It's time to raise the cap on bank space

kylewwefan · June 2019

I sub. Have all the storage boxes. Still need more space. Like infinite space. Or at least a nice even thousand. Or ten thousand. Need more space.

stitchesofdooom · June 2019

kargen27 wrote: »

I wouldn't mind more bank space but really it will not fix anything. We will have the new space filled in a few days and then want more space.

"We all know that supporting the Games-as-a-Service model is bad for gaming and bad for the gamer."

Nah, it helps keep games fresh. One time purchase stand alone games no matter how good after a while get stale and that ends your playing that game. It allows companies to put much more money into development at the starting stages of designing a game when they know the as a service model will extend the life of the game.

We don't know any of that other stuff either. At best you may suspect.

There's always one. I don't want to start a massive row here, but you're comepletely wrong.

The first thing you need to understand is that is costs less than $0.15/active player/month to keep even the most expensive and demanding gamer servers running. Total cost. Less that $2/YEAR.

Here is the GOOD model for online games, the one that should be:

Pay to buy the base game.
Pay to buy the DLC's
Pay a yearly sub of no more than $15/£10. That's YEARLY.
No more microtransaction store.

The base game will make hundreds of millions in profit. The DLC's make hundreds of millions in profit. The subs to pay for the servers make hundreds of millions in profit. This is yearly.

Events keep people interested in the game, but that's all covered easily by the $15/year sub. It's easily enough to run the servers and the studios alone.

This is a fact.

How does this benefit us? Simple. The game, and the DLC's, everything they do: the focus goes to making it all as good as humanly possible with their budget so as to sell the maximum number of units.

This raises overall quality, and quantity of quality.

On top of that, people stay engaged longer becuase now everything in the game is earnable (including the craft bag) AND the game becomes far less grindy. Dungeons are now more worth doing because you have a more reasonable chance of earning the things you want instead of these items being so grindy to get that you eventually buy them out of frustration.

Here is the current model of GaaS that you seem to think is okay (spoiler alert: it's not):

Grinding for things like motifs is drastically harder to encourage purchases in crown store.
"But I have crowns from subbing", you say? Well either you sub for crowns so you can buy the crown store items you like, or you sub for p2w things like the gameplay buffs and most importantly the Craft Bag.

This brings us to the point of the thread.

The craft bag is a necessity sooner or later as bank space is capped, chest space is capped, and more different kinds of items are being added all the time. This is not dissimilar to companies that make the game super grindy and then sell you exp boosters to ease the problem that THEY purposefully implimented into the game.

Are you getting it yet?

And with the GaaS model, the focus is constantly finding new and creative ways to get you to spend money. Profit through maximum in game sales over profit through selling as many units as possible. As long as quality is "acceptable" and profits keep rising, the company is happy.

You must be no older than in your early 20's because if you had been gaming in the late 90's-early 2000's, you'd have remembered a better time.

Back then, games were made to be as good as they could possibly make them, and they were polished to within an inch of their lives before release. Aside from graphics and tech, the games back then were amazing. At least more of them were. And when a bug was actually found it was a thing people talked about because bugs were hard to find. Like, REALLY hard to find.

Now ESO IS better than a lot of online games but the abhorrent greed of the way they do business isn't acceptable. Normalized, but not acceptable.

The good model I suggested, that would still turn a company a massive profit. There is one company in particular soon to prove that fact again.

The only problem is that the GaaS model makes MORE money. That's why they do it. So when you support it, you support the degredation of the quality of games. And what do you get for that?

...can you think of any live service games in the past year or 2 that have crashed and burned do to them being bug-ridden MVP..? Hmm..? HMM??

stitchesofdooom · June 2019

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

stitchesofdooom wrote: »

As far as I know, the bank space cap has never been raised. Over the last 5 years, more and more items have been added.
And yes, I appreciate that chests have been introduced, which is helpful, but with the miriad of new items, bank space is still lacking.

This is the part where someone tells me to "just subscribe".

In response to any comments of that regard, I will say this:
We all know that supporting the Games-as-a-Service model is bad for gaming and bad for the gamer.
We all know that massive profits are made without microtransactions or loot boxes.
We all know that it costs, at the absolute most, $0.15/active player/month to run servers.
We all know that the more we support this greedy model: the worse games will be, the more agressive the predatory monetizations will be, the more pay to win games will become.

I don't sub (unless I need crowns for DLC - coz then I'm just buying DLC) because I know that not buying into GaaS means fighting anti consumerism. I support the game just fine.

So yeah, we need the cap on bank space raised please.

The space is there with the sub but you dont want it so its your problem

I replied to another guy just now. It's a bit of an essay sure, but you need to start educating yourself on what GaaS is doing to gaming... and that supporting it is making the problem worse.

stitchesofdooom · June 2019

Easily_Lost wrote: »

If you are talking about crafting mats, why not buy from Guild Traders when you need to make more food / drinks or potions / poisons. instead of hording them.

Because I do daily crafting writs to make gold. Buying mats DTP.

ZaredKorsten · June 2019

I am ESO+. I have the max amount of storage chests, bank space and bag space. I would love to see a bag for furnishings like we have for craft materials. Due to lack of space, I'm currently using my GP Villa as a storage unit for furnishing items, and that is a royal pain in the arse!

idk · June 2019

blnchk wrote: »

idk wrote: »

blnchk wrote: »

I don't get the argument regarding ESO+. People run out of space even with ESO+, and with the ever-increasing number of items this game throws at you, that's completely unsurprising. Raising the bank capacity would not be detrimental to subscribers – in fact it would benefit them more than non-subscribers.

