Outfit System needs to use style material and not gold. Should be obvious why.

Dapper Dinosaur · January 2018

Here's the way the outfit system has been described:

You use gold to choose any known motif for each piece of armor for your equipment slots. This costs gold, only a couple hundred for racial and other common styles and a couple thousand for rarer styles. With this new system, everyone that does not do crafting writs literally might as well just go throw away anything they're currently holding, because they can just use the outfit system to make the gear they want and they no longer need the crafting material for literally anything. Even people that do the crafting writs only need to deconstruct gear they get while playing to keep up with them.

This is extremely bad for the crafting aspect of the game, because this system is going to make style materials basically worthless for everything except crafting writs and the most basic furniture. The way it SHOULD be designed is to use style material instead. This not only will keep the style materials relevant, it could possibly increase their value drastically (not talking about racials here obviously) and save everyone a good amount of gold compared to having to spend gold for both the motif pages and the cost to use the outfit station.

I don't know why Zenimax is not doing it this way. This seems like the most basic kind of common sense imaginable. Why would they make the outfit station eat everyone's gold and make literally dozens of items completely worthless in one big stroke instead of not taking away gold and increasing, or at least keeping, the value of said items intact instead?

@ZOS_GinaBruno Can we get an explanation for why the system is designed this way instead of the common-sense way?

pauli133 · January 2018

The current gold-only plan really is baffling. It completely torches the value of style mats for no clear reason or benefit.

Dapper Dinosaur · January 2018

My only guess is that maybe Zenimax is using this system as a way to phase out the crafting material to lighten the load on non-Eso+ members' bags and banks?

red_emu · January 2018

It's obvious, isn't it? Players without tons of gold will need to spend a lot of time online to enjoy the outfit system. It's all about grind, grind, grind with a sprinkle of RNG

Feric51 · January 2018

I thought it was a quite obvious push for a gold sink. If you buy/sell style mats in traders you're only giving roughly 3.5% of the gold to the ether of ZoS. By contrast, with several thousand gold cost for each item (let's face it, virtually nobody will be choosing basic racial styles), 100% of that cost is removed from the player-base coffers. Outside of the golden merchant and, to some extent, the furnishing vendors, nothing has come close to what this will introduce as far as an in-game gold sink.

Acrolas · January 2018

Can we stop using the common sense argument fallacy around here? Thanks.

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

This not only will keep the style materials relevant, it could possibly increase their value drastically ... and save everyone a good amount of gold compared to having to spend gold for both the motif pages and the cost to use the outfit station.

You don't seem to be following your own argument. A drastic increase in style material value wouldn't make them more cost-effective to use. It would make them less cost-effective.

The gold cost for outfitting standardizes the system cost once you have the motif, making the motif the only game the gatekeeper wannabes can play. But the inflated cost of motifs isn't going to last long the same way that demanding 5k per writ voucher didn't last long.

And if you don't want to use gold, use an outfit token. It seems to be a convenience that works for this system based on some of the threads upset about the gold cost.

Sylvis · January 2018

The downside of this is styles such as Stalhrim Frostcaster and Grim Harlequin, which would basically require you to use mimic stones since the style mats aren't available as drops in the game. (Unless you use a mimic stone then decon that item, but it still cost me real money in the end.) Not to mention if I want to change my costume up a bit I've now completely wasted those mats, which would be a painful thing for those and other very rare styles. The gold is easier to come by than say...Night Pumice or Polished Scarab Elytra. Style mats like those are pretty expensive themselves if you want to buy them from other players.

I definitely don't like how much dying the outfits costs. I think that should be free just like dying armor and costumes is now.

Rex-Umbra · January 2018

Should use both because the game needs gold sinks.

Exalted_Outlander · January 2018

This is a concern I've had when they first announced the Outfit system. Hopefully ZoS addresses this or changes up the system to include the usage of style mats.

Kingslayer513 · January 2018

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

Should use both because the game needs gold sinks.

Agreed. The cost to change an outfit is actually pretty cheap as is. The one thing that struck me immediately when the announcement came was why wouldn't it require motif knowledge, style material, and the little bit of gold. It just seems obvious.

gminkalis_ESO · January 2018

I agree with Rex-Umbra the game should use both gold and style mats.

One of the existing gold sinks in the game I have not seen mentioned though is guild traders. Big traders cost millions of gold per week to keep. The few thousand one time investment for adding a style once doesn't even compare.

duendology · January 2018

I'd like to point out that non-crafters will still need an ARMOUR regardless of their dream costume. I mean they can, of course, run around wearing super-hyper fashionable sparkly "illusion" but they'd be "naked" beneath. So, don't worry crafters, they'll still pay money to get an actual gear.

or pay good money to get a desired motif.
If anything I foresee the increase in the price of motifs...

Recremen · January 2018

Outfit system should not use gold OR style materials. This is the first cosmetic system that incurs a per-use cost, and that sets a bad precedent. Previous systems have all been up-front costs, then free to change as much as you like across your whole account. From costumes to dyes to hairstyles and body markings, they have all followed this trend. We have already invested in collecting the motifs, either by farming or purchasing with gold or real-world cash. That should be enough. We're done. We're good. Further investment should not be required, especially not per-use costs.

Also, why would we take a step backwards towards something more complicated by making it cost style materials? If there is going to be a per-use cost, which there shouldn't, then a general-purpose currency is the better option, and in this case that's gold.

Anyway if they want to monetize the system they should just stick with paying for more outfit slots and maybe releasing motifs earlier to the cash shop. Having to pay every time I want to change my belt when I already know the style is some ridiculous double-dipping.

Dapper Dinosaur · January 2018

duendology wrote: »

I'd like to point out that non-crafters will still need an ARMOUR regardless of their dream costume. I mean they can, of course, run around wearing super-hyper fashionable sparkly "illusion" but they'd be "naked" beneath. So, don't worry crafters, they'll still pay money to get an actual gear.
or pay good money to get a desired motif.
If anything I foresee the increase in the price of motifs...

Being able to choose their appearance completely independent of their actual worn gear makes all style material useless under the current system.

You don't seem to be following your own argument. A drastic increase in style material value wouldn't make them more cost-effective to use. It would make them less cost-effective.

Only if you consider that statement in a vacuum. In practice, as a playerbase we have collectively had years to build up inventory, including countless style material. There are also an extremely small number of style materials that are hard at all to obtain. The rest of them are easily farmable through PVE questing/loot. They're not expensive at all.

Recremen · January 2018

pauli133 wrote: »

The current gold-only plan really is baffling. It completely torches the value of style mats for no clear reason or benefit.

@pauli133

Style mats aren't having their value torched. They're as useless as they've always been. What they're doing is not adding any new functionality to them. You weren't going to run and craft a new Light Apostle Shoulders to replace yesterday's Heavy Frostcaster Shoulders before the patch, and you aren't going to do it after the patch either. No change.

Runefang · January 2018

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

Should use both because the game needs gold sinks.

It's so obvious isn't it?

xaraan · January 2018

Really surprised it doesn't require the style material. So now, other than some furniture, it really doesn't have much value because you can just craft the item in whatever style you have and then create your costume with only gold cost.

I don't mind gold sinks in the game - but they should lower the cost (as in, don't charge for the dying portion) and require one piece of the style material per item.

Edit: the only reason I can think of for the gold only option is a pure gold sink. If you have to pay to buy the item form someone, then that gold is still on the market, but if you spend it on AI features, then the gold is gone.

But between this and transmog sinking the market on dropped gear sells (or at least the extreme prices you could see) the trading market is going to be less and less worthwhile outside of maybe furniture and upgrade mats.