Why won't ESO give a race change for each character? Here is the answer!

jcm2606 · January 2019

Regardless, as I said, it being a good game or not is irrelevant. My point is not whether the game is good or bad, but whether a company can give handouts like this without suddenly going bankrupt.

desciviib14_ESO · January 2019

jcm2606 wrote: »

and it was a terrible game for the first 2 years and they have ONLY been able to improve it through the sales of platinum

Maybe because they couldn't get picked up by a major publisher and had to self-publish, nearly driving their business into the ground?

people purchase the plat for the same reason they do here; convenience and fashion frame

People also purchase the plat because of how DE actually cares about the community. Go into any video covering Warframe, you'll see people saying the same, saying they're willing to sink hundreds into Warframe because of how much content it offers completely for free.

Grinding the parts of new frames is tedious to say the least.

1. It's a grindy game, that's the point. It's a free-to-play game, the grind is there to keep you playing.

2. It really is not that bad.

Why do I play this over Warframe; the better question seems to be why do you? You seem terribly unhappy with ESO/ZOS.

I'm unhappy with ZOS and how they're treating ESO, I'm not unhappy with ESO in itself. There's a very distinctive difference.

I absolutely despise how they've neglected the game on a technical front, completely screwed over balance because of their incompetence, haven't given any thought to PVP, have virtually zero respect for the community when it comes down to these sorts of decisions, and I hate how it's almost always radio silence when it comes to issues with the game.

But, at the same time, I absolutely love the combat, I love PVE, I love both large and small scale PVP in Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds (when they work), I love the sheer level of detail in the world and lore, I love the flexibility of character creation, and I absolutely love the community.

You can simultaneously love something and hate it too.

I play because ESO is a much more detailed game in almost all respects. The worlds are bigger, the toons don't look like melted wax, the environment is rich and detailed, and even to some extent the community is more than just a 24 hour auction house.

1. The small scale, less detailed mission "zones" are by design, and the procedural tileset is actually pretty damn good at giving you unique runs at a given mission.

2. Characters don't look like melted wax to me, so no clue what you're talking about.

3. The community is only a 24 hour auction house if you're sitting in trade chat, lol. Otherwise, the community is pretty damn nice. Clans are about as they are here in ESO, with generally friendly communities who are full of advice, and willing to help with anything. As with PUGs in the group finder here, the squad finder in WF is hit-or-miss, though generally pretty good. Some people mind their own business, others even strike up conversations if you're an endless mission and have some time to kill because a Saryn is allowing the squad to AFK while she just murders everything.

Im not at all saying I agree with ZOS's decisions all the time, many times I don't but in this particular situation I just don't see it as creating racial chaos to sell tokens. The races have been jacked for a while making some worthless to play if you play to accomplish things and others were a no brainer to pick. EVERY mag build you should have picked Dunmer even if it had nothing to do with fire, you'd just put a firestaff on the front bar.

Saryn and Nidus are my go to; I can hold an endless mission for a little over an hour on my own. Though I once got 2 hours on Rhino but never managed that again.

Ohtimbar · January 2019

jcm2606 wrote: »

Regardless, as I said, it being a good game or not is irrelevant. My point is not whether the game is good or bad, but whether a company can give handouts like this without suddenly going bankrupt.

Race change tokens have essentially zero production cost. They're intangible low-effort digital goods. The word afford has no meaning in this context. Their parent company is quite wealthy, and there is no risk of bankruptcy in the foreseeable future.

Arrodisia · January 2019

Sorry. I don't see that as giving a handout. They changed something fundamental in gameplay, and want us to pay for the new expansions, DLCs and now their changes that were caused by their own poor balancing. no thanks. As I stated in my previous comment. This burden shouldn't rest on the players at all imho and my reasons are stated there as well.

desciviib14_ESO · January 2019

Reminds me of the arguments of early 2000s about theft of digital property and what the value of an item that doesn't exist is

Gnozo · January 2019

Zenimax becoming the new Apple.

Creating a Problem and selling the solution.

jcm2606 · January 2019

desciviib14_ESO wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

and it was a terrible game for the first 2 years and they have ONLY been able to improve it through the sales of platinum

Maybe because they couldn't get picked up by a major publisher and had to self-publish, nearly driving their business into the ground?

people purchase the plat for the same reason they do here; convenience and fashion frame

People also purchase the plat because of how DE actually cares about the community. Go into any video covering Warframe, you'll see people saying the same, saying they're willing to sink hundreds into Warframe because of how much content it offers completely for free.

