PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Account Wide Achievements

Rishikesa108

I would like to thank ZOS for giving us the AwA system without causing any major problems with existing data. I have to tell the truth, after reading some [snip] posts and after the previous experience with the loss of the codexes, I was a little scared of this update 33. But now I would like to rightly thank the developers for being able to make everything go smoothly. Yes there are some minor problems and maybe something could have been thought of better, but I'm happy with the AwA system, which works well.

[edited for baiting]

peacenote

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

alberichtano wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

alberichtano wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

"As part of the free base game update, we are excited to add account wide Achievements so an Achievement you earn on one character will be shown as complete on all of your characters."

I am not excited by this. I am devastated.

In the Q&A they said the most important part of AWA was being “performant” going forward. But they are spinning it as though the primary reason was to please the players.

Not a word about what’s been taken away. Nothing. Just the usual silence.

You know what, when you put it like that it feels like "good old" snake-oil salesmen. Promising health and virility, but never mentioning the side effects - which are pretty much all there is to snake-oils.

The net effect is to shift the responsibility (or the blame) to the players themselves. ‘You wanted account wide achievements? Well, here ya go!’ So if players go, “Hey, wait a minute… there’s problems with this. This isn’t what I was expecting,” then they can’t blame ZOS, because ZOS was just providing what the players “have been asking for for years,” as was pointed out in the Q&A.

And that just makes ZOS sound very passive-aggressive and, well, mean.

And they could have avoided that by engaging in an active dialogue with us, as we’ve been asking for for months now. Instead, they were silent about it for weeks, then posted an official statement (one sided conversation), and then went back to silent mode again.

Reputation is very important to corporations. They will usually work hard to please all their customers, because word of mouth is one of their primary forms of advertising. If someone were to ask you to name some corporations that don’t care about their customers, you’d be hard pressed to come up with very many.

Just some food for thought.

They're slowly descending into the realm of a few of the more notorious gaming companies out there who translate and publish MMO's here in the west. Perhaps not quite as bad right now, but if they continue on their current path, they'll end up right up there on the "publishers to avoid list" along with the likes of them. Those companies also made a lot of empty promises and ripped out content players enjoyed and found useful. One in particular ripped the soul out of a once highly successful PVP/PVE MMO called AION by completely deleting content, questlines (literally ripped the main campaign ending right out of the game in favor of a really hollow story) , and four enormous zones in favor of implementing two narrow, limited zones that were totally hollow by comparison. That game is now surviving on life support and has been bleeding out players for years since. The straw that broke the camels back for me was when they made changes to the character creator itself that totally destroyed the appearance of my characters, then expected players to pay for vouchers to fix them.

The same company then proceeded to ruin another game that was highly successful on launch called Blade x Soul by altering content and pushing players towards the cash shop.

I guess that's part of why this entire thing has struck me on such a deep level, going through this kind of extreme loss when it comes to an mmo is hauntingly familiar to me, and when I started playing ESO, I never expected a company that seemed to care so much about story telling, lore, and character development to turn around and do something like this. But they did. And it feels like a bad sign.

I played AION; that's a shame. I think I had moved on before that... around the time when the duo dungeons came out.

Well I logged into all of my characters and perhaps the saddest thing was how "Level 50 Hero" got overwritten as I went backwards through my characters. I now really wish I had taken a screenshot for each one of their leveling dates.

Oliviander

alberichtano wrote: »

Sadly, I am not surprised. I kind of predicted it when news hit that MS was going to buy ZOS. In my (admittedly narrow) experience, games never turn out better after corporate purchases. The new mother corp wants profits, not somewhere to pour down money and resources. So while many thought that MS would revitalise the game, I thought the exact opposite. Now these are the first real changes since that buyout, so I may still be wrong, and MS may put me to shame, but I honestly very much doubt it.

To the contrary - the first change was the implermetation of endeavors. And with that making
radiant apex mounts purchasable with a finite sum of money.

I thought that to be a good sign and fell for it, purchasing 4 of them since that day.
And still sitting on enough endeavors to purchase another one.

But now i feel betrayed and don't dare to login and destroy all my characters history.

ArchangelIsraphel

peacenote wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

alberichtano wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

alberichtano wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

"As part of the free base game update, we are excited to add account wide Achievements so an Achievement you earn on one character will be shown as complete on all of your characters."

