PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

Araneae6537

[Quoted Post Removed].

I agree that people are wrong to blame any part of the playerbase, including PvP, for a change they don’t like. The rest though is valid feedback in my opiniom and I think quite understandable frustration that many feel, myself included, that our concerns have been ignored and baffled because, whether performance or a new feature was the goal, it seems that there should have been a less disruptive way to do this, that would have made more people happy or at least been something they could live with.

code65536

The_Saint wrote: »

What will happen when i rename a character who earned the achievement? will the name also switch?

It should, since it's the character's numeric ID that's attached to the achievement (and translated into a name when displayed by the UI), not the name directly.

SilverBride

[deleted by poster]

TequilaFire

SilverBride wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

Actually this may be

SilverBride wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Cyrodiil is basically empty on the test server. No one would notice anything different about performance.

And the key words in the announcement were "may" and "future." Meaning they don't expect to see any noticable performance improvements from AWA any time soon. So essentially, rip out part of the game players have expected to be there forever for..... maybe some benefit in the future.

So they are going to destroy the way a huge amount of their playerbase plays on the off chance that it may (or may not) fix performance in one zone for one niche playstyle...

I don't know why you focus PvP as this is a game wide change and everyone is just throwing the PvP card out there.
It more falls into line not wanting to increase capacity for a growing game, cheaper to remove stuff.

The game won't keep growing if the clientele keeps shrinking.

So what does that have to do with PvP being the cause for this change?
Database performance affects everybody.
Instead of increasing server capacity they are reducing footprint.
I predict there will be more painful changes.

Oliviander

I have begun to log thru my 58 chars and say farewell to each of them.
It is so sad.

SilverBride

TequilaFire wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

Actually this may be

SilverBride wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Cyrodiil is basically empty on the test server. No one would notice anything different about performance.

And the key words in the announcement were "may" and "future." Meaning they don't expect to see any noticable performance improvements from AWA any time soon. So essentially, rip out part of the game players have expected to be there forever for..... maybe some benefit in the future.

So they are going to destroy the way a huge amount of their playerbase plays on the off chance that it may (or may not) fix performance in one zone for one niche playstyle...

I don't know why you focus PvP as this is a game wide change and everyone is just throwing the PvP card out there.
It more falls into line not wanting to increase capacity for a growing game, cheaper to remove stuff.

The game won't keep growing if the clientele keeps shrinking.

So what does that have to do with PvP being the cause for this change?
Database performance affects everybody.

I've never once during my entire time playing had a single performance issue. The vast majority of performance problems are in Cyrodiil so it's logical this has something to do with that.

TequilaFire

SilverBride wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I agree that people are wrong to blame any part of the playerbase, including PvP, for a change they don’t like. The rest though is valid feedback in my opiniom and I think quite understandable frustration that many feel, myself included, that our concerns have been ignored and baffled because, whether performance or a new feature was the goal, it seems that there should have been a less disruptive way to do this, that would have made more people happy or at least been something they could live with.

I don't see anyone blaming PvP for this mess. But if this is being done to improve performance, then it is being done to fix the performance problem in Cyrodiil since there have been very little performance issues elsewhere in the game.

I feel it is wrong to completely remove replayability from the rest of the game to fix one zone that has a niche playerbase. This fact does not mean that I blame PvPers, but ZoS has gone way overboard with a solution that will benefit a few and hurt many, and they don't even know if it will work.

On the flip side it would be wrong not to fix or to remove PvP.
In reality the Q&A talked a lot of reducing footprint so more systems and features can be added in the future, which will be mostly PvE in all likelihood.
As to performance in PvE go try some trials and arenas.

Fennwitty

Seminolegirl1992 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Seminolegirl1992 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Zezin wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Million dollar question:

Has there been a noticeable improvement in performance, especially in Cyrodiil?

You can't recreate the performance problems of Cyrodiil on the pts, that why the tests they did a while back were on L
The live servers.

Why not? If that's true then why test at all if the main reason for this is performance reasons which are almost exclusively in Cyrodiil? What makes them think achievements are the problem?

Has they been any noticeable change in loading screens in general?

Because you don't have the population of live server Cyrodiil on the pts

So they are blindly going through with something that they know is devastating for a large portion of the playerbase on the off chance that it "may" help and no way to test if it even will.

Yes

Yep.

SilverBride

TequilaFire wrote: »

On the flip side it would be wrong not to fix or to remove PvP.
In reality the Q&A talked a lot of reducing footprint so more systems and features can be added in the future, which will be mostly PvE in all likelihood.
As to performance in PvE go try some trials and arenas.

