Incentives & Encouragement to Play | Collectibles | Crown Store

tinythinker · May 2020

Hello there.

This thread is about incentives to encourage more players to begin and more importantly continue playing The Elder Scrolls Online. There are many ways this can be accomplished, but this thread is specifically about collectibles. The importance of player retention to ZOS is obvious in terms of sustainable revenue, and the importance to players includes having more people to play with (and also to keep the game sustainable at current or higher levels of development).

This thread also talks about the Crown Store, which remains a controversial topic among many ESO players and sometimes leads to heated arguments. The assumption here is that some parts of the Crown Store are problematic regarding incentives to play, but not that the Crown Store will be removed. The stance taken assumes that ZOS needs the Crown Store to help with its revenue as a subscription optional game while also wanting to increase profits beyond sustainability; hence ZOS will not change the basic structure of the Crown Store unless legally required to so. Hence the suggestions made are not endorsements of the current Crown Store model, but assume they are going to be part of how the game continues to function and therefore accounts for this.

Arguments for or against the Crown Store, Crown Crates, Crown Store Gems, etc. are fine, but this thread assumes the status quo for practical reasons. Should there be a change in how the Crown Store operates, up to and including the dissolution of the Crown Store itself, the ideas in this thread can easily be adapted to the new system. Also, this thread suggests a wide variety of things that are modular. They can all fit together or they can be broken up a la carte.

The author’s primary experiences with MMORPGs from major studio include The Elder Scrolls Online (May 2014 to present), World of Warcraft (March 2016 to present), and Final Fantasy XIV (April 2016 to present). This is relevant in exposure to different models of game design, game play, incentivization, and cash shop experiences. Such perspective is important in considering different ideas for how things could work as well as how they should work, so that is part of the background in play here.

Thank you for your understanding.

TL;DR: This isn't a "Crown Store is evil" thread, it's about getting more incentives in the game for playing the game that focuses on collectibles.

Please skip to any section you like. Or read it all the way through. The section titles immediately under this sentence are links.

tinythinker · May 2020

INCENTIVE TO PLAY

With some introductory context out of the way, let’s jump into the point and direction of this post. Central to those things are incentivization to play and collectibles, with the obvious connection the collectibles are a way to encourage people to play a game. This is not to say all players are drawn in or stick around longer to pursue collectibles, but many do. Collectibles don’t have to be a sole reason for people playing more – they can be part of a suite of engagement factors including but not limited to:

Enjoyment of game areas’ atmosphere and ambiance (artwork, layout, music, background/setting animations, etc.)
Enjoyment of exploring and being surprised by new encounters and quests
Enjoyment of combat systems and combat encounters
Enjoyment of quests, stories, and NPCs
Enjoyment of solo and group PvE content
Enjoyment of PvP content
Enjoyment of unlocking achievements and earning collectibles
Enjoyment of secondary systems (housing, outfits, etc.)
Enjoyment of social interaction with other players

Everything else being equal, the stronger each of these areas is the more likely players are to keep playing (or playing more often).

tinythinker · May 2020

COLLECTIBLES AND CASH SHOPS

Collectibles can be a fun part of an MMORPG as they typically reward players for engaging with the game. If you tick particular boxes with your activity in the game, you get a reward. This feels good. It feels better if you actually like, wanted, and worked to get that reward. Often such rewards are tied to recorded achievements in the game, which gives the sense of a double reward – unlocking an achievement and earning a collectible. This is a long running and familiar player experience in MMORPGs, and rarer collectibles often come to hold greater value to self-perception in the game as well as reactions from others, mimicking the same social psychology in the real world in which the ability to acquire rare items can inflate egos and social standing in some circles.

A conflict can be created when the real-world ability to acquire items not broadly and cheaply available (i.e. wealth) enters the game world through a cash shop. Having a collectible no longer signals something earned through practice, patience, skill, or commitment. Sans a cash shop, any player could, barring limits on the ability to learn and carry out a needed level or duration of game play, acquire any collectible. An exception being collectibles locked within a particular window of time to complete the necessary prerequisites. With cash shops, there are collectibles that do not require game play and segregate who has particular collectibles to those able and willing to spend additional real-world money on them and those who cannot or will not.

