Why aren't some ESO Players happy about account wide achievements?
By Alcast | 1 Mar 2022 |
Today we are going to take a look at why some ESO (Elder Scrolls Online) players aren't happy with how the account wide achievements are implemented in U33 Ascending Tide DLC. Beginning with the new Update 33, most of your achievements will be tracked on an account-wide level. Alongside the account wide achievements Undaunted rank progression has also been changed.
A quick recap of what the account wide achievements mean:
- Once you unlock an achievement on one character, you can purchase furnishings that require achievement completion on any character. For example some antiquity furnishing items require you to complete achievements before you can purchase them.
- Titles are now also account wide. Now you can equip any title with any character.
- You will need to login to each character so the game can "collect" all the achievements and add them to your account.
- Exceptions that are still tracked via character and not via account:
- Enchanting Rune knowledge
- Motif Crafting knowledge
- Lorebooks read
- Skyshards obtained by a character
- Public Dungeon Group Event achievements
- Dragonguard Sanctum daily achievements
This all sounds good right? So what's the fuzz about? Why aren't all players happy with the account wide achievements in ESO? To give you a feeling of how much fuzz this created, the test server thread discussing the account wide achievements recently reached 80 pages of comments and had to be heavily moderated due to baiting, flaming and trolling.
Most ESO players are of course very happy with account wide achievements being implemented, some things just could have been done a bit better to improve the overall experience.
Individual Character Progression is lost in ESO
Some players like to farm achievements on every character they play. With the new update they won't be able to do that anymore. Therefore they aren't able to receive achievements on a new character if they have already gotten them on another character before. For example endgame players like to farm achievements of the more difficult dungeons or trial hardmodes on each character, this won't be possible anymore.
Some players asked if it was possible to at least add the names of characters that received that achievement to the achievement list. However, ZOS said that this would nullify the database optimization and therefore won't happen.
Titles can be used by any ESO character after creation
Going forward any new character can equip any title that you have earned in your achievements. That means you could wear a Tick-Tock-Tormentor title on a level 3 character. The endgame community dislikes this option, because now you can't really see anymore which character truly "earned" the title. This also counts for PVP titles that can now be used on any new character.
The developers of ESO stated this was done because titles are received through achievements. Therefore they can't track it per individual character anymore because it is only tracked on the account level.
Level 3 Tick Tock TormentorImmersion of the game experience is broken
Players stated on the forum in this thread that immersion is broken with the new account wide achievements for ESO. Certain quests in ESO could only be done once per character. Now they will only be done once per account due to how they are tracked.
Certain NPCs also react to new characters as if they knew them, even though they have never met them. This is also a byproduct of how these quests were tracked via achievements. Dialogue can differentiate sometimes when you have an achievement unlocked for a story segment or a simple quest. Now with account wide achievements this seems to be a problem because NPCs can't "check" who they know or who they don't because the tracking was done via achievements.
This might be a small oversight and we hope it gets fixed before this goes live. The developers haven't responded to this question yet.
ESO Players asked for an Opt-In system for Account Wide Achievements
Some players asked if it was possible to create an opt-in system for the account wide achievements. This would allow for players to pick whatever they prefer. However, the developers already stated that this won't be possible. Like we mentioned above, one of the main reasons this change was done is to optimize the database. Because on an account level the database has a lot less entries compared to when it has to track everyone on a character level.
You can also watch a video of Alcast discussing the topic.
Complete Developer FAQ about account wide achievements
ZOS, the developers of ESO responded to most of the questions that players had in this thread.
The thread was opened by Gina Bruno, a Senior Community Manager:
"Hi everyone, thanks so much for staying patient while we worked through gathering answers to some of your questions about Account Wide Achievements. We know everyone is extremely passionate about achievements. So much, in fact, that globally we have granted over 1 billion achievements! As high as that number is, this surprisingly isn’t the largest footprint of player generated data. As ESO continues to grow and evolve, we need to be proactive and find ways to ensure the data will always be available in real time.
