Should ESO bring back a subscription model instead of using ESO crates as a funding mechanism?

Edaphon · February 2019

Crates instead of subscription

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Valrien wrote: »

Edaphon wrote: »

Mandatory subscriptions already failed once and they would fail again.

I'm fine with whales funding the game for me.

It didnt fail, they just saw more money in the crown store

It did fail. The player base was on the verge of collapse. You had like 500 people online through Steam.

Exactly. Players were leaving the game in droves and it wouldn't have survived much longer.
If they just wanted to earn some extra money they would have kept the subscription mandatory and added an optional crown store on top of that.
But they didn't because they didn't have any other choice. It was either going F2P/B2P or shut the servers down.

DirkRavenclaw · February 2019

Use both

I said use Booth, first of all, this arent lootboxes in my eyes, they are just a nice way tohave some RNG and 2) they should only people let onto the Forums that pay for ESO+, how can anyone voice his or her Displeasure about any Aspect of the Game if he or she not even support it with some Obulus or other, so Im all for subscription only and i have under 200 Euros to life on, its the 23th of the Month and i have to borrow a few quit of my Mum just to have food but i still get a monthly sub, why? Because its fair, i play multiple Hours dailly

Kulvar · February 2019

Use both

Real money lottery is what I despise.

Getting free crates as in game reward (daily login / undaunted daily / other) + Being able to buy crown gems directly with real money. That is the way to go in my opinion.
ESO+ is already a subscription.

GarnetFire17 · February 2019

Crates instead of subscription

I have already bought all the DLCs, now I should be charged to have to play them? Hell no!

daemonios · February 2019

Subscription instead of crates

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Valrien wrote: »

Edaphon wrote: »

Mandatory subscriptions already failed once and they would fail again.

I'm fine with whales funding the game for me.

It didnt fail, they just saw more money in the crown store

It did fail. The player base was on the verge of collapse. You had like 500 people online through Steam.

Link to source of player numbers and ZOS financial records please.

I've been here since early access, or more accurately since the last few open betas. I was in guilds and happily playing away when ESO lost its mandatory sub. I didn't see the player base on the verge of collapse, but if you can prove otherwise please do so.

Skwor · February 2019

Use both

DirkRavenclaw wrote: »

I said use Booth, first of all, this arent lootboxes in my eyes, they are just a nice way tohave some RNG and 2) they should only people let onto the Forums that pay for ESO+, how can anyone voice his or her Displeasure about any Aspect of the Game if he or she not even support it with some Obulus or other, so Im all for subscription only and i have under 200 Euros to life on, its the 23th of the Month and i have to borrow a few quit of my Mum just to have food but i still get a monthly sub, why? Because its fair, i play multiple Hours dailly

I have felt similar to this for some time, though I would see crates stay.

Loves_guars · February 2019

Edaphon wrote: »

Mandatory subscriptions already failed once and they would fail again.

I'm fine with whales funding the game for me.

Exactly this, this is why I've never complained about crates. You don't like them don't buy them, but I'm grateful for those that don't care about wasting money, they are paying what I can't.

MLGProPlayer · February 2019

Crates instead of subscription

daemonios wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Valrien wrote: »

Edaphon wrote: »

Mandatory subscriptions already failed once and they would fail again.

I'm fine with whales funding the game for me.

It didnt fail, they just saw more money in the crown store

It did fail. The player base was on the verge of collapse. You had like 500 people online through Steam.

Link to source of player numbers and ZOS financial records please.

I've been here since early access, or more accurately since the last few open betas. I was in guilds and happily playing away when ESO lost its mandatory sub. I didn't see the player base on the verge of collapse, but if you can prove otherwise please do so.

https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

Panda_iMunch · February 2019

Subscription instead of crates

Forced sub would've been fine with the PC peeps, but the issue was that console peeps would not comply. I was kinda hoping they would still launch on consoles, but just would take a cut of subs from Micro and Sony, or offer a cheaper sub. Oh well, it's very unlikely to change and it is what it is.

Monte_Cristo · February 2019

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Valrien wrote: »

Edaphon wrote: »

Mandatory subscriptions already failed once and they would fail again.

I'm fine with whales funding the game for me.

It didnt fail, they just saw more money in the crown store

It did fail. The player base was on the verge of collapse. You had like 500 people online through Steam.

Link to source of player numbers and ZOS financial records please.

