Disabling crown gifting is a bad idea

Dubhliam

I can see WHY they did it, everybody is aware how the Crown sellers abuse the system.

However, this is possibly THE WORST way to combat this issue.

I don't think they comprehend the damage this is going to do to the community.

ZOS management at it's finest.
10/10 would recommend.

Katheriah

This is literally the only reason I trade so much, because I want all the shinies. I could live without crown crates, but this really makes me thing twice about playing ESO.

What the hell am I supposed to do with my 200 mil gold?

wilykcat

They paused it which means it's temporary.

Soarora

wilykcat wrote: »

They paused it which means it's temporary.

They said they were working on fixing crown crate gifting and we’re like half a year later and it’s only getting worse. It does not seem temporary.

Casul

ZoS maybe it’s time to make an actual system for in game crown trading?

Katheriah

The crown crate gifting has been disabled 'temporary', which has been taking a very long time now.

At my office we often say: nothing as permanent as temporary fixes.

wilykcat

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

FireBreathingNord

While fraud is a valid concern, disabling gifting hurts real players more than scammers. Gift economies create engagement. Let users self-police + limit gifts to trusted friends to reduce fraud risk. We want to support fair play AND vibrant player cultures.

Temporary gifting bans to curb fraud make sense, but permanent or long lasting bans go too far. Please explore middle ground options like gift limits per user, vetting highly active gifters, limiting gifts between new accounts. With smart policies, we can reduce fraud while keeping gifts alive.

IrisDupree

I mean if they are trying to kill the crown store sales this is an excellent way to go about it. I personally cannot drop 70-100 dollars on a house even once a year. But I have friends who can and happily take my gold in exchange.
Disable gifting and they stop buying all those crowns to help out guildmates by gifting in exchange for gold.

Try cracking down on gold sellers in chat instead of making the game worse for your actual players.

Oh the live stream on the 14th is going to need a LOT of moderators to stop people from talking about this and the crown crate sale loss.

FireBreathingNord

Fraud persists in even the biggest, most popular games - from gold farming in WoW to black markets across FPS and sports franchises. As upsetting as fraud is, it arises from engagement and demand for rare goods.

Eliminating gray markets entirely may be impossible without damaging in-game economies. The key is implementing policies that curb the worst abuses while accepting that some fraud persists.

SilverBride

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.

prof_doom

Naftal wrote: »

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

There's an easy answer to this problem.
Put everything currently in the crown store in a new store where you can buy things for in-game gold.

DrakeHellfire

You know what could be really cool? Spend in game gold to purchase Endeavor tokens, and extend endeavor tokens to the entire crown store as well.

CameraBeardThePirate

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.

Technically speaking, it wasn't really a gold sink. Gold sinks are when the player buys something and that gold disappears from the market - Gold was never disappearing from the market in Crown Gifts, just exchanging hands between players.

Casul

prof_doom wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

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

There's an easy answer to this problem.
Put everything currently in the crown store in a new store where you can buy things for in-game gold.

This would honestly be the best solution if they could keep consistent with platform rates.

FireBreathingNord

Restricting gifts/gold transfers to new accounts could help. Requiring a minimum account age + activity level before sending/receiving big gifts limits scammers abusing new accounts. Let accounts earn trust.

Gradually increasing gift allowance over first few months gives new real players time to establish themselves, while limiting exploiters. Combined with vetting for gift services/sellers, again, smart policies.

Kirawolfe

jaws343 wrote: »

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.

Then find a better way to stop it, without punishing your entire player base.

I gifted mounts, houses, etc to my friends and family. I did perhaps 4 crown exchanges through my guild over the stretch I've been playing (on and off since beta).

They've taken away my ability to help my friends out who don't have the financial means to buy crowns, and taken away my ability to give cool gifts to my brother in another country who I've enjoyed this game with every weekend for a year now.

They will lose money, because there are people who just can't afford to buy crowns otherwise.

This is incredible disheartening, and another slap on top of poorly handled mass bans, their fumbling with the crown crate process, and constant and exhausting combat tweaks and endless 'fixes' which bring back old bugs and issues that need to be fixed yet again.

Really disappointed. I will buy my friends and families new games instead, I guess.

mochizx

Does that mean we can buy stuff in crown store using gold directly now?

thehilanderb14a_ESO

It feels like the suits in charge think that by preventing crown selling they will funnel all those buyers into their own real-money store.

What they will find is that the people spending gold on crowns have little interest in spending real money on them, and that the whales that DO buy them to sell will STOP buying them if they can’t sell them. It also means that many people will stop playing because at this point in the life cycle of the game there is little left for them to strive for other than earning enough gold to buy crown store items from sellers - which also means less revenue from ESO+ subs as people leave.

And while they say this is temporary, even a month or two can do a TON of irreversible damage.

And all of this because people who aren’t gamers are running the show and don’t understand how the in game economy functions to keep the game alive.

Tra_Lalan

Just make an in game system to change gold to crowns, and this will be fine.

Otherwise this is just another example of punishing all playerbase for some exploiters.

markulrich1966

in Fallout you get atoms for achievements, the equivalent to the crown currency.

This whole fraud thing just exists (unresolved since half a year already), because ESO does not have a valid concept to earn crowns ingame.
And now it strikes back that they never added such an option.
I have 30 mio on xbox, which is like 200 mio or so on PC, so what shall I do with that gold? For now, stopping to earn more, playing a more rewarding game like mentioned above.

Katheriah

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'.

Van_Winkle

LOL. And why exactly do we need economy in this game, where we have NOTHING to buy with our gold? Looks like ZOS want to kill they own game.

Aka_

Holy crap. This needed a much bigger explanation and timeline than "yeah we're pausing it so good luck this totally won't do anything to the game"

Just get rid of the damn crown store and implement them in-game at this rate. I don't know, this is wild to me how little they wanted to explain. You can't just drop that and expect us to just shrug and carry on. It's a huge impact.

Flabbergasted, really

Katheriah

ZOS nerfs everything too hard, even their crown store.

If this will take several weeks, I honestly believe they will regret their choices. This won't suddenly make me pay hundreds of euro's on houses and pretty weapons. This will just make me not buy them.

FireBreathingNord

I agree fraud isn't good, but outrage comes from ZOS' blanket ban affecting legitimate players more than fraudsters. There are compromises between allowing rampant fraud and banning gifting entirely.

Some fraud persists in all online games - it's inevitable with player creativity. The goal should be balancing fair play with enabling player agency and culture. With care, gifting can be safely re-enabled under policies that curb the worst abuse. Let's work with ZOS on smart solutions.

TX12001rwb17_ESO

Do they realize a lot of people who buy crowns for the sole intent of selling them for gold will no longer buy them?

ZOS_Kevin

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.

notyuu

Disabling crown gifting means people can no longer sell crowns to earn easy gold..which means
1: less crown sales over all
2: gold sellers now have a foot in the door

both of these are bad

wilykcat wrote: »

They paused it which means it's temporary.

Nothing is as permnant as a temporary measure

SilverBride

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?