is ZOS developing inconvenient content to make money?

mairwen85

kargen27 wrote: »

Short answer... no they are not.

Even shorter answer... Yes.

TelvanniWizard

They always have. Just see their scam crates.

Cavedog

Funny. We were just talking about this in PvP raid tonight. None of us had read this topic on the forum as far as I know....but then we laughed and said "good, we PvP'rs, and the PvE guys can support us. We are OK with that."

...and the PvE guys can laugh at those of us who never stop complaining about the lag, but still play anyway.....

FierceSam

I certainly hope not.

I prefer to think that the Psijiic Order questline was just really badly designed (as a low grade scavenger hunt) and could not be fundamentally altered by the time it was tested and panned. It’s an f-ing pain to do for no great reward and features some of the least enjoyable quasi-racist dialogue in the game. You would hope that ZOS would learn from this but the lazy way many prologue quests are designed (mammoth hunt for example) suggests no one there has learnt anything. That you can now pay money to bunk off the quest is only going to encourage lazy arse shite game design like this in future. This is by far the greatest danger to the playability/enjoyment of the game.

DLC dungeon design/rewards is different. You need some content for the very committed endgame player. If it’s not there they’ll just leave and that’s bad. But however difficult dungeon content is, it’s somewhat tedious the 10th (or maybe even 5th) time you’ve run through it (as many people who once found WGT or ICP challenging are finding during the Imperial City event), so some kind of reward mechanism is required. At the moment ZOS have settled on motifs and monster motifs to encourage repeated visits to high level content. And hopefully the arse who devised the whole fragments of fragments of motifs has been punished alongside the Psijiic Order quest creator. Releasing full motif books (often before the motifs themselves can be farmed) at stupidly high prices is a bit of a crappy thing to do, but it’s fundamentally milking the completionists who ZOS simply see as cash monkeys.

ZOS is clearly going for a paid win option - where $150 will get you a fully specced endgame character who will help you pay to avoid increasingly badly designed and irritating steppen-fetchit questlines - which isn’t a great look. And not something that should be encouraged.

Commancho

Skill line achievements should be account wide. This game has enough content for thousands of hours of fun without additional unnecessary grind. The worst part of it is that you cannot gift unlock tokens from the crown store so as the result you cannot purchase them with a gold. Players have been asking for that since ages. Such a bad move from ZOS and epic PR failure for doubtful profits. I have no problem with them charging for cosmetics as much as they want but this was cheap move.

MartiniDaniels

OP, you are wrong.

1. People need some "small scale" PVE content as some kind of fast accessible challenge... trials is another story, trials are more about team work and perfect execution of pre-defined strategy as a group, but vDLC pugs is clearly about personal skill.. yeah 2-3 good players can carry 1-2 average players, but still it will be a challenge for all 4;
2. People need incentive to do those dungeons, otherwise nobody will play them at all after several initial runs;
3. If motif wasn't in crown store prices for motif pages from new dungeons will be much higher. As for now they are "capped" by crown store price. For example let's take 1 crown = 300 gold (pc eu). That means that 4k crown book is equivalent of ~1.2 M gold. Motif contains 14 pages, quite obviously chest/legs/staves will be more expensive and belts/1H weapons generally less expensive, but overall their combined price will be comparable to 1.2-1.5 M.. even if there are little to none in stock. If not for crown store alternative, cost of some motif pages will be millions..

Itzmichi

Well, every business must make money. Otherwise, servers shut down and everybody needs to play WOW Classic. I mean sure, Psijic Skill Line is definitely a prominent example, it's a pain in the butt to level it. In the end its the decision of the customer to spend their money the way they see it fit. They just supplying a demand here, might be self-created but in the end it is your decision that generates their profit.

UnseenCat

Keep an eye on the mount sprint bug-or-not problem brewing on PTS right now.

When the last patch went live, there was a "bug" where your mount's sprint would slow down when the mount stamina bar dropped to zero. (For years, the mount stamina bar has been the measure of how easy it is to knock you off your mount, but mounts could sprint forever.) It was declared a bug when the complaints came in, and fixed the very next week.

