Additional Costume Slots

Morgha_Kul · February 2018

Currently, costume slots are going to cost me $15 EACH, and only unlock a slot for ONE character.

Now, I'm inclined to have 3 or 4 costumes for each of my characters. I have 14 characters. That's $630 to $840 to set up all my characters. That's outrageous.

Folks, I'm very much inclined to give you some money for these kinds of things, but by pricing them so ludicrously, you prevent me doing so. You're LOSING MONEY this way.

(I'll point out that Star Wars: The Old Republic Online, which has a F2P model considered by most to be ridiculously draconian, sells costume slots like this for in game cash (credits, equivalent to gold in ESO) OR for cartel market coins: 120 for one slot on one character, 300 for ALL characters on the account. $5 will get you 450 cartel coins. That means you'd get 4 slots for $5, making each slot less than ONE DOLLAR EACH... yet ESO expects us to pay $15 for the SAME SERVICE.)

OlafdieWaldfee · February 2018

There were multiple threads pointing this out. No reaction from ZoS so far and I bet there will never be one.
I, too, decided in the light of this unsavory greed, to no longer spend any money on ESO.

I would gladly pay 1500 crowns for an accountwide outfit slot, though.

Morgha_Kul · February 2018

I agree. 1500 for an account wide unlock would be acceptable. Still a BIT expensive, but acceptable.

This overpricing of things is seriously costing them sales. I would have bought a house, but I refuse to pay upwards of $150 for it. I would buy lots of costumes, but they're horribly overpriced. Steeds, costume slots, all sorts of things... all stuff I WOULD buy, that I'm NOT, because they're overpriced... and I'm not the only one.

Kendaric · February 2018

For comparison:

Character slot: 1500 crowns (and includes an outfit slot)
Costumes: 500 - 1000 crowns and are accountwide (and don't cost anything to dye if you're ESO+)

For 1500 crowns the outfit slot really needs to become an accountwide unlock or they should switch the cost of the outfit slot and the token (since the token is a replacement for ingame gold).
Alternatively, they could (and should) offer outfits slots for ingame gold like many other crown store items (bank upgrade, inventory upgrade, riding lessons, motif books, etc.).

VaranisArano · February 2018

My favorite comparison.

Unlock a new character slot: 1500 crowns
Unlock an outfit slot for that new character: 1500 crowns

Velaethia · February 2018

OlafdieWaldfee wrote: »

There were multiple threads pointing this out. No reaction from ZoS so far and I bet there will never be one.
I, too, decided in the light of this unsavory greed, to no longer spend any money on ESO.

I would gladly pay 1500 crowns for an accountwide outfit slot, though.

It's kinda sad and funny how they think they can just ignore this... do they really expect people to buy it at this price?

Although tbph the CMs don't have anything they really can say. This is a marketing decision. They have absolutely no control over it. I'm sure they could report the negative feedback to the market people but they're gonna be like "okay, so? We do what we want, our nonsense maths somehow calculated that this will ultimately net us more money so we decided to do it this way" So they don't bother saying anything. What is there to say? "Sorry you don't like the price, but to bad it's not changing." or "suck it up buttercup". I doubt it's going to change unless it massively cuts into their profits somehow. And even then they might not change it as a matter of pride (literally the most pointless emotion).

Unfortunately it's not likely to reduce their profits. Setting a price like that means it's not likely to greatly increase their profits. But it'll stay the same with the occasional person who thinks its account bound (because it doesn't say its not anywhere in game) buying it. And the rich fool who buys it because they're that desperate or only plays one character anyways.

Sure they could make more money by lowering the price. It wouldn't hurt them and logically, and mathematically they'd do better if they did. But they're not. Maybe out of spite for the playerbase? Maybe out of pride? Maybe they have some sort of meta logic that explain it. That somehow making this cheap would reduce profits from other sources (such as costumes) and they predicted it would cause an ultimately net loss.

