Why aren't the factions really at war?

BellatorMortalis

Running around PVE, once I moved beyond my own faction territories (to clear shards and pick up up lore books), it became clear that in the other faction areas government officials and others are happy to offer me quests, even quests against my own faction.
Rationally, considering the factions are at WAR, in other faction territory I should be identified as a spy, have wanted posters with my face on them, and be killed on sight by any guards or military personnel. Anyone giving me a quest should attempt to weasel out of it, set up assassin contracts on me instead of paying, or simply run away without paying when I report in for clearing quest. In fact, the longer I am in an opposing factions territory, the more numbers of guards and military troops should be scouring the countryside looking for me. I think that PvE would be much better if the WAR aspect was better implemented.
Finally, they should have troops surrounding all waystones to kill or capture anyone from any enemy faction who "ports in". Heck, they should have highly difficult to escape from prison camps where you get placed whenever you are caught. They would strip all gear -- inventory and what you are wearing. You lose your gear permanently. You should not be able to access any waystone once you are in a prison camp. You would have to escape first and get some distance beyond the camp before you can use waystones.
But since this is not the game, I assert the factions are not really at war. It is all fake. Which means the lore is fake.

Domander

Complete the main quest and you will understand.

raj72616a

before One Tamriel you were not allowed to go to other factions' PVE zone. you only unlock them after you finish the main first, and then

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a servant of a Daedra Prince send you into an alternative reality where you were rescued by a different faction after you left Coldharbour. he told you that you will not be the hero that you now are, and will be treated as a nobody and have to work your way up from there.

Magdalina

In the end of main quest sir Cadwell will give you a mildly plausible explanation for that. Now admittedly it's kind of odd lore wise that you can go to other zones before finishing main quest but that's the price you gotta pay for the open world

Berenhir

No Cadwell nonsense and no brain gymnastics can explain why a group of high ranking Pact officers is attacked by their own soldiers directly after leaving Cyrodiil just because they happen to be in enemy territory.
It is just lazy design.

Magdalina

Berenhir wrote: »

No Cadwell nonsense and no brain gymnastics can explain why a group of high ranking Pact officers is attacked by their own soldiers directly after leaving Cyrodiil just because they happen to be in enemy territory.
It is just lazy design.

What?

Also as far as I understand the other alliance zones weren't even supposed to be accessible originally but TES fans really wanted to have it all so they added them as vet zones, then One Tam opened the borders for good.

KerinKor

BellatorMortalis wrote: »

But since this is not the game, I assert the factions are not really at war. It is all fake. Which means the lore is fake.

It is fake, there is little real TES lore in this, it's entirely artificial to provide a basis for adding PVP to a game where PVP has no reason to exist.

Play through Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim and you'll find precious few references to this period of history at all and those that do exist have no mention of the politics of this period nor of any alliances as ZOS dreamed them up: it has nothing to do with Bethesda's timeline for TES.

Sengra

I always thought that there is some kind of magic involved that changes your appearance to others depending on where you are.

Danikat

When the game first came out you could only play through your characters Alliance and Coldharbour, then you were done with open-world PvE and had only dungeons and PvP to do. I think they genuinely expected everyone to just use PvE to level up and then spend most of their time in PvP, because for some reason MMO developers always seem to think most people will play lots of PvP even though that's not the case in most games.

Unsurprisingly a lot of players wanted to stay in PvE and were unhappy with only being able to play 1/3 of the game on each character. On top of which ZOS was bringing in Veteran Levels and recognised that the 1 map they'd made to continue PvE (Craglorn) wasn't enough to keep levelling up in and they weren't going to be able to keep adding new maps quickly enough to keep up with their planned Vet level progression.

So they added a system where you can play through the other Alliances. At the end of the main quest Cadwell and Meridian will send you to an 'alternate reality' where you landed in another Alliance. (Remember the lore version of how you came to join your home Alliance isn't anything to do with your race or choosing to sign up, it's because you dropped into the sea near some of their soldiers and they decided you owed them for saving your life.)

Those were still separate versions of the maps - if you were a DC character and you went to the AD maps you were in a special veteran level version with only DC players.

