So Summerset's been out for a while. What do you guys think of the environment?

psychotrip

I'm Mannimarco-ing this thread rather than making a new one. Now that the chapter's been out for a while, I want to know what you guys think of Summerset's environment.

1. How does it stack up against other post-launch regions?
2. How "dense" does the environment feel? Do you feel there are enough landmarks, settlements, or other unique set-pieces?
3. How diverse does the environment feel? Can you tell one area apart from another? Remember that even many islands have multiple biomes / climates.
4. How diverse do the cities feel? Can you easily distinguish them from each other? Do they each have their own unique flavor?
6. Does the environment feel distinct from the rest of Tamriel? Do you find the landscape unique?

Let's discuss. I've been bringing back a lot of these old-ish threads to see how opinions have changed, and I'm curious to read your thoughts.

Here's the original thread below:

---

I was looking through the currently released images the other day when I noticed something:











https://youtu.be/uU-fq3T-eow?t=404


Notice anything? Each of these locations features the exact same environment: a forest edged by a beach.

Note that these images are from very, very different regions of Summerset. Some are supposedly at the peak of mountains, others at sea-level. Some far to the north, others down south. It's all the same. Can you even tell these are in different regions of a country?

I gotta say, everything they've shown about Summerset, except for Artaeum, is looking pretty samey so far. Not only could they not be bothered to make the cities look distinct (like they did with Morrowind), but is Summerset really just a single biome / climate?

Sure, you can write it off by saying "the altmer used magic to make it this way", but that's yet another retroactive justification for bland worldbuilding.

Sure, you can argue that Summerset doesn't cover enough land to have much diversity, but look at Vvardenfell.

Sure, you can argue that "we just haven't seen different environments yet" but if so: where would they even be? We've seen images of every major city so far, and even the tallest peak of the island (try and see if you can spot it just by looking at the images).

So, are we really expected to trot through samey-looking forests and beaches for an entire chapter? Does this seem a little bland to anyone else? Some people may not prioritize art and world design, but even the most gameplay-oriented fan would get bored if every level looked more or less the same.

Edit: Sidenote, by the way. Look closely at the map for Summerset. The cities there look way more unique and diverse than what we're apparently getting in-game. Just thought I'd point that out.

Seriously guys, it’s laughable to say an island can only have one climate. Click this link.

Kodrac

It is an island after all.

psychotrip

Kodrac wrote: »

It is an island after all.

So is Vvardenfell. I don't see your point.

Kodrac

psychotrip wrote: »

Kodrac wrote: »

It is an island after all.

So is Vvardenfell. I don't see your point.

An island doesn't typically cover more than one climate.

psychotrip

Kodrac wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

Kodrac wrote: »

It is an island after all.

So is Vvardenfell. I don't see your point.

An island doesn't typically cover more than one climate.

And yet Vvardenfell has volcanic rivers, ashen wastes, green plains, swamps, archipelagos, lush forests, craggy scrublands, etc. It also has more than one city-style.

Being an island doesn't excuse a lack of environmental diversity. Why does Sumerset get left behind?

ThumbtackJake

psychotrip wrote: »

Kodrac wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

Kodrac wrote: »

It is an island after all.

So is Vvardenfell. I don't see your point.

An island doesn't typically cover more than one climate.

And yet Vvardenfell has volcanic rivers, ashen wastes, green plains, swamps, archipelagos, etc. It also has more than one city-style.

Being an island doesn't excuse a lack of environmental diversity.

I think that's mostly due to volcanic eruptions causing the different environments.

shadelon

And Vvardenfell is much further north. Summerset is in a tropical climate.

psychotrip

shadelon wrote: »

And Vvardenfell is much further north. Summerset is in a tropical climate.

Except it doesn't appear tropical at all?

ThumbtackJake wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

Kodrac wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

Kodrac wrote: »

It is an island after all.

So is Vvardenfell. I don't see your point.