I am not excited by this. I am devastated.

In the Q&A they said the most important part of AWA was being “performant” going forward. But they are spinning it as though the primary reason was to please the players.

Not a word about what’s been taken away. Nothing. Just the usual silence.

You know what, when you put it like that it feels like "good old" snake-oil salesmen. Promising health and virility, but never mentioning the side effects - which are pretty much all there is to snake-oils.

The net effect is to shift the responsibility (or the blame) to the players themselves. ‘You wanted account wide achievements? Well, here ya go!’ So if players go, “Hey, wait a minute… there’s problems with this. This isn’t what I was expecting,” then they can’t blame ZOS, because ZOS was just providing what the players “have been asking for for years,” as was pointed out in the Q&A.

And that just makes ZOS sound very passive-aggressive and, well, mean.

And they could have avoided that by engaging in an active dialogue with us, as we’ve been asking for for months now. Instead, they were silent about it for weeks, then posted an official statement (one sided conversation), and then went back to silent mode again.

Reputation is very important to corporations. They will usually work hard to please all their customers, because word of mouth is one of their primary forms of advertising. If someone were to ask you to name some corporations that don’t care about their customers, you’d be hard pressed to come up with very many.

Just some food for thought.

They're slowly descending into the realm of a few of the more notorious gaming companies out there who translate and publish MMO's here in the west. Perhaps not quite as bad right now, but if they continue on their current path, they'll end up right up there on the "publishers to avoid list" along with the likes of them. Those companies also made a lot of empty promises and ripped out content players enjoyed and found useful. One in particular ripped the soul out of a once highly successful PVP/PVE MMO called AION by completely deleting content, questlines (literally ripped the main campaign ending right out of the game in favor of a really hollow story) , and four enormous zones in favor of implementing two narrow, limited zones that were totally hollow by comparison. That game is now surviving on life support and has been bleeding out players for years since. The straw that broke the camels back for me was when they made changes to the character creator itself that totally destroyed the appearance of my characters, then expected players to pay for vouchers to fix them.

The same company then proceeded to ruin another game that was highly successful on launch called Blade x Soul by altering content and pushing players towards the cash shop.

I guess that's part of why this entire thing has struck me on such a deep level, going through this kind of extreme loss when it comes to an mmo is hauntingly familiar to me, and when I started playing ESO, I never expected a company that seemed to care so much about story telling, lore, and character development to turn around and do something like this. But they did. And it feels like a bad sign.

I played AION; that's a shame. I think I had moved on before that... around the time when the duo dungeons came out.

Well I logged into all of my characters and perhaps the saddest thing was how "Level 50 Hero" got overwritten as I went backwards through my characters. I now really wish I had taken a screenshot for each one of their leveling dates.

Glad to see another former AION player! I did love that game long ago. I still listen to the soundtrack while playing eso. But yes, It really was a shame, the original aesthetic of the world and characters was gorgeous, but then they overhauled it and it feels so stereotypical now. If you moved on before they removed the original Tiamantara's eye and the other three lands, then you likely missed the outcry on the forums to save the lore. Similarly the devs never listened. I heard they actually had the gall to remove more lands and quests after that then recently come out with heavily monetized classic servers restoring old content to capitalize on player nostalgia. I doubt zos would ever go down a road quite as bad as what killed AION but that whole experience still puts me on edge when we don't hear from the devs.

I'm sorry you had to watch your achievements get overwritten ._. It hurts, a lot, I know logging on my account at all was like that too.

It does make me think, though...if the system can update and change achievements...wouldn't that mean the data is being stored "invisibly" for each character, just not directly accessed for a journal or by the system so as not to tax the working parts of the game? Might it possibly be accessible by a mod? Not sure if this theory was already tested or not. I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to what goes on under the hood of ESO.

jcasini222ub17_ESO

Just trying to get these things answered

Just to confirm if this is working as intended- On my lesser ranked PvP characters I can display the grand warlord title but the rank will show as captain, lt, major etc whatever the specific character rank is? (Kinda odd, not my cup of tea for a display option) I guess in the same vein, I can display PvP titles on characters that never even joined the conflict?

One thing I did notice on my current my current necro, and this is something I need to recheck, but Orsinium looked all completed even though I haven’t begun the quests there. Big let down if that’s the case. Any else notice how the city looks on alts?- I only play orcs so building up the city is always fun.

