You want players? Remove the craft bag barrier

IviRo · July 9

Malprave wrote: »

The game has a lot of players and subscribers. I have played since launch and I never saw this many players as are in the game right now. I know people hate anecdotal experience but that's what I see.

IMO the layoffs are about efficiency. Zos has four or five other facilities working on this game, one as far away as Budapest Hungary, where a company was expressly purchased to make content for the Elder Scrolls Online.

I hate to see people let go, but I have a feeling that the Maryland facility was not the most efficient of workplaces. Issues with people not wanting to return to the office after the pandemic, formation of not one but two unions that cover this facility, and recent changes in management indicate a workplace with problems.

I think players are spending a lot of money on the game, but Zos Maryland facility was burning through it without delivering enough in return.

It's not about whether the craft bag is free or not.

I didn't know that; I thought the main office was only in Maryland, which handles all the content—wow. Well, that explains a lot when you analyze the Xbox head's statement and everything else.

Eliahnus · July 9

They want PAYING customers, not freeloaders. Always this bitching and moaning about the bag… do you people never get tired of this…

Yökarhu · July 9

ESO+ is reasonable imo, but the merchant and other assistants should be able to earn by playing. Make it a quest reward or slap a gold cost. That would solve the problem, people would play the game and if they like it, they will be more likely to get the sub to support a game they love, than get it because you are basically forced to.

Gabriel_H · July 9

merevie wrote: »

With new management, there is the obvious elephant in the room to address.
The ONE reason ESO player base is small is the craft bag issue.
Make the craft bag free.
Yes, ESO+ may drop -but then the same people are likely to invest in the tomes instead.
And everyone else -possible 10k people-would log into ESO again/or start because there is no inventory issue anymore.
It's 2026 -free up the bank space if you actually want players.
It's not the content -it's not the graphics -it's not the age of the game.
It is this one blindly stubborn policy leashing ESO population.
And those people may well hit up the crown store...

Bolded to emphasise the flawed premise.

tomofhyrule · July 9

It’s not hard to make a parallel between this (continual) request and the current problems in the Artificial Stupidity market right now.

Companies see AI and want AI used so they can cut employees costs. AI companies sell subscriptions to AI bots for cheap to get people on board and undercut competitors. Companies push as much AI use as possible. But AI use is more expensive than AI companies charge for, so they’re operating at a massive loss.

Similarly, anyone playing ESO without a sub is quite literally freeloading. You, your characters, your items, and your data are taking up space on the server and costing ZOS money. Their way to recoup that cost is an (optional!) sub. And… you are like “I don’t want to pay, I just want them to host me for free!”

I get it, the economy sucks a lot right now and nobody has money to spend because every CEO is too busy lining their own pockets instead of helping their workers. But ZOS charging for a sub is not highway robbery, it’s a way to recoup the costs of you using their service.

Destai · July 9

I don't mind craft bag, but it is a barrier for sure. Some may enjoy it, but it is detractor for some, and that does cost ESO players.

But in my experience, the things I've seen cost them players is the reward structure and focusing of most attractive earnables into the store. My crew's playing other things for this exact reason. And the people I have tried to recruit looked at the content and prices of things in the store, and didn't even bother. It's been a criticism since day one and it never seemed like ZOS took it seriously. So here we are.

Now, I do see the combat as a "love it or hate it" topic for the general gaming crowd. Well, for the general gaming crowd who knows or cares about ESO.

Imhotep71 · July 9

Gabriel_H wrote: »

merevie wrote: »

With new management, there is the obvious elephant in the room to address.
The ONE reason ESO player base is small is the craft bag issue.
Make the craft bag free.
Yes, ESO+ may drop -but then the same people are likely to invest in the tomes instead.
And everyone else -possible 10k people-would log into ESO again/or start because there is no inventory issue anymore.
It's 2026 -free up the bank space if you actually want players.
It's not the content -it's not the graphics -it's not the age of the game.
It is this one blindly stubborn policy leashing ESO population.
And those people may well hit up the crown store...

Bolded to emphasise the flawed premise.

People look at steam and make the assumption THATS the player base.

