PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

wenchmore420b14_ESO

Just my vote on this.
Don't like it.
I tried it out on PTS and not a fan.
I realize lots have requested this, but I think we are seeing now how many "do not" want it.
I know it is too late to do anything. It is in stone whether we like it or not.
PLEASE! Perhaps a option button?
My 2 drakes.
Huzzah!

SydneyGrey

Please don't take away the ability to get multiple music boxes by doing the Bard's College quest. I love that, and it would be a very, very sad day if you took that away.
Not only sad, but it would be particularly awful for people who can't afford to buy music boxes in the crown store.

SydneyGrey

I just checked on the PTS and sure enough, the ability to do the Bard's College quest multiple times is now gone. You can only do it once now and then it's gone forever. Now when you go in on an alt, the instruments are all already in place, and you no longer can get the quest at all. I went in on an alt that I knew hadn't done the quest previously. The quest-giver gives you the same welcoming speech that he'd give if you were about to start the quest, but you can't get the quest. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. You'll never be able to get another music box again if this awful change goes live. Please don't do this to us, ZOS. This is what that quest-giver says now, and it's now nonsensical since he isn't giving you the quest any more.

TheImperfect

I think overall I'd prefer it kept as it is and not account wide.

IronWooshu

TheImperfect wrote: »

I think overall I'd prefer it kept as it is and not account wide.

They could have implemented this way better and made everyone somewhat happy by meeting in the middle but this is so far to one side that even some pro account wide achievement players don't like it.

The zone guide should at least be empty for each alt to track stuff. That's something they could have done before implementing the achievements in their current state.

Xarc

It is hard to imagine players will continue to play the same way they did until now.

Once you unlocked a title on your main char, why would you try to do a specific dungeon in a specific mode if you already got the achievement on your account...
Maybe you got it with your NB dd, but why your templar heal would try this ?
- For fun ? lol.
- To help a mate ? It will happen 1 time or 2 max.

colossalvoids

Xarc wrote: »

It is hard to imagine players will continue to play the same way they did until now.

Once you unlocked a title on your main char, why would you try to do a specific dungeon in a specific mode if you already got the achievement on your account...
Maybe you got it with your NB dd, but why your templar heal would try this ?
- For fun ? lol.
- To help a mate ? It will happen 1 time or 2 max.

Currently there's motives, undaunted pages once a month, pledges for keys / stones and gear which is drawing people to repeatedly run them. AC wide or not won't really change much in dungeons because people re-running for a title on an alt are the biggest minority probably, also a one time deal. And idk why fun having a little "lol" next to it when it's a primary factor for a lot of us doing them for years. Yeah, it can be hella fun just as any other activity.

It's way harder to draw people there for a first time if it's not Dragonbones ones or MoS as those are having the only sought after rewards nowadays, which actually needs addressing not having anything past vet clear for years.

fezarel

I requested forum access to make this single post for the slightest chance it will make a difference. All of this has been said before, just making sure my voice is also heard/read by ZOS.

In my opinion the system as they want to implement it now is very bad. The negatives in my view:

For those who play their characters and not their general account (which is me):
- It prevents replaying some content and gaining certain rewards on alt characters or even your main character (if you have one) if you did content on your alt first.
- It removes a big part of the journey characters personally make and removes a very natural way to keep track of it. It will be extra bad for console players, who will not have add-ons to perhaps regain some of this.
- It removes the satisfaction (which is a real thing, why else would almost every modern big game or gaming platform implement it) of gaining achievements, however small or meaningless.

For utility purposes the account-wide achievements seem to fall short:

- For those who hoped to avoid grinding hard utility things on their character with account wide achievements:Your crafting motifs and all other grindy/long-taking crafting knowledge is not shared.
- You can buy all achievement furnishings without relogging. This is convenient, but how often will you benefit from this?
- You can now have all titles you ever got on every character. I don't care about this myself, but I see quite a few people are really upset about this.

So the biggest selling points seem to be:
- Some people identify with their account more than with their characters and they are happy that they can get as much achievements as possible without being tied to a character.
- Some people really like to have all titles available to them on all characters.

To me it seems that the upsides, where the shared titles are not an upside at all to a proportion of the players, are not large enough to warrant removing systems that facilitate a character based playing style from the game. This stings extra as it is not necessary at all to make one playing style more important than another and both could easily co-exist using some of the solutions proposed in this thread.

