Why ESO discourages me to player more than 1 character

Dreepa · April 2017

So I would like to play different characters. Just for fun. I would like to have one character being the evil char, doing Dark Brotherhood stuff, while another character would be the good guy. Maybe have a third char just for playing with friends, so we always have the same progress with quests. Etc.

What discourages me from doing so is the achievement score. I like to work towards some goals, and the achievements are great for that. But they are also a strong incentive to stick with just 1 character, as you start from scratch every time you make a new one.

Is there a reason it is not eligible for the whole account?

Daemons_Bane · April 2017

To keep the sense of roleplaying

Dracindo · April 2017

Honestly, I like it this way. I hate having to start a new character from complete scratch. I like to show of my colored armor, even if it just makes it a bit easier for my friends to find me in a mass. Even if they get seperated, I'm only intend to get certain achievements once, like master angler. I already don't feel like wasting time on this, let alone finish it for 8 characters.

LadyNalcarya · April 2017

But achievement score is pointless, its just a number in your char's statistics. And all collectible items and dyes are account wide. It would be nice if they would make achievement progress account-wide, but as long as it doesnt affect anything, I dont see a problem.
But on the other hand, if they add rewards for those achievement points, I will be screwed.

I'm an altaholic and never tried to obtain all achievements on one character.

KnsCtyShful · April 2017

I agree OP. Combine achievements with Horse research/training times, collectibles drops are very rare and are character bound, and having to reexplore areas just with nothing interesting to find Mage Books and skyshards is a pain in the butt.

On PC most of that's not that bad because they have mods that make those things easier to find, however on console I have to have a map open on my phone and go back and forth and it takes forever, even finding a good accurate map problematic.

It would be nice if more things were shared at the account level so I could try out different characters without being hugely punished.

At least with horse research I should be able to just pay gold on my alts and not wait 20 hours everytime would be a huge benefit.

Daemons_Bane · April 2017

Some things can be shared yes, and some things are.. But there are also things that should not be shared, achievements included

Edit: I can live with your overall achievement score being shared, if you feel the need to brag about it.. But the individual achievements should not be shared

rotaugen454 · April 2017

Maybe if they added a "All characters achievements" screen, we'd be able to see how many total we have done across all characters. That would be nice.

Another thing I would like to see is a global "time played" count instead of having to log into each character to type /played and adding the times together. Yes, I could run it through Steam and start counting that way, but why add another layer? Plus, I would not be counting the several thousand hours I have thus far.

stewhead2ub17_ESO · April 2017

As an admitted altoholic, I would suggest pulling the trigger on those other characters. Just play them for fun and have one that you can use to satisfy your achievement cravings. I'm up to 10 toons so far with 2 more coming soon and I love playing each of them.
Oh, as an afterthought, ZOS isn't discouraging you from playing more than 1 character. You're putting that on yourself!

Kodrac · April 2017

I've never paid any attention to my achievement score. I honestly didn't know that was a thing for people.

Nemesis7884 · April 2017

agree with the op - roleplay is a very week argument tbh, rather for the opposite roleplaying means playing a specific character, not one that joins every guild and does everything - thats exactly the opposite of roleplaying

Daemons_Bane wrote: »

To keep the sense of roleplaying

agree with the op - roleplay is a very week argument tbh, rather for the opposite roleplaying means playing a specific character, not one that joins every guild and does everything - thats exactly the opposite of roleplaying

Daemons_Bane · April 2017

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

agree with the op - roleplay is a very week argument tbh, rather for the opposite roleplaying means playing a specific character, not one that joins every guild and does everything - thats exactly the opposite of roleplaying

Daemons_Bane wrote: »

To keep the sense of roleplaying

agree with the op - roleplay is a very week argument tbh, rather for the opposite roleplaying means playing a specific character, not one that joins every guild and does everything - thats exactly the opposite of roleplaying

To you maybe.. To me it seems weird that my character from one faction, is hailed as the hero of the 2 others..

