Hot Take: AWA is good

jad11mumbler · May 2023

Daggerfell0929 wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Here is my take on account wide achievements.

Because getting 100% of all achivements means all holiday limited time achives, all trifectas, getting rank 50 in pvp, playing a *** ton of BGs. I doubt there are more than 20 players on PC NA that have 100% all achives even with AWA

The game has been out for almost ten years lol.

jad11mumbler · May 2023

Browiseth wrote: »

i can't believe we live in a world where this is a hot take

zos removing one of the most pointless and arbitrary grinds (doing achievements all over again) is one of the best changes they ever made

Because its not a hot take.
It's only a vocal minority that dislike AWA.

kargen27 · May 2023

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Kendaric wrote: »

I hate AwA with a passion.

As someone who often plays non-standard characters like Ashlanders and Reachmen, I can no longer prevent certain achievements from showing up on those characters. And then there's the problem of delve boss spawn timers being tied to the achievement, which basically makes doing delves on alts annoying as hell.

How is this even a consideration since YOU earned the achievement and not the character? Your goody two shoes paladin still have never entered a dark brotherhood sanctuary even if he has the silencer title for optional use. I'm sure someone invested enough in the RP aspect to create a Reachman or an Ashlander knows exactly what the toon has done and has not done in its story.

You could not have earned that achievement without the character and the character could not have earned the achievement without you. It was a joint effort between you and the character. A character should not get credit for something the character was not involved with.
Many were fine with account wide achievements so long as individual achievements still existed. I wasn't one of those many as I feel account wide almost anything isn't healthy for the long term health if the game. But as it was going to happen no matter what I had hoped I would still be able to play my characters as individuals. Unfortunately I cannot.

Elsonso · May 2023

jad11mumbler wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i can't believe we live in a world where this is a hot take

zos removing one of the most pointless and arbitrary grinds (doing achievements all over again) is one of the best changes they ever made

Because its not a hot take.
It's only a vocal minority that dislike AWA.

Sadly true. Equally sad is that they also make up a portion of a core demographic for the game.

FantasticFreddie · May 2023

jad11mumbler wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i can't believe we live in a world where this is a hot take

zos removing one of the most pointless and arbitrary grinds (doing achievements all over again) is one of the best changes they ever made

Because its not a hot take.
It's only a vocal minority that dislike AWA.

Part of the reason we are in such small numbers now is so many people quit.

Of the people I got GS with, a core that was mostly static for well over a year, only 2 still play the game at all.
That's just one group. I would say at a minimum, at least 20 people I regularly played with prior to AWA quit the game completely. It changed the way I play too. I found myself getting frustrated in training runs, a desire to help new people can only sustain you for so many hours, especially when most of them are people you really don't know because all your friends quit.
I played more solo content, eventually got into some new teams doing the content I wanted to do. I don't repeat much of anything, I don't lead anything, I only join training runs when specifically asked and only as a fill.

My play time is likely less than half of what it was, and I don't think I've bought crowns since... not out of protest or anything, just because when I'm in game less I care less about everything in it.

greenmachine86 · May 2023

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

I'm curious what progress tracking did you use achievements for before AWA? The game tells you which quests to do so beyond that what, roleplaying? Personally I love AWA now I can take the proper toon for the trial or dungeon instead of worrying about ensuring the achievement or title is on my main toon.

I used the old achievements to track what dungeons each of my DDs, healers and tanks had completed.

El_Borracho · May 2023

Mik195 wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

SoraJP wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

My main gripe with AWA is trying to find what group dungeons a character has not done, or what group event in a public dungeon a character has not done. Usually an issue when trying to amass skill points on a new build or expanding a PVP build. Should have kept those separate

You can see which group dungeons your character has done on the world map. If the character got that skill point, it will be white. For the ones with a second visit you have to hover over it to see if you have 1 of them, if you have both then the whole thing turns white.

Public dungeons turn white when you have completed the group event (this is a character-specific achievement) and have done the quest(s) associated with it.

Oh, I know, but AWA removed the far more convenient way of looking in your achievements for dungeons.

As for the group event in the public dungeons, no, they do not turn white when completed. I thought they did, too, but recently did the one in Eastmarch. It wasn't white but after completing the group, it was clear I already did it.

I'm on console so the fact that delves turn white when I walk by them is a problem. I'd rather they wait until I pick up the skyshard.

