PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

Wolf_Eye

Kesstryl wrote: »

Saieden wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

Mix wrote: »

While I agree with many of the feedback suggestions here (character specific data kept and so on) I think just ONE thing MUST be fixed before this goes Live:

Achievements must be unlinked from npc dialogue and quests.

The game must no longer "check" if a character has done an achievement, but rather if they have completed a quest (from a hidden database we don't see in-game) to see what npc dialogue choices are, to determine what we see in areas that change with quest progression and even to see if we are eligible for certain quests.

People are correct, for the current live version, that you can play the game and never open the achievements and everything is good. However, with this update that actually changes and achievements completed on another character DO impact your other characters and how they interact with the world/the world interacts with them. It is imperative that the game does NOT check achievements for anything except purchasing things that require achievements like furniture and houses.

Achievements must be unlinked from ALL npc dialogue choices and quests!

It seems to be that could be an enormous task. There is no way for testers to catch every single bug related to achievements being linked to quests and dialogue. ZOS it is perfectly acceptable to admit you bit off more than you can chew with this update and postpone the AwA until it is possible to go through and unlink everything. (and maybe consider some of the other feedback too!) You can have a patch between this update and the chapter. We won't mind. We prefer if you took your time to do it correctly. Otherwise, the day this launches you actually will break parts of the game for players who have never cared about achievements, which I think is completely unfair. A part of the game some players ignore will negatively impact their experience and that is just wrong.

(for the rest of us who love achievements you have this entire thread full of feedback and constructive criticism and suggestions)

From here on out, this is what I'm going to be the squeaky wheel over. I can accept the loss of individual character data, as much as I hate it, for whatever reasons, but I will stand my ground here with Mix on this non-negotiable point. NPCs and quests must be decoupled from achievements before this goes live. If that means delaying the update to properly do this, then get it done. I don't care if the world goes silent and I don't hear another blurb about the Planemeld or how the dead came back in Markath until the devs can safely reconnect those NPC reactions to completed quests. I don't want the game world to suddenly become the playground of Sheogorath! My characters deserve to quest, and I mean have access to ALL quests, in a coherent game world. This is where I stand, this is where the game succeeds or fails for me. This is what I will renew or not renew my sub over. Other players deserve to have the same thing, all alts having access to all quests in a coherent game world.


edited for clarity

For me, I dont care about what quests I've done on what character. I've long since stopped caring about side quests, though did/will want to zone quests at least once, for the story. I do these with my wife, exclusivey, and I dont care which character I do them on, I'll do them on whichever I feel like or who needs the skill points even. It doesn't matter all that much to me.

However, in the same vein, it absolutely mattered to me which dungeon and trial achievements I had completed on my dps, healer and newly made tank. My goal was to learn and progress veteran content, to at least hm clears, on all 3 roles to become a "complete" player and ultimately be able to lead with insight and experience from all perspectives of my team, whether in pugs or organized groups.

Even though I have known all along I may not ever be able to actually achieve this goal, it is what motivated me to be involved in this game. This was the account wide achievement I was working towards and everything that has transpired over the last few weeks has said to me "ZoS doesn't care the slightest about your goals and the tools you use measure their progress." I will not, and cannot, accept this now being removed after 18 months of progress. I have a full time job, and I value my time enough that keeping spreadsheets to do what I can already do easily in game, on top of all the grinding and maintenance present to keep up, is a deal breaker.

This game is advertised as "play the way you want", and the way I want is being nerfed into the ground and I would have to to take more of my precious time to make up for it, while still paying hard cash (let's face it, without Plus, this game is unplayable in any serious fashion. I don't have a problem with this, fundamentally). No. I just won't.

"But you're just one player! Others don't care!" I hear you say. Well, firstly, every roleplayer in the game is 9/10 using achievements in a similar function (tracking at character level) , just with different content. But that's not all. Virtually every raid guild is using the system to track the progress of their up and coming end game players in exactly the way I am for myself. How much time do you think those people have IRL to dedicate sorting through who should be allowed to sign up for Craglorns or vet Cloudrest +2? At what point is it too much for an already incredibly time consuming hobby that they pay real money to participate in? And even if they don't quit the game outright, how do you think it will look to guild members when they quit leading, and newer would-be leaders see the same problem and don't want to deal with this kind admin friction that the developers deliberately put into the game?

I totally agree with you on the character tracking. I didn't want this either. I would have preferred AwA given on top of individual character tracking, NOT taking away individual character achievements to be replaced by AwA. At this point, AwA is set in stone and it is coming, and they will not keep character based achievements or tracking because of database size. I'm letting ZOS know that if I have to put up with this, here's where I draw the line. For my play style the quests and stories are what motivate me to log in. Definitely keep posting your feedback and what draws the line for you. At this point, I'm not sure if we are being heard and they're just leaving this thread open for us to vent, but people need to continue to be loud and clear on where our tolerance ends what draws the line for us. If losing character tracking and achievements is where your tolerance ends, I support you in stating that.

I agree, to a certain extent. Like Kesstryl, I won't want to play much anymore if I cannot play through stories more than once. What benefit is there for me to buy the new chapter? Play through it ONCE to completion and a card game? Sorry, but that's not worth $40 to me. That's more like $20. And before anyone says "trial", I don't usually play trials, so that's meaningless to me. I refuse to pre order until I have some assurance in this regards.

In terms of the achievements themselves; no, I don't like it. I don't like losing character tracking so that I can see where the heck I am on things per toon. But as it stands, they seem no longer interested in discussing alternatives, so I'm waiting for the update release. When the majority of the population realizes just what AWA means, we might get a renewed conversation with it that's more far reaching.
~

kind_hero

I am not sure all this is for database and performance, while motif knowledge which counts dozens of motifs each with its own 14 pieces, is character based (because this is tied to the crown store).

Same thing for recipe knowledge, which is character bound. Why, when there are hundreds of recipes, and 99.9% players learn all of these on a single character?

I am not saying that some achievements shouldn't be account wide. More should. But don't make quest achievements account wide! Or thieving/killing!

Anyway, people pay a sub. For that, I do not understand how the studio can use this "old engine" excuse for so long. Bottom line is that you are removing ways of having fun, using hardware/software pretexts. People who are paying subs do not care how large the database is. This is something we shouldn't notice. It's like a bank telling clients to merge deposits because too many accounts increase the database and are hard on the servers.

