spartaxoxo wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

It's just unfortunate that engagement takes priority over player choice here.

I think it's moreso that player protection was taking priority. They didn't want anyone to miss out on the collectibles that they had purchased and earned.

ETA

Someone missing out on some coin can easily earn more coin just playing the game at anytime. Someone missing out on a collectible can not get that collectible again by any means for a long time, if it ever even returns. It took 7 years for the Dragon Treasure to return, for example. The collectibles also don't take up a bunch of inventory space. So there are no gameplay issues caused by having unused collectibles, although it can be annoying to sift through long lists.

I get why players want the ability to opt out of auto claim. But I also understand why devs made the decision they did and I don't think it's just engagement. They erred on the side of protecting players.

Protect players from what? Not clicking on things they have months to click on?

At some point people should take some responsibility for gathering their rewards from seasons like every other game that has them.

I personally would have approached it that way, but the whole opt-in or out suggestion is fine too and probably would be best to avoid the most complaints from either side.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

It's just unfortunate that engagement takes priority over player choice here.

I think it's moreso that player protection was taking priority. They didn't want anyone to miss out on the collectibles that they had purchased and earned.

ETA

Someone missing out on some coin can easily earn more coin just playing the game at anytime. Someone missing out on a collectible can not get that collectible again by any means for a long time, if it ever even returns. It took 7 years for the Dragon Treasure to return, for example. The collectibles also don't take up a bunch of inventory space. So there are no gameplay issues caused by having unused collectibles, although it can be annoying to sift through long lists.

I get why players want the ability to opt out of auto claim. But I also understand why devs made the decision they did and I don't think it's just engagement. They erred on the side of protecting players.

Here's what I'm referring to:

In development, we discussed other ways to strike this balance of wide paths for progression and encouraging future Season play, such as implementing a hard cap on Tome Points that you can carry at any given time, but we believed that would feel considerably worse. We were already removing this for Event Tickets (now Trade Bars!) and thought it would reduce the fun of picking out the rewards you like most on a Tome.

Yeah but that's from the section about why they give way more tome points than you'd need and have some rollover.

For the auto claimer section they state this.

Also occurring at the end of a Season is a reward auto-claimer. This uses excess Tome Points above the roll-over cap to automatically claim rewards on the current Season's Tamriel Tome. Our goal is to help minimize rewards you may miss out on in the transition into a new Season, especially if you stick with the free Tamriel Tome and don't upgrade to Premium. For example, if you forget to redeem rewards before the Season ends and you're on vacation, auto-claim kicks in. We’ve designed it to prioritize high-value rewards like collectibles and currencies, rather than spending your points on consumables

AScarlato wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

It's just unfortunate that engagement takes priority over player choice here.

I think it's moreso that player protection was taking priority. They didn't want anyone to miss out on the collectibles that they had purchased and earned.

ETA

Someone missing out on some coin can easily earn more coin just playing the game at anytime. Someone missing out on a collectible can not get that collectible again by any means for a long time, if it ever even returns. It took 7 years for the Dragon Treasure to return, for example. The collectibles also don't take up a bunch of inventory space. So there are no gameplay issues caused by having unused collectibles, although it can be annoying to sift through long lists.

I get why players want the ability to opt out of auto claim. But I also understand why devs made the decision they did and I don't think it's just engagement. They erred on the side of protecting players.

Protect players from what? Not clicking on things they have months to click on?

At some point people should take some responsibility for gathering their rewards from seasons like every other game that has them.

I personally would have approached it that way, but the whole opt-in or out suggestion is fine too and probably would be best to avoid the most complaints from either side.

Life stuff causing them to miss out on rewards they earned. Such as vacations or unexpected stuff like being in the hospital at the end of a season. Back when we had the daily rewards actually include something nice every now and then, there would inevitably be someone who complained about missing out due to IRL coming first. The autoclaimer is designed to prevent that issue and protect players from missing out on rewards they had earned

If you cared about the rewards enough you'd just click on them before going on vacations? Vactions for most people are usually 1-2 weeks not months, so still plenty of time. If you are in the hospital you probably have more to worry about, and still had all the time before that.

I saw exactly ONE person, perhaps to be contrarian, who was happy one item was auto-claimed that they missed in the UI. Couldn't have been that important if they didn't even realize they didn't have it until they got a pop-up that it was autoclaimed.

AScarlato wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

It's just unfortunate that engagement takes priority over player choice here.

I think it's moreso that player protection was taking priority. They didn't want anyone to miss out on the collectibles that they had purchased and earned.

ETA

Someone missing out on some coin can easily earn more coin just playing the game at anytime. Someone missing out on a collectible can not get that collectible again by any means for a long time, if it ever even returns. It took 7 years for the Dragon Treasure to return, for example. The collectibles also don't take up a bunch of inventory space. So there are no gameplay issues caused by having unused collectibles, although it can be annoying to sift through long lists.

I get why players want the ability to opt out of auto claim. But I also understand why devs made the decision they did and I don't think it's just engagement. They erred on the side of protecting players.

