tomofhyrule wrote: »

No business on this planet can make money by giving everything away for free. And ZOS is governed by Microsoft, which is asking each of its subsidiaries to make a 30% profit margin or face the axe. How is ESO going to get ZOS a 30% profit margin by essentially making it so nobody has to pay a cent to play the game? Are we expecting that that many people are going to whale for cosmetics?

So as not to repeat myself: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8415439/#Comment_8415439

Shadesofkin wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I do have a few concerns with the new model.

Mainly, I'm pretty cynical and I realize that the world I live in is a late-stage capitalist one.

It sounds wonderful on the surface that they're making so much free, and that they're committing to making all new content from here on to be free as well. It sounds great that the only thing they're monetizing are cosmetics.
...it's too utopian.

No business on this planet can make money by giving everything away for free. And ZOS is governed by Microsoft, which is asking each of its subsidiaries to make a 30% profit margin or face the axe. How is ESO going to get ZOS a 30% profit margin by essentially making it so nobody has to pay a cent to play the game? Are we expecting that that many people are going to whale for cosmetics?

The other thing that this concerns me about is the fact that if "new content" is not monetized and "cosmetics" is, then what incentive does the team have to make new content as opposed to just new cosmetics? Surely this suggests that any second they're making new content is a second that they're not making money.

I'll admit, a lot of my feelings are because I'm disappointed after the last two years - I want new Classes more than anything else, and then last year dropped the nuke that is Subclassing on us, so now they need to spend a full two years essentially putting the game back together, and therefore not giving us any new Classes in the meantime. I'm also really bummed that my favorite type of content (Dungeons) was on the chopping block this time, so I'm really not getting anything new that I want at all until 2027 at the earliest. Questing in ESO has been pretty painful lately due to bad writing, but now we're getting stories on TG (I'm not into the unlawful guilds in most TES games) and Sheogorath (who I find to be absolutely insufferable in every one of his appearances and I refuse to acknowledge the Shivering Isles expansion for Oblivion since I hate it so much), so I'm not even getting any stories that sound interesting to me personally in the slightest.

Selling our data most likely.

As it currently stands:

ZeniMax explicitly states that it does not disclose personal information to third parties in exchange for monetary compensation. Under the definitions of California privacy laws (CCPA), however, certain data transfers for behavioral advertising are considered a "sale" or "sharing". ZeniMax may "sell" (per CCPA definition) and "share" identifiers, usage data, customer records, commercial information, and geolocation data with third-party advertising networks, analytics providers, and social networks. Users can generally opt out of this information sharing via the controls in the privacy policy.

Twohothardware wrote: »

I'll take Overland difficulty, Crossplay, and totally overhauled classes with new much better visuals for skills over another new mid zone that's dead in two months after release.

I would hope after $2+ billion dollars of revenue they could do both, but that's just me.

Whoever makes budget decisions needs to return more of it to the ESO team.

twisttop138 wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

In part, I think we are losing some content this year and maybe next in exchange for class refreshes and QoL improvements - ZOS has finite resources and development time.

It would be nice if we could get both at once but that isn't how the real world works. That said, we are still getting new content and some content that appears to be a completely new spin on things. It's going to be the quality that matters in the end.

I've said this before, but I cannot stress this enough - if Seasons 0 & 1 fail, we may get Season 2 but I doubt we'd see a Season 3. If Seasons fail, the game fails.

I think you make a good point here. I think we're getting different things. They may be interesting. I think Zos made a mistake with their announcement stream. I think they buried the lead. They talked a lot about the new way to give them money, like it was a shareholder presentation. They should've been talking about the new system. The new trial. The ship combat thing. Whatever this new public event in Skyrim is. This thing where a zone gets invaded or something and people show up to fight it back kind of like a public event in fallout 76. This should've been the talking points. Battle pass is a dirty word in the industry. It was good they were up front but people want to hear about play not pay.

Because I think you're making another good point. If this year isn't a red letter year, idk if this game continues getting updates. I don't think it dies or shuts down but it will definitely be something we don't want to think about. In a way though, that's unfair to say. We're hostage if we love the game, we better pay and play cause there is a gun to the games head. But true none the less.

Yeah, based on comments the community team have made on the forum I'm starting to get the impression this may be a bit like the infamous 'Xbox 180' announcement where they apparently "forgot" to mention that it was also a games console and could be used to play games, instead focusing on all kinds of novelty features. (Except in that case there was the added problem that no one wanted many of those features, and they had to be removed or redesigned before it came out.)