I could understand better if there were some real communication (not statements or locked posts) and devs would engage in talks with the community they praise so much. There are over 2250 comments in this thread! It should count for something! And most people commenting are players who spent a lot of money on this game since 2014! That should count for something, shouldn't it?

And for people who favour this kind of AwA... I don't mind. Have an opt-in. But what I think would work best is to see this change postponed and thought over some more. Losing the history of millions of chars is a huge price to pay, and we are not sure for what. This chapter we get so little to justify such a cost.

Wolf_Eye

kind_hero wrote: »

Same thing for recipe knowledge, which is character bound. Why, when there are hundreds of recipes, and 99.9% players learn all of these on a single character?

I honestly think you could get rid of most under level 150 recipes (which is the max level for food), and just have the level 150 recipes scale to your toon's level. So you could get rid of all of those recipes, and just have the regular 150 recipes and the special event recipes. Maybe edit a few recipes so that they are easier/cheaper to make to compensate for the loss of the under-leveled recipes, and make it so that you can craft them regardless of your provisioning level.

After that, you could also free up even more space by deleting all provisioning ingredients that are no longer required because the recipes that remain don't need them (and then just adjust furnishing recipes so that they don't need these provisioning ingredients either). That's a lot of data freed up right there.

But I digress; I agree with your point in that there are plenty of other ways to free up data that doesn't require deleting character data.

I honestly, and really, think that freeing up data is not the problem, but perhaps the way the achievements were working before was not ideal (and thus they have to change the system). But that is just a guess on my part.

~

Araneae6537

alberichtano wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

Mix wrote: »

While I agree with many of the feedback suggestions here (character specific data kept and so on) I think just ONE thing MUST be fixed before this goes Live:

Achievements must be unlinked from npc dialogue and quests.

The game must no longer "check" if a character has done an achievement, but rather if they have completed a quest (from a hidden database we don't see in-game) to see what npc dialogue choices are, to determine what we see in areas that change with quest progression and even to see if we are eligible for certain quests.

People are correct, for the current live version, that you can play the game and never open the achievements and everything is good. However, with this update that actually changes and achievements completed on another character DO impact your other characters and how they interact with the world/the world interacts with them. It is imperative that the game does NOT check achievements for anything except purchasing things that require achievements like furniture and houses.

Achievements must be unlinked from ALL npc dialogue choices and quests!

It seems to be that could be an enormous task. There is no way for testers to catch every single bug related to achievements being linked to quests and dialogue. ZOS it is perfectly acceptable to admit you bit off more than you can chew with this update and postpone the AwA until it is possible to go through and unlink everything. (and maybe consider some of the other feedback too!) You can have a patch between this update and the chapter. We won't mind. We prefer if you took your time to do it correctly. Otherwise, the day this launches you actually will break parts of the game for players who have never cared about achievements, which I think is completely unfair. A part of the game some players ignore will negatively impact their experience and that is just wrong.

(for the rest of us who love achievements you have this entire thread full of feedback and constructive criticism and suggestions)

From here on out, this is what I'm going to be the squeaky wheel over. I can accept the loss of individual character data, as much as I hate it, for whatever reasons, but I will stand my ground here with Mix on this non-negotiable point. NPCs and quests must be decoupled from achievements before this goes live. If that means delaying the update to properly do this, then get it done. I don't care if the world goes silent and I don't hear another blurb about the Planemeld or how the dead came back in Markath until the devs can safely reconnect those NPC reactions to completed quests. I don't want the game world to suddenly become the playground of Sheogorath! My characters deserve to quest, and I mean have access to ALL quests, in a coherent game world. This is where I stand, this is where the game succeeds or fails for me. This is what I will renew or not renew my sub over. Other players deserve to have the same thing, all alts having access to all quests in a coherent game world.


edited for clarity

I see one problem with this though. Decoupling means that there has to be another way to keep track of things. Whatever form or shape that will take is nearly irrelevent, as it WILL cost resources to create and to maintain, exactly like the present system we have. In other words, the gain that ZOS claims will come from AwA would be null and void if it is replaced by another system that replaces it. The scrapping of keeping track isn't a side effect - it is the very point, as I understand it.

I don’t buy it or in any case, it’s totally unacceptable. Keeping track of characters’ choices and progress through quests and zones is part of basic functionality in a game.

I don’t understand how in GW2 I can have dozens of characters, more currencies than I can remember what to do with, accountwide achievements and individual story journals for characters and have relatively fast load screens and yet ZOS is saying basic functionality must be cut even with the 18 character max. I confess I know nothing about how this stuff works but I can’t but think the problem is in how things are being tracked more than what or how much is being tracked.

Maybe there should be fewer achievements or certainly less tracked by character — level 4 deconstruction, collecting 100 mundane runes, etc. Please, if it helps, merge or eliminate those.

I LOVE ESO and there is no other game like it and I want to continue to support the game as @Kesstryl said, so long as they maintain the heart of this amazing MMORPG, the world and our characters and their unique stories.

Gelmir

For a game where 99% of population are casuals, most of whom are questers and single player gamers, this feature should be the last thing they implement, whatever the reasons. Mark my words: ZOS will lose more than what they gain with the release of this feature. Not being able to track 1 billion mostly primitive data in a Db is just ridiculous; And due to aforementioned reason, messing up with questline flows, NPC interactions etc just because AwA now has a flag in it, making the game less replayable is just plain stupid. Even if AwA is being kept, it needs complete decoupling from questing history and NPC interactions.

Tandor

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

kind_hero wrote: »

Same thing for recipe knowledge, which is character bound. Why, when there are hundreds of recipes, and 99.9% players learn all of these on a single character?

I honestly think you could get rid of most under level 150 recipes (which is the max level for food), and just have the level 150 recipes scale to your toon's level. So you could get rid of all of those recipes, and just have the regular 150 recipes and the special event recipes. Maybe edit a few recipes so that they are easier/cheaper to make to compensate for the loss of the under-leveled recipes, and make it so that you can craft them regardless of your provisioning level.

After that, you could also free up even more space by deleting all provisioning ingredients that are no longer required because the recipes that remain don't need them (and then just adjust furnishing recipes so that they don't need these provisioning ingredients either). That's a lot of data freed up right there.

But I digress; I agree with your point in that there are plenty of other ways to free up data that doesn't require deleting character data.

I honestly, and really, think that freeing up data is not the problem, but perhaps the way the achievements were working before was not ideal (and thus they have to change the system). But that is just a guess on my part.

