Zone Guide & Map Completion with Account Wide Achievements

ZOS_GinaBruno

Hey everyone,

We've been seeing a lot of questions about what types of things are being tracked on the Zone Guide and Map now that Account Wide Achievements have launched on PC. We wanted to provide some clarity on what is tracked on the account vs character level:

• Zone Quests, Wayshrines, Points of Interest, Crafting Stations, Mundus Stones, Public Dungeons, Skyshards and Shalidor's Library Books are still character-specific in the Zone Guide.
• Delves, Striking Locales, World Events and World Bosses use the Achievement to track progress in the Zone Guide but you will still need to discover these on individual characters on the Map.

Additionally, it's worth mentioning there is currently a bug affecting completed Delves, World Bosses and World Events that are making them display as incomplete. We're working on getting this fixed for a future incremental patch.

Alina_Scarbridge

Literally everything on the map should be individual character based.

Grizzbeorn

I am getting barely any XP from completing World Bosses, World Events, and Delves, even while running an XP scroll since the update.
Was this intended?

This KILLS any incentive to create new characters (and possibly even to play with my high-level characters who are still acquiring CP). It will take forever to level them.

duagloth

What a mess,this makes zero sense. I have Alts that havesomehow defeated a boss in a group dungeon but yet the map shows theyve never been there.

Ulvich

Zone Quests, Wayshrines, Points of Interest, Crafting Stations, Mundus Stones, Public Dungeons, Skyshards and Shalidor's Library Books are still character-specific in the Zone Guide.

Not hardly. Have you seen some of the screenshots people are posting. On my own main I am showing a zone with 100% completion as being incomplete. And alt characters are showing some of these points as being completed. You guys completely wrecked the whole map system. Why would you even mess with it in the first place? It was perfect the way it was.

magnusthorek

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Additionally, it's worth mentioning there is currently a bug affecting completed Delves, World Bosses and World Events that are making them display as incomplete. We're working on getting this fixed for a future incremental patch.

Add to this list Trials as well. Their icons are also black, as if I haven't finished them before. The login order I did was my Main, my former Main and, perhaps, a third Character (but it's quite possible I didn't)

Arunei

This problem was mentioned over on the PTS over and over again. Why was it never acknowledged there? This is what people get so frustrated over. Even if the devs couldn't fix this before it went live, someone should have TOLD us they realized it was a problem and would be fixed in a later patch on live, but as is almost always the case, bugs from the PTS carry over to live and it's treated as though it had never been pointed out.

And please know I'm not irritated with Gina, because she can only tell us what they basically tell her she can. I'm frustrated that this happens over and over and over and over, where we tell ZOS that X or Y is a problem on the PTS and it's never acknowledged in ANY way, not until it goes live.

ArchangelIsraphel

I don't think what you're really seeing is questions, it's more that the zone guide has been rendered useless for alts in terms of tracking certain progress and we'd like it if the company would figure out how to sever the zone/achievement tie so that the guide is actually usable again. The fact that this is intended functionality just makes the game feel broken, to be honest. It's weird to have a QOL tool that was introduced for conveniently tracking activities be broken by AWA. Why should it be useful only once for the first character ever? It makes no sense.

Zorrin

Imagine starting a new playthrough of TESV: Skyrim and upon reaching Riverwood you're hailed as the Dragonborn and every location on the map is marked as cleared as soon as you discover it because you did it in another playthrough. It makes no sense from a character perspective and what is the point of even playing the game? This is what Update 33 has done to every alt. There are far more bugs than the visual one causing completed map pins to appear incomplete. Has ZOS forgotten this is an ELDER SCROLLS game? Or maybe I should say it was an Elder Scrolls game before it was gutted of the immersion and replayability integral to the series.

Wolf_Eye

If Delves, Striking Locales, World Events and World Bosses are automatically given credit as completed to all alts with achievements, then you should not need to travel all the way there just to unlock the icon on the map per character. That's just unnecessary busy work, and causes unnecessary confusion.

It should be either or: either all map icons are unlocked with completed achievements for all toons OR no map icons and no achievements are unlocked for these per toon.

It seems silly that you have to send your alt all the way over to a delve to unlock it on your map when you've already gotten credit for "completing" it on that same alt.

