Ascending Tide Feedback Thread

Destai · March 2022

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All,

Thanks to those who have submitted feedback, both positive and negative. We have shared some of this internally already, but we are going through your feedback here to send more detailed feedback to our internal teams.

Those with performance issues, you should be seeing some of that clear up over the next day or so. We will also follow up with any additional guidance for players as the dev team works to address some of the issue mentioned. Thanks, everyone.

@zos_kevin Can we get an inventory of what feedback's been heard, shared, and discarded? I really don't get the point of asking us for feedback for us to only find out it's ignored. I know it's not your fault personally, but this happens every patch.

One of the things I was looking forward to was confirmed be in the patch, and it seems like that's not the case.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7509277#Comment_7509277
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7539799#Comment_7539799

@ZOS_GinaBruno said this was fixed, and it's not. What happened there?

Llandras was standing across the way from the deposit crates on both PC NA and EU when I crafted on both accounts earlier. When he wasn't dead, I mean....

Sorry was on console, my bad. It's been moved.

ZOS_Kevin · March 2022

Hey All, wanted to clarify a few things here regarding why we are asking for feedback. First, thanks to everyone who has provided feedback so far. We started this feedback thread to encompass everything to come with U33 and Ascending Tide. While Account Wide Achievements are apart of that, they are not the only thing that released with U33 and Ascending Tide.

However, we wanted to address Account Wide Achievements in relation to this thread. When we gather feedback, we share both positive and negative sentiment with the dev team. This is for the team to have player information in addition to the many other data metrics they have to make the best decision at the time. As noted in another thread, sometimes player expectation does not match what the dev team is able to do. And there are a myriad of reasons why this can happen. As we noted in the Q&A, the current implementation of Account Wide Achievements needed to happen to reduce the data footprint for achievements. This is ultimately for long term maintainable database stability and performance.

That being said, we want to reiterate that the dev team will always try to meet player request and expectation whenever possible. So our job is to facilitate the communication to get us there. We know it can be frustrating to provide feedback, especially when some of you have expressed feeling ignored. However, we go through the threads and responses to provide an accurate reading of what players want and how they feel about anything related to ESO.

So to answer part of @Destai's question, we have noted positives like players enjoying the flexibility and challenge of the new dungeons and loving the music. We have also noted the player reaction to account wide achievements (as we did before with the PTS Account Wide Achievement thread and had the Q&A based on that). We are highlighting those who are upset with the current implementation and whose with detailed feedback about ways it could be improved.

We hope this helps regarding why we are asking for feedback. It is not only asking for feedback on Account Wide Achievements, though those are welcome. We are looking for feedback overall on everything in U33 and Ascending Tide.

Lopti · March 2022

Game has been unplayable for 3 days now, can't even get into a dungeon after hours of queueing. Once I can actually experience any of the content will provide actual feedback...

Lopti · March 2022

Lopti wrote: »

Game has been unplayable for 3 days now, can't even get into a dungeon after hours of queueing. Once I can actually experience any of the content will provide actual feedback...

sry not normally this salty, just very frustrated at the moment with how this update has been handled.

Jaraal · March 2022

Achievements are a minuscule amount of data compared with all the other calculations going on. And performance is worse since the patch.

Please explain why player experience was amputated versus creating more physical data storage?

tmbrinks · March 2022

I'm sorry, and I say this respectfully (because I know it's not up to you at all Kevin), but that's not good enough.

6 weeks of feedback and bug troubleshooting for FREE from your customers, and it was just released to Live in much the same format as from week 1 of PTS.

One, abbreviated, Q&A that didn't really address any of the concerns brought by many players, but played the "performance" card for at least the dozenth time in the last few years (with little to no actual performance improvement as of yet).

And still zero comments from a developer who actually put this into effect.

I hope you can understand why we are frustrated. With most other major controversial changes there has been an official posting from one of the devs, not a community manager. Why the silence on this one?

Troodon80 · March 2022

scrosedk wrote: »

I used to be able to proc the EC effect (a fire aura on a foe)with a light attack from a 1H weapon with fire enchantment or both the lightning and ice aura with a crushing wall from an ice staff with Lightning enchantment. What I have found so far since the Ascending Tide Patch was released are these:
1. Light attack from a melee weapon with element enchantment (Fire /Lightning/ Ice) no longer proc the EC status on foes
2. Crushing wall from an Ice staff with Lightning Enchantment can only proc an Ice aura on foes, instead of both lightning and ice auras.
I am not sure what is going on.Can use some answers.

