[suggestion] To Enhance Wedding

Starraver

WARNING: English is not my native language so please be forgiving for my poor grammar. This is a repost of a subject opened on the french general disscussion forum. In order for it to gain more visibility, I decided to post a (homemade) translation of it here. (link to the original post: forums.elderscrollsonline.com/fr/discussion/431108/suggestions-amelioration-du-mariage#latest). The Original post is from "Drahn" and all credit goes to him and those who post their idea on it.

To Enhance Wedding

As you most probably know, it's possible for two player to engage themself to each other trought a "pledge of mara" IG, aviable in the crown store. Sadly all the marriage mechanic hold in one thing: a 10% exp bonus ring with the name of the spouse "on" it.

Important note, marriage is possible between any race, allience, gender and is account linked. Divorce (as in solo game) isn't an option. Altought, there is a possibility for multiple marriage: since only one character need to use a "pledge of mara" to wedd, then a non-married character can use it on an already married character.

The will to post this on the forum came from personnal experience and the fact of disscussing with 4 other people IG. Wich happen to be 2 IRL couple who play ESO together. We came to the conclusion that, in a game where thre's housing, outfit creator, a ton of emote, and so on on character personalisation and roleplay enhancing features; some upgrade on wedding would be more than welcome. Tamreil's most probably swarmed with IRL couple (or best friend/friend who married their character IG) who play just between themselfs as the game is perfectly playable this way. So it's really frustrating to not have any true advantage IG to play in couple.

So here all things we came up with:

Possibility to share account linked item (with spouse only):

More precisely, it would be to cover the exchange of monster set between married couple, but we can imagine a mechanic allowing to exchange many other account linked item such as furnishing.
Of course we thought about the possibility of exploit that exist here, but it would be centered on only two character that have to be married to each other. Let's remember that crown store owned "pledge of mara" is currently the only way to enagage in wedding. So it seem pretty hard to massivly exploit it to exchange linked item.

Shared property of House:
To be honest we think it's a shame that this feature wasn't implemented right away when housing came out.
On the paper it's pretty simple, as well as being able to move already placed furnishing the spouse could themself place furnishing in the house. And it make sense that two person in the same couple share the property of a house they most of them time buy by putting ther gold together (since house big enought for two people are pretty expensive). Adding this exclusive right of house sharing to couple would be a wonderful and esay way of enhancing RP and immersion in the hearth. The spouse should also actually own the house (no need to go on the name of the other spouse and "visit" it's main residence to go in the house), change permission, ect.

An isolated mailbox:
Or the possibility to archive some mail. We're almost in a complete rework of the mailbow here but it seem that being able to hold cute/sweet mail sended by the loved one would be a cool option to have. Note that it could work for some of the materail furnisher mail (wich some are worse archiving) and RP message between (boy-girl/friend).

Access to a private chest:
Why not (to enforce the afford mentionned idea) to siply let spouse have access to each other locked chest in house ? We have for a long time hold in the situatio where only one of the spouse is ESO+ memeber and the non ESO+ give all his/her materail to the other using him as a "walking" bag for the couple to stock all useful crafting material.

The wedding ceremony:
A really big and dierly missing part of the wedding mechanic here, we think. It isn't a surpsise to any who married their character if we told you that the wedding ceremony is kind of underhelming. 3 sec of levitating with weird came out of nowhere light...meh sad.
When you have to pay 1000 crown to buy "pledge of mara" such a ceremony clearly feel it didn't worth your money.
Put in place a true wedding ceremony in the alliance capitale temple with a small dialogue from the priest of mara (such as in skyrim for exemple) and a "I do" line would be more than desiered ans help with making marriage both more symbolic and satisfaying as well as enhancing (once again) more RP and immersive.
The possibility to also send invitation to witness marriage to friend/guild member could be great too.

No more polygami and Divorce option:
Preventing multiple marriage would be a good way to enhance marriage in many way without risking it to become the new easy way to strenghten your charcter as well as preventing exploit in many suggested new addtion to wedding.
Having the possibility of Divorce would be great if for any reason you or your mate happen to stop playing the game or don't want to play together anymore.

Married and then ?
So what happen in your ESO life now that your married ? Will you be able to enjoy the wonderful married life of a badass adventurer couple who kick deadra ass ? Or will you just be two regular player who get to have an almost irrevelent 10% exp bonus ring ?

