Destai wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Apollosipod wrote: »

Taarente wrote: »

I don't understand why tome points are removed at the end of the season. I get that you want us to use tome points, but I don't see why I should be penalised for not using, them. It's not my fault if the rewards are pretty poor and not worth spending points on.

1000% this. If you want us to upgrade to premium versions and spend tome points on these items, they have to be worth doing so. Not bland set pieces and a bunch of items I've already had sitting in a box for a year. I don't need to add to the pile.

It's even more fun than that. The official Zos word is that at the end of each season, they're gonna use your available tome points to buy everything it can afford on the season pass until your tome points run out. They didn't mention if they would save 2k to carry over but I'm pretty sure we can all guess the answer.

The post where Gina mentioned the first thing explicitly mentions the second. Please see the screenshot in allochthons' post above (comment #85). Here is the relevant text:

"First, we can confirm the rollover cap that is mentioned in the in-game help menu, which allows you to take 2,000 Tome Points from the end of one season to the beginning of the next season. Any Tome Points in excess of that will be redeemed automatically..."

WHAT.

They're automatically spending our points for us? They're making this issue so much worse.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom please escalate this.

They're automatically spending any points that would otherwise have been completely lost. They are not spending any of the 2k points that would have carried over.

ETA:

Upside: Players get rewards if they forgot to redeem points before the season's end or couldn't do so for whatever reason (unable to connect for technical reasons, unexpected unavailability due to real life, etc.).

Downside: Players get items they may not have wanted and can destroy.

I'm thinking they'd rather deal with the annoyance from the second group getting unwanted rewards than the first group missing out and filing support tickets to get those items they could have redeemed points for.

virtus753 wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Apollosipod wrote: »

Taarente wrote: »

I don't understand why tome points are removed at the end of the season. I get that you want us to use tome points, but I don't see why I should be penalised for not using, them. It's not my fault if the rewards are pretty poor and not worth spending points on.

1000% this. If you want us to upgrade to premium versions and spend tome points on these items, they have to be worth doing so. Not bland set pieces and a bunch of items I've already had sitting in a box for a year. I don't need to add to the pile.

It's even more fun than that. The official Zos word is that at the end of each season, they're gonna use your available tome points to buy everything it can afford on the season pass until your tome points run out. They didn't mention if they would save 2k to carry over but I'm pretty sure we can all guess the answer.

The post where Gina mentioned the first thing explicitly mentions the second. Please see the screenshot in allochthons' post above (comment #85). Here is the relevant text:

"First, we can confirm the rollover cap that is mentioned in the in-game help menu, which allows you to take 2,000 Tome Points from the end of one season to the beginning of the next season. Any Tome Points in excess of that will be redeemed automatically..."

WHAT.

They're automatically spending our points for us? They're making this issue so much worse.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom please escalate this.

They're automatically spending any points that would otherwise have been completely lost. They are not spending any of the 2k points that would have carried over.

No, I get that, but still. It's a big overstep - it's spending people's money for them essentially. That's not a good precedent. They really just need to hotfix the expiration out of the system. Unless there's a very strong compelling technical reason why, I don't see why that can't happen. It really just seems like they're so beholden to their incentives design here.

ESO_player123 wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Apollosipod wrote: »

Taarente wrote: »

I don't understand why tome points are removed at the end of the season. I get that you want us to use tome points, but I don't see why I should be penalised for not using, them. It's not my fault if the rewards are pretty poor and not worth spending points on.

1000% this. If you want us to upgrade to premium versions and spend tome points on these items, they have to be worth doing so. Not bland set pieces and a bunch of items I've already had sitting in a box for a year. I don't need to add to the pile.

It's even more fun than that. The official Zos word is that at the end of each season, they're gonna use your available tome points to buy everything it can afford on the season pass until your tome points run out. They didn't mention if they would save 2k to carry over but I'm pretty sure we can all guess the answer.

The post where Gina mentioned the first thing explicitly mentions the second. Please see the screenshot in allochthons' post above (comment #85). Here is the relevant text:

"First, we can confirm the rollover cap that is mentioned in the in-game help menu, which allows you to take 2,000 Tome Points from the end of one season to the beginning of the next season. Any Tome Points in excess of that will be redeemed automatically..."

WHAT.

They're automatically spending our points for us? They're making this issue so much worse.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom please escalate this.

I guess they chose this to prevent "I planned to claim on the last day but could not log in" type of posts (since we would lose those points over 2000 anyway). But I dislike this as well since I do not want stuff that I chose not to claim to be sent to me anyway.

