JimT722 wrote: »

How ZOS must see their customers



Don't be a sucker like Peter. Say hell no to crown crates.

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

I shake my head at you people who are so enraged over a game and the decisions a business makes with that game. That however is your choice.

I can't understand why people who oppose crown crates are continuously characterized as being "enraged" or whatnot. I'm not seeing a lot of caps-lock, frothing at the mouth rage posts in these threads. Sure there is the occasional s**t-post, but most of the crown crate antagonists are posting calm, well thought out arguments for why they believe crates will detract from a game they otherwise thoroughly enjoy.

These forums exist as a way for customers to give feedback about the "game and the decisions a business makes with that game." The vast majority of the people arguing against the crates are doing just that in a very calm and reasonable manner. Why all the mischaracterizations?

Are you speaking in this thread specifically? Or all threads about it? You might want to look into some of the older ones. I did not refer to you or anyone else

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

I shake my head at you people who are so enraged over a game and the decisions a business makes with that game. That however is your choice.

That should be easy and quick to explain. We kinda want to remain able to play and enjoy the game, and the decisions ZOS is making are heavily suggesting that we won't be able to do so soon. Not everybody is a MMO hopper, you know.

Also I called for Santie but since Men'Do is here he gets ear scratches instead.

Well this to will be simple and quick. It wont happen. The game at some point will not make enough money to keep the lights on and go dark. Its the question of time that is the only unknown here

So the decision to release 1T for free, DLCS, updates to try and improve the game before these crown crates all get flushed and crates all of a sudden mean you will not be able to play your game? That's a reach....

Everyone is an MMO hopper, its how long it takes which varies.... since if they were not they would not be here and still playing their original MMO! Actually I am not an MMO hopper yet as this is my first one

Okay, maybe it won't be as quick as I imagine. Here are the issues with your points:

1 - While no MMO lasts forever, ESO isn't even three years old yet, so players who are not MMO Hoppers certainly expected it to go on for a few more years. And ESO has a kind of niche player base that is similar to what LOTRO has. LOTRO is turning 10 years old next year.

2 - We went from "One DLC per quarter" to "Not every DLC will be big like Orsinium" and finally to "Not every quarterly update will be a DLC". The kind of update that One Tamriel was is not the kind of update that can be sold, but it is the kind of update that, like the removal of veteran ranks, could be rolled out with a DLC. But we are on the "Not every quarterly update will be a DLC", now. You know, the scarceness of content that happens when the company changes their focus to something else (that being the Crates). It doesn't get better from here. That's what RNG Boxes mean in MMOs: Content release slowing down, Free to Play transition and a last ditch effort to make as much money as possible before lights go out. The Crates do not mean I am automatically unable to play the game, they mean we are in a downward spiral that will result in, yes, not being able to enjoy or to even play the game anymore.

3 - This is false. A MMO Hopper is someone that isn't attached to a MMO and will move to the next shiny thing whenever it shows up. Maybe your definition of MMO Hopper is not the common definition.

4 - I see. Since it is your first MMO, you didn't see this process happen in other MMOs before, and that's why you can't understand the harm that these things cause. But I will let you know that we are not being paranoid here. This happened many times before, and we have a person who did this to other MMOs working with ZOS now. I hope you pay attention to what happens on the next few months and take this experience to your next MMO.

1. Who says it will not go on another few years? I know you are, but as per my previous posting thats simply your opinion, not a fact. I think they have an end game right around the next Elder Scrolls release, thats about the only guess I can make, logic behind it is many of the players I feel will leave it behind when a new and shiny elder scrolls title releases. I think they are more than on track to meet that target, I know I don't have any plans on leaving anytime soon.

2. So? That's life, sometimes you get a lot of great content per year, others you do not. Sometimes mcdonalds rolls out a new burger, sometimes they do not, its business, and factors we do not get to see are what determines it, so lets not pretend to know the details, there could be many reasons why DLC quality varies from year to year, maybe its because they have started losing revenue already. All I can say which is the only fact here, I have been happy with what they have rolled out so far, and I have been given no reasons to not expect some great new DLCs in the future, not everyone burns through stuff in a month, I have yet to even touch the Orsinium DLC, I have plenty of game to play for a while yet.

3. How can you say something is false for a made up definition? The actual definition of hopper is as follows:
a container for a bulk material such as grain, rock, or trash, typically one that tapers downward and is able to discharge its contents at the bottom.
OR
a person or thing that hops.

Even going by your definition of hopper, well I am sorry to say but I think a strong argument can be made that the bulk of a game stuidos money is made from the casual player, the "hopper" as you put it, they are going to follow the money. So cannot blame them as again, their goal is to make money.

4. Correct, first MMO and I have not seen this happen before, but you know what I am well versed in? Business. Your assumptions that crown crates destroys games (which would be bad for business) makes no sense to me when looked at with a business perspective. Being as ZOS is a multi million dollar company, I tend to believe they know how to run their business better than you.

1 - This kind of strategy is implemented when a MMO enters the "get as much as you can as fast as possible" phase. It doesn't mean the servers will shut down, but it means development of content will slow down (or even stop, if the game is put on life support in the end). I don't know it will happen to ESO, I know there is a big chance that it will because it happened to many other MMOs before it. The pattern is there when you are used to it from past experiences.

2 - "So" that we had a visible decrease in content, with no peaks, for the entire year. I would almost agree with you if we got another big DLC already, and I would absolutely agree there was a DLC announced that entered production before the specialist on F2P transition was hired, but that wasn't the case. Argue this again when we start going upwards on content release again, maybe? It will make more sense. Because, right now, it doesn't.

3 - Language is a way of expression of a culture, and not all of the words and expressions used by that culture will be found on the dictionary. The definition of such words and expressions depend solely on how they are used, and the way you used it isn't the way it is commonly used. A MMO Hopper ("hopper" from "hop", hopping", jumping from one to the other) is a player who doesn't get attached to a specific MMO and "jumps MMOs" as the new fad shows up.

4 - You, like others before you, are making wrongful assumptions regarding ZOS and their objectives with ESO. You see, you would be absolutely correct if ESO was a long-term plan for ZOS - and you have no idea of how I wish that was the case - but we have a person working with them that is specialized on F2P transition strategies, which points on the direction of ESO not being a long-term plan anymore. You are well-versed in business; if your company was backed by a mother company that owned many popular franchises and you came to the conclusion that moving on to the next project would be more profitable, what would you do with the old project that isn't as profitable as you have hoped? Because that's what the companies in the MMO industry do. They make a last ditch effort to get as much money as they can and then use that money to fund their next project. This happens all the time, it is absolutely normal for them to do that, but it kinda sucks for the player base of the old project.

1. Maybe the content will slow down, that's not what is being debated here as I agree, content will slow down eventually. Its the fact that the slow down was directly caused by crown crates which is what you are saying, which again, makes no sense when looking at it in a business perspective.

2. Is there not rumblings about some big DLC coming? Vvardenfell I think it was. 1T was just released, that was pretty big, and while not DLC, it was an update, same with the dueling. Its there, I dont personally have any idea the scope of work to implement these. How does it not make sense that year by year, DLC release will vary depending on many factors.

3. Point still stands, thats a pretty loose definition that leaves a lot to interpretation, and I would hardly call this culture and language, its computer speak for MMO, which I am admittedly not well versed on, regardless the point you made with it still does not hold up, as casuals is where the money is at, so unfortunately that is where they are going to direct their attention to. Try to appease everyone, but most importantly appease the biggest portion of your customer base.

4.You are also making assumptions, thats all we have as there are no facts, despite how badly you want me to believe they are. I said repeatedly I dont think ESO has long term plans, I just dont have a problem with them making money on something we can CHOOSE to partake in, if it adds some content to the game and extends it a bit more, great. In your example I would do exactly what ZOS is doing, its capitalism, make as much as you can while you can. While you think its unfair, its just the way it is, as stated before, a business does not cater to you, they cater to money. In their best interests they want to keep customers happy, but when that no longer makes much of a difference, time to make the most of it while the lights are still on. Harsh, but true.

1 - That is the main concern of the people who are against the crates. And it isn't absurd from a business standpoint when you do not plan to stick to that project much longer. It happens all the time in the MMO industry, and it is what we are worried about. We don't want this to happen here.

2 - Vvardenfell was datamined three months after the lady was hired, which means it had to be on production before she got in the team. The issue is that the information changed as time went by. If they had said outright that "We will have one update every quarter, can be a DLC or not, and not all DLCs will be of the same size" we wouldn't be arguing this. But the statement changed as time went by.

3 - If you wish to keep that ground. MMOs have a very specific lingo, and that's part of it. You could have just said outright that you are not familiar with it, that's fine, it isn't your obligation to know the expressions commonly used in MMOs, especially since you are new to them. But that's what it means. Also, casuals and MMO Hoppers are not the same thing. And it doesn't changes the fact that appeasing to MMO Hoppers on this way is bad for the healthy of the game in the long run, and, again, sucks for players who stick to the game.

4 - The problem is that you don't CHOOSE to partake on the damage caused by those things. People who buy the crates and people who do not will suffer the consequences of a sunk game all the same. I am making informed guesses more than assumptions, based on the pattern ZOS is following and the person hired to trace it in the ground for them. And I am not saying that doing that is unfair, I'm saying that it sucks for people who stick with the game. I'm glad you admit that you would do the same, because then you see how using the crates to sink the game in order to make as much money as you can before turning off the lights actually makes sense from a business standpoint and I can rest my case.

You must understand that we have people here who had been playing Elder Scrolls games for their entire lives. Would you be fine if someone took something you really loved for your whole life and ruined it completely in the name of "capitalism"? And then some people came to you completely disregarding it and telling you to keep quiet and just let it happen because "that's how it is"?
Maybe I'm getting old, maybe it is because I'm a lawyer, but I will speak up when someone takes something I love from me.

Being concerned about crown crates and its effect on the game does not equal crown crates destroy the game, so are you now backing off the fact that crown crates will destroy this game? Can you admit to the fact there are probably many factors which destroy this game, and at best crown crates add to it, at worst they make no difference and simply generate some extra revenue at end of life?

Does not matter when it was datamined, do you believe they just determined when they hired this person, that it was just done in a week? I would argue that decision was planned and made much longer than that, so its a moot point, the point is content has continued to roll out, that is what I see with my own eyes.

Not really interested in a discussion about terms, appears this is no longer relevent to the subject at hand, which is the belief that crown crates destroy a game.It also does not change the fact that game companies will cater to the money is, and that is in the casual market. Nor arguing it does not suck for someone like you, but life is not always fair either.

As has been stated, you have yet to provide a valid argument that crown crates cause significant damage. Does it effect some? Yes, are they in the majority? maybe, but thats also up in the air, most people that play the game probably are not even aware of these forums, forums attract the most passionate people about the game. Its another one of those things we can continue to go in circles on.

All I am pointing out as per my earlier post, is I have yet to see an argument as to why a company would deliberately choose to crater its game if these have the effect your stating. The logic of it does not make sense, and I think the real truth is much more complicated than what your making it out to be.

