All events in one year [Wrong decision]

livernoistristanb16_ESO

Good day to all.

I come here to discuss ZOS '(more than questionable) decision that all events take place in 2E 582.

For me, an RP player is above all a ball in the foot, or for the Nordics, an arrow in the knee.

I started ESO as a beta tester, since 2013/2014. I haven't stopped playing and playing and continuing to play the same character. I started with a 14 year old character who grew up with his adventures on Tamriel and should have reached his 21st birthday.
Only voila, everything happens in 582, so my character should be 14 years old for 7 years of play now.

World of Warcraft made the mistake of saying "a year elapses between each expansion" which has upset the daily lives of players who have been playing for a long time. The community received the news very badly.

You ZOS, with ESO you did WORSE, claiming that all the events took place during the same year. All the answers on Reddit, twitter, etc. are clear. This idea is BAD.

You are only punishing the one gaming community that values ​​dates, which is RP players.

Even if the idea started with a good intention, it is extremely bad, and I would rather see an Akatosh agent arrive to send us back to the past than to tell me that everything is going and will be on ESO in a year.

We meet characters who will remember us, the world is big and it's impossible that normal NPCs can travel so fast. The quests send us to all corners of Tamriel, and it is IMPOSSIBLE that all events take place in one year.

The vast majority of PVE and PVP players don't really care about the timeline. And you are punishing the only players who value it.

It doesn't make sense to have days that go by in game at 5x normal speed while having 1 year that goes by in the world, when it's been 7 years that it exists. At some point you have to be consistent.

Making mistakes happens, we all make them, but knowing how to take them is good and going back over them would be proof of listening to the community. Especially with the latest server instabilities and the UE server crash last night.

Make Rp players happy, and don't make such absurd decisions, give us a real timeline! Especially when newspapers in the game itself contradict you! Be consistent!

Thanks you

RaddlemanNumber7

I'm an RP player.

I'm not torturing myself about the timeline. It's clear that the historical timeline has no particular relevance to the player character's experience of existence in ESO.

When the Prophet tells the Vestige, "you are a wound in time, a tear in reality, that should not exist and cannot long endure," he isn't joking. The only timeline in this game is the one the Vestige makes for themselves. Each Vestige makes their own timeline.

The character backstories I have written for my toons take account of that. The extra narrative helps me gain immersion and I have become happier with the game as a result.

The game is what it is. I try to accept that. It's the happy thing to do

livernoistristanb16_ESO

Except that because of this kind of thing, the players get divided.

Saxhleel

They did the same thing with the DLC in Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, but I understand the timeline gets cluttered around one specific year. It sort of jumps from 2E 582 to 2E 854-896, and it isn't in one year. The only other year where a bunch of things happen is 4E 201, but that is only because the creation club things are now apparently canon, which I really dislike. But some things in ESO just don't add up, like other players and some MMORPG elements, so it wouldn't really be saying that much if a bunch of events take place in one year. Zenimax cannot really do anything, as the only two major other events in the year will upset the players that demand an entire new game-sized update within two days of the previous one coming out.

joseayalac

Weel, what's your suggestion to solve this difficult problem? Remember that there's tons of other RPers that started playing later and haven't done the quests in order. Why would they need to solve the stories in order only to fit a timeline? I think every version of the vestige should be given freedom to go on their adventures in any order they decide.

A fixed timeline would break immersion harder for people that don't do the quests in chronological release order than what having everything happen in only one year breaks it for people that do them in that order.

What would you've done? What solution do you propose? Because you said that WoW's approach was a bad idea, but also ESO's idea is bad.

In the end, that kind of problems will always be part of RPGs, because the whole idea of living your own story makes it so the world has to have some chronospatial flexibility. The TES franchise has dealed with this kind of controversy in the past by introducing the Dragon Break concept. (If you haven't heard of it, I encourage you to research the term, because it is very important for TES timeline canon.)

What's written in an Elder Scroll? Everyone who reads it sees something different. Elder Scrolls are an interesting concept symbolizing the RP nature of the franchise.

Supreme_Atromancer

So, the official response was that while all events *start* in 582, not all events take place in 582 - the time of each chapter is not committed to lore, and its personal to you. So the quests all happen in an unspecified order, taking an unspecified number of years, starting in 582.

Do they put an absolute date to any of your interactions, or the events in which you explicitly take part?

Wizardry

Not an RP, but I completely agree it doesn't make sense, although it bothers me alot, I care abotu dates because I'm TES Lore nerd and this breaks the immersion so bad.

Enodoc

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

So, the official response was that while all events *start* in 582, not all events take place in 582 - the time of each chapter is not committed to lore, and its personal to you. So the quests all happen in an unspecified order, taking an unspecified number of years, starting in 582.

Do they put an absolute date to any of your interactions, or the events in which you explicitly take part?

This is the important thing. 2E 582 is the only date that is given, but it doesn't mean everything takes place in the same year.

Surragard

I still subscribe to the theory that the entire game is a dragon break which is why the events of the game aren’t referenced in later games. There is no timeline because none of this really exists in the greater timeline of the history of Tamriel. It would be nice if at some point years from now before the game goes offline we get a final Talos DLC that properly ends the storyline with a bow and explains the dragon break but hopefully that won’t be for a very long time.

Kajuratus

I've never really seen this is a problem tbh. Yes, the devs have to assume that everything takes place in 2E 582, because anything CAN take place in 2E 582. That's how this game works, you can play the content in whatever order you want to. Game time is personal to you, however, so its entirely up to you whether or not everything takes place in the same year or not, and whichever order you complete the main stories of zones is just as valid as anyone else's interpretation. Whenever the devs say that they assume the entire game takes place in 2E 582, that's not some official dictation of lore from on high, they're literally describing their development mindset. Lets be honest, the only way this will affect the community is if people want to find out what happened during this game and go to either UESP or the other TES wiki to find out, and get confused when their timelines have everything in this game take place in the same year.

Malyore

This always bothered me too, so I personally just put it in the back of my mind that tamriel decided "time will not progress until we learn how to progress as a society" because of the banners war. I know it's silly, but it was at least SOMETHING to quell myself.

Surragard wrote: »

I still subscribe to the theory that the entire game is a dragon break which is why the events of the game aren’t referenced in later games. There is no timeline because none of this really exists in the greater timeline of the history of Tamriel.

This is a really nice idea though. I may have to subscribe to it as well until something official is given.

Eporem

For me I just think that in 2E 582 time is more chaotic - all over the place - than it was previously ... maybe the Time Dragon/God is a little weaker or believes the 'now' is the most important or even maybe time travelling, travelling through portals or travelling to wayshires has messed up what time it might be as well..

Sjestenka

I don't think ZOSes ever stated it was one year..? After Orsinium they don't put any dates in the game. One year is how players interpreted it. And UESP.
Im RPer too. Some of my characters 'live' since 2014. A lot of s'wit happened in their 'lives' since, i simply can't put it all in one year. I only use Dragon Break to justify Mirri Elendis' hanging around with them, hah.
(On a side note, we've had 8 annual in-game celebrations. New Life festival and such. Time is linear, it seems).