How ESO needs to monetize PvP correctly

Elder Scrolls Online Player versus Player really is a complete mess when they could actually improve it, actually make more people happier, and monetize it well.

How to do this? Careful introduction of Pay-for-Convenience, which of course is really a type of Pay-to-Win.

• Show value in what you are offering
• Separate the PvP and PvE markets
• Sell Pay-to-Win, but carefully
• Proper league to promote competitiveness
• Encourage sales but enforce cash input

Show value in what you are offering

Right away, ESO fails utterly in this regard, in so many ways.

• Too many exploits - When players can exploit poor game design by putting together gear and skill combinations that are too powerful, there is no incentive to buy anything from the Crown Store (cash shop). Why pay for an advantage when you can get one with an exploit?
• Too many cheats - Just recently yet another cheat-program-for-sale was identified. Unless ESO can actually make it too risky to use a cheat, there will be less incentive to actually buy anything from the Crown Store when they can get more benefits elsewhere more cheaply.
• Too many gameplay issues - A lot of players can play properly but there are enough who can't, and they complain loudly. Even worse, these issues let other players have an advantage. Get a handle on performance that so players who are willing to pay-to-win will actually invest money here. There's little point in paying for advantages when it will do you no good, especially against others who aren't paying for advantages at all.

Separate the PvP and PvE markets

ESO continually tries to force non-PvP players into PvP through events. This is a terrible move for many reasons.

• It antagonizes another market. Why create unrest in already paying customers?
• It brings the wrong type of people into PvP. People who have no interest in PvP don't bother even trying to get better. So PvP players can get easy kills -- but this just means the game is attracting PvP players who are driving off your paying customers.
• And because they don't really need to buy anything from the cash shop to do it, it is a high-risk play to replace one customer with another, when you don't have to take that risk at all.
• It also risks hampering new client acquisition when a brand new player is assaulted by PvP and feels hampered from accessing the game. Even worse, if they are actually here for PvP but can't make any headway whatsoever in getting better at it.
• The PvE market is generally more about earning their achievements and gear rewards. Outright selling those or selling too many advantages to make those too easily acquired, will upset that community and lose clients. So any pay-for-convenience has to be introduced carefully, to avoid being able to give a huge advantage to PvE activities.

Open world PvP can exist in tandem with PvE if done carefully. For example, there is already a mechanic for one-on-one duelling in open world PvE zones. This could be expanded easily to overlap open world PvP in a PvE zone by carefully managing opt-in. For example:

• A player can choose an alliance and declare "war" on them. This flags them for PvP.
• Any player who has flagged themselves for any PvP AND is of that alliance can attack and be attacked.
• A player can choose one, two, or three (all) alliances, including their own.
• Anyone who doesn't flag themselves for PvP at all can safely ignore all of it -- just like being bystanders at a 1-on-1 duel.

In doing this, no PvP-specific zones really need to be created. Everyone can go anywhere.

Sell Pay-to-Win, but carefully

PvP players typically have little interest in grinding out PvE activities for hard-to-get items such as top tier gear sets. But at the same time, these are also locked behind PvE activities.

As mentioned before, selling conveniences can upset the PvE market as well as unbalance overall gameplay in terms of achievements and content clearing.

So pay-to-win for PvP must somehow be limited to PvP. We can do this in two main ways:

• If it is a "common" consumable such as items that are not really locked behind anything particularly difficult, then buying them is a time convenience and generally it is not necessary to put a lot of restrictions on the item. Example: Level-unrestricted consumables such as food, potions, and poisons which are already sold in the Crown Store.
• If it normally requires some effort and/or it is reusable, make the item Bound, limited to PvP, and possibly limited-use (e.g., a fixed number of matches before it is gone, or make it non-repairable/non-rechargeable so it ultimately has to be replaced).
• Pretty much any item, no matter how exclusive, can be on sale. For example, Perfected weapons from Veteran Maelstrom Arena, which are locked behind not only hard content but random chance as to what weapon you get.
• The item's benefits will only work in very specific PvP-only areas. Since we would not want top-tier PvE items for sale to be exploited into being used in PvE, basically they would only function in Battlegrounds, the instanced PvP matches.
• The items are Character Bound. This not only limits their re-use through twinking re-rolled characters but encourages more sales since you would need to purchase them for each character. In this way, even a reusable item like a piece of gear is a "consumable".
• There should be comparable or exactly the same items available in the game, outside of the cash shop. This frames the "pay-to-win" aspect into more of a "pay-for-time-savings".

Proper leagues to promote competitiveness

Without some way of rank and compare to others, PvP and pay-to-win in general has diminished attractiveness. So PvP must in fact be properly competitive. Within a league, players who are willing to spend to get ahead will spend and see the benefits. Those who don't can drop into a different league where they can rank with others who are around the same level of commitment and pay-to-win.

It is also important that the system not encourage exploits where too much pay-to-win overpowered players constantly find a way to enter lower leagues and dominate:

• Players who want to get into PvP need a place to start and improve.
• Players who want to spend, but not that much, need a place where they can still see the benefits of spending.
• Players who don't want to spend at all and earn everything in-game can be in their own league where they can more fairly compare with others doing the same. This means even within the pay-to-win model, there is a non pay-to-win segment.
• When a league is competitive, players might be more inclined to spend for that extra advantage so they can get ahead. Whereas if a top-spender constantly shows up, they might feel there's no point spending anything at all and just leave.

Everyone has limits to what they are willing to do (or spend), so it is important to have a system that is sufficiently competitive that ranking actually make sense.

Encourage sales but enforce cash input

• Because players are notorious for exploiting various game systems to (for example) generate a lot of in-game currency, any sale through in-game currency must be very carefully controlled.
• At the same time, some players who would be willing to pay-to-win but don't have a lot of personal real-life money can still indirectly generate sales through the Gifting mechanic where someone who has Crowns can gift an item to another and get "paid" through in-game currency or items.
• So to maximize potential sales, the items can be Giftable from the Crown Store -- as long as all Crowns that enter the system involve real-world money to ZOS. That is, direct purchases of Crowns or indirect accumulation of Crowns from ESO+ subscriptions.