So is every character now in DB/TG due to AwA, IS BLACKWOOD UN(RE)PLAYABLE NOW?

Adventurer · March 2022

I read that several people had their non-DB/TB characters be talked to as if they were in the DB/TG by the NPCs in the game, because their main was a DB/TG member and the agme registered it incorrectly. Does that mean that in Blackwood you'll always be a DB member now, so you can't see the vanilla dialogue if you're not a DB member?

Does anyone have a list of which dialogues have been broken by AwA, whether it's in Blackwood or elsewhere?

Vevvev · March 2022

If it's tied to an achievement, yes... You'll never see the vanilla dialogue ever again.

peacenote · March 2022

Wait... they had dialogue for if you weren't a DB member. My main was, so that's all I ever saw.

I REALLY hope it wasn't tied to achievements because that is actually something I would have liked to have gone through.

Vhale · March 2022

Hrm. I guess I could play a toon on the European servers to see the other side. Admittedly I'm not sure I will. But its an option I'll think of.

FeedbackOnly · March 2022

Vevvev wrote: »

If it's tied to an achievement, yes... You'll never see the vanilla dialogue ever again.

😢 Stuga

JoeCapricorn · March 2022

Damn, this sucks if true. It would be immersion breaking if someone had a moral crusader type character that gets addressed as a DB member.

And getting locked out of potential dialogue seems very un-Elder Scrolls.

I don't see why those things can't be tracked based on whether the skill-line is unlocked, the rank in said skill-line, the completion of certain quests, and other per-character stats.

Blinx · March 2022

I purposely held off on joining the brotherhood on my last alt until he was safe from that lore breaking dialogue, then he went on a murder spree!

francesinhalover · March 2022

Vhale wrote: »

Hrm. I guess I could play a toon on the European servers to see the other side. Admittedly I'm not sure I will. But its an option I'll think of.

Omg thank you

Adventurer · March 2022

JoeCapricorn wrote: »

Damn, this sucks if true. It would be immersion breaking if someone had a moral crusader type character that gets addressed as a DB member.

And getting locked out of potential dialogue seems very un-Elder Scrolls.

I don't see why those things can't be tracked based on whether the skill-line is unlocked, the rank in said skill-line, the completion of certain quests, and other per-character stats.

I'm guessing it's because they're unable to or don't know how to fix it, devs did they before that some stuff is really hard to code, esp. from the base game/early stuff, as differnet people worked on it and moved on etc. That's how they justified being unable to do some stuff in the past, that the code is really old and people don't know how to do it/it would be hard to make it work.

But yeah, I'd also imagine it would make sense to tie it down to quest completion and not achievement completion.

Serenez · March 2022

Does this AWA actually affect questing on alt characters? Is this the case?

This must be a bug as there is absolutely no way a game developer would do this to a 'role playing' game on purpose. It would eliminate any desire for players to create alt toons, who enjoy 'playing the game via questing'. Players like 'choosing' different paths on alternative characters and keeps them playing the game year after year.

Yes - there are players who create alt toons and want to go from zero to 100 as soon as possible to get that player to end game content. This type of player would enjoy 'skipping' parts of the game to reach their goal faster. This type of player is likely the one to enjoy the AWA.

If this is not a bug, then I am not sure the impact was fully researched enough ahead of time. This player base will ultimately leave the game, so they can play another that will give them a sense of accomplishment through re-playability. This completely takes away the entire "play the way you want'. Now it will become, play the game (questing) only once, and make sure you pick your permanent choice in your quest journey. You will live with it for the rest of your Tamriel life and all other alt toons will be fated by the 'first' toon to complete it.

It would boggle my mind if this is intended, as such a profit loss it would be. What would be the point for this player base to make alt toons after they complete the game (questing) once on a character, if their sole purpose is not end game content but to actually 'quest and play the PVE content' 'their own way on each toon'.

There is a major disconnect here, I think between 'understanding how people play' this game. Those that are strictly end game trial/PVP, may be ok with AWA changes. The faithful lore seekers and questers however, it is a lethal blow to their years of loyalty and unfortunately a completely foreseeable profit loss. No crystal ball is needed here as the impact should have been predicted.

