@Kesstryl

Thanks for responding....that really is fascinating and understanding you are a writer makes it all make more sense to me. I applaud your ability to play the way you do!

I hope that they move the achievement dialogs to be quest completion based (or something) to alleviate this for you.

I was just saying to my husband that I see (and appreciate) more RP in ESO than I have in any game since Everquest (hey, this is back in the days before WOW....it was one of the few MMORPG on the market then, so there were whole servers devoted to RP). Neverwinter used to have a pretty healthy RP community.....but I havent played that in years.

TPishek wrote: »

Works fine on live for me.

Works fine for me as well, my non-DB/TG characters do not get the "I'm no saint" dialogue option



A character with both DB and TG skill lines

Kesstryl wrote: »

Mythgard1967 wrote: »

Why would you nuke all characters? I admittedly do not ascribe to your particular playstyle as to ME; it is rather extreme to be that devoted to pureness of immersion even down to lower level quests; so I admit I might be not comprehending.

But, wouldn't you need to delete all but one character? And let that character be your "main" to live out the story and then never play alt's again? Which is admittedly extreme and sounds not to be enjoyable at all.

I do really admire your ability to keep that level of detail straight on multiple characters (even without AWA). I wish I had that kind of connection to my characters and stories as you do; my memory just doesnt work that way. I read the quests and enjoy them, but they blend together on multiple characters...except for the really memorable ones (like that naked nord guy) or the ones I have done multiple times.

I can understand that if you have the ability to immerse that much and keep it all straight that you would want to preserve it and losing achievements to track could break that.

We all play differently. Not only do my characters have backstories, and their own epilogues on what they do after they save their own lands, but I chose which content to play through from the game to be the story that belongs to them. I had an RP thing going in my head where when I replay a quest, one character is dreaming about what another character is going through due to their connections in Coldharbor. Yes some people actually use game mechanics to role play mentally through stories. A lot of the dumb responses my characters had to suffer through I role played as snide remarks or simply mentally thought out different response. I don't have a main character. They are all my main characters. They are a cast of characters that I play the game with, no one is more important than another. Even ones I originally created to meta end game with ended up with their own stories and connection to the main cast.

I'm a writer, this is how a writer's brain works. ESO was like a writer's theme park for character and immersion with the voice acting and level of detail this game had. I can't get that in other MMORPGs on this level. Granted ESO isn't perfect and needs to really work on its own writing, I can only get better voice acting and immersion in single player games, and only a very small handful of MMORPGs actually has voice acting, and only one pulls it off similarly to ESO. Plus I love ESO lore. The world building is rich when combined with the single player games. ESO had something special that other MMORPGs didn't have, and ZOS totally ruined it with this update. I hope ZOS realizes how special and unique their game was with immersion and fixes this because this is what made their game stand out in the huge list of MMORPGs out there.

I'm getting mixed responses from people on live, some say NPCs are ok now, some say they are still broken, can more people test the list out and help us? Otherwise those of us who want answers won't get them until the next PTS cycle because ZOS will not say a single word about this or even acknowledge it.

I will be joining the testing soon too. On live.

I have already deleted the characters I want to delete prior to Update 33 (including those who completed Markarth. Call me silly...but I really really want a very special character to go through that storyline and be able to see that Epilogue).

I could not delete all of my toons though. There were a good many who...I just couldn't bear to see them gone. Including my main, who has a good number of story achievements. Her achievements should add to a good large pile (luckily, I never got around to finishing Markarth on her).

I think I will start with Clockwork city and run through the entire questline. I will post results when I am able.

ectoplasmicninja wrote: »

I would like to contribute to the testing but unfortunately don't have the time to do it properly currently (work is absolutely nuts right now and will be for months). I suspect that by the time I do, we will probably already have a detailed spreadsheet of things that work correctly and things that don't.

I feel you on the Markarth epilogue, @Wolf_Eye. It saddens me greatly to think I might never get to see that play out again. Or hell, maybe it all actually works fine on live and ZOS is just giggling watching people go nuts over these things. Though if that were the case, you'd think they'd be kind enough to tell us, no?

