PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

Wolf_Eye

I'm actually not entirely clear if the article released on the website is the Q and A that was mentioned before by the community managers.

Please....if there is a Q and A still coming, these are the basic questions I would really like to know:

1. Will the data removed be backed up someplace? If there are too many things that goes wrong when it hits live, is there a way to recover?
2. Will the characters I dearly love (Melina and Vernadis) as well as other story pieces (Adoring Fan, two queens in Elsweyr, etc) be fixed before the upcoming update? Are they currently looking for solutions and will they please let us know if they are trying to fix these?
3. Will there be some way to implement some kind of individual tracking? Will there be some way for add ons to do this, or just in general some way to keep track of at least some of the content an individual character can do?

Please...I am sure I am not the only one who is very very very curious about these things. And with no answer to these questions, I am extremely worried and nervous. Please....can we at least know the answers to these?

~

Jayne_Doe

Whew! 62 pages since last I read and posted in this thread. I haven't taken the time to wade through all the posts, but from what I've gathered it sounds like character data storage and loading is a key factor for this change. Early on, I read that account-wide titles was the reason, but that didn't really make sense since they could have just had titles unlock for the account like dyes do.

I suppose this is a good enough reason to put in all the work they did to switch things over, but I still suspect they had another reason. Maybe someone has already mentioned it, but with the new card game coming up with the new chapter, they may have decided that they wanted to have achievements at the account/player level, rather than for each character. Not enough on it's own probably to warrant such a change, but it could be a secondary motivator.

Regardless, I'm slowly coming to terms with having all this data for my characters deleted, and one of the main reasons/enjoyments of playing alts being removed.

I do have one question that I didn't think to test when NA characters were copied on the PTS. Once all characters have been loaded and all achievements transferred to the account level, the achievements are "set" correct? I'm planning to log in with my main last, so that her information is recorded for all of the achievements, and any future ones I plan to earn with her. I don't want to later do something with an alt that would previously have given them an achievement and have it overwrite the achievement info. That is to say, the achievement transfer process locks the achievements in stone, and they aren't earnable in future by alts and the achievement info gets updated. I don't think it will work like this, but I just want to be sure, as I'd at least like to have my main's achievements remain and not be overwritten later.

simox

Dissapointing but totally expected

Been playing the game since 2014 and I genuinely believe this is the worst thing they have ever done for their game, even worse than adding crown crates, straight up removing peoples character identity that they worked years on, especially in a series like Elder Scrolls where forging unique adventures is so important.

Again this is not me being against AwA, just how its being implemented.

Also I dont think anyone actually believes this will help performance lol

CombatCoati

"To ensure all your achievements are not messed up across all of your characters, make sure you log in with only one character after Update 33 launches. "

FTFY

Varana

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/61715

That creates another question for the Q&A:

Who are you trying to fool with this nonsense? Performance? Really?

One question has been answered, though.
Namely, "does ZOS think we're stupid?"

SilverBride

[deleted by poster]

deleted221106-002999

@Jayne_Doe

Achievements are recorded first-first - first loaded or to 'trip' an achievement forver more becomes the 'owner' of that achievement.

If your 'main' has 99% of an achievement and char B 1% then whoever logs in second will get the account one. BUT that may mean that some other achievment ends up being allocated where maybe you didn't want it.

Good luck if choosing to continue.

Ugh_Tech

It's settled then!

I was asking myself what I'm about to do when all my chars have completed story, chapters, DLC and stuff like that. It seems I need an answer for that earlier than I thought, since I have completely NO motivation to ever login again with any character but my main which has no story left to play.
So I will play my part in 'performance optimization' and stop playing when Update 33 comes out - too bad my subscription has another 6 months until it expires.

Sorry ZOS, it has been a long, happy time playing ESO, but this totally kills the way I like to do, so consequently I quit! Don't count on getting a single cent from me ever again!

Jaraal

So it's official: they are trashing the game for a hope of improved performance.

The_Boggart wrote: »

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.

Agreed.


What a shame.

Vevvev

As a PvPer performance sounds like a good excuse for like combat, but loading screens? That's not even an issue and you're taking away character identity to turn ESO into a stupid game like Guild Wars 2? At the very least there should've been a list of characters that completed the achievement instead of the first. That alone would've saved so much good will on your part, ZOS.

I'm honestly worried about what I'm going to keep and what's going away. It's a bit scary and all the concerns regarding dialogue, quests, and other systems being broken as a result of this isn't making the future look very bright.

remosito

tomofhyrule wrote: »

remosito wrote: »

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..

