Mail changes

h9dlb

Just read the Gold Road patch notes and the auto deletion of mail at 7 days seems a bit unreasonable to me. I suspect there are a lot of regular long term players who only log in once a week (probably on weekends) and they risk losing all their mail (especially sales) if they haven't taken their mail within 7 days.

People away for work or on holiday will lose a lot of stuff.

I can understand the reason might be to reduce server load, but 7 days to take mail from the current 30 days seems a little low to me.

oldbobdude

Really? 7 days? I don’t know. An awful lot of the game is based on in game mail. Sales, rewards of the worthy, crafting supplies.

Durnik

I agree. 30 to 7 is a big jump. What about people who go on vacation? There must be a reason they are doing it. Telling us why might make us feel a bit more ok with it.

acastanza_ESO

Durnik wrote: »

I agree. 30 to 7 is a big jump. What about people who go on vacation? There must be a reason they are doing it. Telling us why might make us feel a bit more ok with it.

The PTS incident really underscored how absurdly short this new timelimit is. We were gone for 11 days through no fault of our own. All of our mail would be gone if this was the way live was right now. ZOS can absolutely not go forward with this change.

Adaarye

I bet its to stop all the rts (return to sender) action

Thats awesome.

Sell us more storage.

XSTRONG

They want us to log in to our alt accounts at least once a week.

EdjeSwift

It's not all 7 days across the board. It's different based on what's in the mail/where it's coming from.

Most of the 7 day stuff is stuff that theoretically you'd be clearing out quick-ish, although I will admit to being guilty of using the mail to keep Activity Finder rewards for extra transmute storage.

Taken from the patch notes on the PTS part of the forum:

Mail Expiration Changes
As part of our continuing efforts to improve server performance and stability, we have reduced the expiration times of certain types of system mail.

These changes only affect mails you receive going forward. The expiration times of mails you received prior to this update have not changed, with the following exception:
A small number of information-only system mails that were previously set to never expire now have expiration timers.
Below are the updated expiration timers based on mail type:
Information-only System Mails: 7 days
Hireling Mails: 7 days
Activity Finder Rewards: 7 days
Rewards for the Worthy: 7 days
Guild Trader Purchases: 7 days
Guild Trader Returns / Sales: 14 days
Weekly Leaderboard Rewards: 14 days
Promotional rewards, such as Twitch Drops: 14 days to a maximum of 180 days
Mails with rewards generated by direct purchases made outside the game, such as Chapters and the Newcomer Pack, will continue to never expire.
As a reminder, the expiration timer for most mail types does not initiate until the mail is received while your character is logged in. There are, however, several exceptions where the timer begins when the mail is sent:
Player mail
Guild Trader mail - Includes item purchased, item sold, kiosk bids, etc.
Guild Finder Listing expired
Customer Service mails

RexyCat

EdjeSwift wrote: »

It's not all 7 days across the board. It's different based on what's in the mail/where it's coming from.

Most of the 7 day stuff is stuff that theoretically you'd be clearing out quick-ish, although I will admit to being guilty of using the mail to keep Activity Finder rewards for extra transmute storage.

Taken from the patch notes on the PTS part of the forum:

Mail Expiration Changes
As part of our continuing efforts to improve server performance and stability, we have reduced the expiration times of certain types of system mail.

These changes only affect mails you receive going forward. The expiration times of mails you received prior to this update have not changed, with the following exception:
A small number of information-only system mails that were previously set to never expire now have expiration timers.
Below are the updated expiration timers based on mail type:
Information-only System Mails: 7 days
Hireling Mails: 7 days
Activity Finder Rewards: 7 days
Rewards for the Worthy: 7 days
Guild Trader Purchases: 7 days
Guild Trader Returns / Sales: 14 days
Weekly Leaderboard Rewards: 14 days
Promotional rewards, such as Twitch Drops: 14 days to a maximum of 180 days
Mails with rewards generated by direct purchases made outside the game, such as Chapters and the Newcomer Pack, will continue to never expire.
As a reminder, the expiration timer for most mail types does not initiate until the mail is received while your character is logged in. There are, however, several exceptions where the timer begins when the mail is sent:
Player mail
Guild Trader mail - Includes item purchased, item sold, kiosk bids, etc.
Guild Finder Listing expired
Customer Service mails

Thank you for posting this quote about different duration for how long a mail can be in your inbox before it will be deleted.

From what I can see of different duration is that it will create a mess as for long time any mail can be waiting in inbox before it will be gone. Some mail can be in inbox until 180 days, some 14 days and other only 7 days.

