I don’t understand about dailies. You can get those done simply by playing game. The game u said u love to play. If youre not doing missions, dungeons, scenarios, and other things in the game that would automatically complete daily, what are you doing that isn’t considered grinding by you
They are different games with different systems and values. 
ESO is pay-to-play in the first place. Though their subscription is rather generous, I agree, 1650 crowns are awesome though I absolutely hate you need to pay to get double furnishing space and that said space is tiny by default. Every other bonus there is unnecessary for me. In the same time SWL is already fully free, no need to pay to get into game itself, no need to pay to get into dungeons or new zones on top of that. Patron bonuses may not look like much in comparison but in the end ESO is like vacuum cleaner connected to your purse. I don’t say SWL is ideal but people comparing them irks me. I don’t play any other games but these two, alas, so can’t bring better examples.
I can say I also could use some extra aurum for being patron though people with lifetime sub may ruin it. I see lots of people could use extra bank space. (though we just got more space in last update) Exclusive deals are neat too but we’d need monthly additions and let’s be realistic here… And regarding keys, in ESO loot from bosses is free to loot in the first place, subscription adds nothing to that. I have very little opinion on that matter regarding SWL though, not my point of interest.
(is sobbing quietly about housing in SWL)
Throwing in a wodge of Aurum for each new time period that someone subbed for sounds like a stellar idea. If it was triggered in line with the payment for the sub ( i.e. X times Y for Y months added) it would be pretty churlish of lifetimers to object.
I wouldn’t, at least. Got far more than I paid for already.
The trouble is (and it was an issue on TSW) if they give $10-equivalent to subs, and can’t produce $10 per month worth of new cosmetics, then it stops being a benefit.
I think there are more people prepared to act churlishly than you anticipate. 
If patrons got aurum for subbing and lifers didn’t, there would be a massive fuss over it. You might be able to do it so that if you buy aurum, you get given patron status as a bonus, but even that would still cause some complaints.
One thing to remember is that for F2P games, the monetization aim is not to get people to subscribe. For SWL, it’s about people buying aurum, and a small number buying a lot of aurum. The patron system isn’t meant to be mind blowingly epic, so that we all sub - though that’s what ESO does.
That actually sounds like a pretty good balance tbh. If you say it’s 4 mins per wave, (including the bosses,) then 3 scen keys will use up 36 mins of your hour, (give or take a few, because there’s normally a bit of wasted time). Add in 20 mins to do the first block of challenges and that’s 56 mins.
I forget which type of mission OD will get you (during this event, side mission too), but the 5 empowerments and 50 kills should just kinda happen, so you’re at 3/4, which is already something like 3600 mof with a sub. So that gets you a couple more ODs and there’s your full hour of doing nothing but OD without paying extra.
I know there’s a <5min SF side mission loop that’ll get you the 3, including time warping in/out of SF if you want the other one. Main missions are a little slower.
This might be touching the core of the issue, which is one of expectation.
People coming from subscription based games are used to having access to “everything” when they sub, with the possibility of cosmetics and such from a cash shop.
SWL does provide a sub option, it costs the same as in subscription-based games, and it gives a lot less value.
Result?
- In ESO I happily sub. When I take brakes from the game, I find myself often continuing my sub, since it gives me Crowns (=aurum) that is more worth than the sub price itself.
- In SWL, I grudgingly sub, mostly because I want to support the game, but I refuse to pay, to me, incredibly high prices access to inventory and banking space, and max run speed, even though I could easily afford it. I would if I found the prices more reasonable, and didn’t feel like the game is incredibly greedy and is trying to bleed me dry at every opportunity - even though I’m paying.
Maybe people more used to F2P games feel differently, I don’t know.
Even so, imo you get little value for money spent in this game. I spend less money on it because of it. OP quit the game because of it. How many more (paying) players would the game have with more reasonable prices/value?
Then again, maybe they prefer fewer paying players, but with better profit on those that do pay.
It seems to me you are seeing this from the perspective of a player that has a lot of time to play.
I don’t want to get into this topic really, because I don’t think it’s the core of the discussion. But just so it is clear: I don’t think it’s “hard” to get MOF. It just requires time. I was mainly trying to emphasize with OPs situation, however, I think the main issue was that he had certain expectations when subbing and spending money, and became frustrated when the game still gated content from him.
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I kinda see the point. Right now it’s only speculation of how many more subs they would get from giving Aurum as part of the sub, which I think they should.
There are probably several ways this could be solved. One could be a maximum amount of Aurum earned in total through patron.
The irony is that whilst giving aurum as part of the sub might increase sub rates, it’d also reduce the amount of aurum being sold. If the aim is to boost aurum sales, then giving it out for free with the sub is a bad plan, unless there are enough drains for it - TSW failed to handle that, ESO does it well. Even capping the amount of points/aurum didn’t help in TSW, so I doubt they’d rush to repeat the same mistake.
Managing expectations is a difficult balancing act. There’s been little sympathy for the OP’s attitude that he’s been scammed somehow, because the benefits of patron status are very clear. He wasn’t misled about what he was getting, it was his own expectations that were wrong.
