Would ESO have been Viable without PvP?

Inhuman003 · May 2017

I say no because of the lore of the Daedric Prince Boethiah, PVP will still live on.

TequilaFire · May 2017

After creating and playing through all PvE to date with 8 characters the only thing that keeps me from moving on is PvP.
Without PvP I would've never even joined a guild and made all the awesome friends I now have.

NewBlacksmurf · May 2017

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

hmsdragonfly wrote: »

Coop Skyrim, while it's amazing, won't last long. There's no incentive for people to sub, they will just buy the game, play through, and move to other games. Things like end-game PvE and PvP are what keep people coming back from time to time after playing through the game.

To all of the short-sighted people who keep saying "but I have fun picking up flowers, crafting gear, farming mats and selling them on the market, and I have never set foot on PvP-land so the game would totally viable without PvP". WRONG. DEAD WRONG. Who do you think will buy your flowers, your gear, and your mats? Roleplayers? So they could send flowers to their roleplaying partner? No, PvPers and hard-core competitive PvEers buy those things. They keep your playstyle viable, without them, there will be no demand for your flowers, have fun vendoring Columbine to NPCs for 2g each.

This is coming from a TES fan who plays both PvE and PvP.

I was thinking about this and I'm not sure I agree.

I honestly think that games in general have been sort of creatively slacking in the PvP department, giving us the same thing over and over again.

PvP means Player vs Player... That can mean a lot of things but at it's base it means competition. It doesn't have to mean killing one another. Players can compete against one another in different ways, we do it all the time in real life. You could conceivably create a mostly PvE game which includes competitive aspects that aren't so twitch heavy, or aren't so based on builds or whatever.

I mean, look at VMA. It's competitive, but it's not PvP. Yeah, that's still really reliant on builds and twitching, but it's just one example.

I mean, I'm sure if we actually think outside the box a little we can come up with other ways for people to compete that aren't necessarily killing one another. I think of games like Civilization where there are multiple ways to claim a victory and not all of them include ruining your opponent. Surely a developer could come up with some manner of analog to the Science victory, or the Diplomatic victory, or the Religious victory.

I guess what I'm saying is, removing PvP -combat- from the game doesn't have to also remove replay-ability and competition. The dev team just has to think a little harder to implement other systems to keep it fun.

kim-jong-un-clapping-this-deserves-a-round-of-applause.jpg

hmsdragonfly · May 2017

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

hmsdragonfly wrote: »

Coop Skyrim, while will be amazing, won't last long. There's no incentive for people to sub, they will just buy the game, play through, and move to other games...

Not if they:
Keep releasing DLC for years

Store progress online, making characters and progress persistent

There is little incentive to sub right now anyway, unless we are talking about crafting bags. If that is the incentive, then they can just make inventory management suck like it does here.

If they are also going to milk the whales with cosmetics, they need everything online and persistent.

hmsdragonfly wrote: »

...
You can find better lore elsewhere: Mass Effect, Warhammer, TES single player games, Fallout etc
...

This comment misses the main appeal of ESO. You can't separate the 'TES single player games'. It is the same world and they are developing the same lore. That is the #1 attraction of ESO. Fleshing out Tamriel further. TES single player games can't have better lore because it is the same lore.

That is why it makes so much sense to have all this PvE DLC. It is full of lore. Adding PvP, coop, and large group play are all nice game modes to add to an Elder Scrolls game, but I for one have no interest in spending a cent on such things. What I appreciate is having persistent characters and the world's state stored online in a way that I can't tweak with console commands. I will play all DLC because it is more of Tamriel.

Of course we are talking about the crafting bag. This is why I said everything is tied in together: If it's just about completing quests, there's very little use of alchemy, provisioning, or any of the trade skills, because you don't need any of them to play through the content. There's no need for theorycrafting and making effective builds. Crafters have no work, there's no point in becoming a crafter. As a result, even if the inventory sucks even more, the craftbag is useless, so, there's no reason to sub. If people don't sub and buy stuffs from crownstore, ZOS simply can't generate enough money to maintain the server and develop new content at the same time, they will have to cut down the cost, so on the brightest scenario, the quality of the new content will be greatly affected. The darkest scenario: the devs will stop developing content all together and the game will be in life support mode.

