Make all crown crate seasons available for purchase

RealJobasha

Yes, it's time for yet another one of these discussions (almost like people really want it 🤔). There's absolutely no reason not to do it. There's nothing I want in the current season and there hasn't been for a long time. There's tons of stuff I want in older seasons, yet because there's no way to buy them, ZOS isn't making any money from me. So basically it's a matter of making one easy change to make more money (that's the whole point of the crown store, and crown crates in particular, gouging our wallets). I'd buy tons of crates from old seasons if they were just there for purchase. There's been another one of these threads every few days for years on end and idk why ZOS can't figure out that this would increase their crate sales tenfold.

It would be as easy as overhauling the crates section of the store page to sort by crate season newest to oldest and then keep the current season's stuff via gem purchase where it is or on a new page so people don't overlook it. it would probably take like 3 days of development (that's being liberal) and would increase profit by a huge margin.

kargen27

Except it might not increase their sales ten fold. Limited time offers can entice players that might not purchase an item to do so. Kind of our nature. Offer up something with the idea that it will never be offered again so will be somewhat rare in the game and more players are going to jump in and purchase.

RealJobasha

kargen27 wrote: »

Except it might not increase their sales ten fold. Limited time offers can entice players that might not purchase an item to do so. Kind of our nature. Offer up something with the idea that it will never be offered again so will be somewhat rare in the game and more players are going to jump in and purchase.

it absolutely would, I, and everyone else on my friends list I actually talk to, have all said that they want to buy old crates for things like mounts or skins, etc. Unless I just happen to have such an anomalous friends list, I'd think that this would be a very popular move.

And while you're correct about that psychology, I've done the same thing before, the ratio disparity between impulse buys to the greater volume of sales they would get from all the seasons being available would be huge. Because there hasn't been anything I've wanted to impulse buy from crates for over 2 years and I know I'm not alone in that regard.

Waseem

Yes I NEED NIGHTFALL CRATESSSS

Anotherone773

kargen27 wrote: »

Except it might not increase their sales ten fold. Limited time offers can entice players that might not purchase an item to do so. Kind of our nature. Offer up something with the idea that it will never be offered again so will be somewhat rare in the game and more players are going to jump in and purchase.

Its actually been proven that the LTO marketing strategy only works in today's world when you are doing it through television/radio mediums. It also is drastically more effective when you are marketing a need. Something that i am going to need anyway. Such as Monopoly at Mc Donalds. I have a choice between 3-4 fast food burger places and i need to eat but if i eat at Mc Donalds i could win a prize. And some of the common prizes are for free food so i will come back again before the LTO is gone to get my free fries...but ill get a burger and coke as well.

That doesn't work online because the internet is a place of instant gratification. I can order nearly any consumer good that exists and have it at my house in less than 7 days( ignoring the pandemic), why would i wait months or more than a year for a virtual good? I might not even be playing this game in 6 months....

And there is the other catch. You have a lot of new players playing ESO and a lot of them will play a week, a month, maybe a few months. Then go play something else. The crown store does not have that impressive of a selection and everything in it is overpriced. Most players wont see 90% of the content that has been available for purchase for crowns. If you provide more of a selection and offer that hook to get them to buy and keep them invested( winning those fries in monopoly), they are likely to hang around longer to buy more stuff. But this LTO stuff most newbies barely see what they can own. And cosmetics are huge sellers in games right now.

Then you have people like me, impulse buyers. I buy in games items on impulse. Their most recent sales they lost on me is Shalidor's and up to 30 crown crates. When i looked at Shalidor's i wanted it, but it wasn't available. A week or two later it became available but i lost interest in it by then. So i didn't buy it. I got excited about owning it while i was exploring it but after i left and moved on, i was like meh, maybe later. I was also going to buy my wife and I crown crates as a christmas present. I was going to buy at least the 4 pack for each of us and the 15 pack if i really liked what was in them. I disliked almost all of the items in them, so bought zero. Had all seasons been available that would have been a guaranteed 15x2 crown crate sale.