And sure, there are ways to be smart about storage, but you don't need to be a hoarder to be bothered by the way bank space never seems to be reviewed, DLC after DLC. All you need to do is value your time, your nerves and your peace of mind.

Even ten more slots per expansion would be something. Some sort of official acknowledgment, at the very least. Honestly, it's about time.

My comment about ESO+ is directly about Zos had clearly made a conscious decision to add bank storage behind ESO+.

While I am all for more storage, your points about storage issues do not hold water. When Zos added the crafting bag that opened up a lot of storage for me yet that filled really fast. Faster than Zos added items to the game. Same thing happened when Zos doubled the bank storage. I ended up getting smarter about what I stored stopped hording stuff just because It happened to drop and go through inventory twice a month to make sure I keep it under control.

No matter how much storage Zos gives me I will still have to be smart about my storage so suggesting Zos adding more gear to the game that I will never use is not a strong argument. There are better arguments that could be made.

Of course people will always have to make decisions about what to keep. Since this game monetises storage, it would be unrealistic to expect otherwise. .

Again, I am not against getting more storage. Heck, my first post was to explain to

Nestor wrote: »

With the load on the server increasing with bag space upgrades, they could probably only add more Offline Storage, which is what our housing storage is. Online storage is loaded and tracked with each player.

Even then bag space increases of any kind are needed.

This make sense.

There is a reason Zos added the chests and did not make them available unless we accessed the specific chests. I doubt it was merely to make it look like TES furnishings.

Further, Zos recently stated server load as the reason they are not offering a furnishings bag. That there are so many unique items compared to the crafting bag that it offers a challenge.

Granted, at least part of this has to do with db organizations. A redesign is not a small undertaking.

It is unfortunate.

kargen27 · June 2019

stitchesofdooom wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I wouldn't mind more bank space but really it will not fix anything. We will have the new space filled in a few days and then want more space.

"We all know that supporting the Games-as-a-Service model is bad for gaming and bad for the gamer."

Nah, it helps keep games fresh. One time purchase stand alone games no matter how good after a while get stale and that ends your playing that game. It allows companies to put much more money into development at the starting stages of designing a game when they know the as a service model will extend the life of the game.

We don't know any of that other stuff either. At best you may suspect.

There's always one. I don't want to start a massive row here, but you're comepletely wrong.

The first thing you need to understand is that is costs less than $0.15/active player/month to keep even the most expensive and demanding gamer servers running. Total cost. Less that $2/YEAR.

Here is the GOOD model for online games, the one that should be:

Pay to buy the base game.
Pay to buy the DLC's
Pay a yearly sub of no more than $15/£10. That's YEARLY.
No more microtransaction store.

The base game will make hundreds of millions in profit. The DLC's make hundreds of millions in profit. The subs to pay for the servers make hundreds of millions in profit. This is yearly.

Events keep people interested in the game, but that's all covered easily by the $15/year sub. It's easily enough to run the servers and the studios alone.

This is a fact.

How does this benefit us? Simple. The game, and the DLC's, everything they do: the focus goes to making it all as good as humanly possible with their budget so as to sell the maximum number of units.

This raises overall quality, and quantity of quality.

On top of that, people stay engaged longer becuase now everything in the game is earnable (including the craft bag) AND the game becomes far less grindy. Dungeons are now more worth doing because you have a more reasonable chance of earning the things you want instead of these items being so grindy to get that you eventually buy them out of frustration.

Here is the current model of GaaS that you seem to think is okay (spoiler alert: it's not):

Grinding for things like motifs is drastically harder to encourage purchases in crown store.
"But I have crowns from subbing", you say? Well either you sub for crowns so you can buy the crown store items you like, or you sub for p2w things like the gameplay buffs and most importantly the Craft Bag.

This brings us to the point of the thread.

The craft bag is a necessity sooner or later as bank space is capped, chest space is capped, and more different kinds of items are being added all the time. This is not dissimilar to companies that make the game super grindy and then sell you exp boosters to ease the problem that THEY purposefully implimented into the game.

Are you getting it yet?

And with the GaaS model, the focus is constantly finding new and creative ways to get you to spend money. Profit through maximum in game sales over profit through selling as many units as possible. As long as quality is "acceptable" and profits keep rising, the company is happy.

You must be no older than in your early 20's because if you had been gaming in the late 90's-early 2000's, you'd have remembered a better time.

Back then, games were made to be as good as they could possibly make them, and they were polished to within an inch of their lives before release. Aside from graphics and tech, the games back then were amazing. At least more of them were. And when a bug was actually found it was a thing people talked about because bugs were hard to find. Like, REALLY hard to find.

Now ESO IS better than a lot of online games but the abhorrent greed of the way they do business isn't acceptable. Normalized, but not acceptable.

The good model I suggested, that would still turn a company a massive profit. There is one company in particular soon to prove that fact again.

The only problem is that the GaaS model makes MORE money. That's why they do it. So when you support it, you support the degredation of the quality of games. And what do you get for that?

...can you think of any live service games in the past year or 2 that have crashed and burned do to them being bug-ridden MVP..? Hmm..? HMM??

So many wrong assumptions and so many opinions listed as fact.

