Year Long Stories are killing your characters \\ Jan19, Empty promise

TiaFrye

SammyKhajit wrote: »

Although the Druids’ stories and lores were all very interesting and enjoyable to learn, this one was expecting a bit more mix-up of the Breton-Druid cultures, where you might have some Druid advisors in the Monard royalty, or families where there are members who identify as both or try to live with the dual identities, and the challenges or conflicts that arise.

Stefan was a case in point where he had Druid mentors and embraced both cultures. Was expecting a bit more of these integration. That would have made the YLS more nuanced and complex.

Stefan is a real positive example of how it should have been handed, making two themes working.

I also think that if Ascendant Mage would've been raised and trained by druids the story part of his could have been so much more interesting and give extra ties with Lord's heritage. Ah, well.

rpa

After doing the Galen side guests I find a certain recurring character for no reason standing in a tunnel at Fauns Thicket with the same oddish dialog that char had at end of the related quest. I'm not sure if its a bug or intentional but I find characters getting lost and confused sad.

TiaFrye

rpa wrote: »

After doing the Galen side guests I find a certain recurring character for no reason standing in a tunnel at Fauns Thicket with the same oddish dialog that char had at end of the related quest. I'm not sure if its a bug or intentional but I find characters getting lost and confused sad.

Watching characters being lost and confused is heartbreaking, especially if they're your long time buddies. At this point some of us consider them almost family members and once injustice happens to them, by how they're brought back or their new stories handed, it's infuriating.

Treselegant

TiaFrye wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

I agree that even before YLS the main theme being overshadowed by MQ and other stuff was the case but hey, if something was really out of place it could probably get a feature in next dlc. But now...
If something will not be featured it's likely be for the whole year and them trying to pack it all tightly just doesn't work for some stuff.

I'm okay with maormer but I was not convinced enough that their presence is absolutely necessary and that they have a good reason to be allied with the big bad. But I suppose that's on him. Shame, really.

I'm still confused as to why the Maormer were involved in the whole plot in the first place. I played through Shipwrights Regret and then they turn up in the main story and it all feels completely disjointed. Why are these sea elves here? What are they actually getting out of this other than getting decimated by some 'mainland mercenary' while doing their own thing on the coast? I've never done the trial so I guess I'll never know what that was about. I get the same feeling about the Sul-Xan in Blackwood - they're just there ( so I assume they're probably used in Rockgrove). Trials don't seem that popular with the crowd who play the game for a good story so why hide so much of it in them? It makes more sense to keep those story lines contained to their trials surely.

TiaFrye

Treselegant wrote: »

TiaFrye wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

I agree that even before YLS the main theme being overshadowed by MQ and other stuff was the case but hey, if something was really out of place it could probably get a feature in next dlc. But now...
If something will not be featured it's likely be for the whole year and them trying to pack it all tightly just doesn't work for some stuff.

I'm okay with maormer but I was not convinced enough that their presence is absolutely necessary and that they have a good reason to be allied with the big bad. But I suppose that's on him. Shame, really.

I'm still confused as to why the Maormer were involved in the whole plot in the first place. I played through Shipwrights Regret and then they turn up in the main story and it all feels completely disjointed. Why are these sea elves here? What are they actually getting out of this other than getting decimated by some 'mainland mercenary' while doing their own thing on the coast? I've never done the trial so I guess I'll never know what that was about. I get the same feeling about the Sul-Xan in Blackwood - they're just there ( so I assume they're probably used in Rockgrove). Trials don't seem that popular with the crowd who play the game for a good story so why hide so much of it in them? It makes more sense to keep those story lines contained to their trials surely.

I joined a lore-runs of trials a few times but it's much harder to get into than say a dungeon. Dungeons' story-runs we can do with my friend, two people, on normal it's enough to do them. Trials? As much as ZoS want to lure me into them it's nearly impossible. I know a lot of people who feel the same. I don't want to step on any endgame player's toes but yeah, that part of the story will mostly stay unexplored for us.

But hey there were a lot of maormer in Galen and yet their allegiances are still a mystery to me as well as their reasons. The only thing I understood that the bad maormer are disowned by Orgnum? If that's true, it's kind of disappointing and in line with all baddies are so bad we have nothing to do with them.

