do you consider ESO to be strongly story driven?

craybest

I'd like to hear your opinions on this.
I've always considered the game to be strongly story driven, with a clear main quest and even ever side quests being carefully voiced and with a believeably story background to justify it.
But when I see the forums most topics seem to be about loot, nerfs, items, skills, and besides the lore subforums I hardly ever see anyone talking about the actual story.
So my 2 questions are, do you believe ESO to be strongly story driven? and do you think that all the forum talk is at the end of the day something all MMOs will always focus on, independent if it's more story driven, or not?

xeNNNNN

I do believe it is yes. But the issue is like all MMOs it isn't the focus of the players even if it is the focus of the game. The forums are used mostly to complain continuously about almost everything.

- Right now night-blades are complaining.
- Sorcs are universally always complaining.
- The "they dont care" threads are consistent.
- The performance threads.
- The threads telling ZoS how to do their job

There are many positive and good well rounded threads out there about story and lore and such but unfortunately they are drowned in the sea that is stupidity.

The necroed rage threads, the current rage threads. Its also a simple fact that this forum represents only a small fraction of the people who play as well and should never be used as some form of indicative statistic to determine what is good and what is not.

People will always complain first and those who are happy will always be quiet. It is the way of things.
But overall yes the game is story driven but also by its general PvE activities too all that said, again - its always easier to complain than be positive.

FlyingSwan

Storytelling is the one thing ESO does very well, so you won't see people discuss it. People tend to be more vocal when they are unhappy with something, whereas we simply accept those things we buy that work well. So forums give an appearance of a product being less satisfactory that it is. Plus, most people who play ESO are not even on the forum.

There are many valid criticisms about how ESO is managed, how flaky it is, how ZOS are simply on a never-ending cash grab etc., but the story-telling is something that ZOS get right every time.

Loves_guars

Story is the main element of ESO that makes me play these days.

max_only

Yes it was. I don’t talk about story on the forums much because there are always new people so there is always the fear of spoiling for others.

Currently I don’t believe eso is story driven. Right now it’s driven by everything else but story/lore. There is no story to pvp. Just a bunch of warriors dying over and over again for nothing.

AlienatedGoat

I consider ESO to be nerf-driven. That seems about the only consistent change that I see these days.

dazee

ESO is not a story driven game it is driven by the tears of people who refuse to learn counters to sorc and NB in pvp. those tears and whines power the great mega reactor needed to run the servers- wait I mean the tired old hamsters.

CMDR_Un1k0rn

Yes it is.

That's why nobody talks about it.

This is the Internet. People only complain.

idk

ESO is heavily story based and story driven. From the base game main story line, alliance story lines and with each expansion there is a story line.

Successful PvE based games tend to be story driven. PvP gamer tend to still have a story but it’s more of a back story to justify your characters existence. Not much creativity or effort goes into it. At least not with the ones I’ve played and beta tested.

coop500

I'd say it's much stronger than any other MMO

Tasear

Yes but quests are mudane with poor player engagement outside the story.

VvardeFellow

Yes, but. Almost every quest, whether singular or a line, has interwoven stories in them. But the story gets drowned by the "hurry up and level or xyz" hamster wheel. Also, when I, and I alone continually save a king, a zone, or Tamriel itself, it's not too immersive when I'm saying, "right, I'm the only one", or the occasional PC part of a quest that leaves you with "where does that come from?"

JadeCoin

It depends what you mean by "story-driven."

For me personally, the stories and lore are a very central part of why I'm here, but that's going to vary depending on who you ask. The stories are rich and continuous enough that at least some other players will feel the same way I do.

Stories are relatively expensive to create, though, and repeatable only to a point. They can't be easily cranked out in bulk, and they don't really drive daily login numbers. This is why you could argue that a lot of the game is driven by some type of completionism, or "OCD lite": people chasing achievements, or cosmetics, or shinies, or whatever. Fluff-driven, I guess you could say. That's how I'd describe the Anniversary event anyway.

Then there are the folks doing the really hard endgame content and the high-level PvP. That's challenge-driven or score-driven, maybe?

There are an awful lot of factors at work in the game. It'd be impossible to generalize.

AcadianPaladin

For me the game is story-driven and does a good job. The biggest complaint in that area I have is disrupting the story by forcing new characters to start in the flavor of the month newest chapter instead of where they should - at the beginning of the game in Coldharbour with transition to the starting zone of their home alliance. Experienced players can hold their nose through the flavor of the month tutorial then port to one of their houses, find the mysterious stranger and do the proper tutorial. Newer players, however, are left understandably confused and lost when they emerge for the tutorial of the month.

