The fact that I can see other people's companions just completely ruined the game for me.

Jaraal

I get a lot of people running up to my companion and inspecting her costume, then asking me what it is. And I also find it interesting how other folks have dressed up their robo-toons as well. So I would say not everybody is aghast at somebody else having the same experience they are.

SidraWillowsky

NylAR wrote: »

All my feelings, all my immersive thoughts, all my enjoyment from the past few days, all the fun and all the laughs just suddenly GONE IN A MYRIAD OF COMPANION CLONES EVERYWHERE FOLLOWING ALL THESE OTHER PEOPLE

MIRRIad

What did you expect with a name like that?!

ectoplasmicninja

I mean I understand OP's sadness at the lack of immersion, and a lot of places really do look extra cluttered right now with folks grinding out companion levels and rapport, but at the same time "my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined because I am seeing other people doing the same thing I am doing in an MMO" is not entirely reasonable. Is it really worse than stacking on top of each other to talk to an NPC, or seeing a dozen players all also sneaking through the halls on your top secret assassin mission?

Stormvessel

What kills the immersion for me is the player names. Few are actual names and even fewer are true to the lore. Names like "Heal you with farts" and "Lord Bone-Bringer" don't exactly add to the realism much.

NylAR

ectoplasmicninja wrote: »

I mean I understand OP's sadness at the lack of immersion, and a lot of places really do look extra cluttered right now with folks grinding out companion levels and rapport, but at the same time "my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined because I am seeing other people doing the same thing I am doing in an MMO" is not entirely reasonable. Is it really worse than stacking on top of each other to talk to an NPC, or seeing a dozen players all also sneaking through the halls on your top secret assassin mission?

It's not that at all, i could spend an eternity helping people do and get the same stuff as I do in an MMO. My concerns are purely about the storytelling and immersion and nothing else. So far I've viewed other players as adventurers or travelers, not heroes (in terms of storytelling). Now it's just way harder. Think of ESO as a sort of huge, everlasting interactive fantasy book <- That's how I look at it. Hence why it's so difficult. If you've ever read a really good storydriven book, you'll know what I mean.

I've learned to treat players that break immersion with their silly or non-immersive visuals or non-immersive behavior as sort of hallucinations from being exposed to (example) mushrooms in a dungeon or, chemicals and toxic vapors in an alchemy lab, or just being hit in the head. That took a great deal of sort of getting used to but I did get over it.

I understand that I may sound as some sort of anti-social person, but i actually quite enjoy company of other players, adventuring together and roleplaying together. So no... It's not that at all.

ectoplasmicninja

Oh no, I wasn't trying to cast you in an anti-social light. It's just that with thousands of players always on the server at the same time rolling up into your quest space continuously (in my experience at least) it's strange to me that this is still or only now bothering you, if you know what I mean. It seems like you'd either be totally used to this sort of thing by now and therefore immune to it or have already quit in annoyance, if you're the kind of player who values immersion.

I don't know how you managed to see other players as adventurers but not heroes when the vast majority of the game is not instanced and other players constantly run into your fights and kill your enemies. That's not a criticism, I genuinely don't know how you've successfully explained it to yourself that way. But maybe you've been lucky and not had randoms show up to important fights and story beats in the chapters - you've been very fortunate if so. I can hardly take a screenshot at the end of a sad quest without some random jumping up and down on the corpse of the NPC I'm praying over. I just am so used to it that it couldn't possibly upset me. This attack of the clones that's happening right now barely registers other than making everything look crowded. I don't know that I'd still be playing if I felt strongly about being the One True Vestige.

Luckylancer

OP is right. Devs should had made faces of other people's bastians and miris randomised. 10 template for them, generation based on one of each player's hidden ID number or their account name chracter count.

Devs put low effort about this topic.

SammyKhajit

Stormvessel wrote: »

What kills the immersion for me is the player names. Few are actual names and even fewer are true to the lore. Names like "Heal you with farts" and "Lord Bone-Bringer" don't exactly add to the realism much.

