How ZoS can make getting Achievements more desirable for players

Harvokaan · January 2022

In current game there are only several achievements desired by players like Grand Master Crafter, Sunspire Trifecta, Emperor, etc. Most of those desired ones give players some rewards like titles, skins, mounts or outfit styles and tthat is the reason for their success, unfortunately other then those, achievements don't really provide anything meaningful. How it can be changed so achievement hunting will be more popular (and why we should even care):

1) Achievement Points Leaderboard
That leaderboard would show only best 100/200/500 characters. It is something that is done by many different groups (links provided below). Hunting for achievement can be competitive and we already have a lot of leaderboards in game (for each trial, bgs, cyro). Showing only the best x players from specific server would give the most dedicated hunters sense of pride and accomplishment (put here your favorite EA meme for lols). Only by looking on how many different groups tried to provide leaderboard like that should be a good indicator that it is something woth consideration (especially when leaderboard is pretty simple thing to do in game):
Examples of player driven leaderboards:
https://eso-database.com/en/leaderboards/
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb/discussion/386482/achievement-points-leaderboard-deadlands-48k-club
https://eso-armory.com/ (lo longer supported i think)

2) Special Achievement Vendors because gold sinks are good
It is something that could also help with some inflation problems. Achievement Vendors are already available in game, they provide some nice furnishings if you have specific achievements unlocked. But imagine vendor that sells skins/furnishings/cosmetics/mounts (new ones, not existing ones from CS) for millions of gold only if you reach certain amount of achievement points. For example for 10k points, you unlock first mount, skin and couple furnishings, for 20k new tier of rewards, for 30k next, etc. The offer provided by this vendor could be expanded more because each dlc we got new achievements so why not adding new tier of rewards after 50k or 60k points in the future. If rewards would be nice then some players might treat those cosmetic as chase items because we all know, fashion is the true endgame.

3) More rewards for different things
More mounts, outfits, furnishings. ZoS is already providing more rewards then before but it can still be better, right?

Why we should even care?
Achievements if done right can increase replayability of some content as players are focusing on completing that specific goal. Also more good rewards that you need to work hard for means more time in game to try to get those items. It rewards players for playing a lot of different content and encourage ppl to try different things.

What are your propositions? How ZoS can make Achievement Points more desirable? Should they even focus on that?
Share your thoughts

VaranisArano · January 2022

I dunno.

More rewards for doing in-game things is cool.

But rewards don't inherently make RNG-based Achievements more entertaining, or make hard PVE content more accessible to the playerbase, or make PVP Achievements more appealing to people who really don't like PVP.

Not to mention that you'd have to decide if the Axhievement point counter is account-wide or whether this is really just an exercise in only playing with one character vs having alts to fill multiple roles.

The short answer is that if you want Achievements, you go for it! I'm not sure that needs to be a goal for everyone.

_Zathras_ · January 2022

I think the people that hunt for achievements are already doing so. Or, they've already done it all.

If you are looking to incentivize people to chase those carrots, why? There is content I will never do, no matter how cool the dye, title, or what "exclusive" non-combat pet is as a reward.

What I would like to see, is less reliance for some people to use achievement points as a metric for how capable a player is at the game.

redspecter23 · January 2022

If they want me to be interested in achievements, they can make them account wide. I have 18 characters and only one of them cares about achievements. If I'm on any of the other 17, I couldn't care less currently.

Peacatcher · January 2022

Honestly playing the game is its own reward for me. I do display some of the achievements I've collected over the years (master angler, former emp for example) but achievements are not the focus of my game time.

Actually there's one exception, I'd like the Chevalier title for one of my characters because it 'fits' him. However as it involves a vet dlc dungeon i'll probably never pursue it.

Weper · January 2022

redspecter23 wrote: »

If they want me to be interested in achievements, they can make them account wide. I have 18 characters and only one of them cares about achievements. If I'm on any of the other 17, I couldn't care less currently.

Agree. Every MMO has account-wide achievement system by now.
But I guess it's more profitable for ZO$ to keep it character specific.

hafgood · January 2022

Actually some of us like it character specific as we can use them to judge the progress done on each character.

Plus with the ps4 trophies not copying over to ps5 being able to get the achievements needed for the trophies on an alt is good. Means I can slowly work my way through platinuming the game again. Account wide achievements would stop this

Monte_Cristo · January 2022

I'd like achievements to add crowns to your account. For example, you do an achievement worth 5 achievement points so you get 5 crowns. Doing that same achievement on another toon does not give the crowns, so no using easy achievements for crown farming. Only the first toon to complete that achievement is rewarded the crowns.

colossalvoids · January 2022

Would surely support more rewards thrown in in-game instead of cash shop, if that's something achievement related would be just a pleasant bonus here.