~

Whilst those are alternative solutions, they would only trivialise the game further so there was no real sense of progression or exploration as you found the same recipes the whole time and simply upgraded them as you advanced through the game. Dumbing down is the worst approach developers take in MMOs in the mistaken belief that it attracts new players while ignoring the fact that it hastens their boredom as soon as they get remotely established in the game. There have to be better ways of dealing with database issues, assuming there are any, such as optimising the database in respect of both hardware and software.

Jaraal

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Zezin wrote: »

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »

Public dungeon skill points are a separate character specific from inception of account-wide - it has the little blue head icon above it in the journal.

It's just the non-skill point public dungeon quest and bosses done that are account-wide.

So, yes you still get the skill point from completing that small part of the public dungeon.

Wait - so one cannot redo the quests for the public dungeons on alts? That's terrible - why even return to them?

You can do the quests on as many alts as you want, the only thing you won't be able to do is get the achievement multiple times except for the skill point achievement as that is character specific.

Except there ARE quests that lock areas after completion. These are still not replayable on current PTS.
And this is about more than just doing quests. Exploration, stortlines, NPC responses, etc.
Again, this is not that simple.

One of the failures with AWA and quests seems to be those with multiple optional endings. The character who will be tied to the achievement (as soon as they log in, lol) will have made the choice for the entire account, as was mentioned with the Stros M'Kai quest and the "hidden" ending in Markarth. Another example, Veya's quest in Vvardenfell. The ending you choose will affect all your characters, and how they interact with the epilogue scene. Also, will your level 2 character who has yet to find the wounded armiger on the road outside Seyda Neen appreciate seeing the final gathering of NPCs in Vivec City? How about when they find the final ceremony in Senchal with all the quest NPCs gathered that they have never interacted with before? And the list goes on and on.

It's going to be a confusing mess if it goes live like this.

Araneae6537

Tandor wrote: »

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

kind_hero wrote: »

Same thing for recipe knowledge, which is character bound. Why, when there are hundreds of recipes, and 99.9% players learn all of these on a single character?

I honestly think you could get rid of most under level 150 recipes (which is the max level for food), and just have the level 150 recipes scale to your toon's level. So you could get rid of all of those recipes, and just have the regular 150 recipes and the special event recipes. Maybe edit a few recipes so that they are easier/cheaper to make to compensate for the loss of the under-leveled recipes, and make it so that you can craft them regardless of your provisioning level.

After that, you could also free up even more space by deleting all provisioning ingredients that are no longer required because the recipes that remain don't need them (and then just adjust furnishing recipes so that they don't need these provisioning ingredients either). That's a lot of data freed up right there.

But I digress; I agree with your point in that there are plenty of other ways to free up data that doesn't require deleting character data.

I honestly, and really, think that freeing up data is not the problem, but perhaps the way the achievements were working before was not ideal (and thus they have to change the system). But that is just a guess on my part.

~

Whilst those are alternative solutions, they would only trivialise the game further so there was no real sense of progression or exploration as you found the same recipes the whole time and simply upgraded them as you advanced through the game. Dumbing down is the worst approach developers take in MMOs in the mistaken belief that it attracts new players while ignoring the fact that it hastens their boredom as soon as they get remotely established in the game. There have to be better ways of dealing with database issues, assuming there are any, such as optimising the database in respect of both hardware and software.

True, but I’d much rather they reduce the number of provisioning recipes and sub-50 materials than character data. 🥺

Kesstryl

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

Saieden wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

Mix wrote: »

While I agree with many of the feedback suggestions here (character specific data kept and so on) I think just ONE thing MUST be fixed before this goes Live:

Achievements must be unlinked from npc dialogue and quests.

The game must no longer "check" if a character has done an achievement, but rather if they have completed a quest (from a hidden database we don't see in-game) to see what npc dialogue choices are, to determine what we see in areas that change with quest progression and even to see if we are eligible for certain quests.

People are correct, for the current live version, that you can play the game and never open the achievements and everything is good. However, with this update that actually changes and achievements completed on another character DO impact your other characters and how they interact with the world/the world interacts with them. It is imperative that the game does NOT check achievements for anything except purchasing things that require achievements like furniture and houses.

Achievements must be unlinked from ALL npc dialogue choices and quests!

It seems to be that could be an enormous task. There is no way for testers to catch every single bug related to achievements being linked to quests and dialogue. ZOS it is perfectly acceptable to admit you bit off more than you can chew with this update and postpone the AwA until it is possible to go through and unlink everything. (and maybe consider some of the other feedback too!) You can have a patch between this update and the chapter. We won't mind. We prefer if you took your time to do it correctly. Otherwise, the day this launches you actually will break parts of the game for players who have never cared about achievements, which I think is completely unfair. A part of the game some players ignore will negatively impact their experience and that is just wrong.

(for the rest of us who love achievements you have this entire thread full of feedback and constructive criticism and suggestions)

From here on out, this is what I'm going to be the squeaky wheel over. I can accept the loss of individual character data, as much as I hate it, for whatever reasons, but I will stand my ground here with Mix on this non-negotiable point. NPCs and quests must be decoupled from achievements before this goes live. If that means delaying the update to properly do this, then get it done. I don't care if the world goes silent and I don't hear another blurb about the Planemeld or how the dead came back in Markath until the devs can safely reconnect those NPC reactions to completed quests. I don't want the game world to suddenly become the playground of Sheogorath! My characters deserve to quest, and I mean have access to ALL quests, in a coherent game world. This is where I stand, this is where the game succeeds or fails for me. This is what I will renew or not renew my sub over. Other players deserve to have the same thing, all alts having access to all quests in a coherent game world.


edited for clarity

For me, I dont care about what quests I've done on what character. I've long since stopped caring about side quests, though did/will want to zone quests at least once, for the story. I do these with my wife, exclusivey, and I dont care which character I do them on, I'll do them on whichever I feel like or who needs the skill points even. It doesn't matter all that much to me.

However, in the same vein, it absolutely mattered to me which dungeon and trial achievements I had completed on my dps, healer and newly made tank. My goal was to learn and progress veteran content, to at least hm clears, on all 3 roles to become a "complete" player and ultimately be able to lead with insight and experience from all perspectives of my team, whether in pugs or organized groups.

Even though I have known all along I may not ever be able to actually achieve this goal, it is what motivated me to be involved in this game. This was the account wide achievement I was working towards and everything that has transpired over the last few weeks has said to me "ZoS doesn't care the slightest about your goals and the tools you use measure their progress." I will not, and cannot, accept this now being removed after 18 months of progress. I have a full time job, and I value my time enough that keeping spreadsheets to do what I can already do easily in game, on top of all the grinding and maintenance present to keep up, is a deal breaker.