And that is just in the last 30 days. They have missed out on 10s of thousands, probably near 200k total, of crowns in sales for me since i started playing 4 years ago because things are not available when i want them. I have $150/month in untapped gaming funds that ZOS could claim some or most of just buy offering a lot more stuff for sale ALL THE TIME. That money gets spent on other games( currently single players) which then draws me away from ESO. The less time i play ESO, the less likely i am to spend money in the crown store.

Lastly, they assume that people are just going to have the funds available to buy their overpriced crown items, or that they are going to spend money to buy the crowns and then just sit on them waiting and hoping what they want to become available. If i have $100 this month to spend on game stuff and my choices are to spend it on crowns and hope my house comes up for sale again in the near future OR i can go spend it on something else in another game that i can get right now or even spend it on owning another game, then why would i spend it and wait for my to become available? I won't. That is not how entertainment works.

LTOs might work for 5% of the player base but it actually hurts your sales with the other 95%. It is a very outdated strategy from when the medium to reach the most customers was television. It still works on that medium, not this one. I think they should probably hire someone who got their degree in marketing this century.

Slyclone

Yeah i think they stopped listening a while back. Except the moderators of course.

At least they give us a heads up once a month on what to expect. But I don't have money available for the game some months.

This month I have my wallet pointed at the 23rd.

kargen27

Anotherone773 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Except it might not increase their sales ten fold. Limited time offers can entice players that might not purchase an item to do so. Kind of our nature. Offer up something with the idea that it will never be offered again so will be somewhat rare in the game and more players are going to jump in and purchase.

Its actually been proven that the LTO marketing strategy only works in today's world when you are doing it through television/radio mediums. It also is drastically more effective when you are marketing a need. Something that i am going to need anyway. Such as Monopoly at Mc Donalds. I have a choice between 3-4 fast food burger places and i need to eat but if i eat at Mc Donalds i could win a prize. And some of the common prizes are for free food so i will come back again before the LTO is gone to get my free fries...but ill get a burger and coke as well.

That doesn't work online because the internet is a place of instant gratification. I can order nearly any consumer good that exists and have it at my house in less than 7 days( ignoring the pandemic), why would i wait months or more than a year for a virtual good? I might not even be playing this game in 6 months....

And there is the other catch. You have a lot of new players playing ESO and a lot of them will play a week, a month, maybe a few months. Then go play something else. The crown store does not have that impressive of a selection and everything in it is overpriced. Most players wont see 90% of the content that has been available for purchase for crowns. If you provide more of a selection and offer that hook to get them to buy and keep them invested( winning those fries in monopoly), they are likely to hang around longer to buy more stuff. But this LTO stuff most newbies barely see what they can own. And cosmetics are huge sellers in games right now.

Then you have people like me, impulse buyers. I buy in games items on impulse. Their most recent sales they lost on me is Shalidor's and up to 30 crown crates. When i looked at Shalidor's i wanted it, but it wasn't available. A week or two later it became available but i lost interest in it by then. So i didn't buy it. I got excited about owning it while i was exploring it but after i left and moved on, i was like meh, maybe later. I was also going to buy my wife and I crown crates as a christmas present. I was going to buy at least the 4 pack for each of us and the 15 pack if i really liked what was in them. I disliked almost all of the items in them, so bought zero. Had all seasons been available that would have been a guaranteed 15x2 crown crate sale.

And that is just in the last 30 days. They have missed out on 10s of thousands, probably near 200k total, of crowns in sales for me since i started playing 4 years ago because things are not available when i want them. I have $150/month in untapped gaming funds that ZOS could claim some or most of just buy offering a lot more stuff for sale ALL THE TIME. That money gets spent on other games( currently single players) which then draws me away from ESO. The less time i play ESO, the less likely i am to spend money in the crown store.

Lastly, they assume that people are just going to have the funds available to buy their overpriced crown items, or that they are going to spend money to buy the crowns and then just sit on them waiting and hoping what they want to become available. If i have $100 this month to spend on game stuff and my choices are to spend it on crowns and hope my house comes up for sale again in the near future OR i can go spend it on something else in another game that i can get right now or even spend it on owning another game, then why would i spend it and wait for my to become available? I won't. That is not how entertainment works.

