I like that races have unique passives that you cannot get elsewhere and do not like the idea of just picking the best passive of whatever and applying it to a race.

However, I do think some better balancing is needed and better options could be out there. Which I guess they will be doing in Q1 next year - though I have no faith in their ability to do it well.

I think that if you wanted for example a High Elf that was a stam build, many would argue that they would have no useful racial passives to help that and if they trained a given way (a warrior elf their whole life for example), then they should not get magic passives, but stam ones instead - this is a flawed argument. Racial passives do not come from life choices, they come from lineage. Life choices would be like a redguard studying mages guild and psijiic guild and picking up all the passives of those lines and wouldn't necessarily change their racial leanings.

That had nothing to do with my end point, but I hate seeing people make that argument as to why they should be able to pick whatever passives they want.

What I would like to see is a unique set of morphs (even morphs as a base so you don't have to have three versions, just pick one morph or the other at the start) to racial passives that branched off into one that would follow their traditional leanings and another that offered a unique set of options for out of the norm builds.

For example the High Elf bonus to magicka could remain for a mage build, but there could be another morph that simply allows an across the board cost reduction - doesn't have to be super strong, as it would apply to magic and stam, but that would give a stam build something to work with and having a little reduction on using magic, which as a stam user could still be helpful as many builds still need to activate magicka based abilities. Could also be useful to someone trying to do a hybrid build or even preferable to someone in pvp even if they were a magicka build. It doesn't outright just 'steal' the flat bonus a redguard gets to stam for example, so isn't just a cookie cutter concept of offer every build a mag/stam version of the same thing. But think of what makes us give that racial bonus the race originally had to begin with - a history of intelligence and magic use for high elves that you could say turns into someone using abilities more efficiently than just getting a flat buff to magic. So there are ways it can be both Elder Scrolls lore friendly and offer choices to a variety of builds and desires.

Same with Redguards - they are viewed as having excellent stamina as a race of warrior/sword-masters, but how else can that stamina be applied to other applications or other aspects of their history (like their long and wise culture) offer a different alternative to just flat stam buffs - could take a similar approach like a flat regen buff to two or all three resources by a small percent since it would be spread to all three. (I say three b/c giving a little health regen % buff would really not make much difference). But the view is that your stamina is being used to regenerate a variety of your 'power' and not just a flat - here have some extra stam.

Same with dunmer - they added the bonus elemental damage to them so they were not only fire, but this should have been split, so you could choose one morpoh that is just the big fire damage buff or the other morph (maybe a 1% stronger that what it gives now) that applied to all three elements instead of just giving them both.

I would have to go through all the races and passives to create unique ideas, which I don't think is needed at this point just to make a forum post that zos may not read. BUT in the end, I'm just getting at the fact I would like to still see racial passives mean something unique to builds without being the end-all, be-all and with still offering something to more than one type of build.

I'd also like to see more unique non combat related flavor passives added to races. But I love stuff like the argonian swim speed bonus, the bosmer falling damage reduction, khajiit pick pocket bonus, etc.

The whole lore argument falls flat for me in an online game, but I'm used to emergent story MMOs and the whole point for many developers in creating the MMO, to begin with, was to create a form of entertainment where the narrative is told by the audience. This is what made online gaming an innovative form of entertainment compared to all the others that just feed you their product and your only role is to consume it.

The online game that inspired the creation of the acronym, MMO, Ultima Online, had decades of lore based on earlier single player games behind it too. But it was largely ABANDONED when the online version launched because its developers wanted it to take its own course.

But is ESO an MMO? Not entirely.

If it means to follow a story told by others before it was even released, and it is wedged some centuries in the middle of a timeline containing specified events, it never was suitable material on which to base an online game. But here we are.

So, let's put aside cultish arguments and look at common sense. What are all those muscles doing on Dunmer males, Breton males, Altmer males? If they are incapable of physical warfare comparable to Orcs, Nords, Redguards, and others, why do they even have heavy armor and metal weapons? And why do Dunmers have dual wield as their first racial passive? Ambidextrous? Uh, no. If so they'd deal more damage with dual wield than the other races as well.

It's all rather contrived....lizards swimming faster...responding better to drink than to solid food...a mixed race of man and mer only having bonuses to magic...just LOOK AT THEM, these passives, and say, with a straight face, they make sense in the context in which they're offered, anchored and restricted to specific races.

Does that truely make sense to you? And what of you fellow players? They follow these rules of course, as they must, but do you imagine most ESO players care about lore?

So, who does this product serve?

Look i like the lore and all but it's really not practical to tie significant stats and battle effectiveness to certain races in a competitive mmo environment. People who care about that sort of thing will always pick the one that is the most useful for them. It would actually be better if ZOS just let people choose certain sets of passives themselves with the race they want, and then they're free to rp their character through 'natural affinity' and their progression with the game. I would allow one racial passive for each one that would NOT give them a large tactical advantage over other races in trials or pvp like faster swim speed, pickpocket chance, or slight decrease in detection area.

