PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

SerafinaWaterstar

Elsonso wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Wow. That really is ridiculous. So can’t even do if wanted as already done?

Does Zos not consider replaying through old content to be a good thing anymore?

I am sure they do. Quests that are attached to achievements will likely be the focus of new fixes, possibly starting next week, but more likely, the week of Feb 14.

I love your optimism!!

tomofhyrule

I get the desire to view account-wide progress. I also get the desire to allow all alts to contribute to that progress. But as this was implemented, it seems... lacking.

If I had designed this system, I'd have done a few things:

• Opening the Achievements menu should first present the score across the entire account. That means that an achievement is counted as gained once any character obtains it, similar to the current PTS setting. In essence, it's making a new 'Account-wide' tab for all achievements and showing the result from that.
• Looking at any of the tabs should show achievements for the specific character. That way we can still use it as a system to track individual progress, and any addons (and the zone map!) that uses that progress to show completions will not end up broken.
• Any achievement that is earned by a character will pop. However, all achievements, earned and unearned by a single character, should show all characters who have earned it, similar to any of the Global Achievements addons. This should also allow them to be linked in chat with a line about the character and date it was earned.
• Some achievements should get an icon to indicate that they increment over the whole account. This should be limited to vet dungeon slayer achievements, and PvP slayer/BG score achievements to name a few - basically things that rely on grinding a lot of enemies or heavy RNG. When these are earned, they should not show a character name as it was a group effort, and they will be shown as earned on all characters. Other achievements like Skyshards or Zone completion achievements, even if they may be a bit grindy, should be specific to the characters.
• Similarly, a new category for 'Account' achievements should also follow these rules to increment over the whole account. This should include Housing, Champion, and Monster Trophy achievements. Again, these should increment and pop as earned over the entire account as a group effort.
• Titles, cosmetics, and achievement furnisher availability should be tied to the 'Account-wide' tab, so any character earning a brand new achievement unlocks the ability to buy/use that item over the whole account in perpetuity.

DarcyMardin

silvereyes wrote: »

SnowP wrote: »

Skyshards
* skyshard achievements are now account wide.
This change makes it really hard to find the missing skyshards for a char.
Only way I found is print out the achievement, open the map, enable the filter Acquired Skyshards, hover with the cursor over every acquired Skyshard, find the line presented in the tooltip in the achievement list and cross it out.

Skyshards are tracked at the character level still on both on the Map Completion and Zone Guide UI, as are story quests, wayshrines, points of interest, striking locales, set station discovery, mundus stones, public dungeon quests, and Shalidor's Library books.

The only things on those zone completion lists that are account-wide now are delve exploration / discovery, dolmens / world events / encounters, and world bosses.

SnowP wrote: »

Addons like Skyshards would have to be rewritten if it even is possible because they rely on character wide achievements for skyshards.

I can confirm that this is true. The Skyshards addon is reporting all of the Skyshards discovered by other characters as already collected on this brand new character.

Those screenshots would totally confuse me when entering a zone with an alt. All the delves are shown as done, but none of the associated skyshards?? I always pick up the skyshard when first doing a delve. And how can it list none of the wayshrines discovered when all the delves are done? So I have run around the whole zone not knowing whether this character has actually ever killed the boss in a particular delve or not?

This is a hot mess, ZOS. Please revert at least until you can do this in a much less slapdash and confusing way!

FedericoBiS

As a endgame PVE player (over 7000 hours), and having multiple trifectas, making achievements and titles account wide will invalidate the multiple times I've gotten x trifecta.

Say I got x trifecta 3 times, I can track it now on live, all three separate occasions. On PTS, the 1st one (oldest) would override the other two, thus, deleting any record of getting it multiple times.

People say that skins and mounts are account wide, why not titles... Titles being character locked is the only thing capable of discerning if you actually got it on that toon, take that away, and suddenly, it becomes impossible to know of you got x achievement 1 time, or 5 times, if you got it as a dps, a tank or a healer.