1 - Certainly not, but our concept of "destroying" seem to be different. Yours equal to "shutting the servers down" while ours is to "rapidly decline in quality, content stagnation, free to play" with server shut down being a consequence of the game being ruined. Crates are an essential part of the free-to-play conversion strategy that we already discussed - you know, the one you said you would follow too. And because they become the focus of development, they ruin games. So they are not "one of the many factors", they are the main factor, the one that causes the other factors like a big tower of cards coming down.

2 - I don't think you understood the statement at all. It being datamined in May means it was in production BEFORE SHE WAS HIRED, because three months after she was hired it was already in the game files. It does matter when it was datamined because it indicates when they started production, you see? ZOS has a big hang up with sunken costs. If Vvardenfell was already in production when the lady was hired, they wouldn't scrap it in favor of her strategy. That's not how they work. What would show that they do have long-term plans for the game would be if they initiated production of something despite her strategy. Which means, if they made something new and fantastic after she joined. So "Vvardenfell was datamined so content is still being produced at a reasonable pace, with a reasonable quality level" is absolutely invalid. It holds as much water than saying Orsinium was proof that the B2P transition had no impact on content production, while we know that Orsinium was in production before the B2P transition.

3 - I presented the arguments, you just decided not to accept them because you do not have any previous experience with this kind of strategy. Shift in development focus, content starts coming out slower (already happening), less things available to direct purchase (already happening as per this month's showcase), game's reputation dragged to the mud, Free-To-Play transition (more often than not, addition to things that are relevant to combat to the RNG boxes after this). That's what comes with the introduction of RNG boxes. That's what came with the RNG boxes every game that followed this path, the games where this lady worked on. You are yet to give me a reason why I should think ESO could be the one exception to the rule. And you are going back and forth with your statements. You said yourself it was something you would do if you were in ZOS place, you know it makes sense, and it is exactly what happens in the industry. Just give it a thought. If there was something that costs very little to produce but makes insane profit, would you invest on that or would you invest on something that takes much more work to make and doesn't sell for nearly as much? That's the Crates X Content issue.

You know, no one is born with experience. That is absolutely fine. But this really isn't going anywhere because you decided that, despite your lack of experience, you won't listen people who do have experience. You can continue in denial if you want, but please pay attention to the next months if you didn't pay attention to what happened to the pacing of content release this year already, so that on the next MMO you play you can identify the pattern like we did.

You want me to believe you based on your experience alone (and a whole slew of others apparently yet I see the same faces in each thread), I get it, but when I use some common sense and put myself into the company shoes and ask why, your whole argument falls apart. I have addressed it in previous posts which I have yet to hear any viable arguments for, they seem to have been skimmed over for some reason.

Yes I have no experience in MMO's, at least I can be honest and admit it, that does not discredit my legitimate questions when looking at things with a business perspective, which is what this is at the end of the day, a business decision. Your inexperience shows when it comes to how a business operates, makes decisions, and balancing generating revenue with customer satisfaction, that's fine also, but you need to learn that a company is there to make money, and not everyone will be happy with how they do so.

And I think you are the one who misunderstands, it was data mined 3 months before she was hired, fine. To think a company would make such a huge decision over the fate of the game in the way you make it out to be, I can almost guarantee that discussion to take that person on would have been had MUCH longer than 3 months ago. These decisions are not made easy. Again I have no proof, but in my experience a business would take a long time to make such a decision, not even getting into the fact contract negotiations and working out start dates for this person who seems to for some reason be in popular demand. I could see this being planned from the very beginning, just my opinion though, but pretty logical again when you think of it in running a business rather than your own personal experience which is already negative and poisoned.

Anyways I will let this get back to the nerd rage thread. I hold no ill will, we will simply agree to disagree. Your experience to my business logic, does not seem like its going to go anywhere soon. I will give it a few months and review, how I am going to do so? No idea, I think numbers will go down regardless as 1T brought a lot of people back, and I think that will trickle off, but if its as "rapidly descending" of a demise as its made out to be it should be noticeable, and like I said before I will admit if I am wrong, but will you?

You are seeing the same people now because this was already extensively discussed and, since the crates were taken off the PTS and not added to the Live Game so far, most of the discussion has died down. You can check the official feedback thread for them on the PTS forum for an earlier discussion, though to find the first discussions about it (that happened when they were announced) you will have to do a little digging. You will see that there are many more who had this kind of experience too, if you do that.

You have to decide if it makes sense or if it doesn't make sense, though. You said you would do it yourself, but you think it doesn't make sense? That's odd.

All your arguments are addressed with the same argument: Your arguments only make sense from a business standpoint if you have long-term plans for that business, and mine only make sense if you do not have long-term plans for that business and want to get as much cash as possible as fast as you can so you can go to your next project. That's what you are ignoring. The pattern they are following heavily indicates that ESO isn't a long-term project anymore, and that's why it makes sense to discard it, like many companies did to many MMOs before.

Things move a little bit faster in the gaming industry than you might be used to, especially in MMOs. I am actually pretty familiar with different kinds of business, and I can tell you that if you are not familiar with the gaming industry specifically then that's why this sounds so alien to you. Going by the information we have, it seems that this person specifically was hired by Bethesda (which is a sister company), and then got in charge of ZOS's marketing. Employees move around the companies that are part of the same mother company pretty easily, so it happens even faster than usual. If discarding the game was planned from the beginning, well, that's even worse, but it would make sense too. Then Vvardenfell might be the last big area we will see added for a long time.

Also I have experience running a business, I actually run a pretty successful company with four stores and two factories, with my family (That's only until I pass the test to become a Judge, however, since Judges are not allowed to run companies in my country). But I realize the differences between my kind of company and a gaming company because I studied this field a lot.

And I would LOVE to be able to say I am wrong, because I really love this game. I want more than anything for ZOS to show me that they are different and that they won't do what the other companies did. I just want to go back to complaining only about the lack of black hair for Altmer, which was LITERALLY my only real complaint for over two years playing the game, up until the crates were announced.

I am not ignoring anything, I have said repeatedly that in my opinion ESO des not have a long term outlook. Please refer to my posts explaining why I believe this, to sum it up, techonology progresses at a rapid rate, new games will come out which will steal customers, new elder scrolls will come out which will steal customers and the very fact that if a business has a 10 year plan for a game, that will not make them more money than having a 5 year plan, go on to another project, then come up with a follow up 5 year plan on ESO2 for example in which the customer would have to buy the game, costumes, crowns, mounts etc again. This was all explained earlier, but you keep accusing me of the one that is not listening, perhaps instead of reacting to my posts, you would be better served reading them. This is why I am starting to see this whole thing is pointless. You will not look at things with a different perspective which is rooted in reality rather than what you want.

I do have to decide if it makes sense or it does not make sense. Literally the only way your claims will make sense is if the company is brain dead stupid, I like my odds.

Please see my point above, I think my point that crown crates are not as detrimental to the game as you make it out to be stands in both long and short term scenarios. I do not think they have long term plans either, but that does not mean crown crates are responsible for it.

Now you are admitting that technology moves faster, thank you for agreeing to my point. So technology moves quickly, yet you want a long term investment where the technology will be outdated. You are contradicting yourself here, and no, it does not happen faster than usual.
-Fact, 1T was just released, this has driven many users back to the game
-Fact, there will be a large new DLC coming soon which will attempt to keep those users around
-Fact, crown crates will be sandwiched between these two, seems really smart timing to launch them! But you go ahead and think this was a decision made on a whim.

If you have so much experience running a business, I would think you would be able to spot the timing of these launches and see the reality of what their plan most likely is here, and that crown crates are not the cause, but simply a way to make money because the cause of the downfall of this game is simply the times we live in, technology moves fast, competition is fierce and cut throat, and they are all working to get the most dollars from its consumers. Keeping an outdated product alive for people like yourself is not good business sense, you would be leaving a lot of money on the table with the casuals and people who always want the best technology. I would also think you would be able to see my point that if these are so detrimental, that different businesses would not keep going down the path, being involved in a family business apparently does not help with the insight on how one generates income not only now, but well into the future. So you apparently "get" business, but still feel crown crates are going to rapidly decline this game, that's all the more evidence that your too personally invested in this to see the reality.

Its a scary thought that you could be a judge, since here we have an example of you throwing a business under the bus under what you are assuming it will do. How do you think that will work out for you on the bench? Are you going to judge criminals guilty because they committed the same crime as someone else without first hearing the facts?

I read all of your posts thoroughly, and I actually think we do agree in multiple points, but you still are not considering that the plan might just as well be discarding ESO to move to a next plan. You said for yourself that, on this case, you would do the same. If you would do the same and you have so much experience with business, why do you think the company would have to be "braindead stupid" to do it?

I am not contradicting myself, I am contradicting what you are making of my argument, which isn't what I said. And with MMOs, there is one thing regarding the technology moving fast: When a company has a long-term plan for a MMO and it is successful, the company can - and will - update the engine, textures and models as time goes by, as to stop the game from being outdated. It's the beauty of MMOs, they can change all the time.

I don't think adding crates was a decision made on a whim. They hired a person specialized in microtransitions in February, the announcement was made on... August? September? I don't remember now, but it was several months after she was hired. So here's what most likely happened: She was hired, she presented her plan (the same plan used in the previous games that went this route), the plan was discussed, they decided to go with it. There was enough time to discuss from when she was hired to when the crates were announced. But it could have happened on another way, too: ZOS decided they wanted crates, then they hired someone that is specialized on adding them to MMOs. None of these options, however, show that Vvardenfell's development started only after they made this decision, which is why Vvardenfell being added is no indication that the focus didn't shift.

I understand your point of view. You see the Crown Crates as a symptom instead of a cause. And you know, you might as well be correct, because they are indeed introduced as a business plan in the end (the F2P + RNG Boxes business plan). And this is a point that I actually do consider as a possibility, too, and I discussed this possibility a lot in the past with other forum goers.
However, if they are a symptom and they absolutely need to be added, there are ways to implement them that are not so consumer-unfriendly, like I suggested earlier.
And, of course, the product doesn't HAVE to stay outdated. MMOs are anything but static.

And it's very harmful to say such thing of me. That was really uncalled for. I am extremely diligent with my duties and I don't know what the word is in English but I'm what we call "garantista", which means I am extremely hung up on constitutional rights and put them above everything, no matter who the defendant is or what crime they are being accused of. I would be thankful if you could please refrain from using personal attacks like that. The comparison you made is absolutely absurd, too.
If you must know, no, I am not throwing ZOS under the bus. I'm pretty much begging on my knees for them to not do what everyone else did. I didn't even cancel my subscription, it will renew next week. I'm praising them in other threads for things they did right. How does disagreeing with this and do not want them to follow the pattern became throwing them under the bus?

Because, as you put it, it will send this game into a rapid decline. Those are your words. A rapid decline is a bad business plan as this game can be milked for some time yet, I think while there may not be a lot of content for you, there is a lot of content left for most. The best possible outcome is a soft landing, a gradually slow down of investment into the game, that would be the smart choice. A rapid decline would be a stupid choice, but that's what your suggesting they are doing here.

