PTS Update 42 - Feedback Thread for Mail Expiration Changes

Necrotech_Master · April 30

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

BenevolentBowd wrote: »

I see a lot of good feedback that appears to be largely ignored by ZOS.

I can really relate to the feedback about the correlation to full inboxes and inventory space. The proposed changes would benefit ZOS the most because there seems to be an unspoken expectation they could drive more players to ESO+ subs.

I may have missed a similar comment because there are a lot of pages, but I haven't seen any one mention the greatest number of mail messages for myself: Hireling mail.

If a player utilizes all of their character slots like myself, I can generate over 100 hireling mails a day. This is after all of the changes to reduce the hireling message counts.

If turn off ESO+ and I instantly have a huge problem. My online time shifts from doing writs, collecting shadowy supplier rewards, dragonguard chest, and chatting with my guildies to spending all my time inventory managing my mail so I can read my guild messages and receive mail from other players.

As a result, I'm finding I'm just grabbing my daily login rewards and dragonguard chest and logging off after getting the info I need for my daily and weekly posts. Heh, if I want to login to a hundred emails to be processed, I can login to my work computer...

I was actually going to suggest that overhauling the hireling system would eliminate a lot of database entries. Maybe make them account wide and consolidate them to where rewards scale based on the number of characters with the right perks.

i would actually support something like that, because i frequently do not log in all of my characters each, usually at best i do maybe 2-3

Sordidfairytale · May 1

Have Hireling Mail be a tab at the crafting station itself where they periodically deposit their offerings. Perhaps if you don't collect them, they don't have room to deposit more.

peacenote · May 1

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

BenevolentBowd wrote: »

I see a lot of good feedback that appears to be largely ignored by ZOS.

I can really relate to the feedback about the correlation to full inboxes and inventory space. The proposed changes would benefit ZOS the most because there seems to be an unspoken expectation they could drive more players to ESO+ subs.

I may have missed a similar comment because there are a lot of pages, but I haven't seen any one mention the greatest number of mail messages for myself: Hireling mail.

If a player utilizes all of their character slots like myself, I can generate over 100 hireling mails a day. This is after all of the changes to reduce the hireling message counts.

If turn off ESO+ and I instantly have a huge problem. My online time shifts from doing writs, collecting shadowy supplier rewards, dragonguard chest, and chatting with my guildies to spending all my time inventory managing my mail so I can read my guild messages and receive mail from other players.

As a result, I'm finding I'm just grabbing my daily login rewards and dragonguard chest and logging off after getting the info I need for my daily and weekly posts. Heh, if I want to login to a hundred emails to be processed, I can login to my work computer...

I was actually going to suggest that overhauling the hireling system would eliminate a lot of database entries. Maybe make them account wide and consolidate them to where rewards scale based on the number of characters with the right perks.

i would actually support something like that, because i frequently do not log in all of my characters each, usually at best i do maybe 2-3

Yes... more and more I feel like the currently proposed solution is literally the least player-friendly method that could be devised, while there are a wide variety of areas that could be addressed to pare down the game transactions and also make things better for players, not worse. The lack of flexibility that these mail timers are going to cause for players is almost unbelievable to me. I am on PC, and I am an ESO+ Subscriber, and I use lots of mods. I've often said that I don't know how folks play on other platforms - I have a lot of respect for those that do. These proposed changes magnify that sentiment by 1,000 fold.

Is the game really in such dire straits that we need to be doing these things? If so, things like a hireling revamp would be much more of a win/win for all.

Rishikesa108 · May 1

I don't understand how shortening the listing time can give the servers an advantage.
In fact, if an item that I put up for sale comes back to me, it is very likely that I will put it up for sale again, so there would still always be the same number of items for sale in the guilds.
Indeed, if we want to look deeper, it could be a greater effort for the server that the players receive the items back and then put them back on sale. A good trader knows that he must always leave his trading guilds with 30/30 items for sale. So I see absolutely no lower impact benefit for servers.
I only see the desire to drain gold from the game, that is, from the players' pockets.
The rewards in this game are already ridiculous (this evening I did a vet Vateshran Hollows, where I already have all the gear, so I don't need the drop that is given to me, and by handing in the quest I received a whopping 453 gold!), if then the main source of legitimate income is taken away from us... where should we go to get the gold?
Obviously not from unauthorized sources... right?

