PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

Wolf_Eye

Melina Cassel appears in Markarth for the Friend In Deed achievement.

She does not give a quest, instead, her dialogue is directly attached to the achievement itself.

I have already tested this.

1. I did not have the achievement starting off.
2. I went onto Character A and talked to her. I got through her first dialogue stage and got 1/5 completion on the achievement
3. I then switched to Character B (a brand new character). I found her and talked to her.
4. Instead of treating Character B like a new person, she treated them as though they were the same as Character A, and the dialogue went on to the second dialogue stage.

The Adoring Fan works much the same way as Melina does, so I would assume that this would be the case with him as well. But he is much harder to test because he's much harder to find (in spite of me yelling out "By Azura! By Azura! By Azura!" in the chat box while wandering Blackwood, he has yet to materialize)

I'm sorry. But I cannot accept this. The Friend In Deed and Adoring Fan achievements are pure story achievements. Literally, the whole point of these ones is to experience the story and dialogue they come with.

What's worse, is that Melina has splitting dialogue choices, so you can't ever do it again on an alt to see the alternative choices. You are literally locked out of this permanently.

I can't say that achievement hunters would really deeply care about having an extra 10 measly points on their achievement score across alts all because a Friend In Deed auto completed on their alts.

But I can say that as a House Ravenwatch fan I really DEEPLY care about being permanently locked out of story content that involves one of my favorite characters after only getting to do it ONCE.

Please. Imagine your fav character in the game, and imagine for a moment that you can't ever do some content with them ever again after doing it only once. Please understand this. Please please please can we please fix this?

cynaes

Jaraal wrote: »

The problem is that ZOS has always catered to the casuals, usually at the expense of the hardcore end gamers. And it’s the casual mentality of “I don’t wanna have to do all this work, give me my achievements now” that has fueled this change in how the game works.

This attitude about casual players being lazy is exactly why I have a hard time understanding most arguments against account-wide achievements. These arguments often sound very elitist and along the lines of "if you're only casual, you're enjoyment of the game probably shouldnt matter".

Although I'm more than 5.000 hours into the game, I consider myself a casual player and I don't consider myself lazy. Account wide achievements bring a host of advantages to me, that's why I'm all for them.

Araneae6537

I have played MMORPGs with accountwide achievements before but in none of them was each character’s ability to interact with the world and quest curtailed by it! How could anyone think this is okay???

This is worse than I had feared. I liked the little achievements and XP boosts from exploring on a new character and more than that, the dungeon achievements which gave me a certain sense of accomplishment, a little dopamine kick when it pops up on the screen and a desire to complete these achievements on all my dungeoneering characters. I had absolutely no desire to have all achievements on one character as to me it seems a lack of any choices and so I have different characters focused on different aspects, different playstyles. I totally respect that other people enjoy the game differently and if the system could be modified to better accommodate everyone, great, and I can sacrifice some of what I enjoy to that end if it must be. But losing the ability for my characters to do certain quests, to interract with NPCs based on the choices made with THAT CHARACTER, that is going too far, and how does trashing all my characters’ identity help anyone???

silvereyes

There could be benefits to having separate achievement tracking at the character level in addition to the aggregate, account-wide level, even if you don't even care about character achievements at all:

• Achievements currently excluded from going account-wide, like Maelstrom Arena and public dungeon group bosses, could be removed from the exclusions list. The skill point reward could be associated with the character achievement, but not the account-wide achievement.
• Undaunted reputation could be awarded for dungeon achievements again, just at the character level, while the account level achievement would have no reputation reward.
• Antiquities skills could reward XP for character-level achievements again, allowing those skill lines to be leveled faster the second time.
• Numerous bugs with quests, delves, world bosses and dolmens/encounters could be avoided by coupling their progression logic with character level achievements. Having separate tracking at the account and character level would allow these bugs to be fixed without adding their achievements to those excluded from going account-wide.

Yuualun

I thinking about this for days now because this whole thing don't let me sleep anyway.