The same thing was mentioned during PTS for Encratis. Normally a tank would simply run a flame glyph on their front bar weapon. It's the same for any set that requires an element to proc, it can't be done with glyphs now. That no longer works. I don't believe there was a response to that during PTS, either.

shadyjane62 · March 2022

In an effort to help reduce the data point I have been deleting chars, emptying my craft bag, destroying things left and right, but it doesn't get better.

Kesstryl · March 2022

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey All, wanted to clarify a few things here regarding why we are asking for feedback. First, thanks to everyone who has provided feedback so far. We started this feedback thread to encompass everything to come with U33 and Ascending Tide. While Account Wide Achievements are apart of that, they are not the only thing that released with U33 and Ascending Tide.

However, we wanted to address Account Wide Achievements in relation to this thread. When we gather feedback, we share both positive and negative sentiment with the dev team. This is for the team to have player information in addition to the many other data metrics they have to make the best decision at the time. As noted in another thread, sometimes player expectation does not match what the dev team is able to do. And there are a myriad of reasons why this can happen. As we noted in the Q&A, the current implementation of Account Wide Achievements needed to happen to reduce the data footprint for achievements. This is ultimately for long term maintainable database stability and performance.

That being said, we want to reiterate that the dev team will always try to meet player request and expectation whenever possible. So our job is to facilitate the communication to get us there. We know it can be frustrating to provide feedback, especially when some of you have expressed feeling ignored. However, we go through the threads and responses to provide an accurate reading of what players want and how they feel about anything related to ESO.

So to answer part of @Destai's question, we have noted positives like players enjoying the flexibility and challenge of the new dungeons and loving the music. We have also noted the player reaction to account wide achievements (as we did before with the PTS Account Wide Achievement thread and had the Q&A based on that). We are highlighting those who are upset with the current implementation and whose with detailed feedback about ways it could be improved.

We hope this helps regarding why we are asking for feedback. It is not only asking for feedback on Account Wide Achievements, though those are welcome. We are looking for feedback overall on everything in U33 and Ascending Tide.

@ZOS_Kevin I really appreciate you and your efforts to try to help us. You've personally answered one of my threads on PTS, and I have a long memory, so again I thank you. Most of the frustration we are experiencing is two fold.

First point, we posted most of these bugs that the wider community is now dealing with in the first two weeks of PTS, and only one out of the many things ever got addressed which was the Museum quests. It took 5 weeks of testing and 5 weeks of over 90 pages of feedback and yet it seemed like fixes to the many problems were going to get shipped to live, and they did. Furthermore, we had no communication about our concerns during those 5 weeks except for a general Q&A that only intensified our concerns when the very things we were worried about were not even acknowledged in it or any of the patch notes.

This brings us to the second point which is the non-existence of any communication from the devs. They allowed you and Gina limited information and limited interaction with us, and they offered not a single bit of acknowledgement about the bugs or concerns. You can imagine how this escalates our fears about this release, and here we are, it was released, bugs and all. We tried to be patient, we hoped each patch would address some of our concerns, even as an acknowledged bug that would be fixed later - just simply acknowledged as have been done in past patch notes, that would have gone a long way to reassure us. The sound of crickets on our end just amplified our fear and frustration.

It's been well over a month now, which in the fast pace of gaming culture, is a really really really long time to get answers, or even acknowledgement. Furthermore, this update wasn't just infuriating, it was hurtful to a lot of us. Many of us grieved over these changes. We love ESO and the time we spend in the game world is precious to us. To have parts of it ripped away and outright changed in a way that favors one percentage of players while gutting the hearts of other percentages of players - you have to understand where all this anger and frustration comes from. Some of us are trying to adapt, but the changes are so intrusive into how we play without compromise that we are afraid that the ESO world we loved to live in is ruined to a point where we just can't continue. I know, I haven't been able to bring myself to log in since Monday. I just can't! I will always remember what ESO was, and if some of the bugs and concerns are swept under the rug in the hopes we will forget, I can assure you that most of us grieving this change will NEVER forget what we once had that is now gone. There has to be fixes for some of the outstanding issues, there has to be compromises and extra work put into the devs' hectic workload, there has to be some preservation of the continuity and coherence of the game world for all affected by this change!

Many of us might be able to weather losing individual character data if the Account Wide Achievements wasn't so intrusive into our gameplay. As I said in another thread, achievements should only intrude when I open a tab to look at them and be proud, allow titles and achievement purchases, and NOTHING more! Achievements should not drastically change how the game works for alts, break immersion, screw up NPC encounters and dialogue, lock out quests no matter how trivial, destroy maps, nerf XP, and make tracking impossible for our alt characters. It's too intrusive! It went way way way too far!

