Elder Scrolls Online: How characters & Pacing can affect player engagement in the story.

Iccotak

The Characters & The Player story
Elder Scroll games never really put much effort into NPCs because the single player titles always had considerable room for the players moral ambiguity. Serana from “Skyrim: Dawnguard” was really the only fleshed out character that the player could develop any emotional connection for. Which is why there’s a noticeable quantity vs quality difference between characters in Skyrim and Fallout 4. The truth is that Skyrim and ESO are really the first Elder Scroll games that make an effort to write NPCs that players can care about.

This is because Elder Scroll games were always about one person, you the player. Your character is the central protagonist of the plot and the only one that matters so your relationship with other characters was never a focal point. There were many people who weren’t a fan of being the main character in an MMO but it is an Elder Scrolls game and in my opinion they made it work with the Molag Bal story arc because they made a group of well written & acted companions for your player to engage with.

A relevant example of TES being about the player - TES V: Skyrim
- Skyrim was about our character, the Dragonborn, fulfilling a prophecy and saving the world from Alduin the World-Eater
- Dawnguard was about our relationship with the character Serana, no matter which side we chose
- Dragonborn was about us facing off against Miraak, the First Dragonborn, and our connection to the Daedric Prince Hermaeus Mora.

In all of these stories in Skyrim, it was about the player’s relation with Fate.
to quote Paarthanax

“The Kelle... Elder Scrolls, as you name them, they have often been used for prophecy. Yes, your prophecy comes from an Elder Scroll.”

“True… But qostiid - prophecy - tells what may be, not what should be. Qostiid sahlo aak. Just because you can do a thing, does not always mean you should. Do you have no better reason for acting than destiny? Are you nothing more than a plaything of dez… of fate?”

In Dawnguard you were always fated to meet Serana and end the Volkihar clan. No matter which side you choose that is what the outcome will always be.

This comes full circle when we meet once again with Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Fate, in the Dragonborn DLC. It seems that no matter what we do, we are destined to take Miraak’s place to become Mora’s plaything, which was a position that Miraak desperately sought to escape.

In contrast look at the major MMORPG World of Warcraft.
Warcraft is essentially a cast of characters in a soap opera. These characters are the focus of the plot, while you’re there for the ride. The MMO had the advantage of its story & characters being set up back in the RTS games, so there were already people that were invested in their story.

Sure people can make their own characters in WoW but they are not the Main Character, rather they are more like observers playing second fiddle to the major characters. WoW focuses on engaging players emotions through cinematic over-the-top soap opera storytelling. The Players care more about the story of characters like Arthas, Thrall, Jaina, Sylvanas, Saurfang, etc. than they do about their own PCs - they’re just a soldier in the ongoing conflict of Warcraft. That’s how WoW get’s them invested in their factions - by giving them compelling characters that they want to support in the fight.

Which is what makes the Main Story Boss fights so engaging is because it’s everyone working with these major characters to take down the Main Antagonist. You went on an epic journey that led to this moment killing “The Big Bad” (Illidan, Arthas, Deathwing, etc)

Am I saying that Elder Scrolls Online should copy WoW?
No, what works for WoW is not going to work for ESO. In fact I would say that has been the problem - ZOS has been making their own NPCs the main characters as opposed to us the player.
It’s like a session of Dungeons & Dragons. The DM is not the main character, the players are. If a DM takes over a story with an NPC then the players lose interest because their characters have nothing to do but play second fiddle to the DM, which is not fun.

If ZOS wants players to be invested in a story then there has to be skin in the game for them. A personal motivation for the story.
The story has to affect the player in some way that they have a vested interest in seeing it through. Like Mannimarco and Molag Bal, they took your soul - there’s your personal motivation in a grand story.
Sure we help the five companions but the story comes full circle to ultimately being about us.

Emphasize how the player’s involvement in a story affects them and other characters. Implement dialogue options that are related to the choices the player has made to their character (race, class, curse,) as well as what they did in quests because all these variables should have more impact on how characters react and treat you.

