Make Eidetic Memory books account wide

Carbonised

@ZOS_RobGarrett @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

I know I'm not the only one who's sick and tired of being quest locked and location locked out of certain Eidetic Memory books once you have finished a quest.
In the past, ZOS has fixed a few of these, but with every new DLC, more and more Eidetic Memory books are added that you get locked out from if you don't read them manually in the very narrow window when you are doing the quest.

Case in point: Before Summerset I had all Eidetic Memory books learned, after Summerset, I find myself locked out of 6 Summerset specific books, that have not been fixed, despite numerous threads about this, and bug reports.
And a clarification: I'm not talking about the Mage Guild lorebooks, I'm talking specifically about the Eidetic Memory books that have zero impact on the game. No achievements, no nothing, just a book collection that some people like to have and read.

Outfit pices is already account wide, you can collect an outfit piece on any character, and have all your characters use it. Eidetic Memory entries should be given the same treatment, since it is after all a collection of collectibles, like outfit pieces, mementos or pet and mounts.

Seeing how ZOS does a really bad job at fixing these unobtainable Eidetic Memory books, and seeing how they keep adding more and more unobtainable ones with every DLC, this suggestion will mean that you can at least get the book you didn't get the first time on an alt, and it would count for all your characters.
It's essentially a QoL fix, for those of us who find ourselves locked out of several Eidetic Memory books for our collection, seeing as ZOS rarely bother to make these books obtainable the way they should be.

Please consider this suggestion, and make Eidetic Memory books an account shared collectible section, like outfit pieces, mementos and other account shared collectibles.

Shadow-Fighter

True

DirkRavenclaw

But, i dont understand. If you have the Books on one of your Characters, you can just read them on this Character. Why the need to read in on another Character? There are a lot of Issues with this Game right now, it is still growing. Just learn all Books on your Main, buy the Books at the Mages Guild, i think and put them into your Houses, all my Alts can read the different Tamrielic Lore in different Homes of mine

Carbonised

DirkRavenclaw wrote: »

But, i dont understand. If you have the Books on one of your Characters, you can just read them on this Character. Why the need to read in on another Character? There are a lot of Issues with this Game right now, it is still growing. Just learn all Books on your Main, buy the Books at the Mages Guild, i think and put them into your Houses, all my Alts can read the different Tamrielic Lore in different Homes of mine

This has nothing to do with the Mage Guild books, as I specifically wrote in my post. Looks like you didn't even bother reading it.

Sheezabeast

Isn't obtaining Eiditic Memory a reward? What do you propose Zos replaces it with if this was account wide?

Carbonised

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Isn't obtaining Eiditic Memory a reward? What do you propose Zos replaces it with if this was account wide?

There is no need to replace it with anything. I think you are confusing the actual "Eidetic Memory" reward from the Mage's Guild questline with the Eidetic Memory section of your collected books. I'm not suggesting doing anything about the Mage Guild reward, as it is right now, you can still collect Eidetic Memory books before actually gaining the "Eidetic Memory" reward from the quest line. You just can't access them until the Mage Guild quest is done, and I'm not suggesting changing that.

saxgooner

or make quests repeatable

Sheezabeast

Carbonised wrote: »

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Isn't obtaining Eiditic Memory a reward? What do you propose Zos replaces it with if this was account wide?

There is no need to repace it with anything. I think you are confusing the actual "Eidetic Memory" reward from the Mage's Guild questline with the Eidetic Memory section of your collected books. I'm not suggesting doing anything about the Mage Guild reward, as it is right now, you can still collect Eidetic Memory books before actually gaining the "Eidetic Memory" reward from the quest line. You just can't access them until the Mage Guild quest is done, and I'm not suggesting changing that.

Ah I see, thank you for elaborating for me. I see your issue now.

Jhalin

Eidetic Memory has achievements attached (sort of, their hidden ones) so I don’t figure they’d put all of them into a single account-count

Stil, it’d Be conveninet

Carbonised

Jhalin wrote: »

Eidetic Memory has achievements attached (sort of, their hidden ones) so I don’t figure they’d put all of them into a single account-count

Stil, it’d Be conveninet

No they don't. There is not a single achievement associated with Eidetic Memory books.

You are referring to the Lorebooks addon which pops up some reward messages every time you find X number of books, but that's strictly addon related.

MrGarlic

I totally agree.

It's incredibly frustrating to be a few books short and no way of ever seeing them.

It's not a game breaker, but it does leave a sour taste in the mouth.

Carbonised

MrGarlic wrote: »

I totally agree.

