Make land mass not theme parks

xtni

This might be an unpopular opinion but I would prefer land mass over theme anytime... the dlc themes are too intense and seem to overshadow the land mass potential...

I think Western Skyrim was awesome but after a while it starts to become this crazy vampire theme park festival...
I am playing a vampire but to me it’t too much. When I am not in the mood for vampires I simply don’t enjoy being there... I know Western Skyrim is in a crisis with vampires, but in the Skyrim game, the country Skyrim was also in a big crisis with dragons, but still the game had much flavor and many themes and atmospheres other than dragons... I would simply prefer land mass over intense themes.

I would love for the expansions to be more about cultures and less about the big main theme. I’m not saying the main theme should not be there, I would just like to be able to be in Western Skyrim without it all being about the main theme.

I think it would be cool if ZoS maybe started focussing on less frequent expansions, and then make the expansions larger and more dense with culture and unrelated things, so I don’t feel like I get reminded of the big theme every five steps I take.
I think it is a shame for great zones to be paired with a very big and overshadowing theme, because sometimes I just want to be in the country without the main story taking focus. If I am not in the mood for vampires I am automatically not in the mood for Skyrim. And when I am really in the mood for Skyrim because of the many other things the place have to offer like nostalgia, roleplay, nord culture, I feel it’s impossible to use the zone for much good, because it’s hard not to be met with vampire theme everywhere.

Sangwyne

Land masses tend to be pretty boring. I've been on long hikes before. Know what I saw? Grass. And dirt. Lots of dirt. Sometimes a shrub. If it weren't for the "theme park" aspect, Skyrim would just be a barren landscape devoid of life with snow everywhere. Sometimes it's better that a fantasy game doesn't try to always have realistic landscapes, because those tend to be pretty boring.

xtni

I believe you are missing the greater point of my post.
I want themes - just not only the big, central theme.

Ippokrates

xtni wrote: »

I would love for the expansions to be more about cultures and less about the big main theme.

We all do. That's why Murkmire is such a hit.

ThorianB

The story is vampires, but i don't feel like the zone is some big vampire theme. Skyrim is about Nordic culture. If there is any zone "theme" it would be that one.

Ringing_Nirnroot

I’ll take anything over cyrodiil land mass

Sengra

I agree. I know you're more talking about zone-wide themes than quests but I think the way quests 'use up' a certain parts of a map is also really bad because it makes that area feel more like a stage for this quest than an actual part of the land. There are all those interesting locations that could be used for RP or more quests that could be added later but this is impossible because there will now be forever corpses and destroyed buildings or caves and houses you can never enter again. Also the quests should be more hidden and something you can discover by exploring not stalk you wherever you go, that would make it a little more immersive.

And I really like how you had to discover the quests and locations in Cyrodiil, it's just that the landscape is very repetitive after a while.

Sylvermynx

Well, the devs and management have settled on the "yearly story" setup, so it's pretty doubtful at this point that they're going to go back to the Orsinium/CWC/Morrowind/Summerset type of releases.

And since this game isn't set up to "clean up" after stories that's going to be an issue forever I guess. I know people think they could just make "instances" after you finish a quest line so that the next time you're there you see the results of your efforts - but that means that if you have friends you play with, you all would have to make sure you're all doing the quest lines at the same time, or the instancing will be out of sync. I ran into that in both WoW and RIFT though I hear that WoW at least has fixed some of that - I don't know myself as I haven't played it since 2013.

VaranisArano

Ippokrates wrote: »

xtni wrote: »

I would love for the expansions to be more about cultures and less about the big main theme.

We all do. That's why Murkmire is such a hit.

ZOS got a lot of mixed feedback on Murkmire, especially from new players who came for Summerset, and then were confused about what Murkmire had to do with the elves they'd been adventuring with. That's one reason they are going with their year-long story arcs.

Cultural exploration is great for lore fans, but it's not as marketable to the general audience.

Sylvermynx

VaranisArano wrote: »

Ippokrates wrote: »

xtni wrote: »

I would love for the expansions to be more about cultures and less about the big main theme.

We all do. That's why Murkmire is such a hit.

ZOS got a lot of mixed feedback on Murkmire, especially from new players who came for Summerset, and then were confused about what Murkmire had to do with the elves they'd been adventuring with. That's one reason they are going with their year-long story arcs.