We can be patient for patches to fix these things IF WE KNOW THE DEVS ACKNOWLEDGE THE BUGS AND CONCERNS AND ARE WILLING TO ADDRESS THESE THINGS! I can be patient through bugs and bad consequences if I know patches are coming that will fix the game world and make it make sense again for our alts. Since we don't know anything at this point, you can't blame us for being ready to riot to make sure our concerns are heard, because up until your post, the silence made us believe we were not being heard at all and most likely ignored because the last thing we heard was a Q&A telling us this was good for the game. And what we got are all these bugs, and problems with quests and NPCs, and it's impossible to track anything on alts now, and maps don't make sense, and how is this good for the game?

Thank you again, Kevin, for stepping in to reach out to us. My anger is not at you, it's at whoever decided that this version of AwA was good enough to release in this state.

Edited to add exclamation points, because some of these sentences need exclamations!

Stamicka · March 2022

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

However, we wanted to address Account Wide Achievements in relation to this thread. When we gather feedback, we share both positive and negative sentiment with the dev team. This is for the team to have player information in addition to the many other data metrics they have to make the best decision at the time. As noted in another thread, sometimes player expectation does not match what the dev team is able to do. And there are a myriad of reasons why this can happen. As we noted in the Q&A, the current implementation of Account Wide Achievements needed to happen to reduce the data footprint for achievements. This is ultimately for long term maintainable database stability and performance.

“Reducing data footprint for achievements” makes absolutely no sense. For years we have never heard anything about this, and you also sell character slots in the crown store.

Why on earth have you increased the maximum amount of characters that an account could hold. You haven’t done this once, but multiple times. How could you sell character slots and not see this issue on the horizon? New characters means new achievements on the character.

Here’s the thing. I’m not advocating for removing these additional character slots, but if you never added them you would never have to take them away. More characters would just be on the long list of things players want to see in the game. If you’re going to claim that there’s too many characters and too many achievements, you should not have made additional character slots buyable in the first place. See the problem? As a company, you need to think about the long term and future implications of your changes. Do not implement things that you will eventually have to take away as the game grows, it makes no sense.

painsworth01 · March 2022

As primarily a solo player, this last quarterly "update" is a perfect example of nothing to look forward to.. My opinion of it sadly is MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Please, Zos, give us solo players access to solo or duo versions of new group dungeons. Would not cost you much and would give the solo players much content to enjoy. We would not expect loot to be commensurate with group versions of the dungeons.

As to yet another half dozen new gear sets, just more junk to decon.

As to card games in ESO -- seen it in other mmo's and not very likely to increase lagging interest

deleted221106-002999 · March 2022

I still haven't logged in nor updated, nor my dad or other family that sometimes play.

Personally I asked about a client side solution for the implementation of awa - moving what we had over to the client side and keeping your awa server side. I asked about this early on in the pts feedback thread and repeated it several times throughout. I even sent a message to @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_Kevin looking for feedback.

The result of all this was deathly silence other than a 'will pass it along' from kevin.

This client-side solution alone would have satisfied a huge proportion of those against the awa implementation as it would have enabled them to continue their character focused adventures. And it could have run concurrently with your awa implementation, satisying pretty much everyone.

Feedback works both ways and should have something approaching parity. Currently and in the past it's been 99.9% on our side and 0.01% from zos. [edit: psijic pixies made off with the other 0.09% ; even fictional creations possibly provide more feedback

]

Many players who were developers/db gurus called the necessity and reasoning behind awa into question and many have noted zero improvements. None of their concerns have been addressed. Why was this necessary for performance? What other options did you consider? Did it occur to you to ask us, your customers first if we wanted anything like this? Did you look at the real fluff in the game (unused sets, junk dropping loot boxes with a fancy label but just equals gold etc) and getting rid of that instead, if it really was necessary to prune stuff?

I'm very sorry but a lot of this comes across to me as newspeak: it gives a semblance of appearing to be trying to engage without providing concrete results. In other words it's the same as always and the forum is littered with previous failures. Community ambassadors? Class representatives? Do these still exist, if so who/where are they?Or if they exist are they just some cloistered cabal unrepresentative of the wider player base? I'm asking because I honestly don't know and I don't know because of zero communication.

With so many years of hollow promises, trust has been shattered. You need to do a LOT more than an occasional placatory comment.

In fairness I have no issue with you @ZOS_Kevin; I believe you are trying.

But I don't see any evidence that we were listened to during weeks of pts testing and feedback from a q&a that was identified by others as being a delaying tactic, which appeared very much to be a fair appraisal. And once it landed and appeared as nothing more than a sterile edict ignoring many of the issues raised, it confirmed we truly were not being listened to. No really, if you were to put out an honest survey now and ask whether players felt they were being ignored or proactively and actively engaged with I am fully confident a massive majority would opt for 'ignored'.

