PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

spoqster

I think this has been mentioned and the answer is that it's not the case, but I want to stress how great it would be if partial progress from grindy achievements would be added up on achievement syncing and if it were possible to complete achievements by doing partial work on different characters.
This would further enforce the idea of "play as you want", as you could do those long-term achievements like stealing 1m gold or doing 30 world boss quests, etc. on multiple characters, instead of being locked in to finish it on the character you started it on.

WiseSky

Ohh God...

Are you saying my level 2 Character will be Greeted as if they Traversed and adventured the whole Tamriel by the NPCs...

What is the point of making a new Character then?

Saieden

WiseSky wrote: »

Ohh God...

Are you saying my level 2 Character will be Greeted as if they Traversed and adventured the whole Tamriel by the NPCs...

Yes, this is exactly what is about to happen.

What is the point of making a new Character then?

The only thing I can think of is to sell you skyshards and lorebooks.

Jaraal

Kelinmiriel wrote: »

Global titles are fine - those who don't want to use them on characters who haven't earned them don't have to (if we can still tell which characters haven't.)

Not everyone holds this view. Characters who didn't earn titles wearing them devalues the whole experience and will be a constant reminder of the mockery ZOS will have made of achievements in general with AWA.

WiseSky wrote: »

Ohh God...

Are you saying my level 2 Character will be Greeted as if they Traversed and adventured the whole Tamriel by the NPCs...

What is the point of making a new Character then?

Yep. "You're the one who stopped the Maormer invasion! Divines bless you!" even if you're level 2, have never set foot in Greenshade, and secretly wish the maormer had wiped out those filthy elves off the map.

Ugh_Tech

spoqster wrote: »

I think this has been mentioned and the answer is that it's not the case, but I want to stress how great it would be if partial progress from grindy achievements would be added up on achievement syncing and if it were possible to complete achievements by doing partial work on different characters.

Let's put it this way: if you have a point there depends on your view. Where's the line between grindy achievements and those being not grindy?
You get a reward for doing some special requirement, maybe a title like master angler, grandmaster crafter, monster hunter, whatever. In some cases you may not care in others you may be proud of it. But what happens usually to something you're proud of when you no longer have to do anything to get it? It often becomes worthless. And that's what these rewards will become if all your alts get them for free.
So the first master-angler-character you have is something to be proud of. Putting that title to character that never caught a fish is ridiculous imho. And having that efford shared over a dozen characters feels more like 'member of master-angler-team'.
The thing (at least for me) is: the (in my eyes) grindy achievements don't provide any reward that's essential for progressing in the game, so I don't have a problem not having them on all my characters (or even one). If none of my chars is master angler, so be it.

spoqster wrote: »

This would further enforce the idea of "play as you want", as you could do those long-term achievements like stealing 1m gold or doing 30 world boss quests, etc. on multiple characters, instead of being locked in to finish it on the character you started it on.

Like some others mentioned here 'stamping' achievements from one character to others kills some role-playing aspects. If one of your chars is monster hunter, all the others will have this achievement and you cannot play 'pacifist-style'-characters anymore (or better: you can't prove it). Same with black market mogul or mass murderer - doesn't really look good on a Paladin-style Templar. This kills more 'play as you want'-options than it provides imho.

SerafinaWaterstar

Have just started the long process of manually recording the basic progress of all 18 characters so at least I have some idea about what they have or have not done.

Am only doing a simple over-view; am resigned that they’ll all have a lot of the ‘grindy’ etc ones, or ones to do with certain guilds even though not actually done them yet. ☹️

But it’s making me sad. And also rather angry. So much will be lost because someone wants to say their level 10 is a Godslayer.* 🥱

(Big shout out to the ESO app that allows us console players to track stuff without addons - can you please update with Deadlands? Ta 😘)

*yes am being flippant. Because I am upset by this unnecessary change & feel snarky.

Ugh_Tech

Maybe this is just to keep the thread on top of the list.

I think most members/players made their point, most agreed in 'noone is against AwA, but don't wipe our character data' and some are just waiting for ZOS to finally give an update - and since the last post from a ZOS-member in this thread was more than a week ago it's about time!