That continued right up until One Tamriel when ZOS responded to players feedback that only getting to play with 1/3 of the people on your server (so 1/18 of the total population - 3 platforms, 2 servers per platform, 3 Alliances) was frustrating - if you met another player outside the game after creating your characters they chances are you'd be separate and never able to play together and a lot of maps (especially Vet level maps) felt empty.

Now of course you can go to any map at any time. But the story and lore still functions as if you're going through the maps in the intended order, so when you go to another Alliance you're still under the effect of Meridan's power even if you skipped ahead and never had the conversation with Cadwell or picked up the quest.

Enodoc

You are not identified as a spy in other faction territories because your identity is being hidden. It's a simple Daedric illusion effect, no lore issues here.

GrigorijMalahevich

All fractions are in a proxy war over Cyrodiil. Are you rooting for open world warfare??? Think anout all the innocent lives, you maniac!!!

P.S. I am up for that, the Pact should awaken. It has been long enough that we share one world with these abominations of nature! Grab your weapon if choice and head to the nearest army training barracks.
The Pact needs you!

Purify them with fire!!!

TX12001rwb17_ESO

BellatorMortalis wrote: »

Running around PVE, once I moved beyond my own faction territories (to clear shards and pick up up lore books), it became clear that in the other faction areas government officials and others are happy to offer me quests, even quests against my own faction.
Rationally, considering the factions are at WAR, in other faction territory I should be identified as a spy, have wanted posters with my face on them, and be killed on sight by any guards or military personnel. Anyone giving me a quest should attempt to weasel out of it, set up assassin contracts on me instead of paying, or simply run away without paying when I report in for clearing quest. In fact, the longer I am in an opposing factions territory, the more numbers of guards and military troops should be scouring the countryside looking for me. I think that PvE would be much better if the WAR aspect was better implemented.
Finally, they should have troops surrounding all waystones to kill or capture anyone from any enemy faction who "ports in". Heck, they should have highly difficult to escape from prison camps where you get placed whenever you are caught. They would strip all gear -- inventory and what you are wearing. You lose your gear permanently. You should not be able to access any waystone once you are in a prison camp. You would have to escape first and get some distance beyond the camp before you can use waystones.
But since this is not the game, I assert the factions are not really at war. It is all fake. Which means the lore is fake.

What about players who aren't soldiers in the army?

crashen17b14_ESO

Cadwells shenanigans aside, we never actually JOIN a faction. We are wandering adventurers and mercenaries. We might favor one alliance over the other and choose to represent them in the meaningless quagmire of cyrodiil, but ultimately the faction war is just a distraction. The true enemy is the planemeld and molag bal's infiltrators stirring up trouble.

If you want an actually plausible, immersive reason why we can serve all three factions, its because we are more like an entity that exists outside the political pecking order. We work with each faction to root out agents of molag bal and the other Bad Daedra. Basically like the fighter's guild and mages guild.

tinythinker

Enodoc wrote: »

You are not identified as a spy in other faction territories because your identity is being hidden. It's a simple Daedric illusion effect, no lore issues here.

Except that this isn't explained when you first arrive, so actually if you are a new player it is lore breaking. I offered a simple, quick solution as did others. Maybe they have a fix for this with the first expansion. Maybe not. But it's been left like this for several months.

crashen17b14_ESO wrote: »

Cadwells shenanigans aside, we never actually JOIN a faction. We are wandering adventurers and mercenaries. We might favor one alliance over the other and choose to represent them in the meaningless quagmire of cyrodiil, but ultimately the faction war is just a distraction. The true enemy is the planemeld and molag bal's infiltrators stirring up trouble.

If you want an actually plausible, immersive reason why we can serve all three factions, its because we are more like an entity that exists outside the political pecking order. We work with each faction to root out agents of molag bal and the other Bad Daedra. Basically like the fighter's guild and mages guild.

Actually you became the hero of the faction. In the original storyline, when you go to fight Molag Bal and have to talk to the other Alliance leaders outside of your starting faction, they talk about you being a champion of their enemy and warn you against trying anything like an assassination. ZOS just decided to lift the restrictions on what zones you could go to and when without giving any consideration to the actual story or dialogue.

Magdalina

tinythinker wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

You are not identified as a spy in other faction territories because your identity is being hidden. It's a simple Daedric illusion effect, no lore issues here.