This conflict has led to a resentment of cash shops among some players, especially those who play subscription-only games. Still, sub games typically limit the number of things that go into a cash shop. World of Warcraft’s cash shop is pretty bare compared to Final Fantasy XIV’s, and the cash shops of both of those sub-only games are no match for the cash shop of The Elder Scrolls Online, a buy-to-play/sub-optional game. While FFXIV has more items than WoW, many of those are from past events in the game that could have been acquired for gameplay. Moreover, in those two sub-only games the vast majority of collectibles are still things that can only be acquired via gameplay. ESO on the other hand is the opposite, with a vast number of collectibles (especially mounts, pets, and outfits) available exclusively in the cash shop.

When new players start the game, some see people with amazing mounts or pets and ask how they can get them, expecting it to be something that can be earned through a hard-won achievement, only to find that it must be purchased for cash. And in many cases, it isn’t just a straightforward transaction with a clear, fixed cost. The player must by Crown Crates, with a chance that the desired item may or may not be rewarded. This means you might get something you want for roughly the same as another mount, outfit, emote, pet, etc. sells for directly, or, you might pay several times that amount fishing for them item through several purchases of crates. Yet even that is sometimes not enough.

There is another layer to the Crown Store mechanism – gems. Gems are acquired only through converting undesired or duplicate items received from Crow Crates. These can be used to acquire specific things you wanted from a Crown Crate, but also items that can only be purchased with gems. Meaning that you have zero chance to get such items from a crate, but rather must burn through the contents of many, many crates to get the top tier items, with the tiers going from Common, Fine, Superior Epic, to Legendary before reaching Apex.
Items are regularly rotated in and out of the Crown Store to create artificial scarcity and fear of missing out. Some are like the McRib, rarely make an appearance. This can add a sense of pressure to purchase items right away and is a popular marketing tactic, but it does not feel good to players who either miss out and are frustrated waiting for the item to come back to the Crown Store, or who simple can’t afford the item in question.

ZOS introduced the ability to gift players items that can be purchased directly in the Crown Store, including Crown Crates, which has allowed players to create an economy of selling in-game gold for Crown Crates, or conversely, Crown Crates for in-game gold. This economy is in no way regulated by ZOS and players who get swindled are on their own. Caveat emptor, indeed. Yet, not every player can or wishes to amass an in-game fortune in gold to try to buy their way into the highest of the Crown Store heavens. Even when they can afford such an indirect way to access such items, it isn’t the same as notching an achievement for great or dedicated gameplay.

There are also crates that are sometimes given to PC players who create a Twitch account and link it to their ESO account, but not everyone wishes to do so and the creates earned are full of mostly junk items. Those can be converted to gems, but, not everyone wants to watch an ESO streamer (even with the volume down) just to get a Crown Crate “drop”, and drops are not always available, making that another (slow) avenue for rewards that is not about actually playing the game and directly engaging in its content.

tinythinker · May 2020

COLLECTIBLES TYPES IN ESO AND HOW TO GET THEM

Having looked at the importance of rewards for playing and succeeding at activities in an MMORPG as well as the how acquiring collectibles works in ESO and two other top-tier games of that genre, let’s look at types of collectibles in ESO.

Mounts: Mostly from Collector’s Editions of Chapters, direct Crown Store purchases, Crown Crates, Crown Store gems; a handful are available for in-game gold at stables
Non-Combat Pets: Mostly from Collector’s Editions of Chapters, direct Crown Store purchases, Crown Crates, Crown Store gems; a couple are available for buying a DLC or Chapter and entering a particular town or city
Costumes: Exclusively from Crown Store purchases, Crown Crates, Crown Store gems
Disguises: A dozen or so are available from in-game quests in the base-game zones – they are like costumes but take up inventory space
Polymorphs Some were costumes from base-game quests (still available) or available for in-game currencies in Imperial City; newer polymorphs are exclusively from Crown Store purchases, Crown Crates, Crown Store gems
Body Markings: About a dozen or so are available in-game, but the rest are from Crown Store purchases, Crown Crates, Crown Store gems
Personalities: Some are available in-game but more are available from Crown Store purchases, Crown Crates, Crown Store gems
Skins: A category in which the number available in game solidly outweighs the number sold in Crown Store purchases, Crown Crates, Crown Store gems
Other Appearance Items: Adornments, Hair Styles, Hats, Head Markings and the like – we’re back in Crown Store country
Emotes: Some items from in-game events and activities, the rest from the Crown Store and Collector’s editions
Housing Furnishings: A mix of in-game and Crown Store items, with the in-game items often tied to in-game achievements
Assistants: All Crown Store direct purchases
Mementos: The only items exclusively available in-game for game-related activities like completing quests

