Skyshard achievement purchase

CleymenZero

Laz wrote: »

I'm going to revive this thread because I personally feel that this is questionable.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Could you please help us and bring more transparency about this such as the cost expectations or if there is a way to get this for free outside of logging in for daily rewards?

I get the idea of continuous monetization but at a certain point, while all things are optional and it's very similar to what Warframe does (not quite on par) this a sub based game, with people paying for expansions and (thankfully) getting the DLC free with the sub.

The game I'm sure has it's whales that just buy everything up the moment it's out but at what point does it become too much and players just sit back and kind of feel disgusted with the idea of paying for thing x y or z.

Thanks for voicing your concern!

There was an outcry when racial passives changed and we got a meager 3 token, I remember that there was also an outcry about the pyandorean motif being Crown gem only and they went back and made them available through fishing I think.

All this to say that I don't understand why people don't bring up the subject of skyshard purchase more. They do to say it is p2w but ZOS is not going back on this... So the best outcome is to argue for a fairer price so that not only whales can benefit from the feature.

My opinion is that 10-20 cents per skyshard would be 1- accessible to all and 2 - a reasonable price, enough to be alt friendly at 30 to 60 cents per skill point...

Even then, it's still really expensive so I wonder why they don't make this account-wide...

sudaki_eso

Are you guys really willing to spent a couple of k crowns on skyshards? Maybe i am missing something but unless you want to max out every chars crafting ability and only do power leveling on your chars i dont see any reason to spent crowns on them...

Just by leveling, playing pledges, doing the main story as well as the main zone stories you will get more then enough to unlock all the passives, weapon skills and some other usefull stuff you need. Did this with all my chars and still have skill points left...

And yes, i expect it to be quite pricy and i have the feeling that the raid dummy will also be quite expensive, i doubt zos will sell both of them cheap.

Edaphon

CleymenZero wrote: »

All this to say that I don't understand why people don't bring up the subject of skyshard purchase more.

Because it's completely optional.

You can still get skyshards the usual way without paying a single crown and that's what most people are going to do, regardless of the price.
If they bother with skyshards at all, that is. There are plenty of other ways to get more than enough skillpoints.

katorga

I don't buy anything with crowns except rare race changes. So the eso+ crowns add up over time. I'd rather spend them on getting rid of grind rather than outfits and housing which hold zero interest for me.

tmbrinks

CleymenZero wrote: »

Laz wrote: »

I'm going to revive this thread because I personally feel that this is questionable.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Could you please help us and bring more transparency about this such as the cost expectations or if there is a way to get this for free outside of logging in for daily rewards?

I get the idea of continuous monetization but at a certain point, while all things are optional and it's very similar to what Warframe does (not quite on par) this a sub based game, with people paying for expansions and (thankfully) getting the DLC free with the sub.

The game I'm sure has it's whales that just buy everything up the moment it's out but at what point does it become too much and players just sit back and kind of feel disgusted with the idea of paying for thing x y or z.

Thanks for voicing your concern!

There was an outcry when racial passives changed and we got a meager 3 token, I remember that there was also an outcry about the pyandorean motif being Crown gem only and they went back and made them available through fishing I think.

All this to say that I don't understand why people don't bring up the subject of skyshard purchase more. They do to say it is p2w but ZOS is not going back on this... So the best outcome is to argue for a fairer price so that not only whales can benefit from the feature.

My opinion is that 10-20 cents per skyshard would be 1- accessible to all and 2 - a reasonable price, enough to be alt friendly at 30 to 60 cents per skill point...

Even then, it's still really expensive so I wonder why they don't make this account-wide...

As others have said. You can get them in game, there is no need to buy them. I'm not exactly keen on the idea, I think it borders on P2W (not quite there, since you can do it in game), but for the whales out there, people with lots of money to spend, fine, they can take a shortcut to getting skyshards. They will still be there for you to get in-game, at no cost to you.