Based on what we’ve seen, the credit goes to the character with the earliest date on the achieve.

For the accumulation ones, it’ll add the numbers together as you log into them, and credit goes to the character who gets the last one in. If A has 95, B has 7, and C has 84 for a 100-thing achieve and you log in in the order A, B, C, then credit goes to B since that’s the one that crossed the mark.

thanks a lot! much appreciated!

Fennwitty

I am of course confident this was about performance and will vastly improve the game.

Just like they solved all that lag in Cyrodiil with a few deft tweaks last year to healing. /s

If this was about performance SHOULD HAVE SAID THAT WEEKS AGO. That ship has sailed, and goodwill vanished along with the promised Q&A.


Q&A work started what, February 7. So more than two weeks ago.

At my job I can put together a Q&A in 1 day with a few emails and someone proofreading. Unless a key person is out of the office.

If it takes longer than that -- nobody actually had answers in the first place.

I'm not blaming @Zos_Kevin. He's been great doing the best he can.

remosito

IldaraFathryon wrote: »

Not sure which stage of grief this is going to correspond to, but is there/are there any addons we can install prior to release of the update that might preserve some of the functionality in terms of character-based achievement logging even after the real ones are merged?

there was one that added a global achievement tab plus per character ones.

I hacked it to do a sum it up version.

no idea how it will interact with this merge though..

https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1867-KyomasGlobalAchievements.html

if I remember correctly it would save some per character achievement info in a file.

that info might get overwritten by post merge info though.

should be possible to adapt the addon to not do that. and even keep updating post merge achieve state post merge.

former would be much easier than latter obviously...

Enodoc

If the general purpose is to reduce the size of the database, I can see why maintaining one list per account is better than 12+, but even so, it should still be possible to add data to that single account record to indicate which characters have completed which achievement and when - it's effectively a case of:

{@Enodoc
    {Achievement A
        Earned by: {Enodoc (datestamp), Melisi (datestamp), Nishani (datestamp)}
    }
    {Achievement B
        Earned by: {Melisi (datestamp)}
    }
    {Achievement C
        Earned by: {}
    }
}

instead of per-character which I guess is a bit like this:

{@Enodoc
    {Enodoc
        {Achievement A
            Earned: True
            Date: x
        }
        {Achievement B
            Earned: False
        }
        {Achievement C
            Earned: False
        }
    }
    {Melisi
        {Achievement A
            Earned: True
            Date: x
        }
        {Achievement B
            Earned: True
            Date: x
        }
        {Achievement C
            Earned: False
        }
    }
    {Nishani
        {Achievement A
            Earned: True
        }
        {Achievement B
            Earned: False
        }
        {Achievement C
            Earned: False
        }
    }
}

This may have happened already within these last 62 pages, but do we have a list of the specific per-character progression points which are important to retain? There may be other options for tracking progress that wouldn't need to be through the Achievements system for some of those.

Quests, Lorebooks, Skyshards and POIs, for example, are mostly tracked in the Zone Guide separately from Achievements already (Delves, Dark Anchors and World Bosses aren't it seems, as those Zone Guide entries seem to partially tie into Achievements, but they could certainly be separated from their respective Achievements if it literally already works without Achievements for other types of Objectives).

deleted221106-002999

You (zos) could have kept character-specifics by implementing it client-side; the same calls are generated by servers regardless. This was suggested in the first couple of pages of this 'feedback'.

But no - got to improve 'performance' by driving out long-term players.

Not only are you 'killing it' you actually killed it.

_Zathras_

Mephit wrote: »

This whole thread was a complete waste of everyone’s time, cos ZOS didn’t pay the slightest attention to it.

Suddenly this is for performance? They must think we are all stupid.

Just delete the thread ffs

^ and pretty much /thread.

"Performance" as the means to overwrite everything, and to ignore everyone.

@ZOS_GinaBruno thank you for engaging the community on this critical topic. The discourse you shared, the give-and-take of collaboration, as well as the abundant empathic insights towards the community members, were truly memorable. I felt it was an exemplary extension of your communications initiative, broadening and strengthening your customer's trust, and re-building a relationship that just needed a little extra nudge into that circle of excellence.

While I personally think the AWA needs a little more thought on some pesky little matters, in all honesty, I'm going to congratulate you and your team on a job well done.

Wolfpaw

Vevvev wrote: »

As a PvPer performance sounds like a good excuse for like combat, but loading screens? That's not even an issue and you're taking away character identity to turn ESO into a stupid game like Guild Wars 2? At the very least there should've been a list of characters that completed the achievement instead of the first. That alone would've saved so much good will on your part, ZOS.

