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Main storyline narrative problems and solutions
Saddiq
✭✭✭
Long article. In a nutshell this is about 'fixing' some very fixable issues in the main story's narrative.
Spoilers spoilers spoilers.
So, first off, for context, ESO is probably one of my favorite games ever, so this is not a hate-on post.
Also for context, I’m a major TES fan. I’ve played (and loved) Arena and Daggerfall, Battlespire and Redguard, and even hunted down the Novia phone games long after the Novia was ancient history.
For all of the TES games, I have always strived to explore the worlds to completion before endeavoring on the actual narrative story, or main quest. After my intro to Tamriel in Morrowind, in which I accidentally ‘finished the game’, only to find a dozen insignificant quests like delivering x to y. After saving the world, being a courier is an incredibly anticlimactic ending, and since then I’ve played to the best of my ability to delay the actual story until I was sure I had stepped on every square inch of soil I could.
So then, ESO.
In its current state, ESO is unplayable in this way, and sullies an otherwise fantastically entertaining chapter of lore. There’s a number of problems, but what I want to discuss is how easy the solutions are, and how unnecessary the current system. The fix, I imagine, requires only a page of new dialogue and the corresponding animation. Granted, a page of dialogue with John Cleese is probably $300,000 when all is said and done, but I’m sure you can find a perfectly acceptable imitator for a fraction of that price.
Problem 1:
The Soul Magic skill line contains one active for trapping souls that is quite important in small doses in the game (Soul Trap), 1 ultimate that is arguably the most powerful and cost-effective ultimate in the game (Soul Strike), and most importantly, a 2-tiered passive that saves you tens of thousands of coins in soul gems in giving you free resurrects as much as once every hour (Soul Summons).
In its current state, these valuable skills, especially the money-saving resurrection passive, ‘need’ to be acquired early in the game, but can only be done by dipping into the narrative early on. I had to consciously start the main quest far earlier than I wanted simply because it would be stupid not to get the free resurrection passive.
Solution:
Very very simple to implement. Make the achievements in this skill line level-based, just as they are (at Lv 25, unlock this passive, at Lv 35, unlock that active, etc.), and simply remove the conditions of forcing the player to advance a story we might not want to advance at the time. They’ve already leveled the challenges to the character (which I appreciated a lot, as it remained a challenge), so there’s no reason to tie very valuable skills to your literary position in the narrative. Rather, simply reward the player for levelling by unlocking these distinct skills at specific levels between 1 and 50.
Problem 2:
Cadwell’s Silver and Gold are locked until you’ve finished the main narrative. This is just silly for multiple narrative reasons. Chief among them is the right idea in the game to bring the warring alliances together to fight the real, common enemy. This is basic, good storytelling, and it’s what should be done to raise the stakes and ratchet up the narrative tension. But this is entirely killed off when, after defeating Molag Bal and ending the planemeld, I completely forget the lessons I’ve learned that corrected my narrow-minded thinking (as a character), seeing other provinces as enemies and warring over a throne that holds no real power in the inter-regnum period.
For me to go back to Cyrodiil and PVP after defeating Molag Bal makes my character at the least shallow, and more to the point, a bit of a monster. Because I slay hundreds and thousands of mortals with souls in an ultimately unwinnable war, I cheapen and betray my freeing of thousands of souls upon defeating Molag Bal, who is after all behind the Empire's fall and the deaths of mortals in PVP in the first place. Furthermore, how am I supposed to take dark anchors seriously, not to mention Molag Bal’s dialogue and taunts during encounters with dark anchors, when the planemeld is ended and Molag Bal is regenerating his power, slowly, for another era in the future?
Solution:
Again, incredibly simple. Lock the other alliances until the player has achieved ‘Daggerfall Covenant Hero’ (or equivalent) and VR1 status (2 conditions). The player can then if they wish go to Coldharbor (a strange narrative choice in my opinion, but to each their own), or alternately, become a hero of Tamriel, learn about the other alliances, and therefore, literarily, come to see the other alliances as people, learn that the real threat common to all is the planemeld and Molag Bal, and then swear off the alliance war and assault Coldharbor. This is narratively and thematically consistent.