Right, it's making people's choices for them. They build the system with an expiration and it doesn't seem like these situations were considered. Oh no - I might be able to eventually buy a whole season if I save up for a few seasons. That's my choice. I've still bought the content, so what's the harm to them?

This just seems like such an unnecessary situation.

Destai wrote: »

No, I get that, but still. It's a big overstep - it's spending people's money for them essentially.

No, it's auto-claiming free items a player might have forgotten to claim despite being eligible for them.

In the end, the whole tome "currency" is just an overly complicated way to keep track on which items were already unlocked in a season. There's no real choosing about which items to claim from a page because the currency minimum reached to unlock said page is always higher than what buying all items would cost. The whole principle of getting currency first and then needing to click on items to individually claim them is logically obsolete. They could have just made it a big progress bar and send out the items and currency when certain percentages were reached, it would be the same (just with less clicking, and probably people sending out complaints they didn't get the things, because they missed the message and have no overview about their inventories).

virtus753 wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Apollosipod wrote: »

Taarente wrote: »

I don't understand why tome points are removed at the end of the season. I get that you want us to use tome points, but I don't see why I should be penalised for not using, them. It's not my fault if the rewards are pretty poor and not worth spending points on.

1000% this. If you want us to upgrade to premium versions and spend tome points on these items, they have to be worth doing so. Not bland set pieces and a bunch of items I've already had sitting in a box for a year. I don't need to add to the pile.

It's even more fun than that. The official Zos word is that at the end of each season, they're gonna use your available tome points to buy everything it can afford on the season pass until your tome points run out. They didn't mention if they would save 2k to carry over but I'm pretty sure we can all guess the answer.

The post where Gina mentioned the first thing explicitly mentions the second. Please see the screenshot in allochthons' post above (comment #85). Here is the relevant text:

"First, we can confirm the rollover cap that is mentioned in the in-game help menu, which allows you to take 2,000 Tome Points from the end of one season to the beginning of the next season. Any Tome Points in excess of that will be redeemed automatically..."

That's what ya get for not double checking something you read last week. Thank you for the clarification! While I think that is kind of a weird way to do it, it's actually more generous then other MMOs with a battle pass if we're being fair.

I get the reasoning behind "auto-buying is good, they're avoiding the posts they'll get at the end when people forget to claim their rewards." And that makes sense.

But they're really been pushing Choice here with seasons. And if we push to the end to get the items on the bonus pages, our choices are taken away. It's not THAT big a deal to destroy Yet More Crown Meals, but it's annoying. I chose not to buy them. Too bad, I'm getting them anyway!

allochthons wrote: »

I get the reasoning behind "auto-buying is good, they're avoiding the posts they'll get at the end when people forget to claim their rewards." And that makes sense.

But they're really been pushing Choice here with seasons. And if we push to the end to get the items on the bonus pages, our choices are taken away. It's not THAT big a deal to destroy Yet More Crown Meals, but it's annoying. I chose not to buy them. Too bad, I'm getting them anyway!

Yeah, I’m putting that choice piece of marketing in the same bucket with “we removed FOMO” when they removed certain FOMO but actually gave us different FOMO, and arguably more.

I think the autoredemption is the better choice from a utilitarian perspective given the expiration of points (that is, considering all players and the company in total, what will produce the greatest benefit between auto-redeeming and not?). But that expiration of points is the reason autoredemption is even a thing. Getting rid of that is what would restore choice, but it would remove much of the pressure that heavily drives this monetization model. While they talked a lot about how they retired the event tickets model due to the negative feedback about the cap, the new system not only retains but arguably doubles down on that flavor of pressuring us to earn certain currency within each designated timeframe rather than being able to stock up when we can and then rely on past earnings when we don’t want to or can’t actively participate. And just like event tickets, we can always catch up for real money in this new system by buying the +bonus track and/or ESO+ for caches. That cap they removed from tickets just got moved to a different place in the system, and it’s less obvious than before: the game presumably won’t stop you from earning more TP than can possibly be spent and carried over, nor does it even show those effective caps anywhere. You’ll just lose it.

BretonMage wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Apollosipod wrote: »

Taarente wrote: »

I don't understand why tome points are removed at the end of the season. I get that you want us to use tome points, but I don't see why I should be penalised for not using, them. It's not my fault if the rewards are pretty poor and not worth spending points on.

1000% this. If you want us to upgrade to premium versions and spend tome points on these items, they have to be worth doing so. Not bland set pieces and a bunch of items I've already had sitting in a box for a year. I don't need to add to the pile.

