PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

Oliviander

If they are doing this for Performance reasons
they easily could heve deleted all character slots but one
and in exchange added

Class Change
Name Change
Race Change
Appearance Change
Mundus Stone Change

to the armory system and the result would nearly be the same

Or the other way round with this change the armory system
could be removed because it is obsolete
just take the other tool (formerly character) to play.
And even better ZOS could sell more
skill lines and skyshards again.

nightstrike

peacenote wrote: »

we are reaching a technical limitation, similar to why we can't provide additional furnishings in houses for you right now (as much as we'd like to!) where the achievement database has grown too large, and our ability to add more content is hampered.

I would not accept this as a valid response, honestly. They would basically be saying "we can't scale the game, so we're going to delete parts of it so that we can keep scaling it." That's not sustainable. They'll just have to delete something else tomorrow. What I would accept as an answer is something to that conveys "(1) we hit a wall; (2) we can't scale things further until we redesign that wall." Basically, the message should be about how this coming year won't introduce 2 more DLCs and a chapter because doing so would break the game. Instead, they'll spend the first 6 months changing the backend to use a database correctly. Or something like that.

You're trying to show them how they could send the same message differently. I'm trying to show them that the message, in any form, is a bad one that shouldn't ever be sent; instead, they need to change the situation that is creating bad messages in the first place.

peacenote wrote: »

[*] Do you have any options available to the people who were asking for an opt-out?
...
[*] Why did it take so long to clarify that Account Wide Achievements are part of a performance improvement goal?
...
Also, I definitely remain skeptical that current performance and performance gains are driving this, and am more convinced than ever that this is about adding achievements for the card game - at best a "robbing Peter to pay Paul" scenario where room needs to be made for future content before the performance issue hits.
...
It feels like you are crying wolf, even if you are 100% genuine. It's no wonder that years after the "year of performance" it feels like attributing a controversial change to "performance" seems like misdirection or outright dishonest to many.

As you know, opt-out was expressly denied. They stated that it would be negate any performance gains if everyone opted out. Let's think about that for a minute. If only a few people hated the feature and opted out, it wouldn't affect performance, and so it could be allowed. But it's not allowed, because so many people hate the feature that it would negate the performance gains. They are saying quite clearly that they know that most people would prefer to keep the tracking on, but are removing it anyway.

In my version of your "Better Q&A", I would ask them to clarify this ambiguity in the context that their performance claims are, by all external analysis, fake.

nightstrike

Wolfkeks wrote: »

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.

AWS (or equivalent) scaling. Pure assumption here, but I'm guessing that they rent extra capacity during events. I recall that ESO went down when AWS went down some months ago, so they clearly use it in some way.

nightstrike

SirBedevere wrote: »

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.

But try deleting that character.

tim77

it''s really sad to know, we can never ever create a new character and start from scratch.

I appreciate zos looking constantly for small things to speed up loading times, but this change has so much impact on gameplay, i would really prefer a few secs more on login than this.
But i guess it's over and lost.

I just wish they would be honest at the first place, and not selling it as "we did it for you" and clearly telling from the start "the data getting out of hand, we need to do something". Because know i dont even know whats true, data getting really too much or they just want to make a point by telling this now, after realizing how much are against it and it's just too much work to revert back?

Jaraal

Quoted post has been remove.

Well, that backfired then, because this will be the first expansion I will not purchase.

Saieden

Quoted post has been remove.

Which is really dumb because the new content, for one toon, barely lasts halfway till the next content.

Wolf_Eye

SirBedevere wrote: »

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.

This is what I was worried about; that countless quests and NPC dialogues might be permanently changed and/or locked out for subsequent characters. It's what my testing hinted at, and this will likely apply to any quest or NPC dialogue that's directly attached to achievements.

And the hardest part is that it's not always clear which achievements are hardcoded into dialogue/quests and which ones are not. Just because a quest has an achievement that you can earn does not always mean that quest is hardcoded to be dependent on the achievement. If the quest is dependent on the achievement, you would be locked out of doing it in subsequent alts. If it is detached from the achievement, then you can freely do it as many times as you'd like, regardless of whether you got the achievement for it.

So the concerning question is: how many of these types of instances are in the game?

Jaraal

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

SirBedevere wrote: »

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.