Here's what I'm referring to:

In development, we discussed other ways to strike this balance of wide paths for progression and encouraging future Season play, such as implementing a hard cap on Tome Points that you can carry at any given time, but we believed that would feel considerably worse. We were already removing this for Event Tickets (now Trade Bars!) and thought it would reduce the fun of picking out the rewards you like most on a Tome.

Yeah but that's from the section about why they give way more tome points than you'd need and have some rollover.

For the auto claimer section they state this.

Also occurring at the end of a Season is a reward auto-claimer. This uses excess Tome Points above the roll-over cap to automatically claim rewards on the current Season's Tamriel Tome. Our goal is to help minimize rewards you may miss out on in the transition into a new Season, especially if you stick with the free Tamriel Tome and don't upgrade to Premium. For example, if you forget to redeem rewards before the Season ends and you're on vacation, auto-claim kicks in. We’ve designed it to prioritize high-value rewards like collectibles and currencies, rather than spending your points on consumables

AScarlato wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

It's just unfortunate that engagement takes priority over player choice here.

I think it's moreso that player protection was taking priority. They didn't want anyone to miss out on the collectibles that they had purchased and earned.

ETA

Someone missing out on some coin can easily earn more coin just playing the game at anytime. Someone missing out on a collectible can not get that collectible again by any means for a long time, if it ever even returns. It took 7 years for the Dragon Treasure to return, for example. The collectibles also don't take up a bunch of inventory space. So there are no gameplay issues caused by having unused collectibles, although it can be annoying to sift through long lists.

I get why players want the ability to opt out of auto claim. But I also understand why devs made the decision they did and I don't think it's just engagement. They erred on the side of protecting players.

Protect players from what? Not clicking on things they have months to click on?

At some point people should take some responsibility for gathering their rewards from seasons like every other game that has them.

I personally would have approached it that way, but the whole opt-in or out suggestion is fine too and probably would be best to avoid the most complaints from either side.

Life stuff causing them to miss out on rewards they earned. Such as vacations or unexpected stuff like being in the hospital at the end of a season. Back when we had the daily rewards actually include something nice every now and then, there would inevitably be someone who complained about missing out due to IRL coming first. The autoclaimer is designed to prevent that issue and protect players from missing out on rewards they had earned

If you cared about the rewards enough you'd just click on them before going on vacations? Vactions for most people are usually 1-2 weeks not months, so still plenty of time. If you are in the hospital you probably have more to worry about, and still had all the time before that.

I saw exactly ONE person, perhaps to be contrarian, who was happy one item was auto-claimed that they missed in the UI. Couldn't have been that important if they didn't even realize they didn't have it until they got a pop-up that it was autoclaimed.

People are not perfect. They forget things that they really wanted to do or put things off and then end up in a position they can't do it. I think it is nice that the system doesn't expect perfection from imperfect people.

ETA

It would be nice if they're able to find time to add an option for people who didn't want it. I'm not saying those annoyed aren't valid. I'm just saying that they erred on the side of causing the least harm to a player's account and I personally think that's also totally valid.

Arunei wrote: »

It does baffle me that the claimer applies even to people who got Premium or Premium+. You'd think buying one of the upgraded Tomes would disable the claimer for that Tome, seeing as a person always has access to those rewards and thus has no risk of losing them.

Yes, this. "Screwed" is probably way too strong of a word, but I didn't even have all the pages unlocked. Which is why I bought the Tome - so it wouldn't go away. It is frustrating that I was saving points for items that I wanted to get when I finally was able to unlock the pages and had them instead be applied towards items that were less of a priority to me. Now, my current Tome points that I'm earning are competing between Season 0 and Season 1.

The auto-claiming and rollover processes don't mesh well with the permanency that comes with the purchasing options. But on the flip side, if someone bought all the Tomes and auto-claiming and rollover was disabled in those cases, they effectively would just have a bigger and bigger pool of Tome points which ZOS seems to want to disallow for some reason. Plus, those individuals would never be able to convert points into gold. If auto-claiming was disabled to satisfy the people who say "I didn't want to claim this reward" but rollover and conversation was NOT disabled, that is a problem as well, as people who buy the Tome to get the items at their leisure will have a long slog ahead of them if their points keep getting converted to gold before they can unlock and buy the items. This is what happened to me, and losing the Tome points to gold would be even worse from my perspective than what actually happened, as I'd rather have the rewards. But ideally I should be able to save my Tome points until I unlocked the pages if I permanently purchased the Tome.

For both models to work together more effectively, ZOS would have to have a separate pool of Tome points for each season, with auto-claiming and rollover only going into effect if the previous season's Tome disappears or when a player claims absolutely everything from a purchased Tome and has leftover points, in which case the game could close out the Tome, give the player gold, and apply the leftover points to the next season in line.

As a design decision, the autoclaimer is not the best idea to come down the pike, but it seems to be geared toward infrequent players who may not have logged in for a few days before or after the new Tome shows up. I think the major consideration in its design is that free-tier players lose access to the old Tome at 10am EDT when the Tome ends. Premium-tier players are not in that boat and a gated system of some sort could have worked for them. Something like what used to exist for event tickets ("you cannot have more than 12, so go spend some to make room") could have been implemented, but wasn't and the devs decided on a one-size-fits-all solution for reasons which made sense to them at the time.