Edit: lol @programcanaan i totally missed your post because of my long delayed response. You can see that i agree with you.

bellanca6561n wrote: »

The whole lore argument falls flat for me in an online game, but I'm used to emergent story MMOs and the whole point for many developers in creating the MMO, to begin with, was to create a form of entertainment where the narrative is told by the audience. This is what made online gaming an innovative form of entertainment compared to all the others that just feed you their product and your only role is to consume it.

The online game that inspired the creation of the acronym, MMO, Ultima Online, had decades of lore based on earlier single player games behind it too. But it was largely ABANDONED when the online version launched because its developers wanted it to take its own course.

But is ESO an MMO? Not entirely.

If it means to follow a story told by others before it was even released, and it is wedged some centuries in the middle of a timeline containing specified events, it never was suitable material on which to base an online game. But here we are.

So, let's put aside cultish arguments and look at common sense. What are all those muscles doing on Dunmer males, Breton males, Altmer males? If they are incapable of physical warfare comparable to Orcs, Nords, Redguards, and others, why do they even have heavy armor and metal weapons? And why do Dunmers have dual wield as their first racial passive? Ambidextrous? Uh, no. If so they'd deal more damage with dual wield than the other races as well.

It's all rather contrived....lizards swimming faster...responding better to drink than to solid food...a mixed race of man and mer only having bonuses to magic...just LOOK AT THEM, these passives, and say, with a straight face, they make sense in the context in which they're offered, anchored and restricted to specific races.

Does that truely make sense to you? And what of you fellow players? They follow these rules of course, as they must, but do you imagine most ESO players care about lore?

So, who does this product serve?

I am honestly perplexed by this answer.

If the lore means nothing to you, then why play this game?

I mean, you said it yourself, it has had a heavy tendency towards a ZOS imposed narrative from the start. Surely you were aware of this either when you started playing? Or soon after?

Your account creation date suggests you have been here since March 2014 (like me). From the first days of playing the game it was obvious that ZOS was attempting (not always managing) to create an online gaming experience that was steeped in the lore and atmosphere of the Elder Scrolls.

So having become aware of that... you stayed.

If the world-building isn't what you are here for, then... well... why?

laereal wrote: »

Iluvrien wrote: »

I am honestly perplexed by this answer.

If the lore means nothing to you, then why play this game?

I mean, you said it yourself, it has had a heavy tendency towards a ZOS imposed narrative from the start. Surely you were aware of this either when you started playing? Or soon after?

Your account creation date suggests you have been here since March 2014 (like me). From the first days of playing the game it was obvious that ZOS was attempting (not always managing) to create an online gaming experience that was steeped in the lore and atmosphere of the Elder Scrolls.

So having become aware of that... you stayed.

If the world-building isn't what you are here for, then... well... why?

The hell? You dont have to care about the lore to enjoy an mmo. There are plenty of people who play this game just for the mmo experience. They stay because they made friends and like to play with friends.

It isn't about "a mmo" it is about the choice of this one, rather than any others. I even put the word in italics in the post you quoted.

This poster has stayed in a game that which has, as one of the fundamental tendencies that they themselves identified, something that they have no desire for and something that actively prevents them from playing the way they want to...

... for over four years.

Nothing about that situation makes you the slightest bit curious as to the reasoning behind it?

Your consternation at my post would make sense if this is the only mmo that someone could be playing. This is absolutely not the case. There are dozens of the blasted things. As such, why choose the one that annoys you? Rather than one that doesn't?

It really isn't as unreasonable a question as you seem to be suggesting.

laereal wrote: »

Iluvrien wrote: »

It isn't about "a mmo" it is about the choice of this one, rather than any others. I even put the word in italics in the post you quoted.

This poster has stayed in a game that which has, as one of the fundamental tendencies that they themselves identified, something that they have no desire for and something that actively prevents them from playing the way they want to...

... for over four years.

Nothing about that situation makes you the slightest bit curious as to the reasoning behind it?

Your consternation at my post would make sense if this is the only mmo that someone could be playing. This is absolutely not the case. There are dozens of the blasted things. As such, why choose the one that annoys you? Rather than one that doesn't?

It really isn't as unreasonable a question as you seem to be suggesting.

Because many mmo players will tell you that no mmo is perfect, not every mmo will tick all the boxes when it comes to your wishlist, and that people usually stick with an mmo because they like it the most.

You picked one aspect of the game what you think is the driving force for people to stay with it instead of looking at other factors. What I don't get is why you would think this is the only thing that would get them to stick with one game when there are so many facets to this game that makes it fun and enjoyable. And while people love the game, they stick acknowledge that it is not perfect and there are things about it that can be improved for practicality and gameplay's sake, like the handling of racial passives in this game.

