PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

Tandor

silvereyes wrote: »

I also have to just say that ZOS seems to be acting a bit hypocritical this update. For years, they have denied vociferous player requests to convert rewards at the time of update based on what the player had done in the past. But ZOS has always fallen back on a simple excuse: your rewards are based on what the rules were at the time you earned them. You want the new rewards? Go earn them after the update.

• They didn't upgrade our gear to VR16 when Imperial City came out.
• They didn't grant Undaunted busts and trophies when Homestead was released.
• They didn't upgrade our vMA and vDSA weapons to perfected versions when Greymoor changed the reward structure for veteran arenas.
• They didn't scale our existing Champion Points to the new XP curve when CP 2.0 was released.

But now, suddenly, they are going to start handing out achievement progress for free based on rules that didn't apply when that progress was earned?

There's another way in which this change doesn't follow the conventions normally applied by ZOS to requests for system changes. Usually, if some people want something changed, and other people want it left alone, they leave it well alone. Examples are requests to add PvP to the Justice System and requests to add an auction house to the trading system. Yet seemingly this change has been introduced despite a sizeable section of the playerbase being opposed to it on many occasions.

When Matt Firor set out the reasons for dropping the PvP change to the Justice System in the 2016 "Year Ahead" article, he said "When introducing new systems to the game, our number one goal is to make sure that we don't introduce new problems. Having players enforce justice on the criminal activity of other players has the potential to introduce imbalances and other issues that greatly outweigh any potential gameplay benefits."

I believe that this change to the achievement system totally fails to meet the test set out in that quote, which you'll find under General Status Updates here:-

https://bethesda.net/en/article/2Wf71RtAhikiKaOIUqGUEK/the-elder-scrolls-online-the-year-ahead

I do think that there are ways in which the changes could be modified to overcome the many objections, including the critical and pretty universally agreed idea of making the switch to account-wide achievements optional. However, I doubt that this could be achieved within the testing cycle for the impending Update, nor indeed do I think it likely that even if the presently designed system was pursued regardless of the enormous damage it will undeniably do to many players' enjoyment of the game it would be possible to iron out the many bugs, inconsistencies and conflicts within that time. The obvious problem with pressing ahead now and changing it later is that all the individual character data will have been lost by then. There would seem to be no realistic alternative to pulling this system change for now while extensive consultation, research, redesign and testing are undertaken with a view to reintroducing it later in the year as appropriate.

IronWooshu

I think the best option for alts would be that when the alt completes an achievement already achieved, the achievement title in the list shows as a different color like say yellow.

This is a far easier implementation at the last minute then some of the other proposed changes.

CombatCoati

Usually I am a silent reader here on the forums. Whenever changes to the game come, I take it as it is and try to adopt. Some things I might like, some things I might like less, but it has always worked for me.
But this one made me come out of my comfort zone, because it will have such a huge impact on the way I play the game, and not for the better. To be frank, I can't tell you how much I dislike that change and cannot believe how anyone at ZOS could think it is a good idea to implement account wide achievements the way it seems to be coming.

I can understand the want or even need for account wide achievements, don't get me wrong! But why take everything away from those players that want an (additional) way to track down their progress per character? Why not choose a system that implements 'best of both worlds' in a way that keeps all the achievements as is, but adds another global layer? Let players still keep track of what they have achieved per character, but add an achievement like 'Complet/Kill/whatever on ONE of your caracters".
Now tie rewards and/or titles to that global achievement, and you're good to go without taking away anything from anyone, aren't you?

To me regaining achievements on alts is a main reason to play alts at all. Not necessarily because of the achievements themselves, but because gaining an achievement on an alt gives me a feeling of progress for that toon, a feeling of having achieved something (pun intended). Take that away, and you take away most of my motivation to replay content that I have already done on another character. And even if I wanted - how am I supposed to track my progress? Just as one example: whenever I do the group events in public dungeons for the skill point, I usually go around and kill all of the bosses in that particular dungeon. That way the dungeon feels 'completed' to me on the character I am playing at this time, and the achievement is both confirmation as well as reward that I have done so.

Yes, it feels rewarding to me to regain achievements. And I look to look up my achievements, switch to those not done yet and feel good seeing that there are only a few left to work on.

That may sound strange to some of you, but to each their own I guess - and, as I have said, I am not ageinst global achievements per se, not at all, I even support that. But please, as an addition to the existing system, and not, as we see it now, as a substitute, taking away all means of tracking the progress per character for the players that would like to do so (besides having pen and paper ready all the time while playing - been there, done that, but that's thirty-something years ago when I started playing stuff like The Bard's Tale or Wasteland on my C64, and I thought that times were over some twenty years ago at least....)

peacenote

Erorah wrote: »

While I am admittedly an Achievement-Wh***, I would rather NOT see this implemented as is.
Should it be optional? Not really.

What it SHOULD do, ONLY, is allow any character on a single account to buy something from the Achievement Vendors, regardless of which Character got the achievement. You open the dialogue with the Achievement Vendor, and an Achievement Check should take place. Then instead of seeing RED, Character Locked items, I can buy them freely with my Decorator, who by the way, is atrocious at DPS...

Instead I cycle through several characters every day, searching for the one that can buy the SuchandSuch item from SoandSo...

Just let me buy things. Leave the rest alone

This is actually a good point that I haven't heard mentioned much. I agree with you. This should definitely be added to the list of "unnecessary grind/quality of life" improvements that we should keep. I still have hope that we'll get both views, an account-wide view with the individual view preserved, and shopping should look at the account-wide view or all accounts.

Danikat wrote: »

Has ZOS ever backed down on a change once it gets onto the PTS? I know they sometimes tweak the numbers on balance changes or fix some of the bugs which are identified, but I can't remember them ever putting a system onto the PTS and then not including it in the live update, no matter what players thought of it.

Yep, they have. The big one I remember is the proposal to change how light and heavy attacks work.

Yuualun wrote: »

I am starting to think that Zos was not really aware how many people actually love the current system. There where a lot of voices that asked for Global achievements, the other part of the players where simply silent and just happily playing the game. Until now.