I've been here since early access, or more accurately since the last few open betas. I was in guilds and happily playing away when ESO lost its mandatory sub. I didn't see the player base on the verge of collapse, but if you can prove otherwise please do so.

https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

What caused the spike in December 2014?

lolli42 · February 2019

Neither (explain)

if i have to sub, to play, i stop playing

Uryel · February 2019

What do you mean, "instead" ? We do have a subscription model AND crates AND absurdly overpriced cosmetics.

I mean, for most things I understand the pricing, even though some are a bit steep, but I'm lucky enough to live in a "rich" country. Lower prices would make things way more available for people in slightly less rich countries, and the volume of sales would certainly increase. But they market their wares as if they only targeted North America. It's not like those bytes and pixels had a manufacturing cost...

And for some things, the prices are simply "Hell no". Like outfit slots. 1500 crowns for one slot that is character only and not account wide, this is madness. As a comparison, Champions Online sells you 2 slots for their equivalent of 150 crowns. Sure, that's character only, but that's effectively 20 times cheaper.

If 1500 crowns were for an account wide unlock, I'd already have purchased 2. Or 3. As it's priced now, I'll just never buy one. I have the money, I can buy it, but that's not worth that much. And to add insult to injury, it's never stated anywhere in the game that this is for the current character only. Nor does it states anything else either. It simply isn't explained at all, but for that price one could assume that it's account wide. You actually need to look for information outside the game to know that. That's really bad business practice.

I'd suggest to at least have proper communication, and, well, drastic lowering of prices. At least in EU, lots of people have lower income than your average USA / UK / France / Germany person, but would still spend a portion of their income on game stuff, provided that doesn't cost them about as much as the rent. The current pricing is effectiveley keeping a large potion of the playerbase from purchasing stuff. Since said stuff has no production cost, prices could be lower, "rich" people would buy some more, not-so-rich people would start buying it, all in all I'm pretty sure that would mean more money for ZOS.

But hey, look, crates !

Zhoyzu · February 2019

Neither (explain)

VaranisArano wrote: »

The people who can really answer that question are ZOS' accountants. They have the data for the whole game population on both subs and crown crates, unlike the rather small sample size of players on the forums.

Presumably, they already answered that question with a "No."

except they dont because console players werent around when the game was sub only so the stats that have arent useful.
Console players not only have to pay for internet but also the right to use the internet on their console which is why eso became buy to play because being charged 3 times a month to play a game is absolutely ridiculous.

No one is forcing you to buy crates anyways so neither.

theyancey · February 2019

Use both

Yes, lower the cost of both the base sub and ESO+ so that together they come out about what ESO+ is now. Keep the crown store too. This might get rid of some of the bots and freeloaders. If it brings in another buck or two per month then that could be put to good use beefing up staff for bug hunting and more creative content too.

Sylvermynx · February 2019

Other

It doesn't essentially matter to me, as I "subscribe" to ESO+ (and I'm happy with it.... I would be happier if they did free crates again some of course).

I've always paid my way in MMOs. Not changing now.

Zacuel · February 2019

Anyone who feels the game needs more money can gift me crown stuff.

You're welcome.

Davor · February 2019

Other

I voted other. One of the reasons why I stopped playing ESO after the first month was because I REUFSE to keep paying money to just play a game. I find the way the gaming industry is fracking pathetic. Zenimax wants my money. I have to jump through hoops to give them money. Why am I jumping through hoops to give Zenimax money? For me to have the PRVILEGE to give Zenimax money I need to agree that I don't own the game I give money for. I can't fault Zenimax at all for anything, and need to ABIDE by their terms.

Like wow, I can't believe companies are like that now. If someone wants to give me their money, I am not going to tell them how to do it, and they have to agree with me and I can never be wrong. So if Zenimax had a subscription only to play ESO again, I am sorry, I will not give Zenimax money anymore.

Now that ESO is buy to play, I finally came back because I found that acceptable. Still stupid that I need to be privilaged in giving Zenimax money, and I need to give my rights away and say that Zenimax is never wrong, and I don't own nothing and Zenimax can basically do anything they please and I can't say boo about it.

Funny enough, I do have ESO+ though. How I find this acceptable is because I find Zenimax pathetic enough to make me jump through hoops so I have the privilege to give them money makes me actually giggle. Like I mean, while they are millionaires I can't wait for them to meet their creator's and explain why they make people jump through hoops to get money. Quite funny actually. Since I enjoy the game, and find the ESO+ actually worth it for me and not just a privilege to keep playing, I believe that is the way to go.