On balance, Crown Store items crush in-game rewards.

tinythinker · May 2020

EVENING THINGS OUT

If you enjoy buying most of your collectibles in the Crown Store, that’s fine. Enjoy your purchases and have a great day.
What about those wish there were more engagement points in the game, such as earning collectibles? As mentioned, it is highly unlikely ZOS will simply say, “Oops, out bad, we’ll just take most of the collectibles out of the Crown Store.”

Even so, there are ways to balance things out a bit more so that people can feel a greater connection between accomplishing things in the game even if the Crown Store framework remains. It would be a modified framework, yes, but the cash would still flow.

The rest of this thread are examples (<-- please consider this word, I beg you) of how that could happen.

tinythinker · May 2020

MO’ ACHIEVEMENTS, MO’ FEWER PROBLEMS

Add achievements to the game. Make ‘em hard or take forever. Add new activities that come with new achievements. It’s all good. Then put some of that premium Crown Store stuff in the game instead as rewards to unlock with the achievements. Mounts, non-combat pets, and costumes, oh my. Not ALL of your premium stock in the pipeline, but some really choice pieces for milestone achievements. Oh, and like, add a new master achievement for doing all of those monster trophy collector achievements and put some’m reaaaaal good as a reward for that. Also, make some exclusive item categories that are in-game only…

tinythinker · May 2020

IN-GAME EXCLUSIVE COLLECTIBLE TYPES

These are the kind of things that would be so tempting to just add to the Crown Store, but that would be a real blow. And it would blow. All the blowing. Because these would very cool to add and to be tied to what you actually accomplish as a player, not the size of your bank account.

There are any number of things that could fit here. I’ll just toss out a couple:

Class Polymorphs: This is a simple idea. You work your ass off as a class and that character gets a treat. What kind of treat? Your combat animations get reskinned. Take a Dragonknight for example. And one of that class’ polymorphs could be a Coldfire DK. Your fire animations are all Coldfire blues and greys. Your poison animations are sickly ichor black and glowing blue. Maybe some audio changes that fit as well. Or, for Sorcerers, polymorphs might include different skins for your pets. And so on, and so on. These could be earned for doing (multiple) achievements for that class (across various content types). There’s Molag Bal for the DK. Maybe Meridia for Templars. And so on. Plus, there could also be another set of polymorphs tied to the Divines. You get the idea, I hope.
Siege Polymorphs: If you play as a race native to your Alliance in Cyrodiil and get far enough with your achievements/Alliance points/something something, you can earn a special polymorph of basic siege weapons that are in the style of your race. If you play as a non-native race, you get a special variant polymorph for your siege. Something to spice up the battlefield.

tinythinker · May 2020

IN-GAME FIRST ITEMS

The name gave it away, didn’t it? This takes a page from FFXIV. Add some items otherwise bound for the Crown Store to seasonal events or opportunities to let people earn it in game first. Then lock in in the gem section or whatever for those who missed that window of opportunity and put it in whatever rotation.

tinythinker · May 2020

NEW TYPES OF SEASONAL EVENTS

Holidays are great

But think… BIGGER. Yeah…

So, take a few things that exist in game to use as examples:

Stealing as a member of the Thieves Guild
Killing as a member of the Dark Brotherhood
Capturing objectives/holding in Cyrodiil
Hunting special monsters in Imperial City
Pulling off feats (kill streaks, holding a chaos ball, etc.) in Battlegrounds
Seeking and recovering antiquities
Clearing dungeons under various conditions

The list can go on and on and on. The idea is not to replace or remove holiday events. They are established, enough people like them, etc.

