Endeavor language is inconsistent and weird

sleepy_worm

"Heal 60000 Amount" does not sound like good English to me. "Amount" is not a unit of health. It's not really a unit of anything. I'd like 3 amount, please.

The capitalization is also rather odd. They want us to update an "Outfit," which is a thing in the game so I suppose it could be a proper noun. But they want us to do it 1 "Time," which is a bit of a stretch. Meanwhile, they refer to something as an "Enchanting table," so Enchanting is a proper noun but an Enchanting Table is not? Feels weird, I tell you.

liliub17_ESO

I think it's just lazy language usage. Not sure what word should be capitalized? Why not capitalize them all and let Akatosh sort them out!

The "1 time" is odd; using the word "once" would have been sufficient.

"Heal 60,000 amount" should have been "Heal 60,000 HP" or an appropriate variant.

LouisaB75

I just wish they would stop saying stone atronachs are in Craglorn.

AcadianPaladin

It seems to me they are using one of the generally accepted ways of applying book or chapter titles: Capitalize all words except the minor 'helping' or 'connective' words like a, an, the, with, at, etc.

I do agree that heal 60000 health would probably be a clearer choice than amount.

IsharaMeradin

I think someone just forgot to remove the word Amount when they put in the actual amount. I get the feeling that it may have been intended as placeholder text. i.e. "Heal [Amount] with Scribed Skills"
But instead, someone set it up as "Heal [x] Amount with Scribed Skills". Which when you have a variable such as X the use of amount does make sense. For both the coder and the end user, "Heal [X Amount] with Scribed Skills" would probably be for the best.

sleepy_worm

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

It seems to me they are using one of the generally accepted ways of applying book or chapter titles: Capitalize all words except the minor 'helping' or 'connective' words like a, an, the, with, at, etc.

It seems that way until you hit the lowercase "T" in "Enchanting table."

virtus753

sleepy_worm wrote: »

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

It seems to me they are using one of the generally accepted ways of applying book or chapter titles: Capitalize all words except the minor 'helping' or 'connective' words like a, an, the, with, at, etc.

It seems that way until you hit the lowercase "T" in "Enchanting table."

ZOS has an in-house style guide regarding what gets capitalized. I believe it was mentioned in a dev post once, but I’d need to find it again. The loading screens also provide some good examples of this capitalization. It would likely be possible to reconstruct the guide based on observation, but it doesn’t seem to be a typical ruleset you’d find in general use.

Beyond the capitalization and awkward phrasing, endeavor language does have issues with factual accuracy at times, like how they say “afflict X enemies with poison” when they mean “apply a weapon poison X times” (even to the same enemy, if you like). Or “Use 50 skills with skill styles” when they mean use (any number of) skills with skill styles 50 times. In these cases the language is actually incorrect, not merely awkward.

Similar to how for the Honest Toil quest they say you can “unearth an antiquity or treasure chest” when they mean “unearth an antiquity or loot a treasure chest, thieves trove, or safebox.” (Every year I see a lot of confusion from people who think they need treasure maps for this because that’s the only way to “unearth” a chest. The wording is wrong in that unearthing is not required.)

AcadianPaladin

sleepy_worm wrote: »

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

It seems to me they are using one of the generally accepted ways of applying book or chapter titles: Capitalize all words except the minor 'helping' or 'connective' words like a, an, the, with, at, etc.

It seems that way until you hit the lowercase "T" in "Enchanting table."

Good point.

I've been doing endeavors so long that I've learned them all through trial and error. One of the more curious ones for me was translating 'kill beasts' into 'kill wolves'. Silly me for thinking, at one time, that crocodiles or trolls could be beasts.

Seriously though, I'm quite pleased with both the endeavor and golden pursuit systems.

virtus753

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

sleepy_worm wrote: »

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

It seems to me they are using one of the generally accepted ways of applying book or chapter titles: Capitalize all words except the minor 'helping' or 'connective' words like a, an, the, with, at, etc.

