Question: Tome Points Expiration vs Premium giving "forever" tome access

wolfie1.0. · April 4

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin

I want to ask some points of clarification regarding tome points, tome cache's and the Premium benefit of "Tomes not expiring" when the season ends. i do NOT see any of these covered in any article or post, or in the help menu or patch notes.

How exactly does this benefit work? how to Tome points get allocated to a previous tome vs the current one? We have been told that tome points expire once a season ends and only a certian amount (2k) will carrry over to the next tome. Does this mean also that we can no longer earn tome points on the prior tome? can challenges be done on the prior tome AND the exisiting one at the same time? or is it the same source? How does the game know where i am spending tome points? If we have a permantent Tome, and we beleive we are done with what we want from it, how is that tome cleared and gotten rid of?

Also, someone mentioned that once a Tome season ends, all remaining tome points will be used to redeem unclaimed rewards, how is this chosen? most value or in order? how does this interact with the premium benefit of keeping the tome active.

Also, when Tome Caches are redeemed and lets say i have 4 tomes active via premium which tome can those be redeemed at? Also, can there be a disclosure about which tome is being allpied to when redeeming? there should be a confirmation of some sort.

I am not trying to be difficult with the questions, but there is no documentation anywhere that i can find that gives specifics, and with the communities general surprise about how tome points that are unspent willl only carry over 2000 points, something that wasn't mentioned in any of the ariticles and ONLY found in the ingame help menu is rather frustrating.

So i just want to ask these questions, now so that its clear as to what we should expect when tomes start to stack up. I dont see writting anywhere, and if its not confirmed or documented by ZOS then its an assumption, assumptions lead to misunderstandings and comunication failures. more information is needed.

If anyone has information that ZOS has already commented on one or more of my questions, please link it. i dont see it in writing, and i would prefer the questions be answered in writing for easier reference to the source.

allochthons · April 4

I'm looking forward to the answers too.
AFAIK, the only source of the auto-redeeming is from a comment Gina made on Reddit regarding expiring points. It adds a bit of detail, but not enough:

D14_Diabolos · April 4

This rollover cap should had been made much more clear - e.g. when you open the Tamriel Tomes. It needs to be more clear. I wouldn't had spent my caches had I know there's a rollover cap for sure.

JemadarofCaerSalis · April 5

So, let me get this straight.

If we have an excess of 2000 tome points, enough to buy something else, we will be *forced* to get the stuff we didn't claim from the tome?

So, if I skip all the potions and upgrade materials because I don't want them, but manage to earn enough points to get them at the end, I have no choice but to take them?

wolfie1.0. · April 5

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

So, let me get this straight.

If we have an excess of 2000 tome points, enough to buy something else, we will be *forced* to get the stuff we didn't claim from the tome?

So, if I skip all the potions and upgrade materials because I don't want them, but manage to earn enough points to get them at the end, I have no choice but to take them?

Apparently, which imo ruins the entire point.

majulook · April 5

This whole auto buy thing is ridiculous.

Lets say there is only 1 thing I want, that thing is on page #9 I want to get. I get enough Tomes to unlock the pages, and I get the 1 item that I wanted. Now have19,000 Tomes left over, nothing else I want so nothing else I select.

Seasons over, I now get 2000 tomes brought forward and I get 17,000 tomes worth of stuff from the lower pages that I skipped to get to page #9.

Can I sell the stuff to a NPC?
Are you going to increase my bank space to accommodate it all?
How is it being deliverer in game mail or?

Why do they still not have complete information on how this tomes stuff actually works? Why little drips of information on various different social media outlets when they have official forum with no response to questions and no full explanation of how this all works is just silly. (A big Thanks to those that use those other social media outlets for posting on here what they find.)

I really do not know what to make of all this.

JemadarofCaerSalis · April 5

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

So, let me get this straight.

If we have an excess of 2000 tome points, enough to buy something else, we will be *forced* to get the stuff we didn't claim from the tome?

So, if I skip all the potions and upgrade materials because I don't want them, but manage to earn enough points to get them at the end, I have no choice but to take them?

Apparently, which imo ruins the entire point.

majulook wrote: »

This whole auto buy thing is ridiculous.