Grinding the parts of new frames is tedious to say the least.

1. It's a grindy game, that's the point. It's a free-to-play game, the grind is there to keep you playing.

2. It really is not that bad.

Why do I play this over Warframe; the better question seems to be why do you? You seem terribly unhappy with ESO/ZOS.

I'm unhappy with ZOS and how they're treating ESO, I'm not unhappy with ESO in itself. There's a very distinctive difference.

I absolutely despise how they've neglected the game on a technical front, completely screwed over balance because of their incompetence, haven't given any thought to PVP, have virtually zero respect for the community when it comes down to these sorts of decisions, and I hate how it's almost always radio silence when it comes to issues with the game.

But, at the same time, I absolutely love the combat, I love PVE, I love both large and small scale PVP in Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds (when they work), I love the sheer level of detail in the world and lore, I love the flexibility of character creation, and I absolutely love the community.

You can simultaneously love something and hate it too.

I play because ESO is a much more detailed game in almost all respects. The worlds are bigger, the toons don't look like melted wax, the environment is rich and detailed, and even to some extent the community is more than just a 24 hour auction house.

1. The small scale, less detailed mission "zones" are by design, and the procedural tileset is actually pretty damn good at giving you unique runs at a given mission.

2. Characters don't look like melted wax to me, so no clue what you're talking about.

3. The community is only a 24 hour auction house if you're sitting in trade chat, lol. Otherwise, the community is pretty damn nice. Clans are about as they are here in ESO, with generally friendly communities who are full of advice, and willing to help with anything. As with PUGs in the group finder here, the squad finder in WF is hit-or-miss, though generally pretty good. Some people mind their own business, others even strike up conversations if you're an endless mission and have some time to kill because a Saryn is allowing the squad to AFK while she just murders everything.

Im not at all saying I agree with ZOS's decisions all the time, many times I don't but in this particular situation I just don't see it as creating racial chaos to sell tokens. The races have been jacked for a while making some worthless to play if you play to accomplish things and others were a no brainer to pick. EVERY mag build you should have picked Dunmer even if it had nothing to do with fire, you'd just put a firestaff on the front bar.

Saryn and Nidus are my go to; I can hold an endless mission for a little over an hour on my own. Though I once got 2 hours on Rhino but never managed that again.

You just said one possible case to change races: dunmer to altmer. Gilliam's been testing, and on every class, even magDK, in every case, altmer pulled ahead with these changes. Want to get the best possible DPS? Go altmer.

Ohtimbar wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

Regardless, as I said, it being a good game or not is irrelevant. My point is not whether the game is good or bad, but whether a company can give handouts like this without suddenly going bankrupt.

Race change tokens have essentially zero production cost. They're intangible low-effort digital goods. The word afford has no meaning in this context. Their parent company is quite wealthy, and there is no risk of bankruptcy in the foreseeable future.

Which only serves to further prove my point that this is nothing except pure corporate greed. There's nothing stopping them from simply giving out tokens en masse, or, more realistically, giving out tokens bound to each character for a certain amount of time before they expire. They just don't want to, because the alternative is easy $$$$$$$$.

Calotron · January 2019

As someone who is very new to ESO and primarily an outsider looking in on most of these topics, from what I gather ZOS has changed Race Passives which have adjusted the meta in such a serious way that they are providing a Race Token for free, but a lot of people are still unhappy with that.

My question is do these Passives really effect DPS output at endgame and high skill play?
Might be a stupid question and I apologize if it is. Just trying to grasp why so many people are so upset.

killmove · January 2019

redspecter23 wrote: »

ZOS implements a change that players can fix by paying. This sets a poor precedent. 1 free race change per character is an appropriate response from a company with good intentions about balancing the game. Using game balance as an excuse to monetize is just plain shady.

I'll pay for chapters. I'll pay for ESO+. I'll even visit the crown store for cosmetics from time to time and I'll be happy with each of these transactions. As soon as I have to start paying to fix things on my end that are adjusted by ZOS on a regular basis, I tighten up the wallet.