I'm 56 and started playing games on BBS's or by switching floppies out on my first computer. There were good games and broken games back then just like now. Sports games were notorious for bad releases where the only viable option was to go back to the previous version and hope the next would get back on track. Not the only things you got really really wrong. Games have the same problem other industries have. Product is pushed out early because stock holders or other investors want a launch to influence an otherwise lackluster quarterly report. Has nothing to do with whether the game is as a service or not.

And my personal opinion I think we expect more out of games than we once did because of all the hype and build-up before release. We are inundated with how massively great a game will be sometimes a year or more before actual release. All that anticipation can lead to a let down even if the game is good. Anticipation is funny like that.

Also I sub in this game because I think the game is fun and it is cheaper than going to one movie a month. The extra stuff is nice but none of it influences whether or not I keep my subscription up for this game.

Again you offered a whole lot of opinions but presented no facts to support your opinions. You just called your opinions facts. Doesn't work like that.

You briefly mentioned pay to win. I agree pay to win in games is bad. Luckily there is none of that in ESO and I hope it stays that way.

One more quick note. Give the condescending attitude a rest. HMM?

Rake · June 2019

yes

Jayman1000 · June 2019

Emma_Overload wrote: »

Bank space needs to be about 1000 (2000 with ESO+). Many people on these forums are in denial about how many sets have been added to the game. Even with all chests and personal guild bank, I'm finally out of space. Deconstructing sets is not an option. Many of them were hard to obtain or cost a lot of gold. Deconning some of those sets would be like throwing away weeks of my life!

I think there should be an option for "hoarders" like you, where you could dole out some extra cash for even more storage chests. I mean, why not let you get what you want so you can play like you want, and let ZOS profit from that?

Bouldercleave · June 2019

Personally I don't need more, but after 5 full years they should double it for non subscribers and subscribers both.

While they are at it, they should add another 40 - 60 slots to the mount upgrade for each skill line (stamina, capacity, and speed) with diminishing returns on speed so it wouldn't get TOO fast.

Dusk_Coven · June 2019

I think an interesting product ZOS could offer is an account-wide giftable Crown Store Item that gives you a multiplier on your stack sizes.
Right now Food is stacked to 100 and Materials stacked to 200. Suppose we say Food is stack size multiplier 1 and Materials is stack multiplier 2.
If you buy this product one time, you get +1x. So Food would stack to 100 x (1 + 1) or 200. And Materials would stack to 100 x (2 + 1) = 300.

And let people buy as many stack multipliers as they want.

Which won't necessarily help hoarders who have, say, 15,000 units of Rubedite Ingots, so the ESO+ Crafting Bag still has value. But for lite-hoarders or crafters, even a single multiplier can "double" bank space.

Dusk_Coven · June 2019

stitchesofdooom wrote: »

You must be no older than in your early 20's because if you had been gaming in the late 90's-early 2000's, you'd have remembered a better time.

Back then, games were made to be as good as they could possibly make them, and they were polished to within an inch of their lives before release. Aside from graphics and tech, the games back then were amazing. At least more of them were. And when a bug was actually found it was a thing people talked about because bugs were hard to find. Like, REALLY hard to find.

I think this is in part due to the internet. Now companies can access beta testers with public test servers (and they do an amazingly lousy job) and send out patches fast-fast.
Before the internet became so handy, if you didn't playtest everything to basically perfection, you were selling a broken product and your name would be mud overnight. To actually distribute a patch would probably cost you the miserable profit (if any) you hoped to make after people illegally distributed copies of your stuff.

DaveMoeDee · June 2019

kargen27 wrote: »

I wouldn't mind more bank space but really it will not fix anything. We will have the new space filled in a few days and then want more space.

"We all know that supporting the Games-as-a-Service model is bad for gaming and bad for the gamer."

Nah, it helps keep games fresh. One time purchase stand alone games no matter how good after a while get stale and that ends your playing that game. It allows companies to put much more money into development at the starting stages of designing a game when they know the as a service model will extend the life of the game.

We don't know any of that other stuff either. At best you may suspect.

The games don't get stale. You finish them and move to the next game. That is like saying the bread I already ate will get stale.

DaveMoeDee · June 2019

Thrawniel wrote: »

I sub, and even I would love more banking space.

I passed up on couple of recent furnishing packs because I did not have time to decorate right away, and had no space to store it.

Or maybe just add more storage chests. Or something. Furniture is a relatively new feature and is a major space-eater. So basic system needs to get updated to accommodate it.

Just buy another house and you have more furniture storage. Problem solved!

DaveMoeDee · June 2019

jcm2606 wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

With the load on the server increasing with bag space upgrades, they could probably only add more Offline Storage, which is what our housing storage is. Online storage is loaded and tracked with each player.

Even then bag space increases of any kind are needed.

Increasing inventory size wouldn't worsen the load on the servers. The servers are just storing more data, not doing more calculations, and even then, the data used by the game's inventory system could probably be made more efficient. I imagine each stack in a given container (character inventory, bank, chest, etc) is stored as a single entry, so 10 full stacks would be stored as 10 separate entries.

If we assume the stack size is stored in a variable called "stackSize", they could make it more efficient by adding a new variable called "fullStacks" which stores the amount of full stacks of this item is stored in this container, and renaming "stackSize" to "partialStack", which stores the amount of items in the top-most partial stack.