Who knows. It doesn't make sense to me. But I highly doubt they're going to change it. In fact ZoS would have to report a net loss, and then fire the current market team and get a new one before this will be changed. I could be wrong, they could surprise me. But my hopes are not up. That being said I won't be buying any. Unless they reduce the price by 1/5th or make it account bound at that price.

Costumes are account bound, it is indeed silly that this isn't as it serves a similar function.

The leading and only logic based theory I've heard as to why they're priced this high is to dissuade people from buying them because somehow it'd ultimately cut into their over-all net profit if they were too cheap. (Likely they theorised they'd lose money on costumes if they made the price for extra slots reasonable)

I mostly spend by sub crowns on costumes so that could be the merit.

Another thing I heard was that their is too many crowns in the economy so they're massively over pricing things in order to flush some of the crowns out of hoarders who rarely spend it. Since a lot of people get crowns from sub, 10 months is 15,000 crowns. Sure equal to about $150 but that's only 10 months of being subbed. They're probably not pricing things by looking at how much it'd cost to buy the crowns with real money in order to buy the item in question but instead how much time subbed it would take. Imagine a person subbed for 2 years who's never spent a single crown. The idea of this scares them so if they ever do spend crowns it causes their stockpile to go down quickly. The problem is this screws over new players, and players who do spend their crown regularly.

As I said it's hard to know for sure. Like most companies they have absolutely no transparency. Maybe if you became a significant shareholder you'd be privy to a small amount of this information? But probably give you a NDA. So /shrug.

OlafdieWaldfee · February 2018

Velaethia wrote: »

The leading and only logic based theory I've heard as to why they're priced this high is to dissuade people from buying them because somehow it'd ultimately cut into their over-all net profit if they were too cheap. (Likely they theorised they'd lose money on costumes if they made the price for extra slots reasonable)

That's the only logical conclusion. None of my characters is still wearing a costume, just one of the hats. I like my individual look much more. So they make it painful for me to create new outfits but cheap and fast to get a costume ... sounds totally like something some deranged marketing-clown would pull out of his posterior.

Velaethia · February 2018

OlafdieWaldfee wrote: »

Velaethia wrote: »

The leading and only logic based theory I've heard as to why they're priced this high is to dissuade people from buying them because somehow it'd ultimately cut into their over-all net profit if they were too cheap. (Likely they theorised they'd lose money on costumes if they made the price for extra slots reasonable)

That's the only logical conclusion. None of my characters is still wearing a costume, just one of the hats. I like my individual look much more. So they make it painful for me to create new outfits but cheap and fast to get a costume ... sounds totally like something some deranged marketing-clown would pull out of his posterior.

Unfortunately marketing people don't look at things from a rational way. They look at raw numbers. Nothing else exists. They're given a job to make numbers go higher. So they do mental gymnastics to do it. And everyone listens even if its nonsense, or bad business because at the end of the day a company exists to make a profit, no... to maximise their profit.

I use costumes situationally now, instead of all the time. I like being able to create my own custom look. I still buy new costumes though. Who cares if I use them 90% of my gameplay or 10%. It's typically the only thing in the crown store I'm interested in. And also skins/polymorphs.

Esha76 · February 2018

I will add that when I cancelled my Plus membership over this, I sent them an email explaining exactly why. Surprisingly, a real person did write back. They were sympathetic toward my view on the matter, and did say that they have received a lot of customer complaints regarding the pricing of these outfit slots. He said he was passing my emails, with the others people have wrote, on to "Leadership" for further consideration. But that he also, obviously, couldn't promise anything will change.

So, whomever these "Leadership" people are... marketing, managers, directors, etc. They are the one responsible for all this.

As others have pointed out here, and in another thread, I don't see them ever changing their price.

As other have theorized, I think the best we will ever see is a sale or weekend special sort of thing. Which I personally, will still refuse to entertain, unless these things were made account wide. But I most certainly am not holding my breath over that idea either.

