ZOS's big mistake in the last update.

db0ssman

ESO/ZOS is always the example that I use when I discuss how a gaming company can strike the balance between monetizing the game without exploiting players into having to pay to actually enjoy the game. The vast majority of monetized items are strictly cosmetic, like costumes and mounts, or can easily be acquired in game with minimal effort, like xp pots, potions, research scrolls. That makes the fact that most things are over-priced somewhat irrelevant because not purchasing the items will not affect your enjoyment of the game. Conversely, non-cosmetic core content is appropriately priced and often distributed to F2P costumers as well as those who buy specific DLC. So far, I've never seen players locked out of previously purchased content just because new DLC has come out, unlike some other companies that use a similar model (cough, Destiny, cough).

I think that ZOS has made a big mistake treating the new outfit system as an optional cosmetic instead of core content. Much of end-game content is centered around farming and collecting motif chapters (Vet DLC dungeons, Cyrodil, Trails, Dailies & Weeklies). Until the outfit system has come out, the motifs you've grinned for have been completely under-utilized in the main game. Fully using crafted gear sets is really only possible on leveling alts, but that means the training sets you make will have a fairly short and finite life. Using sets like hunding's rage or Law of Juleanos (spelling?) to supplement using a monster set means that your look was still dependent on the world sets and monster sets you use for the set abilities. The outfits give you a way to utilize the motifs you collect and gives you a reason to engage in the end game content more thuroughly.

The current system, however, is too exploitative for such a core element of the end-game. The cost of an outfit that uses rare motifs is too high for casual or medium-core players to constantly spend on outfits that will just disappear. For example, I tend to play ESO around 15 to 20 hours a week and since I don't specifically focus on farming gold, I only make around 30k gold a week. Losing 1/2 of that to make 1 outfit on 1 character that I will never use again makes the system untenable. 1500 crowns ($15) to just have one slot unlock on one toon is unrealistic for most people to pay. I have a few suggestions that ZOS could implement in order to both enhance the game and still monetize outfits.

1. Keep the crown cost of outfit slots the same, but give people the ability to save outfits and make any previously created outfits free to requip at an outfit station. An outfit slot would only really give people a way to convienently swap outfits, but doesn't make the system obsolete.
2. Keep the crown cost of outfit slots the same, but make unlocks account wide.
3. Reduce the crown cost of outfit slots to 250 (possibly 500 at most) and keep slots individual on characters. This still monetizes the new system for those that want to use it, but isn't oppressively expensive.

Leandor

Only 2 is a real option. 1 is a compromise I'd accept if you could "save" something upwards of 10 outfits per char.

3 is no option. Penalizing veteran players or players that put in a lot of hours in any way is never a feasible option.

Even at 100 crowns a slot, I'd have to spend 13500 crowns on my main account and another 9000 on my second account to get all slots. Yes, I have 24 chars.

And the second account is largely used for non vet pvp. Which means I delete chars once they reach 50. That alone makes the current system completely unusable for this account.

How in the world did they think this was a good concept? I have already decided that I will not even spend gold on a single outfit. I'll use some of my ~75 constumes instead.

db0ssman

I actually forgot to add my option 4, so I'll do that now.

db0ssman

Lol, you can't edit it looks like.

Option 4: Use gold to unlock new outfit slots or pay 1500 crowns. This would likely work like bag space or bank space where the first unlocks are fairly cheap, but the later unlocks are very expensive. It could be something like:
1. Free
2. 2500 gold
3. 5000 gold
4. 10k gold
5. 20k gold
6. 30k gold
7. 60k gold
8. 120k gold
9. 240k gold
10. 500k gold

This way people can grind to get a medium amount of slots and only those truly hardcore would pay and only for the last few slots.

Waffennacht

Well if it costs you 15k for something you'll never use again, that means over the course of 2 years you paid 21 gold per day to look awesome

disintegr8

Leandor wrote: »

Only 2 is a real option. 1 is a compromise I'd accept if you could "safe" something upwards of 10 outfits per char.

3 is no option. Penalizing veteran players or players that put in a lot of hours in any way is never a feasible option.

Even at 100 crowns a slot, I'd have to spend 13500 crowns on my main account and another 9000 on my second account to get all slots. Yes, I have 24 chars.

And the second account is largely used for non vet pvp. Which means I delete chars once they reach 50. That alone makes the current system completely unusable for this account.

How in the world did they think this was a good concept? I have already decided that I will not even spend gold on a single outfit. I'll use some of my ~75 constumes instead.

I hadn't thought about this, I presume bought outfit slots are like riding lessons, if you delete the character you lose what you have paid for. I guess you would not buy additional outfit slots until you are sure a character is being kept.

db0ssman

Waffennacht wrote: »

Well if it costs you 15k for something you'll never use again, that means over the course of 2 years you paid 21 gold per day to look awesome

What I mean is that if you changed your free slot every week, that it would cost you 15k to look awesome for 1 week, or closer to 2.15k a day. I think for the vast majority of players spending that much gold would be untenable. It would probably be less in the long run, since you would probably not change it for every toon every week and you might sometimes like a more basic set which is pretty cheap.