DaveMoeDee · April 2017

I only try to get all achievements on my first character who is max in all crafting and who has done a bit of fishing. I don't care about achievements on my 11 other characters, 4 of which are level 50.

I completely disagree with the OP that achievements have any bearing on the appeal of alts. Alts are awesome because you get to play each class. Even better if you do a stamina and magicka version of each. They also increase the value of alts by allowing each to do dailies. This is particularly valuable during special events.

DaveMoeDee · April 2017

duplicate

Tandor · April 2017

As an altoholic I hate the whole concept of account-wide features - not just achievements but CPs, dye unlocks and so on.

I don't have a main plus alts (and I don't have "toons"). All my many characters are individuals, I want to level them through the game separately, doing different things in many cases. Like the OP, I have a good guy and an evil guy (among others), so I wouldn't want the good guy to be stuck with sharing the evil guy's achievements from the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild.

Achievements don't really count for anything other than being an indication of progress and in some respects role-playing style. You don't have to complete everything on every character, but when a character does achieve something I want that to be recognised on his personal record and not be something that was already there before he did it because a different character achieved it first.

This game actually encourages multiple characters precisely because it offers so many different ways of playing them. What would be the point of that if no differentiation was ever made in the way their actions and progress were rewarded? You might just as well have shared xp so once you've leveled up one character you've leveled up all the others as well.

Asardes · April 2017

Vet ranks called, they want their discouragement back

Saturnana · April 2017

I like the idea of my characters not sharing the achievements since they're all unique personas, and like you said; some may be evil, some may not. Having account-wide achievements would mess with that, for me at least. But I also like hunting down achievements and hopefully, one day, I might complete them all. (Gotta catch 'em all!)

I have five characters, two of which I play actively (both AD). I only have one main character, the one I started out with and have invested the most in, and she's the one I want to complete everything with. All zones, dungeons, crafting skills, you name it. Thing is, doing that would mean investing a lot of skill points into non-combat skills and that could influence her potential in PvP in the future (which I haven't started on yet xD). So I have the other AD character to train solely for combat. That is enough for me to keep him interesting to play. Just as the other three characters I have (2 EP and 1 DC) are there to explore those quest-lines. Any achievements I get on the other four characters are a bonus, I'm only aiming to complete them on my main.

It works for me.

WalksonGraves · April 2017

account wide mount training would fix most of the problem.

Saturnana · April 2017

Tandor wrote: »

As an altoholic I hate the whole concept of account-wide features - not just achievements but CPs, dye unlocks and so on.

I don't have a main plus alts (and I don't have "toons"). All my many characters are individuals, I want to level them through the game separately, doing different things in many cases. Like the OP, I have a good guy and an evil guy (among others), so I wouldn't want the good guy to be stuck with sharing the evil guy's achievements from the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild.

Achievements don't really count for anything other than being an indication of progress and in some respects role-playing style. You don't have to complete everything on every character, but when a character does achieve something I want that to be recognised on his personal record and not be something that was already there before he did it because a different character achieved it first.

This game actually encourages multiple characters precisely because it offers so many different ways of playing them. What would be the point of that if no differentiation was ever made in the way their actions and progress were rewarded? You might just as well have shared xp so once you've leveled up one character you've leveled up all the others as well.

This pretty much sums it up.

Maybe ZOS could implement an extra tab on the character overview screen to show an accumulation of all the characters' achievements, for the achievement hunters out there. So account wide, sort of. Only it wouldn't affect any individual character, and the player still gets an overview of his progress in total.

rotaugen454 · April 2017

lnsane wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

As an altoholic I hate the whole concept of account-wide features - not just achievements but CPs, dye unlocks and so on.

I don't have a main plus alts (and I don't have "toons"). All my many characters are individuals, I want to level them through the game separately, doing different things in many cases. Like the OP, I have a good guy and an evil guy (among others), so I wouldn't want the good guy to be stuck with sharing the evil guy's achievements from the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild.