My only argument is on your feelings that this will send the game into a rapid decline, perhaps you think a rapid decline is 2 years? That's not rapid when its almost half the life of the game to date.

I think the evidence points to the fact they had this in mind the entire time when you look at the timing and traffic they have generated, there are no facts, but evidence points to my side, otherwise its a pretty big coincidence which is what your suggesting it is. A coincidence in a multi million dollar gaming company is rare, they have things planned out years in advance, again no proof, but look at major companies, the stakes, and the way they do business.

When you have consoles on an MMO, yes it does have to stay outdated, there is only so much a console can handle. Once the next generation of consoles come out, games will come out which will not run on the older generations. You are looking at this as a PC perspective, ESO is more than a PC game. What is the lifepan of a console now? 5-7 years? That fits pretty much perfectly into my opinion that this game has an end life around 5 years.

And I am not trying to inhibit your goals in life, and its not a personal attack at all, a fact is a fact. What you are doing is dangerous since your using the past to determine the future in your argument. Its not right, while they probably will go down the same path if that's what they see as generating the best source of income, I for one am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, as they deserve it from what I have seen in game so far. They may not be listening to your exact suggestions, but they are listening. We have Mythic ambrosia, we have them retooling the crates to try to be better. May not be exactly to your liking but they are trying at least. We have had a bunch of DLC, tweaks, fixes, updates. I am just not seeing evidence this is the plan.

You are throwing them under the bus because you are using past examples of games to back up your point and that this is why the game will decline. You are putting this opinion everywhere and anywhere you can to rally people to your cause under assumptions that are yet to come to fruition, I don't know about you, but that's throwing someone under the bus to me.

lordrichter wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

None of these options, however, show that Vvardenfell's development started only after they made this decision, which is why Vvardenfell being added is no indication that the focus didn't shift.

The reason that Vvardenfell being added to the game is no indication of a shift in focus is that Vvardenfell is probably completely outside of all of this. I think Vvardenfell is an exception, a special case, and does not reflect on anything that ZOS would normally be doing.

I doubt that it is a coincidence that Vvardenfell is being data mined in the months leading up to the 15th Anniversary of TES III: Morrowind.

If anything, I think that Vvardenfell represents a joint effort between ZOS and Bethesda to roll out special Elder Scrolls content to coincide with the May 1 anniversary. It is possible that Bethesda is the one driving this. It is possible that Bethesda is compensating ZOS for all, or part, of the development. It is certain that Bethesda is contributing to the development of Vvardenfell.

d0e1ow wrote: »

That moment when someone is trying to conflate the idea of innocent until proven guilty in a legal court of law regarding criminal charges to someone practicing responsible consumerism by sticking to the old adage "fool me once..."

The internet. Next up we'll find out that @Abeille is actually *** IRL. EDIT: A certain WWII dictator.

runagate wrote: »

d0e1ow wrote: »

That moment when someone is trying to conflate the idea of innocent until proven guilty in a legal court of law regarding criminal charges to someone practicing responsible consumerism by sticking to the old adage "fool me once..."

The internet. Next up we'll find out that @Abeille is actually *** IRL. EDIT: A certain WWII dictator.

@Abeille is General Hideki Tojo!? That can't be right.

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

I shake my head at you people who are so enraged over a game and the decisions a business makes with that game. That however is your choice.

I can't understand why people who oppose crown crates are continuously characterized as being "enraged" or whatnot. I'm not seeing a lot of caps-lock, frothing at the mouth rage posts in these threads. Sure there is the occasional s**t-post, but most of the crown crate antagonists are posting calm, well thought out arguments for why they believe crates will detract from a game they otherwise thoroughly enjoy.

These forums exist as a way for customers to give feedback about the "game and the decisions a business makes with that game." The vast majority of the people arguing against the crates are doing just that in a very calm and reasonable manner. Why all the mischaracterizations?

Are you speaking in this thread specifically? Or all threads about it? You might want to look into some of the older ones. I did not refer to you or anyone else

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

I shake my head at you people who are so enraged over a game and the decisions a business makes with that game. That however is your choice.

That should be easy and quick to explain. We kinda want to remain able to play and enjoy the game, and the decisions ZOS is making are heavily suggesting that we won't be able to do so soon. Not everybody is a MMO hopper, you know.

Also I called for Santie but since Men'Do is here he gets ear scratches instead.

Well this to will be simple and quick. It wont happen. The game at some point will not make enough money to keep the lights on and go dark. Its the question of time that is the only unknown here

So the decision to release 1T for free, DLCS, updates to try and improve the game before these crown crates all get flushed and crates all of a sudden mean you will not be able to play your game? That's a reach....

Everyone is an MMO hopper, its how long it takes which varies.... since if they were not they would not be here and still playing their original MMO! Actually I am not an MMO hopper yet as this is my first one

Okay, maybe it won't be as quick as I imagine. Here are the issues with your points:

1 - While no MMO lasts forever, ESO isn't even three years old yet, so players who are not MMO Hoppers certainly expected it to go on for a few more years. And ESO has a kind of niche player base that is similar to what LOTRO has. LOTRO is turning 10 years old next year.

2 - We went from "One DLC per quarter" to "Not every DLC will be big like Orsinium" and finally to "Not every quarterly update will be a DLC". The kind of update that One Tamriel was is not the kind of update that can be sold, but it is the kind of update that, like the removal of veteran ranks, could be rolled out with a DLC. But we are on the "Not every quarterly update will be a DLC", now. You know, the scarceness of content that happens when the company changes their focus to something else (that being the Crates). It doesn't get better from here. That's what RNG Boxes mean in MMOs: Content release slowing down, Free to Play transition and a last ditch effort to make as much money as possible before lights go out. The Crates do not mean I am automatically unable to play the game, they mean we are in a downward spiral that will result in, yes, not being able to enjoy or to even play the game anymore.

3 - This is false. A MMO Hopper is someone that isn't attached to a MMO and will move to the next shiny thing whenever it shows up. Maybe your definition of MMO Hopper is not the common definition.

4 - I see. Since it is your first MMO, you didn't see this process happen in other MMOs before, and that's why you can't understand the harm that these things cause. But I will let you know that we are not being paranoid here. This happened many times before, and we have a person who did this to other MMOs working with ZOS now. I hope you pay attention to what happens on the next few months and take this experience to your next MMO.

1. Who says it will not go on another few years? I know you are, but as per my previous posting thats simply your opinion, not a fact. I think they have an end game right around the next Elder Scrolls release, thats about the only guess I can make, logic behind it is many of the players I feel will leave it behind when a new and shiny elder scrolls title releases. I think they are more than on track to meet that target, I know I don't have any plans on leaving anytime soon.

2. So? That's life, sometimes you get a lot of great content per year, others you do not. Sometimes mcdonalds rolls out a new burger, sometimes they do not, its business, and factors we do not get to see are what determines it, so lets not pretend to know the details, there could be many reasons why DLC quality varies from year to year, maybe its because they have started losing revenue already. All I can say which is the only fact here, I have been happy with what they have rolled out so far, and I have been given no reasons to not expect some great new DLCs in the future, not everyone burns through stuff in a month, I have yet to even touch the Orsinium DLC, I have plenty of game to play for a while yet.

3. How can you say something is false for a made up definition? The actual definition of hopper is as follows:
a container for a bulk material such as grain, rock, or trash, typically one that tapers downward and is able to discharge its contents at the bottom.
OR
a person or thing that hops.

Even going by your definition of hopper, well I am sorry to say but I think a strong argument can be made that the bulk of a game stuidos money is made from the casual player, the "hopper" as you put it, they are going to follow the money. So cannot blame them as again, their goal is to make money.

4. Correct, first MMO and I have not seen this happen before, but you know what I am well versed in? Business. Your assumptions that crown crates destroys games (which would be bad for business) makes no sense to me when looked at with a business perspective. Being as ZOS is a multi million dollar company, I tend to believe they know how to run their business better than you.

1 - This kind of strategy is implemented when a MMO enters the "get as much as you can as fast as possible" phase. It doesn't mean the servers will shut down, but it means development of content will slow down (or even stop, if the game is put on life support in the end). I don't know it will happen to ESO, I know there is a big chance that it will because it happened to many other MMOs before it. The pattern is there when you are used to it from past experiences.

2 - "So" that we had a visible decrease in content, with no peaks, for the entire year. I would almost agree with you if we got another big DLC already, and I would absolutely agree there was a DLC announced that entered production before the specialist on F2P transition was hired, but that wasn't the case. Argue this again when we start going upwards on content release again, maybe? It will make more sense. Because, right now, it doesn't.

3 - Language is a way of expression of a culture, and not all of the words and expressions used by that culture will be found on the dictionary. The definition of such words and expressions depend solely on how they are used, and the way you used it isn't the way it is commonly used. A MMO Hopper ("hopper" from "hop", hopping", jumping from one to the other) is a player who doesn't get attached to a specific MMO and "jumps MMOs" as the new fad shows up.

4 - You, like others before you, are making wrongful assumptions regarding ZOS and their objectives with ESO. You see, you would be absolutely correct if ESO was a long-term plan for ZOS - and you have no idea of how I wish that was the case - but we have a person working with them that is specialized on F2P transition strategies, which points on the direction of ESO not being a long-term plan anymore. You are well-versed in business; if your company was backed by a mother company that owned many popular franchises and you came to the conclusion that moving on to the next project would be more profitable, what would you do with the old project that isn't as profitable as you have hoped? Because that's what the companies in the MMO industry do. They make a last ditch effort to get as much money as they can and then use that money to fund their next project. This happens all the time, it is absolutely normal for them to do that, but it kinda sucks for the player base of the old project.

1. Maybe the content will slow down, that's not what is being debated here as I agree, content will slow down eventually. Its the fact that the slow down was directly caused by crown crates which is what you are saying, which again, makes no sense when looking at it in a business perspective.

2. Is there not rumblings about some big DLC coming? Vvardenfell I think it was. 1T was just released, that was pretty big, and while not DLC, it was an update, same with the dueling. Its there, I dont personally have any idea the scope of work to implement these. How does it not make sense that year by year, DLC release will vary depending on many factors.

3. Point still stands, thats a pretty loose definition that leaves a lot to interpretation, and I would hardly call this culture and language, its computer speak for MMO, which I am admittedly not well versed on, regardless the point you made with it still does not hold up, as casuals is where the money is at, so unfortunately that is where they are going to direct their attention to. Try to appease everyone, but most importantly appease the biggest portion of your customer base.

4.You are also making assumptions, thats all we have as there are no facts, despite how badly you want me to believe they are. I said repeatedly I dont think ESO has long term plans, I just dont have a problem with them making money on something we can CHOOSE to partake in, if it adds some content to the game and extends it a bit more, great. In your example I would do exactly what ZOS is doing, its capitalism, make as much as you can while you can. While you think its unfair, its just the way it is, as stated before, a business does not cater to you, they cater to money. In their best interests they want to keep customers happy, but when that no longer makes much of a difference, time to make the most of it while the lights are still on. Harsh, but true.

