Disabling crown gifting is a bad idea

wilykcat

RoxyPhoenix wrote: »

how come the crown/gold trading websites knew about this week before it was announced? Towns were flooded with advertisements for 500k+ crown sales, no one holds that many crowns on them unless ur an online gold trading company.

Many of those messages are auto-mated (ran by bots/AI). I highly recommend for not going onto those websites they gave out and instead block and report. There are lots of fraudulent behavior going on behind the scenes of this and its very creepy.

I know. What I do is to report them for spamming the chat and block them. I eventually got annoyed with it and then I completely disabled the zone chat. Now I never see it. Disabling the in-game chat is basically the "mute all" button.

Katheriah

hiyde wrote: »

they know what's best for the safety of their business.

To be fair, if I look at the Steam charts, communication from ZOS on the forum and other channels plus the things my friends and guildies say/do... I would like to respectfully state that they have no clue.

I love this game. That's why I'm angry. They killed some people's (including mine) playstyle by this choice and have given no trust they will fix it timely. Look at the crown crates. Do you know what happens when you take fun away from people for 6 months without any clear deadline? They leave and fall in love with another game.

Also, please remember that people that don't spend $100+ on a house will not suddenly start doing it now.

gronoxvx

Not really surprised by zos disabling gifting. More that zos hasnt fixed the issues yet since the crown store is their pride and joy. Would have expected all hands on deck for it.

ApoAlaia

During the TESO sale I went ahead and purchased another alt account, because the account which used to be an alt is not quite an alt anymore.

To get my house in order to my liking I bought ESO+ to fill the bag with needful stuff - didn't quite manage during the free ESO+ promotion - and some additional crowns to get myself a banker.

Today I log in and I am greeted by this:



Needles to say it was a bit of a [snip] moment...

[edited for profanity bypass]

loosej

Are we still allowed to give someone else the crown while grouped? Or will this cause a temporary ban on our account?

/s

me_ming

jaws343 wrote: »

Zezin wrote: »

PrincessOfThieves wrote: »

Yeah. For me personally, being able to earn stuff in game is very important, and I spend a lot of time farming stuff I can sell (dungeon masks, writs and the like).
Without the ability to buy crown gifts, there will be no cosmetic goals to work towards and I will have significantly less motivation to play. The amount of cosmetics you can earn ingame is very limited, and some of them require insane feats such as trial trifectas.

Same with me, gridind for gold felt good because of the recompense of getting stuff from the crown store, now what's the point? The majority of my time playing was making gold, what am I supposed to do now? Just hoard a pile of useless fake currency?

You mean, play a video game...

Honestly, any outrage over this against ZOS is misplaced. Fraud is not good, and frankly, it is in ZOS' best interest to make sure their game doesn't allow for it.

as much as I agree that fraud should not be taken lightly. I don't like the fact that this video game you are talking about where it has very little incentive to play it, this is an MMO-RPG. Where titles and how your character looks matters. There is one comment on this thread that I really like:

Stamicka wrote: »

They should disable the whole crown store and start making some worthwhile rewards for doing things in the game. That'll really stop fraudulent behavior for the foreseeable future .

THIS!

People don't bother playing the game, because they know they can easily get something waaaaay better than what the in-game rewards offer. So much of what is in the crown store and crates should have been in-game rewards. I mean, you say to just play the game, when playing through the game isn't rewarding. Like I said, this is an MMO-RPG, titles should be rewarding, how you look should be rewarding, it should feel like your progressing, but it doesn't. It just feels like you just keep up with what the crown store has to offer.

Tra_Lalan

SilverBride wrote: »

We aren't being punished. ZoS is trying to fix a problem and I'm sure they avoided this as long as they could. It's those that are committing the crimes that are the cause of what is happening to us now. They are the ones to blame.

Yes we are. I purchased crowns recently, because I wanted to gift my friend Murkmire and some other DLCs he is missing (he stoped subing due some previous ZOS ideas). Gifting was the main reason I bought those crowns, and now I cant use them as intended.
So I feel I have been punished, and decieved by ZOS.

If someone is stealing at your shop and you can't catch the thief, you don't put into jail all your customers, do you? But that is just how they work. It is not the first time (remember the recent ban wave?).

Also I think this change is huge, and will drive away more players than u35. This game has a very poor reward structure, meaning most of the cool stuff you would want is in the crown store, you can't get them via playing. Buing crowns for ingame gold was some sort of solution to heal this reward structure. Many players played the game to gain gold (trading, motif farming, doing writs on 20 chars, whatever was their thing) and then used this gold for crown store purchases. Now they have lost most of the reasons to play the game. So yeah, we are punished.

kah

I know the response to this is always going to be, "But they can make more money this way!!", but considering a bunch of players pay for ESO+ on top of a new expansion each year, it would be better if they just made everything in the crown store achievable by playing the game.