Discord_Days · February 2018

I'm also not interested in character-only purchases. But something that works across my alts would be preferable.

cabbageub17_ESO · February 2018

Costumes should still remain desirable bc they offer unique art values that aren’t otherwise obtainable. If they’d like to create a synergy between costumes and outfits they should make the costume art values slotable into outfits. It would further incentivize costume purchases bc they would have greater utility.

The prices of these slots are absurd. I dropped my Plus account to 1 month from 6 mos bc it was due and I feel uneasy about what I feel to be predatory practices in the crown store and am not so sure how I will proceed in the game. I believe in supporting the game (subbed since launch and buy crowns here and there) but there’s a limit. This was the feature I was most looking forward to and their implementation of it has really soured me on the game. MMOs die bc they lose people’s interest and blocking content off with exhorbitant pricing will do exactly that. The whales sitting on a Year’s worth of subscriber crowns will never spend them and what do ZOS care if they are spent. They got the money for them already.

Velaethia · February 2018

Esha76 wrote: »

I will add that when I cancelled my Plus membership over this, I sent them an email explaining exactly why. Surprisingly, a real person did write back. They were sympathetic toward my view on the matter, and did say that they have received a lot of customer complaints regarding the pricing of these outfit slots. He said he was passing my emails, with the others people have wrote, on to "Leadership" for further consideration. But that he also, obviously, couldn't promise anything will change.

So, whomever these "Leadership" people are... marketing, managers, directors, etc. They are the one responsible for all this.

As others have pointed out here, and in another thread, I don't see them ever changing their price.

As other have theorized, I think the best we will ever see is a sale or weekend special sort of thing. Which I personally, will still refuse to entertain, unless these things were made account wide. But I most certainly am not holding my breath over that idea either.

I wish that made me hopeful... but it actually doesn't. I'm sure most community managers and even the developers themselves are sympathetic and think it's silly but they don't have any control over it what so ever. I bet the devs are burying their heads in shame with how the marketing team has soured this beautiful feature they created. I would be. Ugh it's so frustrating.

BloodWolfe · February 2018

I agree and as soon as I saw that I cancelled my ESO+ and will NOT resubscribe until they acknowledge and do something about it and I will NEVER buy any more crown packs either. I will play this game purely as a free player until they change this. Their greed will be their downfall if they keep this s**t up!

I subbed to ESO+ and would occasionally buy crown packs as I like to support a company but they've gone too far lately and this was the end. I spent my money elsewhere and bought Monster Hunter World on my PS4 and am loving it. ZOS... Capcom thanks you though for your greed, it gave them another sale lol.

OrdoHermetica · February 2018

It might be worth sharing your thoughts in this thread as well, since it's sort of become the unofficial megathread for people discussing this.

Also, point of clarity... it's sales that's messing this up, not marketing. Marketing is all about getting you excited about buying things, and this is pretty much the opposite of that. Sales are the folks that are all about the numbers, and sales and marketing teams often have more than a little bit of animosity between them.

Bleakraven · February 2018

I wish outfit slots were account-wide too. I tend to delete characters after some time and now idk what will happen to the oufit slot I purchased if I delete that character.

OrdoHermetica · February 2018

Bleakraven wrote: »

I wish outfit slots were account-wide too. I tend to delete characters after some time and now idk what will happen to the oufit slot I purchased if I delete that character.

It disappears with the character. Like mount training, it's per character. Unlike mount training, however, there's no in-game way to get outfit slots, so yeah. You just lose real-world money if you retire an alt with unlocked outfit slots. That's a big part of people's anger, actually.

sozo108 · February 2018

VaranisArano wrote: »

My favorite comparison.

Unlock a new character slot: 1500 crowns
Unlock an outfit slot for that new character: 1500 crowns

Yikes, looking at it that way just makes the pricing totally shameful.

jpl7340 · February 2018

This is completely unacceptable. This purchase needs to be account wide. There is no excuse for such a blatant and shameless money grab.

I was incredibly excited about this addition to the game. Like, pee-my-pants excited. But between this and that I would have to get a copy of all the motifs I want on EACH of my characters, it makes this system effectively USELESS.