It's even more fun than that. The official Zos word is that at the end of each season, they're gonna use your available tome points to buy everything it can afford on the season pass until your tome points run out. They didn't mention if they would save 2k to carry over but I'm pretty sure we can all guess the answer.

The post where Gina mentioned the first thing explicitly mentions the second. Please see the screenshot in allochthons' post above (comment #85). Here is the relevant text:

"First, we can confirm the rollover cap that is mentioned in the in-game help menu, which allows you to take 2,000 Tome Points from the end of one season to the beginning of the next season. Any Tome Points in excess of that will be redeemed automatically..."

WHAT.

They're automatically spending our points for us? They're making this issue so much worse.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom please escalate this.

We need to be able to opt out of them automatically giving us unwanted rewards. If I don't claim a reward, it's because I DON'T WANT IT.

And the fact that collectibles can't be deleted makes it so much worse.

Collectibles can be removed by Support. If you really want them gone, when it happens, I’d write to them and explain why you want a particular one removed. I know they’ve removed spider ones for people who hate spiders and swapped out mounts for equivalent animal types that aren’t as bouncy to help with motion sickness.

Why is the personality included for 0 points but the other rewards do cost tome points? Bit disingenious to make people pay an additional 15 euros for the biggest package and not include those for "free' imho.

Auto-looting with excess points at the end is better than just losing the points, but I'm still not sure why there has to be a cap to begin with (especially one that wasn't made clear by the devs up front or in the game). So what if people can unlock all the pages of the next tome automatically? If they'd rather save their points for the next season and be able to buy what they want in one go, who cares? I hate timers, and I hate having rewards that I want but can't claim yet because I have to slowly unlock them hanging over my head for long stretches of time. I also don't like having one currency just to unlock access to things which you need to earn another currency in order to actually acquire.

Regarding the UI, I like the tome being an actual tome in theory. However, it is a bit jarring to go from that to the "View Challenges" UI. There's a disconnect. Also, the tome could be better organized. It took me a while to realize my caches were listed at the bottom instead of in the tome. Also, where can I see my premium tome tokens? Was it just on the "Upgrade Tome" page (which is now grayed out and inaccessible)? I don't understand the bonus pages. You still need 2k more tome points to unlock bonus page 1, so shouldn't that just be page 11?

As for the challenges, they are fine. I don't mind having weekly and season ones instead of daily and weekly. It might even be better. I like that you can reroll if you don't like the challenges you were given, but it would be even better if you could just pick off of a list or choose 5 out of 10 like with endeavors. We don't need more RNG in the game. Auto-looting tome points from challenges (the way endeavors did) would make the system better too. Also, I hate feeling like I need to do math to figure out which challenges give more points and having to choose between completing challenges I want to complete and earning the maximum amount of points. Just make completing each challenge to max number of times all equal the same amount of tome points.

I think another thing that makes this system feel confusing is that it was introduced in the midst of so many other changes--in particular that it was introduced shortly after the Gold Coast Bazaar, which also had a new currency which was earned in a different manner. (And now I have to do more math to figure out if it's worth spending tome points on one of the numerous other currencies in the game which can all purchase different rewards which are located all over the place.)

Coming back with a new comment to what I mentioned before. Please make tomes purchasable with crowns so that those of us with ESO plus can dedicate some of our crowns to that cost.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Kallykat wrote: »

Auto-looting with excess points at the end is better than just losing the points, but I'm still not sure why there has to be a cap to begin with (especially one that wasn't made clear by the devs up front or in the game). So what if people can unlock all the pages of the next tome automatically? If they'd rather save their points for the next season and be able to buy what they want in one go, who cares? I hate timers, and I hate having rewards that I want but can't claim yet because I have to slowly unlock them hanging over my head for long stretches of time. I also don't like having one currency just to unlock access to things which you need to earn another currency in order to actually acquire.

This is where “this is a player-focused method to improve things that allows people to play less” conflicts with “this is a corporation-focused method to keep people interacting with the game (an therefore more inclined to spend money)”

The idea of Season Passes in any game, not just ESO, is that they want players to be incentivized to interact with the game frequently. If it were set up in a way where someone could just grind one season and then log off for three whole months because they have enough currency, that’s three whole months of that player not interacting with the game… and not spending money on it.

Sure, everyone can argue “but I would spend more money if I wasn’t feeling forced to!” but… that’s one person. Pretty well every Live-service game is trying to add FOMO passes of this sort because they work and there’s a lot of research showing that they do.