So once again, I am hoping this is a bug, otherwise it makes zero logical sense for any company to only allow players to quest once with regards to the lore and their choices. Why bother creating alt toons?

Achievements should not dictate questing choices on alt toons. Otherwise the game will become unrecognizable. I am going to go on faith here and believe this is a bug and not intended. I will keep my fingers crossed and await a response to the player base that this wasn't intended and a time frame for the fix to be implemented to sever the achievements from the NPC reactions and questing choices.

Coatmagic · March 2022

As the OP mentioned above, there is always the other server if you've not already spilled over onto there.
Plus side for ZoS of people doing this is that they can charge twice for everything

Saieden · March 2022

Serenez wrote: »

Does this AWA actually affect questing on alt characters? Is this the case?

This must be a bug as there is absolutely no way a game developer would do this to a 'role playing' game on purpose. It would eliminate any desire for players to create alt toons, who enjoy 'playing the game via questing'. Players like 'choosing' different paths on alternative characters and keeps them playing the game year after year.

Yes - there are players who create alt toons and want to go from zero to 100 as soon as possible to get that player to end game content. This type of player would enjoy 'skipping' parts of the game to reach their goal faster. This type of player is likely the one to enjoy the AWA.

If this is not a bug, then I am not sure the impact was fully researched enough ahead of time. This player base will ultimately leave the game, so they can play another that will give them a sense of accomplishment through re-playability. This completely takes away the entire "play the way you want'. Now it will become, play the game (questing) only once, and make sure you pick your permanent choice in your quest journey. You will live with it for the rest of your Tamriel life and all other alt toons will be fated by the 'first' toon to complete it.

It would boggle my mind if this is intended, as such a profit loss it would be. What would be the point for this player base to make alt toons after they complete the game (questing) once on a character, if their sole purpose is not end game content but to actually 'quest and play the PVE content' 'their own way on each toon'.

There is a major disconnect here, I think between 'understanding how people play' this game. Those that are strictly end game trial/PVP, may be ok with AWA changes. The faithful lore seekers and questers however, it is a lethal blow to their years of loyalty and unfortunately a completely foreseeable profit loss. No crystal ball is needed here as the impact should have been predicted.

So once again, I am hoping this is a bug, otherwise it makes zero logical sense for any company to only allow players to quest once with regards to the lore and their choices. Why bother creating alt toons?

Achievements should not dictate questing choices on alt toons. Otherwise the game will become unrecognizable. I am going to go on faith here and believe this is a bug and not intended. I will keep my fingers crossed and await a response to the player base that this wasn't intended and a time frame for the fix to be implemented to sever the achievements from the NPC reactions and questing choices.

Yes, in many cases, though not all. We tried to tell, literally from day 1 pts, not to go through with this. Just look at the first page of responses: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/596970/pts-update-33-feedback-thread-for-account-wide-achievements/p1

Kesstryl · March 2022

Serenez wrote: »

Does this AWA actually affect questing on alt characters? Is this the case?

This must be a bug as there is absolutely no way a game developer would do this to a 'role playing' game on purpose. It would eliminate any desire for players to create alt toons, who enjoy 'playing the game via questing'. Players like 'choosing' different paths on alternative characters and keeps them playing the game year after year.

Yes - there are players who create alt toons and want to go from zero to 100 as soon as possible to get that player to end game content. This type of player would enjoy 'skipping' parts of the game to reach their goal faster. This type of player is likely the one to enjoy the AWA.

If this is not a bug, then I am not sure the impact was fully researched enough ahead of time. This player base will ultimately leave the game, so they can play another that will give them a sense of accomplishment through re-playability. This completely takes away the entire "play the way you want'. Now it will become, play the game (questing) only once, and make sure you pick your permanent choice in your quest journey. You will live with it for the rest of your Tamriel life and all other alt toons will be fated by the 'first' toon to complete it.