LTOs might work for 5% of the player base but it actually hurts your sales with the other 95%. It is a very outdated strategy from when the medium to reach the most customers was television. It still works on that medium, not this one. I think they should probably hire someone who got their degree in marketing this century.

The points you make are valid out and about in the real world. I was going to use the McRib sandwich as an example. It isn't (my opinion) a particularly good sandwich but offer it for two weeks only and people line up to get one.

Thing is we are all playing one game. We obviously enjoy the game or at least I hope we do. So the 3-4 other places doesn't really apply because we are in one game. You want a particular mount in this game their isn't another game offering that mount.
ZoS is a huge corporation. We all know they have a whole team or three that just crunches numbers. Businesses are all about increasing profits. We the players do not see the numbers. We can speculate but that is all it is, speculation. We can make guesses about the economics of the game. I am pointing out maybe the numbers show exclusive limited edition items work better for this particular game. I would never say so conclusively as I don't have the numbers but it is a possability.

You also have to consider all the players that purchased crown crates with an expectation of exclusivity of certain items could be alienated by the items being made available again. Something they have to consider.

My point was we can't assume a loss of profit because we don't have access to the data.

And that limited time exclusive offer is a huge psychological trigger for a huge percentage of the population. I mean honestly those McRib sandwiches really are not that good. And yes I see the irony in me using them as an example when the availability is repeated. Still kind of demonstrates my point.

renne

The current crown crates are certainly insanely uninspiring. Are we even due a limited run of something this month?

Ryuvain

Yeah the lto items are annoying. A random item I looked up and want for my outfit? Maybe I'll see it in 2 years. Sigh.

They jumped off that cliff a long time ago with these lootboxes.

Nordic__Knights

Anotherone773 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Except it might not increase their sales ten fold. Limited time offers can entice players that might not purchase an item to do so. Kind of our nature. Offer up something with the idea that it will never be offered again so will be somewhat rare in the game and more players are going to jump in and purchase.

Its actually been proven that the LTO marketing strategy only works in today's world when you are doing it through television/radio mediums. It also is drastically more effective when you are marketing a need. Something that i am going to need anyway. Such as Monopoly at Mc Donalds. I have a choice between 3-4 fast food burger places and i need to eat but if i eat at Mc Donalds i could win a prize. And some of the common prizes are for free food so i will come back again before the LTO is gone to get my free fries...but ill get a burger and coke as well.

That doesn't work online because the internet is a place of instant gratification. I can order nearly any consumer good that exists and have it at my house in less than 7 days( ignoring the pandemic), why would i wait months or more than a year for a virtual good? I might not even be playing this game in 6 months....

And there is the other catch. You have a lot of new players playing ESO and a lot of them will play a week, a month, maybe a few months. Then go play something else. The crown store does not have that impressive of a selection and everything in it is overpriced. Most players wont see 90% of the content that has been available for purchase for crowns. If you provide more of a selection and offer that hook to get them to buy and keep them invested( winning those fries in monopoly), they are likely to hang around longer to buy more stuff. But this LTO stuff most newbies barely see what they can own. And cosmetics are huge sellers in games right now.

Then you have people like me, impulse buyers. I buy in games items on impulse. Their most recent sales they lost on me is Shalidor's and up to 30 crown crates. When i looked at Shalidor's i wanted it, but it wasn't available. A week or two later it became available but i lost interest in it by then. So i didn't buy it. I got excited about owning it while i was exploring it but after i left and moved on, i was like meh, maybe later. I was also going to buy my wife and I crown crates as a christmas present. I was going to buy at least the 4 pack for each of us and the 15 pack if i really liked what was in them. I disliked almost all of the items in them, so bought zero. Had all seasons been available that would have been a guaranteed 15x2 crown crate sale.

And that is just in the last 30 days. They have missed out on 10s of thousands, probably near 200k total, of crowns in sales for me since i started playing 4 years ago because things are not available when i want them. I have $150/month in untapped gaming funds that ZOS could claim some or most of just buy offering a lot more stuff for sale ALL THE TIME. That money gets spent on other games( currently single players) which then draws me away from ESO. The less time i play ESO, the less likely i am to spend money in the crown store.