I'm honestly worried about what I'm going to keep and what's going away. It's a bit scary and all the concerns regarding dialogue, quests, and other systems being broken as a result of this isn't making the future look very bright.

Loading screen speed is an important factor in PvP. Loading into a keep before it's flagged, camps, & moving around map in general. I've lost count how many times a cluster of players have been blow-up at a keep shrine or camp before they had control of their character.

SilverBride

[deleted by poster]

Jaraal

From the official page:

Go anywhere, do anything, and play your way in The Elder Scrolls Online, the award-winning online RPG set in the Elder Scrolls universe. Learn more…

If you're on Steam, you may be able to get a refund because of the bait and switch aspect of no longer being able to play multiple characters through the stories in different ways as was advertised from the beginning. It may be harder to get a refund if you bought the game from Zenimax directly, but it can't hurt to try.

kringled_1

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Vevvev wrote: »

As a PvPer performance sounds like a good excuse for like combat, but loading screens? That's not even an issue and you're taking away character identity to turn ESO into a stupid game like Guild Wars 2? At the very least there should've been a list of characters that completed the achievement instead of the first. That alone would've saved so much good will on your part, ZOS.

I'm honestly worried about what I'm going to keep and what's going away. It's a bit scary and all the concerns regarding dialogue, quests, and other systems being broken as a result of this isn't making the future look very bright.

Loading screen speed is an important factor in PvP. Loading into a keep before it's flagged, camps, & moving around map in general. I've lost count how many times a cluster of players have been blow-up at a keep shrine or camp before they had control of their character.

If character achievement data is being reloaded at those keep /camp /transitus moments then that's an issue with software design, not database size. This should literally only be able to improve the initial character load when you log in. While improvements there are nice it's not my pain point for performance.
And after the fall 2020 Cyrodiil tests any pvper should be very skeptical of ZOS's ability to accurately diagnose and make changes to improve pvp performance that aren't fundamental rewrites of the combat code.

silvereyes

Wolfpaw

SilverBride wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Loading screen speed is an important factor in PvP. Loading into a keep before it's flagged, camps, & moving around map in general. I've lost count how many times a cluster of players have been blow-up at a keep shrine or camp before they had control of their character.

So this was their fix for PvP performance? I agree that is an issue that needs resolved but not at the cost of everyone else.

Probably not, just one of the many items (hundreds/thousands) on some list.

silvereyes

Wolfpaw wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Loading screen speed is an important factor in PvP. Loading into a keep before it's flagged, camps, & moving around map in general. I've lost count how many times a cluster of players have been blow-up at a keep shrine or camp before they had control of their character.

So this was their fix for PvP performance? I agree that is an issue that needs resolved but not at the cost of everyone else.

Probably not, just one of the many items (hundreds/thousands) on some list.

I dread to read the rest of that list.

Excerpt from Update 34 patch notes:

Account-wide questing
You asked for it, and we listened! Now you never have to grind those pesky story quests on another character ever again! Now, whenever you progress or complete a quest, the same state will be recorded on all of your characters!

KMarble

Hmmm... the way AWA is being implemented kind of contradicts what we were told by Firor on Jan 12th.

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

It’s long past time to give everyone an update on where we are with PvP improvements. As many of you know, we did a series of tests over the last year to give us more data. These tests were successful and gave us the information we needed. We now have a plan going forward - but heads up: it is going to take some time.

In short – just like we did for the client a year or so back when we introduced multithreaded rendering to increase client frame rates – we are going to rearchitect our server. The version of ESO in 2022 is many magnitudes larger and more complex than the ESO that launched in 2014. So, in order to give everyone a good play experience in high-intensity situations like PvP and Trials, we need to essentially rewrite some of the foundational server code to account for it. This should dramatically increase server performance, but obviously we will need to test and evaluate as we go along.

We’ve been planning this for the last quarter and we’re starting work on it right now. But, as you can imagine, changing the fundamentals of a huge live game such as ESO is a delicate and multi-stepped process, so expect this to take up much of 2022. Much of the early work is going to happen behind the scenes and we are definitely not going to rush it. A re-architecture of this magnitude will require the entire game to be re-tested and evaluated, as this particular code is the foundation on which the game is built. It will take tons of QA and testing time as well, and I’m sure that when the time comes, we’ll do as large a test as we can on the PTS.

