Disabling crown gifting is a bad idea

BearOrK

Hello! Is there a chance to only gift DLC for now?

Many of my friends can only afford to pay for playstation plus in order to play online (now it got increased price) and cannot pay for eso plus.

Being able to pay for your content with gold was one of the best choices with this game TwT

Sorry my English.

TaSheen

It seems there's no gifting at all and no information about when that may change. Perhaps you can send them gift cards in their currency to buy the DLCs?

PieMaster1

Keeping this thread relevant. [snip]

[edited for discussing moderator action(s)]

ComboBreaker88

Naftal wrote: »

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.

They disabled the biggest gold sink in the game. I don't think you are thinking this through.

How exactly is it a gold sink? It doesn't remove gold from the game. On the contrary, it funneled it to a handful of players. Crown selling was always a way to literally buy gold and not get banned.

GooGa592

Disabling the crown store all together might be a good idea though. Move the rewards to earned in game rewards instead.

Katheriah

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin The subject was completely ignored during your stream. Some nice shinies ending in a couple of days. Can we expect any update/ETA at all?

I can tell you one thing though, I'm not spending €84.99 on just a house and an arms pack. If you wonder why so many people use ingame gold to buy crownstore items. That's it. This wouldn't be such an issue if items had a reasonable price.

SilverBride

I would just like an update, even if it's just that there is nothing new to report at this time.

VinnyGambini

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin

Will you give us any update on this topic???

CrashTest

ComboBreaker88 wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

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.

They disabled the biggest gold sink in the game. I don't think you are thinking this through.

How exactly is it a gold sink? It doesn't remove gold from the game. On the contrary, it funneled it to a handful of players. Crown selling was always a way to literally buy gold and not get banned.

Because most people who traded gold for crowns earned gold using guild traders which deletes gold from the game via taxes.

A single top tier trader deletes millions of gold from the game every week.

A single top tier trading guild deletes tens of millions from the game every week.

The entire guild trader bidding system deletes hundreds of millions (maybe even a billion) every week.

When those players leave because there's no point in them making gold, all that gold they would've deleted from the game just sits in the game.

Guild trader traffic in top trader guilds has already declined since crown gifting paused and has only seen a surge in the past few days due to people dumping jewelry mats and jewelry because u40.

PCNA

Jimbru

I still think ESO needs to incorporate an in-game currency exchange, similar to what GW2 and STO have. A place to exchange gold for crowns or vice versa, with a floating exchange rate based on demand. It wouldn't replace the ability to buy crowns, but would give players a better option for obtaining crowns and crown items than what presently exists.

VinnyGambini

Jimbru wrote: »

I still think ESO needs to incorporate an in-game currency exchange, similar to what GW2 and STO have. A place to exchange gold for crowns or vice versa, with a floating exchange rate based on demand. It wouldn't replace the ability to buy crowns, but would give players a better option for obtaining crowns and crown items than what presently exists.

This

NoticeMeArkay

I don't understand why so many people focus on an ingame currency exchange when you NOW have the opportunity to vote with your own wallet and demand that the game itself finally receives desirable rewards for a change.

Caligulove

Whatever they come up with in order to bring gifting back, I will poin

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

wilykcat wrote: »

Sometimes investigations and temporarily disabling stuff does take longer. Not everything in life happens quickly and instantly.

Just wanted to build on this point. We are working on building solutions that protect everyone when gifting crown store items. Investigating solutions and building those out does take time. We understand this is not deal. It isn't ideal for anyone not engaging in fraudulent behavior. It isn't ideal for us. However, we want to stress this is temporary as we are working out the best path forward. We don't know how long this will take, but we are working to resolve this as soon as we can.

Just remember that there is no such thing as solutions. Only tradeoffs exist.

Katheriah

Well I'm wondering if @ZOS_GinaBruno or @ZOS_Kevin is going to inform us about the progress and ETA of that tradeoff.

This is one hell of a chance to practice with the better communication that was promised.

PapaTankers

I too would like an update on this.

For me and many other people their whole endgame was removed with disabling gifting.

Only earnable rewards that we have are essentialy motifs and few budget skins and mounts locked behind some of the hardest content in the game requiring insane amount of dedication and teamwork and organizing.

Gifting atleast pushed us to earn gold to get some sort of rewards.
The way ESO is monetized makes it look like a free to play game.