It would boggle my mind if this is intended, as such a profit loss it would be. What would be the point for this player base to make alt toons after they complete the game (questing) once on a character, if their sole purpose is not end game content but to actually 'quest and play the PVE content' 'their own way on each toon'.

There is a major disconnect here, I think between 'understanding how people play' this game. Those that are strictly end game trial/PVP, may be ok with AWA changes. The faithful lore seekers and questers however, it is a lethal blow to their years of loyalty and unfortunately a completely foreseeable profit loss. No crystal ball is needed here as the impact should have been predicted.

So once again, I am hoping this is a bug, otherwise it makes zero logical sense for any company to only allow players to quest once with regards to the lore and their choices. Why bother creating alt toons?

Achievements should not dictate questing choices on alt toons. Otherwise the game will become unrecognizable. I am going to go on faith here and believe this is a bug and not intended. I will keep my fingers crossed and await a response to the player base that this wasn't intended and a time frame for the fix to be implemented to sever the achievements from the NPC reactions and questing choices.

Unfortunately this ship already sailed. I pleaded this case on PTS to no avail. We received zero response on whether these are bugs or are intended from this point on. I'm still hoping they are bugs that will be patched, but I'm not hopeful at this point because of them not addressing this at all. It would be good to post this feedback up in their official feedback thread about update 33 that is at the top of the page.

I suggest NOT making a toon on the other server. The only way you will get to enjoy the stories again on a fresh account is every PTS cycle, and having characters not on one of the servers will allow you a fresh account from scratch 4 times a year if you want to re-experience content without achievements killing it. I'm only playing PTS right now because I just can't bring myself to log into any of my alts this patch at the moment, and I'm on EU PTS where I have no live characters and had to start from scratch to test things. It made me realize the 4 times a year thing if I decide to play through a favorite quest again to get all the proper dialogue trees and appropriate NPC reactions and flavor, at least on one character, before I test the updates.

edited for grammar

Remathilis · March 2022

Adventurer wrote: »

I read that several people had their non-DB/TB characters be talked to as if they were in the DB/TG by the NPCs in the game, because their main was a DB/TG member and the agme registered it incorrectly. Does that mean that in Blackwood you'll always be a DB member now, so you can't see the vanilla dialogue if you're not a DB member?

Does anyone have a list of which dialogues have been broken by AwA, whether it's in Blackwood or elsewhere?

Is the dialogue based on an achievement check or a skill line check? Not all my characters have the skill line, so it seems checking for the skill line to be present would fix this.

Now, that probably won't fix Razumdar calling my Ebonhart hero an old friend in Summerset just because the AD toon knew him, but that seems like a minor inconvenience.

alberichtano · March 2022

Kesstryl wrote: »

Serenez wrote: »

Does this AWA actually affect questing on alt characters? Is this the case?

This must be a bug as there is absolutely no way a game developer would do this to a 'role playing' game on purpose. It would eliminate any desire for players to create alt toons, who enjoy 'playing the game via questing'. Players like 'choosing' different paths on alternative characters and keeps them playing the game year after year.

Yes - there are players who create alt toons and want to go from zero to 100 as soon as possible to get that player to end game content. This type of player would enjoy 'skipping' parts of the game to reach their goal faster. This type of player is likely the one to enjoy the AWA.

If this is not a bug, then I am not sure the impact was fully researched enough ahead of time. This player base will ultimately leave the game, so they can play another that will give them a sense of accomplishment through re-playability. This completely takes away the entire "play the way you want'. Now it will become, play the game (questing) only once, and make sure you pick your permanent choice in your quest journey. You will live with it for the rest of your Tamriel life and all other alt toons will be fated by the 'first' toon to complete it.

It would boggle my mind if this is intended, as such a profit loss it would be. What would be the point for this player base to make alt toons after they complete the game (questing) once on a character, if their sole purpose is not end game content but to actually 'quest and play the PVE content' 'their own way on each toon'.

There is a major disconnect here, I think between 'understanding how people play' this game. Those that are strictly end game trial/PVP, may be ok with AWA changes. The faithful lore seekers and questers however, it is a lethal blow to their years of loyalty and unfortunately a completely foreseeable profit loss. No crystal ball is needed here as the impact should have been predicted.