Achievements don't really count for anything other than being an indication of progress and in some respects role-playing style. You don't have to complete everything on every character, but when a character does achieve something I want that to be recognised on his personal record and not be something that was already there before he did it because a different character achieved it first.

This game actually encourages multiple characters precisely because it offers so many different ways of playing them. What would be the point of that if no differentiation was ever made in the way their actions and progress were rewarded? You might just as well have shared xp so once you've leveled up one character you've leveled up all the others as well.

This pretty much sums it up.

Maybe ZOS could implement an extra tab on the character overview screen to show an accumulation of all the characters' achievements, for the achievement hunters out there. So account wide, sort of. Only it wouldn't affect any individual character, and the player still gets an overview of his progress in total.

Exactly what I wanted.

DaveMoeDee · April 2017

I can only think of one real difference if achievements are account-wide. Achievements that require you to complete other achievements would be easier to get. That is a hassle for those who split crafting, but not an issue otherwise. A single character SHOULD have to kill all the lieutenants at dolmen. That is very doable.

Clearly something is lost if achievements per character are ditched. Then again, I wouldn't care if that was lost.

Asardes · April 2017

I have 9 characters currently of which I've played only the first 4 to some extent.
My main has 23K achievement points and many more to go since I still haven't completed 2/4 trials on veteran, haven't completed any on hard mode, haven't done speed run, haven't completed MA on either normal or veteran, still have plenty of AvA ones to complete, and haven't completed the fishing achievements - I actually dread the latter more than the veteran trials because there's basically no skill involved, just straight grind with just pressing one button and loads of time wasted.
My sorcerer and templar have around 14-15K, and my NB has around 9K achievements. The rest I don't really care for the moment.

The biggest hurdles that prevented me from playing alts vanished 3-4 patches ago:
- vet ranks eliminated, which did away with an unnecessary grind (june 2016)
- game fully scaled, which meant XP gain was much faster (october 2016)
Now it's just easy, pleasant and rewarding to level alts.

Saturnana · April 2017

rotaugen454 wrote: »

lnsane wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

As an altoholic I hate the whole concept of account-wide features - not just achievements but CPs, dye unlocks and so on.

I don't have a main plus alts (and I don't have "toons"). All my many characters are individuals, I want to level them through the game separately, doing different things in many cases. Like the OP, I have a good guy and an evil guy (among others), so I wouldn't want the good guy to be stuck with sharing the evil guy's achievements from the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild.

Achievements don't really count for anything other than being an indication of progress and in some respects role-playing style. You don't have to complete everything on every character, but when a character does achieve something I want that to be recognised on his personal record and not be something that was already there before he did it because a different character achieved it first.

This game actually encourages multiple characters precisely because it offers so many different ways of playing them. What would be the point of that if no differentiation was ever made in the way their actions and progress were rewarded? You might just as well have shared xp so once you've leveled up one character you've leveled up all the others as well.

This pretty much sums it up.

Maybe ZOS could implement an extra tab on the character overview screen to show an accumulation of all the characters' achievements, for the achievement hunters out there. So account wide, sort of. Only it wouldn't affect any individual character, and the player still gets an overview of his progress in total.

Exactly what I wanted.

Oops, didn't see your comment.
+1 for you then!

Sigtric · April 2017

AGNTSA

If you're into your characters enough that you have specific ones you do not want to have Dark Brotherhood for, why do you need them to have achievement points for it?

dodgehopper_ESO · April 2017

Dreepa wrote: »

So I would like to play different characters. Just for fun. I would like to have one character being the evil char, doing Dark Brotherhood stuff, while another character would be the good guy. Maybe have a third char just for playing with friends, so we always have the same progress with quests. Etc.

What discourages me from doing so is the achievement score. I like to work towards some goals, and the achievements are great for that. But they are also a strong incentive to stick with just 1 character, as you start from scratch every time you make a new one.

Is there a reason it is not eligible for the whole account?

