How can I measure different character progression after the next update?

SerafinaWaterstar

Achievements are the only way to track progress through the quests/zones/game.

With AWA, all achievements have been smashed together - and seeing as I have done virtually everything on my main, this will mean all my other characters will have all that filled in, despite not having done most of the stuff.

Genuinely want to know how I am supposed to monitor progress of these other characters as I play them through the game. Or is this not encouraged anymore?

Dolgubon

For the most part: you don't. Enjoy AwA!

Treeshka

From what i understand from comments of other people and from forum discussions that are going on, you can not track induvial progress anymore except a few achievements.

Tyrvarion

The Zone guide should work still.

JKorr

Excel spreadsheet?

Much more important to improve performance in pvp rather than allow individual characters to track achievements. At least the "improve performance" is the reason they're giving.

To ensure that ESO’s performance can keep up and grow with the game’s new experiences, most achievements will become account-wide with Update 33. This means that an achievement that you’ve earned on any one of your characters may also be considered completed across all your characters. By consolidating achievements, we can retain and improve the way the game handles this type of data and the overall experience. With the database’s overall footprint reduced, it will more performant across the board, which may manifest itself in faster load screens and improved performance on other database-heavy operations. Most importantly, this change helps keep the game performant as we continue to add new content and achievements in the future.

This change also creates a whole new world of opportunities for your account and characters. For example, Titles rewarded via achievements will become account-wide, allowing you to use them on any character regardless of which one first earned it.

They seem to be discounting that many people don't really agree with the second paragraph there. I don't really want achievements on characters I didn't earn, and possibly don't want them to have.

SpiritKitten

Might I suggest a quest addon that shows color-coded quest markers on the map? Not started, started, finished. I use one.

FaylenSol

Quest progress, zone guide, skill level, crafting levels, undaunted/mages guild/fighters guild levels, skill points, etc.

Tons of ways to track progress. 90% of the achievements weren't useful for tracking progress or were just an annoying grind to get on multiple characters.

I really don't want to get Nature Slayer on every character for example.

kringled_1

Tyrvarion wrote: »

The Zone guide should work still.

The zone guide will not work as it does now. Quest features should work ok but Wb/delves/world events auto complete on a second character.

SerafinaWaterstar

Zone guide will not work. (See pts thread)

On console so add ons not an option.

Excel spreadsheets make this like bloody work.

Danikat

I very rarely look at the achievements list and I don't use it to track progress. As the thing I'm concerned about doing on all my characters is open-world PvE quests and exploration I use the quest log to remind me what they're currently doing and the map to see how far they've gotten through the zone they're in - if there's empty spaces I know I haven't been around that area yet. (No I don't mean the zone guide, although I'm hoping the problems with that will be fixed before the update goes live, I mean looking at the map itself.)

I do also have the Quest Map addon installed, which adds map markers for quests you haven't yet discovered/completed, but I only turn it on briefly when I think I've finished a zone so I can double-check I haven't missed anything.

The only thing I think I might have trouble keeping track of is which characters have done which group dungeons, but until there's a way to either do them all solo or consistently find groups who are willing to actually do the quest (not just check it off, I mean stand and listen to the NPCs each time they're speaking) I'm not worried about doing those on all my characters anyway.

AlnilamE

FaylenSol wrote: »

Quest progress, zone guide, skill level, crafting levels, undaunted/mages guild/fighters guild levels, skill points, etc.

Tons of ways to track progress. 90% of the achievements weren't useful for tracking progress or were just an annoying grind to get on multiple characters.

I really don't want to get Nature Slayer on every character for example.

On the contrary. 90% of achievements existed only to track character progress. The last 10% are the ones that are grindy and hard.

And I would like to get nature slayer on more than one character, just like I have the "loot 1000 treasure chests" on 6 characters already.

kargen27

Sticky notes.

"I really don't want to get Nature Slayer on every character for example."