Yes, ESO's lore is great, it's why I buy this game in the first place, I will also play all DLCs because it is more of Tamriel. I am a TES fan. However, if there's nothing else beside the lore and the questing, I won't sub, and after finishing the storyline I will praise the game and then simply stop playing it, go back to my other games. A dead MMO doesn't generate profit, without profit, the game will go into life support mode and there won't be any further content development.

Pwnyridah · May 2017

Taking the pvp option out would kill the game for sure.

Trials for many is that thing you do once a week to get a motif. PvE is almost purely about the random roll loot grind which is soul crushing and boringly repetitive.

PvP is engaging in that you don't know what to expect when you hit that keep or load the next IC zone's door. Your effort pays off in telvar, ap, keys and you can earn items you want or make mad cash.

The only issue is the lag - but honestly the lag in Destiny from other players that could teleport invincibly but line you up like you're in slow-mo or ddos you out of a competitive match is way worse.

DaveMoeDee · May 2017

hmsdragonfly wrote: »

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

hmsdragonfly wrote: »

Coop Skyrim, while will be amazing, won't last long. There's no incentive for people to sub, they will just buy the game, play through, and move to other games...

Not if they:
Keep releasing DLC for years

Store progress online, making characters and progress persistent

There is little incentive to sub right now anyway, unless we are talking about crafting bags. If that is the incentive, then they can just make inventory management suck like it does here.

If they are also going to milk the whales with cosmetics, they need everything online and persistent.

hmsdragonfly wrote: »

...
You can find better lore elsewhere: Mass Effect, Warhammer, TES single player games, Fallout etc
...

This comment misses the main appeal of ESO. You can't separate the 'TES single player games'. It is the same world and they are developing the same lore. That is the #1 attraction of ESO. Fleshing out Tamriel further. TES single player games can't have better lore because it is the same lore.

That is why it makes so much sense to have all this PvE DLC. It is full of lore. Adding PvP, coop, and large group play are all nice game modes to add to an Elder Scrolls game, but I for one have no interest in spending a cent on such things. What I appreciate is having persistent characters and the world's state stored online in a way that I can't tweak with console commands. I will play all DLC because it is more of Tamriel.

Of course we are talking about the crafting bag. This is why I said everything is tied in together: If it's just about completing quests, there's very little use of alchemy, provisioning, or any of the trade skills, because you don't need any of them to play through the content. There's no need for theorycrafting and making effective builds. Crafters have no work, there's no point in becoming a crafter. As a result, even if the inventory sucks even more, the craftbag is useless, so, there's no reason to sub. If people don't sub and buy stuffs from crownstore, ZOS simply can't generate enough money to maintain the server and develop new content at the same time, they will have to cut down the cost, so on the brightest scenario, the quality of the new content will be greatly affected. The darkest scenario: the devs will stop developing content all together and the game will be in life support mode.

Yes, ESO's lore is great, it's why I buy this game in the first place, I will also play all DLCs because it is more of Tamriel. I am a TES fan. However, if there's nothing else beside the lore and the questing, I won't sub, and after finishing the storyline I will praise the game and then simply stop playing it, go back to my other games. A dead MMO doesn't generate profit, without profit, the game will go into life support mode and there won't be any further content development.

I think you don't understand how people like me play. I don't do anything competitive. I go with a guild in PvP now and then, but mostly for leveling or for hanging out. I do not min-max at all. I don't do trials, or even many vet dungeons. I have ~520 CP and 5 characters so far at max (only one former v16), so I have played a decent amount. Yet I do all crafting. I have major inventory problems.

You have a major disconnect in your comment "Crafters have no work, there's no point in becoming a crafter." I am not looking for work. My main is max is all 6, finished all research ages ago, and I have few other max level crafters in each craft. My main tries to learn all motifs, though I don't care what my gear looks like. I actually do periodically sub to move mats into crafting bags. I subbed one month for DB for that very reason, and one month during the anniversary where mats were raining down (where I also knocked out most of the remaining DB achievements).