To make it clear, getting these achievements takes a LOT of effort, progging content for months, with 11 other people, to get the perfect clear with speed run, no death and all the HMs, in addition to the time cost of learning your character/class, getting the gear (golding it out), drinking expensive potions during the entire prog, mastering every mech in the trial/dungeon. All that effort and time, to get the achievements we WANT multiple times, and delete any record of the repeats feels like an insult.

All that being said, I can see why people want account wide achievements, on paper it seems like a good idea, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. I understand endgame of any kind is a very small % of the player base, so I don't expect ZoS to cater to such a small demographic, but the implementation of global achievements can be done better, to not leave anyone out of their goals/past feats.

I expect a lot of good suggestion to be thrown out there, and my two-cent would be to implement a sort of counter in the achievement window, to keep track of how many times you've gotten a certain achievement, and even better, when hovering over a certain achievement, at the bottom, show "earned by x character on 12/12/2021" in a list for every time you unlocked it.

There are so MANY ways ZoS could make this change and not hurt the different types of demographics in this game, but the current implementation on the PTS feels like the laziest one: just track the oldest one, overriding any other instance of an unlocked achievement.

I understand ESO is an old game, old spaguetti code, but with a change this drastic I expected better.

That's my feedback, and this might be the 1st or 2nd time I've ever posted in the forums, so that tells you the importance of this aspect of the game for me, and how I disagree with the PTS implementation of it.

Jaraal

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

Some repeatable content is lost. It's hard for me to test this properly without my EU chars on the PTS, but...

Some collection quests are tracked by Achievement dialogues, e.g. Relics of Summerset. It looks like these are not repeatable now. I just tested this by getting the Monochrome Paintbrush ticked off on one character, logged in on another character and found that it was no longer there for them to pick up.

Has anyone seen what happens to the adoring fan and Choixth? Are they only going to appear for the first character now (or never again in my case)?

From what I've seen on the rest of PTS, quests are generally supposed to be tracked at the individual character level still. If this is not the case for some quests, please file a bug report.

I can confirm that the Solitude Musical Instruments quest is no longer tracked on multiple characters. If you already did this quest on one character, then the museum will already be filled with instruments on another.

This essentially means you can only earn ONE music box from this quest per account.

So they are creating a scenario where older accounts will be able to have things that newer accounts will be locked out of. And once you do a quest one time, you can never do it again. One Precursor dummy, etc.

Nice.

silvereyes

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

Also, for those saying the "zone guide" and map can serve as a replacement for character specific tracking- it can't any more. Things like world bosses, delves, dolemens and other such things tied to achievements that have now been made account wide are shown as complete on a brand new character that has never even touched the content. At least that's what I'm seeing on my account (is it a glitch?). So brand new characters are being treated as if most of their journey is already complete except for quests. It's really unfortunate that this change was made, not only from a tracking perspective, but from a content perspective as well. I don't want to log on a brand new character to have the game act like they've already explored the whole map.

I really hope some kind of middle ground solution can be achieved because while I have no desire to take account wide achievements away from those that want that kind of tracking, I also don't want much of what makes eso fun for many taken from them.

I've filed a bug report for the world bosses, world events and delves. IMO, completion on those should have nothing to do with whether they are part of an achievement or not.

There's evidence to support this view as well. The points of interest are still tracked by character, and they are part of the Pathfinder achievements for each zone, which are awarded account-wide.

silvereyes

I will say, I'm very happy they at least let you discover things again on new characters. That is working as expected for me.

heaven13

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I get the desire to view account-wide progress. I also get the desire to allow all alts to contribute to that progress. But as this was implemented, it seems... lacking.

