Account wide achievements make it hard for me to get motivated to play

gamma71

Why would anyone do everything over again. Account wide achievement s was one of the best things they have done.

xaraan

I feel exactly the opposite. Now that all the work I've done on alts, either just by playing naturally and earning something or by getting stuck having to use that character b/c they were a tank or healer and that's what my group needs from me, all that work now counts for something.

I'm an altaholic is some form, I have 18 characters, they are all maxed out crafters, have done all the silver/gold questlines, gotten almost all sky shards (a few of them literally every shard), etc. And even with all that work, there wasn't time for me to truly care about achievements at all before b/c they were so spread on different characters that I used for different things. Now I'm actually trying to clear certain achievements that I ignored previously. I certainly wasn't going to get trifecta clears on every trial on all 18 characters, or every thieving ach, or fishing ach's, etc.

Something that turns me off about MMOs, that I'm sure plenty are used to, is the idea of farming. I accept that there will always be some aspect of it, like today having to do deadlands portals a dozen times to get a drop of the new motif page for example. So the idea of having to just kill so-and-so mob over and over again a million times on one character only hoping a trophy would drop, or having my heart drop when I rode by a random zone encounter where you interact with an NPC when I was logged into the "wrong" character, or quitting my raid/dungeon group b/c I was always stuck using my tank and never got the ach/titles on my main, etc. It was a real turn off for me with the game.

I get that some players are the flip side of this, but plenty of us are glad for the change. I guess no matter what, one side or the other will be unhappy with the way it works.

BahometZ

As someone who has played this game a lot over the years, I am thrilled that the past is consolidated into a more complete picture. But as someone looking to continue to play this into the future, the drive to do so has been pole-axed. I am also an altoholic, I love rediscovering places. At the moment I am filling out the eidetic memory on my main character and exploring the world more thoroughly than ever before. But it is just highlighting how unenjoyable it is to explore new places on a fresh toon and find the world is filled in for you, that there is no reliable way to keep track of what is done. It just feels hollow.

I've voiced my many other issues with the implementation elsewhere, and what's done is done, but I won't ever forget how Zos pulled the rug out form under a large section of the community.

Ondolemir

For the longest time, I have not made alternate characters for the express purpose of having to re-earn achievements. I couldn't disagree with this more.

Honestly, I'd rather all achievements be account-bound and instead add rewards on an account level like Guild Wars 2 does.

peacenote

I also feel the same as the OP. And honestly, there have been tons of changes over the years where I had concerns but I did get used to everything. This has been the opposite. My realization of how horrible this change is for me and my enjoyment of the game just gets worse and worse and worse.

Browiseth wrote: »

i'm kinda the opposite. i feel more motivated than ever to play on my alt characters since now i'm not starting from scratch on a pointless achievement grind i already did on my main

will never understand why AWA was such a controversial change. now i feel motivated to play all of my characters and do different stuff on them: each character is working towards something unique that carries over across my whole account

also, small addendum because this is the stupidest argument against AWA i've ever seen. don't like that all your characters have access to your high end titles? then don't bloody use them. don't like that other players can use their high end titles on their lowbie characters? then that's more of a you problem than a game problem i'm sorry.

I actually believe that we should have gotten Account Wide Titles first, as they did not have to be tied to AwA. They could have been made available account wide like dyes and all other rewards. Lots of people wanted AwA ONLY for this change and it would have been so much less disruptive to separate the two features and put the title debate to bed first. So while I respect and understand player's frustration with that piece of the change, especially since there was no easy way to internally track who earned what in case you wanted to be more of a purist about when you apply titles, I do kind of agree with you that titles are neither here nor there when it comes to discussing AwA, either pro or against.

