PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

Jaraal

BladedMischief wrote: »

This is honestly such a slap in the face. A role playing game shouldn’t have account wide achievements. Characters are individuals. You’re taking that away with this. Makes new characters pointless. Makes role playing pointless. This isn’t a role playing game anymore with this update.

You nailed it! It will be a card playing game soon.


How far the once-best MMORPG ever made has fallen! The original vision flushed away for a few coins.


I don't want to live on Tamriel any more.

matterandstuff

There's no point fixing "performance" in an MMORPG by nuking the "RPG" bit of that game from orbit, because it defeats the entire purpose. You'll certainly increase performance - by getting rid of those pesky players using the servers.

ESO+ cancelled. Now to order the popcorn for Update 33 release day.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

[Quoted post has been removed.]

Agree.
I remember in beta and at launch defending ESO from other TES fans that said ESO is not a true Elder Scrolls game and is not canon. I doubled down on "white knighting" ESO because I loved it, found T1 made it feel even more a TES game, and have invested 12k+ hrs, 8 years of subs, unknown $ in game and out, (I love swag), I agree that with this you (ZoS) has killed the "Elder Scrolls" aspect of the game. It is now just another generic MMO with no RPG left.
Ideas for a new name??

OleandersOne

Dolgubon wrote: »

<snip>

I'm not decided on what I'll do but... Good chance I might be doing the same.

Regardless of your decision, a huge thank you to you and the other creators I've seen in this thread. I think it's a good day to throw some donations around, so I'm going to go do that and try to pull some good out of this awful thing.

Zorrin

matterandstuff wrote: »

There's no point fixing "performance" in an MMORPG by nuking the "RPG" bit of that game from orbit, because it defeats the entire purpose. You'll certainly increase performance - by getting rid of those pesky players using the servers.

ESO+ cancelled. Now to order the popcorn for Update 33 release day.

My feelings exactly. I'm afraid it's going to be a rather enlightening day for ZOS to see just how many people care about replayability and keeping characters as individuals for RP when everyone that doesn't keep up with the forums has this thrust upon them. I'm sure the 500 remaining players will enjoy the 2 second faster load times though

CombatCoati

I just fired up the game to work a little bit on the weekly endeavours. Had already decided to do the public dungeon one as they came up on Monday. Knowing that one of my alts has done a couple of those already, I logged in, opened achievements and looked in public dungeons to find that he was missing only three more in Aldmeri zones to have completed all base game public dungeons.

And that was the moment when I lost all incentive to play, logged out and started Wasteland 3 instead.

hiyde

Zezin wrote: »

@code65536 @silvereyes I do honestly hope this isn't enough to drive you out of the game,while I do disagree on a lot of things with you two it would be a terrible loss for the community to see you go, if that is your decision however, I respect it and wish you all the best, your add-ons helped me a lot in my time in ESO, for that I thank you.

I've read this entire thread since it began. Like most, I come down on the side of "Yes to AWA *and* keeping individual character tracking".

Whatever the reasons behind this, the overwhelming negative response to losing character history should have been a red-flag moment, not a Double Down moment. I recognize so many names here of players passionately telling you what character individualization means to them. They are some of the most dedicated, long-time players of the game who:

- Tend to spend large sums of money (I think @wolfie1.0. personally funded at least one DLC lol)
- Help others enjoy the game (AddOns, Guild Officers, acting as in-game wikis, helping/coaching newbies and on and on)

"The thing we are most proud of over the course of 2021—and 2020—is that we have given you all a safe virtual place to get away from the realities of the outside world, even if only for an hour or two. So many of you have played ESO (including many millions for the first time over the last two years) and have found solace and peace in Tamriel when events on Earth became overwhelming. The ultimate goal of any game like ESO is to make the virtual environment an alternative to daily life in the real world, even if only for a little while. In this, ESO excels, and we are very proud of what we have achieved."

(Matt Firor, Director's Letter, last month)

Now, many of those passionate players of ESO being described above are telling you that this decision is doing harm to their love of the game and commitment to it.

At least 3 major addon developers (who, together, have had over SIXTEEN MILLION copies of their addons downloaded) are telling you that this decision is doing harm to their love of game and commitment to it. (FYI that collective shriek you just heard across the PC servers was the thought that @Dolgubon might leave the game / end support for his addons lol)

WoW figured out how to do this. Perhaps, since you're both now in the MS family, they can share some insights. When they came to the same crossroads, they found a way to do both.

One would think that becoming part of a Two Trillion Dollar company might open the door to making improvements to the game without having to gut core elements some of your most dedicated players have enjoyed for nearly a decade.

This is one of the biggest nerves you've struck in the history of ESO.

Please pause this change and find a better way. Imagine the good will you'd build from doing so vs. alienating some of the biggest ambassadors of your game.

Elsonso

Dolgubon wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

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

I'm not decided on what I'll do but... Good chance I might be doing the same.

My plan is just to update the API version and upload it without testing it a couple times per year. Mine are fairly simple, and ZOS really has to torch things to break them.