Loot Crates need to go as well. Again, it just shows how pathetic Zenimax is. "We want you to gamble, but for you to be able to gamble, you need to give us money first, but before you give us money, you agree we are never wrong, you can never sue us, we can do as we please, and oh, anything you get, you don't own, we own the fake, make believe virtual stuff, but you need to give us real currency for the fake make believe stuff you don't own."

Like really, how can you be proud of that? I guess the millions in the bank account makes you smile, but can you actually go out in public and be proud to say that?

Uh, what was the topic about again? Sorry for going off tract.

Anhedonie · February 2019

You know that pay to play model is unsustainable for the most mmos right now, yeah? ESO is one of these games.

Sylvermynx · February 2019

Other

@Davor.... well, son.... you don't really own anything you use online any more. And that goes for things you think you've bought for use offline.

You have two choices: pay the freight, or be locked out. Personally, I balance the freight against the fun.

Katahdin · February 2019

Neither (explain)

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Valrien wrote: »

Edaphon wrote: »

Mandatory subscriptions already failed once and they would fail again.

I'm fine with whales funding the game for me.

It didnt fail, they just saw more money in the crown store

It did fail. The player base was on the verge of collapse. You had like 500 people online through Steam.

Link to source of player numbers and ZOS financial records please.

I've been here since early access, or more accurately since the last few open betas. I was in guilds and happily playing away when ESO lost its mandatory sub. I didn't see the player base on the verge of collapse, but if you can prove otherwise please do so.

https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

Steam is no where even close to an accurate count.
There were WAY more non steam players than steam players by a very large margin.
There probably still are way more non steam accounts

FlyingSwan · February 2019

The reason the ESO sub failed is because the game does not have the quality we expect from subscription games. Upon release, ZOS were charging a premium price for a mandatory sub and yet the game was in many way more broken than it even is today, support was awful and content releases were lethargic. So people just stuck two fingers up to ESO and left en masse for 'proper' sub games, I went to FFXIV for example, which is a superbly run game for which I am happy to pay a mandatory sub.

ZOS seem to have found ways to fund the game, it's a shame that cash shop gouging for tat is one of them, but if people buy it, it obviously works. It's just a shame ZOS are not using this revenue to overhaul the game in any meaningful way.

Davor · February 2019

Other

Sylvermynx wrote: »

@Davor.... well, son.... you don't really own anything you use online any more. And that goes for things you think you've bought for use offline.

You have two choices: pay the freight, or be locked out. Personally, I balance the freight against the fun.

Yeah I know, just how I think to make myself feel better.

Iluvrien · February 2019

Subscription instead of crates

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Valrien wrote: »

Edaphon wrote: »

Mandatory subscriptions already failed once and they would fail again.

I'm fine with whales funding the game for me.

It didnt fail, they just saw more money in the crown store

It did fail. The player base was on the verge of collapse. You had like 500 people online through Steam.

There are two reasons why this statement (especially including steam) is flawed:

1) ESO released on PC and Mac on April 4 2014 and on Steam for those platforms on July 17th 2014. This delay of 3.5 months is enough to ensure that the initial game population was not on steam.

2) The period that is actually shown at the beginning of the steam charts includes the content drought caused by the development for console (release data June 5th) that ended on June 14th 2015 for PvP players (IC) and November 2nd 2015 for PvE players (Orsinium). At which point PC/Mac had received no new content for 18 months.

You say P2P failed. I say it was never given a proper chance.

ZOS financials alone would answer the question properly, and we are never getting those.

phaneub17_ESO · February 2019

I would leave if mandatory subscriptions became a thing again, I only came back after it was removed. I still buy crown packs every so often when they're up for sale, and have subbed a couple times for the crafting bag when my inventory becomes unmanageable.

Tandor · February 2019

Use both

Emma_Overload wrote: »

Nobody knows if subs failed. ZOS, like most game companies, never discusses finances. Some people have speculated that sub revenue was under expectations, but others claim that either Sony or Microsoft "forced" ZOS into a B2P model when ESO was launching on consoles.

Agreed.

There's a lot of questionable stuff talked about how bad the game was at launch. Performance wise it actually ran fine if you had a reasonable gaming machine, but a a lot of players came from WoW or single-player games such as TES and were used to being able to play those on a low spec PC. Some were simply out to knock the new competition (WildStar and ArcheAge fans over-hyped their games which they claimed would bury ESO - not quite how it turned out). Add to that the F2P crowd who were keen to trash the subscription model and a lot of the criticisms of the game were, at the very least, exaggerated. PvP, for example, was a lot smoother in the early days. I imagine it also took a while for the addons to settle down, although I never use them personally so can't judge that.