Necrotech_Master · May 1

peacenote wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

BenevolentBowd wrote: »

I see a lot of good feedback that appears to be largely ignored by ZOS.

I can really relate to the feedback about the correlation to full inboxes and inventory space. The proposed changes would benefit ZOS the most because there seems to be an unspoken expectation they could drive more players to ESO+ subs.

I may have missed a similar comment because there are a lot of pages, but I haven't seen any one mention the greatest number of mail messages for myself: Hireling mail.

If a player utilizes all of their character slots like myself, I can generate over 100 hireling mails a day. This is after all of the changes to reduce the hireling message counts.

If turn off ESO+ and I instantly have a huge problem. My online time shifts from doing writs, collecting shadowy supplier rewards, dragonguard chest, and chatting with my guildies to spending all my time inventory managing my mail so I can read my guild messages and receive mail from other players.

As a result, I'm finding I'm just grabbing my daily login rewards and dragonguard chest and logging off after getting the info I need for my daily and weekly posts. Heh, if I want to login to a hundred emails to be processed, I can login to my work computer...

I was actually going to suggest that overhauling the hireling system would eliminate a lot of database entries. Maybe make them account wide and consolidate them to where rewards scale based on the number of characters with the right perks.

i would actually support something like that, because i frequently do not log in all of my characters each, usually at best i do maybe 2-3

Yes... more and more I feel like the currently proposed solution is literally the least player-friendly method that could be devised, while there are a wide variety of areas that could be addressed to pare down the game transactions and also make things better for players, not worse. The lack of flexibility that these mail timers are going to cause for players is almost unbelievable to me. I am on PC, and I am an ESO+ Subscriber, and I use lots of mods. I've often said that I don't know how folks play on other platforms - I have a lot of respect for those that do. These proposed changes magnify that sentiment by 1,000 fold.

Is the game really in such dire straits that we need to be doing these things? If so, things like a hireling revamp would be much more of a win/win for all.

under the current system i just miss out on most of the hireling mails, but im almost guaranteed to get them whenever i log in a character, unless i swap off and back to the same character in the same play session lol

if all the hireling mails were consolidated then i could gather them all at once and i wouldnt be missing out on potentially dozens of mats

p_tsakirisb16_ESO · May 1

Since this is linked to the traders changes and there isn't separate feedback thread, will the listing fees be halved?

Because on expensive items north of 1 million cold, that means a hefty loss of money every 2 weeks.

FrancisCrawford · May 1

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the changes for mail expiration. Please let us know if you have any feedback or run into any issues relating to these changes.

Cutting the duration of mail availability is a major QoL reduction. I kite a lot of stuff between my primary and second accounts, and doing it twice as often would not be fun.

sarahthes · May 1

p_tsakirisb16_ESO wrote: »

Since this is linked to the traders changes and there isn't separate feedback thread, will the listing fees be halved?

Because on expensive items north of 1 million cold, that means a hefty loss of money every 2 weeks.

It shouldn't be. 95% of items sold or more will not be affected, and it would cut one of the most frequently engaged with gold sinks in the game in half.

ApoAlaia · May 1

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the changes for mail expiration. Please let us know if you have any feedback or run into any issues relating to these changes.

Cutting the duration of mail availability is a major QoL reduction. I kite a lot of stuff between my primary and second accounts, and doing it twice as often would not be fun.

Four (and change) times as often.

'Regular' mail between accounts will expire in 7 days.