Lets say there is only 1 thing I want, that thing is on page #9 I want to get. I get enough Tomes to unlock the pages, and I get the 1 item that I wanted. Now have19,000 Tomes left over, nothing else I want so nothing else I select.

Seasons over, I now get 2000 tomes brought forward and I get 17,000 tomes worth of stuff from the lower pages that I skipped to get to page #9.

Can I sell the stuff to a NPC?
Are you going to increase my bank space to accommodate it all?
How is it being deliverer in game mail or?

Why do they still not have complete information on how this tomes stuff actually works? Why little drips of information on various different social media outlets when they have official forum with no response to questions and no full explanation of how this all works is just silly. (A big Thanks to those that use those other social media outlets for posting on here what they find.)

I really do not know what to make of all this.

This is exactly my issue.

I turned in all my caches because I wanted to unlock the pages. I also wanted most of the stuff available, and have more to buy, but I don't want the stuff like the upgrade materials, or the potions, or experience scrolls and all that stuff. I do not know how many points I will have left over after I have unlocked the bonus pages (if I do, and the bonus pages has stuff on them I want).

They really should do it like most other battlepass systems: Change the page unlock from tome points to tome experience, and give both experience and points from the weeklies, or if we are going to *have* to take the stuff we don't want, just make it so we have to claim the stuff and get rid of the currency altogether (though that might be too late at this point).

IE, we earn experience, and when we unlock a page, or even individual rewards, we can claim the things on that page.

Because, this seems like it is going to be a recurring issue. If they have bonus pages, that is where they will likely put the 'best' stuff, and so people are going to want to unlock them, which means lots of points. Lots of points means the potential for lots of points left over, which means we are just going to keep getting all the stuff we didn't want to buy in the first place.

Casul · April 5

Love the concept of tomes, dislike the rollover cap.

Ravenshadow6513 · April 5

Even if they added some way to convert 2000 Tome Points into a Tome Cache, that would help a lot with rollover being lost.

Ilumia · April 5

I suggested a toggle for it in another thread:
"Would be great if that was optional, and I could decide if I wanted to enable it to make sure I don't loose rewards and have to spend time carefully making sure that doesn't happen, or disable it if I want to skip inventory management that is unnecessary to me, if I have already spent time reviewing and buying what I want."

ADarklore · April 5

It's interesting. Because with the daily login, you still received stuff you didn't want. So I don't see this as a difference. At the end of the season, you'll end up with stuff you don't want- same as the old system.

JemadarofCaerSalis · April 5

ADarklore wrote: »

It's interesting. Because with the daily login, you still received stuff you didn't want. So I don't see this as a difference. At the end of the season, you'll end up with stuff you don't want- same as the old system.

My issue with this is that I thought this was meant to be an improvement over it, and if it is going to be forced, why bother to make it so that we seemingly have the option to skip it, and even with the dailies, we had the option to just not claim the dailies.

Sure, we couldn't get anything after, but we didn't have to claim the stuff we didn't want.

Plus, the dailies had the 'free' idea behind them.

By making us 'purchase' the rewards, it just feels wrong to make us 'purchase' rewards we don't want, especially since some tome points will roll over and others won't.

I am even fine with the idea of just losing those points and NOT getting the things I don't want (and have no use for, but my brain doesn't want me to delete, just in case!!!!) rather than having them forced upon me.

Though, I think that the ability to turn points back into caches, even at a loss (say a 2000 point cache would take 3000 points to create) would be best.

I understand the reasoning behind not allowing the rollover (at least what I think the reasoning is), but don't necessarily agree with it.

wolfie1.0. · April 7

Well...

I guess I am not getting any answers to my questions..

robwolf666 · April 7

So much for Tomb Points not having a limit, if I'd known that I wouldn't have used my caches.
So much for us also having a choice in claiming only what we want if whatever we have left is auto-redeemed for things we weren't interested in.

Edit: Well, just went in and bought everything with the Tomb Points I have - page 1 thru 10 plus both bonus pages... and I still have 5K left. So if they don't carry over that's 5K wasted, and I'm mighty cheesed off about it.

May as well not bother doing any more challenges for the rest of Season Zero either since the Tomb Points are pointless at this point if they just get erased if they're not used.

And no, I'm not paying for Premium just to spend those remaining points - Pay to spend? Not likely.