Look at past installments of ESO
In Orsinium we befriended King Kurog, he seemed like a great guy who just wanted a hopeful future for his people. So when he killed his chieftain it was a shock because we worked with him up to that point. He became our friend but we had to kill him because he’d gone mad for power. The story became a tragedy because we lost a friend.

In Summerset, if you played the base game, we reunited with an old friend Daren, who we reminisce with. It felt bitter sweet because instead of an army like we had for Molag Bal, it was just us that was stopping the destruction of the Crystal Tower.

If you played Morrowind then you’re character played a part in Veya’s fate who became Nocturnal’s Champion.
Daren ultimately sacrificed himself to give us a shot at defeating the Veya. There was a sad feeling that over the course of time we were losing our friends. The story had an impact on our character, and it was partly our fault.

An issue with recent stories is that too much hinged on you liking the "good" characters and feeling for them vicariously. Feel for a character’s struggle as if it is your own. Here’s the thing, I can sympathize with Khamira in Elsweyr but Season of the Dragon really seemed to be about her and didn’t really have anything to do with my character, it didn’t affect me personally, except for losing Tharn (allegedly)

This could have been different if the story took into account the role we played in obtaining the Wrathstone & unleashing the Dragons. If Khamira was not only mad with Tharn but also with us, then we could have had character growth in our relationship with Khamira. The story becomes about facing the consequences of our actions.

However we hardly had much time to develop a relationship with Khamira due to a lack of interaction and our relationship with Tharn was only meaningful if we met him during the Planemeld.
So the Quest lines in the chapters need to be longer not only due to a lack of character interaction but also because the stories in Q2 & Q4 are too short which leads to my next point.

Stories have to be longer
Another thing that made the the Planemeld & The Daedric War Arcs good was the amount of time those stories took. In the Planemeld we had 6 zones of build up, Daedric War was 3, but Elsweyr had 2.
Sure there were Dungeons but only the first one mattered but even then you don’t need to play them to understand the story.
If ZOS is only going to use two zones for a story arc then there’s going to need to be more quests in order to have a more fleshed out story. Otherwise we’ll start to feel - “Was that it?”
Which is the last thing a writer wants to feel. There’s a difference between a cliff hanger and being cut short.

Take the time to tell the story, set up the characters, including the antagonist, and allow more time for them and the story to develop because otherwise we just aren’t invested.

VaranisArano

I think the year-long stories are hamstrung by the release schedule of dungeon DLC, prologue quest, chapter, and Q4 DLC.

For example, Elsweyr's best moment for me was releasing the dragons. Massive "oh shoot, what have I done?!" moment. But since that happened in the Prologue, most new players either never experienced it or if they did, they did it long after they've been fighting dragons. It robs the moment of all storytelling power. Imagine if that had been the tutorial!

Greymoor, on the other hand, has been stretching out its investigation through the Harrowstorm dungeons and the Prologue...and then in Greymoor, we're still asking "What are the Icereach Coven/Draugrkin/vampires up to?" despite having been investigating that since Q1. The story feels like it spends a lot of time spinning its wheels.

Hexi

Facerolling through 99% of the game isn't exactly engaging. It's pretty hard to care when you go to a supposedly powerful enemy with story implication and you delete it in 2 seconds.

Starlock

Something to remember about video games: they are interactive forms of entertainment. This makes it a challenging medium to tell stories in on a couple of levels that relate to the OP's points.

First, nearly all video games that strive for narrative content are inevitably going to have some issues with pacing. This happens because no matter how much the developers want to set the pace, it is ultimately the player who determines the pace especially in a large, open world MMORPG. The developers have to be careful about restricting player choice to facilitate their vision of pacing because that significantly restricts how players can play the game. Sometimes, attempts to solve the perceived problem of pacing just end up causing more problems.

The way the developers have handled the challenge of pacing has shifted a lot since the game's original release.

