Raideen wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

dude. YOU CAN ACESS ALL OF DLC IN ESO WITH GOLD. you are again factually wrong here. crown for gold trading is a thing that exists. everything on a crown store (outside of things like skill lines and skyshards which can just be outright earned through in game activities) - can be purchased with gold. I mean... I literally did that for my alt account so that I could acess all the zones on it without having to subscribe with real money.

Crown to gold conversion to purchase DLC is LITERALLY 10's OF MILLIONS OF gold. There is no way you made that much gold without ESO+.

Linaleah wrote: »

you keep moving these goalposts, but you are STILL. WRONG.

you keep going lalalalala, not listening, even as you are proven wrong again and again.

That is incorrect, I simply keep address your off topic points that were not part of the original discussion. You folks, as I already suggested, are the ones who keep moving the goal posts.

Linaleah wrote: »

yes you can buy tokens with gold.

In WOW, yes you can purchase tokens with gold in game. You go to the Central Auction House and purchase a game token with gold. That gets applied to your account and all of the content in WOW is available to you, all of it. Mounts/outfits/emotes/etc. This is not the case in ESO.

Linaleah wrote: »

you can also buy DLC's with gold in ESO. but in WoW you have to KEEP buying those tokens, in ESO once you unlock those DLC's? you are set.

Explain to me how a new players in ESO, who does not subscribe to ESO plus is going to make the 10's of millions of gold to purchase DLC?
Secondly, its not the same as you suggest. ESO Limits your ability to play the game without ESO+. WOW does not.

Buy wows most recent expansion, use in game gold to purchase a token and you have access to the entirety of WOW's content sans a handful of mounts and pets which are offered in their cash shop. The VAST majority of wows mounts, pets, etc are all found in game. No additional cost like ESO.

Linaleah wrote: »

and to reiterate. making gold in WoW? is much MUCH harder then in ESO, especially as a newer player. the chances of you actualy being able to afford to buy those tokens within first month? as a new player? are all but nonexistent. (I would say completely impossible, but there is always that one person who is exception that proves the rule... however for the purposes of a regular player, its NOT something one should or could easily rely on)

This is no different in ESO. In fact in ESO the amount of gold needed (after a currency conversion) is MASSIVELY larger than one would need in wow.

That being said. Leveling alone in wow from 1-60 will easily yield over 50% of the gold required to purchase a token. Making gold in wow is not difficult at all with a central auction house that is available to every player. Sadly most new players in ESO are not welcome in the good guild traders with kiosks that actually sell. They will not make enough gold in their leveling experience to pay for their weekly dues.

Linaleah wrote: »

in any case - to the OP's point, I think transmute stations should be added to base game. since Vvardenfell is included in base game now (as far as I know) - it would be a good place to have one, considering Sotha Sil's connection to Vivec and all.

100% Agreed. But in my opinion it would be more honest to allow ALL players, regardless of ESO+ or not, to have access to 99% of the games content if they purchase the most recent chapter.

Sadly, a large percentage of the games content is not even accessible to ESO+ members.

sigh. lets address it point by point.

there are no gold limits without ESO plus. you can make as much gold as you want. you don't even need to trade for it. there is stealing. there is vendoring trash as you play. you don't need to craft at high end, you can craft at low level, doing daily writs which is great supplementary income and CAN be done without ESO plus. how do I know? again, i have an account without ESO plus. becasue you have acess to the ENTIRETY of base game upon initial purchase and lets go with THE base game - you can hit max level without subscribing. you can experience all of the original stories without subscribing. you can reach and participate in end game. and while you do so - you can save up the gold as you go along and purchase DLC's one at a time.

you ARE moving gold posts. now you are claiming that gold is harder to make in ESO, when everything EVERYTHING you do - awards more gold the most things you can do in WoW, especially at early levels. again, I PLAY WoW and have been for years. without assistance of my main I couldn't even afford to upgrade my mount speed the moment I leveled up to the point where it became available. and even at max level, in WoW - quest rewards are still in range of 30-40 gold. yes, you read that right. there are some world quests at max level that award more, but they are not regular. you can grind some old raids and that will get you couple of thousands for a good chunk of time invested.

here are current token prices in WoW. https://wowauction.us/token without having multiple max level characters - good luck making enough gold in a month without spending all your time farming.

