Is Buying Skyshard SP Pay to Win?

Shadow-Fighter

Yes it's P2W.

Last year or so players want it for free but ZOS put it on shop.

Lorebooks will be the next

Jhalin

Yes it's P2W.

Bealeb319 wrote: »

This is not pay to win. It does not make anyone better than they already were. What it does is encourages people to play more than one hero which is not a bad thing. It allows people to share their own achievements with other characters they already own instead of having to do everything multiple times which can get redundant, overwhelming, and honestly boreing.

Except it’s not encouraging play at all

This is literally paying to circumvent gameplay, exploration, having a presence in the game space.

It’s not sharing achievements, it’s buying power with cash. The people who will use it don’t care about characters, they just want their power with as little time spent as possible. I can guarantee half the people who somehow think this isn’t crossing the line into P2W would roll over and accept lvl50 maxed toon being for sale in the store,

Then they’d complain about their max CP group member spamming Snipe and dying to every stuff breeze as everyone else stands by and says “we told you so”

Removing the gameplay from character progression is a terrible decision in no uncertain terms, especially when it’s established as power received through gameplay not a transaction as other cash shop options are. Things that have requirements beyond payment retain those requirements even if expedited by cash purchases.

Transactions
You learn horse riding buy completing a transaction, either gold or crowns.

You get more bag/bank space by completing a transaction, either gold or crowns.

You obtain potions, food, and drinks by buying them from vendors/players, or with crowns


Expedited Progress
You earn exp by killing mobs or completing quests, you can earn more per kill/quest by using an exp scroll, but you still have to kill and quest to earn exp.

You research items by obtaining an item’s, clicking a button, and waiting, or faster by clicking a button and spending crowns, but still requiring you obtain the item.


Gameplay Circumvention, P2W
Skyshards are obtained by exploring the game world and engaging enemies to get through to them VS pay cash to acquire skillpoints

Gear is obtained by defeating delve, dungeon, arena, or trial bosses VS pay cash to obtain gear

Level skill lines by completing related actions (gathering lorebooks, or defeated Daedra/undead, completing dungeons and trial achievements) VS pay cash to obtain fully leveled skill lines

dbgager

No it's not P2W.

Sorry but no way is it pay to win. Can a new player come into the game and buy this to get all the skyshards. If the answer is no then it is clearly not pay to win. I don't see why anyone would even argue that. Anew player will have to go through the game and find every single one of them just like anyone else. This is a timesaver and nothing else. It is a convenience for people who have already done that. There getting absolutely nothing they don't already have.

Zer0oo

No it's not P2W.

If you already unlocked it on another char, i see no reason to not give it to alts. It is not like it is challenging or even entertaining to get all the skyshards you need for your 10+th char. Same goes for your the boring grind guilds like mages, fighters and psijic.

JeibuKul

No it's not P2W.

It isn't p2w. You can achieve the same result playing the game and even with this you have to had already completed it on one of your characters. ESO has a total lack of account wide things, which is just annoying some times.

P2W is literally an item in the store for cash, that you can NOT achieve in the game.

P2W would be something like all legendary quality upgrade items would be crown store only, P2W would be Outfits/Appearance slot items having stats that are only available for purchase in the crown store.

Zer0oo

No it's not P2W.

I am just worried that they will put it in for a real rip-off price

Elara_Northwind

Yes it's P2W.

Zer0oo wrote: »

If you already unlocked it on another char, i see no reason to not give it to alts. It is not like it is challenging or even entertaining to get all the skyshards you need for your 10+th char. Same goes for your the boring grind guilds like mages, fighters and psijic.

I doubt anybody is against alts getting the skyshard achievements, I think everybody is on board with that, it is the fact that they are charging us real money to get them all at once that is the issue. If the achievement were made account wide, and the shards given as and when you level, for FREE, that would be great! But instead, they are actually being very greedy with this. Imagine if we suddenly had to pay real money to make our cp account wide too!

I also believe that supporting things like this being available for real money sets a very bad precedent for any future crown store content. If they get away with introducing stuff like this, goodness knows what will be coming out on the crown store next

Facefister

Yes it's P2W.

They've just confirmed that they'll also add Skilllines like Mages Guild and Psijics on the store.

max_only

Other.

The stream is on now. They just said it will be per character and it will be just skyshards zone achievements at first and IF it goes well they MAY allow already earned skill lines like Psijic Order to be purchased for alts.