Say we had 3 full stacks of rubedite ingot, and a partial stack of, say, 37. Under how I think the current inventory system works, we have 4 separate entries of rubedite ingot, 3 of which have "stackSize" set to "200", and 1 has it set to "37". Under this new system, you have a single entry of rubedite ingot, where "fullStacks" is set to "3", and "partialStack" is set to "37". When "partialStack" reaches the max stack size, add "1" to "fullStacks", and reset "partialStack" to "0". We've added a new variable to each entry, but we've removed three entire entries, so overall we need to store less data.

Switching to a more efficient inventory system could allow them to add more slots, while reducing the amount of data stored.

Increasing inventory size WOULD worsen the load on the servers. "Just storing more data"? Have you ever worked with a database before? One with a large number of records? More data is not a trivial performance concern. Once you start overwhelming your database server with too much inventory, good luck rolling taking people's storage away.

If you wanted to conserve slots through computation, I would have expected you to just store the total amount stored for stackable items and just do integer division and modulo. Why add an additional column that is sparsely populated, especially when the crafting bag already uses the single item count?

I don't like either approach though. They both leave you with awkward logic when you have many small stacks and start merging them into full stacks. Just store it as it is organized in-game. Don't over-engineer.

labambao · June 2019

I got some 480/240 bank since last year. All gear there is gold, with hakeijo enchants. When I stop subscribing I was just scared to touch it. But whatever, I don't use all that staff almost a year. Looks like I need just deconstruct it. But this wise I had a feel that here is a tonn of useless sets in game xD

Rowjoh · June 2019

An interesting thought for those that are anti-subscription....

The money that you spend on just ONE average night out on the town having a few beers, a bite to eat afterwards and a taxi home is equivalent to around 18 months subscription.

Ringeren · June 2019

i got ESO+ with craftbag and 480 slots bank, all 8 storage chests and 3 bank alts with increased inventory, still struggling on a daily basis with full storage. If we got a bottomless furniture chest and a tab in the craftbag for motif/recipes/blueprints i would be happy

Kuramas9tails · June 2019

I would like larger chest sizes over bank space because I like to separate and organize my items by what the set is for (example: Stamina DPS, Magic DPS, Magic Healer, etc) and we all know there are a lot of set variations for each one so it grows and overcrowds fast. And with ZOS changing things every patch, I like to hold onto certain sets not BIS for future patches that may have the set I mention as new BIS because I would rather not re-farm a trial or dungeon....again.

I was actually thinking last night as I was going through my bank, I wish there were a tab for easy access items. another example: I was making gear for my Necro for leveling and I have a LOT of sets in my bank. If I had a tab I could place the items in, it would make it faster and easier for me to find and pull them from the bank instead. Just like how people mentioned a "favorites" tab for costumes and accessories so you can find them easier for your characters.

There's just a lot of different ways ZOS can make things more convenient and sadly, I think they are implementing these way too slow. After 4 years and they finally added a way to search for guilds and find specific items in guild traders which I think all of these should have been there form the very beginning.

ZOS is really more about pushing out content than on convenience for the everyday player. Which makes me wonder what other ideas other players have for this. I am going to make a new discussion on this because I am really curious.

stitchesofdooom · June 2019

kargen27 wrote: »

stitchesofdooom wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I wouldn't mind more bank space but really it will not fix anything. We will have the new space filled in a few days and then want more space.

"We all know that supporting the Games-as-a-Service model is bad for gaming and bad for the gamer."

Nah, it helps keep games fresh. One time purchase stand alone games no matter how good after a while get stale and that ends your playing that game. It allows companies to put much more money into development at the starting stages of designing a game when they know the as a service model will extend the life of the game.

We don't know any of that other stuff either. At best you may suspect.

There's always one. I don't want to start a massive row here, but you're comepletely wrong.

The first thing you need to understand is that is costs less than $0.15/active player/month to keep even the most expensive and demanding gamer servers running. Total cost. Less that $2/YEAR.

Here is the GOOD model for online games, the one that should be:

Pay to buy the base game.
Pay to buy the DLC's
Pay a yearly sub of no more than $15/£10. That's YEARLY.
No more microtransaction store.

The base game will make hundreds of millions in profit. The DLC's make hundreds of millions in profit. The subs to pay for the servers make hundreds of millions in profit. This is yearly.

Events keep people interested in the game, but that's all covered easily by the $15/year sub. It's easily enough to run the servers and the studios alone.

This is a fact.

How does this benefit us? Simple. The game, and the DLC's, everything they do: the focus goes to making it all as good as humanly possible with their budget so as to sell the maximum number of units.

This raises overall quality, and quantity of quality.

On top of that, people stay engaged longer becuase now everything in the game is earnable (including the craft bag) AND the game becomes far less grindy. Dungeons are now more worth doing because you have a more reasonable chance of earning the things you want instead of these items being so grindy to get that you eventually buy them out of frustration.

Here is the current model of GaaS that you seem to think is okay (spoiler alert: it's not):

Grinding for things like motifs is drastically harder to encourage purchases in crown store.
"But I have crowns from subbing", you say? Well either you sub for crowns so you can buy the crown store items you like, or you sub for p2w things like the gameplay buffs and most importantly the Craft Bag.

This brings us to the point of the thread.

The craft bag is a necessity sooner or later as bank space is capped, chest space is capped, and more different kinds of items are being added all the time. This is not dissimilar to companies that make the game super grindy and then sell you exp boosters to ease the problem that THEY purposefully implimented into the game.