Like others have said, remove the craft bag from ESO plus and I cancel that sub. The craft bag is the major value of ESO+

LootAllTheStuff · July 9

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Similarly, anyone playing ESO without a sub is quite literally freeloading. You, your characters, your items, and your data are taking up space on the server and costing ZOS money. Their way to recoup that cost is an (optional!) sub. And… you are like “I don’t want to pay, I just want them to host me for free!”

Your assertion lacks nuance. For example, someone playing the game on XBox has to pay for GamePass just to play the game. I assume there is some internal accounting at MS to pay studios/publishers for games included in GamePass based on how many are actually playing those games.

Besides that: If the same player wants DLC content not included in the base game, they have to buy crowns to get it. Similarly, if they want any of the items in the Crown Store, they have to buy the crowns. And people do actually do both those things.

If they also had a sub, they'd have the DLC while subbed and also be given crowns they can use for cosmetics. Whether that works out to the same yearly revenue as (no sub) + (crown purchases) is a good question - seems unlikely, and the calculus is going to change as more DLCs are rolled into the base game. But (share of GamePass revenue) + (additional purchases) does not equal (freeloading).

LadyGP · July 9

The crafting bag has been the gotcha thing in this game for pretty much ever.

It's the main source of income for them. Zero chance they will get rid of it.

karthrag_inak · July 9

completely disagree. 3 ESO+ accounts, each of which is 6-10 years old, would disappear if this happened.

Gabriel_H · July 9

Imhotep71 wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

merevie wrote: »

With new management, there is the obvious elephant in the room to address.
The ONE reason ESO player base is small is the craft bag issue.
Make the craft bag free.
Yes, ESO+ may drop -but then the same people are likely to invest in the tomes instead.
And everyone else -possible 10k people-would log into ESO again/or start because there is no inventory issue anymore.
It's 2026 -free up the bank space if you actually want players.
It's not the content -it's not the graphics -it's not the age of the game.
It is this one blindly stubborn policy leashing ESO population.
And those people may well hit up the crown store...

Bolded to emphasise the flawed premise.

People look at steam and make the assumption THATS the player base.

Like others have said, remove the craft bag from ESO plus and I cancel that sub. The craft bag is the major value of ESO+

@code65536 gathered the points data together from the NM event. A reasonable interpretation of that data suggests the player base is 55% PC and 45% Console, with less than 25% recorded playing through Steam.

Melivar · July 9

From a player perspective having more people could be a great thing for many but terrible for others. I personally would always like there to be more people around, even when 80% of my play time I don't want to interact with them lol.

From a business perspective if you don't want to pay the sub fee why would they even care about you. This is even more so now that there are no chapters or dungeons to bring in revenue and additional income comes from tome sales. Which if you not paying a sub your likely not buying the tome either.

ESO+ and the craft bag generate consistent revenue, and the Craft Bag is at least 50% of the reason people sub perhaps more. They are not going to give that up on the hope that a larger population might buy more things and stuff.

tomofhyrule · July 9

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Similarly, anyone playing ESO without a sub is quite literally freeloading. You, your characters, your items, and your data are taking up space on the server and costing ZOS money. Their way to recoup that cost is an (optional!) sub. And… you are like “I don’t want to pay, I just want them to host me for free!”

Your assertion lacks nuance. For example, someone playing the game on XBox has to pay for GamePass just to play the game. I assume there is some internal accounting at MS to pay studios/publishers for games included in GamePass based on how many are actually playing those games.

Besides that: If the same player wants DLC content not included in the base game, they have to buy crowns to get it. Similarly, if they want any of the items in the Crown Store, they have to buy the crowns. And people do actually do both those things.

If they also had a sub, they'd have the DLC while subbed and also be given crowns they can use for cosmetics. Whether that works out to the same yearly revenue as (no sub) + (crown purchases) is a good question - seems unlikely, and the calculus is going to change as more DLCs are rolled into the base game. But (share of GamePass revenue) + (additional purchases) does not equal (freeloading).

There is also nuance you’re missing as well.

Playing ESO on console means you need to pay for XB/PS servers to get online. Those are not ZOS servers and ZOS makes no money from them. The ESO+ is for using ESO servers.

