PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

Arunei

Unfortunately, with AwA coming tomorrow and still no mention of a delay, I think it's inevitable it's going to get pushed to live.

Gina said they were going to keep the data in case something catastrophic happened. Maybe if they get droves of people asking tomorrow what's going on with their achievements and all (and by that I mean like hundreds of people flocking to the forums to ask what the heck is going on), they'll reconsider and roll back, though it's unlikely since it would reset any progress anyone made between release and said rollback.

Crown_of_Antlers

I don't have any hope that they will push this back. Today I'll sign into each of my characters, take one more look at them, and say goodbye. I'll miss them, especially my pair of Bosmers whom I roleplay as the ancestors of my TES3 character, but if never logging in on them again is the only way to keep my characters achievements from being blended together into one, so be it. ZOS will not get another dime or another log-in from me.

Shame on you, ZOS. Taking away characters' individuality goes against everything that the Elder Scrolls has ever stood for. And if "performance" really is the true reason you're doing this, then there is something wrong with the way ESO is put together and this change isn't going to permanently fix it.

Elsonso

Arunei wrote: »

Unfortunately, with AwA coming tomorrow and still no mention of a delay, I think it's inevitable it's going to get pushed to live.

Gina said they were going to keep the data in case something catastrophic happened. Maybe if they get droves of people asking tomorrow what's going on with their achievements and all (and by that I mean like hundreds of people flocking to the forums to ask what the heck is going on), they'll reconsider and roll back, though it's unlikely since it would reset any progress anyone made between release and said rollback.

They are not going to delay, cancel, or roll back this thing. My estimation is that the only thing that would cause this would be massive data loss of epic proportions across the the board, and that won't be happening. Look to the XBox problem that happened recently to understand how massive this data loss would have to be in order to roll back.

Crown_of_Antlers wrote: »

Today I'll sign into each of my characters, take one more look at them, and say goodbye. I'll miss them, especially my pair of Bosmers whom I roleplay as the ancestors of my TES3 character, but if never logging in on them again is the only way to keep my characters achievements from being blended together into one, so be it. ZOS will not get another dime or another log-in from me.

Doing something similar here. I have four accounts, and 7 of the 8 (PC NA + PC EU) were a simple matter of picking a main, then stripping the alts for valuables and either parking them naked in some house or just deleting them. Since the goal is to get to a single main, it it a little harder on the last one. I have 5 main characters on @Elsonso PC/NA. three of which were original to launch. I'll get 'er done, though.

Kesstryl

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my characters. I'm thinking of doing the nuclear option which is to delete all but one so I have NO achievements on my account messing up the integrity of the game world. Then use PTS to play out everything, take note of which achievements destroy NPC reactions and narrative integrity, and avoid those like they're a horrible plague. Or I will simply let my characters sit and never touch them again and walk away. I have today to think about and prepare for this. I'm not happy.

tomofhyrule

I've accepted it. It's got some bugs that I'm more than a little annoyed about - like some non-quest dialogues and events being permanently broken - but my characters and their stories live in my head anyway. I can make it through this.

I'm very grateful for silvereyes's addon so my alts can still complete zones themselves. At least there is that.

In terms of achievements though, I just spent the last week prepping for it. All of my random tester characters have been deleted and rerolled to be bank mules/name reservers only for when I eventually get their stories started. At this point, my main and my secondary are the only characters I have on my account that have any achievements at all, and my secondary is only level 28 so he doesn't have anything new. I even deleted my first character I made (I had to make a character to get to the crown store and buy the Any Race/Alliance pack for my main) so I can ensure my main is the one who gets credit for everything.

And I'm hoping to set it all up that the first thing I do is log into my main and get all of those points counted, and then my secondary. And I have just the thing for him to do that my main hasn't that will give him one achievement of his own.

I'd hope that the first few weeks of the patch come with a lot of bug reports where quest dialogue is nonsensical so they can go back and swap those triggers to the quest log properly. I remember that was an issue when Companions came out - some quests would not spawn a follower NPC if you had a companion active and broke it, so they were fixing those for a while afterwards. They may eventually have to do a bit of a nuke and delete all of our progress for Melina/Giant Cheese/etc so those can happen again, but that's a small price to pay to get those to work once again.

But no, this will not be rolled back. This is going live as it is, so I'm getting the Zone Tracker addon and hoping for the best.