Now, there's word that this behavior may be returned as an intended behavior on the PTS for the upcoming patch.

If mount stamina determines how long your mount can sprint, low-level toons are in for a very slow, slogging time running around to get skyshards and wayshrines.

Of course, there are Crown store riding lessons and buyable skyshards for alts. Is this going to be a forced inconvenience to drive purchases of these items?

If so, it's going to feel like a gut-punch to long-time players.

Minyassa

I don't think that they're deliberately developing inconvenient content to make money off it. I think that they are just quick to notice what some players find inconvenient about normal game features, and do not miss the opportunity to develop a chance at making money off that. For many of us, hunting skyshards on all our toons or doing event activities to get the tickets or what-have-you is no burden, just a normal part of the game. If it was over-the-top inconvenient to the point that very few people could stand to do a thing and it was the prevailing belief that one *had* to either use the crown store or quit the game, that would be deliberately developing inconvenient content. They're just mercenary and grasping, so far, but not outright extorting us.

JKorr

Wing wrote: »

I have been a long time sub and supporter of *most* things ZOS has done. I personally moved to ESO from a "F2P" mmo that I was literally spending lots of money on every week to stay competitive and nickle and dimed you for every tiny convenience or bit of content it could.

so anytime anyone has been like "ESO is pay to win" I just throw my head back and laugh.

HOWEVER

as I sat looking at the motifs in the crown store because a cursory search of guild stores not only didn't have the motif I was looking for, the pieces they did have were AMAZINGLY overpriced, I sat pondering to myself "hmm okay 4k crowns well that's not that bad I. . .WAIT A MINUTE!"

all of a sudden I thought: "is the content BS so that we will drop real money for the rewards. . .?!"

this was touched on back when the psijic skill line (among others) was added to the crown store, the fact that it might set a trend of designing BS content to get people to pay real money to skip it. the same thing can be said of motifs.

dungeon DLC's are by far the least popular and most complained about DLC content we get. are widely considered by the majority of average players to be too hard (something in fact ZOS devs brought up themselves, saying outright that people are not playing them) and are the sole location for many motifs. the amount of motifs being acquired by players compared to the amount of people able to access them is a COLLOSAL difference, and one only need to go search for the motifs in guild stores (if they are even for sale in the first place) to see the absolute crazy prices created by the rarity and scarcity.

but don't worry, the crown store is here to help. . .for 39.99 (or insert your appropriate price here to make a point)

You found pieces of the motif you wanted in the guild stores, and thought those pieces were AMAZINGLY overpriced. Thus you then made the connection that ZOS is somehow forcing players who put the pieces of the motif up for sale to list them at AMAZINGLY high prices. Because of course the *players* would never ask outrageous prices without being forced by ZOS to do that.

Never mind the prices that have been posted in the past for the aetherial ambrosia cipher and components, never mind the AMAZINGLY high prices for the motifs that aren't easy to farm [I've seen 100K + for some pieces], it isn't players charging the prices *they* want to get, its all a plot by ZOS to make people buy off the crown store.

You know, if that is the first conclusion you've come to, it might be time for a break from this game for you.

GrimTheReaper45

I dont know if their designing content around making you purchase things but they definitely have made things less convenient for the same of purchases.

Craft bag should be base game.
Dying costumes should base game
They sell skill lines and skyshards when for years we told them we wanted skyshards and lorebooks marked on map.

Keledus

I will probably get alot of hate on what I'm about to say but it's the truth whether you like it or not.
I dont like it myself much either but have to accept that it is the way it is and we quite frankly can't change it.
I certainly do agree that making players miserable kind of forcing them to purchase something to make it more convenient is horrible examples being the crafting bag.

ZOS is a company owned by another company and probably has many investors from a business point of view they have to create methods of generating revenue and stay profitable. Subscription and yearly chapter isn't enough especially for a game that isn't in its peak anymore.