It wouldn't be the firs time they "shadow fixed" something, but I would certainly hope they'd be kind enough to tell us in patch notes.

I would....really prefer to take my time and not rush through the story again since I'd only have one shot. I can't even really use EU server either, because I want that to stay free of achievements (that way, when EU is in PTS, I can always have a "brand new experience" whenever I want. And the PTS will always be wiped again and again so it goes on for infinite).

I'm also not sure I'm very eager to give ZOS more money for more accounts + Greymoor + Markarth, only to find out they HADN'T fixed it....

I wish they would talk to us. The Markarth epilogue wrapped things up so nicely, it was a beautiful and brief conversation with a very dear character that gave us his last thoughts. I don't consider the storyline complete without it.

KMarble wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

KMarble wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

Vrienda wrote: »

Is it possible the PTS is behind live still? Might be an idea to test all this on live where possible.

I agree, but since I never logged in and I'm thinking about deleting all my chars to wipe clean my achievements to carefully curate them from the beginning so I don't get immersion problems, I'm not logging in live. I'm hoping ZOS will fix their game with how AwA is causing these immersion issues so I don't have to resort to the nuclear option. Honestly, the thought of that is exhausting and I'm more likely just going to let my account go into cold storage and pass my guild to someone else through a level 3 alt that has no achievements. If saving the most important thing to me in ESO means deleting all my characters and starting over, including ones that will never have the beginnings they once had (old tutorials now forever gone because of Direnni Island), then it's time to just move on to another MMO. I've played many of them, it won't be hard to pick up where I left off and funnel money I once gave to ZOS to someone else that doesn't shred their game for alt characters like this, including ones that do have their own AwA AND individual character achievements and complete quest logs.

If I understood things right, deleting your characters will accomplish very little other that erasing the "earned by" part. Achievements are saved to the server, not your computer, and since most achievements are now tied to account instead of character, you'll lose a lot (motifs, furnishing plans and recipe learnt), but not what you want.

The only way you can start with a clean slate is to create another account.

People please read what I wrote, I said I HAVE NOT logged in on live yet since this update hit. Right now my achievements have not been moved account side yet. I haven't talked about the "earned by" thing, though that bothers me too, but can be fixed with addons, my beef is the way achievements effect NPC dialogue trees and ambient NPC chatter as your character walks by. I don't even know if I can nix any achievement that won't effect NPCs but I already bombed my DB/TG character when this update hit due to reports like this from PTS.

PTS used the NA server for TWO WEEKS when the bugs were at their worst, then moved to EU where it's stayed ever since. I've had to get achievements on a new PTS account because I don't have one on EU live. It has been slow going to even begin to see how the NPC reports play out and if things were fixed during the PTS cycles because they were never acknowledged or were mentioned in the PTS patches. This is beyond frustrating. I've straight out asked @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_Kevin several times to get information about the state of NPCs, and for whatever reason, ZOS is choosing to not talk about it at all.

Kesstryl, I've been reading what you've posted since you joined the discussion about AWA in the PTS. In fact, I was there already when you joined and was already pleading with them to post-pone AWA.

I understand that you're angry and hurt, but you're directing your frustrations to the wrong person. I'm trying to give you advice because once you delete your characters there is no turning back.

As you said, information from the devs is lacking, and none of us know for sure if deleting all the character in one account will prevent future characters from being "contaminated" with achievements already earned by the deleted ones.

What will happen if you destroy everything you've created so far in game just to find out your new character has those achievements?

