.

zos is a for profit company and if you want an elder scrolls game to play online they have to make profit some how, I think zos has a terrible PR record with it's customers, and like all mmo's they are not truthful or up front about what's going on seems to be an industry standard these days.

Where's our end of the year road ahead ?

I think it's strange, if not foretelling, that ZOS has mentioned nothing of 2017 except for housing. I seriously think they don't have much planned. I bet they do have crown crate items planned for seasons and seasons to come though. Did you see the fireplace stream preview of housing?

I feel like they don't want to give anything away is because they don't really have that much to show. If we don't get any new content with player housing, which is almost certain at this point, we'll have gone almost a year without new content...

Sinthrax

alexkdd99 wrote: »

How awful that a company would run a business to make profits. How dare they do such a thing.

I guess every for profit company out there is immoral and should be ashamed.

Zos, you and every other business need to throw profits out the window since apparently that is shameful to increase profit.

Who said they couldn't make profit. There is a difference in profit and outright theft.

Vaoh

UntrustedExistenz wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

Everything that will come to us in 2017 has likely been almost completely finished since around 2014-2015, which is why we already have trailors/gameplay of it all. They will release this content slowly and monetize every bit of ESO in-between.
That's how ESO is now. Would love for ZOS to prove me wrong, but they know what's up as well.

That's the reason my real life friends don't play with me anymore. They told me 2 years ago that all new things will be added so slowly to gets every penny from players and they said back then that pvp is not giving them as much fun as intended. Didn't belive them. Today I need to rebuild my opinion about the game.
Sometimes I think the only reason I'm still here is just a blind love to Elder Scrolls games and lore.
Have hope that will not be a toxic love.

The "Elder Scrolls" name is the only reason I have stayed as long as I have. It's the only reason I even picked up the game!

Sigtric wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

You've summed it all up really well @Pandorii

I just wish that it wasn't like this. They could have fixed PvP and focused on the community so ESO could have a massive population. Then the Crown Store could've stayed as simple as it was back when it launched (Ex: 3 costumes for 700 Crowns).

Instead they've continually neglected their game, diminished their reputation, crushed their playerbase, and monetized everything and at higher prices to sqeeze what they can out of the players left. Console release and the concept behind One Tamriel was easily enough (with proper care) to grow ESO bigger than WoW. That's why so many players stuck with it for 6-12 months after it began going downhill.

A game like ESO had almost infinite potential, but ZOS has taken great measures in throwing it away. An inexperienced Dev team with little care for their product and no vision for the game's future. They care strictly for money through monetizing everything possible.

Everything that will come to us in 2017 has likely been almost completely finished since around 2014-2015, which is why we already have trailors/gameplay of it all. They will release this content slowly and monetize every bit of ESO in-between.

That's how ESO is now. Would love for ZOS to prove me wrong, but they know what's up as well.

How it physically hurts me to fully agree with this

I know. It sucks but it's true

Xsorus

So if I'm subscribed; what did they release in the store this year I absolutely need?

Riejael

Sallington wrote: »

"It's a business. They're here to make money." Every freaking one of these threads has these people.

I guess all those subscription MMOs without cash shops I used to play and love were all in my head.

So.. how is ESO different than subscription MMOs?

Lets say you go ESO+ and pay the $14.95 a month like you would FFXIV or WoW.

Guess what you get to do in those other MMOs? Buy $49.99 expansion packs every couple of months. But the DLC's in ESO are apart of the subscription.

So what exactly does the 'evil' crown store do that's so bad in comparison? Over priced mounts? Yeah those subbed MMOs have those too. Loot Crates? They've got them too. Reskinned mounts? Yep.

Like many fads.. taking jabs at big business makes people look foolish.. and come 2017.. its falling out of style.

starkerealm

Xsorus wrote: »

So if I'm subscribed; what did they release in the store this year I absolutely need?

Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild?

JackDaniell

The best part is all the money is getting reinvested in server maintinane and pvp balance!

... to me it almost looks like they are trying to bleed the game dry for as much money as they can

starkerealm

Vaoh wrote: »

You've summed it all up really well @Pandorii

I just wish that it wasn't like this. They could have fixed PvP and focused on the community so ESO could have a massive population. Then the Crown Store could've stayed as simple as it was back when it launched (Ex: 3 costumes for 700 Crowns).

Honestly? No.

I mean, I like the idea, and there's a lot of people that will gleefully say that PvP is the panacea for MMOs. But... the problem is, that's not really true.

There's a major problem.

There aren't that many players. Outside of MMOs completely built around PvP, where you don't have any choice on participation, your PvP community is vanishingly small. Other developers have published stats and I've never seen one above 10%, rarely above 5%. There are exceptions, but ESO was never going to be one of those, because of how it handles PvP.

