Crown Crate changes and alternatives

Avariprivateer · September 2019

The current state of Crown Crate odds are not terribly great. For this reason a large number of people have almost certainly avoided them. It may be worth asking if ZOS wants a thousands of "whales" or tens of thousands of "porpoises" who are not fleeced to Utumno and back. I had I few ideas regarding this.
1: Make all Crate items drop at a 1:1 ratio
2: Make junk items worth more gems or gem prices lower
3: Remove junk items
4: Separate crates into Mount/Steed Crates, Pet Crates, House Crates and Clothier Crates
5: Institute a requirement that the first card always drops a mount or pet, second a bag of clothes or jewelry, third a potion or whatever, fourth weapon/rug/glowworm convention or raven or rook in a pine
6: Eliminate crates, sell directly
7: House Crates!!

thermatico · September 2019

RNG.

I feel like we get at least 3 of these threads every time a new crate drops. If you are worried about the drop rate don't buy the crates. Seems pretty simple.

Avariprivateer · September 2019

thermatico wrote: »

RNG.

I feel like we get at least 3 of these threads every time a new crate drops. If you are worried about the drop rate don't buy the crates. Seems pretty simple.

Oh, I don't, I was just thinking out loud.

Ode2Order · September 2019

Avariprivateer wrote: »

The current state of Crown Crate odds are not terribly great. For this reason a large number of people have almost certainly avoided them. It may be worth asking if ZOS wants a thousands of "whales" or tens of thousands of "porpoises" who are not fleeced to Utumno and back. I had I few ideas regarding this.
1: Make all Crate items drop at a 1:1 ratio
2: Make junk items worth more gems or gem prices lower
3: Remove junk items
4: Separate crates into Mount/Steed Crates, Pet Crates, House Crates and Clothier Crates
5: Institute a requirement that the first card always drops a mount or pet, second a bag of clothes or jewelry, third a potion or whatever, fourth weapon/rug/glowworm convention or raven or rook in a pine
6: Eliminate crates, sell directly
7: House Crates!!

1: they can't do that bc it would eliminate the excitement of getting a rare mount, and thus decrease the amount of people buying crates. That's the ZOS objective.
2: agreed! it definitely sucks when you get dupes and only get a fourth of the value. Like, gimme something I don't have instead of the fourth copy of the same minipet.
3: Incompatible with 2, and also how are you gonna get crown gems if they do this? Bad idea.
4: Would lessen the RNG, but refer to point 1
5: There should at least be 1 drop per crate that isn't junk, agreed.
6: I wish. I wish.
7: Lol so what, people would pay 10k crowns to get a random house? I'm assuming from your emoji this wasn't a serious suggestion.

Iccotak · September 2019

make crates cheaper if you want people in general to buy them
stop trying to hook whales

Dusk_Coven · September 2019

I think the current system is actually fine and could in fact be expanded to make as many items in the Crown Store giftable as possible. They could do this with Crown Promissory Notes. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6125916/#Comment_6125916

What gifting / Crown Promissory Notes does is let people who have an excess of crowns (e.g., from ESO+ subscriptions) but who are not very interested in the Crown Store, offload their crowns in exchange for something that may be useful to them.
In this way ZOS also combats Real Money Traders as well, and in that way discourage botting.

TelvanniWizard · September 2019

I'm all in for n.6.

Vlad9425 · September 2019

Best thing to happen to Crates would be for them to disappear altogether and for all the items that were previously in them to be sold straight up in the Crown Store. No RNG bs and people will still be able to support the game by buying stuff they actually want.

Cirantille · September 2019

Yeah, I wanna spend those sub crowns but I can not find anything to spend on
All reskinned mounts and pets bleh

TelvanniWizard · September 2019

Vlad9425 wrote: »

Best thing to happen to Crates would be for them to disappear altogether and for all the items that were previously in them to be sold straight up in the Crown Store. No RNG bs and people will still be able to support the game by buying stuff they actually want.

This. Right now, I would gladly spend my coin in cosmetics and whatnot, but everything I could posibly want is no longer available, or locked behind gambling (wich I won't do). Thus, I never spend in the game (I used to spend in housing, but limited slots prevent me for further investment).

AcadianPaladin · September 2019

Vlad9425 wrote: »

Best thing to happen to Crates would be for them to disappear altogether and for all the items that were previously in them to be sold straight up in the Crown Store. No RNG bs and people will still be able to support the game by buying stuff they actually want.

Quoted for truth.

I have never bought a single crate and never will. I don't have any problem with gambling or those who want to buy crates, it is simply that I do not ever buy anything unless I know exactly what I'm getting for my money. That means 'mystery boxes' are not something I would ever buy.

I peruse the crated items out of curiosity but it would never ever occur to me to buy crates in the hopes of getting a desired item.

What I have always found to be ironic is that I would happily buy some of the items locked away in crates if those items were available for simple crown sale.

Tigerseye · September 2019

thermatico wrote: »

RNG.