You also miss something in your cost of business calculus. If there are a lot of people like me, they make a lot of revenue when DLC drops, but I don't tax the servers because I don't do much in between DLC (or events) and I don't PvP (which is taxing on infrastructure). People who only PvP are bigger headaches for infrastructure, while also having no interest in many of the DLC. Subbing can also be pointless if they aren't looting mats. So PvP players can more easily stick around as freeloaders compared to the players eagerly awaiting the continuation of the narrative. People like me also don't care about balance. Heck, part of the fun of the game is trying each class. ZOS doesn't have to waste dev time responding to my subjective complaints because I don't make such complaints.

DaveMoeDee · May 2017

TequilaFire wrote: »

After creating and playing through all PvE to date with 8 characters the only thing that keeps me from moving on is PvP.
Without PvP I would've never even joined a guild and made all the awesome friends I now have.

If you played all PvE content with 8 characters to date, why wouldn't you do the same with new content? Playing another game for 2 months and then returning for new content wouldn't be an option? That's what I did with Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3, for example.

FloppyTouch · May 2017

geonsocal wrote: »

great question...personally - without pvp, I would have played the game for maybe six months to a year...going on two years (console) now, and, it's the pvp that keeps me logging in...

This

KingJ · May 2017

For a while the game was carried by its PVP player base while the game had no new content for months and was bleeding players PVP players stayed and kept the game alive.Look at PVP now we treated like a pest instead of part of the community.

nimander99 · May 2017

Yeah

Galwylin · May 2017

One problem EQ2 is dealing with is in order to slow the progress of players through an expansion (some would honestly blow through it as fast as Morrowind which like 50 or so quests) they introduced something along the lines of not being able to advance your character except through a daily type quest. And a lot of people hate it. PvE players want content 24/7 and they don't want to be held back. That will probably change next expansion.

WoW just lets folks blow through but they give a lot and make their end game pretty good. Its probably the easiest MMO to play. There's nothing overly complicated about it. The tutorial really provides all you need. You don't have things like Intricate gear here. When you are ready for new gear, its appropriate to you and your level so you can do their content. Its all about keeping you coming back to the content. PvP is set up the same way. You keep at it, you get the better gear for it, and keep at it. It gets a bit old to me but RNGesus has power in WoW. He does throw fits when doing raids and such with your drops. WoW is successful because it does have a system set up that only needs a tweak here and there once in while. So instead of constantly making changes to huge changes they've made, they make small ones so they can concentrate on the whole game itself. Not so absorbed in balance. But no mistake, they continue to work on balance since even separated, players can outsmart any developer.

I don't think EQ2 is so bad since they do have some huge expansions (not always though) but if that's all that you have left, sure, I wouldn't want artificial barriers to my advancement either. And WoW probably plays the same today that it did five years ago (after the paladin class change). Its simple and nothing takes a math genius to discover about it. But that simplicity can also make the game feel boring. You do the same thing over and over a good deal in PvE there. PvP can be fun since you can play at an early level (I forget what) and you will be with and against players in your level bracket. You have mechanics in their battlegrounds which add some interest. My favorite were always the large ones. The small ones were too annoying unless you came in with a formed group. But the large ones could be anyone and if the other team plays dumb, you can be weaker and still win.

But just about all MMOs need both types to last. PvP has never been big in EQ/EQ2. They're great at raiding. But its age is starting to wear. You stats is just a huge mess that needs a simplification. I just started SWTOR which I've been playing instead of ESO lately. I like it and wish I had played it earlier. ESO is so small to everything else I play which makes it feel like I'm doing the same thing over and over even when not at endgame.

ofSunhold · May 2017

Viable, yes. At least for a time.

But

PvP tends to be a lot of people's endgame after they've exhausted their PvE avenues. Those are gamers you want to retain if you can.

