Official Discussion Thread for "Tamriel Tomes Season Zero Developer Update"

twisttop138 · April 10

My wife and I read the article this morning and we're impressed with the communication and acting on feedback. I hope you guys are able to keep it up, even when it is difficult. One thing I do want to bring to the attention of the studio though is Rewards.

I didn't see it mentioned much, but the actual Rewards for this season are a little lacking. The furnishings packs are great but much of it is common, worthless stuff we can craft. If it's going to be craftables, maybe try a more rare selection, though the themeing (I don't think that's a word) was pretty good. It kind of feels though, that the rewards this season we're mostly crown store cast offs you've had in a drawer somewhere. Stuff the team thought probably wouldn't sell well. I've heard this sentiment repeatedly in guild chats.

I've been saying, and you mentioned also at the end of the article, it's still early days. There's stuff to dial in. It will take time. I am not a fan of battle passes, but if we're gonna have one, it seems like you're doing the work to make it a good one.

twisttop138 · April 10

DeathandDebauchery wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

But I really feel like you guys are over complicating this whole thing. All you have to do is let them carryover. That's it. It's pretty bewildering that you guys are going through a whole development effort to make an auto-claimer and gold conversion system, instead of just having a more generous rollover.

This right here. The only rational explanation is money grab, and that is not player friendly.

Of course it's a money grab. It's replacing chapters, so they need it to make money. I know a lot of people are new to this kind of thing. Battle passes are slowly coming to every mmo, and there's a reason. Cause it works. Being extremely fair though, this one is pretty player friendly. Most games your currency is just poofed into the ether. Fallout 76, a mmo with a battle pass in some form for the a lot of its 8 years, is only now converting your left over tickets into an in game currency. A lot about ESO's pass is pretty generous. Let's see if they dial it in as promised.

erebus_79_ESO · April 10

I just feel like tomes challenges are more work than endeavors...I don't like leaving them undone but ugh what a grind. daily endeavors were like 5 mins and done.

ESO_player123 · April 10

decaffeinated wrote: »

ESO_player123 wrote: »

AFAIK the carried over points ARE counted towards unlocking the pages in the new season. So, if a player carries over, say, 10K points, and the total number required to unlock everything in the new season is 20K, they need to do only about half of the challenges they would need to do if they started with 0 points.

It seems that ZOS thinks we will stop playing if we have "too many" tome points. We might stop doing CHALLENGES, but most people don't play this game just to earn rewards.

Honestly, I'd love to stop having to grind stuff in Wrothgar/Gold Coast/Hew's Bane right now... but I need to get some points back into caches. I'd still play the game - just not the currently overpopulated zones.

Do not get me wrong, I'd be happy if the cap was higher or, even better, there was no cap at all. I was just trying to find explanation of why ZoS was unwilling to do it.

GuardianV · April 10

Hamfast wrote: »

"Roll-Over Cap

As the end of a Season transitions to the start of a new one, a maximum of 2,000 Tome Points roll over to the next Tamriel Tome. These Tome Points are available immediately and provide a head start into the new Season."

I was under the impression that, unlike the event tickets that had a limit of 12 tickets, this new currency did not have a limit. But now we hear only 2000 points carry forward to the next season... that items will be auto-purchased with anything beyond that 2000 point limit, regardless if we want them or not.

Why can't I hold on to the points until I see something I want if nothing for that season fits?

And it's worse than that. If you are not paying for premium, then it you have to acquire 20,000 Tomes to unlock items on the last pages. But even if you buy every free item, it will still only cost 15,990 Tomes. With rolling over the extra 2,000 Tomes, that will mean, unless we want to pay to unlock premium, we have to earn an additional 2,010 Tomes that we will never be able to use or keep if there are things on the last page we want.

Why is the rollover cap not equal to the amount of Tomes needed to unlock the last page minus the number of Tomes need to buy everything? In this season, we should be able to rollover at least 4,010 Tomes. Or at least make one of the items with unlimited purchases, like the one for gold, so we don't have to earn something we can never use.

virtus753 · April 10

GuardianV wrote: »

Hamfast wrote: »

"Roll-Over Cap

As the end of a Season transitions to the start of a new one, a maximum of 2,000 Tome Points roll over to the next Tamriel Tome. These Tome Points are available immediately and provide a head start into the new Season."