LadySinflower · May 1

I find this change to be ridiculous. Let me illustrate my own situation. I have been unable to play ESO for a month. On April 3 my Xbox fell on the floor and the HDMI port was damaged. I did not, and still do not, have the money to repair or replace the Xbox. As a result I've already missed the anniversary event. I had items that I was saving for an upcoming guild event by utilizing the mail/return to sender function because my inventory was completely clogged. They are now gone because more repaired 30 days have passed, but that is not due to any change you made. There were, however, items that I listed in my trader right before this happened that will just now be expiring. I am hoping to be able to get my Xbox repaired so these items don't disappear. The items I had been saving for the guild event are already gone.

If the new time limits on mail storage and guild listing times had already been implemented, not only would I have lost the items I was trying to save, but I would have lost everything listed in my guild traders. I know that a situation like mine is extreme and completely unforseen, but shortening the lengths of time on holding mail and guild listings would ensure that someone in my situation had no chance to retrieve any of the things they/I had, some of which were quite valuable.

It's like you want to take our valuable items away from us and force us to pay more to list them. You may not be increasing listing fees directly, but by cutting the listing time in half you are effectively doubling the listing cost of everything in the traders.

And heaven forbid someone be unable to play for an extended time period. You just take away everything they were selling or saving. I am a console player so I have no access to the PTS. But if the feedback you were given said no, please don't do that, you ignored feedback and did it anyway. Why bother to put anything on the PTS if your plan is to do what you want regardless of player feedback?

Thanks for nothing.

acastanza_ESO · May 1

LadySinflower wrote: »

I find this change to be ridiculous. Let me illustrate my own situation. I have been unable to play ESO for a month. On April 3 my Xbox fell on the floor and the HDMI port was damaged. I did not, and still do not, have the money to repair or replace the Xbox. As a result I've already missed the anniversary event. I had items that I was saving for an upcoming guild event by utilizing the mail/return to sender function because my inventory was completely clogged. They are now gone because more repaired 30 days have passed, but that is not due to any change you made. There were, however, items that I listed in my trader right before this happened that will just now be expiring. I am hoping to be able to get my Xbox repaired so these items don't disappear. The items I had been saving for the guild event are already gone.

If the new time limits on mail storage and guild listing times had already been implemented, not only would I have lost the items I was trying to save, but I would have lost everything listed in my guild traders. I know that a situation like mine is extreme and completely unforseen, but shortening the lengths of time on holding mail and guild listings would ensure that someone in my situation had no chance to retrieve any of the things they/I had, some of which were quite valuable.

It's like you want to take our valuable items away from us and force us to pay more to list them. You may not be increasing listing fees directly, but by cutting the listing time in half you are effectively doubling the listing cost of everything in the traders.

And heaven forbid someone be unable to play for an extended time period. You just take away everything they were selling or saving. I am a console player so I have no access to the PTS. But if the feedback you were given said no, please don't do that, you ignored feedback and did it anyway. Why bother to put anything on the PTS if your plan is to do what you want regardless of player feedback?

Thanks for nothing.

That is an awful situation to be in, and exactly the kind of thing that ZOS has failed to take into consideration here.
That said, I might suggest reaching out to support about restorations here, considering the extenuating circumstances they might be willing to make an exception and restore at least some of the items. It's not a guarantee but ZOS does actually tend towards decent customer service in that area.

Wolf_Eye · May 1

I wonder if it is at all possible to completely re-do the guild store system and have gold sent to the seller's bank instead of through the mail. If the process is automated, then no one would need to miss out on sales. This could help sooth some issues.

I'm not sure what to do about returned items though, especially if the bank is too full to accept them.

NordSwordnBoard · May 1

"...improvements in server performance by reducing strain on the database."

Since I started playing this game, anytime I've seen this reason given there has been no discernible permanent improvement. Not that it actually matters, but I think most players would prefer the current system to the proposed improvements. One is an existing system we like. The other is a vague promise.

Durnik · May 1

You know what helps server performance? Don't require us to swap toons to get hireling mails. I swap toons over and over to simply get my mail.

Jywebbs · May 1

OMG
Seriously ?

Apart from the really bogus excuse of the performance impact on your databases (there are many solutions today to manage all that), we're still waiting for the promised updates server side you served us (The lot of famous improvements you talked about during your major announcements in 2022?)

