PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

Sheezabeast

This is so, so, so discouraging...I hate being so skeptical. I hate reading their reason, and doubting every word of it. The live testing in Cyrodiil didn't help any...the years of bandaid fixes haven't helped any...and now, this "fix" that will forever erase a playstyle. My playstyle.

They really...don't care

Mephit

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.

Perhaps you should try Super Mario World or something?

Wolfpaw

Mephit wrote: »

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.

Perhaps you should try Super Mario World or something?

Thanks for the advice! I will stick with ESO for now, considering the direction it's going. PC beta player & still truck'n a long through changes. Seems ZOS has their eye on the long road since MS buy, looking forward to big things.

Jaraal

This will be an interesting number to watch over the next few weeks:


https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

DarcyMardin

A lot of changes lately that they claim are based on improving performance.

Yet performance does not improve, in fact, it keeps getting worse. It’s getting ever more difficult to believe the “it’s the performance” excuse anymore.

Thanks for ruining my (literally) dozens of alts’ individual progress ZOS. I’ve thrown my heart into this game. Not to mention large amount of my money. Guess I’ll be picking up the pieces and moving on when my 3 subscriptions expire, if not before.

Lonestryder

Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water...

Araneae6537

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

Oh but it IS for performance, because ZOS realized that all those pesky accounts with over a dozen characters were because people love their CHARACTERS! So ZOS rips out their souls and no more desire for new characters and lots of character-heavy accounts can be put in cold storage.

To all of us who have invested so much in their characters over the years, ZOS says FU and there’s the door.

silvereyes

TPishek wrote: »

The hyperbole is getting out of hand.

Is it really though?

Hyperbole is using the impossible, the ridiculous, to make a point.

What I once would have considered impossible for ZOS to do, they have just proven is quite possible. What other assumptions are we making about "surely, they'd never do that" will turn out to be false in the coming year?

Is it hyperbole to say that throwing out character tracking in an RPG that has had the feature for 8 years should have been impossible?

Is it hyperbole to think that maybe if ZOS is willing to consider throwing away a couple thousand data points per character to make things faster, they might be willing to throw away a few hundred thousand (quests) to make things even faster?

At this point, my faith in both ZOS' vision for the game, as well as their competence to implement their performance plan, has been pretty heavily undercut. It's hard to really know what's an exaggeration anymore.

TPishek

silvereyes wrote: »

TPishek wrote: »

The hyperbole is getting out of hand.

Is it really though?

Hyperbole is using the impossible, the ridiculous, to make a point.

What I once would have considered impossible for ZOS to do, they have just proven is quite possible. What other assumptions are we making about "surely, they'd never do that" will turn out to be false in the coming year?

Is it hyperbole to say that throwing out character tracking in an RPG that has had the feature for 8 years should have been impossible?

Is it hyperbole to think that maybe if ZOS is willing to consider throwing away a couple thousand data points per character to make things faster, they might be willing to throw away a few hundred thousand (quests) to make things even faster?

At this point, my faith in both ZOS' vision for the game, as well as their competence to implement their performance plan, has been pretty heavily undercut. It's hard to really know what's an exaggeration anymore.

Yes, it is exaggeration to the highest degree.

RoseTheSnowElf

Jaraal wrote: »

RoseTheSnowElf wrote: »

I have seen this topic talked about 1 time in chat. However, they were discussing Alliance War Rank titles. And they thought it would be cool that those would be account-wide. (It's my understanding that those are still character specific. Right?)

Nope. Currently on test your level 2 crafting mule can wear the Emperor, Former Emperor, Grand Overlord titles. And Battleground titles like Bloodletter, Grand Champion, The Merciless, etc.

Oh, my mistake. I'm finding it difficult to remember what is and what isn't included in AWA.

Wolfkeks

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.

Mmh they said that it would take the whole year to fix PvP (ergo their spaghetti code) so I don't think that this is it.
But hard to say at this point because we lack the communication from ZOS' side. (No comments from them here or the pinned PvP performance thread)

heaven13

Withdrawing from playing ESO, canceling my sub, and getting a refund on my unspent crowns now seems like the best thing I’ve done in 2022. Only thing left to do is free up the hard drive space by uninstalling both live and pts.

Hard to believe ZoS is this tone deaf in terms of what players want and even harder to believe they think we’ll buy the “performance improvement” line again, especially after performance keeps getting worse with every “fix”.

I’m so completely disappointed that something so widely disliked and, more importantly, so buggy is being green-lit for release and even bragged about as something to be proud of. The lack of the promised Q&A shows just how much value is placed on loyal, long term paying customers. I’m sad to say goodbye to this game but clearly my time here is done.

nightstrike

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.