I was under the impression that, unlike the event tickets that had a limit of 12 tickets, this new currency did not have a limit. But now we hear only 2000 points carry forward to the next season... that items will be auto-purchased with anything beyond that 2000 point limit, regardless if we want them or not.

Why can't I hold on to the points until I see something I want if nothing for that season fits?

And it's worse than that. If you are not paying for premium, then it you have to acquire 20,000 Tomes to unlock items on the last pages. But even if you buy every free item, it will still only cost 15,990 Tomes. With rolling over the extra 2,000 Tomes, that will mean, unless we want to pay to unlock premium, we have to earn an additional 2,010 Tomes that we will never be able to use or keep if there are things on the last page we want.

Why is the rollover cap not equal to the amount of Tomes needed to unlock the last page minus the number of Tomes need to buy everything? In this season, we should be able to rollover at least 4,010 Tomes. Or at least make one of the items with unlimited purchases, like the one for gold, so we don't have to earn something we can never use.

With the new change today to their plans for our excess points, those 2,010+ otherwise unredeemable points beyond the 2k carryover will now become gold at the end of the season. That has the potential to be even better than a repeatable gold reward, as that reward would presumably require a minimum number of points to be redeemed.

GuardianV · April 10

shadoza wrote: »

DeathandDebauchery wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

But I really feel like you guys are over complicating this whole thing. All you have to do is let them carryover. That's it. It's pretty bewildering that you guys are going through a whole development effort to make an auto-claimer and gold conversion system, instead of just having a more generous rollover.

This right here. The only rational explanation is money grab, and that is not player friendly.

I do not understand why players want the points to carry over. IF one can earn enough points to purchase everything in the book, why does anyone want extra points? As I see it, pages unlock by earning challenge points, so having extra points at the start of the challenge does not give you options to spend on more desired items at the last pages. By the time you reach the last pages, you have already earned enough new points to purchase everything again.
If the points were allowed to accumulate, later, players will complain that they have thousands of points and nothing to spend them on.

Will you explain your position regarding these statements?

The most basic reason, is because we earned them. If they don't want points to carry over, then they should lower the amount needed for unlocking the pages. Making us earn currency that can't be spent, to just have to watch it expire is very demotivating towards earning it.

Morimizo · April 10

madintheed wrote: »

Why oh why are you making this so complicated. If you don't want us to hoard tome points just add a final bonus page with rewards that can be claimed infinitely. Could be anything from tri pots to any of the many many currencies already in game. Then I can choose to spend my points on what will be useful for me. I don't want you to auto claim stuff I've already chosen not to claim. That just makes me want to stop engaging with the whole tome as soon as I've claimed the last thing of interest. Which this season is page 4!

This is by far the best solution I've read, and it would remove the necessity for refunding tome caches as well. I am extremely concerned that their conversion rate for tome points to gold will be 1:1, which, even at 1:10 makes it nowhere near worth it.

If ZOS continues with the auto-claim, a lame conversion rate for tome points to gold, and the 2000 point limit, all it will do is compel me to not engage with the system once the few items that might be appealing are acquired. Their way around this of course, is to place a few shinies on the last couple of pages, which require a certain amount of tome points to be earned, that will in turn be mostly wasted. I will counter this with actively curbing my interest in late page offerings.

How is this supposed to be a satisfying, fun gameplay loop? It is a big step back from the endeavor system, which had no limits and could be spent in any crown crate season.

robwolf666 · April 10

They should just let us keep all our remaining Tome Points for Season Zero considering all the confusion that was caused, bring in the cap for Season 1 onwards now that we know.

Necrotech_Master · April 10

im also surprised that they dont have some kind of "infinite claim" item on say bonus page 2 (bonus page 1 and 2 unlock simultaneously anyway)

it also still seems unclear what happens with the auto claim + rollover pts, if you own the tomes

so for example if you own tome 0 as a premium tome, when tome 1 starts, do you still lose all of your tome pts and go through the autoclaimer even if you own the premium tome?

this whole system still has a lot of "fine print" pain points than it initially seemed that were absolutely not clear at all

Kallykat · 1:18AM

bobsontpm wrote: »

I see only three downsides to the whole thing, and they can be easily amended:
- the help section in game, which does not explain enough how the system works. Kind of the article explained all of this.
- the symbol for Tome Points is the same colour as the gold bars and it got me confused at first. Especially when they are present in small scale. Maybe better make tome points just white instead of goldeny-brown/yellow? I don't know. You will figure it out
- the claiming tome points: as suggested the auto claiming of tome points. Also the sound for getting a challenge done is very weak and easy to miss.