This is what I was worried about; that countless quests and NPC dialogues might be permanently changed and/or locked out for subsequent characters. It's what my testing hinted at, and this will likely apply to any quest or NPC dialogue that's directly attached to achievements.

And the hardest part is that it's not always clear which achievements are hardcoded into dialogue/quests and which ones are not. Just because a quest has an achievement that you can earn does not always mean that quest is hardcoded to be dependent on the achievement. If the quest is dependent on the achievement, you would be locked out of doing it in subsequent alts. If it is detached from the achievement, then you can freely do it as many times as you'd like, regardless of whether you got the achievement for it.

So the concerning question is: how many of these types of instances are in the game?

There are 86 quests in the Cyrodiil zone alone. Consider how many zones there are in the game, and the number of opportunities for something to go wrong is quite large. Unfortunately, there's just not enough people on the test server to check everything. But you can rest assured that everything bugged will be discovered rather quickly when the update goes live.

Ugh_Tech

tim77 wrote: »

it''s really sad to know, we can never ever create a new character and start from scratch.

I appreciate zos looking constantly for small things to speed up loading times, but this change has so much impact on gameplay, i would really prefer a few secs more on login than this.
But i guess it's over and lost.

I just wish they would be honest at the first place, and not selling it as "we did it for you" and clearly telling from the start "the data getting out of hand, we need to do something". Because know i dont even know whats true, data getting really too much or they just want to make a point by telling this now, after realizing how much are against it and it's just too much work to revert back?

Look at the Q&A in the very first paragraph:
"Hi everyone, thanks so much for staying patient while we worked through gathering answers to some of your questions about Account Wide Achievements. We know everyone is extremely passionate about achievements. So much, in fact, that globally we have granted over 1 billion achievements! As high as that number is, this surprisingly isn’t the largest footprint of player generated data. As ESO continues to grow and evolve, we need to be proactive and find ways to ensure the data will always be available in real time."

I take two conclusions from that.
1. they know exactly what they're doing, especially to the players with 10+ chars. That totally explains (in my eyes) the way it was announced (more silent AFTER the revealing event for this year's content, and that only was announced that AwA would come "as requested for years", but not that CwA would be kicked out). Seems to me ZOS hoped noone would notice until they could say it's too late to change that.
2. one billion achievements are not the largest data footprint - but obviously the largest they think they could cut out. Or to put it more cynical: "Da**, CwA doesn't have the largest footprint as we thought - let's cut it out anyway!"

I know that this sounds harsh, but since ZOS doesn't seem to care in any way about any concerns and proposals made in this thread, I cannot see it any other way. 2.000+ comments in this thread and ZOS remains silent except 'we're preparing a Q&A' (which is now clearly done) and 'keep to the rules'.
An honest reaction would be imho either
- a statement like 'ok we didn't think this through' or 'we underestimated the impact to both, quest-replayability and long-term-motivation for players' and postponing this change so it can be reworked or
- a real 'live Q&A' via discord, twitch or whatever where the decision makers (not the community managers) explain what were the crucial facts and how they think 'multi-char-veterans' that currently see their way to play ESO being taken away can be satisfied.

proprio.meb16_ESO

All of us will be forced to have one main and quest just with that char, all other should be mules and alternate builds for specific content like pvp or trials, as it will be impossible to have a fresh start with them (at least until zos checks and fix each and every questline - which wont be a quick task)... if you want a real fresh start you'll need to get another account... this btw sound the exact opposite of "play as you want"...

it's a pretty short sighted choice from any point of view.

In any and every modern game, from the best piece of art to the worst crappish software, i can start again my playthrough from scratch, but apparently this is no more an option in ESO.

dzugarueb17_ESO

What am I going to say is harsh.

Do you realize, that most of your players play this game because no other new Elder Scrolls game is on the horizon?

You're going to gut replayability of a basically single player (because it is - for so, so many people) game, for what, slight DB size reduction?

Yeah, this really can't affect performance in any way - I work as a game developer longer than I'm here with you (for 8 years btw), and I've seen various systems and databases along the way - and the reason stated is completely baffling to me (as for many other people).

Maybe you can fix the quests and quest consequences (a very important thing for a single player RPG, mind), but considering you fix some bugs in quests for years - can we count on you fixing this enormous disaster we see it on PTS in such a miniscule timeframe? I guess we realistically can't.