So once again, I am hoping this is a bug, otherwise it makes zero logical sense for any company to only allow players to quest once with regards to the lore and their choices. Why bother creating alt toons?

Achievements should not dictate questing choices on alt toons. Otherwise the game will become unrecognizable. I am going to go on faith here and believe this is a bug and not intended. I will keep my fingers crossed and await a response to the player base that this wasn't intended and a time frame for the fix to be implemented to sever the achievements from the NPC reactions and questing choices.

Unfortunately this ship already sailed. I pleaded this case on PTS to no avail. We received zero response on whether these are bugs or are intended from this point on. I'm still hoping they are bugs that will be patched, but I'm not hopeful at this point because of them not addressing this at all. It would be good to post this feedback up in their official feedback thread about update 33 that is at the top of the page.

I suggest NOT making a toon on the other server. The only way you will get to enjoy the stories again on a fresh account is every PTS cycle, and having characters not on one of the servers will allow you a fresh account from scratch 4 times a year if you want to re-experience content without achievements killing it. I'm only playing PTS right now because I just can't bring myself to log into any of my alts this patch at the moment, and I'm on EU PTS where I have no live characters and had to start from scratch to test things. It made me realize the 4 times a year thing if I decide to play through a favorite quest again to get all the proper dialogue trees and appropriate NPC reactions and flavor, at least on one character, before I test the updates.

edited for grammar

I wonder though... imagine for a moment that MS pulled something similar with its clients/customers - selling/hireing the Office bundle (Word, Excel Powerpoint etc), and then doing some massive change mid-stream, where suddenly you can't open any other formats than the ones created by the programs themselves, for example. Or making older formats even from the same program line unreadable (texts in older versions of Word no longer readably by Word). And not explain or say anything about this to the customers beforehand, and ignoring the questions and criticisms of these moves. I can't help but wonder if that would fly at all? Or if that would set them back hard with customers.

Difference is, of course, that Office caters to private users as well as companies big and small. A game is just a game (sarcastically meant).

Could any other nieche than gaming behave like this to its customers?

nickl413 · March 2022

All because some people wanted access to titles and furniture they unlocked on an alt. But ZOS had to go the extra mile and make it a big part of an update. Nobody asked for what we got.

peacenote · March 2022

nickl413 wrote: »

All because some people wanted access to titles and furniture they unlocked on an alt. But ZOS had to go the extra mile and make it a big part of an update. Nobody asked for what we got.

Yes. What seems to have happened is, they felt they needed to prune the achievement database but instead of being honest about that, they "sold" it to us as being what we asked for and only admitted that it had to do with performance when there was backlash. While not actually directly addressing or even acknowledging the feedback and suggestions besides just saying we couldn't opt out (which frankly was pretty obvious without a Q and A).

At BEST, if we want to give the benefit of the doubt, the people who decided to market these changes as AwA didn't understand the nuances behind how it is done well and were really hoping everyone would be excited, but because it was being done for performance they were stuck when it turned out people were upset. However imo they should have known - and done better - since mods, detailed descriptions of what people wanted, and implementations in other games had been around a long time for easy reference.

I think most polls showed that lots of people wanted account-wide rewards, such as titles, and many people wanted an account-wide view, like what the mods did, and some wanted the dyes behind the super grindy monster trophies, which are truly ridiculous achievements and should have been addressed with better drop rates. Very few people truly couldn't stand seeing repeat alt pop ups and wanted the erasure of alt data but that probably could have been addressed with two toggles: turn off repeat achievement pop ups and turn on account wide only achievement view. IF they were truly trying to give us what we wanted, as opposed to masquerading a back end performance issue as something we wanted.

Kirawolfe · March 2022

Remathilis wrote: »

Is the dialogue based on an achievement check or a skill line check? Not all my characters have the skill line, so it seems checking for the skill line to be present would fix this.

Great idea. That'd be all I'd need. Tweak some things to fix how NPCs talk to your new, completely unrelated character.