There is no reason an MMO cannot have both strong story and deep lore AND balanced gameplay - a race as a whole may have a lore that leans more toward magic or warrior culture or something else, while allowing player characters the same ability to reach the same level of combat performance without negating lore (nothing in lore I've seen suggests it is impossible for an individual nord to master magic or a high elf from being a strong warrior).

People who believe that the general lore associated with a given race requires every player character of that race to be objectively and passively better or worse combat wise is either not thinking it through fully or scared ZOS will make changes that balance racial combat benefits, thus losing any advantage they currently enjoy from picking an OP race.

So I agree - it is rather silly for someone to state those of us that enjoy the game should somehow accept poor or unbalanced gameplay when the only reason give is the 'but lore' excuse, which just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

See, this is one of the major problems I have with this argument.
You keep using contradicting lore.
Like here, you say "the nedes looked exactly like nords and that proves my point that there have been no evolutinary changes", and then only a little time later you say "the nedes looked exactly like bretons, and that proves my point that there have been no evolutinary changes"... and I look at bretons, and I look at nords, and I am not blind enough to think they look the same, and I shake my head, wondering if you even know what you are talking about...
And I am saying that maybe the neded looked like -both- nords and bretons, and imperials as well while we're at it, with one group evolving in one direction and the other in the other direction and a different one in a different direction... which is -exactly- the logical conclusion you seem so desperate to try and deny.

Did you just ignore the part of the post where I talked about the different Nedic populations, or are you still responding to things line by line instead of taking your time to read everything? It gets tiring to have to explain everything multiple times. The Nedes were not, as you claim below, "one race", they were multiple people, likely from different parts of Atmora, coming in waves. Each individual group must be considered separate when trying to determine if there were any "changes over time". Whatever group the Bretons were did not change in appearance, as described by the lorebook you falsely claim is contradictory. The group that became the Nords did not change. Heck, the one Cyrodiil-area Nede we know of (Titus Valerius from Craglorn) even looks just like a 2nd-Era Imperial.

So in the face of all that actual evidence, no, I'm not going to speculate that there was some secret change over time, especially when evolutionarily that's way too short of a period for it to happen over to begin with. The human side of things, then, is finished. There is no record of change, there IS record of distinct groups who specifically did not change appearance over time, and that tracks with everything we know about the evolutionary timescales being insufficient for such a change to begin with. Additionally, from another argument, we know that there aren't any selective pressures to begin with to drive such dramatic racial differences as described by the racial descriptions and/or passives. Concluding, we can use a combination of in-game lore and real-life knowledge to be sure that racials do not make evolutionary sense.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

We have -one- race, the nedes. fast forward an era and we have imperials, bretons and nords. At the very least the bretons and imperials are supposeldy descendent from the nedes - but they are quite a bit differently depicted and described. The nords may be different having come from atmore rather recently, though it is assumed the nedes came from there as well, jsut a bit earlier then the nords, so... one people back then, three different people now, one magically inclined feudalists, one militaristically inclined empire-builders, and one tough and drunk brawlers. Sounds like someone did some divergent evolving there, as much as you want to deny is, crying "noone saw it happen, so it must not have happened!" all the while.

If your hypothesis that there wasn't any change was correct, then bretons, imperials and nords would have to be exactly the same, looking exactly the same, having the exact same passives handed to them by the game designers in eversy TES game, etc. They don't.
Thus logic dictates there indeed was some change, and since noone noticed any "boom, changed!" event like with the dunmer for example... the most likely option would be a slow, gradual change over time... and guess what evolution shows up as? Yes, indeed, a slow gradual change over time as traits that are more beneficial in the surroundings, be it environmental or cultural, are passed on at an higher rate then others...

As stated in a previous post and again above, we very much do not have one race called Nedes. Your argument falls apart.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

That's a lot of unsupported assumptions you are making there.

Sadly, it just doesn't really hold up. The bretons are described as having changed physically to the point where nords mistook them as a new strain of aldmeri (which by itself would indicate that the changing of races to "new strains" is not unknown in Tamriel)

And of course we have a load of aldmeri changing as they settle different places, so... all in all... I say evolution is pretty much a thing, if maybe a wierd magically twisted mutant thing at times over in Tamriel!

No, you just either had not gotten to the "there were multiple Nedes" part of my previous post or you're outright ignoring it. Curious that you cut your quote short to try and make it sound like there was some kind of evolution going on with Bretons. Here's the quote in full :

The Bretons, in ten generations of Elven intermingling and slavery, had become scarcely recognizable as humans. Indeed, the hunting party attacked them thinking they were some new strain of Aldmeri, halting their slaughter only when one of the oldest began to wail for his life, a shrieking plea that was spoken in broken Nordic. When word of this reached Windhelm, the Nords reasoned that the "Manmeri" beyond the Reach were, in fact, descended from human slaves taken during the Elven destruction of Saarthal. King Vrage made the first priority of his Empire the liberation of his long-tormented kinsmen in High Rock.