Ok, putting aside quests - zone guide shows delves and dolmens and whatnot as completed on a brand new toon - this is not a glaring bug to you, like, seriously? You won't even acknowledge this as a bug? What about other achiev only trackers - riddles, etc.? Thats a disaster.

You've done a lot of great QoL things for a single player, convenient and replayable experience, basically the whole history if ESO shows commitment to a single player player base - One Tamriel, companions, alchemy tracking etc. - it was really great. But now you're taking a step in a whole other direction and the huge player opinion split shows that. Why?

Please, delay this thing, it definitely needs to be worked on more. Its basically "resources scarcity" from Eve Online reddit situation - there is no shame in devs admitting the decision is rushed and taking time to work on it.

Saieden

dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »

What am I going to say is harsh.

Do you realize, that most of your players play this game because no other new Elder Scrolls game is on the horizon?

You're going to gut replayability of a basically single player (because it is - for so, so many people) game, for what, slight DB size reduction?

Yeah, this really can't affect performance in any way - I work as a game developer longer than I'm here with you (for 8 years btw), and I've seen various systems and databases along the way - and the reason stated is completely baffling to me (as for many other people).

Maybe you can fix the quests and quest consequences (a very important thing for a single player RPG, mind), but considering you fix some bugs in quests for years - can we count on you fixing this enormous disaster we see it on PTS in such a miniscule timeframe? I guess we realistically can't.

Ok, putting aside quests - zone guide shows delves and dolmens and whatnot as completed on a brand new toon - this is not a glaring bug to you, like, seriously? You won't even acknowledge this as a bug? What about other achiev only trackers - riddles, etc.? Thats a disaster.

You've done a lot of great QoL things for a single player, convenient and replayable experience, basically the whole history if ESO shows commitment to a single player player base - One Tamriel, companions, alchemy tracking etc. - it was really great. But now you're taking a step in a whole other direction and the huge player opinion split shows that. Why?

Please, delay this thing, it definitely needs to be worked on more. Its basically "resources scarcity" from Eve Online reddit situation - there is no shame in devs admitting the decision is rushed and taking time to work on it.

Most of this, in some form or another, has been said since the day one of the PTS cycle. They ignored all of it and are doubling-down on burning their game from the inside.

Jaraal

Saieden wrote: »

dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »

What am I going to say is harsh.

Do you realize, that most of your players play this game because no other new Elder Scrolls game is on the horizon?

You're going to gut replayability of a basically single player (because it is - for so, so many people) game, for what, slight DB size reduction?

Yeah, this really can't affect performance in any way - I work as a game developer longer than I'm here with you (for 8 years btw), and I've seen various systems and databases along the way - and the reason stated is completely baffling to me (as for many other people).

Maybe you can fix the quests and quest consequences (a very important thing for a single player RPG, mind), but considering you fix some bugs in quests for years - can we count on you fixing this enormous disaster we see it on PTS in such a miniscule timeframe? I guess we realistically can't.

Ok, putting aside quests - zone guide shows delves and dolmens and whatnot as completed on a brand new toon - this is not a glaring bug to you, like, seriously? You won't even acknowledge this as a bug? What about other achiev only trackers - riddles, etc.? Thats a disaster.

You've done a lot of great QoL things for a single player, convenient and replayable experience, basically the whole history if ESO shows commitment to a single player player base - One Tamriel, companions, alchemy tracking etc. - it was really great. But now you're taking a step in a whole other direction and the huge player opinion split shows that. Why?

Please, delay this thing, it definitely needs to be worked on more. Its basically "resources scarcity" from Eve Online reddit situation - there is no shame in devs admitting the decision is rushed and taking time to work on it.

Most of this, in some form or another, has been said since the day one of the PTS cycle. They ignored all of it and are doubling-down on burning their game from the inside.

Yes, regardless of the potential fallout, they are already past the point of no return. The official announcement being put up on the website after weeks of "feedback" means it's a done deal. And probably has been since before it dropped on the PTS.

Which makes me curious as to why they stated that they would be 'reviewing our concerns', if it was all a moot point?

SerafinaWaterstar

Which makes me curious as to why they stated that they would be 'reviewing our concerns', if it was all a moot point?

Because it makes it look like they are.