I really wish that the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves guild storylines had Order of the Hour and Iron Wheel alternative endings so we could play things differently on different characters.

Kiralyn2000 · April 2017

And here I was expecting a "have to grind all skillpoints/alliance points/mount training/motifs on every character" thread.

Honestly, I have no idea how many achievement points my 'main' has. Only thing that really matters to me with achieves is what they unlock - dyes & houses & bears, oh my!

(not sure about the bears....)

Rainwhisper · April 2017

In general, I like keeping them separate. It is a roleplaying game after all. A few things, though, I wish were shared:

- gathering/refining achievements (10,000??? Seriously???)
- motifs (I see zero argument for making alts learn motifs that cost 100k each)
- furniture purchase eligibility (just so that I don't have to swap to the right character to buy something)

idk · April 2017

Sounds more like a personal choice than Zos discouraging you from doing anything.

Blaming Zos for our own choices doesn't make it their fault.

Magdalina · April 2017

There is actually a sense of achievement in getting stuff done on different characters. One thing for sure though, I wish they'd either make collectible achievements account wide or just bring it back to where you could bank the collectible for your main toon to use, I'm never ever going to complete that one this way lol.

I kind of like how it's now I think, what you'd want account wide the most - dyes, skins, costumes etc - is shared, but the achievements themselves, along with titles, are not. Imo combat achievements at least definitely shouldn't be shared, if one of your characters can run vMA without dying it absolutely doesn't mean another one of your characters(who might be level 10 for all we know) has a right to Flawless title.

DaveMoeDee · April 2017

Sigtric wrote: »

AGNTSA

If you're into your characters enough that you have specific ones you do not want to have Dark Brotherhood for, why do you need them to have achievement points for it?

I always come back to this point. Almost all master achievements (achievements for completing other achievements) make sense. It is annoying for some to have to merge crafting onto one character, but when you have a lot of skill points late in the game, it isn't costly.

Apart from those master achievements, the only other justification for merging achievements is the score. I don't consider that a good reason. Score doesn't matter apart from being a mark of what you have achieved, and cheapening the score by making it account-wide is making it less of an achievement.

Nestor · April 2017

I can understand chasing Achievements on one character for some sense of completion.

However on an Alt, except for Master Writs, achievements do nothing. They do not contribute to character advancement in any way shape or form, other than what ever experience you may accrue in chasing them. Experience you would get whether the Achievement is there or not.

So, it's not the game that is discouraging you from leveling Alts, it is your desire to have the same achievements on that alt that is discouraging.

Compared to release year, where we all had to grind each alt through Caldwells Silver and Gold and beyond to gain Vet Ranks, leveling alts now is a walk in the park. Once one has reached end game, or better Champ Cap, any alt that reaches 50 is max ranked. And you can reach L50 in 20 to 30 hours without grinding. Faster if you just grind but grinding is mind numbing for me.

coop500 · April 2017

I like having the achievments seperate, that way the thieving related ones are not connected to my good healing khajiits and such.

I actually do not understand why everyone is so up in arms about this, you don't HAVE to have all the achievements on every toon, you get the reward anyway account wide such as dyes, costums and so on. So what more do you need? It's just a pixel mark on a pixel page.

I also don't understand the riding complaint, yes it takes a long time, I get annoyed too, but it would make no sense for a brand new character to be just as good at riding that giant wolf or that giant lion then a level 50 toon. It's rider skill, rider being the toon, not the animal. I know somewhere the wording is off and says mount skill, but in most areas it says Rider Skill or something along those lines.

And skyshards, I find this as a fun excuse to wander around and find other goodies, farm mats and so on. This one I can understand a little better then the rest, especially if you are a numbers person and hate exploring. Though to me The Elder Scrolls games has always been mainly about exploring and between treasure maps and skyshards, they are a good excuse.

I am a alt lover, I have all 8 toon slots filled and I enjoy them all, they all give a fresh feeling of starting over that I adore.