and no, leveling from 1 to 50 which is current max level as expansion is not out yet, does NOT easily yield enough to buy half a token. it barely yields enough to upgrade your mount speed - long after you hit eligible level to get that max speed. how do I know? I HAVE JUST LEVELED MULTIPLE CHARACTERS. because I wanted those achievements and armor transmogs for leveling alliance races. just questing/doing some dungeons is NOT even close to enough. literally, I was sending gold from my main so that my alts could move faster, because from just playing alone they could NOT afford to buy their flying mount upgrade. which for the reference - is 5k gold with neutral reputation. the lowest token has been in the last month was 130k gold and you have to watch it like a hawk to catch it at that price. in ESO - after crown to gold conversion ( prices vary depending on a platform but lets go with the most expensive one, according to the exchange discord I personaly use - and I'm even going to round it up - so currently 500 gold per crown - and i'm seriously going for the absolute highest price here, to be fair). 1 mil per story DLC. 1.5 if you want to buy former expansion. that is highest possible price, for a full priced DLC - with quest rewards alone being 10 times as high as quest rewards in WoW, so when you account for that, ESO is cheaper. and you can wait to buy DLC on sale at half the price and sometimes at 75% off. its millions, but its nowhere near tens of millions. your exaggeration is showing

and no, i don't think ALL DLC's should be available to everyone the moment new expansion comes out just because. why? because once again, when we are comparing requirements in WoW to acess that content - it is COMPARABLE to requirements in ESO, except in ESO you can acess much larger portion of the game with almost no restrictions (if one considers acess to crafting bag a restriction) - WITHOUT SUBSCRIBING AT ALL. without having to grind for gold in any way.


and what large percentage of the game is inaccessible to people with ESO plus? the ONLY thing that is inaccessible is the most recent expansion. everything else? is INCLUDED INTO ESO PLUS. all of the DLC's and all of the older expansions. but here is a crucial difference. in WoW... if you don't buy the most recent expansion? you are 100% locked out of the end game. you are locked out of the portion of yearly anniversary events, because those events historically require the newest expansion to get all the rewards from as they require a max level character doing max level content temporarily added for the event. in ESO - you are only missing the newest raid - trial. everything else? is included. INCLUDING newest dungeons. you can hit max level. you can participate in end game.

the one thing, the ONE thing we agree on is that trading gold for bnet balance is much safer in WoW, then crown trading in ESO. something I have brought up earlier in a thread. risk of crown trading CAN be mitigated however, by using trading communities instead of trying to chase lower prices at higher risk via trade chat. I do still think that they should implement something more akin to exchange in Guild Wars 2, secret world, Neverwinter, etc.

however. YOU continue to argue pointless semantics when in reality - in this particular instance, the situation is comparable. well.. in ESO you also get crowns with your subscription, so technically you can subscribe long enough to buy acess to DLC's with crowns and then unsubscribe, NOT grind gold and RETAIN acess.

starkerealm wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

sigh. lets address it point by point.

Hmm...

Linaleah wrote: »

there are no gold limits without ESO plus. you can make as much gold as you want. you don't even need to trade for it. there is stealing. there is vendoring trash as you play. you don't need to craft at high end, you can craft at low level, doing daily writs which is great supplementary income and CAN be done without ESO plus. how do I know? again, i have an account without ESO plus. becasue you have acess to the ENTIRETY of base game upon initial purchase and lets go with THE base game - you can hit max level without subscribing. you can experience all of the original stories without subscribing. you can reach and participate in end game. and while you do so - you can save up the gold as you go along and purchase DLC's one at a time.

While technically true, the efficiency without a craftbag is abominable. It's actually more resource efficient and profitable to craft at tier 10 across the board because it standardizes all of your crafting materials, reducing the overall footprint. However, the fact remains that you'll still be juggling materials, maps, and other rewards, most of which would be shoved into a bag.

For a player with no financial investment in the game, this works out to about 40k a day.

That's not great. I mean, I'm pulling about 90k a day from writs + anything I sell to other players. But, 40k a day is about as good as you're going to get without buying extra slots, and that's a drop in the bucket compared to buying DLC as gold for crown exchanges.

Linaleah wrote: »

you ARE moving gold posts. now you are claiming that gold is harder to make in ESO, when everything EVERYTHING you do - awards more gold the most things you can do in WoW, especially at early levels. again, I PLAY WoW and have been for years. without assistance of my main I couldn't even afford to upgrade my mount speed the moment I leveled up to the point where it became available. and even at max level, in WoW - quest rewards are still in range of 30-40 gold. yes, you read that right. there are some world quests at max level that award more, but they are not regular. you can grind some old raids and that will get you couple of thousands for a good chunk of time invested.

I don't play WoW, so I'm not familiar with the economy over there. However, my understanding is that the system over there runs on a Copper, Silver, Gold system, which would suggest even awarding a single GP over there would have at least the buying power of 10k here. Now, obviously, that could be a misunderstanding on my part, and even if it's correct, the games (almost certainly) have radically different PPP values. So, it's not like these things are equal.

Linaleah wrote: »

here are current token prices in WoW. https://wowauction.us/token without having multiple max level characters - good luck making enough gold in a month without spending all your time farming.

Which is unsurprising, given the entire goal is to encourage players to either pay, or engage with the point that they're effectively providing a service to the community.

I'm not opposed to the general idea of ESO+ tokens for players, though that's an entirely different discussion.