I'm really hoping that is the case, because like you and several other people have said it came across as a shareholder presentation where they just deleted the slides about expected profit, but the focus was still very much on what we will be paying for and how much it would cost and very light on things to do, which are kind of important for a game. But the attitude from ZOS since then has been pretty much "What? Content? Of course there is? Did we not tell you that? Oh, right, yeah there's content..we can't tell you what or how much, but it's there". Which is not ideal but a step up from the initial announcement.

But also as many people have said this isn't the first (or even the second) time we've heard this. Just the ones I remember off the top of my head include:

• 2019/2020 being the 'Year of Performance' where they were going to focus on fixing bugs and backend systems and would deliver a lighter chapter as a result. Admittedly covid made a mess of everything in 2020, but even before that things weren't going to plan.
• Removing the story/zone DLC to replace it with a free update focused on balance and QoL (which is what the 4th quarter update was already supposed to be).
• Then last year was supposed to be the 'transitional year' when we got less than in a normal year because they were focusing on the switch to their new model.

Now we're being told 2026 is also a transitional year and to trust that 'season zero' isn't fully representative of the kind of things we'll get later on.

Maybe that's true. Maybe their new leadership really will do things differently and Microsoft demanding 30% profits plus the switch to a notoriously unstable live-service season pass model won't cause the problems it does in so many other games. But that's a lot of maybe's.

The free to play revenue model for games is actually pretty lucrative in general. Many games release regular content for free and make their money on cosmetics and convenience items. ESO isn't even fully going f2p. They'll still have the old chapters and dlc for sale. You still have to buy the base game.

Too soon to tell.

However, I'm hoping the intent is to gradually usher people more into the subscription for any paid non-cosmetic content, providing permanency to worlds, quests, dungeons, trials and QoL features, and then have the Tome costs (or whatever it was; I forget already). That would address simplifying complaints regarding paying and access. Clearly they focused first on the many complaints about FOMO... which potentially is fantastically awesome.

On the flip side, there wasn't a lot of obvious information about how they'd monetize non-cosmetic content. It may be that compared to cosmetics, it's not worth their effort. It may be there's more to come. But personally I'm hoping we'll see more subtle nudges towards subscription benefits and that this will be the only other 'cost" besides cosmetics.

EDIT: For context, this comment relates to a couple of comments above expressing concern that making new content (and some older content) part of the base game means ZOS doesn't have any motivation to make new content. I think they do still have plenty of motivation. You have to give players some new content to keep them around.
----

I think making some, most, or even all of the older DLC part of base game and making new content releases part of base game can actually increase revenue.

New players don't like seeing so much of the world walled off from them until they fork over more money right off that bat, especially if they already just bought they "premium" edition to start playing the game. We should remember ESO is buy-to-play, not free-to-play. Someone who doesn't play the game and is purchasing it for the first time is very unlikely to understand the difference between chapters and DLC. They are in for a shock, and many don't stick around.

Everyone can see this if they are in guilds, and especially if they manage a guild. The new player churn in ESO is extremely, extremely high. A lot of ZOS's actions indicate they understand this and have been trying for a few years now to address it. Refreshing the starter zones, some adjustments to mount speeds, other little things I can't recall offhand.... but these were all just tiny little obstacles compared to the biggest factor driving new players away, which is that there are paywalls everywhere in ESO. This was meant to drive ESO+, and to some extent it has. Because unlocking all the DLC will either be an outlay of hundreds of dollars or a consistent ESO+ sub. And even if you go with the DLC purchase, you still are walled off from endgame crafting. Endgame crafting is master writs, and you simply cannot effectively participate in that part of the game without the craft bag. There used to be what, 10-15 different style mats when the craft bag was released? Now there are about 140.

In economic terms, their monetization model previously has been about maximizing revenue per daily active user. I have commented about this before. I think they very well may increase revenue by lightening up a little. Turning off fewer players from the start means more active users and potentially a bigger pie. ESO is not a luxury product. It can't continue to charge 10-20x other gaming experiences without suffering a much smaller player base than it would otherwise have.

Elder Scrolls is massively popular. Skyrim is 15 years old, but the popularity is still strong going by the Oblivion Remaster reception. The whole gaming community went nuts, in a good way. They don't talk about ESO. They don't care about ESO. ESO could be WAY bigger than it is.

All of this is to say that "giving away" the year 1 DLC does not make me concerned about ESO's financial health. It gives me hope. That DLC should have been made part of the base game years ago, and ESO would probably have a healthier player count today if it had been. Some of those lost players might have been whales, spending beaucoup dollars in the crown store. They will probably not come back. But new players find their way to ESO all the time, and making more of them stick makes the game more fun for existing players and will help ESO's bottom line. People like shinies and will pay for them, so I am warming to the idea of a battle pass if it means getting rid of some of these ridiculous paywalls players see AFTER they have already paid $60-70 for what they thought was a whole game.