Me either, but I also do not want a character to get it just because another character stumbles across the Knotted Heart on their way to a dungeon.
My main is one trophy away on five separate achievements and two away on another. When the achievements get shared instead of being able to obtain those trophies on my main the achievements are just done. All my characters will have them with not a single character actually earning them. So basically something I am close to achieving and work on from time to time to take a break from other things will be done for me with zero effort. Not something I want but something that is being forced.
They say the change is for performance. If that is true then maybe the answer is no new achievements. If they can be completed by combining the efforts of multiple characters they are worthless anyway and not really achievements. Achievements are usually something you need to put in an effort to obtain.
It is clear a large number of players consider being able to do achievements on individual characters as an integral part of the game. Taking achievements away for faster load screens (maybe faster) seems akin to chopping off your leg because a toenail is dirty.

If you don't want to get Nature Slayer on every character that is fine. Don't do it. I think I should at the very least be able to obtain Nature Slayer on one character without other characters contributing. If the achievement is then shared that is okay. I would like a toggle so I can get the achievement on others but if performance really is a concern I can give that up. Just let me finish it one time on one character.
I don't want to have to decide abandon 17 characters or abandon years of working on achievements. This is the first time since day one I've felt a change is going to absolutely wreck the way I play the game. I probably won't quit playing but I sure don't see myself playing near as often.
I have a 2nd account and started a character on there to go through the content in the same order my very first character went through content. Has been fun doing that but that will be lost with the change. It needed to be a new character as all my others have done quests kind of random. That account will be abandoned other than for flow over storage after this change is made.
This change is like saying we are removing all vet content in the game. It is upsetting to a large number of players.

Kiralyn2000

FaylenSol wrote: »

Quest progress, zone guide, skill level, crafting levels, undaunted/mages guild/fighters guild levels, skill points, etc.

Tons of ways to track progress.

Most of those are just character power/skill level. They don't track anything about your zones, quests, story progression, etc.

And as mentioned, the zone guide will only be partially useful if at all.

Sylvermynx

Danikat wrote: »

I very rarely look at the achievements list and I don't use it to track progress. As the thing I'm concerned about doing on all my characters is open-world PvE quests and exploration I use the quest log to remind me what they're currently doing and the map to see how far they've gotten through the zone they're in - if there's empty spaces I know I haven't been around that area yet. (No I don't mean the zone guide, although I'm hoping the problems with that will be fixed before the update goes live, I mean looking at the map itself.)

I do also have the Quest Map addon installed, which adds map markers for quests you haven't yet discovered/completed, but I only turn it on briefly when I think I've finished a zone so I can double-check I haven't missed anything.

The only thing I think I might have trouble keeping track of is which characters have done which group dungeons, but until there's a way to either do them all solo or consistently find groups who are willing to actually do the quest (not just check it off, I mean stand and listen to the NPCs each time they're speaking) I'm not worried about doing those on all my characters anyway.

Yes, this is also how I play - I never look at achievements, don't care about them, don't use titles, don't care about them either. I know what each character (yes, all bajillion of them) has done, and if necessary, I make a note on one of my spreadsheets if I get stuck on something so I won't lose track in case it's a while until I get back to that one character.

Since I've never had any use for achievements, I don't really care what ZOS is doing about all this. I'm sorry they have chosen to upset so many apple carts by not making this optional or providing per-character overviews as many of you asked though. It seems like they might lose a fair amount of subs and players.

Kesstryl

Be careful, they will lock this thread too and direct you to their PTS feedback. The problem is most people in General don't know what's going on in PTS and each locked thread just diverts attention away from what's going on. Most people are going to get a rude awakening when this hits live.

Tandor

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Zone guide will not work. (See pts thread)

On console so add ons not an option.

Excel spreadsheets make this like bloody work.

Addons won't help anyway, as they rely on picking up data that isn't being recorded any more.