ZOS_Ragnar

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ArchangelIsraphel

jcasini222ub17_ESO wrote: »

Just trying to get these things answered

Just to confirm if this is working as intended- On my lesser ranked PvP characters I can display the grand warlord title but the rank will show as captain, lt, major etc whatever the specific character rank is? (Kinda odd, not my cup of tea for a display option) I guess in the same vein, I can display PvP titles on characters that never even joined the conflict?

One thing I did notice on my current my current necro, and this is something I need to recheck, but Orsinium looked all completed even though I haven’t begun the quests there. Big let down if that’s the case. Any else notice how the city looks on alts?- I only play orcs so building up the city is always fun.

@jcasini222ub17_ESO For PVP, this is working as intended. While titles earned and achievements were made account wide, alliance rank was not, so a character that is still technically a captain can wear the warlord title. A character fresh off of the character creator who has never seen Cyro can also wear it. All characters must still grind alliance rank independently, but have access to the titles and achievements of other characters who completed those goals before them due to AWA.

As for things like Orsinium being seen as completed, that is part of the altered continuity of the world many have been reporting since testing began on the PTS. Because things in the world like seeing Orsinium complete or not, along with hearing dialogue praising your character for their accomplishments was linked to achievements, you will now hear and see things in game on brand new alts as if you have already done the quests even though you have never done them. This is because the achievement credit was already given to your account on another character, and so the game shows it as "complete" even though it is not. You can still do the quests, but you will see and hear the world on every new alt as if your character has already completed it.

jcasini222ub17_ESO

Thanks for the reply! @ArchangelIsraphel this def creates some decision points.

I really didn’t have much desire to return to my Templar but that’s the grand warlord and all story completed up to like 3/4 years ago when I walked away from that class. They seemed pretty buffed up based on these notes and changes though.

Zephiran23

If you accumulate a bunch of achievements when logging a character, how are you meant to be able to see all the new ones you've just completed? There's a limited number of icons on the bottom of the summary screen to show those recently completed, but if you exceed that then there's nothing?

Collections will show you the new gear you've added, you can have a mark next to gear in inventory as well to show it's new loot. Somehow a system developed after that doesn't have a checkmark?

Varana

This system hasn't been "developed" afterwards. This is just the ancient achievements screen, there has been almost no actual development for the UI.
The only thing you can do is click through all the categories. The newest are always on top, so achievements being gained by the aggregation have the current date (or whenever you did the process) next to them.

alberichtano

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

jcasini222ub17_ESO wrote: »

Just trying to get these things answered

Just to confirm if this is working as intended- On my lesser ranked PvP characters I can display the grand warlord title but the rank will show as captain, lt, major etc whatever the specific character rank is? (Kinda odd, not my cup of tea for a display option) I guess in the same vein, I can display PvP titles on characters that never even joined the conflict?

One thing I did notice on my current my current necro, and this is something I need to recheck, but Orsinium looked all completed even though I haven’t begun the quests there. Big let down if that’s the case. Any else notice how the city looks on alts?- I only play orcs so building up the city is always fun.

@jcasini222ub17_ESO For PVP, this is working as intended. While titles earned and achievements were made account wide, alliance rank was not, so a character that is still technically a captain can wear the warlord title. A character fresh off of the character creator who has never seen Cyro can also wear it. All characters must still grind alliance rank independently, but have access to the titles and achievements of other characters who completed those goals before them due to AWA.

As for things like Orsinium being seen as completed, that is part of the altered continuity of the world many have been reporting since testing began on the PTS. Because things in the world like seeing Orsinium complete or not, along with hearing dialogue praising your character for their accomplishments was linked to achievements, you will now hear and see things in game on brand new alts as if you have already done the quests even though you have never done them. This is because the achievement credit was already given to your account on another character, and so the game shows it as "complete" even though it is not. You can still do the quests, but you will see and hear the world on every new alt as if your character has already completed it.

So cringy.

ArchangelIsraphel

alberichtano wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

jcasini222ub17_ESO wrote: »

Just trying to get these things answered

Just to confirm if this is working as intended- On my lesser ranked PvP characters I can display the grand warlord title but the rank will show as captain, lt, major etc whatever the specific character rank is? (Kinda odd, not my cup of tea for a display option) I guess in the same vein, I can display PvP titles on characters that never even joined the conflict?