How will anybody be able to keep track of which mail that suddenly just vanish as you now have to know when it was sent or which mails that where collected/claimed content?

How will it work for us that have more then one account and might log in to a character to get our Hireling Mails for that character, but forget to pick it up (claim) before logging out again?

I use Postmaster Mail (addon) to collect and (auto)delete mail when I log in to character and remember to check if there have been any mail to that character, so it wont fill up in game mail from too many mails that are waiting in inbox, but it is easy to forget when you are in hurry to collect all items in mail if you are stressed or focus on your main characters.

The other side effect is that you will need to have ESO+ to get all Hireling mats added into your account as it will very fast fill up your Inventory space (Bank, PC Inventory and Guild Bank).

Without ESO+ you will have to deal with a large amount of collected material and move them into other storage or use material to craft to keep it from filling up your usage Inventory (primarily PC Inventory and Bank, if you use Bank Assistant to get direct access to Bank independent where you are in game with exception for PvP).

As I see it this move is more about forcing player to be online without shorter interruption then before (30 days means you could be away for 30 days before you need to check mail or collect items).

This change is done to make players that don't have ESO+ to either forget about Hireling and use Guild Store or craft as often as possible to make items that can be sold or stored other places (it is a method to make items like mats into one item instead of stacks which might take several Inventory slots). This will also have an impact on ingame economy as now you can not use RTS to keep mats or items outside of the economic circulation for longer duration, but need to make use of that item by selling (to vendor or Guild Store), use it on a character or move it to any other storage space you trust (GB). Using RTS once more would just repeat the same issue and you will hit a limit of how many mail you can send or receive, if you would repost it as RTS for storage.

I believe more that this is related to get players to be online much more then before and exposed to Crown Store for Daily rewards, to make population increase as active daily log in (which would make investors in ESO happy) and to increase in game circulation (economy) without changing how hireling works. It doesn't have anything to do with performance as such as you still need to log in and collect your mails, but now even more often then before. The only thing that will change is the amount of mails that need to be stored on server which also cost real world money for a company like ZoS.

Necrotech_Master

RexyCat wrote: »

EdjeSwift wrote: »

It's not all 7 days across the board. It's different based on what's in the mail/where it's coming from.

Most of the 7 day stuff is stuff that theoretically you'd be clearing out quick-ish, although I will admit to being guilty of using the mail to keep Activity Finder rewards for extra transmute storage.

Taken from the patch notes on the PTS part of the forum:

Mail Expiration Changes
As part of our continuing efforts to improve server performance and stability, we have reduced the expiration times of certain types of system mail.

These changes only affect mails you receive going forward. The expiration times of mails you received prior to this update have not changed, with the following exception:
A small number of information-only system mails that were previously set to never expire now have expiration timers.
Below are the updated expiration timers based on mail type:
Information-only System Mails: 7 days
Hireling Mails: 7 days
Activity Finder Rewards: 7 days
Rewards for the Worthy: 7 days
Guild Trader Purchases: 7 days
Guild Trader Returns / Sales: 14 days
Weekly Leaderboard Rewards: 14 days
Promotional rewards, such as Twitch Drops: 14 days to a maximum of 180 days
Mails with rewards generated by direct purchases made outside the game, such as Chapters and the Newcomer Pack, will continue to never expire.
As a reminder, the expiration timer for most mail types does not initiate until the mail is received while your character is logged in. There are, however, several exceptions where the timer begins when the mail is sent:
Player mail
Guild Trader mail - Includes item purchased, item sold, kiosk bids, etc.
Guild Finder Listing expired
Customer Service mails

Thank you for posting this quote about different duration for how long a mail can be in your inbox before it will be deleted.

From what I can see of different duration is that it will create a mess as for long time any mail can be waiting in inbox before it will be gone. Some mail can be in inbox until 180 days, some 14 days and other only 7 days.

How will anybody be able to keep track of which mail that suddenly just vanish as you now have to know when it was sent or which mails that where collected/claimed content?

How will it work for us that have more then one account and might log in to a character to get our Hireling Mails for that character, but forget to pick it up (claim) before logging out again?

I use Postmaster Mail (addon) to collect and (auto)delete mail when I log in to character and remember to check if there have been any mail to that character, so it wont fill up in game mail from too many mails that are waiting in inbox, but it is easy to forget when you are in hurry to collect all items in mail if you are stressed or focus on your main characters.

The other side effect is that you will need to have ESO+ to get all Hireling mats added into your account as it will very fast fill up your Inventory space (Bank, PC Inventory and Guild Bank).

