I would buy tons of crown stuff, but everything is ridiculously priced, so I buy nothing.

Vaerion

This is a two-parter. The first part is the steps you could take to increase profits manyfold, and the second part is why it would work.

Steps to Increase Profits Manyfold:

• Permanently reduce price for "convenience" items by 75%
• Make convenience items easier to craft (some of us simply don't have time)
• Continuously release a steady stream of FUN and COOL cosmetic items
• Release a heart-felt apology letter to customers, stating that you were chasing profits the wrong way, and will now sell us ENTERTAINMENT instead of convenience to invented problems

Why This Would Work:
As stated in the title, I would buy lots of stuff in the store, in addition to my ESO+ subscription. I would spend at least an extra $20 per month. But since there's so little value per dollar, I buy nothing instead. I'm sure there are a lot of people who feel the same (I mean, just read some reviews). So you're losing money from all these people.

Your pricing strategy for store items seems to be the same as a company that sells a physical product or professional service. "Charging the maximum amount someone is willing to pay will generate the most profits." This is false. You're not selling TVs or fixing a car. There's no cost-of-goods-sold. (Yeah, you pay someone to design/code the thing, but you don't pay the cost for every sale.) There's no one-customer-per-time-slot.

You also seem to be operating under the false assumption that, if someone pays $10 for a storage chest, you'll lose money if you reduced the price of the storage chest. But many people would still buy $10 worth of stuff, but they'd just get more value for their money. Others may be encouraged to spend more because they're getting more for their money. Instead, they might only buy what they absolutely need because everything's so expensive. The things we "need" are solutions for problems that you invented (limited bag space, etc.).

Lastly, none of this is fun. Do you forget that you're selling entertainment? Inconveniencing us to the point where you're forcing us to buy things is not fun.

Sell us fun. Sell us entertainment. Be transparent. If you're first-to-market with this business strategy, you'll win over a ton of customers.

Vaerion

Also, by "fun" and "cool" cosmetics, I don't mean immersion-breaking stuff like Asian MMOs or Fortnite.

SammyKhajit

OP: This one would give you 100 awesome if allowed.

everseeing_njpreub18_ESO

It only touches on an aspect of what your saying, but in this sense i agree.

I have over 20k crowns from my monthly subscription just piling up, but my main enjoyment is the housing. I love the house-guests, some of the mini-pets and mounts, but with the current limits i have skipped on many of them i would have immediately bought if i could place them out (In your terms, have fun with). I know the reasoning, but it goes along a bit with your post.

If i COULD get more enjoyment out of these items i would buy them immediately.

fizzylu

ESO prices are definitely more than a bit ridiculous. I pass on stuff all the time just because I can't excuse the price. I mean, seriously.... over forty dollars for a target dummy???? I thought that had to be a joke when my friend wanted to buy it, but nope. I'm not even against the crown store. Like yeah, I think selling a not so optional subscription AND having pretty much all customization/collectible options locked behind a paywall is questionable.... but it is what it is. The pricing though? Really there's no reasonable explanation for charging so much. GW2 does it better by far and I never hesitate to purchase or choose not to get something in that game. I can get a costume in that game for like four dollars. I can get an armor style for about six dollars. I can change my characters appearance for around three dollars. So yeah, it'd be cool if ZOS could see the logic in lowering the prices.... but if anything they just seem to keep getting higher (still not over the 40+ dollar target dummy).

OBJnoob

I have to agree. It's a pretty uneducated agree-- uneducated because I've always agreed, hardly ever purchased, and therefore barely even know what the prices of things are anymore. But I know they're too high for me.

I suppose they aren't stupid. There must be enough people buying 100 dollar houses and 40 dollar (or whatever,) mounts for them to justify the prices. I assume they "know" that making it cheaper x5 won't make them sell more x5. But I promise I'll never spend more than 20 bucks on... Anything.

I'm very happy for anybody that is a retired player, wealthy, or just super into the game. But as for me I've got bills to pay and paying more than 20 bucks for a digital anything is just... Laughable. It's not even that I can't afford it, it's just plain not worth it.

I'll back down a little bit. I know some people are really into housing (I'm not,) and I bet there's a lot of playtime and enjoyment value in buying a brand new home. Might enjoy that for years. Prolly worth 50 bucks or so. Just not my 50 bucks

VaranisArano

I feel like specifics would help your cause a lot, or at least help me understand your objections better.

I mean, what convenience items are you buying from the Crown Store because you don't have time to craft them yourself?

You can also earn Storage Chests in game, if you object to paying for them. I got mine from Crafting Vouchers, but you can get them with Tel Var if you prefer PVP.