One last thought: is this perhaps a schism between people that often play solo CRPGs (character first play style) versus people that mostly play MMOs (account first play style)? I don't think it is important, but I notice many proponents use the argument that other MMOs have account-wide achievements and that ESO is lagging behind in that aspect.

So ZOS, please don't take away from the character first play style. I hope you can postpone this account wide achievement change until you have found a way to implement it to make those in favour of it happy without angering a significant part of your player base.

Katinas

So far there has been zero reaction from those like me asking "What about ESO's replay-ability as an MMORPG game if proposed changes go through?" We will not be able to complete a vast amount of quests, earn quest rewards, replay same quest on different character and choose different ways to complete that quest and so on. The open possibilities that you can play ESO would be narrowed down to doing it one single way and one time only.
These changes simply cannot go to Live server.

matterandstuff

The implementation of accountwide achievements is so extreme here that I don't understand what the designers think the continuing replayability will be after it's done. It's basically housing, dungeons and trials (until you clear the achievement the first time), and new zones. That's it.

We're losing the ability to replay at least some significant quests, we're losing the ability to play through a zone on different characters and track ordinary progress the way we've always been able to; effectively, it flat-out nukes the entire (quite common) character-based playstyle from orbit.

I've been more enthusiastic about the game of late, but I really think the developers are wildly underestimating the player exodus that's going to hit the game after this update. There are so many casual players who don't even realise how much of the way they've just always played this game is going to cease to be possible afterwards.

I really urge the developers to pull account-wide achievements out of Update 33 as a matter of urgency and take the entire implementation back to the drawing board to come up with something more widely tolerable. This specific take on account-wide achievements is an ESO-killer. It's the single greatest threat to the continued viability of the game in the time I've been playing.

Mushroomancer

This has no doubt been proposed somewhere in the (as of writing) 732 comments above, but I don't have the time to sift through all of the discussion right now, so here goes.

I really think the simplest solution to this is having a "dual" system for achievements. That means having an account-wide achievements list, alongside a character-specific one. The way I would make it work is that progress towards achievements is counted for single characters first and then cumulated into the account-wide list.
The achievement is considered completed on the account-wide list the first time it is achieved by any character, or the first time the collective "efforts" of all characters are satisfactory for the completion of "complete the listed achievements", "cumulative" ("[blank] adventurer" and the likes), and "collection-style" achievements (monster trophies and the likes). Once an achievement is completed, the related rewards are available account-wide, including titles.
At the same time, each achievement can still be completed on a single character, allowing for people to re-obtain them multiple times, pretty much like it is in the current system.

Now, of course account-wide titles are still an issue to some people. And just to clarify, [snip] (refer to this thread) [snip]: I do understand the sense of accomplishment some people get from re-obtaining achievements and titles on different characters, I'm not saying they are in the wrong in feeling like a chunk of replay value is being taken away from them. I will say that, as per the aforementioned thread, I don't think account-wide achievements themselves are what kills replayability, they are merely highlighting the lackluster nature of the rewards that are given for replaying content, and most people are just clinging onto those objectively poor rewards because they are all we have.
This tangent aside, I think, right now, the simplest way is the much-suggested "gilded title" system, where a visual indicator of a specific character obtaining a specific title is attached to the title itself. And yes, I know this is kind of a band-aid solution to the problem, but I think it can work for the time being, while someone smarter and more creative than me at ZOS comes up with something better.

The last thing that needs to be addressed is the really buggy-feeling interactions that account-wide achievements have with some quests, especially collection/museum quests. Personally, I don't feel very affected by these interactions, but a lot of people do, and from what I've read, they feel very shoddy in the way they work in the game, almost like they are not intentional. I understand that, most likely, these seemingly broken interactions are due to the game using the related achievement to track if the quest giving out the reward can be accepted/is completed, but I really think ZOS should look into changing this in a way that those quests can be replayed on different characters and give out their rewards properly, regardless of whether the account-wide achievement for them has been completed or not.

[edited for baiting]

PurpleScroll

Very happy that they're being made account-wide. As a long term player of GW2, I am very used to them being account-wide anyway. I always found the per-character way to be really strange.

