kargen27 wrote: »

How would allowing character transfer benefit Sony? Microsoft of course owns the game now through subsidiaries but they would also need to weigh how this would affect X-box. They are separate entities under the umbrella both having to answer to different people.
And what is the benefit compared to the risk and cost for ZoS? This would probably be a multi year endeavor with an intense redirect of resources. This late in the game not sure there would be enough benefit. For the change to be profitable it would have to cause many players that have left the game to come back and start spending money. Current players making the switch or players that don't sub or purchase crowns would make no financial impact so no real incentive for the company to try and take on this change.

I'm glad you have brought this up! The issue is with having cross play and cross progression is these reporting to these different entities, so I completely understand what you are saying. Especially with Sony, as they are the hardest when it came to getting them to budge on allowing for crossplay in 2018 for games because they are aware that they would lose profits.

As for how this would benefit ZOS and reallocating the resources to contribute to this project as also a great question! From my standpoint, this is difficult to answer because I am not too well versed in coding or what exactly needs to be done in order to implement such a thing, but I do know it would most likely be a living hell. Speaking on what I do know, crowns and dlc would not be transferrable across platforms, so I can all but guarantee that any returning cross play or character transfer would be subscribing to eso plus and obviously would need to purchase the current chapter. I cannot speak on every player, as I was definitely in the minority of the top guilds of ps4 NA endgame, but I know every player on that end that has quit is more than willing to pay that price rather than restart (although I know several people that chose to restart on pc). On the more casual side of things, in terms of the majority of the population, I believe new people would be dragged into the game on top of returning players indirectly. Platform restriction has been a huge deal in terms of who you can play with. It is the deciding factor of who you can or can not play with. Most of my real life friends have always been pc and xbox, so I was always sort of the outlier on ps4. However, with the gaming world constantly evolving, cross platform has become somewhat of a necessity to stay afloat and competitive with other titles. With the capability for people to switch to other platforms (because I believe cross progression/character transfer is much more realistic than cross play), I think they would be able to drag more people in to play and give it a try, ones that may or may not have ever thought of playing off of the sheer hype of people coming back to the game.

This is just a thought though! I do not see this being considered until they have major server issues fixed or until they have somewhat of a content drought. It's a huge project to take on, but in the later years of an mmo such as eso, I believe that this could add onto the lifespan.

Thanks for your input!

blktauna wrote: »

The code was never written to accommodate cross platform and I'm pretty sure they won't start now. Also Sony is very very against having folks leave their servers and their control. There's the addon question that consoles cant use. No one on PC will give them up to accommodate console. There's whatever contracts that are in place that we will never know and don't need to know, it's not our business.

It just isn't going to happen at this late in the lifecycle of the game.

Perhaps in their upcoming games cross platform will show up.

You're absolutely right! About Sony being very controlling about the whole cross platform thing. The only real feasible thing I could see right now would be a character transfer. But for that they would have to spend much time on because it was never an intention for them so they would be starting from scratch. That's another thing they could profit from, putting a price on character transfer (Or at least every transfer after the first one). People say that is not possible because of duplicate names but there has already been a very simple work around for that in several huge titles by simply adding a four character tag to the end of an account. I understand what you mean about addons, which is why I feel direct cross play would not be possible. More in the lines of cross progression, in which you could perhaps choose your primary platform and change it every so often. But this could also bring more problems like direct market manipulation by pc players on other platforms temporarily to make some quick gold.

Saying that some form of cross-platform would never happen? I agree that I could never see cross play, pc, xbox, and ps4 playing on the same server amongst each other would never happen. Having cross progression where you could perhaps switch platforms once every so often? That is also shooting to the stars. But I could definitely see a character transfer tool being implemented at some point in the future. Or maybe that is just copium haha.

Thanks for your input!

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Mostly (from what I know myself regarding databases - SQL specifically) the issue with transferring characters (outside the dupe name issue which yes there could be solutions found) is regarding merging a very complex character from one database to a non-empty other database.