Facefister

Yes it's P2W.

max_only wrote: »

The stream is on now. They just said it will be per character and it will be just skyshards zone achievements at first and IF it goes well they MAY allow already earned skill lines like Psijic Order to be purchased for alts.

"May", they most definitely will as soon as they figured it out how* to code it in.

CassandraGemini

Other.

Facefister wrote: »

They've just confirmed that they'll also add Skilllines like Mages Guild and Psijics on the store.

Oh, great. More money they won't be getting from me and more missed opportunities to actually make something good out of this idea. I really, really don't like the general direction this is going. Putting cosmetics in the crown store for more or less reasonable amounts of money is okay in my book. They're not useful for anything despite giving you an opportunity to shape your character's looks to your liking. I've bought some myself and was totally okay with spending my ESO+ crowns on them, because, well... I wanted them and thought they'd look cool, so I bought them for my personal entertainment.
But really useful stuff like skyshard skill points/lorebooks/psijic rifts, where it would have made so much more sense to just finally give people a real incentive to collect all of them, because they would not only get a nice but ultimately meaningless in-game achievement, but also a real achievement in the form of the loss of these grinds for future characters... I just don't get it.

max_only

Other.

Facefister wrote: »

They've just confirmed that they'll also add Skilllines like Mages Guild and Psijics on the store.

Facefister wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

The stream is on now. They just said it will be per character and it will be just skyshards zone achievements at first and IF it goes well they MAY allow already earned skill lines like Psijic Order to be purchased for alts.

"May", they most definitely will as soon as they figured it out how* to code it in.

This is why I chose “other”. On one hand ewww, on the other hand 2/3 of the game’s population are desperate for any improvement (consoles).

Like I said in my first comment, consoles got their wish, but it was a monkey’s paw wish.

Vandril

No it's not P2W.

[nevermind, misread]

UppGRAYxDD

Yes it's P2W.

It's definitely P2W.... we pay, ZoS wins... Why not make it free? Or at least part of ESO+?

StormChaser3000

Yes it's P2W.

100% pay to win. Moreover they decided to go mega greedy and will want people pay for each separate character according to the today's stream..

theyancey

On Twitch today they said that they will be looking at adding skill lines and such to this P2W scheme.

Ertosi

Yes it's P2W.

Elara_Northwind wrote: »

I doubt anybody is against alts getting the skyshard achievements, I think everybody is on board with that [...]

I'm against it, so kindly don't speak for all of us. I saw a few others post saying the same.

Pay-to-Skip cash-shop options are still a "softer" form of Pay-to-Win as they allow players to bypass content and thus save time; time is an advantage. To me, it doesn't matter if the content has already been cleared by one of a Player's characters; that doesn't mean they deserve the option to buy it for their other characters that haven't earned it.

heaven13

karekiz wrote: »

Shadow-Fighter wrote: »

If its not P2W then i want to buy DLC Full complete (with all Achievments) Clown shop tokens for my alts too. Thanks!

Well you would need to earn them first then buy the unlock. I wouldn't care as its basically global acheezements.

I have alts that have never completed Challenger fanglair etc but I sure do use that personality. By some peoples "definitions" I shouldn't be able to unless I clear the content on each alt to unlock it.

My issue is that its per character. I would MUCH rather like a global unlock at a higher price. Or even both. Per char all skyshards for 1K (10.00 USD> - Account wide all chars for 5K (50.00 USD)

If you think you're going to get all the skyshards in the game (143 skillpoints worth) for 1k crowns, I believe you are going to be sorely disappointed.

Mount training is 1k crowns for 10 lessons in one category. So you need to spend 6k crowns to make that line (whether it be speed, capacity, or stamina) and 18k crowns if you want to do all your mount training through the crown store.

There is no way in any realm of Oblivion that ZOS is giving 143 skillpoints worth of skyshards for 1k crowns. You might get one ZONE's worth of skyshards for 1k.

TLDR: Expect the cost to be fairly prohibitive and aimed at people with more money than patience.

Facefister

Yes it's P2W.

Ertosi wrote: »

Elara_Northwind wrote: »

I doubt anybody is against alts getting the skyshard achievements, I think everybody is on board with that [...]

I'm against it, so kindly don't speak for all of us. I saw a few others post saying the same.