For myself, I would hold off on the Coldharbor and main plotline until 2 months before either the game was pulling the plug, or I was planning on pulling the plug on the game. Now I’ve said goodbye to the alliance war and PVP, and honed in on a meaningful narrative that sums up a giant universe of a game and brings a variety of threads from all 3 alliances together into a consistent storyline.
But, if others want to play it ‘out of order’, they can go to Coldharbor at an earlier point. Either way, you play how you want, and narrative-minded players aren’t forced into narratively-meaningless PVP and dark-anchor encounters when the planemeld is ended and the real threat to Nirn is, temporarily, prevented. Currently, while I enjoy PVP and dark anchors, they’ll always be tainted by my character engaging in some very nonsensical (dark anchors) and morally atrocious (PVP mass slaughtering of the SOULS of mortals I just quested to save) gaming.
Problem 3:
It’s not only PVP and dark anchors, it’s every other quest too. For an engaging narrative, no writer would write a denouement that’s 2/3rds longer than the entire story before the denouement, in which the savior of Nirn returns from freeing souls, ending the planemeld, and defeating Molag Bal, wakes up the next morning, and crafts 4 shields and 2 bows, delivers a letter to a rich matron, rescues Stibbons from the latest escapade, and tries to help a local militia recruit 3 citizens.
They’ve created a massively epic scope to this game, but made, by definition, two-thirds of it meaningless because we’re forced to experience the majority of the game as an epilogue, in some kind of awkward Wayne’s World alternate universe where our reputation is gone, queens and kings don’t remember that we saved their world (and are furthermore now asking us to save it in the future when it’s already been saved), and so on and so forth.
Solution:
Perhaps some would be worried that your character would be a traitor to your alliance if they helped the other 2 alliances before going into Coldharbor. For me this is both infinitely better than the alternate universe nonsense we’re currently doing, and also quite fixable with the recording of variants on current dialogue. I realize there’s big name actors involved, but most of the dialogue does not involve these actors, since most of the game is not focused on the main story. The new dialogue need merely alter the ‘no one knows you previously saved Nirn from the same threat currently happening’ nonsense to an expansion of the character’s horizons beyond the superficiality of his own alliance.
Very few quests and snippets of dialogue reflect or refer to the alliance war and more specifically your role in it, and where an AD quest might mention fighting against DC invaders, for example, new dialogue can be inserted if you’re a DC original that makes the DC invaders rogues or splinter groups (problem solved), or more involved, takes your character on a journey to realize that the side you’re fighting for is engaged in the same kind of war crimes your opponents are, bringing your character more fully to a motivation to unite the alliances for the final assault on Coldharbor, the real enemy.
Conclusion:
I really don’t think the solutions are that complicated to implement, and in their current state what quite likely would have been my favorite game of all time (what? Can you say that on this overly negative forum board?), is turned into a very schizophrenic experience that will always be sullied. It’s too late for me but hopefully there’s lots of new players in the future who can get a real page-turner and reap the benefits of some perfectly good narrative writing the ZOS team created, before cheapening the whole story by pulling the rug out in the ‘epilogue’ with the nonsense dialogue of Cadwell’s Silver and Gold. “Let’s pretend you were in another alliance” is, frankly, beyond laughable. As a writer I’d feel very discontent about my work being undermined by that silliness.
So, thanks ZOS for a fantastic experience. The finale and story were great. Now I’m off to start Cadwell’s Silver, and engage in stories that are on their own meaningful, but in the context of Cadwell’s Silver are nonsensical and meaningless, JUST so that I can earn more skyshards and champion points [sic VR ranks] and actually engage in the Craglorn storyline and other future storylines to experience new stories and have fun with them.
Any writers on ZOS reading this? Bring it up to your bosses and fix this if you can. Shouldn’t be that hard by my understanding. You wrote a great novel otherwise. Thanks a lot. I had a lot of fun!
