The ESO Craft Bag: A Convenience or a Gatekeeper to Enjoyable Gameplay?

Cooperharley

I think the craft bag is in line with a core philosophy at ZOS:

Create problems and sell the solution in the shop (mount training, egregiously grindy skill lines like psijic/antiquities/etc, skyshard sales, lack of earnable mounts in game so they sell them)

radiostar

I'll come clean, or maybe it doesn't even matter because Z never even listened to me, that originally the craftbag was on the pts as being a FREE ADDITION to the game. And I said why make it free when it's so valuable. Next update, it was not a free addition, it was only ESO plus.
But at this point I'll say it should be free because of all the added items that can go into your pack but yet you can't expand your pack any longer. If Z wants to keep the craftbag behind the sub, then make it possible to increase your carry of items.

Nestor

The game can be played without a Craft Bag. I did for a year or so until they created it. Although, this was back when there were a lot less Style Mats, maybe 15 or 20? So, it was easier. I do remember destroying stacks of style mats whenever I got to 200. Happened quite often.

With the Free ESO Plus periods happening 2 or 3 times a year, you can off load your hoarde periodically.

Solvar

I do wonder if the amount of crafting materials one acquires through normal play would turn off potential new players who try playing for a little while, get caught up in inventory management (especially since they probably have not maxed out there backpack yet), and are just not willing to pay for ESO+, so give up on the game and go play something else.

You can certainly play the game without a craft bag, but I was surprised by how many craft items I got in a few hours of normal gameplay just by gathering, searching crates, etc, to the extent my inventory actually filled up, and this is before even deconstructing anything.

I wonder if a limited craft bag would improve the new user experience, but still give some value for the ESO+ plus membership. Maybe a limited craft bag that holds 25 of each item? This would pretty quickly fill up on the common items, but would take a while for things like style stones, rare crafting items, to the extent that one would only have to go clean out the crafting bag maybe once a week or something. I'm not sure how fast it would fill up, but also selling 25 of an item might at least net enough gold to make it worth the effort.

Cooperharley

Nestor wrote: »

The game can be played without a Craft Bag. I did for a year or so until they created it. Although, this was back when there were a lot less Style Mats, maybe 15 or 20? So, it was easier. I do remember destroying stacks of style mats whenever I got to 200. Happened quite often.

With the Free ESO Plus periods happening 2 or 3 times a year, you can off load your hoarde periodically.

You CAN play a lot of ways and without a lot of stuff. It doesn't mean it feels even remotely good or really like it should. When things are made intentionally to be annoying in order to drive you to the store, that's bad. Things shouldn't be excessively grindy or monotonous ON PURPOSE to try to sell you a solution. That just looks and feels bad

ImmortalCX

After 2500 hours without crafting bag, I developed a good system to play without it. (Back in 2016-19)

At the last event, I subbed for a month because I wanted to take advantage of all the free materials that were overwhelming my inventory. What is interesting is what happend during the sub, and also what happened after the sub expired.

During the sub, with all my materials in the crafting bag, instead of the bank, I realized I could easily use the bank to ferry gear to other characters for deconstruction and to max their crafting. It was almost trivial to max the crafting on my two other level 50 characters that I never used before.

During the sub, I was able to easily perform crafting daily writs on my three characters. I didn't have to worry about all the junk that the crates give you because most of it automatically went into the bag.

The sub expired two weeks ago and it is challenging and annoying to do daily writs on three characters. The problem is that surveys/maps can't be easily transferred through the bank to my main without taking mats out of the bank. And after performing all the writs, I am always depositing things back into the bank.

My main character's inventory is overflowing with surveys and maps I have no time to do, and I am tending to junk things I used to sell, just to make space.

You can play this way, if you have a system it can even be enjoyable, but the reality is that that crafting bag has a huge impact on ability to make gold. Having three crafting characters pumping out writs, I estimate I make an extra 75K gold/day from gold mats and master writs. Without ESO+, 3 crafters is a pain and my playstyle is at least 25% time spent on inventory management. I am still making good gold, but it feels like a grind.

ESO+ allows you to really play the crafting/housing game, and you will have enough gold to empty the luxury vendors when they have things you want.

I am currently thinking that the best play is to sub every few months to reset equilibrium, because after a month without the sub, stuff is starting to get painful.

Horace-Wimp

I have purchased ESO+ only once just to see what the fuss was that everyone raved about. That fuss? The Crafting bag.

It was fun while it lasted and I am thinking of paying for ESO+ again. I just don't know when. While it is a bit of chore to manage Inventory it's not game breaking. And it does not detract from the enjoyment of my game.