And it's wise to appeal to the broadest group possible in a bid for high player count, which equals money, which equals continued viability. So they want PvPers, they want RPers, they want solo explorers and obsessive achievement collectors and endgame PvE leets and market Barons and every gamer niche they can draw and make a place for.

DannyLV702 · May 2017

geonsocal wrote: »

great question...personally - without pvp, I would have played the game for maybe six months to a year...going on two years (console) now, and, it's the pvp that keeps me logging in...

I was ready to quit after one month of playing. (Started at console release). Then when I decided to try PvP before "quitting" I found what has kept me here ever since.

Agalloch · May 2017

Rainwhisper wrote: »

My favorite thing about One Tamriel is that it was a huge step in making Elder Scrolls Online feel more like an Elder Scrolls game, with friends, rather than an Elder Scrolls-branded MMO. Housing is another excellent step in that direction.

As anyone who has read my posts on the subject knows, I've hated PvP in every MMO I've played since the days of text MUD's. Nothing about the playstyle or goals of PvP aligns with what I want to get out of an roleplaying game. Likewise, I think of PvP as antithetical to what makes Elder Scrolls games so enjoyable, since in those games are about exploring a vast, highly-detailed, socially complex world while building a character who eventually can navigate that world with ease.

Nonetheless, PvP has been available as an option in ESO since launch, and conventional wisdom seems to be that major MMO's have to provide PvP as an option if they want a sufficiently large player base to be financially viable. Unfortunately, as I've seen in every MMO I've played, the challenges of balancing PvP and PvE leave people in both camps frustrated, and those frustrations seem to me to be growing. In addition, the development philosophy of ESO, much to my chagrin, seems to be trending toward greater, not less, integration of PvP with the PvE experience and world.

Obviously this question is hypothetical, since the ship has long-since sailed, but:

Do you think Elder Scrolls Online would have been viable as a PvE-only experience?

Which is to say, if it essentially replicated the experience of playing Skyrim, but with friends, would it have had enough content, activities, options, and experiences to attract and retain a large enough playerbase to be viable long-term?

I genuinely don't know if there are enough players who share my goals and priorities out there to justify the existence of a PvE, open-world, multiplayer RPG. If not, I still wonder if, because of the differences in playstyles, it makes sense to try and integrate in any way the PvE and PvP aspects of the game.

PVP was the main advertising for ESO . ESO was made with PVP in mind. If many of the devs didn't already left we could have the justice system completed also with OPEN PVP .
Even WOW have open pvp .
With no PVP ESO will fall and will shutdown in maximum 2 years.

And yes..at the first year, PVP wasn't so broken like it is right now.

Remember old days ? This was possible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfeMROJhXSY

Now? Even a *** group finder doesn't work ( worked fine before Homestead)

Even ESO has so many problems ( maybe Zenimax must hire more devs? ) right now, this game can't breed without PVP.

English is not my native language.

Aisle9 · May 2017

You can't use Siege Engines in PvE...

How can you play without Fire Ballistae ?

Kay1 · May 2017

Besides PvP and Trials there's nothing else to do so if you remove the most played mode in ESO I don't think this game will survive it.

Zenimax also created the best WvW PvP, there's no competence, yes they are destroying the game with all the patches but the WvW itself is just superior to any other MMO.

Farorin · May 2017

The promise of PVP is what brought myself, and a huge amount of other players to the game in the first place. It was advertised as PVP heavy, and alliance war focused.

I would have played it without PVP, just for the Elder Scrolls part as I am an ES fanboy, but honestly, I wouldn't have stuck around for long without the PVP.

*edited to make a sentence more clear

Vapirko · May 2017

I wouldn't still be playing if not for pvp. It's by far the most fun and dynamic form of combat. It's just full of lag and bugs.

Etaniel · May 2017

I personnaly wouldn't have played it, I don't see the point in advancing my character if it's not to go play against others.

