are Motifs in the store a scummy tactic on ZOS's part?

Wing · March 2021

we already have a buy to play game, a premium sub, in game shop, gamble crates, etc. how many revenue streams does this game need.
but lets talk about motifs, particularly the motifs in the store that drop from vet DLC dungeons.

DLC dungeons are some of the least popular content in the game, to the point that people resort to tips and tricks to avoid them, or simply leave if they find themselves in one.

(the fact that paid content has this reaction and there has been no radical change is beyond me)

most people run the dungeons on medium for gear, and only then if its particularly op, then the slimmer people that run it on vet for the monster set, and once again only if its op, and then the group that does hard mode for achievements / skins / colors /etc or people that buy carries for gold for said rewards.

motifs only drop on vet mode, and then only an update AFTER the DLC launched in the first place. by this time the people only interested in the gear have moved on, and only a few niche subsets of players will run this content on this difficulty. (paid carries, people legit interested in the motif to either collect or sell, etc.)

as a result of this prices on dungeon dlc motifs are outrageous, costing hundreds of thousands of gold for a single page and millions for a whole set (if you can even find the whole set)

BUT WAIT! ZOS is here to help!

you can just BUY the new motif straight from the store! for 5k-6k crowns. . . (avg. $40 usd)

i recently bought a motif from the store, and shortly after had a (-_-) shifty eye moment of ". . .was this planned?" after chatting about this with a few other people we all came to the same conclusion.

its like the skill line bypasses and what people like Alcast said when they came out, oh Psijic quest line a giant time sink and boring grind? well you can just pay to not do it! people at the time mentioned that ZOS might deliberately add detrimental quests lines and mechanics that you can pay to avoid.

a note on the difference of sub games vs free to play games was that free to play games had the devs in conflict with accounting, as they have to specifically find ways to monetize content and thats always to the detriment of the player, were as with sub or non free to play games the devs just design content around what they intend and envision without trying to find out how to deliberately inconvenience the player and thus get them to spend money.

i personally feel alot of these systems, and the way Motifs are introduced, specifically dungeon motifs, are not designed with our enjoyment in mind, but rather a scummy implementation designed at the detriment of the player so that we will in fact just spend real money to buy them from the store.

i would love to see analytics on store bought motifs over time throughout the game, i promise you ZOS has that data, and i promise you that motifs have just been straight purchased from the store more and more over time.

i have to say, of the couple big AAA MMO's (ESO, WoW, FFXIV) ESO is by far the most scummy and overly monetized.

virtus753 · March 2021

Many of those vet DLC motifs will be dropping next week during the Anniversary event from daily quests, including daily crafting writs.

Best way to get them cheap without running the dungeons or spending the real world cash.

Czeri · March 2021

The anniversary event always drops premium motif pages, making them affordable for most players, so all you need is patience.

jaws343 · March 2021

Within a few weeks of release, most of the pages are for sale for under 50k gold in guild traders.

spartaxoxo · March 2021

No. In additon to hard to get motifs always being obtainable eventually during the anniversary, they also have a chance to drop on normal. Farm the dungeon on a pledge day and you'll get them eventually.

The motifs in cs are just for those who either cannot or will not do content for them as a time saver only

Gracous · March 2021

Its not a scummy way to do things. You still have options. You can buy them from the crown store or you can run the content or you can buy them from vendors. I understand that not everyone wants to run the content so then you still have the other two options to get the motifs. As far as I am aware there are only two that you have to buy through the crown store (Frostcaster and Tsaesci).
I usually buy my motifs from other players.

Kosef · March 2021

and a gang of alts...

This upcoming event is where it pays to have 15 alts and max level doing max daily writs

mobicera · March 2021

If people keep buying mats, pots, etc and flipping them for absurd prices simply because they have the gold then you best believe if I get a motif I'm going to sell it for a pretty penny...
I mean I need a way to buy those pots right?
ESO economy is completely out of hand and these outrageous prices are simply the result of personal greed.
Delusional at that as this is a video game that will shut down.

Basically when people are pinched of their last penny just to get by are you actually surprised that they price things outrageously themselves?

Zos releasing them in the crown store is so that it's more lucrative to buy with crowns,so your virtual currency gets transferred to real world currency.