Linaleah wrote: »

and no, leveling from 1 to 50 which is current max level as expansion is not out yet, does NOT easily yield enough to buy half a token. it barely yields enough to upgrade your mount speed - long after you hit eligible level to get that max speed. how do I know? I HAVE JUST LEVELED MULTIPLE CHARACTERS. because I wanted those achievements and armor transmogs for leveling alliance races. just questing/doing some dungeons is NOT even close to enough. literally, I was sending gold from my main so that my alts could move faster, because from just playing alone they could NOT afford to buy their flying mount upgrade. which for the reference - is 5k gold with neutral reputation. the lowest token has been in the last month was 130k gold and you have to watch it like a hawk to catch it at that price. in ESO - after crown to gold conversion ( prices vary depending on a platform but lets go with the most expensive one, according to the exchange discord I personaly use - and I'm even going to round it up - so currently 500 gold per crown - and i'm seriously going for the absolute highest price here, to be fair). 1 mil per story DLC. 1.5 if you want to buy former expansion. that is highest possible price, for a full priced DLC - with quest rewards alone being 10 times as high as quest rewards in WoW, so when you account for that, ESO is cheaper. and you can wait to buy DLC on sale at half the price and sometimes at 75% off. its millions, but its nowhere near tens of millions. your exaggeration is showing

and no, i don't think ALL DLC's should be available to everyone the moment new expansion comes out just because. why? because once again, when we are comparing requirements in WoW to acess that content - it is COMPARABLE to requirements in ESO, except in ESO you can acess much larger portion of the game with almost no restrictions (if one considers acess to crafting bag a restriction) - WITHOUT SUBSCRIBING AT ALL. without having to grind for gold in any way.

In contrast to WoW, where not subscribing still means you can play with the login screen and think about the things you'd like to do.

I mean, with respect, that's the big failure for me on any, "but with WoW," comparisons. That's one of the last (if not outright the last) MMO with a mandatory subscription. If you don't pay Bliz (or buy a token), you don't get to play at all.

ESO gives you limited access if your sub lapses. That's it.

Linaleah wrote: »

and what large percentage of the game is inaccessible to people with ESO plus? the ONLY thing that is inaccessible is the most recent expansion. everything else? is INCLUDED INTO ESO PLUS. all of the DLC's and all of the older expansions. but here is a crucial difference. in WoW... if you don't buy the most recent expansion? you are 100% locked out of the end game. you are locked out of the portion of yearly anniversary events, because those events historically require the newest expansion to get all the rewards from as they require a max level character doing max level content temporarily added for the event. in ESO - you are only missing the newest raid - trial. everything else? is included. INCLUDING newest dungeons. you can hit max level. you can participate in end game.

Oh. I should have read this paragraph before I wrote the previous one.

That said, this is something that does deserve a huge focus, ESO does not gate you off of endgame content unless you cough up cash. I've played so many MMOs that either throw grind barriers up, or outright block you from endgame unless you're paying for it. In more than a few cases, you can't even level to endgame unless you've been buying everything as you went. ESO steps away from that hard.

Yes, if you buy a fresh copy you're not going to be going into Kyne's Aegis. Yes there are legitimate arguments that some of the DLC gated sets are far more powerful than what you can get your hands on without going into that content (FGD, Reli, ect), but that's nowhere near the threshold of, "pay or you can't participate" or, "we'll make the grind to endgame miserable unless you want to pay a bit more,") that a lot of MMOs have taken.

Linaleah wrote: »

the one thing, the ONE thing we agree on is that trading gold for bnet balance is much safer in WoW, then crown trading in ESO. something I have brought up earlier in a thread. risk of crown trading CAN be mitigated however, by using trading communities instead of trying to chase lower prices at higher risk via trade chat. I do still think that they should implement something more akin to exchange in Guild Wars 2, secret world, Neverwinter, etc.

Yeah, this is the one major failure of the Crown system. I can respect ZOS for what they wanted to do. I understand that there was a strain on Customer Support, because before Gifting was a thing, we'd have to go through CS to gift crown items. ZOS did not crowns becoming an easily traded currency. However, with how the Crown economy has evolved over the last couple years, the idea of just directly exchanging Crowns for gold via a trade system feels like a more natural step now than it used to be.

I still have reservations, because I've seen Cryptic (Neverwinter's devs) absolutely abuse the hell out of that to justify P2W with, "well, you can just grind for the Zen." But, it would kick the knees out from under Crown scammers.

Linaleah wrote: »

however. YOU continue to argue pointless semantics when in reality - in this particular instance, the situation is comparable. well.. in ESO you also get crowns with your subscription, so technically you can subscribe long enough to buy acess to DLC's with crowns and then unsubscribe, NOT grind gold and RETAIN acess.

