Is the Crown Store for exploiting ignorant people?

MrBrownstone · September 2019

Yes, there are lots of nice items you can get with Crowns, especially the DLCs, and I've bought tons of things but still,

There are tons of overpriced items which you can acquire for much cheaper with in-game gold, like;
- Most of the Crafting Styles. It's much cheaper to acquire them in-game instead of paying 5k Crowns. You can even sell 5k Crowns instead and buy the Style with a portion of the gold.
- Event tickets. In almost every event, acquiring the tickets in-game is extremely easy. Like this one, you just spend 15-20 minutes for a dungeon. I wouldn't even pay 50.
- All the potions, food, scrolls, soul gems etc. and the packs that include them. These items are literally free in-game, you get tons of stacks of them doing nothing.

While most of the costumes, styles that are unavailable in-game, mounts and especially the wonderful DLC are worth it, the ones I listed are a joke.
Not even gonna mention the crates but that's a whole other story and it's already discussed a lot.

EDIT: I forgot to include the worst, Werewolf & Vampire curse...

VaranisArano · September 2019

Most of those are more like "exploiting people who want to buy items quick instead of actually playing the game."

Its "pay for convenience."

You want it free, or you want it cheap for gold?

Play the game.

bharathitman · September 2019

The things that you listed are for people who are lazy. Even to sell your crowns to another player it requires time and effort. On consoles the motif market is not overflowing with motifs like PC/EU and some of them are really difficult to find with no Tamriel Trade Center to help you out.
Same with event tickets, people might have missed out on them due to other commitments or simply by being plain lazy

Ingenon · September 2019

I believe that ZOS lists items in the Crown Store that they believe will sell, so they can make money. To their credit, they are not coding ESO so that you must buy Crown Store items in order to finish end game content. The things you listed are mostly cosmetic items. And some folks must be buying them, else I am sure that ZOS would pull them from the Crown Store. I say to each his own. If folks want to spend money instead of spending time in game collecting ...

CaffeinatedMayhem · September 2019

MrBumblefoot wrote: »

Yes, there are lots of nice items you can get with Crowns, especially the DLCs, and I've bought tons of things but still,

There are tons of overpriced items which you can acquire for much cheaper with in-game gold, like;
- Most of the Crafting Styles. It's much cheaper to acquire them in-game instead of paying 5k Crowns. You can even sell 5k Crowns instead and buy the Style with a portion of the gold.
- Event tickets. In almost every event, acquiring the tickets in-game is extremely easy. Like this one, you just spend 15-20 minutes for a dungeon. I wouldn't even pay 50.
- All the potions, food, scrolls, soul gems etc. and the packs that include them. These items are literally free in-game, you get tons of stacks of them doing nothing.

While most of the costumes, styles that are unavailable in-game, mounts and especially the wonderful DLC are worth it, the ones I listed are a joke.
Not even gonna mention the crates but that's a whole other story and it's already discussed a lot.

I buy dungeon/trial motifs from the crown store (buy crowns with gold) because it's cheaper than buying individual pages (PC/NA).

Event tickets are for those who may have missed events, and those who aren't patient.

The items are for those who aren't in guilds and don't know about all the free stuff. It's not perfect, and rather sketchy, but it's better than quitting the game because you don't have food or soul gems.

idk · September 2019

I think it is a matter of choice. If you think something is over prices then do not buy it. Pretty sure Zos' bank account shows the items are not over priced. Otherwise they would reduce the prices.

Further, why are you buying motifs in game with gold. Do the content and get the motifs yourself, even sell the extras to those not capable of clearing the content on a difficulty mode required to efficiently farm the motifs.

It just does not make sense to complain about the crown store price of something you can get for free in game. It just sounds like someone merely wants to complain.

RaddlemanNumber7 · September 2019

Those things are in the crown store to exploit lazy rich people, which is entirely OK by me. Same with the pay-to-not-play skill lines.

Elsonso · September 2019

The only thing I really consider to be "exploiting the player" would be outfit slots. They need to add text to the description to say that they are a single slot for the current character.

Saucy_Jack · September 2019

To be honest there's a number of motifs that it's actually *cheaper* to buy crowns for than it is to buy from traders. The cheapest Honor Guard motif pages I've seen in the traders was for ~50k, with the chest page alone going for 400-600k according to my recent TTC search. So even *IF* all other pages went for the cheap 50k price (absolutely not likely), that's (50k*13) + (400 to 600k) for the whole motif, which comes out to 1.05 - 1.25 million gold total. Given that the other pages are certainly selling for more than 50k on average, we can safely up the estimate by 200k, to 1.25 - 1.45 million.