Kelinmiriel

Having seen how this is implemented on the PTS, I have to say, PLEASE, don't do it!

I signed on to my main character, that I've played far more than all the others combined, since I started almost five years ago. There are some achievements she hasn't quite gotten yet. Like "Savior of Elsweyr", and "Savior of Morrowind" - on both of those, she's finished everything except "Grand Adventurer". Not quite enough unique quests yet. (For example, 23/30 on Morrowind.)

Four characters later, I hit one who hadn't even touched the zone quests on either of those, who happened to be the one who tipped the balance on unique quests in both zones by having done a couple dailies in each, and that's the one who got credit for both Grand Adventurers AND both "Savior" achievements.

The zone guides are a mess, there are broken quests (a new character went to the Bard's College and was asked, "How would you like to become a legend?" but only had the option of "Good-bye" and didn't get a quest; went to Associate Zanon's workshop to talk to a sad, broken construct head, who wanted help, but no quest, and no Associate Zanon was there).

I love the game. I want to play it, not skip it! Please, don't do this!

I could see having a separate global achievement option to view - but please don't remove the individuality of our characters like this.

SydneyGrey

I think what sucks the most about it is that if you did a quest that has a related achievement on it five years ago, the ability to ever do that again on alts will be gone forever. You might have done it so long ago that you barely even remember doing it, yet you will never be able to do it again, ever, once this change goes live. It takes away playability for our alts.

FantasticFreddie

SydneyGrey wrote: »

I think what sucks the most about it is that if you did a quest that has a related achievement on it five years ago, the ability to ever do that again on alts will be gone forever. You might have done it so long ago that you barely even remember doing it, yet you will never be able to do it again, ever, once this change goes live. It takes away playability for our alts.

I'm literally never going to get another world boss, delve, or public dungeon achievement again, because I've done every zone in the game at least once, and that just sucks.

What we really need is just to functionally leave the system as it is, and just add a separate tab in our journal that shows our account wide achievements, maybe even show which toons have them.

Katheriah

@ZOS_Kevin are there any updates? Please don't delete individual char progress.

HumbleThaumaturge

SydneyGrey wrote: »

I just checked on the PTS and sure enough, the ability to do the Bard's College quest multiple times is now gone.

Just heard: With account-wide achievements, we will be limited to earning just 1 music box from the Western Skyrim Bards College quest (where we ride around getting musical instrument). After the Update, all of our characters will have the "“An Instrumental Triumph” achievement and will, therefore, be unable to get the quest at the Bards College (the quest will be flagged as completed for all characters).

Verified: I took a new (level 3) character to Western Skyrim and visited the Bards College. Yep, it's just like the poster says . . . all the instruments are in-place, and the quest-giver can't give a new character the quest.

Motivation: So! Get ye to Western Skyrim! And get a music box for each of your characters while you can! (I think I currently have 11. Just 7 more to go before the Update!)

Deter1UK

SydneyGrey wrote: »

I just checked on the PTS and sure enough, the ability to do the Bard's College quest multiple times is now gone. You can only do it once now and then it's gone forever. Now when you go in on an alt, the instruments are all already in place, and you no longer can get the quest at all.

This is MOST unfair.

I read above a similar post to do with Litany of Blood.

I like running alts to do the quests. This removing the ability to pick up a quest with a new character cannot be right surely?

Parasaurolophus

Katheriah wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin are there any updates? Please don't delete individual char progress.

I wouldn't expect any major updates in the first week. a week is not enough.

Saieden

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Katheriah wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin are there any updates? Please don't delete individual char progress.

I wouldn't expect any major updates in the first week. a week is not enough.

We don't need a major update, just some kind of response, much like the one that was given for the combat changes, explaining what the intention and vision is in the first place, and some idea of what they might be thinking in terms of addressing the community's concerns.

Mephit

Saieden wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Katheriah wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin are there any updates? Please don't delete individual char progress.

I wouldn't expect any major updates in the first week. a week is not enough.

We don't need a major update, just some kind of response, much like the one that was given for the combat changes, explaining what the intention and vision is in the first place, and some idea of what they might be thinking in terms of addressing the community's concerns.