It's just greed again...

zaria · March 2021

spartaxoxo wrote: »

No. In additon to hard to get motifs always being obtainable eventually during the anniversary, they also have a chance to drop on normal. Farm the dungeon on a pledge day and you'll get them eventually.

The motifs in cs are just for those who either cannot or will not do content for them as a time saver only

They are an nice source of income for they who do HM dlc dungeons a lot.

In most cases its much cheaper to sell crowns for gold and then buy the motif than pay 5K crowns at least with PC-EU high crown prices.

Magdalina · March 2021

Most of these 'outrageous' motifs already cost within like 30k gold window, many of them within 10k window (which, if you ask me, is really low for how challenging some of these HMs are). I just sold a simple Order of the Hour Daggers motif that drops from dailies anyone can do (not to mention they're being farmed so even at off times you're unlikely to get to solo the WB) for 15k. Minotaur chests, iirc, go for 800k gold. Dungeon motifs prices are fine.

Overall I don't approve of motifs at all and especially DLC dungeons motifs being in the store though - not because I think it's a conspiracy though, but because imho stuff like this should only be obtainable via in-game means, by either doing the content or paying the gold to people who have done the content. At least they're making them expensive and not like hey, 500 crowns instead of all that effort.

Also, I really wish people would stop acting like dlc dungeons are some impossible godmode feat that only Alcast, or his equals with 100k dps and 250% uptime of 150% of the buffs available in game, can do. When ZOS just started releasing dlc dungeons, stuff like WGT, ICP, RoM and CoS was indeed extremely challenging at the start and even in non-hm, very few groups could do them. They have long abandoned that model though, most vet dlc's since then are pretty easy (yes, for a pug, too. A pug with at least some understanding of how the game works) non hm, but hardmode adds a HUGE jump in difficulty. I won't argue that HMs in most others are, well, hard, but let's stop implying that like it's only like 1/10000 groups that manage to complete vet dlc's at all. You're of course within your right to say this content simply doesn't interest you and refuse to do it, but if you actually come there intending to do it and stick with it, you'll probably get it. I have like 70-80% vet dlc's completion rate with pugs. Sometimes it does mean kicking someone who refuses to cooperate or having someone ragequit mid-fight and having to find a replacement. But I've completed stuff like vet FV and MHK (2 of the hardest dungeons in non HM imo) with pugs who had absolutely no idea what they were doing and had like 30k group dps total (which is less than 15k per person and is abysmally low by 'endgame' standards). It took some time and was a little more painful than it would've been with a more experienced and better setup group, but it worked just fine.

Oh, and motif droprate is fairly decent in non hm too, I seem to usually get like maybe 1 in every 5 non-hm runs. I actually really like the current system, minus the part where these motifs are in crown store at all lol. It's rewarding for those of us who do enjoy vet dlc's and it's great incentive to try for hm.

joseayalac · March 2021

Can't agree with what OP said about the Psijic line. It's one of my favorite quests.

I think that a quest that tours you through some of Tamriel's most interesting features, while the Augur says hilarious things is a nice thing.

redspecter23 · March 2021

I was mostly fine with it right up until the Welkynar motif dropped. In game, you need to do normal +3 for just 1/10th of a page, otherwise vet. ZOS is aware that the majority of the playerbase won't be completing vet on a regular basis. They then were "gracious" enough to place it in the store for people to buy.

They set the rarity, then also set the price in the store to bypass that rarity wall in game they themselves set. Whether that's scummy or not is up for debate, but it's definitely a conflict of interest. It creates a situation where items in game can be made extra rare knowing that the solution to that rarity or grind can be sold back to you later.

As for motifs that are widely available in game relatively easily? That's a different situation. Common blue motifs shouldn't be sold in the crown store for more than a single crown considering how common they are. Anyone buying those is only doing so out of ignorance of how common they are in game. As a member of the ESO community, I would personally NEVER attempt to take advantage of a player and sell them common in game items at a massively inflated price. I would consider that a scumbag move to do so. ZOS sells 3 of them for 500 crowns (or equivalent to about 175,000 gold at 350:1 rate) so make of that what you will.

spartaxoxo · March 2021

Gracous wrote: »

Its not a scummy way to do things. You still have options. You can buy them from the crown store or you can run the content or you can buy them from vendors. I understand that not everyone wants to run the content so then you still have the other two options to get the motifs. As far as I am aware there are only two that you have to buy through the crown store (Frostcaster and Tsaesci).
I usually buy my motifs from other players.