Treselegant

TiaFrye wrote: »

Treselegant wrote: »

TiaFrye wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

I agree that even before YLS the main theme being overshadowed by MQ and other stuff was the case but hey, if something was really out of place it could probably get a feature in next dlc. But now...
If something will not be featured it's likely be for the whole year and them trying to pack it all tightly just doesn't work for some stuff.

I'm okay with maormer but I was not convinced enough that their presence is absolutely necessary and that they have a good reason to be allied with the big bad. But I suppose that's on him. Shame, really.

I'm still confused as to why the Maormer were involved in the whole plot in the first place. I played through Shipwrights Regret and then they turn up in the main story and it all feels completely disjointed. Why are these sea elves here? What are they actually getting out of this other than getting decimated by some 'mainland mercenary' while doing their own thing on the coast? I've never done the trial so I guess I'll never know what that was about. I get the same feeling about the Sul-Xan in Blackwood - they're just there ( so I assume they're probably used in Rockgrove). Trials don't seem that popular with the crowd who play the game for a good story so why hide so much of it in them? It makes more sense to keep those story lines contained to their trials surely.

I joined a lore-runs of trials a few times but it's much harder to get into than say a dungeon. Dungeons' story-runs we can do with my friend, two people, on normal it's enough to do them. Trials? As much as ZoS want to lure me into them it's nearly impossible. I know a lot of people who feel the same. I don't want to step on any endgame player's toes but yeah, that part of the story will mostly stay unexplored for us.

But hey there were a lot of maormer in Galen and yet their allegiances are still a mystery to me as well as their reasons. The only thing I understood that the bad maormer are disowned by Orgnum? If that's true, it's kind of disappointing and in line with all baddies are so bad we have nothing to do with them.

This is my experience of it. My guild is a very casual role player focused and we do dungeons slowly together when someone requests it but put out a call for a trial and you get nothing but silence. So, for me and probably a lot of people, the chunks of story placed in trials will be never seen.

Necrotech_Master

TiaFrye wrote: »

Treselegant wrote: »

TiaFrye wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

I agree that even before YLS the main theme being overshadowed by MQ and other stuff was the case but hey, if something was really out of place it could probably get a feature in next dlc. But now...
If something will not be featured it's likely be for the whole year and them trying to pack it all tightly just doesn't work for some stuff.

I'm okay with maormer but I was not convinced enough that their presence is absolutely necessary and that they have a good reason to be allied with the big bad. But I suppose that's on him. Shame, really.

I'm still confused as to why the Maormer were involved in the whole plot in the first place. I played through Shipwrights Regret and then they turn up in the main story and it all feels completely disjointed. Why are these sea elves here? What are they actually getting out of this other than getting decimated by some 'mainland mercenary' while doing their own thing on the coast? I've never done the trial so I guess I'll never know what that was about. I get the same feeling about the Sul-Xan in Blackwood - they're just there ( so I assume they're probably used in Rockgrove). Trials don't seem that popular with the crowd who play the game for a good story so why hide so much of it in them? It makes more sense to keep those story lines contained to their trials surely.

I joined a lore-runs of trials a few times but it's much harder to get into than say a dungeon. Dungeons' story-runs we can do with my friend, two people, on normal it's enough to do them. Trials? As much as ZoS want to lure me into them it's nearly impossible. I know a lot of people who feel the same. I don't want to step on any endgame player's toes but yeah, that part of the story will mostly stay unexplored for us.

But hey there were a lot of maormer in Galen and yet their allegiances are still a mystery to me as well as their reasons. The only thing I understood that the bad maormer are disowned by Orgnum? If that's true, it's kind of disappointing and in line with all baddies are so bad we have nothing to do with them.

*most* trials on normal difficulty can be done fairly easy nowadays, but even easier ones require 12 players (like aetherian archive is not too bad, but requires 12 players to fill all the pads)

i usually do try to talk to the npc at the start and at the end to go through their dialogs just to see what they say, and some trials do have some lorebooks scattered about

Destai

TiaFrye wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

I agree that even before YLS the main theme being overshadowed by MQ and other stuff was the case but hey, if something was really out of place it could probably get a feature in next dlc. But now...
If something will not be featured it's likely be for the whole year and them trying to pack it all tightly just doesn't work for some stuff.