My concern is that there are a lot of people who don't have the money to spend, who will feel like they need to spend the money on unlocking these skyshards on an alt. But I guess that's just about every business today... advertising to people who can't really afford things, it's the reason we have a whole industry devoted to debt

CleymenZero

sudaki_eso wrote: »

Are you guys really willing to spent a couple of k crowns on skyshards? Maybe i am missing something but unless you want to max out every chars crafting ability and only do power leveling on your chars i dont see any reason to spent crowns on them...

Just by leveling, playing pledges, doing the main story as well as the main zone stories you will get more then enough to unlock all the passives, weapon skills and some other usefull stuff you need. Did this with all my chars and still have skill points left...

And yes, i expect it to be quite pricy and i have the feeling that the raid dummy will also be quite expensive, i doubt zos will sell both of them cheap.

Yes I am willing to pay a couple of Crowns for skyshards because I am unwilling to farm skyshards on 11-12 characters. Although, if the price is not right, I WILL slap my speed build onto all my alts to farm something like 30-40 skill points per toon... I could probably do 2 in the span of 6 hours.

Again, that is if the price is right. Whether it is expensive or not depends on whether it is considered expensive to get it on all your alts or it is expensive for 1 alt. There's only one of the 2 scenarios that would make me a customer...

CleymenZero

Edaphon wrote: »

CleymenZero wrote: »

All this to say that I don't understand why people don't bring up the subject of skyshard purchase more.

Because it's completely optional.

You can still get skyshards the usual way without paying a single crown and that's what most people are going to do, regardless of the price.
If they bother with skyshards at all, that is. There are plenty of other ways to get more than enough skillpoints.

Yeah, I have to repeat myself and it's fine because I wouldn't spend my time reading so many comments other threads but I've said it in other threads: I understand they are optional and that's fine. I just have 14 characters like so many others and have spent a lot of time collecting skyshards. I must've collected 1500-1600 if not more across all my characters so I'm starting to feel it.

So I would buy if reasonable but understand they won't price it for people like me, they will price it for the guys with 1-2 alts and for the whales.

tmbrinks wrote: »

CleymenZero wrote: »

Laz wrote: »

I'm going to revive this thread because I personally feel that this is questionable.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Could you please help us and bring more transparency about this such as the cost expectations or if there is a way to get this for free outside of logging in for daily rewards?

I get the idea of continuous monetization but at a certain point, while all things are optional and it's very similar to what Warframe does (not quite on par) this a sub based game, with people paying for expansions and (thankfully) getting the DLC free with the sub.

The game I'm sure has it's whales that just buy everything up the moment it's out but at what point does it become too much and players just sit back and kind of feel disgusted with the idea of paying for thing x y or z.

Thanks for voicing your concern!

There was an outcry when racial passives changed and we got a meager 3 token, I remember that there was also an outcry about the pyandorean motif being Crown gem only and they went back and made them available through fishing I think.

All this to say that I don't understand why people don't bring up the subject of skyshard purchase more. They do to say it is p2w but ZOS is not going back on this... So the best outcome is to argue for a fairer price so that not only whales can benefit from the feature.

My opinion is that 10-20 cents per skyshard would be 1- accessible to all and 2 - a reasonable price, enough to be alt friendly at 30 to 60 cents per skill point...

Even then, it's still really expensive so I wonder why they don't make this account-wide...

As others have said. You can get them in game, there is no need to buy them. I'm not exactly keen on the idea, I think it borders on P2W (not quite there, since you can do it in game), but for the whales out there, people with lots of money to spend, fine, they can take a shortcut to get skyshards. They will still be there for you to get in-game, at no cost to you.

My concern is that there are a lot of people who don't have the money to spend, who will feel like they need to spend the money on unlocking these skyshards on an alt. But I guess that's just about every business today... advertising to people who can't really afford things, it's the reason we have a whole industry devoted to debt

I consider it pay2skip more than pay to win because you have to have done it once to access it.

That being said, making it inaccessible for the masses would give it more of a p2w feel even though it still wouldn't be. Having a feature in the Crown Store that only the 1% or the single alt dude can access and excluding others by pay-gating this feature would be the most disappointing (and the likeliest) thing they could do.