This one would pay to see how healing is done with methane explosion

Charon_on_Vacation

if you play a game that doesn't put a lot of effort in individual immersion, because it is an MMO-RPG, you shouldn't be surprised that stuff like that is happening.
you could go and try to meet some real, human friends out there, which will make sure that there are no clones of them.

DarcyMardin

When all I care about is the story and my immersion in the story’s world, I read a book (or write one, since that’s my day job). When I play an MMO, I expect to run into other players, doing the same things I’m doing. Seeing a lot of identical companions doesn’t bother me at all.

Different strokes….

Coatmagic

Most that I've seen are all dressed/dyed differently (they make fun paper dolls if you've coin to spend!) and in all honesty,
the majority of players look so similar anyhow, not sure why a few more should bother.

As others have already stated, hair changes/skin tone, and to my mind especially personality will be helpful down the line to blend them all in a bit better and mix em up with the rest of us

theyancey

I get it. It is alike a flock of Stibbeneses tha you can't get rid of. Maybe in the future we can toggle on/off seeing other's companions. Still it is far from game wrecking for me

Dagre2

so, constantly running into players that look the same didn't do it but the companions did? i mean, there's already another thread showing an example of this in case you hadn't noticed over the years.

if people are just being dramatic because they want some customization, then just ask for companion customization. being offended by another player having the same companion while they look identical to another 10,000 players seems a bit much to me.

Lugaldu

I just don't understand why it was implemented in the cities that you only see your companion, but not outside as well. At the moment I mainly try to be in zones where other players are less frequent. The clones bother me a lot too, but since I was "emotionally prepared", it is ok at the moment. I just hope that soon will come out more companions.

ZOS_ConnorG

Greetings all,

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Skjoldur

amm7sb14_ESO wrote: »

I hear what you're saying.

ESO has never been a game for immersion. Which is a shame, considering the IP is renowned for its immersion.

There is always something in ESO that reminds you that you are playing a video game.

Solo it's okay, I think, though the clunky, borderline horrible interface annoys the heck out of me.

I got my girlfriend to start playing recently, and when I was questing with her or did some dungeons, I noticed how horrible some mechanics are: You never know whether a dialog option will trigger some kind of event so that the other player can't finish the dialogs or not, and you will always have to check that interacting with things really counts for both. -- SWTOR did a much better job at this.

Elsonso

Lugaldu wrote: »

I just don't understand why it was implemented in the cities that you only see your companion, but not outside as well. At the moment I mainly try to be in zones where other players are less frequent. The clones bother me a lot too, but since I was "emotionally prepared", it is ok at the moment. I just hope that soon will come out more companions.

My understanding is that they have the option to turn off "other companions" for performance reasons, not immersion reasons. This is why it would not be everywhere. As far as I know, they are not actively using this anywhere. I have not really paid attention. I see Bob's Companion running around everywhere I go, but I might not notice right away if Bob is there but his companion is not.

edward_frigidhands

NylAR wrote: »

Somehow (with insane amount of luck I imagine) I hadn't seen anybody with their companion out before I've managed to complete the quest for Mirri. I really enjoyed the whole narrative of her quest and as we progressed further after that I was really starting to get to like her character... I pretty much spent the entire time since launch of the new expansion out there in the wilds not really encountering many players (luckily), exploring the new lands, exploring Mirri's deeper character, building rapport, and just feeling like I have a new friend by my side. Then... as immersion was finally setting in, I had to go empty my bags to my character's house...

You can probably already imagine where this is going to go...

As I exit my house through the door regularly as I always do... There were 7 people standing in front of the house all with their companions out, so I was suddenly seeing 3 different Mirris and 4 different Bastians.... At first I tried to ignore it, altho it did disgust me... Then I proceeded to run to the nearby city and BY ALL THE DIVINES I WISH I NEVER DID...

