Missing Skill Point Investigation & Resolution

ZOS_GinaBruno

Hi everyone,

When we launched Update 28 on PC/Mac back in November, some of you ran into an issue where the Soul Trap or the Werewolf Ultimate skills had unmorphed. When attempting to re-morph these skills, they would continually reset and cause you to lose a skill point each time. Each attempt to refund missing skill points in subsequent incremental patches was unsuccessful. As we continued to further investigate the entirety of the issue, we discovered numerous other bugs that were contributing to a much larger and more extensive problem. In this post, we’ll elaborate on the current issues and how we plan to address them.

First, we need to take a step back and look at the skill system itself, which reallocates skill points in two different ways:

• Respec-ing, which grants a full refund of all points based on system tracking, completely ignoring allocated points
• Refunding, which measures allocations against expectations, and only returns points that are missing

We introduced Refunding in 2018 when a change to the Werewolf passive Devour removed the purchase requirement, and instead automatically granted the ability when players first acquired the Werewolf skill line. At that time, we did not take measures to refund the point back to players who had already spent a skill point on it.

Fast forward to Update 28 in 2020, when a recent change to the way we count skill point allocations caused an issue where abilities that are automatically granted - but have purchasable morphs - were not correctly counted. This caused those abilities to reset back to their base state without refunding a point. We quickly addressed the issue to prevent players from losing more points, and with it, issued a skill point refund.

After this occurred, we continued to receive complaints that skill points were still not refunded. Upon further investigation, we suspected that some players actually had extra skill points for one reason or another – more than they should, and more than normal play would grant. This means when players lost a skill point, the system did not know to refund that missing point since they had extra points to begin with. To gather more information, we added some logging in an incremental patch to help us identify the players with extra skill points.

This brings us to today where we've identified an issue with the original addition of refunds. Since 2018, it appears that some players were erroneously granted extra skill points based on the number of Champion skills they purchased. Furthermore, our data shows that some players have earned more than 20 extra skill points this way that are unaccounted for by the refund system. The more Champion Points someone had, the more likely they were to encounter this issue. But to be clear, these are skill points that these players should not have been able to earn, and that are not obtainable by players through normal gameplay means.

To correct this issue and return us to a place where we can accurately give refunds when needed, we will push a full respec for skills and Champion Points to all players in Update 29. When that happens, all extra skill points should be removed from the game and all players will have access to the same amount of earnable skill points, as is intended. The amount of extraneous skill points we remove will range from 0 all the way up to 25, depending on skill allocation when these refunds were performed. We are taking additional steps to prepare for the future including improved logging for refunds, converting our refund process to match the respec process, and better precautions surrounding how we change existing skills.

We understand these actions may be pretty disruptive to your builds; to extend our apologies for all these issues, we’ll be offering a free Ambersheen Vale Fawn pet and free respecs for all players at the launch of Update 29.

We hope this gives some insight into this issue and the related investigation we’ve been tackling since Update 28. Thank you, and we appreciate your patience and understanding while we correct these issues.

Ackwalan

Thanks for the update. Not looking forward to putting all those skill points back in, but it's just something that has to be done.

Maythor

Will this address the fact that I have a character that cannot morph my werewolf ultimate, nor actually select to take any of the werewolf skills despite having been a werewolf for a good while and having spare skill points?

Tommy_The_Gun

So, will we have to re-spec all skills & passives and CP we have ?
Should I start taking screenshots and writing it down (so it will be easier to re-crate) ?

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We introduced Refunding in 2018 when a change to the Werewolf passive Devour removed the purchase requirement, and instead automatically granted the ability when players first acquired the Werewolf skill line. At that time, we did not take measures to refund the point back to players who had already spent a skill point on it.

Well, my affected character is quite old (started playing in 2014) and in 2015 I had WW unlocked on him. So it kinda makes sense as I do not recall any refunds when Devour became "free". So it might be it.

...Also I do not recall having 20 skill points out of nowhere... I hope I won't lose anything... I just want 1 skill point back, that seems to by stuck in limbo....

VixxVexx

Yes Gina, more feedback like this please. For everything else.

Aliyavana

When you push the patch, can you make it so that Chapter tutorials dont give a skillpoint? It has been since Morrowind (2017) that characters created prior to owning a chapter have reported missing a skillpoint, since chapter tutorials give out a skillpoint, and characters created after owning a chapter can also do the original Soul Shrivren in Coldharbour tutorial for another skillpoint. That option isn't available for pre-chapter characters. Remove the skillpoint from the Chapter tutorials, or give all pre-chapter characters that skillpoint.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/374410/skillpoint-from-morrowind-tutorial-unobtainable-for-toons-created-before-morrowind-change-please/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/404450/major-oversight-summerset-tutorial-missable-skillpoint-feedback/p1

Mythreindeer

Hopefully this works as intended because it sure has the potential for epic disaster. Guess I better take some screenshots now.

BisDasBlutGefriert

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

taking screenshots and writing it down (so it will be easier to re-create) ?