Without ESO+ you will have to deal with a large amount of collected material and move them into other storage or use material to craft to keep it from filling up your usage Inventory (primarily PC Inventory and Bank, if you use Bank Assistant to get direct access to Bank independent where you are in game with exception for PvP).

As I see it this move is more about forcing player to be online without shorter interruption then before (30 days means you could be away for 30 days before you need to check mail or collect items).

This change is done to make players that don't have ESO+ to either forget about Hireling and use Guild Store or craft as often as possible to make items that can be sold or stored other places (it is a method to make items like mats into one item instead of stacks which might take several Inventory slots). This will also have an impact on ingame economy as now you can not use RTS to keep mats or items outside of the economic circulation for longer duration, but need to make use of that item by selling (to vendor or Guild Store), use it on a character or move it to any other storage space you trust (GB). Using RTS once more would just repeat the same issue and you will hit a limit of how many mail you can send or receive, if you would repost it as RTS for storage.

I believe more that this is related to get players to be online much more then before and exposed to Crown Store for Daily rewards, to make population increase as active daily log in (which would make investors in ESO happy) and to increase in game circulation (economy) without changing how hireling works. It doesn't have anything to do with performance as such as you still need to log in and collect your mails, but now even more often then before. The only thing that will change is the amount of mails that need to be stored on server which also cost real world money for a company like ZoS.

the other part of the patch notes was that the mails are going to be categorized differently

right now we only have "system" and "player" but to follow up, these are the other currently expected mail changes:

Mail Improvements

We have made a number of interface and system improvements to Mail. All changes outlined below apply to both Keyboard & Mouse and Gamepad interfaces.

Mail Categories
Mail is now automatically sorted into three categories:
Player Mail – Messages received from other players in game.
System Mail – Messages received from various non-player sources that include item attachments, as well as any mails received from Customer Support.
System Alerts – Messages received from various non-player sources that are information-only and do not include attachments.

Mail Sorting
Player Mail is now sorted based on expiration with the most recently received message displayed at the top.
System Mail and System Alerts are sorted based on expiration with the soonest-to-expire message displayed at the top.

Attachment Preview
Mail headers now display the icon of their first attachment.

Inventory Space Display
The Mail screen now displays how many inventory slots are available on the current character.

“Delete After Claim” Option
This option on the Mail screen causes any System Mail to be automatically deleted after you claim its attachments, and is enabled by default.
Note this option does not affect Player Mail.

“Take All” Function
This button claims all attachments from all mails currently visible in the current active category (Player or System).
Mail is processed based on the currently sorted order and starts with the mail soonest to expire.
Note that Player Mail and System Mail have different sorting rules, explained above.
COD Player Mails and Customer Support mails are not affected by "Take All".
If an attachment is unable to be claimed for any reason, such as unavailable inventory space, the process halts and no further attachments are claimed.
Note the “Delete After Claim” option, if enabled, will apply to every System Mail affected by “Take All” after attachments are claimed.

Mail Notifications
Upon logging in, you will now receive a notification if:
You received a mail that includes an attachment.
You have mails with attachments that are about to expire.
You receive a Hireling Correspondence mail.

Deleting Mails With Attachments
You can now delete a mail that still has an unclaimed attachment. A confirmation dialog will appear to ensure this is the intended action.

Danikat

So to avoid having items or gold deleted I'll have to empty my guild stores before I go away for 14 days or more. (Or more likely any time I'm away for 10 days or more, to allow for unexpected problems and extended maintenance times.) That's going to be a pain, especially since it will have to coincide with other planning and prep for going away.

Rageypoo

I bet they'll make it so ESO+ members get the 30 days back.

16BitForestCat

If ZOS is doing this to "encourage" people to log in more often and be more active in guilds as others have speculated, they've just had the exact opposite effect on me. I have five accounts aside from my main that used to do guild trading. I say "used to" because now I will pull those accounts from trading, and continue to only log into them when I do my once-a-month private guild bank cleaning to store items on them. I don't have time or energy to waste on checking my alt account emails every few days, when before I only had to do it once or twice a month.

kringled_1

EdjeSwift wrote: »

Taken from the patch notes on the PTS part of the forum:

Mail Expiration Changes


Mails with rewards generated by direct purchases made outside the game, such as Chapters and the Newcomer Pack, will continue to never expire.

Just to tack on a thought here:
This isn't actually true, or at least it wasnt in the not too long ago past, the last time I tested.
I had some mails with High isle maps, part of the chapter purchase.
They did not show an expiration date.
However, somewhere at or a bit over 30 days past receipt, they just vanished from the inbox.