Alina_Scarbridge

Ulvich wrote: »

It was perfect the way it was.

DarcyMardin

The map, which I used to trust and rely on, has been rendered useless. Those of us who tested on the PTS warned about these problems, but we were ignored. I’ve been on and off all day since the patch dropped, and I’m more confused than ever. I don’t even care about AwA anymore, but I do care about knowing whether my many alts have killed the boss and collected the skyshard in a particular delve in a particular zone. Which the map *used to* show!

LoneStar2911

Yeah, this is honestly ridiculous.
What a terrible implementation of AwA.
Achievements should be account wide. Not locations, not quests, not NPC interactions.
ZOS, you’ve gotta figure out how to separate these things from achievements. It’s making people incredibly unhappy.

karthrag_inak

How about making wayshrines Account-wide?

Sarannah

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*] Delves, Striking Locales, World Events and World Bosses use the Achievement to track progress in the Zone Guide but you will still need to discover these on individual characters on the Map.

No, I cannot accept this!! (Sorry) And I am actually in favor of AwA.
But these things should not automatically be completed for every character just because one character did it. Like anything on the map, these should come uncompleted(black), and should only turn white when actually completed.

If you are truly serious about AwA, decouple everything from achievements! Or complete everything for every character, because one character completed it. And everything means handing out all skyshards, all quests completions, all quest skillpoints, all zone completions, etc. The way AwA is implemented now is half/half, and this is terrible, looks terrible, and feels terrible. Not to mention confusing.

Do it right, or don't do it at all!

PS: This also means you cannot, in the future, hold any more community events like the one with Blackwood striking locales!

Tandor

karthrag_inak wrote: »

How about making wayshrines Account-wide?

How about restoring achievements to pre-UD33 and leaving titles account-wide? At least that way people have a choice whether to use another character's title. At the moment those who don't want account-wide achievements and those who do want them are stuck with a broken and half-baked mess which is neither account-wide nor character-specific.

As for the claim that this is being done as it "may" give performance improvements, how about running a poll to show how many believe it will actually happen? That's a poll of the staff, by the way, the players already know the answer based on all the previous performance "improvements".

wenchmore420b14_ESO

I had a brand new Lv1 character sitting in tutorial this morning.
I logged in to my main, who has been around since launch and done it all.
Took my new alt, (without the new AwA add ons), and ran through Stonefalls, border to border. Here is my findings~

ZONE GUIDE~ Showed Delvs, WB, and Dolmans as all done. On map they were black, but all I had to do is ride by the edge of the "cell", and it would click as done.

PUBLIC DUNGEONS~ After enter, all bosses marked done.
GROUP DUNGEONS~ Normal, no change
THIEVES TROVES~ Got a Trove, even though I am in first zone. Show's I have Thieves Guild and DB active.
CAMPFIRE~ Done
FISHING~ All rare fish already caught and done.

I didn't run into any NPC's with the dialog changes though. I forgot where they are.. Lol...
Just my 2 drakes....
Huzzah!

dzugarueb17_ESO

LoneStar2911 wrote: »

Yeah, this is honestly ridiculous.
What a terrible implementation of AwA.
Achievements should be account wide. Not locations, not quests, not NPC interactions.
ZOS, you’ve gotta figure out how to separate these things from achievements. It’s making people incredibly unhappy.

It cannot be made separate anymore. The relevant data is deleted. The thread of prophecy is severed. We will persist in the doomed world ZOS have created.

Necrotech_Master

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

I had a brand new Lv1 character sitting in tutorial this morning.
I logged in to my main, who has been around since launch and done it all.
Took my new alt, (without the new AwA add ons), and ran through Stonefalls, border to border. Here is my findings~

ZONE GUIDE~ Showed Delvs, WB, and Dolmans as all done. On map they were black, but all I had to do is ride by the edge of the "cell", and it would click as done.

PUBLIC DUNGEONS~ After enter, all bosses marked done.
GROUP DUNGEONS~ Normal, no change
THIEVES TROVES~ Got a Trove, even though I am in first zone. Show's I have Thieves Guild and DB active.
CAMPFIRE~ Done
FISHING~ All rare fish already caught and done.