ZOS's database platform is likely proprietary, and since most of the first dev team I think are long gone now, it would probably be really dicey to try to manage a transfer tool at this point in the game's life.

Now, I'm well aware that WoW added character transfer later in its life - and I used it myself with fair frequency. However, WoW is separate "realms" not megaservers.... and the devs there may have always had such a process in mind.

[Edit - stupid typo]

Yeah, mega servers and realms in wow. Two certainly different things, and eso has always had some pretty severe server issues. So throwing something like this into the mix, with devs that did not even write the original code to the game and see it grow, but rather being adoptive step parents to said code, could certainly be a disaster. But I am not giving up hope on it! Major issues to the stability of the server would have to be solved first and I am unsure of how long that would take, because if my memory serves me correctly, the server performance has always been a big complaint by the majority of the player base consistently from launch to present. Which is expected at the same time with how ambitious of an mmo eso is in comparison to its predecessors.

Thanks for the input!

WOW allowed transfers because they had distributed servers. ESO has what, 2 for each platform. So, that comparison does not apply.

It would promote rampant cheating as folks could borrow gold and resources on their current platform and take those to the new platform.

Then there are Addons, PC has them, consoles dont. So, combat and leaderboards would never be balanced.

Not even going to go into the database issues.

I have to say, this is the first time I have seen someone who readily admits to not knowing about coding saying that code changes of this sort of magnitude would not be easy. Well said.

Most people come on here and say that whatever changes they want would be easy for the devs to do, not knowing any more than you I am sure.

Thank you for the breath of fresh air and reality check.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I have to say, this is the first time I have seen someone who readily admits to not knowing about coding saying that code changes of this sort of magnitude would not be easy. Well said.

Most people come on here and say that whatever changes they want would be easy for the devs to do, not knowing any more than you I am sure.

Thank you for the breath of fresh air and reality check.

I have written many database sync scripts like this. It is not a hard problem.

Cross-platform play is another issue and would likely not be as simple, but just syncing databases is straightforward.

I have done programming work on major websites as well, so I do have some knowledge of the area. I mostly worked in C++ myself, but touched on databases and now review security in Java and C# a significant amount of my time.

I quit playing a few years ago. Not because I dislike ESO. But because I dislike playing ESO on xbox. I only played on Xbox because that is where my friends played. Now that they have moved onto new games I would love to play ESO on PC. I understand the reason they don't want to make the game cross platform. But they should definitely make the game cross save because I refuse to put in all the effort I put into this game that I did before and start from scratch. So I canceled my sub and started playing other games. I login and check the forums every few months hoping to see an update on the topic. I 100% plan to return to ESO if I could just get my Xbox character with all my stuff onto PC.

jtm1018 wrote: »

Nah, cross platform progression is a nono.
Platform transfer should be a thing.
Ps to pc is the key, besides micro owns beth now.
Sony san is just a 3rd wheel now.
Team microbeth ftw.

Microsoft owning Bethesda now doesn't mean the two will be on the same page. Different investors who are there to earn profits and may not agree on the best way to do so.

PunxniTsunami wrote: »

Good evening everyone! Hope you all are having a great 2022 so far.

I am aware that this is a heavily already shut down topic, transferring accounts across platforms and whatnot is not currently possible because ZOS did not create the tool necessary and had no plans to back then, and the only reason pc was able to do the initial transfer to console was because the servers were blank slate and were completely fresh. But why not return to the idea? I have been playing ESO since June of 2015 on PS4, I think I could say I have been through it all on that end and definitely experience the game to its fullest extent with well over 10,000 hours put in. I have since taken a very long break from the game, I made my last leave prior to the launch of Greymoor. With all of this time invested, and with me no longer being a freshman in high school but a pre-med junior college student, I simply do not have the time, nor am I willing, to throw all of that time away and start from scratch. I know many people that share similar beliefs and would be more than willing to purchase the game all over again just to experience true performance on PC and start playing again, whether it would be hardcore again or casually. I am by no means some computer science genius, so I can't speak about the logistics on how this would be done, and I am sure it would be a nightmare on the backend. But I also feel that having cross save/cross progession/cross platform is almost at the point to which it is a staple in every major mmo title.