Remathilis wrote: »

Now, that probably won't fix Razumdar calling my Ebonhart hero an old friend in Summerset just because the AD toon knew him, but that seems like a minor inconvenience.

It breaks the story for me.

I'm hoping they'll be able to fix quest responses and make them based on the skill line instead of the achievement. Player achievements for everything you've done in the game, combined from all of your characters, is a great idea. Your character being recognized in a quest for something he didn't do, makes no sense.

sarahthes · March 2022

nickl413 wrote: »

All because some people wanted access to titles and furniture they unlocked on an alt. But ZOS had to go the extra mile and make it a big part of an update. Nobody asked for what we got.

That's not why I wanted account wide achievements.

I wanted all the cumulative monster trophies, PvP Kill x of Y, dungeon kill xx monsters, justice system sell xx to a fence achievements to be global.

I also did some zone quests on one toon and some on others and I wanted those to be cumulative as well because questing isn't my jam and the thought of replaying a quest just... No. I had started redoing quests on my main that I'd done with other toons and I clicked through them so fast I accidentally murdered some people...

KMarble · March 2022

I ran the new dungeons on my NB yesterday. She isn't my first character and has NOT done Elsweyr yet. Ja'zi greeted her as if they've already met.

Iselin · March 2022

There seems t be a lot of misinformation, outright lies and possibly also bugs about how the game reacts to your character after AWA,

Most if not all character choice, completion, etc. reactions and instancing are still character specific.

For example: I only have one character that completed the quest in Murkmire about the frog-powered musical instrument where you broker a deal for them to be exported. This one character and only that character out of my 18 sees an Argonian musician at the beach in Vulkhel Guard playing that instrument. That was the case before and still is after AWA.

Stuga the stalker still stalks any character that has not accepted her quest to talk to the ambassador and doesn't bother those that have.

I have yet to see any interaction, anywhere, treat one of my characters as if they have done something that they haven't.

LostHorizon1933 · March 2022

I find the topic title is better if you read it in Vicereeve Pelidil‘s voice, with the same emphasis as used on Khenarthi’s Roost: “The Silvenar MURDERED?!”

tonyblack · March 2022

I wonder, did anyone even test it before blaming all on AwA, which have nothing to do with it? Out of curiosity i did first Blackwood quest and Eveli correctly react to my character who haven’t met her before with no extra dialogues. I assume same with dark brotherhood membership (though my alt complete it so I can’t check that).

tonyblack · March 2022

KMarble wrote: »

I ran the new dungeons on my NB yesterday. She isn't my first character and has NOT done Elsweyr yet. Ja'zi greeted her as if they've already met.

Not true, my main did all elsweyr quests, my alt isn’t and he greeted my alt as a complete stranger.

kringled_1 · March 2022

Iselin wrote: »

There seems t be a lot of misinformation, outright lies and possibly also bugs about how the game reacts to your character after AWA,

Most if not all character choice, completion, etc. reactions and instancing are still character specific.

I have yet to see any interaction, anywhere, treat one of my characters as if they have done something that they haven't.

Most, I will give you. It's definitely not all. Most because most of the reactions are related to quests which are character specific.
My list of things that I am sure are not functioning as before the update includes: clivia tharn in wgt (emperor achievement), Choixth in Summerset and Murkmire, Melina Cassel in the Reach, the Adoring Admirer in Blackwood, NPCs in fargrave that are associated with "the grasp of the stricture" achievement. All of these are tracked by achievement only and have no corresponding quest, and fixing them to be character specific is problematic now. There's probably others
The subject of the OP, Blackwood quest interaction with DB membership was either overlooked or was trickier because the achievement it looked at was not a story line quest achievement. It should be fixable by looking at either a relevant dark brotherhood quest or DB skill line status.
I agree that there's definitely some misinformation out there and less of this is buggy than some posters present. That doesn't alter the fact that the update definitely broke some of these interactions, and ZOS went full ahead with it knowing that these would happen and that some cannot be restored to a character specific state because the data is now gone.

Magenpie · March 2022

Iselin wrote: »

There seems t be a lot of misinformation, outright lies and possibly also bugs about how the game reacts to your character after AWA,

Most if not all character choice, completion, etc. reactions and instancing are still character specific.