I am giving the benefit of the doubt on this and tend to agree with you. I think what happened is that it was a common request, but there were different underlying reasons which caused this to be requested by many (which I've outlined in detail in other posts) and all have different root causes. Desire for titles across characters, less grind, end game issues, etc. And in reality, people aren't even unified in a vision of what they would want implemented, and in some cases didn't realize what they were asking for. But instead of delving into the reasons and determining whether this was the best solution to all of them and surveying the community to check for unintended consequences (which, personally, if it were my game I would do for such a core change), a tired and stressed team saw it as a quick win, because they did want to give us something nice, and underneath this there may be another reason (like achievements for the upcoming card game, or performance, or something like that) where changing this now was attractive.

I am desperately hoping this will be adapted into an account-wide view alongside the character specific data, with tweaks to reduce some of the grind, which seems like it will meet most needs. An option to hide the character specific data for the people who find it overwhelming would cover the gap even more (and maybe for new players, character specific data is off, but still captured, by default, since some of this seems to be about not overwhelming newbies). If this goes live as-is it will truly remove a lot of the magic of ESO for me. This isn't something I can really "adapt to" as it literally just removes a bunch of fun from the game due to the way I play.

If it goes forward the way it is on PTS now, I think an official statement saying why with more details than "this was a common request" is the only thing that could partially redeem the decision to those of us who feel such a big sense of loss. WHY does ZOS feel that tracking character-specific data, a feature we've had since launch, in an MMORPG with many players focused on the RP part, in a game that thrives on nostalgia, was the right direction of the game? We need to hear that this was intentionally done, in this way, for a very important reason that justifies the loss. So we can at least feel considered and maybe understand.

That's how I feel, anyway. And actually ZOS does a pretty good job of telling us why so I don't think it's even an unreasonable or unlikely request. But best would be for them to go back and model the changes based on Kyoma's mod, with some quality of life improvements like titles for all (which maybe display in a different color on characters who earned them) and account-wide shopping if any character has earned an achievement for furniture.

Araneae6537

skyrimfantasy wrote: »

So with quests auto-completing on an alt, not only do we lose the ability to play a quest again, we loose the reward of something like the museum quests as noted earlier in comments. How about the nirnhoned item you get as a reward in the Crag quest line, do we no longer get that? Do we also lose any skill points an alt would have earned on a quest? This would make leveling alts tiresome.

What quests have you found are auto-completed and not replayable?

tomofhyrule

peacenote wrote: »

Erorah wrote: »

While I am admittedly an Achievement-Wh***, I would rather NOT see this implemented as is.
Should it be optional? Not really.

What it SHOULD do, ONLY, is allow any character on a single account to buy something from the Achievement Vendors, regardless of which Character got the achievement. You open the dialogue with the Achievement Vendor, and an Achievement Check should take place. Then instead of seeing RED, Character Locked items, I can buy them freely with my Decorator, who by the way, is atrocious at DPS...

Instead I cycle through several characters every day, searching for the one that can buy the SuchandSuch item from SoandSo...

Just let me buy things. Leave the rest alone

This is actually a good point that I haven't heard mentioned much. I agree with you. This should definitely be added to the list of "unnecessary grind/quality of life" improvements that we should keep. I still have hope that we'll get both views, an account-wide view with the individual view preserved, and shopping should look at the account-wide view or all accounts

This is another reason I'd love for the account-wide view on top of the character view. All titles/cosmetics/furnisher unlocks should be tied to the achievements in the account view so you don't have to go character hopping to buy your fishing boat. And again, people should be able to display whatever title they want on whatever character they want, and if that means some Lv3 if 'Former Emperor, whatever. Maybe they're RP-ing that, who am I to judge. The only title I really care about in game is my own.

If, as people are suggesting, this is a hotfix for the PS trophies, have the console trophies unlock with the account-wide view. After all, the console achievements/trophies are already essentially an account-wide view of the game. We shouldn't need to delete character progress just to pop a trophy on console, there should be a way to have both.

And yes, have the icons to show some achievements increment account-wide. I'm over the Monster Trophy grind, and multi-part achievements like Dungeon Challengers would be easier if people could compile them regardless of character.

Just please don't take away the character history. There's nothing wrong with people wanting to do speedruns in all characters, or wanting to explore zones for the first time on their sixth alt. Map/zone completion should be tied to the character tab. And keeping a character tab would prevent breaking achievement trackers like Pithka's, which is another way that people like to see what they have done and could still shoot for in dungeons.

Vrienda

I'm a little concerned about Undaunted rep progress going forward. Supposedly you'll be doubling down on pledges and using quests to give the rep rather than completion achievements. That's okay I suppose but I can't help but feel we're losing something by all the non-completion achievements no longer giving any rep with them. Including something as simple as buying someone a drink in every undaunted-inhabited tavern.

I tend not to do pledges, I sign up for my random daily when that's an endeavour or event, always viewed pledges as more of a lucky bonus. Kinda feels like I'll fall behind on my alts now with how rep works.

Could you maybe have the random daily give more rep too?

silvereyes

peacenote wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

Has ZOS ever backed down on a change once it gets onto the PTS? I know they sometimes tweak the numbers on balance changes or fix some of the bugs which are identified, but I can't remember them ever putting a system onto the PTS and then not including it in the live update, no matter what players thought of it.

Yep, they have. The big one I remember is the proposal to change how light and heavy attacks work.

Except that wasn't the normal PTS cycle. It was an out-of-cycle preview PTS, which is honestly how they should have handled Account Wide Achivements, IMO.

ZOS has backed down plenty of times based on PTS changes, but usually related to combat changes. I seem to recall there was something reverted related to Sorc shields during Morrowind PTS, and there have been lots of OP things that have been heavily nerfed before release or during the first post-patch incremental in response to PTS feedback.

However, in terms of new major systems overhauls that ZOS wanted to go forward with, the most I've ever seen have been tweaks and customer service measures. Examples include introducing Crown Gems (which honestly, they probably had coded already and were just waiting to see if they could get away without them), offering free respecs after major skill overhauls, offering free name and race change tokens after racial overhauls, offering new character slots when a new class is introduced, and lowering the steepness of the Champion Point 2.0 XP curve.