For example, in many base game zones, side quests often served to tell parts of the rest of that zone's main story. I'm playing Rivenspire right now, and it is one of the best example of this narrative method. Several side quests in that zone relate to what's going on in that region. This means that even if the player gets sidetracked away from the main story, the activities they are doing in that zone still largely relate to that central narrative. Pacing becomes a bit less problematic. However, there's also a tradeoff to doing this. When you weave side quests of a zone into the main quest, they have to continue to make sense to do regardless of the order a player encounters them in. That's tough to account for. In the newer zones, side quests basically don't intersect at all with the main quest and I suspect they did this in part to avoid this problem. Instead they've focused on telling good, self-contained stories for side quests... many of which really are quite good.

The short of it is that narrative design and flow gets really difficult in a non-linear, open world game like this. Personally, I prefer games that leave room for the player to insert their creativity into the story and tell more of the story in their own heads. Especially in an RPG. If I wanted to watch a movie - to not interact with the story or be creative - I would watch a movie, yeah?

Iccotak

Hexi wrote: »

Facerolling through 99% of the game isn't exactly engaging. It's pretty hard to care when you go to a supposedly powerful enemy with story implication and you delete it in 2 seconds.

I do think that One Tamriel needs some balancing as I have a couple posts on that topic.
Some agreed with me but a percentage of the responses were “Story/Overland should be easy. If I want a challenge I’d play endgame”

Edit: I had a section in this post discussing it but the post was already long enough as it is.

Gabrielzavadski

Iccotak wrote: »

In Dawnguard you were always fated to meet Serana and end the Volkihar clan. No matter which side you choose that is what the outcome will always be.

Not entirely true, Volkihar Clan survives if you choose the vampire side, and you become their leader.

Anyway, I found out on my own experience, that the Ebonheart Pact has far more depth than almost any questline in the game. Almost all side quest characters are recurring, they appear in other Zone plot quests and even on Planemeld arc later on. Also, many Pact npcs are recurring on dlc content... also, we nearly had some "Serana" kind of interaction with Naryu Virian (Pact quests, not talking about dlc's).

Daggerfall Covenant had almost the same depth as Ebonheart Pact too, also with many recurring npcs.

And we have the please help another settlement Aldmeri Dominion, with it's annoying jungles , without as much depth and recurring characters as we had in Daggerfall Covenant and mainly on Ebonheart Pact alliances.

All that aside, the game offers a immersive way to play it, by completing all zones quests in their own sequence, and all the DLC's at their launch date, giving you diferent dialogues and interactions.
That, for a MMORPG, is a big deal... Also, its a The Elder Scrolls game!

Iccotak

Gabrielzavadski wrote: »

Iccotak wrote: »

In Dawnguard you were always fated to meet Serana and end the Volkihar clan. No matter which side you choose that is what the outcome will always be.

Not entirely true, Volkihar Clan survives if you choose the vampire side, and you become their leader.

Anyway, I found out on my own experience, that the Ebonheart Pact has far more depth than almost any questline in the game. Almost all side quest characters are recurring, they appear in other Zone plot quests and even on Planemeld arc later on. Also, many Pact npcs are recurring on dlc content... also, we nearly had some "Serana" kind of interaction with Naryu Virian (Pact quests, not talking about dlc's).

Daggerfall Covenant had almost the same depth as Ebonheart Pact too, also with many recurring npcs.

And we have the please help another settlement Aldmeri Dominion, with it's annoying jungles , without as much depth and recurring characters as we had in Daggerfall Covenant and mainly on Ebonheart Pact alliances.

All that aside, the game offers a immersive way to play it, by completing all zones quests in their own sequence, and all the DLC's at their launch date, giving you diferent dialogues and interactions.
That, for a MMORPG, is a big deal... Also, its a The Elder Scrolls game!

Blood for the Pact!

Agreed they are my favorite alliance.

With that said I’m mainly discussing and critiquing the DLC Season Story format

Faulgor

Spot on! Of course I'd say so because it includes some of the stuff I've commented on your other posts (we've been talking about this for a while it seems).

There's just too little personal involvement in Greymoor's storyline, and in a way Elsweyr had the same problem. I get the feeling ZOS thinks they can fill that motivational hole by adding recurring characters like Sai, Tharn and Lyris, but that's not enough to give the player the impression that his actions and relationships matter.