But anyway, the more I play post-AwA, it's obvious that it was such a fatal flaw to have character progress tracking be so intertwined with achievements. The character tracking is the catastrophic loss. We should have at least three categories of things which all were tied into one system, the achievement system:

1. Account-wide Goals/Achievements: Anything that's a "grind" or more of a "high numbers" thing should have been account achievements. Kill 100 zombies. Run 100 dungeons. Kill 1000 sorcs in PvP. Whatever.
2. Personal landmarks for characters for memorable accomplishments and separate character tracking progress through its own system: The first time a character hits level 50. Map progress. The first time you run each trial or dungeon. The first time you do a speed mode.
3. Repeatable rewards and acknowledgements for challenging achievements, like no death runs or trifectas. You get a pop up if you do a no death run, maybe 5 transmutes or something, but your account achievement is checked off the first time you do it.

The reason it was such a controversial change is that we lost a lot of functionality in the area of sentimental character landmark moments, character tracking progress, and acknowledgments for achievements that make sense to pursue multiple times. And now we have the worst of all worlds, at least in my personal opinion. I'm sorry that I'm someone who appreciates checklists and feedback but I enjoyed working through different characters and different roles to unlock hard modes and other challenging content and it just feels so pointless now.

Kesstryl

I'm with all of you who lacks motivation post AwA. I still haven't logged in on any of my fully leveled alts on my live account as I'm still not sure if I want to delete them all and start over to have a coherent narrative with the right achievements going to the right alts and delete 8 years of what little history is left, or just leave it all a mess with achievements all over the place with whatever character got it first and keep what little history is there. Plus I lose all my learned furnishing plans which is what would hurt the most. I can't decide, and so I have no desire to play because whatever I decide to do will become permanent and I have to live with the consequences of that. Even if I use an addon to delete the char names in the achievement pop ups, they will still be there on the server and I will know it.

joerginger

Making achievements account wide was a great change.However, the decision to keep some things still restricted to characters feels strange, especially lore books.

It is also a bit strange that some parts of map exploration became account wide. Like lore books, crafting & motif knowledge and all the remaining character-only stuff, these should have been disconnected completely from achievements.

katanagirl1

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Agenericname wrote: »

Mythgard1967 wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i'm kinda the opposite. i feel more motivated than ever to play on my alt characters since now i'm not starting from scratch on a pointless achievement grind i already did on my main

will never understand why AWA was such a controversial change. now i feel motivated to play all of my characters and do different stuff on them: each character is working towards something unique that carries over across my whole account

also, small addendum because this is the stupidest argument against AWA i've ever seen. don't like that all your characters have access to your high end titles? then don't bloody use them. don't like that other players can use their high end titles on their lowbie characters? then that's more of a you problem than a game problem i'm sorry.

You may be happy with that complete contradiction, others are not.

You may be unhappy with that needed consolidation; but others are not.

Yes, but both groups could have been happy.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

Ermiq wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

there is still much reason to be in cyro with alts, alliance ranks are still per character which is 50 skill pts per character

i still really like account wide achievements, made many achievements much less grindy but doesnt stop me from running the content with alt toons even if i have all the achievement from the area i am in

So wait, are alliance ranks per character or account wide? OP said they're account wide - "I always enjoyed taking new toons to Cyrodiil, unlocking new titles and equipping me. Now it's like what's the point? Even my level 3s are grand overlords."

I haven't checked personally but if that's an account wide achievement that's really dumb.

The achievements are account wide, and the titles you get as an achievement reward are account wide. But the character's rank is per character (the alliance rank that you see in the character screen and in the PVP screen).

Oh ok that makes a bit more sense. Not sure I agree with giving the title to a character that's not actually a Grand Warlord but it's not game-breaking.

even before AWA, i had 1 character get emperor and all of my toons were able to use the emperor costume (in fact the 1 toon i have using the emperor costume has almost never been in cyrodiil)

titles are nothing different than an unlockable costume to me, i could use emperor costume on any toon regardless if they had been emperor prior to AWA, so why not add titles to the costumes?

