OP: This one would give you 100 awesome if allowed.

ESO prices are definitely more than a bit ridiculous. I pass on stuff all the time just because I can't excuse the price. I mean, seriously.... over forty dollars for a target dummy???? I thought that had to be a joke when my friend wanted to buy it, but nope. I'm not even against the crown store. Like yeah, I think selling a not so optional subscription AND having pretty much all customization/collectible options locked behind a paywall is questionable.... but it is what it is. The pricing though? Really there's no reasonable explanation for charging so much. GW2 does it better by far and I never hesitate to purchase or choose not to get something in that game. I can get a costume in that game for like four dollars. I can get an armor style for about six dollars. I can change my characters appearance for around three dollars. So yeah, it'd be cool if ZOS could see the logic in lowering the prices.... but if anything they just seem to keep getting higher (still not over the 40+ dollar target dummy).

I feel like specifics would help your cause a lot, or at least help me understand your objections better.

I mean, what convenience items are you buying from the Crown Store because you don't have time to craft them yourself?

You can also earn Storage Chests in game, if you object to paying for them. I got mine from Crafting Vouchers, but you can get them with Tel Var if you prefer PVP.

I mean, I understand the appeal of lowered prices and fun cosmetics (that aren't locked into the extremely profitable Crown Crates, natch.)

But without clarification, I confess this looks to me like a case of "I don't want to play the game to get the convenience item for free, so can you please hugely discount the price for me?"

I know they chase the Whales with the Crown Store. But offering a small selection of items each week that are priced reasonably would not cannibalize whale sales.

As for Convenience Items, daily logins should get you plenty of those. I have more than 5000 Tri Pots and hundreds of the Foods. Soul gems are easy to get with the World Passive that fills a Soul Gem for you. And it takes 20 minutes to level Alchemy and Provisioning to make your own.

Prices are too much for a buy to play and subscription based game.

houses, mounts, motifs and anything else should never be the price of a chapter or DLC.

Vaerion wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

I feel like specifics would help your cause a lot, or at least help me understand your objections better.

I mean, what convenience items are you buying from the Crown Store because you don't have time to craft them yourself?

You can also earn Storage Chests in game, if you object to paying for them. I got mine from Crafting Vouchers, but you can get them with Tel Var if you prefer PVP.

I mean, I understand the appeal of lowered prices and fun cosmetics (that aren't locked into the extremely profitable Crown Crates, natch.)

But without clarification, I confess this looks to me like a case of "I don't want to play the game to get the convenience item for free, so can you please hugely discount the price for me?"

Storage chests are one of the convenience items to which I'm referring. I normally have about 2 to 4 hours a week to spend gaming. I don't enjoy crafting or PvP, so I don't want to waste my time on those activities.

These are some of the items I would buy were they not ridiculously priced (assuming you buy crowns in 1,500 chunks):

• $15 -- Extra armory slot
• $20 -- 60-slot chest (x3)
• $50 -- Cool armor skin
• $50 -- A nice house
• $30 -- A cooler mount
• $50 -- A few assistants (x3)

I don't understand how anyone could look at these prices and think they're reasonable. And this is coming from someone with a 6-figure salary. The prices are absurd. The cost of a single luxury home is more than a new AAA game in its entirety.

Well, I meant a few assistants at $50 each. You get the idea. I'm dumb without coffee.

VaranisArano wrote: »

Vaerion wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

I feel like specifics would help your cause a lot, or at least help me understand your objections better.

I mean, what convenience items are you buying from the Crown Store because you don't have time to craft them yourself?

You can also earn Storage Chests in game, if you object to paying for them. I got mine from Crafting Vouchers, but you can get them with Tel Var if you prefer PVP.

I mean, I understand the appeal of lowered prices and fun cosmetics (that aren't locked into the extremely profitable Crown Crates, natch.)

But without clarification, I confess this looks to me like a case of "I don't want to play the game to get the convenience item for free, so can you please hugely discount the price for me?"

Storage chests are one of the convenience items to which I'm referring. I normally have about 2 to 4 hours a week to spend gaming. I don't enjoy crafting or PvP, so I don't want to waste my time on those activities.