In the meantime, we’ll consider additional ways to keep Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds interesting and exciting (for example, potentially special rulesets or weekend events) and will continue to work on bug fixes affecting combat, but we won’t be adding any new features to PvP until the work mentioned above is complete. Doing so would not only prolong the fixes we want to implement but would also exacerbate the issue of poor performance.

We completely understand the frustration many of you are feeling, especially with lack of information about our PvP plans. This was a huge decision to make and we needed to make sure we had exhausted all other possibilities before announcing this. Thanks for bearing with us, and we will give you periodic updates about the re-architecture progress over the course of the year.

Is AWA part of that restructure? If it is, I see none of the points I highlighted applied to it. If it isn't, why would this be introduced while (I assume) other teams are trying to re-arrange the architecture of the game?

Wolfpaw

silvereyes wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Loading screen speed is an important factor in PvP. Loading into a keep before it's flagged, camps, & moving around map in general. I've lost count how many times a cluster of players have been blow-up at a keep shrine or camp before they had control of their character.

So this was their fix for PvP performance? I agree that is an issue that needs resolved but not at the cost of everyone else.

Probably not, just one of the many items (hundreds/thousands) on some list.

I dread to read the rest of that list.

Excerpt from Update 34 patch notes:

Account-wide questing
You asked for it, and we listened! Now you never have to grind those pesky story quests on another character ever again! Now, whenever you progress or complete a quest, the same state will be recorded on all of your characters!

One could only hope, seriously I would love that. Pick-up and play where I left off on a different toon.

silvereyes

Wolfpaw wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Loading screen speed is an important factor in PvP. Loading into a keep before it's flagged, camps, & moving around map in general. I've lost count how many times a cluster of players have been blow-up at a keep shrine or camp before they had control of their character.

So this was their fix for PvP performance? I agree that is an issue that needs resolved but not at the cost of everyone else.

Probably not, just one of the many items (hundreds/thousands) on some list.

I dread to read the rest of that list.

Excerpt from Update 34 patch notes:

Account-wide questing
You asked for it, and we listened! Now you never have to grind those pesky story quests on another character ever again! Now, whenever you progress or complete a quest, the same state will be recorded on all of your characters!

One could only hope, seriously I would love that. Pick-up and play where I left off on a different toon.

Jeez….

Read the room.

tomofhyrule

silvereyes wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Loading screen speed is an important factor in PvP. Loading into a keep before it's flagged, camps, & moving around map in general. I've lost count how many times a cluster of players have been blow-up at a keep shrine or camp before they had control of their character.

So this was their fix for PvP performance? I agree that is an issue that needs resolved but not at the cost of everyone else.

Probably not, just one of the many items (hundreds/thousands) on some list.

I dread to read the rest of that list.

Excerpt from Update 34 patch notes:
Account-wide questing
You asked for it, and we listened! Now you never have to grind those pesky story quests on another character ever again! Now, whenever you progress or complete a quest, the same state will be recorded on all of your characters!

Pleasebeajokepleasebeajokepleasebeajoke

I know it sounds facetious, but this no longer sounds outside the realm of reality anymore. I really pray that they don’t take everything away from people who like to play multiple times…

Oliviander

Jaraal wrote: »

So it's official: they are trashing the game for a hope of improved performance.

The_Boggart wrote: »

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.

Agreed.

What a shame.

I'm a member since March 2013 and just canceled my sub over this
ridiciulous move to trash my characters history.
With that ESO is no Roleplaying Game anymore.
I really feel cheated from ZOS after giving them many bucks over the years.

TPishek

The hyperbole is getting out of hand.

silvereyes

tomofhyrule wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Loading screen speed is an important factor in PvP. Loading into a keep before it's flagged, camps, & moving around map in general. I've lost count how many times a cluster of players have been blow-up at a keep shrine or camp before they had control of their character.

So this was their fix for PvP performance? I agree that is an issue that needs resolved but not at the cost of everyone else.

Probably not, just one of the many items (hundreds/thousands) on some list.

I dread to read the rest of that list.

Excerpt from Update 34 patch notes:
Account-wide questing
You asked for it, and we listened! Now you never have to grind those pesky story quests on another character ever again! Now, whenever you progress or complete a quest, the same state will be recorded on all of your characters!

Pleasebeajokepleasebeajokepleasebeajoke

I know it sounds facetious, but this no longer sounds outside the realm of reality anymore. I really pray that they don’t take everything away from people who like to play multiple times…

Me: Oh, I was definitely telling a joke.
ZOS in 3 months: It wasn't a joke.