Though the fix (starting options) has been suggested since the first chapter came out and seems simple enough. . . it has not been implemented.

Sylvermynx

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

For me the game is story-driven and does a good job. The biggest complaint in that area I have is disrupting the story by forcing new characters to start in the flavor of the month newest chapter instead of where they should - at the beginning of the game in Coldharbour with transition to the starting zone of their home alliance. Experienced players can hold their nose through the flavor of the month tutorial then port to one of their houses, find the mysterious stranger and do the proper tutorial. Newer players, however, are left understandably confused and lost when they emerge for the tutorial of the month.

Though the fix (starting options) has been suggested since the first chapter came out and seems simple enough. . . it has not been implemented.

Yep. I bought the Gold box when I first started. And of course, I'd been lurking here and reading (sometimes starting with threads long ages closed), so when I got dumped out in MW instead of the main game.... I was more than just slightly confuzzled. So.... thank the goddesses for google. I quickly figured out how to start from the beginning. I really did enjoy meeting Jiub again though, especially after Skyrim!

Still, if people don't think about searching for issues like that, well.... it's just painful - and bad game design.

DaveMoeDee

People like me who are here for the story aren't going to start many posts. People with something to complain about are going to post the most.

Ertosi

I consider ESO to have always been story driven. Which is why I consider the Season of the Dragon's "overarching" story to be a greatly overhyped "feature" for this year. It's my belief that the only reason "story" is being so greatly hyped this year is to distract everyone from the fact that this year isn't bringing any new significant features on the same scope as those brought in previous years.

And seeing how an "interconnected" story is being hyped so very much this year, lets look at what it's brought us so far, these first two quarters:

• Completing Q1's story amounted in the change of a single line later when talking to Abnur Tharn when he essentially says "you" helped gather the Wrathstone instead of "someone".
• The early hype of "Tamriel uniting to fight the dragons" ended up being merely the Elsweyr prepper dailies where you went to random alliance zones to train a khajiit by having it follow you while you smashed mobs.

Yes, ESO is story driven, and that's a great thing, but if it's going to be their primary focus this year it needs to be done in a manner truly as big as the hype, and never at the expense of real features. Sure, they might manage to surprise me in this year's last two quarters, but given how weak this year as been so far with regards to total new features brought, I'm not holding my breath.

Sylvermynx

Ertosi wrote: »

I consider ESO to have always been story driven. Which is why I consider the Season of the Dragon's "overarching" story to be a greatly overhyped "feature" for this year. It's my belief that the only reason "story" is being so greatly hyped this year is to distract everyone from the fact that this year isn't bringing any new significant features on the same scope as those brought in previous years.

And seeing how an "interconnected" story is being hyped so very much this year, lets look at what it's brought us so far, these first two quarters:

• Completing Q1's story amounted in the change of a single line later when talking to Abnur Tharn when he essentially says "you" helped gather the Wrathstone instead of "someone".
• The early hype of "Tamriel uniting to fight the dragons" ended up being merely the Elsweyr prepper dailies where you went to random alliance zones to train a khajiit by having it follow you while you smashed mobs.

Yes, ESO is story driven, and that's a great thing, but if it's going to be their primary focus this year it needs to be done in a manner truly as big as the hype, and never at the expense of real features. Sure, they might manage to surprise me in this year's last two quarters, but given how weak this year as been so far with regards to total new features brought, I'm not holding my breath.

Little too late for that now, I think. What will be will be as it's already pretty much set in stone. So, don't hold that breath son.... *sadface*

mb10

Unfortunately not.

It definitely started off that way with the whole Molag Bal and planemeald saga but ever since the story has been all over the place.

No one knows the lineal order of the story, its all mixed and ambigious.

Shame really tbh

barney2525

mb10 wrote: »

Unfortunately not.

It definitely started off that way with the whole Molag Bal and planemeald saga but ever since the story has been all over the place.

No one knows the lineal order of the story, its all mixed and ambigious.

Shame really tbh

Disagree

If you start a character, skip the tutorial, go to your main city. Whatever you do to prepare your character for actual play (I go to crafting stations, make level 1 armor and weaps to kill crabs just to open skill lines - basically I open all the skill lines including guilds and ledgerdomain, which generally gets me to level 4, I make a white set of armor and weaps for the character and head off to the hooded figure.