Once again I will repeat myself: we are customers and we pay for the Eso+ service.
Since the 2022 announcements we really have the impression of facing politicians who promise mountains and wonders. Confidence is seriously waning, seriously.

You plan to reduce the duration of sales to guild merchants at 14 days. This will force players to relist items every 2 weeks.
I hope you have planned to halve the contributions, it would really be an abuse to keep the same commissions for a period reduced by half, isn't it ?

Imagine the required work of merchant guild leaders who are already overwhelmed by the activities of their guild on a monthly basis, announcing them that they will have to double the pace... lol

Your excuse :
"We noticed [...] that the items sold within the first 48 hours of being put on sale", I guarantee that this is not true for several reasons:
- I observe the sales markets a lot and I am registered in 3 merchant guilds (so I have 90 monthly slots).
- I have statistics (yes, I am one of those who track their sales on Excel spreadsheets, it happens) and I add them to each sale with the average sales rate in the performance columns as well as the min and max and the average rate should be around 24 to 48 hours if I listened to you, but that is not at all the case.

- According to the sales statistics that I have kept since 2018, my average sales rate (in days) is segmented according to the value of the products on sale.

For example :

All products between 0 and 20k gold sell fairly quickly in the first 3 days max,
Products between 20 and 100k gold sell in the first 6 to 8 days,
Products between 100 and 500k gold sell within the first fortnight but sometimes takes long (over 3 weeks),
Products above 500k gold are sold mainly and almost entirely beyond the 20th day

Without exception and for 5 years, these statistics have been the same and remain stable but beyond that, I am not the only one to notice this. There are several of us selling and we have very similar statistics so we really have the right to doubt the excuse provided regarding the sale of items within 48 hours or you have forgotten an important concept when reading statistics: segmentation.

I should point out of course that I am part of an association of merchant guilds, there is a lot of discussion and once again the leaders of these guilds are not going to receive this news with pleasure at all (and obviously all traders).

I specify that I am a French player so probably you do not follow the statistics of the countries that you consider "secondary" given that your management decided to fire the entire FR team recently (yes definitely there is no only in the game decisions are unilateral and hard to defend but that is another subject).

Finally, another subject on which we do not agree and which will greatly displease a large part of the community, it is guaranteed.

fluffybunny · May 2

This is a really stupid change. No one asked for it. No one WANTED it. It’s such an inconvenience. The exact opposite of what people wanted was delivered and I truly do not understand some of these incredibly idiotic decisions made by the devs.

Sordidfairytale · May 2

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

I wonder if it is at all possible to completely re-do the guild store system and have gold sent to the seller's bank instead of through the mail. If the process is automated, then no one would need to miss out on sales. This could help sooth some issues.

I'm not sure what to do about returned items though, especially if the bank is too full to accept them.

Gold going to the bank is convenient and solves the matter entirely with gold.

The real issue though is your final thought, where does the stuff go if the persons inventory is too full to receive stuff. Lets look at a worst case scenario.

I list 30 items. The next day I'm kicked from the guild for ridiculous pricing, my items are going to be delisted. Currently they would be sent to me in the mail, I'm going to need more than 14 or even 30 days to recover from the emotional trauma of being G-kicked. So I'm likely going to lose my priceless stuff.

If however we remove the mail from the interaction entirely and have the Banker hold the items in essence in an escrow, then I can come get the items whenever. Further, I would only have 30 items in the trader/mail database. Because I wouldn't be allowed to list anything until I retrieved my items from the Banker. In essence you could have potentially (30 x 5) 150 trader/escrow slots. Could a player use this as expensive storage? Yes, but that's what is happening now, but worse if you add in the mail.

You could have the escrow be an all or nothing interaction as well, so a player doesn't just pull out a few items at a time and instead; must clear their escrow from all traders before relisting with any trader, in order to discourage using it as additional storage.

xyphrum · May 2

I suggest you give me an option when listing the item in the trader, how long I want to have it listed and pay the listing fee accordingly. Let's say the default is set to 14 days and when I want to list for 28 days, I just pay double the listing fee.