StackonClown · April 8

robwolf666 wrote: »

So much for Tomb Points not having a limit, if I'd known that I wouldn't have used my caches.
So much for us also having a choice in claiming only what we want if whatever we have left is auto-redeemed for things we weren't interested in.

Edit: Well, just went in and bought everything with the Tomb Points I have - page 1 thru 10 plus both bonus pages... and I still have 5K left. So if they don't carry over that's 5K wasted, and I'm mighty cheesed off about it.

May as well not bother doing any more challenges for the rest of Season Zero either since the Tomb Points are pointless at this point if they just get erased if they're not used.

And no, I'm not paying for Premium just to spend those remaining points - Pay to spend? Not likely.

How do i get Tomb points?? is that also new ?

Necrotech_Master · April 8

StackonClown wrote: »

robwolf666 wrote: »

So much for Tomb Points not having a limit, if I'd known that I wouldn't have used my caches.
So much for us also having a choice in claiming only what we want if whatever we have left is auto-redeemed for things we weren't interested in.

Edit: Well, just went in and bought everything with the Tomb Points I have - page 1 thru 10 plus both bonus pages... and I still have 5K left. So if they don't carry over that's 5K wasted, and I'm mighty cheesed off about it.

May as well not bother doing any more challenges for the rest of Season Zero either since the Tomb Points are pointless at this point if they just get erased if they're not used.

And no, I'm not paying for Premium just to spend those remaining points - Pay to spend? Not likely.

How do i get Tomb points?? is that also new ?

i think they typo'd "tome" lol

AScarlato · April 8

Maybe instead of auto-buying things, they could convert the points to gold instead of it either buying things people don't want or evaporating.

Like if there were 19K excess points, just give someone 19K gold? I don't know.

DoofusMax · April 8

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

So, let me get this straight.

If we have an excess of 2000 tome points, enough to buy something else, we will be *forced* to get the stuff we didn't claim from the tome?

So, if I skip all the potions and upgrade materials because I don't want them, but manage to earn enough points to get them at the end, I have no choice but to take them?

If I'm reading @ZOS_GinaBruno's comment correctly, then yes. Bites biggly if true. OTOH, getting something rather than losing everything in excess of 2K is marginally better than the alternative, but shoving a stack of Crown Meals into my inventory (which I will immediately destroy) because that's what RNGesus decided? Yeah, not a huge difference over just losing the points.

Taarente · April 8

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin Ok it is clear that you have no actual consistent understanding of how the tomes system works. It’s clear that you haven’t done any user journeys and actual testing of the user journey. So stop what you’re doing, go back and actually test your system properly and actually produce a document that sets out how this works. Currently this system falls apart once even the most basic logic is applied. So don’t make currency expire. Don’t auto allocate me anything. Don’t offer me choice then take choice away. If you can’t get this right why should we expect any of the other planned changes to be right.

barney2525 · April 8

So we have been trained in this game " You have unopened boxes/crates " , and so you Open them. And as was pointed out in this Festival, in order to get the Festival item from ' Awards for the Worthy ', you Must open the box during the Festival.

So then we get the new Season. If you buy a Years worth of ESO Plus at the Start of the Season, you receive 12 caches. The bottom of the page says, you have 12 unopened caches.

And from what I am reading here IF you open them ..... you are LOSING the majority of what you paid for ??? If you open them you have 20k+. Now I'm reading only 2000 rolls over? That's bought with cash money.

something aint right.

robwolf666 · April 8

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

StackonClown wrote: »

robwolf666 wrote: »

So much for Tomb Points not having a limit, if I'd known that I wouldn't have used my caches.
So much for us also having a choice in claiming only what we want if whatever we have left is auto-redeemed for things we weren't interested in.

Edit: Well, just went in and bought everything with the Tomb Points I have - page 1 thru 10 plus both bonus pages... and I still have 5K left. So if they don't carry over that's 5K wasted, and I'm mighty cheesed off about it.

May as well not bother doing any more challenges for the rest of Season Zero either since the Tomb Points are pointless at this point if they just get erased if they're not used.

And no, I'm not paying for Premium just to spend those remaining points - Pay to spend? Not likely.