This game is advertised as "play the way you want", and the way I want is being nerfed into the ground and I would have to to take more of my precious time to make up for it, while still paying hard cash (let's face it, without Plus, this game is unplayable in any serious fashion. I don't have a problem with this, fundamentally). No. I just won't.

"But you're just one player! Others don't care!" I hear you say. Well, firstly, every roleplayer in the game is 9/10 using achievements in a similar function (tracking at character level) , just with different content. But that's not all. Virtually every raid guild is using the system to track the progress of their up and coming end game players in exactly the way I am for myself. How much time do you think those people have IRL to dedicate sorting through who should be allowed to sign up for Craglorns or vet Cloudrest +2? At what point is it too much for an already incredibly time consuming hobby that they pay real money to participate in? And even if they don't quit the game outright, how do you think it will look to guild members when they quit leading, and newer would-be leaders see the same problem and don't want to deal with this kind admin friction that the developers deliberately put into the game?

I totally agree with you on the character tracking. I didn't want this either. I would have preferred AwA given on top of individual character tracking, NOT taking away individual character achievements to be replaced by AwA. At this point, AwA is set in stone and it is coming, and they will not keep character based achievements or tracking because of database size. I'm letting ZOS know that if I have to put up with this, here's where I draw the line. For my play style the quests and stories are what motivate me to log in. Definitely keep posting your feedback and what draws the line for you. At this point, I'm not sure if we are being heard and they're just leaving this thread open for us to vent, but people need to continue to be loud and clear on where our tolerance ends what draws the line for us. If losing character tracking and achievements is where your tolerance ends, I support you in stating that.

I remember when they added 3rd person view, no trader kiosks, when Vet went to CP, when Craglorn was new, and pre T1.
I have always just been patient and just "Wait & See". Some changes I really didn't want, some I did. If needed I adapted.
But I found this week, that my play style won't just change AFTER UD33, but has changed now.
I use my alts for crafting writs. As I go through them now, it's like saying goodbye. One alt got Master Blacksmith the other day, and I was like "Oh Cool!" then I was "Oh wait..:(".
I have a new character that I took time to write a full back story and character arch that I was looking forward to playing pure vanilla. Not so much now.

I will log in on UD launch, just to explain to my guildies and friends what is going on as many in game doesn't know what's really coming. And even in worst case scenario, I will still log in to take care of Guild Hall, bid on traders, etc, because I care about my guildies.
BUT, the UD will go live 3/14. My sub that I have kept EVERY month since March 2014, will expire 3/25.
I will log on and "See myself" how it affects me and mine. I will take that 10 days to decide if I renew it or use that $ elsewhere.
My 2 drakes...
Huzzah!

I can't just say goodbye to my alts and treat them like crafting mules. I have history with them, some of them are as old as my 8 year account. I can't just treat them like they never existed, or that they are all wearing different costumes of my main, or whatever Sheogorath touched mess this is causing with individual character continuity and integrity. I will have the game world be coherent for my alts, and treat each one individually based on which quests have been done or not done, or I won't play at all.

I already created a level 3 toon which I will use to manage my guild, but I refuse to log into any of my other alts to delete their history. I will only touch my other characters when NPCs and quests are decoupled from achievements so my alts can have a coherent game world to play in. I don't need ESO to get my Elder Scrolls fix, I'll go play Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim for that.

Zezin

Tandor wrote: »

Zezin wrote: »

Mephit wrote: »

I had an exchange earlier with some people in an ESO Facebook group. They don’t have a clue what is coming.

One person said they trust ZOS and have faith they will sort this out, and that the release isn’t even live yet…

Another person said it’ll be ok cos they’ll probably do something similar to WOW.

I told them to check the PTS / forums but they won’t…

I genuinely think most people assume AWA will be something new, and are oblivious / ignorant of what is coming.

A lot of people I know, know what is coming, most are either ok with it, excited or only have minor reservations about it. Truth of things is most of those people don't have a reason to complain here at the forums and so you don't see them much, negative reactions are much easier to gather than positive ones, that's just how people work.

Do they know the form in which it is coming, or are you simply reporting the number of people who are saying "Great, I'm so excited that account-wide achievements are coming" without knowing anything about the present implementation on PTS?

whenever I'm discussing this I make a point to talk about the problems we currently have, it doesn't change it for most.

Zezin

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Zezin wrote: »

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »

Public dungeon skill points are a separate character specific from inception of account-wide - it has the little blue head icon above it in the journal.

It's just the non-skill point public dungeon quest and bosses done that are account-wide.

So, yes you still get the skill point from completing that small part of the public dungeon.

Wait - so one cannot redo the quests for the public dungeons on alts? That's terrible - why even return to them?

You can do the quests on as many alts as you want, the only thing you won't be able to do is get the achievement multiple times except for the skill point achievement as that is character specific.

Except there ARE quests that lock areas after completion. These are still not replayable on current PTS.
And this is about more than just doing quests. Exploration, stortlines, NPC responses, etc.
Again, this is not that simple.

yes those are BUGS, it's funny how I see more feedback on the bugs thread than on this thread and bugs on this thread instead of the bug thread. It's the developers job to fix those before the patch is out, if they're not fixed by then I'll be annoyed too, as it is right now however I see no reason to, I am excited for the changes.

Saieden

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

kind_hero wrote: »

Same thing for recipe knowledge, which is character bound. Why, when there are hundreds of recipes, and 99.9% players learn all of these on a single character?

I honestly think you could get rid of most under level 150 recipes (which is the max level for food), and just have the level 150 recipes scale to your toon's level. So you could get rid of all of those recipes, and just have the regular 150 recipes and the special event recipes. Maybe edit a few recipes so that they are easier/cheaper to make to compensate for the loss of the under-leveled recipes, and make it so that you can craft them regardless of your provisioning level.

After that, you could also free up even more space by deleting all provisioning ingredients that are no longer required because the recipes that remain don't need them (and then just adjust furnishing recipes so that they don't need these provisioning ingredients either). That's a lot of data freed up right there.

But I digress; I agree with your point in that there are plenty of other ways to free up data that doesn't require deleting character data.

I honestly, and really, think that freeing up data is not the problem, but perhaps the way the achievements were working before was not ideal (and thus they have to change the system). But that is just a guess on my part.

