You can pay to save time, LOTS of time. So it’s more like Pay-4-(Much) Convenience (P4C)
For example, to fully train a mount (for EACH character – and the game allows up to 8 characters for free), it takes approximately 180 days as each training can only be done once every 20 hours. If you pay, you can get all the upgrades instantly! It gets expensive when you have to repeat it for all characters you own. But the option is there.
Or to research all traits on a character, it can take more than a year. Pay and yep, you can reduce them to a minute. That’s assuming you have access to the gear to trait. Also, it’s very expensive. But again, the option is there.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown for each P4C feature
Research Scrolls
The one-day research scrolls were tolerable, but now there are 15-day Grand Research Scrolls with NO cooldowns! In normal non-P4C circumstances, research for EACH trait can take up to 128 days!
Master craftsmanship was considered a big accomplishment. Now they’re ‘meh’ with these scrolls.
However, they don’t come cheap at 5,000 crowns and being a Master craftsman does not offer much incentive in a pay-to-win (P2W) viewpoint. It helps immensely on retraiting those bind-on-pickup pieces though.
Storage Chests
You can only buy these with writ vouchers or Tel var stones and these are not easy to earn.
With just a simple payment of crowns, you don’t have to go through all that trouble!
You’ll be able to get a free Fortified Chest with 30 slots when you reach Level 18 though, and that is the only one you can get for free. You must level a new character if you’re already past that as it can’t be bought via crowns or merchants
Unlimited craft bag
The unlimited craft bag is a huge time saver to managing your inventory.
It gives an unfair advantage to another player as they can go farming resources all day without having to return to the merchant, crafting stations or banker for a long time
The craft bag is shared between all characters and has unlimited space. Store all the mats you want without any worries! No trips required to the bank for submitting writs!
Most of the players subscribe to ESO Plus for this one perk.
Banker Assistant and Merchant Assistant
Once again, with just a simple payment of crowns, you further reduce your trips to the nearest town’s bank and merchant.
Excellent time saver when combined with ESO Plus
There’s a slight caveat with these assistants though. The merchant does not repair your gear and the banker does not let you access the guild bank / guild store.
Riding Lessons
Same as above, you can convert your approx ~180 days (almost half a year) of full horse training in speed, stamina and capacity for each character to just a few minutes with crowns.
It is generally desired to upgrade riding lessons to maximum on each character to maximum. So you’ll have to do the above for every character whereas a normal free-player will have to login to each character daily for 180 days. Add in the loading screen time and the time to port and find a stablemaster to train.
Tamriel Skyshard Hunter achievement
Yes, you will be able to instantly get a character to own all the skill points awarded by collecting the skyshards across Tamriel if you pay.
The developers have emphasized that you need to have at least one character with the achievement to be able to buy that item.
Coming soon: Fighters Guild, Psijic Skill Line Full Leveling
Yes, again confirmed in March 2019 ESO Live.
Buying Gold with Real-Life money
Simply sell your crowns for gold (100% permitted) and you can now use the gold to
- Get carried in dungeons for bind-on-pickup loot
- Get carried in trials for those rare skins/mounts
- Get any crafting materials you need without having to grind the gold/farm
- Get to level 50 or max cp in Skyreach
- Gold your armor, jewellery and weapons
- Buy those rare items in guild stores
- and many more
Some crown store items can be purchased via ingame gold
But they do not scale to the cost of the crowns
Such as
- Bag Space Upgrade (gold cost increases for every upgrade but crown prices does not increase)
- Bank space upgrade (gold cost increases for every upgrade but crown prices does not increase)
- Attribute Respecification Scroll (gold cost depends on the number of attributes to reset but the crown price is fixed)
- Skill Respecification Scroll (gold cost depends on the number of skill points to reset but the crown price is fixed)
- All the supplies can be bought via ingame gold (fair items)
- The crown prices of the Rare Styles Motifs (5,000 crowns for Ancient Elf, Barbaric, Daedric, and Primal crafting styles) are a joke when they’re going at about 500g each at guild stores
The best solution
There’s only one good solution (it’ll never happen). Remove these crown store items and limit Crown store items to strictly cosmetics items only.
No time saver items. Nich.
Alternative solutions
If they cannot be taken down, make them purchasable via ingame gold or some other mechanic that does not require a huge investment on the player end such as forcing them to PVP.
But that’s the whole point, they’re meant to save time. You pay to save time.
Some possible solutions that may happen when pigs fly
- Ingame conversion facility: E.g. 1 crown = 1000g. (YEA right – people could just farm gold easily)
- UPDATE: You can now legally buy crowns for gold from other players. The rate goes from 80g – 400g per crown depending on server. However, the trade is not secure and is very prone to scams.
- There are unofficial Discord channels such as this that provide secure crown purchases but they charge an above-market rate and take a commission
- Remove the monthly crowns allotment for ESO Plus subscribers (YEA right – subscribers will think thrice)
- Allow ESO Plus to be purchased with gold
Check out how other games handle this:
- Guild Wars 2 has a Currency Exchange system – exchange gold for gems (ala crowns). Prices are determined by supply and demand from players
- World of Warcraft has a WoW Token system. A token that can be bought for WOW gold and you can even use it to buy Destiny 2 or other games in the Blizzard Store
(previously titled “You can pay to save lots of time in Elder Scrolls Online”)