Option 1 - remove this nonsense = lots of testing to ensure they remove the dross correctly
Option 2 - introduce some kind of option / middle ground = more design, development and testing
Option 3 - fight forward and treat issues as "bugs" = see various comments = terrible decision

Unless they go option 3 they are going to be busy

SerafinaWaterstar

Sorry if this has been covered but whilst have been reading through all threads, can’t remember everything after 25 (!) pages.

A lot of quest progression is mapped via achievements. All zone mq are - can someone who has access to the pts please clarify if those achievements autocomplete if one character has already done it?

(If yes, how does one progress via a mq line now?)

Elsonso

Katheriah wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin are there any updates? Please don't delete individual char progress.

It will be interesting to see what today's patch notes say. My expectation is that it will just be fixes for stuff they identified before PTS started, which could include some things players also noticed. Outside of coincidental changes, no changes from player feedback until next week.

tomofhyrule

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Sorry if this has been covered but whilst have been reading through all threads, can’t remember everything after 25 (!) pages.

A lot of quest progression is mapped via achievements. All zone mq are - can someone who has access to the pts please clarify if those achievements autocomplete if one character has already done it?

(If yes, how does one progress via a mq line now?)

Most quests are tied to the journal, not achievements. You can still do the quests on alts, and all quest hubs will show as 'uncompleted' until the characters do the quest. The only thing you don't get is achievements for doing it. This also means new characters will have a journal that tells them they completed the first MQ today and the second MQ five years ago.

Quests ties to museums are the ones that are coming out buggy since they do actually use the achievement to tally the things being collected. Also some random encounters like Melina Cassel are tallied by achievements and block characters from individual progress.

What does show as 'complete' are Delves/WBs/Dolmens, ad those are completed from the second you walk into the zone. They're not automatically discovered on the map, but as soon as you're in range, they turn white. That also means that Delve bosses won't have the quick respawn since that character technically has completed the Delve.

It's part of what makes this confusing - some achievements are tracked by character, which is marked in blue. The quest journal and things like Skyshards are tracked by character, but we can't necessarily see that information easily. If there is this tracking by character, it doesn't really seem that Account-wide achievements is really saving too much in terms of data, so why is the ability to see Character achievements being eliminated? Especially with the number of things that are tied to achievements (XP gains as well) that haven't been addressed?

It feels a bit like ZOS was just trying to throw this together, either to fix the PS5 trophy problem or to just allow people to have account titles - which I'm fine with - but didn't realize how much of the game checked achievements for progress. I'd hope that they keep the character list and just make a new account list, or that they go through achievement by achievement to see which should really be shared and which should be individual, in order to try to address both camps. As it is now, there are very few people who think the current system is the best, but if either the live or PTS systems are the one they go with, there will be a large number of people who will feel they're being cheated out of something that they had.

Katheriah

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Katheriah wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin are there any updates? Please don't delete individual char progress.

I wouldn't expect any major updates in the first week. a week is not enough.

Since this is going live pretty fast I'd expect them to have at least started a discussion to see if this is REALLY what they want to throw live.

jle30303

You say "quests are tied to the journal, not achievements".

I say "Then how can I see my COMPLETED quests in my journal"?

wolfie1.0.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Sorry if this has been covered but whilst have been reading through all threads, can’t remember everything after 25 (!) pages.

A lot of quest progression is mapped via achievements. All zone mq are - can someone who has access to the pts please clarify if those achievements autocomplete if one character has already done it?

(If yes, how does one progress via a mq line now?)

Most quests are tied to the journal, not achievements. You can still do the quests on alts, and all quest hubs will show as 'uncompleted' until the characters do the quest. The only thing you don't get is achievements for doing it. This also means new characters will have a journal that tells them they completed the first MQ today and the second MQ five years ago.

Quests ties to museums are the ones that are coming out buggy since they do actually use the achievement to tally the things being collected. Also some random encounters like Melina Cassel are tallied by achievements and block characters from individual progress.

What does show as 'complete' are Delves/WBs/Dolmens, ad those are completed from the second you walk into the zone. They're not automatically discovered on the map, but as soon as you're in range, they turn white. That also means that Delve bosses won't have the quick respawn since that character technically has completed the Delve.

It's part of what makes this confusing - some achievements are tracked by character, which is marked in blue. The quest journal and things like Skyshards are tracked by character, but we can't necessarily see that information easily. If there is this tracking by character, it doesn't really seem that Account-wide achievements is really saving too much in terms of data, so why is the ability to see Character achievements being eliminated? Especially with the number of things that are tied to achievements (XP gains as well) that haven't been addressed?