One thing I did notice on my current my current necro, and this is something I need to recheck, but Orsinium looked all completed even though I haven’t begun the quests there. Big let down if that’s the case. Any else notice how the city looks on alts?- I only play orcs so building up the city is always fun.

@jcasini222ub17_ESO For PVP, this is working as intended. While titles earned and achievements were made account wide, alliance rank was not, so a character that is still technically a captain can wear the warlord title. A character fresh off of the character creator who has never seen Cyro can also wear it. All characters must still grind alliance rank independently, but have access to the titles and achievements of other characters who completed those goals before them due to AWA.

As for things like Orsinium being seen as completed, that is part of the altered continuity of the world many have been reporting since testing began on the PTS. Because things in the world like seeing Orsinium complete or not, along with hearing dialogue praising your character for their accomplishments was linked to achievements, you will now hear and see things in game on brand new alts as if you have already done the quests even though you have never done them. This is because the achievement credit was already given to your account on another character, and so the game shows it as "complete" even though it is not. You can still do the quests, but you will see and hear the world on every new alt as if your character has already completed it.

So cringy.

Agreed, character progression and questing on alts is now like looking at a bowl of spaghetti and trying to follow where a single strand leads. It's a mess. I don't know how they thought this was ok. Eso reminds me more of a game in early beta now than a polished mmo.

LoneStar2911

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

It's a mess. I don't know how they thought this was ok. Eso reminds me more of a game in early beta now than a polished mmo.

This is a great way to put it.

alberichtano

I wonder how many threads there are now with bugs and whatnot.

ADarklore

So far I've only logged into three of my characters... I was worried about the skyshard issue as some of my characters haven't collected them in the newer zones. However, I found between running the Skyshard addon (and changing the icon) and clicking the filters to show both collected and uncollected... that the Skyshard addon icon would be prominent when showing UNCOLLECTED skyshards on the main map, but after collecting them, they'd change to the 'collected' icon (sometimes had to do a refresh UI). Another options is hovering over the skyshard icon to show the 'hint' and then hover over the zone guide and see which you're still missing. So it's actually not as bad as I was expecting thankfully.

_Zathras_

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

Agreed, character progression and questing on alts is now like looking at a bowl of spaghetti and trying to follow where a single strand leads. It's a mess. I don't know how they thought this was ok. Eso reminds me more of a game in early beta now than a polished mmo.

While this debacle has instigated a decision on my part to move my financial support to more capable studios, I did log in briefly on a new character to take a bit of a world tour.

It really is a mess.

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

Or is the current state of the game going forward a series of weekly/monthly patches, to attempt to make this better.

My other question (and, no, I am not expecting someone to come down from the mountain on high) is why push this out, when it was clearly not ready for launch.

Again, I put it out there as a plea for communication transparency. Or just communication. Or..anything, really.

Jaraal

_Zathras_ wrote: »

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

That's what bugs me about this whole thing. ZOS is still tracking our individual achievements. All of them. They are simply choosing to hide them from us, except on the currently logged in character since Update 33.

ADarklore

Jaraal wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

That's what bugs me about this whole thing. ZOS is still tracking our individual achievements. All of them. They are simply choosing to hide them from us, except on the currently logged in character since Update 33.

And WHERE did you get this from?!? Even if true, 'perhaps' they are still tracking individually for the moment making sure all goes well. But eventually they will combine all the collected data into an ACCOUNT and permanently delete the 'per character' data.

kringled_1

Jaraal wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

That's what bugs me about this whole thing. ZOS is still tracking our individual achievements. All of them. They are simply choosing to hide them from us, except on the currently logged in character since Update 33.

I don't think they are. I think what we see is what there is and all of the data has been mushed together.

Jaraal

kringled_1 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

That's what bugs me about this whole thing. ZOS is still tracking our individual achievements. All of them. They are simply choosing to hide them from us, except on the currently logged in character since Update 33.

I don't think they are. I think what we see is what there is and all of the data has been mushed together.

Have you logged in all your characters? I haven't. And I don't see any reason to right now. Nor will anyone likely log in the millions of accounts that people have walked away from and never played again. All that achievement data is still out there. Also, do you see that "Earned by" notation on all your achievements? That's a form of tracking that didn't even exist before Update 33.