Elsonso wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin ... I was directed here by the Q&A... Is there an "expiration date" for logging into ESO to migrate character achievements to the account?

I just realized that it will probably be 3-6 weeks before I get an answer to this, if I get an answer to this, so powering down...

Tandor

SilverBride wrote: »

I will not benefit one bit from this fix to server performance because I have never in all my years of playing ESO had a performance problem.

The problem is in Cyrodill so isolate why that zone is different and fix it there. Don't punish the rest of us.

I'm the same, no performance issues playing since launch.

If Cyrodiil is the main problem area and removing a character's achievement history is the solution then disable that achievement history on loading into Cyrodiil. No need to touch it in the rest of the game.

If the performance issues are beginning to leak into the rest of the game (I've seen no sign of it) then don't add new data storage loads like the card game that hardly anyone wants. Not adding a new mini-feature that few people want is far less damaging than removing a core feature that has been in the game since launch and on which many people have based their whole gameplay experience.

As it stands, there's no way I will want to continue my two accounts with multiple characters on both regional servers if their achievements, quests, and NPC dialogues are compromised with the overall loss of their individuality. Those two accounts will therefore be parked if this goes Live and their subs cancelled, leaving just a third account with a single character on each server and no prospect of adding any other characters.

It's been a sad few weeks since this was announced amid a fanfare of silence, and an even more depressing day today with the website announcement and a Q&A that fails to address most of the critical concerns many players have. I've been a huge and vocal fan of the game since launch, and would in all honesty have expected a lot better from the company in respect of both the decision, its implementation, and the communication about it.

Vevvev

I seriously doubt the achievements are effecting Cyrodiil loading performance. It maybe on first entering the zone, but all the fast little hop, skip, and jumps you do going from keep to keep are a different kind of "loading screen". I've noticed this where porting from wayshrine to wayshrine even if across an entire zone is much faster than porting from zone to zone. I feel like this "performance" change will not fix a thing.

nightstrike

silvereyes wrote: »

As a software developer myself, I also have been finding it harder and harder to support ZOS as a development company at all. I see cutting features in any successful software as an absolute last resort, and if ZOS can't find some way to fix performance without ripping out parts of the game, it's going to be hard for the professional in me to respect them.

I agree here. This and numerous recent changes are the kinds of things that amateurs do. Their claim is, basically, that because the database is poorly designed, they'll store less in it. That's treating the symptom, not the cause. Any decent database design for a large scale system like this should be able to handle the kind of load that ESO puts on it. They're running on AWS, they have scalability built in already. Are they not indexing it well? Are their caches poorly configured? Hire a DB admin that can handle what you throw at it.

I work in an industry where we generate absolutely massive amounts of data, and it requires hiring talent skilled in dealing with that. Stupid example: you wouldn't scp a file to your home directory that's 200 TB. You'd use a different tool to move that file around, right? Maybe globus, maybe a parallel storage system. You wouldn't tell your boss, "Sorry, I can't copy that file, it's too big. Delete the data instead." You'd find the right tool for the job.

In ESO, if we can believe this stupid justification, they are basically saying, "We don't know how to handle large data sets, so we're just deleting them."

I don't know what's worse.... (1) lying about the situation, in which case, the inane DB gambit is fake and ZOS isn't trustworthy.... or (2) they're telling the truth, which means they don't have staff with the right skill mix to continue development on a platform of this scale.

There is no conceivable situation I can possibly fathom where deleting achievement history is the right answer to database performance.

Please, ZOS, hire a database expert. You're doing it wrong. Heck, you already run on AWS. Just ask Amazon! They have staff that will, for a price, help you solve this problem. You don't need to go at it alone. Frankly, this would be a better long term investment anyway, so that you can concentrate on your core competency of Elder Scrolls lore.

@ZOS_GinaBruno TL;DR: Please find the right tool. Data deletion is not it!

Addendum: I will offer my services to help you solve this problem. PM me about it.

heaven13

Maybe now since we’re going to be getting so much performance improvement they can finally sell us the more character slots we’ve wanted!

Oh wait.

tmbrinks

@ZOS_Kevin

You have prominent ESO personalities, players who've spent countless hours providing for the ESO community, content creators, speaking out against this change. What does it take to actually listen to your players?

Fennwitty

If I buy a bunch name change tokens and make all my toons have a 4-character name, that's gotta help the backend too right?

Or if I go through all my characters' inventories and delete 1 item from each. Undoubtedly huge performance gains there.

Think about all the future fun items that can be introduced with the saved memory.

etchedpixels

Jaraal wrote: »

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


https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

It's been on a steady downward slide since 2020.

I'd be wary of the stats this month telling anyone very much - everyone is off to Lost Ark and a load will be off to Elden Ring, but as New World shows that might be a temporary success as they hit things like the Lost Ark endgame.

nightstrike

Fennwitty wrote: »

If I buy a bunch name change tokens and make all my toons have a 4-character name, that's gotta help the backend too right?

Or if I go through all my characters' inventories and delete 1 item from each. Undoubtedly huge performance gains there.