I believe they should fix PvP and I certainly don't think they should remove it.

As far as trials and arenas, I have done a few arenas and never had an issue. I don't do trials because that is not what I am interested in.

[Edited for clarity]

SirBedevere

KMarble wrote: »

SirBedevere wrote: »

Okay, but the Bard's College thing seems like it was already fixed, no?

The Bards' college quest isn't fixed. See here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7528022/#Comment_7528022

This week's patch notes acknowledge that:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7527624/#Comment_7527624

SirBedevere wrote: »

And the other is just an epilogue? That seems pretty minor to me. It should certainly be fixed, as should whatever it is in Rimmen that's happening, but these seem like they should all be still tracked in some way if the devs need to fix them later, right? Aren't there quest completions that could be used instead of achievements, for instance?

The way you were talking before, saying "the dialogue to start the quest is no longer available" in reference to the "all zone content gets auto completed" topic really made it seem like this problem was more widespread than I'm seeing any evidence for.

For certain people is a minor thing, for others it is not. Yes, all of it should be fixed. Preferably before it goes live.

The samples we got from testing seem to indicate the problem is more widespread than what you or anyone else is seeing. We, the players testing things, don't have the time to test it all. ZOS' employees who were assigned to work on AWA (and have access to things we do not - like the code) didn't catch many things (like the bug on the first week that prevented secondary characters from buy skyshards or the vampire/werewolf).

Think of it this way, lets say there is a bridge ahead that you need to cross. You get there, and as soon as you step on it, you notice parts of it are falling off. Do you back away and try to find a way to fix the bridge or a detour that will get you where you want to go, or do you keep on walking with faith that it was just that one plank?

Most people leaving comments in this thread have been asking for a DELAY, in hopes that someone will make the bridge safer. We didn't test all the wooden planks on the bridge, but it isn't hard to tell there are other rotten ones ahead.

The feature is already published on the marketing site. An official justification has been published in the form of a Q & A. Feel free to keep asking for a delay, but I'm pretty sure that ship has departed.

Just focusing on the evidence on hand, though, and not trying to extrapolate, from what I've seen reported on the questing side, it's mostly just a few quests with bugs. Someone said they did the entire Dark Heart of Skyrim story line, and ran into only two issues. That means that the other quests were all working. To me, that seems less like a rotten bridge and more like a bridge missing only a couple planks out of hundreds. And of those, one is being worked on, and the other can be repaired in situ after go-live, if needed. I'm confused about the alarmism surrounding quests.

What I am alarmed about are things like bosses being auto-completed, since that's not tracked anywhere except achievements right now. That seems like a huge oversight in the original design, and if they don't get those working before go-live ... well, that data's just gone.

Araneae6537

SilverBride wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I agree that people are wrong to blame any part of the playerbase, including PvP, for a change they don’t like. The rest though is valid feedback in my opiniom and I think quite understandable frustration that many feel, myself included, that our concerns have been ignored and baffled because, whether performance or a new feature was the goal, it seems that there should have been a less disruptive way to do this, that would have made more people happy or at least been something they could live with.

I don't see anyone blaming PvP for this mess. But if this is being done to improve performance, then it is being done to fix the performance problem in Cyrodiil since there have been very little performance issues elsewhere in the game.

I feel it is wrong to completely remove replayability from the rest of the game to fix one zone that has a niche playerbase. This fact does not mean that I blame PvPers, but ZoS has gone way overboard with a solution that will benefit a few and hurt many, and they don't even know if it will work.

I completely agree that this change is wrong, whatever the purpose. I doubt that it’s even ostensibly for PvP since the only specific I recall is loading screens. I don’t think that I’m the only one that has experienced lag and slow loading in PvE zones, but this is NOT an acceptable fix for it.

TequilaFire

That is not what is going on though and the more misinformation about PvP being the only cause is disrespectful to more people that play PvP than you think.
Just so you know I have 45 alts, so I have a stake in this as well.

SirBedevere

code65536 wrote: »

The_Saint wrote: »

What will happen when i rename a character who earned the achievement? will the name also switch?

It should, since it's the character's numeric ID that's attached to the achievement (and translated into a name when displayed by the UI), not the name directly.

Are we sure about this? I know that the Ring of Mara stores just the text of the character name that got married. I have one that had to basically be trashed after the partner changed character names.

SirBedevere

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I think quite understandable frustration that many feel, myself included, that our concerns have been ignored and baffled because, whether performance or a new feature was the goal, it seems that there should have been a less disruptive way to do this, that would have made more people happy or at least been something they could live with.