How do you think ZOS knows when to grant your accumulated achievement? Yes.... by tracking how many parts of it ALL YOUR CHARACTERS have completed behind the scenes.

kringled_1

Jaraal wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

That's what bugs me about this whole thing. ZOS is still tracking our individual achievements. All of them. They are simply choosing to hide them from us, except on the currently logged in character since Update 33.

I don't think they are. I think what we see is what there is and all of the data has been mushed together.

Have you logged in all your characters? I haven't. And I don't see any reason to right now. Nor will anyone likely log in the millions of accounts that people have walked away from and never played again. All that achievement data is still out there. Also, do you see that "Earned by" notation on all your achievements? That's a form of tracking that didn't even exist before Update 33.

How do you think ZOS knows when to grant your accumulated achievement? Yes.... by tracking how many parts of it ALL YOUR CHARACTERS have completed behind the scenes.

I have logged into all my characters (other than a few level 3 mules on my second account). But yes, I agree, the character specific data still exists for characters that haven't been logged into. While I would have preferred to retain character specific achievement data, the price of never being able to play them again was too high. As they've been achievement merged, I believe that barring a roll back (which I don't think is even remotely likely to happen), character achievement data is gone for them.
I think cumulative achievements were totaled and then the character records were removed in that process. So no, I don't think there's any tracking for a loaded character in the way I interpreted your post. There's definitely mountains of character specific achievement data stored, but I don't believe it's tracked individually anymore once those characters are loaded into the live game.

ADarklore

Jaraal wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

That's what bugs me about this whole thing. ZOS is still tracking our individual achievements. All of them. They are simply choosing to hide them from us, except on the currently logged in character since Update 33.

I don't think they are. I think what we see is what there is and all of the data has been mushed together.

Have you logged in all your characters? I haven't. And I don't see any reason to right now. Nor will anyone likely log in the millions of accounts that people have walked away from and never played again. All that achievement data is still out there. Also, do you see that "Earned by" notation on all your achievements? That's a form of tracking that didn't even exist before Update 33.

How do you think ZOS knows when to grant your accumulated achievement? Yes.... by tracking how many parts of it ALL YOUR CHARACTERS have completed behind the scenes.

But they are not tracking this BY CHARACTER going forward, it is all 'by account' now. Also, I imagine going forward that ZOS will find a way to merge character data even if they haven't been logged into, this was only the first step.

Vevvev

Jaraal wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

That's what bugs me about this whole thing. ZOS is still tracking our individual achievements. All of them. They are simply choosing to hide them from us, except on the currently logged in character since Update 33.

I don't think they are. I think what we see is what there is and all of the data has been mushed together.

Have you logged in all your characters? I haven't. And I don't see any reason to right now. Nor will anyone likely log in the millions of accounts that people have walked away from and never played again. All that achievement data is still out there. Also, do you see that "Earned by" notation on all your achievements? That's a form of tracking that didn't even exist before Update 33.

How do you think ZOS knows when to grant your accumulated achievement? Yes.... by tracking how many parts of it ALL YOUR CHARACTERS have completed behind the scenes.

Started to notice it's only showing my main's achievements and none of my alts. I'm honestly scared of logging into my other characters and having everything getting wiped on my main due to their age being 2017 and my first character being back in 2015.

ArchangelIsraphel

ADarklore wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

That's what bugs me about this whole thing. ZOS is still tracking our individual achievements. All of them. They are simply choosing to hide them from us, except on the currently logged in character since Update 33.

I don't think they are. I think what we see is what there is and all of the data has been mushed together.

Have you logged in all your characters? I haven't. And I don't see any reason to right now. Nor will anyone likely log in the millions of accounts that people have walked away from and never played again. All that achievement data is still out there. Also, do you see that "Earned by" notation on all your achievements? That's a form of tracking that didn't even exist before Update 33.

How do you think ZOS knows when to grant your accumulated achievement? Yes.... by tracking how many parts of it ALL YOUR CHARACTERS have completed behind the scenes.

But they are not tracking this BY CHARACTER going forward, it is all 'by account' now. Also, I imagine going forward that ZOS will find a way to merge character data even if they haven't been logged into, this was only the first step.

Actually, it's pretty obvious that under the hood, individual achievements are being stored and tracked somehow, just not retrieved or displayed, due to the way the game is capable of retrieving data to update the achievement to the oldest date to display over the newer dates as you log into the character. It doesn't actually seem like achievements are being overwritten or deleted (yet) just that the system is set to display the oldest date. And that information is still linked to the characters themselves, since it will also update the names tagged in the tooltip.