To all devs: great job!

This is a point I haven't seen made before. I know it's a minor thing and that there are more pressing issues, but I agree that it would be nice if tome points were a different color so as to more quickly distinguish them from trade bars and gold.

Kallykat · 1:38AM

I appreciate the article and the detailed explanations. Along with the more frequent streams, it does appear that ZOS is trying to communicate more with players.

I think the auto-loot system is set up well for what it is. However, it is still unclear to me why there needs to be a cap at all (or why the cap has to be so low). If it has to do with incentivizing people to play, I think that's a poor reason. People should want to play because they enjoy the game, not because of FOMO, which you claim to be removing from the game. As it stands, grinding challenges is feeling more like a chore I have to accomplish each week instead of playing the content I want to play. I would love to just open my caches now and buy what I want to buy up front and then casually complete challenges in the background as I quest. However, I can't do that because I don't know how many tome points I will receive from challenges by the end of the season, and I don't want to risk having more than 2,000 left over.

I'm also still a little unclear on how the cap makes sense for people who bought the premium tome. The main thrust for buying it is to allow unlimited time for collecting rewards. If at the end of every season your points are capped, it's going to be that much harder to save up for old rewards the more tomes we get.

Another issue I didn't see addressed in the article is discrepancy between the amount of tome points awarded from one challenge to another. I'd love to see every weekly challenge, when completed the max number of times, provide equal tome point rewards. I don't want to choose between maximizing points and playing the content I actually enjoy. Can we at least get an explanation on this one?

Again, I appreciate the communication. I don't actually hate the system entirely (I like have reward options), but there are still some pain points.

Imperial_Archmage · 2:47AM

Let me preface this by saying that I appreciate the communication and transparency but I have some concerns about the system. I’ve been a gamer for a very long time now and to me the Tome is very obviously just another battle pass. Those are fine but they’re typically used in games that don’t have a subscription model so the premium section not being auto unlocked for ESO+ members just seems wrong to me.

That’s more of a general concern but as far as specifics go, I just don’t understand the reason behind gating pages behind a certain threshold of tome points when it’s quite literally impossible to spend those points given the prices of what’s on offer. The season is just a few days in and I already have more than enough points to buy everything in the free section but for some reason I have to earn another 8000 points to unlock the pages, 8000 points that I literally can’t use because there is nothing to spend them on and only 2000 of which will roll over. Even if you factor in the premium offerings you still need to earn far more points than are necessary to buy everything just to unlock the pages. There is clearly a big miscalculation going on with these values and that’s definitely something you need to look into.

virtus753 · 5:40AM

Imperial_Archmage wrote: »

That’s more of a general concern but as far as specifics go, I just don’t understand the reason behind gating pages behind a certain threshold of tome points when it’s quite literally impossible to spend those points given the prices of what’s on offer. The season is just a few days in and I already have more than enough points to buy everything in the free section but for some reason I have to earn another 8000 points to unlock the pages, 8000 points that I literally can’t use because there is nothing to spend them on and only 2000 of which will roll over. Even if you factor in the premium offerings you still need to earn far more points than are necessary to buy everything just to unlock the pages. There is clearly a big miscalculation going on with these values and that’s definitely something you need to look into.

You need to earn 20k Tome Points total to unlock all the pages. That doesn’t change for free or premium. They’re the same pages. Each 2k earned unlocks another page, until at 20k total both bonus pages are unlocked together.

If you have earned 12k points (since you said you need 8k more to unlock all the pages), how do you have more than enough points already to redeem the 15,990 in rewards on the free track?

