My Thoughts on Housing

WOBANOG

Hey all, thought I'd share my thoughts on housing in ESO. I started playing again this past summer and decided to save up for the Bastion Sanguinaris house that I planned to go all out on. As it turned out, 2023 was a year where it didn't show up at all. I even tried an old method I saw people had attempted (with some success) in 2020 by trying support tickets with plain requests for a specific Crown Store transaction. No dice.

It really had me thinking about the housing system and the nature of the rotating houses. I absolutely understand the concept that, from a sales perspective, creating artificial scarcity is of great benefit to ESO by encouraging people to buy Crowns. I also understand that having players wait for months might also encourage them to spend more on other things - possibly requiring them to continue spending to finally get what they had been after from the get go.

I also think this method is inefficient. There are presumably many people, like me, who only really want 1-2 things on the entire rotation (weapon packs, houses, etc). For houses, due to the simple nature of their themes, are not interchangeable. I found myself becoming less and less interested in ESO as the months went on because the one thing I wanted to do was continuously not offered. Now I simply hover over the monthly crown store pages and don't really even bother with daily login rewards either.

My solution? Exactly what I suggested on a support ticket: allow players to purchase content not currently on the rotation for a certain percentage more than it is sold for ordinarily. This could retain the same sales strategy that ESO has run with for years now while also making more money from the people like me. I even said I'd be willing to pay twice what the house was worth. Perhaps it need not be a 100% increase, but I have to believe at some point it would be of clear benefit to both ESO and the community.

Curious about everyone's thoughts on this.

Pixiepumpkin

We don't have their collected data to understand why ZOS makes the decisons they do, but I will say that in my life experience the "data" rarely covers everything and often leaves out context or simply can not account for human nature.

Like you, there have been expensive items I wanted, but was unable to get. On multiple occasions this led to me getting bored (as I was unable to fulfill my next "goal") and leaving the game, often at 6/9 months at a time, or in some cases even over a year.

All that time away from game had me spending money elsewhere (one of those "data points" that collected data does not show), money that could have just as easily been spent here.

During those breaks, it also makes me think about the game less, if at all making it even harder to return.

I can completely understand their decision, but personally speaking I feel strongly that they are leaving money on the table/missing sales.

One one hand, I guess we can thank ZOS for not allowing us to spend money, on another I can't imagine share holders feel the same way.