I try to understand why people are against two views where one works exactly as the pts and one is the old character specific view and I think it is like this:

Let's say I got the god slayer but I had to do it on another char and actually want it on my main.
But as long as there is an optional second view there is still "proof" that this character in fact never got it. That's why they also want the "earnd by:" tooltip erased.
[snip]

It's is kinda ironic in the end of the day they also don't want real account wide achievements where all the achievements belong to the account not the characters. They want all achievements on their favorite char and pretend this char did it.

I don't really know what to do with this "realization" but it kind of explains why we fail to find a common ground

Because while one side don't want to lose their individual characters, the other side want's exactly that: Erase every individuality in order to pretend all their chars did the same.

[edited for baiting]

Wolf_Eye

Spent so long on Blackwood roads trying to find Adoring Fan (With Character B that I list below). Blackwood seems extra large when you don't have riding training.

I finally found him Just as I suspected, he worked exactly like Melina did.

1. I already previously had 1 set of dialogue completed on an already existing Character A, so the quest in my log read 1/5
2. Used Character B (a brand new character. Literally only born today). Talked to the Fan with Character B
3. He starts off immediately with his 2nd set of dialogue, treating Character B as though they are Character A.
("Remember me?" No, Mr. Fan, I do not remember you. This is literally a new person)

I'm sorry I'm just....I'm so tired.

Please give me Melina Cassel back.

doesurmindglow

silvereyes wrote: »

doesurmindglow wrote: »

I decided to take the new character and play through the first quest to see what happens when you're supposed to go meet with Clivia Tharn in that same throne room, figuring that might trigger a reset where Queen Khamira would despawn, as Queen Khamira does not yet exist. BUT NOPE, both Queen Khamira and Clivia Tharn occupy the throne at the same time which is, needless to say, rather awkward:

Heh, good stuff. Please report it in the bug reports thread.

Also, please edit your comment with

[spoiler][/spoiler]

tags, to avoid giving away the story for those of us who still haven't played through it.

Ah yea thanks. Edited.

doesurmindglow

Jaraal wrote: »

Wow, what a nightmare. And this is just one of hundreds of quests?

Yikes.

To be fair, I don't know that this bug occurs anywhere else; it's possible I just happened upon the one case where making titles account-wide create a weird instance/phasing conflict in the overland content. But I might go looking for others and see if it occurs in other places as well.

Jaraal

cynaes wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

The problem is that ZOS has always catered to the casuals, usually at the expense of the hardcore end gamers. And it’s the casual mentality of “I don’t wanna have to do all this work, give me my achievements now” that has fueled this change in how the game works.

This attitude about casual players being lazy is exactly why I have a hard time understanding most arguments against account-wide achievements. These arguments often sound very elitist and along the lines of "if you're only casual, you're enjoyment of the game probably shouldnt matter".

Although I'm more than 5.000 hours into the game, I consider myself a casual player and I don't consider myself lazy. Account wide achievements bring a host of advantages to me, that's why I'm all for them.

And yet many people have stated in this thread and others that 'I want X title for my other character, but I don't want to have to do it all over again so let me have account wide titles.' Or 'But I don't wanna have to get monster trophies on individual characters, let me lump them all together so I don't have to do as much work.'

I never said anyone was lazy (those are your words only), but the theme is that people just don't want to play the game as it's been intended for the last eight years. They want shortcuts. So let's not try to whitewash it.

Jaraal

doesurmindglow wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Wow, what a nightmare. And this is just one of hundreds of quests?

Yikes.

To be fair, I don't know that this bug occurs anywhere else; it's possible I just happened upon the one case where making titles account-wide create a weird instance/phasing conflict in the overland content. But I might go looking for others and see if it occurs in other places as well.

What would make me particularly unhappy would be if I couldn't do the Imperial City questline any more. The Drake of Blades is my favorite character, and I enjoy doing the entire thing on all my alts once they hit level 10. To think that they would be locked out of that fun quest is rather disheartening.

MECHA_STREISAND

skinnycheeks wrote: »

There is so much here but figured I'd link my feedback as well. It is a rather short video but is probably easier to follow than reading a write-up. Thanks for considering our feedback. I think the system is a good idea overall but just needs some tweaks.

Watched your video this morning and 100% agree - earning the titles on each character gives a reason to keep doing the really hard endgame stuff, so if this reward is removed then it needs to be replaced with something otherwise people aren't going to bother.