The devs can try to make things more player-friendly, but they also have to answer to the suits who are basically seeing players as moneybags. It is a painful position for the devs, honestly so I don’t blame them, but I understand why some things are going in the direction they are.

I disagree.
The concept of Season Passes is to gain revenue for future development.

What studies are you referencing. I found studies for FoMO as it relates to emotional responses from lonely persons. I did not find a valid study that relates FoMO to gaming options. If you could point toward a specific valid study, I would read it.

(Disclaimer: I think the concept of battle passes work to keep players engaged comes from the same folks that think the concept 'play together: stay together' actually works to keep a game alive. One of the indications that a business is struggling financially is down-sizing. When a business starts reducing employees and closing unproductive locations it is because they are removing what doesn't work. One of the indicators that a game is struggling is when they start removing or neutralizing PvP and group events. They do this because PvP and Group play are not profitable in an MMORPG game.)

Speaking from a position of being both a creator and a 'suit.' I will suggest that no one cares more about the consumer base than the executive level. We know where the revenue comes from. We know that unhappy consumers do not spend money. Gaming is a business. It has to make money to keep making products. It is not fair to blame executives if the development is not going your way. The development team is a creative group that is influenced first and most by their own personal preferences. If the player base does not like what they like, they do tend to take it personally. (This is why fitting the development team to the project is very important.) If you do not like the direction things are going, it IS the development team that comes up with the ideas and pitches them toward a green.

Having spent a week with the Tome challenges, I'd like to add this to my previous feedback: I VASTLY preferred the way the activities were structured from the endeavor system, which were more varied, shorter, and much less repetitive.

Under the endeavors system, we had 3 short daily endeavors, which added up to 21 short endeavors per week. That's a LOT more variety than the 5 long challenges we get per week under the tomes system.

For example, we used to have "kill 5 flame atronachs" as a daily endeavor. Under the tomes system, we have "kill 25x6 flame atronachs" (storm atros were bugged) over the week. That's 150 atronachs. It's a lot, but also, it gets boring.

It's the same with harvesting challenges. Under the endeavors system, we had "collect 15 cloth-producing plants" - but that was once that week, and there were 20 other endeavors for some variety. Now we have to collect 15x6 cloth resources, and there are only 5 weekly challenges. Sorry, but all that is tedious and repetitive.

So I'd love it if they gave us more endeavor-like activities instead of what we have now. I don't see why we can't have the shorter daily endeavors from before, just without the expiration, and subject to the limit of 12 concurrent challenges that we have now.

Faerugue wrote: »

AzuraFan wrote: »

I hate that every time you complete an item, you have to claim it. It's especially bad on the gamepad UI, where a big message pops up that's really distracting until you clear it. Which isn't easy to do when you're running with a pug in a dungeon.

We didn't have to claim seals when we completed an endeavor. Can the challenges work the same way?

This for all my accounts and toons!! And a number of guildies who feel the same...

@Faerugue I installed an addon called AutoClaimTomePoints that does the claiming in the background. Hopefully ZOS will make the addon unnecessary.

virtus753 wrote: »

AzuraFan wrote: »

Faerugue wrote: »

AzuraFan wrote: »

I hate that every time you complete an item, you have to claim it. It's especially bad on the gamepad UI, where a big message pops up that's really distracting until you clear it. Which isn't easy to do when you're running with a pug in a dungeon.

We didn't have to claim seals when we completed an endeavor. Can the challenges work the same way?

This for all my accounts and toons!! And a number of guildies who feel the same...

@Faerugue I installed an addon called AutoClaimTomePoints that does the claiming in the background. Hopefully ZOS will make the addon unnecessary.

I use an add-on to do this as well. The one downside to autoclaim is that once you claim just one instance of a challenge, you cannot reroll it. So if I collect 15 metal nodes but then decide I want to reroll that challenge, I would not be able to do so if I were using an autoclaim add-on. Without autoclaim, I have to make the choice to claim the points and get stuck with that challenge. Some people will probably prefer the ease of autoclaim and the way it mitigates the annoying pop-up, while others may prefer the greater control over rerolling to favor activities they like or that are more rewarding. Using autoclaim comes with increased pressure to keep a close eye on new challenges and micromanage them in advance.

This was also an issue with endeavors when we got some that had many more points than others. Back in 2024, certain themed dailies offered up to 100 points as opposed to 10, and people found themselves locked out of the ones that offered extra seals because they did 3 of the less rewarding endeavors first without knowing. There was a lot of pushback on the micromanagement there, as there has been with the weeklies here.

That's why autoclaim should be paired with equalizing the tome point rewards across challenges.