If I had designed this system, I'd have done a few things:

• Opening the Achievements menu should first present the score across the entire account. That means that an achievement is counted as gained once any character obtains it, similar to the current PTS setting. In essence, it's making a new 'Account-wide' tab for all achievements and showing the result from that.
• Looking at any of the tabs should show achievements for the specific character. That way we can still use it as a system to track individual progress, and any addons (and the zone map!) that uses that progress to show completions will not end up broken.
• Any achievement that is earned by a character will pop. However, all achievements, earned and unearned by a single character, should show all characters who have earned it, similar to any of the Global Achievements addons. This should also allow them to be linked in chat with a line about the character and date it was earned.
• Some achievements should get an icon to indicate that they increment over the whole account. This should be limited to vet dungeon slayer achievements, and PvP slayer/BG score achievements to name a few - basically things that rely on grinding a lot of enemies or heavy RNG. When these are earned, they should not show a character name as it was a group effort, and they will be shown as earned on all characters. Other achievements like Skyshards or Zone completion achievements, even if they may be a bit grindy, should be specific to the characters.
• Similarly, a new category for 'Account' achievements should also follow these rules to increment over the whole account. This should include Housing, Champion, and Monster Trophy achievements. Again, these should increment and pop as earned over the entire account as a group effort.
• Titles, cosmetics, and achievement furnisher availability should be tied to the 'Account-wide' tab, so any character earning a brand new achievement unlocks the ability to buy/use that item over the whole account in perpetuity.

This is pretty much exactly as I think as well. It would be a great compromise that works for all types of players. Please ZoS, pay attention to this. If it delays the system to another patch, so be it.

silvereyes

As a general aside, @ZOS_GinaBruno, I really really hope that some sort of core event logs are being preserved during this transition to account-wide achievements. Please tell me that ZOS database administrators will be able to rebuild achievement history from scratch if need be after this goes live. Given the history with skill points and champion points tracking and resetting and taking multiple patches to get right, I think it would be only prudent.

Jaraal

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

And this may also dynamically affect the way NPCs react, because I have discovered the museum person acts like you never completed the quest on a toon who had their museum piece "auto filled".

Does this also mean random AD NPCs will be saying, "You're the one who stopped the Maomer invasion! Divines bless you!" to my characters who never did the quest?

Yikes.

Conversely, does it also mean I'll never hear from Stuga again if I did her quest on just one character?

kringled_1

I have mixed but more negative than positive feelings about this.
The positive:
Monster trophy achievements may be more approachable.
The limitations on achievement furnishing vendors being lifted is a definite step forward.
Being able to see/link achievements from other characters is very nice.

Neutral:
For some people, account wide titles are a huge boon. It's not for me but I don't have any issues with it.
Xp gains that go along with the achievements for delve completion, world boss kills, some of the dungeon slayer achievements will be reduced to once per account rather than per character. Not a big deal for me but players are definitely losing something.

Negative:
As mentioned by others, some skill lines become potentially more difficult to advance with this change. I won't be able to test undaunted until EU characters are copied as all of my NA characters are undaunted 10 and I won't be able to level a new character just to test pledge progress.
Direct replayability of things like museum collections, the bog dog "quest" in Blackwood goes away. In other places where npc reactions are different depending on prior achievements, I won't be able to play a quest on different characters and see multiple sides of the story.
As with many others, I hate losing the individual character completion and date data. For things like dungeon and trial achievements, it's a different experience on different characters and roles, and being able to track that via achievement is nice and also gives me some reason to do these things over. If I can't tell any more what I have or haven't done other than from memory and my own tracking spreadsheets something has been lost that really adds to the multiple character experience.

Dark_Lord_Kuro

Salmeyna wrote: »

I also would like to offer my thanks to the dev team for these changes. For reasons i can't check out the PTS myself, but i asked a friend to test different things.
I was a bit afraid about the implementation, but turns out, this will be done in the best way possible to me personally, if it goes live like this.

About the opt-in: i don't mind if there is a toggle at the beginning, but i wish it to be permanent. Just having a different tab with global achievements defeats the purpose of accountwide achievements. So i couldn't care less if some people opted out of it for their own reasons, but in that case i would like the possibility taken from me to revert to character specific achievements.