I could rant on for hours but to keep it short and simple, I truly love this game for all its faults, the memories, and the great friends I have made because of it over the years, and I would love to come back to it on pc and still have all that progress that I made on my jet engine of a ps4. I know many share my sentiment and I am certain this would definitely bolster your server populations and get thousands of people to return to the game, and perhaps even generate even more new players.

Thanks for reading!

I agree with this topic and theres an even bigger reason now that Microsoft bought Bethesda and ESO is on game pass. I too understand your struggle with the PS4 Airlines and PS5s are impossible to find nowadays so I recently bought a Xbox Series X. My PS4 Pro ( yes the Pro Version) screams at me when I play ESO, Apex Legends and Destiny 2 even after cleaning the dust. I definitely wouldn't mind cross save on ESO especially since I have over 4000 hours in ESO with alot of money put on it. I refuse to start all over and am currently waiting for Cross Save possibly in the future to play ESO again.

PunxniTsunami wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

The code was never written to accommodate cross platform and I'm pretty sure they won't start now. Also Sony is very very against having folks leave their servers and their control. There's the addon question that consoles cant use. No one on PC will give them up to accommodate console. There's whatever contracts that are in place that we will never know and don't need to know, it's not our business.

It just isn't going to happen at this late in the lifecycle of the game.

Perhaps in their upcoming games cross platform will show up.

You're absolutely right! About Sony being very controlling about the whole cross platform thing. The only real feasible thing I could see right now would be a character transfer. But for that they would have to spend much time on because it was never an intention for them so they would be starting from scratch. That's another thing they could profit from, putting a price on character transfer (Or at least every transfer after the first one). People say that is not possible because of duplicate names but there has already been a very simple work around for that in several huge titles by simply adding a four character tag to the end of an account. I understand what you mean about addons, which is why I feel direct cross play would not be possible. More in the lines of cross progression, in which you could perhaps choose your primary platform and change it every so often. But this could also bring more problems like direct market manipulation by pc players on other platforms temporarily to make some quick gold.

Saying that some form of cross-platform would never happen? I agree that I could never see cross play, pc, xbox, and ps4 playing on the same server amongst each other would never happen. Having cross progression where you could perhaps switch platforms once every so often? That is also shooting to the stars. But I could definitely see a character transfer tool being implemented at some point in the future. Or maybe that is just copium haha.

Thanks for your input!

I hate to admit it but I honestly would pay for a character transfers if they gave us the option. It would be worth it especially for people that have accounts worth thousands of dollars. Hell I'd easily pay $60

Note that cross play will likely never happen. Ironically it works in other games, even a moneypit like Genshin Impact.

Bet one-way transfers are not that hard since it is just moving data from one server to another. Even allowing a (potentially paid) service to transfer mounts, housing and Crowns/Crown Gems would be easy and valuable. Charge $19.95 and limit it to once a year or a bit more often and it would both make money and make people much happier.

That code would only have to get a list of the items owned on one "server" and transfer them to the other. Remove them from the original if desired (definitely for Crowns and Crown Gems).

Though syncing between NA and EU would be even simpler, since those are in the exact same format. Run such a script every month or so, to sync up the 2.

This is not hard programming folks! And yes, I have written code for major websites (backend, including database) so I have knowledge in this area.

"Bet one-way transfers are not that hard since it is just moving data from one server to another."

It isn't as simple as you think. It isn't just some text file you are popping from one drive to another. The data base interacts with the character data and tracks information on that character. If they tried a transfer there could be conflicts beyond just same names.