Cultural exploration is great for lore fans, but it's not as marketable to the general audience.

True in main - but I'm an outlier there. Yeah, I got Murkmire free along with a lot of people but I don't mess with anything there except antiquities and treasure maps - and that goes for Shadowfen in base game too. Not into those types of swamps, packed with hostile mobs like crocs and kotu gava (well, guess Shadowfen doesn't have those, but a lot of other not fun masses of hostiles - wasps in clusters you can't avoid for instance).

I did complete the Shadowfen portion of Cadwell's Gold. And that will be the last time I do that even though it wasn't on my "main main". I didn't like the whole EP zones questing. AD was far preferable to me personally.

colossalvoids

I agree on that, especially when the theme is so prevalent like it's in Skyrim zones. And there is Murkmire and Orsinium as an example, which were a success in that department at least compared to some other ones. Even Summerset, even though it shattered some altmer fans dreams of cities made of glass and actually superior high elves but I actually find it one of the most beautiful zones to date with some actual representation, even if it's pretty grounded now, but same goes for all elder scrolls since Oblivion and forward so not the time to complain.

nukk3r

Ippokrates wrote: »

xtni wrote: »

I would love for the expansions to be more about cultures and less about the big main theme.

We all do. That's why Murkmire is such a hit.

Is it tho? If you don't count the BRP farmers, the zone is empty for the most part of the year. It's not even a decent trading hub.

Araneae6537

@xtni Do not other chapters/expansions do this? Orsinium especially was focused on story and characters and the culture of the orcs. It was the best chapter that was not a chapter. Vvardenfell and Summerset are full of interesting stories, no?

And Elsweyr I still enjoy the unique feel of the place, both land and culture. The main quest is a whirlwind of things, including dragons, but the other quests were varied I thought.

How did you feel about any of the other chapters? As for Skyrim in particular, personally, I had more than enough of it in, well, Skyrim, so have been glad for lots of additional elements brought in.

ArchMikem

Larger Zones please. More nature, less mobs placed ten meters apart always drawing aggro.

xtni

Araneae6537 wrote: »

@xtni Do not other chapters/expansions do this? Orsinium especially was focused on story and characters and the culture of the orcs. It was the best chapter that was not a chapter. Vvardenfell and Summerset are full of interesting stories, no?

And Elsweyr I still enjoy the unique feel of the place, both land and culture. The main quest is a whirlwind of things, including dragons, but the other quests were varied I thought.

How did you feel about any of the other chapters? As for Skyrim in particular, personally, I had more than enough of it in, well, Skyrim, so have been glad for lots of additional elements brought in.

Yes I agree there was more diversion and more focus on culture etc in the earlier expansions. It is mostly in Western Skyrim I notice it.

jssriot

nukk3r wrote: »

Ippokrates wrote: »

xtni wrote: »

I would love for the expansions to be more about cultures and less about the big main theme.

We all do. That's why Murkmire is such a hit.

Is it tho? If you don't count the BRP farmers, the zone is empty for the most part of the year. It's not even a decent trading hub.

Shame. It is a really fun zone. It was the first new content I played through entirely when I came back after leaving the game shortly after Summerset came out because it was fresh and intriguing as opposed to more Skyrim/Morrowind rehash.

(That said, Elsweyr and Dragonguard turned out impressively good despite my initial boredom with anything to do with dragons, having played Skyrim into the ground repeatedly in years past.)

KalyanLazair

xtni wrote: »

I would love for the expansions to be more about cultures and less about the big main theme. I’m not saying the main theme

You totally won me here. I too would love if the story centered more around the culture and less about the theme. It was kind of cool to revisit Skyrim in the Solitude and Markarth region, but it didn't have that flavor that made TES Skyrim so special, and that's without mentioning I'm an Oblivion girl, so while I loved Skyrim, TES IV has a special place in my heart. For some reason I found Solitude/Markarth a bit barren once I had done all the quests, and the harrowstorms just don't do it for me. Not knowing when one is going to pop up and the fact they require a large number of players to destroy, meh, it's dragons 2.0. At least in Summerset I can solo the geysers, don't need to wait for people to show up.