The type of seasons being discussed here would be limited time periods for limited rewards. These exist in different forms in other online games. There are Ranked Battleground seasons in WoW. There are ranked Feast seasons in FFXIV. Both of those are PvP-based. We can also look to Fallout 76. Yes, I said FO76. They have challenges already that are PvE based and a bit similar to F.A.T.E.s in some way from FFXIV, and both of those very limited-times events (a matter of minites) that give rewards, and recently announced a new seasons system. Love, hate, or meh FO76 that doesn’t mean it’s developers are devoid of good ideas that can inspire other games.

ESO doesn’t have FO76 challenges but it has many other things to serve as objectives. Almost any type of content could have seasons. People would be free to ignore them, and they could last anywhere from 10 days to a month. They could also be concurrent. Like one going in Battleground, one for dungeons, and one for Dark Brotherhood. In terms of prize structure, some could be “anyone could get through the whole thing to get the grand prize and all of the little prizes along the way” and others could be have ranked grades of winners (similar to what Cyrodiil AvA already has).

Imagine having special targets to go after (McGuffin items or NPCs) in Cyro or PvE zone and on. Maybe special targets for assassination that have to be hunted and identified in a certain way. Or extra rare antiquities. Some spice sprinkled on existing content. Or some new boss mobs that appear during some types of seasonal events with no fixed location, like a scavenger hunt.
At the end of a season, imagine being able to earn some cool collectible as a prize for doing things you like to do anyway or for trying something new? And/or maybe Crowns or Crown Crates?

At this point, the Crown Store is already pushed by having a daily log-in reward notification which, you know, opens up the Crown Store to the calendar tab. People barter over buying Crowns in zone chat. People wear Crown-based appearances, ride Crown-mounts, and are followed by Crown-pets. Giving Crowns as a reward for actually doing content in the game sounds fair.

tinythinker · May 2020

THAT'S ALL FOLKS

Thanks for your time and consideration. Again, if you missed it, this isn't a "Crown Store is evil" thread, it's about getting more incentives in the game for playing the game that focuses on collectibles.

Be well.

Starlock · May 2020

To add some perspective - once upon a time, when video games were released, they were finished, polished products.

Then, someone got the idea "why don't we just cut out some of this content and sell it back to the customer later to get more profit?" At first, most customers were wise enough to realize that this was a predatory business practice and wouldn't have it. These "day 1 DLC" titles were widely and deservedly criticized. After all, the normal standard a mere console generation ago was to release an actually finished game without content cut out of it to be sold later at extra cost to the customer. It was shady to do that, and correctly recognized as such.

Sadly, predatory, customer-unfriendly business practices tend to win out in the long run unless consumer protections (aka, laws) step in to regulate it. A mere decade later we have games like Elder Scrolls online that resell hundreds of in-game assets to the customer at no small cost to the customer. Something this shady would have been unthinkable a decade ago, but now an entire generation of gamers is growing up believing this is not only normal, but an acceptable business practice. And you can bet your biscuits that corporates will take full advantage of that - they already are, by the billions.

Because of that, while the idea of having an in-game collectibles system is a good one, there is just no way it is going to be implemented in a way that isn't shady in the present climate. It won't simply be about earning cool in-game collectibles - there will be some psychological manipulations in the direction of monetization strapped into the system. The model for games-as-service titles is not, unfortunately, about the customer. Or even the customer playing the game. It's all about them playing to pay with no upper limit. That won't change for the lifetime of this game. They may well introduce something like F76's shady "season pass" model, which is all about psychologically manipulating certain types of customers into paying to win the rewards for that season. It all circles back to the monetization, unfortunately, and that won't change.

As a related aside, the very notion that a game needs more incentives to play it is just... bizarre to me on a fundamental level. Playing games is a form of recreation. You know, fun? Playing the game for what it is - for the fun of it - really is all that matters. The main reason to add more "incentives" is, again, for monetization. If a game is trying to pitch to you incentives to play, it's because they want you to pay. Good games focus on being... good games? They don't try to actively incentivize you to play because they recognize they are games and not trying to be cash traps?