Tandor

Danikat wrote: »

I very rarely look at the achievements list and I don't use it to track progress. As the thing I'm concerned about doing on all my characters is open-world PvE quests and exploration I use the quest log to remind me what they're currently doing and the map to see how far they've gotten through the zone they're in - if there's empty spaces I know I haven't been around that area yet. (No I don't mean the zone guide, although I'm hoping the problems with that will be fixed before the update goes live, I mean looking at the map itself.)

I do also have the Quest Map addon installed, which adds map markers for quests you haven't yet discovered/completed, but I only turn it on briefly when I think I've finished a zone so I can double-check I haven't missed anything.

The only thing I think I might have trouble keeping track of is which characters have done which group dungeons, but until there's a way to either do them all solo or consistently find groups who are willing to actually do the quest (not just check it off, I mean stand and listen to the NPCs each time they're speaking) I'm not worried about doing those on all my characters anyway.

Bear in mind that not all quests work properly under this system as implemented at present, so that some quests don't appear after being completed once, others are offered and immediately auto-completed, while conflicts arise such as two Queens on the throne simultaneously and NPC dialogues being compromised e.g. by characters who haven't participated at all in a zone story being hailed as a hero for saving the zone etc.. Some quest ending options are missing after the quests have been done once, and some rewards will be missing when completing the quests more than once. Similarly, the zone maps are mixed up in that some things show correctly to a character entering the zone for the first time while other things will be auto-completed on first arrival. These things are all detailed on the PTS forum with only one such case having been given a temporary fix while ZOS try to work out a proper solution for that one case but with no acknowledgement that they have taken on board all the other cases. PTS players can in any event only test some of the game, there isn't time to do more, and when it goes Live there are inevitably going to be a lot more issues arising.

It's also far from straightforward for those who do take an interest in achievements, including those who want them to be account-wide, because a lot of the "grindy" achievements remain character-based while achievements like say "Kill 100 crabs" are structured so that if your main character who does all achievements kills 99 but then you inadvertently let an alt kill one more then it is the alt that has hit the target and who therefore gets credited with the achievement which your main will never be able to get.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

Tyrvarion wrote: »

The Zone guide should work still.

The zone guide will tell you 2/10 dungeons completed. But the map will show ALL of them done.
How do you tell what one's you've done? This is just a taste of the mess called AwA.

Danikat

Tandor wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

I very rarely look at the achievements list and I don't use it to track progress. As the thing I'm concerned about doing on all my characters is open-world PvE quests and exploration I use the quest log to remind me what they're currently doing and the map to see how far they've gotten through the zone they're in - if there's empty spaces I know I haven't been around that area yet. (No I don't mean the zone guide, although I'm hoping the problems with that will be fixed before the update goes live, I mean looking at the map itself.)

I do also have the Quest Map addon installed, which adds map markers for quests you haven't yet discovered/completed, but I only turn it on briefly when I think I've finished a zone so I can double-check I haven't missed anything.

The only thing I think I might have trouble keeping track of is which characters have done which group dungeons, but until there's a way to either do them all solo or consistently find groups who are willing to actually do the quest (not just check it off, I mean stand and listen to the NPCs each time they're speaking) I'm not worried about doing those on all my characters anyway.

Bear in mind that not all quests work properly under this system as implemented at present, so that some quests don't appear after being completed once, others are offered and immediately auto-completed, while conflicts arise such as two Queens on the throne simultaneously and NPC dialogues being compromised e.g. by characters who haven't participated at all in a zone story being hailed as a hero for saving the zone etc.. Some quest ending options are missing after the quests have been done once, and some rewards will be missing when completing the quests more than once. Similarly, the zone maps are mixed up in that some things show correctly to a character entering the zone for the first time while other things will be auto-completed on first arrival. These things are all detailed on the PTS forum with only one such case having been given a temporary fix while ZOS try to work out a proper solution.