Except that this isn't explained when you first arrive, so actually if you are a new player it is lore breaking. I offered a simple, quick solution as did others. Maybe they have a fix for this with the first expansion. Maybe not. But it's been left like this for several months.

It's been like this since One Tamriel. Before One Tamriel you couldn't access other alliance zones without finishing main quest so basically were forced to hear that explanation eventually. They changed it to the way it is because it appears people value ability to go to any zone at any time much more than having a lore abiding reason for that. That's what people have been asking for since launch and they finally have it now. I don't see it likely to change tbh.

Danikat

tinythinker wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

You are not identified as a spy in other faction territories because your identity is being hidden. It's a simple Daedric illusion effect, no lore issues here.

Except that this isn't explained when you first arrive, so actually if you are a new player it is lore breaking. I offered a simple, quick solution as did others. Maybe they have a fix for this with the first expansion. Maybe not. But it's been left like this for several months.

If you're worried about keeping the lore accurate all you need to do is stick to the storyline and only go to a new zone when the game sends you there. That way you won't visit another Alliance until you've been told about Meridian's spell and are under it's influence.

And I would have thought new players would be more likely to do that, simply because they may not know they can go to other Alliances and won't have many reasons to do so.

KochDerDamonen

Magdalina wrote: »

Berenhir wrote: »

No Cadwell nonsense and no brain gymnastics can explain why a group of high ranking Pact officers is attacked by their own soldiers directly after leaving Cyrodiil just because they happen to be in enemy territory.
It is just lazy design.

What?

Also as far as I understand the other alliance zones weren't even supposed to be accessible originally but MMO players really wanted to have triple the grinding zones so they added them as vet zones, then One Tam opened the borders for good.

@Magdalina Wowee haha yeah screw those guys, I sure don't like them hehe

Real version: Zos wanted to validate the xp it takes to get to v12/v14 (at the time) without developing enough new content for each faction to get that far without much grinding. Unlock the already developed but locked off zones :^)

idk

Domander wrote: »

Complete the main quest and you will understand.

This. Would offer a spoiler but suffice to say if your in EP territory they see you as EP. Complete the main quest line to understand why.

Magdalina

KochDerDamonen wrote: »

Magdalina wrote: »

Berenhir wrote: »

No Cadwell nonsense and no brain gymnastics can explain why a group of high ranking Pact officers is attacked by their own soldiers directly after leaving Cyrodiil just because they happen to be in enemy territory.
It is just lazy design.

What?

Also as far as I understand the other alliance zones weren't even supposed to be accessible originally but MMO players really wanted to have triple the grinding zones so they added them as vet zones, then One Tam opened the borders for good.

@Magdalina Wowee haha yeah screw those guys, I sure don't like them hehe

Real version: Zos wanted to validate the xp it takes to get to v12/v14 (at the time) without developing enough new content for each faction to get that far without much grinding. Unlock the already developed but locked off zones :^)

Wat MMO guys? It was the Skyrim crowd that was super upset for not being able to explore any zone on any toon. MMO crowd couldn't care less for the most part, especially considering questing/grinding most zones' open world mobs was extremely inefficient in terms of quick leveling up back then.

You're making comments based on experience you haven't had. You weren't here anywhere near launch, were you? First veteran tier was vet 10, and as far as I can understand veteran levels were added precisely because people wanted to see other zones so much(or at the very least it was one of the reasons). Vet 12 came with Craglorn I think, and THAT's where people grinded til they nerfed the zone XP to nothing. Most of grinding people never even set foot in other alliance's zones because literally only reason to do so was to see them/see the quests/get achievements.

crashen17b14_ESO

You dont see the main factions go hunting down valaste and vanus galerion just because they happen to be high elves in pact/covenant territory. The Guilds have an agreement with the faction leaders and are more or less allowed to go where they want, recruit who they want, and operate with whoever they want. The same is now true for the Vestige. The only difference is that the PC can choose to support their favorite faction on their own time.

Personally I look at it as if we are inquisitors who will go wherever we need to to root out molag bals corruption. A lot of the main villains for each zone story either are, or could be imagined as deeply embedded agents of Bal. Ayrenn's brother, Baron Montclaire, those egg-murdering dominion in shadowfen. Almost every representative of an enemy alliance outside of their home territory is comitting a war crime of some sort or another, usually necromancy or genocide. Things you dont generally see approved of within their own territory.