You’re right that there is a gap between the 20k to open the last two pages and the 15,990 in free rewards plus 2k carryover. That gap is not 6k (8k - 2k carryover) though — it’s 2,010. Those 2,010 points (plus any extra) will at least be converted to gold. If I had to guess, I’d say that gap’s there to encourage people to upgrade, but it’d be a much bigger issue if it were 6k points instead of 2k. And it was a bigger issue when those points in excess of the carryover and redemption were just going to be outright lost rather than being converted to gold. That’s not to say there isn’t room for further improvement, but I don’t see how there’s a 6k gap that’s going to be lost.

With premium there’s 31,930 points’ worth of rewards on both tracks combined. That’s nearly 12k over the 20k required to unlock the pages, so there is no required excess in this case as there is with the free track.

Necrotech_Master · 7:23AM

virtus753 wrote: »

Imperial_Archmage wrote: »

That’s more of a general concern but as far as specifics go, I just don’t understand the reason behind gating pages behind a certain threshold of tome points when it’s quite literally impossible to spend those points given the prices of what’s on offer. The season is just a few days in and I already have more than enough points to buy everything in the free section but for some reason I have to earn another 8000 points to unlock the pages, 8000 points that I literally can’t use because there is nothing to spend them on and only 2000 of which will roll over. Even if you factor in the premium offerings you still need to earn far more points than are necessary to buy everything just to unlock the pages. There is clearly a big miscalculation going on with these values and that’s definitely something you need to look into.

You need to earn 20k Tome Points total to unlock all the pages. That doesn’t change for free or premium. They’re the same pages. Each 2k earned unlocks another page, until at 20k total both bonus pages are unlocked together.

If you have earned 12k points (since you said you need 8k more to unlock all the pages), how do you have more than enough points already to redeem the 15,990 in rewards on the free track?

You’re right that there is a gap between the 20k to open the last two pages and the 15,990 in free rewards plus 2k carryover. That gap is not 6k (8k - 2k carryover) though — it’s 2,010. Those 2,010 points (plus any extra) will at least be converted to gold. If I had to guess, I’d say that gap’s there to encourage people to upgrade, but it’d be a much bigger issue if it were 6k points instead of 2k. And it was a bigger issue when those points in excess of the carryover and redemption were just going to be outright lost rather than being converted to gold. That’s not to say there isn’t room for further improvement, but I don’t see how there’s a 6k gap that’s going to be lost.

With premium there’s 31,930 points’ worth of rewards on both tracks combined. That’s nearly 12k over the 20k required to unlock the pages, so there is no required excess in this case as there is with the free track.

i think the problem is that is not taking into account using point caches

if thats the math, then for "free" track only players it would never make sense to ever use a tome point cache if you plan on completing all the available tome tasks

if your on the free track only and guaranteed to have 4000 pts in overage, then using any amount of tome caches basically amounts to a massive waste, especially if those tome pts only get converted to a low value material like gold

to be honest, since we technically have to PAY real money for the tome caches to begin with (through premium tome purchase or eso+ sub), excess points should technically be converted to crowns, because we are paying real money for them (it doesnt have to be a 1:1 ratio, but gold is NOT an acceptable conversion personally)

twisttop138 · 1:59PM

Morimizo wrote: »

madintheed wrote: »

Why oh why are you making this so complicated. If you don't want us to hoard tome points just add a final bonus page with rewards that can be claimed infinitely. Could be anything from tri pots to any of the many many currencies already in game. Then I can choose to spend my points on what will be useful for me. I don't want you to auto claim stuff I've already chosen not to claim. That just makes me want to stop engaging with the whole tome as soon as I've claimed the last thing of interest. Which this season is page 4!

This is by far the best solution I've read, and it would remove the necessity for refunding tome caches as well. I am extremely concerned that their conversion rate for tome points to gold will be 1:1, which, even at 1:10 makes it nowhere near worth it.

If ZOS continues with the auto-claim, a lame conversion rate for tome points to gold, and the 2000 point limit, all it will do is compel me to not engage with the system once the few items that might be appealing are acquired. Their way around this of course, is to place a few shinies on the last couple of pages, which require a certain amount of tome points to be earned, that will in turn be mostly wasted. I will counter this with actively curbing my interest in late page offerings.

How is this supposed to be a satisfying, fun gameplay loop? It is a big step back from the endeavor system, which had no limits and could be spent in any crown crate season.