Melivar

Spot checked a few of the achievements that are going to stack kill counts and such and will be loading in my characters in from least played to my 3 mains so that achievements will be split between the 3 mains that I play for open world (NB jack of all trades), dungeons (Templar Healer) and trials (Necro Tank). They each have things that are going to be split up that way anyways so as long as those 3 get the majority of things will be ok in my book.

From that point I will look things over and then decide if I want to finish a grind on a particular character or just play as I usually do and be happy when new things do pop up.

Still sad for those of you that this affects in an adverse way to how you have played for as long as you have treated ESO as home and hope you can find a way to make it all work out and still find joy in the game. Don't do anything to rash just in case you have a change of heart later.

In the end some changes just work out for the best even if it means something different or a total change in direction. At least at this point in time there are lots of alternatives with a lot of existing titles having new content with their own changes and new/newer games to try out and explore

Jaimeh

tmbrinks wrote: »

We got one tiny squeak (from the Q&A), then nothing. Radio silence.

And then to still be told "we're working on our communication"...

It's proof that the word "communication" was used as buzzword and there was not really any intention on doing so. And it's why I've pulled my financial support from this game after supporting it continuously (and on multiple accounts) for years.

I'm not naïve, so I know that I'm nothing more than a line in a database (irony?) with an account number and a credit card number attached to it to a large company like this. It that I feel like we were given meaningless lip service, that has left this bitter taste in my mouth. Because they never really cared about us, the players.

Imagine rolling out an update that punishes long-time players and has them up in knots about how to preserve the history of their characters, how to log in, how to play them moving forward, and only issuing a Q&A with limited information that doesn't begin to acknowledge the enormity of the change and its implications. They did not even considering postponing it to flesh it out more, or explore other avenues. Players are deleting their characters, or making mental notes to park them for the foreseeable future to deal with this... it's beyond mind-boggling. Why couldn't this wait three more months? Is it because of something in the upcoming chapter, like the card game, clashing with character achievements? What is so pressing that they had to do it now, with bugs still out there, and without figuring out a way of preserving at least map clearance indicators on alts? Just tumbleweeds on ZOS' part... no other communication. That's how much they respect their playerbase...

Bucky Balls

Posting on behalf of comrade_ogilvy who is 'currently tied up in room 101'.

comrade_ogilvy wrote:

After wandering around pts on a low level character for a bit [actually, bucky was co-opted] into starter zones like stonefalls, auridon and senschal(s.elsewyr) the ambient npc chatter seems to be mostly silenced. This may simply be because whatever rng mechanic wasn't triggered but it did seem eerily and noticeably quiet. This silence does NOT extend to main quest line npc's ("I swear it was sai sahan..." or "do you know how long I've been looking for you" and, naturally, "dragons in your homeland...") which are still noticeably present. Additionally, some npc's (eg Nahrina in Sentinel Alik'r when approached will NOT recognise the new character and her dialogue reflects that her side quest in an alik'r delve has not been completed) seem ok too; but I only tested one or two of these. My low-level character was not greeted with anything reflecting account-wide progresss by npc monologues - no 'saviour' etc mentions in my brief wanderings in sentinel, senschal, rivenspire and wayrest but, again, those comments are rng and may simply have not been triggered.

All the previous overland issues are still conspicuously present: world objects approached like delves will show initially as dark but as soon as the 'found' trigger occurs, the map turns them white. World bosses etc are shown as complete if AWA has recorded them as complete.

The add-on created by @silvereyes (CharacterZoneTracker) makes some cosmetic changes to both the map and and the zone guide such that current, live behaviour is more or less retained: incomplete delves show as incomplete on the map and the map-inset zone guide pretty much has everything as it should be (exception: tooltips show awa data). Unfortunately, the add-on changes are cosmetic in that it has no effect, understandably, on game mechanics - when you enter a delve the boss will take 5+ mins to spawn if AWA has recorded the delve as complete. When you kill a delve boss you will get the text acknowledgement that it's complete but no corresponding pop-up graphic if awa has recorded it as already done. I didn't test world bosses or other stuff due to time constraints.

image showing u33(no add-ons) incomplete delve on approach from perspective of low-level character. Note that inset and 'full' zone guide shows completion of various zone activities not done by the character but recorded by awa as 'complete'.

image showing CharacterZoneTracker add-on changes to ui from same low-level character: the incomplete delve is still blanked as it should be and the map inset zone guide is showing that this new character has done nothing yet in zone. Once the delve boss is killed (after the LONG wait) - the add-on updates the map and inset zone guide to reflect this fact(not shown).

