PTS Update 42 - Feedback Thread for Mail Expiration Changes

ZOS_GinaBruno · April 15

This is the official feedback thread for the changes for mail expiration. Please let us know if you have any feedback or run into any issues relating to these changes.

acastanza_ESO · April 16

As I already said in a thread of its own. These expiration changes are completely unacceptable. 7 day expirations essentially mean that no one can ever take any kind of vacation from the game. Inventory management is already hard enough without forcing us to need to be 100% on top of our mail at all times always. None of these changes should be implemented. 30 days was already a perfectly fair amount of time to claim mail, further reductions are simply ridiculous.

ShadowPaladin · April 16

I think one major problem is the following highlighted part...

As a reminder, the expiration timer for most mail types does not initiate until the mail is received while your character is logged in. There are, however, several exceptions where the timer begins when the mail is sent:
Player mail

Guild Trader mail - Includes item purchased, item sold, kiosk bids, etc.

Guild Finder Listing expired

Customer Service mails

The red part shoud/must stay at 30 days OR it must NOT be an exception. That means, the timer for that ingame mail must also only start WHEN the char where it is received on, is logged in!!!

If the timer starts the moment an item is sold and the system sends it to the selling player, most players will stop using vendors for selling when they don't know when and how long the maybe offline from the game.

licenturion · April 17

Adding my voice to the conversation as well.

Don’t really like the changes especially for trading. I am usually away during the summer for a two holiday of hiking and can’t login to the game. So I lose out on gold from sales made within those 14 days

Only solution is stop trading a few weeks in advance or hope everything gets sold and get the remaining things of the market (and take a loss) right before a holiday.

Or I am forced to share my login info with a friend so he can manage these things while I am away, but I prefer not to do this.

All in all bad changes to a system that worked well and already had limits and changes that serve no benefit and only frustration.

BuffNukem · April 17

I'm definitely not a fan of any of these mail changes.

The most egregious of these changes is the Rewards of the Worthy expiring in just 7 days. This is a ridiculous limit and one that will have extreme impact during each Whitestrakes Mayhem event. Anyone who hits that event hard earns hundreds of these mails, and now the 7-day limit means that you have to stop participation of the event to clean out your mailbox because the rewards won't even last until the end of the 12 day event. If the toon you want to sort through the mail and decon with isn't the one that you are grinding AP on, then you are stuck unable to que for the campaign because you have to be on a different character to clean your mailbox. Often when the campaign queues are 100+ this could mean hours of lost event participation time each night because of this mailbox limit change.

Please reconsider increasing all the mailbox time limits, but especially the RotW limits to at least be longer than the 12-day PVP event.

thejadefalcon · April 17

If you want to reduce mail's effect on the server,* may I suggest you take a look at the kiosk bid mail as a quick fix that doesn't harm players? It doesn't need to last an hour, let alone seven days. If you're not around at trader swap time, what the mail says won't matter, you either got one or you're way too late to get a free one. In addition, when you lose bids, it gives you a mail for. Every. Single. One. Why? When you win, even if it's your tenth and final bid, you only get the "ur winner" mail, so it's obviously checking the final results before it sends anything at all. If mail is stressing the servers out that badly, maybe sending 10 literally identical mails out (which would get reported for spam if a player did it), to who knows how many players, should be the first thing you look at?

*which is, in itself, a fairly ludicrous concept. I have mail from over a decade ago in other MMOs that I keep as a small "I've been playing since this came out" souvenir and think to think back on and it's never even been hinted that is the cause of any problems. I did the same for ESO (thanks for being a launch player! Thanks for buying Elsweyr! etc.) until you decided to put an expiration date on all of them for all of a single patch, then reverse it.

Necrotech_Master · April 17

i would agree some of the timers seem a little short scale, considering that some RL stuff such as vacations can be 2 weeks for some people

this change wouldnt affect me personally, as i log in pretty much everyday (i even have a laptop with me when im on a trip to log in during the evenings), but i could see it being a problem for most people

allochthons · April 18

Rewards for the Worthy also only contain transmute crystals once a day.
I only ever enter Cyrodiil for transmutes, so I save the RoTW mail and open 1 a day.
Even getting to Tier 1 would overwhelm the new system.