Essentially, this argument is “I’m paying Uber Eats to deliver my food, so I shouldn’t have to pay for the food itself because I already paid!”

The better argument would be “XB/PS should not charge a fee to play online.”

BXR_Lonestar · July 9

Craftbag needs to stay where it is - linked to the subscription service. Otherwise, nobody will have any incentive to subscribe to the subscription service.

NOW. If ESO cut out the hybrid model and went PURELY with the subscription service where we are all paying for the subscription, then I would agree with you 100%. But we're not there. So there needs to be something that incentivizes you keep with the subscription over the purchase model. The craftbag is that incentive. If you want it? Subscribe!

SolarRune · July 9

Okay, you don't want to sub, but remember this is a revenue stream that would need to be replaced if the craft bag was available through other means, as xbox xboxing all over zos is the overall low performance of xbox.

Would you be interested in 40k crowns for craft bag, or are you really just saying you'll play more if it's free and won't spend any more on the game - in which case, from a business perspective, what's the point, its the revenue the bean counters want, not just more players.

SeaGtGruff · July 9

If you do not craft, you don't need any crafting mats other than maybe tempering mats for when you are reconstructing gear at a particular quality level, so players who are not interested in crafting and who do not sub could save a lot of inventory space by selling all of the mats they harvest, and all style mats and trait mats that they find while looting or get from deconstruction.

If they want crafted gear but don't want to deal with crafting in order to save on inventory space, they can buy crafted gear for gold from players who do craft, along with any pieces of traited gear they need for researching traits.

They can even go ahead and engage in crafting if they wish, but keep only the mats they need for doing writs at whatever level they can craft at. Or they can buy mats with gold from other players so they can do their writs, buy intricate gear from traders for deconstructing and leveling up their crafting skill lines, etc.

They can also use alts as mule characters to store any mats for additional character levels that they might want to craft at. In fact, that's what I did for the first few years that I played ESO before finally deciding to sub for the craft bag and other benefits of ESO Plus. It eventually got to be such a hassle and time consumer that I finally chose to sub, but that was largely because of my desire to keep as many mats as I could-- even multiple stacks of mats for gear levels I no longer needed to craft for my own characters-- rather than just selling all but single stacks of those mats.

And unless you want to craft gear in any style imaginable, you can sell all style mats and just buy basic racial style mats as needed from the NPC crafting merchants, or use Crown Mimic Stones for any styles you need to do master weits, or buy the actual style mats from traders as needed for doing master writs. Same with trait mats-- just buy them as needed.

In short, if you are smart about it, and frugal with how many mats you actually keep on hand for doing daily writs and master writs, it's quite possible to engage in crafting without needing to sub for the craft bag. It might take strength of will to sell off all but what you actually need rather than hanging onto it, but it can be done.

And that's only if you want to engage in crafting without subbing. As already mentioned, if you don't engage in crafting then you don't even need to keep any mats other than tempering mats for when you reconstruct gear-- or you can just sell off all of those, too, and buy them from traders as needed.

stuartx13 · July 9

NO!!!!

OsUfi · July 9

I'm not so bothered about making the craft bag free, but without it, holy heck does this game become inventory-simulator: the video game movie tie-in.

Instead of making the craft bag free, maybe make stacks of ingredients and materials and such go up to 1,000 instead of 200. Get rid of all the cp10-cp140 materials too (seriously, who needs these still?). Maybe reduce the catalogue of materials too? Or certainly don't add to it. We've got 260+ now for motifs and regional furniture alone, right?

The craft bag is fine remaining in ESO+ land, but there's no need to fill our inventories to the obnoxious level we have at the moment.

All that said, with everything going on right now, I doubt that'd happen for years.

LootAllTheStuff · July 9

tomofhyrule wrote: »

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Similarly, anyone playing ESO without a sub is quite literally freeloading. You, your characters, your items, and your data are taking up space on the server and costing ZOS money. Their way to recoup that cost is an (optional!) sub. And… you are like “I don’t want to pay, I just want them to host me for free!”