First when you juste swore your life to your soul-mate you probably want to show your new married statue to the entire world (since your obviously so happy to finaly be married to the most incredible/cute/smart/[add more pleasent comment here] person in the whole Tamriel and beyond). So why is there not even a character title for It ?
Something as simple as : "Husband of <insert spouse character name>" and "Wife of <insert spouse character name> would be more than fit and satisfaying.

Second, adding dailies quest aviable only to married couple with not to game important reward so all people don't go to wedd the first people to cross their road in order to get things. Furnishing and other cosmetic (marriage themed ?) item would be cool. Plus it would be a cool way to enjoy qucik play session with your mate that feel unique and enforce the sensationof being married to someone.

Last but not least- Rework of the ring of Mara:
Here the big bad wolf of marriage in ESO and the first thing that disapoint you when you do wedding.
The ring is cute and it mention the name of your spouse as the crafter but it's less than the minimum we would want for it.
It's simple 90% of the time you can"t wear it cause it take a slot in ring preventing you to get set bonus. Moreover once you hit max level or a level so high set gear become mendatory, the ring is now useless and will remain as a dead item in your inventory or your bank. Having a special slot to equip it would be more than welcome and desierd.

Then let's talk about the actual bonus of the ring. As mentionned before the 10% exp bonus is not that great. For once you have to wear set or is max level it of no use anymore. We completly refuse to see it gain a combat bonus of any sort (for people who search to always play an fully optimised character would go full on marring the first personne they see to get the bonus). But getting something more revelent that the exp bonus or have it gain a new bonus once you hit CP160 would be cool and make the Ring of Mara more revelent in generale.

We let zenimax appreciate what kind of non-combat bonus would be fit in replacement of the underhelming 10% exp bonus.


In Conclusion, We know that putting so much attention in a feature that have no influance nor in PVE nor in PVP is maybe much to ask to ZOS but we also firmly think that perfection lay in attention to detail. Generaly we also think that all those change would be a very efficient and easy way to enhance the experience IG of many player and would be more that welcome by the full community of ESO players.

The only way for us IRL couple and IG couple to get ZOS to do something about it is to give so much visiblity to our plead that ZOS can't ignore it. This post is a way of achieving this. So please mind to take a minute of your life to give it more visibility.

See You IG.

@Starraver & @Rosemelia and all those who participated in giving us those idea.

Ragged_Claw

Some very good points made here that I totally agree with. I've had my Ring of Mara sitting in my bank since the launch of the game since there doesn't seem to be much point to marriage (other than RP). I definitely agree about housing being shared, I bought a large house for myself and my IRL partner, but he refused to hand-over his share of the gold because he couldn't decorate it or do anything with it

I've seen a few posts in the past asking for a similar overhaul to marriage, I'd love to see ZoS add something to it, or that ring is going to still be stuck in my bank in another four years...

anadandy

Some great ideas here - particularly with regards to housing. I know many people wish there was a co-ownership options and tying to it to the Ring of Mara would at least give some bit of weight to that decision.

A separate item slot for the ring would be nice too.

max_only

It’s a shame the ring takes up a valuable spot. It should be a buff when grouped with your IG spouse.

The wedding ceremony should be a mini quest with dialogue and the option to select “I do.” The npcs hanging around the temples should stand and clap too.

I agree with the housing but I don’t know how they will go back and add those features now, it’s probably easier for them to have one account to own a house at a time. Trying to give two permissions is difficult because what if the spouse stops membership but you keep membership? Then they need two rules for the same house. It’s not impossible but I think they took the easy way.

Ragged_Claw

I'm thinking they didn't integrate shared housing because if a couple had a falling out (like they do) ZoS would end up getting tickets like 'He stole my Alinor rug' or 'She's walked out and taken all the crafting tables' etc. I guess unfortunately it's a system that could be abused. I wonder if other MMOs do shared housing and how they implement it? But still, a proper wedding ceremony and extra slot for the ring are still great ideas that I imagine could be integrated fairly easily.

Acrolas

The marketing material and the game itself do a good job of not laterally equating the Ritual of Mara to a marriage or a civic union. Just an small optional role-play perk irregardless of your real-world relationship status.

Coercing players into the Ritual to gain access to a wider assortment of game options isn't good game design or good use of this specific lore. Anything close to account sharing isn't going to happen as the Ritual won't be indicative of real-world vetting and will become a liability to your account security.

They're fun ideas. But fun isn't always practical or fair to the community as a whole.