I'm okay with maormer but I was not convinced enough that their presence is absolutely necessary and that they have a good reason to be allied with the big bad. But I suppose that's on him. Shame, really.

I’m prepared to accept they’re an ambient enemy, barely any different than a goblin tribe or something, in this YLS. Sure they’re there but feel like flavoring for the narrative given its geographic setting.

WildRaptorX

I can’t tell you what the green dragon’s or Rada’s vision was or what this apparent ‘gate of oblivion’ did or was…

But I can remember so much about Summerset because the storytelling was top notch.

Down with year long stories!

NotaDaedraWorshipper

Faulgor wrote: »

Blackwood: Daedra, more daedra, cultists, Eveli, ............Argonians/imperials.

Fixed it for you

Imperials never get focus and content. Not even in their own provinces. They are just...there, either as bad guys or some decoration.

NotaDaedraWorshipper

So far the only year long story which was good was Elsweyr. All after that has had atrocious writing which seems to just get worse. I haven't gotten to High Isle yet, still doing "Gates of Oblivion" with the Deadlands, which has been going slowly because it's torture. I had to take breaks when doing Blackwood because it was so bad.

The writing makes the stories feel like they are some saturday morning cartoon for children. Constant hand-holding and repeatings so our little brains don't forget what is going on, and obvious villains who go "muahahaha" and all.
Despite all of these world-ending dangers and whatnot, nothing actually feel tense or threatning. It's all very nice without conflict. In the end I know that despite the Vestige being a bumbling, senile idiot they will kill the bad guy and we will have a nice afterparty where I will be told what a great hero I am.
It's very boring.

All of the recurring characters also adds to it. Not only do their usage make Tamriel feel incredibly small when they appear everywhere all over the continent, but they can't even make them return without butchering their character and turn them into some one-dimensional caricature of who they once were.

I think one of the big issues ESO's writing have is the lack of continuity, and a canon one at that. Yes, we know ZOS wants people to be able to play ESO in whatever order they want but what even is the point of these year long stories without it? It's all an incoherent mess. They can do both and let people play in whichever order they want but still have a canon for continuity. Other mmos do that just fine. Will it be a weird for the new player who jumps right to the most recent content? Yes, but that is to be expected if you do that, and right now it already is a weird mess for both newcomers and old! Newcomers will see characters who were dead suddenly be alive without explaination and vice versa, along with other odd behavior from them. Meanwhile the "older" players who has been playing through the content in the release order so it's all somewhat coherent are treated with a story and characters that doesn't care at all about their choices nor all the content their Vestige has done.
It's such a pointless thing to try have because it just makes a mess for everyone.

TiaFrye

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

TiaFrye wrote: »

Treselegant wrote: »

TiaFrye wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

I agree that even before YLS the main theme being overshadowed by MQ and other stuff was the case but hey, if something was really out of place it could probably get a feature in next dlc. But now...
If something will not be featured it's likely be for the whole year and them trying to pack it all tightly just doesn't work for some stuff.

I'm okay with maormer but I was not convinced enough that their presence is absolutely necessary and that they have a good reason to be allied with the big bad. But I suppose that's on him. Shame, really.

I'm still confused as to why the Maormer were involved in the whole plot in the first place. I played through Shipwrights Regret and then they turn up in the main story and it all feels completely disjointed. Why are these sea elves here? What are they actually getting out of this other than getting decimated by some 'mainland mercenary' while doing their own thing on the coast? I've never done the trial so I guess I'll never know what that was about. I get the same feeling about the Sul-Xan in Blackwood - they're just there ( so I assume they're probably used in Rockgrove). Trials don't seem that popular with the crowd who play the game for a good story so why hide so much of it in them? It makes more sense to keep those story lines contained to their trials surely.

I joined a lore-runs of trials a few times but it's much harder to get into than say a dungeon. Dungeons' story-runs we can do with my friend, two people, on normal it's enough to do them. Trials? As much as ZoS want to lure me into them it's nearly impossible. I know a lot of people who feel the same. I don't want to step on any endgame player's toes but yeah, that part of the story will mostly stay unexplored for us.