It seems that way until you hit the lowercase "T" in "Enchanting table."

Good point.

I've been doing endeavors so long that I've learned them all through trial and error. One of the more curious ones for me was translating 'kill beasts' into 'kill wolves'. Silly me for thinking, at one time, that crocodiles or trolls could be beasts.

Seriously though, I'm quite pleased with both the endeavor and golden pursuit systems.

One of the (unpublished) rules about those kill quests is that each enemy fits into one kill quest type. Trolls have their own dedicated “kill troll” endeavor. Crocodiles fall under “kill reptiles.” They do not double dip even when they would by nature. For game purposes they have a single category in terms of kill type.

Other “beasts” include bears, senches, harpies, echateres, mammoths, and skeevers (per UESP - I can confirm some of those from my own experience).

whitecrow

liliub17_ESO wrote: »

The "1 time" is odd; using the word "once" would have been sufficient.

Or better yet, just "update an outfit."

zaria

virtus753 wrote: »

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

sleepy_worm wrote: »

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

It seems to me they are using one of the generally accepted ways of applying book or chapter titles: Capitalize all words except the minor 'helping' or 'connective' words like a, an, the, with, at, etc.

It seems that way until you hit the lowercase "T" in "Enchanting table."

Good point.

I've been doing endeavors so long that I've learned them all through trial and error. One of the more curious ones for me was translating 'kill beasts' into 'kill wolves'. Silly me for thinking, at one time, that crocodiles or trolls could be beasts.

Seriously though, I'm quite pleased with both the endeavor and golden pursuit systems.

One of the (unpublished) rules about those kill quests is that each enemy fits into one kill quest type. Trolls have their own dedicated “kill troll” endeavor. Crocodiles fall under “kill reptiles.” They do not double dip even when they would by nature. For game purposes they have a single category in terms of kill type.

Other “beasts” include bears, senches, harpies, echateres, mammoths, and skeevers (per UESP - I can confirm some of those from my own experience).

This, Aragonias are not reptiles, the one I hate is void creatures. Iron golems are better after High Isle as they spawn in the volcanic events.

My favorite is cast ultimate x times, on an sorcerer, you can also one bar an bear on a warden.
Update an outfit, use an memento.

majulook

Just a quick PSA

Voskrona Guardian's are considered Stone Atronachs and can be found in Solstice

LouisaB75

majulook wrote: »

Just a quick PSA

Voskrona Guardian's are considered Stone Atronachs and can be found in Solstice

Thanks for that.

Wasn't going to do that endeavour today as I have already done the decon one and thrown my poor arcanist from the crows nest of my ship to do the healing one, though she is apparently part cat from the amount of times she landed on her feet. Was just going to update an outfit for the third but may not have to now as I will be doing the Solstice WB quest and I think that is the one due today.

Danikat

sleepy_worm wrote: »

The capitalization is also rather odd. They want us to update an "Outfit," which is a thing in the game so I suppose it could be a proper noun. But they want us to do it 1 "Time," which is a bit of a stretch. Meanwhile, they refer to something as an "Enchanting table," so Enchanting is a proper noun but an Enchanting Table is not? Feels weird, I tell you.

I used to work with someone who wrote like this. As far as I could tell any word which was considered important in a sentence, heading or label was capitalised, even just in normal emails.

And yes, my employer had a style guide too, but having a guide and making sure everyone uses it are two different things. More than once something went out with seemingly random capitalisation because no one else had time to fix it.

code65536

liliub17_ESO wrote: »

The "1 time" is odd; using the word "once" would have been sufficient.

First, the game has 7 officially-supported languages, and special forms like "once" are very much language-specific.

Second, the amount that is asked for is not always 1. Could be 2 or more. So the text that they use is actually "Update an Outfit <<1>> <<1[Time/Times]>>" in English, "Mettez une tenue à jour <<1>> fois" in French, etc.

AlnilamE

As others have pointed out, the capitalization follows what's called "Title Case", with the exception of the word "table".