Excellent idea actually!!! Thanks! 😁👍🏻

Although, I think I'll use my phone to snap pics. That way I won't have to keep jumping between pics and game over und over. Phone in left hand, mouse in right hand.

Araneae6537

Thank you for the information!

Do we know when Update 29 is scheduled for or approximately when it will be?

Gythral

So we'll penalise every customer for 1 STAFFs mistakes!!!

relentless_turnip

@ZOS_GinaBruno apologies, I am still a little confused. Does this mean I will need to replace all my.skill points on all of my characters? I don't mind I am just after clarification 👍

ZOS_GinaBruno

relentless_turnip wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno apologies, I am still a little confused. Does this mean I will need to replace all my.skill points on all of my characters? I don't mind I am just after clarification 👍

Correct, once Update 29 launches (we haven't announced a date for this yet, but figure it'll be in Q1).

SimonThesis

Thank you for the clarification above!

What does "players were erroneously granted extra skill points based on the number of Champion skills they purchased" mean? Do you mean champion skills purchased from the crown store?

@ZOS_GinaBruno

fierackas

Meh, I really don't want to redo the skills on 16 toons, thanks a bunch

Rehdaun

Thank you for the transparent and honest update @ZOS_GinaBruno. This is the transparency that we all want and have been asking for. That's one of two huge bugs that were introduced in U28 and I'm glad it's been identified and will be hopefully fixed in U29.

Now how about the second game-breaking bug? The hangs, crashes and bluescreens? Referenced here in what you call your "official update post": https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/552923/crash-to-desktop/
Last update was on 1/4/2021 by @ZOS_SarahHecker. Any more updates or insight on that bug?

Maythor

Considering the way mundus' were lost and relost last time they tweaked them, my faith that this will work out this time is pretty battered.

I'll take screenshots of characters to try and work out if I have the correct skill points returned, but in truth there is nothing we can really do .. just accept what they give us. I don't know for sure how many skill points I should have and will have to accept how many they end up giving me, since finding any sort of fix or resolution to these sorts of issues takes years (or not at all).

LuxanQualta

For months half of my 35 characters on two accounts have been broken because they were WW and lost all their morphs as well as all the skill points. Now the fix is to take away more points, force me to spend the better part of a year earning the skill points back on broken characters, go through an arduous process of documenting and reallocating 200 to 300 skill points per character, and still have to re-earn the morphs on my WW characters. This is simply too much for me.

So far as I know, I never got unearned SP - I tracked my own progress. If I am to lose SP that I am pretty sure I earned, that seems like a penalty to players because the dev team made mistakes along the way. In such a case the right answer would be to start off every when a base of 25 SP to put everyone on the same footing and then adjust the system so that nobody ends up getting seriously hurt by this attempted fix.

If it turns out that I am supposed to spend weeks rebuilding my characters and months earning SP that I thought I had legitimately earned, then how would I have time to enjoy the next year's new content? Or any events? Or even the game itself? Seriously, this is a real game-breaker!!

As to the pet - I don't need another pet and it in no way comes remotely close to being a reward for putting up with this kind of nonsense.

I started playing with the Beta and have been a steadfast and loyal customer for all those years. This is my reward? Having to rebuild every character and re-earn skill points while playing with broken builds and missing the new fun stuff because I am paying for developer mistakes?

Please give this a rethink folks.

O-Los_Zulis

Meh, is right. All I have to say is I hope you get THIS *** right so we don't have to do it again.

Disappointment+50

Tommy_The_Gun

O-Los_Zulis wrote: »

Meh, is right. All I have to say is I hope you get THIS *** right so we don't have to do it again.

Disappointment+50

Come on, man, cheer up ! We are getting a free PET ! ! ! ... LOL

tony5tone

How about fixing the Werewolf Pounce...that is still horribly broken and simply doesn't work 9/10 times. It legit has made the Werewolf build, not fun anymore when ya try to pounce and just...stand there.

Losing one skill point, fine...hey, life goes on. Whether or not it gets fixed and refunded, life goes on for me. Having once again to reattain the skills, then those skills NOT working once reattained...AGAIN, keep the pet...fix the character FULLY. That would make folks far happier.

Taleof2Cities

LuxanQualta wrote: »

Please give this a rethink folks.

ZOS found the root cause for the skill points issue and has a solution ... which will help every single affected player and put everyone on even ground.

Why on earth would this need a "rethink"?

DewiMorgan

I'll get cracking on an addon to backup and restore skills and CP for all characters, when I get back from work in 5 hours.

At the moment I know of a few addons that already do something similar:

- https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info946-SuperStar-CharacterBuilder.html - for CP and skillpoints.
- https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info2126-ChampionPointsSlots.html - for CP only.
- https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1903-ChampionPointRespec.html - for CP only.

These are powerful and full-featured, but perhaps overkill for just a simple backup/restore of CP and skillpoints.