What happened to the ingame rewards system feedback that was sent out a year back? Does zenimax still consider gear a reward?

Hartsa99

SilverBride wrote: »

Katheriah wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Put the blame where the blame is due.

ZoS didn't create this problem... players did. They are the ones that are responsible for this mess.

Something needed to be done so they can remedy this situation. Luckily gifting is just paused and not removed permanently which they could have done instead.

I'm not blaming ZOS for the fraud that seems to be going on. I blame them for this 'solution'.

How would you have fixed it?

---

World of warcraft make it like 10 years ago, when they put game tokens buyable from their internet site, and then players can sell em through in game selling system for gold.

If there is will there is a way,,, this works nowdays almoust everything

Elrond87

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.

you could buy runs for those trials i believe

ComboBreaker88 wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

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.

They disabled the biggest gold sink in the game. I don't think you are thinking this through.

How exactly is it a gold sink? It doesn't remove gold from the game. On the contrary, it funneled it to a handful of players. Crown selling was always a way to literally buy gold and not get banned.

yep im glad its disabled. step in the right direction.

shadyjane62

I am very glad the gifting has been disabled. It gave a lot of advantages to those who scored a lot of gold and spent it to advance their chars and accounts.

I would advocate for a gold for token exchange like WoW or GW2.


The system here stinks.

SilverBride

shadyjane62 wrote: »

I am very glad the gifting has been disabled. It gave a lot of advantages to those who scored a lot of gold and spent it to advance their chars and accounts.

I've purchased 2 houses and a race change token through our guild's crown exchange. These items did not give me any advantages or advance my characters and account.

AstroST

shadyjane62 wrote: »

I am very glad the gifting has been disabled. It gave a lot of advantages to those who scored a lot of gold and spent it to advance their chars and accounts.

I would advocate for a gold for token exchange like WoW or GW2.


The system here stinks.

Care to elaborate? Of what kind of advantage you are talking about?
Do you think that buying skyshard or skills advancamente give and advantag to players? Or something else?

Jimbru

Jimbru wrote: »

I still think ESO needs to incorporate an in-game currency exchange, similar to what GW2 and STO have. A place to exchange gold for crowns or vice versa, with a floating exchange rate based on demand. It wouldn't replace the ability to buy crowns, but would give players a better option for obtaining crowns and crown items than what presently exists.

Not to mention, having an in-game exchange for crowns and gold totally takes the wind out of illegal out-of-game gold sellers.

Katheriah

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/643289/update-on-current-and-future-status-of-gifting#latest

Thanks for the insight, but why is it so darn difficult to give a timeline?

What does 'working on a solution' mean in this case? Are you brainstorming? Have you figured out what to do and are you building a solution? Because there must be a 'we are aiming for a solution in week X' idea somewhere.

No big tech company in 2023 just wings it with the idea to fix such a big issue 'whenever'.

Just say if we're talking about weeks, months or years.

jaws343

Katheriah wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/643289/update-on-current-and-future-status-of-gifting#latest

Thanks for the insight, but why is it so darn difficult to give a timeline?

What does 'working on a solution' mean in this case? Are you brainstorming? Have you figured out what to do and are you building a solution? Because there must be a 'we are aiming for a solution in week X' idea somewhere.

No big tech company in 2023 just wings it with the idea to fix such a big issue 'whenever'.

Just say if we're talking about weeks, months or years.

No big tech company gives out unrealized deadlines. That is just asking for the community to jump on them even further when they find they can't hit that prematurely given deadline.

Katheriah

Big tech companies do it all the time. I'm asking for an ETA, not a deadline.

It's not even that difficult, I'll throw in one* in the casual style of the patch notes:

"Hey guys! We just want to give you a quick update. At this moment we are working on a fix that will benefit all parties, except for the people that were abusing the system, obviously! Hopefully next week you can test this solution on our Public Test Server and we're aiming to go live at the end of the next month. If this ETA changes, we will make sure to update you with the new expectation.

We realize the process so far has been less than satisfying. That's why we want to thank you all for your ongoing patience and support by giving a 20% discount on your first use of the new gifting system on the live servers. So it's time to start thinking about what to gift to your friends!"

*PardonmyFrench, not a native speaker.

sarahthes

Katheriah wrote: »

Big tech companies do it all the time. I'm asking for an ETA, not a deadline.

