Disabling crown gifting is a bad idea

FluffyBird

Every time I check the forums I find out that ZOS has made another flop or a ridiculous decision. Every time I'm glad I spend my money and time elsewhere, but I'm really sad that current team keeps messing up what once was a nice game.

ikzaa

If I've learned anything in 9 years from developers, it's that SOON means: We have no idea what to do.

Why not make a ticket that can be sold in the guild trader?

NoticeMeArkay

I see Zenimax decision to turn off crown gifting (temporarily) as a great idea.

- It means that all those players that have been buying cheap gold online from third party sellers will no longer have a reason to do so.
- Botting in ESO will be less attractive as an option of side income as there are no potential buyers around. Leading to less independent botters being seen roaming the starter zones and only the established groups remaining. For now.
- The few guilds who tried to sell trial runs (Not all, I'm speaking of a few) in order to sell the acquired gold for cheap bucks to third party sellers and their bot armies, won't be able to do so as good as before as the demand for gold shrinks down.
- The players who bought crowns for extra cheap using a VPN won't be able to turn them into increased profit by offering their acquired goods for third party sellers as trade material or sell them directly to players for double the value.
- With less illegally acquired gold in the economy, the economy itself may slowly return to normal. Which means prices will both drop and increase back to their natural setting and the intend to mistreat the system for personal gain will look less and less attractive.

Games like World of Warcraft took a different turn and instead tried to profit off the established black market. Zenimax's behaviour let's me guess that they will not take this turn but instead take the current situation about to unfold very seriously and will make use of the time and resources necessary to establish a safe and bulletproof way for players to gift crowns, out of reach to you-know-who.

And I'm all here for it. Great job, Zenimax.

Noerra

@ZOS_Kevin Wishing you guys the best of luck in finding a Win-Win for you guys and us.

Please turn gifting back on soon please and thank you!

It's a real bummer to see this feature removed from the game.

DinoZavr

@ZOS_Kevin this is a very unfortunate decision.

This completely eliminates Crown Exchange which was (according to Gina) not illegal,
but Real-Money-Trade which IS illegal shall flourish. Expect to see hundred of potatoes sold for mega-millions.
Acting this way Zenimax, basically, supports RMT. Strange.
And considering ESO economy there are veteran players, who understand how things works and sitting on mega millions of gold, and new players who want all the shinies and they want 'em now, ready to spend theirs Crowns.
The change breaks the financial interactions between said players, and, i hope, that in many months of crippled economy Zenimax shall start understanding how theirs game economy really works and the consequences of short-minded decisions.
Though, this is your game and, of course, you can destroy it however you like.
Or, if all this is a lie, we (players) as the next move can expect devaluation of the seals of endeavors like 5x .. 10x making them completely obsolete. And the real purpose is to milk each every player for the real money.

TL/DR; Zenimax decision supports real-money-trading and cripples the game economy. Please, re-consider!

FireBreathingNord

You make some excellent points - the reduced third-party gold buying and botting that should result from disabling gifting are absolutely key benefits worth celebrating. Any progress made against exploitative behavior harming game integrity is a real win. However, permanently banning all gifting still feels like an excessive sledgehammer approach when more focused anti-fraud systems could maintain those gains while also reasonably allowing good faith gifting between legitimate players.

SilverBride

I started playing this game in Beta, took a break then came back with Elsweyr. In all this time I never purchased crowns until a few months ago when I had accumulated enough gold to make some large purchases. I would likely buy crowns in the future again but it's not going to stop me from playing and enjoying the game if I have to wait a bit.

Xandreia_

if it takes as long as the code rewrite, gifting is NEVER coming back.

SilverBride

FireBreathingNord wrote: »

...permanently banning all gifting still feels like an excessive sledgehammer approach...

It's not permanent.

muscle_witch

For anyone who hasn't been following this since March, let me be very clear: just because they used the word "temporary" does not mean that this will be back any time soon, if at all, despite whatever ZOS' best intentions may be.

This is part of an ongiong issue that has been happening since March 3. Over the course of the past six months, ZOS's explanation for the cause of disabling gifting has changed multiple times, no real answers or timelines for a workable solution have been provided, and we have been assured multiple times that gifting is not going away permanently despite every successive step ZOS takes doing little to nothing to inspire confidence in that.

If crown gifting is important to your player experience, I suggest saving yourself the grief and divesting yourself of ESO now - based on the current progression, it will likely be over a year before any substantive changes take place, and you will likely never be given an answer that satisfies you as to why this all happened in the first place. This is not me trying to scare people away, but everyone's expectations should be realistic.

