Expiration for tome points and tome point caches?

Qyrk · 4:15AM

@ZOS_Kevin My ticket is 260404-000025

Many players are only now realizing that Tome Points expire at the end of each season, and the problem is that this was never clearly communicated when opening Tome caches. If players had known max 2k points are carried over, many of us would have never opened the cache all at once.

Because this wasn’t stated at the time the caches were opened, players made decisions with incomplete information that should’ve been provided by the game. Losing those points now feels less like a seasonal reset and more like a penalty for something that was never explained.

This kind of surprise expiration risks damaging player trust and discouraging engagement with the seasonal system going forward. A lot of players enjoy planning and saving for future rewards, and discovering that those resources silently expire creates frustration rather than motivation to keep playing.

Please consider some form of resolution for players who lost Tome Points due to this lack of communication—whether that’s a one-time restoration, conversion, or grace period. At the very least, clearer messaging in-game would prevent this situation in future seasons.

We appreciate the work that goes into maintaining the game, but transparency on systems like this is critical to maintaining a healthy and trusting player base.

Enemoriana · 4:46AM

"We never speaked about expiring, but it is mentioned in help, so that's your problem, not our"?
Help menu is place where people go after they have problem or question, not before. It is way to help resolve issues, not learn new info! To learn new info there are news. Words have their meanings for reason.

Treeshka · 6:13AM

Maybe they can make an exception for this season, so points do not expire on this season.

16BitForestCat · 6:24AM

allochthons wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno did acknowledge this on the Reddit thread I linked above:

I was reading the Reddit page where that discussion thread happened (I don't have a Reddit account, so what I'm seeing is whatever is on public display). I almost missed Gina's comment/thread because it was hidden and had to be manually expanded due to having so many downvotes. *LOL+SMDH*

People are NOT happy, and this is absolutely on ZOS.

BretonMage · 6:24AM

The help menu is like an 80 page manual, does anyone actually read it? The fact is, lots of people were caught unawares by the 2000 point limit. I honestly think it was an oversight on ZOS' part, since the UI for Tomes was also rather lacking. They probably ran out of time to polish it up to their usual standard. I do hope they'll find a fair way to help out players who made this mistake.

Lyssia_Blackthorn · 12:24PM

The other thing about the help menu is that you can't use it and look at what it's talking about at the same time. I go to the help menu for things like "how do I get from challenges to rewards" - which was so hard to find in the help menu that I gave up on it - but when I want to know what something is or does or how it functions, where I can look at the different things in question (tome caches and tome points and tokens, for instance, and their differences), I go first to the official explanations on the official ESO website and then, very rarely, to a third party, usually ESO Hub and USEP. If the Help file is going to be where they put the information, not only does that need to be clarified a lot better, the Help file itself needs to be massively reworked to actually be a reasonably functional document.

Meridiano · 12:59PM

ZOS want tome points to be purchasable via ESO+ and the higher tier Premium, and they also want them to be earned during the whole season, so they soft-reset them at the beginning of each season. Okay, fine. Just let us convert points above the threshold into another currency.

And this currency should be customizable. User wants gold? Multiplier A applies. Trade bars? Multiplier B, because trade bars are obviously more valuable than gold. Not crowns or crown-gems, but Undaunted keys and seals should be available in the list.

I don't want tome items I don't purchase, that's why I don't purchase them. Force-redeem them is nonsense.

Elvenheart · 2:15PM

So far I've only seen one player say they somehow knew about all of the Tome points expiring except for 2,000 at the end of a season. They didn't remember how they knew that, but the assumption was that ZOS must have communicated it somewhere. I can honestly say that had no idea until first learning about it over the past few days here on the forums. I do want to add that I'm one of the lucky ones that was overly cautious and did not open any of my caches, not because I knew what would happen if I did, but because I HAD NO IDEA what would happen because it wasn't communicated well by ZOS and I wanted to just experiment with the system by earning a few points and spending them to get comfortable with the process before proceeding further.

I love ESO and all things ESO. I read all the articles that come out even if I've already heard the info in a livestream "just because." I very, very rarely miss anything they do on Twitch, and if I do I watch the replay as soon as I can. And I check out the forums daily because I really enjoy seeing what others are having to say about the game, and I like seeing the official comments in green. I've really been enjoying this new focus on communication from ZOS, seeing Kevin and Gina and others responding to player concerns so much lately has been a very heartening experience.

Of course, even with all of this it's still possible for me to have missed something along the way, but something this huge and important about the new system? All but 2,000 points themselves "expiring" or being "automatically" spent at the end of a season if left unused, but safe as long as they remain in an unopened cache? Something this critical should have been splashed all over every outlet of information with a lot of emphasis, to the point that NO ONE could have claimed they didn't know about this before Tomes ever went live. A huge warning in the game should have popped up when someone hit "F" at the "Open Cache" option clearly explaining the consequences for opening a cache. It just boggles my mind how something this important could have slipped under the radar.

allochthons · 2:20PM

Elvenheart wrote:

... Just let us convert points above the threshold into another currency.

And this currency should be customizable. User wants gold? Multiplier A applies. Trade bars? Multiplier B, because trade bars are obviously more valuable than gold. Not crowns or crown-gems, but Undaunted keys and seals should be available in the list.

This is an excellent idea. I still don't want tome points to expire, but this is the first acceptable (to me) alternative I've seen.

allochthons · 2:29PM

Elvenheart wrote: »

So far I've only seen one player say they somehow knew about all of the Tome points expiring except for 2,000 at the end of a season. They didn't remember how they knew that, but the assumption was that ZOS must have communicated it somewhere.

<snip everything else for space, but I agree with all of it>

The information IS in non-ESO sources, like the ESO-Hub summery, and Alcast's guide. I haven't found where they learned it, I suspect it must have been PTS somehow.