Speaking as someone who struggles to find motivation to do stuff - give us a reward or we aren't going to do it.

PS - to be honest, I wouldn't want to use a title on a character that didn't earn it directly.

(Edited out duplicated video)

Jiscarlo

valkyrie93 wrote: »

can anyone confirm if pvp rank is account wide now?

The Rank is not account wide bug the achievements and titles with it.

kind_hero

cynaes wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

The problem is that ZOS has always catered to the casuals, usually at the expense of the hardcore end gamers. And it’s the casual mentality of “I don’t wanna have to do all this work, give me my achievements now” that has fueled this change in how the game works.

This attitude about casual players being lazy is exactly why I have a hard time understanding most arguments against account-wide achievements. These arguments often sound very elitist and along the lines of "if you're only casual, you're enjoyment of the game probably shouldnt matter".

Although I'm more than 5.000 hours into the game, I consider myself a casual player and I don't consider myself lazy. Account wide achievements bring a host of advantages to me, that's why I'm all for them.

I consider myself casual as well (even though I have thousands of hours of playtime), yet I don't like this change as it is implemented right now. ESO has a ton of character centered achievements, like reaching a certain level, story progression, dungeon completion, etc, so merging all of those dilutes the experience of playing a different character. It's the other side of the same coin, because on the other hand, you say, well, I have done that already, I don't want to redo that for the achievement. In some cases I feel the same, and this is why people want this, we all start with the grindy achievements which are mostly counters or statistics. But where we stop is what sets up apart.

What you are missing is that cloning the achievements of your main, or merging the achievements of your alts will feel like a big gain for a while, but with time, you will feel less and less motivated to play an alt, except for situations when you want a certain role, etc. Sometimes I wish to go and do a whole new zone with one of my alts, and focus on that journey until it's done. Not having any achievements for all the progress in that area will definitely make my experience less enjoyable. Also, not being able to track my bosses progress through a public dungeon will make running such a dungeon less appealing to me, and I mention this scenario because I tend to re-run public dungeons with people who did not complete them, and for that I pick an alt who did not do it, because it's more fun to get an achievement than just loot (which is mostly useless).

You are not playing with your account, but with an avatar, so that's why a char can have multiple decisions in a quest, chose to do thieving or stay out of it, focus on crafting, etc. The achievements reflect that, like having zero murders on a lawful char. OK, not everyone cares about that, but for those who do, this implementation hurts their playstyle a lot.

Having achievement points account wide is the way to go, and maybe there should be an option like track achievements on this char yes/no, for people who want to play as you. So, by saying that, I respect your style and choice. However, you must consider the implications of what you wish for other players and the time they put in their alts. Like multiple master anglers, or very dedicated raiders with multiple trifectas. Deleting these multiple achievements is almost as deleting the character for some people.

SerafinaWaterstar

I have said this before (not sure which thread tho lol) but just because titles are account-wide, that will not solve ‘gatekeeping’ in end game trials.

Most prog/achievement chasing groups want a dps test - so you are still going to have to show that. So even if you are Godslayer on your Nightblade, you will have to pass the dps on your Templar to join the group.

SerafinaWaterstar

Been thinking about the ‘character v player’ and *who* has done the achievements.

Those who say its the player, and the individual characters don’t matter, don’t seem to understand the enjoyment & fun in mastering a different class & skill line.

It’s like playing a musical instrument.

I may be a virtuoso on the violin, but have no idea (beyond the basics) when it comes to the piano. Or the clarinet. Or the harp.

But I learn & measure my progress*- can I play that piece yet? If I play with others, am I in harmony with them, or are there aspects I need to work on?

Please let those that want to have some options around this, such as opt in/out or keep a separate character tab. Just not the way it is on the pts.

{* on console at least, achievements are so linked in with progress, its the only means of seeing what have done/need to do in the game for each individual ‘instrument’}

Nemezijus

My gut feeling is that the switch to global achievements is to reduce the database management and ease up on the servers. Upon merging character-based achievements they could reduce database count up to 18-fold. I don't think that adding another layer of complexity - keeping track of global progress on a separate tab - is in any way beneficial for the servers.