You forgot Grim Harlequin.

Magdalina · March 2021

joseayalac wrote: »

Can't agree with what OP said about the Psijic line. It's one of my favorite quests.

I think that a quest that tours you through some of Tamriel's most interesting features, while the Augur says hilarious things is a nice thing.

The issue with Psijic is if you have to do it on more than one character (which most endgame players who have several characters do). I did enjoy it on my first playthrough, it was super fun, but doing it again would be a hell of a grind.

spartaxoxo · March 2021

zaria wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

No. In additon to hard to get motifs always being obtainable eventually during the anniversary, they also have a chance to drop on normal. Farm the dungeon on a pledge day and you'll get them eventually.

The motifs in cs are just for those who either cannot or will not do content for them as a time saver only

They are an nice source of income for they who do HM dlc dungeons a lot.

In most cases its much cheaper to sell crowns for gold and then buy the motif than pay 5K crowns at least with PC-EU high crown prices.

On PS4 NA the crowns would be worth 500k. So it depends on the going rate of the motif as to which is the cheaper option.

spartaxoxo · March 2021

redspecter23 wrote: »

I was mostly fine with it right up until the Welkynar motif dropped. In game, you need to do normal +3 for just 1/10th of a page, otherwise vet. ZOS is aware that the majority of the playerbase won't be completing vet on a regular basis. They then were "gracious" enough to place it in the store for people to buy.

They set the rarity, then also set the price in the store to bypass that rarity wall in game they themselves set. Whether that's scummy or not is up for debate, but it's definitely a conflict of interest. It creates a situation where items in game can be made extra rare knowing that the solution to that rarity or grind can be sold back to you later.

As for motifs that are widely available in game relatively easily? That's a different situation. Common blue motifs shouldn't be sold in the crown store for more than a single crown considering how common they are. Anyone buying those is only doing so out of ignorance of how common they are in game. As a member of the ESO community, I would personally NEVER attempt to take advantage of a player and sell them common in game items at a massively inflated price. I would consider that a scumbag move to do so. ZOS sells 3 of them for 500 crowns (or equivalent to about 175,000 gold at 350:1 rate) so make of that what you will.

When they released the Welknyar motif for sale last, they also made it easier to get through the Summerset event. So I think the idea is to allow the big caliber players to have their challenging content that basically nobody else can do, and then set a price limit on how much they can realistically charge for the motifs as well as give less skilled players a realistically avenue for acquiring these items. It's also what the anniversary event is for.

They don't really want a huge profit motif to exist for excluding people from dungeons which are already difficult to do, I think.

Kiralyn2000 · March 2021

I'm visiting a hotel.

If I buy a can of soda from the in-room minibar, it might be $2-4.
If I walk out of the hotel to the corner store, it might be $1.
If I buy a case of soda from a distributor, it's $.25/can.

Is this a 'scummy tactic' on the part of the hotel?

Common blue motifs shouldn't be sold in the crown store for more than a single crown considering how common they are. Anyone buying those is only doing so out of ignorance of how common they are in game. As a member of the ESO community, I would personally NEVER attempt to take advantage of a player and sell them common in game items at a massively inflated price. I would consider that a scumbag move to do so. ZOS sells 3 of them for 500 crowns (or equivalent to about 175,000 gold at 350:1 rate) so make of that what you will.

Of course, prices & availability have varied over time. I remember when I started (years after the game had started), people thought that blue motif books were good to sell for 1k+ gold. By a couple years later, you couldn't give them away. Meanwhile, prices in cash shops (except during sales) don't tend to change. And crown gifting didn't exist, so any "1 crown = X gold" exchange rates weren't a thing, either. So that 500 crowns for a blue motif was a lot different in 2015 than it is in 2021.
(it was still a silly purchase. Just like mount training, or food/repair/consumables.)

Psiion · March 2021

Greetings all,

After review, we have gone ahead and closed this thread down as it is mostly Bashing in nature, and not conducive to constructive discussion. Please keep in mind that Bashing is against the Forum's Community Rules as stated below:

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