It's incredibly frustrating to be a few books short and no way of ever seeing them.

It's not a game breaker, but it does leave a sour taste in the mouth.

Indeed. There is literally no gameplay advantages of making the Eidetic books account wide, it just saves an awful lot of frustration for book collectors.

TheShadowScout

I am against more account wide stuff in general. Including account wide lorebooks - some of those -do- come with skill line advancements, you know?

That being said...

They really -could- do something for the issue. Though I reckon if they did, it would be crown store "convenience" items, like the riding training... perhaps a "collection" tome that lets you learn a complete book collection in one go. Which would be fine by me - the ones who want it badly enough can pay for it, and the rest won't...

But even more importantly, the books that get locked into one-time dungeons or places needs be fixed so they appear accessible even after completing the matching quest, so people can pick them up whenever and at any time. Because I too like completing book collections, and I too sometimes pass things by during my questing, so the ability to go back and make up for that cannot be understated.
I mean, they did it for the mainquest books, those get scattered outside the harborage, and so on... how hard can it be to do the same with all other books as well?

Rygonix

Perhaps something like what was done in Final Fantasy X and those Al-Bhed Primers that you might accidentally pass up in the game. Put them in a zone that the player can search around in for them, but only the ones that are otherwise completely unattainable to you.

Carbonised

TheShadowScout wrote: »

I am against more account wide stuff in general. Including account wide lorebooks - some of those -do- come with skill line advancements, you know?

That being said...

They really -could- do something for the issue. Though I reckon if they did, it would be crown store "convenience" items, like the riding training... perhaps a "collection" tome that lets you learn a complete book collection in one go. Which would be fine by me - the ones who want it badly enough can pay for it, and the rest won't...

But even more importantly, the books that get locked into one-time dungeons or places needs be fixed so they appear accessible even after completing the matching quest, so people can pick them up whenever and at any time. Because I too like completing book collections, and I too sometimes pass things by during my questing, so the ability to go back and make up for that cannot be understated.
I mean, they did it for the mainquest books, those get scattered outside the harborage, and so on... how hard can it be to do the same with all other books as well?

The books that give you +1 in a skill are all found in bookshelves, should be relatively easy to mark them as being "read" account wide, while still enabling your character to get the +1 skill when reading them in a bookshelf the first time. Or they could excempt the bookshelf books from being account wide, doesn't matter either way, since all bookshelf books can be found at any time in the game.

And yes, I would prefer if ZOS simply fixed the bugged books and made them available after their quests, but the fact is that even after 3+ years of reporting bugged books, even after a massive thread about bugged Eidetic Memory books, even after bringing it up on every PTS forum, there are still many books that are not fixed, and even worse, they keep adding new ones with every DLC, latest one is Summerset, with a massive amount of books that are unobtainable after their quests have been done. Making Eidetic books account wide will at least enable people to finish their collections, despite some books being quest locked. And like I also said, many collectibles are already account wide, such as outfit pieces, Crown purchases and mementos. Eidetic Memory books shouldn't necessarily be treated any different.

JesQu

No, you gotta collect them all.

Armatesz

Carbonised wrote: »

Jhalin wrote: »

Eidetic Memory has achievements attached (sort of, their hidden ones) so I don’t figure they’d put all of them into a single account-count

Stil, it’d Be conveninet

No they don't. There is not a single achievement associated with Eidetic Memory books.

You are referring to the Lorebooks addon which pops up some reward messages every time you find X number of books, but that's strictly addon related.

Far as I remember yes there are some of the eidetic memory books that ARE associated with achievements, example is the lessons books from vvardenfell. Unlocking 36 of the first volumes unlocks the ability to purchase them as book furniture, same as the 37 which is put separate (I think it is a hidden furniture sorts) so it can get kinda finicky at ends. There is far more of the shalidor books that are associated with unlocking the ability to get something than the eidetic memory ones.

For one such reference https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/the-36-lessons-sermons-1-37/

Armatesz

I will add there is so many quests that get influenced with having various knowledge of various eidetic memory books that I don't even know where to begin with. I can understand the frustration and honestly would love a better way to resolve it.

Carbonised

Armatesz wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

Jhalin wrote: »

Eidetic Memory has achievements attached (sort of, their hidden ones) so I don’t figure they’d put all of them into a single account-count

Stil, it’d Be conveninet

No they don't. There is not a single achievement associated with Eidetic Memory books.

You are referring to the Lorebooks addon which pops up some reward messages every time you find X number of books, but that's strictly addon related.