Are you getting it yet?

And with the GaaS model, the focus is constantly finding new and creative ways to get you to spend money. Profit through maximum in game sales over profit through selling as many units as possible. As long as quality is "acceptable" and profits keep rising, the company is happy.

You must be no older than in your early 20's because if you had been gaming in the late 90's-early 2000's, you'd have remembered a better time.

Back then, games were made to be as good as they could possibly make them, and they were polished to within an inch of their lives before release. Aside from graphics and tech, the games back then were amazing. At least more of them were. And when a bug was actually found it was a thing people talked about because bugs were hard to find. Like, REALLY hard to find.

Now ESO IS better than a lot of online games but the abhorrent greed of the way they do business isn't acceptable. Normalized, but not acceptable.

The good model I suggested, that would still turn a company a massive profit. There is one company in particular soon to prove that fact again.

The only problem is that the GaaS model makes MORE money. That's why they do it. So when you support it, you support the degredation of the quality of games. And what do you get for that?

...can you think of any live service games in the past year or 2 that have crashed and burned do to them being bug-ridden MVP..? Hmm..? HMM??

So many wrong assumptions and so many opinions listed as fact.

I'm 56 and started playing games on BBS's or by switching floppies out on my first computer. There were good games and broken games back then just like now. Sports games were notorious for bad releases where the only viable option was to go back to the previous version and hope the next would get back on track. Not the only things you got really really wrong. Games have the same problem other industries have. Product is pushed out early because stock holders or other investors want a launch to influence an otherwise lackluster quarterly report. Has nothing to do with whether the game is as a service or not.

And my personal opinion I think we expect more out of games than we once did because of all the hype and build-up before release. We are inundated with how massively great a game will be sometimes a year or more before actual release. All that anticipation can lead to a let down even if the game is good. Anticipation is funny like that.

Also I sub in this game because I think the game is fun and it is cheaper than going to one movie a month. The extra stuff is nice but none of it influences whether or not I keep my subscription up for this game.

Again you offered a whole lot of opinions but presented no facts to support your opinions. You just called your opinions facts. Doesn't work like that.

You briefly mentioned pay to win. I agree pay to win in games is bad. Luckily there is none of that in ESO and I hope it stays that way.

One more quick note. Give the condescending attitude a rest. HMM?

If you are indeed 2 decades my senior, you should know better.

As for "opinions stated as facts", that's very much a blanket statement akin to putting your fingers in your ears and yelling "lalalalalalalalalalalalala".

* Cost to make ESO: $200M
* 5M copies sold would have been enough to break even. Alas I cannot fiond launch sales figures (as those would have been full price sales).

* Running costs of the servers $0.15/active player/month - maximum total cost. If they are using their own servers it will be because it is cheaper to do so. That $1.80/player/year. x 10M players and you £18M/year to run the servers.
* Running cost of the studios approx $1M/week (that's the best info I can find) so that's £52M/year for the running of the studio.
* With a $15/year/player sub (as I have suggested) x 10M players = $150M/year.

* Server cost + studio cost = 70M/year. Deduct that from a hypothetical yearly sub cost of £150M and you have $80M/year profit.
* Sale of DLCs is pure profit. 2 dungeons at $7.50 each, one larger DLC at $30, one smaller DLC at $15 = $60/player/year. Say half wait for sales and also take tax and deductions from tax and let's say they make half of 10M players x $60, so $300M/year of pure profit as that small yearly sub would run the servers AND the studio and still make profit.

That would be $380M/year in profit and with the game improving to drive DLC sales and newcommers to the game, that number would only rise.

Sure those numbers are an estimation but yeah, feel free to try to argue with that.

stitchesofdooom · June 2019

Rowjoh wrote: »

An interesting thought for those that are anti-subscription....

The money that you spend on just ONE average night out on the town having a few beers, a bite to eat afterwards and a taxi home is equivalent to around 18 months subscription.

I refer you to my debate with @kargen27

stitchesofdooom · June 2019

Jayman1000 wrote: »

Emma_Overload wrote: »

Bank space needs to be about 1000 (2000 with ESO+). Many people on these forums are in denial about how many sets have been added to the game. Even with all chests and personal guild bank, I'm finally out of space. Deconstructing sets is not an option. Many of them were hard to obtain or cost a lot of gold. Deconning some of those sets would be like throwing away weeks of my life!

I think there should be an option for "hoarders" like you, where you could dole out some extra cash for even more storage chests. I mean, why not let you get what you want so you can play like you want, and let ZOS profit from that?

I've already suggested we be allowed to buy the craft bag out right

dodgehopper_ESO · June 2019

Bank space really should be increased. It is obvious to most people who play the game.

Tasear · June 2019

Let me buy 2 100 slot housing storage for monster helms and shoulders.

kargen27 · June 2019

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I wouldn't mind more bank space but really it will not fix anything. We will have the new space filled in a few days and then want more space.

"We all know that supporting the Games-as-a-Service model is bad for gaming and bad for the gamer."

Nah, it helps keep games fresh. One time purchase stand alone games no matter how good after a while get stale and that ends your playing that game. It allows companies to put much more money into development at the starting stages of designing a game when they know the as a service model will extend the life of the game.

We don't know any of that other stuff either. At best you may suspect.

The games don't get stale. You finish them and move to the next game. That is like saying the bread I already ate will get stale.