Further my biggest problem with expiring items is that most of the time I DON'T REMEMBER WHAT PRICE I LISTED THEM FOR.
This frequently results in me listing the item again for the same or even higher price and it still won't sell.

One simple thing you could at least add in the mail with the expired item is telling me in which guild I posted it and which price I tried to selling it for. Then I can easier re--post the item in a better trader or for a lower price.

Speaking of re-posting. Why not save the price I tried selling it for? Currenlty the suggested price is 3x merchant price.
(btw a "feature" that was introduced years ago. For me 1x merchant price was way more intuitive tbh. 3x merchant price has never helped me in any way and adds only more confusion to the table). But ok, it would make a lot of sense if the game saves the asking price for an item. So when I list an item again, whether I got it back from an expired mail or I just unlisted it myself, or even just listing multiple of the same items, it would not suggest 3x the merchant price, but the price I listed it for previously.

Also, in the guild trader menu itself, when the item is still listed, the only option now is to unlist the item. Can we get an extra option to "re-price" an item? That option would just modify the asking price of that item in the guild store. I would have to pay the listing fee again, but it would also show up as new.
This would be a great Quality of Life improvement.
To be honest I only let my items expire because currently it's too much hassle to unlist it, get the item back from the mail, remember what price I listed it for and re-post it for a lower price.

Horny_Poney · May 2

I would be OK-ish with the reduced email and trader list durations ONLY if:
- listing fees are halved,
- the email returning my item allows me to relist it directly, with editable (but prefilled with previous values) guild name and item price. Meaning: the item can be relisted with 2 button presses.
THIS would be convenient for users. The currently proposed change is convenient only to the devs.

wolfie1.0. · May 2

Horny_Poney wrote: »

I would be OK-ish with the reduced email and trader list durations ONLY if:
- listing fees are halved,
- the email returning my item allows me to relist it directly, with editable (but prefilled with previous values) guild name and item price. Meaning: the item can be relisted with 2 button presses.
THIS would be convenient for users. The currently proposed change is convenient only to the devs.

Step further, relist optometrist in the guild store with several price options you can preplan if it doesn't sells

Jrkjrjnhy3uu

Wolf_Eye · May 2

Sordidfairytale wrote: »

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

I wonder if it is at all possible to completely re-do the guild store system and have gold sent to the seller's bank instead of through the mail. If the process is automated, then no one would need to miss out on sales. This could help sooth some issues.

I'm not sure what to do about returned items though, especially if the bank is too full to accept them.

Gold going to the bank is convenient and solves the matter entirely with gold.

The real issue though is your final thought, where does the stuff go if the persons inventory is too full to receive stuff. Lets look at a worst case scenario.

I list 30 items. The next day I'm kicked from the guild for ridiculous pricing, my items are going to be delisted. Currently they would be sent to me in the mail, I'm going to need more than 14 or even 30 days to recover from the emotional trauma of being G-kicked. So I'm likely going to lose my priceless stuff.

If however we remove the mail from the interaction entirely and have the Banker hold the items in essence in an escrow, then I can come get the items whenever. Further, I would only have 30 items in the trader/mail database. Because I wouldn't be allowed to list anything until I retrieved my items from the Banker. In essence you could have potentially (30 x 5) 150 trader/escrow slots. Could a player use this as expensive storage? Yes, but that's what is happening now, but worse if you add in the mail.

You could have the escrow be an all or nothing interaction as well, so a player doesn't just pull out a few items at a time and instead; must clear their escrow from all traders before relisting with any trader, in order to discourage using it as additional storage.

The escrow is a good idea. That could be done through the banker, and they can have their guild store tab greyed out until you clear out their escrow.

I have another idea too.

Maybe things can be revamped to allow "automatic relisting". So, when you initially post your item, you could click a little checkbox if you want to have the item automatically relisted if it did not sell (with the fees pulling from your bank automatically). Or you do not have to click the checkbox, in which case it would go to the escrow. That way, it does not have to clog the mailing system if the mailing system is affecting performance.

