Charging for appearance change (not race) feels... kind of awful?

FaylenSol

This might be just from my personal experiences from other games, including other games made by Zenimax/Bethesda (Fallout 76).

But charging crowns for the ability to change my characters hair color? Just... feels awful.

Of all the monetization this game has, this is the one that actually rubs me the wrong way. I'm fine with the time savers, cosmetics, loot boxes, and account upgrades. Majority of the things you can get that impact game mechanics in the crown store can also be earned in game and none of it makes you better than someone who just plays the game without spending money.

But locking appearance changes behind the crown store is just a feelsbadman.

Especially since you can't access your unlocked cosmetics in the character creation menu without buying an appearance change token. If I create a new character I can't see any of the hair styles, skins, tattoos, etc. I've bought or unlocked. I have to make the character, equip those things, then purchase a token, and then I can make adjustments to my characters appearance with those things equipped.

SidraWillowsky

It costs an exorbitant amount of Crowns. I'd be fine if it cost like 500, but it's ridiculous that it's so expensive right now.

FaylenSol

Coming from other online games that charged in-game gold for changing appearances and from another Bethesda IP that just let you change your appearance at will with two button presses anywhere you are without charge (Caps or otherwise)...

It just feels so bizarre to me to charge crowns at all for this feature.

Jackey

I was also a bit disappointed in how they implemented the highly requested "barber shop" feature.
It should have been an actual barber shop where you could pay gold to change your hair, beard and colour.

I don't mind the token for an appearance change but I would never buy it to change my hair colour lol

FaylenSol

I would agree if the game didn't have so many sliders.

When making my Necro Tank I wanted him to be a tall beefy dude. But didn't realize I made his thighs a bit too... thicc. It wasn't until I put on certain types of armor that this became very apparent. It was a very, "Do these pants make my butt look big" moment for me. lmao.

Finding out to tweak just that aspect of him would cost me crowns felt just terrible.

MellowMagic

100% percent agree.

I sorta understand the pricing for name change, race chance, alliance change w.e

But yeah 1k crowns so I can change my eye color because the lighting in the character creating menu made my green eyes appear more green they how they appear in 90% of the game same with hair colour. Or to change my voice because I forgot about it when I was making my guy and now I realised how much I hate his laugh. Simple things like eye colour and hair should cost in-game gold. Things like this is what makes people cringe when discussing eso to non-eso players.

Radiance

Hair color Pack Now, zos!

Erebear

I tried to make a twin of Razum-dar, only to find, red was not an available color for Khajiit “hair”😒

MasterSpatula

The implementation of appearance change is one of the things that really killed my faith in ZOS as a company.

If you weren't around here on Day 1, you might not be aware that there was a bug at launch that meant that you were only able to zoom to get a detailed look at the characters on the first character you created. For subsequent characters, you had to build them zoomed out and just hope. That and the poor lighting of the Wailing Prison meant a lot of our characters didn't quite come out the way we wanted. So requests for appearance change started pretty much on 3/30/2014.

When they finally gave us appearance change, it was in an all-or-nothing package. My main, the second character I created on the first day of Early Access, is just a smidge too frowny. That's it. One teeny, tiny little tweak and I'd be happy. But I'll be damned if I'm going to pay them the same price as a complete overhaul for that. So frowny she remains, entirely because ZOS insists on overcharging us for a necessary feature and not even allowing the price to scale to the amount of changes being done.

I have plenty of Crowns, but it's the principle of the thing. I don't reward this kind of behavior.

Ashryn

Yes, this is the first game I've played where you couldn't tweak your character as you wished unless you pay plenty. Let's face it, you look differently in-world then what you see in a limited way when you create your character. Costumes and hair look different and who can choose a proper voice from the clips you hear? I've often chosen a voice that sounded like it would fit and then have been unpleasantly surprised that the character yells obnoxiously with every movement.

kieso

Yeah its pretty lame imo. Even wow lets you change on the fly at a barber shop.

poodlemasterb16_ESO

LOL. First World Problems.

Moonsprite

I would really like a hair color pack. I hope they decide to add one. The adornments change color based on your current hair color, right? I haven’t found a way to change them.

FaylenSol

poodlemasterb16_ESO wrote: »

LOL. First World Problems.

Its a forum about a MMORPG. Everything discussed on here is a first world problem.

Ryuvain

Erebear wrote: »

I tried to make a twin of Razum-dar, only to find, red was not an available color for Khajiit “hair”😒

Tried that with the hair day 1 lol. The generic hair colors are pretty boring imo.

scorpius2k1

You can customize your character's outfit and weapons and dye them for GOLD...I too am a bit baffled why it costs actual money to change how the rest of your character looks. Seems a bit out of touch imho. It would be a really nice addition to have a dressing room area in zones along with the outfit stations. They could even offer a new housing item if players wanted the feature in their homes which I would think could make more money (gold and crown store) than just a restrictive token. This way we could change body/hair as well and further add to the quality of life in ESO. The alliance and name change tokens seem more appropriate if they are going to charging players for character modifications.
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Kiralyn2000

FaylenSol wrote: »

Coming from other online games that charged in-game gold for changing appearances and from another Bethesda IP that just let you change your appearance at will with two button presses anywhere you are without charge (Caps or otherwise)...

It just feels so bizarre to me to charge crowns at all for this feature.

I suppose it depends on what games one has played. I remember appearance changes in online games costing $ (when it was even possible at all), long before games started doing it for free or in-game currency.