TaSheen

It's not going to affect me much, because I log into all three accounts both pc megaservers every day anyway. I think it's a stupid move on ZOS's part though. All it's going to do is further debilitate the numbers who log in.

You can lead a horse to water - but you CANNOT force him to drink....

katanagirl1

So the timer doesn’t start until you get the mail, but sometimes I am on a different character than I would use to do something, like I save any gold earnings from guild stores so I can pick them up on my main character. This new change could be detrimental if I leave it in the mail and forget to pick it up later.

TaSheen

katanagirl1 wrote: »

So the timer doesn’t start until you get the mail, but sometimes I am on a different character than I would use to do something, like I save any gold earnings from guild stores so I can pick them up on my main character. This new change could be detrimental if I leave it in the mail and forget to pick it up later.

Yeah, it's going to be a real problem. Sure I log in on all 3 accounts both pc megaservers every day.... but this is a not-insignificant change after so many years.

I really don't think it's a good idea personally. Not that anyone asked me.

DreamyLu

Do I understand properly?

It means that if we leave for holidays:
- We must empty store, because the mails of what will be sold during our absence will get deleted.
- We will lose the hirelings mails.

Is that correct?

ShadowPaladin

DreamyLu wrote: »

Do I understand properly?

It means that if we leave for holidays:
- We must empty store, because the mails of what will be sold during our absence will get deleted.
- We will lose the hirelings mails.

Is that correct?

The countdown for the hireling mails will only start the moment you long in to the game with the char you receive them on. If you don't log in, the countdown won't start, since those mails are only generated the moment you log in.

For the mails coming from guildtraders its different. Here the timer will start the moment an item is sold and the system generates and sends the mail. From that moment on you do have 14 days to collect that mail. This is btw. the one point the majority of players are complaining about (me as well ).

Elsonso

Durnik wrote: »

I agree. 30 to 7 is a big jump. What about people who go on vacation? There must be a reason they are doing it. Telling us why might make us feel a bit more ok with it.

My guess. Reduce database sizes on the backend by storing less mail long term.

Daiyanae

>>Taken from the patch notes on the PTS part of the forum:>>

Does this mean only mail on the PTS? I looked for the original Patch Notes you refer to and couldn't find them.

Jaraal

Danikat wrote: »

So to avoid having items or gold deleted I'll have to empty my guild stores before I go away for 14 days or more. (Or more likely any time I'm away for 10 days or more, to allow for unexpected problems and extended maintenance times.) That's going to be a pain, especially since it will have to coincide with other planning and prep for going away.

Especially since you will lose your listing fees.

Imagine if this new mail metric were in place during the Anniversary Event! The folks who were locked out for 10 days would have lost even more of their mail than they already did. And heaven forbid that your game system or internet access goes down for any length of time through no fault of your own.

This is yet another change to things that have worked for 10 years that is detrimental to the players. And they call them "Quality of Life" improvements, which they have said they will be focusing on instead of releasing new content at the previous rate.

h9dlb

If they want to reduce it, 21 days would be acceptable, but certainly not 7 days. As a trader, who cant log in every week due to RL, I'd just quit the game

SolarRune

Anything under 15days risks people falling foul of this change because of normal family vacations or work commitments, I know when I go away I don't have any kind of access.

Really hoping they rethink this one.

PeacefulAnarchy

Daiyanae wrote: »

>>Taken from the patch notes on the PTS part of the forum:>>

Does this mean only mail on the PTS? I looked for the original Patch Notes you refer to and couldn't find them.

It will be on live starting with gold road release in June.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8088280/#Comment_8088280

redlink1979

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote:

Below are the updated expiration timers based on mail type:
Information-only System Mails: 7 days
Hireling Mails: 7 days
Activity Finder Rewards: 7 days
Rewards for the Worthy: 7 days
Guild Trader Purchases: 7 days
Guild Trader Returns / Sales: 14 days
Weekly Leaderboard Rewards: 14 days
Promotional rewards, such as Twitch Drops: 14 days to a maximum of 180 days

These are concerning timers.

SilverBride

People usually only go away for vacation once a year. Just prepare for this by clearing all mail and removing any items already up for sale until back home.

JustLovely

Rageypoo wrote: »

I bet they'll make it so ESO+ members get the 30 days back.