But hey there were a lot of maormer in Galen and yet their allegiances are still a mystery to me as well as their reasons. The only thing I understood that the bad maormer are disowned by Orgnum? If that's true, it's kind of disappointing and in line with all baddies are so bad we have nothing to do with them.

*most* trials on normal difficulty can be done fairly easy nowadays, but even easier ones require 12 players (like aetherian archive is not too bad, but requires 12 players to fill all the pads)

i usually do try to talk to the npc at the start and at the end to go through their dialogs just to see what they say, and some trials do have some lorebooks scattered about

Basically yes, and it's hard to find 12 people either way. If ZoS expect me to waste my time and ask around guilds, ask around on forums and so on what do they expect from their new players who actually like YLS because it's easy and no strings attached content? That's not a way to get people doing trials.

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Blackwood: Daedra, more daedra, cultists, Eveli, ............Argonians/imperials.

Fixed it for you

Imperials never get focus and content. Not even in their own provinces. They are just...there, either as bad guys or some decoration.

It's actually really sad that even since the launch imperials were treated poorly even though the entire race are not responsible for Soulburst and what came after. You can barely see good imperials in IC because questline is quite short and most of it you have to watch your back in PVP zone.
I still have some hope for Nibenay Basin but something tells me that main theme of the region won't be imperials when we get that chapter/dlc.

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

So far the only year long story which was good was Elsweyr. All after that has had atrocious writing which seems to just get worse. I haven't gotten to High Isle yet, still doing "Gates of Oblivion" with the Deadlands, which has been going slowly because it's torture. I had to take breaks when doing Blackwood because it was so bad.

The writing makes the stories feel like they are some saturday morning cartoon for children. Constant hand-holding and repeatings so our little brains don't forget what is going on, and obvious villains who go "muahahaha" and all.
Despite all of these world-ending dangers and whatnot, nothing actually feel tense or threatning. It's all very nice without conflict. In the end I know that despite the Vestige being a bumbling, senile idiot they will kill the bad guy and we will have a nice afterparty where I will be told what a great hero I am.
It's very boring.

All of the recurring characters also adds to it. Not only do their usage make Tamriel feel incredibly small when they appear everywhere all over the continent, but they can't even make them return without butchering their character and turn them into some one-dimensional caricature of who they once were.

I think one of the big issues ESO's writing have is the lack of continuity, and a canon one at that. Yes, we know ZOS wants people to be able to play ESO in whatever order they want but what even is the point of these year long stories without it? It's all an incoherent mess. They can do both and let people play in whichever order they want but still have a canon for continuity. Other mmos do that just fine. Will it be a weird for the new player who jumps right to the most recent content? Yes, but that is to be expected if you do that, and right now it already is a weird mess for both newcomers and old! Newcomers will see characters who were dead suddenly be alive without explaination and vice versa, along with other odd behavior from them. Meanwhile the "older" players who has been playing through the content in the release order so it's all somewhat coherent are treated with a story and characters that doesn't care at all about their choices nor all the content their Vestige has done.
It's such a pointless thing to try have because it just makes a mess for everyone.

Summing it up, all players are treated in a way two-hour-after-work-no-strings-atrached; acknowledgements of players' previous accomplishments are barely cameos when people who you fighting against should know who you are and act accordingly; lack of canon timeline and endless prologue quests in first cities are confusing (I like to bring up two Vanus Galerion clones yelling at you if your toon who haven't done Summerset but just began Messages Across Tamriel enters local mages guild); recurring characters carry the story on their backs because new could not yet; both are (most of the times) executed poorly and that drags the story down; nothing deep in new stories nowdays; so on and so forth.

I think YLS not only killing the characters, they slowly make the game unplayable.

TiaFrye

Keylun wrote: »

I can’t tell you what the green dragon’s or Rada’s vision was or what this apparent ‘gate of oblivion’ did or was…

But I can remember so much about Summerset because the storytelling was top notch.

Down with year long stories!

When vision is made from "everyone you love will die" I immediately stop treating these villains like characters. They're tools to push the story in needed direction.

With Summerset I had a moment when for one quest I had hope that maybe just maybe a character I knew and showed compassion for will make it right and the moment I was betrayed in Evergloam was both glorious and painful. This kind of complexity was stolen from us by year long stories.