This is the fallout 76 solution. It's a grind. The end of the battle pass is level 100 but the bonus page opens at 150. So, not easy to get but when you get there you have a bunch of points to spend. There's infinite amounts of caps (gold) other in game currency, consumables and even 200 atom packs (their crowns) which I think would also be a big hit here.

I think it's a mistake, also, to think of this as a replacement for endeavors. Endeavors are something forced on them by EU law if they wanna sell gambling boxes in Europe. This is an entire new system that still lets you choose to get seals in addition to other things. Could tomes be more player friendly? Definitely. Is it still a decent battle pass system in comparison to other MMOs? Yeah, not too bad. If they keep listening to and acting on feedback, then I think we'll have a satisfying system that augments gameplay. But it's always going to be, at its heart, a thing to keep players engaging in content and giving the studio money.

virtus753 · 5:42PM

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Imperial_Archmage wrote: »

That’s more of a general concern but as far as specifics go, I just don’t understand the reason behind gating pages behind a certain threshold of tome points when it’s quite literally impossible to spend those points given the prices of what’s on offer. The season is just a few days in and I already have more than enough points to buy everything in the free section but for some reason I have to earn another 8000 points to unlock the pages, 8000 points that I literally can’t use because there is nothing to spend them on and only 2000 of which will roll over. Even if you factor in the premium offerings you still need to earn far more points than are necessary to buy everything just to unlock the pages. There is clearly a big miscalculation going on with these values and that’s definitely something you need to look into.

You need to earn 20k Tome Points total to unlock all the pages. That doesn’t change for free or premium. They’re the same pages. Each 2k earned unlocks another page, until at 20k total both bonus pages are unlocked together.

If you have earned 12k points (since you said you need 8k more to unlock all the pages), how do you have more than enough points already to redeem the 15,990 in rewards on the free track?

You’re right that there is a gap between the 20k to open the last two pages and the 15,990 in free rewards plus 2k carryover. That gap is not 6k (8k - 2k carryover) though — it’s 2,010. Those 2,010 points (plus any extra) will at least be converted to gold. If I had to guess, I’d say that gap’s there to encourage people to upgrade, but it’d be a much bigger issue if it were 6k points instead of 2k. And it was a bigger issue when those points in excess of the carryover and redemption were just going to be outright lost rather than being converted to gold. That’s not to say there isn’t room for further improvement, but I don’t see how there’s a 6k gap that’s going to be lost.

With premium there’s 31,930 points’ worth of rewards on both tracks combined. That’s nearly 12k over the 20k required to unlock the pages, so there is no required excess in this case as there is with the free track.

i think the problem is that is not taking into account using point caches

if thats the math, then for "free" track only players it would never make sense to ever use a tome point cache if you plan on completing all the available tome tasks

if your on the free track only and guaranteed to have 4000 pts in overage, then using any amount of tome caches basically amounts to a massive waste, especially if those tome pts only get converted to a low value material like gold

to be honest, since we technically have to PAY real money for the tome caches to begin with (through premium tome purchase or eso+ sub), excess points should technically be converted to crowns, because we are paying real money for them (it doesnt have to be a 1:1 ratio, but gold is NOT an acceptable conversion personally)

TP from caches is identical in effect to TP earned from challenges. That means two things here.

On the original topic: caches are irrelevant in this situation. Whether the poster got 16k from grinding or caches or a mix doesn’t matter. It can’t make 16k a difference of 8k from 20k, or 20k more than 32k. Perhaps in this case TP left to earn for the last few pages may have been summed as if they were cumulative. If someone is at 16.5k TP earned, enough to buy all the free track rewards, they will see 1.5k left to earn to open page 10, 3.5k left to open bonus page 1, and 3.5k to open page 2. Summing those three numbers makes it seem like there’s 8.5k left to open the pages, close to the 8k mentioned above. But it’s 20k total you have to earn to unlock all the pages, not the 130k it would be if these were cumulative. Caches have no effect on this, opened or not.

To your point about caches: I agree that they are in effect merely a skip-ahead/catch-up mechanic for the free track and are wasted if you have the time and patience to grind. I think that was likely ZOS’s intent and that it got badly lost when the carryover wasn’t effectively communicated. ESO has long had a lot of pay-to-skip/pay-for-convenience, and this seems completely in line with that. Free track shouldn’t be so point-greedy that people feel compelled to spend money on caches. I don’t see a problem with keeping caches as a “rainy day” backup for free track users especially.