An island doesn't typically cover more than one climate.

And yet Vvardenfell has volcanic rivers, ashen wastes, green plains, swamps, archipelagos, etc. It also has more than one city-style.

Being an island doesn't excuse a lack of environmental diversity.

I think that's mostly due to volcanic eruptions causing the different environments.

Volcanic eruptions only explain the lava and ash. And even so, does this really justify Summerset looking so samey? Am I just crazy?

shadelon

Yes you are just crazy. Go lool at Auridon. Much better comparison. It is tropical. Vvardenfell is in a completely different climate being so much further north and having a massive volcano that dominates the island always active which is actually the reason for the giant mushrooms and stuff. The constant volcanic eruptions has a massive effect on the environment.

SexualCabbage

I don't think there's going to be much variation sadly. I felt the same way when i heard the devs say before the release of morrowind that it was more "lush" then it was in TES III. As soon as i heard that i knew it was going to pretty much just be bigger deshaan, and i really wasn't far off.

Faulgor

Yeah, I've said so myself.

Granted, I'm hesitant to moan too much about this before we've seen the island on the PTS.
But by this time before Wrothgar's and Vvardenfell's release, we had already seen much more diverse landscapes.

I'm especially surprised that we haven't seen a single palm tree so far on this tropical island.

psychotrip

shadelon wrote: »

Yes you are just crazy. Go lool at Auridon. Much better comparison. It is tropical. Vvardenfell is in a completely different climate being so much further north and having a massive volcano that dominates the island always active which is actually the reason for the giant mushrooms and stuff. The constant volcanic eruptions has a massive effect on the environment.

I didn't even bring up the mushrooms, but even so you're entirely wrong. The mushrooms are planted by the Telvanni, even when not on Vvardenfell. The volcano doesn't explain the verdant plains, swamps, forests, scrublands, archipelagos etc.

We're talking about the Summerset mainland of the expansion, not Auridon. I'm not sure how many tropical places you've been, but either way this is ultimately irrelevant. A tropical landscape can still be diverse. Skyrim is a mostly boreal climate and yet it's far more diverse than this. Even Eastmarch, a single hold (even smaller than the island of Summerset) has more environmental diversity with its steam-pools, frozen wastes, and forests.

And if nothing else, isn't this just a little bit boring from a visual standpoint? A bit uninspired to make an entire chapter and only give us one environment to look at? Whether we're on a mountain top or at the beach?

Faulgor wrote: »

I'm especially surprised that we haven't seen a single palm tree so far on this tropical island.

Exactly. If this is a tropical island it's a pretty bland one.

Ackwalan

I noticed the 4th picture looks a little phallic. The Altmer have issues.

Maryal

Kodrac wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

Kodrac wrote: »

It is an island after all.

So is Vvardenfell. I don't see your point.

An island doesn't typically cover more than one climate.

Really?

https://huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/13/big-island-climate-zones_n_6866828.html

psychotrip

Ackwalan wrote: »

I noticed the 4th picture looks a little phallic. The Altmer have issues.

That's the best they could come up with for the crystal tower, apparently.

psychotrip

Maryal wrote: »

Kodrac wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

Kodrac wrote: »

It is an island after all.

So is Vvardenfell. I don't see your point.

An island doesn't typically cover more than one climate.

Really?

https://huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/13/big-island-climate-zones_n_6866828.html

I'm putting this in my OP. The notion that an island should only have one environment is laughable. Take a look at Japan as well.

@shadelon @Kodrac Take a look at that article. It's actually got some really beautiful pics too.

Faulgor

People shouldn't make this an argument about realism, because it isn't. It's purely gameplay.

Vvardenfell in TES3 had vastly different biomes. So did Cyrodiil in TES4, and Skyrim in TES5. Frankly I can't think of any RPG that doesn't offer different environments to explore. It's mainly for the enjoyment of the player to see different places.