It should be HERE: In Bold, highlighted text: https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/guides/tamrieltomes

It should have been highlighted in game, with an extra "are you sure?" step before opening the caches.

ESO-Hub's summary:

DenverRalphy · 2:44PM

allochthons wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

... Just let us convert points above the threshold into another currency.

And this currency should be customizable. User wants gold? Multiplier A applies. Trade bars? Multiplier B, because trade bars are obviously more valuable than gold. Not crowns or crown-gems, but Undaunted keys and seals should be available in the list.

This is an excellent idea. I still don't want tome points to expire, but this is the first acceptable (to me) alternative I've seen.

That is not my quote. I think the reply chain got corrupted somewhere.

[edit] reply chain fixed

SilverBride · 2:47PM

A fact as important as this should have been displayed in a very prominent place.

tomofhyrule · 2:50PM

Elvenheart wrote: »

So far I've only seen one player say they somehow knew about all of the Tome points expiring except for 2,000 at the end of a season. They didn't remember how they knew that, but the assumption was that ZOS must have communicated it somewhere. I can honestly say that had no idea until first learning about it over the past few days here on the forums. I do want to add that I'm one of the lucky ones that was overly cautious and did not open any of my caches, not because I knew what would happen if I did, but because I HAD NO IDEA what would happen because it wasn't communicated well by ZOS and I wanted to just experiment with the system by earning a few points and spending them to get comfortable with the process before proceeding further.

I'll say that I expected the points to expire at the end of a season, mainly because most other games with seasonal models have a seasonal currency that exists for the purpose of that season and goes away after the season. I was actually surprised that they're allowing 2k Points to transfer over since most games don't allow any to transfer.

ESO has traditionally been bad at explaining things, but because of that I've gotten into the habit of not assuming anything. I also test on PTS and look at other sources for base information (I don't look at story spoilers, but I do want to look at how things work so I am informed).
I also don't normally take ESO at their word on every little thing. For example: they're going on about "reducing FOMO" and "nothing will delete itself after a season" and everything, when we can clearly see that Night Market is going to be going away, and the High Seas boat stuff and Underwater is not a permanent zone so it's another thing that'll only exist for one event and be gone.

I do hope they help out for people who made this mistake and work on explaining things better.

allochthons · 2:54PM

DenverRalphy wrote: »

... Just let us convert points above the threshold into another currency.
That is not my quote. I think the reply chain got corrupted somewhere.

Yup. Sorry. I've fixed it, I think.

coop500 · 2:59PM

Converting the currency would make the system feel better, at least it's not 100% wasted and also gives incentive to gather points beyond what is needed to finish the pass.

PoveusRonin · 3:05PM

When season 1 starts, 2k tome points will carry over but the rest will expire. Ok, what if you have the premium that allows season 0 to stay open, does that mean you still lose the points that you could spend there?

This whole thing is getting more and more confusing the more I am reading about it.

PeacefulAnarchy · 3:06PM

PoveusRonin wrote: »

When season 1 starts, 2k tome points will carry over but the rest will expire. Ok, what if you have the premium that allows season 0 to stay open, does that mean you still lose the points that you could spend there?

This whole thing is getting more and more confusing the more I am reading about it.

They have not been clear on this. Their current communications would lead me to believe that yes, you lose the points.

DenverRalphy · 3:10PM

PoveusRonin wrote: »

When season 1 starts, 2k tome points will carry over but the rest will expire. Ok, what if you have the premium that allows season 0 to stay open, does that mean you still lose the points that you could spend there?

This whole thing is getting more and more confusing the more I am reading about it.

When season 1 starts, the season 0 tome will still be available to purchase from. However your tome points will be limited to however many carried over, and what you have stored in caches.

allochthons · 3:17PM

DenverRalphy wrote: »

When season 1 starts, the season 0 tome will still be available to purchase from. However your tome points will be limited to however many carried over, and what you have stored in caches.

If that's accurate (and I expect it is), that dramatically devalues Premium and Premium +.

JeroenB · 3:19PM

Both of these locations in-game, the Currency tab and the Tome, should explicitly communicate to the player that Tome Points are an expiring currency with a 2000 point reserve, in my view.

Especially egregious is the current situation on the Currency tab, as Tome Points are listed among all the other, non-expiring currencies with no indication that anything is different about them. Before opening my ESO+ Caches I purposefully checked the Currency tab to see if there was any cap on Tome Points, but there is nothing there to suggest any hesitation to opening them.

To fix the current situation, if ZOS truly cannot reasonably do a one-off reversion of Tome Points to Caches for those affected, I agree with the proposal that there should be a one-off conversion of overflow points to another currency. Some mixture of Trade Bars and Seals seems most appropriate.

(Individual player choice of the target currency would indeed be most desirable, and this conversion being a standard feature would be great too, but both seem unlikely.)

PoveusRonin · 3:30PM

allochthons wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

When season 1 starts, the season 0 tome will still be available to purchase from. However your tome points will be limited to however many carried over, and what you have stored in caches.

If that's accurate (and I expect it is), that dramatically devalues Premium and Premium +.

It feels like it would also devalue the ESO+ perk that gives you the cache. Based on what others are saying, the free tier has rewards for 16k points but require 20k points to unlock everything. This leaves 4k (2k of which expire) each season.

I don't know about others but I don't want to spend time or money on something that will be lost NO matter what I do.

AzuraFan · 4:07PM

If I hadn't read it here, I'd have no idea that tome points expire at the end of the season (except for 2k). Fortunately I didn't open any of my caches. But I might not have spent a lot of tome points before the season ended, figuring I had all the time to do so because I upgraded to the premium tome.