Newer motifs in the CS have historically had prices of either 5k or 6k crowns; at the general price of 200g per crown, that comes out to 1 - 1.2 million gold, which is cheaper than buying it in the traders - even cheaper if you can get a better deal from a guildie than 200:1.

Vlad9425 · September 2019

Most games nowadays have these “Stores” packed full of micro transactions. I don’t usually buy anything from the crown store anymore unless some kind of really cool outfit shows up in there (this hasn’t happened in a while). The best thing to do is avoid the store altogether and especially avoid the Gambling RNG crates but only buy the stuff that you find appealing and see the price is reasonable.

Shantu · September 2019

ESO is a game we voluntarily play. Beyond that, it's hard to see how anything can be considered exploitative.

bluebird · September 2019

Yes the Crown Store is overpriced at best, and purposefully misleading and scammy at worst.

Motifs: Yes these are overpriced. Ancient Elf, Barbaric, Primal and Daedric for 5,000c? Lmao.
Skill lines, Skyshards: While these are definitely overpriced as they are really easy to get ingame, they are a convenience option and new players can't purchase them so nobody is getting scammed.
Soul gems, Mimic Stones, Consumables: Overpriced garbage. But I hope new players find out early into the game that they don't need to buy any of this from the store as they're easy to get ingame, so I hope they won't fall for it.
Vampire and Werewolf bites and cure: Misleading. Buying a bite ingame would be considerably cheaper, not to mention that you can usually get it for free from mobs or players too. The cure is also cheap for gold. Yet there is no way of learning about this if you aren't part of the community so it's quite misleading for new players.
Research Scrolls and Horse Training: Overpriced and scammy. The game doesn't have to have arbitrary timegating that drags out crafting research for months. There's also no reason to limit our horse training to 1 per day - they don't limit out bagspace upgrade to 1 per day at the Pack Merchant either, so why shouldn't we be able to buy as much training as our gold allows as well? Game systems are purposefully designed to be a hassle for no good reason other than to drag them out, only to sell the solution for cash.
Outfit slots: Overpriced and misleading. There's plenty of threads on the Forum about people buying an Outfit Slot Upgrade thinking that it is Account Wide - Outfit Styles are account wide, why wouldn't Outfit slots be? Well they aren't and there's nothing to indicate that. ZOS charge the same price for a Character Slot, as they charge for one Outfit Slot for one single character. For that price, it should be account-wide. Or if it's character bound it should be a lot less.
DLCs: Overpriced. I know you said that DLCs are worth it, but I disagree. FFXIV's Shadowbringers expansion costs 40 bucks and adds 5 zones, 2 new classes, 2 new races, 9 dungeons, 2 raids, a host of game modes and new systems. In ESO for 27 bucks Morrowind adds 1 zone and 1 trial, for 20 Murkmire adds 1 zone and 1 arena. The only redeeming feature of DLCs is that they're included in the subscription - but to buy actually buy them is incredibly overpriced for the amount of content.
Mounts, Costumes, Pets, Houses, Furniture: Overpriced, but this is a matter of opinion as some people may find cosmetic fluff worth their cash. Though some mounts (like the Dark Stag), some houses, and most furniture packs (some cost more than an entire house) definitely have crazy pricetags and that's a fact, not an opinion.

I also strongly disagree with the notion that these prices are somehow to protect gameplay and the ingame economy. No, the prices aren't high because convenience options should cost a lot of money to maintain the integrity of gameplay - they're just high because ZOS wants to charge players as much as possible. Trait Research and Mount Training timegating isn't 'gameplay' it's just an unnecessary problem that ZOS sells the solution to. Skill lines and Skyshards don't cost that much to preserve gameplay (if they wanted to preserve gameplay they shouldn't have been added at all), it's simply to profit off of it. So I find it rather naive to defend Crown Store prices thinking that they somehow serve the playerbase when in fact they're determined by however much money ZOS thinks they can get away with.