RDMyers65b14_ESO · May 2017

With me going through the content within a few days of release, there is no way I would be still around without PVP. It is the only challenge to the game. It is not the killing of the other players as much as it is the fantastic guild that I run with. Like you, OP, I come from the world of mushes and muxes. For the first year of the game, I was heavily into the RP on the game. When they announced IC, I figured that I would have to learn PVP just to visit the Imperial City. I managed to get into a guild which has became my guild home. I am hooked. Mind you, this is the only game that I have ever PVPed. If you haven't given it a real chance, try it. It might be harder in the other factions though. In DC, even the lower level can help make a difference because of the way we are so very outnumbered. Everybody counts.

Shogunami · May 2017

ESO was initially marketed mainly as a PvP game - where PvP WAS the end-game, and to many people PvP is the only end-game worth doing. Without the support of the PvPers during beta and during launch I doubt ESO would have been as successful as it is.

Having said that, I think ESO would be "viable" without PvP, but not for very long.

BlanketFort · May 2017

The only time I set foot in Cyro is to level my assault skill line to get Vigor for my main, and aggressive war horn for my healer. And I loathed every moment of it.

I'd rather they just separate the two. Or if PvP never existed. God, the balancing issues that screw up PvE because of PvP. ZOS tries to be good at both and just ends up failing at everything. But hey, I still play because Elder Scrolls.

I get that they initially designed ESO to be PvP, but they've been selling it as a PvE experience and it's just sad to see PvE nerfed in favour of fixing cancerous PvP builds. But I'm biased, I just really hate PvP.

I bet some pvp'ers who have no intention to do much of PvE, also hate being forced to run dungeons for their gear. (That's different now with the new vendors, but still).

Sylosi · May 2017

Rainwhisper wrote: »

As anyone who has read my posts on the subject knows, I've hated PvP in every MMO I've played since the days of text MUD's. Nothing about the playstyle or goals of PvP aligns with what I want to get out of an roleplaying game.

Not that I am really into the roleplaying aspects of MMOs, but to me the most realistic, believable worlds in MMOs are those with open world PvP (and sandbox MMOs at that), now ESO doesn't have that, but I guess something like Cyrodil is the next best thing.

Rainwhisper wrote: »

Nonetheless, PvP has been available as an option in ESO since launch, and conventional wisdom seems to be that major MMO's have to provide PvP as an option if they want a sufficiently large player base to be financially viable.

There is this myth that MMO players are PvE players, yet if you go to the launch of most MMOs that have PvE & PvP servers you have as many PvP servers as PvE, e.g - Rift, there is certainly a demand for PvP in MMOs.

There is also this myth of a very simple playerbase setup, that you have a PvE playerbase and a PvP playerbase, sure for some people that is true, but many people do both to one extent or another, to take a typical example it is not uncommon for good raid guilds to have a number of players who also play plenty of PvP.

There is also no such thing as the PvE (or PvP) playerbase as such, they are both made up of many groups with differing interests (e.g - in PvE there are people that just like to explore / do quests and have very different wants from a guy playing as a hardcore raider) and PvE players who don't do the bit of PvE the devs balance around (usually raids) get screwed over from PvE balance changes as much as PvP.

Rainwhisper wrote: »

Unfortunately, as I've seen in every MMO I've played, the challenges of balancing PvP and PvE leave people in both camps frustrated, and those frustrations seem to me to be growing.

Whilst there are problems balancing both, there is also an amount of ignorance over things, especially from certain PvE players, where any nerf gets blamed on PvP even when the nerf has nothing to do with PvP or is a problem in both areas, take sustain in this game, that was nerfed, you'd think from some that was down soley to PvP, yet if you go ask good PvE players what was happening in many dungeons/raids was that mechanics were being often at best trivialized at worst bypassed entirely because of the powercreep in this game through things like CP, hence there was just as much reason to nerf CP from a PvE perspective as from a PvP, yet the ignorant think it was entirely down to PvP.

And also lets be realistic here, a large amount of PvE players do not care in the slightest about good balance, they play these games on the basis of getting shiny things and any nerf regardless of how merited it is, is "bad" to them.