Far as I remember yes there are some of the eidetic memory books that ARE associated with achievements, example is the lessons books from vvardenfell. Unlocking 36 of the first volumes unlocks the ability to purchase them as book furniture, same as the 37 which is put separate (I think it is a hidden furniture sorts) so it can get kinda finicky at ends. There is far more of the shalidor books that are associated with unlocking the ability to get something than the eidetic memory ones.

For one such reference https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/the-36-lessons-sermons-1-37/

I'm all for excempting the special books, like the Sermons of Vivec, since those can be obtained at any point of your game.
Either that, or like with the books that give +1 skill, they could make the books account wide in the Eidetic Memory section, while still having the achievement locked behind individual character progression.
It doesn't have to be that hard, mementos are obtained from public dungeons, and each individual character can do the quest that obtains the memento, while the memento itself is still account shared - they just need to implement the same thing for books. The Eidetic Memory collection is account shared - but every achievement or other feature associated with the book still has to be obtained individually on every character. Done.

TheShadowScout

It looks to me that the balanced solution would be to simply make ALL books always obtainable. If none get locked in one-time areas, people could complete every collection if they spent the effort.

With possibly also adding crown store "convenience" items for those who ave more money then patience, just like for riding, or researching, or motiv-hunting... yes?

I mean, that -does- seem to be the way things are done in ESO, right? And thus would be way more likely to happen then just wanting it all account wide without spending any additional effort or money...

BrightOblivion

DirkRavenclaw wrote: »

But, i dont understand. If you have the Books on one of your Characters, you can just read them on this Character. Why the need to read in on another Character? There are a lot of Issues with this Game right now, it is still growing. Just learn all Books on your Main, buy the Books at the Mages Guild, i think and put them into your Houses, all my Alts can read the different Tamrielic Lore in different Homes of mine

As mentioned above, these are not the lorebooks. You cannot buy them. You cannot place them in houses. Other characters have to go over wherever they are to find them.

"But why can't you just get them on another toon and read them there?" Because I'm collecting them on my main, who is very much a lore hound, with her over 3715 books found. Because on her, particularly where books are concerned, I'm a compulsive completionist, and being locked out of those books because "Oh, you didn't read it while it was in your inventory for a short quest step," or "We gave no indication beforehand, but you persuaded this NPC like we allow you to do every time, so no book for you," or "You're not DC? Well, then you can't get at least on book that's only in their gate. Not the area around their temple. Their actual where you port in gate," or "This book is still stuck inside a pillar more than 6 months after it was reported" is ludicrous. Can I read them on another toon? Certainly. But I shouldn't have to.

"But there are other major/ more important problems in this game." Not really an excuse Just because it's not a problem for you, doesn't mean it's not a problem. You're right, though. The list of bugged books is growing. I can name at least three that were added with Summerset that aren't accessible if you finished a quest, picked the wrong conversation choice, or even just talked to an npc before you read the flyer. That's what's most frustrating to me about this. They'll fix some books here and there, but they'll also add more broken ones with each update.

And with the ones from pre-Wolfhunter, they don't even have to try to figure out which of those 3888 books are broken. There is a fantastic spreadsheet I can link when I boot my computer up (I've got it bookmarked for reference when I can't find a book) where a dedicated group of folks have listed every bugged book, its location, and associated quests. Someone at ZOS just has to act on it.

Here's the thing. I don't actually agree with making Eidetic Memory account wide (while being a relatively close-knit bunch, none of my toons possess a Borg collective hive mind). All I want is for them to fix the books that are currently bugged and stop adding new bugged books. In fact, if they fixed the currently bugged books, I would gladly go through each PTS cycle to verify that every newly-added Eidetic Memory book shows up during and after the associated quest, just to help make sure that more bugged books don't reach Live. I feel that strongly about it.

I don't mean any of this as an attack on ZOS, their QA team, anyone who doesn't give a flip about books, or you personally, Dirk (while we disagree on a few things, I really do think you're a cool cat and an awesome guildie). I'm just a compulsive nerd who's frustrated beyond belief that his main character, despite having done every single quest she can get to and slowly working on accumulating every motif (because those pages count, too), still can't complete her personal mental library because "Oh, hey! That book's bugged and has been for half a year!"

madeeh91rwb17_ESO

I was just thinking about this today -

It would be so much better if all the lore books were readable on any character with eidetic memory unlocked regardless of which character had encountered the said books.

Armatesz

Carbonised wrote: »

Armatesz wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

Jhalin wrote: »

Eidetic Memory has achievements attached (sort of, their hidden ones) so I don’t figure they’d put all of them into a single account-count

Stil, it’d Be conveninet

No they don't. There is not a single achievement associated with Eidetic Memory books.