With respect to the proposed Guild Trader mail change, I also want to highlight this comment from another thread:

baratron wrote: »

Whether or not this is a controversial change depends on where you live.

In Europe, people in employment generally get a minimum of 28 days of annual leave, and it is not uncommon to take most of these as a single long holiday/vacation. Businesses in France, for example, often close for 3-4 weeks at a time during July-August.

[snipped by Allo for brevity]

Personally, I am horrified by these changes, which I feel disproportionately affect European and other players who live in countries with a better work-life balance than the United States. I would suggest running the ideas past the various international Community Managers before they go live.

Skjoldur · April 22

This is only acceptable if the timers starts only if a character is actually logged in / logged in after it arrived.

That would alleviate most concerns regarding vacations, yes, in Europe vacations longer than one week are quite common, and some periods of inactivity due to other real-life stuff.

Mails with money or items / rewards attached should still have a minimum lifetime of 14 days, I think.

Jojo93 · April 22

If you shorten the times, then at least let the transmutation stones from the daily, random dungeons stack and the news of sales from login 7 days. Otherwise 7 days are much, much too short.

Google Translater

MoonPile · April 23

Commented in a separate thread also, but agree that the mail changes are not helpful for traders, storage issues, nor any potential life events.

The current time (30 days) for mail from players and gold or canceled trades is fine as-is.

In fact I wish I could permanently save some nice player mails (I just screenshot, currently).

ZOS_Kevin · April 29

Hello, All. We have received a lot of feedback regarding the changes to the Mail expiration timers on the PTS. We understand the concerns raised around shortening Mail timers, specifically in instances where a player may need to step away from the game for an extended period of time, and that with this shortened window they may miss items or gold coming from Guild Traders through the Mail.

As we reviewed this feedback and investigated those concerns, our data revealed that the vast majority of items listed at Guild Traders sell within a week. If an item does not sell by then, it typically doesn't sell during that listing period. In light of this, Guild Trader listings will now be reduced from 30 to 14 days. All Mail expiration timers will remain at 14 days. To be clear, the timer for Mail expiration will be 14 days from when the item sells or is returned to the player. A Guild Trader listing will expire 14 days from when an item is listed. This will affect all new Mail items and Guild Trader listings from U42 launch onward.

We understand that this may not be the news some of you were hoping to hear, and want to provide context for this decision. Based on the data of how quickly items typically sell, the team felt that 30 days for Guild Trader listings was unnecessarily long, and reducing the Mail expiration timers and the Guild Trader listings will allow for improvements in server performance by reducing strain on the database.

If you plan on being away from the game for an extended period, we recommend taking those personal plans into account when making decisions regarding Guild Trader listings.

We hope this information has been insightful, and as always, you are welcome to leave additional feedback in the PTS section of the Forums.

Reginald_leBlem · April 29

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hello, All. We have received a lot of feedback regarding the changes to the Mail expiration timers on the PTS. We understand the concerns raised around shortening Mail timers, specifically in instances where a player may need to step away from the game for an extended period of time, and that with this shortened window they may miss items or gold coming from Guild Traders through the Mail.

As we reviewed this feedback and investigated those concerns, our data revealed that the vast majority of items listed at Guild Traders sell within a week. If an item does not sell by then, it typically doesn't sell during that listing period. In light of this, Guild Trader listings will now be reduced from 30 to 14 days. All Mail expiration timers will remain at 14 days. To be clear, the timer for Mail expiration will be 14 days from when the item sells or is returned to the player. A Guild Trader listing will expire 14 days from when an item is listed. This will affect all new Mail items and Guild Trader listings from U42 launch onward.