For example: I only have one character that completed the quest in Murkmire about the frog-powered musical instrument where you broker a deal for them to be exported. This one character and only that character out of my 18 sees an Argonian musician at the beach in Vulkhel Guard playing that instrument. That was the case before and still is after AWA.

Stuga the stalker still stalks any character that has not accepted her quest to talk to the ambassador and doesn't bother those that have.

I have yet to see any interaction, anywhere, treat one of my characters as if they have done something that they haven't.

I agree about the misinformation/misunderstanding. I have 10 alts all over the shop in terms of story. None of them (so far) have had any out of place conversations or have had any misattributed accolades. IIRC there are some janky moments storywise but they've always been there. So for example, I'm pretty sure Raz has some overly familiar conversations with you in Summerset, but I *think* he's always done that?

And believe me, I was as worried as the next person about how AwA would pan out if it affected the storylines in such a ham-fisted way, and I would definitely be complaining about it, but it hasn't had the drastic effect on my narratives as I feared. Perhaps I'm missing things.

kringled_1 · March 2022

sarahthes wrote: »

nickl413 wrote: »

All because some people wanted access to titles and furniture they unlocked on an alt. But ZOS had to go the extra mile and make it a big part of an update. Nobody asked for what we got.

That's not why I wanted account wide achievements.

I wanted all the cumulative monster trophies, PvP Kill x of Y, dungeon kill xx monsters, justice system sell xx to a fence achievements to be global.

I also did some zone quests on one toon and some on others and I wanted those to be cumulative as well because questing isn't my jam and the thought of replaying a quest just... No. I had started redoing quests on my main that I'd done with other toons and I clicked through them so fast I accidentally murdered some people...

I was cautiously optimistic about account wide when they were announced in the live stream. My disappointment is almost entirely with details of the implementation.
I have not seen a single poster who advocated for keeping monster trophies character specific. They are notoriously grindy in the rng way. I got a couple of them in the roll up.
I don't begrudge you the pvp slayers, some are very slow because they are underplayed classes, etc. Got one in the roll up.
I have a lot of the dungeon slayers...and I don't understand the attraction. They are filler achievements to me, surrogates for "did you run this dungeon x times",with no rewards prior to this other than xp, and literally nothing now.
Black market mogul, well, account wide only helps people a little bit unless they are stealing quite a lot across multiple characters. It accelerated my completion by maybe a couple of weeks, but if you're not putting in dedicated stealing time it won't happen account wide or not.
I'm not sure what the benefit is with respect to zone quests other than the achievement for x zone quests tied to house purchases.

In return for these benefits (real but not huge to me) the biggest thing I lost is my optional to do list of getting delve/wb kills in overland, and for getting dungeon/trial achievements on multiple roles/classes. Some of this I can track via spreadsheet but it was nice to get confirmation from the game on things like speedrun and the achievement ding is nice.
Now I have fewer than a dozen wb left in the whole game, no delve bosses outside of Cyrodiil, and only a few no deaths for dungeons other than the two new ones. Makes it much easier to just log off and do something else.

Ilsabet · March 2022

Okay y'all, I have done some actual research.

My main character has done everything Dark Brotherhood and everything Gates of Oblivion. I gunned through the beginning of the Blackwood main quest with an alt that has done nothing Dark Brotherhood, nothing Gates of Oblivion, and nothing Orsinium, so she hasn't even met Eveli before. This is all on live, PC/NA.

Exhibit A: Lolly's guild skill lines, which do not include Dark Brotherhood.

Exhibit B: Lolly's Dark Brotherhood achievements, which include everything my main has done except the Litany of Blood, which is still character-specific.

Exhibit C: The conversation with Eveli after a certain murder is discovered, in which Dark Brotherhood members are forced to tell Eveli they're Dark Brotherhood members.

According to UESP, this is the dialogue that non-members get, so it looks like ZOS at least found one thing to not mess up.

I didn't continue to the conversations about the letter, since this seemed pretty conclusive to me, but I can check those too if anybody's not convinced.