KingArthasMenethil

Treselegant wrote: »

TiaFrye wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

I agree that even before YLS the main theme being overshadowed by MQ and other stuff was the case but hey, if something was really out of place it could probably get a feature in next dlc. But now...
If something will not be featured it's likely be for the whole year and them trying to pack it all tightly just doesn't work for some stuff.

I'm okay with maormer but I was not convinced enough that their presence is absolutely necessary and that they have a good reason to be allied with the big bad. But I suppose that's on him. Shame, really.

I'm still confused as to why the Maormer were involved in the whole plot in the first place. I played through Shipwrights Regret and then they turn up in the main story and it all feels completely disjointed. Why are these sea elves here? What are they actually getting out of this other than getting decimated by some 'mainland mercenary' while doing their own thing on the coast? I've never done the trial so I guess I'll never know what that was about. I get the same feeling about the Sul-Xan in Blackwood - they're just there ( so I assume they're probably used in Rockgrove). Trials don't seem that popular with the crowd who play the game for a good story so why hide so much of it in them? It makes more sense to keep those story lines contained to their trials surely.

The Maormer in Firesong are entirely disconnected to the Maormer in Shipwrights Regret/Dreadsail Reef.
It just seems more like they forgot or didn't care and did their own thing.

Shipwrights regret lead into Dreadsail Reef and then Firesong does its own thing with the Dreadsails creating a disconnect as now there's two leaders but Firesong never talks of the Queen from the Dungeon and Trial.

Faulgor

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Blackwood: Daedra, more daedra, cultists, Eveli, ............Argonians/imperials.

Fixed it for you

Imperials never get focus and content. Not even in their own provinces. They are just...there, either as bad guys or some decoration.

I'm still upset that Imperials had to share their chapter with Argonians.
I was so convinced we were going to get Skingrad, but no. Colovia would have been so nice, the Gold Coast is already one of the best zones in the game ...

Treselegant

KingArthasMenethil wrote: »

Treselegant wrote: »

TiaFrye wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

I agree that even before YLS the main theme being overshadowed by MQ and other stuff was the case but hey, if something was really out of place it could probably get a feature in next dlc. But now...
If something will not be featured it's likely be for the whole year and them trying to pack it all tightly just doesn't work for some stuff.

I'm okay with maormer but I was not convinced enough that their presence is absolutely necessary and that they have a good reason to be allied with the big bad. But I suppose that's on him. Shame, really.

I'm still confused as to why the Maormer were involved in the whole plot in the first place. I played through Shipwrights Regret and then they turn up in the main story and it all feels completely disjointed. Why are these sea elves here? What are they actually getting out of this other than getting decimated by some 'mainland mercenary' while doing their own thing on the coast? I've never done the trial so I guess I'll never know what that was about. I get the same feeling about the Sul-Xan in Blackwood - they're just there ( so I assume they're probably used in Rockgrove). Trials don't seem that popular with the crowd who play the game for a good story so why hide so much of it in them? It makes more sense to keep those story lines contained to their trials surely.

The Maormer in Firesong are entirely disconnected to the Maormer in Shipwrights Regret/Dreadsail Reef.
It just seems more like they forgot or didn't care and did their own thing.

Shipwrights regret lead into Dreadsail Reef and then Firesong does its own thing with the Dreadsails creating a disconnect as now there's two leaders but Firesong never talks of the Queen from the Dungeon and Trial.

Really? Wow, they're even more pointless as a faction that I thought. I always just suspected that that everything was hidden behind the trials but making it so it's not even that is related is quite something.

It all comes back around to the idea that there's this obvious formula at work here - this faction exists because that's what our framework says to do. They play the role of forgettable fodder for the player to plough through and never question why they're there in the first place. Created to pad out enemy variety and nothing more.

Still, it is suprising to me how obvious it is this expansion - you probably could have replaced the Dreadsails with skeevers, removed the few times they're involved, and still had the same story. The story may have even had more time to flesh out it's key characters without them and that would have been a vast improvement.

TiaFrye

I would like to "react" to the recent developments and while I would not be linking certain posts (and I encourage you to stay out of doing so at least in this thread), because I'm against sending people to "war". Because even you don't say anything they might attack for the sake of it.