I didn't run into any NPC's with the dialog changes though. I forgot where they are.. Lol...
Just my 2 drakes....
Huzzah!

thieves troves can spawn in any zone including starter zones like khenarthis roost, you can find them even on toons that have never been in thieves guild but it will unlock the skill line

(yes im sure you were copy/pasting your other post about this where you had crossed out the note about thieves guild lol)

Sylvermynx

dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »

LoneStar2911 wrote: »

Yeah, this is honestly ridiculous.
What a terrible implementation of AwA.
Achievements should be account wide. Not locations, not quests, not NPC interactions.
ZOS, you’ve gotta figure out how to separate these things from achievements. It’s making people incredibly unhappy.

It cannot be made separate anymore. The relevant data is deleted. The thread of prophecy is severed. We will persist in the doomed world ZOS have created.

I would think that they keep backups of the databases for a while. I've got backups of every website I ever managed since the beginning (that would be early 2002), including those websites I don't manage any more; and it's a good thing too, because I got a call from a woman a few months back who had moved herself and her website to Ireland in 2018, using a local host provider who had their building burn down including some of their own backups, and her site was one of them that was missing from the data.

So even though she'd had several years of changes at least she got the full backup from 2018 that I still have. AND poor woman, she's changed providers as well, for obvious reasons! I emailed her full instructions with pictures on keeping her own backups too - one can't be too careful.... or too redundant.

Caroloces

• Zone Quests, Wayshrines, Points of Interest, Crafting Stations, Mundus Stones, Public Dungeons, Skyshards and Shalidor's Library Books are still character-specific in the Zone Guide.

Not true. I just finished logging in all 7 of my characters, only one of whom has done the Western Skyrim zone. All of my characters show that they have completed 30 unique quests, when most have not even entered the zone. I believe that it may be more accurate to say that Zone Story Quests are character specific, but the essential point is that everything in the zone quide should be character specific, and it should be detached from the AwA completely.

Grizzbeorn

LoneStar2911 wrote: »

Yeah, this is honestly ridiculous.
Achievements should be account wide. Not locations, not quests, not NPC interactions.
ZOS, you’ve gotta figure out how to separate these things from achievements. It’s making people incredibly unhappy.

And XP needs to be decoupled from Achievements, as well.
The leveling experience has been seriously hamstrung.

dzugarueb17_ESO

Sylvermynx wrote: »

I would think that they keep backups of the databases for a while. I've got backups of every website I ever managed since the beginning (that would be early 2002), including those websites I don't manage any more; and it's a good thing too, because I got a call from a woman a few months back who had moved herself and her website to Ireland in 2018, using a local host provider who had their building burn down including some of their own backups, and her site was one of them that was missing from the data.

So even though she'd had several years of changes at least she got the full backup from 2018 that I still have. AND poor woman, she's changed providers as well, for obvious reasons! I emailed her full instructions with pictures on keeping her own backups too - one can't be too careful.... or too redundant.

Backups wont help. New data is generated en masse as we speak. Imagine someone playing an alt right now, finishing the zone doing quests, occasionally killing (already white) delve bosses and world bosses. Because the information is not stored anywhere except achievements right now - it is not recorded right now. If ZOS decides to rollback to the backup to "fix" the global delves and WBs back to character specific - the state of the completed zone will rollback to a mess - you've done the zone quests, but the delves state suddenly is circa 2022-03-14. This is a no go. I cannot imagine they can do this.

No, we've warned about this in PTS thread - the situation is unique and there is no going back, at all. The replayability is permanently gimped by making part of the map permanently white and this will stay forever.

Tandor

Sylvermynx wrote: »

dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »

LoneStar2911 wrote: »

Yeah, this is honestly ridiculous.
What a terrible implementation of AwA.
Achievements should be account wide. Not locations, not quests, not NPC interactions.
ZOS, you’ve gotta figure out how to separate these things from achievements. It’s making people incredibly unhappy.

It cannot be made separate anymore. The relevant data is deleted. The thread of prophecy is severed. We will persist in the doomed world ZOS have created.

I would think that they keep backups of the databases for a while. I've got backups of every website I ever managed since the beginning (that would be early 2002), including those websites I don't manage any more; and it's a good thing too, because I got a call from a woman a few months back who had moved herself and her website to Ireland in 2018, using a local host provider who had their building burn down including some of their own backups, and her site was one of them that was missing from the data.