Aorys

I can't leave my home anymore because I'm ill. I liked to farm and doing writs. That was my kind of game. Now I will farm for what? For buying mats to craft wooden platforms? I can tell this has nothing to do with fraudulent behavior and gifting will not be back. I'm moving to another game.

ZOS_Icy

Greetings,

We have recently removed some unnecessary bashing in addition to some back and forth from this thread.

• Bashing and Slanderous Comments: We do not permit the bashing of individuals (including ZeniMax employees), groups, or other companies on our forums. We believe that doing so is neither constructive nor in spirit of our game and community.

This is a reminder to keep the discussion civil and constructive. Please keep our Community Rules in mind moving forward.

Thank you for your understanding.

ssewallb14_ESO

I fear this will have the same effect as suddenly and drastically cutting the money supply as you now have a lot more gold sitting people's bank accounts with nothing they want to spend it on.

This would be very harmful to the ingame economy.

SilverBride

Buying crowns is not the only thing players spend gold on. I spend a LOT on mats for crafting furnishings for my multiple houses, most of which I purchased with gold.

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

For those trying to keep a positive light, good for you. Im not gonna put y’all down for trying to see the bright side of things. However stating it’s “temporary” falls on deaf ears to most because they’ve been saying this about crown crate gifting for six months now. Temporary keeps fans from getting items for months that won’t return for a year, sometimes two.

If you’re that patient, great, but not everyone is and when you’ve been playing for years and years… and the only fresh thing to keep you interested just got taken away for seemingly vague reasons you’re being kept in the dark on as though you are too ignorant to understand…. Why would anyone be patient in that situation.

You are the consumer. They need you, us, not the other way around. Good faith is earned, and Zenimax, you have not earned our good faith over these many years. What they’re banking on and hoping for is that most of the fan base is too addicted to this game to leave. It’s a gamble that I don’t think will pay off in the end.

Well said.

Napalm_Death32

The players is going to protest this hard,boycotts going to happen, hell they even losing players moving to other games, Both of my server guilds has players cancelling their subs against this, They made a terrible idea and managed to turn their players into a horde of doom slayers. They would be smart to reinstate the G:C feature, ZOS lacking common sense as always, first they can't do basic maths and then they do something this stupid? nah, to quote and change up the gta san andreas meme "you wronged the wrong community fool"

Napalm_Death32

FabresFour wrote: »

Four_Fingers wrote: »

So it was illegal to buy crowns for gold after all?
They have been so unclear about this always speaking in mysterious fraud terms.
No wonder people are confused, they thought it was OK because it has been condoned by some members of ZOS.
So no longer can buy alliance change tokens for gold, etc.

They weren't "unclear", they were very clear: It wasn't illegal. Hell, even Gina herself was on some crown-for-gold guild discord.

They could be turning it into something illegal NOW, and if that happens... vish

That won't stop players, now players will go off game to do trades anyways, they had to know that will happen

ApoAlaia

SilverBride wrote: »

Buying crowns is not the only thing players spend gold on. I spend a LOT on mats for crafting furnishings for my multiple houses, most of which I purchased with gold.

I'm sure those sellers are grateful for your custom.

However this begs the question, what incentive do they have now that they no longer have a use for the gold you and others like yourself provide?

Elsonso

SilverBride wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

...but I don’t think we should all lose the ability to trade or sell because some people try to take advantage of others...

They aren't doing this because some players scammed others in game over crown sales. From what I understand it goes much deeper than that.

I agree. I doubt that "fraudulent" has anything to do with normal gifting, even if scamming can happen while doing it. Those people are inconvenienced by this, to be sure, and it is unfortunate that they have to suffer because of things other people are doing.

"This is why we can't have nice things..."

hiyde wrote: »

Not to mention, it's been 6 months since the disabling of Crate-gifting on PCNA. I don't think they'd completely pulled the plug on all gifting today if a solution was anywhere on the horizon...

Potentially. Depends on how serious that fraudulent activity has become.

Also, keep in mind that they did come up with a fix, but ultimately, the fix was not right and they went back for a new fix. Second time around, they are going to be more cautious about telling us about it before it is ready, I am sure.

belial5221_ESO

A COD system would have made it so fraud wouldn't happen.On a positive note, without crown items being giftable,the gold seller bots greatly reduced,since why would ppl buy gold from em,if noone can get crown items with the gold they were buying.

Elsonso

belial5221_ESO wrote: »

A COD system would have made it so fraud wouldn't happen.On a positive note, without crown items being giftable,the gold seller bots greatly reduced,since why would ppl buy gold from em,if noone can get crown items with the gold they were buying.

Assuming COD is a tool in-game for converting Gold into Crowns... We don't know that will make much difference with fraud, unless you have more information about the nature of the fraud than the average person in this thread.