ZOS did a great job with it in Wrothgar and Vvardenfell - the smaller DLCs didn't lend themselves to a lot of environmental diversity, although there still is quite a bit in Hew's Bane and the Gold Coast.

The only reason the base game zones aren't really diverse are developmental constraints: Instead of creating a larger diversity within each zone, they decided to make every zone distinct from each other. Which is fine, zone borders are basically biome borders.

So holding Summerset to the same standard as any other RPG, including the ones in the main TES line and content released by ZOS previously, is not too much to ask.

xaraan

Looks like an elvish/forested version of Southern California climate/weather wise: which makes sense looking at it's location on the map.

ZiRM

The Altmer pride themselves in having the hottest womens beach volleyball teams.

phermitgb

they're elves. proto-typical elves. proto-typical elves in nearly every fantasy environment I can remember since childhood exist in perpetual clean happy forests. Lotro elves, high elves from dnd (admittedly modeled after tolkien elves), elves from...well, okay, nearly all elves from nearly every major feature film/tv-series/video game are more-or-less modeled after tolkien elves to varying degrees...so...maybe that's the fundamental problem

my point being, that for whatever reason, we have a titanically overreaching fantasy stereotype about "ELVES"...not all elves (we allow all kinds of sub-cultures of elves to be all kinds of kooky) but our fundamental stereotype elves always live in these perpetual arboreal springtime paradises, carefully sequestered from the world where they maintain a harmony with all living blah blah blah *retch*...

sorry...it's just, I'm so tired of the stereotype elf. I happily embraced morrowind (es3) when I played it. The dunmer were JERKS!!!...it was awesome. dusky-toned, dour little jerks, but not the diametrically opposite and evil "dark-elf" - I really enjoyed them, and enjoyed the portrayal of wood elves, and the presence of argonians and khajit, and the total absence of a "elves vs dwarves" storyline that seems to be so oppressively present in so many fantasy worlds

don't get me wrong - I love the hobbit and the lord of the rings trilogy - but Tolkien created such vivid portrayals of classic fantasy "races" that sadly have become so rigidly planted in the public consciousness that it seems nearly impossible to break out

*sigh*

I had a point when I started this rant

psychotrip

phermitgb wrote: »

they're elves. proto-typical elves. proto-typical elves in nearly every fantasy environment I can remember since childhood exist in perpetual clean happy forests. Lotro elves, high elves from dnd (admittedly modeled after tolkien elves), elves from...well, okay, nearly all elves from nearly every major feature film/tv-series/video game are more-or-less modeled after tolkien elves to varying degrees...so...maybe that's the fundamental problem

my point being, that for whatever reason, we have a titanically overreaching fantasy stereotype about "ELVES"...not all elves (we allow all kinds of sub-cultures of elves to be all kinds of kooky) but our fundamental stereotype elves always live in these perpetual arboreal springtime paradises, carefully sequestered from the world where they maintain a harmony with all living blah blah blah *retch*...

sorry...it's just, I'm so tired of the stereotype elf. I happily embraced morrowind (es3) when I played it. The dunmer were JERKS!!!...it was awesome. dusky-toned, dour little jerks, but not the diametrically opposite and evil "dark-elf" - I really enjoyed them, and enjoyed the portrayal of wood elves, and the presence of argonians and khajit, and the total absence of a "elves vs dwarves" storyline that seems to be so oppressively present in so many fantasy worlds

don't get me wrong - I love the hobbit and the lord of the rings trilogy - but Tolkien created such vivid portrayals of classic fantasy "races" that sadly have become so rigidly planted in the public consciousness that it seems nearly impossible to break out

*sigh*

I had a point when I started this rant

Believe it or not, there was a time when Altmer weren’t prototypical elves. ZOS threw that notion in the garbage with the rest of the “transcription errors”.