If ZOS allowed excess TP to be converted to crowns, then players who spent no money on caches would be able to get crowns by earning excess TP from challenges. I do not see ZOS being open to that. Even if they were willing to code the game to calculate excess TP against caches spent so they could grant crowns for excess TP from paid caches only (not from grinding), I think that premise — that, once extracted, the Tome Points from caches are “paid” while the Tome Points from grinding are “free” — is not one they would agree with. It’s certainly not how they built the system, which does not differentiate points based on source. According to the system, the premium value of caches is the convenience/timesaver, and you get that value when you open one. The points you’re left with are identical to points from grinding. When you open a cache, you do so knowing you could theoretically grind instead but are choosing to use a paid convenience to skip the grind, get the rewards sooner, and/or guarantee the rewards if you don’t end up doing the grind. You get that — unless you’re continuing to open caches after having gotten all rewards and the 2k carryover. And that should only happen if you’re not aware of the 2k carryover. That’s why ZOS is offering the one-time restoration of caches for this month.

Going forward people can make more informed decisions knowing about the carryover limit, and if they choose to spend money on timesavers they don’t also then get the benefit of any excess points back as premium currency — unless everyone gets premium currency for their time spent producing the same identical points, which would be great for players but is almost certainly a bridge too far for a company trying to satiate the demands of late-stage capitalism.

Drew_Melbourne · 6:02PM

This doesn't address the biggest flaw in the tome structure, which is that unlock pages requires more points than to buy the contents of that page*.

The premise of the tome is that you unlock pages and then buy what you want. If it's a straight grind, the pages (and the entire tome conceit) are meaningless.

The unlock has to be 65% or 50% of the page buy value.

(*Premium doesn't count. People need to be encouraged to go premium because they are having a good time and want more of it, not because they are trying to fix a bad time.)

CatalinaWineMixer2 · 6:39PM

I really like the new system. The tasks make the game more fun and interesting, offers a good variety and gives us good choices of both tasks and rewards. This is a nicer and way better system than a lot of other games! I frown on battle passes, but I like this! You guys are doing it right! I am not in any way disappointed in the Premium. The price point is very fair.

We all expect a few hiccups with any new system or features and the one time redeemable cache process was launched in a timely and informative way. I commend you for this. Moving forward, players will be aware of this so I am happy to see it become a non issue moving forward.

There is a necessary limit for carryover at the end of the season. Rightfully so. People who play Eso more frequently should be rewarded for playing it. Farming everything in a short time frame then having it carry over while they play other games is not the intended purpose of this system. @Zos please stick to your resolve on this one.

Necrotech_Master · 6:41PM

virtus753 wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Imperial_Archmage wrote: »

That’s more of a general concern but as far as specifics go, I just don’t understand the reason behind gating pages behind a certain threshold of tome points when it’s quite literally impossible to spend those points given the prices of what’s on offer. The season is just a few days in and I already have more than enough points to buy everything in the free section but for some reason I have to earn another 8000 points to unlock the pages, 8000 points that I literally can’t use because there is nothing to spend them on and only 2000 of which will roll over. Even if you factor in the premium offerings you still need to earn far more points than are necessary to buy everything just to unlock the pages. There is clearly a big miscalculation going on with these values and that’s definitely something you need to look into.

You need to earn 20k Tome Points total to unlock all the pages. That doesn’t change for free or premium. They’re the same pages. Each 2k earned unlocks another page, until at 20k total both bonus pages are unlocked together.

If you have earned 12k points (since you said you need 8k more to unlock all the pages), how do you have more than enough points already to redeem the 15,990 in rewards on the free track?

You’re right that there is a gap between the 20k to open the last two pages and the 15,990 in free rewards plus 2k carryover. That gap is not 6k (8k - 2k carryover) though — it’s 2,010. Those 2,010 points (plus any extra) will at least be converted to gold. If I had to guess, I’d say that gap’s there to encourage people to upgrade, but it’d be a much bigger issue if it were 6k points instead of 2k. And it was a bigger issue when those points in excess of the carryover and redemption were just going to be outright lost rather than being converted to gold. That’s not to say there isn’t room for further improvement, but I don’t see how there’s a 6k gap that’s going to be lost.