Lastly, they assume that people are just going to have the funds available to buy their overpriced crown items, or that they are going to spend money to buy the crowns and then just sit on them waiting and hoping what they want to become available. If i have $100 this month to spend on game stuff and my choices are to spend it on crowns and hope my house comes up for sale again in the near future OR i can go spend it on something else in another game that i can get right now or even spend it on owning another game, then why would i spend it and wait for my to become available? I won't. That is not how entertainment works.

LTOs might work for 5% of the player base but it actually hurts your sales with the other 95%. It is a very outdated strategy from when the medium to reach the most customers was television. It still works on that medium, not this one. I think they should probably hire someone who got their degree in marketing this century.

im 100% with you here and i have 1000$ of un tapped funds for gaming lol their bad tho

gatekeeper13

I wonder why you waste your time trying to offer nice suggestions to a company that has been proven not to listen to customers opinion...

TelvanniWizard

More on the lack of sense of LTO´s in this thread:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/557159/limited-items-limited-housing-eso-policies/p1

Michae

I try to budget things so LTO's really turn me off. My country's currency is weak so the Crown items are expensive even when you consider having crowns from sale. I have crowns saved up for stuff I really want and I regularly buy Crowns for gold but I have a limited supply of that. For example I like the Senche-raht currently offered in the store, but at the same time I'm waiting for a few other things I'd definitely want. So I'm passing on Senche-raht, I already have two so I'm not that hot on having another samey mount when I can spend that money on something more unique down the line. If that Senche-raht stayed in store for longer I would just saved up and bought it in less intensive month, now I'm just passing on it. It's not universal of course, but it's an example on how LTO robs ZOS of the sale. The question is on how many people will buy the thing (and other things) impulsively vs the budgeting ones.

Anotherone773

[

kargen27 wrote: »

Anotherone773 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Except it might not increase their sales ten fold. Limited time offers can entice players that might not purchase an item to do so. Kind of our nature. Offer up something with the idea that it will never be offered again so will be somewhat rare in the game and more players are going to jump in and purchase.

Its actually been proven that the LTO marketing strategy only works in today's world when you are doing it through television/radio mediums. It also is drastically more effective when you are marketing a need. Something that i am going to need anyway. Such as Monopoly at Mc Donalds. I have a choice between 3-4 fast food burger places and i need to eat but if i eat at Mc Donalds i could win a prize. And some of the common prizes are for free food so i will come back again before the LTO is gone to get my free fries...but ill get a burger and coke as well.

That doesn't work online because the internet is a place of instant gratification. I can order nearly any consumer good that exists and have it at my house in less than 7 days( ignoring the pandemic), why would i wait months or more than a year for a virtual good? I might not even be playing this game in 6 months....

And there is the other catch. You have a lot of new players playing ESO and a lot of them will play a week, a month, maybe a few months. Then go play something else. The crown store does not have that impressive of a selection and everything in it is overpriced. Most players wont see 90% of the content that has been available for purchase for crowns. If you provide more of a selection and offer that hook to get them to buy and keep them invested( winning those fries in monopoly), they are likely to hang around longer to buy more stuff. But this LTO stuff most newbies barely see what they can own. And cosmetics are huge sellers in games right now.

Then you have people like me, impulse buyers. I buy in games items on impulse. Their most recent sales they lost on me is Shalidor's and up to 30 crown crates. When i looked at Shalidor's i wanted it, but it wasn't available. A week or two later it became available but i lost interest in it by then. So i didn't buy it. I got excited about owning it while i was exploring it but after i left and moved on, i was like meh, maybe later. I was also going to buy my wife and I crown crates as a christmas present. I was going to buy at least the 4 pack for each of us and the 15 pack if i really liked what was in them. I disliked almost all of the items in them, so bought zero. Had all seasons been available that would have been a guaranteed 15x2 crown crate sale.