Heck, White Knight Chronicles II (PS3 JRPG) charged to change your appearance, and that wasn't even an MMO (it had some online MP, but it was lobby or mission based? Otherwise, it was a single player game.)

On the other hand, I've also played City of Heroes & Star Trek Online, which not only let you change your appearance but ties it to specific outfits so you can switch between them at will. I had CoH characters with radically different appearances in different outfit slots. (which is also part of why the ESO price for outfit slots bugs me so much - I can get 2 account-wide outfit slots in STO for like 500 'crowns'.)


But yeah, on the whole, I'm more used to it being a $$ option, than it being 'free'. (I was honestly surprised to see it in Fallout 76 - I actually made a second character to make a new face, before I noticed that altering your appearance was even an option. I'd assumed that it would either be not possible at all, or would cost Atoms. )

volkeswagon

There are many money grabs in this game. Like crown gem mounts that have like a 1% chance of dropping in crates then charge 400 gems to buy. Would require like $100 to get that many gems for a mount. A complete rip off and extremely unethical.

FaylenSol

Eh, the rare mount drops don't bother me all that much. I think I've only ever seen a couple that I found neat, but I've been able to find a mount that fits my character without it being tied to the crown crates.

But something about locking the ability of changing your characters appearance behind a paywall seems worse in my opinion. Especially since the game has a pretty good character creator and we can't see all the new stuff you unlock by playing the game without going through the pay wall.

itscompton

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

It costs an exorbitant amount of Crowns. I'd be fine if it cost like 500, but it's ridiculous that it's so expensive right now.

Same with a character name change, why should it cost nearly 2 months worth of subscription reward crowns to change the name of 1 character? It's such a small, inconsequential, change and they want me to pay more than $20 dollars worth of crowns for it? I have 2-3 characters I'd love to change the name of but I won't even use the subscription crowns to do it out of matter of principal because they have it so overpriced.

BellaDCopular

FaylenSol wrote: »

Coming from other online games that charged in-game gold for changing appearances and from another Bethesda IP that just let you change your appearance at will with two button presses anywhere you are without charge (Caps or otherwise)...

It just feels so bizarre to me to charge crowns at all for this feature.

I played swtor, you could change your appearance for cartel coinst when they added in the appearance modifier, the costs could vary, depending on if it was a complete race change, minor changes such as hair color/style or eyecolor or the cosmetics (makeup, cybernetics, jewlery etc) it was slightly more expensive if you move the face slider for a different face, or change your bodytype. I'd be ok with a system like that. We still have the collectibles menu to change hairstyle etc, but a recent change made it so it overrides that if you wear a disguise, I think it had to do with vampirism not being hidden with a disguise or something seeing as my vampire now turns back to normal with a disguise, where she didn't do that last year.

anadandy

MasterSpatula wrote: »

My main, the second character I created on the first day of Early Access, is just a smidge too frowny. That's it. One teeny, tiny little tweak and I'd be happy. But I'll be damned if I'm going to pay them the same price as a complete overhaul for that.

Similar to my Breton sorc. I made her a redhead, only to find out her hair was more magenta when she was out in the world. It irks me, but not enough to spend a months worth of plus crowns to fix that ONE thing.

FaylenSol

itscompton wrote: »

Same with a character name change, why should it cost nearly 2 months worth of subscription reward crowns to change the name of 1 character? It's such a small, inconsequential, change and they want me to pay more than $20 dollars worth of crowns for it? I have 2-3 characters I'd love to change the name of but I won't even use the subscription crowns to do it out of matter of principal because they have it so overpriced.

Couldn't agree more. It is one thing to charge for it, it is another to charge so much for it.

merpins

And then there's the armor skins. You wanna save a pre-set style that you made, color and all? Well ya can do it once, after which you gotta fork over 1500 crowns to unlock another slot that lets you save your presets. Oh, and it's not account wide so ya gotta fork over 1500 crowns for EVERY character you want more than 1 set armor style on, assuming you don't want to scrap the old one to make a new one.

ElvenOverlord

Everybody talking about a hair color pack how about a skin tone pack? It would literally solve the problem of skin tones being different in-game from the creation screen. Having the ability to change your skin tone in-game would be a huge QOL change

Vlad9425

Agreed there needs to be an in game gold alternative added and the crown store version price should be at least halved.

Athan1

What also really annoys me is how you need to pay real money to change your beard trim or make-up... This isn't how cosmetics work. In the same way that someone changes clothes every day, their trim or make-up changes too. Just let us change this to whatever we want?

Daenyres

Nearly everything in the crown store is stupidly expensive and they make you pay for the dumbest most mundane things like you said, hair color change. At the end of the day ZOS only cares about money.

Athan1

In my country 100 crowns cost $1 so it's pretty straightforward to see how ridiculously expensive everything is. So basically, an appearance change costs $25 for me. For real?? IRL barbers cost less!

Sarannah

There needs to be some hurdle to appearance changes. Otherwise you will get players trolling others, by copying their looks all the time.

Having to buy appearance changes also makes creating a character more impactful, instead of just clicking create and figuring it all out later.

WeerW3ir

well. if you purchase those hair and beard packs. you wont have a problem to change them. tho having colors closed behind paywall. well.

but who am i kidding? this is not a wow. and never will be. under the 6-7 yxears i learned that zos does not care aboutwhat players want. just what is good for us. according to them. most of the functions which should be free is behind paywall, since elsweyr. every story is just a one year long story but not taking the MAIN story forward.