My apologies for sounding angry, and I do know the ramifications of everything I'm thinking of. That's why in the end I'm probably not going to play. I've already deleted three alts, one of them was my end game DK tank who's name I don't want on some achievements I wanted for another alt because she did them first, one of them my Dark Brotherhood/Thieves Guild alt for obvious reasons, and my end game Warden Healer who also got some achievements at an earlier date that I wanted for another character. Because achievements right now are so intertwined with the game in ways that ruin immersion and the way I play and that doesn't get fixed, I'm eventually going to just fade out of this game and community and let my account go into cold storage. It's not what I want, and I want to give ZOS time to fix some of the issues with how achievements are intruding way too far into game play because I know fixes take time and they have a lot of other issues they are dealing with right now. I'm keeping the NPC issues with AwA front page in the hopes I am heard and they are gracious enough to give players like me the chance to have the game world be like it was before and enjoy it again. If they decide this isn't important and they want ESO to be a chat room where players simply meet to raid and beat what the game throws at them, and the RPG aspects are no longer a part of their vision, then I will go because my play style and money are not important to them. I'm really hoping players like me are important to them and they do want to keep us around. I'm not the only one who's spoken up about the issue of immersion, but I am probably one of the loudest ones.

Ilsabet wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

Ilsabet wrote: »

Okay this is Molly the Bookworm on PC/EU. She is level 4 and has no guild skill lines unlocked. DB and TG achievements provided by EU Ilsabet.

Molly's skill line and achievement stuff:

Tarnamir's dialogue:

Verdict: Achievements do not affect Tarnamir's dialogue, and characters who do not have either TG or DB skill line(s) unlocked will not get the "I'm no saint." dialogue option that leads to him acknowledging membership in those groups.

Probably still worth mentioning that characters with those skill line(s) unlocked still have the option to sidestep the TG/DB dialogue by choosing the other option.


Hee, I just realized that Lolly and Molly rhyme. Also I think Tarnamir is checking out her booty in that first shot.

I am very tired.


Edit: The plot thickens, yo.

Molly snagged herself a thieves trove near the Russafeld Heights wayshrine, which conveniently unlocked the TG skill line.

I had previously ditched Tarnamir's quest, so I went back to talk to him and start it again, expecting the "I'm no saint." dialogue option to be there this time. But...

I'ma let somebody else figure that out. I think my work here is done.

Achievements do affect getting whether the "I'm no saint" option shows up or not, you proved that on your live Lolly, and your PTS Lolly. The option showed up on your live Lolly, but not your PTS Lolly. I don't think opening the skill line achievement effects it, I think it's the achievements associated with joining those guilds that trigger this dialogue option. I only tested the Dark Brotherhood one on PTS, and specifically only did their main quest and none of the dailies. My non-DB alt who never even stepped into the Gold Coast got the "I'm no Saint" option. That needs to be decoupled from achievements and moved to whether the individual character has completed the quests to join those guilds or not.

All of my testing was done on live. Lolly (in the first post) is on PC/NA, and Molly (in the second post quoted here) is on PC/EU. On both servers, my main character Ilsabet has gotten the displayed achievements which carried over to the alts.

In my initial testing with Molly, the "I'm no saint." option did not appear even though she had EU Ilsabet's achievements. That's why I figured the line must depend on whether the skill line is unlocked, and that's why I'm flummoxed about why it still didn't appear even when she had both the achievements and the skill line.

The only thing I can think of is that there's a specific achievement that triggers it, that NA Ilsabet has gotten but EU Ilsabet hasn't. EU Ilsabet hasn't gone through the complete quest line for either TG or DB, so that may be the difference.

Ok I see it now, thanks for getting my attention I don't know if you wanted to complete one of the quest lines on your EU account to see if that will trigger the dialogue in your non alt, but that might settle this for sure.

Adventurer wrote: »

Bethgael wrote: »

You're misinformed, I'm afraid. These are tied to player achievement flags, not completion ones on individual characters.

This is from live, right?

Yep. I don't play the PTS because I don't like to spoil myself. Spoil-er myself? You get the drift.

Side note: also a writerbrain. I find this whole situation extremely frustrating.

Ilsabet wrote: »

Today Captain Medusa Herring is taking a break from pirating and being generally lazy to see whether any random townsfolk wish to give her credit for heroic deeds she had nothing to do with. PC/NA, live.

