silvereyes wrote: »Don’t forget that there are quest stages still being tracked per character that could be used to fix most of those NPC dialog consequences. There are only a couple, like adoring admirer, that have no quests.
But we've heard no word if NPC dialogue will be fixed to track from quests, or if they intend to keep the world incoherent for our alts because their vision for the game is that alts are simply a different face of our main, which is ridiculous because why spend money on writers and voice actors at this point if we can't enjoy all content fresh on an alt. Besides RP or immersion being ruined, there is no point to even play any part of the game more than once now. Even if you don't care about RP or immersion, you aren't even getting your money's worth if content is designed to only be fresh and new once and then all alts are either locked out of content, no matter how small, and are treated as saviors even if they never completed content. This game lost value on those points alone and is not worth paying for anymore.
That's the thing about doing content a second time though, it's not fresh anymore and it won't ever be again, there's also an argument to be said on how many times people replay content like quests and for those who do how many actually listen to the story a second time. I agree on RP and immersion being broken and diminished but in terms of replaying content it's just as freash as content you've already done in the past is, you might not get a small ding congratulating you on finishing it but that's it.
Saying that you shouldn't have voice actors anymore is almost like saying you should have sound in a movie theater just because you can't goin there again without paying. The voice acted quests are something I really enjoy in ESO and the reason I like questing in this game so much compared to other MMOs where I just skip dialogue.
Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »
Is PTS still EU?
Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »
Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »PTS alchemy seems broken. It's stuck in a superposition of states between account-wide full knowledge but, at the craft table, an individual character still shows as having no individual knowledge (Schrodinger's alchemy cat)...
Either way it needs to be fixed, preferably by not going ahead with this unwelcome mess in its entirety.
I think this is working as intended, the alchemy achievements not matching the reagent knowledge, like with Skyshards achievements vs. actually collecting them. I would not be surprised to see enchanting achievements go the same way at some point, since the inconsistency is confusing, and I'm sure they'd love to throw out a slew of timestamp data to save space.Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »PTS alchemy seems broken. It's stuck in a superposition of states between account-wide full knowledge but, at the craft table, an individual character still shows as having no individual knowledge (Schrodinger's alchemy cat).
With enchanting you(zos) made it clear you intended it to be character specific and provided extra visual cues to reflect this. Alchemy is NOT done the same way, nor given in your list of character specifics.
Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »
newtinmpls 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.
silvereyes wrote: »I've been thinking about this, and I don't think this is just about the card game. I think the performance / server stability reasons that ZOS gave are genuine, and they are experiencing a real issue with scalability right now.I think the new card game is going to add a slew of achievementsalberichtano wrote: »The gaming company could partner with a cloud storage provider that you would not have direct access to. Your sub fee would cover both costs.
- When playing the game it can quickly pull your profile from the cloud and then update while playing or when you log off
- Vendor manages your data storage at a reasonable fee, game dev manages the game with no additional fees
Problem solved. I would think this solution would have been considered especially now that ZOS is with MS. And that's my greatest concern in all this as far as why can they not work together to solve problems like this.
Because, I believe (and I admit it just guesswork on my part), MS doesn't want to use datastorage that they could rent for good money on a game they just purchased. Unless the gamers will pay at least the same amount for said data storage, it would be a net loss for them. And I am not sure that ZOS would want to increase the costs for the game in that way - it would probably kill the FTP-element, as laying the cost entirely on the Plus-ers would be devastating (though, again, I might be wrong here, since I am not sure how much MS wants to rent out there data space for).
MS bought ZOS in order to make profits, not to improve the games with their own tech. Like any company their duty is to make profit to the shareholders, and anything else would make them liable for misconduct. For a pure gaming company investments in an MMO could generate more profit, but for a parent company it would probably be seen as far too risky.
But again, this is what I believe is happening from my rather meager experience from businesses. I just don't think that MS wants to rain resources over ZOS or ESO, they want to make a profit from what already is there.
- Even as early as the end of 2019, work on database cold storage had already begun. They realized they had a scaling problem even then, as accumulated character data continued to pile up over time.