Saieden

cynaes wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

The problem is that ZOS has always catered to the casuals, usually at the expense of the hardcore end gamers. And it’s the casual mentality of “I don’t wanna have to do all this work, give me my achievements now” that has fueled this change in how the game works.

This attitude about casual players being lazy is exactly why I have a hard time understanding most arguments against account-wide achievements. These arguments often sound very elitist and along the lines of "if you're only casual, you're enjoyment of the game probably shouldnt matter".

Although I'm more than 5.000 hours into the game, I consider myself a casual player and I don't consider myself lazy. Account wide achievements bring a host of advantages to me, that's why I'm all for them.

I think you are both missing the fundamental issues raised: the vast majority of players have no problem with having account-wide achievements in the game, which can then be linked to steam, PSN, XBLX, etc., however a very significant portion of us do not want it at at the expense of the complete removal of per character progress tracking.

What is gained by the change as it is currently implemented is barely more than superficial convenience, and really only in the case of titles and buying furnishings from vendors. What is lost, on the hand, is character identity in the form of their achievement history which is of far more significant value to the individual player, and thus is far more likely to turn players away from the game than if they never did anything with account-wide achievements at all.

Furthermore, the system also has the side effect of making some content literally unrepeatable (Museums pieces and their associated rewards), added a daily quest time-gate (Undaunted), while at the same time, they have actively decided to functionally ring-fence all content (aka running grinds) that reward you with actual gameplay progression from the achievement system altogether, which just so happen to be the every single one of the most time-consuming things about fully levelling a new character.

RaddlemanNumber7

I was hoping to use the map and the "Map Completion" flood bars to track my characters' individual progress after this mess goes live. It appears that is not going to be so simple.

This is the map I got when this new character visited Stonefalls for the first time. All I have done with this character is ride from the Davons Watch wayshrine to the Inner Sea Armature and "discovered" it. I haven't entered the delve, but it shows as completed. I'm not using any add-ons.

The flood bars on the left show the little bits of Stonefalls I have already completed on the Live NA Server. If it was the EU server everything would be filled already.



I entered the Inner Sea Armature delve for the first time on this character. The boss was not there.

I was able to use the wayshrines marked on the Stonesfalls map, even though this character hadn't been there before.

I notice some inconsistency with the way Striking Locales are displayed. Ones discovered already by another character are not shown in the flood bar...

Yuualun

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Been thinking about the ‘character v player’ and *who* has done the achievements.

Those who say its the player, and the individual characters don’t matter, don’t seem to understand the enjoyment & fun in mastering a different class & skill line.

I agree but I fear we can try to explain this as many times but it won't change the a thing.
People play very differently and this is fine.

For some people a Character is just a simple Avatar and a Tool others have an actual deep bond to their characters. Both sides will never truly understand the other side. I for example could never see my Character as "just a tool".

We need a compromise. But a compromise means that both sides have to give up something and live with a solution that is not 100% perfect for them. But a solution we all can live with.

I am glad that many on both sides have indicate they are fine with such a compromise. (Of course there are some that don't and I think this is sad because it is rather selfish...)

Still I hope we can find a compromise and that we get an official statement rather sooner than later. Because this waiting and not knowing feels truly horrible...

SerafinaWaterstar

It has been suggested that the toggle from the map that shows basic progress could be used to track individual character progress - please can someone test this & see if that is still the case, or is that all filled in too if already completed zone on a different character?

jecks33

Does the new sistem merge the requirements progressions for certain achievements?

Es. "Veteran Flame Colossus Slayer - Defeat 50 Flame Colossi in Veteran City of Ash II"

If I have killed 25 colossus on the char A and 25 colossus on char B will I get the achievement?

SerafinaWaterstar

@Yuualun

Whilst I definitely am one who cannot understand the ‘player not character’ view, I do also appreciate the need for some sort of compromise.

Even if that means stepping back from implementation to tweak it until the most people are happy - better than to put as it is now into the live game.