Katinas

Constructive feedback and criticism from the playerbase requires those reading them to also be constructive. So far we have seen lack of it. Playerbase does not want this AWA, not in this form at least. Revert this absurd change and get rid of people who developed it, you don't need incompetent staff ruining what took 8 years to create. It is not too late still. The proposed account wide achievement system is absurd, stick it in your to-do list when and if you have competent people working in the future. Don't ruin what ain't broken. Listen to your players. Open your eyes.

Kesstryl

SirBedevere wrote: »

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.

This is exactly WHY this update needs to be delayed and MORE testing needs time because these kinds of bugs are game breaking. Think of how confused new players will be when they roll an alt and can't complete or even start a simple zone story because they finished it on their main. This is so unhealthy for the game that it wipes out any health we might get from database optimization by consolidating achievements. This update can't go live until quests and NPCs are decoupled from achievements.


edited for clarity

_Zathras_

nightstrike wrote: »

I'm trying to show them that the message, in any form, is a bad one that shouldn't ever be sent; instead, they need to change the situation that is creating bad messages in the first place.


In my version of your "Better Q&A", I would ask them to clarify this ambiguity in the context that their performance claims are, by all external analysis, fake.

There's the rub. That is why they aren't engaging.

See, the thing about surreptitiously using performance as the background reason for the AWA, is that they aren't the only ones in the room with careers and degrees in tech/computer science. So, there isn't any wool, and no one's eyes are covered.

At any rate, an article on this popped up from MassivelyOP. It might be worth it to add to the discussion.

Saieden

Katinas wrote: »

Constructive feedback and criticism from the playerbase requires those reading them to also be constructive. So far we have seen lack of it. Playerbase does not want this AWA, not in this form at least. Revert this absurd change and get rid of people who developed it, you don't need incompetent staff ruining what took 8 years to create. It is not too late still. The proposed account wide achievement system is absurd, stick it in your to-do list when and if you have competent people working in the future. Don't ruin what ain't broken. Listen to your players. Open your eyes.

Yes it is, the Stadia 2-week validation deadline is on Monday. They didn't listen 3 weeks ago, and they won't listen now.

dzugarueb17_ESO

So, we're looking down the irreversible destruction of character related data in 2 weeks, right? There can't be a rollback once the game is live with the new changes (you can't rollback a live, changing game). Everything that is still attached to the achievement system, not quest system at the time of - quest consequences, etc. etc. will be destroyed for good. I'm at a loss for words here.

SerafinaWaterstar

At any rate, an article on this popped up from MassivelyOP. It might be worth it to add to the discussion.

Which misses the actual point that it is breaking the game.

_Zathras_

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Which misses the actual point that it is breaking the game.

_Zathras_ wrote: »

It might be worth it to add to the discussion.

The greater point is that someone from a gaming news venue thought the AWA issue was worthy of publication. If you've ever tried to get someone to print a story, you might have an appreciation for what it takes to cross that threshold. I thought it was balanced. The discussion afterwards is the place for nitty gritty details.

I gave my 2c worth, so apparently did Tandor. Every bit helps to flesh out what is happening.

tomofhyrule

Reasonably, a system this foundation-shaking that is irreversible (save a full server rollback) and has been shown to be more than a little buggy should absolutely be pushed back. But they're showing they won't do it. I think if it were all about performance, we could still go with the half-second loner loadscreens until next update to make sure such a foundational system works right.

That to me tells one thing: AwA is required to be in the game now because it'll be a foundation for something else. And there is something that's coming out in the next update. I'd hate to spin conspiracy theories, but I'll bet that the real reason this is being pushed so hard, whether it bugs our games or not, is that this foundation needs to be in place for the card game. I only wish, that if that were actually the case, that they had tried to bring AwA out with the u32 instead, so we could have tested it and found all of these bugs, and then they would have had the luxury to delay it to u33 and fix things. It's also a benefit that it'll pop all achievements again so our console friends will get their trophies fixed, but I think the main reason is this card game system, and that can't be delayed... so this can't be delayed.

I guess the only hope is that ZOS fixes the bugs so the system can work. I assume they can always convert an achievement from character to account later (since it can't easily be converted account to character), so I'd hope they put more achievements on the character side if we know they're buggy until the backend work is done. @SirBedevere just reported that the starter zone quest for DC is bugged, and that's unforgivable. I wonder if that means the EP starter quest of 'find all villagers to evacuate' is likewise bugged. Still, to break one of the first quests a character does?