Much like @SilverBride, I bought a bunch of stuff that I didn't really want because the autoclaimer was going to buy it for me anyway. So I'm now the "proud" owner of at least a couple of skill styles I'll never use, a Theodolite pet I'll never use, a spider mount that I didn't want, and a few other bits. The outfit stuff wasn't a high priority for me, but I'll probably slap them onto at least one character at some point and I did buy the Outfit Change Tokens, so not a huge issue. The gold loss is insignificant. Even if the autoclaimer had bought the mount (a 1000-point item), that's still a couple of days' crafting writs for one character. Pretty small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

SkaiFaith wrote: »

I had understood it would have "been bad" in my view - I'd have preferred to be able to choose myself when to claim those rewards, cause potions and stuff can be useful but at this moment they are just clogging my bank. SO, I claimed everything except for Transmute Crystals (even though I didn't want the mount).

I also made sure to only have 2.500 Transmutes and banked the rest, and what happened? Auto-claimer claimed all Transmutes for me, going to almost the cap 2975. This, to me, is also bad - would I have lost all those transmutes if I was above 2.500? Idk for sure, but definitely would like to have more autonomy over this stuff. Now I have another 475 Transmutes to manage in my Bank, taking another 20 slots. PLEASE remove the cap if you are going to give us all these Transmutes! What's the point otherwise...

yes, yes you do lose the transmutes. I'm at cap on transmutes with more geodes in my inventory and the auto claimer claimed 150 transmutes that disappeared into the void.

For my main account, the auto claimer was also bugged. It claimed cosmetic maul i already bought/owned.

Not a huge consequence since it only reduced the gold converted a small amount, but the fact it charged me the points for an item already owned is clearly a bug.

Had 18.5k points end of season AFTER buying literally every single item except couple of the useless to me potions. With so many extra points, decided might as well and by mid season had bought every item other than a few potions.

My other point is - what is the use of auto claiming for premium tome owners? We keep the tome forever, with zos assuring us we can continue to buy from that old tome in later seasons, if we wish. So there is zero reason to even have an opt out - the default should be zero auto claim for anyone owning the premium tome.

Eliahnus wrote: »

You knew this was coming, what are you complaining about…

Entirely unproductive and unhelpful. Of course we knew. We also brought up, over and over ever since we first learned about how the claimer works, why it should be opt-in. And knowing about something doesn't mean people can't express concern or frustration about it. You realize that's how things get addressed, right? That's the whole purpose of pointing out the flaws of something? If people knew about something they disliked and never brought up the problems, those problems would literally never get looked at. You are quite literally telling people "You knew this was going to happen so you might as well not bother saying anything". How does that help? How does that change anything?

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

It's just unfortunate that engagement takes priority over player choice here.

I think it's moreso that player protection was taking priority. They didn't want anyone to miss out on the collectibles that they had purchased and earned.

ETA

Someone missing out on some coin can easily earn more coin just playing the game at anytime. Someone missing out on a collectible can not get that collectible again by any means for a long time, if it ever even returns. It took 7 years for the Dragon Treasure to return, for example. The collectibles also don't take up a bunch of inventory space. So there are no gameplay issues caused by having unused collectibles, although it can be annoying to sift through long lists.

I get why players want the ability to opt out of auto claim. But I also understand why devs made the decision they did and I don't think it's just engagement. They erred on the side of protecting players.

I don't care about the Gold myself (the conversion rate is WAY too low), but it would have been more useful than the Style Pages I won't ever use. However it's not just about Gold.

The claimer has NO WAY of knowing what each individual person considers useful or desirable. It has no way of knowing what individual things to prioritize and instead I believe just goes in order of the stuff on each Page. To people who do a lot of PvP or Trials/Dungeons on certain builds, they might see the Tri Pots as WAY more valuable than Style Pages they're never going to use. I personally didn't want any of those Style Pages but I bought them all anyway because the claimer was going to, but if I hadn't had the Points to buy everything, I'd have preferred the claimer to get the Furniture and Supply Boxes over those. But it wouldn't have because it won't claim item-type rewards.

That's one of the BIG issues with the claimer. It doesn't take into account what people actually want, completely avoids entire types of reward, and there's no way for us to prioritize any of the stuff it will claim so it at least grabs what we'd prefer when there aren't enough Points to buy everything. And because it can't choose for any individual person what they actually would prefer, it's why there needs to be an ability to opt out of it. The point about people, for whatever reason, missing out on stuff because they didn't opt in is easily handled by just making it opt-in by default.

And yes, it's very possible that life can happen and someone who opted out and then they wind up losing stuff entirely, but that's a risk I think many of us would be willing to take. Especially because unless it's something that comes up abruptly, there's more than likely going to be time to turn the claimer back on just to be on the safe side.

Heck, even if they never give us the ability to opt in or out, at least make it so we can select things in an order that we'd want the claimer to take things in.