The rest is from an AD viewpoint :

Wailing Prison - drops off at Kenarthi Roost, which starts Alliance Quest.
Clear all of Kenarthi - sent to Vulkel Guard, receive the Mainline quest starter
Go to Mage and Fighter guild to get the questline starters - Mage Guild is middle of Auridon, so you dont deal with it right away
Do Main quest 1 - when I leave the harborage it triggers Main 2, then I go back down the beach and trigger Fighter guild start, which sends me back to Fighters guild - talk with leader there and next part wont be until well into Auridon
Now do Main quest until you have rescued Tharn. Here you have the option of going ahead and going to Grahtwood to knock out that quest, or waiting and having all quests send you to grahtwood.
(I go ahead and do it, but thats just me ) At this point Sai Sahan will just have to wait until all the other quests catch up

Go back to Vulkelguard do the Alliance quests. Cover the entirety of Auridon. As you move north, you will come to the delve to do the Mage Guild - do it, then complete the Mage quests until they send you to Grahtwood. At that point continue Alliance quests. Same deal when you reach the area to do the Fighters guild quests. Complete them when you reach them, once they send you to Grahtwood, go back and finnish Alliance Quests.

If you use this system, and don't push one sets of quests too far ahead of the others, you get a story that flows very well. And you won't be missing anything.

FierceSam

First, the forums are an exceptionally bad way to gauge what is going on on ESO.

In terms of your question, at the moment I don’t feel that ESO is very story driven. Instead I feel it is very Event driven. New Life bleeds into Jester’s morphs into the 5 Year Anniversary. There’s a lot to do and most of it is fun, but there’s no story there at all.

And for all of the Season of the Dragon gallumfing, we’ve had very little story there either - a couple of lines of dialogue in Frostvault and Depths of Malatar and a slightly anticlimactic prequel quest for the game shows.

I’m looking forward to Elsweyr and at least the beginning of a serious storyline.

tahol10069

Of course, that's why I play it. And that's why you don't see me posting here. I'm a full solo player, so I have nothing to complain about. I don't care about meta, so whatever they change doesn't really hurt me. Doesn't mean I'm 100% happy with the game, but it mostly gives me what I want from a game.

jainiadral

Definitely. I'd have never lasted 11 mos. if it wasn't. I'm a lone wolf quester-- aside from exploring, story and questing is all I do in the game. With all the PvP stuff going on in General, I don't have any reason to post these days. It's pages and pages of utter irrelevance

Though, I'm definitely finding cataloging ESO domestic animals to be a lot of fun too

Ermiq

It was. Until they decided to force people to start from the last part of the story with every chapter release.
Ridiculous game design decision, certainly not acceptable for a story driven game.

logarifmik

The story drove me to play this game and it still do.

Ermiq wrote: »

It was. Until they decided to force people to start from the last part of the story with every chapter release.
Ridiculous game design decision, certainly not acceptable for a story driven game.

Completely agree, after 1T the narrative become a mess. And no good enough explanation why is given since then.

Royaji

ESO has strong story and it is one of the reasons why it appeals to a much wider public than other MMOs. But MMOs can't be story-driven. No studio in the world can create story content faster than players consume it. If we were to say that story is the main appeal in ESO as an MMO Wrathstone would have 3 hours of content. Chapters? 10-20 hours at best. You can't base an MMO on such miniscule content drops.

That's why ESO has two playerbases. Story-driven one that comes in for a couple of weeks every patch and the more dedicated MMO palyerbase. People who come for the story care very little about balance, mechanics and forums. They are not going to spend their time on that stuff. And that's why forums are a lot more concerned about more MMO-related features since dedicated players who come to the forums care about them a lot more.

MartiniDaniels

No. I mostly stopped doing quests after I "discovered" group content. Well, I'm still doing them, maybe 1 "big quest" marker per week but this is mostly due to my attachment to TES lore.
And I never completed main storyline, only Bangkorai, Auridon and Stonefalls, Morrowind and now trying to complete main storyline and Summerset, but easily distracted by somebody's proposition to go to dungeon/trial/cyro.

kmcaj

No. Not really a good example of a story driven game.

Elsonso

There is a story, and it is actually a good story, and there is lore, and it is good lore. Both are present in all aspects of the game, but I don't feel that it drives the game. It is there as part of the game.

Swagonian

Y E S

worrallj

It's got good story telling for an mmo, but I would not call it story driven. I'd call a game story driven if the story is what helps the player understand / figure out what they're supposed to do next. That doesn't happen in ESO anymore than your average mmo.

Once you accept the quest, it's just standard chase the quest marker. I've tried turning the quest markers off, and many if not most quests can be nearly impossible to figure out where your supposed to go without them. The quest dialogue is always too vague.