I guess I'm old fashioned...

Foefaller · May 2020

I think not being able to earn at least some of the currently crown store only content by playing (whether we're talking a direct, less scamable way to trade crowns, a gold<>crown converter, or something else) actually losses ZOS money, not just in player retention but in per-player spending.

My armchair, possibly Dunning-Kruger inspired economic theory is that by giving the player an in-game way to earn said content, you're giving them a new metric to gauge that content: the time it would take to earn it, which would give them a better idea of the actual value of the content to them.

Sorta like how giving workers more time off would make them more productive over the whole year, I think giving players some more clarity on what it is they are actually getting (in terms of "time saved not grinding") would make them more confident in spending money on something.

barney2525 · May 2020

Someone has waaaaay to much time on their hands.

I just don't get it.

I understand having a few suggestions here and there about possible improvements, and putting them out here for the CMs to see.

I Don't understand trying to revamp the entire game into a person's ' own image ' so to speak.

IMHO

barney2525 · May 2020

Just one note

"Meaning that you have zero chance to get such items from a crate, but rather must burn through the contents of many, many crates to get the top tier items, with the tiers going from Common, Fine, Superior Epic, to Legendary before reaching Apex."

This is completely wrong. The gems are the secondary method of obtaining the item than CAN be dropped by RNG from the crate. On several occasions I have gotten the item I was wanting from the crate while simply opening crates to get the gems to buy said item.

idk · May 2020

My incentive to play is the storytelling/quests, quality, and challenging raid design, combat design, and enjoying doing the raids and more with fun players. Ofc, the server performing reasonably well helps. Everything else is very much secondary and that seems to be what OP is focused on.

If I do not find the incentive to play the game because of the game itself I could care less about the cosmetics OP is talking about. As for getting new players to start playing ESO that OP also mentions, Zos has done quite well with that. It is why Zos had to add capacity to both PC server in 2019 (not talking about since Covid). New players will play the game because something about the actual game interests them.

xXMeowMeowXx · May 2020

I love the color!! It is very relaxing, Cx. Wow, you put put a lot of time into the OP.

Knightpanther · May 2020

My incentive to play more would be when they fix the game.

Be Safe

Bradyfjord · May 2020

I want a working game. That is all I really want them to work on. The desync/server lag issues are holding everything else back.

Once performance issues can be improved/fixed, I think a lot of things need to evolve over time, such as:

How gearing works: The 2 'monster' piece, and 2 '5 piece' system needs some shaking up.
Antiquities/Mythics are a good first try, but the Antiquities system seems so boring. (I didn't care for Arch. in WOW)
I never found collections fun in most games in and of themselves.
New siege options for Cyrodiil, like the option to launch teammates over walls with catapults.
Another 'Imperial City'. Something new that involves pvpve. Maybe something tied to a new dlc/chapter.
Add new 'Exalted Morphs'. Morphs of our morphs that can only be gained if you max out the relevant morph.

But seriously, nothing is more important to me right now (ESO related) than the game's performance. I can't even solo a base game dungeon without occasional deaths to lag (about 1 in 5 runs).

Tandor · May 2020

Beyond the obvious loss of revenue, the problems with making stuff available through in-game play in addition to through a cash shop are twofold.

First, it panders to those who labour under the misapprehension that "free to play" means just that, and who don't believe in making any contribution to the funding of a game's maintenance and development. That applies just as much to "buy to play" games where such players think that spending £5 on an online and evolving game in a sale should entitle them to play it forever without additional contributions.

Second, if items are to be made available through playing the game as well as by purchase in the cash shop it has to be structured so that the ingame method takes time and effort. That immediately leads to cries of "grind" and demands for shortcuts and easier access to those items which in turn leads to further increased stocking of the cash shop with said shortcuts in the form of tokens etc as well as the further trivialisation of the game's content generally.

Aleinzzs · May 2020

performance, that would be the incentive to play.

and ya know not *** us with the perfected weapon changes.