In my headcanon, these uncharacteristically evil members of the covenant/pact/dominion are agents of Bal tasked with stirring up distrust and hate between the factions, to keep the war going and the focus off the planemeld. The players all operate with the tacit permission of the faction leaders to go in and take them out. The vestige goes and kills a corrupt general in shadowfen, and people back home just hear about another loss, if anything at all. Better than making it widely known that each and every faction has been so thoroughly infiltrated by the Worm Cult and Molag Bal.

It doesnt always fit, but it works for me.

Dreepa

Simple answer: ZOS used the TES brand to make DAOC2. When they realized that the TES brand actually has some more implications and expectations than just putting the same art style and some story in there, it was already to late.

So now we have open world with the stupid "PvP centric" design approach where it all is about the factions.

By the way: Playing with friends in voice chat, I can totally feel the difference: When they get a good TES quest, that has more like mystic tombs and interesting mage quests, they are all eager to see whats coming next. When they do faction quests, they just wanna be done with it.

I really don't know how anyone ever could come up with the idea of making TES a 3 faction game.

The brand is so strong in so many areas, like exploration and secrets hidden etc. But not faction warfare!
Unless it is really dynamic and matters throughout the whole world in a dynamic system, like done with Imperials vs Nords in Skyrim.

hmsdragonfly

Berenhir wrote: »

No Cadwell nonsense and no brain gymnastics can explain why a group of high ranking Pact officers is attacked by their own soldiers directly after leaving Cyrodiil just because they happen to be in enemy territory.
It is just lazy design.

I agree with this. I have a dream, that soldiers of your faction will stay neutral to you, I mean, I can skip the quest but those Dominion ****** keep attacking me, even though I am a high ranking Dominion officer.
Well, but I don't want the coding to be screwed up even more, so it's just a dream.

Radinyn

Dreepa wrote: »

Simple answer: ZOS used the TES brand to make DAOC2. When they realized that the TES brand actually has some more implications and expectations than just putting the same art style and some story in there, it was already to late.

So now we have open world with the stupid "PvP centric" design approach where it all is about the factions.

By the way: Playing with friends in voice chat, I can totally feel the difference: When they get a good TES quest, that has more like mystic tombs and interesting mage quests, they are all eager to see whats coming next. When they do faction quests, they just wanna be done with it.

I really don't know how anyone ever could come up with the idea of making TES a 3 faction game.

The brand is so strong in so many areas, like exploration and secrets hidden etc. But not faction warfare!
Unless it is really dynamic and matters throughout the whole world in a dynamic system, like done with Imperials vs Nords in Skyrim.

And what, leave dueling and battlegrounds as the only pvp systems? I know, TES has a great lore (i am adoring fan of it) but lore should be shaped by a game, not game by the lore.

Runs

We are not in Tamriel. I believe we do not exist, at least not in the way we think we do. I think we are all fragments of Cadwell's crazy mind as he slowly goes crazy in Coldharbour. The what ifs, the regrets, the missed opportunities.

There are clues that Tamriel isn't real. Have you ever seen children? Not just the Vestige but also everybody and everything else in the game can come back to life, are they also soulless? Do they come back at a waysrhine and run back into position, just waiting for us to find them and kill them again? People repeat the same phrases over and over and over again. Have you ever gone to the bathroom? Yes there are chamber pots, but no one ever uses them. Of course this isn't real.

There is one quest where you play a "game" which after beating if you talk to Cadwell he will mention always having wanted to play, but now that you did there is no point.

I am he, as you are he, as you are me. And we are all together...

Bananko

In a similar vein, why is my Imperial character usually (though thankfully not always) attacked by the Imperial NPC's?

alexkdd99

KerinKor wrote: »

BellatorMortalis wrote: »

But since this is not the game, I assert the factions are not really at war. It is all fake. Which means the lore is fake.

It is fake, there is little real TES lore in this, it's entirely artificial to provide a basis for adding PVP to a game where PVP has no reason to exist.

Play through Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim and you'll find precious few references to this period of history at all and those that do exist have no mention of the politics of this period nor of any alliances as ZOS dreamed them up: it has nothing to do with Bethesda's timeline for TES.