@ZOS_GinaBruno, @ZOS_Kevin: When will we get an update? I know communication was always something improveable, but we're at post 1.800+ and the last reaction besides 'keep to the rules' was post 1.186 - this is way beyond 'communication needs to improve'! Don't we deserve being kept up to date?!

EDIT: Whoa! Seems someone cut out several posts here!

mystfit

The amazing thing about games like ESO is they create WORLDS and we make characters to live in them. Most people have some sort of agenda..she want to raid, they want to craft. Some people have characters in their heads they want to bring to life. ESO lets us do that.
There is a crowd of people want each character to be unique. They might craft a back story where an achievement of mass slaughter or even simple things like mining is....beneath them or against their moral code. They spend forever in character creation finding the right class, right look, then name them lovingly and dress them with equal care. Then they go make ANOTHER character with that same level of care but different.
Account wide achievements erase that uniqueness, that care and basically stamp them a clone.
And there are people who love this idea. Totally respect that, I've bought a skill line once or twice to avoid some drudgery on an alt I want to get up to speed.
Ya know how you make both sides happy? Opt-ins. Opt-outs. Play your way. That nets the company the most happiest of players then forcing a feature on them that truly affects them at the character level.
The real world sucks lately, don't make the pixel world suck for someone too.

ZOS_Ragnar

Hey folks,

We have removed a few posts from this thread that were off topic and risked derailing the conversation. Thank you for your understanding.

Mephit

ZOS_RyanM wrote: »

Hey folks,

We have removed a few posts from this thread that were off topic and risked derailing the conversation. Thank you for your understanding.

Makes sense, but the real problem is that ZOS are not communicating with us.

This is a ZOS thread created for the sole purpose of letting us provide feedback about something incredibly important.

Some kind of communication will go a long way to help, but I won't hold my breath.

In the meantime we are finding new ways to disagree with each other, and I'm afraid that is on ZOS.

Ugh_Tech

ZOS_RyanM wrote: »

Hey folks,

We have removed a few posts from this thread that were off topic and risked derailing the conversation. Thank you for your understanding.

Really? This is all ZOS as company has to say after a week of silence on a topic that important?!? Q&A? Status of Q&A?? ETA of Q&A???

No, just removing posts (instead of moving them to another thread where the OT discussion might have continued)...
I was expecting much more than that!

Mephit

Ugh_Tech wrote: »

ZOS_RyanM wrote: »

Hey folks,

We have removed a few posts from this thread that were off topic and risked derailing the conversation. Thank you for your understanding.

Really? This is all ZOS as company has to say after a week of silence on a topic that important?!? Q&A? Status of Q&A?? ETA of Q&A???

No, just removing posts (instead of moving them to another thread where the OT discussion might have continued)...
I was expecting much more than that!

"risked derailing the conversation" there is no conversation!

Zezin

Yeah, it feels like whatever had to be said already has.

Saieden

Ugh_Tech wrote: »

Maybe this is just to keep the thread on top of the list.

I think most members/players made their point, most agreed in 'noone is against AwA, but don't wipe our character data' and some are just waiting for ZOS to finally give an update - and since the last post from a ZOS-member in this thread was more than a week ago it's about time!

@ZOS_GinaBruno, @ZOS_Kevin: When will we get an update? I know communication was always something improveable, but we're at post 1.800+ and the last reaction besides 'keep to the rules' was post 1.186 - this is way beyond 'communication needs to improve'! Don't we deserve being kept up to date?!

EDIT: Whoa! Seems someone cut out several posts here!

You might have better luck on twitch

https://twitter.com/GinaLBruno/status/1494455321087119361

proprio.meb16_ESO

It seems a group if people decided this thread is over?

That's the least useful thing one can do... maybe there's little to add and zos could indeed pass by and let us know how it's going on their side, but it's not anyone's task to call this discussion over.

silvereyes

peacenote wrote: »

So... for anyone else who is concerned... I have a question. Are we communicating in the wrong place? I have seen major ideas be reversed in this game. Does anyone know what truly "got the message through" to ZOS?