Don't call devs names. I'm begging you. The moment you say that someone is stupid, or untalented or even worse - that's it. You've lost your credibility. Anything you will say after that wherever it will be solid critique with all the threads neatly leading to one point, it's became garbage the moment you decided to humiliate another person, living breathing person, and put yourself above them.

This thread is about caring. This thread says "hey, guys, you look tired as of late, not as sharp as before, maybe you need to take some time?". I care about people behind the stories as much as I care about characters they've made. I know a few, and while I wasn't introduced to many more and probably won't be because I'm just an artist sharing my love to this game with others on social media. But the people I know and know how they care about this game, about their creation, these people I will fight for any day. I will fight for them to death with any on this forum, or Twitter, or anywhere else. Because I know these people.

The ones who are seeing only company as a whole and not individuals working for it will never understand how it is.

You can say that you didn't like something as much as that other time, other year, but you should never do so in pair with some humiliating comment towards devs. They are people, people like you and me making this game. Like you and me they make mistakes, they slip up, they'll like something that you probably don't. The Internet makes people incredibly brave in the worst way, I get that. But be better than this if you consider yourself someone who loves ESO and cares about it.

That's one thing you have in common with the devs. Believe it or no.

Destai

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

Definitely agree with exploring one topic more deeply.

I wish this chapter played out over several chapters like the Daedric War arc. I really do like how they wrote the druids, and the noble houses had a lot of potential. It feels like they're condensing stories and speeding up the narrative to adhere to the YLS format. There are really good underpinnings in many of these stories though, I still do enjoy them.

Greymoor felt pretty coherent to me personally and I only had some minor gripes with its stories. That YLS has aged better than expected for me and it really introduced some good features.

Blackwood's YLS was decent, I liked how they wrote the armies of Dagon, especially in the dungeons. That pyroturge boss is still my favorite in the game. The whole longhouse emperor backstories were cool too. Honestly my only gripe was Eveli got a bit annoying after a while.

Dr_Con

Treselegant wrote: »

TiaFrye wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

I agree that even before YLS the main theme being overshadowed by MQ and other stuff was the case but hey, if something was really out of place it could probably get a feature in next dlc. But now...
If something will not be featured it's likely be for the whole year and them trying to pack it all tightly just doesn't work for some stuff.

I'm okay with maormer but I was not convinced enough that their presence is absolutely necessary and that they have a good reason to be allied with the big bad. But I suppose that's on him. Shame, really.

I'm still confused as to why the Maormer were involved in the whole plot in the first place. I played through Shipwrights Regret and then they turn up in the main story and it all feels completely disjointed. Why are these sea elves here? What are they actually getting out of this other than getting decimated by some 'mainland mercenary' while doing their own thing on the coast? I've never done the trial so I guess I'll never know what that was about. I get the same feeling about the Sul-Xan in Blackwood - they're just there ( so I assume they're probably used in Rockgrove). Trials don't seem that popular with the crowd who play the game for a good story so why hide so much of it in them? It makes more sense to keep those story lines contained to their trials surely.

they were promised land by the ascendant lord, from a storytelling standpoint they needed a foreign invader that all 3 alliances could rally around to fight, which no alliance had control over

still, I don't think it was necessary for the invading forces to be the maomer bogeyman, they had an island full of a diverse array of prisoners on Amenos that they could have used if they gave them the cure to leave that place. Instead they made us sympathetic to some of the prisoners so it's really in a weird place, but I'll be the first to say it. Large prison gangs would have been better antagonists than the Maomer.

TiaFrye

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

Definitely agree with exploring one topic more deeply.

I wish this chapter played out over several chapters like the Daedric War arc. I really do like how they wrote the druids, and the noble houses had a lot of potential. It feels like they're condensing stories and speeding up the narrative to adhere to the YLS format. There are really good underpinnings in many of these stories though, I still do enjoy them.

Greymoor felt pretty coherent to me personally and I only had some minor gripes with its stories. That YLS has aged better than expected for me and it really introduced some good features.

Blackwood's YLS was decent, I liked how they wrote the armies of Dagon, especially in the dungeons. That pyroturge boss is still my favorite in the game. The whole longhouse emperor backstories were cool too. Honestly my only gripe was Eveli got a bit annoying after a while.

I agree that ideas are cool and most of all I really wish devs had more time to develop those. This is all I ask for.