This Is the most recent compilation post of all official responses to the original crown crate gifting thread, showing the process of how this has all unfolded (note that it does not include @ZOS_Lunar and @ZOS_Kevin's comments as of July 13, as the bulk of conversation about this topic moved to the thread linked below)

Here is the current thread discussing the temporary solution for crown crate gifting; you'll be able to see the many concerns, complaints, and requests for information that have been ignored in the six weeks since the system was implemented.

ETA this link to the brief thread surrounding the announcement of crown crate gifting being disabled on all platforms

FireBreathingNord

While reducing opportunities for fraud is important, implementing overly broad restrictions can sometimes have unintended consequences like incentivizing real money trading*.

Rather than absolutes like complete bans or unchecked systems, the goal should be focused anti-fraud measures that allow reasonable player exchanges to continue. For example, gift limits based on account history, temporary trade blocks during investigations or individual or new accounts, or direct exchange of crown-currency items. Approached creatively and optimistically, compromises seem achievable.

I'm confident that if we engage in constructive dialogue on specific anti-fraud systems, rather than all-or-nothing thinking, collaborative progress can be made. There are still plenty of reasons to be hopeful about ESO's future if we maintain open and solution-focused communication.

Tyrant_Tim

Xandreia_ wrote: »

if it takes as long as the code rewrite, gifting is NEVER coming back.

It’s all in the language both threads used, they both were delayed for the “foreseeable future…” something that all too often means never.

Sure, not having gifting around might help curb some of the filth from this game, but what’s worse?

VPN buyers?
No buyers?

Pennies to the dollar are still more than nothing, in regards to pixels that have no expiration date.

KiltMaster

Bold choice especially when there are other games out and coming out ...

Punishing the many because of the few hardly ever works out well.

Reverb

Aka_ wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Well there goes my only way of being able to obtain future DLCs.....

I’m pretty sure that’s the intent. Instead of being able to get the DLCs from someone in exchange for gold, you’ll have to either sub or buy your own crowns. That’s a win for zeni

No? The DLC still had to be bought by someone. They still get the money whether someone gifted it or bought it themselves.

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Well there goes my only way of being able to obtain future DLCs.....

I’m pretty sure that’s the intent. Instead of being able to get the DLCs from someone in exchange for gold, you’ll have to either sub or buy your own crowns. That’s a win for zeni

ZOS still got their money the seller had to buy crowns and purchase the DLC.

That’s only true if sellers are buying crowns. In my experience, most crown sellers are unloading their “free” ESO+ crowns. They would be subbing anyway but not spending more. Zeni doesn’t make anything from those transactions, because nobody actually bought those crowns.

thehilanderb14a_ESO

Not sure why people think this will stop RMTs. The single biggest gold sink in game is the cost of securing a trader, and many guilds funded that sink by either selling crowns or by holding raffles for crown items like houses or crates.

Without those means of income, more people will be ENCOURAGED to seek out gold sellers.

All this move does in terms of “stopping fraud” is block the people who were buying crowns cheap in foreign markets via VPN workarounds in order to resell.

FireBreathingNord

ikzaa wrote: »

If I've learned anything in 9 years from developers, it's that SOON means: We have no idea what to do.

Why not make a ticket that can be sold in the guild trader?

The idea of selling large discounted crown packs through tickets systems is a creative compromise worth exploring. It adds more friction, but allows player exchanges under structured oversight. Solutions in this spirit seem promising for striking a balance between openness and security.

Lozeenge

I don't like how abrupt this news was. We're already seeing reports of people having their gifts now stuck in limbo because they were in the middle of an exchange.

A LITTLE heads up would've been nice!

SilverBride

I do think they should allow sales that were already made to complete.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin Is this something they will consider?

Four_Fingers

Reverb wrote: »

Aka_ wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Well there goes my only way of being able to obtain future DLCs.....

I’m pretty sure that’s the intent. Instead of being able to get the DLCs from someone in exchange for gold, you’ll have to either sub or buy your own crowns. That’s a win for zeni

No? The DLC still had to be bought by someone. They still get the money whether someone gifted it or bought it themselves.

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Well there goes my only way of being able to obtain future DLCs.....

I’m pretty sure that’s the intent. Instead of being able to get the DLCs from someone in exchange for gold, you’ll have to either sub or buy your own crowns. That’s a win for zeni

ZOS still got their money the seller had to buy crowns and purchase the DLC.

That’s only true if sellers are buying crowns. In my experience, most crown sellers are unloading their “free” ESO+ crowns. They would be subbing anyway but not spending more. Zeni doesn’t make anything from those transactions, because nobody actually bought those crowns.

Uh. I pay 14.99 a month for those 1625 crowns, they are not "free".
Most crown items people want cost a whole lot more crowns than that.
I don't think ESO+ subscribers are the issue here.