Your assertion lacks nuance. For example, someone playing the game on XBox has to pay for GamePass just to play the game. I assume there is some internal accounting at MS to pay studios/publishers for games included in GamePass based on how many are actually playing those games.

Besides that: If the same player wants DLC content not included in the base game, they have to buy crowns to get it. Similarly, if they want any of the items in the Crown Store, they have to buy the crowns. And people do actually do both those things.

If they also had a sub, they'd have the DLC while subbed and also be given crowns they can use for cosmetics. Whether that works out to the same yearly revenue as (no sub) + (crown purchases) is a good question - seems unlikely, and the calculus is going to change as more DLCs are rolled into the base game. But (share of GamePass revenue) + (additional purchases) does not equal (freeloading).

There is also nuance you’re missing as well.

Playing ESO on console means you need to pay for XB/PS servers to get online. Those are not ZOS servers and ZOS makes no money from them

I don't believe that's true. XBox has to compensate publishers/studios for games that they give away for free via GamePass; if they didn't, no-one would agree to have their game featured. You could argue that since MS now owns ZOS, they wouldn't pay; but the internal accounting still needs to be done so the studio should still be credited.

One thing I DO think ZOS could reasonably do as a QoL measure, would be increase the maximum bank space offered to both subscribers and non-subscribers, while keeping the infinite crafting bag as an ESO+ exclusive. They've already made it easier for everyone to upgrade storage to the max; increasing that max would also ease some inventory issues.

AzuraFan · July 9

OsUfi wrote: »

I'm not so bothered about making the craft bag free, but without it, holy heck does this game become inventory-simulator: the video game movie tie-in.

Instead of making the craft bag free, maybe make stacks of ingredients and materials and such go up to 1,000 instead of 200. Get rid of all the cp10-cp140 materials too (seriously, who needs these still?).

If they did that, most people wouldn't need the craft bag. There has to be something really enticing to make people subscribe. The craft bag succeeds at that (hence all the threads asking for it to be free), so it's working well. They aren't going to do anything to jeopardize that, which would include making the stacking way too generous.

Frayton · July 9

The fact that something for account maintenance (avoiding the burdensome chore of inventory management) is the primary reason most of us get ESO+ rather than good content says a lot about the game.

BretonMage · July 9

I think it would get obnoxious fast in ESO if most people dropped ESO+. Ten times more look-at-me cosmetics, P2W everything, brand collaborations... No.

Arunei · July 9

I'd still sub even without the Craft Bag, personally, because of the other perks I struggle without (namely double bank space). But since they'll never remove it and make it a base game feature, there are other things they could do instead:

* Expand bank and character inventory space: The most obvious option and likely one of the easiest to implement.
* Limited Craft Bag: Make it only hold up to one stack of maybe, say, 50-100 items.
* Limited Furniture Vault: Same idea, make it hold one stack of maybe 150 or 200 items.
* Cheaper and more accessible Storage Coffers/Chests: As it stands now, the Chests and Coffers are EXTREMELY expensive for what you get, and they're also extremely limited in how you can buy them. They're only available for either Crowns, TV, or Writ Vouchers. They need to be made available for Gold and potentially also AP, and they need to have their prices lowered. 200k TV for 60 slots that you can only access from a House? Or 200 Writ Vouchers? 100k/100 is a more reasonable cost.
* Make a storage system for Gear: Perhaps it could be called something like Gear Depot, but whatever they call it, it would work like the Craft Bag and Furniture Vault. I think Gear is one of the big things that can clog up a LOT of peoples' inventories, especially people who have a bunch of Sets on numerous characters for different activities like PvP or Trials. Make it function like the Craft Bag too in that it can be accessed by any character at any time, but have maybe the same space as the Vault (aka 500).

BardokRedSnow · July 9

IviRo wrote: »

merevie wrote: »

With new management, there is the obvious elephant in the room to address.
The ONE reason ESO player base is small is the craft bag issue.
Make the craft bag free.
Yes, ESO+ may drop -but then the same people are likely to invest in the tomes instead.
And everyone else -possible 10k people-would log into ESO again/or start because there is no inventory issue anymore.
It's 2026 -free up the bank space if you actually want players.
It's not the content -it's not the graphics -it's not the age of the game.
It is this one blindly stubborn policy leashing ESO population.
And those people may well hit up the crown store...