SickleCider

ArchMikem wrote: »

Larger Zones please. More nature, less mobs placed ten meters apart always drawing aggro.

This is a big problem for me. The zones feel very compressed and dense with mobs, obvious quest regions butting up against each other and overlapping. I appreciate a lot of the work they've done to make zones feel more organic, especially with the wildlife that seems to be behaving more naturally rather than just standing around waiting to attack, but you still notice that there's way too many mobs per square inch. It's like a lot of areas are set up for convenient XP farming. I really feel it down in Blackreach, which I think could be a lot more atmospheric without moldy lions and tigers and bears oh my every ten feet or so.

Greasytengu

I think I get what OP is saying.

In Morrowind, Summerset and even Elswery, the main story was mostly contained to the main story's quests. Smaller towns had their own set of stories well separated from the Zone's main quest. Just because there is a crisis doesn't mean that life just stops for people in Tamriel, these NPCs have their own problems that need fixing.

In Greymoor, Every settlement's quest was tied to the main quest, and it got boring pretty fast. There is no slice of life in 2nd era Skyrim, just Vampire this, Werewolves that, Harrowstorm killed my grannie. That style of zonemaking might fly for the smaller zones, but not for the big addition.

Amottica

VaranisArano wrote: »

Ippokrates wrote: »

xtni wrote: »

I would love for the expansions to be more about cultures and less about the big main theme.

We all do. That's why Murkmire is such a hit.

ZOS got a lot of mixed feedback on Murkmire, especially from new players who came for Summerset, and then were confused about what Murkmire had to do with the elves they'd been adventuring with. That's one reason they are going with their year-long story arcs.

Cultural exploration is great for lore fans, but it's not as marketable to the general audience.

As a new player, I can say that Murkimire seemed to be the least populated zone I had come across. I realize that that older content is played less than newer content. That is normal in MMORPGs and this is in that context.

That told me that Murkmire is not such a great success.

KalyanLazair

Greasytengu wrote: »

I think I get what OP is saying.

In Morrowind, Summerset and even Elswery, the main story was mostly contained to the main story's quests. Smaller towns had their own set of stories well separated from the Zone's main quest. Just because there is a crisis doesn't mean that life just stops for people in Tamriel, these NPCs have their own problems that need fixing.

In Greymoor, Every settlement's quest was tied to the main quest, and it got boring pretty fast. There is no slice of life in 2nd era Skyrim, just Vampire this, Werewolves that, Harrowstorm killed my grannie. That style of zonemaking might fly for the smaller zones, but not for the big addition.

For me this was one of the least memorable zones I've played. Aside from the Skyrim nostalgia, it is just not that interesting.

In my opinion I think the best DLC they've launched is Wrothgar. The main quest is awesome, the place is huge and there is just so much to do, including plenty of sidequests which are not related to the main quest. Just like you say, normal people having their own problems aside from whatever is going on in the big picture.

trackdemon5512

@VaranisArano @Amottica @Ippokrates

Murkmire was in development hell since the beginning of the game. It was supposed to be the second zone introduced after Craglorn but the poor reception and problems with design held it up for years.

It’s generally accepted that Murkmire was pushed out as a comparatively easy DLC to end the year due to the fact that Argonian assets had long been in place within the game. See the Shadows of the Hist DLC and note that virtually everything used to structurally build Murkmire was already there years prior.

Shifting between zones of different types, even with a connecting story proved problematic. For one it made designing assets difficult as you had multiple styles to be done. It also made missing parts of the connecting story a disjointed affair for those playing for narrative. To understand the full Morrowind storyline you had to play through 2 chapters, 1 zone dlc, all of which were radically different in looks and assets.

@xtni the current release schedule is ample enough to keep players engaged without leaving. You can expect 4 content updates a year and due to the storyline/zone focus they’re rather robust. Other games that try for heftier ambitions usually see multiple delays in production and an inconsistent schedule. As such players tend to leave. Destiny is an example of this and so is GTA Online to an extent where players don’t know what or if anything substantial is coming next until it’s revealed. And by that point they’re often playing another game and invested into it like say Borderlands 3 or COD Warfare.

xtni

Greasytengu wrote: »

I think I get what OP is saying.