The CharacterZoneTracker add-on was enabled/disabled to generate the images. The data was collected from live (VERY IMPORTANT FOR ADD_ON TO WORK) by loading into each character with the add-on active then transferred to pts saved variables for testing. No other add-ons were active during testing except, briefly, to test if there were any conflicts with other add-ons or game errors.

From this brief testing, with the add-on - assuming you download it before u33 and backup your savedvariables - it seems to restore some of the replayability removed with the awa implementation. For console users dismayed by this awa implementation, I am truly sorry there is no apparent workaround for you.

All of this begs the question, however: given zos were asked for a client-side implementation why was none implemented and why was that requested potential feature question not addressed in the q&a? Personally, I remain opposed to the implementation of awa and would have preferred keeping what we have and adding account-wide separately.

Thanks to @code65536 and @silvereyes for 11th hour add-on provision. And for Bucky for passing on this test information which I hope may be of interest.

Danel_Vadan

https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/grass-foxtail-cluster/

c363b

When you play on more than 1 computer (same account and characters), would you have to cycle through all the characters on each computer for the mentioned addons to be effective in saving your character data?

proprio.meb16_ESO

c363b wrote: »

When you play on more than 1 computer (same account and characters), would you have to cycle through all the characters on each computer for the mentioned addons to be effective in saving your character data?

No need to... you should be able just to copy your saved vars lua for the lib addon (after you've logged out - it updates its saved vars on char logout) in a usb stick and then place it into the saved vars folder of the other machine.

Jaraal

Still shaking my head in disbelief at the high price ZOS is willing to pay for "maybe" performance in the future. It seems like the deletion of so many characters and reduction in the number of people who actually stick around will have more performance benefits than removing some 50kb achievement data. And a lot of us who normally buy all new content aren't buying High Isle, that can effectively only be played one time, then you already have all the achievements you're gonna get from it.

It was fun redoing content from scratch with my alts. Tamriel Once just doesn't seem worth the price.

SilverBride

I wonder what players who know nothing about this are going to think when they log in tomorrow.

alberichtano

Bucky Balls wrote: »

Posting on behalf of comrade_ogilvy who is 'currently tied up in room 101'.

comrade_ogilvy wrote:

After wandering around pts on a low level character for a bit [actually, bucky was co-opted] into starter zones like stonefalls, auridon and senschal(s.elsewyr) the ambient npc chatter seems to be mostly silenced. This may simply be because whatever rng mechanic wasn't triggered but it did seem eerily and noticeably quiet. This silence does NOT extend to main quest line npc's ("I swear it was sai sahan..." or "do you know how long I've been looking for you" and, naturally, "dragons in your homeland...") which are still noticeably present. Additionally, some npc's (eg Nahrina in Sentinel Alik'r when approached will NOT recognise the new character and her dialogue reflects that her side quest in an alik'r delve has not been completed) seem ok too; but I only tested one or two of these. My low-level character was not greeted with anything reflecting account-wide progresss by npc monologues - no 'saviour' etc mentions in my brief wanderings in sentinel, senschal, rivenspire and wayrest but, again, those comments are rng and may simply have not been triggered.

All the previous overland issues are still conspicuously present: world objects approached like delves will show initially as dark but as soon as the 'found' trigger occurs, the map turns them white. World bosses etc are shown as complete if AWA has recorded them as complete.

The add-on created by @silvereyes (CharacterZoneTracker) makes some cosmetic changes to both the map and and the zone guide such that current, live behaviour is more or less retained: incomplete delves show as incomplete on the map and the map-inset zone guide pretty much has everything as it should be (exception: tooltips show awa data). Unfortunately, the add-on changes are cosmetic in that it has no effect, understandably, on game mechanics - when you enter a delve the boss will take 5+ mins to spawn if AWA has recorded the delve as complete. When you kill a delve boss you will get the text acknowledgement that it's complete but no corresponding pop-up graphic if awa has recorded it as already done. I didn't test world bosses or other stuff due to time constraints.

image showing u33(no add-ons) incomplete delve on approach from perspective of low-level character. Note that inset and 'full' zone guide shows completion of various zone activities not done by the character but recorded by awa as 'complete'.

image showing CharacterZoneTracker add-on changes to ui from same low-level character: the incomplete delve is still blanked as it should be and the map inset zone guide is showing that this new character has done nothing yet in zone. Once the delve boss is killed (after the LONG wait) - the add-on updates the map and inset zone guide to reflect this fact(not shown).