I'll take that bet. People who have subbed for the entire 10 years of the game don't even get any kind of special rewards or recognition.

peacenote

As it happens, I am an ESO+ Subscriber, so this isn't as bad as it could be for me personally, because I have a mod to auto-open my hireling mails to go straight into the Craft Bag.

But this is a really really awful change, regardless. It forces anyone with alts to have to do inventory management on every login, if they play irregularly at all, whether because the alt is rarely used or due to play schedule.

I'll describe how I play ESO. My default play schedule is 4 hours Sat and Sunday morning. Sometimes I can only do one weekend day, sometimes I have to skip the whole weekend. In recent years I've joined a couple of raid teams so sometimes I also play a couple of hours Tues and Sunday evenings, but that time is pre-booked for a specific activity (raiding).

When there is an event going on, I'll try to log in quickly every day to participate in the event. If it's the Anniversary event, I'll try to do writs on a couple of characters. If it's Midyear Mayhem, try to squeeze in a Tier 1. Etc. But I have 15 min, maybe 30 min to participate in the event on non-weekend days. Because I work a lot.

This change would penalize me for quickly logging into my alts for any reason, because that log in would trigger mail delivery, but I only have time to do inventory management Sat or Sunday mornings. And if it's a weekend where I need to skip, that mail would be gone before I'd even have time to deal with it. Then there are scenarios such as: it's a raid night, and I just need to move gear from one character to another. I don't want to spend another 10 min making my guild mates wait, while I find room to put the mail attachments so I don't lose them if I don't remember to log in again on that particular character within 7 days.

This is yet another change that will be significantly more impactful to people with multiple characters. It is not alt friendly. It is also penalizing to players with limited play schedules and anyone who goes on vacation. It also seems very bad for non-ESO+ players, which thankfully I am not, but I still care about this, because non-subscribers are a key component of our community and those players should be considered when changes like this are made.

Thank you to OP for posting this in General Discussion; @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin to provide this feedback. Players should not have to worry about rewards being lost due to the scenarios I describe.

amapola76

Good grief, this is terrible. In all my years playing the game, it might be the most sickening cash grab I've seen yet, as it's clearly intended to force people into ESO+.

We keep paying for more and more, but getting less and less.

Ilumia

SilverBride wrote: »

People usually only go away for vacation once a year. Just prepare for this by clearing all mail and removing any items already up for sale until back home.

Just because that's the only example you can imagine, it doesn't mean that anyone else might not have a different life where this change presents problems. That's what this thread is about, and people have given plenty of examples and make complaints about a system that's getting a QoL deterioration/worsening.

ShadowPaladin

People, PLEASE do read the PTS Patch Notes precisely !!!!

Here is a full quote:

Mail Expiration Changes
As part of our continuing efforts to improve server performance and stability, we have reduced the expiration times of certain types of system mail.

• These changes only affect mails you receive going forward. The expiration times of mails you received prior to this update have not changed, with the following exception:
  • A small number of information-only system mails that were previously set to never expire now have expiration timers.
• Below are the updated expiration timers based on mail type:
  • Information-only System Mails: 7 days
  • Hireling Mails: 7 days
  • Activity Finder Rewards: 7 days
  • Rewards for the Worthy: 7 days
  • Guild Trader Purchases: 7 days
  • Guild Trader Returns / Sales: 14 days
  • Weekly Leaderboard Rewards: 14 days
  • Promotional rewards, such as Twitch Drops: 14 days to a maximum of 180 days
• Mails with rewards generated by direct purchases made outside the game, such as Chapters and the Newcomer Pack, will continue to never expire.
• As a reminder, the expiration timer for most mail types does not initiate until the mail is received while your character is logged in. There are, however, several exceptions where the timer begins when the mail is sent:
  • Player mail
  • Guild Trader mail - Includes item purchased, item sold, kiosk bids, etc.
  • Guild Finder Listing expired
  • Customer Service mails

I highlighted the two IMPORTANT parts BLUE and RED!!!

According to those patch notes the BLUE part stands for most of the mails. For which the timer(s) will only start IF the player logs in with one of his chars. It does not say explicitly which mails are included, BUT the exceptions from this rule are mentioned!

Those exceptions I marked RED. Those are the ones where the timer(s) will start the moment the mail is generated by the system!


The whole thing we need to worry about is - as far as I can tell atm - only the mails related to the Guild Trader and here from my pov only the one for *Returns / Sales*. This timer with its 14 days is too short!!!

I do think there are two ways to change/fix this:

1. Change the timer to at least 21 days (or leave it at 30 days).
2. Make it so that this timer also only starts the moment a player logs in to the game and NOT when the mail is generated by the system.