In response to player feedback on the forums regarding the implementation of the Account-Wide Achievements system announced for Update 33, Zenimax Online Studios developers responded to player concerns with a Q&A address:
Account-Wide Achievements Response
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 isnât 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 databaseâs 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, weâd 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 âmainâ 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 doesnât 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 isnât 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, letâs 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 isnât 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 âcopiedâ 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 characterâs achievement progress will be âcopiedâ into the accountâs achievement progress. If this character is then deleted, the only data that will be lost is the characterâs character-wide achievements.
Q: How are museum quests affected by Account Wide Achievements?
A: Right now, weâve made it so all museum Achievements are character-based to allow characters to participate in finding each museumâs 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.