The CharacterZoneTracker add-on was enabled/disabled to generate the images. The data was collected from live (VERY IMPORTANT FOR ADD_ON TO WORK) by loading into each character with the add-on active then transferred to pts saved variables for testing. No other add-ons were active during testing except, briefly, to test if there were any conflicts with other add-ons or game errors.

From this brief testing, with the add-on - assuming you download it before u33 and backup your savedvariables - it seems to restore some of the replayability removed with the awa implementation. For console users dismayed by this awa implementation, I am truly sorry there is no apparent workaround for you.

All of this begs the question, however: given zos were asked for a client-side implementation why was none implemented and why was that requested potential feature question not addressed in the q&a? Personally, I remain opposed to the implementation of awa and would have preferred keeping what we have and adding account-wide separately.

Thanks to @code65536 and @silvereyes for 11th hour add-on provision. And for Bucky for passing on this test information which I hope may be of interest.

If I may play the cynic again (as it is what I do best) - they knew that modders would solve it for them. As with so, so many other bugs, issues and matters of QoL, modders do a lot of work that ZOS then simply doesn't have to. It is a rare thing to see implementations that were once part of a mod, and even then it is often (though admittedly not always) wrenched to become a selling point. Compare the modded versions of the Armory and the one created by ZOS - the modded versions were free, the ZOS-version is free to a very limited degree.

So that is why, I believe.

Jaraal

SilverBride wrote: »

I wonder what players who know nothing about this are going to think when they log in tomorrow.

Yeah, I imagine getting spammed with achievements on login is going to generate some questions. And the vast majority of players have no clue what's about to happen. Unfortunately, I will be at work when they bring the servers up, else I'd be grabbing some popcorn and watching the show.

tmbrinks

Just finished the Silver Rose motif. Tomorrow all my characters will be (essentially) at this same point of completion. So little incentive to log onto them

wolfgirlb14_ESO

I didn't find out about how poorly executed all of this was going to be until I had already pre-purchased High-Isle, but now that I have seen all of seen the posts about everything we are losing, I've stripped all my characters except my main and my crafter of everything they had except for character bound stuff and am parking them until I see what is going to happen. That way If I decide to, I can delete any whose achievements I don't want to register without having to log in as them or lose the stuff they were carrying. Thank goodness for the housing chests and bank.

Tandor

alberichtano wrote: »

Bucky Balls wrote: »

Posting on behalf of comrade_ogilvy who is 'currently tied up in room 101'.

comrade_ogilvy wrote:

After wandering around pts on a low level character for a bit [actually, bucky was co-opted] into starter zones like stonefalls, auridon and senschal(s.elsewyr) the ambient npc chatter seems to be mostly silenced. This may simply be because whatever rng mechanic wasn't triggered but it did seem eerily and noticeably quiet. This silence does NOT extend to main quest line npc's ("I swear it was sai sahan..." or "do you know how long I've been looking for you" and, naturally, "dragons in your homeland...") which are still noticeably present. Additionally, some npc's (eg Nahrina in Sentinel Alik'r when approached will NOT recognise the new character and her dialogue reflects that her side quest in an alik'r delve has not been completed) seem ok too; but I only tested one or two of these. My low-level character was not greeted with anything reflecting account-wide progresss by npc monologues - no 'saviour' etc mentions in my brief wanderings in sentinel, senschal, rivenspire and wayrest but, again, those comments are rng and may simply have not been triggered.

All the previous overland issues are still conspicuously present: world objects approached like delves will show initially as dark but as soon as the 'found' trigger occurs, the map turns them white. World bosses etc are shown as complete if AWA has recorded them as complete.