It was well known at the time that with console players having to pay a monthly service charge for the platform they weren't going to take kindly to a monthly subscription on top, so it was no surprise to most when ZOS announced ESO was going to B2P with optional subscriptions. The real concern was that it didn't go P2W as a result of a cash shop being introduced but ZOS made a commitment not to go there and I reckon they've stuck pretty solidly to it.

As for the Steam figures given above, the game wasn't released initially through Steam so the peak initial demand was direct through ZOS, and although the Steam figures picked up slightly as the game got talked about on Steam, the real pick-up wasn't until much later with the launch of One Tamriel, and that's illustrated in the linked chart.

I don't see any prospect of ZOS (or any other MMO developer) going back to a subscription-only model, and I also see no reason why those developers running optional subscriptions would ever want to drop them. The key to commercial viability these days is flexibility and choice, so giving people multiple ways of playing the game and contributing financially to it seems likely to be continue to be the best way of running mainstream MMOs.

Kingslayer513 · February 2019

Other

Where's the "false premise" poll option?

Ragnarock41 · February 2019

Crates instead of subscription

I'm fine with the current monetization system. I think the ESO+ system kinda lost its value after they introduced chapters that you can't buy with crowns. That being said I don't have that much time to play nowadays so I like being able to just play anytime I want without paying a sub.

I think current system in ESO is pretty good.

Ragnarock41 · February 2019

Crates instead of subscription

daemonios wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Valrien wrote: »

Edaphon wrote: »

Mandatory subscriptions already failed once and they would fail again.

I'm fine with whales funding the game for me.

It didnt fail, they just saw more money in the crown store

It did fail. The player base was on the verge of collapse. You had like 500 people online through Steam.

Link to source of player numbers and ZOS financial records please.

I've been here since early access, or more accurately since the last few open betas. I was in guilds and happily playing away when ESO lost its mandatory sub. I didn't see the player base on the verge of collapse, but if you can prove otherwise please do so.

https://steamcharts.com/app/306130 Here is your ''proof''. The charts do tell what you need to know about how successful sub model was.

daemonios · February 2019

Subscription instead of crates

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Valrien wrote: »

Edaphon wrote: »

Mandatory subscriptions already failed once and they would fail again.

I'm fine with whales funding the game for me.

It didnt fail, they just saw more money in the crown store

It did fail. The player base was on the verge of collapse. You had like 500 people online through Steam.

Link to source of player numbers and ZOS financial records please.

I've been here since early access, or more accurately since the last few open betas. I was in guilds and happily playing away when ESO lost its mandatory sub. I didn't see the player base on the verge of collapse, but if you can prove otherwise please do so.

https://steamcharts.com/app/306130 Here is your ''proof''. The charts do tell what you need to know about how successful sub model was.

Look, you may be satisfied by those Steam numbers. To me they say next to nothing. They represent a fraction of the player base and there is no financial information attached. The numbers certainly are lower in 2014 than now, but I don't see a steep decline as someone claimed earlier as the reason for dropping mandatory subscriptions. And in the end the game will have to be paid somehow. I believe a sub is much more transparent and fair than microtransactions, which are predatory and have a negative impact on gameplay (which they demonstrably have had).

Uryel · February 2019

Katahdin wrote: »

Steam is no where even close to an accurate count.
There were WAY more non steam players than steam players by a very large margin.
There probably still are way more non steam accounts

And with the recent steam [removed profanity], there migt have been disgruntled people who stopped playing entirely. Or managed to find a way to get rid of Steam entirely. I know we did in my home.

I never played on Steam, my wife did, so she has been lmocked out odf the game several times while I was playing. Which is a tad bit annoying when you currently live 300 km away from one another and use the game to spend the evening "together" (sort of).

Thanks to the advice of some other forum users, we found a way to make her Steam account able to connect without using Steam, even though she bought the game after 2016. Not free, though. You "simply" need to log into your ESO account using Steam / Steam account infos, and once there, purchase the base game again. So, for 20 euros, your account is now an hybrid that can both log automatically htough steam or manually through normal ESO launcher. Anything purchased on either one of the platforms will work for the account (so far...). She had purchased Summerset and ESO+ through Steam and still has that, even though she hasn't logged through Steam ever since.

Good riddance.

Even though this is probably not the most common occurrence, the Steam stats might have lowered even more if people managed to get rid of it to bypass the "can't connect" recurring issues.