Sure, but why stop there? Why not share motifs as well? Or mount speed? Books?

motifs, furnishing recipes, and provisioning recipes having acct wide knowledge on those would certainly help tracking of those, instead of having to keep moving that stuff to my main instead of like outfit pages

motifs are like semi-acct wide, learning it on any toon still unlocks the outfit style acct wide for use at outfit station on any character

I second this. One small consolation would be having furnishing plan and motif knowledge shared so I don’t have to do the inventory management via the banker to check my hierarchy of knowledge and apply a trickle-down effect to pass them along. This takes up valuable time in my day.

RevJJ

I have two accounts. One was my main with fifteen characters and ESO + and one was a “side account” that only had the base game and one character.

I haven’t logged into the main one since AWA went live because I don’t want to see the uniqueness of my characters getting lost. I’ve not renewed my ESO+ either.

It’s not so much the concept of AWA (I don’t care about titles being usable by other toons), it’s the way it was implemented (replayability heavily impacted, as well as individual character info that people liked having). Grindy achievements such as monster trophies? Great, love AWA for that. Not being able to do certain things anymore because it’s tied to achievements? Terrible. And the complete radio silence (aka middle finger) after 90+ pages of feedback just added to the bad taste in my mouth about this ZOS-patented sledgehammer approach.

EF321

Tandor wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

Nah, it was me who did them, not characters.

So why don't your characters share their xp, skill points and levels then, after all it was you who completed the quests, not them?

You are mixing progression that affects gameplay and some fluff checkboxes. Not even to mention that skyshards, skill lines, xp boosts, mount trainings and such are $$$.

DarcyMardin

Poorly implemented change. I am playing much less and hardly ever sign in my many alts. My guilds are showing fewer sign-ins, too. Big mistake, ZOS.

ApoAlaia

For me it hasn't made any difference.

Well, tell a lie, it has made one difference, I no longer need to camp the few and far between spawns of Wamasu for the buzzing spine to drop on the 'right' character, I finally have all the basic dyes unlocked.

If they would have done this years ago they would have saved me what constituted the grindiest, least rewarding, most frustrating 100s of hours spent in the game killing the same menial mobs over and over and over again for the monster trophies.

I reckon I would have all my 26 characters at least with Antiquities and DB maxed out instead of just half of them if it wasn't for this absolute joy and time vacuum.

Other than that is business as usual. I pay less attention to what I do with which character but that's it.

There is a small niggle that now levelling Antiquities is more time consuming because you no longer get the skill line 'boost' from the achievements but as far as I could tell no one else had an issue with that so that is probably a 'me' problem.

Now if I had all the trial trifectas and dungeon trifectas on at least one character, like it was the case with some of those who most vehemently opposed AwA, that would maybe be different? not sure, but I am not there yet and I won't be for a long while.

Jaraal

BahometZ wrote: »

But it is just highlighting how unenjoyable it is to explore new places on a fresh toon and find the world is filled in for you, that there is no reliable way to keep track of what is done. It just feels hollow.

I've voiced my many other issues with the implementation elsewhere, and what's done is done, but I won't ever forget how Zos pulled the rug out form under a large section of the community.

Agreed. And the fact that it was done so they could have room for a card game to sell us, even though many of us aren't even remotely interested in that sort of thing, makes it all the more a bitter pill to swallow. And it leaves us to wonder what will be the next thing we've come to love over the years that will be unceremoniously round filed in the name of corporate progress.

Coatmagic

Am on the fence. Some good some bad. Could have been implemented better.
Like anything with a skill line that needs levelling should have been left out of AwA, imo, since it becomes a bit of a drag banging out a story line to level a skill line the game says you already have all the achievs for.

Necrotech_Master

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Agenericname wrote: »

Mythgard1967 wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i'm kinda the opposite. i feel more motivated than ever to play on my alt characters since now i'm not starting from scratch on a pointless achievement grind i already did on my main

will never understand why AWA was such a controversial change. now i feel motivated to play all of my characters and do different stuff on them: each character is working towards something unique that carries over across my whole account

also, small addendum because this is the stupidest argument against AWA i've ever seen. don't like that all your characters have access to your high end titles? then don't bloody use them. don't like that other players can use their high end titles on their lowbie characters? then that's more of a you problem than a game problem i'm sorry.