To be clear, I don’t think that the monetization in SWL is very well done. I think that most of the cosmetics are over priced, and I think that a lot of things would be bought more if they were cheaper. I don’t think that the patron feature is too badly priced though really. It’s got some handy perks to it, but it doesn’t feel like you gimp yourself if you don’t pay. ESO feels like it punishes you for not paying, which is one of the reasons that I stopped playing it.
It is something which is often different about F2P vs buy-to-play games. Having made the initial investment means that people are often more open to the idea of paying more regularly, where F2P games that gimp you if you are playing for free often face community backlash if it’s not really free.
One of the big things that is different is about the time investment. F2P titles are often much more time intensive, but give you the option of paying to skip that. For example, in ArcheAge, you gain labour points based on the amount of time you spend logged in. Labour points are required for most of the crafting stuff in the game. You can also buy potions which give you points, which gives you a work around (if you’re willing to pay RL money for the currency you need).
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It really doesn’t require a lot of time. And if you’re only interested in one activity (as the OP seems to be), chances are that by just doing said activity you already complete most of your daily achievements and earn currency to do more of it.
As far as end-game stuff like scenarios (which the OP specifically complained about) goes, no content is being gated. Anyone can run as much of it as they want. Loot is. Most games have mechanics in place to limit the amount of loot or progression you can earn, even if you do pay for a subscription.
But “expectations” is the key word here. Had the OP spent any amount of time reading up on what they were signing up for, they wouldn’t have expected something that was never promised to begin with.
They should offer something like lifetime Grand Master again. When TSW came out, I paid $249.98. I still think it was a great deal and well worth the value. Some people would rather pay $200-$300 up front for lifetime Patron, rather than the current sub model.
Great deal for the player, but probably not a great deal for Funcom…
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This is a tone deaf remark. For some people it is not only a lot of time, but its a waste of time and a bad user experience. Yes, doing 3 main missions and side missions in Kingsmouth might be okay for you, but not everyone enjoys playing like that. Some people have one hour of gaming time. Starting that hour every time by repeating the same missions in KM is very unsatisfying and unrewarding.
I have no issue with dailies, because they reward players doing multiple things in the game. But its not a good idea to force players doing dailies to just be able to do the content they want to do.
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It shouldn’t be for anyone, really. Yes, the fastest way to do the challenges is to do stuff in KM, but at lvl 50, even at elite 1 ip, you can get through them in any zone before KD pretty quickly. It may take 5-10 mins per mission instead of 2 mins in KM, but if you’re hurting for MoFs needed for other content, then it’ll still help.
If you’re doing something like OD, then you can get the main mission, monster kills and upgrades challenges done just by running the content that you were wanting to do. That means you’ve only got 3 side missions to do. Given that the “kill X of Y” area missions count towards that just speeds it up further.
One hour of game time really isn’t as limiting as many people appear to think. I’ve been through periods where I play less than that, and still got my challenges out of the way without trouble on e2 characters. About the only thing that you’ll struggle to do in an hour if you’re low level (or low ip) and not well organised is running multiple dungeons. That’s technically doable, but the practicality of putting a group together takes too long if you haven’t already arranged a group with friends.
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Also to add on to that: If you only have an hour than 3 scenario keys really shouldn’t be to limiting. Heck, chances are you aren’t even through all the missions yet or if you started not to long ago that they aren’t level 50 and CAN’T even do scenarios.
Choose one: Either have to little to do in your playtime or have to little playtime.
Like the only instance you don’t get much out of SWL is if you don’t have lots of time to spend on the game and not a lot of money but also wanna be endgame. And the expectation to have an MMO cater to that is…weird.
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Since we’re going around in circles anyway…
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I played SWL to long…I start seeing connections were there are none: 
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My problem with SWL is the rates. It feels like you need to spend years to get to endgame gear unless you spend thousands of dollars. If Funcom changed either one of those rates (not both) so that it’s something more reasonable, then I think it would be fine. So instead of thousands of dollars, they changed the rate to hundreds of dollars, for example.
This is holding gear-oriented people back from trying new gear and weapons which already exist, which I think is detrimental to Funcom revenues.
It’s actually fairly simple to calculate the actual rates – just calculate how much XP it would take to get everything to Level 70, including one of each weapon. Then use the daily limits to convert to time. And for cost, convert the XP to average cache XP. It won’t be exact, but you’ll get a good idea.
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The question is, would reducing the costs tenfold result in a more than tenfold increase in uptake. The fact that they haven’t done it suggests that their data says no.
Gear oriented people already try out different things. There are a surprising number of people who run with lots of different weapons, and have run enough dungeons to level different weapons, talis and signets to do so.
The fact that there are people who are willing to farm dungeons, scens and lairs to level new bits of gear means that there are groups forming for the players who pay to advance their kit. The daily limits don’t mean much to players who’ve been around for a long time, and people who have got good drops from stuff like regionals can farm pretty much endlessly - sell a Petru and get like 500k MoFs for example.
Arguably, the gear grind is annoying, tedious and very very long. That does mean that people who want to level items either have to pay to circumvent the process, or invest a lot of time. It does help by providing an incentive to keep people running the content though. Progression rewards can be a big motivator for some people, (often, ironically, the same people who find the rate of progression in the gear grind frustrating). Making it easier to reduce the amount of time people need to progress might therefore result in higher churn rate, with more people leaving the game sooner because they feel they’ve seen, done and got it all.