How can you possibly want to devalue the subscribers’ contributions? I often see requests like this, but I just don’t understand—on what grounds should we give away an infinite bag for free?
I’m also happy to purchase subscriptions, chapters, Crown Crates, and Tome Tamriel, so your idea doesn’t appeal to me.

While Im not one hundred percent on board with op's idea, your being willing to buy all these things is besides the point they're making. You are a fan, all here on these forums are already for the most part customers, and have spent an amount of money on the game thats not the norm likely, and are at least invested enough to come here, lurk and even participate on occasion.

You're not the average everyday eso player, or potential eso player. That's who op is wanting to appeal to whether people agree with the method or not.

onyxorb · July 9

Yökarhu wrote: »

ESO+ is reasonable imo, but the merchant and other assistants should be able to earn by playing. Make it a quest reward or slap a gold cost. That would solve the problem, people would play the game and if they like it, they will be more likely to get the sub to support a game they love, than get it because you are basically forced to.

I just started a toon on a new platform, so definitely no crowns available for assistants.
I joined a few guilds though, and have access to some amazing guild halls.

So I make it a point to pop into a guild hall to manage my inventory and decon/research to free up slots.
Also made sure to do my horse training (20 days to max out inventory slots).

Just I've been getting along fine without the assistants by using the guild hall.
I get free port back to where I was by porting to a house to preview it and walking out.
Sure, it's a few extra load screens, but it's free inventory management, so I'm fine with it so far.

Think the only time I can't use this trick is if I'm soloing a dungeon, and I'm not going to be doing that anytime soon lol.

miteba · July 9

I have ESO+ just because of the craft bag.
I'll be honest, the crowns, the XP and whatever more it gives, is a bonus for me.
I just really care for the craft bag and supporting the game that way.

I'm sure that if the craft bag went free, a lot more people would return/play the game BUT many more would stop buying the ESO+, and that would be even worst (business wise)

Orbital78 · July 9

I've said it in similar posts, but this is the main reason I don't play FO76 even though I love the Fallout universe. I played Fallout back in the DOS days.

AetherialXL · July 10

If someone isn't willing to buy 1-12 month ESO+ sub, I doubt they would be spending money on crowns. It's a business, they have to make money or what's the point, unless you want commercials halfway through a trial not gonna happen.

peacenote · July 10

merevie wrote: »

With new management, there is the obvious elephant in the room to address.
The ONE reason ESO player base is small is the craft bag issue.
Make the craft bag free.
Yes, ESO+ may drop -but then the same people are likely to invest in the tomes instead.
And everyone else -possible 10k people-would log into ESO again/or start because there is no inventory issue anymore.
It's 2026 -free up the bank space if you actually want players.
It's not the content -it's not the graphics -it's not the age of the game.
It is this one blindly stubborn policy leashing ESO population.
And those people may well hit up the crown store...

I.... don't think it's this simple.

I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. The craft bag is of high value to me. Tomes are not. I absolutely would not funnel my subscription funds into the most inflexible way of obtaining cosmetics that the game has to offer.

Remember that an ESO subscription provides multiple benefits, and removing a benefit from the subscription is going to devalue the sub, not necessarily cause subscribers to happily give up all other benefits to buy a Tome instead. I like my furniture vault, I like my increased antiquity timer, and probably more than anything what I actually use is costume dyeing.

I think that ZOS runs an equal risk of alienating loyal customers who have been paying a sub for a long time if they go down this route. Catering to people not willing to pay for a sub and giving them something at no cost seems equally likely to result in no new profits from that population and instead a loss of profits from subscribers who feel unappreciated and drop the sub and quit entirely out of annoyance. Plus increased expenses due to a population increase from people playing for free who aren't investing in the game in any way.

But again, if I go back to speaking just for myself, I personally would not drop my sub if this occurred, but I would be even less inclined to invest in Tomes on top of a sub than I am right now, since it would "feel" like the sub cost increased (with less benefits tied to it.)

wolfie1.0. · July 10

This is one of those requests that is DOA.