I get that. It would probably be different if the company had more good will to start with, but we've been sold the "performance" line for some time, and most of us don't really believe it anymore.

There's kind of an unspoken contract being broken here. We figure, we're subbing to ESO+, we're supporting the game by buying their overpriced pixels in the store. Now it's the company's turn to fulfill their part of the bargain and deliver more content, better systems, faster performance. That's what a "healthier" game looks like.

But instead, we're monetized more. Each chapter provides less for the same money. More and more systems get introduced only if there's a monetization hook involved.

And now we're told to rip out part of the base game to solve the company's technical debt problems so that they can keep monetizing more content ("experiences", if you use the marketese word). We're told that there "may" be some small load screen improvements, but we weren't asking for that.

It makes complete sense to me why people are angry.

LalMirchi

Oliviander wrote: »

I have begun to log thru my 58 chars and say farewell to each of them.
It is so sad.

Yes, unless I'm misunderstanding the Q/A and this very informative thread I am probably going to turn all my alts into crafting mules. That feels rather sad

Wolfkeks

SilverBride wrote: »

Million dollar question:

Has there been a noticeable improvement in performance, especially in Cyrodiil?

I don't think this change will affect perfomance in PvP or Trials a lot tbh.

During MYM on the live server Cyrodiil magically works, the new campaigns have less lag, less desyncs and less crashes and that is with the character based achievement system. So they showed us that they can make it work even if all my characters I drag into the campaign have different achievements.

Also they stated that it will take the whole year to fix the perfomance issues in PvP and Trials with a large test coming to PTS so I guess they didn't mean the AwA system.

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

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.

I think they mentioned in the Q&A that this had to do with the data in the database. I'm not a programmer so I don't know if upgrading the database would also solve the issues they mentioned though.

[Edited for Typos]

zsitvaij

What I'm baffled by is the complete inability to predict that mushing together achievements is going to mess up quests.

But even then, they have the source code, just do a search for conditionals on achievements! But no, we'll have the game subtly broken for years to come, with one or two quests 'fixed' per quarter until it shuts down.

KMarble

I understand being angry, hurt and even scared, but could we please not point fingers around and blame other players for this?

Please, stop diminishing one style of play. PvPers are just players. I don't care what color they fight for, I don't care if they destroy me when I step foot in a PvP zone. I'll proudly fight at their side when they come to PvE. PvPers are players, my guild mates, my friends and my group members.

The reason why problems appeared in Cyro first is due to the nature of the game - it's fast, it's intense and regularly has a huge number of players firing skills and attacks at a rate of ~1/second in the same instance. Any problem that might affect they game has a bigger chance of happening there first.

The issues that happen in Cyro are absolutely bleeding into the rest of the game. I've experienced several myself and I don't PvP.

old_scopie1945

Oliviander wrote: »

I have begun to log thru my 58 chars and say farewell to each of them.
It is so sad.

I know how you feel mate. I have gone through the same myself. Heart breaking.

Vulkunne

Wolfkeks wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Million dollar question:

Has there been a noticeable improvement in performance, especially in Cyrodiil?

I don't think this change will affect perfomance in PvP or Trials a lot tbh.

During MYM on the live server Cyrodiil magically works, the new campaigns have less lag, less desyncs and less crashes and that is with the character based achievement system. So they showed us that they can make it work even if all my characters I drag into the campaign have different achievements.

Also they stated that it will take the whole year to fix the perfomance issues in PvP and Trials with a large test coming to PTS so I guess they didn't mean the AwA system.

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

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.

I think they mentioned in the Q&A that this had to do with the data in the database. I'm not a programmer so I don't know if upgrading the database would also solve the issues they mentioned though.

[Edited for Typos]

Simply put it all depends on how the Database was built. This is why some business network are very slow cause it takes forever to query the DB for things everyone is looking for in a poorly built DB with missing relationship(s). Generally speaking the larger the DB, the longer it takes to access data. However again, there are vendors out there who specialize in DB design and mgmt. With this said surely Microsoft knows people who could help with this.

I'm willing to bet someone is standing firm that going this route is more important than fixing the actual problem. Add to that, its an assumption, however other DB ZOS uses probably are also overloaded and built like 10 years ago. So you see what I mean, if this is the case... nothing is really getting fixed other than retiring DB that may be costing the company money and network usage. However if they all have same problem then I doubt we'll see any real benefit as other games will probably end up using the consolidated resources.