The Daggerfall town crier is making a big deal about a plague in Camlorn that Medusa is pretty sure someone else has already taken care of:

(She does not, however, appear to be terribly concerned about the large mostly-naked man punching local residents.)

Medusa was hoping this fellow would offer to buy her an ale, but instead he seems to be complaining about that friendly dog she met earlier:

So that was all fairly disappointing. But then she ran across this drunk ghost, who thought Medusa had vanquished a dungeon she's pretty sure she can't even go to yet:

Come to think of it, Medusa hasn't even run across those Undaunted swabs yet. She should probably do that sometime.

There was also a fellow in Daggerfall who thought Medusa was the one who brought those Pellingare brats to justice, but Medusa is pretty sure she hasn't been in those particular sewers.


So it seems like group dungeon achievements are triggering ambient comments, even if the character hasn't completed the dungeon(s) themselves, but at least with these particular zone quests, the commentary is based on quest completion rather than any related achievements other characters may have earned.

This is awesome! Would you be willing to submit this as an official bug report to ZOS? I posted it on the PTS bug reports, but this is your testing and they will probably start ignoring me after awhile because I've been too vocal lately. This is very important and is one of the reasons why I've thought about deleting all my characters to clean my account of dungeon achievements and figure out which achievements trigger immersion breaking events (for those reading and not caught up, I have not yet logged in on live since the patch hit). I'm holding off in the hopes they will fix these bugs. This is very depressing though, and even if some NPCs were fixed between patches, there's still a lot of stuff that AwA has broken.

Dungeon NPCs can still be moved to fire off quests because people always do the dungeon quests. This would be an easy fix, just needs time made for it by ZOS.


Edit - I am keeping track of everything reported here in a document. If others test something and get specifics, I'll add those. I'll eventually make a google docs for everyone, but I'm swamped with work at the moment. If someone wanted to start one, I can add what I have in there.

I do need to make one correction to my earlier post about Medusa's dungeon-related chatter. Here's my edit to that post:

Ilsabet wrote: »

There was also a fellow in Daggerfall who thought Medusa was the one who brought those Pellingare brats to justice, but Medusa is pretty sure she hasn't been in those particular sewers. Okay I need to retract this one, I hopped into Wayrest 1 to make sure, and there's no quest-giver there so it appears Medusa has actually completed it on some random normal or other. I'll move this one to the "inconclusive" pile and see if she gets any other comments on dungeons she has or hasn't done.

I was about to include a snarky comment about how it would be handy to have a simple list of which group dungeons a character has or hasn't completed, and then I remembered that the What Pledges at my Alts addon is great, so I can use that to refer to at least a few dungeons that are pledges this week. (And that does confirm that Medusa has done Wayrest 1.)

So my apologies for posting something based on an assumption without verifying it first.


I will probably submit a bug report about the VoM thing, since that's got easy screencap evidence and I'm super sure she hasn't done that dungeon yet.


Edit: Did a bunch more invading people's personal space and the only dungeon-related line I got was the same line from the same guy about the Pellingare brats. So I think that's gonna stay inconclusive on my end.

I did however get more quest-related lines that properly reflected incomplete quests, so that's good.

Thank you for testing this so thoroughly

I have a character who's just doing the Markarth prologue right now. I'll run him through Markath proper, and see if Verandis is there at the very end.

My main (made after my return, now my fav) started in the prison with Fennorian (wish that was still available), and she's gotten the achievement for Ravenwatch, so this will be a good test.

I was at least heartened to see that Verandis doesn't act as if he knows you in Markarth if the toon your on hasn't done Rivenspire, but another toon has completed it. He acted friendly towards the other toon, but not the toon I tested with after U33.

Kesstryl wrote: »

They are a cast of characters that I play the game with, no one is more important than another. Even ones I originally created to meta end game with ended up with their own stories and connection to the main cast.

I'm a writer, this is how a writer's brain works. ESO was like a writer's theme park for character and immersion with the voice acting and level of detail this game had.

