ESO - Worried about Data Loss

[letskeepthegoodthings]

Hi,

I hope it is Ok to post this here, if not feel free to just delete the post.

ESO is releasing a change that's going to result in many character-specific accomplishments and histories to be erased. A lot of folks are saying they are going to quit due to this and it seems a sad result for a great game. The upcoming feature that's causing this is welcomed by many; it is just the implementation that's problematic.

Some excellent add-on creators have expressed that they probably will not have interest in the game after this goes live, which is also a shame and why I thought I would post the petition to help get the word out about the concerns here: https://chng.it/CCq8bxh2

There was a petition a while back to get attention on the changes being made to Orbs and how it affected healers, and it did result in a change, although how much the petition had to do with it I certainly couldn't say.

Anyway, that's all. Thanks.

[Messajah]

Wow talk about hyperbole and overreaction.

They're just making some achievements account-wide to reduce grinding per-character. LOL.

In other words, they're making the game more alt-friendly, so that people can relax and enjoy having multiple alts.


Edit: Here is clarification about how the account-wide achievements work. Like I said, there is no data loss.

[Baertram]

To Messajah: You do not seem to pay attention here and did not dig into technical detail, nor test this on PTS right? At least your answer really reads like that...
So please try to read and understand before writing next time, instead of trying to mitigate the problem which is obviously a big one for some players, if you'd have read the official forum posts linked in the petition.
Thank you for your understaning.

As explanation summay:
It's not about that it is added, which was mentioned to be totally okay, but about the HOW it will be added by ZOs:
Every player having managed to collect the achievements info with several chars will loose the progress and just the first char loggedin will be used to store the overall progesss of all chars/toons. So the work done is lost.

Ppl just want ZOs to react and change it so that each side benefit from it:
You, as the "simple lol player having to only do the achievents once" as well as "all the others which like to keep track for each single toon, due to whatever reasons...maybe role play or whatever".

In the end there often have been such short-comings which were improved. I hope in the end it will be a solution that will keep the time invested by players, per character, but also provides an account wide achievement possibility for all other players who dislike grinding them again for each toon.

[Psiioniic]

Originally Posted by Baertram just the first char loggedin will be used to store the overall progesss of all chars/toons. So the work done is lost.

Oh, seems I also misunderstood how it works. Do you mean when I log in after the update with a fresh character I will have no account wide achievments, even when I later log in with my main char? That would be advanced stupid...

I always understood the announcement as if the progress is combined and the order in which I log in after the patch does not matter.

[Baertram]

No, the first logged in char afaik will get the progress of the current account and will be "named as the one to have unlocked it" for existing achievements.

The further progress for new achievements is account wide, no matter which char will unlock them. Eiher this unlocking char will be named as the unlocking one then (or maybe the other first logged in char will also be named there).

At least this is what I had understood. Correct me please if this was wrong.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.co...hievements-q-a

Edit:
Maybe it was changed or a bug what I described above as the Q&A says:

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.

But it definately worked somehow other as I first logged in on PTS a few weeks ago. My first logged in char was all of sudden shown as having completed all the achievments, even on another character (who really had completed that achivements).

[Messajah]

There is no excuse for the FUD-spreading by the petition linked by OP.

That petition was made 1 day AFTER the official FAQ-thread (and the FAQ has not been updated since).

The FAQ is clear...

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.co...hievements-q-a

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.

In other words:

- There is no data loss. Log into every character after the change. It will merge all the data into the account-wide storage and updates the database's "earliest character name and date" fields as you log in each character and it finds earlier dates.

Here is more confirmation that this is how it works:

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.

Read the full FAQ linked above for even more details. I've only quoted some of the most relevant parts.

[Baertram]

Thanks for the information. I had missed that FAQ too, before I have seen the petition here.
But your first post was not providing this information. You just wrote some text like "you all overreact" and added a "lol".
If you'd have provided that additional information from the start it would have been on-topic and more helping than just writing something like "your petition is nuts".