I'm playing since release, almost every day, and i might have a bit of an obsession issue. I have to collect everything, which also includes every achievement on every character. This takes away so much time of me actually being able to enjoy the content with my multiple chars, as i'm constantly working on grinding achievements on alts, which is by far less fun then just explore and quest. The first time is special, ofc, and there is no difference to me between the Master Angler, Saviour of Morrowind or trifecta achievements. The first time is awesome, but every alt is just a "check, next".
Now, if there was a way to re-earn achievements after they went accountwide, like they are now, i would just continue the tedious grind (right now slayer achievements on 8 chars, after i finished all on my first 4), because i can check the characterspecific achievements, see that something is incomplete, and obsess about it.
Regarding this i have to offer more thanks. The collection system, the outfit system, the curated drops, the armory system, and now the accountwide achievements...they help me complete everything, so i can focus more on the joy of actually playing the game.

What i absolutely love:
-not just having an overview tab, but achievements get actually unlocked, there are no missing spaces waiting to be filled out
-not having to grind out dungeon and trial achievements on all chars, which is always an issue with the elitist community, because noone cares if you have done trifecta on 4 chars, that doesn't mean the 5th can do it too...meanwhile i could just change my build on a char that already did it, and it would play completely differently...while char number 5 could have the same class and same build then a previous one, but that's not accepted because of reasons, i guess.

What i'm a bit sad about:
-having exploration and quest achievements accountwide too. it's very helpful to track character progress for all my alts, and they aren't tedious to grind out, you just have to enjoy playing the game.
-there are some achievements i got with alts first out of pure luck, so my main will have some achievements that he didn't get first.

In the end the pros by far outshine the cons.
I'm one of the crazy people that completely maxed out research and all crafting skills on all chars, have all provision recipes on all chars, and i'm working towards having all motifs and furnishing recipes on all chars. I don't mind "losing" the grand master crafter achievement on all chars that got it after my main. I don't mind "losing" the trifectas on every char that is not my main. They will have it unlocked, and that feels awesome. Ofc i will help my guildies in getting theirs. Ofc i will continue to fish and craft, ofc i will participate in future events without having to worry about having 4 more chars who haven't finished the new life writ achievement yet, and OFC i will replay the whole content with my alts, now much happier that i don't have to worry about getting all those grindy achievements again, which breaks my progression (as i have to finish everything in a zone, before i can go to the next, be that achievement, eidetic memory, dungeons or set collection).

A BIG thank you, and i hope that even if there is some opt-in, i will be able to permanently get the accountwide achievements in it's currently designed form!

Finally someone else that can see all the amazing side tho the change

kind_hero

silvereyes wrote: »

I will say, I'm very happy they at least let you discover things again on new characters. That is working as expected for me.

I am guessing you haven't done vMA on that new char.

See, this screenshot summarizes very well the issue with this achievements update.

Wolf_Eye

Jaraal wrote: »

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

And this may also dynamically affect the way NPCs react, because I have discovered the museum person acts like you never completed the quest on a toon who had their museum piece "auto filled".

Does this also mean random AD NPCs will be saying, "You're the one who stopped the Maomer invasion! Divines bless you!" to my characters who never did the quest?

Yikes.

Conversely, does it also mean I'll never hear from Stuga again if I did her quest on just one character?

For the random comments, I cannot confirm. Since the random comments are...well, random, it's much harder to say whether they will occur for toons who had their achievements "auto completed" or not. Wandering around in the PTS, I have yet to get any NPCs to say any sort of random comments to me about quest completion...

Stuga should be easy for me to test though, I will try it when I'm able on the PTS

Jaraal

silvereyes wrote: »

I will say, I'm very happy they at least let you discover things again on new characters. That is working as expected for me.

Well, this proves that they didn't do it for performance reasons. Looks like ZOS is still tracking individual achievements... they are just hiding them from us in the data.

Did your character get the 'delve completed' achievement popup when you cleared it?

