The crafting bag might be a central part of ESO+ but it is definitely not the only selling proposition.

Also ESO+ becomes more valueable each time a new DLC is added to the game. The double bank space might seem to be worthless but in case you have "space" problem it is a huge plus too.

If you are into costumes and dying stuff, ESO+ is also very helpful. Same with housing and the amount of items you can place there.

While i like the idea of getting the Crafting Bag through crwons in the crown store i think the price would be absurdly high, but rightfully so.

No. We subbers FINALLY have something to sub for. Sub if you want the craft bag.

Edited to fix typo.

Juju_beans wrote: »

Dire wrote: »

dannymcgr81b14_ESO wrote: »

Dire wrote: »

Granting players access to the Craft Bag for free should also be a great incentive for players to spend crowns as well (wink).
Dire

How do you figure this? If they are not willing to spend 15 bucks for eso plus which comes with the craft bag, double bank space, all kinds of bonuses and 1500 crowns, why do you think they would spend 15 bucks for just 1500 crowns?

Because if we do not have to pay 15 dollars a month, we will be able to spend that money elsewhere on things like crowns. Thanks for the response! I do love the fact we also get 1500 crowns for the Sub though, very friendly incentive.

There is no guarantee that your $15 will come back to Zos each and every month.
The sub provides a guaranteed income stream for the company.
The crown store purchases are variable from month to month.

The hilarious thing about the, "they could get the money anyway," argument is, like Dire pointed out, you get 15 bucks worth of crowns for subscribing anyway. "No, I wouldn't sub, I'd buy an extra $15 a month..." Like you do now?

starkerealm wrote: »

Juju_beans wrote: »

Dire wrote: »

dannymcgr81b14_ESO wrote: »

Dire wrote: »

Granting players access to the Craft Bag for free should also be a great incentive for players to spend crowns as well (wink).
Dire

How do you figure this? If they are not willing to spend 15 bucks for eso plus which comes with the craft bag, double bank space, all kinds of bonuses and 1500 crowns, why do you think they would spend 15 bucks for just 1500 crowns?

Because if we do not have to pay 15 dollars a month, we will be able to spend that money elsewhere on things like crowns. Thanks for the response! I do love the fact we also get 1500 crowns for the Sub though, very friendly incentive.

There is no guarantee that your $15 will come back to Zos each and every month.
The sub provides a guaranteed income stream for the company.
The crown store purchases are variable from month to month.

The hilarious thing about the, "they could get the money anyway," argument is, like Dire pointed out, you get 15 bucks worth of crowns for subscribing anyway. "No, I wouldn't sub, I'd buy an extra $15 a month..." Like you do now?

And the same argument goes for "the craft bag is the only incentive for subscribing". You are getting 1500 crowns along with other perks too.

But it seems that a lot of people who only subscribe because of the craft bag are being held hostage by it. :-P

I'll honestly cancel my sub and stop playing if they do that. #stopshaftingeso+subscribers

500 crowns for Craft Bag dump for expired ESO+

I'm going to say no. It helps continue support the game remaining with ESO+.

And as previously mentioned, it is possible to get additional housing storage for your home. You can either PVP/Quest in IC or focus on master writs.That will greatly increase your storage. And, I know this is a hoarder's game, but a lot of this stuff you don't need. Decon what you can, list stuff in the guild store, and vendor the stuff that's not worth anything. Or, subscribe.

Gythral wrote: »

See earlier threads on said subject!
Now go out and do a few hours labour for min. wage or drink a few less Starbucks a month and pay for something you enjoy!

Somewhat harsh, many including loyal subs like me argued that it should of been part of the game from the beginning. The inventory in this game is poorly designed.

I agree with everyone here though; never going to happen. It really is the only thing making people sub to be honest beyond DLC access if they CBA to buy them.

AlnilamE wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

klowdy1 wrote: »

Your suggestion needs to be something equally as good as the crafting bag. People have been asking for handouts in this game since shortly after it became a B2P model, but they never have a suggestion for what ZOS could do to keep up optional subs. The alternative would be even more things becoming crown only items, coupled with less creative DLCs (after the inevitable employee purge to make up for the lost revenue), mixed with higher crown store prices, because why wrack your brain (as ZOS marketing department), when the answer is right in front of you.