Beside that: You are wrong about the data loss, and that's what that petition also is about:

There is no data loss. Log into every character after the change. It will merge all the data into the account-wide storage and updates the database's "earliest character name and date" fields as you log in each character and it finds earlier dates.

Only the 1st char having done the achievement will get the flag. What about all the other chars having done it? This information is lost.
And there exists a wide player base who wnats to track it for all of their toons, not only the 1st one having done it.
I can only repeat myself: The petition is about the "how" it is done (ZOs chose a simple way and says it is about the technics and server speed benefits. Maybe this is 1 reason but there could be other ways to achieve the same, like caching the achievments data at client side so the server access is not needed at each access to the achievements), not "that it will be done".

I also like the server wide achievements, but I totally agree that the already earned character achivements should be kept properly, and not downgraded somehow. Or at least let the players choose. Default: Server wide. The ones that want it different: Old way per toon.
This way they could even see how many players want a or b, and how many keep to use toon achievements. There are a lot of forum posts and players teling them already they dislike ONLY a, and want a + b. So they should listen to them.

[Messajah]

Yeah sorry about the tone of my first reply.

Regarding the tracking of per-character data: They mentioned that their database now contains billions of rows.

Something like this:

Row ID       | Character ID  | Achievement ID | Achievement Status
9132139423   | 9312398138    | 49123821389    | 1298

1 database row per character, per achievement.

Since every character has 1 row per available achievement, then it makes sense that they've now reached billions of database rows. Which means that the time it takes to lookup or update a row is going to be extremely slow now, meaning that the server process will stall/freeze and cause lag for players while it updates the bogged-down, bloated database. And consider that many achievements update every time a mob dies (such as kill X amount of mob Y achievements).

This problem is a result of having a megaserver where every person plays. They can't "shard" their databases into smaller servers.

There aren't any solutions to this except to merge all database rows into per-account instead of per-characters. They've done the math on this and seen the savings they will get, which will allow the game servers to run smoothly without database lag. It's a crisis that forced them to act now. They can't let people keep per-character achievements. It's unfortunately not up to us.

The harm is mostly mitigated by how they implemented this:

1. Every character you login with is merged into the account-wide achievement database.
2. If the character you login with has completed an achievement earlier than what the acocunt-wide database says, then the account-wide record is updated with the earliest achievement date and character name.
3. Therefore, it doesn't matter what order you login with your characters. The earliest one will always be recorded as the one that achieved it.
4. However, incomplete/partial achievements will be merged, meaning that the character that contributed the final pieces of the account-wide version (such as "collect all 18 skyshards" in their example) will be recorded as the character that completed it. So if absolute cleanliness of your achievement data matters, I guess it's gonna be a bit tricky to login in a way that ensures your "main" gets the completion of those partial achievements. But ehhh, that's really, really picky... Try to be happy with the fact that the achievement is done on your account, not what character name it says if you go to "OCD-inspect" that single achievement. How often does someone go in and read their achievements and then gawk at the character names? Does anyone do that? I think the vast majority of people won't care about that. It's a near-invisible detail of the GUI that nobody really goes to look at. I think most people will be happy that their achievement progress merges so that they don't have to waste their IRL health/time doing the same achievement over and over again on alts. The biggest sentiment I've seen is happiness that the achievement grind will finally become easier.
5. ZOS said that if there's some problem with the merging or anything else, they'll rollback and try again later. So no need to worry. Let's see how it goes, and if there's some issues, we can expect outrage and a rollback. :P

[Baertram]

Okay, understood.
But they maybe could let users get some sort of export of the already achieved achievements, per character, so they can keep track of that on their own at least. Or re-import that into any addon letting it update "per character" achievents at local addon SavedVars.

I bet there would be any solution but currently it's just ignored and players fear their data, collected over years, will be just lost and not accessible anymore (at least not for the players).

Well, we'll see. I hope it works out well and does not lead to more disappointed players leaving the game.