Dr_Con wrote: »

Treselegant wrote: »

TiaFrye wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Being able to join the villain for once would be great. Legit my entire time playing through High Isle I was wondering "why is the ascendant order evil? They're organized and act competently. They wanna overthrow the current factions and create a new order in Tamriel to reign in the chaos? Hell sign me up... Oh I can't."

The Ascendant Order was so all over the place in their motivation. In the beginning they were still portrayed as a kind of democratic, anti-monarchist force, and that somehow went out the window because they had to be written as the bad guys so they went about killing indiscriminately.
But it bugged me so much how we were shoved to work for the nobility. It made absolutely no sense that we were playing the attack dog of the aristocracy while claiming to be the good guys.

Honestly, and I'm picking up something here from the Breton thread in the lore forum section, there are too many kingdoms in Tamriel as it is. This medieval/feudalist bent on political landscapes should be a defining trait for Breton culture, but it's bloody everywhere - and yet, somehow, everyone's still free to follow their dreams and live in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural (well, multi-species, because the culture is so uniform) metropolises. And wherever we go, we are supposed to think of the monarchs as the good guys, it's maddening. The world-building has become flat like a piece of paper.
Morrowind is a bit different due to the Great Houses and the Tribunal, but that's mostly legacy from TES3.

One culture that stands out are the Orc Strongholds, which is another reason why Orsinium ranks so high in my book.
Would I want to live in one? Not particularly, no. But it makes for much more interesting world building, besides, I wouldn't want to live under any of the kings and queens of Tamriel, either.

I was talking on Reddit about this briefly but, I think it'd have been more interesting to give the ruling class of High Isle some grey areas. Like the Direnni were once a factor in their state, those with more Elven blood enjoyed a higher standard of living, and the Ascendant Order would be a radical opposition to that oppression.

I love the themes of this year and the artwork, which is always stellar, but the writing seemed like a collage of too many ideas. We got druids, knights, and somehow sea elves, but I don't think all those story elements come together neatly.

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

I agree that even before YLS the main theme being overshadowed by MQ and other stuff was the case but hey, if something was really out of place it could probably get a feature in next dlc. But now...
If something will not be featured it's likely be for the whole year and them trying to pack it all tightly just doesn't work for some stuff.

I'm okay with maormer but I was not convinced enough that their presence is absolutely necessary and that they have a good reason to be allied with the big bad. But I suppose that's on him. Shame, really.

I'm still confused as to why the Maormer were involved in the whole plot in the first place. I played through Shipwrights Regret and then they turn up in the main story and it all feels completely disjointed. Why are these sea elves here? What are they actually getting out of this other than getting decimated by some 'mainland mercenary' while doing their own thing on the coast? I've never done the trial so I guess I'll never know what that was about. I get the same feeling about the Sul-Xan in Blackwood - they're just there ( so I assume they're probably used in Rockgrove). Trials don't seem that popular with the crowd who play the game for a good story so why hide so much of it in them? It makes more sense to keep those story lines contained to their trials surely.

they were promised land by the ascendant lord, from a storytelling standpoint they needed a foreign invader that all 3 alliances could rally around to fight, which no alliance had control over

still, I don't think it was necessary for the invading forces to be the maomer bogeyman, they had an island full of a diverse array of prisoners on Amenos that they could have used if they gave them the cure to leave that place. Instead they made us sympathetic to some of the prisoners so it's really in a weird place, but I'll be the first to say it. Large prison gangs would have been better antagonists than the Maomer.

The land part is so weird to me honestly. I loved the quest with maormer on Galen, new female captain is a nice character but really? Anyone could have been on maormer's place.

Kesstryl

I also agree with the sentiment that we are wishing for the writers and devs to spend more time developing the stories instead of squishing them and cropping them down to fit in a year. I think the ideas themselves are fine, and there are parts in the YLS that I do greatly enjoy, but they do feel rushed and formulaic. I wouldn't mind a story developing over several years like the Daedric War. This would give more time for character development, faction development, story complexity and polish, and more branching dialogue for RP value. Maybe some minor branching quests if you completed a questline from other base game or DLC which reflects your character choices.

Supreme_Atromancer

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

Imperials never get focus and content. Not even in their own provinces. They are just...there, either as bad guys or some decoration.

