Xanmeer Lakehouse price proves ESO is Healthy.

HappyLittleTree

Or you just ave your eso+ crowns for some month

Kalgert

I can say only this...

Dithieon

RogueShark wrote: »

That ESO+ "discount" makes me laugh. If Pacrooti was here, he would laugh too.

O_LYKOS

I was 100% wanting to get it. Until I seen the price lmao no thanks.

AefionBloodclaw

nope

I can't believe the utter appalling behaviour of ZoS, not only overcharging for a digital house that doesn't even exist, and has barely any content as such in it, compared to cheaper, but fully brand new games with hundreds and and hundreds of hours of content, complete with art books and statues and stuff, and also the Xanmeer house is BUGGED. They're selling a bugged digital house, with whole sections that are derezzed when you approach them, and they're asking for $150 for it. Disgraceful >:(

therift

I thought the 'meta' for game monetization was microtransactions... as in very large numbers of sales of a few dollars/euros/rubles each.

I just don't understand the pricing strategy. I don't have ZoS's database of sales data, of course, but I would guess that a lower price (much lower) Crown price for an empty house coupled with a variety of furnishing packs at various price points would generate more revenue overall.

And there should always be an in-game currency purchase option.

I would guess that an improvement to the Purchase tab menu - identifying items as Craftable or not - would encourage more sales of individual Crown items... not to mention a restructure of that Purchase tab to something more convenient than lists as long as my arm.

I had great plans for this house. I pass.

Casdha

other

I don't think it means anything other than some will buy it and some will not.

I just got done spending 22,000 crowns on the rest of my character slots and the assistants because ZOS gave me the only home I was interested in getting. I had to use them up someway or another. I don't buy crown crates or anything that can be found in game. I also don't buy costumes.

My sub renews in Feb so I'll have plenty again in a month.

Edit: also When did this happen? Maybe it could be more of an indicator.

jcaceresw

nope

Not sure why people are willing to pay for virtual things that won't be available anymore when the game stop being supported or the servers are shut down. I realized this late after spending around $400. Now I don't open my wallet for such things.

Kagukan

other

The game is alive and well but I don't know if the price of player housing proves anything. I remember seeing a MMO that isn't doing well at all charge over $200 for a mount.

Cage_Lizardman

nope

Noone will buy it. Even though I want a Xanmeer mansion, we lizards are too poor.

Zathras

other

generalmyrick wrote: »

Doesn't the price of the xanmeer lakehouse prove that eso is healthy? I mean 150 dollars worth the crowns? WOW!

It isn't proof of anything, aside from whaling.

"The idea is you have a paying player subsidising the play of, potentially, dozens or hundreds of other users. And so you have to be willing to create a game that has the ability to make huge sums of money from relatively small numbers of people.

"Once you decide that you are going to enter the whaling business, it's a different mindset and a different set of goals you're designing for entirely."

- Scott Hartsman

There is a lot of irony in that quote, as well as applicable tones for ESO.

zaria

other

Zypheran wrote: »

ZOS logic:
Why sell 15 houses at $10 when you can sell 1 at $150 dollars and reduce server load!
I did a poll on this some time ago and you would be surprised by the percentage of people willing to spend $100 or even more on a house.
For some, the high price is an incentive as it offers exclusivity.
Personally though, I just think that the game would be all the richer (figuratively and literally) if they made housing more accessible to the masses by not charging monstrous prices.

Its expensive because its special and the high price creates exclusivity.

it plenty of reasonable priced nice houses but they don't offer any exclusivity.

And that ESO is among the games on steam who bring in most money proves its healthy.
yes steam is just an fairly minor channel fro eso.

Yolokin_Swagonborn

Are people really going to want to buy this house after they race change all their argonians to other races?

Silver_Strider

Bought it with the crowns I saved from Christmas.

pshift

This thing is finally on sale?! Going to buy it now, don't care the price, lol. Been waiting on this one.

What_In_Tarnation

RogueShark wrote: »

Knowing people bought extreme expensive hats in TF2, thus I'm not really surprised here.

Davor

Ohtimbar wrote: »

I don't think much can be inferred from this single piece of data, but relying on whales for income is not what I would necessarily consider healthy, for anyone.

And this is why Bethesda does what they are doing now. There are no whales. We are all human beings. Let us make sure that Zenimax and Bethesda see us as humans instead of downgrading us to whales and dollars and cents. No wonder companies don't respect us anymore, we can't even respect ourselves.

Just because people have money to spend don't meant they should be shamed. After all we are no better than them. We rent video games just like they do, and play like they do, so why are they worse than us? Just because I don't buy from the store doesn't make me any better than anyone else who does.