Pay-to-Skip cash-shop options are still a "softer" form of Pay-to-Win as they allow players to bypass content and thus save time; time is an advantage. To me, it doesn't matter if the content has already been cleared by one of a Player's characters; that doesn't mean they deserve the option to buy it for their other characters that haven't earned it.

The idea itself, skipping stuff which you've done several times, isn't bad. The bad thing is to monetize every phase and step of it instead of putting it into the game for everyone. This is a monetized QoL patch.

Ertosi

Yes it's P2W.

max_only wrote: »

The stream is on now. They just said it will be per character and it will be just skyshards zone achievements at first and IF it goes well they MAY allow already earned skill lines like Psijic Order to be purchased for alts.

lol at the "per character" part. Have no doubt, it's going to be milked for everything they can.

But it's such a slippery slope. First Skill Points through skyshards. Maybe guild Skill Lines next. If so, probably weapon and class lines after that. Once it's done, anyone with a wallet will just be able to buy their new characters piecemeal in the Crown Store.

Vandril

No it's not P2W.

Jhalin wrote: »

It’s not sharing achievements, it’s buying power with cash. The people who will use it don’t care about characters, they just want their power with as little time spent as possible.

I will use this if I feel it's priced fairly. And I will do so because I want to play the character I care about in content I care about, not run around mindlessly across overland zones and running passed 1-shot mobs of no difficulty or intrigue in delves to collect all the glowy things. And no, I won't slow down and "acquire Skyshards naturally instead of grinding them", as many opponents of account-wide Skyshards tend to suggest, because I have content I'd like to play and it is not the overland content I've already taken my time to enjoy at least once.

I'm the kind of person that does things once. Books? Read it once. Games? Play it to completion once. Movies? Watch it once. Shows? Watch it once. I don't enjoy doing the same exact activity more than once. So while I enjoyed and was engrossed in overland content the first time I roleplayed through it and will enjoy future overland content as it gets released, I will almost never enjoy going through any of it again.

It's not that I "don't care about characters". On the contrary, I love coming up with backstories and deciding on their personalities and how they'll solve problems differently than my other characters. But in the interest of not boring myself to tears by doing content I've already done, and for players like me, gameplay concessions must be made. I will buy the skyshards for my alts, and I will then go on to immediately enjoy the characters I've created by joining them in activities I enjoy.

I absolutely wish it weren't (or won't be) a cash shop feature - it should be a basic game feature - but I will take advantage of it to increase my enjoyment of the game in any form I find at least reasonable.

FierceSam

Yes it's P2W.

While the notion that skyshard achievements should be account rather than character bound has the appeal of convenience, it is a genuinely bad idea. What’s more this implementation of it is nothing more than a naked cash grab. And a blatant stalking horse for future P2W content.

If ZOS genuinely thought having to actually play the game was stopping people from creating alts, they would simply implement this as a QoL update. Clearly they don’t think this is an issue, the fact that they sell extra character slots shows they KNOW it’s not stopping people creating alts, but they can see that there is a demand for this that they can cash in on.

Now advancement of alts will be entirely dependent on your willingness to pay extra. Want to jump from no skills to all of them in an instant? No time, skill, or ability required? That will be a ton of crowns. Can’t be bothered to play the game, don’t worry you can pay the game for your laziness.

The ultimate goal is to sell you a premade endgame character with everything bolted on so you don’t even have to get your paddle fingers dirtied by actually playing the game. They’ll even send you gameplay footage of ‘your’ character doing everything you can’t be bothered to. And a certificate to hang on your wall listing all the non-accomplishments you didn’t earn on your journey. You won’t even have to play the game to win the skin.

This is the worst idea since the introduction of coloured in gamble boxes.

Facefister

Yes it's P2W.

Vandril wrote: »

Jhalin wrote: »

It’s not sharing achievements, it’s buying power with cash. The people who will use it don’t care about characters, they just want their power with as little time spent as possible.

I will use this if I feel it's priced fairly. And I will do so because I want to play the character I care about in content I care about, not run around mindlessly across overland zones and running passed 1-shot mobs of no difficulty or intrigue in delves to collect all the glowy things. And no, I won't slow down and "acquire Skyshards naturally instead of grinding them", as many opponents of account-wide Skyshards tend to suggest, because I have content I'd like to play and it is not the overland content I've already taken my time to enjoy at least once.