If I were ZOS and I were determined to roll this out with this patch, I'd try to make a lot of the achievements still character-specific until I've finished severing everything in the game that depended on achievements.

• ALL 'do specific quest' achievements. The complete 50 quests in [zone] can stay account.
• ALL striking locale/delve/WB/destroy all dolmens in the zone once achievements
• ALL museums and non-quest 'museum-esque' achievements like Melina Cassel or Giant Cheese

If they make as much character-specific as possible, specifically the ones we see to be buggy, then they can always convert them after the problems are fixed. But if they get converted before... that'll break the game. And as we saw going from week 3 to week 4 on PTS, the 'fix' wasn't so much a fix as it was a reset that prevented some characters from getting the achieve completely.

Please ZOS, if this has to come out this patch, err on the side of safety and make a lot of achievements character specific until you're sure that they won't affect the game. Removing character history is one thing, but removing replayability is absolutely atrocious for an Elder Scrolls game.

Tandor

Vulkunne wrote: »

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.

Avoid such games at all cost, as they will be a hotbed of exploitation - the only reason that MMO developers keep the character data server-side in the first place.

SerafinaWaterstar

Fair point @_Zathras_

nightstrike

Jaraal wrote: »

Which makes me curious as to why they stated that they would be 'reviewing our concerns', if it was all a moot point?

To stave off the backlash a little longer.

It actually makes sense if you think about their approach to their game design. If we take the obvious lie about this system instead as a truth, that they are deleting a tiny piece of the database because it's growing too fast, that implies that in some amount of time, they will be back to the current database size and they will have to deal with the issue again.

The way they handle customers is similar. Just feed them anything today and push the problem until tomorrow. It will be worse tomorrow, but that's tomorrow's problem, not today's.

nightstrike

Saieden wrote: »

Yes it is, the Stadia 2-week validation deadline is on Monday. They didn't listen 3 weeks ago, and they won't listen now.

They can pull the validation from Stadia, remove the change, revalidate, and deploy the update late.

alberichtano

dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »

What am I going to say is harsh.

Do you realize, that most of your players play this game because no other new Elder Scrolls game is on the horizon?

You're going to gut replayability of a basically single player (because it is - for so, so many people) game, for what, slight DB size reduction?

Yeah, this really can't affect performance in any way - I work as a game developer longer than I'm here with you (for 8 years btw), and I've seen various systems and databases along the way - and the reason stated is completely baffling to me (as for many other people).

Maybe you can fix the quests and quest consequences (a very important thing for a single player RPG, mind), but considering you fix some bugs in quests for years - can we count on you fixing this enormous disaster we see it on PTS in such a miniscule timeframe? I guess we realistically can't.

Ok, putting aside quests - zone guide shows delves and dolmens and whatnot as completed on a brand new toon - this is not a glaring bug to you, like, seriously? You won't even acknowledge this as a bug? What about other achiev only trackers - riddles, etc.? Thats a disaster.

You've done a lot of great QoL things for a single player, convenient and replayable experience, basically the whole history if ESO shows commitment to a single player player base - One Tamriel, companions, alchemy tracking etc. - it was really great. But now you're taking a step in a whole other direction and the huge player opinion split shows that. Why?

Please, delay this thing, it definitely needs to be worked on more. Its basically "resources scarcity" from Eve Online reddit situation - there is no shame in devs admitting the decision is rushed and taking time to work on it.

I think that the "why" is because their new owners are expecting profit from their purchase. Cutbacks are not exactly a rarity in these cases.

KMarble

SirBedevere wrote: »

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.

Thank you. Achievement related quests have been in my mind since the very beginning, but there was just so much happening at the same time, that I never got around to mentioning them.

One that comes to mind is the vampire castle in Greymoor/Blackreach. Once you complete that quest (it's related to Aduza, IIRC), most of the castle becomes inaccessible to the character who did it. No idea how this is working (or not) on PTS. The abbey in Blackwood is another one. I know there are more quests like that but I don't remember most of them.

alberichtano

Quoted post has been remove.

I gotta ask... did ANYONE want a card game? What's the point? Sure, I admit that the minigames in the first Witcher game were kind of fun, because you could win some extra gold or whatnot, but in an MMO?

I have this horrible tingling in the spider senses that "special cards" will be for sale in the Crown-store, or in lootboxes.