You are referring to the Lorebooks addon which pops up some reward messages every time you find X number of books, but that's strictly addon related.

Far as I remember yes there are some of the eidetic memory books that ARE associated with achievements, example is the lessons books from vvardenfell. Unlocking 36 of the first volumes unlocks the ability to purchase them as book furniture, same as the 37 which is put separate (I think it is a hidden furniture sorts) so it can get kinda finicky at ends. There is far more of the shalidor books that are associated with unlocking the ability to get something than the eidetic memory ones.

For one such reference https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/the-36-lessons-sermons-1-37/

I'm all for excempting the special books, like the Sermons of Vivec, since those can be obtained at any point of your game.
Either that, or like with the books that give +1 skill, they could make the books account wide in the Eidetic Memory section, while still having the achievement locked behind individual character progression.
It doesn't have to be that hard, mementos are obtained from public dungeons, and each individual character can do the quest that obtains the memento, while the memento itself is still account shared - they just need to implement the same thing for books. The Eidetic Memory collection is account shared - but every achievement or other feature associated with the book still has to be obtained individually on every character. Done.

If you mean where we can see the eiditic memory in section and not books that our other characters have gotten I agree that should be a given. But if you mean something else I have to sadly disagree with the aim you are going for. There is just too many books dependent on quests. That and a lot of the aspects of how they work could glitch quests potentially (theoretically speaking that is) that it is an unknown variable of how many this would break.

I would like it if I could see the eiditic memory section anytime I please. I've done too many testing to see a lot of books have unusual interactions with various quests and whatnot that perhaps I would like to see things a different way if possible that your path would make impossible for me unless I have an alt account... which would be meaning I would be spending even more money than I intend. It does leave to other possible things as well which I am probably not thinking of.

Carbonised

@BrightOblivion

I would prefer they simply fixed the bugged EM books as well, but we've been waiting years for that, and nothing. And they even keep adding more and more unobtainable books, latest with Summerset which had a huge amount of them, and no amount of bringing it up on the PTS forum or bug forum helps anything.

Making them account wide will at least enable people to finish off their collection on their main characters.

Armatesz

I could argue that new game plus might work better for some of us.

BrightOblivion

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_TheFolksWhoPutTheseIn

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Aq6oFPsgzBZDULnwJwE1YAzR-dYO8Cc-2ouyISC3NA/edit#gid=1976921407

This spreadsheet has been given to you by the folks over in the "Eidetic Memory Bugs/Comments/Help" thread (found here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/270549/eidetic-memory-bugs-comments-help/p1)



Or, well, use it, at least. xD

Please?

EDIT: Summerset books not listed in the above spreadsheet:

Divine Prosecution Notification - Not readable after speaking to Justiciars Tanorian or Farowel in Alinor
Invitation to the Kinlady's Conference - Not readable after finishing "The Queen's Decree" quest
Night Runner Captain's Journal - Not readable if you choose to persuade the Orc during "The Abyssal Cabal" quest
Sapiarch's Recommendation - Not readable after completing "Culture Clash" quest
Writ of Valid Credentials - Not readable after completing "Culture Clash" quest

Carbonised

ZOS, I can literally hand to you exactly which books are bugged, where their location is, and what quest is associated with them:

Night Runner Captain's Journal



Writ of Valid Credentials


The Scaled Elves



Fellruner Failure?
Findings on the Elemental Votality of Imps
Report on Wing Rot Curative Trials


All the info is there, you simply need to fix these books to not make them quest locked and location locked. Either that, or make Eidetic Books account wide so I can finish my book collection, despite your numerous bugs that you never bother fixing.

@ZOS_RobGarrett @ZOS_GinaBruno

NewbieOKS

agreed with the @Carbonised statement here

Nairinhe

I play one character, so account wide books are of no use to me. I'd say just fix them!

BTW, anybody knows if Arowende's diary pages are accessible after quest?

NewbieOKS

Nairinhe wrote: »

I play one character, so account wide books are of no use to me. I'd say just fix them!

BTW, anybody knows if Arowende's diary pages are accessible after quest?

Do you mean those diary pages are put outside of the quest location after we finish a quest?

Lintashi

JesQu wrote: »

No, you gotta collect them all.

I tried. But I failed. Maybe you can tell me, how exactly I can return to Abamath, after doing quest there? If you do not know, and even support cannt help me in this case, please, stop talking about things you do not understand.