I'm still sore over the way guild trader multi-bidding went forward with almost no changes after reams of negative PTS feedback. And then it melted the EU servers.

Shadeous

Currently using the addon Account Achievements you can see how many times you have achieved something and which characters have achieved it and which date they did so like so:

I believe the system should try to replicate this addons functionality, part of the thing with achievements is having them pop up when you complete the conditions and I think that losing this for future characters would be a big loss and making every achievement one and done would hurt replay value. Tracking global progress for achievements but allowing every character to separately completing them would be a good compromise.

With regards to PVE trifectas I believe reducing your abiltity to get a trifecta to once only will ultimately affect the forming of future trifecta seeking groups, I suggest that after the first time you complete any PVE trifecta you are able to repeat it. Again taking the Account Achievements addon for inspiration I would suggest tracking all further clears of a trial/dungeon that meet the requirements and having it not only pop up saying you gained it, but adding it to your achievement list and giving the data/character it was achieved on. This would work well as it would eliminate people not wanting to do trifectas again as they would still get the achievement, and it would add to their total for that particular achievement. Furthermore if you could repeat it on any character and still get the achievement again and increase it's number gained it would make future trifecta groups even easier to form.

Parasaurolophus

So many negative posts from excited players. I just wanted to remind you that not all players see such changes as extremely negative. Although the fact that there are players who complete the same quests several times baffles me. But not the point. I will speak from my experience.
I have my main character. He's a little RP. All quests and new chapters I go through only on it. The exception was with the Russian localization of the game, when I replayed all the vanilla zones on alt. I have always tried to get all the achievements on one character, since achiv hunting is one of the elements of the endgame in eso. I already have a couple of trifecta from the trials and a few from the dungeons. However, now I'm playing in the raid on the alt, because we have an optimized raid and the place for my main character's class is occupied. And I'm happy that I can now just play freely without worrying about progress going past the total score. It doesn't bother me anymore.
I'm glad that I can buy furniture for achievements, which are only on alts. I am also glad that I can now buy furniture from other alliances and I do not have to spend hundreds of hours to get a grand overlod on a character from another alliance. I can just now play pvp freely since my main already has 5 stars.
Yes, it would be nice to have a notification under each achievement where it would be written by which character and when it was received. But if not, then this is not a tragedy for me. Perhaps I would prefer to remove the record of which character received this or that achievement altogether.
Also, the progress bars on the maps and other problems should of course be fixed.

etchedpixels

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Also, the progress bars on the maps and other problems should of course be fixed.

The only way you can fix the progress reporting for things like zone quests is by keeping per character data. At that point therefore you might as well make them visible so that people don't have to go write a load of new add-ons to work around the behaviour change. (plus of course it yet again leaves the poor suffering console players out in the cold if this becomes add-on stuff)

For a bunch of the others like dungeon achievements and which character does or does not have them, you have to track them per character so the data is still needed to fix it.

Dark_Lord_Kuro

Mephit wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Mephit wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Mephit wrote: »

ArgonianAustin wrote: »

I wish everything transferred over.

Can I ask why that is...

Do you only want to do things once? and want to be able to pick different characters / classes to do it depending on what you are enjoying at the time / which is "better"?

Would you be happier if you had one account wide character that could swap classes / skills as and when?

Just trying to understand the requirement.

Nothing stop you from epeating content on other characters, you just wont receive acheivement for it, wich depending on who you ask can be either not a problem, a major one or anything in between

Didn't answer my question...

Yes i will still continue to quest either way, acheivement arent nessesary to do that, although they seem to help a lot of people of the forum to do so

Wasn't a dig at you or anyone, I just genuinely want to know what the ask is. If someone can articulate what is required then perhaps we can find a middle ground. I can't believe anyone is asking for progress to be lost?

Sounds like someone told ZOS that "account wide achievements would be cool" and they have brought in a massive sledgehammer with no though for the consequences.

Like someone else mentioned, perhaps there is another reason? either way.. I'll be out if it progress is lost

Im all in for a opt in/out type of scenario over the current version

Mephit

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

So many negative posts from excited players. I just wanted to remind you that not all players see such changes as extremely negative. Although the fact that there are players who complete the same quests several times baffles me. But not the point. I will speak from my experience.
I have my main character. He's a little RP. All quests and new chapters I go through only on it. The exception was with the Russian localization of the game, when I replayed all the vanilla zones on alt. I have always tried to get all the achievements on one character, since achiv hunting is one of the elements of the endgame in eso. I already have a couple of trifecta from the trials and a few from the dungeons. However, now I'm playing in the raid on the alt, because we have an optimized raid and the place for my main character's class is occupied. And I'm happy that I can now just play freely without worrying about progress going past the total score. It doesn't bother me anymore.
I'm glad that I can buy furniture for achievements, which are only on alts. I am also glad that I can now buy furniture from other alliances and I do not have to spend hundreds of hours to get a grand overlod on a character from another alliance. I can just now play pvp freely since my main already has 5 stars.
Yes, it would be nice to have a notification under each achievement where it would be written by which character and when it was received. But if not, then this is not a tragedy for me. Perhaps I would prefer to remove the record of which character received this or that achievement altogether.
Also, the progress bars on the maps and other problems should of course be fixed.

You say...

Although the fact that there are players who complete the same quests several times baffles me

You are of course welcome to that opinion, but I think this highlights the problem.

ZOS - who is your target customer? those of us who enjoy replaying content, or those "baffled" by those that do?

