Make land mass not theme parks

Kwoung

ArchMikem wrote: »

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

Ever play BDO? Lots and lots of land mass, and it takes freaking forever to get anywhere! Also, try the Dark Brotherhood passive if getting agroed while riding around is an issue for you.

Athan1

While I agree with the OP in theory, there is a fundamental issue: Skyrim or any other game focused on a different region of Tamriel had to have multiple themes in order to stay interesting. Similarly, ESO is examining the entirety of Tamriel, and beyond, hence it can devote whole lands and zones to a single theme.

While I would agree that the main theme is oversold in the zone (e.g. Summerset and Artaeum were more about the Daedric War than literally anything else), you can still explore a plethora of side-quests or just wander around on your own. I will kindly remind you that if you find W Skyrim too full-on, you can still explore E Skyrim or Bleackrock (<3).

MrDenimChicken

I agree with the OP.

It does seem like the main zone story dominates the whole zone. All side quests are related to the main zone story. I mean that's fine and all, but I think it would be way cooler for side quests to go into interesting details about the land and race's lore.

Lugaldu

It doesn't bother me at all that the different zones have a specific focus that relates to the respective chapter. I always chose the zone I want to play according to my mood, there are so many options now. If you want snow and mountains, but don't want to see Harrowstorms and vampires, then you can go to Wrothgar for example.

bluebird

VaranisArano wrote: »

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.

You know, I'm going to call nonsense on that claim. I know ZOS *told us* that was one of the reasons they switched to year-long stories, but it (like many of the other 'reasons' they gave) smelled fishy. 🤨 Firstly, I don't recall such new player confusion at all, and I've been playing and reading the forums throughout 2018.

Secondly, the 'year-long' system is far worse for new players. If a new player joined in Murkmire, they'd get a nice standalone adventure, allowing them to jump in without prior knowledge or confusion. If a player joined during Summerset, they wouldn't have any idea what's up with the Daedric plot because it was a conclusion to a year-long story (MW-CWC-SS). The issue isn't Murkmire in either of those cases. If anything, new players got a conclusion to a (somewhat confusing already in-progress) story chapter in Summerset, allowing them to turn a new page and start an independent adventure with Murkmire. So ZOS claiming that independent stories were somehow an issue for new players is ridiculous.

Same with the marketing. They never marketed their independent releases the way they marketed their Chapters... so any hype they generate for their Chapters was due to the Chapter alone, not their consecutive drawn-out year-gimmick. They made 3 cinematic trailers for the year-long Elsweyr story: 3 small animated segments of a divided trailer where random characters are fighting dragons, released literal months apart. But did they try releasing cinematics for their independent releases? No. So it's disingenuous to conclude that their chopped up story marketing works better, when they didn't try the other way. They didn't make a cinematic trailer featuring an Orcish civil war in the snow with besieged strongholds, a heist-in a tomb treasure hunter cinematic for Thieves Guild, nor a cloak-and-dagger pursuit and assassination in dark alleyways cinematic for Dark Brotherhood. If Murkmire for example got a cinematic trailer like Dragonhold, there would be 0 chance any of their 'new players were confused' issues would have happened.

I also remember ZOS saying exactly what you write here, so none of my arguments are directed against you, of course! I'm just really skeptical about the actually given reasons when they make no sense. It comes across much more like ZOS tried to pass off a solution to an issue that didn't exist; or try to reinvent the wheel to solve a problem they created unnecessarily by switching to overarching stories in the first place. Elsweyr's story was incredibly disjointed by trying to fit so many gimmicks into it, from talking dragons to necromancers, Monty Python soul-shriven, Imperial politics, Khajiit family drama, etc.; and it didn't have enough payoffs for all the buildup when they moved a lot of story conclusions from the actual Chapter to a post-several-DLCs ending (and how that actually helped new players is a mystery). As a fan of TES, I too am worried like OP about the toll this year-long conveyor belt has had on the quality of the stories we'll get to experience in ESO.

Narvuntien

xtni wrote: »

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...
.

Other expansions don't have the same lack of land mass that western skyrim has.
Vvandenfell has a lot of just empty space and Northern Elseweyr is very barren and open

The upcoming Blackwood has a reasonable amount of space as well.

It is a Greymoor problem not a ESO problem.