Many of us loathe this implementation of awa. It's a game killer. We want to play but don't want to face the known destruction of all individual character history and future replayability. This eclipses anything else the update might have to offer, rendering it irrelevant.

Either roll awa back, put in a client side implementation of the character specifics so those of us who used it can continue as before and leave awa as an extra.

Bragerth · March 2022

Please remove earned by from other characters there is no need for that tooltip or at least hide it in the background so we dont have to use addons to hide it

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno

Snamyap · March 2022

painsworth01 wrote: »

As primarily a solo player, this last quarterly "update" is a perfect example of nothing to look forward to.. My opinion of it sadly is MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Please, Zos, give us solo players access to solo or duo versions of new group dungeons. Would not cost you much and would give the solo players much content to enjoy. We would not expect loot to be commensurate with group versions of the dungeons.

As to yet another half dozen new gear sets, just more junk to decon.

As to card games in ESO -- seen it in other mmo's and not very likely to increase lagging interest

Have you tried the dungeons because these two are perfectly soloable. No mechanics to block you and the encounters are easier compared to other dlc dungeons. Even the hidden bosses can be accessed and defeated solo.

Jaraal · March 2022

RavenXIV wrote: »

Please remove earned by from other characters there is no need for that tooltip or at least hide it in the background so we dont have to use addons to hide it @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno

Yes, because “Earned By” is a misnomer. “Completed By” would be more accurate, and “Stolen By” even more appropriate in many cases.

FlopsyPrince · March 2022

jle30303 wrote: »

A full rollback would not be possible, but it seems to me that there is at least one thing that could be done for Skyshards, Areas of Interest, Delves, World Bosses, Dolmens and other world events (Abyssal Geysers, Harrowstorms).

Firstly: It seems that, for each of the above, there are two boolean on-off variables: "Discovered / Not Discovered" and "Completed / Not Completed".

This leads to weird situations where a thing can be both Completed but still Not Discovered, which is just wrong.

These could productively be replaced on the in-character map, by a three-state CHARACTER-BASED variable, where 0 = "undiscovered" (does not show on map), 1 = "discovered but incomplete" (appears black), 2 = "completed on this character" (appears white).

Since Skyshards are already noted in the Zone Guide on a per-character basis, then Delves, WBs and World Events (Dolmens, Geysers, Harrowstorms) also can.

A quick-and-dirty fix would be to make a fix which runs the following processes, when a CHARACTER logs in for the first time after the fix...

(1) SKYSHARDS
Since these are already correctly noted on a per-character basis in the Zone Guide, they are already divorced from Achievemets. So: Check through all Skyshards. If they are "Unclaimed" in the Zone Guide, copy this to state 1 on the map, so all undiscovered Skyshards are visible but black. If they are "Claimed", copy this to state 2, so they are either invisible, or visible and white, depending on map filters.

(2) AREAS OF INTEREST
In the Zone Guide, these are all noted as discovered if ANY character has discovered them, even if THIS character has not discovered them. Therefore, the copying needs to go the other way: from the current map info, to the Zone Guide, of the "discovered" versus "undiscovered" status. If it's not already white on the map, then turn it off in the character-based Zone Guide, so that the specific character needs to rediscover it.

(3) DELVES, WORLD BOSSES, DOLMENS, HARROWSTORMS, ABYSSAL GEYSERS
All of these are incorrectly marked as "completed" in the Zone Guide, even for characters that have not completed them, if just ONE character has completed it. To restore a per-character completion basis of this, the best that can be done is to check whether they are in fact "Undiscovered" on the map (i.e. not visible at all), and if so, copy this info from the map to the Zone Guide, to un-complete them in the Zone Guide for this specific character.

Characters who have ALREADY discovered (but not actually completed) one of the above, will obviously have it marked as complete on the map now, and thus will have the relevant feature still "complete" in the Zone Guide: but, if it's not yet discovered by that character, it is now at state 0 on the map ("undiscovered") and should convert NOT to state 2 ("completed", appears white) but to state 1 ("discovered but incomplete", appears black), when the specific character discovers it, and will still appear as "not complete" in the Zone Guide. When the specific character completes it, THEN AND ONLY THEN should it turn white on the map, and turn to "complete" in the Zone Guide.

This way:
- Achievements would still be account-wide, for the completion of any Delve, World Boss, Dolmen, Harrowstorm, Abyssal Geyser, Area of Interest and Skyshard
- Zone Guide would be fully divorced from Achievements, and be character-specific rather than account-wide.
- When a thing turns from state 1 to state 2 in the Zone Guide, the bonus XP for discovery / completion could be restored.
- MOST of the "character-specific discoveries" would be reverted to the correct state of "not completed on this character" by virtue of having been "not discovered on this character". Those which had been "discovered" before the fix would still be marked as complete even if the character had not done so: but those which were not "discovered" until after the fix would only be marked as "discovered" but NOT as "completed" until the actual character completed them, thanks to divorcing the Zone Guide and the Zone Map from Achievements.