The add-on created by @silvereyes (CharacterZoneTracker) makes some cosmetic changes to both the map and and the zone guide such that current, live behaviour is more or less retained: incomplete delves show as incomplete on the map and the map-inset zone guide pretty much has everything as it should be (exception: tooltips show awa data). Unfortunately, the add-on changes are cosmetic in that it has no effect, understandably, on game mechanics - when you enter a delve the boss will take 5+ mins to spawn if AWA has recorded the delve as complete. When you kill a delve boss you will get the text acknowledgement that it's complete but no corresponding pop-up graphic if awa has recorded it as already done. I didn't test world bosses or other stuff due to time constraints.

image showing u33(no add-ons) incomplete delve on approach from perspective of low-level character. Note that inset and 'full' zone guide shows completion of various zone activities not done by the character but recorded by awa as 'complete'.

image showing CharacterZoneTracker add-on changes to ui from same low-level character: the incomplete delve is still blanked as it should be and the map inset zone guide is showing that this new character has done nothing yet in zone. Once the delve boss is killed (after the LONG wait) - the add-on updates the map and inset zone guide to reflect this fact(not shown).

The CharacterZoneTracker add-on was enabled/disabled to generate the images. The data was collected from live (VERY IMPORTANT FOR ADD_ON TO WORK) by loading into each character with the add-on active then transferred to pts saved variables for testing. No other add-ons were active during testing except, briefly, to test if there were any conflicts with other add-ons or game errors.

From this brief testing, with the add-on - assuming you download it before u33 and backup your savedvariables - it seems to restore some of the replayability removed with the awa implementation. For console users dismayed by this awa implementation, I am truly sorry there is no apparent workaround for you.

All of this begs the question, however: given zos were asked for a client-side implementation why was none implemented and why was that requested potential feature question not addressed in the q&a? Personally, I remain opposed to the implementation of awa and would have preferred keeping what we have and adding account-wide separately.

Thanks to @code65536 and @silvereyes for 11th hour add-on provision. And for Bucky for passing on this test information which I hope may be of interest.

If I may play the cynic again (as it is what I do best) - they knew that modders would solve it for them. As with so, so many other bugs, issues and matters of QoL, modders do a lot of work that ZOS then simply doesn't have to. It is a rare thing to see implementations that were once part of a mod, and even then it is often (though admittedly not always) wrenched to become a selling point. Compare the modded versions of the Armory and the one created by ZOS - the modded versions were free, the ZOS-version is free to a very limited degree.

So that is why, I believe.

For what, barely one-third of the playerbase? That's hardly a solution.

DarcyMardin

Re the new add-ones, which I’ve installed and am very thankful for — this might be a stupid question, but I’m no code expert:
once I have finished signing in all my characters and the data in the saved variables file, will it stay saved when I play the game after the update tomorrow? it won’t be overwritten by ZOS’s new code? (I’m assuming that add-on file is separate from the game code, but I’ve never actually looked at what’s in the files in my various ESO folders).

tmbrinks

DarcyMardin wrote: »

Re the new add-ones, which I’ve installed and am very thankful for — this might be a stupid question, but I’m no code expert:
once I have finished signing in all my characters and the data in the saved variables file, will it stay saved when I play the game after the update tomorrow? it won’t be overwritten by ZOS’s new code? (I’m assuming that add-on file is separate from the game code, but I’ve never actually looked at what’s in the files in my various ESO folders).

I have talked with Code (who wrote the library) and he has it setup so that it will not update if it detects update 33 as the version of the game being run.

I'd still recommend making a backup of the saved variables file just in case.

Elsonso

SilverBride wrote: »

I wonder what players who know nothing about this are going to think when they log in tomorrow.

"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."

I predict that most players won't notice, won't care, or will generally approve, even if they object to particulars.

For the rest... Anyone who has been around here for long enough knows that the number one skill required for long term ESO play is the ability to adapt to change. ZOS twiddles with the game, sometimes in a manner that seems random, four times per year, every year. Long term play of ESO is not for those who lack skill in the ways of change.

SpiritKitten

I spent the last two weeks doing Kari's Hit List and some skyshard runs, but I just can't do it anymore. Burnt out. 3 of my alts will not get Kari's TG xp I guess. Skyshard runs will be more difficult going forward. I can live with this, because I learned long ago to adapt to change in MMOs. We do not have the ultimate power over our characters or the game world. The devs do. They work in mysterious ways.

I feel sad about all the alts being deleted/parked/stripped. I went the opposite route after the AWA announcement, and bought them all their own homes and have begun decorating them so they know that I love and value them and would never delete them. I've begun respeccing them so they can be whole, even if played less.

Deleting alts so their name doesn't appear on a line of text in a tooltip (in the achievement panel) seems overboard and emotional, and an act many will regret I would bet.