Sorry but as already stated, interbreeding is not evolution. And if they're called Bretons, how is it that they're scarcely recognizable as humans? The Bretons we know look quite human. Didn't you imply that different races should have different names? And how does this match up with other accounts, already discussed, which say that Bretons kept their Nedic appearance? Or with your own insistence that the progeny takes the race of the mother? To me it seems more likely that the author of the Pocket Guide was trying to justify the Nordic campaigns against High Rock by showing the depredations of the Elves enslaved them. And the idea of different "strains" of Aldmer is fully explained by the presence of both Direnni Aldmer and Chimer, both of whom are different "strains" of Aldmer, and both of whom exist in the relevant timeframe. I'll address the Aldmer argument later on since you can't seem to decide what your actual argument on them is and I'd rather get most things in one place than have to keep explaining them to you with every new paragraph.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

...which is says... where exactly?
There is -no- mention of any "magical changes" of that regard, until we get to the aldmer followers of trinimac getting changed into orsimer and the chimer getting changed into dunmer. Oh, maybe the snow elves getting transformed into blind falmer by the dwemer 'shrooms too I suppose. Well, maybe you could count the khajiit as well, there is a myth of them having been mer once upon a time before azura gifted them with kittyness if I recall correctly...
...but I am pretty sure there is no such tale about bosmer (though there is mention of them taking mannish wives, so that's one for the intermingling change theory again i reckon, and a strike for your "magical change" hypothesis), and none about the ayleids, snow elves, chimer maormer... all of which split off from the aldmer, and ended up looking... completely different. Okay, so not completely, but noticeable different. Sounds to me like some sort of "change over time" may have happened after all, and what would that be if not evolution by any other word?

Sorry, but your argument is impossible to follow here. You say that there is "no mention" of magickal changes, except for every single type of elf except Ayleid, Maormer, and Bosmer. But then later on below in your post you AGREE that the Bosmer were magically changed by Y'ffre. What is it exactly that you believe again? While speculative, I think that if we keep seeing this pattern of elves moving from Summerset and getting magically changed, and given that there haven't been nearly enough generations for these superficial appearance changes to have an evolutionary cause, it is more likely that change of this nature on Tamriel is a magical process. If we want to get Deep Lore about it, the Aldmer were descended from the most Anu-related spirits to begin with, meaning they were least metaphysically aligned with change. Thus if they are going to change it makes much more sense to be a sudden magical process rather than some physical one. It's just not in their nature.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Funny, how would that work when ALL the ones who split off used the shtick to "redefine themselves"... why would the ones left behind need so too?

Personally I think phonetic shift is far more likely to blame for altmer, though until we actually get to see an aldmer, we can only speculate if the altmer are really as "pure" as they like to think. I mean, we have altmer with golden skin, chimer with skin more greyish shaded then altmer, ayleids with bronze skin, maormer with silver-blue skin, snow elves with pale white skin, dwemer with grey skin... who knows what aldmer might have looked like? Altmer will likely imagine them with golden skin, maormer will swear every oath they had silver skin, I reckon... and the two of them have been killing each other over the question since... forever.

Except for the skin color. Altmer get the golden skin tone (in shades ranging from yellow to "white folk"), but king Dynar has bronze tanned skin, more brown then yellow. Visibly different from all the many, many altmer.

Well if we're still just speculating, then they'd probably use analogous real-world reasons. For instance, we have various religious groups that redefine themselves as "Orthodox" after a schism splits a group of their followers off. Are we to assume that they're some new race of religious followers? No, that's silly. They call themselves by a new name because the actions of others made it important enough to leverage their orthodoxy as a defining trait.

Also you really should get off some of those more unsubstantiated claims regarding skin color. Chimer skin was gold, we can see it in ESO in those quests I mentioned. It seems a lighter gold (could just be lighting) but as was already explained there are multiple lorebooks saying that their skin was already changed by Boethiah (The Changed Ones, The Anticipations). This "bronze" skin of the Ayleids is also silly. The only Ayleid we see has no metalic color to his skin, and in fact looks so close to one of the Altmer presets in the character creator that I truly don't know if it's actually different or just a trick of the lighting.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Oh, the skin colors changing into various ways from whatever the aldmer had is in itself only a indication of -change-, nothing more.

But as someone who always demands "proof in the lore", how come you don't allpy the same rules to yourself while speculating about "daedric fiat" where none is mentioned in the lore?
(Not that I would be opposed to that, really, it -is- possible after all. But sadly for your base case, daedric fiat or divine blessing would be a good argument for all sorts of racial passives, so...)

I'm just saying it fits the established pattern of elves magically changing as they move from Summerset. We have definitive evidence of that and it's not in poor form for me to argue that the thing we know happened to some elves is likely to have happened to other elves, instead of an unsubstantiated and illogical evolutionary change.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

I would not disagree with that. It is certainly a viable explaination, and one I actually believe myself.