This approach sounds good. Though any change like that would normally take significant time in a large system. (Hopefully with solid testing.) This is especially true since it would add new tracked data. Updating the map to show things accurately based on existing data might be simpler, but would likely still take time.

My biggest question is why they didn't catch this in testing. It seems like a very logical thing to figure out when adding something like AWA. Part of development planning must always be "what could go wrong".

SammyKhajit · March 2022

Camera angle, as others have pointed out, is very off.

The new music is on the quiet side. Neither like nor dislike. It’s just background Muzak.

Haven’t tried the new dungeons because this one is trying to finish off achievements on his main character.

It was very, very irritating to have this one’s non main alts get achievements that they didn’t earn. Why ZOS why? Yes, this one was prepared by all the other players’ posts but it was still very aggravating.

Hotdog_23 · March 2022

Jaraal wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Is there anything we can improve in the future?

This question has been asked, and the answers ignored numerous times. Things that go to the PTS are going to Live regardless of improvements we suggest. The bugs we point out are ignored on a consistent basis.

I guess the answer to your question is: stop asking your question. We've all been around long enough to know that what we say doesn't matter. It is insulting to pretend like our opinions would have any sort of affect on the decision making process. "The Vision" is proprietary, and we have no say in it.

True words, true words.

Ugh_Tech · March 2022

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

However, we wanted to address Account Wide Achievements in relation to this thread. When we gather feedback, we share both positive and negative sentiment with the dev team. This is for the team to have player information in addition to the many other data metrics they have to make the best decision at the time. As noted in another thread, sometimes player expectation does not match what the dev team is able to do. And there are a myriad of reasons why this can happen. As we noted in the Q&A, the current implementation of Account Wide Achievements needed to happen to reduce the data footprint for achievements. This is ultimately for long term maintainable database stability and performance.

Just my two cents on this since I'm also a member of the group of players that didn't start the game since U33.
I can accept that changes in the way data is stored may be necessary to keep things stable. But the whole situation is full of contradictions to me.
I have never seen any 'warning' or similar coming from the devs saying that the amount of achievement data would be a problem. If this was the case, then why were there still character slots buyable in the crown store, when every character creates more data?
On the other hand: I used the addon 'Character Achievements' to 'backup' by character data before the update went life - that backup has a size of 119 kiB for twelve chars --> approx. 10 kiB per char. Let's assume there are 20 million ESO accounts with 5 chars in average. So there are 100 million chars with 10 kiB achievement data each, which results in a total data volume of approx. 1 trillion bytes aka one terabyte, most likely split into (at least) six databases (PC EU, PC NA, XBOX EU, etc.). That's not an amount of data you can't handle these days!

AwA was annouced after the year's release event in January and instantly put on PTS. Who decided to make such a deep change (I don't use the word 'great' for it intentionally) without any kind of 'warning' to the community and - let's be honest - any chance for implementing suggested changes before putting it life?

As player, I lived though many games over the decades, witnessed many shitstorms and 'sub-optimal' things devs did, and it was NEVER a good idea to take things away from players they got used to over years. Another thing that is never a good idea is to wipe data of active players - you did both like bloody beginners! You just took it away instead of providing any other way to track the progress of our alts - and there would have been plenty of ways besides keeping the data available in a life view. Providing a sub-section in the Bethesda account website like it is available on eso-database.com is only one example.

However, it's over for me. I've lost all trust and faith in ZOS and I doubt I will ever log into ESO again with other chars than my main. What's the sense in repeating content when that content is broken and there is no indication of what's left to do? After years of playing barely anything else besides ESO this has ended - sad but true.

Hymzir · March 2022

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

However, we wanted to address Account Wide Achievements in relation to this thread. When we gather feedback, we share both positive and negative sentiment with the dev team. This is for the team to have player information in addition to the many other data metrics they have to make the best decision at the time. As noted in another thread, sometimes player expectation does not match what the dev team is able to do. And there are a myriad of reasons why this can happen. As we noted in the Q&A, the current implementation of Account Wide Achievements needed to happen to reduce the data footprint for achievements. This is ultimately for long term maintainable database stability and performance.

I know you are just the messenger, but the problem is that we've heard this message many times before.

It just reinforces the image of Ivory Tower dev mentality reigning at ZOS.

As such, your message rings hollow. It comes out as meaningless platitudes meant to placate the masses, and frankly it is patronizing.