I must admit that in the beginning I never considered the fact that the MMO Company holds all my characters data to be a downside of MMOs. Look for new MMOs to offer players the ability to store your character data locally in the future. Rather than get to angry over this, this right here could also be a Great Conversation for streamers and influencers to have going forward. Not to trash ZOS but to help make the industry aware of this problem and the need for change in future games. I can't see anyone in their right mind opposing this for new games as its a win-win for everyone involved.

SirBedevere

SirBedevere wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

The_Saint wrote: »

What will happen when i rename a character who earned the achievement? will the name also switch?

It should, since it's the character's numeric ID that's attached to the achievement (and translated into a name when displayed by the UI), not the name directly.

Are we sure about this? I know that the Ring of Mara stores just the text of the character name that got married. I have one that had to basically be trashed after the partner changed character names.

Finally got PTS downloaded and I just tested this. @code65536 was right. The name on the achievement changes with name changes.

MsOblivyous

I finally got access to the forums! now, for the important part:

I DO NOT WANT AWA. (Notice that's a period at the end. A full stop. No room for misunderstanding). This has proven to be faulty and not executed correctly, will destroy character identities, it ruins the core value of "Play any way you want", and will not encourage people to play more. I think this needs to be halted until it can be correctly implemented without the messy bugs and irreparable damage the currently proposed system will do.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin

I believe that 72 pages of people telling you this is a bad move, backed by the given proof that this system is not functional, and opposed by EIGHT YEAR VET players should be enough for anyone with half an ounce of common sense to understand this is going to harm your relations with players; and once you damage the trust and relationships, we will never trust you again. There are plenty of long time vet players strongly considering quitting the game, and that should be a major red flag.

Jaraal

SilverBride wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

Actually this may be

SilverBride wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Cyrodiil is basically empty on the test server. No one would notice anything different about performance.

And the key words in the announcement were "may" and "future." Meaning they don't expect to see any noticable performance improvements from AWA any time soon. So essentially, rip out part of the game players have expected to be there forever for..... maybe some benefit in the future.

So they are going to destroy the way a huge amount of their playerbase plays on the off chance that it may (or may not) fix performance in one zone for one niche playstyle...

I don't know why you focus PvP as this is a game wide change and everyone is just throwing the PvP card out there.
It more falls into line not wanting to increase capacity for a growing game, cheaper to remove stuff.

The game won't keep growing if the clientele keeps shrinking.

It appears that the business model is shifting towards the more transitory players that are looking to beat the game as fast as possible with whatever combination of characters they can use to get it done, and away from the long term players who prefer to replay the game with different alts and often with multiple accounts. It’s the difference between getting lots of quick dollars and high turnover versus focusing on steady income from loyal customers.

SilverBride

Jaraal wrote: »

It appears that the business model is shifting towards the more transitory players that are looking to beat the game as fast as possible with whatever combination of characters they can use to get it done, and away from the long term players who prefer to replay the game with different alts and often with multiple accounts. It’s the difference between getting lots of quick dollars and high turnover versus focusing on steady income from loyal customers.

I feel there are many long term players because I see them every day on my friend's list and in my guild. I believe it's the long term players who sub and spend a lot of money on houses and crates and all the extras because they are in it for the long haul.

[Edited for clarity]

Jaraal

SilverBride wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

It appears that the business model is shifting towards the more transitory players that are looking to beat the game as fast as possible with whatever combination of characters they can use to get it done, and away from the long term players who prefer to replay the game with different alts and often with multiple accounts. It’s the difference between getting lots of quick dollars and high turnover versus focusing on steady income from loyal customers.

I think they are greatly underestimating just how many of us long term players there are.

Who do they think is spending the most money? The quick rush to the end then quit players, or the long term players who sub and spend a lot of money on houses and crates and all the extras that the short term players don't care about.

I think they’re betting on us “wiping away our tears” and playing whatever version of buggy, dumbed down game they put in front of us.

I also think they may be in for a big surprise.

Kesstryl

KMarble wrote: »

I understand being angry, hurt and even scared, but could we please not point fingers around and blame other players for this?

Please, stop diminishing one style of play. PvPers are just players. I don't care what color they fight for, I don't care if they destroy me when I step foot in a PvP zone. I'll proudly fight at their side when they come to PvE. PvPers are players, my guild mates, my friends and my group members.

The reason why problems appeared in Cyro first is due to the nature of the game - it's fast, it's intense and regularly has a huge number of players firing skills and attacks at a rate of ~1/second in the same instance. Any problem that might affect they game has a bigger chance of happening there first.