Most companies know by now that buying power isn't the way to go and I think ZOS knows that aswell so they venture out trying to create revenue by pay for convenience I wouldn't be surprised that the content was developed to be rather annoying/boring so it pushes people to pay for convenience generating them revenue.

Rungar

all entertainment is designed to make money while keeping you busy and this is no different.

Wing wrote: »

I have been a long time sub and supporter of *most* things ZOS has done. I personally moved to ESO from a "F2P" mmo that I was literally spending lots of money on every week to stay competitive and nickle and dimed you for every tiny convenience or bit of content it could.

so anytime anyone has been like "ESO is pay to win" I just throw my head back and laugh.

HOWEVER

as I sat looking at the motifs in the crown store because a cursory search of guild stores not only didn't have the motif I was looking for, the pieces they did have were AMAZINGLY overpriced, I sat pondering to myself "hmm okay 4k crowns well that's not that bad I. . .WAIT A MINUTE!"

all of a sudden I thought: "is the content BS so that we will drop real money for the rewards. . .?!"

this was touched on back when the psijic skill line (among others) was added to the crown store, the fact that it might set a trend of designing BS content to get people to pay real money to skip it. the same thing can be said of motifs.

dungeon DLC's are by far the least popular and most complained about DLC content we get. are widely considered by the majority of average players to be too hard (something in fact ZOS devs brought up themselves, saying outright that people are not playing them) and are the sole location for many motifs. the amount of motifs being acquired by players compared to the amount of people able to access them is a COLLOSAL difference, and one only need to go search for the motifs in guild stores (if they are even for sale in the first place) to see the absolute crazy prices created by the rarity and scarcity.

but don't worry, the crown store is here to help. . .for 39.99 (or insert your appropriate price here to make a point)

i agree that the dlc dungeons are a complete and total failure of zos to measure their playerbase but you dont really need to collect any of them.

ZeroXFF

Psijic order isn't the worst offender though. Thieves guild and dark brotherhood are.

probabkyravi

Psijic skill line takes takes like 3 or 4 hours, yeah its quite dull but if people wanna pay Bethesda £10 an hour to skip it thats their problem.

I did the grind 10 times and its chilled, grab some books/shards/dolmens on the way, maybe watch TV or Voice-comms with friends. If impatient or people that lack time wanna pay then let them, I'm sure crown store is not making its millions from the rich kids that skip the grind and ZoS know we are not all afluent so I don't think they will abuse it.

Dungeons/trials/arena motifs as people say are to inspire stronger players to return to farm end-game content, this can only be a good thing for quite a few reasons.

My issue was/is houses and furnishings that can only be bought for crowns, I had 3.5 mil on my old account and had nothing to spend it on except crowns... This made me think as I don't want to promote crown selling/buying as its seemingly doing fine and crowns are over-priced.

UnseenCat

GrimTheReaper45 wrote: »

Craft bag should be base game.
Dying costumes should base game
They sell skill lines and skyshards when for years we told them we wanted skyshards and lorebooks marked on map.

I have to disagree on those particular items. Craft bag has always been an ESO Plus subscription perk, same with dyeing costumes. Perks for subscribers are a good way to encourage the optional subscription -- and subscribers supply steady income to "keep the lights on" which is what helps the game.

Purchaseables for skill lines and skyshards for alts -- once they've been collected "the hard way" on one character is a convenience thing to use or not.

Forced inconvenience is where all players -- regardless of subscription status or completion status of achievements on a toon -- is where something is so horribly grindy or a huge roadblock to essential progression that you have the choice to either pay for the "upgrade" or spend months and months grinding for agonizingly slow progress.

This is why I brought up the potential for riding stamina to become a forced inconvenience to sell Crown riding lessons and skyshards for alts. As the game stands today, leveling riding speed takes a long time, but at least if you can sprint at a reasonable speed as long as no enemies knock you off your horse, you can get around to collect overland skyshards and wayshrines and therefor progress your character fairly well. If you lose the sprint-regardless-of-riding-stamina mechanic, you'll very quickly discover that a baby toon can't even get across a town very fast at all. New players and old will feel like they literally can't get anywhere in the game world at first. Unless they spend money to buy Crown riding speed lessons, and/or purchaseable unlocks on alts. That's forced inconvenience, and it would be very disappointing to see it come to be.