VaranisArano · January 2022

Weper wrote: »

redspecter23 wrote: »

If they want me to be interested in achievements, they can make them account wide. I have 18 characters and only one of them cares about achievements. If I'm on any of the other 17, I couldn't care less currently.

Agree. Every MMO has account-wide achievement system by now.
But I guess it's more profitable for ZO$ to keep it character specific.

How is it profitable? Most players don't chase achievements on multiple characters, in large part because non-title rewards are usually account-wide anyway. Even the achieve

It's also something that's divided the playerbase on the forums.

On the character-specific side, you've got achievements that track how capable a certain character is. Like, I have a Legate's worth of PVP experience on my MagDK, and barely a Sergeant's worth on my MagSorc. Someone might be able to heal a trifecta on their Warden, but not complete it on their Nightblade. Once you make it account wide, you lose the ability to use the achievement as a sign of a character's suitability for group content. Or for roleplaying purposes, there are players who don't want the thieving/murdering achievements on their Paladin characters. There are people who do pacifist runs where they want zero kills on their achievements in order to prove it.

I myself kind of lean towards the account-wide side, but I do understand the reasons why players might want to keep the achievements character-specific.

Xebov · January 2022

Iam not so sure about that.

I see Achievments as a manifestation what i did, not a rulebook on what i should do. Having to many rewards tied to stuff will likely cause more frustration given that some achievments are very grindy and others depend heavily on playstyle or interests. So you would likely put more stuff out of reach or add more frustration.

The Leaderboard would simply not work. Some players have one character, others many, so the picture you would get would not be accurate at all.

The Achievment Vendor for points might be somewhat interesting, but millions of gold for items? That sounds way to costly.

VaranisArano wrote: »

Once you make it account wide, you lose the ability to use the achievement as a sign of a character's suitability for group content. Or for roleplaying purposes, there are players who don't want the thieving/murdering achievements on their Paladin characters. There are people who do pacifist runs where they want zero kills on their achievements in order to prove it.

Achievments tell you very little about the players capability. You only know what they did and when they did it but not how. You could do it as a healer and now you are a tank. You could have done it when certain items where OP or stuff was bugged so it was easier. You could have been the strongest in your group pulling everyone through, or the weakest. You could have done it perfectly, or barely. You get the idea.

VaranisArano wrote: »

I myself kind of lean towards the account-wide side, but I do understand the reasons why players might want to keep the achievements character-specific.

The problem with account wide vs character based could be solved easily, simply have both. Every character could keep his personal achievments but add all his achievments to the account wide ones. This way everyone can play as they like and look up a character progress or a total progress as they please.

_Zathras_ · January 2022

Monte_Cristo wrote: »

I'd like achievements to add crowns to your account. For example, you do an achievement worth 5 achievement points so you get 5 crowns. Doing that same achievement on another toon does not give the crowns, so no using easy achievements for crown farming. Only the first toon to complete that achievement is rewarded the crowns.

Personally, I'd like to see less content tied to the Crown Store.

AzuraFan · January 2022

As a PvE-only player, one of the things I do is chase PvE achievements. No incentives required.

Enticing players to do content they usually don't want to do rarely works long-term. They might do it once or twice, but then they give up unless the reward is huge (and it never is). Games aren't jobs. They're supposed to be fun. ESO lets each player do what's fun for them and skip the stuff that isn't.

Harvokaan · January 2022

Xebov wrote: »

Iam not so sure about that.

I see Achievments as a manifestation what i did, not a rulebook on what i should do. Having to many rewards tied to stuff will likely cause more frustration given that some achievments are very grindy and others depend heavily on playstyle or interests. So you would likely put more stuff out of reach or add more frustration.

The Leaderboard would simply not work. Some players have one character, others many, so the picture you would get would not be accurate at all.

The Achievment Vendor for points might be somewhat interesting, but millions of gold for items? That sounds way to costly.

VaranisArano wrote: »

Once you make it account wide, you lose the ability to use the achievement as a sign of a character's suitability for group content. Or for roleplaying purposes, there are players who don't want the thieving/murdering achievements on their Paladin characters. There are people who do pacifist runs where they want zero kills on their achievements in order to prove it.

Achievments tell you very little about the players capability. You only know what they did and when they did it but not how. You could do it as a healer and now you are a tank. You could have done it when certain items where OP or stuff was bugged so it was easier. You could have been the strongest in your group pulling everyone through, or the weakest. You could have done it perfectly, or barely. You get the idea.

VaranisArano wrote: »

I myself kind of lean towards the account-wide side, but I do understand the reasons why players might want to keep the achievements character-specific.