Faulgor

phermitgb wrote: »

my point being, that for whatever reason, we have a titanically overreaching fantasy stereotype about "ELVES"...not all elves (we allow all kinds of sub-cultures of elves to be all kinds of kooky) but our fundamental stereotype elves always live in these perpetual arboreal springtime paradises, carefully sequestered from the world where they maintain a harmony with all living blah blah blah *retch*...

Which seems odd, because of all the races I'd think the Altmer are the ones to care the least about the environment or "nature".
What do they care about a forest? Creation was a mistake anyway, and if you really wanted to, you could just magic it back in some fashion. Do you want to muck about in the dirt like a Bosmer or the lizard folk? They have Goblin slaves for that.
Even an (magical) industrial wasteland would fit much better with their culture, imo.

Enslaved

Red Mountain > Summerset.

TelvanniWizard

Faulgor wrote: »

phermitgb wrote: »

my point being, that for whatever reason, we have a titanically overreaching fantasy stereotype about "ELVES"...not all elves (we allow all kinds of sub-cultures of elves to be all kinds of kooky) but our fundamental stereotype elves always live in these perpetual arboreal springtime paradises, carefully sequestered from the world where they maintain a harmony with all living blah blah blah *retch*...

Which seems odd, because of all the races I'd think the Altmer are the ones to care the least about the environment or "nature".
What do they care about a forest? Creation was a mistake anyway, and if you really wanted to, you could just magic it back in some fashion. Do you want to muck about in the dirt like a Bosmer or the lizard folk? They have Goblin slaves for that.
Even an (magical) industrial wasteland would fit much better with their culture, imo.

Copied from ESO wiki, Auridon page:

Riliadir, viewing gardens in Auridon:
“It’s too, well, clean, I guess. It’s not like Valenwood at all. Wood Elves, we’re part of the forest and we work together with the trees; the Altmer demand obedience from them. If they can’t magically force them into shape, they’ll cut them. I’ve seen it, the obsessive clipping and pruning and even tying trunks down to encourage them to bend in strange ways. I heard they’ll have them uprooted, even after years of work, if just one flower blooms without exactly the right number of petals, or if one fruit doesn’t have the ‘proper’ number of seeds. It’s all about control for them. It’s horrible. I feel bad for their gardens.”

Kodrac

Faulgor

To anyone who wondered how much of the island will actually be accessible:



Yeah. Lol.

zaria

Faulgor wrote: »

People shouldn't make this an argument about realism, because it isn't. It's purely gameplay.

Vvardenfell in TES3 had vastly different biomes. So did Cyrodiil in TES4, and Skyrim in TES5. Frankly I can't think of any RPG that doesn't offer different environments to explore. It's mainly for the enjoyment of the player to see different places.

ZOS did a great job with it in Wrothgar and Vvardenfell - the smaller DLCs didn't lend themselves to a lot of environmental diversity, although there still is quite a bit in Hew's Bane and the Gold Coast.

The only reason the base game zones aren't really diverse are developmental constraints: Instead of creating a larger diversity within each zone, they decided to make every zone distinct from each other. Which is fine, zone borders are basically biome borders.

So holding Summerset to the same standard as any other RPG, including the ones in the main TES line and content released by ZOS previously, is not too much to ask.

It would make no sense for Summerset to have an cold north part like Wrothgar or Eastmark. Reapers marc goes into desert as you move east.

Cyrodil and Oblivion has an frozen northern part even if south of the Rift, probably as they wanted more variation in Oblivion . Southern part of Oblviion was tropical.

Rosveen

zaria wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

People shouldn't make this an argument about realism, because it isn't. It's purely gameplay.

Vvardenfell in TES3 had vastly different biomes. So did Cyrodiil in TES4, and Skyrim in TES5. Frankly I can't think of any RPG that doesn't offer different environments to explore. It's mainly for the enjoyment of the player to see different places.

ZOS did a great job with it in Wrothgar and Vvardenfell - the smaller DLCs didn't lend themselves to a lot of environmental diversity, although there still is quite a bit in Hew's Bane and the Gold Coast.