All my feelings, all my immersive thoughts, all my enjoyment from the past few days, all the fun and all the laughs just suddenly GONE IN A MYRIAD OF COMPANION CLONES EVERYWHERE FOLLOWING ALL THESE OTHER PEOPLE. I ENJOYED the game for the past X DAYS and NOW IT'S COMPLETELY RUINED

WHY ZENIMAX?! WHY DID YYOU THINK THIS WAS GOING TO BE OKAY?! I'm just so sad and disappointed.... I was starting to like this game just about as much as when I started playing back in 2015 and then this happened... Why oh WHY... I don't really wanna be using my companion anymore...

This stupid feature of being able to see other people's companions just has to go... IT JUST HAS TO

I disagree with your suggestion.

However, I would counter with one of my own.

We should be allowed to design our own companions.

Delgent

It's no different than...

You can probably already imagine where this is going to go...

As I exit my house through the door regularly as I always do... There were 7 people standing in front of the house all with their summoned pets out, so I was suddenly seeing 3 different Bears and 4 different Daedra.... At first I tried to ignore it, altho it did disgust me... Then I proceeded to run to the nearby city and BY ALL THE DIVINES I WISH I NEVER DID...

All my feelings, all my immersive thoughts, all my enjoyment from the past few days, all the fun and all the laughs just suddenly GONE IN A MYRIAD OF SUMMONED PET CLONES EVERYWHERE FOLLOWING ALL THESE OTHER PEOPLE. I ENJOYED the game for the past X DAYS and NOW IT'S COMPLETELY RUINED

WHY ZENIMAX?! WHY DID YOU THINK THIS WAS GOING TO BE OKAY?! I'm just so sad and disappointed.... I was starting to like this game just about as much as when I started playing back in 2015 and then this happened... Why oh WHY... I don't really wanna be using my summoned pets anymore...

This stupid feature of being able to see other people's summoned pets just has to go... IT JUST HAS TO!

Lugaldu

Elsonso wrote: »

My understanding is that they have the option to turn off "other companions" for performance reasons, not immersion reasons. This is why it would not be everywhere.

Sad situation that in this case performance has more value than immersion for the players. But it also means that the same function can be implemented everywhere with a future update. I hope at least that this will be the case at some point...

Shantu

It's hard to understand why anyone thought that seeing the same faces running around all over Tamriel would be a good idea. I mean come on....it just looks dumb. It's bad enough having to look at Darian's face in a different wig every 20 characters, but this?

Cloudtrader

Luckylancer wrote: »

OP is right. Devs should had made faces of other people's bastians and miris randomised. 10 template for them, generation based on one of each player's hidden ID number or their account name chracter count.

Devs put low effort about this topic.

This. Faces and hairstyles of other peoples Companions should be a client-side random draw.

amm7sb14_ESO

Zyreist wrote: »

Personally, I'm not particularly bothered by the clone swarms. I've seen enough dual-wielding dark elves running around since the beta era that I simply tune out a lot of the nonsense sourced from other players.
Banks used to be so crowded with bodies that I just sort of treated them like another dimension until personal bankers came out and cut down on the traffic jam. The addition of companions in a new zone feels like those days all over again, but I'm certain the density will go down over time.
It's been my observation that there's a certain ''immersion hazard' that comes with the format of an MMO, that you either have to adapt to, or accept MMOs are perhaps not for you. Like when 20 people charge through the door of my house. Or I step out of it into the middle of an ongoing roleplay of people hanging out on my porch. Or swarms of people are murdering every NPC before they can unleash their story monologue leaving the exact context of your adventure something of a mystery(I just come back when the free weekends are over). There's a myriad of other weird behaviors that come with having innumerable people all doing whatever they feel like in or around your own experience.
As to the companions in particular... it would be nice if there was a way to render companions and pets invisible in certain contexts(like cities)... and it would also be nice if we could get them customizable helmets to style them up a little bit more uniquely.

What's wrong with dual wielding Dark Elves???

And no, there isn't "immersion hazard" with MMO's. There is immersion hazard with WoW-clone MMO's.