The issues that happen in Cyro are absolutely bleeding into the rest of the game. I've experienced several myself and I don't PvP.

I have to agree with this. While I've blamed them in the past for certain changes made for them that tanked something for me in PvE, in this case they are in the same boat with the rest of us. Some of them have been outspokenly upset by this along with the rest of us. I think we will get our point across better united and not attacking each other for something that is not the fault of any player. Heck, even many in the AWA camp don't want this implementation.

All we can hope for at this point is that ZOS will find a way to fix the oustanding bugs in two weeks time, or put off the update until the bugs can be dealt with. I can accept that this plane is flying, there's no stopping it. What I want now is an implementation that decouples NPC reactions and achievement quests to be removed from achievement code and written into quest code so the world will go on as normal when this hits live and my toons are not like, why are people mistaking me for someone else all the time, has Shegorath caused shenanigans again? I'd like communication that they're at least aware of these bugs and intend to work on them because I still don't know if this is working as intended or if they even realize this is happening.

SirBedevere

SirBedevere wrote: »

KMarble wrote: »

SirBedevere wrote: »

Okay, but the Bard's College thing seems like it was already fixed, no?

The Bards' college quest isn't fixed. See here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7528022/#Comment_7528022

This week's patch notes acknowledge that:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7527624/#Comment_7527624

SirBedevere wrote: »

And the other is just an epilogue? That seems pretty minor to me. It should certainly be fixed, as should whatever it is in Rimmen that's happening, but these seem like they should all be still tracked in some way if the devs need to fix them later, right? Aren't there quest completions that could be used instead of achievements, for instance?

The way you were talking before, saying "the dialogue to start the quest is no longer available" in reference to the "all zone content gets auto completed" topic really made it seem like this problem was more widespread than I'm seeing any evidence for.

For certain people is a minor thing, for others it is not. Yes, all of it should be fixed. Preferably before it goes live.

The samples we got from testing seem to indicate the problem is more widespread than what you or anyone else is seeing. We, the players testing things, don't have the time to test it all. ZOS' employees who were assigned to work on AWA (and have access to things we do not - like the code) didn't catch many things (like the bug on the first week that prevented secondary characters from buy skyshards or the vampire/werewolf).

Think of it this way, lets say there is a bridge ahead that you need to cross. You get there, and as soon as you step on it, you notice parts of it are falling off. Do you back away and try to find a way to fix the bridge or a detour that will get you where you want to go, or do you keep on walking with faith that it was just that one plank?

Most people leaving comments in this thread have been asking for a DELAY, in hopes that someone will make the bridge safer. We didn't test all the wooden planks on the bridge, but it isn't hard to tell there are other rotten ones ahead.

[snip]

Just focusing on the evidence on hand, though, and not trying to extrapolate, from what I've seen reported on the questing side, it's mostly just a few quests with bugs. Someone said they did the entire Dark Heart of Skyrim story line, and ran into only two issues. That means that the other quests were all working. To me, that seems less like a rotten bridge and more like a bridge missing only a couple planks out of hundreds. And of those, one is being worked on, and the other can be repaired in situ after go-live, if needed. I'm confused about the alarmism surrounding quests.

Looks like I'm going to need to eat my own words now. There are almost certainly more quest bugs than have been reported so far.

I just started to go through the DC story quests with two characters, alternating between them as I did the same quests, to see if I could trip anything up with achievements.

In literally the first zone achievement of the DC story line, I've already found a bug that locks one of the quests out of one of the two characters I tested with.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7530648/#Comment_7530648

Granted, this took some coordination to trigger, but it's still alarming that it took less than an hour to find.

newtinmpls

tmbrinks wrote: »

I just want to be able to track what each of my characters are doing in the game separately, as I have for the last 8 years.

So many are treating this as a Win/Lose (in order for the AWA group to "win" the rest of us have to "lose") there is such a thing as a win/win.

same here (I like the individuality of my characters) but it's up to ZoS and they appear to have chosen win/lose

newtinmpls

I just went back to the article

"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"

Really?

You wreck my characters individuality; mangle the game and it "may" improve performance? The PTS is super fast now?

Ugh_Tech

TequilaFire wrote: »

On the flip side it would be wrong not to fix or to remove PvP.

In fact I suggested splitting the game into a PvP- and a PvE-system some time (years?) ago when there was continously trouble with unexpected 'emergency downtimes' and such mostly because of trouble in Cyrodiil. In that way, every environment could have been optimized for its purpose and player data could have been synchronized between the systems when a player logs into one system - as we all know, that never happened.