In Morrowind, Summerset and even Elswery, the main story was mostly contained to the main story's quests. Smaller towns had their own set of stories well separated from the Zone's main quest. Just because there is a crisis doesn't mean that life just stops for people in Tamriel, these NPCs have their own problems that need fixing.

In Greymoor, Every settlement's quest was tied to the main quest, and it got boring pretty fast. There is no slice of life in 2nd era Skyrim, just Vampire this, Werewolves that, Harrowstorm killed my grannie. That style of zonemaking might fly for the smaller zones, but not for the big addition.

Exactly! This sums up my opinion very well.

Netheniel

I agree with the OP, but there are other things I was disappointed by. ZoS having worked on delivering two zones; Western Skyrim and Blackreach, neither of them felt complete. Blackreach in particular was pointless. Aside from the art gallery, once you get your fill of indigo and magenta eye candy, the place serves no purpose. On the surface side, it's mostly void of life. The elks and tundra were a nice touch, but without a dense forest and dark nights with the threat of vampires, the immersion just breaks down. Large open land masses are quite boring.

One of the things I liked about GW2 is that the developers made an effort to try something new with each of their releases. Gliders, mounts, new meta events, new skill lines for each profession, new gameplay loops, living world changes (season 1 was pretty awesome). I would love to see ESO live a little outside the box and try to evolve their game. Every content drop feels like a rehashed experience with only a single cherry on top. If they made their game feel more alive like their cinematic team does, that would be amazing.

Snowstrider

ArchMikem wrote: »

Larger Zones please. More nature, less mobs placed ten meters apart always drawing aggro.

The only zone i ever felt was large and got s sense of exploration of was Elsweyr

VaranisArano

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

VaranisArano Amottica Ippokrates

Murkmire was in development hell since the beginning of the game. It was supposed to be the second zone introduced after Craglorn but the poor reception and problems with design held it up for years.

It’s generally accepted that Murkmire was pushed out as a comparatively easy DLC to end the year due to the fact that Argonian assets had long been in place within the game. See the Shadows of the Hist DLC and note that virtually everything used to structurally build Murkmire was already there years prior.

Shifting between zones of different types, even with a connecting story proved problematic. For one it made designing assets difficult as you had multiple styles to be done. It also made missing parts of the connecting story a disjointed affair for those playing for narrative. To understand the full Morrowind storyline you had to play through 2 chapters, 1 zone dlc, all of which were radically different in looks and assets.

xtni the current release schedule is ample enough to keep players engaged without leaving. You can expect 4 content updates a year and due to the storyline/zone focus they’re rather robust. Other games that try for heftier ambitions usually see multiple delays in production and an inconsistent schedule. As such players tend to leave. Destiny is an example of this and so is GTA Online to an extent where players don’t know what or if anything substantial is coming next until it’s revealed. And by that point they’re often playing another game and invested into it like say Borderlands 3 or COD Warfare.

As you say, Murkmire was the last of the old style, standalone zone DLCs. It had to happen at some point, but ZOS seems to have moved away from that model of content.

That's because there's a lot of benefits to doing the year-long story arc, including continuity of stories and reuse of assets. I don't think it's likely that ZOS will return to standalone DLCs

In Elsweyr, ZOS proved that they could weave in cultural lore with a new area and multiple crisies (dragons and Euraxia's necromancers).

I'd rather get zones like Elsweyr rather than Greymoor, where the writers seem to have assumed that we learned everything we wanted to know about 2nd Era Skyrim from TES V, and focused on vampires and reachmen to the exclusion of most new lore.

Amottica

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

@VaranisArano @Amottica @Ippokrates

Murkmire was in development hell since the beginning of the game. It was supposed to be the second zone introduced after Craglorn but the poor reception and problems with design held it up for years.

It’s generally accepted that Murkmire was pushed out as a comparatively easy DLC to end the year due to the fact that Argonian assets had long been in place within the game. See the Shadows of the Hist DLC and note that virtually everything used to structurally build Murkmire was already there years prior.

Shifting between zones of different types, even with a connecting story proved problematic. For one it made designing assets difficult as you had multiple styles to be done. It also made missing parts of the connecting story a disjointed affair for those playing for narrative. To understand the full Morrowind storyline you had to play through 2 chapters, 1 zone dlc, all of which were radically different in looks and assets.