Same, but at least they now tell you if the skyshard is undiscovered, discovered, or acquired. when you hover the icon over it

SimonThesis · May 2023

I love AWA! Having 18 characters I don't want to have to redo achievements and quests on all of them. It allows my Pvp toons to have the vet trial titles and my pve toons to have pvp titles like Former Emp and GO.

ArchangelIsraphel · May 2023

jad11mumbler wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i can't believe we live in a world where this is a hot take

zos removing one of the most pointless and arbitrary grinds (doing achievements all over again) is one of the best changes they ever made

Because its not a hot take.
It's only a vocal minority that dislike AWA.

It's a vocal minority now because many of the players who hated AWA quit playing the game all together. Those of us who didn't have learned to adapt to this travesty because we enjoy other aspects of the game as well, but still loathe AWA. Mostly, we hate how badly it was implemented, when it could have been done far better with some actual forethought and planning by ZOS to revamp the system. Instead it was rushed out broken, and remains one of the worst decisions the company has ever made in the minds of many.

It is also likely that many of us have fallen silent because we're just tired of repeating ourselves over and over again, when our objections to the system fall on deaf ears, and continue to fall on deaf ears.

Lumsdenml · May 2023

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

jad11mumbler wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i can't believe we live in a world where this is a hot take

zos removing one of the most pointless and arbitrary grinds (doing achievements all over again) is one of the best changes they ever made

Because its not a hot take.
It's only a vocal minority that dislike AWA.

Part of the reason we are in such small numbers now is so many people quit.

Maybe people you know quit, but there are actually more people playing now than before u33. Stream charts have 17,885.6 average players for February 2022 (u33 was March 22) and for April 23 there were 18,182.9.

SerafinaWaterstar · May 2023

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Daggerfell0929 wrote: »

Every other MMO has account wide achives, it is the industry standard. WoW, New World, FF14

Care not a jot what other MMOs do.

I used achievements to track character progress across all my 18 chars. Now its a hot mess. And seriously decreased my playing time as it just gets annoying when you can’t do a zone properly without half of it being marked as complete after you put on foot in it.

Achievements should never have been a way to monitor progress, but it was all there was. Zone guide is ok but generally not that helpful. And has been pointed out, new zones have skyshards all marked off once done on one char.

And no, can’t use add on as on console. Thank the gods for the ESO app otherwise I’d be weeping over pen & paper.

I'm curious what progress tracking did you use achievements for before AWA? The game tells you which quests to do so beyond that what, roleplaying? Personally I love AWA now I can take the proper toon for the trial or dungeon instead of worrying about ensuring the achievement or title is on my main toon.

No, not ‘roleplaying’. Used it to track skyshards, wbs, points of interest, world events, dungeons, etc. that each char had done. All quite big parts of the game, seeing as it encourages exploration. Now, once take a char into a new zone, most already marked as completed, which makes playing a bit meh.

(Was used to taking different chars into trials as main is a nb - so was never really bothered about titles. Only good ones are Witch, Pirate & Scoundrel. And Master Wizard 😉)

Elsonso · May 2023

Lumsdenml wrote: »

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

jad11mumbler wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i can't believe we live in a world where this is a hot take

zos removing one of the most pointless and arbitrary grinds (doing achievements all over again) is one of the best changes they ever made

Because its not a hot take.
It's only a vocal minority that dislike AWA.

Part of the reason we are in such small numbers now is so many people quit.

Maybe people you know quit, but there are actually more people playing now than before u33. Stream charts have 17,885.6 average players for February 2022 (u33 was March 22) and for April 23 there were 18,182.9.

Anyone who starts the game after ZOS drops changes that are not universally popular will be impacted to a lesser degree than those who were there and established before it. People who started after U33 were not as impacted by AwA because they have no investment in character achievements. Likewise, people who started after U35 were not as impacted by the combat changes introduced in that update. ZOS correctly banked on new players backfilling disgruntled players who left the game during 2022.

FantasticFreddie · May 2023

Lumsdenml wrote: »

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

jad11mumbler wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i can't believe we live in a world where this is a hot take

zos removing one of the most pointless and arbitrary grinds (doing achievements all over again) is one of the best changes they ever made

Because its not a hot take.
It's only a vocal minority that dislike AWA.

Part of the reason we are in such small numbers now is so many people quit.