Achievements are not going to make a noticeable difference on loading screens. First, it'll only affect loading from the lobby, and second, that time is largely dominated by addons loading large saved variables. When I turn my addons off, that loading time is maybe a few seconds at most.

Melivar

While AWA and this change won't change how I play my account overall, I wish there could have been some middle ground for those that will be affected and will possible leave over it.

Hoping those number will be low and I don't see a drop in the folks that I play with regularly.

I have 14 characters on my account and while each has their own back story and is played to match, I only have one main character my Nightblade (started during preorder time for Summerset) who is fun to play in overland, explore the world and do quests but I just haven't been able to push out the DPS to be helpful in vet content also dies way to much there. This character does all my questing (only a few zones to wrap up) and misc. activities in game and thus has the most achievements overall but very few dungeon and trial achievements.

Now I have a tank, a few healers and some DPS characters that are much more useful in Vet and Trial content. These characters have mostly been used to try new things and as I found their strengths and weaknesses to allow myself to access more of the games content while having fun in the process. They all have enough skill points to do their activities but not much more and get achievements mostly by accident as I didn't particularly care about them having achievements. These characters have given me access to motifs, skins and other things outside the guild stores for use on my Nightblade and account in general.

Now with AWA granting achievements to my account and not a particular character i will be much happier to jump on whoever is needed to help someone out and even go through the process of grinding out some no deaths and other things that in the past I have just remained quiet on when I see a guild call out. So from my standpoint AWA opens up things and challenges that I might not have ever bothered with.

Best of luck to everyone dealing with complicated decisions based on a change that will impact what ESO means to you.

The one positive if you decided you need a break is that there are a bunch of things coming up that you might not have tried otherwise. That is how i found and came to ESO years ago when I had finally had enough of WOW and I haven't looked back. It's also what will eventually happen here and lead to my next home for a few years

silvereyes

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?

Once the achievement is complete, the game no longer raises events for achievement progression that an addon needs. And if the addon didn't back up progress from before U33 goes live, it wouldn't help in any case, because all historical progression is getting melted into the same pot, with no nametags on which characters contributed what.

Speaking of which: does anyone want to maintain my addons? I doubt I'm going to feel particularly motivated to continue adding compatibility for updates I don't plan to play:
https://www.esoui.com/downloads/author-20381.html

Saieden

RoseTheSnowElf wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

RoseTheSnowElf wrote: »

I have seen this topic talked about 1 time in chat. However, they were discussing Alliance War Rank titles. And they thought it would be cool that those would be account-wide. (It's my understanding that those are still character specific. Right?)

Nope. Currently on test your level 2 crafting mule can wear the Emperor, Former Emperor, Grand Overlord titles. And Battleground titles like Bloodletter, Grand Champion, The Merciless, etc.

Oh, my mistake. I'm finding it difficult to remember what is and what isn't included in AWA.

It's very easy.

Is it in the Crown Store: Not account wide.

Is it a tedious grind for tangible rewards/skill unlocks: Not account wide.

Mephit

Lonestryder wrote: »

Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water...

English teachers should start using “ESO AWA design” as the very first definition / explanation for that idiom!!

Araneae6537

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.

An AWA like GW2 would be a HUGE improvement over what we’re getting. You can still complete zones afresh and track progress on each character in GW2. There was a lot I didn’t like though and ESO fit me better, but the GW2 mounts are great and the Heart of Thorns zones really unique. Maybe I’ll be visiting Cantha instead of High Isle this year…

remosito

remosito wrote: »

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...

addon seems to store a lot of info in the savedvariables:

["name"] = "charname",
                            ["totalPoints"] = 48885,
                            ["earnedPoints"] = 13200,
                            ["achievements"] = 
                            {
                                [11] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "1556476601",
                                    ["progress"] = "7",
                                },
                                [12] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "1551380132",
                                    ["progress"] = "1",
                                },
                                [13] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "1551474104",
                                    ["progress"] = "1",
                                },
                                [14] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "1552424780",
                                    ["progress"] = "1",
                                },
                                [15] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "1553638524",
                                    ["progress"] = "1",
                                },
                                [16] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "1554153063",
                                    ["progress"] = "1",
                                },
                                [17] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "1551212940",
                                    ["progress"] = "1",
                                },
                                [18] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "1551212233",
                                    ["progress"] = "1",
                                },
                                [19] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "1551387726",
                                    ["progress"] = "10",
                                },
                                [20] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "1552351703",
                                    ["progress"] = "50",
                                },
                                [21] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "1554056907",
                                    ["progress"] = "100",
                                },
                                [22] = 
                                {
                                    ["timestamp"] = "0",
                                    ["progress"] = "701",
                                },
                                [28] = 

...many many lines cut....my savedvars file is 327000 lines long....