ArchangelIsraphel

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

And this may also dynamically affect the way NPCs react, because I have discovered the museum person acts like you never completed the quest on a toon who had their museum piece "auto filled".

Does this also mean random AD NPCs will be saying, "You're the one who stopped the Maomer invasion! Divines bless you!" to my characters who never did the quest?

Yikes.

Conversely, does it also mean I'll never hear from Stuga again if I did her quest on just one character?

For the random comments, I cannot confirm. Since the random comments are...well, random, it's much harder to say whether they will occur for toons who had their achievements "auto completed" or not. Wandering around in the PTS, I have yet to get any NPCs to say any sort of random comments to me about quest completion...

Stuga should be easy for me to test though, I will try it when I'm able on the PTS

I just tested for stuga in auridon on an alt that never did her quest, and she did appear. I'm currently running around seeing if any dialouge will mess up for me and how npcs the character has never spoken to interact.

majulook

Two Questions

1. If one character has found any or all the mages guild books to level the Skill line still "Glow" for a character that has not found those books?

2. Antiquity's Lead Drops affected by this or any part of the Antiquity system?

kringled_1

Jaraal wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

I will say, I'm very happy they at least let you discover things again on new characters. That is working as expected for me.

Well, this proves that they didn't do it for performance reasons. Looks like ZOS is still tracking individual achievements... they are just hiding them from us in the data.

Did your character get the 'delve completed' achievement popup when you cleared it?

Based on the image in a different thread, I'm guessing no, it acts as if the character has already cleared that delve.

silvereyes

Jaraal wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

I will say, I'm very happy they at least let you discover things again on new characters. That is working as expected for me.

Well, this proves that they didn't do it for performance reasons. Looks like ZOS is still tracking individual achievements... they are just hiding them from us in the data.

Did your character get the 'delve completed' achievement popup when you cleared it?

No. The delve boss was already marked as completed as soon as I entered the delve. I very much hope that this is not intentional.

Edit: CORRECTION! the above picture was taken with the MapPins addon on PC. The base game does not display the boss icon on the map. Still, I don't think the delve completion should be tracked with account-wide achievements, even if the achievement for completing them all is.

Elsonso

kind_hero wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

I will say, I'm very happy they at least let you discover things again on new characters. That is working as expected for me.

I am guessing you haven't done vMA on that new char.

See, this screenshot summarizes very well the issue with this achievements update.

I admit with shame that it took me too long to see that.

silvereyes

Another good thing: side quest progression, including those discovered in delves, still track at the character level, as expected.

Jaraal

silvereyes wrote: »

No. The delve boss was already marked as completed as soon as I entered the delve. I very much hope that this is not intentional.

Maybe the discovery achievement is still intact because it awards XP, while the delve completion does not.

But why would they be locking us out of potential XP by not letting our alts do the quests our mains have already completed?

Wolf_Eye

silvereyes wrote: »

Another good thing: side quest progression, including those discovered in delves, still track at the character level, as expected.

Just for clarification, does this mean that non-museum quests are likely repeatable on all toons?

Would NPCs in a quest react a certain way; for example, there is a particular questline in the Blackwood main quest that causes NPCs to react to you in a different way if you have done Dark Brotherhood quests.

Now, unlocking the Dark Brotherhood skillline itself is tied to an achievement; would NPCs react as though a brand new toon is a member of the Dark Brotherhood because of this in spite of the fact that they have never done a DB quest? That's the tricky question...It's one I also want to test later on when I have the chance to hop on.

silvereyes

Elsonso wrote: »

kind_hero wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

I will say, I'm very happy they at least let you discover things again on new characters. That is working as expected for me.

I am guessing you haven't done vMA on that new char.

See, this screenshot summarizes very well the issue with this achievements update.

I admit with shame that it took me too long to see that.

While I totally understand the disappointment, on a personal level, I think titles are well past being useful to gauge player ability, even before this change. They have been moving the way of other cosmetic collectibles for some time. Even titles you can't just throw gold at for a carry, like Stormproof, don't mean what they used to in the old days, both with save points and power creep.