I mean, I understand the appeal of lowered prices and fun cosmetics (that aren't locked into the extremely profitable Crown Crates, natch.)

But without clarification, I confess this looks to me like a case of "I don't want to play the game to get the convenience item for free, so can you please hugely discount the price for me?"

endgamesmug

Everything costs gems these days so i dont buy anything, and i dont buy gamble crates. Endeavours might come through in the end but im not dependant on it all, so i just plain old grind as much as i can ingame for things to make and buy with gold.

Nestor

I know they chase the Whales with the Crown Store. But offering a small selection of items each week that are priced reasonably would not cannibalize whale sales.

As for Convenience Items, daily logins should get you plenty of those. I have more than 5000 Tri Pots and hundreds of the Foods. Soul gems are easy to get with the World Passive that fills a Soul Gem for you. And it takes 20 minutes to level Alchemy and Provisioning to make your own.

Alekero

Im ok with prices actually... but there absolutely nothing to buy here. Costumes? I got few that look amazin and thats it.
Weapons? Same old pets on rotation? Motifs, that is cheaper to buy from stores? Totally useless dyes since its better to dye with ESO+.
Mounts which 70% are reskins...
ZOS should add alternative payment for ESO+ tho, like crown gems or seals of endeavor (not gold since its ez to farm) - thats would be really step forward.

Pixiepumpkin

Prices are too much for a buy to play and subscription based game.

houses, mounts, motifs and anything else should never be the price of a chapter or DLC.

Vaerion

VaranisArano wrote: »

I feel like specifics would help your cause a lot, or at least help me understand your objections better.

I mean, what convenience items are you buying from the Crown Store because you don't have time to craft them yourself?

You can also earn Storage Chests in game, if you object to paying for them. I got mine from Crafting Vouchers, but you can get them with Tel Var if you prefer PVP.

I mean, I understand the appeal of lowered prices and fun cosmetics (that aren't locked into the extremely profitable Crown Crates, natch.)

But without clarification, I confess this looks to me like a case of "I don't want to play the game to get the convenience item for free, so can you please hugely discount the price for me?"

Storage chests are one of the convenience items to which I'm referring. I normally have about 2 to 4 hours a week to spend gaming. I don't enjoy crafting or PvP, so I don't want to waste my time on those activities.

These are some of the items I would buy were they not ridiculously priced (assuming you buy crowns in 1,500 chunks):

• $15 -- Extra armory slot
• $20 -- 60-slot chest (x3)
• $50 -- Cool armor skin
• $50 -- A nice house
• $30 -- A cooler mount
• $50 -- A few assistants (x3)

I don't understand how anyone could look at these prices and think they're reasonable. And this is coming from someone with a 6-figure salary. The prices are absurd. The cost of a single luxury home is more than a new AAA game in its entirety.

Vaerion

Vaerion wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

I feel like specifics would help your cause a lot, or at least help me understand your objections better.

I mean, what convenience items are you buying from the Crown Store because you don't have time to craft them yourself?

You can also earn Storage Chests in game, if you object to paying for them. I got mine from Crafting Vouchers, but you can get them with Tel Var if you prefer PVP.

I mean, I understand the appeal of lowered prices and fun cosmetics (that aren't locked into the extremely profitable Crown Crates, natch.)

But without clarification, I confess this looks to me like a case of "I don't want to play the game to get the convenience item for free, so can you please hugely discount the price for me?"

Storage chests are one of the convenience items to which I'm referring. I normally have about 2 to 4 hours a week to spend gaming. I don't enjoy crafting or PvP, so I don't want to waste my time on those activities.

These are some of the items I would buy were they not ridiculously priced (assuming you buy crowns in 1,500 chunks):

• $15 -- Extra armory slot
• $20 -- 60-slot chest (x3)
• $50 -- Cool armor skin
• $50 -- A nice house
• $30 -- A cooler mount
• $50 -- A few assistants (x3)

I don't understand how anyone could look at these prices and think they're reasonable. And this is coming from someone with a 6-figure salary. The prices are absurd. The cost of a single luxury home is more than a new AAA game in its entirety.

Well, I meant a few assistants at $50 each. You get the idea. I'm dumb without coffee.

VaranisArano

Vaerion wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

I feel like specifics would help your cause a lot, or at least help me understand your objections better.

I mean, what convenience items are you buying from the Crown Store because you don't have time to craft them yourself?

You can also earn Storage Chests in game, if you object to paying for them. I got mine from Crafting Vouchers, but you can get them with Tel Var if you prefer PVP.

I mean, I understand the appeal of lowered prices and fun cosmetics (that aren't locked into the extremely profitable Crown Crates, natch.)