Yeah this is the part of the post I referenced above where it's completely unclear what you believe.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Have you looked at Orc mating habits, perchance? Especially like its a wolfpack structure, with the main breeding going on from the chief and his various wives? Now, that kind of thing seems to be in flux, with it being strong in the traditionalists, and laxer in more enlighted orcs (and good thing too), but a history of that sort of thing would explain a thing or two, right?

Even if the race were made up of 100% traditionalists, strictly enforced breeding, and they had been doing so for the tens of thousands of years it would take to create even a fraction of their racial buffs, it would still not explain things because you don't have a guarantee that the people who become chieftain have a genetic predisposition for toughness or strength versus having training for it. Among real-life humans, for instance, you have some small variability in potential for various physical capacities, but the most predictive factor for how strong or fast or whatever somebody is will be how much training they've done. Similarly, you can't be sure that your traditionalist orc society is truly getting a naturally strong chief versus one who has been training harder than their peers. Heck, the most naturally-gifted orc might end up being a hunter or a builder instead of a warrior. The strongest=chieftain is just not going to apply a selective pressure on a complex tool-wielding society with specialized labor.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

No, I am saying that you cannot trust -anything- blindly, especially not the lorebooks. Yes, there are a lot of good bits of info there - but also a lot of bad ones. Treating them as gods own truth on the other hand, when they are sometimes even more contradictory then anything else... that is not a good idea. A far worse idea though is working on the assumption that anything not explicitely mentioned in the lorebooks does not exist. Especially things that are logically infered by the game system as we have it.

Well don't trust blindly, then. Corroborate your sources across multiple books, using in-game NPCs, etc. And I've not been saying that things not mentioned in the books can't exist, but if you can't find reference to something and can't logically infer it (and I've shown repeatedly that you can't), then you should re-evaluate your beliefs about the topic.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

True enough.
How about the rest of the books tho? Especially the stuff he wrote about himself, hmmm? And that is the trouble, you seem to think you have the divine insight to get to pick which lore is "useful information" and which should be discarded.
And I dislike it when someone think they have the right to tell others what they should believe in, thus I argue that there are parts of the lore that contradict your narrative that are just as valid.

If you can't pick out the good info from a Narsis Dren book versus the self-aggrandizing stuff then you really ought to train up on using context clues. At some point you have to expect a baseline level of competency for reading comprehension. Since you've picked up that Narsis Dren is a giant tool I assume you have that, so why play naive? And you can argue validity of a contradictory account all day, but you keep eventually admitting that my arguments are sound, as with the Bosmer origin or the various other confirmed magically-changed elves. That's not telling you what you should believe, that's just persuasion. Not that I'm saying my arguments are always going to be right 100% of the time by default, but I don't feel bad about making my case.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Wrong.
For one, stipulating "mutually exclusive" when there are no such things is a bit of faluty reasoning. For another, your argument is a bit like saying "because there have been wildly different and inaccurate maps of australia in the past, we must conclude australia does not exist".
Now, with an -actual- place like australia, we can go and check, with fictional things we have to ask "Did the author -want- them to exist?", and if the answer is "yes", then the rest is just information getting adjusted as the story is rewitten over time.

The answer here is "yes" by the way, quite obviously.

And here we come back to the core argument... I still say we see the same problem, we just argue stupidly about the lore when the core difference is, I want to adjust the story while keeping with the original intent, and you want to throw part of it away and write a new story instead...

Are you arguing that mutually-exclusive things don't exist in general, or that specifically evolutionary and magical processes are not mutually exclusive for creating new races? I'll assume the second for now. If evolutionary and magical race-producing processes are not mutually exclusive, then they can happen over the same course of time. Since these magical processes occur within the same individual, whereas evolutionary processes occur in a species over the course of many generations, they are indeed mutually exclusive. You could try arguing that you could have a magical shift in the middle of an evolutionary process, but either a speciation event was enough to bring about a totally new species before the magical change, or it wasn't, and afterward you have a completely separate speciation event. I can't think of any of that happening in the lore.

Take the Dunmer, for example. We have not one, but TWO opportunities to witness this, but don't. We have the potential to change from Aldmer to Chimer evolutionarily, but Boethiah changes their skin magically first. Then we have the opportunity for Chimer to change to Dunmer evolutionarily, but Azura's curse is what brings on the change. There's no mention of any intermediary races between Aldmer and Chimer or Chimer and Dunmer, so unless we're going with wild and unsubstantiated speculation then we ought to conclude that these were completely magical, Daedra-driven transformations.

As for your core argument, it just goes back to your idea only being supported in one place (and with contradictions at that) while mine is supported through the rest of the lore. The people designing gameplay may have wanted racials, but those were probably different people from those designing the story, the NPCs, etc. If racials were supposed to be this big important thing in the lore, then the rest of the storytelling department ought to have gone out of their way to support it with the combination of lorebooks, quests, and NPCs that make up the actual story of the game series. The original intent of the storytellers seems to be that they wanted an interesting and complex world populated by interesting and complex characters who can't be easily shoehorned into the "good at swords" or "good at magic" buckets.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

That's what I would call "adjustments". Keeping the original notion, coming up with a better system for it. Horse training kept the three stats, just changed things around a bit in how they were trained. Provisioning kept the general way of cooking things, just changed the recipes and streamlined the ingredients.

