Thoughts on the Update on Current and Future Status of Gifting

kah · September 2023

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

It's locked, so I figured I'd get a thread going for people's responses.

I'm glad to see a response personally, though I wish it had been done where more players could see it like the U40 stream. Just a mention would have gone a long way to gain some good will from players. Beyond that, I gotta say all earlier complaints stand still despite what's been said in this "update" which really just rehashed things from before with a slightly better promise of a "near future" update on the timeline.

Thoughts?

Fischblut · September 2023

For me, "gifting" became non-existent at the end of 2021, so I had lot of time to cope with it

Back then, the crown/gold rate suddenly increased from 400 gold/crown to 600 gold/crown and kept growing. This is outrageous, so I stopped using it.

Now I hoped to see official currency exchange system in ESO (or at least safe option to "gift"), but this latest developer's post has no hints on it

It just means that someday gifting system will be enabled again - without anything new to protect players who use it to buy crown store items for gold.

However, I don't lose hope to see some improvements someday

Necrotech_Master · September 2023

it sounds like they are trying to combat the 3rd party RMT sites

im not sure if this has anything to do with the crown to gold trade, as it sounds like they are much more concerned about RMT transactions for crowns or other items such as gold

kah · September 2023

I swear I saw a headline yesterday about ESO making an official statement about crown to gold trading at last, but like a fool, I went to bed without reading it.

Def agree that the number one issue, in ZOS's eyes, is 3rd party RMT trading sites. Not to beat a dead horse, but a big part of the issue in my opinion is also the current pricing model. It drove a lot of people to trade gold for crowns, and with that gone, it's especially frustrating atm.

But, again, glad to know they're acknowledging it as a problem to fix, and it seems like it's at least somewhat of a priority.

Odummacleod · September 2023

from what i've seen since beta and the launch of ESO, is the gold for crowns and crown store items , is really a slick move on the veterans of the game and friends and guildies of the veterans of ESO because they can go to these websites and buy for very cheap several millions or billions of gold, and then their character in ESO has this much gold on them, so they in turn trade this gold they got from other websites and got almost for nothing great mounts, and weapons and armor and houses and the such, and at no time did ESO make any money off them but only off the players that bought the crowns from ESO website, it's almost like they laugh at ESO for these past years because they think they got over on ESO and for players like me it's really upsetting because we pay for our crown store items and these other players got them for free if not nothing , so my point is ESO is losing money and has been losing money for years because of these other websites and these players that think it's ok to bypass ESO website to buy crowns and still get crown store items just like us but we did it the right way and made ESO money they did'nt, it's really not a fair systems, why do we have to pay for crown store items and they don't.

kah · September 2023

Odummacleod wrote: »

from what i've seen since beta and the launch of ESO, is the gold for crowns and crown store items , is really a slick move on the veterans of the game and friends and guildies of the veterans of ESO because they can go to these websites and buy for very cheap several millions or billions of gold, and then their character in ESO has this much gold on them, so they in turn trade this gold they got from other websites and got almost for nothing great mounts, and weapons and armor and houses and the such, and at no time did ESO make any money off them but only off the players that bought the crowns from ESO website, it's almost like they laugh at ESO for these past years because they think they got over on ESO and for players like me it's really upsetting because we pay for our crown store items and these other players got them for free if not nothing , so my point is ESO is losing money and has been losing money for years because of these other websites and these players that think it's ok to bypass ESO website to buy crowns and still get crown store items just like us but we did it the right way and made ESO money they did'nt, it's really not a fair systems, why do we have to pay for crown store items and they don't , we sould all be equal in buying crowns, me and a lot of players are not willing to risk getting banned for buying gold from other websites but these players are and i hope ESO really thinks about this system of gold for crowns gifting because it's only right we all pay for what we want and make ESO money not these other websites and people and these players that been playing for years found a slick way to not pay 100 dollars on a house or whatever and only pay 10 or 20 or 30 dollars on gold for another website so now because of this system in ESO they can have a great house and other things from the crown store and did not give ESO any money, you see what i mean it's not fair i bought 100 dollars of crowns from ESO website and got me a big house and these other players got the same house if not better and bought it with gold how is that fair, i just bought 5500 crown today from the ESO website for 40 dollars and to think that another player in the past or near future got the same amount of crowns i did but got it for gold, all i'm saying is we sould all pay for what we want not only the few, we all sould be equal in ESO when it comes to getting crown store items how is that bad. thank you for your time i said my peace.

Friend, I would love to read what you've written, but it's very hard to read a big chunk of text with no periods.

hiyde · September 2023

kah wrote: »

Friend, I would love to read what you've written, but it's very hard to read a big chunk of text with no periods.[/quote]

WTB [Paragraph Breaks]

Araneae6537 · September 2023

It’s great to have an update and more info! I wish it could have been done differently for those with gifts in limbo and similar circumstance, but hopefully it can be sorted outer sooner than later.

freespirit · September 2023

I can only comment on what I've seen in the past few weeks on PC-EU but gradually I am seeing less and less of our friendly gold seller's adverts!

I used to be able to set my watch by the time of day I saw these adverts, past few days I've not seen any, first time in a very long time tbh.

If stopping gifting is stopping these people, then to my mind it is a very sensible and somewhat necessary move!!

Odummacleod · September 2023

hiyde wrote: »

kah wrote: »

Friend, I would love to read what you've written, but it's very hard to read a big chunk of text with no periods.

WTB [Paragraph Breaks]

[/quote]

thats fine all that matters is what i say is true or false , right or wrong, get something done or not, not the fact that i can't write or spell correct.