Thank you for paying for us. Because of people like you the game is still alive. Keep paying please so other people can play this game.

desciviib14_ESO · January 2019

killmove wrote: »

redspecter23 wrote: »

ZOS implements a change that players can fix by paying. This sets a poor precedent. 1 free race change per character is an appropriate response from a company with good intentions about balancing the game. Using game balance as an excuse to monetize is just plain shady.

I'll pay for chapters. I'll pay for ESO+. I'll even visit the crown store for cosmetics from time to time and I'll be happy with each of these transactions. As soon as I have to start paying to fix things on my end that are adjusted by ZOS on a regular basis, I tighten up the wallet.

Thank you for paying for us. Because of people like you the game is still alive. Keep paying please so other people can play this game.

LOL
Im not even sure if that's sarcasm or not

jcm2606 · January 2019

Calotron wrote: »

As someone who is very new to ESO and primarily an outsider looking in on most of these topics, from what I gather ZOS has changed Race Passives which have adjusted the meta in such a serious way that they are providing a Race Token for free, but a lot of people are still unhappy with that.

My question is do these Passives really effect DPS output at endgame and high skill play?
Might be a stupid question and I apologize if it is. Just trying to grasp why so many people are so upset.

They do. Take Dunmer, for instance. Dunmer has a 7% bonus to all fire damage, that is applied in such a way that it increases your final damage. That is a huge bonus, and from the math I saw on the DK reps Discord in a conversations, equals to about a good ~500 spell damage. For this reason, a lot of end game magicka damage dealers went Dunmer, as it offered the highest damage with flame staves, which are used for burning down single targets.

With the new passive, however, that 7% bonus has been replaced with a flat 258 spell & weapon damage. This is added as an extra source of spell damage, similar to how a set would function, and so scales differently with regards to how it influences damage. Compared to the 7% bonus, 258 < ~500, which leads to a big damage loss. A friend of mine was looking at her magicka Dragonknight, and she lost at least 1k worth of damage off of some of her abilities, and a good 4k off of her ultimate, because of the combined loss of the 7% bonus and some max magicka (Dunmer also lost a lot of max magicka with these new passives, but all races lost max magicka/stamina across the board, though Dunmer got it a bit worse).

Gilliam, one of the more technically proficient Zenimax employees when it comes to things like this, did some internal testing and figured out that Altmer is now the best race for magicka damage dealers, which is bad news for all those who have Dunmer. A single race change is not enough to potentially cover 3-4 characters, or more. This change can potentially cost players hundreds of dollars, and I'm not exaggerating, since a race change token costs 3000 Crowns, and the 21000 Crown pack goes for $184.95 AUD.

Arrodisia · January 2019

Calotron wrote: »

As someone who is very new to ESO and primarily an outsider looking in on most of these topics, from what I gather ZOS has changed Race Passives which have adjusted the meta in such a serious way that they are providing a Race Token for free, but a lot of people are still unhappy with that.

My question is do these Passives really effect DPS output at endgame and high skill play?
Might be a stupid question and I apologize if it is. Just trying to grasp why so many people are so upset.

to answer that It does effect gameplay for competitive people, and one race change token is a pitance when they know a large portion of players already have many chars which were created based on those passives. Those race tokens are expensive to buy and a person with many chars will pay more than the cost of the expansion and sub for something that ZOS changed from their side that never should've been imbalanced in the 1st place. There are a few reasons why people are unhappy imho and I agree with them and gave my reasons as well on page 1. I hope this helped.

zyk · January 2019

jcm2606 wrote: »

Regardless, as I said, it being a good game or not is irrelevant. My point is not whether the game is good or bad, but whether a company can give handouts like this without suddenly going bankrupt.

ZOS could obviously offer free race changes without going bankrupt.

Having a profit motive isn't an argument to justify every decision made by a company. It goes without saying that they're trying to make a profit and must have a sustainable business model. That does not mean ZOS needs to profit from these particular changes to remain operational. It does not mean that there are not other considerations that indirectly impact profitability such as customer service.

Ohtimbar · January 2019

jcm2606 wrote: »

Which only serves to further prove my point that this is nothing except pure corporate greed. There's nothing stopping them from simply giving out tokens en masse, or, more realistically, giving out tokens bound to each character for a certain amount of time before they expire. They just don't want to, because the alternative is easy $$$$$$$$.