Let's not lose sight of one enormous truth: we are privileged to be able to play in an MMO at all. I grew up before the internet even existed. A lot of you seem to take this wonderous digital realm for granted. Please take a step back and see the larger picture.

DarcyMardin

tmbrinks wrote: »

DarcyMardin wrote: »

Re the new add-ones, which I’ve installed and am very thankful for — this might be a stupid question, but I’m no code expert:
once I have finished signing in all my characters and the data in the saved variables file, will it stay saved when I play the game after the update tomorrow? it won’t be overwritten by ZOS’s new code? (I’m assuming that add-on file is separate from the game code, but I’ve never actually looked at what’s in the files in my various ESO folders).

I have talked with Code (who wrote the library) and he has it setup so that it will not update if it detects update 33 as the version of the game being run.

I'd still recommend making a backup of the saved variables file just in case.

Thanks! Will do.

peacenote

Elsonso wrote: »

For the rest... Anyone who has been around here for long enough knows that the number one skill required for long term ESO play is the ability to adapt to change. ZOS twiddles with the game, sometimes in a manner that seems random, four times per year, every year. Long term play of ESO is not for those who lack skill in the ways of change.

Change? Yes. Removal/erasure of character data and irreversible disruption of multiple play styles for a percentage of the community, resulting in less choice in how you choose to navigate and re-play the game? I can't recall anything like that happening in the history of ESO before. It is something folks can choose to accept (or not) but there isn't really a way to adapt to this like one does for a balance change.

What I am genuinely curious about is how the things people DO notice will be moderated on the forums. I get why it isn't desirable to have 100 threads about the same thing, but this thread is in PTS and when the change goes live, will feedback keep being funneled here? Will concerns about NPC reactions and comments about how data was merged and grateful thank yous from the happy folks and ideas for what people what to be account vs. character after this all is over be pushed into one thread about AwA forever more? This impacts so much, once it is out... it doesn't really seem like it will be one topic. And it's going to go on for a while, with people who are taking a break come back, don't log in to their alts right away, etc. The entire community certainly is not watching this, waited with baited breath to log in on all of their characters as soon as the maintenance window is over. I'm sure there are a bunch of people who have no idea and won't find out until they return to the game when High Isle is here.

SpiritKitten wrote: »

I spent the last two weeks doing Kari's Hit List and some skyshard runs, but I just can't do it anymore. Burnt out. 3 of my alts will not get Kari's TG xp I guess. Skyshard runs will be more difficult going forward. I can live with this, because I learned long ago to adapt to change in MMOs. We do not have the ultimate power over our characters or the game world. The devs do. They work in mysterious ways.

I feel sad about all the alts being deleted/parked/stripped. I went the opposite route after the AWA announcement, and bought them all their own homes and have begun decorating them so they know that I love and value them and would never delete them. I've begun respeccing them so they can be whole, even if played less.

Deleting alts so their name doesn't appear on a line of text in a tooltip (in the achievement panel) seems overboard and emotional, and an act many will regret I would bet.

Let's not lose sight of one enormous truth: we are privileged to be able to play in an MMO at all. I grew up before the internet even existed. A lot of you seem to take this wonderous digital realm for granted. Please take a step back and see the larger picture.

I hear you about not over-reacting; it's good advice of course. I will add that there's another way to look at the large digital realm... ESO is only small piece of that. So for some it may be less about taking it for granted and more about wanting to spend money and time supporting a company that listens to feedback (or at least communicates in a way to acknowledge that it was clearly heard and understood and weighed carefully). There's no reason to put up with a car that catches on fire every three months just because once upon a time we only had horse and buggies.

SilverBride

I have adapted to many changes throughout my time playing ESO, but this is more than just a minor change... it completely changes the way I have always played my characters as separate individuals. I am just thankful for the addons.

The_Boggart

This juggernaut will be rolling out and squashing my characters into an homogeneous paste.
I will possibly survive, the ESO+ cash spent on a few good books
Also dust off morrowind.

Bucky Balls

DarcyMardin wrote: »

Re the new add-ones, which I’ve installed and am very thankful for — this might be a stupid question, but I’m no code expert:
once I have finished signing in all my characters and the data in the saved variables file, will it stay saved when I play the game after the update tomorrow? it won’t be overwritten by ZOS’s new code? (I’m assuming that add-on file is separate from the game code, but I’ve never actually looked at what’s in the files in my various ESO folders).