Sordidfairytale · May 2

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

Sordidfairytale wrote: »

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

I wonder if it is at all possible to completely re-do the guild store system and have gold sent to the seller's bank instead of through the mail. If the process is automated, then no one would need to miss out on sales. This could help sooth some issues.

I'm not sure what to do about returned items though, especially if the bank is too full to accept them.

Gold going to the bank is convenient and solves the matter entirely with gold.

The real issue though is your final thought, where does the stuff go if the persons inventory is too full to receive stuff. Lets look at a worst case scenario.

I list 30 items. The next day I'm kicked from the guild for ridiculous pricing, my items are going to be delisted. Currently they would be sent to me in the mail, I'm going to need more than 14 or even 30 days to recover from the emotional trauma of being G-kicked. So I'm likely going to lose my priceless stuff.

If however we remove the mail from the interaction entirely and have the Banker hold the items in essence in an escrow, then I can come get the items whenever. Further, I would only have 30 items in the trader/mail database. Because I wouldn't be allowed to list anything until I retrieved my items from the Banker. In essence you could have potentially (30 x 5) 150 trader/escrow slots. Could a player use this as expensive storage? Yes, but that's what is happening now, but worse if you add in the mail.

You could have the escrow be an all or nothing interaction as well, so a player doesn't just pull out a few items at a time and instead; must clear their escrow from all traders before relisting with any trader, in order to discourage using it as additional storage.

The escrow is a good idea. That could be done through the banker, and they can have their guild store tab greyed out until you clear out their escrow.

I have another idea too.

Maybe things can be revamped to allow "automatic relisting". So, when you initially post your item, you could click a little checkbox if you want to have the item automatically relisted if it did not sell (with the fees pulling from your bank automatically). Or you do not have to click the checkbox, in which case it would go to the escrow. That way, it does not have to clog the mailing system if the mailing system is affecting performance.

Hmm I think having an automatic feature for drawing out gold could cause issues, what if you didn't have enough gold in the bank to re-list the item? Having it expire and go to the escrow would archive the item, then from escrow you could select a relist option and pay the relisting fee then. But the interaction would need to take place for the gold to be transferred from the current character or the item to be removed from Banker/Trader escrow.

endorphinsplox · May 2

Okay ZOS, I'm normally very lenient and kind in the way that I approach changes being introduced, but today, not so much. You are absolutely hopeless if you think you can hear widespread unanimously negative feedback, and not only not reverse the changes but also introduce a new change that doubles down on the previous one. I'm no server admin and have little experience with that side of running an MMO, but I have a hard time conceiving of this concept that mail and trader listings are causing server performance issues. I understand that a lot of transactions happening at once is definitely going to affect server performance on some level, but this appears to say that the information just existing is bogging down servers. Why would the database not be separate from the databases that track moment to moment gameplay?

I know that you folks have attempted to adjust course this past couple of years because of a series of massive blunders and tons of backlash. Its a good start, but I'm going to say this now before you continue down this path of pretending to be more focused on feedback and QOL. Your whole team needs to stop everything and sit down to look at player feedback. You need to be more open with your communication not only on the forums but in game. You need to be interacting with the players who love this game but feel disenfranchised by your unwillingness to admit your faults and address major concerns. There's a lot of silence from the devs on major issues, and when you aren't silent, you'll often do ridiculous things like this. Its embarrassing.

Usually, you have your hearts in the right place, but fail the execution by about a mile. This time, not only are you totally in the wrong, but I'm willing to bet real money on this change not helping anything whatsoever. I can basically guarantee that not even the most astute and experienced players will see any level of benefit from this change. Server performance will still be rough in lots of places. This will not change that.

gariondavey · May 2

Horrible change, absolutely hate it.

ashcroftpmb16_ESO · May 2

Overwhelming thumbs down for these changes - no point repeating everything, but please listen ZoS. Higher value items - over 250k, take awhile to sell and nobody wants to pay listing fees twice to trading guild bosses who already rake in the cash. Really special items, Velothi Triptych and high end rare recipes, are selling at between 2 and 10 million - people will simply not list them and spam the zone chat channels with their ill gotten gains. Suggest anything listed at over 2 million stays on the traders for 30 days - anything else is 14 days at half the present listing fees.