To take an MMO in 2014 and say you expected it to be kept afloat on PvP is probably the result of an echo chamber of fellow PvP enthusiasts distorting your views of the world.

What you need to make PvP appealing is a low barrier for entry, and a combat system built around skill rather than statistical advantages.

ESO does not have a low barrier for entry into PvP. We see complaints all the time about players having to get to Level 10 before they can even hit Cyrodiil, to say nothing of needing to complete significant amounts of PvE content in order to obtain the skills they needed.

This is ignoring the time commitment necessary to gear up, and equip yourself, and keep yourself stocked on consumables like Soul Gems and pots. This means, they need to stop what they're doing, leave PvP, and engage in PvE for extended periods of time in order to go back in.

Or... they could just fire up Call of Duty. I know, COD is a punching bag for a lot of people, but it does allow immediate access and a (theoretically) level playing field. PvP in videogames has evolved into it's own creature with different priorities. As with so many other things, ESO was a nostalgia hit, dragging up loads of mechanics that had been abandoned by MMOs in the last decade. In this case, for good reason. It's amazing when it works, but the way it's designed... the design decisions that are necessary to set up those cool elements, guaranteed that it would appeal to an extreme niche.

I love PvP in this game. You can't get it anywhere else these days. But... I also understand that there aren't tens of millions of people out there who want a PVP game, and are willing to spend the time grinding a character to 50, then grinding their CR to 561, then grinding to get gold upgrade mats, and grinding to get the ideal gear sets, before they start being able to participate in PvP in any serious way. They'll just dig out Call of Duty, or For Honor, or even Dark Souls. Because as much work as DS requires to get you into the PvP meta, it's still a fraction of the time commitment ESO sticks up front as the barrier for entry.

Could this be fixed? Yes, but not without completely overhauling how Cyrodiil works, and how characters are prepped for going there. But, you can't stick template characters into the game, (prebuilt, level 50, CR300, all your skill lines maxed, just add water) without getting a lot of salt from people screaming, "P2W,P2WPW2JEAIDLJEADASPAAAHHHYYY TOOOOOWWWWIIIINNNN!"

So... not happening.

And the reason you couldn't do that is because PvP is advantage based, not skill based. Yes, I know, it takes skill to run high end PvP builds. Hell, it takes skill to run any PvP build that isn't just proc-spam. But, it isn't a game like, let's drag out that dead horse again, CoD. Where a new player can potentially gun down someone who's on their 80th prestige, so long as they're lucky. What cannot happen (without driving people bugnuts) is a level 10 waxing a CR561 in Cyrodiil (ignoring level scaling for the moment). It doesn't matter how skilled the level 10 is, they're up against someone with a much larger repertoire of skills, full gold gear (presumably), better consumables (hell, purple food didn't even exist for level 10s before the Witchmother event). It doesn't matter how good they are, they're toast.

This still applies to newbies hitting Cyrodiil, even with scaling. It's not as one sided. But they're still at a massive statistical disadvantage when paired against veterans who've been in there for ages.

In short, you cannot play ESO as a PvP title. If you just want PvP combat... you're going to look somewhere else. You're going to look for a game that lets you sit down, get straight into combat, and not have to worry about things like stocking up, or asking how many soul gems you've got.

Ironically, for a PvP focused game, consumables as refreshing resources would probably be a much wiser choice. Like the Estus Flasks in Dark Souls, or half the garbage in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Asking someone to manage tripots in the warzone means they're going to need to pop their head out of Cyrodiil from time to time. It means they're going to have to deal with downtime. In a vacuum, or if it was 1999, that's fine, because no one else is offering something like this, and you can afford to break up PvP like that. But, it's 2016. People want PvP, they're going to fire up Overwatch.

I'd like to believe the novelty of a full on campaign is enough to draw people in, but in the end it's not. It is too niche. In a game that's not designed around people doing nothing but PvP.

Vaoh wrote: »

Instead they've continually neglected their game, diminished their reputation, crushed their playerbase, and monetized everything and at higher prices to sqeeze what they can out of the players left. Console release and the concept behind One Tamriel was easily enough (with proper care) to grow ESO bigger than WoW. That's why so many players stuck with it for 6-12 months after it began going downhill.

A game like ESO had almost infinite potential, but ZOS has taken great measures in throwing it away. An inexperienced Dev team with little care for their product and no vision for the game's future. They care strictly for money through monetizing everything possible.

So, I'm actually going to have to stop you there. I don't fully agree with what you're saying, but there are a few huge errors.

First is about monetization. I understand if this is your first exposure to MMOs, it seems like stuff's getting monetized left and right. It's not.

Let's look at Star Trek Online for a moment.