All I think we need for this update is:
- A "Backup" button
- A "Restore" button
- Let the user know if there is a points difference between backup and restore.
- Let the user tweak the restored values before committing them (maybe only possible for CP?).
- Gracefully handle if the user has already spent some skillpoints/CP before hitting "restore".
- Gracefully handle if the user is up to 25 points short of what they had when they backed up.
- Decent translation, so everyone can use it easily.
- VERY simple/easy to use and lightweight. May be *many* users.

Anything I'm missing?

FatherDelve

Great Idea, if, yes if there is not always that big fear in the room that something is going horrible wrong.
But let me believe this time everything is going fine, and we wont have crashes, we wont missing CP points, skillpoints etc at the end.

Pyr0xyrecuprotite

@Araneae6537
We're getting an announcement about the upcoming DLC and year-long storyline on January 21. Zos USUALLY finishes announcements of this sort by saying the next update will be put on to PTS on the following Monday (January 25). We normally expect six weeks of the new update on PTS (although based on the year-end letter, it's possible that they might extend this a bit to ensure better pre-release quality control), which gives us an expected release date somewhere around March 8 (plus or minus a week).

Screenshots prior to rebuilding all your characters (ugh... so many now!) are a good idea.

Re the underlying number of skillpoints though, I think there are addons on PC that keep track of which skillpoints are achieved and which are still earnable (plus where and how). If the characters with "excess" skill points are on PC, I'm curious what the addon would show. (Doesn't help if this issue only applies on consoles.) There should be SOMETHING that ZoS can learn from this if they work with the addons...

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1863-UrichsSkillPointFinder.html
@DewiMorgan

This is useful to compare your earnt skillpoints.

Pyr0xyrecuprotite

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1863-UrichsSkillPointFinder.html
@DewiMorgan

This is useful to compare your earnt skillpoints.

@ZOS_GinaBruno can someone please officially state if the characters with excess skill points are on PC or consoles or both, and (for PC players) if the real (official) total skill points available matches what the skill point addon finds?

This would allow PC players (at least) to find out in advance if they are likely to lose a bunch of skill points when update 29 comes out. Thanks!

Pixative

10/10 communication here and plenty of warning so I can go through and screenshot what I had on each char. Sounds like a complicated situation but this is the best way to handle it, and I appreciate that.

LuxanQualta wrote: »

angery

Whoa relax a bit there my dude. I don't think it's going to be nearly as bad as all that, let alone on taking months to recover from. I do NOT envy you having to put the points back into 35 characters though, that's ruff
At least they are giving us a lot of time to prepare. Usually when an mmo figures out they made a mistake that gave people stuff they weren't supposed to have, they drop a hotfix with no warning.

prof_doom

Possibly dumb question, but if this full respec sets us all back to zero (which I can't quite tell if that is what's going to happen), what's that going to ongoing research if the various research passives get set back to zero?

Varana

How exactly would those excess skill points have been awarded?
I mean, I certainly don't keep track of how many spare SP I have on each character every time - so it could be that one day, I had 3 free SP, and after a few CP levelups, I'd have 4 skill points?
Does this affect every character, even those under level 50, for players with higher CP? Is every character affected in the same way, or could one character have zero excess SP and another one more than that?
Also, seconding that question about Urichs Skill Point Finder addon.

DewiMorgan

prof_doom wrote: »

Possibly dumb question, but if this full respec sets us all back to zero (which I can't quite tell if that is what's going to happen), what's that going to ongoing research if the various research passives get set back to zero?

Good question.

I assume the timers will switch to max time until we re-spend the points... but for the extra training slots, do they cancel (so we need to find another training item?), or just freeze until re-unlocked again?

If it's the former, if the training items in those slots are "forgotten", then that could be VERY pricey for people like my wife, who's currently training all her alts on nirnhoned and triune!

Definitely something for us to test on PTS, if there's a way to test it, there.

Taleof2Cities

prof_doom wrote: »

Possibly dumb question, but if this full respec sets us all back to zero (which I can't quite tell if that is what's going to happen), what's that going to ongoing research if the various research passives get set back to zero?

Research timers will not lose their "time" between the skill point reset and when you invest those points back into the passives, @prof_doom.

That functionality currently exists on Live ...

Pyr0xyrecuprotite wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1863-UrichsSkillPointFinder.html
@DewiMorgan

This is useful to compare your earnt skillpoints.

@ZOS_GinaBruno can someone please officially state if the characters with excess skill points are on PC or consoles or both, and (for PC players) if the real (official) total skill points available matches what the skill point addon finds?

This would allow PC players (at least) to find out in advance if they are likely to lose a bunch of skill points when update 29 comes out. Thanks!

It is possible to do your own "audit" of skill points on Live for tracking purposes, @Pyr0xyrecuprotite.

Head to the respec shrine and see how much gold it costs ... then divide the total by 50 (the amount of gold per skill point).

Then compare that total to the Ulrich's skill point add-on (or whatever add-on you use to keep track).

I don't think Ulrich's has been updated for Markarth yet. Just an FYI when doing a comparison.