You may notice, noone called for horses to be removed from the game, or provisioning, yes?

Interesting interpretation, I think I'll use that below.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

That IS "racials going away".

No, racials would still be there, the stat changes and all, I'm just suggesting changing how you get them. 0:) And instead of "race passives" they can be called "background passives" just like how "horse feeding" became "horse training". It's perfect and follows your formula for what an "adjustment" is exactly!

TheShadowScout wrote: »

One - cultures remaning themselves seems to be the exception, rather then the rule. And usually happens when regional cultures combine or split think... not for random "Oh, nedes was so yesterday, let's be bretons now..."

Breton, which you should remember from the very thorough review you no doubt did of the "Bretons: Mongrels or Paragons" you quoted, was the term for the caste of half-blood humans. Their new name was drawn directly from the cultural institution that their lives were based around.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Two - when the lore actually references physical changes enough that the descendents of nedic men get called "manmer" by the other decendents of their shared ancestor race, well... that usually would be a pretty strong indication for a "distinct new people", yes?

Already covered this above, but to review : Nedes were not a single people, and the "manmer" bit is unlikely to be true as it is not corroborated by the other in-game sources, including the actual appearance of Bretons, and there is a perfectly logical reason for the Pocket Guide writer to lie about that point.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

...people who actually have to try and convince their editor to run their story might disagree.
BtW, the "unlikely ones" can also be split into "the miracle" and "the scandal", just in case you ever want to write for a newspaper and make decisions about what is newsworthy.

So you are saying... what?
That we have tons of movies about boxing champions winning and not the underdog going the distance? Tons of books about the scion of a prominent wizarding family going to hogwarts instead of the boy who lived under the stairs? Tons of tales about how the hordes of stormtroopers win the day and not the perky rebel heroes? Tons of stories about a average persons daily routine, and none about something unexpected happening to mess it all up? Tons of stories where the expected happens instead of some plot twist along the way?
Who'd read that? It'd be boring, wouldn't it?
And -that- is why stories about the unlikely one are more commonly remembered. Not saying that this is the only thing that makes a good story, there are many ingredients... but go on, look at stories, look at the heroes... you will find stories about how the hero sure to win did unsurprisingly win become background noise, while the ones of the unlikely one winning get remembered! (not in the least because more people find themselves identifying with the unlikely ones, as most are a member of the masses, feeling they too must be fighting an uphill battle towards recognition and realization of their dreams; and not a scion of the elite who could expect to have an insurmountable advantage everywhere they weanted to and any whim handed to them on a silver platter)

First of all, you are changing the argument. Is Harry Potter, a full-blooded wizard, a hero in spite of his disadvantaged upbringing? Sure, but very clearly it's not because he belongs to an unexpected race that isn't usually good at wizarding. Were Leia, Like, and Han heroes because they faced overwhelming odds against a powerful and ruthless enemy? Sure, but not because they were Space Humans. Race has nothing to do with their stories, and it has nothing to do with the success or failure of the vast majority of characters in TES lorebooks. Don't run away from your original argument as soon as it gets tough and fling out a bunch of distractions.

But second of all you still don't know what you are talking about. You are expounding an ever-broader list of ways to make a story interesting, but you're still defining what makes a successful story too narrowly. There are stories of intrigue, stories of comedy, stories of romance, of horror, and many more. They don't all have to follow this superlative format you originally described, nor these underdog stories you're presenting now. Hell, the subjects don't even have to be especially interesting, as the slice-of-life genre has proven time and again. It can be about ordinary people doing quite ordinary things, just told well and usually with some kind of narrative structure. This whole section of your argument is pointless and bad.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Actually I was more thinking of a nomadic people having to be more self-reliant -because- they have not outsourced all those crafting skills to a specialized crafter... though in any case, that would definitely be a cultural bonus, and not a racial one.
Also, some portable forges were pretty sophisticated, just sayin.

People still specialize in such societies. This would also be one of those mutually-exclusive things by way of one of your other arguments. If (and there isn't) selective pressure for orcs to be tough and strong via chieftain breeding rights, then there would not be selective pressure for them to be crafters as the crafters can't breed.


Now to summarize a few things :

Racials don't make sense from an evolutionary perspective

• The timeframes are too short for this kind of differentiation
• The bonuses are many many orders of magnitude larger than anything we see in real life
• There are no selective pressures that would produce the types of racials that are described or to the magnitude given
• Any alleged differentiation which may have somehow happened, despite the above, is better explained by canonical magical changes, cultural changes, and the fact that there were entirely different groups of people all confusingly sharing the name "Nede"

Racials don't make sense lore-wise

• The in-game depictions in lorebooks and NPCs paint an extremely complex picture of the races, where the alleged proclivities and advantages of the race fall away to reveal complex characters with a great many different skillsets
• In particular, we have ample depictions and descriptions of every race having robust cultural traditions around all the big three classic TES categories : Combat, Magic, and Stealth. Trying to essentialize the culture of any of the races inevitably cuts out huge amounts of canonical nuance.