Star Trek uses a resource called Dilithum. This is a little flaky because in theory you can grind it up, but in practice you can buy it for cash. Each character can earn about $0.25 per day (as I recall, it's been awhile.) You're technically buying from other players, which is why you'll see people saying, "oh, but you can play for free, you just need to grind a bit." You can, but you're getting someone else to pay your way.

Dilithium is used for crafting. You can't make purple or higher gear without spending real money.

Dilthium is used as the currency for endgame items. Again, you can't buy endgame gear without spending real money.

Dilithium is used to build the player bases, which include non-cosmetic improvements. Such as increased XP gains, or gear that is (when purchased) flat out better than anything else you can buy in the game.

Dilithium is used for upgrading gear. You see, actual endgame gear doesn't drop at all, and can't be crafted. You can craft up to mk12, but to mk14 you need to... you guessed it, spend real money, and as a bonus, there's actually a gambling mechanic baked into this one.

Dilithium is used to purchase skills for your character (it's a little more involved, but it's part of the crafting system).

And this is before you look at the cash shop. Ships sold in the cash shop (or through lockboxes) are statistically superior to "free" ones (purchased with Dilithium, by the way). Initially this was just a 10% buff on some, and others simply had unique skill configurations. But now, there's an entire tier of ships that are exclusive to those sources. In other words you need to actually pay real money to level up.

Let me say that again, you need to pay real money to level up.

You need to pay real money to gain access to new classes. (Again, ship variants, and your ship is your class in space.)

Those new classes are flat out superior to ones that can be obtained for "free." Again, in scare quotes because... yep, you get one legitimately free ship each time you get access to a new tier.

There are entire systems that function to produce Dilithium, but it's generated at such a slow rate, and characters are hard capped, that you are pointed at the exchange and told to cough up some cash if you want to advance.

Additionally, STO's lockboxes flat out gate top tier class options. The equivalent in ESO would be if instead of Storm Attronach mounts, the Apex rewards actually allowed you to gain additional skill lines, more active ability slots you could use, potentially even additional weapon bars, on top of flat out giving you a +10% boost to your hitpoints, weapon/spell damage, and resistances.

It gets better if you look at other games by the same developer. Neverwinter flat out sticks superior player classes in their lockboxes, which utterly invalidate your existing class choices. Champions Online wins, though. They gate "freeform" characters to subscribers and sell them at $50 per slot. These are characters that can select any player ability in the game, each time they pick one. And, yes, it's exactly as broken as it sounds.

So, no, I've seen far more monetized games. I realize, where you're coming from, you might not realize it. But this stuff can get really predatory. What we've seen in ESO looks like someone following directions from corporate. Not the product of people who are driven by avarice. Because, trust me, they could choke the life out of the whales if they were so inclined.

Vaoh wrote: »

Everything that will come to us in 2017 has likely been almost completely finished since around 2014-2015, which is why we already have trailors/gameplay of it all. They will release this content slowly and monetize every bit of ESO in-between.

Which is why Murkmire didn't release with One Tamriel. Because it's been done for two years, but ZOS doesn't want to charge us for it because they're busy monetizing... what, exactly? We got the crown crates. We got the stupid elk mount. But, again, an expansion of new content, which they could charge for? No, that they needed to keep in the fridge until the right moment because they don't want people paying for it? What?

Now, I could be wrong, but at the beginning of 2016, I think we knew about Thieves guild and the Dark Brotherhood. Those got announced in January. Before that, we didn't really know what was coming out in 2016. This time two years ago, what we knew about 2015 was the Champion System and Justice System (and I think it was still being pitched as open world PvP at that point). We didn't know about the IC or Orsinium yet. (They'd been teased along with a lot of other content, some of which we still haven't gotten. But they hadn't been announced yet.)

Now, you're partially right. ZOS does drip feed information about upcoming releases, basically for the reason you said, though the payoff isn't money, it's attention. They drip feed what's coming next in bits and pieces because they want you excited about the next release. They don't (usually) undercut that by talking about the stuff after that in their main info releases, because it, "distracts from the message," read: "undermines the excitement for the next release." It's not malicious or nefarious, but it is marketing. If you don't like that... I'm sorry, there isn't much you can do. That kind of information delivery actually works to keep attention on a product.

Vaoh wrote: »

That's how ESO is now. Would love for ZOS to prove me wrong, but they know what's up as well.

Yeah, on the scale of MMOs with serious monetization... ESO doesn't raise much of a blip. On the range of games to pick up if you want PvP? Even fantasy PvP, it's not a great choice. Not because of things like the lag in Cyrodiil, but because its PvP design philosophies are stuck in the 20th century. And it would be impossible to fix those without killing the PvP you enjoy.

EDIT: Yay typos. ._.