No argument from me. I'll be royally pissed off if they press on with this like it's in any way acceptable. But, we're talking about a company that cheated their own subscribers out of DLC by calling it a different name...

Calotron · January 2019

Thanks for the explanations above.

That does seem a bit underwhelming if you've got multiple mains.
It's cool that racial passives have such a role in some aspects, but a shame that if changed in such a way it causes this much discord within the community.

I don't even have a level 50 yet, been playing Altmer Magplar so I don't have that much skin in the game as most do.

Hope it gets sorted for everyone it effects!

Wildberryjack · January 2019

These changes aren't so drastic that you NEED to change your race. You're being melodramatic. Redguards are still tops for Stamina builds, Altmer are still tops for Magicka builds, Argonian are still tops for Healers and Tanks. The other races finally got a much needed boost to make them at least better so you don't feel like you're gimping yourself playing them, and the hybrid races will be stronger so they're viable. These are all good things Chicken Little, not the disaster you're making it out to be.

SaintSubwayy · January 2019

Ohtimbar wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

Which only serves to further prove my point that this is nothing except pure corporate greed. There's nothing stopping them from simply giving out tokens en masse, or, more realistically, giving out tokens bound to each character for a certain amount of time before they expire. They just don't want to, because the alternative is easy $$$$$$$$.

No argument from me. I'll be royally pissed off if they press on with this like it's in any way acceptable. But, we're talking about a company that cheated their own subscribers out of DLC by calling it a different name...

True, that was a Dock Move back then.

BUt you know what, I get that one. A Chapter is way more work than a DLC, it has a Trial, more quests, more area to cover and so on.
On this change I can understand ZOS.

But the Token story here, I dont get their greed here. Is it really worth for them, sto risk the loss of a not insignificend chunk of the playerbase, just to sell some Tokens. Maybe the need to try and see what the future may be hiding if this goes throuh at it sits now.

Arrodisia · January 2019

need? we don't need anything. We want 1 token per char, because we're already paying for services which include balancing through subs, dlc's, and expansions imho and the changes are from their side due to balancing issues.

The changes to the spec skills weren't always so drastic, but we got those for free and now these changes can involve a lot of real money and you want to say we should pay for the fact that they were not balanced in the 1st place. ahhh no and I already gave my reasons in my previous comment. So I won't bore those who did read them and write them again.

Arrodisia · January 2019

Please stay on topic folks.

iiYuki · January 2019

Aluneth wrote: »

There is no company out there, that would throw away a profit of up to millions, to please the playerbase.

You realise that making money and keeping the majority of your player base happy don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Actually as I see it they could potentially earn more by keeping people happy because they would be more likely to support and pay for items in game. I haven't payed a penny in the crown store for over 6 months now because I decided that they dont deserve more of my money when they clearly dont invest it back into the game...

desciviib14_ESO · January 2019

iiYuki wrote: »

Aluneth wrote: »

There is no company out there, that would throw away a profit of up to millions, to please the playerbase.

You realise that making money and keeping the majority of your player base happy don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Actually as I see it they could potentially earn more by keeping people happy because they would be more likely to support and pay for items in game. I haven't payed a penny in the crown store for over 6 months now because I decided that they dont deserve more of my money when they clearly dont invest it back into the game...

That could be the case but not likely since generally many of those people complain about any monetization so they aren't likely to spend anymore money than they are required and are no more likely to suddenly be happy with ZOS over 1 change.

However, I do agree that they could offer the chance for a change at login like how they do when they make major changes to CP system.

Yigrok · January 2019

Why can't people just appreciate the fact that they at least give you 1 free race change? People feel so entitles these days. Of course they are a business and they need to make money to keep this service running for us.
This being said, i urge you to go and look for any other game out there that did certain changes and offered at least 1 token for said change, or if they offered any free tokens at all.
Learn to appreciate every little free thing that they give you. It's not like you have 13 main characters, it's most probably 1, the rest are alts that you use for various things.