Do other folks have other suggestions for how to make the main storyline not a requirement to complete the other 2/3rds of the game?
Edited by Saddiq on December 18, 2014 1:39AM
Spoilers spoilers spoilers.
So, first off, for context, ESO is probably one of my favorite games ever, so this is not a hate-on post.
Also for context, I’m a major TES fan. I’ve played (and loved) Arena and Daggerfall, Battlespire and Redguard, and even hunted down the Novia phone games long after the Novia was ancient history.
For all of the TES games, I have always strived to explore the worlds to completion before endeavoring on the actual narrative story, or main quest. After my intro to Tamriel in Morrowind, in which I accidentally ‘finished the game’, only to find a dozen insignificant quests like delivering x to y. After saving the world, being a courier is an incredibly anticlimactic ending, and since then I’ve played to the best of my ability to delay the actual story until I was sure I had stepped on every square inch of soil I could.
So then, ESO.
In its current state, ESO is unplayable in this way, and sullies an otherwise fantastically entertaining chapter of lore. There’s a number of problems, but what I want to discuss is how easy the solutions are, and how unnecessary the current system. The fix, I imagine, requires only a page of new dialogue and the corresponding animation. Granted, a page of dialogue with John Cleese is probably $300,000 when all is said and done, but I’m sure you can find a perfectly acceptable imitator for a fraction of that price.
Problem 1:
The Soul Magic skill line contains one active for trapping souls that is quite important in small doses in the game (Soul Trap), 1 ultimate that is arguably the most powerful and cost-effective ultimate in the game (Soul Strike), and most importantly, a 2-tiered passive that saves you tens of thousands of coins in soul gems in giving you free resurrects as much as once every hour (Soul Summons).
In its current state, these valuable skills, especially the money-saving resurrection passive, ‘need’ to be acquired early in the game, but can only be done by dipping into the narrative early on. I had to consciously start the main quest far earlier than I wanted simply because it would be stupid not to get the free resurrection passive.
Solution:
Very very simple to implement. Make the achievements in this skill line level-based, just as they are (at Lv 25, unlock this passive, at Lv 35, unlock that active, etc.), and simply remove the conditions of forcing the player to advance a story we might not want to advance at the time. They’ve already leveled the challenges to the character (which I appreciated a lot, as it remained a challenge), so there’s no reason to tie very valuable skills to your literary position in the narrative. Rather, simply reward the player for levelling by unlocking these distinct skills at specific levels between 1 and 50.
Problem 2:
Cadwell’s Silver and Gold are locked until you’ve finished the main narrative. This is just silly for multiple narrative reasons. Chief among them is the right idea in the game to bring the warring alliances together to fight the real, common enemy. This is basic, good storytelling, and it’s what should be done to raise the stakes and ratchet up the narrative tension. But this is entirely killed off when, after defeating Molag Bal and ending the planemeld, I completely forget the lessons I’ve learned that corrected my narrow-minded thinking (as a character), seeing other provinces as enemies and warring over a throne that holds no real power in the inter-regnum period.
For me to go back to Cyrodiil and PVP after defeating Molag Bal makes my character at the least shallow, and more to the point, a bit of a monster. Because I slay hundreds and thousands of mortals with souls in an ultimately unwinnable war, I cheapen and betray my freeing of thousands of souls upon defeating Molag Bal, who is after all behind the Empire's fall and the deaths of mortals in PVP in the first place. Furthermore, how am I supposed to take dark anchors seriously, not to mention Molag Bal’s dialogue and taunts during encounters with dark anchors, when the planemeld is ended and Molag Bal is regenerating his power, slowly, for another era in the future?
Solution:
Again, incredibly simple. Lock the other alliances until the player has achieved ‘Daggerfall Covenant Hero’ (or equivalent) and VR1 status (2 conditions). The player can then if they wish go to Coldharbor (a strange narrative choice in my opinion, but to each their own), or alternately, become a hero of Tamriel, learn about the other alliances, and therefore, literarily, come to see the other alliances as people, learn that the real threat common to all is the planemeld and Molag Bal, and then swear off the alliance war and assault Coldharbor. This is narratively and thematically consistent.