There's a value to everything. This feature has a value to me but the price ZOS will attach to it will most probably far exceed the value I give it.

All this considered, I'm still hoping for something reasonable for someone with a lot of alts like 250 Crowns per zone. With that, I would spend 300$ on it. If 300$ only completes 1 or 2 toons, I'm so out...

NordSwordnBoard

I hope they are priced as a convenience, not a luxury. Lately I've been discouraged enough that I'm considering skipping the new chapter. They offer so much less than Vvardenfell did, and all the talk about necro ending up just like warden has me feeling apprehensive. LOL if its priced like mundus or outfit slots.

I have to buy character slot(s), and I planned on mixing purchased and gathered skyshards to level a necro. This whole thing might not be worth the trouble...

CleymenZero

NordSwordnBoard wrote: »

I hope they are priced as a convenience, not a luxury. Lately I've been discouraged enough that I'm considering skipping the new chapter. They offer so much less than Vvardenfell did, and all the talk about necro ending up just like warden has me feeling apprehensive. LOL if its priced like mundus or outfit slots.

I have to buy character slot(s), and I planned on mixing purchased and gathered skyshards to level a necro. This whole thing might not be worth the trouble...

Same, I want it as a convenience, not a luxury.

I have 14 and soon 16 characters, with that amount of characters, even if they price it as a convenience, it's still gonna end up being a luxury for me lol

Aurie

Interesting that Crown purchase of Skyshards is not for the whole zone, but just 3 skyshards = 1 skill point.

I hope ZOS will take the price into account.

CleymenZero

Aurelle1 wrote: »

Interesting that Crown purchase of Skyshards is not for the whole zone, but just 3 skyshards = 1 skill point.

I hope ZOS will take the price into account.

I believe it is per zone. I am converting it into skyshards and skill points per $ because the value is then less disguised than the unit zone/$.

I'm establishing what would make me OK with the price not happy with it. It's too much to hope for but I'm at least being transparent.

Hamfast

Personally, there is only 1 zone I would buy the sky shards for... Cyrodiil, I have gained all the sky shards on 1 character and as a person that Hates PVP that is about all I will do...

As for the price, if they can ask for over $100.00 in crowns for a digital house, I would expect the sky shards to cost several thousand crowns for a zone (Perhaps based on the number of sky shards) but if it makes it to the live servers, we can all be surprised at the price...

Aurie

Having checked the PTS Crown Store this morning, I can confirm that each individual purchase is for 3 skyshards in a particular zone (and therefore 1 skill point).

Nestor

Aurelle1 wrote: »

Having checked the PTS Crown Store this morning, I can confirm that each individual purchase is for 3 skyshards in a particular zone (and therefore 1 skill point).

Which is about useless. This is 10 minutes of work. Who is going to buy their way out of that?

Edaphon

Aurelle1 wrote: »

Having checked the PTS Crown Store this morning, I can confirm that each individual purchase is for 3 skyshards in a particular zone (and therefore 1 skill point).

Did you by any chance only check zones with 3 skyshards like Betnikh or Bal Foyen?

Aurie

Edaphon wrote: »

Aurelle1 wrote: »

Having checked the PTS Crown Store this morning, I can confirm that each individual purchase is for 3 skyshards in a particular zone (and therefore 1 skill point).

Did you by any chance only check zones with 3 skyshards like Betnikh or Bal Foyen?

Edaphon, you are quite right.....I only checked the zones at the top of the page.

Apologies!

CleymenZero

Sorry for repeating myself but here:

5 piece Fiord
5 piece jailbreaker

Make sure one of the pieces is a shield with divines on it.
Go either full Divines or 2 pieces of Well-fitted.
Put 100 CP into Sprinter. And rest of CP in Lover for Windrunning
Respec stats for stamina.
Chose Steed Mundus.
Transmute the 3 Jewelry to Swift. Ideally purple jewelry.

With this, a large zone can be completed in about 20 minutes. You almost run faster or as fast as a fully upgraded mount. That running speed is kept in delves where you lose a lot of time getting around.