As for the rest, let's put it like this the most successful MMORPG by far is a 13 year old game that charges a sub and still has far more players than any other MMO, one of the reasons for that success is it puts resources into many different areas of the game, and this retains the many different groups of players that make up an MMORPG playerbase, most other MMOs fail miserably at that to the point where they end up with a joke of a playerbase and just tunnel visioning on their cash shop players.

Volrion · May 2017

I and the 20 people are started with never would have bought the game if it weren't for pvp.

...and we've all quit because PVP at end game is a laggy mess lol

Hammy01 · May 2017

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Lord of the Rings is a huge title . Big PVE community . They avoided PVP to make player vs monster characters instead , thinking their gigantic following and the amount of roleplayers would hold the title for years . Now that's a name brand bigger then any other in fantasy ...

They couldn't of been more wrong . Within two years massive boredom and closing of servers despite consistent and large PVE updates . Food for thought . Lesson learned is don't underestimate the amount of PVP players out there . It's more then then a lot of people think .

I played a lot of Lotro and the monster play was really fun pvp. There were a lot of people that created monsters and only pvp'd (like myself). That game would have been a blast had they allowed the monsters out of the Ettenmoors (sp?... The one ond only pvp zone) to do other things.
I personally think that had Turbine developed the pvp side a little more then the game may have faired better in the end.

As far as this thread goes, I think successful games need both pvp and pve because their is big crowd of people who enjoy doing both!

raasdal · May 2017

I came into ESO for the PvE, as i played all the ES Games from Morrowind and on. Was just about to quit after about 6 months, as the content got boring. Then i tried PvP, and got hooked. Have now played since Patch 1.5/1.6

Eirella · May 2017

geonsocal wrote: »

great question...personally - without pvp, I would have played the game for maybe six months to a year...going on two years (console) now, and, it's the pvp that keeps me logging in...

^This.
I started this game as a PVE-er with no interest in PVP. After playing about 2 months I became insanely bored with the game and was about to quit, but decided to try PVP first. I fell in love.
PVP is what keeps me playing.

Arthg · May 2017

Without PvP, which I didn't actually buy the game for, I'd have quit long ago.

Running about in dungeons and grinding gear makes no sense, unless it is to help my alliance win by being an efficient warrior.

taiji2078 · May 2017

PvP has no place in ESO. Nothing to justify it. Just another time waster inside a time waster. That's all. I don't like the pvp in ESO so I don't play it even if I could get 1000x the bonuses I get in pve.

ESO for me is the poorly made continuation to the Skyrim legend. I prefer soloing what I can solo. What I cannot solo, I'd rather not try to do it.

hmsdragonfly · May 2017

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

hmsdragonfly wrote: »

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

hmsdragonfly wrote: »

Coop Skyrim, while will be amazing, won't last long. There's no incentive for people to sub, they will just buy the game, play through, and move to other games...

Not if they:
Keep releasing DLC for years

Store progress online, making characters and progress persistent

There is little incentive to sub right now anyway, unless we are talking about crafting bags. If that is the incentive, then they can just make inventory management suck like it does here.

If they are also going to milk the whales with cosmetics, they need everything online and persistent.

hmsdragonfly wrote: »

...
You can find better lore elsewhere: Mass Effect, Warhammer, TES single player games, Fallout etc
...

This comment misses the main appeal of ESO. You can't separate the 'TES single player games'. It is the same world and they are developing the same lore. That is the #1 attraction of ESO. Fleshing out Tamriel further. TES single player games can't have better lore because it is the same lore.

That is why it makes so much sense to have all this PvE DLC. It is full of lore. Adding PvP, coop, and large group play are all nice game modes to add to an Elder Scrolls game, but I for one have no interest in spending a cent on such things. What I appreciate is having persistent characters and the world's state stored online in a way that I can't tweak with console commands. I will play all DLC because it is more of Tamriel.