- When the pandemic hit, ESO's popularity exploded, hitting active player numbers unseen "since console launch back in 2015". According to Steam Charts, the active player count more than doubled between the end of 2019 and April 2020.
- When Greymoor released, the servers couldn't handle character load traffic. They singled out some redundant character save code - which was fixed - but also achievements as the underlying cause. This was even considering the fact that many of the characters being loaded were either brand new, or hadn't played in years.
- Database caching and worker optimizations work is already complete, and launched with Update 27.
- There was another large spike of activity in late March 2021. This corresponds with the patch before the Blackwood Chapter release, not the Chapter itself.
- Cold storage is running late. It's activated on Playstation NA and EU and XBox NA and EU servers. However, it hasn't been activated on PC NA or PC EU servers, yet, and there's no ETA for when it will be.
Given that evidence, I think that what is happening is that the database optimizations the developers have implemented so far - including caching - are proving insufficient to deal with the game's rapid data growth. The Greymoor Boom is now exacting a delayed performance drag on the database as those players accumulate more data per character, and they accumulate more and more characters. The cold storage optimizations aren't complete yet, and they probably won't be on PC in time for the new surge of activity in the coming month.
They probably knew this all this in Q4 of last year when they planned out their rearchitecture, and they knew they didn't have enough time to fundamentally change all the achievements data to use a different storage mechanism before March 2022. So they decided to try and kill two birds with one stone and implemented a frequently-requested feature of account-wide achievements to try and buy some time by deleting data.
They probably foresaw some backlash, but I honestly don't think that they knew how much there would be, and they had no backup plan. The player activity surge is coming, and soon, and AwA is their only hope to weather it.
Just another reason why they need to reinstate a formal program for community dialog again, IMO. If the Council of Nirn, Council of Raiders programs were still active, and this had been discussed with them ahead of time, it probably would have been apparent to ZOS much earlier that character data is sacred to a lot of players, and they needed to come up with a different plan to deal with their technical issues. The community / class rep programs and PTS feedback are not good substitutes to a back-and-forth dialog.
Kelinmiriel wrote: »Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »PTS alchemy seems broken. It's stuck in a superposition of states between account-wide full knowledge but, at the craft table, an individual character still shows as having no individual knowledge (Schrodinger's alchemy cat)...
Either way it needs to be fixed, preferably by not going ahead with this unwelcome mess in its entirety.
If you haven't put this in the thread for bugs, please do it. It'll just get lost here, and is even less likely to be noticed.
Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »Kelinmiriel wrote: »Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »PTS alchemy seems broken. It's stuck in a superposition of states between account-wide full knowledge but, at the craft table, an individual character still shows as having no individual knowledge (Schrodinger's alchemy cat)...
Either way it needs to be fixed, preferably by not going ahead with this unwelcome mess in its entirety.
If you haven't put this in the thread for bugs, please do it. It'll just get lost here, and is even less likely to be noticed.
I know about the other thread. I chose to post here.
Here, there - it doesn't matter; it will be given pretty much the same amount and quality of acknowledgment as every other item of feedback given.
Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »Kelinmiriel wrote: »Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »PTS alchemy seems broken. It's stuck in a superposition of states between account-wide full knowledge but, at the craft table, an individual character still shows as having no individual knowledge (Schrodinger's alchemy cat)...
Either way it needs to be fixed, preferably by not going ahead with this unwelcome mess in its entirety.
If you haven't put this in the thread for bugs, please do it. It'll just get lost here, and is even less likely to be noticed.
I know about the other thread. I chose to post here.
Here, there - it doesn't matter; it will be given pretty much the same amount and quality of acknowledgment as every other item of feedback given.
It's very important to put it in the bug thread and report with /bug.
We have to help get it into the internal bug tracker backlog so it can be prioritized and acted on in a future patch!
dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »
Acheivements surely arent. Being able to play the game more than once is.
This is all purely speculational for now, but what do you plan to do when this thing is pushed to live regardless? I'm going to spam the hell out of guild and zone chats, reddit and forums about how you can play a (great) Elder Scrolls game only once.
Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »
Acheivements surely arent. Being able to play the game more than once is.