So even though she'd had several years of changes at least she got the full backup from 2018 that I still have. AND poor woman, she's changed providers as well, for obvious reasons! I emailed her full instructions with pictures on keeping her own backups too - one can't be too careful.... or too redundant.

What we were told in the Q&A information following the PTS feedback was this:

"Q: What will happen to the character-specific achievement data once this goes through? Will there be a way to revert the process if something goes wrong?

A: We will have backups of all the data in case of an emergency, but as noted earlier, much of this effort is a performance initiative and great for the long-term health of the game. As such, we do not intend to revert this unless we run into some sort of catastrophic bug."

So yes, they have a backup, but no they don't intend to use it.

Jayne_Doe

Sylvermynx wrote: »

dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »

LoneStar2911 wrote: »

Yeah, this is honestly ridiculous.
What a terrible implementation of AwA.
Achievements should be account wide. Not locations, not quests, not NPC interactions.
ZOS, you’ve gotta figure out how to separate these things from achievements. It’s making people incredibly unhappy.

It cannot be made separate anymore. The relevant data is deleted. The thread of prophecy is severed. We will persist in the doomed world ZOS have created.

I would think that they keep backups of the databases for a while.

I fear that while they do have a backup (they said they were backing up character data in case of any "disasters") but the question is how to get that data back onto live, if the only way of tracking completion of these things was via achievements.

Frankly, I am really disappointed that I can no longer track whether my alts have yet done a delve or WB or dolmen. And, that when I enter a new zone, half of the things I would normally do with an alt will show as completed. Granted, I can still do them, and will know at the time of "discovery" of a dolmen or WB that I haven't really done it with that alt. But, I'll either have to do it right then or remember to go back and do it.

Also, as someone else already mentioned, we will no longer get the XP from completing a dolmen or WB, etc. for the first time, but will rather get the reduced XP, even if it is actually the first time an alt has completed it.

AWA, while great for certain things, has been a disaster, since tracking for a lot of things we would normally want to complete on an alt (dolmens, e.g.) can no longer be tracked. I would argue that it's a BUG that the zone guide doesn't track these any more, even though it's working as ZOS intended (and probably the only way it can work, now). That they intended this is a further slap in the face to those of us who play alts, not as something just to use for a vet trial (to fill a particular role, e.g.) but as characters in their own right, for whom we want to do all quests, delves, dolmens, WBs, etc. Now, half of that cannot be tracked in the game any more, and it is completely immersion breaking to have the game show that they did things that they haven't actually done yet.

I get that they did this for the "future of the game" but they should have just had titles unlock at the account level like dyes already do and been done with it. This has butchered the way many of us play this game, and even why we continue to play it. While there's no real way for me to tell now on PC which alts have done what - other than the zones which I know they've never done anything in yet - I still have time on console to take pictures or write down a few things so I know what they have/haven't done. It won't be perfect, but after this update hits my main platform, I'll lose a real incentive for playing my alts.

ZOS tried to convince us all that this was a great idea, with their puff piece and even the Nintendo-speak in their FAQ, but at the end of the day, there is absolutely no benefit to this system for the way many of us play this game, and a very large detriment.

SydneyGrey

Just took a new character to a delve he's never been to before, and the map updated to show that the delve had been done, but it hadn't been. Not by that character it hadn't. He had never been there before, had not gotten the skyshard, and had never defeated that delve boss before. This is absolutely appalling, because now I can't tell what skyshards my characters have and what they don't have any more unless I actually travel to each individual skyshard again.

This is a sickening change and needs to be reverted immediately. It makes me not want to even play my alts any more, because it makes getting skyshards for them a million times harder and wastes a lot of my time.

LoneStar2911

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

LoneStar2911 wrote: »

Yeah, this is honestly ridiculous.
Achievements should be account wide. Not locations, not quests, not NPC interactions.
ZOS, you’ve gotta figure out how to separate these things from achievements. It’s making people incredibly unhappy.

And XP needs to be decoupled from Achievements, as well.
The leveling experience has been seriously hamstrung.