MehrunesFlagon · September 2019

MrBumblefoot wrote: »

Yes, there are lots of nice items you can get with Crowns, especially the DLCs, and I've bought tons of things but still,

There are tons of overpriced items which you can acquire for much cheaper with in-game gold, like;
- Most of the Crafting Styles. It's much cheaper to acquire them in-game instead of paying 5k Crowns. You can even sell 5k Crowns instead and buy the Style with a portion of the gold.
- Event tickets. In almost every event, acquiring the tickets in-game is extremely easy. Like this one, you just spend 15-20 minutes for a dungeon. I wouldn't even pay 50.
- All the potions, food, scrolls, soul gems etc. and the packs that include them. These items are literally free in-game, you get tons of stacks of them doing nothing.

While most of the costumes, styles that are unavailable in-game, mounts and especially the wonderful DLC are worth it, the ones I listed are a joke.
Not even gonna mention the crates but that's a whole other story and it's already discussed a lot.

I question why the food and potions are even in the crown store.

Elsonso · September 2019

bluebird wrote: »

I also strongly disagree with the notion that these prices are somehow to protect gameplay and the ingame economy. No, the prices aren't high because convenience options should cost a lot of money to maintain the integrity of gameplay - they're just high because ZOS wants to charge players as much as possible. Trait Research and Mount Training timegating isn't 'gameplay' it's just an unnecessary problem that ZOS sells the solution to. Skill lines and Skyshards don't cost that much to preserve gameplay (if they wanted to preserve gameplay they shouldn't have been added at all), it's simply to profit off of it. So I find it rather naive to defend Crown Store prices thinking that they somehow serve the playerbase when in fact they're determined by however much money ZOS thinks they can get away with.

For some of these things in the Crown Store, they make the in-game versions trials for the faithful. Every time someone crafts food, drink, or potions in the game, or finds and collects motifs, or uses the outfit system to make an outfit rather than buying a costume, a tear forms in the eye of an accountant.

Once you purchase the game, ZOS makes no money on playing the game. Free to Play with an initial buy-in. The focus on revenue is ESO Plus and Crown Store, and the focus of the Crown Store is Crates. Ultimately, the only players that really matter are the ones spending money in the Crown Store, buying doo-dads and (especially) Crates, and subscribing to ESO Plus.

Eirinin · September 2019

bluebird wrote: »

Yes the Crown Store is overpriced at best, and purposefully misleading and scammy at worst.
Motifs: Yes these are overpriced. Ancient Elf, Barbaric, Primal and Daedric for 5,000c? Lmao.

Skill lines, Skyshards: While these are definitely overpriced as they are really easy to get ingame, they are a convenience option and new players can't purchase them so nobody is getting scammed.

Soul gems, Mimic Stones, Consumables: Overpriced garbage. But I hope new players find out early into the game that they don't need to buy any of this from the store as they're easy to get ingame, so I hope they won't fall for it.

Vampire and Werewolf bites and cure: Misleading. Buying a bite ingame would be considerably cheaper, not to mention that you can usually get it for free from mobs or players too. The cure is also cheap for gold. Yet there is no way of learning about this if you aren't part of the community so it's quite misleading for new players.

Research Scrolls and Horse Training: Overpriced and scammy. The game doesn't have to have arbitrary timegating that drags out crafting research for months. There's also no reason to limit our horse training to 1 per day - they don't limit out bagspace upgrade to 1 per day at the Pack Merchant either, so why shouldn't we be able to buy as much training as our gold allows as well? Game systems are purposefully designed to be a hassle for no good reason other than to drag them out, only to sell the solution for cash.

Outfit slots: Overpriced and misleading. There's plenty of threads on the Forum about people buying an Outfit Slot Upgrade thinking that it is Account Wide - Outfit Styles are account wide, why wouldn't Outfit slots be? Well they aren't and there's nothing to indicate that. ZOS charge the same price for a Character Slot, as they charge for one Outfit Slot for one single character. For that price, it should be account-wide. Or if it's character bound it should be a lot less.

DLCs: Overpriced. I know you said that DLCs are worth it, but I disagree. FFXIV's Shadowbringers expansion costs 40 bucks and adds 5 zones, 2 new classes, 2 new races, 9 dungeons, 2 raids, a host of game modes and new systems. In ESO for 27 bucks Morrowind adds 1 zone and 1 trial, for 20 Murkmire adds 1 zone and 1 arena. The only redeeming feature of DLCs is that they're included in the subscription - but to buy actually buy them is incredibly overpriced for the amount of content.