We do not expect the game to be based on our varied whims and desires, we do not expect it to reflect our personal preferences 100%. We are fully aware and perfectly fine with adapting to changes.

If the changes push the game too far, then we do what all reasonable people do. Accept it and move on. It's only a game and not the end of the world. However, I bet most of us would want to continue, if at all possible. We do not want to move on, and all we need is reassurances that sticking with ESO is still worthwhile.

The issues with the implementation of AWA were extreme, and wrecked the game for a large portion of the player base. At the very least, one would've expected an acknowledgment from the devs that there would be issues and problems. A reasoning why these sacrifices must be made, an explanation why it is better in the long run, would've helped a lot too. A clear explanation of what problems would be fixed in upcoming patches, and which issues ZOS was willing to live with, was the least you could've done.

However, that was not what happened. All we got was a vague line about possible improvements, maybe, down the line, on making the game more "performant." What ever that means. And even that was not something you opened with. It came across as an ad-hoc justification for pushing though your "vision."

Furthermore, a lot of people who do coding for a living, made some very detailed posts about why this makes no sense. How can such a small amount of data be causing issues when compared to all the other information the game has to shift back and forth. And if it causes such immense strain on servers, why not just save it client side?

Even if someone would bother to go and cheat and edit their achievements log, then so what? What would that really matter? One could even postulate a claim that they had just used alternate methods to get those achievements. The people, to who those achievements really matter, would not cheat to get them, and those who don't care about them, wouldn't bother.

It also didn't really help, that you declared quite recently, that the upcoming CCG will come with whole host of new achievements and stuff to track. Sacrificing narrative cohesion, character progress tracking, and much more, just to facilitate achievements tied to a feature many will never even touch, makes this things even more egregious

I mean, I hope you realize, that a CCG is not all that welcome among a large portion of the player base either. People were asking for simple and straightforward tavern games to have fun with between dungeons and quests. We did not want, nor were we asking, for the introduction of yet another avenue for excessive grind. We were not asking for a completely separate game to be bolted into ESO. One, I might add, that makes not sense from the perspective of the world. Tamriel just isn't a place where people play collectable card games. It does not fit the world itself.
.
-sigh-

To reiterate - the problem is not that this change happened. The problem is how it was handled.

So, for the love of all that is good and pure, can you provide us with a clear cut answer to the following concerns:

Will world interactions that are tied to achievements (npc comments and the like) be fixed to track individual character progression? - So that you're active character is not recognized as an initiate of the Dark Brotherood, when that character would never, under any circumstances, associate themselves with a bunch of fanatics from a religiously organized cult of murderers.

Are you going to fix the map so that it will provide useful information on what each individual character has done and where they've been? - You do realize how confusing this update left the map and zone guide, right? There are a lot of posts and threads about this issue. It is a real issue and warrants to be addressed.

Are you going to fix the fact that some content is now once per account? - This is the one I find hard to believe you didn't realize would happen. And even harder that you let it happen. And baffling that you haven't even commented on it. - Tamriel Once is not a good idea.

I don't expect these to be fixed right now and here, but they are crucial issues and key points on whether I'll continue with the game or not.

So... Are these even problems in the eyes of ZOS, or should I just move on and cut my losses?

This is why communication, especially when doing big irreversible changes to the base game, is so important. This is why we are angry, and why we are not letting this thing just slide. The longer you postpone tackling these issues, the more you sidestep with vague claims about "myriad reasons", the more you will end up looking like you are just refusing to admit that you dropped the ball.

You have to start coming down from your tower every now and then and interacting with the plebs, or you will end up losing the tower too.

duagloth · March 2022

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey All, wanted to clarify a few things here regarding why we are asking for feedback. First, thanks to everyone who has provided feedback so far. We started this feedback thread to encompass everything to come with U33 and Ascending Tide. While Account Wide Achievements are apart of that, they are not the only thing that released with U33 and Ascending Tide.

However, we wanted to address Account Wide Achievements in relation to this thread. When we gather feedback, we share both positive and negative sentiment with the dev team. This is for the team to have player information in addition to the many other data metrics they have to make the best decision at the time. As noted in another thread, sometimes player expectation does not match what the dev team is able to do. And there are a myriad of reasons why this can happen. As we noted in the Q&A, the current implementation of Account Wide Achievements needed to happen to reduce the data footprint for achievements. This is ultimately for long term maintainable database stability and performance.

That being said, we want to reiterate that the dev team will always try to meet player request and expectation whenever possible. So our job is to facilitate the communication to get us there. We know it can be frustrating to provide feedback, especially when some of you have expressed feeling ignored. However, we go through the threads and responses to provide an accurate reading of what players want and how they feel about anything related to ESO.