You may be happy with that complete contradiction, others are not.

You may be unhappy with that needed consolidation; but others are not.

Yes, but both groups could have been happy.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

Ermiq wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

there is still much reason to be in cyro with alts, alliance ranks are still per character which is 50 skill pts per character

i still really like account wide achievements, made many achievements much less grindy but doesnt stop me from running the content with alt toons even if i have all the achievement from the area i am in

So wait, are alliance ranks per character or account wide? OP said they're account wide - "I always enjoyed taking new toons to Cyrodiil, unlocking new titles and equipping me. Now it's like what's the point? Even my level 3s are grand overlords."

I haven't checked personally but if that's an account wide achievement that's really dumb.

The achievements are account wide, and the titles you get as an achievement reward are account wide. But the character's rank is per character (the alliance rank that you see in the character screen and in the PVP screen).

Oh ok that makes a bit more sense. Not sure I agree with giving the title to a character that's not actually a Grand Warlord but it's not game-breaking.

even before AWA, i had 1 character get emperor and all of my toons were able to use the emperor costume (in fact the 1 toon i have using the emperor costume has almost never been in cyrodiil)

titles are nothing different than an unlockable costume to me, i could use emperor costume on any toon regardless if they had been emperor prior to AWA, so why not add titles to the costumes?

Sure, but why stop there? Why not share motifs as well? Or mount speed? Books?

motifs, furnishing recipes, and provisioning recipes having acct wide knowledge on those would certainly help tracking of those, instead of having to keep moving that stuff to my main instead of like outfit pages

motifs are like semi-acct wide, learning it on any toon still unlocks the outfit style acct wide for use at outfit station on any character

I second this. One small consolation would be having furnishing plan and motif knowledge shared so I don’t have to do the inventory management via the banker to check my hierarchy of knowledge and apply a trickle-down effect to pass them along. This takes up valuable time in my day.

at least PC has addons to help with this lol

i have addons that track my character knowledge so it plainly states on the item tooltip if my main needs to learn it, i remember the days before these addons existed (or i knew about them) and had to go through the process of taking any recipe/blueprint/motif shove it in my bank, check on my main if i needed it, then sell the ones i didnt need

the part that this helps the most is when looking for missing stuff i want to buy on guild stores, with addons i can add a filter to only search for "unknown" items as long as im on my main and just buy up a few use them to add to my knowledge then keep searching

Dalsinthus

I find these threads both interesting and perplexing.

What a lot of the AWA criticism boils down to is that, for some, repeating achievements was the primary motivation to do content and without these achievements they do not enjoy the content. Questing, dungeons, trials - for all of this, achievements were an important motivation. Without this, some say they don't want to play.

From an outside perspective, it sounds like this complaint comes from not liking the content enough to do it again.

I love to achievement hunt, but I also regularly repeat quests because I like the stories. I repeat DLC dungeons because I like the content and like helping my friends get harder achievements, even when I already have them. I like the game and that is why I play. But that's just my perspective.

SilverBride

Dalsinthus wrote: »

I find these threads both interesting and perplexing.

What a lot of the AWA criticism boils down to is that, for some, repeating achievements was the primary motivation to do content and without these achievements they do not enjoy the content. Questing, dungeons, trials - for all of this, achievements were an important motivation. Without this, some say they don't want to play.

From an outside perspective, it sounds like this complaint comes from not liking the content enough to do it again.

I love to achievement hunt, but I also regularly repeat quests because I like the stories. I repeat DLC dungeons because I like the content and like helping my friends get harder achievements, even when I already have them. I like the game and that is why I play. But that's just my perspective.

The reason this is a problem is because it fills in the map so we can no longer track which World Bosses and Delves etc. that we have haven't completed on that particular character. For those of us who enjoy completing the maps on all of our alts this makes that very difficult.

There is an addon that @silvereyes created called Character Zone Tracker that keeps these unfilled until that particular character has completed them, BUT it had to have been installed and characters logged in before update 33 to work with the current content. BUT if it is installed now and characters logged in it will do this for future new content, such as the new chapter releasing soon.

fizl101

Dalsinthus wrote: »

I find these threads both interesting and perplexing.