We understand that this may not be the news some of you were hoping to hear, and want to provide context for this decision. Based on the data of how quickly items typically sell, the team felt that 30 days for Guild Trader listings was unnecessarily long, and reducing the Mail expiration timers and the Guild Trader listings will allow for improvements in server performance by reducing strain on the database.

If you plan on being away from the game for an extended period, we recommend taking those personal plans into account when making decisions regarding Guild Trader listings.

We hope this information has been insightful, and as always, you are welcome to leave additional feedback in the PTS section of the Forums.

This is such a fascinating response to the feedback and I cannot wait to see how it recieved by the traders on the forums

acastanza_ESO · April 29

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hello, All. We have received a lot of feedback regarding the changes to the Mail expiration timers on the PTS. We understand the concerns raised around shortening Mail timers, specifically in instances where a player may need to step away from the game for an extended period of time, and that with this shortened window they may miss items or gold coming from Guild Traders through the Mail.

As we reviewed this feedback and investigated those concerns, our data revealed that the vast majority of items listed at Guild Traders sell within a week. If an item does not sell by then, it typically doesn't sell during that listing period. In light of this, Guild Trader listings will now be reduced from 30 to 14 days. All Mail expiration timers will remain at 14 days. To be clear, the timer for Mail expiration will be 14 days from when the item sells or is returned to the player. A Guild Trader listing will expire 14 days from when an item is listed. This will affect all new Mail items and Guild Trader listings from U42 launch onward.

We understand that this may not be the news some of you were hoping to hear, and want to provide context for this decision. Based on the data of how quickly items typically sell, the team felt that 30 days for Guild Trader listings was unnecessarily long, and reducing the Mail expiration timers and the Guild Trader listings will allow for improvements in server performance by reducing strain on the database.

If you plan on being away from the game for an extended period, we recommend taking those personal plans into account when making decisions regarding Guild Trader listings.

We hope this information has been insightful, and as always, you are welcome to leave additional feedback in the PTS section of the Forums.

This is pants-on-head insane. We gave unanimous negative feedback to this change and instead of actually addressing it and backtracking, you found the one way you could possibly make it even worse. The disconnect between the player base and the dev team has never been more clear than it is now.

bloodandiamonds · April 29

Players: Absolutely no one wants these changes.
ZOS: Cool, let's implement them.

Reginald_leBlem · April 29

bloodandiamonds wrote: »

Players: Absolutely no one wants these changes.
ZOS: Cool, let's implement them.

"And make them worse!"

HatchetHaro · April 29

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

As we reviewed this feedback and investigated those concerns, our data revealed that the vast majority of items listed at Guild Traders sell within a week. If an item does not sell by then, it typically doesn't sell during that listing period. In light of this, Guild Trader listings will now be reduced from 30 to 14 days. All Mail expiration timers will remain at 14 days. To be clear, the timer for Mail expiration will be 14 days from when the item sells or is returned to the player. A Guild Trader listing will expire 14 days from when an item is listed. This will affect all new Mail items and Guild Trader listings from U42 launch onward.

April Fools was a month ago.

Look, I get the reasoning for reducing Guild Trader listing times, that's fine; but that does absolutely nothing to address the community's concerns about the shorter mail expiration times.

heinousmoz · April 29

As a trader, not well. More expensive / rarer items take time to sell. This is an unncessary cash grab on listing fees with an increased chance of losing the item to the mail black hole.

A ridiculous change to somethign that worked fine the way it is.

jaws343 · April 29

I still think the mail changes are not good.

The trader listing change is interesting. Any serious trade guild I have been in encourages members to re-list every week to push sales. It keeps listings to the top of the trader list as a lot of people don't look past the new listings in major trading hubs. So once you are at 29 or 28 days, a lot of buyers assume either your pricing isn't competitive or the best deals in the range have already been picked through.

However, it does impact the more pricier/rarer items. Ones that sell for a lot, but may take a few weeks for an interested party to show up and search specifically for it.