CrashTest · September 2023

There are patch notes for next patch that limit gifting to 500 outgoing at a time and gifting is working on the PTS.

phaneub17_ESO · September 2023

The problem they're having atm is people purchasing say a 12 month subscription, get all the crowns upfront, spend those crowns, then chargeback the subscription. Obviously the account gets locked, but they move on to the next one like a throwaway phone.

The only ideal solution is to promise the crowns at the end of the subscription rather than at the start or by month for first time subscribers. For those who purchase crowns directly from the packs, those Crowns would stay personal until a certain grace period has lapsed where they cannot be used for gifting. It won't stop the problem, but may deter or dissuade them from doing it, minimizing the loss on their end from fraudulent payments.

Each account will have to build up their own internal rating based on how often they get refunds, suspensions, actions taken against it, and so on. Those accounts with good standings will get the crowns upfront, those unscrupulous ones will get them at the end of a subscription or remain unable to gift until a period of time has passed. This means they need to reprogram the system however on how expenditures are handled and that alone could take a year to polish out before releasing publicly.

kah · September 2023

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

The problem they're having atm is people purchasing say a 12 month subscription, get all the crowns upfront, spend those crowns, then chargeback the subscription. Obviously the account gets locked, but they move on to the next one like a throwaway phone.

The only ideal solution is to promise the crowns at the end of the subscription rather than at the start or by month for first time subscribers. For those who purchase crowns directly from the packs, those Crowns would stay personal until a certain grace period has lapsed where they cannot be used for gifting. It won't stop the problem, but may deter or dissuade them from doing it, minimizing the loss on their end from fraudulent payments.

Each account will have to build up their own internal rating based on how often they get refunds, suspensions, actions taken against it, and so on. Those accounts with good standings will get the crowns upfront, those unscrupulous ones will get them at the end of a subscription or remain unable to gift until a period of time has passed. This means they need to reprogram the system however on how expenditures are handled and that alone could take a year to polish out before releasing publicly.

i've seen this around quite a few times. Is there some post or comment from a dev/mod you could link to that confirms this?

phaneub17_ESO · September 2023

https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/19/elder-scrolls-online-says-its-wont-punish-players-using-gifting-to-swap-gold-for-crowns/

At the top of the month, ZeniMax Online Studios annoyed Elder Scrolls Online players with a “pause” of in-game gifting, a decision it attributed to “ongoing fraudulent behavior.” Gifting is what the system was built for, but it’s also the key method to essentially buy things off the cash shop with in-game gold, using other players as broker. That system works great right up until one party is innocently tangled up in the other’s stolen credit card or hacked account scheme, which leads to ZOS losing money. So the move was temporary, but that hasn’t made it any less irritating for legitimate users.

There are other articles, but I'm too lazy to go searching for them, this is the most recent in my history.

kah · September 2023

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/19/elder-scrolls-online-says-its-wont-punish-players-using-gifting-to-swap-gold-for-crowns/

At the top of the month, ZeniMax Online Studios annoyed Elder Scrolls Online players with a “pause” of in-game gifting, a decision it attributed to “ongoing fraudulent behavior.” Gifting is what the system was built for, but it’s also the key method to essentially buy things off the cash shop with in-game gold, using other players as broker. That system works great right up until one party is innocently tangled up in the other’s stolen credit card or hacked account scheme, which leads to ZOS losing money. So the move was temporary, but that hasn’t made it any less irritating for legitimate users.

There are other articles, but I'm too lazy to go searching for them, this is the most recent in my history.

Cool. Thanks for the link! I was mostly curious if they'd specifically mentioned what the fraudulent behavior itself was. Your earlier post makes points I've read before, but in hindsight, I suppose they wouldn't want to say what the fraudulent behavior exactly was lest others try and copy.

Lellandra · September 2023

It looks like they wanted to show us that they doing something by telling us that nothings going to change anytime soon.

Hoghorn · September 2023

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/19/elder-scrolls-online-says-its-wont-punish-players-using-gifting-to-swap-gold-for-crowns/

At the top of the month, ZeniMax Online Studios annoyed Elder Scrolls Online players with a “pause” of in-game gifting, a decision it attributed to “ongoing fraudulent behavior.” Gifting is what the system was built for, but it’s also the key method to essentially buy things off the cash shop with in-game gold, using other players as broker. That system works great right up until one party is innocently tangled up in the other’s stolen credit card or hacked account scheme, which leads to ZOS losing money. So the move was temporary, but that hasn’t made it any less irritating for legitimate users.

There are other articles, but I'm too lazy to go searching for them, this is the most recent in my history.

i read this article and the only thing there i can see that supports your assertion in post #12 above is "As one player noted on Reddit, one of the “new” methods here APPEARS to be". are you saying that you are treating some rando's reddit speculations as factual evidence of the details of the crown gifting pause?

phaneub17_ESO · September 2023

Hoghorn wrote: »

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/19/elder-scrolls-online-says-its-wont-punish-players-using-gifting-to-swap-gold-for-crowns/

At the top of the month, ZeniMax Online Studios annoyed Elder Scrolls Online players with a “pause” of in-game gifting, a decision it attributed to “ongoing fraudulent behavior.” Gifting is what the system was built for, but it’s also the key method to essentially buy things off the cash shop with in-game gold, using other players as broker. That system works great right up until one party is innocently tangled up in the other’s stolen credit card or hacked account scheme, which leads to ZOS losing money. So the move was temporary, but that hasn’t made it any less irritating for legitimate users.

There are other articles, but I'm too lazy to go searching for them, this is the most recent in my history.

i read this article and the only thing there i can see that supports your assertion in post #12 above is "As one player noted on Reddit, one of the “new” methods here APPEARS to be". are you saying that you are treating some rando's reddit speculations as factual evidence of the details of the crown gifting pause?

I quoted the part I was referring to and you then make an assumption. I also said there are other articles, go look for them.