So considering this, skyshards aren't worth THAT much money...

xaraan

Sorry man, but I have to disagree with you OP. This should not be cheap. Like anything else in the game that you can get in game, the crown store equivalent should not be more convenient than the in-game version. Choice should be price or do the work. At 100 crowns per zone, that would be laughable.

About the only thing over priced in the store right now IMO are the outfit slots - those aren't earn-able anywhere but crown store and should either be much cheaper or an additional slot for your whole account, not one character.

CleymenZero

xaraan wrote: »

Sorry man, but I have to disagree with you OP. This should not be cheap. Like anything else in the game that you can get in game, the crown store equivalent should not be more convenient than the in-game version. Choice should be price or do the work. At 100 crowns per zone, that would be laughable.

About the only thing over priced in the store right now IMO are the outfit slots - those aren't earn-able anywhere but crown store and should either be much cheaper or an additional slot for your whole account, not one character.

"About the only thing over priced in the store right now IMO are the outfit slots - those aren't earn-able anywhere but crown store and should either be much cheaper or an additional slot for your whole account, not one character."

That's why I say people should not rely on Crown Store pricing of other items to establish a price for this particular feature.

I wouldn't mind the Skyshard achievement being relatively expensive if it was account-wide. I would figure 3-4k Crowns per zone per account should be fine.

100 Crowns would mean more than 3.6k Crown per character. Is 36$ per character that cheap? I mean... I know the purpose of this feature is not to make you instantly get all skyshards on all characters but it's still not a reason to make it completely unattainable.

It should be priced as a convenience and not a luxury. Skyshards are not that hard to get, it's just tedious. So I would think the value of this achievement should be equivalent to time saved and with the proper gear, it goes fast. I would do it to prove it but I'm gonna wait for the price on this thing first. I will likely be doing it all myself.

Laz

xaraan wrote: »

Sorry man, but I have to disagree with you OP. This should not be cheap. Like anything else in the game that you can get in game, the crown store equivalent should not be more convenient than the in-game version. Choice should be price or do the work. At 100 crowns per zone, that would be laughable.

About the only thing over priced in the store right now IMO are the outfit slots - those aren't earn-able anywhere but crown store and should either be much cheaper or an additional slot for your whole account, not one character.

I think it's best to maintain a healthy conversation about this whole topic as it seems to never cease to be a topic of conversation ever since it's announcement/release.

When you look at the store it's packed with convenience. Cheapest mount right now is only ~$4 and you can use it right away. XP boosts, health/magicka/stam potions combo, food buff, motif buying, vampire bite/werewolf, and research acceleration and many many more. This is the things most people consider to be utility (yes, motif's included) and probably use often. Yet when we look at the cost, it's pretty high. It really is calculated to a break point where the consumer will say "screw it, it's worth it to have this thing now" and for a multi functional way to play game (b2p and b2p+s2p for extra benefit) the pricing, the offers and many of the other things are questionable. Another example would be character slots, great for people who are b2p but the s2p crowd should not at all have to pay that much for a character slot (if they really need it) $15 for a whole extra slot? Another month of my sub for this slot? Seems kind of wild to me to be asking for this much for essentially a save slot I'm already paying for.

If you take a look at the failure that Fallout 76 was/is and how much their in-game purchaes (certainly not an MTX considering cost) it's the exact same thought philosophy in ESO. What makes it okay for ESO and not okay for Fallout 76? ESO they already have your money in more than 1 way from DLC, expansions, buying the base game, subscriptions, and an in-game shop that has things priced almost on par with what Fallout 76 has compartively when it comes to items and "shortcuts" and we sit here and nod and say it's okay for ESO but mad for Fallout 76?