Ode2Order · April 29

ngl this isn't it

acastanza_ESO · April 29

As someone pointed out in my thread, this new change to guild trader listing duration is a significant negative impact on high-value low-volume items (like, for example, Knight of the Circle style pages). Those, and similar, items often sit for an extended period of time before selling, so this change doesn't make any sense there either and has a significant negative impact on people dealing in high-value items.

ZOS, you've said repeatedly that you listen to, and take seriously, players concerns, this is an area where we've told you unanimously that these changes are bad and you shouldn't do them. We also think that your explanation for why you're doing them is nonsense, since it is actually likely to do the opposite - in fact increasing DB calls by forcing people to do more listings more often, and also generating more expiration mail more often. Stop this. Revert this change. Admit it was a mistake.

heinousmoz · April 29

ZOS: We listened to you and are doing it anyway and ps we're listening by making all the changes worse.

HatchetHaro · April 29

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

ZOS, you've said repeatedly that you listen to, and take seriously, players concerns, this is an area where we've told you unanimously that these changes are bad and you shouldn't do them.

Yeah, it's a very consistent track record. Not a good track record, mind you, but it's very consistent.

I wonder what happened to all that feedback about the low drop rates of the Anniversary Jubilee style pages...

BlueRaven · April 29

We keep losing quality of life systems to improve the servers. But the servers never improve.

PapaJester · April 29

I was gonna leave some feedback, but now I'm worried if I do, they'll change it to, "You have 37 minutes to pick up your mail."

In short, it's a bad change, and a terrible response.

Eclipse318 · April 29

But... why?

I very frequently do have guild trader listings that sell 2-3+ weeks later.

When listings expire, people are just going to relist items, so I'm baffled how this helps address anything with server space.

Lauranae · April 29

what is the reasoning behind this ESO ?

I do not think that will affect lag at all. So what ?

It seems that you totally cut the communication between the players and yourselves. No matter what we say, you just do what you want.

Why ask for feedback if you know you will do what you want anyway ?

Be careful that you dont ditch a dig larger than it is actually.

On my side, i already emptied 2 accounts and i will just delete them. i will for now keep two other accounts, but i feel less and lass attracted by ESO, not because of the story, but because of the lack of communication from the Devs when it is the most needed.

jcaceresw · April 29

Reduce the posting fee by half and I may be more agreeable to this guild timer change.

jcaceresw · April 29

In my experience, some items gets sold after more than 20 days of being posted. Some others nearly close the deadline.

Phaedrathallassa · April 29

That’s amazing. (Edit: in a “my jaw is open” way, not a “this is a great change” way). Were the other changes not data driven?

The data isn’t wrong - even for low movement items they sell better if i relist every week, even for the same price. It’s been like this since the guild store ui update because the ui pushes items by date even when sorting by price. Lowering the listing time isn’t really a bad thing and should make it easier to find what I really want when shopping.

However, the mail changes means for my two week vacation in June I’ll have to totally clear my listings. I’ll have zero ability to offer things for sale at patch release. Otherwise I almost guarantee I’ll lose gold to the mail gods.

The biggest reason prices are so high is because of the barrier to entry to the market. There’s plenty of mundane rune and dreugh wax on the server locked up in people’s craft bags. But with only 30 slots people have to prioritize what they sell, and many people don’t want to give up a precious guild slot for trading, or otherwise find it too difficult to sell things. High prices reflect how difficult it is to get items to market. Not to mention how limited trader numbers mean high prices for everyone to get into the market.

Hopefully making the databases more efficient now will enable them to provide more slots per person or other trading improvements in the future.

Compromises need to be made for trading to function at all in on a megaserver with this much data. But when that’s at the cost to the player, you are increasing the barrier to entry and driving prices up, not down. The mail change increases this barrier and isn’t going to be good for the economy.

jrmwvu04 · April 29

Great changes, will help clear out dead weight in trader listings. If your items are sitting on a storefront for longer than 14 days, they were priced poorly and another 16 days isn’t going to help. The combination of changes is 28 days to deal with an unsold listing, which is quite reasonable.