Maintenance for the week of October 12:
• PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – October 12, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) – 8:00AM EDT (12:00 UTC)
• Xbox One: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – October 14, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) – 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®4: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – October 14, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) – 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
• PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – October 12, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) – 8:00AM EDT (12:00 UTC)
• Xbox One: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – October 14, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) – 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®4: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – October 14, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) – 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
The Markarth DLC and Update 28 base game patch are now available to test on the PTS! Read the full patch notes here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/categories/pts/
MMORPG What? Nope. MMOAG. (a.k.a. Who's Line is it Anyway?)
Super_Sonico
✭✭✭✭
The Problem
I started playing RPGs back in the mid 80s, when I was just old enough to understand the math behind THAC0. Since then, I've had a love for playing in immersing environments where I could shape my character to any desire I chose, living out consequences of things I would never do in real life, and enjoying the fantasy that is the role playing part of the game.
When I started playing computer based RPGs, I started getting the sense that the white knights were winning in the coding world. Most RPG style games on the computer seemed to be losing the notion behind alignment, and anything other than the white knight characters were just heavily penalized. (There are exceptions to this in some games, but not in most, by far.)
ESO has created a beautifully immersing environment. But, I'm wondering where the notion of alignment and role playing is? Early on, a friend of mine was playing. We go questing every evening. He quit around level 40 because he thought it was just too boring. Kill things, select a dialog option, move on. Rinse, repeat.
While the dialog is great, script wise, the choices very much are meaningless in the scheme of the world. We did one quest where he chose a person to live, I chose the person to die, we got the same reward, nothing in the game changed for either of us, and we moved along to the next quest.
Where's the role playing in that? Where's the role playing anywhere in this game?
One might argue that the choice to have the guy live or die is role playing enough. Not for those of us who enjoyed the consequences and benefits of what alignment actually (would, should, could) mean.
What we really have here is an MMOAG: Massively Multiplayer Online Adventure Game. Where the points are all made up (experience points, veteran points, champion points!) and decisions don't matter anyway.
Just not what I hoped or expected. Not that I'm surprised, but knowing that the focus is so far away from making a smarter game where decisions really matter is just depressing.
Solutions
A few things can easily be done in the current structure to provide a more meaningful experience with regards to role play.
1. Combine game mechanics with game architecture.
One example would be the notion of instanced builds based off decision making. When said friend above and I were gaming, we encountered a part of the game I had completed and he hadn't. I had tamed the vampire horde in the local cemetary, and while we were in the same group and the same instance initially, when we went to the cemetary, we lost sight of each other because he had not cleared that quest area. I couldn't help him finish the quest or even see him til we left the cemetary. We played with the transition point for a bit. Run across the 2-meter zone, we'd disappear from each other, run back through it, reappear.
Why can this game architecture not be used to enhance the consequences of decision making? If my friend let the *** live, maybe the place goes to hell. When he loads into it, he continues to get oblivion hordes attacking the village. I killed the guy so I can load into the same place and experience a trade outpost and have access to items maybe he can't. -- The illustration only serves to portray an example. -- In the PvE world, you could make completely different experiences in the long run so that several zones in each country have a long term experience that is dictated by the decisions you make and all the other areas are normal instances where everyone overlaps. What kind of character you play determines the kind of world your character eventually experiences. All done through the existing mechanic of instances.
2. Use the game architecture to enhance the experience, not detract from it.
There are a lot of things that break immersion in the game which detracts from the notion behind role-playing.
One of the worst rpg-violating experiences is being out in the middle of the marshes of Shadowfen and seeing 'WTS/WTT/WTB' in zone chat. Another for me is having a good item and having to constantly post in zone chat 'WTS' because there's no alliance-wide vendor I can just stick it up on and forget about. I've seen all the posts for auction houses. I don't know what that is, but I do know what an alliance-wide vendor would be. I don't want to see ESO+ebay. What I would like to have is a store where I can set the price, post my items, and have anyone in the same alliance as me (at least) be able to buy it. (I can see it being world-wide, but there might be limitations on database sizes that make this impractical. Or I can even see it being instance wide, where I always can see my goods, but other people's goods I see is based on who's loaded in my instance.)
I don't want to get derailed by the economy. That's not the point. The point at hand is creating a game mechanic that doesn't force me into a non-rpg role because of poor architecture.
There are plenty of options for chat tags. For the most part, I've created tabs that eliminate zone chat altogether. I use it occasionally to announce a dolmen is up, or call for help to beat a boss. But it's annoying. Why with a structure behind the ability to partition the text input into different fields (guilds, tells, whispers, etc,) are there no trade channels for commerce, world channels for your alliance, and channels for my instance? This is a prime example of a game architecture subtracting from the immersion experience. It shouldn't, and that should be a Cardinal Rule; Thou shall not have a game system detract from game play and immersion.
Another example: access to gold and goods in the bank. If I extend my imagination to come up with an explanation for the portal magicka used to allow me access to my banked items at a crafting station, why is that magicka not available to me when I'm at a vendor and want to sell items? Why is it not available to me at a vendor to access banked gold? Why is there not a checkbox that allows me to separate banked items versus items in my inventory. The inventory management at a crafting station is an exercise in tedium as players are forced to engage an architecture that works against them.
I'm sure the community will come up with a better list of things that I can, but there are numerous instances where the game architecture detracts from immersion and forces players to do things outside of a role-playing mode based around their character.