Given the combination of the above, the evidence for which I have been providing throughout the thread, I think the best way forward is to treat the races as the complex cultures they are, and transform racial passives into background passives or some similarly-named system. This is fully supported by the lore, better accounts for the immense cultural variety we see in the TES universe, and simultaneously unburdens players from sacrificing RP choices for gameplay choices.

Recremen wrote: »

[snip]

Given the combination of the above, the evidence for which I have been providing throughout the thread, I think the best way forward is to treat the races as the complex cultures they are, and transform racial passives into background passives or some similarly-named system. This is fully supported by the lore, better accounts for the immense cultural variety we see in the TES universe, and simultaneously unburdens players from sacrificing RP choices for gameplay choices.

Um, no. These are not just variations in skin tone and favorite foods we're talking about. Khajiit are quite clearly and quite substantially biologically different from Nords, who themselves are biologically different from Orcs, who are also different from Dunmer. Moving to Daggerfall for your college years ain't gonna do squat to get rid of your scales and tail.

That's what the racial passives represent. You wanna role play an Orc mage who was born and raised at the mages guild in Cyrodiil, fine, do that. Nothing stopping you. But you're gonna role play an Orc, not a scrawny elf in an Orc costume.

Recremen wrote: »

Glurin wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

[snip]

Given the combination of the above, the evidence for which I have been providing throughout the thread, I think the best way forward is to treat the races as the complex cultures they are, and transform racial passives into background passives or some similarly-named system. This is fully supported by the lore, better accounts for the immense cultural variety we see in the TES universe, and simultaneously unburdens players from sacrificing RP choices for gameplay choices.

Um, no. These are not just variations in skin tone and favorite foods we're talking about. Khajiit are quite clearly and quite substantially biologically different from Nords, who themselves are biologically different from Orcs, who are also different from Dunmer. Moving to Daggerfall for your college years ain't gonna do squat to get rid of your scales and tail.

That's what the racial passives represent. You wanna role play an Orc mage who was born and raised at the mages guild in Cyrodiil, fine, do that. Nothing stopping you. But you're gonna role play an Orc, not a scrawny elf in an Orc costume.

You no doubt didn't follow along with the whole conversation, but prowess differences between any of the races to the extent and in the forms that we see regarding racial passives are simply not backed up in the lore or biology. You can look at a Nord and Khajiit and say "yep, they're biologically different" but articulating the specific ways in which the entire race of one is predisposed to be better at a specific task than the other is not possible. To use your Orc example, you very much can play a scrawny orc, who it turns out is another kind of elf.

[snip]

There's a scrawny looking lion down at the local zoo. Take a guess as to who I'd put my money on in a real wrestling match between him and Dwayn Johnson.

Determining biological predispositions are entirely possible. Not only possible, but necessary to provide distinguishing characteristics between each race. Stop trying to use rare outliers as justification for ignoring biology and established lore.

Recremen wrote: »

Glurin wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

Glurin wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

[snip]

Given the combination of the above, the evidence for which I have been providing throughout the thread, I think the best way forward is to treat the races as the complex cultures they are, and transform racial passives into background passives or some similarly-named system. This is fully supported by the lore, better accounts for the immense cultural variety we see in the TES universe, and simultaneously unburdens players from sacrificing RP choices for gameplay choices.

Um, no. These are not just variations in skin tone and favorite foods we're talking about. Khajiit are quite clearly and quite substantially biologically different from Nords, who themselves are biologically different from Orcs, who are also different from Dunmer. Moving to Daggerfall for your college years ain't gonna do squat to get rid of your scales and tail.

That's what the racial passives represent. You wanna role play an Orc mage who was born and raised at the mages guild in Cyrodiil, fine, do that. Nothing stopping you. But you're gonna role play an Orc, not a scrawny elf in an Orc costume.

You no doubt didn't follow along with the whole conversation, but prowess differences between any of the races to the extent and in the forms that we see regarding racial passives are simply not backed up in the lore or biology. You can look at a Nord and Khajiit and say "yep, they're biologically different" but articulating the specific ways in which the entire race of one is predisposed to be better at a specific task than the other is not possible. To use your Orc example, you very much can play a scrawny orc, who it turns out is another kind of elf.

[snip]

There's a scrawny looking lion down at the local zoo. Take a guess as to who I'd put my money on in a real wrestling match between him and Dwayn Johnson.

Determining biological predispositions are entirely possible. Not only possible, but necessary to provide distinguishing characteristics between each race. Stop trying to use rare outliers as justification for ignoring biology and established lore.