I still like having the title, because it reminds me of what I did to achieve it. However, it's mostly just flexing in the mirror, and making it account-wide doesn't change that. Especially if vMA achievements are still tracked at the character level.

SnowP

silvereyes wrote: »

SnowP wrote: »

Skyshards
* skyshard achievements are now account wide.
This change makes it really hard to find the missing skyshards for a char.
Only way I found is print out the achievement, open the map, enable the filter Acquired Skyshards, hover with the cursor over every acquired Skyshard, find the line presented in the tooltip in the achievement list and cross it out.

Skyshards are tracked at the character level still on both on the Map Completion and Zone Guide UI, as are story quests, wayshrines, points of interest, striking locales, set station discovery, mundus stones, public dungeon quests, and Shalidor's Library books.

I am sorry that I did not make the point clear enough.
silvereyes is absolutely right - you still earn Skyshards on each individual character.
With:

SnowP wrote: »

Skyshards
* skyshard achievements are now account wide.

I meant the achievement list for skyshards that you can see under Achievements -> Character -> Skyshards
This is now account wide and not char wide as e.g. Achievements -> Crafting -> Enchanting -> Aspect
And therefore pretty useless to track skyshards of the individal char.

majulook

Jaraal wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

No. The delve boss was already marked as completed as soon as I entered the delve. I very much hope that this is not intentional.

Maybe the discovery achievement is still intact because it awards XP, while the delve completion does not.

But why would they be locking us out of potential XP by not letting our alts do the quests our mains have already completed?

Less XP acquired means you have to play more to gain XP.
Players playing more is what ZOS wants. its all about increasing the number of players and increasing the time players play that they want.

silvereyes

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

Another good thing: side quest progression, including those discovered in delves, still track at the character level, as expected.

Just for clarification, does this mean that non-museum quests are likely repeatable on all toons?

I don't know. Does it? I would assume so, but I've only tested what you see in the screen shots.

Wolf_Eye

silvereyes wrote: »

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

Another good thing: side quest progression, including those discovered in delves, still track at the character level, as expected.

Just for clarification, does this mean that non-museum quests are likely repeatable on all toons?

I don't know. Does it? I would assume so, but I've only tested what you see in the screen shots.

I was just curious if that was the purpose of the screenshot you were showing

I'm a little bit half asleep at the moment, so I might have gotten confused.

silvereyes

SnowP wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

SnowP wrote: »

Skyshards
* skyshard achievements are now account wide.
This change makes it really hard to find the missing skyshards for a char.
Only way I found is print out the achievement, open the map, enable the filter Acquired Skyshards, hover with the cursor over every acquired Skyshard, find the line presented in the tooltip in the achievement list and cross it out.

Skyshards are tracked at the character level still on both on the Map Completion and Zone Guide UI, as are story quests, wayshrines, points of interest, striking locales, set station discovery, mundus stones, public dungeon quests, and Shalidor's Library books.

I am sorry that I did not make the point clear enough.
silvereyes is absolutely right - you still earn Skyshards on each individual character.
With:

SnowP wrote: »

Skyshards
* skyshard achievements are now account wide.

I meant the achievement list for skyshards that you can see under Achievements -> Character -> Skyshards
This is now account wide and not char wide as e.g. Achievements -> Crafting -> Enchanting -> Aspect
And therefore pretty useless to track skyshards of the individal char.

My point wasn't that they are just earned on a character level. I was providing an alternate place to find the full list of remaining skyshards for a character in a zone. You don't need to use achievements for that.

majulook

silvereyes wrote: »

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

Another good thing: side quest progression, including those discovered in delves, still track at the character level, as expected.

Just for clarification, does this mean that non-museum quests are likely repeatable on all toons?

I don't know. Does it? I would assume so, but I've only tested what you see in the screen shots.

While thy may be repeatable, If its a delve, and the boss is already counted a killed (Since you did it on another character) you get less XP