It feels a bit like ZOS was just trying to throw this together, either to fix the PS5 trophy problem or to just allow people to have account titles - which I'm fine with - but didn't realize how much of the game checked achievements for progress. I'd hope that they keep the character list and just make a new account list, or that they go through achievement by achievement to see which should really be shared and which should be individual, in order to try to address both camps. As it is now, there are very few people who think the current system is the best, but if either the live or PTS systems are the one they go with, there will be a large number of people who will feel they're being cheated out of something that they had.

Personally I am in favor of a delay until update 34 or 35, or even 36 while they work out the problems with it. I don't think this is unwarranted. They should take the time to come up with a middle ground.

One thing I really don't like about ZOS'S implementation of what they think are QOL changes is that they don't "officially" allow enough time or give enough advance notice or do enough testing prior to release.

Tandor

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Sorry if this has been covered but whilst have been reading through all threads, can’t remember everything after 25 (!) pages.

A lot of quest progression is mapped via achievements. All zone mq are - can someone who has access to the pts please clarify if those achievements autocomplete if one character has already done it?

(If yes, how does one progress via a mq line now?)

Most quests are tied to the journal, not achievements. You can still do the quests on alts, and all quest hubs will show as 'uncompleted' until the characters do the quest. The only thing you don't get is achievements for doing it. This also means new characters will have a journal that tells them they completed the first MQ today and the second MQ five years ago.

Quests ties to museums are the ones that are coming out buggy since they do actually use the achievement to tally the things being collected. Also some random encounters like Melina Cassel are tallied by achievements and block characters from individual progress.

What does show as 'complete' are Delves/WBs/Dolmens, ad those are completed from the second you walk into the zone. They're not automatically discovered on the map, but as soon as you're in range, they turn white. That also means that Delve bosses won't have the quick respawn since that character technically has completed the Delve.

It's part of what makes this confusing - some achievements are tracked by character, which is marked in blue. The quest journal and things like Skyshards are tracked by character, but we can't necessarily see that information easily. If there is this tracking by character, it doesn't really seem that Account-wide achievements is really saving too much in terms of data, so why is the ability to see Character achievements being eliminated? Especially with the number of things that are tied to achievements (XP gains as well) that haven't been addressed?

It feels a bit like ZOS was just trying to throw this together, either to fix the PS5 trophy problem or to just allow people to have account titles - which I'm fine with - but didn't realize how much of the game checked achievements for progress. I'd hope that they keep the character list and just make a new account list, or that they go through achievement by achievement to see which should really be shared and which should be individual, in order to try to address both camps. As it is now, there are very few people who think the current system is the best, but if either the live or PTS systems are the one they go with, there will be a large number of people who will feel they're being cheated out of something that they had.

Personally I am in favor of a delay until update 34 or 35, or even 36 while they work out the problems with it. I don't think this is unwarranted. They should take the time to come up with a middle ground.

One thing I really don't like about ZOS'S implementation of what they think are QOL changes is that they don't "officially" allow enough time or give enough advance notice or do enough testing prior to release.

This is my view too. I'm fine with the fact that there's no time to fix things before the end of this Update, I just want them to acknowledge the scale of the feedback and announce that the change is being pulled until later in the year to allow time for more consultation, consideration, reworking and testing. If they'd care to throw in the reason why they made the change in the first place and indicate what they're hoping to achieve by it then all the better.

Xarc

Since I know they will be account wide achievement, i already started to play differently with my alts

IronWooshu

Xarc wrote: »

Since I know they will be account wide achievement, i already started to play differently with my alts

Somewhat the same but I'm waiting to see if anything changes because I will be deleting them if they have achievements that my main doesn't have.

I want my main to be the one with his name on the earned by (stupid idea to have earned by titles btw) to have the achievements. This wouldn't be a problem tho if that idea was never implemented. If your going to do account wide achievements just make them without character names on them.

Just thinking about that makes me so mad, it's like some stupid little bandaid they lazily threw at this last minute idea of account wide achievements. Obviously it wasn't thought out well because we are losing all replayability and progression towards any future alt.