So to answer part of @Destai's question, we have noted positives like players enjoying the flexibility and challenge of the new dungeons and loving the music. We have also noted the player reaction to account wide achievements (as we did before with the PTS Account Wide Achievement thread and had the Q&A based on that). We are highlighting those who are upset with the current implementation and whose with detailed feedback about ways it could be improved.

We hope this helps regarding why we are asking for feedback. It is not only asking for feedback on Account Wide Achievements, though those are welcome. We are looking for feedback overall on everything in U33 and Ascending Tide.

Show me how theyre listening?

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey All, wanted to clarify a few things here regarding why we are asking for feedback. First, thanks to everyone who has provided feedback so far. We started this feedback thread to encompass everything to come with U33 and Ascending Tide. While Account Wide Achievements are apart of that, they are not the only thing that released with U33 and Ascending Tide.

However, we wanted to address Account Wide Achievements in relation to this thread. When we gather feedback, we share both positive and negative sentiment with the dev team. This is for the team to have player information in addition to the many other data metrics they have to make the best decision at the time. As noted in another thread, sometimes player expectation does not match what the dev team is able to do. And there are a myriad of reasons why this can happen. As we noted in the Q&A, the current implementation of Account Wide Achievements needed to happen to reduce the data footprint for achievements. This is ultimately for long term maintainable database stability and performance.

That being said, we want to reiterate that the dev team will always try to meet player request and expectation whenever possible. So our job is to facilitate the communication to get us there. We know it can be frustrating to provide feedback, especially when some of you have expressed feeling ignored. However, we go through the threads and responses to provide an accurate reading of what players want and how they feel about anything related to ESO.

So to answer part of @Destai's question, we have noted positives like players enjoying the flexibility and challenge of the new dungeons and loving the music. We have also noted the player reaction to account wide achievements (as we did before with the PTS Account Wide Achievement thread and had the Q&A based on that). We are highlighting those who are upset with the current implementation and whose with detailed feedback about ways it could be improved.

We hope this helps regarding why we are asking for feedback. It is not only asking for feedback on Account Wide Achievements, though those are welcome. We are looking for feedback overall on everything in U33 and Ascending Tide.

Show dont tell

SerafinaWaterstar · March 2022

@Hymzir

Bloody awesome post. Totally agree.

LesserCircle · March 2022

The update feels laggy in general, I have worse performance with latency and FPS

RevJJ · March 2022

Hymzir makes good points. I would also very much like to know if the things being addressed are seen as bugs or features.

If they are seen as bugs then I might return when they’re fixed.

If they’re seen as features then I can free up about 100GB on my laptop. As a bonus my 200kb of achievement data would help improve performance for other players.

Hurbster · March 2022

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey All, wanted to clarify a few things here regarding why we are asking for feedback. First, thanks to everyone who has provided feedback so far. We started this feedback thread to encompass everything to come with U33 and Ascending Tide. While Account Wide Achievements are apart of that, they are not the only thing that released with U33 and Ascending Tide.

However, we wanted to address Account Wide Achievements in relation to this thread. When we gather feedback, we share both positive and negative sentiment with the dev team. This is for the team to have player information in addition to the many other data metrics they have to make the best decision at the time. As noted in another thread, sometimes player expectation does not match what the dev team is able to do. And there are a myriad of reasons why this can happen. As we noted in the Q&A, the current implementation of Account Wide Achievements needed to happen to reduce the data footprint for achievements. This is ultimately for long term maintainable database stability and performance.

That being said, we want to reiterate that the dev team will always try to meet player request and expectation whenever possible. So our job is to facilitate the communication to get us there. We know it can be frustrating to provide feedback, especially when some of you have expressed feeling ignored. However, we go through the threads and responses to provide an accurate reading of what players want and how they feel about anything related to ESO.

So to answer part of @Destai's question, we have noted positives like players enjoying the flexibility and challenge of the new dungeons and loving the music. We have also noted the player reaction to account wide achievements (as we did before with the PTS Account Wide Achievement thread and had the Q&A based on that). We are highlighting those who are upset with the current implementation and whose with detailed feedback about ways it could be improved.

We hope this helps regarding why we are asking for feedback. It is not only asking for feedback on Account Wide Achievements, though those are welcome. We are looking for feedback overall on everything in U33 and Ascending Tide.

Unfortunately, it's evident that the PTS was completely ignored. Why didn't you just wait until all the bugs were sorted? That's what the PTS is for, not to ignore all the people who do the bug-testing for you for FREE. It's what Blizzard did, and that ended well.There is a very good reason why most of the comments are about AwA. The impression is lately is that we as the players are just being relegated to cash machines. Personally I've lost all interest in the game and I have only logged on with my main character, albeit briefly. At some point very soon I may well stop altogether if it's not all sorted.

