Proposal on new Rewards Structure [Revised]

Tornaad

Many in the community think that we need a new rewards structure and that ZoS puts too much into the crown store. I definitely agree that we need a new rewards structure and have been thinking about a possible way to take advantage of the love Zos has for the crown store to get it done. The reason I think a new reward structure would need to involve the crown store in some way is simply because of how much of an emphasis ZoS puts on the crown store.
Edit:
After the initial hostility towards my idea, I revised it and debated about either updating the original post or just starting a new thread, I thought this might be the best route.
The revised idea is as follows.
As Zos often likes to create multiple versions of things anyway, create multiple possible rewards for completing difficult challenges, for example, a fancy mount that has an option of multiple colors it comes in. When you complete the achievement, it gives you a ticket that lets you redeem it for one of the mounts of your choice. If you complete the achievement again you can again, get another coupon, but if you are impatient or simply do not want to complete it multiple times, then you can go into the crown store and purchase additional versions. However, you can only purchase the special mount (or whatever it might be) if you have first completed the achievement.

At that point, they still have something to sell in the crown store, and (whether they purchase the additional versions or not) individuals would still have something to show off their various achievements.
I think this could provide a happy medium between the current structure, and a more robust rewards structure that so many have been asking for.
What do you think of this idea?
Would you be fine with this kind of reward structure?

Seminolegirl1992

No

I struggle with the idea that a nicer version of something earned from an achievement is purchasable for real money. I would like the idea of basic versions of mounts being offered for gold (c'mon- a fantastic gold sink option), and fancier things offered in the crown store. If something is offered for an achievement, especially a more difficult one, I would prefer there not be a better cosmetic in the crown store that is clearly similar to it. Feels...cheap. Like what was the point, yknow?

The rewards structure does need to be reworked though. Difficult achievements used to offer skins and personalities. Now the model is body marking and face marking that are usually awful. The vDSR markings are cool but I doubt I'll use them. When I got the beast and worm cult personality, or drom'athra skin, I was freaking stoked. Those felt rewarding. Going back to something similar would make a lot of folks happy but I doubt they would do that. They are making a killing in the crown store upping prices on mounts, costumes, etc because people will still buy them.

TaSheen

No

I don't have any issue with the way things work now. I'm not really much interested in rewards at all, and don't often even buy cosmetics with crowns.

I loved the ticket bought indriks and pets, I buy costumes with endeavors. That's about it.

jlmurra2

No

I feel no issue with the current rewards structure.

The crown store though I feel should have more crown purchasable collectables available directly rather than so many only being obtainable though buying crown crates.

Soarora

No

The rewards structure does need to go back to how it was where we got skins for vet trial completion, skins and personalities for dungeon challengers, and furnishings for trial HMs. I just do not feel motivated to do challengers and trial HMs without those rewards and it frustrates me. However, putting nicer versions in the crown store is just recipe for disaster… something similar happened with the Kynes Aegis skin and it did not go down well.

Drammanoth

Yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-STNGAqfTE8

MaraxusTheOrc

No

So they have to make two versions of every reward? Seems impractical. What types of rewards are you talking about? Skins? Hats? Mementos? Titles? It’s a pretty broad post. Considering this stuff is cosmetic in nature, and we as gamers have historically gone as record in favor of cosmetic-only cash shop items and disfavor game-impacting items, I’m just not sure I like the idea here.

Firstmep

No

No, zos needs to put actually useful rewards forward for repeatable content and titles mtx etc is fine for achievements.

Amottica

No

First of all, the crown store is intended as a revenue source to supplement the low cost of a subscription and the even lower cost of just buying DLCs. So any means to earn crown store items in-game will be something that will make the endeavor system a fast and efficient means to get a radiant apex mount.

On that note, @jlmurra2 makes a good point that many of us would probably prefer to be able to purchase crate times straight up. Even if it is extremely expensive to where 99% of the player base could not afford it, we would probably prefer a fixed price for a radiant apex mount than to roll the dice for it.

Tornaad

Yes

Drammanoth wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-STNGAqfTE8

Awesome! Thank you for sharing.