The problem with account wide vs character based could be solved easily, simply have both. Every character could keep his personal achievments but add all his achievments to the account wide ones. This way everyone can play as they like and look up a character progress or a total progress as they please.

Polymorph from vAS can be farmed in-game but if you want to but it from other players they are selling it for 8mil (PC EU). Milions for nice costmetic doesn't sound too much as we are talking about gold sink here, something that is needed.

Semi-agreed on capability thing, number of achi points won't tell you much but certain clears and trifectas can.

Sylvermynx · January 2022

AzuraFan wrote: »

As a PvE-only player, one of the things I do is chase PvE achievements. No incentives required.

Enticing players to do content they usually don't want to do rarely works long-term. They might do it once or twice, but then they give up unless the reward is huge (and it never is). Games aren't jobs. They're supposed to be fun. ESO lets each player do what's fun for them and skip the stuff that isn't.

I'm the opposite; I have no use for achievements at all. I don't use titles, don't like skins, and most of the dyes aren't my sort of thing anyway. I don't even use any of the dyes nor the title from the Master Angler achievement (which I did on each of my accounts, for the boat and fish to fillet for Perfect Roe).

_adhyffbjjjf12 · January 2022

In mmorpg part of the pleasure is showing your accomplishments. So for achievements the following would be nice for me:

- Rewards unique skins or dye that you cannot get from any other source for milestones (say every 5k)
- Give a decent gold reward every 1k
- Allow you to optionally show your achievement score next to your title for others to see.

kargen27 · January 2022

Xebov wrote: »

Iam not so sure about that.

I see Achievments as a manifestation what i did, not a rulebook on what i should do. Having to many rewards tied to stuff will likely cause more frustration given that some achievments are very grindy and others depend heavily on playstyle or interests. So you would likely put more stuff out of reach or add more frustration.

The Leaderboard would simply not work. Some players have one character, others many, so the picture you would get would not be accurate at all.

The Achievment Vendor for points might be somewhat interesting, but millions of gold for items? That sounds way to costly.

VaranisArano wrote: »

Once you make it account wide, you lose the ability to use the achievement as a sign of a character's suitability for group content. Or for roleplaying purposes, there are players who don't want the thieving/murdering achievements on their Paladin characters. There are people who do pacifist runs where they want zero kills on their achievements in order to prove it.

Achievments tell you very little about the players capability. You only know what they did and when they did it but not how. You could do it as a healer and now you are a tank. You could have done it when certain items where OP or stuff was bugged so it was easier. You could have been the strongest in your group pulling everyone through, or the weakest. You could have done it perfectly, or barely. You get the idea.

VaranisArano wrote: »

I myself kind of lean towards the account-wide side, but I do understand the reasons why players might want to keep the achievements character-specific.

The problem with account wide vs character based could be solved easily, simply have both. Every character could keep his personal achievments but add all his achievments to the account wide ones. This way everyone can play as they like and look up a character progress or a total progress as they please.

I like the idea of being able to see all achievements done across all characters. What I do not want is for multiple characters to count towards one achievement. As example I don't think catching a blue fish on one character should count as catching that fish on another character. If players want to see achievements for all their characters in one place sure why not. But each achievement needs to be earned by one character.

Kiralyn2000 · January 2022

_Zathras_ wrote: »

I think the people that hunt for achievements are already doing so. Or, they've already done it all.

If you are looking to incentivize people to chase those carrots, why? There is content I will never do, no matter how cool the dye, title, or what "exclusive" non-combat pet is as a reward.

This. Achievement Chasers will chase achievements, just because. (see: the crazies who obtain & play games in all sorts of genres they don't care about, just for "gamerscore")

But for the rest of us, please don't try to further incentivise us to play content we don't want to. People will either be sucked in to something they don't enjoy, just for the shiny. Or they'll continue to ignore it, but now losing out on even more 'rewards'.

Seems like an overall negative thing.

_adhyffbjjjf12 wrote: »

In mmorpg part of the pleasure is showing your accomplishments.

I suppose some people are in to that. Personally, I could care less (which carries over into not having any real knowledge of which skins/titles/dyes/etc are a sign of "achievement", which means that your theoretical audience doesn't even realize that you're trying to show off. Ugly Skin is just Ugly Skin. I've no idea that yours means you cleared Uber Content, while the one on the guy standing next to you is just He Spent Crowns.)