3. Have a hardcore RPG server.
This is just a pet, wish-list idea of mine that I wish existed. I really wish there was a server that was moderated and run as an RPG server. Breaking character would be punishable by a mod giving you a strike. 3-strikes and you're banned from the server for a month or two. Characters there could be played hardcore (where when you die, you die) and the point is to role-play. It would eliminate zone chat and force people to talk to each other face to face, or though the magicka of telepathy (whispers/tells). It would have a few additional features, but I'll let your imaginations run with it a while as this post is probably tl;dr for most of you anyway.
I started playing RPGs back in the mid 80s, when I was just old enough to understand the math behind THAC0. Since then, I've had a love for playing in immersing environments where I could shape my character to any desire I chose, living out consequences of things I would never do in real life, and enjoying the fantasy that is the role playing part of the game.
When I started playing computer based RPGs, I started getting the sense that the white knights were winning in the coding world. Most RPG style games on the computer seemed to be losing the notion behind alignment, and anything other than the white knight characters were just heavily penalized. (There are exceptions to this in some games, but not in most, by far.)
ESO has created a beautifully immersing environment. But, I'm wondering where the notion of alignment and role playing is? Early on, a friend of mine was playing. We go questing every evening. He quit around level 40 because he thought it was just too boring. Kill things, select a dialog option, move on. Rinse, repeat.
While the dialog is great, script wise, the choices very much are meaningless in the scheme of the world. We did one quest where he chose a person to live, I chose the person to die, we got the same reward, nothing in the game changed for either of us, and we moved along to the next quest.
Where's the role playing in that? Where's the role playing anywhere in this game?
One might argue that the choice to have the guy live or die is role playing enough. Not for those of us who enjoyed the consequences and benefits of what alignment actually (would, should, could) mean.
What we really have here is an MMOAG: Massively Multiplayer Online Adventure Game. Where the points are all made up (experience points, veteran points, champion points!) and decisions don't matter anyway.
Just not what I hoped or expected. Not that I'm surprised, but knowing that the focus is so far away from making a smarter game where decisions really matter is just depressing.
Solutions
A few things can easily be done in the current structure to provide a more meaningful experience with regards to role play.
1. Combine game mechanics with game architecture.
One example would be the notion of instanced builds based off decision making. When said friend above and I were gaming, we encountered a part of the game I had completed and he hadn't. I had tamed the vampire horde in the local cemetary, and while we were in the same group and the same instance initially, when we went to the cemetary, we lost sight of each other because he had not cleared that quest area. I couldn't help him finish the quest or even see him til we left the cemetary. We played with the transition point for a bit. Run across the 2-meter zone, we'd disappear from each other, run back through it, reappear.
Why can this game architecture not be used to enhance the consequences of decision making? If my friend let the *** live, maybe the place goes to hell. When he loads into it, he continues to get oblivion hordes attacking the village. I killed the guy so I can load into the same place and experience a trade outpost and have access to items maybe he can't. -- The illustration only serves to portray an example. -- In the PvE world, you could make completely different experiences in the long run so that several zones in each country have a long term experience that is dictated by the decisions you make and all the other areas are normal instances where everyone overlaps. What kind of character you play determines the kind of world your character eventually experiences. All done through the existing mechanic of instances.
2. Use the game architecture to enhance the experience, not detract from it.
There are a lot of things that break immersion in the game which detracts from the notion behind role-playing.
One of the worst rpg-violating experiences is being out in the middle of the marshes of Shadowfen and seeing 'WTS/WTT/WTB' in zone chat. Another for me is having a good item and having to constantly post in zone chat 'WTS' because there's no alliance-wide vendor I can just stick it up on and forget about. I've seen all the posts for auction houses. I don't know what that is, but I do know what an alliance-wide vendor would be. I don't want to see ESO+ebay. What I would like to have is a store where I can set the price, post my items, and have anyone in the same alliance as me (at least) be able to buy it. (I can see it being world-wide, but there might be limitations on database sizes that make this impractical. Or I can even see it being instance wide, where I always can see my goods, but other people's goods I see is based on who's loaded in my instance.)
I don't want to get derailed by the economy. That's not the point. The point at hand is creating a game mechanic that doesn't force me into a non-rpg role because of poor architecture.
There are plenty of options for chat tags. For the most part, I've created tabs that eliminate zone chat altogether. I use it occasionally to announce a dolmen is up, or call for help to beat a boss. But it's annoying. Why with a structure behind the ability to partition the text input into different fields (guilds, tells, whispers, etc,) are there no trade channels for commerce, world channels for your alliance, and channels for my instance? This is a prime example of a game architecture subtracting from the immersion experience. It shouldn't, and that should be a Cardinal Rule; Thou shall not have a game system detract from game play and immersion.
Another example: access to gold and goods in the bank. If I extend my imagination to come up with an explanation for the portal magicka used to allow me access to my banked items at a crafting station, why is that magicka not available to me when I'm at a vendor and want to sell items? Why is it not available to me at a vendor to access banked gold? Why is there not a checkbox that allows me to separate banked items versus items in my inventory. The inventory management at a crafting station is an exercise in tedium as players are forced to engage an architecture that works against them.
I'm sure the community will come up with a better list of things that I can, but there are numerous instances where the game architecture detracts from immersion and forces players to do things outside of a role-playing mode based around their character.
3. Have a hardcore RPG server.
This is just a pet, wish-list idea of mine that I wish existed. I really wish there was a server that was moderated and run as an RPG server. Breaking character would be punishable by a mod giving you a strike. 3-strikes and you're banned from the server for a month or two. Characters there could be played hardcore (where when you die, you die) and the point is to role-play. It would eliminate zone chat and force people to talk to each other face to face, or though the magicka of telepathy (whispers/tells). It would have a few additional features, but I'll let your imaginations run with it a while as this post is probably tl;dr for most of you anyway.