Ode2Order

Of course there's going to be some grinding in an MMO. Otherwise there'd be no next goal for yourself to set and you wouldn't play anymore. I feel like it's a difference in mentality in players: they want the best stuff for the least amount of effort. And who wouldn't want that? But the point of a game is to work towards the best stuff. They're designed to make you release the happy hormone when you finally get that rare welkynar chest motif, when you get that maelstrom bow, when you get the sunspire mount, etc.
However, the crown store motifs are not designed for those that are willing to work towards getting them ingame. They're designed for people with limited time to play that still want to get some of the good items. The pricing isn't high because ZOS want all the dough (okay maybe some dough), they're high because it discourages players from just getting the thing for money since it's only a fiver anyway. They want you to play the game. That includes dungeon DLCs and grinding. There's no online game without online players.

MasterSpatula

I must be the only person who enjoys the Psijiic quest line.

As someone whose top priority is storytelling and character, I actually enjoy the process of listening to the Auger tell his tales and jokes, of dealing with the rifts that are the fallout of the storyline (and taking the opportunity for plenty of materials farming along the way), and learning the backstory of my questgiver.

For me, if I feel like I'm genuinely in the process of living a story, that's the opposite of a "grind."

Tigerseye

They could be doing this, to an extent, but if they do, people will lose the will to play the game at all and therefore, won't buy the motifs, either, for that reason.

To keep people playing (and paying), they have to offer good content, with decent rewards, in the hope that will then make people like the game enough to sub and/or to buy a few treats from the store.

Of course, this theory is assuming games are just money making endeavours, and not something else, and that the money men are both sensible and are, ultimately, in charge.

As opposed to the possibilty that, at least some, games are actually the online playgrounds of despotic people, intent on implementing their own, often weird, psychological agendas, regardless of the financial implications to the game of doing so.

After WoW WoD, I have little faith that the former is always the case.

UnseenCat

Maybe another way to put it is this: Forced inconvenience isn't pay-to-win, but it's so close to it it almost feels that way.

Pay-to-win equals putting the best gear behind a paywall, full-stop, with even the most grindy skill level-ups or collectable/craftable weapons/armor still pale in comparison.

Forced inconvenience equals making the grind so long and pointless that grinding is an achievement not of skill, but of nothing but sinking your time for months on end doing something mindless. Or interfering with game mechanics so much with an arbitrary obstacle that costs nothing in skill or engagement to overcome, only near-endless time-wasting,

Some would argue that inventory-juggling without the ESO+ craft bag is forced inconvenience, but while not having the craft bag makes inventory more tedious, I've seen people survive quite well without it. ESO was originally designed as a subscription-only game; the craft bag was somewhat of an awkward outgrowth of how to differentiate sub perks from non-sub play. ZOS essentially picked a perk based on what was one of the poorer aspects of the game's original design -- that is, the base game's inventory system was awkward. Subscribers get a mitigation to a "bad" mechanic.

Forced inconvenience would be something like time-gating/paywalling progression. You could only complete a certain number of quests in one day unless you kill 5,000 skeevers in the overland to unlock another quota of quests, or pay for the unlock. And only quests would provide skill line gains, therefore progression would be locked behind either a time-gated grind or a paywall.

UnseenCat

MasterSpatula wrote: »

I must be the only person who enjoys the Psijiic quest line.

As someone whose top priority is storytelling and character, I actually enjoy the process of listening to the Auger tell his tales and jokes, of dealing with the rifts that are the fallout of the storyline (and taking the opportunity for plenty of materials farming along the way), and learning the backstory of my questgiver.

For me, if I feel like I'm genuinely in the process of living a story, that's the opposite of a "grind."