For me, since i don't like alts and i like to have 1 character that i do everything with, this is perfect, so thank you ZoS.

desciviib14_ESO · January 2019

Actually, I have 9 mains. It just depends on what kind of fighting I feel like doing is the one I pick that day and I also lvl for hirelings on them and I am at the mid end there. MANY have all 11 slots maxed and some even have 2nd accounts with more

HelixUnited · January 2019

If zos can give everyone a 15k+crowns house to everyone for free and survive they can give away extra race change tokens and survive, they gave more valuable stuff away in the past for free they can do it again, they make more than enough revenue from crates, eso+, and everything else to do a one time race change for all toons for everyone in the first week or two of the update.

Krayl · January 2019

“ZOS is a business” isn’t a good argument for not giving their customers something that literally costs the company nothing after they decided to change one of the core aspects of their product.

Unless what you mean to say is. “ZOS is an unethical business.” Then you’re spot on. I personally think they will do the right thing and ensure the customers who have spent the most on the game and have multiple CP level characters will be satisfied with multiple free race change tokens.

Jacozilla · January 2019

jcm2606 wrote: »

Regardless, as I said, it being a good game or not is irrelevant. My point is not whether the game is good or bad, but whether a company can give handouts like this without suddenly going bankrupt.

I'm not really sure whether you're joking, or seriously this deficient in business fundamentals.

The COGS or cost-of-goods-sold is a balance sheet item and consideration when companies model what their margins will be on any particular item. It fundamentally controls what price points are 'losses' vs 'profits' on a per item, per sale calculation. But in this case there is no COGS.

The class tokens are potential revenue to be sure, but not a direct debit line item for each they issue. ZOS doesn't go bankrupt because they issue 1 or 1 million of them - there is zero cost basis other than the labor to implement the mechanic of giving them out. Pepsi giving away prizes to lure sales is X spent to gain Y hopeful increase to sales, with an actual cost basis to X - whatever sales they earn, each prize issued actually costs them a deduction to current cash holdings.

For race tokens there is no X cost basis to lose on issue, only future possible revenue not earned. Therefore the consideration is does ZOS believe the probable monetization of this 'balance change' they themselves induced exceeds the possible customer dissatisfaction and loss of revenue from cancelled subs and microtransactions.

TLDR - clearly ZOS believes, right or wrong, that whatever revenue they lose from angry customers will be exceeded by those that buy additional race change tokens. However, arguing they are not giving out tokens because it would bankrupt them is silly when you are talking about a line item with no fundamental cost other than delivery mechanism.

Arrodisia · January 2019

let me try to reexplain why we aren't happy with these changes since someone asked why we couldn't be happy with 1 token. I don't think we're feeling entitled here because we want 1 token per char.

We, the players, didn't create and leave the imbalance in the game and then decide to change it at a high real money cost per char. Therefore we shouldn't be footing the bill for their poor balancing. These changes are in the dlc's, expansions,subs.......we already pay for. So your basically saying hey it doesn't really bother me because I have 1 alt and screw the rest of the player base who do have multiple chars. I think you underestimate how many people have more than a couple chars and many even have all slots full and have played this game a long time. They lose nothing for giving us a token per char. They actually keep and expand their player base by doing so. btw someone already posted a link about another game that didn't charge for this type of change. I do get they want the changes, and so do we. That normally wouldn't be a problem, but the entire change stems from their balancing problems from the beginning. So no. It shouldn't rest on the players to pay extra for those changes. This is just imho

Ertosi · January 2019

Seraphayel wrote: »

No, because they don't have to.

All this exaggerated crying about race changing because you might be 1-2% worse now is hilarious.

@Seraphayel But it's not just the BiS types that are hurt by these changes. I don't count percents or chase meta but have built many of my old toons around their old racials.

Take my poor Bosmer bow ganker who's losing his bonuses to stealth and damage from stealth, and in return getting a bonus made redundant by him already carrying a bow. My khajiit is going to miss his bonus damage from stealth as well.

My elementalists are going to hurt. Altmers losing their elemental damage hurts my thunder mage. And my poor, poor dunmer fire mage is shredded losing her bonus fire damage and max magicka.

Without that bonus to max HP recovery, my HPDK nord isn't going to be fun any more.

All of the changes down the board just stink of being a purposeful nerf to max stats. Then with the CP cap no longer moving up, they've limited our characters' potential from both ends.

Brutusmax1mus · January 2019

Correct