Gold Pieces Not Added To Bags From E-mail Attachments

Shadowshire · March 2018

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_Wrobel

After I logged-on to play TESO shortly before midnight on 03/11/2018 (or after midnight on 03/12/2018), I selected a character, then opened the E-Mail UI after the character was readied for play.

Of course, I removed attachments from the messages which had attachments. They were primarily Gold Pieces and perhaps a few were crafting materials sent by Hirelings. After removing each attachment, I deleted the message. Any e-mail messages from Guild officers did not have attachments, and I did not delete them at that time.

First, a fundamental flaw in the E-mail UI design is that, if the player presses a key for an action which is not currently displayed onscreen, the E-Mail UI "handles" this "error" by closing, i.e., by exiting. Consequently, given the non-default keybinds that I configured: (A) instead of transferring an attachment, the UI closes and my character moves to the left. Or (D) instead of deleting a message, the UI closes and my character moves to the right. On occasion, this can happen as many as 10 times or more during the course of about 50 to 60 keypresses.

However, it is not unusual for the the E-mail UI to crash after I press the correct keybind while it is displayed onscreen. A frequent problem since I began playing TESO in December 2014 is that the game client and megaserver can seldom process my input as quickly as I can send it. That says a lot about ZOS/Bethesda performance since my fingers are only somewhat faster than those of someone whose hands are paralyzed. Which is to say, when I input a repetitive series of keystrokes "too quickly" the UI ordinarily crashes. So, I must deliberately use a slow pace, as well as beware of pressing a key to perform an action before the game client completely displays it.
Clearly, the designer's choice to close the UI when it receives input that it cannot process assumes -- incorrectly -- that simply exiting the UI cannot cause any errors, such as the loss of an item(s) attached to an e-mail message. Of course, it is inconvenient to code the UI to display an error message in the upper right-hand corner of the HUD, and issue an audio cue to signal that it received erroneous input -- although that is the user-friendly way for the UI to respond.
Another flaw is that, except for Gold Pieces, each time an item attached to an e-mail message is accepted, the software outputs an audio cue (sound) which confirms that the item was transferred to the character's Bags. Sometimes the E-mail UI exits and there is no cue although the keypress was not an error. Afterward, I have usually found the item in the character's Bags, else it has remained attached to the e-mail message. At least once, though, the item vanished completely, never to be seen again.

Question: originally, was there an audio cue to confirm that Gold Pieces had been transferred and added to the total in the Bags? If so, then when and why was it removed? I have never heard one. If the E-mail UI has never had an audio cue to confirm the transfer of Gold Pieces, then why was that omitted?

Particularly with Update 17, the game as a whole has become even more unreliable and unstable than before. In this case, while I read the 33+ e-mail messages and accepted attachments from almost all of them, the E-mail UI exited for no apparent reason at least twice.

Since my character didn't move, I am sure that I pressed the correct key to accept the E-mail attachment, or to delete the e-mail, or to confirm that I wanted to delete the e-mail message. Rather, either the E-mail UI crashed although I did not press any key at all, or it crashed when I pressed the correct key for an action currently displayed onscreen.
Often I had the impression that the game client was having a problem maintaining its asynchronous "connection" to the game host, and the E-mail UI apparently exited because of that at least once. Unfortunately, the FPS and Network Latency widgets which I opt to display on the HUD vanish while I use the E-mail UI . (They are also not displayed while my character uses the Bank UI, Guild Bank UI, or Guild Store UI, via a Banker.) So I could not observe whether the Latency had become displayed with three red digits.

To the point: after accepting a total of 92,043 Gold Pieces from the e-mails which had them, the number of Gold Pieces in the character's Bags remained unchanged.

As shown on the following screenshots of the Master Merchant add-on record of Gold Pieces received from selling items at Guild Stores and via Guild Traders during the preceding 16 hours, 33 messages had an attachment of Gold Pieces, ranging from 219 GP to 19,049 GP, including another one for 16,469 GP. Most attachments were for sales of Alchemy reagents, usually for 1,000 - 3,500 GP per sale.

The first screenshot lists items 01 - 15.
The second screenshot lists items 16 - 29.
The third screenshot lists items 21 - 34, edited to outline items 30 - 33 in a white rectangle.

The initial, unchanged amount in the character's bags is shown as 3,039,152 GP by the following screenshot:

For your information:

Quitting the game, using the Repair Files option of the Launcher, then restarting the game did not change the number of Gold Pieces in the Bags.
Simply reloading the UI made no difference. Disabling Master Merchant and reloading the UI did not change it either.
Re-naming the ... /Addons folder and restarting the game without any add-ons to load did not change the number of Gold Pieces in the Bags.
Master Merchant is the only add-on which I use that collects the data for attachments, and only for messages sent by Guild Stores. I do not use any add-on that modifies the E-Mail UI, or effects any action pertaining to e-mail messages and/or attachments. I also do not use any "inventory management" add-on(s).

Note to ZOS Support: it is not possible to log-in on any Support website page, even after changing the password via "Account Recovery" according to your instructions, as I have advised you in reply to your e-mail response to my report.

Please investigate the failure of the software to transfer the Gold Pieces that were attached to e-mail messages to Ace Firelight's Bags. If at all possible, I want to be compensated for the loss. I am not going to accept any excuses. Either you can and you will, or explain exactly why you can't.