But without clarification, I confess this looks to me like a case of "I don't want to play the game to get the convenience item for free, so can you please hugely discount the price for me?"

Storage chests are one of the convenience items to which I'm referring. I normally have about 2 to 4 hours a week to spend gaming. I don't enjoy crafting or PvP, so I don't want to waste my time on those activities.

These are some of the items I would buy were they not ridiculously priced (assuming you buy crowns in 1,500 chunks):

• $15 -- Extra armory slot
• $20 -- 60-slot chest (x3)
• $50 -- Cool armor skin
• $50 -- A nice house
• $30 -- A cooler mount
• $50 -- A few assistants (x3)

I don't understand how anyone could look at these prices and think they're reasonable. And this is coming from someone with a 6-figure salary. The prices are absurd. The cost of a single luxury home is more than a new AAA game in its entirety.

Edited to add: thanks for the clarification! That did help me understand better where you were coming from, I think.



Well, here's one of the things about playing an MMO. You either spend your time playing to get stuff for free, or you pay for the convenience of getting them now. MMOs are not a particularly friendly genre for people with limited time who want all the things quickly.

You could spend the time doing crafting writs.
You could spend the time doing PVP.
You could spend the time earning the gold in your favorite way to trade so someone will gift you those items.

And if you won't spend the time, that's your choice to either buy them for $$$ or do without those items. Theoretically, there's at least three entertaining options that only cost time, not money.


The prices are not aimed at selling many items to the majority of players. The items clearly sell sufficiently that Marketing has not lowered the prices to your preferred level, so you must consider why not.

After all, you aren't buying them, so you aren't the target audience. The target audience is the people who are buying.

No judgement: The target audience for those items are primarily people with the disposable income or time to make purchases in a video game. Some of them are people with the time to make gold for crown gift/gold trading. These are people who want those storage chests and would rather pay $20 than do without or spend the time playing the game. These are people who may have a stack of gold acquired through trading or a stack of crowns from years of subscribing who can afford something that catches their eye. These are people who'll see that limited time house up for sale in their favorite style and buy it, no matter how expensive. It's people who stocked up on Crowns during a 50% off sale and now are slowly spending them. There are even some people for whom the "exclusivity" of certain items due to their high price is a big draw.

It's not just selling to "whales" who will spend a large chunk of disposable income on a game, though that's certainly a part of the general strategy.

So, no offense, but if you aren't part of the target audience of people who are actually buying the items, ZOS doesn't have a ton of incentive to lower prices. These items sell satisfactorily at the current prices and during sales.

You can ask, but I highly doubt we'll see ZOS slash prices by 75%.

Vaerion

VaranisArano wrote: »

Vaerion wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

I feel like specifics would help your cause a lot, or at least help me understand your objections better.

I mean, what convenience items are you buying from the Crown Store because you don't have time to craft them yourself?

You can also earn Storage Chests in game, if you object to paying for them. I got mine from Crafting Vouchers, but you can get them with Tel Var if you prefer PVP.

I mean, I understand the appeal of lowered prices and fun cosmetics (that aren't locked into the extremely profitable Crown Crates, natch.)

But without clarification, I confess this looks to me like a case of "I don't want to play the game to get the convenience item for free, so can you please hugely discount the price for me?"

Storage chests are one of the convenience items to which I'm referring. I normally have about 2 to 4 hours a week to spend gaming. I don't enjoy crafting or PvP, so I don't want to waste my time on those activities.

These are some of the items I would buy were they not ridiculously priced (assuming you buy crowns in 1,500 chunks):

• $15 -- Extra armory slot
• $20 -- 60-slot chest (x3)
• $50 -- Cool armor skin
• $50 -- A nice house
• $30 -- A cooler mount
• $50 -- A few assistants (x3)

I don't understand how anyone could look at these prices and think they're reasonable. And this is coming from someone with a 6-figure salary. The prices are absurd. The cost of a single luxury home is more than a new AAA game in its entirety.

Edited to add: thanks for the clarification! That did help me understand better where you were coming from, I think.



Well, here's one of the things about playing an MMO. You either spend your time playing to get stuff for free, or you pay for the convenience of getting them now. MMOs are not a particularly friendly genre for people with limited time who want all the things quickly.

You could spend the time doing crafting writs.
You could spend the time doing PVP.
You could spend the time earning the gold in your favorite way to trade so someone will gift you those items.

And if you won't spend the time, that's your choice to either buy them for $$$ or do without those items. Theoretically, there's at least three entertaining options that only cost time, not money.


The prices are not aimed at selling many items to the majority of players. The items clearly sell sufficiently that Marketing has not lowered the prices to your preferred level, so you must consider why not.