~

Whilst those are alternative solutions, they would only trivialise the game further so there was no real sense of progression or exploration as you found the same recipes the whole time and simply upgraded them as you advanced through the game. Dumbing down is the worst approach developers take in MMOs in the mistaken belief that it attracts new players while ignoring the fact that it hastens their boredom as soon as they get remotely established in the game. There have to be better ways of dealing with database issues, assuming there are any, such as optimising the database in respect of both hardware and software.

True, but I’d much rather they reduce the number of provisioning recipes and sub-50 materials than character data. 🥺

Prohibitive inventory is the number one driver of recurring revenue. The useless items and unavoidable clutter maintenance is left in the game by design, and no amount performance gain will ever (financially) justify removing it.

Kesstryl

alberichtano wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

Mix wrote: »

While I agree with many of the feedback suggestions here (character specific data kept and so on) I think just ONE thing MUST be fixed before this goes Live:

Achievements must be unlinked from npc dialogue and quests.

The game must no longer "check" if a character has done an achievement, but rather if they have completed a quest (from a hidden database we don't see in-game) to see what npc dialogue choices are, to determine what we see in areas that change with quest progression and even to see if we are eligible for certain quests.

People are correct, for the current live version, that you can play the game and never open the achievements and everything is good. However, with this update that actually changes and achievements completed on another character DO impact your other characters and how they interact with the world/the world interacts with them. It is imperative that the game does NOT check achievements for anything except purchasing things that require achievements like furniture and houses.

Achievements must be unlinked from ALL npc dialogue choices and quests!

It seems to be that could be an enormous task. There is no way for testers to catch every single bug related to achievements being linked to quests and dialogue. ZOS it is perfectly acceptable to admit you bit off more than you can chew with this update and postpone the AwA until it is possible to go through and unlink everything. (and maybe consider some of the other feedback too!) You can have a patch between this update and the chapter. We won't mind. We prefer if you took your time to do it correctly. Otherwise, the day this launches you actually will break parts of the game for players who have never cared about achievements, which I think is completely unfair. A part of the game some players ignore will negatively impact their experience and that is just wrong.

(for the rest of us who love achievements you have this entire thread full of feedback and constructive criticism and suggestions)

From here on out, this is what I'm going to be the squeaky wheel over. I can accept the loss of individual character data, as much as I hate it, for whatever reasons, but I will stand my ground here with Mix on this non-negotiable point. NPCs and quests must be decoupled from achievements before this goes live. If that means delaying the update to properly do this, then get it done. I don't care if the world goes silent and I don't hear another blurb about the Planemeld or how the dead came back in Markath until the devs can safely reconnect those NPC reactions to completed quests. I don't want the game world to suddenly become the playground of Sheogorath! My characters deserve to quest, and I mean have access to ALL quests, in a coherent game world. This is where I stand, this is where the game succeeds or fails for me. This is what I will renew or not renew my sub over. Other players deserve to have the same thing, all alts having access to all quests in a coherent game world.


edited for clarity

I see one problem with this though. Decoupling means that there has to be another way to keep track of things. Whatever form or shape that will take is nearly irrelevent, as it WILL cost resources to create and to maintain, exactly like the present system we have. In other words, the gain that ZOS claims will come from AwA would be null and void if it is replaced by another system that replaces it. The scrapping of keeping track isn't a side effect - it is the very point, as I understand it.

If that is the answer we get, then I'm done. No other MMORPG or game treats alts like they're all just one and the same character with different faces. That an Elder Scrolls game has done this is unthinkable! I think they should keep any quest related achievement character side until they can decouple the NPCs and move everything over to their hidden quest log database. If so and so has such and such quest completed, then a trigger will set for NPC dialogue. If an achievement only quest is moved over to the quest log database, then all alts will have access to it. They're not getting rid of quest tracking, so moving these things quest side and decoupling from achievements is not really any database footprint, and will still give the reduction they want.

I still can't believe it was released on PTS in this state. Did they think we wanted all our characters to just play dress up and drag queen each other as if they're all the same person? It's just so gross for an Elder Scrolls game!

OleandersOne

Zezin wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Do they know the form in which it is coming, or are you simply reporting the number of people who are saying "Great, I'm so excited that account-wide achievements are coming" without knowing anything about the present implementation on PTS?

whenever I'm discussing this I make a point to talk about the problems we currently have, it doesn't change it for most.

With your past comments about it being a 'minor system change' and how we (the roleplayers) were blowing it out of proportion, I doubt that your description of the problems would match mine. Which is actually fine, we all have our own spin. But saying (on your part or mine) that we've talked to a horde of people and they agree with us is basically the equivalent of saying that lurkers support us in email. It's absolutely meaningless.

proprio.meb16_ESO

Zezin wrote: »

yes those are BUGS, it's funny how I see more feedback on the bugs thread than on this thread and bugs on this thread instead of the bug thread. It's the developers job to fix those before the patch is out, if they're not fixed by then I'll be annoyed too, as it is right now however I see no reason to, I am excited for the changes.

I need to give you bad news mate... they won't be able to do it before they release this patch... there's just not enough time and the only quick way (the only way actually) is to get affected achvs back to character-based, as they did with museum quests (please note: they didn't "fix" any "bug" in that case, they just reverted them back to be per-character, as they were before).
I suspect they're not even bothering to start checking&fixing all quests, but maybe i'm too drastic.

For sure they haven't even checked starting alliance questline as you can read in a recent post, figure the rest. They're apparently reading just the single issues we report and talk about, and in the case of museum quests decided to take a step back. That was a drop in the ocean.

newtinmpls

Jaraal wrote: »

One of the failures with AWA and quests seems to be those with multiple optional endings. The character who will be tied to the achievement (as soon as they log in, lol) will have made the choice for the entire account, as was mentioned with the Stros M'Kai quest and the "hidden" ending in Markarth. Another example, Veya's quest in Vvardenfell. The ending you choose will affect all your characters, and how they interact with the epilogue scene. Also, will your level 2 character who has yet to find the wounded armiger on the road outside Seyda Neen appreciate seeing the final gathering of NPCs in Vivec City? How about when they find the final ceremony in Senchal with all the quest NPCs gathered that they have never interacted with before? And the list goes on and on.

It's going to be a confusing mess if when it goes live like this.

Fixed it for you

newtinmpls

Kesstryl wrote: »

I still can't believe it was released on PTS in this state. Did they think we wanted all our characters to just play dress up and drag queen each other as if they're all the same person? It's just so gross for an Elder Scrolls game!