Dark_Lord_Kuro

AlnilamE wrote: »

renne wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Salmeyna wrote: »

Having another tab for achievements on account is not real accountwide achievements, and just in these thread there were already plenty of people trying telling the same. No, it's not a compromise. An optionality is a compromise, a simple tab to see what you already know is just a punch in the face for those who got their hopes up.
While i don't want to invalidate people who don't want this awesome function implemented, stop acting like noone wants it. Heck, even polls started by players show that the majority wants ACCOUNTWIDE ACHIEVEMENTS. Not an overview tab.
Also stop speaking for the whole endgame community. People like me have to speak up because if we won't, others might assume you speak for us. There are plenty of people in the endgame community who love this. In fact, out of all of my guildies we talked about it with, only a single one voiced his displeasure.

Why would an overview not work for you if it works the same way as the achievements work on PTS now, but with a separate tab for the specific character you are currently on?

Because it's not accountwide achievements, it's an overview tab.

But if you only look at the overview tab (and it works the same as it works on the PTS now, ie, different characters contribute to an achievement) what difference would it make?

Be able to view it and having ot unlocked on all character are 2 completly different thing

OleandersOne

I've played for a little over four years, and have never seen an issue that would force me to the forums. This does.

At the heart, this is an economic question for me. I'm a person that rereads books, watches movies more than once, and replays games often as many times as I have time to, and will put hard cash to that pursuit. If the replayability of a game is diminished to the point that there are chunks missing, or quest progression that has been broken, what incentive do I have to pay for the privilege? This isn't a flounce, it's just watching where I put my very hard-earned money.

Shnax

Personally, I am not too concerned about titles. I will probably not use a title a character has not earned individually, but I don't really mind if others do.
I agree that there should be more rewards to the big endgame challenges, especially in a way that encourages repeating them.

What really bothers me about this change is losing the ability to track each character's progress. It feels like a completely unnecessary loss of content, because completing things again with a different class or role is an important part of the game for many players and should remain a relevant play style.
This is not a matter of casual versus endgame. There are casuals who want to do public dungeons on multiple characters and there are endgame players who want trifectas on multiple characters. Both should be able to get the achievements on each of their alts.

Having a total progress that includes achievements on all characters as an additional feature would be great, but removing individual progress is just making the game worse.

Salmeyna

AlnilamE wrote: »

I understand where you are coming from, but at the same time, this just sucks the fun right out of the game for me. Because it removes replayability of alts and it also gives me an "easy way out" for achievements that would be more challenging my main than on some of my alts. And that lowers my motivation to play and get better. What's the point if you can just use an easy-mode class and get the same result?

I've played ESO pretty much non-stop since launch. For the first time, I'm considering stopping, because the loss if individuation of my characters completely changes the game for me.

I don't doubt that. Every major change has people happy about it and people against it. And with all the different playstyles many players have different motivations, which results in different arguments too. I am well aware that there are people who only enjoy the game if they can repeat the same thing over and over again, and there are people like me, who need to have everything. Completely different playstyles. And it's not about possibility, as someone stated. What both niche groups have in common is, that both of our groups work towards something. For my group accountwide achievements make this target seem more possible.
The grind has sucked the fun out of the game for me, this change would bring it back.
I don't choose easy-mode class, each of my chars has a backstory and a playstyle.
Fun fact, i haven't been able to finish story content with more than one character yet, because of grinding everything else.

I'm all for optionality. I don't want to take away a gameplay style from anyone, so i expect that noone keeps me from getting a change that makes me enjoy mine.
I won't threaten with stopping to buy every single CE since launch, cancelling my sub, not buying any more crown crates or leaving the game. I will keep playing, i will keep paying. I'll just be really disappointed if we don't get it.
But this is my view. I want real unlocks, with no option to re-unlock it. I don't care about details. You can have counters. You can have names. You can have markings. I don't care, i just want the possibility taken from me to grind something to reearn something that is missing. The missing part is what bugs me and makes me obsess towards a nigh-unreachable goal. And two different tabs/overview tab/whatever you want to name it is not a solution, nor a compromise.

Bragerth

I’m sure they will fix quests or other things along the way, everyone’s complaining about this so much, are we even testing the other changes pts have. It be sad that everyone is focused on this so much that there might be other big problems with combat etc.

The way Kevin was talking sounded like they will be listening once this does go live beyond it being implemented. I would like Account wide achievements.