Jaraal · May 2

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

As we reviewed this feedback and investigated those concerns, our data revealed that the vast majority of items listed at Guild Traders sell within a week. If an item does not sell by then, it typically doesn't sell during that listing period. In light of this, Guild Trader listings will now be reduced from 30 to 14 days. All Mail expiration timers will remain at 14 days. To be clear, the timer for Mail expiration will be 14 days from when the item sells or is returned to the player. A Guild Trader listing will expire 14 days from when an item is listed. This will affect all new Mail items and Guild Trader listings from U42 launch onward.

Will you be cutting the listing fees by 56% to keep the cost the same for the players? Because if the item doesn't sell within 14 days, they're still going to relist it.

SithDi · May 2

Adding my voice to the many criticizing this change.
It definitely just feels like [snip] cloud and DB maintenance - but the QA on that team - as we all know - needs serious re-vamping with all the major high profile mistake they've made lately.
So instead of actually fixing your system and processes, you lower the amount of service provided to the customer. Because moving the burden to the customer - by making them have to baby sit their mail and trader slots - is easier than actually fixing the inefficiency in your systems and code.
Have you considered the impact to your player base at all?
Have you considered the impact to your customer support people who are going to get many more tickets about lost items?
Do you ever consider the 4th constraint at all - reputation and customer satisfaction?
Not everyone raids, dungeons or even PVPs.
Plenty of us actually play the game for the trade system, for the housing system and the quests.

[edited for minor bashing]

sarahthes · May 2

Jaraal wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

As we reviewed this feedback and investigated those concerns, our data revealed that the vast majority of items listed at Guild Traders sell within a week. If an item does not sell by then, it typically doesn't sell during that listing period. In light of this, Guild Trader listings will now be reduced from 30 to 14 days. All Mail expiration timers will remain at 14 days. To be clear, the timer for Mail expiration will be 14 days from when the item sells or is returned to the player. A Guild Trader listing will expire 14 days from when an item is listed. This will affect all new Mail items and Guild Trader listings from U42 launch onward.

Will you be cutting the listing fees by 56% to keep the cost the same for the players? Because if the item doesn't sell within 14 days, they're still going to relist it.

I almost never have to relist, 99.9% of my stuff sells within 2-3 days. Cutting my listing fees would remove a gold sink from the game.

Most listings are like mine. Listing fees should not be reduced.

Kelinmiriel · May 2

I believe this change will also encourage people to sell in zone chats instead of through trade guilds, since they'll be getting less value for the fees they pay, and risking losing their items entirely, if the item doesn't sell, and for any reason, they can't sign on to reclaim it in time.

Has anyone considered that?

jrmwvu04 · May 2

sarahthes wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

As we reviewed this feedback and investigated those concerns, our data revealed that the vast majority of items listed at Guild Traders sell within a week. If an item does not sell by then, it typically doesn't sell during that listing period. In light of this, Guild Trader listings will now be reduced from 30 to 14 days. All Mail expiration timers will remain at 14 days. To be clear, the timer for Mail expiration will be 14 days from when the item sells or is returned to the player. A Guild Trader listing will expire 14 days from when an item is listed. This will affect all new Mail items and Guild Trader listings from U42 launch onward.

Will you be cutting the listing fees by 56% to keep the cost the same for the players? Because if the item doesn't sell within 14 days, they're still going to relist it.

I almost never have to relist, 99.9% of my stuff sells within 2-3 days. Cutting my listing fees would remove a gold sink from the game.

Most listings are like mine. Listing fees should not be reduced.

These changes will not noticeably affect any serious traders because none of them are going weeks at a time without checking their mail or listings. The changes are to reduce the capability to abuse those systems to store your stuff. Which from the sounds of it, it will accomplish. As for the listing fees, those are negligibly small as is and certainly don’t need to be adjusted.