This game so badly needs to allow account transfer between PC, Xbox and PS

Fawn4287

I haven’t played ESO for several years now, I mainly played PvP and since I live in OCE and played on NA xbox servers the connection became so unbearably bad, I would play another game of anything else and return to ESO and think i could connect to a someone living on Saturn on any other game and probably have a more consistent and less laggy connection. Most other games have either or a combination of cross play, cross progression or account transfers, its really unacceptable that a game like this doesn’t offer anything like this, especially considering at console launch zos allowed people to transfer their PC accounts to console and wreak havoc in what was probably the most unfair thing I had seen in a game (until I saw COD unbans streamers and content creators who blatantly hack).

However I am about to buy a PC and would love to try ESO on some decent hardware, however never again in my life would I dedicate a fraction of the time I spent grinding, farming and leveling on another MMO, the thousands of hours I spent will essentially go to nothing with how things currently stand. If ZOS allowed cross progression or even just account transfers I would love to try and play ESO again, however without it I am likely never to play this game again.

Northwold

Fawn4287 wrote: »

I haven’t played ESO for several years now, I mainly played PvP and since I live in OCE and played on NA xbox servers the connection became so unbearably bad, I would play another game of anything else and return to ESO and think i could connect to a someone living on Saturn on any other game and probably have a more consistent and less laggy connection. Most other games have either or a combination of cross play, cross progression or account transfers, its really unacceptable that a game like this doesn’t offer anything like this, especially considering at console launch zos allowed people to transfer their PC accounts to console and wreak havoc in what was probably the most unfair thing I had seen in a game (until I saw COD unbans streamers and content creators who blatantly hack).

However I am about to buy a PC and would love to try ESO on some decent hardware, however never again in my life would I dedicate a fraction of the time I spent grinding, farming and leveling on another MMO, the thousands of hours I spent will essentially go to nothing with how things currently stand. If ZOS allowed cross progression or even just account transfers I would love to try and play ESO again, however without it I am likely never to play this game again.

For different reasons (I play on EU but the only people I know who play this game are on NA), I'd love to see cross-server transfers. There is simply no way I would go through the grind of ESO from scratch again. There seems to be a huge gap between low CP level and about CP900 where everything designed for solo gets far too easy while everything designed notionally for groups is much too hard to solo. It's incredibly tedious if you're not a group player.

So I guess two points:

- Yes cross server transfers would be awesome.

- Would be nice to see some attention given to what you might call the "midlevel desert" of ESO.

HalfDragoness

I don't personally have this problem as I've always played on PC and wouldn't play ESO on a console, but I can definitely empathize with not wanting to start again from 0. If for some reason I lost my account and I had to start again I would be beyond devestated, I've put so much time, effort, and energy into it.
I hope they make this an available path for anyone who wants to make a PC/console migration.

AdamLAD

Wholeheartedly agree. The game needs cross play, merging of servers or transfers.

Tandor

Too many technical and legal/contractual problems to overcome, and almost certainly not enough interested players to make it commercially viable to devote/divert the necessary resources to enable it to happen. Moreover, all the threads that crop up on this from time to time indicate that any such traffic would be one-way only, i.e. from console to PC - and there are enough performance issues on the PC servers as it is, not least for PvP, so PC players will be wary of increasing their server populations even more.

Stinkyremy

Irony for me is that I started on PC and was in the PC beta. Dropped the game then picked it up years later on console and made the exact same character, race/class and exact same name as my 1 and only character on PC.

Would be nice to get my beta monkey on console.
I should have transferred my PC data when I had the chance but was too poor IRL at the time (still am)

Dr_Con

yes to character/cp being transferred

no to all gear, currency, character progression, achievements, and stickerbook (to clarify, stickerbook for tradeable items- though it's unlikely this could be separated).

the economy on console has been ruined by rampant, unchecked botting. allowing transfer of items would essentially be a way into selling their gains on PC servers.

If ZOS were to make CP level on an account the same regardless of what platform and server, I don't know how healthy it would be for the game. I do see some games offering account transfers to other regions for a fee and it doesn't really affect them much.

The_Titan_Tim

Yup, giving each account a one time transfer token would be great, I understand that they wouldn’t want people bouncing back in forth as it would be too much work with the current system that ZOS has.

What allows certain games to have one account for multiple platforms with shared progression is because those games generally have their own personal account.