How do i get Tomb points?? is that also new ?

i think they typo'd "tome" lol

Huih... I didn't even notice, oh well. Kinda reads better anyway.

wolfie1.0. · April 8

DoofusMax wrote: »

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

So, let me get this straight.

If we have an excess of 2000 tome points, enough to buy something else, we will be *forced* to get the stuff we didn't claim from the tome?

So, if I skip all the potions and upgrade materials because I don't want them, but manage to earn enough points to get them at the end, I have no choice but to take them?

If I'm reading @ZOS_GinaBruno's comment correctly, then yes. Bites biggly if true. OTOH, getting something rather than losing everything in excess of 2K is marginally better than the alternative, but shoving a stack of Crown Meals into my inventory (which I will immediately destroy) because that's what RNGesus decided? Yeah, not a huge difference over just losing the points.

Based on what she said to, if you have more than one Tome active, excess points will be allocated automatically to the oldest tome first, and rhen onto the second, and third etc...

Bah, this is annoying. If there is stuff that I absolutely dont want then I honestly feel more incentive to just avoid the tomes and challenges entirely.

This feels counter productive and is not helping me feel any benefit to buying in. Which, while good for my wallet cant be what ZOS wants.

AScarlato · April 8

DoofusMax wrote: »

shoving a stack of Crown Meals into my inventory (which I will immediately destroy) because that's what RNGesus decided? Yeah, not a huge difference over just losing the points.

If you get are forced to get something you immediately destroy, it's worse than getting nothing, because you got inventory clutter and a chore.

I don't think people that earned too many points should get nothing at all though, so they should maybe coming up with something else they can give instead (like gold, since we used to get Gold from login rewards here and there anyway).

allochthons · April 8

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Based on what she said to, if you have more than one Tome active, excess points will be allocated automatically to the oldest tome first, and rhen onto the second, and third etc...

Exactly the opposite. Gina says "Any Tome Points in excess of that will be redeemed automatically on any unclaimed rewards from owned Tamriel Tomes, starting with the most recent one." (emphasis mine).
(Pointing this out doesn't mean I agree with auto-redeeming, at all. Just clarifying this point.)

barney2525 wrote: »

So we have been trained in this game " You have unopened boxes/crates " , and so you Open them. And as was pointed out in this Festival, in order to get the Festival item from ' Awards for the Worthy ', you Must open the box during the Festival.

I really like this framing. We really have been trained to open things right away. There are a few exceptions, like opening the Imperial City reward boxes one per day to get the merit, but mostly, we open right away. That is a good argument against the "you should have mathed the math before opening" point.

wolfie1.0. · April 8

allochthons wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Based on what she said to, if you have more than one Tome active, excess points will be allocated automatically to the oldest tome first, and rhen onto the second, and third etc...

Exactly the opposite. Gina says "Any Tome Points in excess of that will be redeemed automatically on any unclaimed rewards from owned Tamriel Tomes, starting with the most recent one." (emphasis mine).
(Pointing this out doesn't mean I agree with auto-redeeming, at all. Just clarifying this point.)

barney2525 wrote: »

So we have been trained in this game " You have unopened boxes/crates " , and so you Open them. And as was pointed out in this Festival, in order to get the Festival item from ' Awards for the Worthy ', you Must open the box during the Festival.

I really like this framing. We really have been trained to open things right away. There are a few exceptions, like opening the Imperial City reward boxes one per day to get the merit, but mostly, we open right away. That is a good argument against the "you should have mathed the math before opening" point.

Thank you for the correction, it still doesnt make much sense to me. Why they went down this path.

Danikat · April 8

Does anyone know what happens if you have slightly more than 2000 points, but less than the cheapest unclaimed reward costs?

For example if I end a season with 2006 points and the cheapest (or first listed) unclaimed reward is 500 points will it force me to claim it, leaving me with 1506 points and some junk I clearly didn't want, or will the 6 points just disappear because they weren't enough to afford anything?

I have a bad feeling sooner or later (probably next October) the game will notice I didn't claim a spider pet and "helpfully" force it into my collection, and I'm not sure if customer support will delete another one so it would be nice to know how to avoid it happening.

wolfie1.0. · April 8

Danikat wrote: »

Does anyone know what happens if you have slightly more than 2000 points, but less than the cheapest unclaimed reward costs?

