Back in January, ZeniMax Online Studios announced that as part of Elder Scrolls Online’s next update, achievements would be made account-wide. That change was emphasized in yesterday’s preview of the update as well. But apparently, some players are deeply unhappy with the change and have been agitating, rather loudly, to stop the studio from going forward.
So what’s the problem exactly? Many vocal players on the official forums and Reddit have argued that account-wide achievements would harm the game’s replayability on alts as much as they would help, as well as invalidate the rarity of displaying hard-won titles. Others have pointed out that treating grindable achievements as replayable content is a different problem, one that would not be solved by dumping the account-wide plans. Surprisingly, the most recent Reddit discussion seems to suggest that more people want account-wide than don’t, even if they’re cautious about it.
But even gamers who welcome the change are still supporting those asking ZeniMax to make this feature opt-in so that per-character achievements aren’t entirely scrubbed away with the update, which seems like a reasonable request and one that is already met in many other MMOs with account-wide perks and records.
However, in the ZeniMax Q&A posted last night, the studio reiterated its position that account-wide achievements are a frequently request and introduced the idea that the shift will improve database performance for the game. The studio clarified that it won’t make its account-wide system opt-in, but it is preserving at least some per-character records.
“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.”
Players should probably check out the entire Q&A to see exactly how the switchover will affect them, but it seems pretty likely that not everyone is going to walk away happy.