Apparently they think some people wanted that - and apparently some do.

Hard to tell actual percent wise, and seriously, how would you gather or sort data to assess this? (semi-serious question)

newtinmpls

On the "Q&A" thread (misnomer, since it's locked to comments), the following was noted:

"Tracking individual character progression nullifies the database improvements that Account Wide Achievements bring and isn’t something we can implement without losing those benefits."

So the game really is broken

Vulkunne

At this point... if I was in charge over there I would sit down with everyone around a kitchen table... figure out where all the problems are and just rebuild the game from scratch. Forget trying to patch an 8 year old game and putting everyone thru burdensome changes. Just rebuild it and move the characters over if you can and move on.

kind_hero

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

kind_hero wrote: »

Same thing for recipe knowledge, which is character bound. Why, when there are hundreds of recipes, and 99.9% players learn all of these on a single character?

I honestly think you could get rid of most under level 150 recipes (which is the max level for food), and just have the level 150 recipes scale to your toon's level. So you could get rid of all of those recipes, and just have the regular 150 recipes and the special event recipes. Maybe edit a few recipes so that they are easier/cheaper to make to compensate for the loss of the under-leveled recipes, and make it so that you can craft them regardless of your provisioning level.

After that, you could also free up even more space by deleting all provisioning ingredients that are no longer required because the recipes that remain don't need them (and then just adjust furnishing recipes so that they don't need these provisioning ingredients either). That's a lot of data freed up right there.

But I digress; I agree with your point in that there are plenty of other ways to free up data that doesn't require deleting character data.

I honestly, and really, think that freeing up data is not the problem, but perhaps the way the achievements were working before was not ideal (and thus they have to change the system). But that is just a guess on my part.

~

I don't think devs have to delete anything, aside some redundant or useless recipes. I like that there are very basic recipes such as a baked potato or a roasted pig. The game should be growing, gaining content, not losing. This is a huge loss of data, and player invested time.

I played WoW for 5 years when it was at its peak (I don't comment about how it is now, because I don't keep track). And I remember they kept adding stuff, sometimes changing items or things, but never removing or deleting things. On the contrary, they even brought back old content and made it easier available. Achievements had some char info to them from what I remember (when a merge was done). I remember doing meta achievements from festivals on multiple chars. Speaking of old engines, WoW's engine is much older at its origins, but has been constantly upgraded. Deleting the history of millions of alts does not seem like an upgrade to me.

Unfortunately, it seems that we are wasting our typing skills here, because none of this feedback is going to change a thing. :-(

Jaraal

newtinmpls wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

I still can't believe it was released on PTS in this state. Did they think we wanted all our characters to just play dress up and drag queen each other as if they're all the same person? It's just so gross for an Elder Scrolls game!

Apparently they think some people wanted that - and apparently some do.

Hard to tell actual percent wise, and seriously, how would you gather or sort data to assess this? (semi-serious question)

I think it's going to be a case of "be careful what you wish for." A lot of folks came to this thread (and others) early on saying, "Yay, AWA finally!" But when they read the details and saw the actual implementation, were like, "OK, maybe this needs more work, this isn't exactly what I was hoping for." And ZOS has spun it by saying 'You guys have been requesting this for years!'.... essentially placing the burden of responsibility squarely upon the shoulders of the players themselves.

alberichtano

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

Saieden wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

Mix wrote: »

While I agree with many of the feedback suggestions here (character specific data kept and so on) I think just ONE thing MUST be fixed before this goes Live:

Achievements must be unlinked from npc dialogue and quests.

The game must no longer "check" if a character has done an achievement, but rather if they have completed a quest (from a hidden database we don't see in-game) to see what npc dialogue choices are, to determine what we see in areas that change with quest progression and even to see if we are eligible for certain quests.

People are correct, for the current live version, that you can play the game and never open the achievements and everything is good. However, with this update that actually changes and achievements completed on another character DO impact your other characters and how they interact with the world/the world interacts with them. It is imperative that the game does NOT check achievements for anything except purchasing things that require achievements like furniture and houses.

Achievements must be unlinked from ALL npc dialogue choices and quests!

It seems to be that could be an enormous task. There is no way for testers to catch every single bug related to achievements being linked to quests and dialogue. ZOS it is perfectly acceptable to admit you bit off more than you can chew with this update and postpone the AwA until it is possible to go through and unlink everything. (and maybe consider some of the other feedback too!) You can have a patch between this update and the chapter. We won't mind. We prefer if you took your time to do it correctly. Otherwise, the day this launches you actually will break parts of the game for players who have never cared about achievements, which I think is completely unfair. A part of the game some players ignore will negatively impact their experience and that is just wrong.

(for the rest of us who love achievements you have this entire thread full of feedback and constructive criticism and suggestions)

From here on out, this is what I'm going to be the squeaky wheel over. I can accept the loss of individual character data, as much as I hate it, for whatever reasons, but I will stand my ground here with Mix on this non-negotiable point. NPCs and quests must be decoupled from achievements before this goes live. If that means delaying the update to properly do this, then get it done. I don't care if the world goes silent and I don't hear another blurb about the Planemeld or how the dead came back in Markath until the devs can safely reconnect those NPC reactions to completed quests. I don't want the game world to suddenly become the playground of Sheogorath! My characters deserve to quest, and I mean have access to ALL quests, in a coherent game world. This is where I stand, this is where the game succeeds or fails for me. This is what I will renew or not renew my sub over. Other players deserve to have the same thing, all alts having access to all quests in a coherent game world.


edited for clarity

For me, I dont care about what quests I've done on what character. I've long since stopped caring about side quests, though did/will want to zone quests at least once, for the story. I do these with my wife, exclusivey, and I dont care which character I do them on, I'll do them on whichever I feel like or who needs the skill points even. It doesn't matter all that much to me.

However, in the same vein, it absolutely mattered to me which dungeon and trial achievements I had completed on my dps, healer and newly made tank. My goal was to learn and progress veteran content, to at least hm clears, on all 3 roles to become a "complete" player and ultimately be able to lead with insight and experience from all perspectives of my team, whether in pugs or organized groups.

Even though I have known all along I may not ever be able to actually achieve this goal, it is what motivated me to be involved in this game. This was the account wide achievement I was working towards and everything that has transpired over the last few weeks has said to me "ZoS doesn't care the slightest about your goals and the tools you use measure their progress." I will not, and cannot, accept this now being removed after 18 months of progress. I have a full time job, and I value my time enough that keeping spreadsheets to do what I can already do easily in game, on top of all the grinding and maintenance present to keep up, is a deal breaker.