So a lot of the per char history is saved in there. One would only have to make sure that info does not get overwritten to keep a history up to the merge point.

Haven't looked at the code to see how hard that would be....

Now maintaining that history going forward in the sense of updating it with new activity per char is a WHOLE other beast of course....it would most likely involve recreating a lot of the achievement progress logic for each of the achievements....

PS... seems to be roughly 17000 lines of savedvariables per character...

Arthtur

Q&A 10/10.

If we talk about how u care about your community.

tmbrinks

That Q&A answered nothing about the 64 pages of concerns here.

Well worth the 2-week wait. /s

Made the right decision to not pay for ESO again.

KMarble

The Q&A has been posted. On the main sub-forum. The thread is locked.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/598865/

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

Hey,

I saw another subject concerning the account wide achievements future changes. It was closed and a reference link brought me here.

I can get the stigmata behind the account wide achievements change:
- I've come across a lot of players over 8 years, and some just want to run overland/delves/easier achievements
- Some just like levelling characters and replaying the zones over and over (I personally can't, once is enough)
- These two points above are real motivation drivers for a percentage of the player base (and there are quite a few)

I can also understand that ZOS might want people to try new content:
- This may push a number of these players to try new things or attempt harder content which they ignored in the past
- Some players only want to play on one character and this will appeal to them

There was nothing broken about having individual achievements per say, but as they want to appeal to the masses and they know that time may be more limited than before (life span of the game), well they have chosen this route.

Again, 50/50...consolidate the player base and offer alternatives to veteran players who have stuck with you and who are still actively playing the game, in their own manner.

Kesstryl

KMarble wrote: »

The Q&A has been posted. On the main sub-forum. The thread is locked.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/598865/

No mention about how NPCs react to your alts or other quests that are tied to achievements in the Q&A? That should have been addressed! @ZOS_GinaBruno

SilverBride

Q: Are there plans to track individual character progression or identifying which character completed an achievement first?

A: Completed achievements will display the name of the character that first completed the achievement, as well as the date it was first completed. The initial account achievement merging process takes this into account and will auto-update the achievement to display the earliest completion date and character. Tracking individual character progression nullifies the database improvements that Account Wide Achievements bring and isn’t something we can implement without losing those benefits.

Are there other ways to reduce data that can be implemented so that tracking bosses can stay intact?

[Edited for clarity]

dinokstrunz

heaven13 wrote: »

Withdrawing from playing ESO, canceling my sub, and getting a refund on my unspent crowns now seems like the best thing I’ve done in 2022. Only thing left to do is free up the hard drive space by uninstalling both live and pts.

Hard to believe ZoS is this tone deaf in terms of what players want and even harder to believe they think we’ll buy the “performance improvement” line again, especially after performance keeps getting worse with every “fix”.

I’m so completely disappointed that something so widely disliked and, more importantly, so buggy is being green-lit for release and even bragged about as something to be proud of. The lack of the promised Q&A shows just how much value is placed on loyal, long term paying customers. I’m sad to say goodbye to this game but clearly my time here is done.

Exactly this, the respect ZoS has on the playerbase is utterly disgusting. The last 2 odd years have been filled with nothing but constant disappointments. The faux exaggeration that systems like Companions and potentially same with Tales of Tribute will be positively accepted is dumbfounding. ZoS will just bury everything under the rug as per usual, if you close your eyes nothing bad is seen. There's just nothing positive about next patch or High Isle and I've yet to see anything that would change my opinion.

deleted221106-002999

KMarble wrote: »

The Q&A has been posted. On the main sub-forum. The thread is locked.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/598865/

That's it? After two weeks?

Performance? That tired old sloth of an excuse that we get every time only to relog and discover the game is even slower and still full of lag and desynchs?

LOL.

No thanks.

I see final fantasy has a free month trial running....

Zorrin

That Q&A makes me feel like I should start planning a massive funeral for 52 of my 56 characters since they won't matter anymore.

JKorr

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.

If this is their fix for PVP performance, it is yet another reason for pve players to really have hard feelings about pvp. The pvp players who use toons to play because they really don't need characters to kill other players [trash-talk, insults, and tea-bagging optional], who may not see any purpose in creating "characters" are a higher priority than the pve players who play their characters, not their accounts. Nice to know. Rather regretting pre-ordering the next piece now, and the extra crowns.

ealdwin

Let me pause for a minute from cleaning out my alts so that my main’s progress isn’t messed up in this rushed process and from hovering my finger over the cancel button on my ESO+ sub to ask this question of ZOS.

Is there any reason that the new system cannot record all characters which have reached an achievement instead of only the first one?
Yes?
No?
Take your time, I’ll just be playing other games while I wait…

Are you sure you want to delete _last_remaining_alt_ ? Alas, but YES.