I feel like we get at least 3 of these threads every time a new crate drops. If you are worried about the drop rate don't buy the crates. Seems pretty simple.

Not really "simple", if you want to buy the items, but can't do so without gambling on crates.

Impossible seems like a better word to use, in fact.

Tigerseye · September 2019

Vlad9425 wrote: »

Best thing to happen to Crates would be for them to disappear altogether and for all the items that were previously in them to be sold straight up in the Crown Store. No RNG bs and people will still be able to support the game by buying stuff they actually want.

I've bought crates but, on balance, I agree.

I will just say though, that if someone is not sure whether to buy them, or not (as opposed to being adamantly for, or against, them), the best advice is to find a season you really like most of the items from and then buy a lot of crates from that season.

Buying a few crates from each season is the worst thing you can do, in terms of value for money.

XRavishX · October 2019

I don't mind the crown crates and I also doubt they'll ever get rid of them unless they're forced to. The problem is that Zenimax probably makes a significant sum of money from the crates.

In their current state, I believe there is a fairly good balance between getting buying crates, getting rare items, and being able to pay for items using crown gems. Getting rid of the crates would create a whole new issue with the rare items, though. If we were able to buy those things, we'd probably see some items be worth as much as some of the houses. I believe the houses are so expensive because the time and effort put into creating them warrants a higher price tag. For items in crown crates, however, rarity is what matters. If everyone were able to buy everything there for cheap, the "best" items would be everywhere. I'm happy to not see everyone ride around in one of the uber-rare mounts that no one is able to buy outright. I'm pretty sure I've seen a whopping two, that I've noticed, in the entire time the crates have been available.

Of course, I'd rather pay in-game money for neat mounts or do some crazy limited time challenges in the game like how they deal with the indrik mounts. Make them limited, sell me the event tickets if you want to make some quick cash, but allow us to earn them. At least add more that I can earn. I love that system.

Still, I highly doubt we'll see the crates go away. The problem is that they were introduced and I'm fairly certain they're making tons of money off them. Stopping that would put a significant dent in their profits and that is never going to happen willingly. They'll have to find a new way of recouping that money and right now crown crates are the easiest thing to do. It's easily implemented, easy to introduce items that people want to buy the crates for, and frees up resources into actual content creation. Despite how many see loot box types of systems, I think we should all be really thankful that absolutely nothing you get in crown crates have a remotely significant impact on gameplay. In other words, if crown crates went away, the only thing in the game we'd notice is that the crown crates were gone. That is a good thing.

Goregrinder · October 2019

Some things in life aren't meant for YOU to buy, but for someone else to buy. People are always looking up the chain, but never down the chain. You bought the game, bought a machine to run it, bought internet access, bought SOME crowns.....there are people who can't even do that.

There will be things that some people have that others won't, and it is the same here. The crates are for those who are willing to gamble on the chance, OR who know it will take X amount of dollars to get 500 gems and are ok with that. The reason why companies have a subjectively high MSRP for their product....because they knew people will spend that much....just look at iPhones and that iStand....people will pay. YOU wont....but YOU are not the people it is for.

ChuckyPayne · October 2019

The new way of income. In-game support to sell your crown safely. Like in GW2 gems <-> gold.

Araneae6537 · October 2019

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

I think the current system is actually fine and could in fact be expanded to make as many items in the Crown Store giftable as possible. They could do this with Crown Promissory Notes. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6125916/#Comment_6125916

What gifting / Crown Promissory Notes does is let people who have an excess of crowns (e.g., from ESO+ subscriptions) but who are not very interested in the Crown Store, offload their crowns in exchange for something that may be useful to them.
In this way ZOS also combats Real Money Traders as well, and in that way discourage botting.

No, I am not supporting Crown crates by buying them with gold, nor do I sell them to other for gold (one good thing about the current way to “sell” Crowns is that I can be sure that I’m not inadvertently supporting something I object to). That isn’t to say I wish other people were prevented from spending their money how they wish, only I dislike how so much is only available through Crown crates as versus direct purchase.

srfrogg23 · October 2019

Avariprivateer wrote: »

The current state of Crown Crate odds are not terribly great. For this reason a large number of people have almost certainly avoided them. It may be worth asking if ZOS wants a thousands of "whales" or tens of thousands of "porpoises" who are not fleeced to Utumno and back. I had I few ideas regarding this.
1: Make all Crate items drop at a 1:1 ratio
2: Make junk items worth more gems or gem prices lower
3: Remove junk items
4: Separate crates into Mount/Steed Crates, Pet Crates, House Crates and Clothier Crates
5: Institute a requirement that the first card always drops a mount or pet, second a bag of clothes or jewelry, third a potion or whatever, fourth weapon/rug/glowworm convention or raven or rook in a pine
6: Eliminate crates, sell directly
7: House Crates!!

I feel like you just don't understand why crown crates exist.

Gadamlub14_ESO · October 2019

the only thing that would change crown crates for the better, is legislation on lootboxes.

Want to fix it? Go bother your local representative.