And that is just in the last 30 days. They have missed out on 10s of thousands, probably near 200k total, of crowns in sales for me since i started playing 4 years ago because things are not available when i want them. I have $150/month in untapped gaming funds that ZOS could claim some or most of just buy offering a lot more stuff for sale ALL THE TIME. That money gets spent on other games( currently single players) which then draws me away from ESO. The less time i play ESO, the less likely i am to spend money in the crown store.

Lastly, they assume that people are just going to have the funds available to buy their overpriced crown items, or that they are going to spend money to buy the crowns and then just sit on them waiting and hoping what they want to become available. If i have $100 this month to spend on game stuff and my choices are to spend it on crowns and hope my house comes up for sale again in the near future OR i can go spend it on something else in another game that i can get right now or even spend it on owning another game, then why would i spend it and wait for my to become available? I won't. That is not how entertainment works.

LTOs might work for 5% of the player base but it actually hurts your sales with the other 95%. It is a very outdated strategy from when the medium to reach the most customers was television. It still works on that medium, not this one. I think they should probably hire someone who got their degree in marketing this century.

The points you make are valid out and about in the real world. I was going to use the McRib sandwich as an example. It isn't (my opinion) a particularly good sandwich but offer it for two weeks only and people line up to get one.

Thing is we are all playing one game. We obviously enjoy the game or at least I hope we do. So the 3-4 other places doesn't really apply because we are in one game. You want a particular mount in this game their isn't another game offering that mount.
ZoS is a huge corporation. We all know they have a whole team or three that just crunches numbers. Businesses are all about increasing profits. We the players do not see the numbers. We can speculate but that is all it is, speculation. We can make guesses about the economics of the game. I am pointing out maybe the numbers show exclusive limited edition items work better for this particular game. I would never say so conclusively as I don't have the numbers but it is a possability.

You also have to consider all the players that purchased crown crates with an expectation of exclusivity of certain items could be alienated by the items being made available again. Something they have to consider.

My point was we can't assume a loss of profit because we don't have access to the data.

And that limited time exclusive offer is a huge psychological trigger for a huge percentage of the population. I mean honestly those McRib sandwiches really are not that good. And yes I see the irony in me using them as an example when the availability is repeated. Still kind of demonstrates my point.

Except what i said was based on actual marketing data, not speculation. When i said 3-4 in town, i was talking about competition. Technically, the competition for ZOS is far higher than those burger joints. I will only drive X distance to eat, I can play any game that exists on the internet. However, this is a mute point as i was using McD's monopoly and the other burger joints to show that the LTO pulls you to McD's for a choice you need to make anyway( what to have to eat). No one needs virtual goods. SO they are selling something people don't need for a price most people will say that is way overpriced, and selling it as an LTO in an marketplace full of instant gratification. Its like trying to peddle state lottery tickets for Friday's drawing on a Saturday...in the middle of a Las Vegas casino.

I think you are giving ZOS marketing team to much credit. I think the people running marketing are very old school and dated. They might even be from old school mediums like television, radio, or newspapers where that stuff worked. My wife took marketing in college 20 years ago and they were teach LTO as old school marketing then that didnt do well in a world in which people could get everything faster and had more choices. In the last 10 years the ability to have instant gratification has really increased so people are even less patient.

Mounts are also a bad example here because all the mounts are either done through gimmicks or crown sales or both. This game has the crappiest mounts situation of any mmo. They tried to turn mounts into a cash cow, but the mounts in this game are pitifully boring. They are all reskins of the same basic mounts. Sometimes they literally only change the color and sell it as a completely different mount. There is no benefit on owning different mounts like most games. There is no mount collecting mini game like a lot of games. They completely missed a whole hook there to keep people interested and use that to sell exclusive mounts.