1 - That is the main concern of the people who are against the crates. And it isn't absurd from a business standpoint when you do not plan to stick to that project much longer. It happens all the time in the MMO industry, and it is what we are worried about. We don't want this to happen here.

2 - Vvardenfell was datamined three months after the lady was hired, which means it had to be on production before she got in the team. The issue is that the information changed as time went by. If they had said outright that "We will have one update every quarter, can be a DLC or not, and not all DLCs will be of the same size" we wouldn't be arguing this. But the statement changed as time went by.

3 - If you wish to keep that ground. MMOs have a very specific lingo, and that's part of it. You could have just said outright that you are not familiar with it, that's fine, it isn't your obligation to know the expressions commonly used in MMOs, especially since you are new to them. But that's what it means. Also, casuals and MMO Hoppers are not the same thing. And it doesn't changes the fact that appeasing to MMO Hoppers on this way is bad for the healthy of the game in the long run, and, again, sucks for players who stick to the game.

4 - The problem is that you don't CHOOSE to partake on the damage caused by those things. People who buy the crates and people who do not will suffer the consequences of a sunk game all the same. I am making informed guesses more than assumptions, based on the pattern ZOS is following and the person hired to trace it in the ground for them. And I am not saying that doing that is unfair, I'm saying that it sucks for people who stick with the game. I'm glad you admit that you would do the same, because then you see how using the crates to sink the game in order to make as much money as you can before turning off the lights actually makes sense from a business standpoint and I can rest my case.

You must understand that we have people here who had been playing Elder Scrolls games for their entire lives. Would you be fine if someone took something you really loved for your whole life and ruined it completely in the name of "capitalism"? And then some people came to you completely disregarding it and telling you to keep quiet and just let it happen because "that's how it is"?
Maybe I'm getting old, maybe it is because I'm a lawyer, but I will speak up when someone takes something I love from me.

Being concerned about crown crates and its effect on the game does not equal crown crates destroy the game, so are you now backing off the fact that crown crates will destroy this game? Can you admit to the fact there are probably many factors which destroy this game, and at best crown crates add to it, at worst they make no difference and simply generate some extra revenue at end of life?

Does not matter when it was datamined, do you believe they just determined when they hired this person, that it was just done in a week? I would argue that decision was planned and made much longer than that, so its a moot point, the point is content has continued to roll out, that is what I see with my own eyes.

Not really interested in a discussion about terms, appears this is no longer relevent to the subject at hand, which is the belief that crown crates destroy a game.It also does not change the fact that game companies will cater to the money is, and that is in the casual market. Nor arguing it does not suck for someone like you, but life is not always fair either.

As has been stated, you have yet to provide a valid argument that crown crates cause significant damage. Does it effect some? Yes, are they in the majority? maybe, but thats also up in the air, most people that play the game probably are not even aware of these forums, forums attract the most passionate people about the game. Its another one of those things we can continue to go in circles on.

All I am pointing out as per my earlier post, is I have yet to see an argument as to why a company would deliberately choose to crater its game if these have the effect your stating. The logic of it does not make sense, and I think the real truth is much more complicated than what your making it out to be.

1 - Certainly not, but our concept of "destroying" seem to be different. Yours equal to "shutting the servers down" while ours is to "rapidly decline in quality, content stagnation, free to play" with server shut down being a consequence of the game being ruined. Crates are an essential part of the free-to-play conversion strategy that we already discussed - you know, the one you said you would follow too. And because they become the focus of development, they ruin games. So they are not "one of the many factors", they are the main factor, the one that causes the other factors like a big tower of cards coming down.

2 - I don't think you understood the statement at all. It being datamined in May means it was in production BEFORE SHE WAS HIRED, because three months after she was hired it was already in the game files. It does matter when it was datamined because it indicates when they started production, you see? ZOS has a big hang up with sunken costs. If Vvardenfell was already in production when the lady was hired, they wouldn't scrap it in favor of her strategy. That's not how they work. What would show that they do have long-term plans for the game would be if they initiated production of something despite her strategy. Which means, if they made something new and fantastic after she joined. So "Vvardenfell was datamined so content is still being produced at a reasonable pace, with a reasonable quality level" is absolutely invalid. It holds as much water than saying Orsinium was proof that the B2P transition had no impact on content production, while we know that Orsinium was in production before the B2P transition.

3 - I presented the arguments, you just decided not to accept them because you do not have any previous experience with this kind of strategy. Shift in development focus, content starts coming out slower (already happening), less things available to direct purchase (already happening as per this month's showcase), game's reputation dragged to the mud, Free-To-Play transition (more often than not, addition to things that are relevant to combat to the RNG boxes after this). That's what comes with the introduction of RNG boxes. That's what came with the RNG boxes every game that followed this path, the games where this lady worked on. You are yet to give me a reason why I should think ESO could be the one exception to the rule. And you are going back and forth with your statements. You said yourself it was something you would do if you were in ZOS place, you know it makes sense, and it is exactly what happens in the industry. Just give it a thought. If there was something that costs very little to produce but makes insane profit, would you invest on that or would you invest on something that takes much more work to make and doesn't sell for nearly as much? That's the Crates X Content issue.

You know, no one is born with experience. That is absolutely fine. But this really isn't going anywhere because you decided that, despite your lack of experience, you won't listen people who do have experience. You can continue in denial if you want, but please pay attention to the next months if you didn't pay attention to what happened to the pacing of content release this year already, so that on the next MMO you play you can identify the pattern like we did.

You want me to believe you based on your experience alone (and a whole slew of others apparently yet I see the same faces in each thread), I get it, but when I use some common sense and put myself into the company shoes and ask why, your whole argument falls apart. I have addressed it in previous posts which I have yet to hear any viable arguments for, they seem to have been skimmed over for some reason.

Yes I have no experience in MMO's, at least I can be honest and admit it, that does not discredit my legitimate questions when looking at things with a business perspective, which is what this is at the end of the day, a business decision. Your inexperience shows when it comes to how a business operates, makes decisions, and balancing generating revenue with customer satisfaction, that's fine also, but you need to learn that a company is there to make money, and not everyone will be happy with how they do so.

And I think you are the one who misunderstands, it was data mined 3 months before she was hired, fine. To think a company would make such a huge decision over the fate of the game in the way you make it out to be, I can almost guarantee that discussion to take that person on would have been had MUCH longer than 3 months ago. These decisions are not made easy. Again I have no proof, but in my experience a business would take a long time to make such a decision, not even getting into the fact contract negotiations and working out start dates for this person who seems to for some reason be in popular demand. I could see this being planned from the very beginning, just my opinion though, but pretty logical again when you think of it in running a business rather than your own personal experience which is already negative and poisoned.

Anyways I will let this get back to the nerd rage thread. I hold no ill will, we will simply agree to disagree. Your experience to my business logic, does not seem like its going to go anywhere soon. I will give it a few months and review, how I am going to do so? No idea, I think numbers will go down regardless as 1T brought a lot of people back, and I think that will trickle off, but if its as "rapidly descending" of a demise as its made out to be it should be noticeable, and like I said before I will admit if I am wrong, but will you?

You are seeing the same people now because this was already extensively discussed and, since the crates were taken off the PTS and not added to the Live Game so far, most of the discussion has died down. You can check the official feedback thread for them on the PTS forum for an earlier discussion, though to find the first discussions about it (that happened when they were announced) you will have to do a little digging. You will see that there are many more who had this kind of experience too, if you do that.

You have to decide if it makes sense or if it doesn't make sense, though. You said you would do it yourself, but you think it doesn't make sense? That's odd.

All your arguments are addressed with the same argument: Your arguments only make sense from a business standpoint if you have long-term plans for that business, and mine only make sense if you do not have long-term plans for that business and want to get as much cash as possible as fast as you can so you can go to your next project. That's what you are ignoring. The pattern they are following heavily indicates that ESO isn't a long-term project anymore, and that's why it makes sense to discard it, like many companies did to many MMOs before.

Things move a little bit faster in the gaming industry than you might be used to, especially in MMOs. I am actually pretty familiar with different kinds of business, and I can tell you that if you are not familiar with the gaming industry specifically then that's why this sounds so alien to you. Going by the information we have, it seems that this person specifically was hired by Bethesda (which is a sister company), and then got in charge of ZOS's marketing. Employees move around the companies that are part of the same mother company pretty easily, so it happens even faster than usual. If discarding the game was planned from the beginning, well, that's even worse, but it would make sense too. Then Vvardenfell might be the last big area we will see added for a long time.

Also I have experience running a business, I actually run a pretty successful company with four stores and two factories, with my family (That's only until I pass the test to become a Judge, however, since Judges are not allowed to run companies in my country). But I realize the differences between my kind of company and a gaming company because I studied this field a lot.

And I would LOVE to be able to say I am wrong, because I really love this game. I want more than anything for ZOS to show me that they are different and that they won't do what the other companies did. I just want to go back to complaining only about the lack of black hair for Altmer, which was LITERALLY my only real complaint for over two years playing the game, up until the crates were announced.

I am not ignoring anything, I have said repeatedly that in my opinion ESO des not have a long term outlook. Please refer to my posts explaining why I believe this, to sum it up, techonology progresses at a rapid rate, new games will come out which will steal customers, new elder scrolls will come out which will steal customers and the very fact that if a business has a 10 year plan for a game, that will not make them more money than having a 5 year plan, go on to another project, then come up with a follow up 5 year plan on ESO2 for example in which the customer would have to buy the game, costumes, crowns, mounts etc again. This was all explained earlier, but you keep accusing me of the one that is not listening, perhaps instead of reacting to my posts, you would be better served reading them. This is why I am starting to see this whole thing is pointless. You will not look at things with a different perspective which is rooted in reality rather than what you want.

I do have to decide if it makes sense or it does not make sense. Literally the only way your claims will make sense is if the company is brain dead stupid, I like my odds.

Please see my point above, I think my point that crown crates are not as detrimental to the game as you make it out to be stands in both long and short term scenarios. I do not think they have long term plans either, but that does not mean crown crates are responsible for it.

Now you are admitting that technology moves faster, thank you for agreeing to my point. So technology moves quickly, yet you want a long term investment where the technology will be outdated. You are contradicting yourself here, and no, it does not happen faster than usual.
-Fact, 1T was just released, this has driven many users back to the game
-Fact, there will be a large new DLC coming soon which will attempt to keep those users around
-Fact, crown crates will be sandwiched between these two, seems really smart timing to launch them! But you go ahead and think this was a decision made on a whim.

If you have so much experience running a business, I would think you would be able to spot the timing of these launches and see the reality of what their plan most likely is here, and that crown crates are not the cause, but simply a way to make money because the cause of the downfall of this game is simply the times we live in, technology moves fast, competition is fierce and cut throat, and they are all working to get the most dollars from its consumers. Keeping an outdated product alive for people like yourself is not good business sense, you would be leaving a lot of money on the table with the casuals and people who always want the best technology. I would also think you would be able to see my point that if these are so detrimental, that different businesses would not keep going down the path, being involved in a family business apparently does not help with the insight on how one generates income not only now, but well into the future. So you apparently "get" business, but still feel crown crates are going to rapidly decline this game, that's all the more evidence that your too personally invested in this to see the reality.

