Customer Service/QOL Disappointment

The other day I was going over some of the stuff I got from the 24 pack of Super Boosters. out of the 120 I opened, I got 3 Enhancement Catalysts. Now at the time I thought those were the things that could chance one Enhancement to another of the same type (purple to purple, PvPIO to PvPIO, etc). I remember those being discussed, and that was the only thing in my email box that even looked like that, so I pulled it onto my character that holds my purple IO's for later use, and was going to try it.

From the email interface there's no info available other than the name. There's no way to tell by hovering over it for any short or long help. Nothing. If you don't know what something is, you either have to look it up from an outside source, or claim it and look at it there.

Wasn't what I thought it was. It's for upgrading ATIO's on your level 50's. Too bad I have no intention of using a set of ATIO's on that particular character. "Oh well" I think to myself, "I'll just send it to one of my character's that does". That's when I found it it's character bound. No warning when I selected it. Nothing. Well, to be fair, there actually is a warning:

Quote:

You are claiming a Character Item. This item will be delivered to this character and this character only. Do you want this character to have this item?

Now that seems straightforward, right? However, everything on the character email list has this warning, ATIO's, Inspriations, and almost all of them can be sold, traded, and transferred. This warning just means that it's going specifically to that character, not that it's character bound. Temp powers seem obvious (though under the circumstances, they should get a similar treatment just because there's always new players) this... especially new tech we haven't seen in game before... not so much.

Well crap, live and learn. I hate bothering support for stuff, but I only have 3, and I paid real money for them. If I didn't, I would have just /e headdesk and proceeded to do whatever I had to do in game to get it on the character I wanted.

So I send my petition to have it transferred to one of my characters that actually could use it, or put it back in my email or something.

Aaaand after a back and forth of a couple emails (always polite from both sides, I won't fault them for that, and I'm not angry with them, they're just doing their job) I basically get a

Quote:

Originally Posted by NCsoft Support I can understand your level of frustration regarding this issue, but the GM team is not able to assist with this type of issue. Because the system is working as intended we will not be able to trade this item for you. Please be more careful in the future when claiming items from email. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact us.

Working as intended?

Now here's where my problem is:

1) This is something I paid actual money out of pocket for.

2) There is no information you can get out of the Email UI to describe what it exactly is (and warn that it is character bound). The only information you can access is the name of the item, and how many you can claim.

3) There was no specific warning when I went to claim it letting me know it was specifically character bound with no way to transfer it around, and was I sure I wanted to claim it. This is a gross oversight with how many similar prompts that exist in almost every other part of the game.

So now, because of a misclick, something rare and useful is now a piece of clutter in my character's salvage tray... I can't use it on him (I already have his build and am happy with it- No I'm not making an alternate build just to use this one thing). Worse, I can't even delete it so it's there mocking me every time I check my salvage (yes I know that is a little melodramatic, but it's true ). Yes, I woulda', coulda', shoulda' checked exactly what it was on the Paragon Wiki, but I really don't feel I should have to go to an outside source for knowledge about it being character bound.

I'll live with my mistake, not like I have a choice, but I'm very disappointed that there's no blatant BIG SCARY WARNING about this when trying to claim such items.

EDIT: Better yet, can they be changed to account bound instead, so there's at least a safety net with such things?

Yeah, I think I saw a red name saying they were looking into giving a notice.

I really hope so. Either that, I'd be cool with them being account bound instead. That way there's at least a safety net.

I could have easily had this same problem. When I got a Catalyst I had no idea what that was. I almost claimed it on my main just because, especially since I got no information from hovering over it. Just an item in my email and how many I had, nothing more. Fortunately, I headed here to the forums to figure out what it was.

Account-bound would definitely be better.

I sympathize with you, Lycantropus. The item descriptions in e-mail (and the market) are woefully inadequate. I should not have to go to a forum, wiki or other outside source just to find out what an item does and what restrictions may be on it. It's a major interface failure.

I'm sorry to hear about the situation you're experiencing. I'll be sure to pass this feedback and suggestion along to Clockwork O1.

The core problem is that there is NO explanation of what these, or many other things, actually are in the "claim" window. There needs to be a popup help in the claim window explaining exactly what the item does, with real numbers.

If it's true that both the regular ATOs and the improved ones are account bound, then no harm done. If you ever want to upgrade an ATO, you can email it to this character to be upgraded and then email it back to your other character. But I don't know if that will work or not. At any rate, I agree that it should be account bound, not character bound. Especially if the ATOs are account bound. It would be just silly to have one piece of that process be character bound when the others aren't.

In fact, it would be so silly that I had to go look it up. The regular ATO isn't bound at all, and the superior version is account bound. So the good news is that claiming it on the wrong character does seem harmless. You can just shuffle the ATO around. But the whole thing does seem ridiculous. The catalyst should be account bound, just like the thing it catalyzed.

You're absolutely right, Lycantropus, and well-said! I've noticed that MMOs (not only this game) are getting lazier and lazier lately when it comes to documentation, apparently expecting the community to do their job for them. But I don't know of any other MMO that doesn't give you a pop-up warning before binding an item to a character.

It sucks, but, as with all things caveat emptor.

Yes but: You haven't lost it. You may want ato's for that toon in the future (more packs will be coming out) and that catalyst will still be there.

I didn't realize the ATO had to be slotted before you could catalyze it. In that case, yeah, you're screwed. Seems weird that the ATO can be freely traded before you catalyze it, and the superior ATO is account bound after you catalyze it, but the catalyst itself is character bound. Feels more like a typo than a design decision.

Something to help you with.

If you plan on using the ATO enhancements and upgrading them, if you can send the enhancement to your character, upgrade it and send it back.

At the very least, since the rewards use the email interface there's an entire email body that is mostly wasted except for the item count. They could put the entire text description of the item in there, or alternatively they could put a Real Numbers hyperlink for the item in there.