I still wouldn't recommend buying DLCs at all in ESO. I'd suggest just subscribing, doing whatever with the crowns. Priority to the Banker and Merchant minions. Personally, I feel those are more valuable than access to the DLC zones when your subscription lapses. Though, I mean, if you're only subscribing for three months out of the year to get the new DLCs and then canceling, that's up to you.

well.. you DO get to play WoW if your subscription lapse but... and there is a major catch. if you have max level characters? you cannot play them, until you resubscribe. you get acess to starter edition and that's that. seems like max level for starter edition is still 20. not 100% sure, but i fired out a very old account that I haven't touched in a while and lvl 13 character was accessible. you have extremely low gold limit so no cheesing it by making gold to buy a token while in free to play state. you cannot use mail. you cannot use chat. you cannot do pet battles. at all. having checked what other things you are locked out of. its worse then f2p version of SWTOR and f2p version of swtor is pretty bad. but even if you do subscribe, if you want to do any group content, any end game content - you HAVE to buy the most recent expac separately, because unlike in ESO - all the previous expacs are obsolete outside of leveling alts.

and I agree Cryptic did abuse the hell out of trading to justify p2w, but they are slightly less awful nowadays (they also have their own version of optional subscription now, so if I were to guess, VIP acess is part of the reason why they relaxed some of the p2w nonsense) but their trading diamonds for zen mechanics are sound and are basically identical to what GW2 and secret world are doing (not sure about other games, i can only speak to what I've personaly played)

I would also recommend just subscribing in ESO. just like I would recommend just getting regular subscription in WoW rather then trying to grind gold for "free" acess. there is a reason why tokens are always available. for a LOT of people, gold making is either too hard or too time consuming or both, so they would rather just sell tokens to other players. you COULD in theory say that "same for ESO" except a lot of the crown sellers i've used are selling their subscription crowns, because nothing in crown store interests them. they are NOT paying extra money for their supply. some do. but a good chunk - do not. it makes a difference when it comes to supply.

economy in WoW is a weird beast. people like to talk about centralized AH, but the thing is... in WoW you do not have one giant megaserver, you have lots of smaller servers and each one has their own unique auction house. what does that mean? well in terms of ESO - imagine if you only have acess to a small trader on a crossroad somewhere. this is what its like to trade on dead servers. server transfers are not free. and even active servers can die on you (I used to play on a very active server, but its pretty dead nowadays) and the annoying thing is - there are still plenty of people around, because of cross realm technology, but its different people, and they do not share trading with you. they are just around to make the world appear full. 23 gold per quest (or sometimes 48 gold) are quest rewards at max level and close to max level. at lower levels - they are lower. MUCH lower. coppers and silvers early on.

I still prefer to craft in ESO at rank 1. even when characters are at max level. but the beauty is - even with a few lvl 6 alts, you can start making decent gold. and here is why i prefer rank one

1. you ONLY get rewarded rank 1 materials. at max level you get a little of max level and a bit of rank or 2 or 3 down. that increases amount of materials you have to store.
2. store materials in shared bank. you CAN craft from a bank, and while its not a bottomless pit that the crafting bag is, it is STILL incredibly helpful. just deposit your material rewards back in. sell off the rest. if you are not in a trading guild and materials start getting overwhelming - vendor still works.
3. there are overall fewer things required. alchemy doesn't ask for poisones, so precrafting 4 potions is much more economical in terms of space.

yes, your rewards are not as good as at max lvl when it comes to selling upgrade mats and the like, but it makes space management and the like - MUCH easier. (an also, you can still be maxed out in crafting with passives which will allow you to upgrade your gear, decon etc.. but keep level of crafting at lvl 1) the biggest drawback of that is no master writs. but that is a choice that you get to make.

P.S. Final Fantasy 14 is another one that has mandatory subscription and locks you out of end game unless you cough up the cash for the most recent expac. make of it what you will. I ... think Black desert also requires subscription, but I'm not sure how they handle expansions and endgame, as it never appealed to me enough to look into it to that degree.

Linaleah wrote: »

well.. you DO get to play WoW if your subscription lapse but... and there is a major catch. if you have max level characters? you cannot play them, until you resubscribe. you get acess to starter edition and that's that. seems like max level for starter edition is still 20. not 100% sure, but i fired out a very old account that I haven't touched in a while and lvl 13 character was accessible. you have extremely low gold limit so no cheesing it by making gold to buy a token while in free to play state. you cannot use mail. you cannot use chat. you cannot do pet battles. at all. having checked what other things you are locked out of. its worse then f2p version of SWTOR and f2p version of swtor is pretty bad. but even if you do subscribe, if you want to do any group content, any end game content - you HAVE to buy the most recent expac separately, because unlike in ESO - all the previous expacs are obsolete outside of leveling alts.

Oh **** TOR. Ugh.

I'd forgotten about the trial WoW accounts entirely. It is more of a, "demo," than an actual account, and somewhat indicative of how TOR feels unless you're a whale.