It's also far from straightforward for those who do take an interest in achievements, including those who want them to be account-wide, because a lot of the "grindy" achievements remain character-based while achievements like say "Kill 100 crabs" are structured so that if your main character who does all achievements kills 99 but then you inadvertently let an alt kill one more then it is the alt that has hit the target and who therefore gets credited with the achievement which your main will never be able to get.

I was simply addressing how I currently track progress without using achievements. The bugs and problems with the new system which ZOS need to fix (hopefully before releasing it) are a seperate topic. (One I've also commented on, in the literal seperate forum topic for reporting those bugs).

I also can't say (and haven't tried to say) what people who care about how specific achievements are completed should do, because that's not for me to say. From my perspective ESO is a fairly unique set-up. Most the games I play either don't have achievements at all or only have ones tacked on by the platform they're on, so they can only be completed once and are usually fairly arbitrary and not useful or meaningful for tracking progress on individual characters or play throughs. As a result it's not something I ever got into the habit of doing. I understand there are people who use them that way, but I wasn't trying to say how they should feel about it or that what I do is a replacement for what they currently do, just answering the topic question by explaining how I track progress without using achievements.

katanagirl1

So there are almost 70 pages of comments on the official thread. I don’t think I have time to even speed read those.

I am on console so I cannot use the PTS myself to see how it works.

So what happens with skyshards and delve clears and such. Do alts get the skyshards automatically if my main has them? That would be helpful to have those skill points automatically.

The only thing that concerns me is with leveling up new toons, you get xp for discovering new places. Will they get the discovery but not the xp boost? I would assume that the game would not automatically add that xp so I assume it will essentially be lost.

fizl101

katanagirl1 wrote: »

So there are almost 70 pages of comments on the official thread. I don’t think I have time to even speed read those.

I am on console so I cannot use the PTS myself to see how it works.

So what happens with skyshards and delve clears and such. Do alts get the skyshards automatically if my main has them? That would be helpful to have those skill points automatically.

The only thing that concerns me is with leveling up new toons, you get xp for discovering new places. Will they get the discovery but not the xp boost? I would assume that the game would not automatically add that xp so I assume it will essentially be lost.

No skyshards are per character not account

Danikat

katanagirl1 wrote: »

So there are almost 70 pages of comments on the official thread. I don’t think I have time to even speed read those.

I am on console so I cannot use the PTS myself to see how it works.

So what happens with skyshards and delve clears and such. Do alts get the skyshards automatically if my main has them? That would be helpful to have those skill points automatically.

The only thing that concerns me is with leveling up new toons, you get xp for discovering new places. Will they get the discovery but not the xp boost? I would assume that the game would not automatically add that xp so I assume it will essentially be lost.

Think of it as two separate things: You find and use the skyshard and get 1/3 of a skill point, then when you've got them all in an area a notification pops up to let you know that's happened. All that's changing is that notification. Your characters will still need to find and use the skyshards to get the skill points, you just won't be told repeatedly when each one has collected all the skyshards in a map, only the first time you do it. (I think that is already displaying correctly on the zone guide, so you will have that to tell you when you've got them all.)

It's largely the same with delves in that it will still be possible to complete them and kill the boss on each character, you just won't get a notification popping up to tell you that you've killed them. The zone guide is currently broken on the PTS and marks delves as complete as soon as you discover them, but ZOS has acknowledged it shouldn't do that, so it should be fixed, hopefully before the system goes live. But you can still explore the delve, kill the boss, collect the skyshard and complete the quest on every character even with the zone guide bug.

As for discovering new places that's not an achievement so it won't be affected.

MasterSpatula

Personally, I think the "performance" explanation is a face-saving excuse.

They failed to consult the community at all before barreling ahead on this, and thus they failed to anticipate a large percentage of the community seeing the entire idea as a QOL deterioration rather than improvement. They failed to anticipate the ways in which certain details of this would inarguably be a QOL deterioration regardless of your feeling on the concept itself. They failed to anticipate all the many, many bugs this would create. They just went ahead without doing the diligence.