Bad analogy. Plenty of games are worth multiple times through without updating or providing more content. Civilization can be played over and over again. A piece of bread can only be eaten once. If the game you finished had new content released maybe you wouldn't move on to the next game. The game designers have the advantage of the base being finished when providing supplemental content instead of the need to start completely over.

kargen27 · June 2019

stitchesofdooom wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

stitchesofdooom wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I wouldn't mind more bank space but really it will not fix anything. We will have the new space filled in a few days and then want more space.

"We all know that supporting the Games-as-a-Service model is bad for gaming and bad for the gamer."

Nah, it helps keep games fresh. One time purchase stand alone games no matter how good after a while get stale and that ends your playing that game. It allows companies to put much more money into development at the starting stages of designing a game when they know the as a service model will extend the life of the game.

We don't know any of that other stuff either. At best you may suspect.

There's always one. I don't want to start a massive row here, but you're comepletely wrong.

The first thing you need to understand is that is costs less than $0.15/active player/month to keep even the most expensive and demanding gamer servers running. Total cost. Less that $2/YEAR.

Here is the GOOD model for online games, the one that should be:

Pay to buy the base game.
Pay to buy the DLC's
Pay a yearly sub of no more than $15/£10. That's YEARLY.
No more microtransaction store.

The base game will make hundreds of millions in profit. The DLC's make hundreds of millions in profit. The subs to pay for the servers make hundreds of millions in profit. This is yearly.

Events keep people interested in the game, but that's all covered easily by the $15/year sub. It's easily enough to run the servers and the studios alone.

This is a fact.

How does this benefit us? Simple. The game, and the DLC's, everything they do: the focus goes to making it all as good as humanly possible with their budget so as to sell the maximum number of units.

This raises overall quality, and quantity of quality.

On top of that, people stay engaged longer becuase now everything in the game is earnable (including the craft bag) AND the game becomes far less grindy. Dungeons are now more worth doing because you have a more reasonable chance of earning the things you want instead of these items being so grindy to get that you eventually buy them out of frustration.

Here is the current model of GaaS that you seem to think is okay (spoiler alert: it's not):

Grinding for things like motifs is drastically harder to encourage purchases in crown store.
"But I have crowns from subbing", you say? Well either you sub for crowns so you can buy the crown store items you like, or you sub for p2w things like the gameplay buffs and most importantly the Craft Bag.

This brings us to the point of the thread.

The craft bag is a necessity sooner or later as bank space is capped, chest space is capped, and more different kinds of items are being added all the time. This is not dissimilar to companies that make the game super grindy and then sell you exp boosters to ease the problem that THEY purposefully implimented into the game.

Are you getting it yet?

And with the GaaS model, the focus is constantly finding new and creative ways to get you to spend money. Profit through maximum in game sales over profit through selling as many units as possible. As long as quality is "acceptable" and profits keep rising, the company is happy.

You must be no older than in your early 20's because if you had been gaming in the late 90's-early 2000's, you'd have remembered a better time.

Back then, games were made to be as good as they could possibly make them, and they were polished to within an inch of their lives before release. Aside from graphics and tech, the games back then were amazing. At least more of them were. And when a bug was actually found it was a thing people talked about because bugs were hard to find. Like, REALLY hard to find.

Now ESO IS better than a lot of online games but the abhorrent greed of the way they do business isn't acceptable. Normalized, but not acceptable.

The good model I suggested, that would still turn a company a massive profit. There is one company in particular soon to prove that fact again.

The only problem is that the GaaS model makes MORE money. That's why they do it. So when you support it, you support the degredation of the quality of games. And what do you get for that?

...can you think of any live service games in the past year or 2 that have crashed and burned do to them being bug-ridden MVP..? Hmm..? HMM??

So many wrong assumptions and so many opinions listed as fact.

I'm 56 and started playing games on BBS's or by switching floppies out on my first computer. There were good games and broken games back then just like now. Sports games were notorious for bad releases where the only viable option was to go back to the previous version and hope the next would get back on track. Not the only things you got really really wrong. Games have the same problem other industries have. Product is pushed out early because stock holders or other investors want a launch to influence an otherwise lackluster quarterly report. Has nothing to do with whether the game is as a service or not.

And my personal opinion I think we expect more out of games than we once did because of all the hype and build-up before release. We are inundated with how massively great a game will be sometimes a year or more before actual release. All that anticipation can lead to a let down even if the game is good. Anticipation is funny like that.

Also I sub in this game because I think the game is fun and it is cheaper than going to one movie a month. The extra stuff is nice but none of it influences whether or not I keep my subscription up for this game.

Again you offered a whole lot of opinions but presented no facts to support your opinions. You just called your opinions facts. Doesn't work like that.

You briefly mentioned pay to win. I agree pay to win in games is bad. Luckily there is none of that in ESO and I hope it stays that way.

One more quick note. Give the condescending attitude a rest. HMM?

If you are indeed 2 decades my senior, you should know better.

As for "opinions stated as facts", that's very much a blanket statement akin to putting your fingers in your ears and yelling "lalalalalalalalalalalalala".

* Cost to make ESO: $200M
* 5M copies sold would have been enough to break even. Alas I cannot fiond launch sales figures (as those would have been full price sales).

* Running costs of the servers $0.15/active player/month - maximum total cost. If they are using their own servers it will be because it is cheaper to do so. That $1.80/player/year. x 10M players and you £18M/year to run the servers.
* Running cost of the studios approx $1M/week (that's the best info I can find) so that's £52M/year for the running of the studio.
* With a $15/year/player sub (as I have suggested) x 10M players = $150M/year.