These are some of the items I would buy were they not ridiculously priced (assuming you buy crowns in 1,500 chunks):

• $15 -- Extra armory slot
• $20 -- 60-slot chest (x3)
• $50 -- Cool armor skin
• $50 -- A nice house
• $30 -- A cooler mount
• $50 -- A few assistants (x3)

I don't understand how anyone could look at these prices and think they're reasonable. And this is coming from someone with a 6-figure salary. The prices are absurd. The cost of a single luxury home is more than a new AAA game in its entirety.

Edited to add: thanks for the clarification! That did help me understand better where you were coming from, I think.



Well, here's one of the things about playing an MMO. You either spend your time playing to get stuff for free, or you pay for the convenience of getting them now. MMOs are not a particularly friendly genre for people with limited time who want all the things quickly.

You could spend the time doing crafting writs.
You could spend the time doing PVP.
You could spend the time earning the gold in your favorite way to trade so someone will gift you those items.

And if you won't spend the time, that's your choice to either buy them for $$$ or do without those items. Theoretically, there's at least three entertaining options that only cost time, not money.


The prices are not aimed at selling many items to the majority of players. The items clearly sell sufficiently that Marketing has not lowered the prices to your preferred level, so you must consider why not.

After all, you aren't buying them, so you aren't the target audience. The target audience is the people who are buying.

No judgement: The target audience for those items are primarily people with the disposable income or time to make purchases in a video game. Some of them are people with the time to make gold for crown gift/gold trading. These are people who want those storage chests and would rather pay $20 than do without or spend the time playing the game. These are people who may have a stack of gold acquired through trading or a stack of crowns from years of subscribing who can afford something that catches their eye. These are people who'll see that limited time house up for sale in their favorite style and buy it, no matter how expensive. It's people who stocked up on Crowns during a 50% off sale and now are slowly spending them. There are even some people for whom the "exclusivity" of certain items due to their high price is a big draw.

It's not just selling to "whales" who will spend a large chunk of disposable income on a game, though that's certainly a part of the general strategy.

So, no offense, but if you aren't part of the target audience of people who are actually buying the items, ZOS doesn't have a ton of incentive to lower prices. These items sell satisfactorily at the current prices and during sales.

You can ask, but I highly doubt we'll see ZOS slash prices by 75%.

I see where you're coming from, and I respect your opinion. Also, I appreciate your reasonable demeanor. But I still disagree.

I have a decent amount of disposable income (senior software engineer). Yet I choose to spend it elsewhere, where I get more value for my money. I believe the amount of money they lose from people in similar situations outweighs what they get from "whales".

While they've undoubtably done their market research, they are by no means infallible. Having worked on SaaS products for a significant portion of my career, and having built and sold my own software, I've seen C-level execs make extremely stupid decisions. And I wouldn't implicitly trust the methods used for gathering and interpreting data without seeing it for myself.

There's also the aspect of longevity. "Continual growth at all costs" is usually a business strategy that has an exit. For some of the smaller VC-funded startups I worked at, the exit strategy was acquisition by a larger company. The founders and investors take their cut (with founders sometimes moving onto their next project), while the fate of the startup can be one of a few paths (integrated into larger product or suite, gutted for tech, etc.).

The monetization of ESO has many similar characteristics. Eventually, they'll burn through their potential market. People who left due to issues with monetization or lack of transparency likely won't come back. Then we start the downward cycle of their product's lifetime.

The company's exit strategy is their next product.

With that said, maybe ESO's end-of-life is part of the plan. Maybe they don't want the longevity that would come with being fair and transparent.

I can say with certainty, the best companies I've worked at/with were bootstrapped (no VC funding), transparent, and truly put their customers first. From my experience, if you embody those qualities and simply "do the right thing", people will want to give you money. Without investors to appease, and if you're transparent about what devs are working on, you're free to take the time necessary to produce quality features. Employees are happy, customers are happy, growth is steady and controlled (even if slow at times).

My hope is that whatever title comes after ESO is a hit, the team that remains to work on ESO generally cares about the quality of content they produce, and they're mostly left alone to do their thing (even if revenue from ESO idles).

Anyway, I rambled too much. Sorry. I just wish companies would be good, fair, transparent, and non-predatory. And focus on long-term sustainability over short-term profits. I guess you could replace my original post with that.