Content without a direction

AVaelham

You have games like Destiny 2 where the devs are carefully putting together an overarching story through multiple seasons and expansions with tons of hints for what is to come and then you have ESO after Summerset, a game that has dropped any sense of overarching continuity and opted for these (by now) stale "Year of X" stories that happen in the same year. I wish we could go back to stories who are told over the years and where you can feel the progress in the world, but I suppose that would go against their philosophy of jumping right into the latest expansion like it's newbie town and you don't have to know any kind of previous story bits.

Do you think we'll get something different for the 2022 Chapter? There's a gamerant article where they say the expansion will be "something nobody is expecting". Maybe a Cyrodiil chapter? lol

WhyMustItBe

Both have their advantages and disadvantages. I think their stand-alone "year long" format has probably helped draw in more new players than would have otherwise tried the game, as it can be daunting to jump into an MMO that has been building for 8 years. At the same time, a lot of the staying power of a game has to do with the "universe," and without regularly stoking the fires of continuity you do risk losing that sense of a living world that is such a draw in these games (look at WoW before the PR apocalypse and subsequent self-cancel implosion for an obvious example).

They have managed to keep the threads loosely tied together by most of these "year long" adventures building on the racial lore of the people of Tamriel as the central unifying force, however they may need to alternate in some things like new skill trees, weapons, and classes (even races) more often with unique Elder Scrolls lore explaining their inclusion in order to ensure things stay not just cohesive but "alive."

mocap

i probably don't get the point of original post, but ESO story is stuck in past time (unlike WoW for example). Story direction will be in new TES single player game, while ESO continue to be a "historical".

AVaelham

mocap wrote: »

i probably don't get the point of original post, but ESO story is stuck in past time (unlike WoW for example). Story direction will be in new TES single player game, while ESO continue to be a "historical".

Sure, from the point of view of the single player games it's all ancient history. I was thinking in terms of the Three Banners War (and subsequently the alliances as well) which haven't really progressed much since 2014. Maybe they can redo some of the base game zones someday with the plot progressing a bit.

winterscrolls229prerb18_ESO

I think the expansion model is fine, on the condition that they keep up the quality.

All zones and their stories need to be as a good as murkmire, summerset, wrothgar.

If anything the only thing they should change is the clockwork release date, if they need to take time to finish it, then take the time.

eg, don't do blackwood: Amazing looking zone, nothing in it, not even trash mobs. Companion system: Built 85% of what was needed, but gave up at the moment they had to integrate the game assets with players, and only stopped at 2 when there should have been double that. Bad quality of the latest expansion makes 6 years of expansions look bad when it was only the last that was a blatant rush job.