Kesstryl · March 2022

Ilsabet wrote: »

Okay y'all, I have done some actual research.

My main character has done everything Dark Brotherhood and everything Gates of Oblivion. I gunned through the beginning of the Blackwood main quest with an alt that has done nothing Dark Brotherhood, nothing Gates of Oblivion, and nothing Orsinium, so she hasn't even met Eveli before. This is all on live, PC/NA.

Exhibit A: Lolly's guild skill lines, which do not include Dark Brotherhood.

Exhibit B: Lolly's Dark Brotherhood achievements, which include everything my main has done except the Litany of Blood, which is still character-specific.

Exhibit C: The conversation with Eveli after a certain murder is discovered, in which Dark Brotherhood members are forced to tell Eveli they're Dark Brotherhood members.

According to UESP, this is the dialogue that non-members get, so it looks like ZOS at least found one thing to not mess up.

I didn't continue to the conversations about the letter, since this seemed pretty conclusive to me, but I can check those too if anybody's not convinced.

Thank you for this detailed test. I admit we need more detailed tests like this. I'd like to know if some of the things reported on PTS were stealth fixed. I can't bring myself to log into my live chars yet, and I don't know how to do this yet without alts getting attributed things I don't want them have achievement wise. Yeah I could run the addon, but just even knowing it's there hurts my OCD. With PTS being EU, I'm still slowly gaining achievements on a brand new account so my testing is very limited.

Saieden · March 2022

kringled_1 wrote: »

Iselin wrote: »

There seems t be a lot of misinformation, outright lies and possibly also bugs about how the game reacts to your character after AWA,

Most if not all character choice, completion, etc. reactions and instancing are still character specific.

I have yet to see any interaction, anywhere, treat one of my characters as if they have done something that they haven't.

Most, I will give you. It's definitely not all. Most because most of the reactions are related to quests which are character specific.
My list of things that I am sure are not functioning as before the update includes: clivia tharn in wgt (emperor achievement), Choixth in Summerset and Murkmire, Melina Cassel in the Reach, the Adoring Admirer in Blackwood, NPCs in fargrave that are associated with "the grasp of the stricture" achievement. All of these are tracked by achievement only and have no corresponding quest, and fixing them to be character specific is problematic now. There's probably others
The subject of the OP, Blackwood quest interaction with DB membership was either overlooked or was trickier because the achievement it looked at was not a story line quest achievement. It should be fixable by looking at either a relevant dark brotherhood quest or DB skill line status.
I agree that there's definitely some misinformation out there and less of this is buggy than some posters present. That doesn't alter the fact that the update definitely broke some of these interactions, and ZOS went full ahead with it knowing that these would happen and that some cannot be restored to a character specific state because the data is now gone.

Even this just shows that stuff is hard coded to specific interactions, rather than having a proper modularized and abstracted architecture, and is then just simply not fit for scalability (adding new content). Imagine building a car with parts from random models and manufacturers, and the builders are expected to just force everything together. It might run at first, but over time things wear away much faster, and to boot it's constantly having new things like different trailers and other components strapped onto it.

It leads to all kinds of maintenance problems, and implies a host of potential internal problems, everything from the code review process to time constraints on developers. For the kinds of release cycles that they have committed to, it is simply unsustainable.

Adventurer · March 2022

The reason why I made this thread is precisely because there isn't a list of what has been broken or not, there's just random comments in various threads like "my non-DB member was greeted by an NPC as if they were in the DB" or "the characters call out to you less with specific titles like "hero/saviour"etc.", so I was hoping we could get more clarification on what works and what doesn't, because right now I haven't logged into my characters yet and want to wait until I see what can't be replayed and experiencing it first so I don't miss out on it.

As for Summerset, UESP lists variations of dialogue (although some is still missing, I remember last time I checked the relic conclusion quest in after Betknih was still missing dialogue for some companions for both choices), and Razum Darr is supposed to have different dialogue based on whether it's your first time meeting him there, or if you've met already in the base game. The same thing happens when you meet in the Dark Brotherhood DLC.