Linaleah wrote: »

and I agree Cryptic did abuse the hell out of trading to justify p2w, but they are slightly less awful nowadays (they also have their own version of optional subscription now, so if I were to guess, VIP acess is part of the reason why they relaxed some of the p2w nonsense) but their trading diamonds for zen mechanics are sound and are basically identical to what GW2 and secret world are doing (not sure about other games, i can only speak to what I've personaly played)

Cryptic has had the optional subscriptions for close to a decade now. I picked up LTSs for both Champions and Star Trek back when I played their games. It was stupidly broken. Paid characters could solo any group content in Champions, except NemCon and that was only because the instance wouldn't let you in with less than a full party. There were similar issues in Star Trek, with certain preorder bonuses offering utility that would just break entire mechanics. Cryptic has balance issues. If they've fixed some of that, then good. I still remember Star Trek Online fondly, even if the P2W garbage put me off of it.

I haven't touched Secret World Legends since shortly after it released. I did have a pleasant interaction with their community manager back then, but Secret World is such a hard game to recommend. So many interesting ideas undermined by terrible balance and monitization decisions. It's still one of my favorite MMO settings, if only the game wasn't a dumpster fire. (Again, I'm in a weird situation, because I do have an LTS from back during the game's original launch.)

Linaleah wrote: »

I would also recommend just subscribing in ESO. just like I would recommend just getting regular subscription in WoW rather then trying to grind gold for "free" acess. there is a reason why tokens are always available. for a LOT of people, gold making is either too hard or too time consuming or both, so they would rather just sell tokens to other players. you COULD in theory say that "same for ESO" except a lot of the crown sellers i've used are selling their subscription crowns, because nothing in crown store interests them. they are NOT paying extra money for their supply. some do. but a good chunk - do not. it makes a difference when it comes to supply.

Yeah, and that actually goes to a point where, if ZOS is getting paid anyway, it does, kinda, make sense for them to simply streamline it into safe marketplace that resists manipulation.

I can't fully shake the "scummy" feel from it, but that is entirely due to how Cryptic handled their markets and balance.

Linaleah wrote: »

economy in WoW is a weird beast. people like to talk about centralized AH, but the thing is... in WoW you do not have one giant megaserver, you have lots of smaller servers and each one has their own unique auction house. what does that mean? well in terms of ESO - imagine if you only have acess to a small trader on a crossroad somewhere. this is what its like to trade on dead servers. server transfers are not free. and even active servers can die on you (I used to play on a very active server, but its pretty dead nowadays) and the annoying thing is - there are still plenty of people around, because of cross realm technology, but its different people, and they do not share trading with you. they are just around to make the world appear full. 23 gold per quest (or sometimes 48 gold) are quest rewards at max level and close to max level. at lower levels - they are lower. MUCH lower. coppers and silvers early on.

Yeah, Star Trek and Champions both ran on megaservers with global AHs. I've seen the system people are asking for, and I know full well how susceptible it is to market manipulation. I used to play the market in STO. I'd buy out commodities (well, not the actual commodities item type, that was mostly vendor trash), and flip them for terrifying profit margins. Once you get started, it quickly snowballs, and you have the money to tell other people how much they'll pay for something (if you're online.) I got out when bots started playing the market after the F2P launch.

With Champions, I used to play the market with C-Store items... which, I'm still not sure how I feel about it. For reference, in Champions Online, when you buy an item, (and I do mean actual items, things like costume unlocks and hideouts were not.) from the C-Store it's bind on equip (technically, some of the items, like the Vampire transform don't even bind at all.) So you can resell it, creating a market where these things would be sold back and forth for in game currency.

Linaleah wrote: »

I still prefer to craft in ESO at rank 1. even when characters are at max level. but the beauty is - even with a few lvl 6 alts, you can start making decent gold. and here is why i prefer rank one

1. you ONLY get rewarded rank 1 materials. at max level you get a little of max level and a bit of rank or 2 or 3 down. that increases amount of materials you have to store.
2. store materials in shared bank. you CAN craft from a bank, and while its not a bottomless pit that the crafting bag is, it is STILL incredibly helpful. just deposit your material rewards back in. sell off the rest. if you are not in a trading guild and materials start getting overwhelming - vendor still works.
3. there are overall fewer things required. alchemy doesn't ask for poisones, so precrafting 4 potions is much more economical in terms of space.

Alchemy and provisioning have really good returns based on material investments, especially when you have quadruple payouts. I could swear alchemy does occasionally proc poison quests. At least @Dolgubon's Writ addon crafts poisons, and the turn in tends to consume them, so they must be being used somewhere. (Because I'm not slotting them.)

The advantage of Ruby tier writs is the master writ payouts, which can either be performed by the player for vouchers, or resold for gold. Either way, that's significantly more valuable than losing ~15 back slots to lower tier mats. That said, 150 items do burn through three times the materials as lvl 1s, so there is that.