@xtni the current release schedule is ample enough to keep players engaged without leaving. You can expect 4 content updates a year and due to the storyline/zone focus they’re rather robust. Other games that try for heftier ambitions usually see multiple delays in production and an inconsistent schedule. As such players tend to leave. Destiny is an example of this and so is GTA Online to an extent where players don’t know what or if anything substantial is coming next until it’s revealed. And by that point they’re often playing another game and invested into it like say Borderlands 3 or COD Warfare.

What do you mean by development hell?

From what I have been told by people who have been around since the beginning, Zos upended everything shortly after releasing Craglorn by both changing the business model and ceasing adding anything to the game for over a year because they wanted to work on porting the game to consoles. They also explained that the game, and Craglorn, was specifically designed as group content after questing in the initial zones was completed. They said nothing after the initial release was designed for solo play. After Zos started adding content to the game again they said solo questing was a big part of it.

From that, I am guessing the development hell is that things got churned up during that period of time and changed what was planned. Also that the zone would have needed to be reworked for the solo questing.

VaranisArano

Amottica wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

VaranisArano Amottica Ippokrates

Murkmire was in development hell since the beginning of the game. It was supposed to be the second zone introduced after Craglorn but the poor reception and problems with design held it up for years.

It’s generally accepted that Murkmire was pushed out as a comparatively easy DLC to end the year due to the fact that Argonian assets had long been in place within the game. See the Shadows of the Hist DLC and note that virtually everything used to structurally build Murkmire was already there years prior.

Shifting between zones of different types, even with a connecting story proved problematic. For one it made designing assets difficult as you had multiple styles to be done. It also made missing parts of the connecting story a disjointed affair for those playing for narrative. To understand the full Morrowind storyline you had to play through 2 chapters, 1 zone dlc, all of which were radically different in looks and assets.

xtni the current release schedule is ample enough to keep players engaged without leaving. You can expect 4 content updates a year and due to the storyline/zone focus they’re rather robust. Other games that try for heftier ambitions usually see multiple delays in production and an inconsistent schedule. As such players tend to leave. Destiny is an example of this and so is GTA Online to an extent where players don’t know what or if anything substantial is coming next until it’s revealed. And by that point they’re often playing another game and invested into it like say Borderlands 3 or COD Warfare.

What do you mean by development hell?

From what I have been told by people who have been around since the beginning, Zos upended everything shortly after releasing Craglorn by both changing the business model and ceasing adding anything to the game for over a year because they wanted to work on porting the game to consoles. They also explained that the game, and Craglorn, was specifically designed as group content after questing in the initial zones was completed. They said nothing after the initial release was designed for solo play. After Zos started adding content to the game again they said solo questing was a big part of it.

From that, I am guessing the development hell is that things got churned up during that period of time and changed what was planned. Also that the zone would have needed to be reworked for the solo questing.

If I had to guess, it's a reference to how Murkmire was originally intended to be an adventure zone like Craglorn. It would have been another group-oriented zone.

Unfortunately, Craglorn suffered from the pre-One Tamriel game structure in that it took a long time to get to Vet 11 with a group of players you wanted to experience the zone with. The zone was pretty empty. So the idea of following it up with a similar adventure zone Murkmire was scrapped. Even after One Tamriel, we still didn't get adventure zone Murkmire, and the assumption is that Craglorn's reworked model of normal zone with lots of group areas just wasn't as popular as the normal DLCs.

By the time we finally got Murkmire, it had been reworked into a regular zone DLC, not too dissimilar to Clockwork City.

Sylvermynx

In my experience (and a generalization over many years of playing single player CRPGs as well as MMOs) dev hell is something that exists because a dev team had some bright ideas - and spent WAY too many years trying to shoehorn those ideas into the game as it currently existed.

When they couldn't do that shoehorn.... that particular project lived a long time in limbo. And eventually resurfaced in a very minor way with - not much appeal to most of the player base.

Yes - there are people who love Murkmire. I don't personally know anyone who does - but then my in game player friend pop isn't vast.

Thankfully.

trackdemon5512

VaranisArano wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

VaranisArano Amottica Ippokrates

Murkmire was in development hell since the beginning of the game. It was supposed to be the second zone introduced after Craglorn but the poor reception and problems with design held it up for years.