Plenty of MMO's in the past have done well with immersion. My 2 favorites, Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest were great for that.

It's the WoW-clone MMO that has difficulties with immersion, and unfortunately, ESO never aspired to be anything more than an Elder Scrolls flavored WoW-clone, which is a shame because the TES IP is so much more than that, and MMO's have been made that are much closer to the spirit of TES than ESO is.

amm7sb14_ESO

Tandor wrote: »

So the OP doesn't find the fact that he constantly bumps into other vestiges who have all defeated Molag Bal individually and separately immersion-destroying, but the fact that they use the same companions is?

I find that a bit odd if I'm honest, but it sounds like it simply reflects the approach of a single-player gamer playing a massively multiplayer game. As such one either copes with it, or sticks to single-player games. As others have said, however, I'm sure it will become less of an issue so far as companions are concerned as they get further developed - but it will remain every bit as much of an issue so far as other vestiges is concerned.

From a roleplay perspective, how would our characters know that all of these other players are also Molag Bal defeating Vestiges? The only information we would be able to perceive is that these are other adventurers in the world of Tamriel, but we would have no knowledge of their exploits. From an RP perspective, seeing other players in and of itself doesn't ruin that immersion or RP, because there is nothing outside of our own meta-knowledge that these other adventurers are Vestiges.

GreenHere

Lugaldu wrote: »

I just don't understand why it was implemented in the cities that you only see your companion, but not outside as well. At the moment I mainly try to be in zones where other players are less frequent. The clones bother me a lot too, but since I was "emotionally prepared", it is ok at the moment. I just hope that soon will come out more companions.

Yep, this. I was about to make pretty much this same exact comment til I read yours @Lugaldu

It's pretty weird that they have the code already built and implemented to hide the annoyances so perfectly... but only use it in such a half-assed manner, right? Why is it only in certain cities? Why is it only Companions?

If they had just chucked Sorc & Warden pets into the same "Players don't have a reason to see them until they have a reason to see them" bin along with Companions, and extended the system to cover the entire world, I bet Blackwood would have been many people's favorite Chapter ever for that feature alone!

If they offered an option to hide other players' annoying pets and whatnot, but the only way I could get it applied to my account is for everything to be completely wiped back to zero... I'd really consider it, honestly. That's how much I want to be free of the flappy plague and the dopey clones. And I'm not alone here.

Dovahkiin02191973

I don't have any use for the companions myself. It is not the way I play the game. We are lucky that character meshes don't have collision on one character to another or then we would have a big problem. When I walk into a Bank to make a deposit most of the time there are 10 or so other players there doing the same and now their companions are present as well as their pets and whatever else you have. It doesn't bother me at all because I can walk right through each character without collision and get to the Banker and do business. If it were the other way then the game would have a serious issue. Just my 2 cents worth on this. It's nothing to cry about. It's the nature of a multiplayer game.

majulook

I just want them to get rid of the arrows over other players companions heads, Which started after the first quest your companion gives you once your rapport is high enough.

aipex8_ESO

I understand your point, but I question how you could possibly feel immersed in this game if you can't tune other players. I'm a big TES fan, love the lore, have very detailed head canon that covers all TES games, and love playing immersively. Also made a lot of my own immersion mods for Skyrim.

In this game, I simply tune out ALL other players when I see them. I'm the only adventurer in the world. Way too many people run around in immersion breaking outfits. Whether it's the Orc in a dress, someone just using super vibrant colors, or trial rewards like people made out of ice, etc., I just tune it out.

Here's hoping that you can overcome it, because I also really like Mirri. In fact I may be retconning my whole personal TES lore to either make her my Neravarine for TES III or the playable character for TES VI.

M_Volsung

What irks me the most is that I made an outfit for Mirri that looks better on her than it does on my character...

SilverBride

It would help if we could turn off the companion's names, rather than seeing "Joe Schmo's Companion" over their heads. Or is there already a way to do this?