Character options need an overhaul or at least some change.

[Dante.1763]

1 hour ago, Follyfoot.2803 said:

Don't talk daft.  A voluntary sub of course like in TESO.  You sub you get access to stuff you would normally have to buy (while subbed)

You people, what you like?  You should know that they could never change to a compulsory sub from a F2P game.  What you smoking?

Ah yes. The totally not optional subscription due to the benefits it has. ESOs sub offers:

 

• Access to all DLC game packs
• Free crowns for the in-game Crown Store
• Access to the Craft Bag
• Double bank space
• Bonuses to progression
• Increased Furniture placement limits
• Costume dyeing
• Double Transmute Crystal capacity
• Exclusive access to unique Crown Store deals
• 10% increase to Experience gains
• 10% increase to Gold gains
• 10% increase to Crafting Inspiration gains
• 10% increase to Trait Research rates

 

Certainly its "Optional" but without it, your game experience is going to be worse. No thank you.

[kharmin.7683]

And, how much of that list from ESO does one lose if one allows the subscription to lapse?

[Vexona.6452]

All of that from ESO is just bonus and in no way takes away from the game. 10% isn't a whole lot and they practically sneeze out xp scrolls and items everywhere. And honestly their player housing is like "Eh okay, I decorated now what?". It's not really used for much except the one dude who bought every crafting station and shoved it into one house and people go there for ease of use, but you don't even need that. ESO sub is nice for their chapters (DLC), but definitely not the cake considering 90% of the game is free. You can even purchase the DLC with earned gold in game, so... you don't have to pay real money for anything.  I will say that their permanent purchase of unlocking cosmetic styles is by far the best investment and I wish GW2 had that option. I saw there are scrolls on the AH but I'd rather pay the 15 bucks in real money for an unlock of the basic styles: support the company and be able to adjust stuff on the fly. 25$ for the extra colour and hair options, too. I think the only thing ESO really has over GW2 is more mogging styles and tattoo/hair choices. But they can't compete with GW's animations or combat. ESO feels like a crappy console ARPG and I got bored very quickly.

 

I am so glad that MMOs aren't clones of each other. After spending time shopping around for what game I wanted to invest in, I found GW2 offers everything I want: lovely graphics, I purchase what I want to support the company instead of being forced to pay a monthly fee for unsupported content, fantastic combat and the most impressive mount system I've ever seen.

[Linken.6345]

10 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

And, how much of that list from ESO does one lose if one allows the subscription to lapse?

All of it.

[Rasimir.6239]

9 hours ago, Sash.2754 said:

All of that from ESO is just bonus and in no way takes away from the game.

Have you tried playing ESO without sub for an extended period of time?

• You basically have to ignore crafting, since a maxed-out bank can't even hold half of the crafting materials the game throws at you continually.
• You need to spend a lot of time checking which loot to pick up to avoid your (maxed-out) bags overflow with crafting materials every couple of minutes, especially since many of those materials are useless to you without craft bag access.
• Ignore housing, since the furniture limit is pretty stingy on a non-subbed account, plus you likely have to find your furniture among the "storage houses" and "storage characters" because there's not enough room to store it in the bank.
• Storing equipment for later use/alts is also a lot less convenient due to the lower limit on bank space, which means you'll have to reconstruct more equipment whenever you want to change builds, while at the same time being much more limited on the amount of transmute stones you can store if you don't sub.
• The 10% reduction on trait research adds up to several days if you want to seriously research traits, another drawback if you like crafting.

 

I've been playing ESO since beta, and without sub for a large part of it, and I can guarantee that it does in fact take a lot away from the game. The restrictions on non-subbed accounts may be subtle at first glance, but if you try to play the game you quickly find that you are stuck spending a lot of time on manual busiwork because they decided to make the qol updates sub-exclusive to get people to sub.

 

I really really REALLY don't want GW2 to go the way of "optional" sub, since every game I've seen so far that has that ends up making things inconvenient for the non-subs to give incentives for subbing. I vastly prefer the GW2 way where I can choose where and when to buy what for my account (crafting tools, bank storage, character slots, whatever) rather than renting access to qol features that only stay available if I keep paying.

[DoomNexus.5324]

Yea I fully agree, ESO without the subscription is a way worse game experience.
For me the material bank/craft bag just kills it. I'm actually fine with everything else but I mean.. just try it in GW2. Try to never use the material storage, treat it like it doesn't exist aka every material has to go into your bank and you are not allowed to use the Deposit button in your inventory. Never.
It becomes a real pain in the kitten and now think about it being in the game but you have to pay for it every. kittening. month.
No thanks.

I will however say that I prefer the DLC system from ESO. Yes, it poses a paywall but since game devs can't just eat sunlight and don't want to sleep under bridges, I think it's a more fair monetization system in the long run. And it would actually benefit the players as well.
If they'd actually sell LS episodes or probably rather an entire season (maybe even introduce a season pass idk) they could probably afford bigger episodes which would actually be worth some money. And an additional advantage for both us and the devs would be that Anet wouldn't be as forced to pump out new skins into the cash shop all the time. Maybe they could affort sneaking in new cool sets that are achieveable via actually playing the game, not by swiping the credit card. There are plenty of really good looking armor pieces and stuff so I'm not saying Anet doesn't do that at all. I just think not cashing out on cosmetics as hard helps keeping a certain value to transfusing stuff. Or actually being able to aquire a (somewhat decent looking) mount skin ingame.

And @topic: Well I'd obviously always appreciate new/more stuff but I think it's not dire and there are more important things to do in my opinion. EoD will bring new customization options anyway (obviously Cantha themed then) - as some have pointed out already.