Honestly, right out of the box, they should have made the Craft Bag part of the base game and let subscribers use the Merchant and Banker without buying them while subbed.

No, I think this thread, and the previous one, do kinda indicate that they got the craft bag exactly right.

It is possible to do your crafting without the craft bag. I mean, we all managed for two and a half years with out the bag. It's a little annoying, and it does push you to sell stuff you're not using, but the game is completely playable without it.

It's an amazing convenience item, however. Stuff goes in there and we just forget it exists until the next time. It is really useful as a time saver, and does make the game more enjoyable by cutting down on the inventory management. The sheer number of people, myself included, who subscribe primarily for the bag, should illustrate this.

So... do I want free stuff? Well, yes. At the same time, I do understand that the game does need a healthy subscriber base to keep going. MMOs need cash to remain operational. That's not greed. MMOs aren't like most games, where once it's out the door, then 99% of development is done, and all that's left is patch fixes. New stuff is always in the works, and old stuff is getting fixed. (Yes, even when our personal bugbears are left untouched, patch after patch, the vast majority of issues do get addressed.)

This means that the development team needs to keep operating throughout the life cycle of the game. (There have been publishers that viewed MMOs as a normal publish and you're done setup, in the past. Atari comes to mind here. This results in games where you're expected to sub for years without any new content coming out.)

So, back to ESO. The Craft Bag helps keep people subscribed. It is an excellently calibrated pain point. Just enticing enough that it's worth paying for, without being so valuable you actually need it to play. So far as it goes, I'd actually say the other Subscriber benefits (the extra bank storage and the housing limits) are nice, but mostly meaningless. That Craft Bag, though...

So, would I like it permanently? Well, yes. But, I also understand why it really should be gated as a subscriber perk and nowhere else.

I do see your point, but then, they could have just left the game subscription-only and be done with it, no?

Probably not.

I mean, there is a huge difference between a mandatory subscription and a optional subscription model where you're paying for extra goodies.

The game is not, literally, unplayable without a subscription. You're just gated off from some features. Yes, one of those features is extremely nice, to the point that some people, you and me included, consider this essential to the experience.

However, you are not completely locked out of the game if you don't pay your subscription fee. That can be a major turnoff for potential players, especially ones not used to MMOs. Given this is part of a franchise of non-MMOs, that's a detail worth remembering.

Also, I'm pretty sure the old subscription model is pretty much dead for the entire industry. Aside from WoW, I can't think of a single subscription only MMO that has managed to hold its place in the market. Part of this goes back to what I just said, being told, "you don't pay, you can't play at all," is a much steeper barrier to entry than, "we have some optional stuff if you subscribe." In fact, I passed on a lot of MMOs over the years because I found the idea of, "renting," a game distasteful. In retrospect the first MMO I paid a sub fee on was one of the first subscription optional business models (Hellgate: London, if you're wondering.) So saying, "they could have just kept the subscription mandatory," I'm not so sure.

AlnilamE wrote: »

Considering how many people run around with new mounts and pets whenever they come out, I feel that the crown store makes them a fair chunk of money. And I again maintain that a happy playerbase is more likely to spend money on your game than an unhappy one.

While both of these details are true, the lack of a craft bag probably doesn't predispose people to be unhappy with the game.

Again, the craft bag is really nice to have, but it's not vital to the experience. At least not in contrast to something like being unable to actually log in and play the game.

The craft bag is a neat to have, but it's not vital to playing the game. This makes it land, pretty solidly, in the range of stuff that makes you want to sub, without also FORCING you to.

AlnilamE wrote: »

I personally don't like feeling that I *have* to spend money on something that's labelled as "optional" and if I didn't have ESO+ simply because it's my way of supporting the game, regardless of what the perks are, I would feel that, and it would make me less likely to sub and play.