This game is advertised as "play the way you want", and the way I want is being nerfed into the ground and I would have to to take more of my precious time to make up for it, while still paying hard cash (let's face it, without Plus, this game is unplayable in any serious fashion. I don't have a problem with this, fundamentally). No. I just won't.

"But you're just one player! Others don't care!" I hear you say. Well, firstly, every roleplayer in the game is 9/10 using achievements in a similar function (tracking at character level) , just with different content. But that's not all. Virtually every raid guild is using the system to track the progress of their up and coming end game players in exactly the way I am for myself. How much time do you think those people have IRL to dedicate sorting through who should be allowed to sign up for Craglorns or vet Cloudrest +2? At what point is it too much for an already incredibly time consuming hobby that they pay real money to participate in? And even if they don't quit the game outright, how do you think it will look to guild members when they quit leading, and newer would-be leaders see the same problem and don't want to deal with this kind admin friction that the developers deliberately put into the game?

I totally agree with you on the character tracking. I didn't want this either. I would have preferred AwA given on top of individual character tracking, NOT taking away individual character achievements to be replaced by AwA. At this point, AwA is set in stone and it is coming, and they will not keep character based achievements or tracking because of database size. I'm letting ZOS know that if I have to put up with this, here's where I draw the line. For my play style the quests and stories are what motivate me to log in. Definitely keep posting your feedback and what draws the line for you. At this point, I'm not sure if we are being heard and they're just leaving this thread open for us to vent, but people need to continue to be loud and clear on where our tolerance ends what draws the line for us. If losing character tracking and achievements is where your tolerance ends, I support you in stating that.

I agree, to a certain extent. Like Kesstryl, I won't want to play much anymore if I cannot play through stories more than once. What benefit is there for me to buy the new chapter? Play through it ONCE to completion and a card game? Sorry, but that's not worth $40 to me. That's more like $20. And before anyone says "trial", I don't usually play trials, so that's meaningless to me. I refuse to pre order until I have some assurance in this regards.

In terms of the achievements themselves; no, I don't like it. I don't like losing character tracking so that I can see where the heck I am on things per toon. But as it stands, they seem no longer interested in discussing alternatives, so I'm waiting for the update release. When the majority of the population realizes just what AWA means, we might get a renewed conversation with it that's more far reaching.
~

Yes but at that point it will be irrelevant. With all data gone, what's there to discuss?

peacenote

nightstrike wrote: »

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.

Oh... I agree. It isn't an either/or thing!

I'm not qualified to definitively say that the claims of performance are a lie. I'm not a coder; the last classes I took on that topic was in 2009 and coding is not my current career. So I chose not to focus on that.

But yea. You'll get no argument from me that it is a truly awful thing if we're being told this is a performance issue and it's either a) not true or b) true only because the card game has 2000 achievements or something.

However, even if there is just a regular, difficult choice, where not everyone in the community agrees... the responses we got did not directly acknowledge ALLLL the things people said. That really isn't cool in any situation and I was trying to show what a response that directly addresses many points of feedback could look like.

I'll give a comparison (which never happened) with Nabisco's Oreos. Let's pretend that Nabisco announces that it can only make one flavor of Oreo going forward, and, due to popular demand, they are going to make it Fruit Punch Oreos. Tons of customers write in about their favorite flavor - can you just save this one?? - and a vocal part of the community just want to be able to keep the regular classic Oreos. Nabisco releases a statement, saying that Fruit Punch Oreos have been an extremely popular request, and that Fruit Punch Oreos are the most efficient to make, so this is why they are going in this direction. No comment about allll the people asking for classic Oreos, but instead a statement that just says "well, most people have requested Fruit Punch Oreos." However, all of the surveys released by Nabisco asked "Would you like fruit punch oreos?" not "Would you be happy if we replaced classic oreos and just made fruit punch oreos?"

Regardless of whether the data behind the amount of people that asked specifically for fruit punch oreos was completely made up, misinterpreted, or 100% real and valid, failing to address the vocal people asking to keep classic oreos would be a mistake.

That's all I'm saying. It's weird that ZOS wouldn't be immediately open about the drivers for AwA, especially since they are pretty open about anything related to performance and also because they tell us "why" for almost any change. But regardless of whether someone, somewhere, felt there had to be a "spin" put on the reason, it still doesn't mean that the company can't address the other sentiments.

SirBedevere

At this point, I'm choosing to focus on the positive. Spending all my playtime on PTS over the last few days has made me realize that, while the bugs are annoying - especially the buggy zone guide tracking, a few buggy quests and lack public dungeon boss tracking - the vast, vast majority of the game is still intact.

I still get a thrill of excitement when I find a corn flower or a Master chest. I still enjoy the stories. I still love filling out my sticker book. And I love the combat, even more now with the hybrid changes (running Hurricane on a MagSorc is really fun, btw). And I still have tons of content that I still haven't even done once. I've barely even played the Necromancer class since Elsweyr came out.

I'm going to have to adapt and find new activities to do, but there don't seem to be any shortage.

For those of you who feel like your characters are losing their souls, I am very sorry. I hope that you can still find ways to enjoy the game, and we will cross paths sometime.

Vulkunne

SirBedevere wrote: »

At this point, I'm choosing to focus on the positive. Spending all my playtime on PTS over the last few days has made me realize that, while the bugs are annoying - especially the buggy zone guide tracking, a few buggy quests and lack public dungeon boss tracking - the vast, vast majority of the game is still intact.

I still get a thrill of excitement when I find a corn flower or a Master chest. I still enjoy the stories. I still love filling out my sticker book. And I love the combat, even more now with the hybrid changes (running Hurricane on a MagSorc is really fun, btw). And I still have tons of content that I still haven't even done once. I've barely even played the Necromancer class since Elsweyr came out.

I'm going to have to adapt and find new activities to do, but there don't seem to be any shortage.

For those of you who feel like your characters are losing their souls, I am very sorry. I hope that you can still find ways to enjoy the game, and we will cross paths sometime.

Its not about positives and negatives really.

For example, when I used to work on programming for projects, regardless of how the code actually ran there was almost always positives and negatives, ie... the things that worked well and those that did not lol. And its interesting because it was the positive aspects that actually helped get me thru a particularly rough project cause we couldn't figure out what the client was really asking for and eventually they dropped the other part of the project.