Maybe people you know quit, but there are actually more people playing now than before u33. Stream charts have 17,885.6 average players for February 2022 (u33 was March 22) and for April 23 there were 18,182.9.

Idk if those numbers are meaningful. A lot of people don't bother with steam (myself included), April 2023 there was a free play event, and 300 people (the difference between 17,885 and 18,182) is not actually that many overall.
It also doesn't account for people like me-- who still play, but much less.

valenwood_vegan · May 2023

I hate how this kinda gets turned into an us vs. them thing... I don't really see many (if any?) people calling for AwA to be reversed, or angry about the fact that grindy achievements don't need to be repeated on each character now (and that all characters' contributions to them are counted).

There are flaws in the way AwA was implemented that IMO should have been and can still be addressed, and pointing those out is useful (ZoS has actually fixed one of them, allowing certain encounters like the adoring admirer, the end of the Ravenwatch quests, etc, to be redone on new characters) and this is quite different from disliking AwA and wanting to cancel it.

ghastley · May 2023

The problem is that Achievements combined things that related to the player, and to the character. We all wanted the player aspects to be one and done, bur would like the character tracking to remain. Perhaps the cut wasn’t always in the right places, such as true style master coming from the same racial styles on six characters, where they should have counted distinct ones, but the overall intent to separate the two aspects was right.

Let’s nitpick those details, and not AWA as a whole, and remember that for some mistakes, the data to fix them is gone.

Elsonso · May 2023

ghastley wrote: »

Let’s nitpick those details, and not AWA as a whole, and remember that for some mistakes, the data to fix them is gone.

Maybe... maybe not. Last time I checked, it was still there. At least... for characters that had not been logged into in the last year. That would likely be the vast majority of characters, actually. The question is whether they delete the data once it is migrated. Even then, there are millions of characters in that database waiting to be migrated.

kargen27 · May 2023

SimonThesis wrote: »

I love AWA! Having 18 characters I don't want to have to redo achievements and quests on all of them. It allows my Pvp toons to have the vet trial titles and my pve toons to have pvp titles like Former Emp and GO.

then don't redo the quests. Why do you want titles on characters that didn't earn them? Not that it matters now but Zos could have given account wide titles without the need for account wide achievements. Titles on characters wouldn't have changed the game so drastically negative as it did for a large portion of the player base.

"I hate how this kinda gets turned into an us vs. them thing... I don't really see many (if any?) people calling for AwA to be reversed, or angry about the fact that grindy achievements don't need to be repeated on each character now (and that all characters' contributions to them are counted)."

No point in calling for it to be reversed. You fry an egg and you can want to put the egg back in the shell to hatch a chick all day long and it isn't going to happen. Can't happen.
And yeah many many many of us voiced our opinions before the change that we saw the changes even to the "grindy" achievements as something negative that would greatly impact how we play the game. Most have since quit speaking out against account wide achievements because it is a done deal that could never be changed back. Those of us that continue to speak negative about it do so in large part to try and dissuade ZoS from even farther changes to moving things account wide instead of character wide.

tmbrinks · May 2023

I love that the major argument for "loving AwA" is that "I don't have to do all the quests and achievements on all 18 characters now!!! Yay!" /s

You never had to do this before... it was only your personal idiosyncrasies that was making you do so...

and for that those that actually enjoyed repeating content on other characters have irrevocably lost that ability...

This could have been implemented so much better, so much feedback completely disregarded... and years of a particular playstyle just wiped out, to save a database that would be measured in the low Gigabytes of size.

As I said earlier. I play less... and I pay less. I only hope somebody at ZoS has noticed that their decision lost them revenue from many long-term, loyal players.

ArchangelIsraphel · May 2023

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

I hate how this kinda gets turned into an us vs. them thing... I don't really see many (if any?) people calling for AwA to be reversed, or angry about the fact that grindy achievements don't need to be repeated on each character now (and that all characters' contributions to them are counted).

There are flaws in the way AwA was implemented that IMO should have been and can still be addressed, and pointing those out is useful (ZoS has actually fixed one of them, allowing certain encounters like the adoring admirer, the end of the Ravenwatch quests, etc, to be redone on new characters) and this is quite different from disliking AwA and wanting to cancel it.

Agreed wholly. Especially since during much of that long battle on the PTS forum, so many of us were advocating for AWA to exist, but in a better form that gave players an optional character journal to track individual completion in. We wanted to enable multiple playstyles to continue existing.