Amottica

Trundik wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Zezin wrote: »

More and more it seems the game is doing everything it can to alienate the end game community, we have nothing to do with the gold we get at end game, now more than ever the pul to play something else grows bigger and bigger.

Fraud and exploitation does much more to alienate the end game community than shutting down crown gifting until they figure out a better path forward.

As such it is a fabulous idea to terminate crown gifting at this time.

The end-game community somehow made it before crown gifting was a thing and will miraculously pull through this hiatus from crown gifting. Even more so since most of the gold is held by the end-game community.

Honestly bro i don't care about fraud. Never impacted my gameplay. Literally never. But this devs... they impact my gameplay almost every month with something bad -_-

Anyone involved in the trading of gold for crowns is impacted by this fraud regardless if they think they are or not. This type of gifting should have never been in the game to start with. There are superior designs already in play in other games.

Amottica

RoxyPhoenix wrote: »

how come the crown/gold trading websites knew about this week before it was announced? Towns were flooded with advertisements for 500k+ crown sales, no one holds that many crowns on them unless ur an online gold trading company.

Was that during the free gameplay period? If so then that is why the ads were flowing freely. They could create a free account to try to get our attention.

Regardless, anyone dealing with third-party gold sellers is playing Russian roulette with their accounts. It is a clear violation of the TOS and I know a player who has been banned for dealing with them.

Ekzorka

SilverBride wrote: »

ZoS didn't create this problem... players did.

I heard similar things when Greymoor was launched unsuccessful — when a piece of a community speaking a certain language was blamed in troubles. Not the little mistake in code, not the bringing back servers online during prime time of the whole server, nope.

SilverBride

Trundik wrote: »

Honestly bro i don't care about fraud. Never impacted my gameplay. Literally never. But this devs... they impact my gameplay almost every month with something bad -_-

I care about fraud because I've been a victim of it. I had my debit card number stolen and they tried to make an online purchase with it, but luckily the merchant thought it looked suspicious and stopped the sale from going through.

So if using stolen credit cards to buy crowns is what is going on then it does affect our gameplay, just like it is now.

Daniel5770

Tbh, i guess the main problem now is because eso is in multi platform 3rd party ie steam, epic.. which many steam eso switch region ie argentina or turkey which means currency exchange is cheap af and many ppl who change region will stock up many crowns when crown sales .. i think to solve this is ro keep eso from other 3rd party,

SCP343

SilverBride wrote: »

Trundik wrote: »

Honestly bro i don't care about fraud. Never impacted my gameplay. Literally never. But this devs... they impact my gameplay almost every month with something bad -_-

I care about fraud because I've been a victim of it. I had my debit card number stolen and they tried to make an online purchase with it, but luckily the merchant thought it looked suspicious and stopped the sale from going through.

So if using stolen credit cards to buy crowns is what is going on then it does affect our gameplay, just like it is now.

Not every crown seller has stolen card or got credit card by scaming people. and there is millions of games that they can sell your card that got stolen [snip]

[edited for bashing]

Lozeenge

people being complacent over ongoing illegal activity because Zenimax's stopgap on the situation mildly inconvenienced them is a little unhinged lol. it's a tough problem to deal with, there are definitely better solutions being suggested, and everything sucks right now. but lets try to dig out of the hole instead of going deeper.

Gendizer

It feels like developers lately are doing everything to ensure a steady player exodus from the game. Nerfing HA builds, numerous new bugs, constant crashes, and now even prohibiting gifting of crown gifts. And all of this against the backdrop of the release of Baldur's Gate, where a significant number of players have already gone. Zenimax Online Studios, wake up already, you're undermining your own project.

Punitio

Please let the already gifted crown items be accepted, i bought an arm pack from the crown store to a friend and he sent it but when i log in yesterday i wasn't able to accept, now it will be there in a limbo. Its very annoying.
The only reason i keept playing this game was to farm gold and buy crown store stuff, now i have no reason at all to play.

SilverBride

SCP343 wrote: »

Not every crown seller has stolen card or got credit card by scaming people. and there is millions of games that they can sell your card that got stolen [snip]

The fact that most crown sales are probably on the up and up, and that using stolen cards can happen in any game doesn't mean that nothing should be done to stop it.

[edited to remove quote]

Trundik

belial5221_ESO wrote: »

A COD system would have made it so fraud wouldn't happen.On a positive note, without crown items being giftable,the gold seller bots greatly reduced,since why would ppl buy gold from em,if noone can get crown items with the gold they were buying.

But seriously, hurting gameplay that much doesn't worth that kind of gain. Why the hell I should be responsible for someone else? Those gold sellers is offer for stupid people same as crown sellers in zone chat. All of that existed somwhere at another planet for me personally, so why and how that *** influences me? Seeing this in chat its not a problem at all and it doesn't sound as positive note now, when they gone. I ignore them anyway and any sane person will do the same.

Disease and "cure" are incomparable. It's like amputating your leg because you found a pimple on it.