Why are there no children?

OutLaw_Nynx

DMuehlhausen wrote: »

KodaErikson8 wrote: »

My guild mates and I were discussing a few days ago why there are no children in the game at all. I asked Customer Support, and besides a funny remark about perhaps it being an Argonian conspiracy, they were unable to respond and directed me here. Why are there no children NPCs in the game?

They did go over this once before if I remember.

It came down to what the game would be rated. If kids were in the game the way people would try to use emotes for sexual acts, or kill children NPCs it would require a higher rating than just T for Teen even with the game experience may chonge online cloause or whatever. So to make it more accessible they left them out.

This is rated M

Ulo

Anyone who's played Skyrim know how annoying 90% of the children are

SirAndy

Rouven wrote: »

I have yet to read that anyone advocated violence to be done to the NPC kids.

That's not the point. Nobody has to advocate anything. If you have children in a (more or less) violent video game, certain countries *will* restrict or outright ban your title, regardless of whether that violence is directed towards children or not.

I'm not here to argue for or against any of this, i'm just stating the facts. Like i said there are plenty of past examples of this.

This is ultimately about money and whether ZOS is willing to give up potential lucrative markets, like Germany, in order to please a few weirdos who think murdering kids should be part of their gaming experience.

Panomania

It boils down to liability. In this day and age you can find an eager attorney, a mush headed "psychiatric professional" as a technical witness and pliable judge anywhere....and all someone has to do is claim the game caused them mental distress. In many cases it ends up being cheaper to pay these leeches off rather than take it to court, or even let it be seen publicly by the press..so it ends up costing even if you did nothing wrong....and keeps costing. Rather than risk such, most companies hire arrays of legal support to advise them on weak points in their product or service that could mean a law suit down the road.

I dont want to even guess at how much ZOS spends on legal fees annually, but I would bet its substantial. For most companies like this that budget surpasses advertising as an expense.

So the next time you want to bemoan ZOS's "greed" at the cost of purely cosmetic swag in their game, blame a snowflake

Rouven

SirAndy wrote: »

Rouven wrote: »

I have yet to read that anyone advocated violence to be done to the NPC kids.

That's not the point. Nobody has to advocate anything. If you have children in a (more or less) violent video game, certain countries *will* restrict or outright ban your title, regardless of whether that violence is directed towards children or not.

I'm not here to argue for or against any of this, i'm just stating the facts. Like i said there are plenty of past examples of this.

This is ultimately about money and whether ZOS is willing to give up potential lucrative markets, like Germany, in order to please a few weirdos who think murdering kids should be part of their gaming experience.

Regardless of the Fallout incident it is wrong to make this blanket statement.

Just having children in an MMORPG will NOT result in the game being taken off the market in certain countries - like Germany because there are examples of games out there having children in the games and they are on the market (in those countries), right now as we write.

Whether or not anyone at the ZOS executive level was afraid of added scrutiny for having children in the past is another story, I have not read or heard an official comment myself.

Other than that I do not know the official criteria concerning children re the rating.

I don't understand your sentence about pleasing weirdos - we are kinda circling back there to what you quoted me for there.

Getting dizzy!

Kevin_of_Devinshire

All the children have been sent to the orphanage in Riften

Ashtaris

One thing I noted when playing Witcher 3 was how "alive" the game seemed to be. NPC's everywhere doing chores, tending their shops, and children playing and singing in the streets. It really brought a sense of immersion to a game I had not seen before, even in previous TES games. I wonder if having non-targetable child NPC's would prevent most of the problems with having children NPC's in the game?

The_Smilemeister

Loralai_907

I actually prefer there being no kids in the game. My gaming time is supposed to be my kid free time, I spend enough of my day listening to rubbish whining or other nonsense between the job (the job part doesn't involve kids, jut some similar characteristics) and the 80 billion children that frequent my house on a daily basis. Having spent a good amount of time playing Skyrim, I can only imagine how the children of ESO would have behaved.

Stovahkiin

Can you imagine having to listen to conversations between children every time you re-entered the area? It would be like hearing about that one guy who has been stuck in Craglorn forever, just in a really high pitched and annoying way.

SirAndy

Rouven wrote: »

I don't understand your sentence about pleasing weirdos

Do a search here, people have *literally* asked about being able to kill children as part of the DB quest-line.
There was also one guy who wanted to be able to eat his victims ...

Rouven

SirAndy wrote: »

Rouven wrote: »

I don't understand your sentence about pleasing weirdos

Do a search here, people have *literally* asked about being able to kill children as part of the DB quest-line.
There was also one guy who wanted to be able to eat his victims ...

Rofl, ok I see where you are coming from.

NordSwordnBoard

Would you still send Valaste to live with Uncle Sheo if she had three kids?

"I traded your mother for a skill point."

So many good vendettas come from this - Conan the Barbarian, Inigo Montoya, Amsterdam Vallon (Gangs of NY) - just to name a few.

One legend says that Alduin can "eat" away the age of his victims, and that his ghost once ate the entire Nord population down to age six after being summoned by Orkey.


Why not just say he threw up and made everyone over age 12?

Chufu

Gargath wrote: »

You cannot own a child in ESO but you can buy a cradle furniture for 410 crowns.
Good business?

