Compensation for Rollback and Lockouts?

acastanza_ESO · April 16

@ZOS_GinaBruno if we're going to be locked out of our accounts for potentially several days as well as potentially rolled back a full day, then compensation for being impacted by this bug through no fault of our own is non-optional. Particularly since this is during an event and will be costing us event tickets, and other event rewards, on top of the standard in-game rewards we would have earned from our normal play such as seals of endevour, hireling crafting materials, rewards for the worthy coffers, transmute geodes, and more.

acastanza_ESO · April 16

Yes, I know this is temporary, but I know I for one will never be testing PTS ever again.

MrCray78 · April 16

several days ?!

MoonPile · April 16

Agree. Just tired; don't have much to add other than feeling punished for being excited about seeing the new stuff –– that I pre-ordered.

I was just half-joking in another thread, in suggesting that the new Elsweyr house (that I was previewing on PTS when I got booted) would be suitable compensation. Obviously not everyone would want the same thing.

The bulk of the email:

We have temporarily locked this account due to an issue with the PTS affecting your Live PC NA account, and will be rolling back progress from this account to April 15th at 9:30am EDT. You can expect this to take 2-3 days to complete and we will alert you when your account is accessible again.

Please note when you attempt to log into your account on any realm during this time, you will see a message saying your account was suspended/banned. Rest assured this is not the case and it is simply how our system identifies locked accounts.

Any realm. So we can't even go on PTS, either, if we even wanted or felt safe to. And the people most likely to be there at launch were probably a lot of long-time NA players, content creators, and so on. Loyal players.

Idk what else to say. Gutted.

acastanza_ESO · April 16

Reasonable compensation would be crediting affected accounts with the maximum possible amount of gameplay+event rewards that could have been obtained for the number of characters we have in the time we're going to be unable to play @ZOS_GinaBruno

PrincessOfThieves · April 16

I agree, people should be compensated for this. Especially since there is an event and people who are affected by this are missing out on rewards.

MoonPile · April 16

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Reasonable compensation would be crediting affected accounts with the maximum possible amount of gameplay+event rewards that could have been obtained for the number of characters we have in the time we're going to be unable to play @ZOS_GinaBruno

I've been grinding SE dragons and Craglorn rifts – just 1-2 characters, but hundreds of boxes & rheum daily; millions in future sales. Argh.

noblecron · April 16

Subs got cancelled too. Hopefully those get restored.

DerAlleinTiger · April 16

Absolutely agree. I don't care so much about hireling mail, transmute stones, coffers, or even purple event boxes. I can get more of all those. What I'm rather angry about are the seals of endeavor, tickets, event mount pieces (I was only a few days away from getting it), the free DLC and horse (though I think those might still be available when the accounts get released... maybe), daily log-ins, and the event style pages from the yellow boxes. THOSE cannot be replaced. Those are limited or downright irreplaceable.

And that's before even getting to my automatically-cancelled subscription, which I've never once let drop in 10 whole years of the game. It's a small thing, maybe a stupid thing, but it was almost a point of "pride" for lack of a better word to have been here the whole way and supported the game through thick and thin. Now this happens, for logging in to look at a house for 2 minutes. Didn't even make or delete any characters.

FabresFour · April 16

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Yes, I know this is temporary, but I know I for one will never be testing PTS ever again.

I wish I could not test the PTS, but as I NEED to use the PTS to work on the translation addon, I'll have to keep using it, but now I'm scared to death.

I really hope they give us back the endeavors, event tickets and confetti that we lost during this time - due to an error that came SOLELY and EXCLUSIVELY on the part of Zenimax. Time, gold and gameplay cannot be refund to us.

And I had 2 to 3 years of ESO Plus accumulated in my account. I hope this will be normal too when it returns.

verminjerky · April 16

Same boat. I lost quite a bit of progress and general good will today. I was already disappointed with what happened to PTS, but then to have my beating heart yanked out of my chest for a moment when I got a notice while I was playing saying my account had been permanently banned?

I've got a lot of time and money invested in this game and while I'm normally pretty tolerant of bugs and issues, this time I'm really put out and I would like to see some customer service.

I would like to be reassured that I will still have plenty of time to get all of the Anniversary Jubilee event collectibles (especially the horse I was carefully saving for), and be reimbursed for the seals, tickets, and subscription time that was lost.