Lately, we have been working on ways to trim the data footprint while still recording all the monsters you slay, items you hoard and achievements you ding. By consolidating achievements, we can retain and improve the way the game handles this type of data and the overall experience. With the database’s overall footprint reduced, it will more performant across the board, which may manifest itself in faster load screens and improved performance on other database-heavy operations. Most importantly, however, this change helps keep the game performant as we continue to add new content and achievements in the future.
Now that you have some context for the backend benefits of Account Wide Achievements, we’d like to get into the Q&A. If you have additional questions or feedback, we encourage you to post your questions/feedback here."
Q: Why switch to Account Wide Achievements?
A: We decided to move to Account Wide Achievements for two main reasons. First, this has been a requested feature by players for years and is a nice quality of life improvement. It gives players a lot more freedom to explore the world on any character, without the fear of missing out on getting achievements or making incremental progress on their “main” character. Second, as mentioned in the intro, this change will result long term maintainable database stability and performance. By reducing the amount of data we have to store, the database doesn’t have to work as hard so the time it takes to search, load and save data will be sped up, leading to a more consistent user experience as the years go by and more data is added to the database.
Q: Are there plans to track individual character progression or identifying which character completed an achievement first?
A: Completed achievements will display the name of the character that first completed the achievement, as well as the date it was first completed. The initial account achievement merging process takes this into account and will auto-update the achievement to display the earliest completion date and character. Tracking individual character progression nullifies the database improvements that Account Wide Achievements bring and isn’t something we can implement without losing those benefits.
Q: Why will Titles also be account-wide?
A: Titles are included with the Account Wide Achievement feature because they are granted via the achievement system.
Q: Can Account Wide Achievements be opt-in? Why/Why not?
A: Account Wide Achievements cannot be opt-in. As noted above, one of the big reasons why we decided to move to Account Wide Achievements is the performance gains we get on the backend. Being able to opt-in essentially wipes out any performance gains.
Q: How will Account Wide Achievements affect PvP achievements? Will skill point-related achievements be per character?
A: Alliance War rank is character based, so any skill points you get from ranking up are still earned that way (though note the achievements and titles are account wide.)
Q: How will Account Wide Achievements work with meta-achievements that require multiple achievements to unlock?
A: All meta-achievements should still work as usual under Account Wide Achievements. Multiple characters can now contribute progress to account wide meta-achievements.
Q: What happens with achievements that have some portions completed on one character and other portions completed on a different character? Will they combine?
A: Partially completed achievements will have their progress combined. If the combined progress unlocks the achievement, then the character that supplied the completing progress gets credit. For example, let’s say there is a Skyshard achievement with 18 Skyshards. If you first log into character A who has completed the first 15 Skyshards, then log into character B who has completed the last 3 Skyshards, character B will get credit for completing the achievement.
Q: What happens with kill-related achievements that have partial completion on one character and a different number of kills on another character? Will they combine?
A: Yes, total kills will combine.
Q: What will happen if an achievement is bugged on a character? (Ex: if it is showing as completed on one screen but not complete on the meta-achievement)
A: Upgrading to Account Wide Achievement may fix some bugged achievements along the way, but this isn’t the aim of the feature so there is no guarantee. The best way to get a bugged achievement fixed is still to submit a bug report so we can address it in a future patch
Q: If an achievement is unlocked on one character and then “copied” to another, will the achievement be lost if the original character that earned it is deleted?
A: Once you log into a character after Update 33 launches, the character’s achievement progress will be “copied” into the account’s achievement progress. If this character is then deleted, the only data that will be lost is the character’s character-wide achievements.
Q: How are museum quests affected by Account Wide Achievements?
A: Right now, we’ve made it so all museum Achievements are character-based to allow characters to participate in finding each museum’s objects and obtain the reward for doing so. We are continuing to explore a better solution to this problem but wanted to ensure you can at least continue earning these rewards on all characters in the meantime.
Q: What will happen to the character-specific achievement data once this goes through? Will there be a way to revert the process if something goes wrong?
A: We will have backups of all the data in case of an emergency, but as noted earlier, much of this effort is a performance initiative and great for the long-term health of the game. As such, we do not intend to revert this unless we run into some sort of catastrophic bug.
by
Alcast
1 Mar 2022
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