Oh yes, my Orc crib is empty too

Gilvoth

i hated seeing children in skyrim, and i hope we never see them in eso.

FortheloveofKrist

Because life is better without children around.

Jayman1000

red_emu wrote: »

I don't get why kids should be unkillable. We can kill adult NPC's so why not kids? Children aren't any more valuable than adults so wheres the equality? PC brah!

And yeah, Orc.

You can always imagine up some way to justify killing adults, like some story about them actually being evil, or having done something that deserves a deathpenalty etcxetc. That's kinda harder to do with kids, they are almost always inherently innocents, so killing them makes you play the part of a murderer of innocent children. Nasty business.

SydneyGrey

At the end of the Orsinium quest-line, the newly-crowned king's wife says she needs to start producing heirs for her husband. When I saw that, I thought, "Good luck, Orc-lady. Did ya notice all those empty cribs?"
LOL.

It would be very easy for them to make all children unkillable, so that wouldn't be an issue.

Jayman1000

SydneyGrey wrote: »

At the end of the Orsinium quest-line, the newly-crowned king's wife says she needs to start producing heirs for her husband. When I saw that, I thought, "Good luck, Orc-lady. Did ya notice all those empty cribs?"
LOL.

It would be very easy for them to make all children unkillable, so that wouldn't be an issue.

You're probably right. Someone else here mentioned that they could just avoid children altogether just to be on the safe side, I think that sounds probable. Also they don't have to spend time making 3D models of children, I guess that saves a bit o' cash too.

Storymaster

I'm down with seeing more children in-game for immersion purposes. Even the occassional child adventurer would be cool--only way to balance this would be to make them have a level limit and low hp and other resource pools, which would in-turn limit the amount of child characters we would see, leaving them largely for roleplay purposes--which is awesome.

GabiAlex

WoW has children in it and some of them are walking around forming a pentagram. Also, isn't Hildegard a teen, so basically a child from some perspectives?

Banana

Argonians

Conduit0

Oblivion: There are no children in the game, that doesn't make any sense. Why are there no children in the game?!

Skyrim: There are children in the game. Oh god why did you put children in the game?!

ESO: There are no children in the game, that doesn't make any sense. Why are there no children in the game?!


I think a pattern is forming.

Synfaer

red_emu wrote: »

Ghettokid wrote: »

I don't get why kids should be unkillable. We can kill adult NPC's so why not kids? Children aren't any more valuable than adults so wheres the equality? PC brah!

And yeah, Orc.

I wonder how much AP would we get for killing kids in Cyrodiil?

Based on all the tantrums that occur in Cyrodiil, I'm guessing that's where the children have gone

Nyghthowler

I have kids IRL. I sure as hell don't want to listen to them whining and crying in the game I play...

KRBC

There are children NPCs in the game there's just no little kids

zaria

TheShadowScout wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

I'm not sure you're old enough to remember the Fallout debacle, but it is a good read for anyone who has questions on the topic.

Heh, I remember that one, and what a mess it was!

To recap what I recall...

In the game "FallOut2", there was a city where street urchins stood around picking the player characters pockets. Now since player characters didn't like loosing stuff from their inventory to pickpockets, they could pick the pockets of the urchins right back before they dashed off to fence the loot. Or if they were so inclined, use their trusty mad max style shotgun to "pacify" the pickpockets and loot the corpses, though having a "child Killer" rep was definitely -not- a good thing even in the lawless wastes of fallout...
Not to mention, ANY firefight near kids had a chance of killing one by accident when that shotgun blast hit the wrong target.

Anyhow, the european censors saw the game and thought killing kids could NOT be allowed, so they removed the kids.
All of them.
Everywhere.
But since they were better at making assumptions then tweaking code, they left the stealing part in the game... so, when you walked through that certain city in an EU version of the game, things from your inventory would mysteriously go missing, with no chance to steal them back.

Yes, I threw my EU version away and got myself an US version of the game to finally be able to play it without aggrivation. Never had to kill a kid either.

Of course, FallOut2 was also full of other fun details that pushed the limits of what some people considered to be acceptable in a computer game.
Definitely adult themed stuff, that I probably should not really mention in too great detail here on the forums... from the player character starring in "adult entertainment" movies over being forcibly married and having the option to sell their better half off to slavers later on, from catching a certain itch by indulging in purchasable companionship in the wrong place over using the characters "feminine wiles" to "persuade" a raider boss to accept less then the demanded ransom to your fallout boy characters spending a night as the "gimp" of a supermutant after loosing at arm wrestling (and then hearing all the villagers tell you that "once you go mutie, you can never go back", likely something having to do with the supermutants increased... size...)
Ahhh. Fun times!
-wipes away nostalgic tear-
They just don't make games like this anymore. Now gerroffmahlawn!

Yes, games back in the 90's was far less prudish, Arcanium steamwork and magic, let you do mission as an hooker and have sex with an sheep.
Mods makes up for it, getting *** by your own statue in Bruma was weird, yes it was an bug but still something you don't see anytime.

RPGplayer13579

Does anyone remember the quest Keepers of the Shell in Shadowfen? So it's ok to kill Argonian children if they are stuck inside their own eggs. We, the player, don't kill them ourselves but it is still unborn children dying.