Anyways, yeah the game is playable and I'll keep playing it as well. However, that said the problem is deeper than that because the characters themselves are not owned by us yet they are crafted by us, with each person shaping their works to their taste. Whether this be an idea, a mirror of themselves, a celebrity, something cool for lore etc. And the crux of the matter is the data they are removing is like a record of things that we accomplished with each character. Characters can be different with totally different experiences and now that story is not just gone, its as if it never even existed... in the first place.

By erasing this data it really does feel like the character has in a way lost part of themselves because our deeds, our time spent with each character in pursuit of that story that is unique to each, is lost. Basically this feels like burning books. Its also kin to perhaps waking up one day and not knowing who you are and where you came from because I can't prove otherwise with my memories. And in this age we are living now with Information Technology and AI and so forth, who we are exists in a finite universe but yet who we are is also digital because in the digital world we create. That's why at every place I've ever worked, preserving a client's data is paramount. You don't copy it and take it home with you You don't delete it, great care must be exercised with people's data.

This is why we're asking them to not go thru with this change. And that really is the point with my story, for the client we produced him something think of it as like a calculator utility that produces results from science. But here however, these characters are not calculators they as well as their story exists multi-dimensionally as a form of art and science.

ArchangelIsraphel

I have to say, after reading the Q&A I am more disturbed than ever by the companies decision to go through with this in spite of the passionate expressions of love for this game as it is that many have posted here.

The shortness of the Q&A and the coldness with which our concerns were addressed....oh wait, scratch that. Many of our concerns were not addressed, and in fact they have been outright ignored in a way that feels really, really weird for a company who claims to value the things we have come to love as players.

When it was said that the Q&A was meant to "clear up confusion" it feels like what they really meant was "we're going to tell you why you should be happy and you're going to like it."

I'm not confused about the changes. I understand exactly why I dislike them, and I feel the database excuse is a poor one when compared to what has been lost.

Oh good. My character history has been wiped clean so that I can load two seconds faster. Well, that was just totally worth it wasn't it?

Other games manage to implement AWA along side individual character tracking. Why was this not thought through? Why did the company think even for a minute that this sloppy method of implementation was even slightly acceptable?

Why can't they get it together and develop a better fix that both preserves this data, improves performance, AND provides AWA? Spend some time on it, instead of a card game no one requested?

Feels like being gaslighted. Especially when they call it a "QOL" improvement when there are well over 1000 posts here describing how utterly broken the state of the game is on alts, what with seeing npcs where they shouldn't be, hearing dialouge you shouldn't, and being unable to experience the game fresh on a new character.

When people go to the store to buy a new bag of chips, they aren't purchasing it so that they can open it to find it already half eaten. Cut the price of new character slots down if you're only going to provide a botched experience on every new alt.

I have tried my best to show my respect and love for this game, as have many here. I have tried to remain as calm and reasonable as possible. But I am at my wits end when it feels as though the developers arent being permitted to reciprocate even an iota of the concern and love the players in this thread have poured out before them.

Kelinmiriel

code65536 wrote: »

[Snipped for brevity; the entire original is here.][

...new characters--with very little character history--load more quickly.

...With or without AWA, there will be a local copy of the player's achievements that the instance will load in. The only difference is whether that data is copied from the accounts database or from the characters database.

...my oldest characters do have longer load screen times than a fresh new character. [in his case, a few seconds, but that's with a very fast computer.]

First, thank you for your in-depth analysis! I completely agree that spending a few extra seconds loading to retain my character's history would be well worth it to me. I have a question, though, based on the bits of quotes I left above and the concepts behind them.

Part of the reason a new character would load faster than an old one in the existing system might be having a lot less achievements. In the new system, the new character would also have a lot of achievements, because they're mostly account-wide.

So doesn't that mean that for a new character on an old account, the load times might actually be longer?

Granted, this difference would be only a few seconds on a really fast computer like code's, but for some people, it would be more significant - and the point remains, that it might be worse instead of better.

Is this accurate, @code65536?

RoseTheSnowElf

Zezin wrote: »

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Zezin wrote: »

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »

Public dungeon skill points are a separate character specific from inception of account-wide - it has the little blue head icon above it in the journal.

It's just the non-skill point public dungeon quest and bosses done that are account-wide.

So, yes you still get the skill point from completing that small part of the public dungeon.

Wait - so one cannot redo the quests for the public dungeons on alts? That's terrible - why even return to them?

You can do the quests on as many alts as you want, the only thing you won't be able to do is get the achievement multiple times except for the skill point achievement as that is character specific.

Except there ARE quests that lock areas after completion. These are still not replayable on current PTS.
And this is about more than just doing quests. Exploration, stortlines, NPC responses, etc.
Again, this is not that simple.

yes those are BUGS, it's funny how I see more feedback on the bugs thread than on this thread and bugs on this thread instead of the bug thread. It's the developers job to fix those before the patch is out, if they're not fixed by then I'll be annoyed too, as it is right now however I see no reason to, I am excited for the changes.

I know I'm relatively new here, but from what I have experienced and observed, there has not been a lot of confidence instilled in the player community that bugs will be fixed in a timely, efficient and effective manner. If they even get acknowledged at all.

And personally, THAT'S my greatest concern of all this.

Jaraal

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

..... the coldness with which our concerns were addressed....

I think this is the key, right here.

There is no empathy for the players, or respect for the millions of hours we have spent on replaying the game and collecting achievements with our alts. It's a cold, calculated business decision, nothing more. Instead of expanding the infrastructure to keep pace with the evolving game, a decision was made to remove gameplay that we have come to love for the past eight years. Out of all the data that could be chosen for deletion, they chose that which means the most to us.

Tandor

Jaraal wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

..... the coldness with which our concerns were addressed....

I think this is the key, right here.

There is no empathy for the players, or respect for the millions of hours we have spent on replaying the game and collecting achievements with our alts. It's a cold, calculated business decision, nothing more. Instead of expanding the infrastructure to keep pace with the evolving game, a decision was made to remove gameplay that we have come to love for the past eight years. Out of all the data that could be chosen for deletion, they chose that which means the most to us.

The coldness isn't just in the business decision that was taken, but also most critically in the wall of silence that was erected around it. That's the aspect that I find the most disappointing, and the most surprising as even for a company not renowned for its communication skills ZOS have previously tended to explain controversial changes and discuss them openly with the community which simply hasn't happened in any meaningful way in this case.