As games became more and more Cross-Platform, it became necessary for the associated companies to create their own unique IDs, as a means to bridge the gaps in services.

ie: my Gamertag is The Titan Tim on Xbox, but whenever I play a Blizzard game on that same Xbox; people see me as “TitanTim#1234” or whatever my numbers are instead of my Gamertag, this is necessary, as PlayStation players can not have spaces in their account names, and Xbox players can’t have underscores.

Rasoma

I am pretty sure there was a transfer option available when the game launched on consoles - you could transfer from the PC/Mac to console but only for a limited time.

The economies have diverged so much that providing a transfer now (either way to/from console) would not be wise even if the contracts with Sony & Microsoft could be renegotiated to allow it.

The_Titan_Tim

Rasoma wrote: »

I am pretty sure there was a transfer option available when the game launched on consoles - you could transfer from the PC/Mac to console but only for a limited time.

The economies have diverged so much that providing a transfer now (either way to/from console) would not be wise even if the contracts with Sony & Microsoft could be renegotiated to allow it.

Yeah, a whole lot of Veteran 14 PC transfers terrorizing everyone with Bat Swarms, or one tapping people with Overload.

Definitely ruined the Cyrodiil experience for a lot of new console players with PC transfers.

AdamLAD

One day it's needs to happen. There's way to many players we can't play with.

WoppaBoem

We need this....

kargen27

Rasoma wrote: »

I am pretty sure there was a transfer option available when the game launched on consoles - you could transfer from the PC/Mac to console but only for a limited time.

The economies have diverged so much that providing a transfer now (either way to/from console) would not be wise even if the contracts with Sony & Microsoft could be renegotiated to allow it.

That was possible because those servers hadn't been populated yet. All kinds of difficulty added when trying to transfer data between populated servers.

p00tx

I am 100% in support of this and would love to see it happen. Hundreds of us have migrated from console to PC in the not so distant past, and we had to leave behind years of gameplay and gathered resources and purchased Crown Store items. I would love to have my houses and furnishings and craft bag contents on PC.

That being said, I'm an admin on another PC game, and we do offer server transfers to our players in exchange for donations. This game has bags that max at 136 slots, and we've been able to create items that activate skills and levels on the new server for them without having to do everything manually, but even still, each item has to be spawned for each player via a back end web client, and it's a LOT of work. I can't even imagine someone having to do this for a player with 18 loaded characters, multiple banks, houses full of furnishings, and craft bags. That would make anyone go insane and I don't wish that on anyone.

As much as I would love the option to fully transfer, I don't see how it can be effectively done on such a large scale with the size and complexity of our character files.

Nestor

Unless you are willing to replace all the data on say the Xbox server with the data from the PC server, this will never happen. Can't just copy over records, it is a Mass Move.

BretonMage

If it is not possible between PC and consoles, at the very least, please give us the ability to transfer characters between PC NA and PC EU.

JMadFour

Cross-Save and Cross-Play should be the standard, full-stop.

It is 2023. It's time for MMOs to modernize.

You should be able to log into any platform that the game is on and have access to your same characters, guilds, and friends.

Don't give me excuses for why it can't be done when plenty of other games do it just fine.

(especially if your excuse is "but the guild trader economy." I literally do not care.)

jaws343

JMadFour wrote: »

Cross-Save and Cross-Play should be the standard, full-stop.

It is 2023. It's time for MMOs to modernize.

You should be able to log into any platform that the game is on and have access to your same characters, guilds, and friends.

Don't give me excuses for why it can't be done when plenty of other games do it just fine.

(especially if your excuse is "but the guild trader economy." I literally do not care.)

Console and PC have inherent differences, not least of which is access to mods and just overall difference in control of a character. As long as those differences are in place, console and PC should never share a playerbase.

But realistically, this game will never have it. Ever.

My username is my Xbox gamertag, and it is possible that someone on PC or even PS can have the same name. So, you merge all these data ases together and 2 people have to change their names.

Who? Who is forced to change? Certainly neither of the console players can, as their names are literally their console username. So then, how do you even merge those two platforms, let alone adding PC into the mix.

And then, just from a competitive fairness level, PC players have far more tools at their disposal for mods, and for just general control of characters in combat. Console players would never be able to keep up in PVP, and there is no way console players would ever be considered for top end raid groups in PVE.

And then there's the economy. Just saw that PC chromium platings we're like hundreds of thousands of gold on the forums this week. Xbox you are lucky to sell them for 80k in any reasonable time. PC gold influx into consoles would basically push all console players out of the market. It'd be impossible for them to compete even remotely on an even playing field.

So many other issues. Many of them technical when it comes down to just merging databases in general. And many examples of games where cross play is a flat out awful experience at any competitive level. Shooters with cross play are trash for the same reasons implementing it here would be trash.