Make a backup of your 'saved variables' directory which contains the files. It should be in your documents directory within elder scrolls online.

For @silvereyes add-on, it will kind of let you play zones as before but it is a cosmetic overlay and doesn't touch much else. Because that one will be updated as you play, if you play, it would be wise to back up the saved variables regularly. I think in the case of that add-on it does warn you against game crashes and such which may affect the saved data.

Personally, I am planning not to continue. This was my first mmo and I only played because it was elder scrolls but, after 6 years and given my age (79) it will almost certainly be my last.

And, to be fair, all I can think about is just what will be dumped next? The only other part of the game I enjoy for relaxation is crafting and I could not bear to suffer this kind of wanton destruction visited upon that.

I would prefer to continue but cannot bring myself at this stage to do so - so much history, the laughs and the frustrations, and replayability will simply be binned tomorrow.

We shared our stories and experiences, we pleaded and begged but in the end, sadly, were ignored.

Thank you all and good luck whatever you choose.

Jaraal

The_Boggart wrote: »

This juggernaut will be rolling out and squashing my characters into an homogeneous paste.

Katamari Damacy - ESO edition.

OleandersOne

Kesstryl wrote: »

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my characters. I'm thinking of doing the nuclear option which is to delete all but one so I have NO achievements on my account messing up the integrity of the game world. Then use PTS to play out everything, take note of which achievements destroy NPC reactions and narrative integrity, and avoid those like they're a horrible plague. Or I will simply let my characters sit and never touch them again and walk away. I have today to think about and prepare for this. I'm not happy.

I'm actually parking almost all of my toons for now, including my main and crafter main, except three (one for each faction) that have almost no achievements. At least that way, I'll be able to play sort-of "fresh" characters. I know only one will get some things (that one scene at the end of Markarth, etc), but better that than loading up my main who has done everything, and never seeing those scenes or hearing that dialogue again. Yeah, I'm very bitter. This whale won't be flensed again.

Undying thanks to Code and Silver Eyes for all of that work in such a short period of time.

Elsonso

SpiritKitten wrote: »

Deleting alts so their name doesn't appear on a line of text in a tooltip (in the achievement panel) seems overboard and emotional, and an act many will regret I would bet.

ESO is changing, and for my part in this, I am adapting accordingly. This is a carefully thought out plan, which started back in February and will be executed through June across the PC and XBox platforms.

ESO was attractive to me because it was an MMORPG and single player TES game in one. That was unique among all of the other games that I play. A chocolate peanut butter cup in a world of chocolate and peanut butter. The fact is that in 2022, there are better RPG games out there, and better MMO games out there. I don't have to adapt and try to make ESO work like I used to play because I have other options. This is only one of a few MMORPG games that I play, and only one of a few single player RPG games that I play. All of them are, in one aspect or another, better than ESO. What made ESO different from them was not that it was the best MMORPG out there, it is actually very average, but that it was pretty good at walking a balance between single player and multiplayer RPG.

I would have stayed with ESO for years to come, had ZOS done things just a little bit differently. I want more multiplayer and more single player, not more multiplayer and less single player. The ZOS chocolate peanut butter cup... now with less peanut butter.

The coup de grâce for me wasn't even the change itself, but how ZOS handled the change and communicated it to the players. It was the apparent disregard for the players and the lack of timely and meaningful communication. Again. This is a problem that has plagued ZOS for years. Despite acknowledging the problem several times over the years, they just can't seem to get it figured out and fixed. I am not even sure that it is something they want to fix.

I play other games where the studio is so proactive about communicating that I am finding out about things before I even knew I wanted to know. When I compare this to ZOS, where I have to linguistically evaluate every word they say, just to understand enough so that I can guess what they would tell me if they considered it important enough to actually tell me... Too much secrecy. Too much hidden agenda. It can wear a person out. It did.

That may not seem important when compared to the rollback in this update...

Morticia : [confronting Debbie in her house] You have gone too far. You have married Fester, you have destroyed his spirit, you have taken him from us. All that I could forgive. But, Debbie...pastels?


Everyone has their breaking point, I guess.

So, as a result, ESO gets less play time than the other games I play, where it used to get more. I will continue to play it as an MMO, but not as an RPG. Main character focus, less emphasis on leveling, alts, and replay.