Agreed.

averyfarmanb14_ESO

Seriously, though, you've got domain confusion (account vs. character) all over the place. I just posted a thread about this bit of fun (sadly, before I saw this thread.)

It's a simple question: Which striking locale is this character missing?

You can't tell, not from either the Map Completion dialog or the achievement tooltip. The Map Completion dialog's driven by character data, the tooltip's driven by (now) account data, so there's no indicator at all as to which locale's missing. If I'm lucky, I've gone to the map and, hopefully, came close enough to reveal the icon for it, but there's no guarantee of that, either.

Kesstryl

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey everyone,

We've been seeing a lot of questions about what types of things are being tracked on the Zone Guide and Map now that Account Wide Achievements have launched on PC. We wanted to provide some clarity on what is tracked on the account vs character level:

• Zone Quests, Wayshrines, Points of Interest, Crafting Stations, Mundus Stones, Public Dungeons, Skyshards and Shalidor's Library Books are still character-specific in the Zone Guide.
  
• Delves, Striking Locales, World Events and World Bosses use the Achievement to track progress in the Zone Guide but you will still need to discover these on individual characters on the Map.

Additionally, it's worth mentioning there is currently a bug affecting completed Delves, World Bosses and World Events that are making them display as incomplete. We're working on getting this fixed for a future incremental patch.

Nothing against you @ZOS_GinaBruno I know you are just doing your job so please don't take this personally. Please inform your bosses that all of these things should still stay character specific. Account Wide Achievements should do nothing more than display a culmination of what all characters have collectively done. It should not intrusively push itself like this into actual gameplay on alts. Please beg them for us, your community, to also decouple any NPC conversations and encounters to flag from completed quests, including completed dungeon quests, and not off Account Wide Achievements. It's gone way too far! Immersion is broken! There are far more unhappy people with this implementation than those who are happy, and that includes people that originally wanted Account Wide Achievements.

This vision of how achievements effect the game world breaks this beautiful, lore rich, wonderfully voice acted world and makes it no better than Super Mario Smash Whatever. This is not what many of us came here for. We came here for the stories, the exploration, the lore, the NPCs, and our individual character stories. Account achievements should only be there to look at when we are in the tab, not have NPCs intrude our poor harrowed alts with praises for things they never did, giving them reasons to not explore places they've never been because the map pretty much says no point now, and ruining narrative continuity and world immersion. Something has to be done to fix these things. No other triple AAA MMO has their Account Wide Achievement system break game world immersion like this. Trust me, I know, I've played most of them, including World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, and Knights of the Old Republic. This is not healthy for the game, especially a game that draws in players of the single player TES games which are rich for being fully immersive. Please urge them to fix the immersion problems.

KMarble

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

I didn't run into any NPC's with the dialog changes though. I forgot where they are.. Lol...
Just my 2 drakes....
Huzzah!

This was pointed out by someone (I'm terribly sorry, but I forgot the person's name) on the last few pages of the feedback thread in the PTS sub-forum.

This person mentioned that although they didn't hear any lines that addressed their char as the "hero/savior/what-have-you", they noticed that the world was much more quiet.

I noticed something similar when I logged in yesterday. None of my alts were hailed as the savior of Tamriel, but the chit-chat was almost all gone.

It felt to me (and I could be wrong) that most of the NPCs' chatter was muted. Even my first char, who has done pretty much everything in game, didn't hear much from NPCs.

Kesstryl

KMarble wrote: »

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

I didn't run into any NPC's with the dialog changes though. I forgot where they are.. Lol...
Just my 2 drakes....
Huzzah!

This was pointed out by someone (I'm terribly sorry, but I forgot the person's name) on the last few pages of the feedback thread in the PTS sub-forum.

This person mentioned that although they didn't hear any lines that addressed their char as the "hero/savior/what-have-you", they noticed that the world was much more quiet.

I noticed something similar when I logged in yesterday. None of my alts were hailed as the savior of Tamriel, but the chit-chat was almost all gone.

It felt to me (and I could be wrong) that most of the NPCs' chatter was muted. Even my first char, who has done pretty much everything in game, didn't hear much from NPCs.

If they are fixing this, why isn't it in the patch notes? @ZOS_GinaBruno Can we get confirmation that NPC reactions are being detached from achievements and are being moved quest side?