But I also think those who don’t want to opt in for it should have a choice but also later if they decide they want to opt in they still can.

Overall everyone’s been complaining about this and I have a feeling that this change is coming no matter how much no one wants it. I think there half the community wants it half the community doesn’t. Instead of complaing about it coming let’s get them
To fix the quests that are affected by the account wide achivements so they work with the system.

silvereyes

Nemezijus wrote: »

My gut feeling is that the switch to global achievements is to reduce the database management and ease up on the servers. Upon merging character-based achievements they could reduce database count up to 18-fold. I don't think that adding another layer of complexity - keeping track of global progress on a separate tab - is in any way beneficial for the servers.

It would be good to hear from ZOS as to what their goals are. All this talk of reducing server load is pure speculation.

Tandor

tomofhyrule wrote: »

renne wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Salmeyna wrote: »

Having another tab for achievements on account is not real accountwide achievements, and just in these thread there were already plenty of people trying telling the same. No, it's not a compromise. An optionality is a compromise, a simple tab to see what you already know is just a punch in the face for those who got their hopes up.
While i don't want to invalidate people who don't want this awesome function implemented, stop acting like noone wants it. Heck, even polls started by players show that the majority wants ACCOUNTWIDE ACHIEVEMENTS. Not an overview tab.
Also stop speaking for the whole endgame community. People like me have to speak up because if we won't, others might assume you speak for us. There are plenty of people in the endgame community who love this. In fact, out of all of my guildies we talked about it with, only a single one voiced his displeasure.

Why would an overview not work for you if it works the same way as the achievements work on PTS now, but with a separate tab for the specific character you are currently on?

Because it's not accountwide achievements, it's an overview tab.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

So, if there were two tabs, an 'Account' and a 'Character,' would that solve your issue? Or would you need to see Character achievements completely removed?

I picture a system where all characters can contribute to the account wide one. Let's take the March of Sacrifices challenger as an example:
Character 1 does the speedrun and character 2 gets the nodeath. You go in later on character 1 and do the hard mode.
After all of that, you unlock the Beast personality and your account tab says you got the challenger achievement. However, character 1's page shows that they did the speedrun and HM, and character 2's page shows they did the nodeath. If you later get the nodeath on character 1, it pops that character 1 got the challenger, but your account already had it.

Would this be an acceptable compromise? Because that's what a lot of people are suggesting. And if not, many of us who do support a system like this don't understand how being able to look at character 1 or character 2's achievements will be a net negative. It certainly allows for replayability since achievement hunters can see that character 1 still needed something, but getting it is only giving a character-based achievement since the account already unlocked it.

In this proposal, it would be. Would this be an acceptable compromise? It gives everyone exactly what they want - you can accrue account-wide achievements on all characters, but you still have character-specific data.

It seems that most people who are pro-account wide achieves have "I want to collect Monster Trophies across the whole account!" as one of the most, if not the most driving factor. If it worked like the above, would you see a problem with it? As yet, nobody has addressed that, even though several pro-character-achievement people have proposed a system like that. It seems like most people want to make this "PTS or current live, no other options."

Again, I can't expect that ZOS will adopt a system like this, but on the surface it seems to do everything that everyone wants. It's probably easiest for ZOS to use the PTS system or scrap it for the live system, but if they delayed it a little and made something like the above that would make everyone happy, wouldn't that be better than them throwing one group or the other under the bus?

It does nothing for those who want to retain the character-specific system for achievements, and who don't want one character doing a bit of an achievement and a different character doing another bit of it. The only real way any change can appeal to everyone is if there is a selectable choice between the existing system and a full account-wide system. Failing that, the best compromise would probably be retaining the present character-specific system for earning achievements while making all achievement-based titles account-wide, given that a main reason why some repeat the achievements they don't want to do again is only to get the title on their alts. That, together with the addition of an account-wide summary showing who did what would probably be a decent enough outcome for everyone, although it would doubtless take some time to develop.

Mycroftz

AlnilamE wrote: »

You can repeat quests and get the quest reward on as many characters as you like. You just won't get an achievement for it.

You can’t repeat quests that can only be done once, and if the system overwrites your achievements in a way that auto-completes these for you, then you won’t be able to do these quests on all toons.