Repurposing the Gates of Adamant into a Chapter Select feature

Enodoc

The Keywright's Gallery was a great concept, but was never able to fulfil its true potential by virtue of its existence being tied to the Tutorial quest. Despite it being a nexus for all of ESO's main storylines, you could literally never return to it once you'd used only one of the gates. Now that Soul Shriven in Coldharbour is being restored as the One True Tutorial, the Keywright's Gallery looks to be consigned to the trash alongside all the other tutorial locations that we can no longer visit. But what if it wasn't?

You remember how the original Main Quest ends? You've hit Level 50, defeated Molag Bal, and Cadwell has a new quest for you if you would just touch the Light of Meridia... But messing with temporal metaphysics doesn't always lead to the intended outcome; rather than being ported straight to the second alliance to start Cadwell's Silver, you fall out of a rift on the isle of Balfiera, along with one of Molag Bal's Harvesters who's bent on stopping you get any further. The quest is literally already written from that perspective. Yes there would need to be a few tweaks here and there to remove the tutorial aspects, switch out the skyshard for some other form of meteoric glass, and perhaps add a bit more narrative, but the core of the existing Gates of Adamant quest would fit perfectly into this scenario. And since this is no longer a tutorial location, once you've completed the updated quest, you would be able to return to the Keywright's Gallery at any time, either via the Lights of Meridia in the Harborages, or because it literally already has a wayshrine in the foyer, and continue through any of the other portals.

A bonus would be that you get to visit Norianwe again, and maybe she would have new dialogue on the regional questlines once you've completed them.

This proposal is based on unlocking the Chapter Select feature with the Light of Meridia after completing the Main Quest, but it could just as easily be inserted straight after Soul Shriven in Coldharbour. Rather than falling out of the sky on your alliance starter island, you fall out of the sky on Balfiera, and Shyazzel is still there to stop you getting any further.

Of course this would also work nicely alongside some of my previous ideas, like retiring Cadwell's Almanac and replacing it with a full Story Guide, as well as restoring and repurposing the old Chapter Intros and getting the Prophet back on the Starter Islands.

I still have a post to make sometime about making sure the Prologue quests properly link up with the Zone Story they are prologuing as well...

LunaFlora

would be nice yes

Legoless

It's such a waste to scrap the island entirely.

Ashnarug

It would be nice but nowadays you are in CP levels when you defeat Molag Bal.

Ajaxandriel

Who had that awful idea to bring back the vanilla intro to begin with??

Aliyavana

We should go back to Balfiera eventually. Direnni ruins have little to no presence on High Rock where they were most prominent during the Direnni Hegemony, nor ruins near Markarth in Skyrim or Elinhir in Hammerfell, which the book '''Once''' once stated they held territory around.

Instead, for some reason, the Ayleids have overtaken Elven ruin representation in High Rock, when they also have representation in Cyrodiil, Valenwood, Hammerfell, Black Marsh, and even the Planes of Oblivion. If you do CTRL+F in https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Elven_Ruins you will see 109 hits for Ayleid ruins. They were overrepresented as it is. Where are the Direnni Ruins?

Northwold

Ajaxandriel wrote: »

Who had that awful idea to bring back the vanilla intro to begin with??

A lot of people suggested this who had thought about how the game plays to a new player who started after the different chapters were introduced. It was completely incomprehensible, leading to an awful player experience and, presumably, a lot of people quitting within days (I certainly did with my first, and second, goes). The alternative would have been to devise a completely new main quest structure that could somehow accommodate the chapters, which would be an absolutely massive undertaking.

The narratives in the game simply didn't make sense, in the worst "is this game bugged or is it me" way, not helped by being able to play quests that needed to be played in sequence out of order, without any indication that there *was* a quest order, weird black chain things coming out of the sky with no explanation what they were, people calling you "soul shriven" all the time when you didn't know what that was, a world narratively divided into alliances and people behaving as if you couldn't get from alliance A to B when you could just use a wayshrine without ANY story context to even begin to suggest that once the game had been divided into three factions, etc, etc. It was horrendous.

The subject came up time and time again on the forums, on steam, on reddit, etc.

Rkindaleft

Ajaxandriel wrote: »

Who had that awful idea to bring back the vanilla intro to begin with??

They changed it back because it was way too hard for a player who's never played the game before to follow the storyline. It's also why they changed the DLC or chapter intro quests to appear after a certain level and not as soon as you finished whatever tutorial because a new player gets yelled at from 20 different directions telling them to go 20 different zones as soon as they start which is too confusing.

I would agree that the Coldharbour tutorial should get a revamp of some sort, as it's a little outdated in terms of graphical appeal and what it teaches you.

ZOS_Kevin

Rkindaleft wrote: »

I would agree that the Coldharbour tutorial should get a revamp of some sort, as it's a little outdated in terms of graphical appeal and what it teaches you.

Just to note, while not a full revamp, we did do some work on the tutorial to flow a bit better for new players. Not to negate that more can always be done, but we did do a Quality of Life pass at how some of the tutorials are handled. To make them better to engage with than before.