Linaleah wrote: »

yes, your rewards are not as good as at max lvl when it comes to selling upgrade mats and the like, but it makes space management and the like - MUCH easier. (an also, you can still be maxed out in crafting with passives which will allow you to upgrade your gear, decon etc.. but keep level of crafting at lvl 1) the biggest drawback of that is no master writs. but that is a choice that you get to make.

P.S. Final Fantasy 14 is another one that has mandatory subscription and locks you out of end game unless you cough up the cash for the most recent expac. make of it what you will. I ... think Black desert also requires subscription, but I'm not sure how they handle expansions and endgame, as it never appealed to me enough to look into it to that degree.

Yeah, I keep forgetting about FF14. I've never played it, (though my significant other did for a little while.) BDO does not require a subscription, (technically, it doesn't even have a subscription) however it sells powerful 30 day buffs, and can feel punitive if you don't have those buffs.

starkerealm wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

well.. you DO get to play WoW if your subscription lapse but... and there is a major catch. if you have max level characters? you cannot play them, until you resubscribe. you get acess to starter edition and that's that. seems like max level for starter edition is still 20. not 100% sure, but i fired out a very old account that I haven't touched in a while and lvl 13 character was accessible. you have extremely low gold limit so no cheesing it by making gold to buy a token while in free to play state. you cannot use mail. you cannot use chat. you cannot do pet battles. at all. having checked what other things you are locked out of. its worse then f2p version of SWTOR and f2p version of swtor is pretty bad. but even if you do subscribe, if you want to do any group content, any end game content - you HAVE to buy the most recent expac separately, because unlike in ESO - all the previous expacs are obsolete outside of leveling alts.

Oh **** TOR. Ugh.

I'd forgotten about the trial WoW accounts entirely. It is more of a, "demo," than an actual account, and somewhat indicative of how TOR feels unless you're a whale.

Linaleah wrote: »

and I agree Cryptic did abuse the hell out of trading to justify p2w, but they are slightly less awful nowadays (they also have their own version of optional subscription now, so if I were to guess, VIP acess is part of the reason why they relaxed some of the p2w nonsense) but their trading diamonds for zen mechanics are sound and are basically identical to what GW2 and secret world are doing (not sure about other games, i can only speak to what I've personaly played)

Cryptic has had the optional subscriptions for close to a decade now. I picked up LTSs for both Champions and Star Trek back when I played their games. It was stupidly broken. Paid characters could solo any group content in Champions, except NemCon and that was only because the instance wouldn't let you in with less than a full party. There were similar issues in Star Trek, with certain preorder bonuses offering utility that would just break entire mechanics. Cryptic has balance issues. If they've fixed some of that, then good. I still remember Star Trek Online fondly, even if the P2W garbage put me off of it.

I haven't touched Secret World Legends since shortly after it released. I did have a pleasant interaction with their community manager back then, but Secret World is such a hard game to recommend. So many interesting ideas undermined by terrible balance and monitization decisions. It's still one of my favorite MMO settings, if only the game wasn't a dumpster fire. (Again, I'm in a weird situation, because I do have an LTS from back during the game's original launch.)

Linaleah wrote: »

I would also recommend just subscribing in ESO. just like I would recommend just getting regular subscription in WoW rather then trying to grind gold for "free" acess. there is a reason why tokens are always available. for a LOT of people, gold making is either too hard or too time consuming or both, so they would rather just sell tokens to other players. you COULD in theory say that "same for ESO" except a lot of the crown sellers i've used are selling their subscription crowns, because nothing in crown store interests them. they are NOT paying extra money for their supply. some do. but a good chunk - do not. it makes a difference when it comes to supply.

Yeah, and that actually goes to a point where, if ZOS is getting paid anyway, it does, kinda, make sense for them to simply streamline it into safe marketplace that resists manipulation.

I can't fully shake the "scummy" feel from it, but that is entirely due to how Cryptic handled their markets and balance.

Linaleah wrote: »

economy in WoW is a weird beast. people like to talk about centralized AH, but the thing is... in WoW you do not have one giant megaserver, you have lots of smaller servers and each one has their own unique auction house. what does that mean? well in terms of ESO - imagine if you only have acess to a small trader on a crossroad somewhere. this is what its like to trade on dead servers. server transfers are not free. and even active servers can die on you (I used to play on a very active server, but its pretty dead nowadays) and the annoying thing is - there are still plenty of people around, because of cross realm technology, but its different people, and they do not share trading with you. they are just around to make the world appear full. 23 gold per quest (or sometimes 48 gold) are quest rewards at max level and close to max level. at lower levels - they are lower. MUCH lower. coppers and silvers early on.

Yeah, Star Trek and Champions both ran on megaservers with global AHs. I've seen the system people are asking for, and I know full well how susceptible it is to market manipulation. I used to play the market in STO. I'd buy out commodities (well, not the actual commodities item type, that was mostly vendor trash), and flip them for terrifying profit margins. Once you get started, it quickly snowballs, and you have the money to tell other people how much they'll pay for something (if you're online.) I got out when bots started playing the market after the F2P launch.