ToRelax · April 16

ZOS is just taking their new lore way more seriously than anyone expected. We logged onto the PTS to see the impact of Ithelia's return, well, this is it.

hamgatan · April 16

This is absolutely disgusting conduct ZOS.

I was on for all of 30 minutes gathering screenshots to ready my guild with advance info for a push on Veteran Lucent Citadel tomorrow night which we would have been live-streaming. I logged on with my normal main char, never made a copy template char.. nothing. I literally engaged one mob to see what their attacks were and thats it.

Now I've copped the same 72 hour lockout the same as everyone else it's thrown the run into disarray and can't go ahead as planned now. 11x Other Guildies that have downloaded the PTS and gotten ready for this, and now its delayed further because their GM just got a lockout.

It's hard enough to build a competent core group on live, let alone trying to do it on the PTS.

Not to mention as said above, 3 days of missed event tickets, Coffers, chances at the Style Pages that already have a criminal RNG on them - oh and the real kicker - you also cancelled my ESO+ Sub that was paid up for the month, which i'll miss 3 days of.

All because your Devs attach a fricking PROD Database to a TEST instance.. This just highlights the gaping hole in the fact that your Prod and Test buckets can even talk to each other in the first place and aren't VLAN segregated. Why was a SQL dump not initiated, then robocopy the required DB's to a staging area one way, then one way copied back into the Test bucket? This is mind-boggling.

I'm not going to speculate any further, but you need to work some serious compensation into this because it's disrupted a LOT of people's progression here.

code65536 · April 16

FabresFour wrote: »

I wish I could not test the PTS, but as I NEED to use the PTS to work on the translation addon, I'll have to keep using it, but now I'm scared to death.

I've logged onto every single PTS since the the 2015 Q3 PTS for IC.

This sort of thing has never, ever happened in all these years.

So, no, I'm not scared to go back onto the PTS once the dust settles.

Jaimeh · April 16

This is very frustrating, I hope all the players affected will be more than adequately compensated, but given there is an event going on with limited time rewards, and all the possible things each player could have accomplished and collected, I can't even think of what would even be an appropriate compensation... It's bad enough to be locked out of your own account due to a bug for days without knowing when it will be fixed, but for it to happen during the Jubilee event it's just horrid.

Another more concerning thing is that participation on the PTS has been decreasing over the years, a lot more people used to test things, and it's something that ZOS desperately needs (the devs on the panels during the anniversary event made a point of this as well). Even if this turns out to be a one off random bug, I can see it making people more hesitant to log into the PTS in the future. There has been an overwhelming sentiment of 'our PTS feedback is not being heard' every cycle, but if now there is an added concern of one's account being broken, then players might not just want to bother with it anymore.

propertyOfUndefined · April 16

Ouch... haven't played in months, but have been eagerly anticipating the scribing feature. It's not clear to me if the temporary ban will prevent me from logging on to PTS, or if it's limited to the live servers. I really hope it's the latter as all I really want to do is test and (hopefully) get excited about playing again.

Froil · April 16

I was checking out the new houses when the servers went offline. But I will say that both are gorgeous! I really want the Khajiit one.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · April 16

Jaimeh wrote: »

This is very frustrating, I hope all the players affected will be more than adequately compensated, but given there is an event going on with limited time rewards, and all the possible things each player could have accomplished and collected, I can't even think of what would even be an appropriate compensation...

If it was up to me I’d give the affected accounts the new Chapter for free. You know everyone involved had at least some interest in it, that’s why they were on the PTS in the first place. Then extend the event for as long as it takes to get everyone sorted (which would also cover all the people who couldn’t play yesterday), and maybe tack on some extra Endeavors and log in rewards for the people who were locked out once things have been cleared up.

acastanza_ESO · April 16

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

Jaimeh wrote: »

This is very frustrating, I hope all the players affected will be more than adequately compensated, but given there is an event going on with limited time rewards, and all the possible things each player could have accomplished and collected, I can't even think of what would even be an appropriate compensation...