With premium there’s 31,930 points’ worth of rewards on both tracks combined. That’s nearly 12k over the 20k required to unlock the pages, so there is no required excess in this case as there is with the free track.

i think the problem is that is not taking into account using point caches

if thats the math, then for "free" track only players it would never make sense to ever use a tome point cache if you plan on completing all the available tome tasks

if your on the free track only and guaranteed to have 4000 pts in overage, then using any amount of tome caches basically amounts to a massive waste, especially if those tome pts only get converted to a low value material like gold

to be honest, since we technically have to PAY real money for the tome caches to begin with (through premium tome purchase or eso+ sub), excess points should technically be converted to crowns, because we are paying real money for them (it doesnt have to be a 1:1 ratio, but gold is NOT an acceptable conversion personally)

TP from caches is identical in effect to TP earned from challenges. That means two things here.

On the original topic: caches are irrelevant in this situation. Whether the poster got 16k from grinding or caches or a mix doesn’t matter. It can’t make 16k a difference of 8k from 20k, or 20k more than 32k. Perhaps in this case TP left to earn for the last few pages may have been summed as if they were cumulative. If someone is at 16.5k TP earned, enough to buy all the free track rewards, they will see 1.5k left to earn to open page 10, 3.5k left to open bonus page 1, and 3.5k to open page 2. Summing those three numbers makes it seem like there’s 8.5k left to open the pages, close to the 8k mentioned above. But it’s 20k total you have to earn to unlock all the pages, not the 130k it would be if these were cumulative. Caches have no effect on this, opened or not.

To your point about caches: I agree that they are in effect merely a skip-ahead/catch-up mechanic for the free track and are wasted if you have the time and patience to grind. I think that was likely ZOS’s intent and that it got badly lost when the carryover wasn’t effectively communicated. ESO has long had a lot of pay-to-skip/pay-for-convenience, and this seems completely in line with that. Free track shouldn’t be so point-greedy that people feel compelled to spend money on caches. I don’t see a problem with keeping caches as a “rainy day” backup for free track users especially.

If ZOS allowed excess TP to be converted to crowns, then players who spent no money on caches would be able to get crowns by earning excess TP from challenges. I do not see ZOS being open to that. Even if they were willing to code the game to calculate excess TP against caches spent so they could grant crowns for excess TP from paid caches only (not from grinding), I think that premise — that, once extracted, the Tome Points from caches are “paid” while the Tome Points from grinding are “free” — is not one they would agree with. It’s certainly not how they built the system, which does not differentiate points based on source. According to the system, the premium value of caches is the convenience/timesaver, and you get that value when you open one. The points you’re left with are identical to points from grinding. When you open a cache, you do so knowing you could theoretically grind instead but are choosing to use a paid convenience to skip the grind, get the rewards sooner, and/or guarantee the rewards if you don’t end up doing the grind. You get that — unless you’re continuing to open caches after having gotten all rewards and the 2k carryover. And that should only happen if you’re not aware of the 2k carryover. That’s why ZOS is offering the one-time restoration of caches for this month.

Going forward people can make more informed decisions knowing about the carryover limit, and if they choose to spend money on timesavers they don’t also then get the benefit of any excess points back as premium currency — unless everyone gets premium currency for their time spent producing the same identical points, which would be great for players but is almost certainly a bridge too far for a company trying to satiate the demands of late-stage capitalism.

even knowing there is a carryover, i still see there being a lot of problems with it

the forced point spending on stuff you might not want to begin with, coupled with the fact that if you dont want a lot, your going to have a massive excess of points to begin with (for example you want something on page 6 but nothing from page 1 to 5, that means you will have 10,000 pts to spend at page 6, and the total needed for everything on page 6 based on the current tome is 1350 pts)

coupled with the fact that the excess pts are converted into a basically useless resource doesnt make the sour taste of the tome go away either

like i noted, it doesnt have to be a 1:1 ratio if it was crowns (or even crown gems would be more acceptable than gold, seals, pretty much ANY currency other than gold)

even at say a 1:20 ratio, having 2000 extra pts is 100 crowns/gems (for a more "premium" currency), not enough to get much but it would still be infinitely more useful than gold since people could save it up for something