What a lot of the AWA criticism boils down to is that, for some, repeating achievements was the primary motivation to do content and without these achievements they do not enjoy the content. Questing, dungeons, trials - for all of this, achievements were an important motivation. Without this, some say they don't want to play.

From an outside perspective, it sounds like this complaint comes from not liking the content enough to do it again.

I love to achievement hunt, but I also regularly repeat quests because I like the stories. I repeat DLC dungeons because I like the content and like helping my friends get harder achievements, even when I already have them. I like the game and that is why I play. But that's just my perspective.

The third thing in play is that the zone map is tied to the achievements. You cant use it any more to say x delve or y world boss hasnt been completed on that character. Decouple map completion from tue achievement in the journal and I think less People would have had a problem with it

JKorr

gamma71 wrote: »

Why would anyone do everything over again. Account wide achievement s was one of the best things they have done.

Because some players make characters with specific backgrounds and traits, and dumping everything all together makes no sense for the characters and kinda ruins things. Not to mention it really sucks for anyone who has been playing since early release, and has at least one if not more characters who have done all the new content as it came out.

My so-light-side-she-should-glow dragonknight really shouldn't have the achievements from the "dark" side. My amoral-anything-for-gold-borderline-sociopath-assassin nightblade really shouldn't have the "lightside/paragon" achievements. I intentionally didn't do some content with certain characters because it wouldn't have fit. Now that seems pointless. Why make any new characters when they will instantly get achievements they didn't [and at level 1 couldn't] earn?

dinokstrunz

Yeah since account wide achievements my motivation to play has severely diminished when it comes to playing other or new characters. Poorly implemented and no options for a toggle feature. One of many issues why I just can't be asked with ESO anymore.

Husker4x4

I'm on the opposite spectrum, I love that my favorite titles are unlocked for everyone. I'd hate having to get them all over again for different toons, so much I wouldn't even bother.

I hate repeating PVE content, but this a pvp opinion.

Jack-0

I am totally in favour of account wide achievements in theory, however ZOS did such an utterly dreadful implementation of this that I'm not at all surprised people are so frustrated. Even I think it's awful and I wanted AwA! There has been literally no detectable performance increase, in fact my loading screens are the longest they've ever been at this point. I am convinced they just bolted on the 'it's for performance' message after seeing the dire reaction to this shambles that they've ploughed ahead with, without taking on board any of the abundance of criticism and feedback.

Since there is literally zero performance improvement for anyone that I've discussed this with, and more support for this statement from all the people on the forums, I think it's fair to say the correct course of action would've been for ZOS to admit they were royally ballsing this up and to go back to the drawing board before ploughing ahead and going live.

They should have kept the dates that each individual character earned the achievement. They should have kept it as it was and created a new AwA tab in the interface to see the account wide accumulation of achievements, but let people continue to track individual characters.

They should never have gone live with this mess. They should have been responsive and customer-focussed enough to know when they were about to aggravate and upset so many of their players.

IF this actually had resulted in some performance improvements I would be a lot more accepting of this situation, but it's just pure rubbish, even if you like AwA or the idea of them, the way they have done this is disgraceful, and a great big middle finger to a huge number of dedicated players. What a shame they only seem to care about attracting new players, and don't seem to give a damn about their vets.

CGPsaint

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

there is still much reason to be in cyro with alts, alliance ranks are still per character which is 50 skill pts per character

Not saying that you're wrong, however those will be the hardest 50 skill points to earn for the majority of players. You could get all of the skill points from Sky Shards, Public Dungeon Group Events, and all of the story line quests in a fraction of the time that it would take most players to get all 50 skill points from the PvP ranks. It's even worse when you factor in that it's character specific.

FluffWit

gamma71 wrote: »

Why would anyone do everything over again. Account wide achievement s was one of the best things they have done.