Zyva

This is awful. Just awful.

fluffybunny

There are more honest people on this game than scammers. The crown store is so ridiculously expensive so those honest players now have no way of getting most of the only cool things in the game. Wasn’t the last patch meant to “improve life” in ESO or something? How the hell isn’t this announcement incredibly ironic?

There are so many solutions to this. A few of which are:

1. Allow items from the crown store to be bought with by gold at a reasonable ratio. Say, 1500:1 or something.
2. Make daily endeavors count for WAY MORE and allow us to buy crown store items with endeavors.
3. Or what someone else said: “lock crown gifting to accounts that have been active and in good standing for say 6 months and are cp level 500 for example. It creates enough of a barrier where even if you get a fraudster, when they get banned it would take so much time and effort to get another account up and running it just wouldn't be worth the time investment.”

IMHO, they’re doing this to ensure that people use real money to buy items. That isn’t okay. What’s the point anymore? I can’t think of a way more perfect way to make sure people spend their cash in the crown store than this.

FayJolyn

As someone who only gets crowns from the ESO+ sub this doesn't really affect me, but I can see people being annoyed with this change. I personally view it a game design flaw that ingame gold has so little value and too many rewards are paywalled in the first place. I just want to ask the devs to maybe start reconsider the game's balance where so much of player engagement and effort is surrounded by a buyable currency. I [snip] love ESO but all these problems with crown crates and crown gifting just lay bare fundamental flaws within the system in which this game operates.

I completely understand that a live service game needs 1) players and 2) income to survive but I feel the tide is turning slowly and players are becoming more critical of systems like this. If crowns play such a big part for so many players I feel somewhere the balance was lost along the way

ESO rewards structure needs a complete overhaul and crowns/lootcrates needs to be a way less prominent part of that.

[edited for profanity bypass]

noblecron

One fix they could do and this is what Guild wars 2 does

Have a gold to crown conversion.

NettleCarrier

I'm very upset at this today. I justify the cost of paying for a second ESO+ because I can send items to my main but now the crowns are just sitting there useless to me. To make matters worse, I had two items I had sent myself that I forgot to reclaim in time and I can't even re-send them from the return inventory so now they are unusable by the intended recipient and unclaimable by the account that purchased them. I tried to see if I could re-send anyway since they had already been purchased and sent once and it just processed and processed for several minutes until I was forced to Alt+F4 the game to get back in. *Sigh*

rabidmyers

buff

ApoAlaia

NettleCarrier wrote: »

I'm very upset at this today. I justify the cost of paying for a second ESO+ because I can send items to my main but now the crowns are just sitting there useless to me. To make matters worse, I had two items I had sent myself that I forgot to reclaim in time and I can't even re-send them from the return inventory so now they are unusable by the intended recipient and unclaimable by the account that purchased them. I tried to see if I could re-send anyway since they had already been purchased and sent once and it just processed and processed for several minutes until I was forced to Alt+F4 the game to get back in. *Sigh*

CS might be able to help you with this, hopefully.

Surely they'll understand that these are exceptional circumstances?

I don't think anyone saw this coming; I certainly didn't.

code65536

Four_Fingers wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Ezhh wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Well there goes my only way of being able to obtain future DLCs.....

I’m pretty sure that’s the intent. Instead of being able to get the DLCs from someone in exchange for gold, you’ll have to either sub or buy your own crowns. That’s a win for zeni

Is it really?

Before they were getting paid even though it was from a source other than the person receiving the dlc. Now what might happen is that people who relied on buying dlcs with gold will just drift off from the game. This in turn makes it harder for people who want to turn their crowns into gold and they may then also drift away.

The ability to turn crowns into gold is one of the reasons people buy crowns.

But if those crowns were acquired fraudulently, e.g., with stolen cards, then ZOS is the one who gets shafted.

An account with a bad credit card transaction should be suspended immediately.
And get a better credit card authorization service.

By the time the card owner discovers the charge and reports the fraud, the transaction would've been done long ago, and the only thing is for ZOS to do is eat the chargeback at that point. Sure, they can ban the account, just as they can ban the account advertising the gold selling in zone, but it'll be too late, and they'll just keep making new ones.

wolfie1.0.

Dubhliam wrote: »

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.

What would you suggest they do instead? It's better to pause than to let it continue.

Darlig_Ulv

I’m in the same boat with an second account holding my crowns…
Just open a ticket and received the standard response about being able to transfer items (including crowns) between accounts

wolfie1.0.

SilverBride wrote: »

FireBreathingNord wrote: »

...permanently banning all gifting still feels like an excessive sledgehammer approach...

It's not permanent.

Unless they provide an estimated time for a fix it effectively is.