Varana · March 2022

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

While Account Wide Achievements are apart of that, they are not the only thing that released with U33 and Ascending Tide.

But what are those other things?

Two dungeons. Great, we've got loads of those. They're fine.
Changes to skills. Great, we've been getting these basically every month or so for a few years. Who cares at this point? They will get changed again.
Continued hybridisation. See skills.

Did anyone at ZOS even start to grasp how deep the AwA changes cut into the game? Both from a player's perspectivem and in terms of interconnection between systems? I have a hard time imagining that ZOS sabotaged their own zone guide and turned it into a confusing mess of conflicting information, on purpose. Or that anyone even slightly into game design thought it would be a good idea to deny players the small but frequent and cheap gratification of achievement popups. Or all the other stuff.

In the end, I don't think you or Gina are the people who should talk to us about this. Get someone who signed off on this and is responsible for the implementation, and let them explain why this was necessary. Including the details, like torpedoing and sinking the zone guide. Honestly, and with technical information, not Orwellian PR speak.

Bragerth · March 2022

Jaraal wrote: »

RavenXIV wrote: »

Please remove earned by from other characters there is no need for that tooltip or at least hide it in the background so we dont have to use addons to hide it @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno

Yes, because “Earned By” is a misnomer. “Completed By” would be more accurate, and “Stolen By” even more appropriate in many cases.

its not about that but if your going to call it account wide achievements then make them truly that because its not truly an awa system when you have other characters tied to it. at that point they should have just left the system the way it was. just look at gw2 for example it has a true account wide system. no earned by completed by it might be hid behind the scenes.

zaria · March 2022

RavenXIV wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

RavenXIV wrote: »

Please remove earned by from other characters there is no need for that tooltip or at least hide it in the background so we dont have to use addons to hide it @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno

Yes, because “Earned By” is a misnomer. “Completed By” would be more accurate, and “Stolen By” even more appropriate in many cases.

its not about that but if your going to call it account wide achievements then make them truly that because its not truly an awa system when you have other characters tied to it. at that point they should have just left the system the way it was. just look at gw2 for example it has a true account wide system. no earned by completed by it might be hid behind the scenes.

How does the GW 2 system work? Yes how they did it in ESO is stupid in that aggregated achievements get counted from all characters for everything like master crafter who counts motifs known and adds up all the base game racial ones on adds up so now all with 5 alts should have it.

proprio.meb16_ESO · March 2022

As @Kesstryl specifically asked on https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/600141/has-eso-finally-lost-its-allure#latest, i'll quote here my post on that thread:

proprio.meb16_ESO wrote: »

Ive already participated a little in PST thread and so dismayed by the lack of acknowledge there that im not even that inclined anymore to read and write in the forum.
I'm still sharing here my two cents though, as i can never underline enough how broken the content is atm (and possibly in the future - what has been done is no easy thing to "fix" as someone still hopes... in the pts the hope of some was that awa could have been fixed in time for the release and here we are):

i created a main back when i started with one tamriel (had participated to the beta but not again until one tamriel) and did a lot of content with it pretty mindlessly and soloing everything i could. Then my kids were born and ofc i left pretty every game i was playing or kept playing at a minimum.

Ive returned to play more regularly when elseweyr was released and, thanks god, i was able to create a brand new main which is my actual one. With it i've been able to enjoy all questlines (comprising those i had done already, but had forgot or skipped) and most of the content. Unfortunately i rushed through some and it's a long time i plan to create a new character to taste again some of those i loved more, maybe all of them... he could have become my new main focus (those of you who are currently broken hearted for the whole situation know what i mean).

My elder kid is also growing up fast and showing interest in ESO (as he see me having fun - he's often beside me when i play) and another plan was to let him create a new character and start his own playthrough when he'll be wanting to.

Note that i'm not against AWA as a thing. My two "mains" have merged and so be it, fortunately i did only base game content with my old main, but can totally feel and be sad for people who just felt betrayed by this update. The more you've diversified your playthrough the hardest this change has hit you.

With the game in the actual state, and the alts that does not count anything anymore:
- the fresh start i had wouldn't have been possible
- my plan for a second playthrough is far less attractive now and i think i just wont do it unless things change.
- my kid will have to buy his own account for a fresh playthrough? really? i'd probably rather address him towards something else

Jaraal · March 2022

LesserCircle wrote: »

The update feels laggy in general, I have worse performance with latency and FPS

Yes, this simply continues the trend of altering or cutting out gameplay in the name of "performance," with nothing but worse performance to show for it.

Can anybody name a change they made to the game that actually improved performance in a noticeable way?