With Champions, I used to play the market with C-Store items... which, I'm still not sure how I feel about it. For reference, in Champions Online, when you buy an item, (and I do mean actual items, things like costume unlocks and hideouts were not.) from the C-Store it's bind on equip (technically, some of the items, like the Vampire transform don't even bind at all.) So you can resell it, creating a market where these things would be sold back and forth for in game currency.

Linaleah wrote: »

I still prefer to craft in ESO at rank 1. even when characters are at max level. but the beauty is - even with a few lvl 6 alts, you can start making decent gold. and here is why i prefer rank one

1. you ONLY get rewarded rank 1 materials. at max level you get a little of max level and a bit of rank or 2 or 3 down. that increases amount of materials you have to store.
2. store materials in shared bank. you CAN craft from a bank, and while its not a bottomless pit that the crafting bag is, it is STILL incredibly helpful. just deposit your material rewards back in. sell off the rest. if you are not in a trading guild and materials start getting overwhelming - vendor still works.
3. there are overall fewer things required. alchemy doesn't ask for poisones, so precrafting 4 potions is much more economical in terms of space.

Alchemy and provisioning have really good returns based on material investments, especially when you have quadruple payouts. I could swear alchemy does occasionally proc poison quests. At least @Dolgubon's Writ addon crafts poisons, and the turn in tends to consume them, so they must be being used somewhere. (Because I'm not slotting them.)

The advantage of Ruby tier writs is the master writ payouts, which can either be performed by the player for vouchers, or resold for gold. Either way, that's significantly more valuable than losing ~15 back slots to lower tier mats. That said, 150 items do burn through three times the materials as lvl 1s, so there is that.

Linaleah wrote: »

yes, your rewards are not as good as at max lvl when it comes to selling upgrade mats and the like, but it makes space management and the like - MUCH easier. (an also, you can still be maxed out in crafting with passives which will allow you to upgrade your gear, decon etc.. but keep level of crafting at lvl 1) the biggest drawback of that is no master writs. but that is a choice that you get to make.

P.S. Final Fantasy 14 is another one that has mandatory subscription and locks you out of end game unless you cough up the cash for the most recent expac. make of it what you will. I ... think Black desert also requires subscription, but I'm not sure how they handle expansions and endgame, as it never appealed to me enough to look into it to that degree.

Yeah, I keep forgetting about FF14. I've never played it, (though my significant other did for a little while.) BDO does not require a subscription, (technically, it doesn't even have a subscription) however it sells powerful 30 day buffs, and can feel punitive if you don't have those buffs.

for ***ts and giggles, back before a game breaking bug created game breaking inflation - I have unlocked everything that is possible to unlock in SWTOR, so that if i go preferred (a step in between complete f2p an subscription) - I could play decently. for a while it wasn't too bad, and then between inflation, removal of ops passes and other fun extra restrictions - it sucks only slightly less then pure f2p. its pretty much subscribe or gtfo situation there. even if you are a whale. its market is basically cash shop items sold for credits (they are BoE there as well) and small smidgen of high end crafted things.

Neverwinter specifically didn't used to have VIP accounts until somewhat recently. they are also genuinely less pay to win nowadays. there are still plenty of issues, but its nowhere near as bad as "coalescent wards that are pretty much a must when upgrading high end gear - are only sold on cash shop" situation they used to have

I still hop into secret world legends every now and then. I also had the original, but there i never got past Kingsmouth, as i made a whole lot of mistakes when distributing my points and so I couldn't get past later quests without more grinding than I was willing to do. Legends, IMO made the combat and speccing a lot more forgiving. I know some OG players were not happy with "dumbing down the combat" but for me, I actualy got to experience the rest of the story thanks to that. but they also only really released one actualy new piece of content since then as well as agent system which is just.. ugh. so... it makes me sad. cause the worldbuilding in that game is #chefskiss

I'm not so against megaserver centralized markets, because in many ways it makes trading more accessible to more people, especially on a casual level, but its not without its issues for sure. its just WoW... doesn't actualy have one of those. and sometimes its nice. other times... it sucks. depends on a server.

I should have specified alchemy at rank 1. at max level you have both poisons and potions for writs, so if you are precrafting (which I recommend for faster completion) you have to use up twice as many inventory slots. at rank one its 4 potions. magika, stamina, health and ravage stamina. that's it. much more convenient and herb rewards are essentially the same, but yeah, no master writs. I don't mind though, for simplicity's sakes.

final fantasy is something I tried getting into couple of times, but its just... I don't know. its too everything. too pretty, too peppy, too slow. god, so darn slow.... combat is like polar opposite of ESO.

but in any case, for all my issues with how clunky guild traders are - they are literally THE main reason why ESO doesn't have anywhere near the severity of inflation than most other MMO's. trader bids are far too effective at removing all the extraneous gold out of the economy. so... I deal with having to shop around sometimes. and ... that also means that even if you don't utilize trading, there are still plenty of ways to make gold through solo gameplay.

and for all my issues with crown store and monetanization practices (and that most recent deal they pulled with hollowjack etc drops) - even when/if I drop my ESO plus, I STILL have acess to all of my characters. I can STILL play them. whatever skill lines i have unlocked on them that are associated with DLC's - I still have acess to those. I can still wear the gear. and should I wish - I can buy those DLC's outright, with crown trading (carefully) , without having to resubscribe first. all in all as far as optional subscription models go - we have it pretty decent here.