So many people assumed that we wanted to cancel it totally, when that wasn't the case. We understood where AWA was of benefit and where it was not for certain playstyles.

So many really good suggestions for how it could be fixed were flat out ignored.

And honestly, it worries me when a company needs to compromise the player experience to make the database fit new content. It leaves you asking "what goes next?" Especially since they seem unwilling to put the resources into making the database better. It reminds me of my teenage self in the early 2000's trying to cram as many files as possible on a 200gb hard drive =_=; (and the saddest part is that the character achievements likely took up very little space at all)

Elsonso · May 2023

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

(and the saddest part is that the character achievements likely took up very little space at all)

Well, I think we can assume that the database was/is not the most efficiently designed masterpiece. I think that the scale of what ESO became may have caught them off guard. I get the distinct impression that they designed it for considerably fewer players.

ArchangelIsraphel · May 2023

Elsonso wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

(and the saddest part is that the character achievements likely took up very little space at all)

Well, I think we can assume that the database was/is not the most efficiently designed masterpiece. I think that the scale of what ESO became may have caught them off guard. I get the distinct impression that they designed it for considerably fewer players.

I agree. And given the scope of ESO's popularity, time should have been put into optimising the database far sooner, before it became a problem. Then if they wanted AWA, they could have accommodated a system that would have allowed players to opt into individual tracking.

spartaxoxo · May 2023

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

There are flaws in the way AwA was implemented that IMO should have been and can still be addressed, and pointing those out is useful (ZoS has actually fixed one of them, allowing certain encounters like the adoring admirer, the end of the Ravenwatch quests, etc, to be redone on new characters) and this is quite different from disliking AwA and wanting to cancel it.

This is true. But some of that issue is that what some consider "flaws" others consider "features" that they want to keep. For example, some like knowing what character ended up with the achievement but don't necessarily care if every character can earn their own achievement. So, they wouldn't be helped by the names being removed from achievements. Meanwhile, many others consider this a major flaw of the system and want either character names removed or for it to only display a character name if that particular character earned the achievement. Others consider it a flaw that quest achievements aren't per character while others are happy that they are account wide because they don't want to have earn them again.

Since there are different tastes and the update wasn't optional, I think it will always be a topic with mixed reception.

Personally I mostly enjoy how AwA was implemented and I found myself spending more afterwards as well. But, I can also understand why others didn't. It's too bad it wasn't optional, but that ship has unfortunately sailed.

valenwood_vegan · May 2023

Yeah I do totally get that we all have different opinions about AwA. I just wanted to try and (hopefully) explain better how I don't actually dislike the idea and am not "against it", but more upset with how it was implemented in a way that broke (for me) some parts of the game where ZoS had been using achievements as a way of tracking other things... like each character's map completion... certain encounters (which they did fix, must give them a wee bit of credit for that :P), easily being able to tell which characters have done which dungeons on vet / hm, and other stuff like that.

I fortunately found a great addon called "Character Zone Tracker" that makes the map properly reflect what each character has / has not done in each zone... that has helped me quite a bit to live with the changes. I think that's a good example of the kind of more practical problem that ZoS *could* have put a bit more effort into solving... that kind of thing bothers me a lot more than the consolidation of the achievements themselves.

jad11mumbler · May 2023

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

jad11mumbler wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i can't believe we live in a world where this is a hot take

zos removing one of the most pointless and arbitrary grinds (doing achievements all over again) is one of the best changes they ever made

Because its not a hot take.
It's only a vocal minority that dislike AWA.

It's a vocal minority now because many of the players who hated AWA quit playing the game all together.

Even when AWA was announced, those of us who didn't like it were in the very small minority.
We were vocal then too, but that was nothing compared to those in favour of AWA at the time.

Lumsdenml · May 2023

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

jad11mumbler wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i can't believe we live in a world where this is a hot take

zos removing one of the most pointless and arbitrary grinds (doing achievements all over again) is one of the best changes they ever made

Because its not a hot take.
It's only a vocal minority that dislike AWA.

Part of the reason we are in such small numbers now is so many people quit.

Maybe people you know quit, but there are actually more people playing now than before u33. Stream charts have 17,885.6 average players for February 2022 (u33 was March 22) and for April 23 there were 18,182.9.