After all, you aren't buying them, so you aren't the target audience. The target audience is the people who are buying.

No judgement: The target audience for those items are primarily people with the disposable income or time to make purchases in a video game. Some of them are people with the time to make gold for crown gift/gold trading. These are people who want those storage chests and would rather pay $20 than do without or spend the time playing the game. These are people who may have a stack of gold acquired through trading or a stack of crowns from years of subscribing who can afford something that catches their eye. These are people who'll see that limited time house up for sale in their favorite style and buy it, no matter how expensive. It's people who stocked up on Crowns during a 50% off sale and now are slowly spending them. There are even some people for whom the "exclusivity" of certain items due to their high price is a big draw.

It's not just selling to "whales" who will spend a large chunk of disposable income on a game, though that's certainly a part of the general strategy.

So, no offense, but if you aren't part of the target audience of people who are actually buying the items, ZOS doesn't have a ton of incentive to lower prices. These items sell satisfactorily at the current prices and during sales.

You can ask, but I highly doubt we'll see ZOS slash prices by 75%.

I see where you're coming from, and I respect your opinion. Also, I appreciate your reasonable demeanor. But I still disagree.

I have a decent amount of disposable income (senior software engineer). Yet I choose to spend it elsewhere, where I get more value for my money. I believe the amount of money they lose from people in similar situations outweighs what they get from "whales".

While they've undoubtably done their market research, they are by no means infallible. Having worked on SaaS products for a significant portion of my career, and having built and sold my own software, I've seen C-level execs make extremely stupid decisions. And I wouldn't implicitly trust the methods used for gathering and interpreting data without seeing it for myself.

There's also the aspect of longevity. "Continual growth at all costs" is usually a business strategy that has an exit. For some of the smaller VC-funded startups I worked at, the exit strategy was acquisition by a larger company. The founders and investors take their cut (with founders sometimes moving onto their next project), while the fate of the startup can be one of a few paths (integrated into larger product or suite, gutted for tech, etc.).

The monetization of ESO has many similar characteristics. Eventually, they'll burn through their potential market. People who left due to issues with monetization or lack of transparency likely won't come back. Then we start the downward cycle of their product's lifetime.

The company's exit strategy is their next product.

With that said, maybe ESO's end-of-life is part of the plan. Maybe they don't want the longevity that would come with being fair and transparent.

I can say with certainty, the best companies I've worked at/with were bootstrapped (no VC funding), transparent, and truly put their customers first. From my experience, if you embody those qualities and simply "do the right thing", people will want to give you money. Without investors to appease, and if you're transparent about what devs are working on, you're free to take the time necessary to produce quality features. Employees are happy, customers are happy, growth is steady and controlled (even if slow at times).

My hope is that whatever title comes after ESO is a hit, the team that remains to work on ESO generally cares about the quality of content they produce, and they're mostly left alone to do their thing (even if revenue from ESO idles).

Anyway, I rambled too much. Sorry. I just wish companies would be good, fair, transparent, and non-predatory. And focus on long-term sustainability over short-term profits. I guess you could replace my original post with that.

Taggund

I generally think things should cost 10% of what they actually do. I've spent some, but I justified it as my discretionary entertainment spending was not going anywhere else during the pandemic. Now, I will not be buying new crowns, even during crown sales.

I have bought some houses with crowns in the past, but now just focused on any that can be bought with gold. Mounts would need to be something I actually would use, and same with pets. I really don't have an interest in skins and costumes. The music boxes are more an item I buy as they are lower cost and covered by the monthly sub crowns.

There are things I would buy if better priced:
- Armory slots - this was a very useful feature added, but I will not be buying additional slots as they are per character. If they cost a lot less, maybe then if per character, but not at the current $15 price per slot per character. (I bought the new inventory pet because it increased space for all characters, so saw more value to it.)

- Deconstruction assistant - would like, but don't want to buy the current one for $50 and then they release an Alfiq version (would match my banker and merchant). I'll wait it out, and may never get it if they don't release. After the new armory assistant this week, I'm guessing they may do factorum version next if they do one, so will still likely be waiting awhile.

- Alliance change tokens - created alts for class/race variety when i started without thinking about alliance, and now that I play in Cyro I would like to get several alts on same alliance as my main, but not at the $25 cost of a change. This is one of the reasons I spend less time in game, as it is another reason to not be on an alt when wanting to change up play.

Kng_Ayumayuma

Everything is TOO high in the store. We know it. They know it.

I'm sure they have run many pricing scenarios both cheaper and more expensive. And have decided on this pricing model. Only they know why.