Mounts, Costumes, Pets, Houses, Furniture: Overpriced, but this is a matter of opinion as some people may find cosmetic fluff worth their cash. Though some mounts (like the Dark Stag), some houses, and most furniture packs (some cost more than an entire house) definitely have crazy pricetags and that's a fact, not an opinion.

I also strongly disagree with the notion that these prices are somehow to protect gameplay and the ingame economy. No, the prices aren't high because convenience options should cost a lot of money to maintain the integrity of gameplay - they're just high because ZOS wants to charge players as much as possible. Trait Research and Mount Training timegating isn't 'gameplay' it's just an unnecessary problem that ZOS sells the solution to. Skill lines and Skyshards don't cost that much to preserve gameplay (if they wanted to preserve gameplay they shouldn't have been added at all), it's simply to profit off of it. So I find it rather naive to defend Crown Store prices thinking that they somehow serve the playerbase when in fact they're determined by however much money ZOS thinks they can get away with.

I could not agree more with you. The prices are astronomical on many many items and as you wisely pointed out, a good bit of what is offered are solutions to problems ZOS made.

I was stunned to learn the vampire/werewolf bites could be had in game (joined a guild and folks are offering them if anyone wanted) because like so many things in the crown store, it was just put out there in a way that gave me the impression his was a crown store only thing. Same with the outfit slot. Good Lord, for that price it should be account wide not just one stinking character!

Cadbury · September 2019

"It's nothing personal. It's just business."

redspecter23 · September 2019

One of the worst scams against ignorant players is the werewolf/vampire cure. It says a lot about a company that they would want players to spend $$$ instead of the easily available option in game for couple hundred gold.

Many of the other examples are much more subjective and highly based on your disposable income versus time you want to spend in game. Basically convenience. Any convenience value of the crown store cures is offset by the MASSIVE disparity in price with the ingame option. The crown option would have to be about 2 crowns to be comparable. Let's be generous and say 5 as it lets you cure yourself anywhere and not just one specific overland location.

It's absolutely insulting to see that in the crown store.

Red_Feather · September 2019

Some of the motifs on for sale are indeed scummy in their pricing. The mercenary and generic race styles selling for ridiculous crowns. You can get those for free, or close to free, in game.

Rastaman111 · September 2019

I only buy some costumes and skins

daemonios · September 2019

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: as basically all in-game stores, ESO's Clown Store exploits known phenomena in order to drive sales. Grind avoidance, exclusive content, often time-limited, disconnect between real money price and in-game currency price, 2 in-game currencies for added effect... It may be slightly better than some in that most things are still purely cosmetic. But in the end I believe the game has changed for the worse due to the Clown Store and the bed need (damn you, phone autocorrect! *shakesfist*) to drive Clown sales.

Cadbury · September 2019

In this day and age, it pays to view any form of micro transactions with scrutiny and scepticism. Thanks, EA.

D0PAMINE · September 2019

You think im ignant cause I live in the hood

Austinseph1 · September 2019

An old saying comes to mind, I believe it was a fool and his money are soon parted. The kind of person that doesn’t research what he is buying is bound to waste it somewhere, why not on ESO 😂

Runkorko · September 2019

MrBrownstone wrote: »

Yes, there are lots of nice items you can get with Crowns, especially the DLCs, and I've bought tons of things but still,

There are tons of overpriced items which you can acquire for much cheaper with in-game gold, like;
- Most of the Crafting Styles. It's much cheaper to acquire them in-game instead of paying 5k Crowns. You can even sell 5k Crowns instead and buy the Style with a portion of the gold.
- Event tickets. In almost every event, acquiring the tickets in-game is extremely easy. Like this one, you just spend 15-20 minutes for a dungeon. I wouldn't even pay 50.
- All the potions, food, scrolls, soul gems etc. and the packs that include them. These items are literally free in-game, you get tons of stacks of them doing nothing.

While most of the costumes, styles that are unavailable in-game, mounts and especially the wonderful DLC are worth it, the ones I listed are a joke.
Not even gonna mention the crates but that's a whole other story and it's already discussed a lot.

EDIT: I forgot to include the worst, Werewolf & Vampire curse...

Store is more than fine.
Dont bother...
(not sarcastic)

zyk · September 2019

I doubt there's a correlation to intelligence.

