ESO/ZOS is always the example that I use when I discuss how a gaming company can strike the balance between monetizing the game without exploiting players into having to pay to actually enjoy the game. The vast majority of monetized items are strictly cosmetic, like costumes and mounts, or can easily be acquired in game with minimal effort, like xp pots, potions, research scrolls. That makes the fact that most things are over-priced somewhat irrelevant because not purchasing the items will not affect your enjoyment of the game. Conversely, non-cosmetic core content is appropriately priced and often distributed to F2P costumers as well as those who buy specific DLC. So far, I've never seen players locked out of previously purchased content just because new DLC has come out, unlike some other companies that use a similar model (cough, Destiny, cough).

I think that ZOS has made a big mistake treating the new outfit system as an optional cosmetic instead of core content. Much of end-game content is centered around farming and collecting motif chapters (Vet DLC dungeons, Cyrodil, Trails, Dailies & Weeklies). Until the outfit system has come out, the motifs you've grinned for have been completely under-utilized in the main game. Fully using crafted gear sets is really only possible on leveling alts, but that means the training sets you make will have a fairly short and finite life. Using sets like hunding's rage or Law of Juleanos (spelling?) to supplement using a monster set means that your look was still dependent on the world sets and monster sets you use for the set abilities. The outfits give you a way to utilize the motifs you collect and gives you a reason to engage in the end game content more thuroughly.

The current system, however, is too exploitative for such a core element of the end-game. The cost of an outfit that uses rare motifs is too high for casual or medium-core players to constantly spend on outfits that will just disappear. For example, I tend to play ESO around 15 to 20 hours a week and since I don't specifically focus on farming gold, I only make around 30k gold a week. Losing 1/2 of that to make 1 outfit on 1 character that I will never use again makes the system untenable. 1500 crowns ($15) to just have one slot unlock on one toon is unrealistic for most people to pay. I have a few suggestions that ZOS could implement in order to both enhance the game and still monetize outfits.

1. Keep the crown cost of outfit slots the same, but give people the ability to save outfits and make any previously created outfits free to requip at an outfit station. An outfit slot would only really give people a way to convienently swap outfits, but doesn't make the system obsolete.
2. Keep the crown cost of outfit slots the same, but make unlocks account wide.
3. Reduce the crown cost of outfit slots to 250 (possibly 500 at most) and keep slots individual on characters. This still monetizes the new system for those that want to use it, but isn't oppressively expensive.