Amottica

We know other games offer this and some charge money for the sever transfer which means there is likely a reason why Zenimax refuses to budge on this issue.

While it is a guess, it is likely a contractual issue with one of their business partners. If that is the case Zenimax will not throw their partner under the bus and may not consider it worth the cost of renegotiating that contractual clause. This is the only thing that makes sense as to why this is not a thing.

Uvi_AUT

I dont own any consoles ( I think the last one I had was a PS2), but I dont see any harm in having the option.
Crossplay means more players, which is always a good thing.

gronoxvx

As much as I'd like this, it would cripple the console community with the amount of people transferring away.

Vrienda

I would -love- cross play servers.

But from a technical standpoint it might be too difficult for ZOS.

But I'd love to play my main character on console when doing a new chapter, so much more comfy even though PC is better for day to day play.

kringled_1

Amottica wrote: »

We know other games offer this and some charge money for the sever transfer which means there is likely a reason why Zenimax refuses to budge on this issue.

While it is a guess, it is likely a contractual issue with one of their business partners. If that is the case Zenimax will not throw their partner under the bus and may not consider it worth the cost of renegotiating that contractual clause. This is the only thing that makes sense as to why this is not a thing.

They don't do transfers between PC/NA and PC/EU, where there's no contractual issues, and people have also been asking for this for a long time. I think it's safe to say that there are significant technical issues that impede account transfers, and so far zos has not made the decision to spend the resources needed to overcome that.
There may well also be contractual issues (for console transfers) that would play into that decision, but it's not something I have any direct information about.

Stinkyremy

Dr_Con wrote: »

the economy on console has been ruined by rampant, unchecked botting.

They cannot do anything to it as it is easy to make a PSN/XBL dummy account even on your prime system, get it to macro run to nodes.

Still PC is not any different, idk what it is like now but day one there were bots clipped into the meshed farming the nodes underground. That immediately effected economy.
From what I see on this forum items like roe and gold plating are super expensive, that is bots and hoarders tanking the economy.
If anything console mats are cheap.

Stinkyremy

Uvi_AUT wrote: »

I dont own any consoles ( I think the last one I had was a PS2), but I dont see any harm in having the option.
Crossplay means more players, which is always a good thing.

Cross play will come at some point. PC already has the identical controller UI built in and PC players do play on controller so there is no skill gap issue with gamepad v keyboard.
Matt already mentioned in an interview it is possible to get cross play but not on their list of things they are doing and seeing cross play is the go to thing now and at some point the numbers will dwindle on both platforms, I expect at some point they will enable cross play.

Dagoth_Rac

You can't even transfer a character from PC-NA to PC-EU. This has nothing to do with Sony or Microsoft. It is clear that the megaserver databases were designed to be completely independent from each other and to reuse unique keys.

It is kind of like how it is fine for Joe in Accounting to transfer to Sales even if there is already a Joe in Sales. They may have same name but will have different Employee IDs. So you can unlink them from Accounting and link them to Sales, but based on unique Employee ID, all their other information will come along without a problem (salary history, expense reports, vacation days, retirement plan, health insurance, etc., etc.).

But if Joe at Amazon goes to work for Google, you can't transfer all that history easily. Joe might be Employee #1234 at Amazon, but Sally is already Employee #1234 at Google. So even if they use same HR software, you have database key conflicts. So you can't just throw Joe's records into the Google database or else you will not be able to tell which are Sally's and which are Joe's.

You could try to change Joe's number ahead of time, in some kind of temporary storage before finally writing to Google database. But there may be hundreds or thousands of database records with Joe's ids in them. And it is never a single database key. These keys often cascade. Like in ESO, you might have a unique account number and a unique character number and a unique guild number and a unique house number (i.e., a number that differentiates my copy of Gold Coast Manor from other players' Gold Coast Manors), and unique housing storage container numbers (i.e., what differentiates my copy of "Fortified Oaken Chest" from another player) and on and on and on. So you have item #1234 linked to storage container #2345 linked to house #3456 linked to character #4567.

So you don't have to just change #1234 to a different number in a single place. You likely have to change dozens of numbers in thousands of places and make sure all the new numbers are properly linked together. It is like a spider web of links going back and forth and up and down and all around the database. It is a mess and easy to goof up. And often hard to see. Like you can get a housing storage container number wrong, and suddenly Joe's inventory is mixed in with Sally's. And Sally may just say, "Oh. I did not realize I had a gold Lady Thorn mask. I thought it was still purple." Then she takes it out and starts wearing it. But that was Joe's gold Lady Thorn mask. And now he can't find his gold Lady Thorn mask. Or maybe he never really wears that mask and does not even notice it is missing for weeks or months.