If it was up to me I’d give the affected accounts the new Chapter for free. You know everyone involved had at least some interest in it, that’s why they were on the PTS in the first place. Then extend the event for as long as it takes to get everyone sorted (which would also cover all the people who couldn’t play yesterday), and maybe tack on some extra Endeavors and log in rewards for the people who were locked out once things have been cleared up.

I would bet that the majority of the people who were affected by this are also the most likely people to have preordered the chapter. The most loyal players who have invested the most in the game, raid leads, addon devs.
But even then the thing I care about are the things I'm missing getting in the game right now that ZOS is stealing from us by doing this.

Jsmalls · April 16

Yeah definitely what's really frustrating. Who are the players that would log into the PTS within the first hour of it's release?

Hardcore/Loyal fans. I understand the need. But a statement could be made that could help settle us. I have the 10 year badge for a reason, and I'm locked out from playing one of the more exciting PTS to have been dropped in quite awhile.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · April 16

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

I would bet that the majority of the people who were affected by this are also the most likely people to have preordered the chapter.

Then just refund those people their money but leave their Chapter access. If the actual real money can’t be returned for some reason, give an equivalently-priced Crown pack instead.

Spell-Slinger · April 16

Ahahahaha I quit ESO a few months ago, but hearing about the new chapter on the PTS, I got intrigued and wanted to go back and at least take a look. Thank you ZOS for reminding me of why I quit this game. This is hilarious.

acastanza_ESO · April 16

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

I would bet that the majority of the people who were affected by this are also the most likely people to have preordered the chapter.

Then just refund those people their money but leave their Chapter access. If the actual real money can’t be returned for some reason, give an equivalently-priced Crown pack instead.

That would be a good gesture sure, but it doesn't address the significant losses of event+gameplay rewards.

gariondavey · April 16

@ZOS_GinaBruno check out this thread please

Theist_VII · April 16

They’ve already said they were going to look into it.

acastanza_ESO · April 16

Telos_Tim wrote: »

They’ve already said they were going to look into it.

You say "already" but this thread was made hours and hours before that comment. It is good to see though.

Theist_VII · April 16

It was in response to @gariondavey.

Hopefully they take care of you guys because 2-3 days of missing event tickets is kind of rough.

I’m glad I was at work when the PTS went live.

Jsmalls · April 16

@Telos_Tim

Honestly missed that post, thanks for sharing.

Theist_VII · April 16

No problem!

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656543/temporarily-taking-down-the-pts-the-pc-na-live-server

For anyone looking to keep an eye on the progress of getting the PTS back up and/or to learn about when their accounts are going back online and what they’re doing to compensate everyone, I posted the link.

DoofusMax · April 16

To be honest at the outset, the account rollback itself is 100% inconsequential for me. I wasn't on the live server at all after the day's server reset, so I have zero progress lost on anything during that few-hour window and my being miffed mostly comes down to being locked out from the live server. The PTS lockout is its own thing and pretty much irrelevant - it's a test server, bad stuff sometimes happens on test servers, and I knew that when I logged on.

What I have "lost" (for lack of a better term) are the event ticket rewards for however many days it takes to get my account access back (including yesterday), however many shots at the replica style page drops from the event activities (I got TrueFlame early on, but wasn't really trying to get anything from the activities other than the replica style pages), and the reward coffers I would have picked up during that time. That's 1 Glorious and 48 regular coffers per day since 7 toons do 7 crafting dailies, plus a handful of various other coffers from missed dailies (no more than a couple each day from Mages, Fighters, and Bolgrul's mostly, but a few from zone dailies). Lost Seals of Endeavor are in there, including the 200 for picking pockets (I've already got Thieves Guild and probably the horse, so no loss on that), as are Hireling mails and a few other odds and ends, but I'm not going to care one way or the other on those. I'm not sure whether to be upset or thankful that I couldn't farm Craglorn and be disappointed over the lack of Potent Nirncrux drops.

When all is said and done, one of two things will be true: I will be satisfied that I've been put back to a state which more or less approximates the condition I would have been in without the interruption or I will not. Since I haven't heard anything from the devs on how that normal state approximation will happen, I have no reason to be satisfied or dissatisfied aside from being miffed at the lock-out.

code65536 · April 18

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin

Regarding the in-game items that you just announced for the locked accounts, for players who play on PC/NA and PC/EU, will these items be given to us on both servers?