Its a scary thought that you could be a judge, since here we have an example of you throwing a business under the bus under what you are assuming it will do. How do you think that will work out for you on the bench? Are you going to judge criminals guilty because they committed the same crime as someone else without first hearing the facts?

I read all of your posts thoroughly, and I actually think we do agree in multiple points, but you still are not considering that the plan might just as well be discarding ESO to move to a next plan. You said for yourself that, on this case, you would do the same. If you would do the same and you have so much experience with business, why do you think the company would have to be "braindead stupid" to do it?

I am not contradicting myself, I am contradicting what you are making of my argument, which isn't what I said. And with MMOs, there is one thing regarding the technology moving fast: When a company has a long-term plan for a MMO and it is successful, the company can - and will - update the engine, textures and models as time goes by, as to stop the game from being outdated. It's the beauty of MMOs, they can change all the time.

I don't think adding crates was a decision made on a whim. They hired a person specialized in microtransitions in February, the announcement was made on... August? September? I don't remember now, but it was several months after she was hired. So here's what most likely happened: She was hired, she presented her plan (the same plan used in the previous games that went this route), the plan was discussed, they decided to go with it. There was enough time to discuss from when she was hired to when the crates were announced. But it could have happened on another way, too: ZOS decided they wanted crates, then they hired someone that is specialized on adding them to MMOs. None of these options, however, show that Vvardenfell's development started only after they made this decision, which is why Vvardenfell being added is no indication that the focus didn't shift.

I understand your point of view. You see the Crown Crates as a symptom instead of a cause. And you know, you might as well be correct, because they are indeed introduced as a business plan in the end (the F2P + RNG Boxes business plan). And this is a point that I actually do consider as a possibility, too, and I discussed this possibility a lot in the past with other forum goers.
However, if they are a symptom and they absolutely need to be added, there are ways to implement them that are not so consumer-unfriendly, like I suggested earlier.
And, of course, the product doesn't HAVE to stay outdated. MMOs are anything but static.

And it's very harmful to say such thing of me. That was really uncalled for. I am extremely diligent with my duties and I don't know what the word is in English but I'm what we call "garantista", which means I am extremely hung up on constitutional rights and put them above everything, no matter who the defendant is or what crime they are being accused of. I would be thankful if you could please refrain from using personal attacks like that. The comparison you made is absolutely absurd, too.
If you must know, no, I am not throwing ZOS under the bus. I'm pretty much begging on my knees for them to not do what everyone else did. I didn't even cancel my subscription, it will renew next week. I'm praising them in other threads for things they did right. How does disagreeing with this and do not want them to follow the pattern became throwing them under the bus?

Because, as you put it, it will send this game into a rapid decline. Those are your words. A rapid decline is a bad business plan as this game can be milked for some time yet, I think while there may not be a lot of content for you, there is a lot of content left for most. The best possible outcome is a soft landing, a gradually slow down of investment into the game, that would be the smart choice. A rapid decline would be a stupid choice, but that's what your suggesting they are doing here.

My only argument is on your feelings that this will send the game into a rapid decline, perhaps you think a rapid decline is 2 years? That's not rapid when its almost half the life of the game to date.

I think the evidence points to the fact they had this in mind the entire time when you look at the timing and traffic they have generated, there are no facts, but evidence points to my side, otherwise its a pretty big coincidence which is what your suggesting it is. A coincidence in a multi million dollar gaming company is rare, they have things planned out years in advance, again no proof, but look at major companies, the stakes, and the way they do business.

When you have consoles on an MMO, yes it does have to stay outdated, there is only so much a console can handle. Once the next generation of consoles come out, games will come out which will not run on the older generations. You are looking at this as a PC perspective, ESO is more than a PC game. What is the lifepan of a console now? 5-7 years? That fits pretty much perfectly into my opinion that this game has an end life around 5 years.

And I am not trying to inhibit your goals in life, and its not a personal attack at all, a fact is a fact. What you are doing is dangerous since your using the past to determine the future in your argument. Its not right, while they probably will go down the same path if that's what they see as generating the best source of income, I for one am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, as they deserve it from what I have seen in game so far. They may not be listening to your exact suggestions, but they are listening. We have Mythic ambrosia, we have them retooling the crates to try to be better. May not be exactly to your liking but they are trying at least. We have had a bunch of DLC, tweaks, fixes, updates. I am just not seeing evidence this is the plan.

You are throwing them under the bus because you are using past examples of games to back up your point and that this is why the game will decline. You are putting this opinion everywhere and anywhere you can to rally people to your cause under assumptions that are yet to come to fruition, I don't know about you, but that's throwing someone under the bus to me.

Yes, we do have different definitions of "rapid decline" then. There is no reason to discuss this any further on this case, because we agree on what is going to happen, we just do not agree on if that's fast or slow.

I did consider (a few pages ago) that this was the plan from the start - the B2P transition, the crates, then the F2P transition. The biggest clue I found was that the set of skeleton mounts was datamined quite a while ago, and we know that apex mounts are all the types of mounts with a certain theme. What I am doing here is giving ZOS the benefit of the doubt - I am not by any means saying it was a coincidence, I'm saying that I believe that their plans just changed over time. Which happens, plans change to adapt to the circumstances. I do not want to jump the shark and say that they lied to us all this time.

Even on console, even if the new ones released are not backwards compatible and can't play ESO, it is still possible for ESO to be made compatible with a new generation of consoles. We don't have many examples of this so far, though. I know that DCU was released for PS4 as soon as the system was launched (it was originally released for PS3 and PC only).

And yes, it is a personal attack saying that you find it scary to think that I can be a judge. Especially because I am the one who decides and who writes the decisions of the judge I work for, and so far he didn't change any of my decisions, so it really feels like a punch in the stomach for you to say that the thought is "scary". But rest easily, I do not work with criminal law right now, I work with children protection services.
You are speaking as if what happened to these other MMOs was completely unrelated to what is happening to ESO, which is the case of the comparison you made with judging someone for a crime. It is not unrelated, however, because we have the exact same person using the exact same strategy. It is reasonable to at least consider the same outcome as a very likely possibility. If you don't think that's reasonable, fine, but no need to say that it is "scary" to think I can be a judge some day. If I wanted to rally anyone against them or throw them under the bus I would not be praising them and defending other practices that I agree with (and that other people don't). So please stop making assumptions regarding my intentions and worse, my character.

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

I shake my head at you people who are so enraged over a game and the decisions a business makes with that game. That however is your choice.

I can't understand why people who oppose crown crates are continuously characterized as being "enraged" or whatnot. I'm not seeing a lot of caps-lock, frothing at the mouth rage posts in these threads. Sure there is the occasional s**t-post, but most of the crown crate antagonists are posting calm, well thought out arguments for why they believe crates will detract from a game they otherwise thoroughly enjoy.

These forums exist as a way for customers to give feedback about the "game and the decisions a business makes with that game." The vast majority of the people arguing against the crates are doing just that in a very calm and reasonable manner. Why all the mischaracterizations?

Are you speaking in this thread specifically? Or all threads about it? You might want to look into some of the older ones. I did not refer to you or anyone else

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

Abeille wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

I shake my head at you people who are so enraged over a game and the decisions a business makes with that game. That however is your choice.

That should be easy and quick to explain. We kinda want to remain able to play and enjoy the game, and the decisions ZOS is making are heavily suggesting that we won't be able to do so soon. Not everybody is a MMO hopper, you know.

Also I called for Santie but since Men'Do is here he gets ear scratches instead.

Well this to will be simple and quick. It wont happen. The game at some point will not make enough money to keep the lights on and go dark. Its the question of time that is the only unknown here

So the decision to release 1T for free, DLCS, updates to try and improve the game before these crown crates all get flushed and crates all of a sudden mean you will not be able to play your game? That's a reach....

Everyone is an MMO hopper, its how long it takes which varies.... since if they were not they would not be here and still playing their original MMO! Actually I am not an MMO hopper yet as this is my first one

Okay, maybe it won't be as quick as I imagine. Here are the issues with your points:

1 - While no MMO lasts forever, ESO isn't even three years old yet, so players who are not MMO Hoppers certainly expected it to go on for a few more years. And ESO has a kind of niche player base that is similar to what LOTRO has. LOTRO is turning 10 years old next year.

2 - We went from "One DLC per quarter" to "Not every DLC will be big like Orsinium" and finally to "Not every quarterly update will be a DLC". The kind of update that One Tamriel was is not the kind of update that can be sold, but it is the kind of update that, like the removal of veteran ranks, could be rolled out with a DLC. But we are on the "Not every quarterly update will be a DLC", now. You know, the scarceness of content that happens when the company changes their focus to something else (that being the Crates). It doesn't get better from here. That's what RNG Boxes mean in MMOs: Content release slowing down, Free to Play transition and a last ditch effort to make as much money as possible before lights go out. The Crates do not mean I am automatically unable to play the game, they mean we are in a downward spiral that will result in, yes, not being able to enjoy or to even play the game anymore.

3 - This is false. A MMO Hopper is someone that isn't attached to a MMO and will move to the next shiny thing whenever it shows up. Maybe your definition of MMO Hopper is not the common definition.

4 - I see. Since it is your first MMO, you didn't see this process happen in other MMOs before, and that's why you can't understand the harm that these things cause. But I will let you know that we are not being paranoid here. This happened many times before, and we have a person who did this to other MMOs working with ZOS now. I hope you pay attention to what happens on the next few months and take this experience to your next MMO.

1. Who says it will not go on another few years? I know you are, but as per my previous posting thats simply your opinion, not a fact. I think they have an end game right around the next Elder Scrolls release, thats about the only guess I can make, logic behind it is many of the players I feel will leave it behind when a new and shiny elder scrolls title releases. I think they are more than on track to meet that target, I know I don't have any plans on leaving anytime soon.

2. So? That's life, sometimes you get a lot of great content per year, others you do not. Sometimes mcdonalds rolls out a new burger, sometimes they do not, its business, and factors we do not get to see are what determines it, so lets not pretend to know the details, there could be many reasons why DLC quality varies from year to year, maybe its because they have started losing revenue already. All I can say which is the only fact here, I have been happy with what they have rolled out so far, and I have been given no reasons to not expect some great new DLCs in the future, not everyone burns through stuff in a month, I have yet to even touch the Orsinium DLC, I have plenty of game to play for a while yet.

3. How can you say something is false for a made up definition? The actual definition of hopper is as follows:
a container for a bulk material such as grain, rock, or trash, typically one that tapers downward and is able to discharge its contents at the bottom.
OR
a person or thing that hops.

Even going by your definition of hopper, well I am sorry to say but I think a strong argument can be made that the bulk of a game stuidos money is made from the casual player, the "hopper" as you put it, they are going to follow the money. So cannot blame them as again, their goal is to make money.

4. Correct, first MMO and I have not seen this happen before, but you know what I am well versed in? Business. Your assumptions that crown crates destroys games (which would be bad for business) makes no sense to me when looked at with a business perspective. Being as ZOS is a multi million dollar company, I tend to believe they know how to run their business better than you.