It makes little to no sense to have people who sub pay as much as they do in the crown shop. People who sub may get exclusive deals in the crown store but that should be all the time for everything. 25% to 50% off easily. And don't get me started on the ESO version of lootboxes, the most over priced low utility I've seen yet. For 15 crates it's 5000 crowns, about $35. You are paying ~2.42x more than what you are getting. Sure you get 4 things in there, but it's random (obviously) but you look at most games that offer this sort of real money aquisition of stuff and you at least get a 1:1 when it comes to cost to box (sometimes more boxes the more money you spend in the case of Overwatch).

Many people will argue you have the monthly crowns you get to spend as you please. "Free" ~$15 crowns is a nice feeling, but is it really free? At the end of the day that's what you are actually paying for to use in their shop to give them money. If you don't spend it right away, you'll spend it eventually, and they still get their $15 either way. All the other stuff is stuff you should unlock in the game as you play or is an added bonus that is nice but it's all quasi beneficial in the sense that the things you are getting with the $15 but not really in the sense that it's stuff people who do not sub and do daily log-in bonus can get for essentially free.

This is why I call for more transparency, better scheduling and information to players, announcing deals and sales prior to them happening and better pricing to your players who are a subscriber versus those who are b2p. The FOMO is real in the ESO shop, and it's really dissapointing.

This is across the board and stems from this particular posts concern.

Cheezits94

I want this to be reasonably priced, but seeing how high the price on other convenience items is, I think ZOS will go totally over the top with those skyshard prices. Once I saw there was no "All Tamriel Skyshards"-Bundle-option to buy but instead every single zone was sold separately, I was sure the price for everything together would be horrendous.

A mundus stone for your home costs 4000 Crowns. ONE stone.
What does it save? A loadscreen and a 40 second ride to the overworld equivalent of that stone.
For it to really be a convenience for your home you need more than one mundus stone. At least two, probably three or four, depending on how much you switch between builds / different types of content. That's 8000-16000 crowns for something that saves you mere minutes.

Heck, it's 18k Crowns to fully upgrade your horse with crowns. I'd be very, very pleasantly surprised if all skyshards together cost less than that per character. My call is for something around 25k crowns (MINIMUM! it'll probably even more) if you buy every zone. I hope it's a lot less, but I don't see any reason why that would be the case.

CleymenZero

Cheezits94 wrote: »

I want this to be reasonably priced, but seeing how high the price on other convenience items is, I think ZOS will go totally over the top with those skyshard prices. Once I saw there was no "All Tamriel Skyshards"-Bundle-option to buy but instead every single zone was sold separately, I was sure the price for everything together would be horrendous.

A mundus stone for your home costs 4000 Crowns. ONE stone.
What does it save? A loadscreen and a 40 second ride to the overworld equivalent of that stone.
For it to really be a convenience for your home you need more than one mundus stone. At least two, probably three or four, depending on how much you switch between builds / different types of content. That's 8000-16000 crowns for something that saves you mere minutes.

Heck, it's 18k Crowns to fully upgrade your horse with crowns. I'd be very, very pleasantly surprised if all skyshards together cost less than that per character. My call is for something around 25k crowns (MINIMUM! it'll probably even more) if you buy every zone. I hope it's a lot less, but I don't see any reason why that would be the case.

I sort of expect this kind of pricing, by putting a post like this out there, I'm trying to field user's opinion. Im trying to see if we can't build momentum to make this accessible.

Everybody seems jaded though and I understand, all we've seen up to now is crazy pricing.

To be honest, even at 3k Crowns for 1 character, they pricing is potentially crazy if you consider that it's not account-wide... At 3k, I would probably buy it for all my characters so that about 15 times.... That 45k Crowns... That 450$ in my region (about 350$ USD?). That's a huge chunk of change to save 200 hours of grinding but I'd do it (most characters got 30% of skyshards just by doing psijic and mages guild so it's a passive gain). You can't apply your hourly wage to calculate the value of this achievement purchase because its leasure time. I've put about 1000$ (650-700$ USD) into this game but must've played more than 2000 hours in the last 2 years. If you want to set a per hour price for this achievement, I'd say that's a good start. You would get to 400$ for all characters.

But I'm just trying to rationalize here which is bit the good way to go about it. The price on most items in the Crown store is insane.