* Server cost + studio cost = 70M/year. Deduct that from a hypothetical yearly sub cost of £150M and you have $80M/year profit.
* Sale of DLCs is pure profit. 2 dungeons at $7.50 each, one larger DLC at $30, one smaller DLC at $15 = $60/player/year. Say half wait for sales and also take tax and deductions from tax and let's say they make half of 10M players x $60, so $300M/year of pure profit as that small yearly sub would run the servers AND the studio and still make profit.

That would be $380M/year in profit and with the game improving to drive DLC sales and newcommers to the game, that number would only rise.

Sure those numbers are an estimation but yeah, feel free to try to argue with that.

No need to argue with that. You are trying to go off on a tangent. You are claiming games as a service is the death of gaming. Showing that ZoS can turn a profit even if it lowered the subscription price does nothing to support your claims of games as a service wrecking the gaming industry. You are also extremely simplifying some things and assuming others. Do you know how many people that sub now might skip a DLC instead of purchasing it outright? Your 10 million is over the life of the game. Some have moved on. Some come and go. As the game is now the estimate is about 2.5 million active players. Some who sub and some who do not. How many would move on if a sub (even as small as you suggested) were required? Many other things you have failed to consider in your profit model. For instance you need to take into account development and research before the game even went to market.

Doesn't matter though as how much money is or is not being generated isn't what we are arguing about. We are arguing whether or not games as a service is bad for games. Obviously it is not as games that follow this model are thriving. There is still a big resistance to single player games tied to an online service or a subscription but for multi player game as a service is fairly standard and the games are doing very well. New content means the game stays fresh.

Emma_Overload · June 2019

Jayman1000 wrote: »

Emma_Overload wrote: »

Bank space needs to be about 1000 (2000 with ESO+). Many people on these forums are in denial about how many sets have been added to the game. Even with all chests and personal guild bank, I'm finally out of space. Deconstructing sets is not an option. Many of them were hard to obtain or cost a lot of gold. Deconning some of those sets would be like throwing away weeks of my life!

I think there should be an option for "hoarders" like you, where you could dole out some extra cash for even more storage chests. I mean, why not let you get what you want so you can play like you want, and let ZOS profit from that?

You are correct. I wouldn't think twice about dropping $100 on an extra 1000 slots. This would be a win for ZOS and for hoarders.

darthgummibear_ESO · June 2019

This is just like one of those threads with people asking for non-subs to get the crafting bag. They aren't going to give huge sub incentives to people who play the game for free.

stitchesofdooom · June 2019

kargen27 wrote: »

stitchesofdooom wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

stitchesofdooom wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I wouldn't mind more bank space but really it will not fix anything. We will have the new space filled in a few days and then want more space.

"We all know that supporting the Games-as-a-Service model is bad for gaming and bad for the gamer."

Nah, it helps keep games fresh. One time purchase stand alone games no matter how good after a while get stale and that ends your playing that game. It allows companies to put much more money into development at the starting stages of designing a game when they know the as a service model will extend the life of the game.

We don't know any of that other stuff either. At best you may suspect.

There's always one. I don't want to start a massive row here, but you're comepletely wrong.

The first thing you need to understand is that is costs less than $0.15/active player/month to keep even the most expensive and demanding gamer servers running. Total cost. Less that $2/YEAR.

Here is the GOOD model for online games, the one that should be:

Pay to buy the base game.
Pay to buy the DLC's
Pay a yearly sub of no more than $15/£10. That's YEARLY.
No more microtransaction store.

The base game will make hundreds of millions in profit. The DLC's make hundreds of millions in profit. The subs to pay for the servers make hundreds of millions in profit. This is yearly.

Events keep people interested in the game, but that's all covered easily by the $15/year sub. It's easily enough to run the servers and the studios alone.

This is a fact.

How does this benefit us? Simple. The game, and the DLC's, everything they do: the focus goes to making it all as good as humanly possible with their budget so as to sell the maximum number of units.

This raises overall quality, and quantity of quality.

On top of that, people stay engaged longer becuase now everything in the game is earnable (including the craft bag) AND the game becomes far less grindy. Dungeons are now more worth doing because you have a more reasonable chance of earning the things you want instead of these items being so grindy to get that you eventually buy them out of frustration.

Here is the current model of GaaS that you seem to think is okay (spoiler alert: it's not):

Grinding for things like motifs is drastically harder to encourage purchases in crown store.
"But I have crowns from subbing", you say? Well either you sub for crowns so you can buy the crown store items you like, or you sub for p2w things like the gameplay buffs and most importantly the Craft Bag.

This brings us to the point of the thread.

The craft bag is a necessity sooner or later as bank space is capped, chest space is capped, and more different kinds of items are being added all the time. This is not dissimilar to companies that make the game super grindy and then sell you exp boosters to ease the problem that THEY purposefully implimented into the game.

Are you getting it yet?

And with the GaaS model, the focus is constantly finding new and creative ways to get you to spend money. Profit through maximum in game sales over profit through selling as many units as possible. As long as quality is "acceptable" and profits keep rising, the company is happy.

You must be no older than in your early 20's because if you had been gaming in the late 90's-early 2000's, you'd have remembered a better time.