Parasaurolophus

Mephit wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

So many negative posts from excited players. I just wanted to remind you that not all players see such changes as extremely negative. Although the fact that there are players who complete the same quests several times baffles me. But not the point. I will speak from my experience.
I have my main character. He's a little RP. All quests and new chapters I go through only on it. The exception was with the Russian localization of the game, when I replayed all the vanilla zones on alt. I have always tried to get all the achievements on one character, since achiv hunting is one of the elements of the endgame in eso. I already have a couple of trifecta from the trials and a few from the dungeons. However, now I'm playing in the raid on the alt, because we have an optimized raid and the place for my main character's class is occupied. And I'm happy that I can now just play freely without worrying about progress going past the total score. It doesn't bother me anymore.
I'm glad that I can buy furniture for achievements, which are only on alts. I am also glad that I can now buy furniture from other alliances and I do not have to spend hundreds of hours to get a grand overlod on a character from another alliance. I can just now play pvp freely since my main already has 5 stars.
Yes, it would be nice to have a notification under each achievement where it would be written by which character and when it was received. But if not, then this is not a tragedy for me. Perhaps I would prefer to remove the record of which character received this or that achievement altogether.
Also, the progress bars on the maps and other problems should of course be fixed.

You say...

Although the fact that there are players who complete the same quests several times baffles me

You are of course welcome to that opinion, but I think this highlights the problem.

ZOS - who is your target customer? those of us who enjoy replaying content, or those "baffled" by those that do?

Again, the reasoning of who is the target audience in the game-service. Honestly, it's already getting too toxic. Most players are casual players who don't have time to close the same zones multiple times on different characters. Especially for the sake of the pictures with the score, which they already already have on other characters.

Dark_Lord_Kuro

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Mephit wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Mephit wrote: »

ArgonianAustin wrote: »

I wish everything transferred over.

Can I ask why that is...

Do you only want to do things once? and want to be able to pick different characters / classes to do it depending on what you are enjoying at the time / which is "better"?

Would you be happier if you had one account wide character that could swap classes / skills as and when?

Just trying to understand the requirement.

Nothing stop you from epeating content on other characters, you just wont receive acheivement for it, wich depending on who you ask can be either not a problem, a major one or anything in between

Didn't answer my question...

Yes i will still continue to quest either way, acheivement arent nessesary to do that, although they seem to help a lot of people of the forum to do so

I think people are noticing that you're very supportive of the new system - which is fine, you're allowed to like it! - but just want to know why you think that it's worth deleting history do to so.

I get that the grind for monster trophies is terrible. I'm all for that being account-wide. There are a few obnoxiously grindy achievements that should be account wide.

But the PTS system shows that some achievements can be tracked at a character level and at an account level. So making Monster trophies be account wide doesn't mean that zone completion (which is a lot of little achievements that are easy enough to do) needs to be as well.

So why do you think that all delves should be registered as complete on all characters if only one did it?

I think most people in this thread are looking for a compromise solution, and the 'character and account' tab is the most common proposal. Most people are also arguing that account-wide accumulation for grindy achievements is a good thing. I know I'd be fine if the 'account' tab was the default so you had to actually switch to the character tab. But exploration is not grindy like Monster Trophies are, especially not if you do have an 'account' achievement tab already. But nobody is making a solid point as to why deleting character achievement is better than showing it in an alternate tab.

While its true that i like the proposed version and PERSONNALY woulnt mund if it goes live, i also see no problem in a opt in version of the system where you can choose wich characters(if any) share their acheivement toward the account and wich remain isolated. You can read a more detailed explanation in a post i made yesterday

What i really want from the new system is that all character in my account can work toward a common goal together, like the 150 jee-lar daily for exemple.

Necrotech_Master

Shadeous wrote: »

Currently using the addon Account Achievements you can see how many times you have achieved something and which characters have achieved it and which date they did so like so:

I believe the system should try to replicate this addons functionality, part of the thing with achievements is having them pop up when you complete the conditions and I think that losing this for future characters would be a big loss and making every achievement one and done would hurt replay value. Tracking global progress for achievements but allowing every character to separately completing them would be a good compromise.

With regards to PVE trifectas I believe reducing your abiltity to get a trifecta to once only will ultimately affect the forming of future trifecta seeking groups, I suggest that after the first time you complete any PVE trifecta you are able to repeat it. Again taking the Account Achievements addon for inspiration I would suggest tracking all further clears of a trial/dungeon that meet the requirements and having it not only pop up saying you gained it, but adding it to your achievement list and giving the data/character it was achieved on. This would work well as it would eliminate people not wanting to do trifectas again as they would still get the achievement, and it would add to their total for that particular achievement. Furthermore if you could repeat it on any character and still get the achievement again and increase it's number gained it would make future trifecta groups even easier to form.

when the account wide achievements was announced, this is actually the direction i thought they would be taking with it

im still glad for account wide achievements, but i definitely think the current implementation could use some refining

etchedpixels

Mephit wrote: »

ZOS - who is your target customer? those of us who enjoy replaying content, or those "baffled" by those that do?

False binary choice.

The answer should be "all of them".

silvereyes

etchedpixels wrote: »

Mephit wrote: »

ZOS - who is your target customer? those of us who enjoy replaying content, or those "baffled" by those that do?

False binary choice.

The answer should be "all of them".

The whole us vs. them thing is pretty toxic in my opinion. I agree, we really should be focusing on ways to make everyone happy.

tomofhyrule

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

So many negative posts from excited players. I just wanted to remind you that not all players see such changes as extremely negative. Although the fact that there are players who complete the same quests several times baffles me. But not the point. I will speak from my experience.
I have my main character. He's a little RP. All quests and new chapters I go through only on it. The exception was with the Russian localization of the game, when I replayed all the vanilla zones on alt. I have always tried to get all the achievements on one character, since achiv hunting is one of the elements of the endgame in eso. I already have a couple of trifecta from the trials and a few from the dungeons. However, now I'm playing in the raid on the alt, because we have an optimized raid and the place for my main character's class is occupied. And I'm happy that I can now just play freely without worrying about progress going past the total score. It doesn't bother me anymore.
I'm glad that I can buy furniture for achievements, which are only on alts. I am also glad that I can now buy furniture from other alliances and I do not have to spend hundreds of hours to get a grand overlod on a character from another alliance. I can just now play pvp freely since my main already has 5 stars.
Yes, it would be nice to have a notification under each achievement where it would be written by which character and when it was received. But if not, then this is not a tragedy for me. Perhaps I would prefer to remove the record of which character received this or that achievement altogether.
Also, the progress bars on the maps and other problems should of course be fixed.