I bought 4k Crowns of riding lessons across my 14 characters. Can't bring myself to pay more and regret doing so. I've bought many character slots as you can see but that's a one time thing so I'm less irritated by that price. The only hiuse I got was a 60k house to put dummies in. I bought the Mundus Stones when at 40% discount... I'm trying to be smart with my money even though I'm spending way more than I should.

I just hope they surprise release an account-wide option...

Anyways, I'm just being hopeful. I know I'm going to be disappointed...

Keihndeth

I'll be honest. I play WoW and ESO. I hated when Blizzard added the $60 character boost. This feels very much in the same vein. It's going to destroy the RPG elements of the game. This game is built around it's immersion and RPG like no other MMO currently is. I'm a Day 1 player and I've defended the financial decisions being made more than I should have. This is a bridge too far. $150+ houses is egregious, but I'm OK with it as it is an optional system. When you tack costs and money onto a system that yields real gameplay impacts, that becomes a real problem. This is a real problem. This may be the straw that breaks the camels back for me after 5 years.

TheNightflame

considering the fact a zone is about 45 mins, and wage wise that's about 10$, any more than 1000 crowns per zone and it makes zero sense to buy skyshards

TheNightflame

if they're account wide unlocks and not per character, then I might do 1500 per zone

CleymenZero

TheNightflame wrote: »

if they're account wide unlocks and not per character, then I might do 1500 per zone

See, I would do 1500 per zone for account wide but significantly less for single toon. I'm talking 200 Crowns per zone. I'll soon have 16 characters so at 200 Crowns per zone per toon, that's a chunk of change...

CleymenZero

Keihndeth wrote: »

I'll be honest. I play WoW and ESO. I hated when Blizzard added the $60 character boost. This feels very much in the same vein. It's going to destroy the RPG elements of the game. This game is built around it's immersion and RPG like no other MMO currently is. I'm a Day 1 player and I've defended the financial decisions being made more than I should have. This is a bridge too far. $150+ houses is egregious, but I'm OK with it as it is an optional system. When you tack costs and money onto a system that yields real gameplay impacts, that becomes a real problem. This is a real problem. This may be the straw that breaks the camels back for me after 5 years.

I understand your concern and am with you until a certain point.

I'm an altoholic, I like looking at my roster when people ask me to DPS and go: "what do I want to play tonight?"

I also like to have multiple skill lines ready to go. I often 2H, Bow/Bow or DW on stam. I like to have 1h and shield too for when I pvp. The constant respecs irritate me greatly. I want QoL and convenience through this. If the price is too high, I'll collect them myself otherwise, I'd like to have the option of just having easy access to more skill points.

People keep saying it takes 40-45 minutes to clear a zone. I do it in 20-25mins with my speed build? It's easier than people think but I just can't bring myself to doing it on all my toons. I've collected about 30% on 12 characters, 60% in 1 and 100% on my main. That's probably around 1500 skyshards. I don't want to do it anymore, at this point it prevents me from enjoying the game.

To be clear, I'm not of those who initially wanted that feature but now that I see its going to happen. I've decided I could make use of it.

ZeroXFF

This skyshard thing doesn't make sense anyways unless it also rewards the quest and public dungeon skill points. If I only get the skyshards, I have to go to those zones anyways, and may as well collect the shards on the way instead of buying anything.

tmbrinks

ZeroXFF wrote: »

This skyshard thing doesn't make sense anyways unless it also rewards the quest and public dungeon skill points. If I only get the skyshards, I have to go to those zones anyways, and may as well collect the shards on the way instead of buying anything.

People asked for it... ZoS determined that they could squeeze a few dollars out of people who might not think of it like you are... and the coding for it must not have been that expensive. They ran the cost analysis, determined they'd make a profit and pulled the trigger.

I for one, won't even consider buying them, regardless of the price (okay, maybe if they were <100 crowns a big zone, which they won't be, given past precedent of other items) The time to collect is not worth it.

Laz

Seems our fears have come to pass. The price is quite high all things considered.

Start speaking out.