I'm the kind of person that does things once. Books? Read it once. Games? Play it to completion once. Movies? Watch it once. Shows? Watch it once. I don't enjoy doing the same exact activity more than once. So while I enjoyed and was engrossed in overland content the first time I roleplayed through it and will enjoy future overland content as it gets released, I will almost never enjoy going through any of it again.

It's not that I "don't care about characters". On the contrary, I love coming up with backstories and deciding on their personalities and how they'll solve problems differently than my other characters. But in the interest of not boring myself to tears by doing content I've already done, and for players like me, gameplay concessions must be made. I will buy the skyshards for my alts, and I will then go on to immediately enjoy the characters I've created by joining them in activities I enjoy.

I absolutely wish it weren't (or won't be) a cash shop feature - it should be a basic game feature - but I will take advantage of it to increase my enjoyment of the game in any form I find at least reasonable.

That's the entire point of it. Putting monetized band aids on the broken systems like in this case, leveling an alt. Why patch it when you can sell the patch. Just like the Welkynar motifs. Make the grind so long and boring so people can just buy it for 6k crowns.

Tandor

No it's not P2W.

Zer0oo wrote: »

If you already unlocked it on another char, i see no reason to not give it to alts. It is not like it is challenging or even entertaining to get all the skyshards you need for your 10+th char. Same goes for your the boring grind guilds like mages, fighters and psijic.

And xp? If not, why not - given that it must be boring because players grind it on alts at dolmens etc.

The sad thing is the number of players who wanted automatic account-wide skyshards and thought it should be free but who aren't complaining now they've got to pay for them. However, my hunch is that it will be very different when they discover just how much they're going to have to pay.

Stranger

Yes it's P2W.

I think the term pay to win is too black and white. I think a better question to ask is if buying skyshards is paying for power? And my answer is yes. If it were up to me I wouldn't add the ability to buy skyshards, if I had to compromise then I would make it a one time purchase per account where all the characters share the skyshards.

Othniel327

No it's not P2W.

I don't think it's pay to win. It's pay for the convenience of not having to do every single thing over again for shards. Especially Cyrodiil. I'll probably get the unlock if it's priced reasonably.

kind_hero

No it's not P2W.

Other games have account shared achievements, also ESO has gear, outfits and dyes account wide, so skyshards will not be something exceptional. The issue here is that you have to pay if you want this shortcut. Also there will be a matter of the cost too, but I think this is more good than bad. Some skyshards are hard to farm, like Cyrodiil.

I got ALL skyshards in the game on my main char, so I don't really want to do that again. Same with motif knowledge or the lore books or the Monster Hunter kills (just 3 examples that came through my mind).

dogman

No it's not P2W.

Leeched wrote: »

Knowing ZO$ the price for this will be exorbitant high so no one will buy it anyways

no u

Cyhawk

Other.

Its pay for convenience. Same with Horse training, Vamp/WW Bites (I hate these) and pretty much everything else in the crown store.

Since everything is available in game, you're just paying with USD what you could farm yourself.

The only thing I can think of in the Crown shop that may be considered a PTW feature is the race change token. Since you cant ever earn another race change through in-game actions. Make another character you say? I'd love to, but im maxed out. (I'd totally buy more character slots. 60 would be nice. Two of each class [dedicated] for every race in each alliance.)

Ertosi

Yes it's P2W.

kind_hero wrote: »

Other games have account shared achievements, also ESO has gear, outfits and dyes account wide, so skyshards will not be something exceptional. The issue here is that you have to pay if you want this shortcut. Also there will be a matter of the cost too, but I think this is more good than bad. Some skyshards are hard to farm, like Cyrodiil.

I got ALL skyshards in the game on my main char, so I don't really want to do that again. Same with motif knowledge or the lore books or the Monster Hunter kills (just 3 examples that came through my mind).

Problem is, it's pretty different and they aren't really comparable. It makes sense for gear, outfits, and dyes to be account wide because it makes sense that your characters could easily share those. It makes sense for CP to be shared because it was specifically designed to be an account wide system and a primary means of an account's vertical progression at higher levels.

It does not make sense for skyshards to be account wide. One character finding a skyshard shouldn't mean that all of your other characters gain their power as well. This is especially true as they give Skill Points, which those other characters haven't earned. The same would hold true for achievements. Finishing vMA on one character doesn't mean all of your other characters should be able to share in the achievement; they haven't earned it. Again, the same holds true for Skill Lines. Just because one of your characters have joined a guild and ran all of their errands to progress doesn't mean squat for your other characters; they still need to do the same.