1 - This kind of strategy is implemented when a MMO enters the "get as much as you can as fast as possible" phase. It doesn't mean the servers will shut down, but it means development of content will slow down (or even stop, if the game is put on life support in the end). I don't know it will happen to ESO, I know there is a big chance that it will because it happened to many other MMOs before it. The pattern is there when you are used to it from past experiences.

2 - "So" that we had a visible decrease in content, with no peaks, for the entire year. I would almost agree with you if we got another big DLC already, and I would absolutely agree there was a DLC announced that entered production before the specialist on F2P transition was hired, but that wasn't the case. Argue this again when we start going upwards on content release again, maybe? It will make more sense. Because, right now, it doesn't.

3 - Language is a way of expression of a culture, and not all of the words and expressions used by that culture will be found on the dictionary. The definition of such words and expressions depend solely on how they are used, and the way you used it isn't the way it is commonly used. A MMO Hopper ("hopper" from "hop", hopping", jumping from one to the other) is a player who doesn't get attached to a specific MMO and "jumps MMOs" as the new fad shows up.

4 - You, like others before you, are making wrongful assumptions regarding ZOS and their objectives with ESO. You see, you would be absolutely correct if ESO was a long-term plan for ZOS - and you have no idea of how I wish that was the case - but we have a person working with them that is specialized on F2P transition strategies, which points on the direction of ESO not being a long-term plan anymore. You are well-versed in business; if your company was backed by a mother company that owned many popular franchises and you came to the conclusion that moving on to the next project would be more profitable, what would you do with the old project that isn't as profitable as you have hoped? Because that's what the companies in the MMO industry do. They make a last ditch effort to get as much money as they can and then use that money to fund their next project. This happens all the time, it is absolutely normal for them to do that, but it kinda sucks for the player base of the old project.

1. Maybe the content will slow down, that's not what is being debated here as I agree, content will slow down eventually. Its the fact that the slow down was directly caused by crown crates which is what you are saying, which again, makes no sense when looking at it in a business perspective.

2. Is there not rumblings about some big DLC coming? Vvardenfell I think it was. 1T was just released, that was pretty big, and while not DLC, it was an update, same with the dueling. Its there, I dont personally have any idea the scope of work to implement these. How does it not make sense that year by year, DLC release will vary depending on many factors.

3. Point still stands, thats a pretty loose definition that leaves a lot to interpretation, and I would hardly call this culture and language, its computer speak for MMO, which I am admittedly not well versed on, regardless the point you made with it still does not hold up, as casuals is where the money is at, so unfortunately that is where they are going to direct their attention to. Try to appease everyone, but most importantly appease the biggest portion of your customer base.

4.You are also making assumptions, thats all we have as there are no facts, despite how badly you want me to believe they are. I said repeatedly I dont think ESO has long term plans, I just dont have a problem with them making money on something we can CHOOSE to partake in, if it adds some content to the game and extends it a bit more, great. In your example I would do exactly what ZOS is doing, its capitalism, make as much as you can while you can. While you think its unfair, its just the way it is, as stated before, a business does not cater to you, they cater to money. In their best interests they want to keep customers happy, but when that no longer makes much of a difference, time to make the most of it while the lights are still on. Harsh, but true.

1 - That is the main concern of the people who are against the crates. And it isn't absurd from a business standpoint when you do not plan to stick to that project much longer. It happens all the time in the MMO industry, and it is what we are worried about. We don't want this to happen here.

2 - Vvardenfell was datamined three months after the lady was hired, which means it had to be on production before she got in the team. The issue is that the information changed as time went by. If they had said outright that "We will have one update every quarter, can be a DLC or not, and not all DLCs will be of the same size" we wouldn't be arguing this. But the statement changed as time went by.

3 - If you wish to keep that ground. MMOs have a very specific lingo, and that's part of it. You could have just said outright that you are not familiar with it, that's fine, it isn't your obligation to know the expressions commonly used in MMOs, especially since you are new to them. But that's what it means. Also, casuals and MMO Hoppers are not the same thing. And it doesn't changes the fact that appeasing to MMO Hoppers on this way is bad for the healthy of the game in the long run, and, again, sucks for players who stick to the game.

4 - The problem is that you don't CHOOSE to partake on the damage caused by those things. People who buy the crates and people who do not will suffer the consequences of a sunk game all the same. I am making informed guesses more than assumptions, based on the pattern ZOS is following and the person hired to trace it in the ground for them. And I am not saying that doing that is unfair, I'm saying that it sucks for people who stick with the game. I'm glad you admit that you would do the same, because then you see how using the crates to sink the game in order to make as much money as you can before turning off the lights actually makes sense from a business standpoint and I can rest my case.

You must understand that we have people here who had been playing Elder Scrolls games for their entire lives. Would you be fine if someone took something you really loved for your whole life and ruined it completely in the name of "capitalism"? And then some people came to you completely disregarding it and telling you to keep quiet and just let it happen because "that's how it is"?
Maybe I'm getting old, maybe it is because I'm a lawyer, but I will speak up when someone takes something I love from me.

Being concerned about crown crates and its effect on the game does not equal crown crates destroy the game, so are you now backing off the fact that crown crates will destroy this game? Can you admit to the fact there are probably many factors which destroy this game, and at best crown crates add to it, at worst they make no difference and simply generate some extra revenue at end of life?

Does not matter when it was datamined, do you believe they just determined when they hired this person, that it was just done in a week? I would argue that decision was planned and made much longer than that, so its a moot point, the point is content has continued to roll out, that is what I see with my own eyes.

Not really interested in a discussion about terms, appears this is no longer relevent to the subject at hand, which is the belief that crown crates destroy a game.It also does not change the fact that game companies will cater to the money is, and that is in the casual market. Nor arguing it does not suck for someone like you, but life is not always fair either.

As has been stated, you have yet to provide a valid argument that crown crates cause significant damage. Does it effect some? Yes, are they in the majority? maybe, but thats also up in the air, most people that play the game probably are not even aware of these forums, forums attract the most passionate people about the game. Its another one of those things we can continue to go in circles on.

All I am pointing out as per my earlier post, is I have yet to see an argument as to why a company would deliberately choose to crater its game if these have the effect your stating. The logic of it does not make sense, and I think the real truth is much more complicated than what your making it out to be.

1 - Certainly not, but our concept of "destroying" seem to be different. Yours equal to "shutting the servers down" while ours is to "rapidly decline in quality, content stagnation, free to play" with server shut down being a consequence of the game being ruined. Crates are an essential part of the free-to-play conversion strategy that we already discussed - you know, the one you said you would follow too. And because they become the focus of development, they ruin games. So they are not "one of the many factors", they are the main factor, the one that causes the other factors like a big tower of cards coming down.

2 - I don't think you understood the statement at all. It being datamined in May means it was in production BEFORE SHE WAS HIRED, because three months after she was hired it was already in the game files. It does matter when it was datamined because it indicates when they started production, you see? ZOS has a big hang up with sunken costs. If Vvardenfell was already in production when the lady was hired, they wouldn't scrap it in favor of her strategy. That's not how they work. What would show that they do have long-term plans for the game would be if they initiated production of something despite her strategy. Which means, if they made something new and fantastic after she joined. So "Vvardenfell was datamined so content is still being produced at a reasonable pace, with a reasonable quality level" is absolutely invalid. It holds as much water than saying Orsinium was proof that the B2P transition had no impact on content production, while we know that Orsinium was in production before the B2P transition.

3 - I presented the arguments, you just decided not to accept them because you do not have any previous experience with this kind of strategy. Shift in development focus, content starts coming out slower (already happening), less things available to direct purchase (already happening as per this month's showcase), game's reputation dragged to the mud, Free-To-Play transition (more often than not, addition to things that are relevant to combat to the RNG boxes after this). That's what comes with the introduction of RNG boxes. That's what came with the RNG boxes every game that followed this path, the games where this lady worked on. You are yet to give me a reason why I should think ESO could be the one exception to the rule. And you are going back and forth with your statements. You said yourself it was something you would do if you were in ZOS place, you know it makes sense, and it is exactly what happens in the industry. Just give it a thought. If there was something that costs very little to produce but makes insane profit, would you invest on that or would you invest on something that takes much more work to make and doesn't sell for nearly as much? That's the Crates X Content issue.

You know, no one is born with experience. That is absolutely fine. But this really isn't going anywhere because you decided that, despite your lack of experience, you won't listen people who do have experience. You can continue in denial if you want, but please pay attention to the next months if you didn't pay attention to what happened to the pacing of content release this year already, so that on the next MMO you play you can identify the pattern like we did.

You want me to believe you based on your experience alone (and a whole slew of others apparently yet I see the same faces in each thread), I get it, but when I use some common sense and put myself into the company shoes and ask why, your whole argument falls apart. I have addressed it in previous posts which I have yet to hear any viable arguments for, they seem to have been skimmed over for some reason.

Yes I have no experience in MMO's, at least I can be honest and admit it, that does not discredit my legitimate questions when looking at things with a business perspective, which is what this is at the end of the day, a business decision. Your inexperience shows when it comes to how a business operates, makes decisions, and balancing generating revenue with customer satisfaction, that's fine also, but you need to learn that a company is there to make money, and not everyone will be happy with how they do so.

And I think you are the one who misunderstands, it was data mined 3 months before she was hired, fine. To think a company would make such a huge decision over the fate of the game in the way you make it out to be, I can almost guarantee that discussion to take that person on would have been had MUCH longer than 3 months ago. These decisions are not made easy. Again I have no proof, but in my experience a business would take a long time to make such a decision, not even getting into the fact contract negotiations and working out start dates for this person who seems to for some reason be in popular demand. I could see this being planned from the very beginning, just my opinion though, but pretty logical again when you think of it in running a business rather than your own personal experience which is already negative and poisoned.

Anyways I will let this get back to the nerd rage thread. I hold no ill will, we will simply agree to disagree. Your experience to my business logic, does not seem like its going to go anywhere soon. I will give it a few months and review, how I am going to do so? No idea, I think numbers will go down regardless as 1T brought a lot of people back, and I think that will trickle off, but if its as "rapidly descending" of a demise as its made out to be it should be noticeable, and like I said before I will admit if I am wrong, but will you?

You are seeing the same people now because this was already extensively discussed and, since the crates were taken off the PTS and not added to the Live Game so far, most of the discussion has died down. You can check the official feedback thread for them on the PTS forum for an earlier discussion, though to find the first discussions about it (that happened when they were announced) you will have to do a little digging. You will see that there are many more who had this kind of experience too, if you do that.

You have to decide if it makes sense or if it doesn't make sense, though. You said you would do it yourself, but you think it doesn't make sense? That's odd.

All your arguments are addressed with the same argument: Your arguments only make sense from a business standpoint if you have long-term plans for that business, and mine only make sense if you do not have long-term plans for that business and want to get as much cash as possible as fast as you can so you can go to your next project. That's what you are ignoring. The pattern they are following heavily indicates that ESO isn't a long-term project anymore, and that's why it makes sense to discard it, like many companies did to many MMOs before.

