OneDrive Sync/loss of Live folder -> Requesting" Protect account settings & Sync Character settings

mctaff

Problem: I had massive problems when One Drive in Windows decided to sync my two computers (one was a laptop - different settings incl screen resolution).
After I tried to un-fudge the whole thing by turning the sync off, I lost everything altogether, resulting in Windows deleting all my game variables and add-ons.

Given the absurd choice to make many character settings specific to characters (including keybinds and combat settings), having to re-set up every character was enough to make me seriously consider quitting the game altogether; along with the 11,000+ hours and thousands of dollars spent.

Solution: Please, for the love of ALL that is Daedric, can ZOS please move the game variables (including add-ons) out of the Documents folder to prevent anyone else having catastrophic issues? This is the easiest thing, as using "mlink", registry and game setting editing and all that bothersome garbage requires people to have a solid knowledge of what they are doing. ZOS, on the other hand, can simply make it point to somewhere else, such as "C:/My Games/ZoS/Elder Scrolls Online/xxx". This is an easy solution to prevent problems. Migration is as simply as the Launcher being equipped with a script to do the migration for the user on demand, setting the new folder as the default once it has copied (leaving a backup in My Documents).

If people want to sync their account across PCs, then simply don't use the new "protect ESO Settings" script, instead opting for "Allow One Drive Sync"


Secondary: While we are at it, why on earth are almost all setting on a per-character basis WITHOUT the option to make them global? Even add-on authors figured this out a long time ago; create profiles that each character can have. See "Personal Assistant (Banking/Junk/Worker)" for an excellent example. ZOS can easily build that functionality into the game, by simply making all individual setting have a "Make global?" checkbox. Hit that; applies to all characters.
Also apply to keybinds in Controls - One only has to re-apply something as tedious as all keybind changes to 18 characters when they are borked, to see the value in this being a standard option.
(Note: Yes, I used an add-on previously to get them all the same. It caused several issues - and why have an Add-On, when ZoS can easily add it to the game options to remove having to load Yet Another LUA?)

mctaff

For anyone else that has this problem:

Extra fun: the existing add-ons are not detecting because Windows adds "- Copy" to all of the existing files.

So when you kill off the new files, you're left with the old ones, and you have to go through each and every file in each and every AddOn folder and remove that part of the filename. That is how you can recover your old settings and Add Ons. Remember, that's for each individual file.

To pre-empt those out there that figure it's time to lay the hate on Windows or whatever - this has arisen because of the choice of location for AddOns was mandated by ZoS and we don't have a simple way of setting that ourselves.

As my two computers run on different resolutions, I can't even let the AddOns themselves be in that folder and have locally stored preferences; they have to be completely isolated from one another, which is annoying if I update a setting on one computer and want it on the other and it's somewhat complex.

The easiest solution? Don't store game files in a place that Windows likes to stuff around.

ZOS_Bill

@mctaff

Thank you for sharing these solutions with everyone!

adirondack

Are we certain they shared solutions?

JerBearESO

We definitely need the per Character settings to be secondary.... in other words, make the settings account wide, then allow each setting to have an overriding value per Character. This way we have account wide settings AND we can have unique settings per Character.

mctaff

adirondack wrote: »

Are we certain they shared solutions?

Pretty certain.

1) Gave ZOS a preventative solution
2) Gave players a preventative stop-gap / Warned people against the Evils of Microsoft(tm), and;
3) also told people how to un-fudge it if it happens to them.