This is not easy stuff. It is called a "database merge". I have worked with multi-billion dollar companies that have devoted huge teams and millions of dollars to doing database merges and it is still difficult, tedious, time consuming work.

Is it possible? Yes. But it is a lot more complicated than, "Just add _PC to the end of my character name!"

And there will be executives saying, "If you spend 2 million and 4 months on this, will it make more than 2 million in server transfer fees? And if it would turn a profit, would it be a larger profit than spending 2 million dollars and 4 months on something else?"

Arunei

Cross-play isn't something ZOS can just do. Sony has to agree to it and I think it's pretty clear since we don't have it, they haven't agreed to it. A large reason is likely because PC can use addons that help in combat, such as FTC and S'rendarr.

As for transferring, people like to forget that the one-time transfer that happened was people moving from PC to an empty console database. There was no risk of different accounts/characters having the same name. Now? There's no way to move accounts because there's just too much of a risk that there are people who have character/account names that are the same. And how do you make change their stuff for that move to happen? There's also the chance that moving accounts from one populated database to another, even if there's no conflict with existing names, is it could still have an issue with data merging incorrectly with other existing data.

Necrotech_Master

Stinkyremy wrote: »

Dr_Con wrote: »

the economy on console has been ruined by rampant, unchecked botting.

They cannot do anything to it as it is easy to make a PSN/XBL dummy account even on your prime system, get it to macro run to nodes.

Still PC is not any different, idk what it is like now but day one there were bots clipped into the meshed farming the nodes underground. That immediately effected economy.
From what I see on this forum items like roe and gold plating are super expensive, that is bots and hoarders tanking the economy.
If anything console mats are cheap.

bots on PC are virtually nonexistent, and even when people do find them, when they reported they get poofed pretty quick

edit: quoted wrong post lol

PrimusTiberius

Tandor wrote: »

Too many technical and legal/contractual problems to overcome, and almost certainly not enough interested players to make it commercially viable to devote/divert the necessary resources to enable it to happen. Moreover, all the threads that crop up on this from time to time indicate that any such traffic would be one-way only, i.e. from console to PC - and there are enough performance issues on the PC servers as it is, not least for PvP, so PC players will be wary of increasing their server populations even more.

Its not as hard as its made out to be, its more of a logistical issue for ZOS and the resources to perform the work. To break it down simply, they (ZOS) just don't want to deal with it, plain and simple.

Tandor

PrimusTiberius wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Too many technical and legal/contractual problems to overcome, and almost certainly not enough interested players to make it commercially viable to devote/divert the necessary resources to enable it to happen. Moreover, all the threads that crop up on this from time to time indicate that any such traffic would be one-way only, i.e. from console to PC - and there are enough performance issues on the PC servers as it is, not least for PvP, so PC players will be wary of increasing their server populations even more.

Its not as hard as its made out to be, its more of a logistical issue for ZOS and the resources to perform the work. To break it down simply, they (ZOS) just don't want to deal with it, plain and simple.

If you say so, your technical knowledge of the process involved is doubtless greater than mine, but out of interest within your calculations how much do you think the cost would be for Microsoft and Sony to be bought out of any contractual restrictions against transferring their customers' accounts to ZOS? Including lawyers fees, naturally.

Amottica

I do see that

kringled_1 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

We know other games offer this and some charge money for the sever transfer which means there is likely a reason why Zenimax refuses to budge on this issue.

While it is a guess, it is likely a contractual issue with one of their business partners. If that is the case Zenimax will not throw their partner under the bus and may not consider it worth the cost of renegotiating that contractual clause. This is the only thing that makes sense as to why this is not a thing.

They don't do transfers between PC/NA and PC/EU, where there's no contractual issues, and people have also been asking for this for a long time. I think it's safe to say that there are significant technical issues that impede account transfers, and so far zos has not made the decision to spend the resources needed to overcome that.
There may well also be contractual issues (for console transfers) that would play into that decision, but it's not something I have any direct information about.

Good point but Zenimax would have to deal with another issue there. With a transfer between PC servers, it would be just a character transfer, not an account transfer since they are the same account. With crown store purchases being specific to one server players would get upset that they still had to repurchase mounts, houses, and more on the other server they just transferred to. They are a possession of the account on that server and not specific to the character. This would upset many and is probably a good reason to take a hard pass on this.