It seems that AWA is just "hiding" everything but the oldest known date of completion, but retaining the fact that completion took place behind the scenes.

Whether or not cumulative achievements are working this way is another matter, but it seems to me those for story quests are. Yet a characters individual total has to be stored to add to the cumulative total...so yeah.

Not only that, but some form of tracking must still be taking place still on a character level for quests to be considered completed for each character, and for that completion to display on the zone guide.

I keep wondering if a deep dive into this would reveal the data still there and accessible by mods.

kringled_1

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

ADarklore wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

That's what bugs me about this whole thing. ZOS is still tracking our individual achievements. All of them. They are simply choosing to hide them from us, except on the currently logged in character since Update 33.

I don't think they are. I think what we see is what there is and all of the data has been mushed together.

Have you logged in all your characters? I haven't. And I don't see any reason to right now. Nor will anyone likely log in the millions of accounts that people have walked away from and never played again. All that achievement data is still out there. Also, do you see that "Earned by" notation on all your achievements? That's a form of tracking that didn't even exist before Update 33.

How do you think ZOS knows when to grant your accumulated achievement? Yes.... by tracking how many parts of it ALL YOUR CHARACTERS have completed behind the scenes.

But they are not tracking this BY CHARACTER going forward, it is all 'by account' now. Also, I imagine going forward that ZOS will find a way to merge character data even if they haven't been logged into, this was only the first step.

Actually, it's pretty obvious that under the hood, individual achievements are being stored and tracked somehow, just not retrieved or displayed, due to the way the game is capable of retrieving data to update the achievement to the oldest date to display over the newer dates as you log into the character. It doesn't actually seem like achievements are being overwritten or deleted (yet) just that the system is set to display the oldest date. And that information is still linked to the characters themselves, since it will also update the names tagged in the tooltip.

It seems that AWA is just "hiding" everything but the oldest known date of completion, but retaining the fact that completion took place behind the scenes.

Whether or not cumulative achievements are working this way is another matter, but it seems to me those for story quests are. Yet a characters individual total has to be stored to add to the cumulative total...so yeah.

Not only that, but some form of tracking must still be taking place still on a character level for quests to be considered completed for each character, and for that completion to display on the zone guide.

Quests always had a separate character specific tracking mechanism, as many small side quests don't have any achievements. It's not able to be directly visible to the player but it's there.
I still believe that the earned by and date updating is a one time thing only as characters with old, character specific achievements are loaded and rolled into the account wide setup, but I certainly can't prove it.

ArchangelIsraphel

kringled_1 wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

ADarklore wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

That's what bugs me about this whole thing. ZOS is still tracking our individual achievements. All of them. They are simply choosing to hide them from us, except on the currently logged in character since Update 33.

I don't think they are. I think what we see is what there is and all of the data has been mushed together.

Have you logged in all your characters? I haven't. And I don't see any reason to right now. Nor will anyone likely log in the millions of accounts that people have walked away from and never played again. All that achievement data is still out there. Also, do you see that "Earned by" notation on all your achievements? That's a form of tracking that didn't even exist before Update 33.

How do you think ZOS knows when to grant your accumulated achievement? Yes.... by tracking how many parts of it ALL YOUR CHARACTERS have completed behind the scenes.

But they are not tracking this BY CHARACTER going forward, it is all 'by account' now. Also, I imagine going forward that ZOS will find a way to merge character data even if they haven't been logged into, this was only the first step.

Actually, it's pretty obvious that under the hood, individual achievements are being stored and tracked somehow, just not retrieved or displayed, due to the way the game is capable of retrieving data to update the achievement to the oldest date to display over the newer dates as you log into the character. It doesn't actually seem like achievements are being overwritten or deleted (yet) just that the system is set to display the oldest date. And that information is still linked to the characters themselves, since it will also update the names tagged in the tooltip.

It seems that AWA is just "hiding" everything but the oldest known date of completion, but retaining the fact that completion took place behind the scenes.

Whether or not cumulative achievements are working this way is another matter, but it seems to me those for story quests are. Yet a characters individual total has to be stored to add to the cumulative total...so yeah.