It's basically a fact that Crates are exploitative. They are virtual scratch cards. Gambling has been thoroughly studied in social science and unfortunately the lessons learned have been applied to gaming. To some people, they are extremely addictive. Gambling is heavily regulated in most civilized societies because it causes so many social issues.

Outside of Crates, the problem with the Crown Store is that it's an 800lb Gorilla. There's nothing inherently wrong with a store selling virtual items for people who enjoy that kind of thing. The problem is how it impacts the rest of the game.

The Crown Store doesn't exist a in vacuum. It impacts the rest of the game in many tangible ways.

For example, performance. Whether one participates in the Crown Store or not, all players must deal with the performance implications. Not only does the huge catalog of art assets for sale degrade client and server performance, ZOS has also had to devote development resources towards that in order to support the Crown Store as it exists today. It's the big reason why there were so many performance issues introduced in 2.2 and why ZOS was so aggressive in pushing out the 64 bit client starting in 2.3.

The game wasn't designed to support the huge number of items introduced through the Crown Store. That had to be engineered. Instead of fixing longstanding bugs like the 30-50% FPS drop bug and server performance issues, ZOS engineers have been focused on designing infrastructure for a more robust Crown Store.

It's also opened the door to player RMT. Players can buy any tradable item or services such as raid carries with cash now; via Cash -> Crowns -> Gold conversion. This was one of the last straws for me. I don't like games with sanctioned RMT.

Next to PVP, the in-game player economy was my 2nd favorite part of ESO. Now good traders are second class citizens to whales who are only limited by their rl wealth and -- probably more common -- credit limits. That part of the game is completely ruined to me now.

These are just some examples off the top of my head. A thorough analysis would take pages. too long; didn't write: The Crown Store has been so profitable, it has come to dominate the direction of the development of ESO, in terms of performance, development resources, gameplay and the player economy.

daemonios · September 2019

Austinseph1 wrote: »

An old saying comes to mind, I believe it was a fool and his money are soon parted. The kind of person that doesn’t research what he is buying is bound to waste it somewhere, why not on ESO 😂

Because in order to catch those fools, they make the game worse for everyone. I would prefer to still be able to purchase mounts specializing in a given trait that you can max in a matter of weeks instead of 6 months, and pick up motifs as books instead of pages or fragments, and not have to deal with refined style and trait materials in addition to the raw materials, and have decent tools in the game for guilds, guild stores, group finder, etc. because ZOS has to sell subscriptions, instead of ignoring all of these or making them a grind to force Clown sales on top of the ESO+ crafting bag.

MehrunesFlagon · September 2019

bluebird wrote: »

Yes the Crown Store is overpriced at best, and purposefully misleading and scammy at worst.
Vampire and Werewolf bites and cure: Misleading. Buying a bite ingame would be considerably cheaper, not to mention that you can usually get it for free from mobs or players too. The cure is also cheap for gold. Yet there is no way of learning about this if you aren't part of the community so it's quite misleading for new players.

The worst part is that on the curses is they actually tell you it can be cured by a priest of Arkay,and then they try to sell you a cure at the bottom of the screen.

SirAxen · September 2019

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe mind your own business.

corpseblade · September 2019

Anyone playing needs to use google. This game is not great at explaining a lot of things, especially the vampire/werewolf bites and cures. If you play anytime at all you see in zone people offering bites for free or for gold. I have seen people new to the game pay gold for roast pig recipes b/c they didn't know it was free near Daniel Tellano. The crown store option is for convenience.

I agree the outfit slots are a rip off.

The shards and guild lines are a result of all the crying in the forums about having to repeat content. They wanted account-wide. Traditionists objected. Zos split the baby and put them in the crown store. Neither side is happy but the forums are a lot quieter on this topic.

Mount training has the same rationale as daily rewards. It keeps you signing in. Plus it takes out some gold. You can pay for the convenience of skipping this in the crown store.

Crown crates are an issue for many people. I liked and bought them b/c I found them fun and it's my disposable income. I stopped buying them when I saw the massive additions of tattoos, makeup, earrings etc. and dyes that diluted peoples' chances of getting something like a mount, pet, or furniture. Also they added formerly crown store available items. The exorbitant gem only pets and mounts pushed me over the limit.

In sum, the crown store per se doesn't bother me. It is how far they are stretching the boundaries. As well I am concerned that my money is not supporting just this game. And that can be traced to performance issues mainly.

Amanuensis · September 2019

Flogging a dead horse doesn't make it any less of a dead horse.