We understand that there are people who are very thrilled by this change. Most people in this thread are offering alternatives that would not remove 'Account-wide achievements,' just add the option to see both character- and account-wide tabs. I doubt you'll find a single one of the most ardent supporters of character achievements who will say "Yes, Monster Trophies should be character specific only!"

But you say you're "baffled" by people who want to replay quests on alts. These people exist, there are a lot of them. We don't need to question motives, but we should try to avoid introducing systems to please one group by obliterating what people in the other group like.

Imagine if they came out with the next update and said "Ok, we got our card game to work, but we had to clear some space in the game so we deleted Kyne's Aegis since not many people run it anyway." Would that be a good way to add a new thing? What about the people who like Kyne's? "Oh, there are still other trials, you can do those instead, and we added the KA drops to the other trials" is not a sufficient answer.

Again, and nobody has answered this yet, what is the benefit to removing character-specific data? The game still stores the quests characters have done (except museum quests autocomplete with zero work now), it still stores their map markers (but the map just assumes everything outside of quest hubs is complete now), it still stores Skyshards (but those can't be tracked easily now), it still stores data on which dungeons are complete or not (again, no easy way to see which is done outside of porting into each sequentially and looking for a quest marker), and it still tracks some character-specific achievements (which seems inconsistent which are by character and which are not). So much of the character data is still there, but now there's no way to see it anymore.

I haven't seen a single person saying that we should never go account-wide. I haven't seen anyone arguing that there shouldn't be some that increment by account at all. Most people are just asking that we be able to see both values, and that ZOS uses a more consistent (and exclusive) criteria on what tallies over the whole account versus what tallies individually.

I'd think that if you went into an achievement screen and it showed the account-wide system, people who want account-wide achievements would be happy. Console achievements and titles/cosmetics could pop with this, so those people would be happy. And then if there were a switch at the top where you could 'View by Character' and see the old system and you could still pop simple achievements on baby characters, then those people would be happy. And if some conglomerate achievements like Trophies or Challengers accumulated by account, then those people would be happy. But then there could be others like fishing that accumulate by character so people with 18 Master Anglers could be happy (and so people would still have a reason to fish so Perfect Roe could stay in the market - it's those people grinding Master Angler who are really getting that and selling it, and there have been several people on the forums complaining about the inflation of the price of PRoe. Do we want to encourage fewer people to farm it?). With a system like this, very few people lose, most people gain.

So what is the benefit of swapping fully to a system where a significant number of people lose? Even if a significant amount gain here, isn't a system where more people gain and fewer lose better?

The cynic in me says that all of the feedback for this is probably going to end up in the circular file and this system will be going live as is with only minor fixes (probably to fix the map discovery inconsistencies). I would hope that it's not too late to reconfigure the system, even if it means releasing it with U34, so that we can get account-wide and character-specific view of the achievements list, where we could still have titles and monster trophies account-wide but also still get that happy bump to see an alt get the 'Achievement Unlocked' popup as well.

ThreeToedPoli

I don't know if anybody has already brought this up, but the biggest problem with the current system that they are trying to implement is that the nerf to levelling (Undaunted and Traditional) is too much.

On the PTS right now, new characters cannot earn the bonus exp from completing Dolmens, Delves or World bosses, completely ruining progression throughout the zones, people will be actually forced into mob grinding or Random Dungeon/BG finder for levelling, especially as after lv 20 quest exp just doesn't cut it without a load of exp boosts from scrolls or ambrosia.

The undaunted levelling is in a terrible place too, with the amount I could test the new system gives you 10 skill line experience per Dungeon story quest, and 10 per Delve daily (I'm an EU player so I had to make a new character to test this, as the level 25 template has undaunted 10). Which means that if you complete every Dungeon in the game, you earn 480 skill levelling from the dungeons, which is far short of the 1300 needed for undaunted mettle 2.

To use an example, if a character steps into vet fungal grotto 1 on the pts, you can earn max of 10 undaunted now, in the current live system that goes up to 70, 10 for completion, 10 for vet completion, 10 for speedrun, 10 for no death, 10 for hard mode and 20 for the two kill X amount of enemies.

Also the removal of all of the bonus undaunted levelling you can get from the side achievements, such as Greater Dungeon Damage Dealer, means that new lower level players will not unlock the skills for a very long time, in fact if anyone tells them to unlock something like Mystic Orb, the grind will be awful.

The final thing I will say, this new system will financially punish players, either through making people buy the sub to access the 24 Dungeons for a measly 240 points or by pushing people towards buying the skill line from the crown store.

I am personally all for people being able to earn achievements account wide, but with the way this is being executed, this will be a massive disaster.

Lekjih

Not on PTS so having to go off of what others are saying.
Good points of this system:
-Never have to Emp push again(1!!!1!11!!)
-Can take any character into a trifecta run and use the title on anyone. I am so excited to have Gryphon Handler on EVERYONE.
-Purchasing leads and furniture on any character.
-Can now leave my thief as a thief and my PvP toons as they are because they're not needing to earn their own titles. As a result, a lot of gear can be deconned and less armory slots are needed.
-A couple of characters can be deleted once their achievements are logged.
-PvP rank is still individual, yay!
-Master Angler and those trophy quests just became easier for those of us with a couple of old charcters

Bad points of this system:
-Can't get anymore music boxes, factotums? I also just really enjoy museum quests, they're a weird little stress relief for me.
-Seems map completion becomes account wide? That hurts my heart. Let me have something grindy on alts!
-People are talking as though quests on alts are autocompleted, but that wouldn't make sense with undaunted being tied to dungeon quests. If this is true, this is very upsetting. There are some beautiful quests in this game and my girls all have their own choices to make.
-The Saviour of Elsweyr achievement bugged out for me and never awarded the Xbox achievement. I'm going to have to rush through it before this update so it doesn't become impossible but I know I am not the only one that this has happened to.
-I don't like that if my main catches all but one fish, and an alt catches the last fish, the alt gets credit. I'd rather not keep track at all at that point.