Now, it's too late, too close to release to fix the many, many bugs or address the community's concerns. Their choices are to admit they made a mistake and delay AWA until they can get it right or push it through.

Thus, the original reason they said they were doing this, a feature requested by players, gets subsumed by "performance." Because doing their job right is to admit the mistake and correct it before pushing it to live. That's not who ZOS is. "You want better performance, don't you? Everyone wants better performance. Why are you against better performance?" Hey, I like better performance, but you have to do it in ways that don't make the game a worse experience--like the 12-person group limit or the many QOL losses and staggering amount of bugs AWA as it currently stands will cause.

Jaimeh

Unfortunately, you can't for the most part, which is why people have been asking for ZOS to delay globalizing the achievements, until they can find a way that maintains individual character progress. There's a lot of issues, ranging from being unable to replay a quest on an alt, to not being able to gage what has been cleared on a map, to going out in the world with a new character and be heralded as the saviour of the queen... The only thing you can do is to manually save the achievements that you have on a given character (and perhaps the maps as they appear on that character as well) so that you have a frame of reference after everything's obliterated.

Danikat

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Personally, I think the "performance" explanation is a face-saving excuse.

I thought it was the other way around. Some players have requested this for years (possibly since the game was released) and ZOS have given no indication they've even seen that, much less that it's something they'd consider doing.

Then suddenly in the middle of yet another round of focusing on performance no matter the impact on other aspects of the game they announce that account-wide achievements are going live in the next update whether they're working or not. It seems more likely to me that someone realised how much data this would clear from the database and that it might run faster as a result and it was only when they were discussing how to explain it to players that someone remembered seeing forum polls on the subject and suggested it could be framed as a QoL update.

If that was the main reason it wouldn't make sense to rush it like this. QoL updates, especially ones which change existing systems, are usually a lower priority. How long did it take them to replace veteran levels after players complained they were sick of the grinding? That was a much bigger issue for players and I think had more consensus that the original system wasn't any fun and it took years of consideration and incremental changes to fully swap over to the CP system.

SeaGtGruff

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Personally, I think the "performance" explanation is a face-saving excuse.

They failed to consult the community at all before barreling ahead on this, and thus they failed to anticipate a large percentage of the community seeing the entire idea as a QOL deterioration rather than improvement. They failed to anticipate the ways in which certain details of this would inarguably be a QOL deterioration regardless of your feeling on the concept itself. They failed to anticipate all the many, many bugs this would create. They just went ahead without doing the diligence.

Now, it's too late, too close to release to fix the many, many bugs or address the community's concerns. Their choices are to admit they made a mistake and delay AWA until they can get it right or push it through.

Thus, the original reason they said they were doing this, a feature requested by players, gets subsumed by "performance." Because doing their job right is to admit the mistake and correct it before pushing it to live. That's not who ZOS is. "You want better performance, don't you? Everyone wants better performance. Why are you against better performance?" Hey, I like better performance, but you have to do it in ways that don't make the game a worse experience--like the 12-person group limit or the many QOL losses and staggering amount of bugs AWA as it currently stands will cause.

Personally, I think the "performance" explanation seems like the only logical reason why they would want to do this. Yes, a lot of players-- or maybe just a few very vocal players-- have been asking for account-wide achievements for a long time, but this isn't the sort of change you just decide to make on a whim because someone asked for it. I realize that a large percentage of the playerbase seems to have a truly low opinion of Bethesda and ZOS, but however inept you (meaning "you all," not "you" in particular) might think they are at fixing bugs or implementing changes, this kind of massive coding change isn't decided just because it's Tuesday and then implemented overnight. It seems obvious to me from looking at the things which are changing to account-wide versus the things which are remaining character-specific that a considerable amount of thought and planning has gone into this.