Mascen

Only with improvements (detailed in comments)

Sorta, my biggest gripe with ESO plus is that if youre not around for X Monthly reward you cant get it. Especially with some of the paintings

Id rather have a ticket system that allows you to pick from a pool, with one ticket a month and a new option added every month. So if you want daedric statues instead of divines or Prince Hubalajad, you can spend 16 months getting all daedric statues

VeiledCriticism

No

I don't agree with giving nicer rewards through crowns, but this is something already present in the game. Some examples come to mind:

Frosthaunt Glister (Crown Crates) vs. Crystal Frost (New Life Event)
Runic Seabrume (Crown Store) vs Seaborn Silver (Veteran Kyne's Aegis Completion)
Mind Shriven (Crown Store) vs Soul Shriven (Random drop in Imperial City after defeating Molag Bal in the center of the sewers)

As far as I can remember, the only time there was a public outcry about it was back in 2019, in Elsweyr Chapter's PTS cycle. There was a crown mount that was exactly like the Sunspire Champion Senche-Lion (aka Godslayer Mount). Both mounts didn't differ from each other in the first cycle (can't find the crown mount image). The big issue was that it was the first time a mount was made available through an achievement. After a week or so, the crown mount was reworked into the Blazeborn Senche-lion.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind nice stuff being offered in the Crown Store, but I don't like feeling like cosmetics obtainable in-game are not some cheap knockoffs.

I personally prefer skins and personalities over cosmetics like Face/Body Markings, which seems the direction for new dungeon/trial rewards. It used to feel much more rewarding receiving cool skins from like vAS and vCR. Same with the Worm Cultist and Beast personality.

AFAIK, the last dungeon-achievement skin was from Castle Throne in 2020 and the last trial-achievement skin was also from 2020 with Kyne's Aegis.

Tornaad

Yes

After the initial hostility towards the idea, I revised it. Hopefully, this will receive more of a warm welcome.

shadyjane62

Yes

I wouldn't mind getting thin crown store if I didn't have to thru gamble boxes to get gems. I won't do it. I have recently given away 10k crowns in riding lessons to people in my group in pvp. They were crowns given to me by Zos and I still wouldn't gamble them away.

fizl101

Rather than through the crown store, how about a similar ticket system but with the achievement vendor? It separates the crown store from the achievements, but still gives a level of choice (if that choice was to be made available)

Tornaad

Yes

fizl101 wrote: »

Rather than through the crown store, how about a similar ticket system but with the achievement vendor? It separates the crown store from the achievements, but still gives a level of choice (if that choice was to be made available)

The reason I thought about using the crown store is because it would appeal to how ZoS seems to like to operate. The goal is to find something that fits within how ZoS likes to operate and give the players a more robust reward structure.
I would be just fine if it were accessed through a special achievement vender. I would just want something that Zos would be able to put into the crown store as well, so maybe they could sell tickets that you could purchase in addition to earning, but you would still need to have the achievement unlocked before you could use the tickets.

tomofhyrule

ZOS's rewards structure is definitely light on content in favor of being able to buy things directly, but I can't say I'm too annoyed by it. There always does seem to be a fine line in these type of threads between "Hard content should get good rewards" and "I want to make sure I can get something exclusive that noobs can't so I can show I'm better than them." I mean, in that case why not have the reward just be a flashing neon sign that says "I DID CONTENT XYZ!"

Reposting from a similar thread:

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I feel like it also depends on the type of reward. Yes, hard things should get rewards, but what shouldn't happen is something useful for an unrelated group gets locked behind something difficult.

Case in point: it's wholly appropriate to give an Olympic Gold Medal to the person who performs the best in a gymnastics routine. It is not exactly appropriate to say the reward for doing the best gymnastics routine is that you get an Oscar for it. Consider the other way around - "you can only get an Olympic Gold for doing an Olympic sport!" makes sense, while "you can only get an acting award by doing an Olympic sport!" makes less sense. Meryl Streep would be disappointed.

Yes, that's an exaggeration, but my point is that the reward should match the thing you're doing. I very much disliked giving personalities (which are incredibly useful to RPers or storytellers) as rewards for hard content. Also the fact that a simple boat furnishing (one of the few boats in the game) was locked behind a vet trial. Yes, there are many storytellers and housing enthusiasts who are endgame ready, but that's not a general rule. There are a lot of storytellers and furnishers that are not capable of harder content, and for many of them it's not simply a 'git gud.' There are reasons to get those things that don't involve showing off accomplishments (and/or flexing on the noobs). To try to say something like "you can't RP the way your character should because you personally suck at the game" just reeks of elitism.