Points that others have raised:
-"it doesn't make sense for 'character' to have access to 'title' because they haven't been there yet". Then don't equip it. These are your paper dolls and you get to choose how they're dressed, figuratively speaking~ Personally, I like this aspect as this opens more backstories for my paper dolls. I do understand the niggle that comes with this, but in the same way my chars can't ride certain mounts until they get to certain zones, this is just as easy to fix~
-"the economy is going to crash" Honestly, it won't. Most title buyers are first time buyers or want other collectibles like skins, mementos and mounts.
-"people will pretend they tanked/healed/dpsed content when really they healed/dpsed/tanked" they can do that anyway with respecs. Some also pretend they actually ran it instead of standing on the bridge or similar. This isn't a big issue, you find out very quickly if someone is faking content competence and can act accordingly as raid lead.

Overall I'm mostly excited, but really nervous that I'm about to lose some of my favourite content and replayability all at once.

KMarble

peacenote wrote: »

Honestly, I think what makes this complicated is that it is both.

Pro Account-Wide Only:

There are lots of people who are sick of not being able to play on their mains, due to raid composition needs and the constant re-balancing/nerfing of combat that ZOS does, and therefore support the idea to essentially obliterate any thought of a "main" by combining all of the achievements. As a healer where trials only have two spots for my role, and rumors are flying that this can go down to one in many cases, and zero for dungeon groups... I understand this. I do fear a day when healers are no longer welcomed in content, and I get kind of angry at team mates and friends when they talk about ways to clear content without a healer, because in a very real way they are excluding ME, since this is the role I am best at. Now that there is an armory, I can choose to create a DPS or tank spec on my healer, to make myself more viable, but I won't magically be able to perform at the needed level to keep my place in prog on an alternate role. In my current trial group, my main has been shelved in favor of my warden healer, because that's the class we needed. So now my end game achievements are split between the two healers. I understand this view and I believe it is a valid struggle. That said, I chose to take the road of not caring, and letting go of my wish that my "main" earned everything first or must have everything. I no longer worry about it. If I get the clear on one character, anyone I'd like to play with will give me a shot. If I'm excluded from something, I'll either go get the achievement or go play with more reasonable people.

Related, but separate, is the belief that with this simplification of achievements, guilds and content organizers won't be able to insist that the character you are playing with has to have the achievement, and therefore it will make end game a friendlier, less toxic place for players who have done the content but now want to bring a different character. Gatekeeping will be reduced because more folks will have the requisite achievements. Personally, I feel this is a false hope. Inability to rely on character-specific achievements isn't going to keep people from trying to vet group members because it's still all about time and efficiency. Other methods will surface. Maybe guilds will require videos of your clears. Maybe they will require a more robust set of "test" runs. Maybe, with even less in-game tools to gauge who is suited for what content, end game will fall apart completely because too many groups will struggle and fail and take too long to get to the content they said they'd try to run, because too many team members are sub-par. I am not sure but I do think that this isn't a good reason to go to account-wide achievements. It won't solve toxicity. All it will do is generate dumber and/or more intrusive barriers to entry.

Pro Character Specific:

On the other hand, there are lots of people who go back to get achievements on each character, and those folks play a big part in filling gaps in rosters in end game. It is TOUGH to find 12 people to dedicate enough time and effort to tackle this content. It gets harder and harder the more time investment is required. All of us have limited time in life. That's a fact. While I try to be a good community member, I absolutely will prioritize running content where I still need something (anything!) over content I have no reason to do again. In fact, when helping friends farm or achieve something, I always check and will get excited if one of my alts can join and grab an achievement too. It's more fun that way. So I am absolutely sure that other folks who now have that little extra reward/recognition of logging accomplishment on a specific toon removed will re-evaluate how they are spending that time, and will pivot to something they do need. So many folks set little goals for themselves that are just for fun - "I'm going to run a marathon," "I'm going to take a bar-tending class." "I'm going to get "Tick-Tock Tormentor" on all my characters." It's just a thing humans do. And the removal of the option to try and get things per character (and have it tracked easily in game, with the yay! experience of an achievement popping) will reduce the pool of players. Also, and maybe more importantly, it will specifically reduce the pool of more experienced players who have done the content and are willing to teach others and help newer folks because they also can get a clear on another character while they do it.

Additionally, there are many folks who have been with this game for many years and have spent a lot of time pursuing character specific achievements. This change, in one patch application, obliterates all that progress and time. Now, I would say that this is not a compelling argument to ZOS, as we all saw how well the vMA weapons arguments went, but that was just one arena and reward type, and this is potentially all areas of the game for many characters to players. It represents even more lost/wasted time, on a much larger scale. Having that taken away IS game-breaking, and will cause people to quit. Up to eight years of your life in this game will have been erased. Yes, it's a game, and it's a hobby, but it will definitely give a lot of people the push to walk away and do something else. As I've pointed out in another comment, a game that makes its living off of nostalgia on the ESO franchise should not underestimate how important these little records are to these same players. It's a big deal. And, humans tend to over-value sunk costs (https://neurofied.com/sunk-cost-fallacy/), often to their detriment. How I think this applies here is that the amount of time spent on curating character history and obtaining achievements per character will seem magnified to those players, which will cause anger that doesn't seem rational to newer folks. And it's going to be strongest for folks that pursued end game achievements, because they take the most time and effort. If you spent 8 years getting trial achievements on every character and all of those dates and that journey is wiped away... trust me, it's emotionally sickening to people. It's why people stay in bad relationships. Because this is an innate trait of the human brain, while some may find it silly, it isn't easily overcome. We all do it, at one time or another.

Btw, account-wide achievements won't eliminate carries. If anything they'll increase the cost, because people will need them only once and there will be less folks around willing to help fill the groups to do them.