We also know from previous changes and announcements that they've been working on ways to simplify decision-making and computations within the game, as well as working on ways to decrease the amount of data that the game must load and that the servers must manipulate. So, yes, it seems to me that this sort of reason probably did play a heavy role, if not the heaviest role, in why they decided to make this change. The risk of getting something wrong, not to mention upsetting a lot of players-- and surely they must have known that a lot of players would object, based on the responses posted in the forums whenever someone brought up the idea of account-wide achievements-- is simply too high for this to have been decided on lightly. They wouldn't have wanted to take those risks unless they felt there was a very good reason to-- and hoping to please some players while knowing that even more players would be upset simply isn't a good enough reason. If you put aside your emotions and any personal biases you might have about this issue, and examine it logically and without any trace of emotion or preference, then "the 'performance' explanation" seems like the only one that genuinely makes any kind of sense.

starkerealm

katanagirl1 wrote: »

So there are almost 70 pages of comments on the official thread. I don’t think I have time to even speed read those.

I am on console so I cannot use the PTS myself to see how it works.

So what happens with skyshards and delve clears and such. Do alts get the skyshards automatically if my main has them? That would be helpful to have those skill points automatically.

The only thing that concerns me is with leveling up new toons, you get xp for discovering new places. Will they get the discovery but not the xp boost? I would assume that the game would not automatically add that xp so I assume it will essentially be lost.

The XP for discovering new areas is pretty trivial, but each character can still earn that independently. Same thing with Skyshards. (The zone guide will accurately report which skyshards that character has collected.)

Ironically, the biggest problem here doesn't affect you, account wide achievements do play havoc with popular addons like Skyshards. Normally, the Skyshards addon will slap map markers down on the map for Skyshards, and keep track of how many skyshards an individual character has earned... but it now tracks how many skyshards have been discovered on the account, and only highlights skyshards that have never been collected.

Approaching a delve you've completed on another character will display a black icon on your compass until you get close enough to earn XP from the discovery. At that point, you'll get your XP payout, and the icon will go white.

Additionally, the zone guide will list that delve as completed from the beginning. First time delve clears are once per account (this includes both the extra XP payout, and forcing the boss to respawn when you enter the room), exploration is not, you can earn that on multiple characters. Though, there seems to be a first time discovery bonus which may be new. The map does not display areas that have been explored by other characters on your account.

Not sure how quests work, I main on PCNA, and the current server copy is PCEU.

starkerealm

Danikat wrote: »

[If that was the main reason it wouldn't make sense to rush it like this.

It's somewhat unlikely that this was rushed. QoL features like this are frequently unannounced until they're ready to roll to the PTS (eg: reordering characters on the login screen, the armory system, outfits, set collections, etc.)

Just because we didn't know about this, didn't mean it wasn't in the works for awhile. I remember Finn teasing the Undaunted key overhaul months before that was formally announced. (I think that was in private, off air, during our post interview wind down, while we were just BSing.) Going out on a limb, I really doubt this was, "oh, we can do this, we should do it right now.")

Kiralyn2000

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Thus, the original reason they said they were doing this, a feature requested by players... .

One of the hazards of having a game with a very large playerbase. "Huge number of people" can beg for some feature, it's clearly a Very Popular Idea™...

...until it's launched and a "huge number of people" scream about how terrible it is.


And it's not 'everyone asked for X, and now that it's here they complain about it', because both "huge numbers of people" are entirely different groups & just a portion of the large playerbase.

SerafinaWaterstar

So, no decent suggestions apart from having to now do this manually OUTSIDE of the game?!

Does that not show how utterly ridiculous these changes are?

And as for the excuse, that it *may* (note, not *will*) enhance future performance in some vague way?! 🤣🤣

If the database cannot cope with this data, then the database is in incredibly poor shape & needs proper management. And money.

SerafinaWaterstar

And those suggesting addons - on console so……..