Not only that, but some form of tracking must still be taking place still on a character level for quests to be considered completed for each character, and for that completion to display on the zone guide.

Quests always had a separate character specific tracking mechanism, as many small side quests don't have any achievements. It's not able to be directly visible to the player but it's there.
I still believe that the earned by and date updating is a one time thing only as characters with old, character specific achievements are loaded and rolled into the account wide setup, but I certainly can't prove it.

I agree with you. Another thing that's making me wonder if it's still there is the way it will wipe a characters name off the tooltip if that character is deleted. I'm guessing some form of linking is there, though maybe not complete.

Jaraal

Vevvev wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

My question is, now that U33 is Live, is even if they wanted to revert the change and put this all back in the oven, is that even possible?

That's what bugs me about this whole thing. ZOS is still tracking our individual achievements. All of them. They are simply choosing to hide them from us, except on the currently logged in character since Update 33.

I don't think they are. I think what we see is what there is and all of the data has been mushed together.

Have you logged in all your characters? I haven't. And I don't see any reason to right now. Nor will anyone likely log in the millions of accounts that people have walked away from and never played again. All that achievement data is still out there. Also, do you see that "Earned by" notation on all your achievements? That's a form of tracking that didn't even exist before Update 33.

How do you think ZOS knows when to grant your accumulated achievement? Yes.... by tracking how many parts of it ALL YOUR CHARACTERS have completed behind the scenes.

Started to notice it's only showing my main's achievements and none of my alts. I'm honestly scared of logging into my other characters and having everything getting wiped on my main due to their age being 2017 and my first character being back in 2015.

Yes, I've noticed this as well. Logging in my alts I haven't gotten any achievement popups. But once I logged in my main I got 10 achievements autocompleted. What's odd about it is that some of the achievements I remember getting on my main years ago. So why would I get credit for them a second time?

This gets more and more convoluted and messed up the deeper we dig. I have a feeling the worst is yet to come.

Varana

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

Actually, it's pretty obvious that under the hood, individual achievements are being stored and tracked somehow, just not retrieved or displayed, due to the way the game is capable of retrieving data to update the achievement to the oldest date to display over the newer dates as you log into the character. It doesn't actually seem like achievements are being overwritten or deleted (yet) just that the system is set to display the oldest date. And that information is still linked to the characters themselves, since it will also update the names tagged in the tooltip.

It seems that AWA is just "hiding" everything but the oldest known date of completion, but retaining the fact that completion took place behind the scenes.

I mean, who knows what garbled systems they come up with these days, but I don't think this is necessary.
They just need to run a script when loading a character that goes through achievements, compares them to the account achievements, replaces that when older, or adds to the total when cumulative. After that, the character-specific information is discarded.
So while characters may technically stay in that Schrödinger's state as long as you don't log in with them, they get updated as soon as they load.

At least that would be the logical way to do this, I assume.

Kesstryl

Varana wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

Actually, it's pretty obvious that under the hood, individual achievements are being stored and tracked somehow, just not retrieved or displayed, due to the way the game is capable of retrieving data to update the achievement to the oldest date to display over the newer dates as you log into the character. It doesn't actually seem like achievements are being overwritten or deleted (yet) just that the system is set to display the oldest date. And that information is still linked to the characters themselves, since it will also update the names tagged in the tooltip.

It seems that AWA is just "hiding" everything but the oldest known date of completion, but retaining the fact that completion took place behind the scenes.

I mean, who knows what garbled systems they come up with these days, but I don't think this is necessary.
They just need to run a script when loading a character that goes through achievements, compares them to the account achievements, replaces that when older, or adds to the total when cumulative. After that, the character-specific information is discarded.
So while characters may technically stay in that Schrödinger's state as long as you don't log in with them, they get updated as soon as they load.

At least that would be the logical way to do this, I assume.

This is how it's done. We do still have individual character tracking for quests, skyshards, and other things, but achievement numbers are added to the account achievements, and the dates they were completed are compared to what's on the account achievements. If a date is older than what's there, it writes over that date with the older one and the char name associated with it. Then the individual character achievements are either deleted, or in a decoupled stasis where the game no longer interacts with them.

wolfie1.0.

I feel a smarter way of doing this would have been to create a quest that said something like "obtain all skyshards in x zone" or say x to n npc for y story state" so that interactions and other functions are tied to questing function results and not achievements.