If you don't happen to like Khamira or Svana, these stories tend to fall apart, because helping them is the only motivation for your character. Especially in Greymoor this is a problem, because if you are a Vampire or Werewolf yourself like many players, why would you have trouble with the Gray Host antagonists? Why overhaul Vampire and Werewolf gameplay in the same update that punishes you narratively for playing as one?

It's such a shame because they did all of this much better in Orsinium and the Daedric War arc, even smaller DLC like Thieves Guild.

theroyalestpythonnub18_ESO

I agree wholeheartedly with most of this. I feel like ESO has really strong character work, which has been more or less glossed over in Greymoor and Elsweyr. Like in Elsweyr both Khamira and Tharn face significant loss and then brush off their feeling with the "not the time to grieve" bit. Compare this to Leythen and Valsirenn who revisit their feelings and motivations half a dozen times throughout the Summerset story.

On the other hand I really liked the characters in Dragonhold. Particularly Za'ji, Aeliah, Nahfahlaar, and Caska. Each of them had a considerable amount of time devoted to exploring their motivations and relationships, despite Dragonhold being smaller in scope than Elswseyr.

The B plot of Greymoor with Rada al-Saran, Molag Bal hating vampires, and the 13th Exarch indicate to me that the meat of the story will come with the Q4 DLC, but I wish the big chapter release of the year could be compelling on its own.

LuxLunae

I played sykrim without doing the dragon sequence at the beginning....So I never absorbed the dragon power nor had a fus ro dah.

Who is partonax?

Olauron

This is rather good post, I agree with many things, like the development of Serana and others.

Iccotak wrote: »

No, what works for WoW is not going to work for ESO. In fact I would say that has been the problem - ZOS has been making their own NPCs the main characters as opposed to us the player.
It’s like a session of Dungeons & Dragons. The DM is not the main character, the players are. If a DM takes over a story with an NPC then the players lose interest because their characters have nothing to do but play second fiddle to the DM, which is not fun.

For me that has happened in the ending of all three Elsweyr parts. My character does practically nothing. He is just waithing fo the horn to be activated or collects energy for the mask, but his own part of damaging an enemy was almost zero. About 90% or more damage to the dragons came from the external (DM) source.

Iccotak wrote: »

In Orsinium we befriended King Kurog, he seemed like a great guy who just wanted a hopeful future for his people. So when he killed his chieftain it was a shock because we worked with him up to that point. He became our friend but we had to kill him because he’d gone mad for power. The story became a tragedy because we lost a friend.

This is where I stopped playing Orsinium, because my choice was to help King Kurog and game removed this choice from me. This is the real tragedy.

Iccotak wrote: »

An issue with recent stories is that too much hinged on you liking the "good" characters and feeling for them vicariously. Feel for a character’s struggle as if it is your own. Here’s the thing, I can sympathize with Khamira in Elsweyr but Season of the Dragon really seemed to be about her and didn’t really have anything to do with my character, it didn’t affect me personally, except for losing Tharn (allegedly)

The issue with Khamira was that we just met her. To get the contrast we can look at the AD storyline. We have Ayrenn, Razum-dar and a lot more characters we encounter in 6 zones (or even 7, if we include Stirk, as for Cirenwe). The same Gharesh-ri was much more important both for my character and for me, because we have common past.

Iccotak wrote: »

This could have been different if the story took into account the role we played in obtaining the Wrathstone & unleashing the Dragons. If Khamira was not only mad with Tharn but also with us, then we could have had character growth in our relationship with Khamira. The story becomes about facing the consequences of our actions.

Since that was just a dungeon, player can simply skip it and then that would be consequences of another adventurer actions.

VaranisArano

LuxLunae wrote: »

I played sykrim without doing the dragon sequence at the beginning....So I never absorbed the dragon power nor had a fus ro dah.

Who is partonax?

Paarthurnax is the wise, older dragon who helps you later in Skyrim's Main Quest, explaining how to use a shout and the Elder Scroll to defeat the Big Bad, Alduin. He's got some fairly interesting philosophical lines about the nature of the player's fate/choices. The player also faces a dilemma over whether to forgive him for his past crimes as Alduin's lieutenant or to bring him to justice.