Things move a little bit faster in the gaming industry than you might be used to, especially in MMOs. I am actually pretty familiar with different kinds of business, and I can tell you that if you are not familiar with the gaming industry specifically then that's why this sounds so alien to you. Going by the information we have, it seems that this person specifically was hired by Bethesda (which is a sister company), and then got in charge of ZOS's marketing. Employees move around the companies that are part of the same mother company pretty easily, so it happens even faster than usual. If discarding the game was planned from the beginning, well, that's even worse, but it would make sense too. Then Vvardenfell might be the last big area we will see added for a long time.

Also I have experience running a business, I actually run a pretty successful company with four stores and two factories, with my family (That's only until I pass the test to become a Judge, however, since Judges are not allowed to run companies in my country). But I realize the differences between my kind of company and a gaming company because I studied this field a lot.

And I would LOVE to be able to say I am wrong, because I really love this game. I want more than anything for ZOS to show me that they are different and that they won't do what the other companies did. I just want to go back to complaining only about the lack of black hair for Altmer, which was LITERALLY my only real complaint for over two years playing the game, up until the crates were announced.

I am not ignoring anything, I have said repeatedly that in my opinion ESO des not have a long term outlook. Please refer to my posts explaining why I believe this, to sum it up, techonology progresses at a rapid rate, new games will come out which will steal customers, new elder scrolls will come out which will steal customers and the very fact that if a business has a 10 year plan for a game, that will not make them more money than having a 5 year plan, go on to another project, then come up with a follow up 5 year plan on ESO2 for example in which the customer would have to buy the game, costumes, crowns, mounts etc again. This was all explained earlier, but you keep accusing me of the one that is not listening, perhaps instead of reacting to my posts, you would be better served reading them. This is why I am starting to see this whole thing is pointless. You will not look at things with a different perspective which is rooted in reality rather than what you want.

I do have to decide if it makes sense or it does not make sense. Literally the only way your claims will make sense is if the company is brain dead stupid, I like my odds.

Please see my point above, I think my point that crown crates are not as detrimental to the game as you make it out to be stands in both long and short term scenarios. I do not think they have long term plans either, but that does not mean crown crates are responsible for it.

Now you are admitting that technology moves faster, thank you for agreeing to my point. So technology moves quickly, yet you want a long term investment where the technology will be outdated. You are contradicting yourself here, and no, it does not happen faster than usual.
-Fact, 1T was just released, this has driven many users back to the game
-Fact, there will be a large new DLC coming soon which will attempt to keep those users around
-Fact, crown crates will be sandwiched between these two, seems really smart timing to launch them! But you go ahead and think this was a decision made on a whim.

If you have so much experience running a business, I would think you would be able to spot the timing of these launches and see the reality of what their plan most likely is here, and that crown crates are not the cause, but simply a way to make money because the cause of the downfall of this game is simply the times we live in, technology moves fast, competition is fierce and cut throat, and they are all working to get the most dollars from its consumers. Keeping an outdated product alive for people like yourself is not good business sense, you would be leaving a lot of money on the table with the casuals and people who always want the best technology. I would also think you would be able to see my point that if these are so detrimental, that different businesses would not keep going down the path, being involved in a family business apparently does not help with the insight on how one generates income not only now, but well into the future. So you apparently "get" business, but still feel crown crates are going to rapidly decline this game, that's all the more evidence that your too personally invested in this to see the reality.

Its a scary thought that you could be a judge, since here we have an example of you throwing a business under the bus under what you are assuming it will do. How do you think that will work out for you on the bench? Are you going to judge criminals guilty because they committed the same crime as someone else without first hearing the facts?

I read all of your posts thoroughly, and I actually think we do agree in multiple points, but you still are not considering that the plan might just as well be discarding ESO to move to a next plan. You said for yourself that, on this case, you would do the same. If you would do the same and you have so much experience with business, why do you think the company would have to be "braindead stupid" to do it?

I am not contradicting myself, I am contradicting what you are making of my argument, which isn't what I said. And with MMOs, there is one thing regarding the technology moving fast: When a company has a long-term plan for a MMO and it is successful, the company can - and will - update the engine, textures and models as time goes by, as to stop the game from being outdated. It's the beauty of MMOs, they can change all the time.

I don't think adding crates was a decision made on a whim. They hired a person specialized in microtransitions in February, the announcement was made on... August? September? I don't remember now, but it was several months after she was hired. So here's what most likely happened: She was hired, she presented her plan (the same plan used in the previous games that went this route), the plan was discussed, they decided to go with it. There was enough time to discuss from when she was hired to when the crates were announced. But it could have happened on another way, too: ZOS decided they wanted crates, then they hired someone that is specialized on adding them to MMOs. None of these options, however, show that Vvardenfell's development started only after they made this decision, which is why Vvardenfell being added is no indication that the focus didn't shift.

I understand your point of view. You see the Crown Crates as a symptom instead of a cause. And you know, you might as well be correct, because they are indeed introduced as a business plan in the end (the F2P + RNG Boxes business plan). And this is a point that I actually do consider as a possibility, too, and I discussed this possibility a lot in the past with other forum goers.
However, if they are a symptom and they absolutely need to be added, there are ways to implement them that are not so consumer-unfriendly, like I suggested earlier.
And, of course, the product doesn't HAVE to stay outdated. MMOs are anything but static.

And it's very harmful to say such thing of me. That was really uncalled for. I am extremely diligent with my duties and I don't know what the word is in English but I'm what we call "garantista", which means I am extremely hung up on constitutional rights and put them above everything, no matter who the defendant is or what crime they are being accused of. I would be thankful if you could please refrain from using personal attacks like that. The comparison you made is absolutely absurd, too.
If you must know, no, I am not throwing ZOS under the bus. I'm pretty much begging on my knees for them to not do what everyone else did. I didn't even cancel my subscription, it will renew next week. I'm praising them in other threads for things they did right. How does disagreeing with this and do not want them to follow the pattern became throwing them under the bus?

Because, as you put it, it will send this game into a rapid decline. Those are your words. A rapid decline is a bad business plan as this game can be milked for some time yet, I think while there may not be a lot of content for you, there is a lot of content left for most. The best possible outcome is a soft landing, a gradually slow down of investment into the game, that would be the smart choice. A rapid decline would be a stupid choice, but that's what your suggesting they are doing here.

My only argument is on your feelings that this will send the game into a rapid decline, perhaps you think a rapid decline is 2 years? That's not rapid when its almost half the life of the game to date.

I think the evidence points to the fact they had this in mind the entire time when you look at the timing and traffic they have generated, there are no facts, but evidence points to my side, otherwise its a pretty big coincidence which is what your suggesting it is. A coincidence in a multi million dollar gaming company is rare, they have things planned out years in advance, again no proof, but look at major companies, the stakes, and the way they do business.

When you have consoles on an MMO, yes it does have to stay outdated, there is only so much a console can handle. Once the next generation of consoles come out, games will come out which will not run on the older generations. You are looking at this as a PC perspective, ESO is more than a PC game. What is the lifepan of a console now? 5-7 years? That fits pretty much perfectly into my opinion that this game has an end life around 5 years.

And I am not trying to inhibit your goals in life, and its not a personal attack at all, a fact is a fact. What you are doing is dangerous since your using the past to determine the future in your argument. Its not right, while they probably will go down the same path if that's what they see as generating the best source of income, I for one am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, as they deserve it from what I have seen in game so far. They may not be listening to your exact suggestions, but they are listening. We have Mythic ambrosia, we have them retooling the crates to try to be better. May not be exactly to your liking but they are trying at least. We have had a bunch of DLC, tweaks, fixes, updates. I am just not seeing evidence this is the plan.

You are throwing them under the bus because you are using past examples of games to back up your point and that this is why the game will decline. You are putting this opinion everywhere and anywhere you can to rally people to your cause under assumptions that are yet to come to fruition, I don't know about you, but that's throwing someone under the bus to me.

Yes, we do have different definitions of "rapid decline" then. There is no reason to discuss this any further on this case, because we agree on what is going to happen, we just do not agree on if that's fast or slow.

I did consider (a few pages ago) that this was the plan from the start - the B2P transition, the crates, then the F2P transition. The biggest clue I found was that the set of skeleton mounts was datamined quite a while ago, and we know that apex mounts are all the types of mounts with a certain theme. What I am doing here is giving ZOS the benefit of the doubt - I am not by any means saying it was a coincidence, I'm saying that I believe that their plans just changed over time. Which happens, plans change to adapt to the circumstances. I do not want to jump the shark and say that they lied to us all this time.

Even on console, even if the new ones released are not backwards compatible and can't play ESO, it is still possible for ESO to be made compatible with a new generation of consoles. We don't have many examples of this so far, though. I know that DCU was released for PS4 as soon as the system was launched (it was originally released for PS3 and PC only).

And yes, it is a personal attack saying that you find it scary to think that I can be a judge. Especially because I am the one who decides and who writes the decisions of the judge I work for, and so far he didn't change any of my decisions, so it really feels like a punch in the stomach for you to say that the thought is "scary". But rest easily, I do not work with criminal law right now, I work with children protection services.
You are speaking as if what happened to these other MMOs was completely unrelated to what is happening to ESO, which is the case of the comparison you made with judging someone for a crime. It is not unrelated, however, because we have the exact same person using the exact same strategy. It is reasonable to at least consider the same outcome as a very likely possibility. If you don't think that's reasonable, fine, but no need to say that it is "scary" to think I can be a judge some day. If I wanted to rally anyone against them or throw them under the bus I would not be praising them and defending other practices that I agree with (and that other people don't). So please stop making assumptions regarding my intentions and worse, my character.

First you mentioned I should pay attention to the coming months to see the effects this has, now its years? Ok we will agree we have a very different definition of rapid, but I cannot help but feel you keep moving the pins here to suit your needs.

Again if you extend the life of the game to new consoles, this would be a bad business decision. They want you to buy the new game, new mounts, new costumes. To reinvest all the money you initially did at the first run, that is how they will take the most amount of money from your pocket, and the average consumer will be happy to do so. Its up to us as individuals to determine if that is ok and make the choice to participate or not. I know how it works, I find the hundred or so bucks I have put into this game for over a year well worth it for my enjoyment, and will most likely make that choice again in the future. While your suggestion is a nice one, I don't think it fits in with the goals of a business.

For me, to see someone who could potentially wield a position of power, but fall victim to the thought "this is whats going to happen because it happened to other game companies" is a bit scary if that thought process moves on to other areas, it shows you have let past games bias your opinion to future ones. its no personal attack, nor am I saying you will do this in your position, just pointing out you are doing it here. Its my general feelings based on how you have framed your argument. I actually respect your thoughts despite disagreeing with them and meant it in no ill regard other than to make you think about your argument and how it was formed from another perspective in which your passionate about.

It appears like I said before we will simply agree to disagree, I hold no ill will towards you honestly, I enjoy a good debate.

JimT722 wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

JimT722 wrote: »

How ZOS must see their customers



Don't be a sucker like Peter. Say hell no to crown crates.

Change that cartoon to the choice of nothing or the choice of a short thrill to finally use up some useless crowns on and you may have a point, otherwise its moot in my case.