Stop shaming people. We need more respect than this. Otherwise nothing will ever change and then only we have to blame. You never know, ESO can become like Fallout 76, really fast. And if it does, we now know why.

Davor

yodased wrote: »

The asking price of anything, virtual or not is not really a signal of strength or weakness, its just the seller determining the market value of that thing.

See the way I see this, is Zenimax is saying their main game is worthless. After all, all the time, energy, and money going into making the game only costs $30 now, $60 on release can't compare to something that takes less time, and money to make but costs so much more.

I just can't believe companies would do this. So Zenimax, are you actually saying ESO is worthless to you now? Talk about not respecting their customers. At least go free to play, then I could understand, but needing to buy the game and still asking for those prices?

Yeah, I really see what you think of ESO, Worthless especially when you have it on sale on Steam almost every two weeks for $12.00.

(yes I know it's not the actual people who work on the game, but it's management in the publishing division who does think of ESO as worthless)

dan958

nope

I can try and sell something I drew for £10000, doesn't mean it is good.

Davor

therift wrote: »

I thought the 'meta' for game monetization was microtransactions... as in very large numbers of sales of a few dollars/euros/rubles each.

That was my thinking as well.

I just don't understand the pricing strategy.

The way I see it is what a company called Games Workshop does. They over price lots of their products and we complain like we do here, but what happens eventually is when something say usually costs $150 we complain it's too high, so then later when they release something it will cost say $75, which is still to high, but people will think, "WOW, 1/2 price, that is properly priced, need to buy NOW".

All is happening is Zenimax is trying to "condition" people into thinking when they have lower prices for something they are giving a better deal when really we are still over paying for what ever is being sold.

yodased

Davor wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

The asking price of anything, virtual or not is not really a signal of strength or weakness, its just the seller determining the market value of that thing.

See the way I see this, is Zenimax is saying their main game is worthless. After all, all the time, energy, and money going into making the game only costs $30 now, $60 on release can't compare to something that takes less time, and money to make but costs so much more.

I just can't believe companies would do this. So Zenimax, are you actually saying ESO is worthless to you now? Talk about not respecting their customers. At least go free to play, then I could understand, but needing to buy the game and still asking for those prices?

Yeah, I really see what you think of ESO, Worthless especially when you have it on sale on Steam almost every two weeks for $12.00.

(yes I know it's not the actual people who work on the game, but it's management in the publishing division who does think of ESO as worthless)

That is a little short sighted though, because you already own the game at 60$ or whatever you paid for it, thats the value that you assign to it. When you see other people buying the game for 10 or 12 dollars, it can make you feel that you got ripped off or the game isn't worth what you paid for it.

Sunken cost fallacy though because the game you bought is not the game that they are buying. The game more than likely to be profitable would have to be sold above the $60 price, but because of the concept of loss leaders and the cash store, they can afford to bring new players in for a lower cost and then whack them with in game purchases.

There is a lot of marketing mojo happening here and assigning a 1:1 value proposition or determining their opportunity cost of selling for $60 is impossible to determine without the data.

DaveMoeDee

yodased wrote: »

These houses are doing exactly what they seemingly are designed for.

1. Get people to talk about how expensive and unrealistic pricing is.
2. Get wealthy people or people who want to appear wealthy to buy it as status symbol.
3. Change perception of "affordable" housing by comparison.

The asking price of anything, virtual or not is not really a signal of strength or weakness, its just the seller determining the market value of that thing.

Now you show me a scatter plot over time with player retention and cash spent and we can start talking about the market.

Just because it exists at a. asking price does not mean its value is that price, in anyones eyes. Those that buy for status are liquid enough to not notice the cost, so they are outliers. "Normal" people would be a better trend graph to determine asking prices for houses.

I'm not noticing people buying the houses as status symbols. I see people buying them because they enjoy housing. I think the prices are crazy, but I have no interest in housing or spending money on cosmetics. I find $2 for a costume to be absurd.

I don't know why we need to be so negative about people over things like this. Sure, be negative about the companies using these approaches if you don't like this trend. I actually love this approach since it helps the game make money by letting people voluntarily give more money than me (and I say this as someone currently on a 6-month ESO+ sub) and I don't care about access to cosmetics. But I can empathize with others would would like more access to such things without forking over absurd amounts. But ESO has a particular revenue model.

Kiralyn2000

other

All it proves is that there are silly people who will overpay for frivolities. And that companies are happy to let them.


But we already knew that from $300+ pre-ripped jeans, $5+ coffee, $500k+ cars, Star Citizen.... /shrug

DaveMoeDee

Ryath_Waylander wrote: »

It proves nothing about the game other than that their priorities do not lie with people that enjoy their game. A notable house being sold only for crowns is such a shame. I would work my butt off to save 5mil ingame gold to buy this house. Damned if I'll pay the price for a new 4TB internal HDD for it.

