WHY ARE QUESTS SO WEIRD?

EnglishDragon17 · August 2015

Apparently prince naemon is dead even know he is in elden root, razum dar says at the start of the three crowns quest that he misses questing with me in dune even know I havnt seen him there. High kinlady este is in a quest I recently did even know I killed her weeks ago. IT DOESNT MAKE SENSE SKYRIM AND OBLIVION NEVER DID THIS!

rb2001 · August 2015

Game has "time-travel" quest, npc and world state mechanics, which is a lacking way to handle multiple world states.

So, revisiting early zones, it will always be in the persistent "we just saved the city" phase, or "the city just burned down and we'll need to rebuild phase".

If you go talk to guy A there he will be in that phase, and if you talk to the same npc in another zone that is further in the timeline, he will be in there (2 places at once), and will say the new state stuff.

It's bonkers.

EnglishDragon17 · August 2015

Its annoying because I feel like I need to do every quest in order to stop this

Acrolas · August 2015

It's uneven. If you start AD and go straight to Reaper's March, Ayrenn will act like she's never met you before. Which is accurate - but then you're going to go back to Auridon and meet her again for the very first time.

It's like they're coercing you to play linearly so as not to draw up so much cognitive dissonance.

Epona222 · August 2015

Acrolas wrote: »

It's uneven. If you start AD and go straight to Reaper's March, Ayrenn will act like she's never met you before. Which is accurate - but then you're going to go back to Auridon and meet her again for the very first time.

It's like they're coercing you to play linearly so as not to draw up so much cognitive dissonance.

In beta, the game WAS linear - you couldn't move on to zone 2 until you had done zone 1. Due to complaints, they opened up all zones, but didn't rehire the voice actors or redo the quests to take account of it.

UrQuan · August 2015

EnglishDragon17 wrote: »

Its annoying because I feel like I need to do every quest in order to stop this

Doing quests in the right order? What a truly bizarre concept that would be...

Defilted · August 2015

I did the zones in order so I never had this issue.

EnglishDragon17 · August 2015

UrQuan wrote: »

EnglishDragon17 wrote: »

Its annoying because I feel like I need to do every quest in order to stop this

Doing quests in the right order? What a truly bizarre concept that would be...

U know what I mean lol. I feel like I cant go to Valenwood until I have fully done Auridon.

traigusb14_ESO2 · August 2015

The only exception seem to be the Daedric Princes.
They seem to remember correctly, even during Caldwell's gold and silver.

Everyone else seems to be very linear and assume toy do things in order.

I was doing the buy drinks for all the undaunted in bars achievement.(I have All zones done)

Some of them move around. I met one of them and asked her whey she moved to Wayrest even though I never met her before yet in the earlier zone.

The game is huge. Sometimes it gets a little weird.

Tavore1138 · August 2015

Short answer - because you are not the only person in the game.

Longer one - there are well over 1,000 quests in this game so far, each of them has a story, a set of actions to be taken, voiced dialogue with a certain number of options. Some of those quests come in multiple interwoven parts.

Stop and consider how many extra lines of code, lines of voice dialogue and database entries would be needed to record exactly which quests you have completed in which order and with what result and allow every other relevant quest to have customised dialogue and recognition of what you had and hadn't done.

Oblivion and Skyrim can do this because you are the only variable - you can even complete quests in different orders and different ways (although, frankly, Skyrim was weak on that anyway) because there is one database recording what you have done and the world shapes itself around you and you alone.

In an MMORPG the world has to allow for thousands and thousands of us and unless they are going to split off a full individual copy of Tamriel per player then you will have to live with odd reactions if you do quests in an order that is not expected.

Try not to let it throw you too much

waterfairy · August 2015

Acrolas wrote: »

It's like they're coercing you to play linearly so as not to draw up so much cognitive dissonance.

They give you the guise of freedom yet they want you to follow the trail of breadcrumbs through zones and punish you if you stray off their path.

UrQuan · August 2015

EnglishDragon17 wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

EnglishDragon17 wrote: »

Its annoying because I feel like I need to do every quest in order to stop this

Doing quests in the right order? What a truly bizarre concept that would be...

U know what I mean lol. I feel like I cant go to Valenwood until I have fully done Auridon.

You're really not supposed to. If you want to, you can go ahead and do so, but don't complain when it doesn't make sense because you're doing an over-arching plot line out of order. It's basically like taking a book, selecting chapters to read in a random order, and being annoyed that it doesn't make sense. You're the one who wanted to skip ahead in the plot line...

Acrolas · August 2015

But the weird thing, when you're doing the Almanac, doing the main objectives in reverse order (last zone to first) somehow feels less tedious than going first to last.

It would be great if you could jump to your last Silver zone and then unlock Gold, but since you can't I'm doing Silver and Gold completely out of story order.