Idk if those numbers are meaningful. A lot of people don't bother with steam (myself included), April 2023 there was a free play event, and 300 people (the difference between 17,885 and 18,182) is not actually that many overall.
It also doesn't account for people like me-- who still play, but much less.

Oh, I think that people playing on steam is a minority, so I'm sure they're are a lot more than the average (18,182.9) says, but I do believe that trends are relatively accurate. I dont think stream has any significant difference to their player base than non steam players.

Jaraal · May 2023

Lumsdenml wrote: »

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

jad11mumbler wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i can't believe we live in a world where this is a hot take

zos removing one of the most pointless and arbitrary grinds (doing achievements all over again) is one of the best changes they ever made

Because its not a hot take.
It's only a vocal minority that dislike AWA.

Part of the reason we are in such small numbers now is so many people quit.

Maybe people you know quit, but there are actually more people playing now than before u33. Stream charts have 17,885.6 average players for February 2022 (u33 was March 22) and for April 23 there were 18,182.9.

Idk if those numbers are meaningful. A lot of people don't bother with steam (myself included), April 2023 there was a free play event, and 300 people (the difference between 17,885 and 18,182) is not actually that many overall.
It also doesn't account for people like me-- who still play, but much less.

Oh, I think that people playing on steam is a minority, so I'm sure they're are a lot more than the average (18,182.9) says, but I do believe that trends are relatively accurate. I dont think stream has any significant difference to their player base than non steam players.

Over 1/3 of the PC players use Steam.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/584393/pc-players-only-do-you-play-eso-through-steam/p1

Elsonso · May 2023

Jaraal wrote: »

Over 1/3 of the PC players use Steam.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/584393/pc-players-only-do-you-play-eso-through-steam/p1

Correction: of the people who participate in the forum, 1/3 claimed they were a PC player and played through Steam.

jle30303 · May 2023

I have said all along - I said it earlier in this thread - I'll say it again:

Account wide *achievements* are a good thing, for having done any given quest or sequence of quests once.

Account wide *titles* are a good thing. I don't have a problem with you using your "Godslayer of Sunspire" title on another character. Anyone who can do a thing once, is capable of doing it again.

Account wide *cumulative achievements* - "kill 750 of monster X" "do 30 of quest Y" - is a good thing. There is no need to worry about "which character completed it" - they ALL did, collectively.

BUT, Account wide *completion* of features such as delves, world bosses and dolmens is a BAD thing. Especially when done in a half-baked way so that things which are not even "discovered" on one character can go to "completed" when you walk by within shouting distance, without ever actually doing it.

The error made, was that the game literally ties completion of these things to the achievements system, whereas these things are the things that should - like Public Dungeons and indeed like regular Dungeons - be tracked separately. So that even if there is an Achievement for having done them once, *it should not mark them as completed on the map for all characters*.

There is also far too much in the way of dialogue, that seems to be dependent on the achievements system rather than actual quest completion. You shouldn't have Dark Brotherhood options in your dialogue unless you have done the relevant part of the Dark Brotherhood quest line ON THAT CHARACTER: a character who does not even have access to the Blade of Woe should NOT be forced, by Eveli Sharp-Arrow, to actually declare that they are the new Silencer of the Dark Brotherhood, to continue progressing the Blackwood questline, because you completed the DB on a completely different character! And people in-game should not congratulate a given character for things not done by that character: these things should be tracked by quest flags, not by achievements.

Jaraal · May 2023

Elsonso wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Over 1/3 of the PC players use Steam.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/584393/pc-players-only-do-you-play-eso-through-steam/p1

Correction: of the people who participate in the forum, 1/3 claimed they were a PC player and played through Steam.

Sure, if you think almost 500 poll responders aren't representative of the overall PC login distribution.

That's like saying the number of forum participants who are blonde haired is not representative of the overall PC players.

Elsonso · May 2023

Jaraal wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Over 1/3 of the PC players use Steam.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/584393/pc-players-only-do-you-play-eso-through-steam/p1

Correction: of the people who participate in the forum, 1/3 claimed they were a PC player and played through Steam.

Sure, if you think almost 500 poll responders aren't representative of the overall PC login distribution.

That's like saying the number of forum participants who are blonde haired is not representative of the overall PC players.

There is no way for us to validate the responses against the overall population of the game, let alone the PC population or the Steam population.