Anyway, the question is, for end game specifically, will the players more willing to jump on alternate toons because FOMO is gone outweigh the amount of players that stop re-running content or all-out quit because their history has been erased? I believe the answer is no. Losing even a small portion of experienced players re-running content will likely make end game content harder to execute. Less "new" people will have good experiences. AND people will cycle through and move on from the content faster, ultimately making it harder for everyone to find people to run the content with in the long run. Therefore I feel it's not good for the game, even though I personally am one of the people who would benefit on the surface. I'd rather live with the fact that my main doesn't have all of the achievements than see this change, as-is, go live. Either way, I tried to capture the end game perspectives I've run across in case it's helpful.

Thank you for your perspective from the end-game POV. I'd like to add mine (from the "I'm so casual it hurts").

I'm not a gamer. I just play ESO. I rage-quit while doing the tutorial in the Wailing prison because I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of using the keyboard and mouse at the same time. That was around Feb 2018. I eventually tried again in May that same year and have stuck with the game so far.

My first year was basically me learning to play a newer generation game (I've played others before, but the controls were much simpler). Many times during my first year I was only capable of completing some of the content because there were other players doing the same. Plenty of those players were leveling alts.

Some people might dismiss my experience because I'm such an outlier, but I've had an experience while doing one of Cadwells' quest that opened my eyes to me not being the only one. I was clearing a delve and at the end of it, another player who was there thanked me for helping them. They mentioned something about how hard it was for a low level tank to complete stuff in game.

I am now in a position to pay forward to all the people who helped me when I first started. My main has done it all, but my alts can still do content and help people, who like me once upon a time, don't quite know how to play yet.

For those among us who like questing on different characters, taking away character achievements takes away the need and will to replay through the zones, which in turn means fewer people doing older content. Many players who will still level up alts will pop into a zone, collect skyshards and hop out as fast as they can.

I created one character of each class so I can learn how each of them play. I cannot do that by power leveling*, but this change signals towards this being the way to go once the update goes live. I know that some people already do that, but there are still many of us wandering around Tamriel - and populating areas that would be otherwise wastelands.

I'm not even going to go into the many skill lines that will become much harder to level up with this change. Suffice it to say that I had a hard time leveling up DB and TG (which advances that story line too), despite the fact that I'm very good at stealing/BoW and got Market Mogul and the achievement for killing 100 NPCs before I knew they existed.

*Technically I could, but it wouldn't teach me the nuances each class has.

Foto1

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Mephit wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

So many negative posts from excited players. I just wanted to remind you that not all players see such changes as extremely negative. Although the fact that there are players who complete the same quests several times baffles me. But not the point. I will speak from my experience.
I have my main character. He's a little RP. All quests and new chapters I go through only on it. The exception was with the Russian localization of the game, when I replayed all the vanilla zones on alt. I have always tried to get all the achievements on one character, since achiv hunting is one of the elements of the endgame in eso. I already have a couple of trifecta from the trials and a few from the dungeons. However, now I'm playing in the raid on the alt, because we have an optimized raid and the place for my main character's class is occupied. And I'm happy that I can now just play freely without worrying about progress going past the total score. It doesn't bother me anymore.
I'm glad that I can buy furniture for achievements, which are only on alts. I am also glad that I can now buy furniture from other alliances and I do not have to spend hundreds of hours to get a grand overlod on a character from another alliance. I can just now play pvp freely since my main already has 5 stars.
Yes, it would be nice to have a notification under each achievement where it would be written by which character and when it was received. But if not, then this is not a tragedy for me. Perhaps I would prefer to remove the record of which character received this or that achievement altogether.
Also, the progress bars on the maps and other problems should of course be fixed.

You say...

Although the fact that there are players who complete the same quests several times baffles me

You are of course welcome to that opinion, but I think this highlights the problem.

ZOS - who is your target customer? those of us who enjoy replaying content, or those "baffled" by those that do?

Again, the reasoning of who is the target audience in the game-service. Honestly, it's already getting too toxic. Most players are casual players who don't have time to close the same zones multiple times on different characters. Especially for the sake of the pictures with the score, which they already already have on other characters.

on the other hand, casual players should not care what score pictures they have on their alts

Tandor

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Mephit wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

So many negative posts from excited players. I just wanted to remind you that not all players see such changes as extremely negative. Although the fact that there are players who complete the same quests several times baffles me. But not the point. I will speak from my experience.
I have my main character. He's a little RP. All quests and new chapters I go through only on it. The exception was with the Russian localization of the game, when I replayed all the vanilla zones on alt. I have always tried to get all the achievements on one character, since achiv hunting is one of the elements of the endgame in eso. I already have a couple of trifecta from the trials and a few from the dungeons. However, now I'm playing in the raid on the alt, because we have an optimized raid and the place for my main character's class is occupied. And I'm happy that I can now just play freely without worrying about progress going past the total score. It doesn't bother me anymore.
I'm glad that I can buy furniture for achievements, which are only on alts. I am also glad that I can now buy furniture from other alliances and I do not have to spend hundreds of hours to get a grand overlod on a character from another alliance. I can just now play pvp freely since my main already has 5 stars.
Yes, it would be nice to have a notification under each achievement where it would be written by which character and when it was received. But if not, then this is not a tragedy for me. Perhaps I would prefer to remove the record of which character received this or that achievement altogether.
Also, the progress bars on the maps and other problems should of course be fixed.

You say...

Although the fact that there are players who complete the same quests several times baffles me

You are of course welcome to that opinion, but I think this highlights the problem.

ZOS - who is your target customer? those of us who enjoy replaying content, or those "baffled" by those that do?

Again, the reasoning of who is the target audience in the game-service. Honestly, it's already getting too toxic. Most players are casual players who don't have time to close the same zones multiple times on different characters. Especially for the sake of the pictures with the score, which they already already have on other characters.

For many players, it isn't about closing a zone on multiple characters or completing all achievements on one character. Many of them don't have a main, or a designated achievement character etc. It's about playing all of their characters equally, fully through the game, and taking on achievements and other zone objectives as part of that gameplay. In my case, for example, when I run a new character through Khenarthi's Roost I want to catch the zone's rare fish and get acknowledgement for that. When I'm in Auridon I want to explore Del's Claim, kill the boss and get acknowledgement for completing the delve. Those things won't be possible under the present changes because my new character's achievements will show them already done before I entered those zones. I don't want to port into a zone for the first time with that new character and find the map fully detailed because another character has completed it. I don't want to be locked out of certain quests because another character has already done them.