...standing around showing off your raid/trial/etc stuff was easier back in early WoW, when they were the only guys with flaming armor. In the era of everyone being able to create/transmog/dye an outfit of eye-blinding fanciness, along with the existence of dozens upon dozens of motifs/skins/etc, nothing stands out from the crowd. "Hey, that's an excellent outfit you assembled" is more important than "this dye came from Trial X Hardmode")

Chips_Ahoy · January 2022

Sylvermynx wrote: »

I'm the opposite; I have no use for achievements at all. I don't use titles, don't like skins, and most of the dyes aren't my sort of thing anyway. I don't even use any of the dyes nor the title from the Master Angler achievement (which I did on each of my accounts, for the boat and fish to fillet for Perfect Roe).

agree, the force is strong with you Mrs. @Sylvermynx

Tthere is no way a game would convince me to do achievements even if ESO gave away days of ESO+ or crtaes it would still pass.

Tannus15 · January 2022

account wide achievements is a good idea. I think keep rewards like titles character specific, just because i've cleared a flawless vMA doesn't mean i should be able to put that title on my rando character i never use. but it's frustrating having some of my achievements on my tank and some on my dps and it discourages me from playing a different dps than my sorc.

endgamesmug · January 2022

A couple of those skins are ok but i rarely find anyone whos interested in pursuing anything like that, i used the master angler title once when i first got it but removed it soon after just felt too "show pony" for me and i dont use any other title ever. Outfit and crafted styles do plenty for looks.

Wolfpaw · January 2022

If achievements were account wide I may pay more attention to it, otherwise achievements don't mean much at all to me, I don't event use titles.

PvE has plenty of rewards already, much rather see dev time spent on a PvP rewards system.

joerginger · January 2022

This would only make sense if we finally get global achievements.

Kwoung · January 2022

The current achievement system being per character is dumb. Getting all the achievements is an end game goal, but you become limited to playing a single character in order to do it, which becomes extremely boring very quickly, and is more likely to drive you out of the game completely, than entice you to stick around and buy more crowns/DLC's.

AzuraFan · January 2022

Sylvermynx wrote: »

I'm the opposite; I have no use for achievements at all. I don't use titles, don't like skins, and most of the dyes aren't my sort of thing anyway. I don't even use any of the dyes nor the title from the Master Angler achievement (which I did on each of my accounts, for the boat and fish to fillet for Perfect Roe).

I don't do achievements for the rewards or titles (when there is one). I just do them for the satisfaction of doing them, and I only do the ones that involve activities I enjoy doing.

whitecrow · January 2022

I think they are already desirable. I enjoy seeing the notice pop up on the screen, especially when I am not expecting it. I don't really need to "get something" for it, although access to new dyes is always nice.

katanagirl1 · January 2022

Lots of posts lately about needing gold sinks. I guess you guys never heard about housing.

Xebov · January 2022

Harvokaan wrote: »

Polymorph from vAS can be farmed in-game but if you want to but it from other players they are selling it for 8mil (PC EU). Milions for nice costmetic doesn't sound too much as we are talking about gold sink here, something that is needed.

Noone will want to do an Achievment just to spend a month farming gold afterwards to buy the stuff tehy just unlocked, thats not going to work.

kargen27 wrote: »

I like the idea of being able to see all achievements done across all characters. What I do not want is for multiple characters to count towards one achievement. As example I don't think catching a blue fish on one character should count as catching that fish on another character. If players want to see achievements for all their characters in one place sure why not. But each achievement needs to be earned by one character.

Could you explain to me why? For me the whole account is a unity, as such i expect everything i do to count towards account based achievments, no matter on which character i do it. If i split fishing across 5 characters and each catches a different fish i expect that to be counted.

_adhyffbjjjf12 wrote: »

In mmorpg part of the pleasure is showing your accomplishments.

Not realy, i played MMOs long before achievments became a thing and i know noone that cares about other players achievments.

hafgood · January 2022

1. Some people like achievements per character, some like them across the account. From previous discussions it is clear that neither side will ever understand the other side. The best solution as already suggested would be a mix of both. So your characters get the achievements individually but there is an overall summary page that all contribute too.

2. Trying to add incentives to get people to do them is pointless. People will then only do them for the reward and will risk getting bored of the game because they are forever being forced (and thats how they will view it) into content they do not want to do because there is a shiny mount at the end of it that they do want.

3. I'm at 38,800ish achievement points on my main. I do not use a single despite having many, I do not use a title despite having many, I've set a basic costume up and don't use dyes despite having many. In other words I do the achievements because they are there not because of the reward. I do not need or want an incentive to do them

Treeshka · January 2022

I am reaching to full achievement almost every patch for a few years by now and literally there is nothing about it. I think there should be some one time rewards based on the achievement points accumulated on a character.

Xebov · January 2022

Treeshka wrote: »

I am reaching to full achievement almost every patch for a few years by now and literally there is nothing about it. I think there should be some one time rewards based on the achievement points accumulated on a character.

This is done by some games and is an interesting idea because you can choose what achievments you do so everyone can reach them regardles of the area they are interested in.