Back then, games were made to be as good as they could possibly make them, and they were polished to within an inch of their lives before release. Aside from graphics and tech, the games back then were amazing. At least more of them were. And when a bug was actually found it was a thing people talked about because bugs were hard to find. Like, REALLY hard to find.

Now ESO IS better than a lot of online games but the abhorrent greed of the way they do business isn't acceptable. Normalized, but not acceptable.

The good model I suggested, that would still turn a company a massive profit. There is one company in particular soon to prove that fact again.

The only problem is that the GaaS model makes MORE money. That's why they do it. So when you support it, you support the degredation of the quality of games. And what do you get for that?

...can you think of any live service games in the past year or 2 that have crashed and burned do to them being bug-ridden MVP..? Hmm..? HMM??

So many wrong assumptions and so many opinions listed as fact.

I'm 56 and started playing games on BBS's or by switching floppies out on my first computer. There were good games and broken games back then just like now. Sports games were notorious for bad releases where the only viable option was to go back to the previous version and hope the next would get back on track. Not the only things you got really really wrong. Games have the same problem other industries have. Product is pushed out early because stock holders or other investors want a launch to influence an otherwise lackluster quarterly report. Has nothing to do with whether the game is as a service or not.

And my personal opinion I think we expect more out of games than we once did because of all the hype and build-up before release. We are inundated with how massively great a game will be sometimes a year or more before actual release. All that anticipation can lead to a let down even if the game is good. Anticipation is funny like that.

Also I sub in this game because I think the game is fun and it is cheaper than going to one movie a month. The extra stuff is nice but none of it influences whether or not I keep my subscription up for this game.

Again you offered a whole lot of opinions but presented no facts to support your opinions. You just called your opinions facts. Doesn't work like that.

You briefly mentioned pay to win. I agree pay to win in games is bad. Luckily there is none of that in ESO and I hope it stays that way.

One more quick note. Give the condescending attitude a rest. HMM?

If you are indeed 2 decades my senior, you should know better.

As for "opinions stated as facts", that's very much a blanket statement akin to putting your fingers in your ears and yelling "lalalalalalalalalalalalala".

* Cost to make ESO: $200M
* 5M copies sold would have been enough to break even. Alas I cannot fiond launch sales figures (as those would have been full price sales).

* Running costs of the servers $0.15/active player/month - maximum total cost. If they are using their own servers it will be because it is cheaper to do so. That $1.80/player/year. x 10M players and you £18M/year to run the servers.
* Running cost of the studios approx $1M/week (that's the best info I can find) so that's £52M/year for the running of the studio.
* With a $15/year/player sub (as I have suggested) x 10M players = $150M/year.

* Server cost + studio cost = 70M/year. Deduct that from a hypothetical yearly sub cost of £150M and you have $80M/year profit.
* Sale of DLCs is pure profit. 2 dungeons at $7.50 each, one larger DLC at $30, one smaller DLC at $15 = $60/player/year. Say half wait for sales and also take tax and deductions from tax and let's say they make half of 10M players x $60, so $300M/year of pure profit as that small yearly sub would run the servers AND the studio and still make profit.

That would be $380M/year in profit and with the game improving to drive DLC sales and newcommers to the game, that number would only rise.

Sure those numbers are an estimation but yeah, feel free to try to argue with that.

No need to argue with that. You are trying to go off on a tangent. You are claiming games as a service is the death of gaming. Showing that ZoS can turn a profit even if it lowered the subscription price does nothing to support your claims of games as a service wrecking the gaming industry. You are also extremely simplifying some things and assuming others. Do you know how many people that sub now might skip a DLC instead of purchasing it outright? Your 10 million is over the life of the game. Some have moved on. Some come and go. As the game is now the estimate is about 2.5 million active players. Some who sub and some who do not. How many would move on if a sub (even as small as you suggested) were required? Many other things you have failed to consider in your profit model. For instance you need to take into account development and research before the game even went to market.

Doesn't matter though as how much money is or is not being generated isn't what we are arguing about. We are arguing whether or not games as a service is bad for games. Obviously it is not as games that follow this model are thriving. There is still a big resistance to single player games tied to an online service or a subscription but for multi player game as a service is fairly standard and the games are doing very well. New content means the game stays fresh.

I'm going off on a tangent? ME?

You honestly can't think of a single GaaS game that has been released as MVP, with the microtransaction shop being the only thing that works right? Are you serious?

Also, I already included the cost of making the game. They like to take every penny into account because the more they can say it cost, the better people think it will be.

Now ESO is by no means a bad game, but some of the practices ARE unsavory. Limited time items they COULD sell all your round. Crown store only items. Capping bag space then renting a storage solution. Regular reminders of items for sale in the crown store.

Even if you cut that profit margin in half, it's still a LOT of money. And a yearly sub over a monthly sub, you honestly think that people would reject the model I proposed?

The point is that a less predatory model would still make a lot of money. And the game would be less grindy and generally improved across the board - this would bring people back and add more people. The focus would be pleasing as many people as possible, not parting as many people as possible with as much of their cash as possible.

I honestly don't see how someone who has gamed longer than me can disagree with any of this after seeing how good gaming can be in years gone by.

stitchesofdooom · June 2019

darthgummibear_ESO wrote: »

This is just like one of those threads with people asking for non-subs to get the crafting bag. They aren't going to give huge sub incentives to people who play the game for free.

It's a request for a bank space increace, to accomodate the constant increace in different types of items in the game.