Hurbster

I think Veya was designed to be unlikable, when the 'twist' happened I just shrugged my shoulders and said 'meh' to myself.

Iccotak

Since the Seasons / Year Long Stories work to act as both a continuation of the ongoing story as well as a separate story the writers are just going to have to give the players more time with the new characters in each DLC.Chapter if they want us to care about them

Major_Lag

Hexi wrote: »

Facerolling through 99% of the game isn't exactly engaging. It's pretty hard to care when you go to a supposedly powerful enemy with story implication and you delete it in 2 seconds.

^ This ^

Ok, I understand that the enemy AI in ESO is rather limited, and it's also unreasonable to expect that every quest boss would have combat mechanics on a similar level as dungeon bosses (for example).

But maybe those Big Bad (quest) Bosses should be at least a little harder, instead of being hardly more challenging than the usual "trash"?

For the record, I really liked the Dragon Priest fights in Skyrim, and also that one fight where you have to first kill off some adds who are empowering the boss before you can harm him directly (forgot which boss it was).
In those cases, there was a meaningful step up in difficulty, as there should be when facing an "elite" enemy.

Also, although this is not a complaint about ESO's storytelling - I feel really burned out (re)doing the exact same story zone quests on the umpteenth character just for the skillpoints (a total of 16 characters... oof).
I really wish there was a crown store token for this, like with the skyshards.
I wouldn't ever buy the skyshards token (why? need to explore map anyway...) but I'd gladly pay for a "skip zone story quests" token.

deLioncourt

I've been playing this game for 6 years now and I can tell you with certainty that if you've played ONE dlc..you've played them all.

All the story beats are the exact same. The dialogue is uninspired, the voice acting is garbage, the storytelling is lame, The world-building is non-existent. Literally every vampire/werewolf scenario was lifted STRAIGHT from the movie "Underworld".

It's all garbage. Obviously, though, i'm not here for the story.

The only purpose for NPCs in this game is to be murdered for loot, and any unkillable NPC is a slap in the face.

JD2013

I have to say, I agree.

ES Games have always been about the player character's story, and in ESO a lot of stories involved us. The last 2 chapters, for the most part, The Vestige felt as though even if they had not been there, things would have worked out exactly the same.

I'd like a bit more engagement for my character rather than the NPC's being the main characters. Despite having saved half of Tamriel at this point, it's starting to feel as though The Vestige is of no importance to any plots.

I would also like to see a story quest about an Elder Scroll. There's a multitude of shenanigans you could do with that.

Everest_Lionheart

I’ve been through Northern Elsweyr a few times now. The main story is decent but the real charm of the zone is in the side quests. I felt those had more of an impact on me than anything.

Orsinium you can see the deception coming from a mile away. King Kurog had the same voice actor as Sheogorath and I picked up on it right away so already didn’t trust him. His demise ultimately gave me more satisfaction than defeating Molag Bal.

Vvardenfell was just a fantastic ride from start to finish. Visually striking in its stark contrast from the lush jungle to the rock volcano and the small islands. The clans have interesting dynamics and their story lines are neat to follow to the end as well. My favourite zone to date.

Hew’s Bane and Gold Coast are fun little distractions to break up the monotony with their daily quests alone. Tired of saving Tamriel or grinding dungeons, go steal some stuff or assassinate some guy for some extra stuff. A welcome distraction from the grind.

Now I’ve been playing only 3 months so have finished only those zones plus all the main alliances. My thoughts on those below:

First up for me was AD. This is a long interconnected story. It can feel like a slog at times. There is a touch too much Bosmer in there though. But when you get to the end with choosing the new Mane and all those quests it’s fantastic. AD also has the best NPC not played by John Cleese in the game! Razum-Dar is the real glue that holds this story and this alliance together.