Raideen wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

Raideen wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

Raideen wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

To everyone saying people can just buy one, you do realize how much they cost, right? They're 1,250 Vouchers, and the average price gold-wise is around 900k. So no, it's not exactly realistic for people to just casually go out and buy one of these things. And no, not every guild has one, either, simply because of the cost. It would make more sense to have them added to some base area.

Agreed. I have 5 trade guilds, they dont all have this item and only one of them has all the attunable crafting stations.

When World of Warcraft releases a new expansion, all the previous expansions are included in the new expansion. This is to ensure all the players are on the same page.

Zenimax should do the same. When a new expansion comes out, all the previous ones should be included in the base game.

technically - they are. IF you are a subscriber.

Technically, figuratively, literally they are not, BECAUSE you have to be a subscriber.

you... have to be a subscriber in order to acess all the previous expansions in WoW. you do realize this, right?

No you do not. You can spend in game gold to play for a month to "subscribe".

Secondly, wow gives all the old expansions when someone purchases the new one. Start WOW in 2020 and buy Shadowlands, you get Battle for Azeroth, Legion, Warlords of Draenor, Pandaria, Cataclysm, Wrath of the Lich King, and The Burning Crusade for no additional cost and 99% of the content is available to the player.

You can not honestly compare ESO's monetization model to WOW's monetization model. In wow, you sub to the game for 14.99 a month OR buy tokens off the auction house with in game gold. For this you get the entire game, 99% of the mounts, 99% of the non combat pets, all of the outfits/customization etc etc at no additional cost. Wow has hundreds and hundreds of mounts. I have over 150 on my account, I purchased 2 from the cash store.

Sounds like Archeage Apex. Where do these tokens come from? Never played WoW, but somebody has to get them from someplace. If somebody buys tokens off a shop and sells them for in game gold, then Somebody still ended up paying for the month of subscription time. And if no one put the tokens up for sale there would be none to buy with in game gold.

IMHO

Arunei wrote: »

To everyone saying people can just buy one, you do realize how much they cost, right? They're 1,250 Vouchers, and the average price gold-wise is around 900k. So no, it's not exactly realistic for people to just casually go out and buy one of these things. And no, not every guild has one, either, simply because of the cost. It would make more sense to have them added to some base area.

Do you have any idea WHY they cost as much?[snip] start finishing master writs. Owning a transmute station is kind of end game.

[Edited to remove Baiting and Rude Comments]

PTTE wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

To everyone saying people can just buy one, you do realize how much they cost, right? They're 1,250 Vouchers, and the average price gold-wise is around 900k. So no, it's not exactly realistic for people to just casually go out and buy one of these things. And no, not every guild has one, either, simply because of the cost. It would make more sense to have them added to some base area.

Do you have any idea WHY they cost as much?[snip] start finishing master writs. Owning a transmute station is kind of end game.

[Edited to remove Baiting and Rude Comments]

"Start finishing master writs," is a little reductive.

Okay, so enchanting and alchemy writs are fairly straightforward. They'll set you back, but not seriously. For Enchanting, any prismatic writ will pay out nicely, but will require an upfront cost of ~10-15k (on PCNA.)

Provisioning Master Writs require you to have learned specific recipes. These tend to be pretty expensive (though, it's not universal, and there are a handful of cheap recipe based writs.) For the high value ones, expect to cough up a Perfect Roe, which isn't cheap.

Gear crafting is, simultaneously, where the up front costs go through the roof, but also start paying out with serious drops.

Okay, so gear writs require a specific trait (easy), and enough traits to craft that piece (3 traits is a non-issue, 9 traits means it could be a couple months before you can do the writ.) They require the motif, this could set you back anywhere from under 100g, up to hundreds of thousands of gold, depending on the moitf page required. This is a one time expense per page, but it can be a huge deterrent. (You only get away from this with jewelry writs, which have terrible production costs when compared to the payout.)

Factor all that in, and getting the 1,250 vouchers for a Transmute table is not a matter of just, "start finishing master writs." That's a very expensive proposition. Granted, it's one that pays out better than what goes in, but it is seriously time consuming to get up and going, and there's no fault if someone's saying it's unreasonable, when getting to the point of a transmutation table basically requires playing the game like a part time job.