To be honest, short of some major negative media attention, I think the best use of everyone's time is to get on PTS and keep testing and keep finding those bugs. Don't wait for them to pop up after go-live. Maybe divvy the work up per faction and have someone play through the entire main zone story of each. Go through the main story quest. Go through the starter islands. Do some Craglorn content or DLC content.

Who knows, maybe if the bug backlog reaches a critical mass, ZOS will agree it's not ready for prime time, or at least pull the same trick they did with museum quests (hopefully, without bugs this time) and move more achievements to character scoping.

And, even if they don't, maybe they will fix as many bugs as possible before they become irreversibly broken at launch.

Zezin

It's coming this patch then, they just posted it in the website.

Edit: here's the link https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/61715

CP5

And performance is their key reason for it, regardless of what issues it may introduce.

silvereyes

Well, consider me officially corrected, then. They do say it’s related to performance.

Seems like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but okay….

Raevenglass

Many of us: Please don't do this. Please let us keep individual characters individuals. Please tell us how you are going to make this work for all of us. It isn't working as intended on the PTS. As implemented it is awful. Where is our Q&A, communication, reassurance that you are even listening?

ZOS:
ACCOUNT-WIDE ACHIEVEMENTS
To ensure that ESO’s performance can keep up and grow with the game’s new experiences, most achievements will become account-wide with Update 33. This means that an achievement that you’ve earned on any one of your characters may also be considered completed across all your characters. By consolidating achievements, we can retain and improve the way the game handles this type of data and the overall experience. With the database’s overall footprint reduced, it will more performant across the board, which may manifest itself in faster load screens and improved performance on other database-heavy operations. Most importantly, this change helps keep the game performant as we continue to add new content and achievements in the future.

SerafinaWaterstar

CP5 wrote: »

And performance is their key reason for it, regardless of what issues it may introduce.

Sorry but I don’t believe it.

If it really is the case, and it’s not just an excuse, then performance had better be SIGNIFICANTLY improved for this to be justified.

Giraffon

Given the lack of any meaningful official updates, I'm resigned to this rather unfortunate path that we seem to be on. But it has me thinking, "What kind of bribe could they give us to reduce the sting of this if they press on with it?"

I don't even know that anything could make it right, but what would make me grumble less? Maybe someone can think of something? I'm struggling.

silvereyes

You know what would also help performance ZOS? Account wide skyshards, and motifs, and trait research knowledge. Heck, what about account wide psijic order, and undaunted, and guild skill lines? Maybe mount training and PVP skills too?

You can’t because you sell those in the store? Oh …. I see.

Nemezijus

Well now it is officially going live.

"By consolidating achievements, we can retain and improve the way the game handles this type of data and the overall experience. With the database’s overall footprint reduced, it will more performant across the board, which may manifest itself in faster load screens and improved performance on other database-heavy operations. Most importantly, this change helps keep the game performant as we continue to add new content and achievements in the future."

Saieden

Zezin wrote: »

It's coming this patch then, they just posted it in the website.

Edit: here's the link https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/61715

So they're claiming this is for performance at the last minute. This is absolute trash imo. Even if this is actually true, which I doubt, their quality of code and developers is bad enough that I have no faith that the problems in the game will ever be truly fixed without introducing more, probably worse, issues. I say this with 8 years in software design and programming at a corporate telco, and a B.Sc. grad with games design as my major.

No thanks, I'll take my money elsewhere.

Luke_Flamesword

Eh, I was afraid of that - so there is no chance for account wide and character achievements in differnet tabs, because they just want to clear database. Well, it will be a lot of data (multiple characters of millions players * every achievement in game), so I hope it will be make a space for different things at least (furniture limits!)

The_Boggart

I play the character not the account, if the game is changed to omit character progress being recorded in a visible manner then I am out.

remosito

out of curiosity: how are achieves like black market mogul, kill x beasties of type y. heal x in groups handled in the merge?

- they are summed up,
- highest is taken,
- first char logged in is taken even if later char has more


just to know if I have to prethink order of character loads post patch..

TequilaFire

It is obvious they will use any means other than adding improved additional hardware no matter the results.
Would be ok if they would take the time to do it right rather than a hack job.
Don't blame the coders this is all on management.

tmbrinks