So wait, you're saying a Khajiit is going to be stronger than a Nord now? 🤔

For real though, just asserting that there's a biological or lore basis for the alleged differences in races isn't the same thing as actually doing a deep dive analysis from both ends. I've been doing that this whole thread. Feel free to look it up, but I'm not going to repeat everything here just for your sake when I'm already doing hours of research per post for the main back and forth I've been having.

That's not what you've been doing. What you've been doing is generating huge walls of text hoping that people will assume that it must mean something and therefore you know what you're talking about when you proclaim that all women have prostates. And what is your actual evidence for this? "There was that one woman in Philadelphia and certain medical texts don't specifically say the words 'women don't have prostates'."

Just admit it already. The only reason you're doing this is because you don't like the idea that game mechanics mathematically simply cannot cater to every idiosyncrasy enough to allow you to top the leader boards playing your headcanon orc archmage.

Look, if you wanna argue for some kind of background trait or birth sign or something to give you a bonus to magicka or whatever in addition to racial passives, fine. But don't try to argue that oddities disprove the norm.

@Recremen : I didn't want to try to quote the section (its a huge bit of text there) but you spoke about Bretons and Manmer being questionable. My Breton's pointy stubby ears suggest to me that this is precisely the intention of the lorekeepers at Bethesda. I'll be honest I don't understand your animus with what @TheShadowScout is saying. He actually agrees with you that Race choice should not effect whether you can be a Great tank, healer, dps, etc. His point is that some level of flavor is valuable and meaningful and to this point I agree. I don't think we need to write Epics on the subject matter. In all honesty I think you're talking past him and failing to see the greater point he is making. It is CLEAR that something is going on with Nords in a mystical way regarding Ice/Snow/Kynareth/Shor. The Nords have a proclivity toward a divine ability (Shouting) and a supernatural resiliency toward the cold, and have come from some frigid plane of existence known as Atmora which may or may not actually be a continent. Dunmer are hugely resistant to flame and this is some mystical proclivity. I personally think you are all getting a bit too genetic in your assessments. There are mystical/spiritual things going on here CLEARLY that are elements of the theme. This is why I believe @TheShadowScout and others (Such as myself) have a problem with wanting to completely undo these racial traits. We all recognize that the series itself has something more going on with it. The Shehai is a Yokudan/Redguard thing. It would be strange if the Shehai appeared outside of the Yokudan people unless this person somehow had a Redguard soul (which I suppose is not completely impossible in the series). It is also inherent to the Argonians for instance that they breathe water and are highly resilient to disease and toxin.

The point I'm making here is that the racial backstory in ESO does matter. There is something much more different between Elder Scrolls than the real life differences between a Norwegian and a Frenchman, or a Frenchman and an Algerian, or an Algerian or a Nigerian, or a Nigerian or a Chinese person, or a Chinese person vs a Navajo. You get my point. This is a magical fantasy world with elves and lizard people, Vampires and Lamias, Sloads and Dragons. Fundamentally, we all agree that an epic Khajiit hero should be able to be a master wizard if he wants to be. Enchantments should even allow that Khajiit to breathe water like an argonian and handle the toxins of Murkmire. The problem is in how it was balanced in this game (which is to say it wasn't). Many of us don't mind the racial differences. A Khajiit has a tail, claws, fangs. It is NOT the same as a Nord, which is why even though a Nord is much more physically imposing than a Khajiit, the Khajiit has an advantage in hand to hand combat. Its just mageobiology, or whatever you want to call it. Every race has this stuff in the Elder Scrolls series. Bosmer have the wild hunt. Dwemer had their 'Deep Tonal Architect Elf' thing. Denying that is to deny the lore itself. Simultaneously, I think we can all agree that there are people who break the innate median norms of their race in Elder Scrolls. Sotha Sil is a prime example of this being a psijic who managed to master tonal architecture. Would this be normal Dunmer behavior? Not in the slightest. This isn't even normal mortal behavior. Sotha Sil is an outlier.

This is @TheShadowScout's point and you seem to keep talking past it. Simultaneously, @Recremen, You keep wanting to point out that everyone is an equal and balance would be good. I don't know about everyone being equal in capacity (not even in real life, but I would agree that everyone in real life is equal in value) but I do believe that every character should be able to master whatever field is available in game. This is what you want and I agree with it. Interestingly enough so does @TheShadowScout so again I'm wondering why is this dance around the subject so voluminous. What is actually being said here? I'm getting a headache reading it and I'm not sure much is being accomplished from a productive perspective other than you have made it abundantly clear you dislike his point by point analysis.

As an aside: Altmer are Banana yellow. Never before in an Elder Scrolls series have I seen an Altmer anything but banana yellow. This influx of more human skin colored Altmer makes me think these are more Ayleid than Altmer, which also makes me think that the game developers are suggesting the Ayleid interbreeding gave them human futures by the way. We can't only use Elder Scrolls Online as the measuring stick by what the series is. On this matter I vehemently agree with @TheShadowScout .