Devs will not refund points or undo morphs for changed skills

Arato

Thank you again for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online Support Team! I have been reviewing your ticket regarding the recent changes made to skills of various classes and your request for a skill point to be refunded to you. And while you present a very well-written and poignant argument for your request for a skill point refund, I must regret to inform you that we will be unable to fulfill your request. I am sure you already understand the nature of why skill changes like this can readily happen in an MMO.

With that said, these changes were made with careful consideration by the development team. Their ultimate goal is to create balanced and equal game play for all of the classes in ESO and changes like this are greatly influenced by player feedback. For this reason, I encourage you to continue to be vocal about changes like this on the forums. We do look to the forums for feedback about game play balance and other issues players are having. With continuous feedback from players like you, you might be able to further influence changes that are made in the future.

Again I am very sorry we cannot fulfill your request. I hope you will continue to explore Tamriel with equal earnestness! Please of course let me know if you still have any more questions or concerns!

Best,
Aryan
The Elder Scrolls Online Support Team

In other words, this is how Zenimax chooses to treat its customers. Bait and switch on skill functionality (the skills I'm talking about weren't changed just by tweaking values of their effects, but rather changed the effects themselves to have different functionalities), and if a skill morph no longer works for your build, you get to foot the bill for respeccing it.

Never in 10 years of playing MMO's have I ever seen a Dev change the functionality of a talent or talent tree without refunding the talent points so that players could make educated decisions about reallocating these points after a skill or talent has been substantially changed. Usually, if a skill has been "nerfed" even just by reducing the values of the skill or talent's effects, they refunded affected people so they could choose to reallocate if they wished.

Here, Zenimax has crossed the line and changed functionality, and refuses to allow people to reallocate unless they foot the bill of paying for an all or nothing respec.

Take it as you will and I'm sure there will be people flocking to defend Zenimax's decision claiming it's not hard to make 10's of thousands of gold to respec, or that we players were "exploiting" by choosing the morph of a skill that fit our build best, only to have the functionality changed on the morph to where it was no longer useful and the other morph would now be a better fit. But it makes 0 sense as to why Zenimax would do what no other developer I have ever known has done, and REFUSED to offer a respec for affected players. What does Zenimax gain from this policy? As for me, I feel rather alienated as a customer and I'll be talking with friends about cancelling subscriptions, combine this poor customer service with the amount of bugs and maybe this game just isn't ready for paying customers yet.

Fuzzylumpkins

Any and every other gaming company on Earth recognises that players select skills based on the function and force or offer respecs upon making changes to those.

[snip]
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wllstrt75b14_ESO

well there are perfectly understandable reasons why Zenimax cant refund points or offer free respecs.

First the tried doing point refunds in the past and have completely messed that up [snip] as the forums were filled with complaints about their screw up.

Second their respec is based off skill points and gold which makes every respec a different value, now if Zenimax would have made the respec cost a token and then the token cost was based of skill points and what not zenimax would have an easier time of just sending people respec tokens [snip]

So in a nut shell..bad game design, [snip] and an unwillingness to support their customers are perfectly reasonable arguments(in zenimax's mind) to not allow free respecs or point refunds.

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Goibot

It amazes me to see a company continually shoot themselves in the foot. I have a Templar as a main and have quit playing him. I have respect him over and over trying to figure out a viable build. Now they come in and change our skills again. I'm not going to respec him again, at V12 were not talking peanuts.

This is wrong, they should lower the cost or drop it entirely for skill line changes.

radiostar

Just issue a token that covers any amount at the shrine and be done with it. Why so complicated, Z?

Blade_07

Yeah, this is absolutely wrong of them to do this to their customers! I personally think they are [snip] and not making it so you can respec. This change in class ballence is THEIR fault for pushing this damn game out to the public when it was completely clear that it was not ready!!! Crap like this just adds to the peoples already burning inferno. [snip] I'm about ready to join the ranks of the thousands of other people that have already been part of the mass exudes from this game. The game has some really fun things about it and that is what has kept me playing this long so far but they keep [snip] up things that just pi$$es people off. And they cant seem to make an update that dose not introduce new bugs. Also they never make hot fixes for this game. We have to wait about a month or so to get an update then hope they fix the bugs and not introduce new bugs. Pathetic!!! And they are way to nerf happy with things. They nerf things to the point where they are no longer fun and make it to the point where things are now broken cuz of the nerf.
FF14 is calling my name hard core! I know full well that Square Enix knows how to make game correctly and there customer support is good.

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mattgbrowneub17_ESO

Goibot wrote: »

It amazes me to see a company continually shoot themselves in the foot. I have a Templar as a main and have quit playing him. I have respect him over and over trying to figure out a viable build. Now they come in and change our skills again. I'm not going to respec him again, at V12 were not talking peanuts.

This is wrong, they should lower the cost or drop it entirely for skill line changes.

I'm a VR1 Templar ive never respecced and he's a beast. Main weapon one hand and shield, 2nd set is resto staff. Heavy armor with medium pieces mixed in. Piercing javelin, spear shards, biting jabs, a self heal and blinding flash in skill bar for resto staff, one hand and shield set up for daedra and undead with silver bolt, the fireball skill and rune of protection plus spear shard and piercing javelin for cc on 1h+s

Arato

[snip] I put in a support ticket because at least then they have to respond.

[snip]
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Blade_07

Arato wrote: »

[snip] I put in a support ticket because at least then they have to respond.

[snip]

Yeah, I agree with ya but something that I dont think people think about is that the customer support people are FORCED to protect the developers even when they them selfs may disagree with them. I'm sure they wish they could help but Zenimax has them on a tight leash.

[edited to remove quote]

kewl

wllstrt75b14_ESO wrote: »

Second their respec is based off skill points and gold which makes every respec a different value, now if Zenimax would have made the respec cost a token and then the token cost was based of skill points and what not zenimax would have an easier time of just sending people respec tokens [snip]

What an amazing idea, +5 bacon for you.

[edited to remove quote]

Arato

Important thing to remember here is that this sets a precedent. Even if the current batch of morphs where functionality was changed does not affect you, this means they are likely to do it again at a whim and foot you with the bill if you don't like it.

They could turn around and do something like replace the DoT on Elemental Ring with an increased chance of applying elemental debuffs from 40% to 80%, that'd make a lot of people want to change morphs I'm sure, but you'll pay 10's of thousands of gold to be able to do it.

Mindvision

I totally agree with the user's feedback, this is just unprofessional, a lack of rationality and as well as things like the new Pulsar not working with the Overload ability. I bet you guys are too hard working on the failed console version. Should have put more time in coding, testing and serving it on a subscription plate.

Arato

I still love how not a single thread about the changed morphs and being reset has been answered by devs. [snip]

If by Monday there hasn't been a change of heart, cancelling subs and 4 other friends of mine are cancelling as well (though 2 of them have six month subs unfortunately)

See you in F2P.

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