This is all purely speculational for now, but what do you plan to do when this thing is pushed to live regardless? I'm going to spam the hell out of guild and zone chats, reddit and forums about how you can play a (great) Elder Scrolls game only once.
Continue questing on my 18 characters, just as i did before the patch.
Its not because a few quest are broken that the game isnt replayable,in fact it definitly is replayable
Sure i do understand that not being able to redo acheivement on alt may saden or even anger some, but the game is much bigger thant that.
People who haven't logged on in, say, 5 years... delete their accounts. Send them an e-mail... Implement login queue times.
These are horrible marketing decisions. 50 broken quests are way, way better in terms of players outcry and coverage.
This issue is not covered anywhere at all besides this topic. And I fear won't be, because, realistically, its 10% who redo quests and 10% of that who will notice a world state broken. And there are people of that 1% who are completely fine with it as we see. Its nothing in the grand scheme of things and won't impact ZOS bottom line at all. Unless this gets coverage somehow.
dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »
Acheivements surely arent. Being able to play the game more than once is.
This is all purely speculational for now, but what do you plan to do when this thing is pushed to live regardless? I'm going to spam the hell out of guild and zone chats, reddit and forums about how you can play a (great) Elder Scrolls game only once.
dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »
Acheivements surely arent. Being able to play the game more than once is.
This is all purely speculational for now, but what do you plan to do when this thing is pushed to live regardless? I'm going to spam the hell out of guild and zone chats, reddit and forums about how you can play a (great) Elder Scrolls game only once.
And this isn't some balance change, or set rework, or other minor change that players will forget about in a few months. This is a major change in gameplay for everyone, and especially those who have cultivated carefully crafted identities for their characters, and for those who have done everything they wanted on one character and are currently replaying the game from scratch on their alts.
No, this is something that will be a sore point and keep people resentful for as long as the game is still active. People won't forget having years of hard work and in many cases lots of money spent on their individual characters just casually erased.... for any reason. And especially not one that won't be showing any immediate changes in performance..... which in itself is a bitter pill for many ("Year of Performance", etc.) And it will become even more egregious if performance continues to degrade, and the character history wipe will prove to be in vain.
Unfortunately, this one won't be easily swept under the rug. And new players will be constantly informed about how the game used to be, what we used to be able to do, how NPCs used to only make remarks to the characters that actually did the content, how titles used to be meaningful and were good identifiers of what the character was able to accomplish. It will be like folks who talk about the VR days, except 1,000 times more prevalent.
McTaterskins wrote: »Lol. 79 pages of - Guys, it really doesn't matter. They're going to do what they planned to do whether it's well thought out or not.
They're scrambling for space.
Anyone notice 1 less of each campaign during Mayhem?
Folks, we're giving up character progression for card game space and a couple dungeons. That's that.
McTaterskins wrote: »Lol. 79 pages of - Guys, it really doesn't matter. They're going to do what they planned to do whether it's well thought out or not.
They're scrambling for space.
Anyone notice 1 less of each campaign during Mayhem?
Folks, we're giving up character progression for card game space and a couple dungeons. That's that.
It's so frustrating and perplexing. Where did all the money from MS go? If the game is so profitable to be aquired by them, then why don't they invest back in it, instead of literally butchering years of the playerbase progression and future replayability in order to cut corners... I was hoping for something in this week's PTS, so I wouldn't have to start taking screenshots of all my alt toons achievements and dates, and then cancelling my ESO+, but here we are.
McTaterskins wrote: »Lol. 79 pages of - Guys, it really doesn't matter. They're going to do what they planned to do whether it's well thought out or not.
They're scrambling for space.
Anyone notice 1 less of each campaign during Mayhem?
Folks, we're giving up character progression for card game space and a couple dungeons. That's that.
It's so frustrating and perplexing. Where did all the money from MS go? If the game is so profitable to be aquired by them, then why don't they invest back in it, instead of literally butchering years of the playerbase progression and future replayability in order to cut corners... I was hoping for something in this week's PTS, so I wouldn't have to start taking screenshots of all my alt toons achievements and dates, and then cancelling my ESO+, but here we are.