How you can have such a fantastic idea and make it completely irrelevant in the implementation is beyond me.

Please fix this people. I want to give you more of my money, but junk like this makes me want to cancel my membership and move on to a different game.

OlafdieWaldfee · February 2018

jpl7340 wrote: »

I was incredibly excited about this addition to the game. Like, pee-my-pants excited. But between this and that I would have to get a copy of all the motifs I want on EACH of my characters, it makes this system effectively USELESS.

You don't need the motifs on all characters. Just on one. Counts for all of them. Just log in with your designated crafter (the one with the motifs) and, voilá, all your chars can use these motifs for outfits.

But you are right about the pricing. Totally killed it for me. It's embarrassingly greedy.

DarcyMardin · February 2018

I would have paid 1500 crowns for one extra slot that all my characters could have used. Instead I am not using the outfitting system for any of my characters. I don’t want to get excited again about all the options open to me for outfitting my many characters when I’d have to pay ridiculous sums of real money to allow them to change their clothes.

It’s bad enough that they are charging in game gold for using motifs and dyes that we have earned via achievements or paid for already. I love housing and I’d expected to love outfitting too, but I’m drawing the line right here: No, I will NOT pay 1500 crowns for each extra outfit slot for each of my characters. That price is insane!

Morgul667 · February 2018

This is a crazy price. There is a 19 pages thread about this on top of other threads.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/394951/1500-crowns-per-outfit-slot-1-slot-just-under-1200-for-every-slot

VaranisArano · February 2018

I'll admit that 1500 crowns for an accountwide extra slot would be a really great bargain. If you had 15 characters, that would be only 100 crowns per outfit!

So I'm curious, what do people think would be an appropriate amount to charge for a new outfit slot per character?

What do people think would be an appropriate amount to charge for an account wide slot, knowing that people can have 1 to 15 characters?

I'd say that 500 crowns would be reasonable for a new outfit slot per character. Most costumes that are account wide are between 750 and 2000 crowns, so I could go for 3000 crowns for an account wide slot because its fully customizable.

QuebraRegra · February 2018

Velaethia wrote: »

OlafdieWaldfee wrote: »

There were multiple threads pointing this out. No reaction from ZoS so far and I bet there will never be one.
I, too, decided in the light of this unsavory greed, to no longer spend any money on ESO.

I would gladly pay 1500 crowns for an accountwide outfit slot, though.

It's kinda sad and funny how they think they can just ignore this... do they really expect people to buy it at this price?

Although tbph the CMs don't have anything they really can say. This is a marketing decision. They have absolutely no control over it. I'm sure they could report the negative feedback to the market people but they're gonna be like "okay, so? We do what we want, our nonsense maths somehow calculated that this will ultimately net us more money so we decided to do it this way" So they don't bother saying anything. What is there to say? "Sorry you don't like the price, but to bad it's not changing." or "suck it up buttercup". I doubt it's going to change unless it massively cuts into their profits somehow. And even then they might not change it as a matter of pride (literally the most pointless emotion).

Unfortunately it's not likely to reduce their profits. Setting a price like that means it's not likely to greatly increase their profits. But it'll stay the same with the occasional person who thinks its account bound (because it doesn't say its not anywhere in game) buying it. And the rich fool who buys it because they're that desperate or only plays one character anyways.

Sure they could make more money by lowering the price. It wouldn't hurt them and logically, and mathematically they'd do better if they did. But they're not. Maybe out of spite for the playerbase? Maybe out of pride? Maybe they have some sort of meta logic that explain it. That somehow making this cheap would reduce profits from other sources (such as costumes) and they predicted it would cause an ultimately net loss.

Who knows. It doesn't make sense to me. But I highly doubt they're going to change it. In fact ZoS would have to report a net loss, and then fire the current market team and get a new one before this will be changed. I could be wrong, they could surprise me. But my hopes are not up. That being said I won't be buying any. Unless they reduce the price by 1/5th or make it account bound at that price.