For example if I end a season with 2006 points and the cheapest (or first listed) unclaimed reward is 500 points will it force me to claim it, leaving me with 1506 points and some junk I clearly didn't want, or will the 6 points just disappear because they weren't enough to afford anything?

I have a bad feeling sooner or later (probably next October) the game will notice I didn't claim a spider pet and "helpfully" force it into my collection, and I'm not sure if customer support will delete another one so it would be nice to know how to avoid it happening.

Good question. We have to assume that if your ending balance is under 2k it goes over but if what you say happens then those that are in excess are tossed into the void.

As for the spider thing... your probably gonna have to talk to support unless something changes.

Personally, all this does is ensure that unless I really really really want something from a season... im not gonna buy in.

Which would be a loss for zos, I was planning on buying them all of 6 or 7 accounts this year.

Morimizo · April 8

Ravenshadow6513 wrote: »

Even if they added some way to convert 2000 Tome Points into a Tome Cache, that would help a lot with rollover being lost.

This would alleviate the problem for sure, and can be a temporary workaround for them, but it's treating the symptom instead of curing the cause of the ailment. Their reasoning for capping rollover tome points is identical to their previous capping of event tickets, except now we''ll pay for the privilege of having earned currency removed. This is worse by the most basic metric.

Honestly, what difference does it make when a player is able to focus their time? Maybe a player can spend a bunch of time on season zero for irl reasons, but not as much on season 1. They would still be playing the same amount of time, it's just spread out differently. Knowing that there is less time for them in the next season, they plan ahead, earning every tome point they can, so they can still participate in the next season. Why prevent this?

I wish ZOS would stop veering down the road of limiting player choice, especially with regards to how they can invest their precious time. Wasn't that the goal of removing daily rewards?

Necrotech_Master · April 9

i was also curious about same thing as the OP lol

it feels like there was a LOT of things that are unclear/unanswered with how these tomes are supposed to work from start to finish

to be honest at this point they need to draft a full on FAQ page for these tomes

Danikat · April 10

Morimizo wrote: »

Ravenshadow6513 wrote: »

Even if they added some way to convert 2000 Tome Points into a Tome Cache, that would help a lot with rollover being lost.

This would alleviate the problem for sure, and can be a temporary workaround for them, but it's treating the symptom instead of curing the cause of the ailment. Their reasoning for capping rollover tome points is identical to their previous capping of event tickets, except now we''ll pay for the privilege of having earned currency removed. This is worse by the most basic metric.

Honestly, what difference does it make when a player is able to focus their time? Maybe a player can spend a bunch of time on season zero for irl reasons, but not as much on season 1. They would still be playing the same amount of time, it's just spread out differently. Knowing that there is less time for them in the next season, they plan ahead, earning every tome point they can, so they can still participate in the next season. Why prevent this?

I wish ZOS would stop veering down the road of limiting player choice, especially with regards to how they can invest their precious time. Wasn't that the goal of removing daily rewards?

Agreed.

That's what I always did with event tickets, I made sure to end each event as close to 12 tickets as I could, because I never knew if I'd be able to play during the next festival. At least a few times I was away and all I had time to do was log in to buy the new collectible between waking up and leaving the house (or between getting home and going to bed).

ZOS can set their own KPIs and peanalise us for not meeting them all they like, they're never going to take priority over my actual job and my family (the two main reasons I'm away from home for extended periods of time) or other people's health concerns or whatever keeps us from playing every day. It would be better for them to accept the reality that it might be their job but for us it's a game and we're only going to play when we have time, which won't always be on their schedule.

Marto · April 10

majulook wrote: »

This whole auto buy thing is ridiculous.

Lets say there is only 1 thing I want, that thing is on page #9 I want to get. I get enough Tomes to unlock the pages, and I get the 1 item that I wanted. Now have19,000 Tomes left over, nothing else I want so nothing else I select.

[...]

Well this is just not how battlepass systems work. On any game.

It's a reward track. And you get all the rewards in the track. You're only picking what order to get them in.

I think the fact the progression is unlocked through a thing called "points" has given many users the false impression that the pass is a shop. It's not a shop. It's a progression path. Points are not a currency, they are XP.