ESO may have the worst marketing of any video game i have ever played. I am not a big fan of Microsoft, but i am kind of glad they are taking over here. They have a modern marketing department that understands marketing virtual products. They also like profits. They aren't going to like that ZOS marketing is leaving so much money on the table with used car salesman sales gimmicks. I am hoping the make them change some things like that.

kargen27

"Except what i said was based on actual marketing data, not speculation. "

Neither of us have access to the actual data. We are both speculating. I'm not even saying you are wrong. I am saying there is no way we can know if you are wrong or right.
The limited time offerings do play on our basic behavior. That behavior hasn't gone away. Going off on a bit of a tangent but there was a study done a while back with slot machines. People could play any machine they wanted. Some machines were set to higher and more frequent payoffs but no bells and whistles when you won. Others had smaller less frequent payouts but when you did win there were flashing lights and all kinds of noises going off. Even knowing the bland machines paid better most people played the flashy machines. All those games we can play on our phones take full advantage of this behavior. Game companies are very good at knowing what buttons to push to make us spend money or spend time in their games.

"This game has the crappiest mounts situation of any mmo. They tried to turn mounts into a cash cow, but the mounts in this game are pitifully boring."

THose boring mounts have zero competition though. Doesn't matter what another MMO might offer because people playing this game are interested in playing this game. That aside not everybody thinks the mounts are boring. I'm not excited by new mounts enough to purchase crowns but others are. Some completionists feel the need to have every mount. They are going to spend the money to get them. Have been several threads in the past arguing that it is predatory behavior to take advantage of those types of players.

"They aren't going to like that ZOS marketing is leaving so much money on the table with used car salesman sales gimmicks. I am hoping the make them change some things like that."

Again this is speculation. Without real numbers over a long period of time we don't know.

Waseem

There has to be ways to obtain older rewards!
How on earth will I obtain 6-7 items I need from Nightfall crates for example? wait 5 years?

RealJobasha

Imagine siding with the [redacted]s in the marketing department instead of siding with the consumers that would gladly pay money for things they want, if only the things they want were available for purchase. non-protestant acceptance of the corporatocracy's actions gets you, and us, nowhere.

Anotherone773

kargen27 wrote: »

Neither of us have access to the actual data. We are both speculating. I'm not even saying you are wrong. I am saying there is no way we can know if you are wrong or right.

Uhhh....it's taught in college for at least the last 10-15 years. It's like saying evolution is speculation because we dont have access to the actual data. Also, you don't know what data i have access to, so you are making a rather large assumption.

The limited time offerings do play on our basic behavior.

Except LTO only works on a small portion of the population which is fine if the item is available all the time for the rest of population it doesn't work on.

THose boring mounts have zero competition though. Doesn't matter what another MMO might offer because people playing this game are interested in playing this game.

Like a well stocked premium shop, mounts are important to a lot of people. Especially when you come from one of the biggest competitors to ESO, WoW. ESO mounts are lame and boring compared to WoW and many WoW players have mentioned this. While it alone probably is extremely rare to be the reason why someone doesn't play ESO, it doesn't help attract or keep players from other games that have better choices. Mounts are probably the biggest cosmetic disappointment i hear mentioned. Also the fact that they are cosmetic in relation to each other.

Again this is speculation. Without real numbers over a long period of time we don't know.

It's more of an educated guess. You really need to stop assuming things about what i know. You don't know me, at all.

kargen27

"Uhhh....it's taught in college for at least the last 10-15 years. It's like saying evolution is speculation because we dont have access to the actual data."

You don't have access to the books. You are speculating.

And no it isn't like saying evolution is speculation because there is actual data and evidence. I can hit a natural history museum and see the evidence for myself. Now there was and still is some speculation about specifics within evolution. As more evidence is found that speculation is adjusted. In the overall timeline it hasn't been that long since we shifted away from dinosaurs being giant reptiles and being more related to birds.

"Also, you don't know what data i have access to, so you are making a rather large assumption."

No, I am not making an assumption. I've never said you are wrong. I said we can't know without looking at the numbers. You may be 100% correct. We don't and can't know that though.

"It's more of an educated guess. You really need to stop assuming things about what i know. You don't know me, at all."

An educated guess is still a guess. A professional would never suggest a change to a companies marketing strategy without first looking at the existing strategy and researching the numbers. Again I am not the one assuming. You are correct that I do not know you.

LuffyGing

THIS ONE NEED XANMEER CREATE.