Of course we are talking about the crafting bag. This is why I said everything is tied in together: If it's just about completing quests, there's very little use of alchemy, provisioning, or any of the trade skills, because you don't need any of them to play through the content. There's no need for theorycrafting and making effective builds. Crafters have no work, there's no point in becoming a crafter. As a result, even if the inventory sucks even more, the craftbag is useless, so, there's no reason to sub. If people don't sub and buy stuffs from crownstore, ZOS simply can't generate enough money to maintain the server and develop new content at the same time, they will have to cut down the cost, so on the brightest scenario, the quality of the new content will be greatly affected. The darkest scenario: the devs will stop developing content all together and the game will be in life support mode.

Yes, ESO's lore is great, it's why I buy this game in the first place, I will also play all DLCs because it is more of Tamriel. I am a TES fan. However, if there's nothing else beside the lore and the questing, I won't sub, and after finishing the storyline I will praise the game and then simply stop playing it, go back to my other games. A dead MMO doesn't generate profit, without profit, the game will go into life support mode and there won't be any further content development.

I think you don't understand how people like me play. I don't do anything competitive. I go with a guild in PvP now and then, but mostly for leveling or for hanging out. I do not min-max at all. I don't do trials, or even many vet dungeons. I have ~520 CP and 5 characters so far at max (only one former v16), so I have played a decent amount. Yet I do all crafting. I have major inventory problems.

You have a major disconnect in your comment "Crafters have no work, there's no point in becoming a crafter." I am not looking for work. My main is max is all 6, finished all research ages ago, and I have few other max level crafters in each craft. My main tries to learn all motifs, though I don't care what my gear looks like. I actually do periodically sub to move mats into crafting bags. I subbed one month for DB for that very reason, and one month during the anniversary where mats were raining down (where I also knocked out most of the remaining DB achievements).

You also miss something in your cost of business calculus. If there are a lot of people like me, they make a lot of revenue when DLC drops, but I don't tax the servers because I don't do much in between DLC (or events) and I don't PvP (which is taxing on infrastructure). People who only PvP are bigger headaches for infrastructure, while also having no interest in many of the DLC. Subbing can also be pointless if they aren't looting mats. So PvP players can more easily stick around as freeloaders compared to the players eagerly awaiting the continuation of the narrative. People like me also don't care about balance. Heck, part of the fun of the game is trying each class. ZOS doesn't have to waste dev time responding to my subjective complaints because I don't make such complaints.

I completely understand your playstyle. The thing is, PvPers and hardcore competitive PvEers are people who fund your playstyle. Why do you think people buy your flowers and your mats? Of course not to sell them to roleplayers. To craft end-game gear, to upgrade them, to make potions, poisons and food so they can take part in end-game activities. They are the reason why there's a healthy market in-game. Without them, no one has any reason to buy flowers, mats and getting gear crafted, as a result, there will be no market. You will sell Columbine to NPC vendors. People become master crafters so that they can craft end-game gear, make potions, poisons and food. And who will use those gear, potions, poisons, and food? PvPers and hardcore competitive PvEers. So, without PvPers and hardcore PvEers, there will be no crafters, and materials will have no value, in-game market won't exist, so, no one will sub.

See, you only periodically sub. Which proves my points perfectly: ZOS cannot keep the game running if the most dedicated fans don't even sub. If they can't generate money from the game, they will just stop developing it. This is an MMO, not a single player games, keeping the game running does cost tons of money. To do that, they need people to sub and buy stuffs from crownstore, and they certainly can't rely on people who sub only periodically. "But when I am offline, I don't stress the server", oh, so can they turn off the server when you are offline? Your idea will definitely work, if ESO is a single player game. Keep releasing DLCs with more of Tamriel. I would certainly buy that. Too bad this is an MMO, they need money to keep the game running. They need people to sub and buy stuffs from crownstore.

Well, most PvPers sub all the time because they need in-game gold to fund their playstyle. They do farm mats. They do become master crafters themselves to craft their own gear, their potions, poisons and food. Everyday of PvPing I use like 100 crafted pots, I can't keep my playstyle if I don't make money through farming mats and playing the game of "Guild Trader Tycoon". Not to mention golding the weapons. Ouch. That alone costs a lot of gold.