The only reason the base game zones aren't really diverse are developmental constraints: Instead of creating a larger diversity within each zone, they decided to make every zone distinct from each other. Which is fine, zone borders are basically biome borders.

So holding Summerset to the same standard as any other RPG, including the ones in the main TES line and content released by ZOS previously, is not too much to ask.

It would make no sense for Summerset to have an cold north part like Wrothgar or Eastmark. Reapers marc goes into desert as you move east.

Cyrodil and Oblivion has an frozen northern part even if south of the Rift, probably as they wanted more variation in Oblivion . Southern part of Oblviion was tropical.

They can have chillier mountain areas, it's nothing unusual even in warm countries.

RANKK7

Yes, don't you see it's Disneyland? What's climate?

@ZOS really, was expecting something different about architecture (there is an entire thread about that), now it seems you didn't bother to give some climate variation... make this freaking place a bit special, because it should be so! It's Elves land, damn.

psychotrip

zaria wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

People shouldn't make this an argument about realism, because it isn't. It's purely gameplay.

Vvardenfell in TES3 had vastly different biomes. So did Cyrodiil in TES4, and Skyrim in TES5. Frankly I can't think of any RPG that doesn't offer different environments to explore. It's mainly for the enjoyment of the player to see different places.

ZOS did a great job with it in Wrothgar and Vvardenfell - the smaller DLCs didn't lend themselves to a lot of environmental diversity, although there still is quite a bit in Hew's Bane and the Gold Coast.

The only reason the base game zones aren't really diverse are developmental constraints: Instead of creating a larger diversity within each zone, they decided to make every zone distinct from each other. Which is fine, zone borders are basically biome borders.

So holding Summerset to the same standard as any other RPG, including the ones in the main TES line and content released by ZOS previously, is not too much to ask.

It would make no sense for Summerset to have an cold north part like Wrothgar or Eastmark. Reapers marc goes into desert as you move east.

Cyrodil and Oblivion has an frozen northern part even if south of the Rift, probably as they wanted more variation in Oblivion . Southern part of Oblviion was tropical.

This is nonsense. Tropical islands can have plenty of environments:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/13/big-island-climate-zones_n_6866828.html

So explain to me why ZOS is slacking.

Kodrac wrote: »

Sure, you can write it off by saying "the altmer used magic to make it this way", but that's yet another retroactive justification for bland worldbuilding.

Besides, aren’t people also saying that the Altmer’s super advanced magical abilities were just “exaggerations”? Which explains why the cities look so mundane and bland? You can’t have it both ways.

zaria

Rosveen wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

People shouldn't make this an argument about realism, because it isn't. It's purely gameplay.

Vvardenfell in TES3 had vastly different biomes. So did Cyrodiil in TES4, and Skyrim in TES5. Frankly I can't think of any RPG that doesn't offer different environments to explore. It's mainly for the enjoyment of the player to see different places.

ZOS did a great job with it in Wrothgar and Vvardenfell - the smaller DLCs didn't lend themselves to a lot of environmental diversity, although there still is quite a bit in Hew's Bane and the Gold Coast.

The only reason the base game zones aren't really diverse are developmental constraints: Instead of creating a larger diversity within each zone, they decided to make every zone distinct from each other. Which is fine, zone borders are basically biome borders.

So holding Summerset to the same standard as any other RPG, including the ones in the main TES line and content released by ZOS previously, is not too much to ask.

It would make no sense for Summerset to have an cold north part like Wrothgar or Eastmark. Reapers marc goes into desert as you move east.

Cyrodil and Oblivion has an frozen northern part even if south of the Rift, probably as they wanted more variation in Oblivion . Southern part of Oblviion was tropical.

They can have chillier mountain areas, it's nothing unusual even in warm countries.

Good point about mountains who we know it has.
Have we seen shots from that area yet.