Costumes are account bound, it is indeed silly that this isn't as it serves a similar function.

The leading and only logic based theory I've heard as to why they're priced this high is to dissuade people from buying them because somehow it'd ultimately cut into their over-all net profit if they were too cheap. (Likely they theorised they'd lose money on costumes if they made the price for extra slots reasonable)

I mostly spend by sub crowns on costumes so that could be the merit.

Another thing I heard was that their is too many crowns in the economy so they're massively over pricing things in order to flush some of the crowns out of hoarders who rarely spend it. Since a lot of people get crowns from sub, 10 months is 15,000 crowns. Sure equal to about $150 but that's only 10 months of being subbed. They're probably not pricing things by looking at how much it'd cost to buy the crowns with real money in order to buy the item in question but instead how much time subbed it would take. Imagine a person subbed for 2 years who's never spent a single crown. The idea of this scares them so if they ever do spend crowns it causes their stockpile to go down quickly. The problem is this screws over new players, and players who do spend their crown regularly.

As I said it's hard to know for sure. Like most companies they have absolutely no transparency. Maybe if you became a significant shareholder you'd be privy to a small amount of this information? But probably give you a NDA. So /shrug.

you could always "meet" with ZOS management in the parking lot outside of their offices in HUNT VALLEY MD to "discuss" this

Velaethia · March 2018

I wish I could live to see this be reality. But not in our world, never in our world.

VaranisArano wrote: »

I'll admit that 1500 crowns for an accountwide extra slot would be a really great bargain. If you had 15 characters, that would be only 100 crowns per outfit!

So I'm curious, what do people think would be an appropriate amount to charge for a new outfit slot per character?

What do people think would be an appropriate amount to charge for an account wide slot, knowing that people can have 1 to 15 characters?

I'd say that 500 crowns would be reasonable for a new outfit slot per character. Most costumes that are account wide are between 750 and 2000 crowns, so I could go for 3000 crowns for an account wide slot because its fully customizable.

Apparently it was 350 on PTR. I think it should be that.

Leandor · March 2018

I have tried using the outfit system to change the appearance of my weapons and a couple armor slots, including colors. After it told me that it will cost 17.5k gold, I decided that I can very well live with my costumes.

The additional slot cost is a blatant exploiting of role players. They benefit most from it and they would use it most. But even for a pvp player like me, who doesn't value appearance as much, this system is failure from start to end.

Velaethia · March 2018

WE WILL NOT LET THIS GO ZOS!!!! You cannot avoid this.

VaranisArano · March 2018

Velaethia wrote: »

WE WILL NOT LET THIS GO ZOS!!!! You cannot avoid this.

Sure they can. After a good long while, they'll do a 50% off sale on outfit slots and everyone will act like its a great deal or at least "Well, that's the best we're going to get, so better buy it now..." grumbling and ZOS will make a second heap of money off of outfit slots.

Its really a shrewd marketing strategy. Get the players who will buy them for 1500 crowns now. Later, do a sale and get the players who would buy it for less to spurge. If someone is grumpy and going "ZOS, I hate your pricing so I'm not buying any!", well, ZOS wasn't going to make that person happy with anything, in ZOS' mind.

Morgha_Kul · March 2018

It's not as shrewd as you might think.

It has to do with PEOPLE.

You see, if you have a product, and you sell it for a huge amount, you make it available to only a minority of people, those with lots of free cash. The majority of people will be unhappy that they can't have whatever it is. Unhappy customers TALK about being unhappy, to other customers, potential customers, press, and so forth. Those customers, hearing negative comments, will eventually see the company and its products in a negative way, and STOP buying anything.

Of course, if you sell the product inexpensively, you will make more people happy. Happy people ALSO talk about it, and so POSITIVE things are said about the company and its products. This attracts MORE customers.

ZOS seems to have taken the former route. I find it worrying, because the negative word of mouth puts the entire future of the game at risk.

They should be trying to sell 100 items at $10 each instead of 1 item at $100 each. They would make more money and generate more positive response.