What were appropriate rewards were skins related to the dungeon in question. They were really not seen anywhere else in game, and related perfectly to the story. Those are also specific to the people who want to wear them to show off - very few people would want to wear a vCR+3 skin for reasons other than saying "wow this is cool because it's rare" or "wow, this is cool because I did vCR+3."

So as much as I like personalities and would love to see more in game, I think those should stay in the crown store and away from hard content. Bye by all means all of those skins in the crates should go to the hardmodes instead.

If I look at vFL as an example...
The Worm Wizard personality is only available from FL speedrun/HM/nodeath. It's also a great personality if someone wants to RP a necromancer.

So let's assume we have a new player with a physical disability that prevents them from doing pretty much anything in game other than RP. They don't get much of a chance to play games because of their disability, but they were able to find an RP community here and even managed to get through the main quest (albeit with a lot of difficulty and dying to some of the bosses a few times). They enjoyed the MQ so much that they want to make their next character a necromancer. And they physically can't get the personality they need.

"OMG just git gud!"

The Worm Wizard personality, while a great reward, is now being tied to being a good player. There are several reasons someone would want to use it; "flexing on noobs" is not the entire list. I can say from personal experience that I put my Beast personality on my baby werewolf character because he's a werewolf; 'trying to show off that I got MoS challenger on a level 27 toon' did not enter into my decision.
...besides, why is Worm Wizard for Fang Lair anyway? Not one enemy in FL uses that personality, so the only thing they have to do with each other is 'necromancers.' Now all of the necromancers in there are wearing a certain skin... which was the one rewarded for Scalecaller (!?), a dungeon where none of those enemies wear it.

So realistically, the WW personality is a bad reward for vFL since it's not referenced in that dungeon at all! But we all think it's a 'good reward' because it's a personality.

I'll take this another way - imagine if they released a new mythic item, "Gloves of the Uber Leet" that was essentially release-date Thrassian's. You get the leads by:

• Getting a drop from a Stream Team member.
• Having a top-voted screenshot in a forum contest.
• Gifted to you by a Gamemaster for having an impressively decorated primary house.
• Winning a writing contest for Bethesda EU for a '10k word story about your character.' In German.
• Making a physical cosplay of your character and getting retweeted by Gina on Twitter.

Obviously, that's a great reward for endgame players, but the stuff to do is... not targeted at endgamers. That's not to say that someone who plays endgame isn't capable of doing these things, but it's not as much of an overlap as if the leads, say, dropped from trial and dungeon HMs.

So, by all means have skins be rewards for hard dungeon content (assuming those skins are used in that actual dungeon). Many of them are pretty outlandish and not all that good for things other than wanting to show off your achievement, so it's not like you're trying to step on anyone's toes here. All of the dungeon skins we've had so far (save Blackmarrow) have come from those specific dungeons and are involved in those stories. We've even had things like the BloodForged skin which went to the Crown Store when it should have come from Bloodroot. But as 'good' of a reward as personalities are, those are useful for more than flexing on people and should be accessible (and released in general - come on ZOS, how many personalities have we been begging for by now).

Tornaad

Yes

tomofhyrule wrote: »

ZOS's rewards structure is definitely light on content in favor of being able to buy things directly, but I can't say I'm too annoyed by it. There always does seem to be a fine line in these type of threads between "Hard content should get good rewards" and "I want to make sure I can get something exclusive that noobs can't so I can show I'm better than them." I mean, in that case why not have the reward just be a flashing neon sign that says "I DID CONTENT XYZ!"

Reposting from a similar thread:

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I feel like it also depends on the type of reward. Yes, hard things should get rewards, but what shouldn't happen is something useful for an unrelated group gets locked behind something difficult.