It’s generally accepted that Murkmire was pushed out as a comparatively easy DLC to end the year due to the fact that Argonian assets had long been in place within the game. See the Shadows of the Hist DLC and note that virtually everything used to structurally build Murkmire was already there years prior.

Shifting between zones of different types, even with a connecting story proved problematic. For one it made designing assets difficult as you had multiple styles to be done. It also made missing parts of the connecting story a disjointed affair for those playing for narrative. To understand the full Morrowind storyline you had to play through 2 chapters, 1 zone dlc, all of which were radically different in looks and assets.

xtni the current release schedule is ample enough to keep players engaged without leaving. You can expect 4 content updates a year and due to the storyline/zone focus they’re rather robust. Other games that try for heftier ambitions usually see multiple delays in production and an inconsistent schedule. As such players tend to leave. Destiny is an example of this and so is GTA Online to an extent where players don’t know what or if anything substantial is coming next until it’s revealed. And by that point they’re often playing another game and invested into it like say Borderlands 3 or COD Warfare.

What do you mean by development hell?

From what I have been told by people who have been around since the beginning, Zos upended everything shortly after releasing Craglorn by both changing the business model and ceasing adding anything to the game for over a year because they wanted to work on porting the game to consoles. They also explained that the game, and Craglorn, was specifically designed as group content after questing in the initial zones was completed. They said nothing after the initial release was designed for solo play. After Zos started adding content to the game again they said solo questing was a big part of it.

From that, I am guessing the development hell is that things got churned up during that period of time and changed what was planned. Also that the zone would have needed to be reworked for the solo questing.

If I had to guess, it's a reference to how Murkmire was originally intended to be an adventure zone like Craglorn. It would have been another group-oriented zone.

Unfortunately, Craglorn suffered from the pre-One Tamriel game structure in that it took a long time to get to Vet 11 with a group of players you wanted to experience the zone with. The zone was pretty empty. So the idea of following it up with a similar adventure zone Murkmire was scrapped. Even after One Tamriel, we still didn't get adventure zone Murkmire, and the assumption is that Craglorn's reworked model of normal zone with lots of group areas just wasn't as popular as the normal DLCs.

By the time we finally got Murkmire, it had been reworked into a regular zone DLC, not too dissimilar to Clockwork City.

@Amottica all of what was said above. Basically the assets for Murkmire were designed around the same time as Craglorn. But the poor reception to Craglorn put a pause on releasing another zone like it. Imperial City, the next DLC afterwards also wasn’t received as well as the developers liked apparently. The PvP with PvE just didn’t mesh.

ZOS didn’t experience real DLC success until Orsinium in 2015 and that zone remains a favorite to this day. In 2016 players got two zone DLCs and two dungeon packs. The Zone DLCs, dark brotherhood and thieves guild were small though and players clearly missed the size of Wrothgar. It wasn’t until summer 2017 that players got Vvardenfell and that got a good reception.

After that we settled into the rotation we currently have of dungeons and zones, one large and one small. And it was further refined into the year long story to make development easier and more consistent. Not only that but it gives the teams more time to look into combat and other necessary fixes. It gave them 2 years to look at changing around CP and despite all the current complaints about performance a lot of the upgrades were done ahead of schedule thanks to the DLC development schedules.

katanagirl1

The Murkmire DLC had one of the best storylines, way better than any other chapter - Summerset, Elsweyr, or Greymoor. The zone is so small, though. I got so tired doing the dailies with only two delves and two world bosses.

I loved the Elsweyr zone though, the dragon battles in the beginning, when lots of players were there initially, was better than I had expected. The Khajiiti culture was explored in some of the sidequests, though not as much as I had hoped, given my main character is Khajiit. I would rank the main storyline very low, though.

Markarth and Greymoor, though - I am so tired of vampires and werewolves at this point.

I guess the point should be how can they make the zones more interesting now that the dailies require you to do them for so long? Still farming Markarth dailies now after what, three months? Just now got started on Wayward Guardian motif pages but Nighthollow is some time in the future?

I’ll still be doing them when the new chapter comes out. Do the devs really expect players to have enough time to do more than one zone, though?