Next up for me was the Pact. This story builds in an interesting way. The first few zones though I’m wondering what the hell am I doing here anyway? But then Stonefalls and Deshaan get interesting before Shadowfen happens. Is there a zone more depressing than Shadowfen? I have zero connection with Argonians. I don’t hate them, just can’t relate and therefore no real connection. I can forgive Shadowfen though because Eastmarch is just awesome, my favourite base game zone. The whole buildup is great, but I wish they could have found a way to end the Pact story there because the Rift feels disjointed after how cohesive the story line is at Eastmarch. They crammed too much into the Rift. The end of the Pact storyline is solid though but could have done without about 1/3 less of those Rift main quests. I like the pact even though I am an AD toon. They worked hard to have their alliance and it’s my actions that helped to hold it together and they appreciate the efforts I put in.

My final of the three alliances was the Covenant. You won’t find a bigger bumbling band of misfit toys that manages to hold things together despite themselves quite like the Covenant. After a couple of forgettable islands the story finally kicks into gear in ultra quest heavy Glenumbra. This zone is literally a quest every 200ft. The main quest is also quite quest heavy. It’s the first zone I experienced quest fatigue but fortunately they go by very fast so it’s a sense of accomplishment getting so much done where other zones have different markers that extend quests, in Glenumbra those middle markers are gone but quest volume is high. Stormhaven is Glenumbra lite, but still very quest heavy, better story though. For all the hype about Rivenspire I found it to be kind of meh. Alik’r was a nice distraction to break up the monotony of cleaning up King Emeric’s messes which return double in Bangkorai. That sums up my Covenant experience, making a bumbling king look good!

And finally Coldharbour is Coldharbour. It’s there to get you through the MQ. The tension between the FG and MG can provide some comical moments but they succeed in spite of themselves as well mostly because they have to good fortune of you and Cadwell to really save the day.

So I’ve still got a lot of found to cover but that’s my experience so far. For sure I’m enjoying the DLC a lot more than the base game and have much more to get to. I’m interested to complete Morrowind and Southern Elsweyr. Still haven’t touched Greymoor yet even though I preordered it. Summerset and Murkmire are waiting also.

Plenty of stories still left to play out.

DaveMoeDee

I don't know if any chapters will every be as good as the base game and the story about being the vestige. The buildup was so good, partly because it took so long to clear all the zones on the way to Coldharbour. The main quest now is kinda sad as people can just run the harborage quests one after another after finishing off the most recent chapter. It no longer feels like everything we are doing in the zone is part of that great battle to come.

The epic story is no longer epic.

ListerJMC

theroyalestpythonnub18_ESO wrote: »

I agree wholeheartedly with most of this. I feel like ESO has really strong character work, which has been more or less glossed over in Greymoor and Elsweyr. Like in Elsweyr both Khamira and Tharn face significant loss and then brush off their feeling with the "not the time to grieve" bit. Compare this to Leythen and Valsirenn who revisit their feelings and motivations half a dozen times throughout the Summerset story.

On the other hand I really liked the characters in Dragonhold. Particularly Za'ji, Aeliah, Nahfahlaar, and Caska. Each of them had a considerable amount of time devoted to exploring their motivations and relationships, despite Dragonhold being smaller in scope than Elswseyr.

The B plot of Greymoor with Rada al-Saran, Molag Bal hating vampires, and the 13th Exarch indicate to me that the meat of the story will come with the Q4 DLC, but I wish the big chapter release of the year could be compelling on its own.

You've said it well here, I think for the year-long stories the expansion ends up doing a lot of story setup which is time the following DLC gets to spend on 'meatier' things.

Dragonhold had some wonderful characters and the 'B Plot' going on in Greymoor sounds a lot more intriguing than the issue we had to deal with (though I did very much enjoy Greymoor and I didn't dislike Northern Elsweyr either, they just felt like they were moving a lot of pieces around that the second half of the year gets to play with).

Iccotak

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

I don't know if any chapters will every be as good as the base game and the story about being the vestige. The buildup was so good, partly because it took so long to clear all the zones on the way to Coldharbour. The main quest now is kinda sad as people can just run the harborage quests one after another after finishing off the most recent chapter. It no longer feels like everything we are doing in the zone is part of that great battle to come.

The epic story is no longer epic.

This bothers me a lot, the main story should have kept the leveling/zone completion pacing that it had before.

I get that makes the story more railroad but that was how it was ideally written and it made the build up truly feel worth it