I disagree. Most players benefit from whales putting a lot of money into games. Most players don't think twice about all the stuff they

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

All it proves is that there are silly people who will overpay for frivolities. And that companies are happy to let them.


But we already knew that from $300+ pre-ripped jeans, $5+ coffee, $500k+ cars, Star Citizen.... /shrug

lol. Star Citizen. I actually watched people play on Twitch and it seems like it will likely end up a fun game, but $10k in ships fun?

Aedrion

other

It's good it has a large aquarium because only 'whales' will be buying this.

F'ck this sh*t. This is offensive!

weedgenius

richo262 wrote: »

That price isn't extreme. Most aren't getting their credit cards out and paying $150 for the house.

Most would be ESO subs that have 10s of thousands of crowns banked that had nothing to spend them on.

It is a crown sink more than anything, just like housing is also a gold sink.

I don’t agree. I’m in a housing guild and many people buy and decorate every crown house they release. They aren’t saving up ~16k crowns every few months for the houses. They’re buying them.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

“When the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, they end up running the companies. The product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products.”

Kuwhar

If i was ZoS I would put a single sweetroll that does nothing on the crownstore for $20,000 just to watch the outrage.

They can price things however they want, they are trying to sell a product; if you think it's too high? Ok that's fine, share your view and move on.

It doesn't make them immoral or evil to "overprice" luxuries.

Guaranteed if you all owned a business or sold a product, you'd sell it for the highest amount you can.

AND keep in mind, ZOS has the numbers on what sells and what doesn't; they don't pull these prices out of a hat.

Davor

yodased wrote: »

Davor wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

The asking price of anything, virtual or not is not really a signal of strength or weakness, its just the seller determining the market value of that thing.

See the way I see this, is Zenimax is saying their main game is worthless. After all, all the time, energy, and money going into making the game only costs $30 now, $60 on release can't compare to something that takes less time, and money to make but costs so much more.

I just can't believe companies would do this. So Zenimax, are you actually saying ESO is worthless to you now? Talk about not respecting their customers. At least go free to play, then I could understand, but needing to buy the game and still asking for those prices?

Yeah, I really see what you think of ESO, Worthless especially when you have it on sale on Steam almost every two weeks for $12.00.

(yes I know it's not the actual people who work on the game, but it's management in the publishing division who does think of ESO as worthless)

That is a little short sighted though, because you already own the game at 60$ or whatever you paid for it, thats the value that you assign to it. When you see other people buying the game for 10 or 12 dollars, it can make you feel that you got ripped off or the game isn't worth what you paid for it.

Sunken cost fallacy though because the game you bought is not the game that they are buying. The game more than likely to be profitable would have to be sold above the $60 price, but because of the concept of loss leaders and the cash store, they can afford to bring new players in for a lower cost and then whack them with in game purchases.

There is a lot of marketing mojo happening here and assigning a 1:1 value proposition or determining their opportunity cost of selling for $60 is impossible to determine without the data.

No, I have no "sunken cost fallacy" at all. I could have waited for the price to go down (like Fallout 76) but I didn't since I wanted to play right away. I don't begrudge anyone for paying a cheaper price than me at all.

As I said, if it takes millions of dollars to make ESO, so many tens of thousands of man hours, and yet sell the game for $12, or even $60, that means they are still making a profit if that is the price they can sell it at. To charge $150 for a home where not as many people work on it, not as much time was spent on it, so didn't cost the company that much to make, is telling me that the main game they made that took over 5 years to make is WORTHLESS to them.

"Yes, yes, here is our game, took over 10 000 hours, with over 50 people to make, and here have it for $60. Now here is a house that took only a 1000 hours to make with 10 people, but pay more than double". If that doesn't say your main game is not worthless, then I don't know what does.

The way I see it, it's like going to a restaurant. You buy a coffee or get it for free and still get free refills. The coffee is worthless for the restaurant because the main reason you are there is for the food. In this case, ESO the main game is the coffee, and the House is the food in Zenimax's eyes. That is how I see it.

Or going to a Casino, and you get free drinks so you don't leave the slot machine. The drinks are worthless, means no loss to them since you are spending money on the machine you are on. Just like how worthless ESO is to Zenimax since they want you to buy from the crown store.

As I said, pretty sad, Zenimax thinks that ESO, all that time and energy people spent on that game is worthless.

Vaerth

nope

generalmyrick wrote: »

Doesn't the price of the xanmeer lakehouse prove that eso is healthy? I mean 150 dollars worth the crowns? WOW!

For that price it better be a guild house, accessible by all and permissions granted by guild owner / manor owner.

Why would anyone pay that much to have a huge place all to themselves? Seems... silly...