Your crowns aren't useless. You could exchange your crowns for all of those items directly. The reason rng crates are loaded with exclusives is so people are suckered into buying something they normally would buy directly. You give up your ability to direct purchase items.


everything about how they are designed is created to try and keep you dumping money into it. The card visuals and Pacrooti's dialogue are carefully crafted to try and influence people to keep spending.

If you want to gamble, go to a casino. $4 gambling for digital items is a slap in the face to loyal customers and shouldn't be in mmorpg's.

Why's are games doing this?

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Cherryblossom wrote: »

Have to say I'm not really understanding the issue with the crates, are they not just allowing some people if they want to, to gamble on getting a special mount!? This is a choice isn't it, if we don't buy do we get banned from the game?

If the sword of ultimate smiting goes in a box, then I might consider there to be a problem, but I don't see that this is planned to happen.

They'll get there. It may not be planned to happen yet, but don't forget the original "We have no plans for locked rng boxes." Technically they kept their word. The rng boxes aren't locked.

After all the feedback and comments and complaints and suggestions for how to mitigate the rngesus boxes in the pts thread, the idea that came back in Gina's comment was in effect "Gee. We see you don't like the consumables, so we'll buff them to be better. Maybe tweak the number of gems for duplicates. Maybe allow you to sell back the consumables no one likes or will use for gems. Oh, and to sort of kind of maybe keep the promise to never sell anything in the crown store better than players can make, we'll throw in a recipe that uses two incredibly rare drops to make something similar to the gamble box item that you can use after you get all seven of the original recipe parts that is also an incredibly rare drop."

snip

i take issue with the bit i put in bold.

'all seven of the original recipe parts that is also an incredibly rare drop' rubbish.

i have the original recipe on one toon. i have a complete recipe and twelve fragments in my bank right now. i have sold four complete recipes and just short of forty fragments. rare?

i don't think so.

but hey its the internet so a bit more misinformation is expected.

summitxho wrote: »

JimT722 wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

JimT722 wrote: »

How ZOS must see their customers



Don't be a sucker like Peter. Say hell no to crown crates.

Change that cartoon to the choice of nothing or the choice of a short thrill to finally use up some useless crowns on and you may have a point, otherwise its moot in my case.

Your crowns aren't useless. You could exchange your crowns for all of those items directly. The reason rng crates are loaded with exclusives is so people are suckered into buying something they normally would buy directly. You give up your ability to direct purchase items.


everything about how they are designed is created to try and keep you dumping money into it. The card visuals and Pacrooti's dialogue are carefully crafted to try and influence people to keep spending.

If you want to gamble, go to a casino. $4 gambling for digital items is a slap in the face to loyal customers and shouldn't be in mmorpg's.

Why's are games doing this?

I don't buy things from the crown store to date. I subscibe to ESO plus for the crafting bag and crafting bag only as it makes my limited play time more efficient, I believe we covered this already. I would not buy the items within the crown crates if available separately, maybe a cool mount or exclusive pet, but have not seen anything so far. You are completely discounting the fact some may buy these for a simple thrill, I do not view it as a waste of money as I never paid money to get these crowns to begin with, they were a side benefit I have yet to see any use for. That is why I will not be getting sucked in, I am not going for anything, heck I probably will not even use what I do get, its the simple thrill of hey I might get something rare which would be cool to be a bit different from everyone else, if not no big deal as the crowns were wasted anyways and I dont want to leave this game whenever that happens with 20,000 crowns I never spent. Hope that clears it up.

Yes, its for making money, making money is good for the game, if not present then future. We already covered this to death though, you believe making money is bad, lots of people agree with you, but its a big part of what drives western economies, the fact that a company can determine its own future and revenue generation. If we lets consumers run the business, they would be driven into the ground because everyone has their own agenda as to whats important to them.

Abeille wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Cherryblossom wrote: »

Have to say I'm not really understanding the issue with the crates, are they not just allowing some people if they want to, to gamble on getting a special mount!? This is a choice isn't it, if we don't buy do we get banned from the game?

If the sword of ultimate smiting goes in a box, then I might consider there to be a problem, but I don't see that this is planned to happen.

They'll get there. It may not be planned to happen yet, but don't forget the original "We have no plans for locked rng boxes." Technically they kept their word. The rng boxes aren't locked.

After all the feedback and comments and complaints and suggestions for how to mitigate the rngesus boxes in the pts thread, the idea that came back in Gina's comment was in effect "Gee. We see you don't like the consumables, so we'll buff them to be better. Maybe tweak the number of gems for duplicates. Maybe allow you to sell back the consumables no one likes or will use for gems. Oh, and to sort of kind of maybe keep the promise to never sell anything in the crown store better than players can make, we'll throw in a recipe that uses two incredibly rare drops to make something similar to the gamble box item that you can use after you get all seven of the original recipe parts that is also an incredibly rare drop."

snip

i take issue with the bit i put in bold.

'all seven of the original recipe parts that is also an incredibly rare drop' rubbish.

i have the original recipe on one toon. i have a complete recipe and twelve fragments in my bank right now. i have sold four complete recipes and just short of forty fragments. rare?

i don't think so.

but hey its the internet so a bit more misinformation is expected.

Meanwhile, I do provisioner writs every day on five characters since writs were introduced and only got to complete it once (and got three extra pieces) :P

Such is the nature of RNG.

I don't think the odds were published, were them? Do we know the drop percentage for the recipe pieces?

JimT722 wrote: »

No, making money is great. I wouldn't manufacture my products for free. However, reputation is incredibly important in my work. Everything I make is carefully crafted to meet the the customers needs, and the price is a fair one.

I am a craftsman and therefore I take pride in my work. Nothing about this move to crown crates says that about them. It says to me that they are willing to tank their reputation in order to make a fast buck.

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Cherryblossom wrote: »

Have to say I'm not really understanding the issue with the crates, are they not just allowing some people if they want to, to gamble on getting a special mount!? This is a choice isn't it, if we don't buy do we get banned from the game?

If the sword of ultimate smiting goes in a box, then I might consider there to be a problem, but I don't see that this is planned to happen.

They'll get there. It may not be planned to happen yet, but don't forget the original "We have no plans for locked rng boxes." Technically they kept their word. The rng boxes aren't locked.

After all the feedback and comments and complaints and suggestions for how to mitigate the rngesus boxes in the pts thread, the idea that came back in Gina's comment was in effect "Gee. We see you don't like the consumables, so we'll buff them to be better. Maybe tweak the number of gems for duplicates. Maybe allow you to sell back the consumables no one likes or will use for gems. Oh, and to sort of kind of maybe keep the promise to never sell anything in the crown store better than players can make, we'll throw in a recipe that uses two incredibly rare drops to make something similar to the gamble box item that you can use after you get all seven of the original recipe parts that is also an incredibly rare drop."

snip

i take issue with the bit i put in bold.

'all seven of the original recipe parts that is also an incredibly rare drop' rubbish.

i have the original recipe on one toon. i have a complete recipe and twelve fragments in my bank right now. i have sold four complete recipes and just short of forty fragments. rare?

i don't think so.

but hey its the internet so a bit more misinformation is expected.

JimT722 wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

JimT722 wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

JimT722 wrote: »

summitxho wrote: »

JimT722 wrote: »

How ZOS must see their customers



Don't be a sucker like Peter. Say hell no to crown crates.

Change that cartoon to the choice of nothing or the choice of a short thrill to finally use up some useless crowns on and you may have a point, otherwise its moot in my case.

Your crowns aren't useless. You could exchange your crowns for all of those items directly. The reason rng crates are loaded with exclusives is so people are suckered into buying something they normally would buy directly. You give up your ability to direct purchase items.


everything about how they are designed is created to try and keep you dumping money into it. The card visuals and Pacrooti's dialogue are carefully crafted to try and influence people to keep spending.

If you want to gamble, go to a casino. $4 gambling for digital items is a slap in the face to loyal customers and shouldn't be in mmorpg's.

Why's are games doing this?

I don't buy things from the crown store to date. I subscibe to ESO plus for the crafting bag and crafting bag only as it makes my limited play time more efficient, I believe we covered this already. I would not buy the items within the crown crates if available separately, maybe a cool mount or exclusive pet, but have not seen anything so far. You are completely discounting the fact some may buy these for a simple thrill, I do not view it as a waste of money as I never paid money to get these crowns to begin with, they were a side benefit I have yet to see any use for. That is why I will not be getting sucked in, I am not going for anything, heck I probably will not even use what I do get, its the simple thrill of hey I might get something rare which would be cool to be a bit different from everyone else, if not no big deal as the crowns were wasted anyways and I dont want to leave this game whenever that happens with 20,000 crowns I never spent. Hope that clears it up.

Yes, its for making money, making money is good for the game, if not present then future. We already covered this to death though, you believe making money is bad, lots of people agree with you, but its a big part of what drives western economies, the fact that a company can determine its own future and revenue generation. If we lets consumers run the business, they would be driven into the ground because everyone has their own agenda as to whats important to them.

No, making money is great. I wouldn't manufacture my products for free. However, reputation is incredibly important in my work. Everything I make is carefully crafted to meet the the customers needs, and the price is a fair one.

I am a craftsman and therefore I take pride in my work. Nothing about this move to crown crates says that about them. It says to me that they are willing to tank their reputation in order to make a fast buck.

That's great your a craftsman, but how many investors do you need to keep happy? How many employees do you have that you want to provide fair wages to? How much investment do you need to return in order to make your next project viable? How many people do you have invested into you that all want something out of their investment? You can simplify it all you want, but its much more complicated when you are talking about a multi million dollar company who has to keep many different people with many different goals happy.

Hey I seem to recall the reputation of Bethesda was not all that great either, Oblivion has game breaking bugs, the same game breaking bugs that showed up in Skyrim and people still came back to the game in droves, those game breaking bugs could have been fixed, but I still log in to Skyrim and find it unplayable due to the file size on my characters with many hours logged, so how did that reputation that they launched a game with huge bugs pan out for them? I would argue pretty darn good and had little effect. Reputation is important yes, but your reputation will not be perfect with all customers. In my opinion the introduction of crown crates will hurt its reputation among people like yourself, but remain relatively unscathed with the majority. That is an opinion, and one we will have to wait for it to pan out to get an answer to. You can point to the forum uproar to make your point you are the majority, but take every single user who has spoken out against crown crates and compare it to the total registered users on this site. I did not run the numbers, but I have a strong feeling it would be a small minority. I am not even beginning to factor in the point that most people who play this game probably do not even know a forum exists.

This is a growing controversy. Even big shows like South Park attack this business method. I don't think it is a small minority.

I may work for a small company, but I have worked for bigger manufacturers as well. They still made very high quality products for fair prices. In my work, if your reputation gets destroyed, you are done. What I make goes into aircraft, you can't mess around. While games are not as crucial on quality, they can still conduct business in a respectable manor. I don't care how big the company is.

Cazzy wrote: »

I'm guessing the crates will arrive on Tuesday. They would've added them by now for the free weekend, if they intended to that. Right?