I feel like the writers considered the Nibenese character in Blackwood. I just think that one of the major problems with this, and other things, is there's just not enough space to iterate ideas, or flesh them out, so if you blink, you'll miss it.

Faulgor wrote: »

Sadly that has become the standard design of ESO's content, going all the way back to Elsweyr I want to say. Even Morrowind felt thematically unfocused, introducing a Frost-Druid class in a volcano zone, revolving around Clavicus Vile cultists and Ashlanders. And Summerset mostly revolved around the Daedric War arc with Psijics and Sload sprinkled in, but surprsingly little High Elven stuff.
Elsweyr: Dragons, Imperials, Necromancers, Khajiit
Greymoor: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Blackreach, Nords
Blackwood: Imperials, Argonians, Daedra, some cultists? I don't remember that year too well
High Isle: Alliances, Bretons, Good Druids, Sea Elves, Bad Druids, Volcanos?

It all feels so unfocused. You also always have multiple baddie factions working together for some reason. I wish they would just pick one theme for once and actually explore it more deeply.

I can understand why- its a year long. The writers make it diverse because if its too narrow and some people aren't interested in the theme, they're SOL for a whole year, and that's not ideal.

I actually think that the Sea Elves make sense, geographically, so I'm not totally against it.

I do agree, though, that there's a risk when you have so much disparate stuff that it can feel like you're trying to contrive a story in order to make all the things on the checklist fit. It doesn't feel organic, and **people can smell it a mile off.**

My largest problem with the number of disparate themes, though, is that the development values, release cadence, or just the cost of producing stories delivered through voice acting never leaves enough room to do any of it the justice it needs.

I feel empathetic to the writers sometimes when I'm reading certain threads. Its clear that they are absolutely receptive to the fan's wishes and thoughts, I think that's been demonstrated a lot. Whenever I've seen Tuttle or Zenke talking, you can see how passionate they are. I read some criticisms, and think "no, they addressed that point, you just missed it."

But you missed it *because* there was only enough space to mention it once, there was no chance to really explore it, or the theme had to be so compressed you're confused it was supposed to be a thing.

My conviction, based on this, is that the real problem with writing in this game is that it doesn't have nearly enough space to do the subject matter justice, and it really demonstrably suffers because of it.

Dr_Con

Rontabs77 wrote: »

it's all because of the story in the following link:
https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/55715

Know more about Mr. Lawrence Schick:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Schick

Well, this explains a lot.

TiaFrye

I can hardly believe it but... We won, guys. Arcs are coming back according to Matt Firor newest letter. More than that, devs will take their time to work on QoL updates and give new systems whole patches!

I have very little illusions about the core of this decision because with landmass of Tamriel growing thin the want to deliver DLCs twice a year becomes less and less realistic. But the mere idea of Arcs returning as a story system gives me so much hope!

I want to thank everyone for contributing their opinions for this thread. Being a long time player feels good once again.

Katheriah

Party mode enabled!

emilyhyoyeon

I'm really surprised about it but super excited

TaSheen

*sigh* I didn't win anything.

TiaFrye

TaSheen wrote: »

*sigh* I didn't win anything.

With due respect, for almost four years we had nothing aside from occasional throw-bones in recurring characters. You will still have your separate stories once a year, but this time instead of nothing long time players will have something too. YLS system took something from us, but I can't see Arcs taking something from you. Anything extra you can ignore and still have what you came for.

TaSheen

TiaFrye wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

*sigh* I didn't win anything.

With due respect, for almost four years we had nothing aside from occasional throw-bones in recurring characters. You will still have your separate stories once a year, but this time instead of nothing long time players will have something too. YLS system took something from us, but I can't see Arcs taking something from you. Anything extra you can ignore and still have what you came for.

I like self-contained stuff, not stretched out over years. This is why I almost never buy books which are issued in trilogies or octets etc until they're all available. Which is why I was thrilled with a game that did a full story a year.

I'll play the game, but it's doubtful I'll play the "arcs". Nor will I buy multi-year stories - I'll wait until they're free. If they're never free, well, fine - since it's not likely I'll play them anyway.

*shrug* I'm nearly always a minority of one. Nothing new.

YandereGirlfriend

WOOT!!