Zenimax stated when they were explaining the acquisition that Microsoft was taking a hands off approach and letting the studio continue to have control of the direction of the game. And Zenimax is a multi-billion dollar company in it's own right.... it's not like they are hurting for money.
wolfie1.0. wrote: »Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »
Acheivements surely arent. Being able to play the game more than once is.
This is all purely speculational for now, but what do you plan to do when this thing is pushed to live regardless? I'm going to spam the hell out of guild and zone chats, reddit and forums about how you can play a (great) Elder Scrolls game only once.
Continue questing on my 18 characters, just as i did before the patch.
Its not because a few quest are broken that the game isnt replayable,in fact it definitly is replayable
Sure i do understand that not being able to redo acheivement on alt may saden or even anger some, but the game is much bigger thant that.
its more than a few.by my count its around 50ish buggy/ broken quests
proprio.meb16_ESO wrote: »Check better... should be tomofhyrule post on page 3, with a pretty long list at its end as spoiler.silvereyes wrote: »wolfie1.0. wrote: »Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »
Acheivements surely arent. Being able to play the game more than once is.
This is all purely speculational for now, but what do you plan to do when this thing is pushed to live regardless? I'm going to spam the hell out of guild and zone chats, reddit and forums about how you can play a (great) Elder Scrolls game only once.
Continue questing on my 18 characters, just as i did before the patch.
Its not because a few quest are broken that the game isnt replayable,in fact it definitly is replayable
Sure i do understand that not being able to redo acheivement on alt may saden or even anger some, but the game is much bigger thant that.
its more than a few.by my count its around 50ish buggy/ broken quests
I keep seeing people throw around this ~50 broken quests figure. What are you including in that figure? Because I know I'm bad at math sometimes, but I read through the entire bug reports thread, and I only count 7, and one of them can be easily avoided:
- A Book and its Cover from Summerset
- Surreptitiously Shadowed from Murkmire
- Giant Cheese Connoisseur from Greymoor
- Taking Up the Mantle from Blackreach
- A Friend in Deed from Markarth
- Adoring Admirer from Blackwood
- Innocent Scoundrel in Stros M'Kai - triggering this bug seems to be a real edge case. Just don't do Stros M'kai quests on two characters simultaneously.
Here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7531289/#Comment_7531289
Totally agree... I dont know where 50 is coming from, it has appeared twice in this thread afaik.silvereyes wrote: »There's enough to be sad about right now without adding in unverified speculation.
proprio.meb16_ESO wrote: »Totally agree... I dont know where 50 is coming from, it has appeared twice in this thread afaik.silvereyes wrote: »There's enough to be sad about right now without adding in unverified speculation.
The first time is in the post of the person you've quoted, who evidently speaks from his personal estimation. The second is your post.
My bad i've linked it to tomofhyrule post, honestly i hadn't counted them.
dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »
Acheivements surely arent. Being able to play the game more than once is.
This is all purely speculational for now, but what do you plan to do when this thing is pushed to live regardless? I'm going to spam the hell out of guild and zone chats, reddit and forums about how you can play a (great) Elder Scrolls game only once.
And this isn't some balance change, or set rework, or other minor change that players will forget about in a few months. This is a major change in gameplay for everyone, and especially those who have cultivated carefully crafted identities for their characters, and for those who have done everything they wanted on one character and are currently replaying the game from scratch on their alts.
No, this is something that will be a sore point and keep people resentful for as long as the game is still active. People won't forget having years of hard work and in many cases lots of money spent on their individual characters just casually erased.... for any reason. And especially not one that won't be showing any immediate changes in performance..... which in itself is a bitter pill for many ("Year of Performance", etc.) And it will become even more egregious if performance continues to degrade, and the character history wipe will prove to be in vain.
Unfortunately, this one won't be easily swept under the rug. And new players will be constantly informed about how the game used to be, what we used to be able to do, how NPCs used to only make remarks to the characters that actually did the content, how titles used to be meaningful and were good identifiers of what the character was able to accomplish. It will be like folks who talk about the VR days, except 1,000 times more prevalent.