While I don't really think about it, I'm pretty sure the craft bag is the main reason I subscribe. DLC access, sure, that's cool. The extra bank space is very useful to my packrat tendencies. But, that craft bag? I "need" that.

AlnilamE wrote: »

Also, keep in mind that even players who only buy the game and never spend a single crown are part of the ecosystem and by increasing the population they make the game more enjoyable for everyone, so giving them less inconveniences to deal with will make them more likely to stay.

Agreed. I've gone back and forth over the years about buy to play setups, and... in large part due to how Funcom derped it up with TSW, I was more than a little pessimistic when ESO announced that was the route they were going. But, I do think that's probably the best approach these days.

The up front box cost culls out the worst of the F2P trolls. Without a mandatory subscription fee gating players who don't want to have a recurring payment, or feel like a subscription is, "renting."

The stuff in the cash shop could be a bit cheaper, but, on the whole, that's not a deal breaker.

AlnilamE wrote: »

And I know we lived without the craft bag (even when we were subbing to ESO+ without it). I had a very elaborate inventory management scheme going. But since the craft bag was introduced, we have seen an increase in crafting mats that makes managing inventory without it more difficult with each update. So if ZOS is not going to make it available, they should at least streamline crafting mats again to make playing without it easier to manage.

Even with the craft bag, some kind of material streamlining should probably happen. I mean, it's happened once before with Provisioning. Alchemy's pretty much the only outlier here, where I'd say the mat list is reasonable.

I mean, the original design intent was that we wouldn't be able to do all the crafting professions. I'd make enchantments, you'd make alchemy, and we'd trade. The idea of a player that did everything wasn't supposed to happen. To say nothing of a player who did everything and crafting wasn't their only occupation in game.

With equipment, provisioning, enchanting, and alchemy, you're going to get choked on materials, and I think that was the original intent. I don't think that's relevant to how players approach the game today, but that was the design. So, the craft bag became a bandaid over that, rather than getting an actual fix.

As the game exists today, I think there does need to be some streamlining of the crafting system (and probably gear itemization.) There's an element of that with jewelry crafting, where the total material tiers have been culled down to 5. I think that's a good start, and something that should probably come to the other crafts as well. As the game exists now, there are four entire tiers of materials that are completely useless to anyone CP150 or higher. As in, they'll never use, or see, those materials except when leveling a character's crafting, and potentially not even then.

It's a completely different discussion from the craft bag, but you're not wrong, crafting could do with some serious streamlining.

AlnilamE wrote: »

(And consider that for the gatherers out there, if everyone has the craft bag, no one will ever leave just worms behind at a node.)

If you'd said, make bait always go in the craft bag, ESO+ or no, I'd probably agree with you. The abandoned nodes are just obnoxious. Not a major issue, but obnoxious all the same. Same with partial chests. Honestly, I'd be fine if nodes and chests would force dump their inventory into someone, so if they did overfill, they'd need to stop and sort before they continued looting. But, that's a different issue entirely.

I would drop my sub if they made the craft bag avaiable with out it.

I'd drop my sub if they added the craft bag for non subscribers.

Dire wrote: »

dannymcgr81b14_ESO wrote: »

Dire wrote: »

Granting players access to the Craft Bag for free should also be a great incentive for players to spend crowns as well (wink).
Dire

How do you figure this? If they are not willing to spend 15 bucks for eso plus which comes with the craft bag, double bank space, all kinds of bonuses and 1500 crowns, why do you think they would spend 15 bucks for just 1500 crowns?

Because if we do not have to pay 15 dollars a month, we will be able to spend that money elsewhere on things like crowns. Thanks for the response! I do love the fact we also get 1500 crowns for the Sub though, very friendly incentive.

Nah, I don't think so. My 15 bucks would likely go to Blizzard or Square Enix. At least their servers aren't complete and utter garbage.

It costs fifty cents a day to subscribe.

Two quarters.

So, you know, you could just do that.

starkerealm wrote: »

It's still necromancy, just, you know, different (much less successful) necromancy.

Actually, it's more like oneiromancy.