For myself, I would hold off on the Coldharbor and main plotline until 2 months before either the game was pulling the plug, or I was planning on pulling the plug on the game. Now I’ve said goodbye to the alliance war and PVP, and honed in on a meaningful narrative that sums up a giant universe of a game and brings a variety of threads from all 3 alliances together into a consistent storyline.
But, if others want to play it ‘out of order’, they can go to Coldharbor at an earlier point. Either way, you play how you want, and narrative-minded players aren’t forced into narratively-meaningless PVP and dark-anchor encounters when the planemeld is ended and the real threat to Nirn is, temporarily, prevented. Currently, while I enjoy PVP and dark anchors, they’ll always be tainted by my character engaging in some very nonsensical (dark anchors) and morally atrocious (PVP mass slaughtering of the SOULS of mortals I just quested to save) gaming.
Problem 3:
It’s not only PVP and dark anchors, it’s every other quest too. For an engaging narrative, no writer would write a denouement that’s 2/3rds longer than the entire story before the denouement, in which the savior of Nirn returns from freeing souls, ending the planemeld, and defeating Molag Bal, wakes up the next morning, and crafts 4 shields and 2 bows, delivers a letter to a rich matron, rescues Stibbons from the latest escapade, and tries to help a local militia recruit 3 citizens.
They’ve created a massively epic scope to this game, but made, by definition, two-thirds of it meaningless because we’re forced to experience the majority of the game as an epilogue, in some kind of awkward Wayne’s World alternate universe where our reputation is gone, queens and kings don’t remember that we saved their world (and are furthermore now asking us to save it in the future when it’s already been saved), and so on and so forth.
Solution:
Perhaps some would be worried that your character would be a traitor to your alliance if they helped the other 2 alliances before going into Coldharbor. For me this is both infinitely better than the alternate universe nonsense we’re currently doing, and also quite fixable with the recording of variants on current dialogue. I realize there’s big name actors involved, but most of the dialogue does not involve these actors, since most of the game is not focused on the main story. The new dialogue need merely alter the ‘no one knows you previously saved Nirn from the same threat currently happening’ nonsense to an expansion of the character’s horizons beyond the superficiality of his own alliance.
Very few quests and snippets of dialogue reflect or refer to the alliance war and more specifically your role in it, and where an AD quest might mention fighting against DC invaders, for example, new dialogue can be inserted if you’re a DC original that makes the DC invaders rogues or splinter groups (problem solved), or more involved, takes your character on a journey to realize that the side you’re fighting for is engaged in the same kind of war crimes your opponents are, bringing your character more fully to a motivation to unite the alliances for the final assault on Coldharbor, the real enemy.
Conclusion:
I really don’t think the solutions are that complicated to implement, and in their current state what quite likely would have been my favorite game of all time (what? Can you say that on this overly negative forum board?), is turned into a very schizophrenic experience that will always be sullied. It’s too late for me but hopefully there’s lots of new players in the future who can get a real page-turner and reap the benefits of some perfectly good narrative writing the ZOS team created, before cheapening the whole story by pulling the rug out in the ‘epilogue’ with the nonsense dialogue of Cadwell’s Silver and Gold. “Let’s pretend you were in another alliance” is, frankly, beyond laughable. As a writer I’d feel very discontent about my work being undermined by that silliness.
So, thanks ZOS for a fantastic experience. The finale and story were great. Now I’m off to start Cadwell’s Silver, and engage in stories that are on their own meaningful, but in the context of Cadwell’s Silver are nonsensical and meaningless, JUST so that I can earn more skyshards and champion points [sic VR ranks] and actually engage in the Craglorn storyline and other future storylines to experience new stories and have fun with them.
Any writers on ZOS reading this? Bring it up to your bosses and fix this if you can. Shouldn’t be that hard by my understanding. You wrote a great novel otherwise. Thanks a lot. I had a lot of fun!
Do other folks have other suggestions for how to make the main storyline not a requirement to complete the other 2/3rds of the game?
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