Case in point: it's wholly appropriate to give an Olympic Gold Medal to the person who performs the best in a gymnastics routine. It is not exactly appropriate to say the reward for doing the best gymnastics routine is that you get an Oscar for it. Consider the other way around - "you can only get an Olympic Gold for doing an Olympic sport!" makes sense, while "you can only get an acting award by doing an Olympic sport!" makes less sense. Meryl Streep would be disappointed.

Yes, that's an exaggeration, but my point is that the reward should match the thing you're doing. I very much disliked giving personalities (which are incredibly useful to RPers or storytellers) as rewards for hard content. Also the fact that a simple boat furnishing (one of the few boats in the game) was locked behind a vet trial. Yes, there are many storytellers and housing enthusiasts who are endgame ready, but that's not a general rule. There are a lot of storytellers and furnishers that are not capable of harder content, and for many of them it's not simply a 'git gud.' There are reasons to get those things that don't involve showing off accomplishments (and/or flexing on the noobs). To try to say something like "you can't RP the way your character should because you personally suck at the game" just reeks of elitism.

What were appropriate rewards were skins related to the dungeon in question. They were really not seen anywhere else in game, and related perfectly to the story. Those are also specific to the people who want to wear them to show off - very few people would want to wear a vCR+3 skin for reasons other than saying "wow this is cool because it's rare" or "wow, this is cool because I did vCR+3."

So as much as I like personalities and would love to see more in game, I think those should stay in the crown store and away from hard content. Bye by all means all of those skins in the crates should go to the hardmodes instead.

If I look at vFL as an example...
The Worm Wizard personality is only available from FL speedrun/HM/nodeath. It's also a great personality if someone wants to RP a necromancer.

So let's assume we have a new player with a physical disability that prevents them from doing pretty much anything in game other than RP. They don't get much of a chance to play games because of their disability, but they were able to find an RP community here and even managed to get through the main quest (albeit with a lot of difficulty and dying to some of the bosses a few times). They enjoyed the MQ so much that they want to make their next character a necromancer. And they physically can't get the personality they need.

"OMG just git gud!"

The Worm Wizard personality, while a great reward, is now being tied to being a good player. There are several reasons someone would want to use it; "flexing on noobs" is not the entire list. I can say from personal experience that I put my Beast personality on my baby werewolf character because he's a werewolf; 'trying to show off that I got MoS challenger on a level 27 toon' did not enter into my decision.
...besides, why is Worm Wizard for Fang Lair anyway? Not one enemy in FL uses that personality, so the only thing they have to do with each other is 'necromancers.' Now all of the necromancers in there are wearing a certain skin... which was the one rewarded for Scalecaller (!?), a dungeon where none of those enemies wear it.

So realistically, the WW personality is a bad reward for vFL since it's not referenced in that dungeon at all! But we all think it's a 'good reward' because it's a personality.

I'll take this another way - imagine if they released a new mythic item, "Gloves of the Uber Leet" that was essentially release-date Thrassian's. You get the leads by:

• Getting a drop from a Stream Team member.
• Having a top-voted screenshot in a forum contest.
• Gifted to you by a Gamemaster for having an impressively decorated primary house.
• Winning a writing contest for Bethesda EU for a '10k word story about your character.' In German.
• Making a physical cosplay of your character and getting retweeted by Gina on Twitter.

Obviously, that's a great reward for endgame players, but the stuff to do is... not targeted at endgamers. That's not to say that someone who plays endgame isn't capable of doing these things, but it's not as much of an overlap as if the leads, say, dropped from trial and dungeon HMs.

So, by all means have skins be rewards for hard dungeon content (assuming those skins are used in that actual dungeon). Many of them are pretty outlandish and not all that good for things other than wanting to show off your achievement, so it's not like you're trying to step on anyone's toes here. All of the dungeon skins we've had so far (save Blackmarrow) have come from those specific dungeons and are involved in those stories. We've even had things like the BloodForged skin which went to the Crown Store when it should have come from Bloodroot. But as 'good' of a reward as personalities are, those are useful for more than flexing on people and should be accessible (and released in general - come on ZOS, how many personalities have we been begging for by now).

Wow! You make some very good points.

If I am going to be completely transparent, then I would say that for me, the current reward structure does not bug me that much. The reason I made this thread is simply because I like to fix problems and I can see why many might feel that it needs work. All of your points are excellent points.