Think about all the future fun items that can be introduced with the saved memory.

This satire is spot on for how much of a farce this justification for deleting data is. Well done (sadly).

Varana

"What did we learn on the show tonight, Craig?"

If ZOS promises communication, forget about the topic. You will never hear anything substantial about it again.

Sure, they might publish something they call "Q&A". Or "FAQ". Or "director's letter". Or "monthly message". Or "official statement". Or "Gina says something on Twatter". Or "Rich laughs about you on stream".

But actually addressing what you asked?
ROFL.

Selling bridges to summer children, btw.

Kiralyn2000

Feh.

Enemy-of-Coldharbour

I only cared about account-wide crafting achievements/knowledge. Too bad that did not happen. I would have paid $$$ for that. I don't care about account-wide titles.

Dark_Lord_Kuro

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.

Hyperbole maybe not but some people here are definitly exagerating, like a few post back one was stating that eso didnt qualify for the rpg part anymore due to the lost of single character acheivement. 100% sure that not all rpgs have acheivements

Indigogo

Lmao! Ahh yes, performance improvements.
Now you can all take that justified anger out at the REAL villians here, pvp!
It's not their fault guys, they had to cripple the game to appease all those crybabies who wanted basic playability in cyro.

🤡

Please tell me you're all smart enough to not be led down that convenient path of blame shift...

KaosWarMonk

Late to the party. My feedback is that I do not want this change. I don't really have a main character, I play depending on what I feel like at the time, therefore, as many have stated this change will remove individual character progression (pls stop trying to spin it otherwise). I'm especially against the account wide titles, that just doesn't make sense in a game where everything is about putting in time and effort for a reward.

Giraffon

Giraffon wrote: »

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.

I finally thought of a couple things:

- Refund crowns for all extra character slots
- Option to completely reset account level achievements any time player wants to do so - (scenario: player wants to start over from scratch with only one new character)
- High Isle is free because this game is disrepecting all of us and the time we've invested
- release next stand alone game so I can go in peace and invest my time in something that will not be stripped from me later for no good reason

nightstrike

Giraffon wrote: »

- Option to completely reset account level achievements any time player wants to do so - (scenario: player wants to start over from scratch with only one new character)

"individually", please

Yoma73

I don't understand the outrage. You, the player, did still achieve all your achievements, did you not?
And even on a per character base, nothing has changed. You either did something with that character or you didn't.

I'm confused

wenchmore420b14_ESO

[Quoted post has been removed.]

This is not about "achievements" as a whole, it is about what this proposed system will dismantle due to said "achievements.
I'm not sure you truly understand Role Playing.
Ask a D&D player or DM about the importance of individuality, back story and personality to 'Characters".
Ask a actor or performer at a Renaissance Festival how they feel about their character and see if you can get them to "drop out of character".
Ask a author what it means to have a character arch, back story, individualism and uniqueness of their characters.

Having NPC's treat my Lv 1 toon as the Hero of Tamriel IS NOT being able to 'just RP anyway, achievements doesn't matter".
I get it, you think we are exaggerating and just "causing a fuss", but this is more important than you realize.
Just my 2 drakes.

Vevvev

[Quoted post has been removed.]

Not if that achievement is used to guage something. The years my character has been a vampire is done via the vampire achievement and I've had to save that outside the game after hearing about this new system.

This makes things unnecessarily difficult at keeping track of personal achievement on a character, and when you share your accomplishment as a link in chat it'll no longer show when you did it on that character.

Varana

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Hyperbole maybe not but some people here are definitly exagerating, like a few post back one was stating that eso didnt qualify for the rpg part anymore due to the lost of single character acheivement. 100% sure that not all rpgs have acheivements

But for the umpteenth time, they have a character history. Whether you call that achievements, journal, archived quests, or pinkfluffybunnies, doesn't matter.
ESO doesn't even let you access journal entries for quests you have done.
It did have a list of completed quest milestones, though... calling them achievements for some reason, but names don't matter.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

Yoma73 wrote: »

I don't understand the outrage. You, the player, did still achieve all your achievements, did you not?
And even on a per character base, nothing has changed. You either did something with that character or you didn't.

I'm confused

Imagine this.
Your main has done most everything.
You make a new toon.
You go to first base zone. Your level 3 toon will get NPC dialogs that your a hero.
You click zone maps, all WB, delvs and dungeons will be marked done.
Certain quest closers like special dialogs, etc will not happen.
This is a simple example, but basically this.

DarcyMardin

Jeez, as I've posted, I've put my heart into this game since the beta, and I'm really gutted by this decision by ZOS. I'm not sure what I'm going to do other than cancelling my 3 subs (and my husband'll probably cancel the 4th sub in our household). We are on the look out for another game. I signed into the game today, and just didn't have the will to play at all.

I really feel as if ZOS, despite the anguished cries of protest in this thread, not to mention all the bug finding, is just saying to longterm players/supporters, "Nah nah nah nah, Nah nah nah nah, Hey hey hey, Good-bye."