Another one here. It's a great way to get players out into the world, and I enjoy just taking in the countryside. I'll grant that the questline drags a bit in the form of getting a bit repetitive, and some of the locations of the rifts may be a bit inconvenient for the sake of inconvenience -- but overall it's a perfectly fine quest. And the Augur is fabulous.

I think some of the backlash comes from it taking you so far out of Summerset that it "feels" un-focused in the context of the chapter. If the Psijic Order quest could start from any hub zone, not just in Summerset, then it would feel more like another over-arching guild like the Fighters and Mages guilds. But that would put another major quest-giver in the hub towns, which are already a bit overcrowded with NPCs vying for your attention.

esotoon

Anybody who doesn’t think this is deliberate hasn’t been paying attention to the gaming world over the past few years. You only have to look at the changes to the latest Wolfentein to see Zenimax, like EA, WB, and others before them, are putting this and other similar syatems into all their games now, not just MMOs.

From the daily loggins, to the crown crates, to exclusive rare mounts and timed exclusives, or seaonal offers, it is all designed to psycologically manipulate players into spending the maximum amount of money. Even if you don’t buy anything or pay for ESO+ you are still being used. i.e. If the player base falls, then those players who are so inclined would have nobody to show off their rare mounts and costumes to, and are therefor less likely to buy them in the future.

If you can stand him, JIm Sterling has a lot of videos about this subject, including footage from seminars where gaming developers are taught these methods, but there are no doubt others out there that have done an equally good job talking about it.

Elsonso

MasterSpatula wrote: »

I must be the only person who enjoys the Psijiic quest line.
For me, if I feel like I'm genuinely in the process of living a story, that's the opposite of a "grind."

No, but then I also farm mats, so closing rifts is just a change of scenery.

Ethardt

Ofc they do. I mean they dont even read the forum.

Mayrael

nafensoriel wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

/snipsnip

There are far far better ways to make money than to annoy your clients and customers.

In no way shape or form would it make sense for them to do this.

What you are most likely experiencing is gating mechanics.. which is in every MMO and RPG game since the beginning of video games.

Ok but why create content that most of the players will avoid because of difficulty? Because endgame players want to have fun to? Ok make the HM a terror for them but for the rest just make run that doesn't require fiber optic bandwidth, next gen PC, full legendary trial sets and group with 2 years of experience on voice com.

I know you (endgame players) would like to limit the amount of people who can run those dungs to sell those motifs at better prices and this is the only reason behind defending state we currently have.

I'm a PvP player, and I am avoiding group DLC content as hell, not because it's hard (Ive done many DLC dungs to farm gear I need) but because of the toxicity of the people who run those dungs.

Where are the times when random stranger explained carefully and slowly some important mechanics, where are the times when nobody was trash talking you because your DPS is 5k below what they would expect? Where are kind players helping eachother to run through those adventures?

Instead we have toxicity, harassing, bashing and other unpleasant stuff because those dungs can't be done by randoms.

GreenhaloX

Everything any gaming entity does is focus on making money. Zenimax is a business for profit.

rpa

I actually do think devs are not stupid enough to make intentionally boring manure content to sell Crown store p2w convenience. They just occasionally fail. If it happens too often cash cows players will move to greener pastures.

karekiz

[/quote]
Ok but why create content that most of the players will avoid because of difficulty? Because endgame players want to have fun to? Ok make the HM a terror for them but for the rest just make run that doesn't require fiber optic bandwidth, next gen PC, full legendary trial sets and group with 2 years of experience on voice com.
[/quote]

I love DLC dungeons, but I will say sometimes they go overboard with what feels like stuffed mechanics even on early dungeon bosses.

Vet MHK <Not exactly a hard fight but lets assume - No coms - Random assortment of players - all New>

The first boss does this:
1. Spawns 8 circles that snare
2. Follows up with AoEs that follow each player and must be kited <Remember snare>
3. Spawn one shotting adds <Tank must deal with them>
4. At 30% CC's the tank <Provided M range> with a one shot, has to be bashed.