You still have to do things over again. Want skill points? You still have to get the skyshards again. Want to use Pjijiic skills or see portals? You still have to do their entire quest line again.

Beyond that in some rare cases eso's content is actually enjoyable to do more then once. Or it was until awa made so much of the content nonsensical.

MasterSpatula

I'll take another whack at that dead horse by agreeing. Without tracking goals on alts, the urge to accomplish anything on those alts is pretty much completely gone. I feel like I've gone from having "characters" to having "toons," and it's so much less interesting.

TwinLamps

Beside endeavors I dont play at all. Zero motivation as well

Ragnarok0130

JKorr wrote: »

gamma71 wrote: »

Why would anyone do everything over again. Account wide achievement s was one of the best things they have done.

Because some players make characters with specific backgrounds and traits, and dumping everything all together makes no sense for the characters and kinda ruins things. Not to mention it really sucks for anyone who has been playing since early release, and has at least one if not more characters who have done all the new content as it came out.

My so-light-side-she-should-glow dragonknight really shouldn't have the achievements from the "dark" side. My amoral-anything-for-gold-borderline-sociopath-assassin nightblade really shouldn't have the "lightside/paragon" achievements. I intentionally didn't do some content with certain characters because it wouldn't have fit. Now that seems pointless. Why make any new characters when they will instantly get achievements they didn't [and at level 1 couldn't] earn?

Except your character doesn’t have the achievement you the player do. If your goodie two shoes toon never raised a hand in anger it still hasn’t done so post AWA even if a selectable title is present for you to choose not to use. You know what your toon has and has not done and you have the power to continue to have that toon act as he or she always does regardless of an achievement present that YOU earned playing another toon or not.

Some say they haven’t logged in since AWA so they don’t lose progress which is simply bizarre. Not logging in is the same thing as losing progress since you can’t go in and see toon specific achievements anymore only now you’re not playing a product you paid for and enjoy. ZoS says AWA is not reverting so it’s either adapt and continue to play or uninstall but a lot of these threads come off as if they simply biding their time hoping ZoS will miraculously see the error of their ways and reinstate toon specific achievements when they specifically stated that won’t happen like when One Tamriel launched and we had almost the same exact discussions occur on the forums. Of note we still have One Tamriel.

I know I’m coming off as callous here but we’ve been through all of this before and saw how it ends. I really feel for the guys who were invested in doing achievements over and over and over again and wish they could have found a way to please everyone. But honestly ZoS didn’t do this in response to us asking for it since 2014, they did it for their own benefit on the back end reducing database size which further eliminates any possibility of rolling this change back. ESO needs dedicated passionate players like the guys feeling burned by AWA. Don’t let the removal of a virtual skinner box deter you from enjoying a rather solid and enjoyable MMO.

DagenHawk

I still think it should have been a option and only a option.

This entire game is built on that philosophy.

Roxxsmom

I've had some debates with my spouse over this. He likes the feature, as he has been playing since the game first launched, and has a number of fully leveled alts and was tired of worrying about which one has which achievement. I don't agree, as I find it frustrating not to be able to remember which of my alts has done which quest chain, and I liked it when an achievement flashed up on the screen while I was playing an alt, even if it's one my main already had.

I suppose a compromise would be nice if you could turn the feature off for individual characters, or even account wide. I don't know how challenging this would be for the game developers to implement, but it seems like an appropriate compromise.

Necrotech_Master

CGPsaint wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

there is still much reason to be in cyro with alts, alliance ranks are still per character which is 50 skill pts per character

Not saying that you're wrong, however those will be the hardest 50 skill points to earn for the majority of players. You could get all of the skill points from Sky Shards, Public Dungeon Group Events, and all of the story line quests in a fraction of the time that it would take most players to get all 50 skill points from the PvP ranks. It's even worse when you factor in that it's character specific.

for most people, i think it would still be an easy 15-20 skill pts, it isnt actually too bad to make it to alliance rank 15-20, it doesnt start really really getting slow until after about 32 (which is when you reach the "halfway point" of total AP needed for alliance rank 50)