It is currently possible to play the game fully with multiple characters, and it should remain that way or else it becomes a single character game which is not how many of us enjoy ESO. Other people play the game differently, and that's fine by me. However, taking away my way of playing in order to enhance theirs isn't fine, and it should be possible for both playstyles to continue co-existing as they have for 8 years, which would be the case if these changes were made optional.

silvereyes

In the past, ZOS has requested that feedback be given more in terms of things like goals, user stories, pain points, etc., rather than wholesale technical requirements. It makes sense, since it's their job to come up with the technical solutions.

In that vein, here's my first attempt to try to summarize the points of view I've seen here. Players want to:

• Prove that they earned a title or achievement to others while logged in as any character, even if the achievement was earned on another character.
• Be able to treat titles as RP cosmetics that are earned on one character and used on another that fits them better thematically.
• Be able to tell if the character's current title was earned by them or some other character.
• Denote that some achievements / titles were earned by multiple characters.
• Repeat achievements on multiple characters, receive notifications when one is earned, and track the date at which it was earned by each character.
• Aggregate progress towards RNG based achievements like monster trophy hunter achievements using activities of all characters combined, so as not to feel like playing an alt is risking getting a drop you need for the achievement on the wrong character.
• Not have to unlock dyes and other account-bound cosmetics/collections with character-only activity, but rather based on account-wide activity, so as not to "waste" effort.
• Be able to track character progress based upon when they completed different achievements personally, even if there is still an aggregated account-wide achievements view.
• Be able to choose or credit which characters get RP achievements like Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild and Legerdemain
• Have questing and exploration remain unchanged, including the ability to do quests on multiple characters, earn rewards and XP multiple times from those quests, and track completion of quests at the character level without having quest steps magically auto-complete or have locations auto-discovered.
• Track completion of world events, world bosses and delve bosses at the character level, independent of achievements.
• Have the transition from the old achievements system to the new system happen in a way that gives the player agency in when they receive the achievements.

Does this sum it up? If there were some technical solution ZOS came up with to make all of these things happen simultaneously, would this please everyone? Is there anything I missed?

Edit:

I forgot to add:

• Don't make Undaunted harder to level on alts due to the lack of XP from achievements.
• Don't make Scrying / Excavation harder to level on alts due to the lack of XP from achievements.

heaven13

Think of poor dragon dailies, or harrowstorm achievements. They’re already a pain to get on live when there’s not an event since few people visit them. I imagine there will be even less if this goes live as is.

Aashiana

Some of us who are serious achievement hounds (I have over 44,000 global points) have just logged into the PTS to see what it looks like. Here are some initial impressions, some strongly positive, some negative:

The Great: We LOVE combining slayers, monster trophies, any achieves that require accumulation of points etc. across characters. What this does for us is formerly we felt like we could only play our "main" most of the time to complete these achieves that are mainly grinding out kills or BG points or AP or a million gold in laundered items. We were THRILLED that our monster trophies, for example, stack across characters. We really only ever want to have to get these kinds of achieves once, and it would be nice if we could play our alts more often and contribute to those totals. We have been working on some of these achieves literally for YEARS and would like to be able to complete them using a variety of characters, more as we just go about playing the game. Partly because we might be tired of just playing that one char to get these and want to try something different.

Less Great: Most of us do track our dungeon, trial, and arena achieves separately. Partly to gain the personal satisfaction of making each character good enough to clear vMA or whatever, and partly because we run dungeons and trials over and over and it keeps them fresh, giving you that little thrill of an achieve accomplished. And partly because in end-game content, a player needs to be able to demonstrate that the role or character s/he is bringing to a trial or even dungeon trifecta has progressed to the point where they're capable of doing it. With account-wide trial achieves, a raid lead is not going to know whether a player has gotten their achieves even on the same role or class and whether or not they're ready for the content. We do have end-game players in our dungeon and trials guilds that stay interested in the game because they can earn these achieves on multiple characters, and just because everyone doesn't feel that way doesn't mean it isn't a real thing. I would like to have individual character tracking still be possible for these specific kinds of achievements, while still retaining an account-wide achievement system - even if it is just like the dungeon add-on that currently shows you which of your chars has completed an achievement when you hover over it.

A note on the suggestion to make the entire system optional. I feel like this looses the benefits identified above, since you would not be able to stack the tedious achieves across characters and increase play time for alts. I would rather see a more elegant hybrid that recognizes the differences between different kinds of achievements and allows character tracking for achieves that really reflect that specific character's skill (including a few others, like maybe Emp).

Ambivalent: I don't care about the rewards as much. I don't have any problem with a person wearing a title on any char if they have earned it at least once. For me the titles are as much RPing as they are flexing. I like my title to fit the char and I like having more to choose from. We can already use skins and mounts and personalities we have earned on one char on any of our chars, so this isn't all that different.

Mephit

silvereyes wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

Mephit wrote: »

ZOS - who is your target customer? those of us who enjoy replaying content, or those "baffled" by those that do?

False binary choice.

The answer should be "all of them".

The whole us vs. them thing is pretty toxic in my opinion. I agree, we really should be focusing on ways to make everyone happy.

Yeah, I agree it is "all of them", but there have been a number of posts by people that don't seem to understand that we all play the game differently, and what irks me is that this change seems to be catering for them.

The vast majority of people get it and want a compromise, but I suspect it is too late.

I am angry, and I don't apologise for it. Something I worked hard for and care about is being taken away. Yeah it's just a game, but I look forward to jumping in and working on an old "hard or grindy" achievement for a new favourite toon.

They are needlessly breaking it.

tim77

silvereyes wrote: »

• Don't make Undaunted harder to level on alts due to the lack of XP from achievements.
• Don't make Scrying / Excavation harder to level on alts due to the lack of XP from achievements.

Well, these are specifically excluded from the changes, as well as skyshards.
But (or because?) these can all be bought in the crownshop

Djiku

I am all for Account Wide Achievements. Yes, even Titles.