It's not even that difficult, I'll throw in one* in the casual style of the patch notes:

"Hey guys! We just want to give you a quick update. At this moment we are working on a fix that will benefit all parties, except for the people that were abusing the system, obviously! Hopefully next week you can test this solution on our Public Test Server and we're aiming to go live at the end of the next month. If this ETA changes, we will make sure to update you with the new expectation.

We realize the process so far has been less than satisfying. That's why we want to thank you all for your ongoing patience and support by giving a 20% discount on your first use of the new gifting system on the live servers. So it's time to start thinking about what to gift to your friends!"

*PardonmyFrench, not a native speaker.

He said in the post they would be providing the ETA and timelines soon. It's clear they're not yet sure when it will happen. Given they're not sure, I would think they're still trying to figure out if it will even be this calendar year.

DragonRacer

That statement 100% confirms these horrible, annoying gold sellers spamming zone chat everyday with new slightly-renamed accounts are a direct cause of everyone else’s suffering.

Hope that “Gold” turd-in-the-punch-bowl gets called out and dragged immediately in every zone when spotted.

Katheriah

sarahthes wrote: »

Katheriah wrote: »

Big tech companies do it all the time. I'm asking for an ETA, not a deadline.

It's not even that difficult, I'll throw in one* in the casual style of the patch notes:

"Hey guys! We just want to give you a quick update. At this moment we are working on a fix that will benefit all parties, except for the people that were abusing the system, obviously! Hopefully next week you can test this solution on our Public Test Server and we're aiming to go live at the end of the next month. If this ETA changes, we will make sure to update you with the new expectation.

We realize the process so far has been less than satisfying. That's why we want to thank you all for your ongoing patience and support by giving a 20% discount on your first use of the new gifting system on the live servers. So it's time to start thinking about what to gift to your friends!"

*PardonmyFrench, not a native speaker.

He said in the post they would be providing the ETA and timelines soon. It's clear they're not yet sure when it will happen. Given they're not sure, I would think they're still trying to figure out if it will even be this calendar year.

'Soon' can be tomorrow, next week, next month...

There's something worse than not meeting your ETA, that's not sharing your ETA. There's always one. They're just not communicating it.

Lozeenge

given how they expected a negative reaction they don't wanna throw estimates around lest they end up missing it for any variety of reasons and stoke the fires because "BUT YOU PROMISED US GRRRRRRRR!"

one too many times i've seen games miss deadlines and everyone's initial response was to just rip the developers into pieces. business-speaking, this is too much of a serious problem to just throw into the soon-to-be-patched pile. they're kind of obligated to handle this as carefully as they are.

Katheriah

That's why I'm not asking for a deadline, but an ETA.

Not a promise, an estimation. A really big difference, and a massive gesture towards the community.

It is important. It's communication. Something they've admitted they have to improve.

Marcus684

Katheriah wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Katheriah wrote: »

Big tech companies do it all the time. I'm asking for an ETA, not a deadline.

It's not even that difficult, I'll throw in one* in the casual style of the patch notes:

"Hey guys! We just want to give you a quick update. At this moment we are working on a fix that will benefit all parties, except for the people that were abusing the system, obviously! Hopefully next week you can test this solution on our Public Test Server and we're aiming to go live at the end of the next month. If this ETA changes, we will make sure to update you with the new expectation.

We realize the process so far has been less than satisfying. That's why we want to thank you all for your ongoing patience and support by giving a 20% discount on your first use of the new gifting system on the live servers. So it's time to start thinking about what to gift to your friends!"

*PardonmyFrench, not a native speaker.

He said in the post they would be providing the ETA and timelines soon. It's clear they're not yet sure when it will happen. Given they're not sure, I would think they're still trying to figure out if it will even be this calendar year.

'Soon' can be tomorrow, next week, next month...

There's something worse than not meeting your ETA, that's not sharing your ETA. There's always one. They're just not communicating it.

As someone who has a career in troubleshooting and fixing problems in a totally unrelated field, when asked for an ETA when trying to identify and correct the cause of a problem I will usually say "A couple of hours" knowing I have exactly zero idea how long it would actually take, and that's if I'm actively engaged in addressing that particular problem. ZOS has limited programmer hours available to address the myriad and ever-growing list of issues that require programmer attention, so trying to provide an ETA on 1 of these issues, especially when it might not be the highest priority, is all risk and no reward.

Just my 2 cents.