Ideally its fairly easy with a team that knows 1/2 of whats going on. The AoE and kite might kill someone not paying attention but its possible to notice and get away w/o a high chance of death. However combines with the WW adds + Tank CC its very clustered. I would mark it as a most likely going to be a wipe if a team doesn't know whats up. That's fine for a mid/final boss, but not for a first.

Either doing the AoE + Snare + Kite *or* One shotting adds + Tank CC is fine enough. It does feel at times they make these fights and come up with 1/2 mechanics and go, why not a bit more? It makes the fight just feel clunky at that point.

However HM shouldn't be touched. You might have huge issues, but if Classic dungeons taught us anything then HM's need to be made with high end in mind. In classic even with 5-10K DPS do HM's. There is just no reason not too, and at that point, why not bother just making Hard Mode the regular mode?

Thats why HM needs motif drops as well and be balanced towards an upper tier. We don't want HM being: CAN YOU AVOID OBVIOUS CIRCLE!? Ohh boy you dodged the attack that will cast every 25 seconds here is a motif, sure there was no chance of wiping as a group, but you did it! Its also one of the few places where tanks actually can get the *** kicked out of them with hard incoming damage. Giving a reason to actually bring a tank.

Want to know stuff made annoying to sell back?

As posted before Look at thieves guild and Dark brotherhood "Faction grind" system. WIth psjiic its annoying but you can cheese it with porting around to guildies. Those? Better get to like doing the same dailies over and over. Fun Fun. Psjiic and mage guild are basically the same "Type" of quest. Go and pick up X over and over again so I view them the same.

nafensoriel

Mayrael wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

/snipsnip

There are far far better ways to make money than to annoy your clients and customers.

In no way shape or form would it make sense for them to do this.

What you are most likely experiencing is gating mechanics.. which is in every MMO and RPG game since the beginning of video games.

Ok but why create content that most of the players will avoid because of difficulty? Because endgame players want to have fun to? Ok make the HM a terror for them but for the rest just make run that doesn't require fiber optic bandwidth, next gen PC, full legendary trial sets and group with 2 years of experience on voice com.

I know you (endgame players) would like to limit the amount of people who can run those dungs to sell those motifs at better prices and this is the only reason behind defending state we currently have.

I'm a PvP player, and I am avoiding group DLC content as hell, not because it's hard (Ive done many DLC dungs to farm gear I need) but because of the toxicity of the people who run those dungs.

Where are the times when random stranger explained carefully and slowly some important mechanics, where are the times when nobody was trash talking you because your DPS is 5k below what they would expect? Where are kind players helping eachother to run through those adventures?

Instead we have toxicity, harassing, bashing and other unpleasant stuff because those dungs can't be done by randoms.

Most content in ESO can be done naked by a drunk monkey with no CP. This actually isn't a bad thing.
Trials, Veteran mode dungeons, Arenas... these barely account for 5% of the player base and count for even less of the actual games content. HM/Vet is elective. It is an additional layer of content. It is not required. Normal modes exist for a reason and that reason is most people enjoy them more(statistically speaking).

Even the concept of a dungeon is weighted significantly to the normal mode for development time. Everything that a vet mode is can be boiled down to 1-5% of a dungeons development. The rest all exist in normal mode and are only "upscaled" automatically to vet. Out of a whole dungeon, you MIGHT get 1 or 2 different mechanics on vet.

I also am a strong champion of playing your way. I don't bash the dad who plays for fun one day a week when the kids are at soccer practice. What you misunderstand is what gating means. A gating mechanic is intended to slow down content consumption for everyone so no one power player can push to the end of the content months before the majority of players. Sometimes this is difficult to do but it is a mechanic used by pretty much every game developer in some way. Heck levels were the original gating mechanic and they started before PC games!

I also don't really see all that many jackanapes trashing people for DPS or lack of knowledge. For every toxic jerk I've met in ESO ive also met hundreds of normal people just having fun.