It was all dreamed up at one time or another. In a world of magic anything can change, even history (lore)

Egonieser

You can refer to some of the explanations and reasoning here

jedtb16_ESO

BellatorMortalis wrote: »

Running around PVE, once I moved beyond my own faction territories (to clear shards and pick up up lore books), it became clear that in the other faction areas government officials and others are happy to offer me quests, even quests against my own faction.
Rationally, considering the factions are at WAR, in other faction territory I should be identified as a spy, have wanted posters with my face on them, and be killed on sight by any guards or military personnel. Anyone giving me a quest should attempt to weasel out of it, set up assassin contracts on me instead of paying, or simply run away without paying when I report in for clearing quest. In fact, the longer I am in an opposing factions territory, the more numbers of guards and military troops should be scouring the countryside looking for me. I think that PvE would be much better if the WAR aspect was better implemented.
Finally, they should have troops surrounding all waystones to kill or capture anyone from any enemy faction who "ports in". Heck, they should have highly difficult to escape from prison camps where you get placed whenever you are caught. They would strip all gear -- inventory and what you are wearing. You lose your gear permanently. You should not be able to access any waystone once you are in a prison camp. You would have to escape first and get some distance beyond the camp before you can use waystones.
But since this is not the game, I assert the factions are not really at war. It is all fake. Which means the lore is fake.

i think you should get out more....

it's just a game ffs.

altemriel

raj72616a wrote: »

before One Tamriel you were not allowed to go to other factions' PVE zone. you only unlock them after you finish the main first, and then

.
.
.
spoiler alert
.
.
.
.
.
a servant of a Daedra Prince send you into an alternative reality where you were rescued by a different faction after you left Coldharbour. he told you that you will not be the hero that you now are, and will be treated as a nobody and have to work your way up from there.

true, daedric magic of sir cadwell

you will see

Aliyavana

tinythinker wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

You are not identified as a spy in other faction territories because your identity is being hidden. It's a simple Daedric illusion effect, no lore issues here.

Except that this isn't explained when you first arrive, so actually if you are a new player it is lore breaking. I offered a simple, quick solution as did others. Maybe they have a fix for this with the first expansion. Maybe not. But it's been left like this for several months.

crashen17b14_ESO wrote: »

Cadwells shenanigans aside, we never actually JOIN a faction. We are wandering adventurers and mercenaries. We might favor one alliance over the other and choose to represent them in the meaningless quagmire of cyrodiil, but ultimately the faction war is just a distraction. The true enemy is the planemeld and molag bal's infiltrators stirring up trouble.

If you want an actually plausible, immersive reason why we can serve all three factions, its because we are more like an entity that exists outside the political pecking order. We work with each faction to root out agents of molag bal and the other Bad Daedra. Basically like the fighter's guild and mages guild.

Actually you became the hero of the faction. In the original storyline, when you go to fight Molag Bal and have to talk to the other Alliance leaders outside of your starting faction, they talk about you being a champion of their enemy and warn you against trying anything like an assassination. ZOS just decided to lift the restrictions on what zones you could go to and when without giving any consideration to the actual story or dialogue.

Why is it hard to not go to a zone before you are sent there... if you go to a zone you are not send to get them it's on you as zones take place in the future or past like cadwells good and silver take place after you do the mq... if you go before then it's your problem

KeiruNicrom

Unfortunately this whole discussion is due to a design choice by ZOS before game launch that has been changed for the player base that wanted "true open world" and to make the game easier to hop into for new players. All the lore of quests that include the war and even the fact we choose a faction before we are even in coldharbour tutorial area are remenants of these design choices that now hold no reasoning mechanically but would take up too many resources to rectify or change. Our desires as players have changed ESO so much that some of these details are essentially ruined or are atleast very confusing unless you play the story the way it was intended at launch. And even then there were some lore discrepencies due to mechanics that were just brushed aside by "daedric prince magick".

So yea it doesnt make sense in the context of the games original lore base, but thats more our fault for wanting a better game in certain ways and just leaving ZOS to think up the lore reasons why the game mechanics work in Tamriel

#dragonbreak #cadwellilluminati #wedonemessedup