I'm in the same boat, and I am a writer as well.

My last character I made became the lead in the book I am currently working on. I used ESO for that creative process, and now I can't.

So, for myself, I've moved on. They have outright refused to talk to us on any level in these last 2 months. I can't reward that degree of contempt by giving them my support any more.

dzugarueb17_ESO wrote: »

Can't decide if I want to be glad the players are doing it, or to be sad the players and not ZOS are doing it.

ZOS has never said anything is wrong with the NPC interactions, outside of museum quests. Working as intended, apparently.

Adventurer wrote: »

And Elam Drals supposedly has different dialogue sometimes in Deadlands if you've done Blackwood.

Elam doesn't show up in the Deadlands until the epilogue, which you only get if you've done both Deadlands and Blackwood. So that one can't happen any other way.

Adventurer wrote: »

And if characters that haven't completed a DLC dungeon get vanilla dialogue in places that refer to them, like Fennorian saying something else if you've completed Unhallowed Grave.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Fennorian#Killreath_Temple

My main character has done all Dark Heart of Skyrim content including prologues, and completed Unhallowed Grave and Icereach.

Ran Lolly through the Greymoor questline until she met Fennorian. She has not done Unhallowed Grave (or the old Greymoor tutorial), and she properly got the dialogue for characters who have never met Fenn before.


Also, when Lolly spoke to Lyris, she recognized her as the Vestige. Lolly was created when the game started with the Wailing Prison tutorial (although the Prophet is still waiting for her to show up at the Harborage). According to UESP, Lyris has 4 possible greetings in Solitude, depending on whether the player has done any of the Main Quest, Icereach, or the Greymoor prologue, or it's their first time meeting. Lolly has not done Icereach or the Greymoor prologue, so the Vestige greeting was appropriate for her.

Also, this is definitely how you introduce yourself to royalty:


Checked in on Lyris with Medusa, who has not done the Wailing Prison or any of Lyris' other recognition triggers, and she properly got the dialogue for a first meeting:


One thing that is potentially janky, although not necessarily related to account-wide achievements, is that Lolly had two instances of dialogue options about having seen the Icereach Coven in action before. This was her first Dark Heart content, so I'm not entirely sure what that is supposed to refer to, except that UESP indicates the second instance is for characters who have done the Greymoor tutorial, which Lolly did not do. The "Bound in Blood" quest from that tutorial does not give an achievement, so there's nothing that Lolly could have inherited from another character. (I think I did run that tutorial with another alt, but that character was deleted to make Medusa well before Update 33.) Similarly to Tarnamir, there's another dialogue option for people who want to bypass the references to things that do not apply to them.


And a confirmed issue: Medusa is not able to eat mammoth cheese in the giant camps in Western Skyrim after inheriting my main character's "Giant Cheese Connoisseur" achievement.


Medusa also spent some time hanging out in Mournhold and Dhalmora, and nobody had much of anything to say to her aside from some entirely uncalled-for comments about some safeboxes she happened to trip over.


Allllso Medusa hopped into Shipwright's Regret to meet fellow captain Za'ji, and he appropriately did not recognize her since they've never met in person before:

Don’t think when ZOS started and implemented the idea of AWA they had any idea how much it would affect the game. Now they are lost because there is no easy fix for the mess it has created which is why they are not really saying anything about it. It will take them months and months of work to address everything that is affected by achievements and not story completed. Not to mention how it will affect how they program and change the game going forward.

Without realizing it they just created mountains of extra work for themselves. Which in turn will be a lost for us because there are only so many developer hours to work on the game. Considering Rich said it would take someone months to change Dragonstar arena and he thought that time would be better spent working on new stuff rather then going back and changing older content. Either ZOS will not fix the problems AWA created or will fix it but in turn be less new content we see because of the hours stolen of developer time to address the problems AWA created.

In short, we have lost either way by a broken game or less new content.

Stay safe and enjoy Springtime