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Spoilers Elsweyr player critiques

Iccotak
Iccotak
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NOTE: This review is outdated since it was made before playing the Dragonhold DLC as well as before the creation of other discussions

Just to Preface; despite my criticisms I greatly enjoyed this Chapter, am looking forward to the next dlcs this year, and am glad to see that ZOS has solidified a content release formula.

I understand that the developers use the expansion as a way to draw in players BUT making every Chapter a starter zone hurts the game, in both story and gameplay.
To begin with it doesn't make any narrative sense for new players to start in each new chapter.
The story of Elsweyr heavily features characters that you previously met in the base game as well as the add-on content that followed. If a new player starts in Elsweyr then they have no context or connection to these characters whatsoever.

Follow the example of previous Elder Scroll games by having players start in the base game and give them the option to travel anywhere (including to add-on content zones) after the intro quest (which is skip-able after the first play though)
And honestly the Original Intro was better than the ones that followed, all the others are just kind of mediocre.
Link of the original opening cutscene
Now on to the latest Chapter

Story & Characters
What I liked
Learning about Khajiit lore was awesome, ZOS does a good job of taking a race I don’t care about and making me see them in a new light. Learning about the Khajiit breeds, their respective religion and practices, learning about the Politics, etc.
I liked that ZOS went out of their way to justify playable necromancers. That they are not inherently evil and that depends on person wielding its power.
Great to see returning characters since I last saw a couple of them 5 years ago. I like that there the game does take some moments to acknowledge the passage of time.
The main story itself emphasized the characters and what they're going through.
There is alot I like and would take a long time to list out.

My Issues
Now that ZOS is actually keeping a solid narrative throughout the whole year (Which is Awesome) perhaps we could have more moments of tension and maybe every once in a while...Lose?
This Chapter should have doubled down on the theme of Consequences.

We see this not only in the main story but also in plenty of the side quests
-Molag Bal warned the Player about making powerful enemies and now we've unleashed Dragons into the World
-Abnur Tharn has pressure not only from his age catching up to him but also his actions and that of his family
-Cadwell faces the person he was when he was alive
-A Khajiit companion character feels guilt about his past which he must confront
-Razum-dar returns home and faces his family
-An Argonian works to help the Khajiit deal with the leftovers of a dangerous disease that people blame the Argonians for releasing
-A village deals with consequences of the actions of their ancestors
-etc, etc.

All of this is great but the main story suffers when it falters in the end and gives the player a happy ending. We've done this formula before where the villain is almost about to achieve victory but we, the ultimate underdog, stop them in the end.

This is why i think designing Elsweyr as a starting zone hurts because new players are going to have the expectation that they win since they’re the hero facing against impossible odds.

It would have had more impact if the consequences of unleashing the Rage of Dragons actually bit us in the end of this chapter. If Abnur Tharn's key flaw; arrogance (as seen with his dismissal of Mulaamnirs threat) was his downfall. If Cadwell had died in vain. If certain characters refusal to deal with the past cost them victory.
The artificial eclipse of the moons was mentioned but the consequences could have been emphasized on what such an event means to khajiiti culture.
We as the players who fought the Daedric Princes in two Arcs (Coldharbour and the Daedric War) could have used a Villain that, despite our best efforts, was always a step ahead of us and won.

Imagine this
You are too late when you defeat Mulaamnir
Kaalgrontiid having absorbed immense power doubles in size and claims godhood
You then hear Abnur Tharn say the same thing he did when the five companions were tricked my Mannimarco: "This is Bad, This is Very Bad"
At the last moment Khamira is able to banish Kaalgrontiid with her moon powers but at the cost of her own life. She lost her life as consequence of the actions of a Tharn, just like the rest of her family. The tale of Khunzar-ri repeats itself with the Khajiit hero dying while trying to stop the Dragons.
This is not a moment of celebration, this is mourning, you’ve lost friends and the Dragon Won.
Rather than the quest ending with a crowning event, it ends with a funeral.

This could considerably raise the stakes and investment for the players perspective. As the story continued throughout the year the player and the rest of the cast would have to rise up from their failure.

(although keep in mind that either way Kaalgrontiid is more powerful at the end of the chapter’s story and will return as an even greater threat this Year, it just doesn't feel like it when the player has a happy ending)

At the end when Khamira was telling me that I am a hero I just couldn't get immersed in that moment because my victories were practically handed to me on a silver platter, there was no moment where I felt there was a risk. Both in story and in combat.
The only real moment I felt anything was when Cadwell faded away...only for him to come back ok.


Characters
The characters were all well written and had so many wonderfully entertaining moments that I couldn’t keep a smile off my face.

That said, an issue is that you’ve spent all this time building your legend as the trailer in the link says and only for characters to treat you like a nobody?

The link; Your Legend Trailer:
Characters in the story should treat you differently depending on what you have done. If you have completed alot then you're known of but if you haven't then you're a nobody.

Example #1: if the player did the prologue quest for Elsweyr then certain Characters should not only be really upset with Tharn but You as well.

Example #2: Characters should acknowledge you as the hero of your alliance if you completed that storyline.

Character interaction offered very little choices in player dialogue. This isn’t a single player RPG so we can’t have that kind of freedom but I do think that players should at least have more dialogue choices considering that this is part of the Elder Scrolls franchise.

Zone
The zone is beautiful and ZOS has really changed for the better in their art direction since the launch back in 2014. The vertical level design really provides depth to exploration and makes the zone feel larger as well as have more risk in travel. The Zone is certainly rich in lore and character.
I would have liked to seen more damage caused by the Dragons, emphasizing the consequences of freeing them. like burned farms, destroyed temples, scorch marks across the landscape, a region covered in Ice & snow from a Frost Dragon, etc. but the zone is a joy to explore nonetheless.
The Quest design was top notch, you never feel like you are wasting your time with meaningless quests as each one serves a narrative rather than just an xp gain.

Combat

This is not just an issue in Elsweyr but also previous chapters.
Too many moments in the story and in the overland content is too easy, with the World Bosses and Dolmens being the only noteworthy challenge or moment in gameplay that actually presents risk to the player.

Overland content is so depressingly easy for new players, you could watch new characters in the zone just curbstomp everything with ease. Overland doesn't need to be as hard as Craglorn, or a dungeon, or a Trial. But I am certain that new players could handle zones that were closer to the difficulty of a public dungeon.

ZOS seems to only do their best and most interesting PvE combat for group content, meanwhile the only challenging solo content is the maelstrom arena from the Orsinium DLC which came out 4 years ago. We know that ZOS is capable of designing more challenging solo content- so why don't they?

Just because the zone is designed to be solo-able doesn't mean that the solo content has to be boringly easy. With how powerful players can be at the start, they could certainly take on 4-5 enemies at a time that had a smarter Ai as well as more variation in their combat mechanics.
I don’t agree with Forcing players to group but I would suggest difficulty to encourage players to work together to complete content while still being solo-able by single players.

Bosses
The new Dolmen’s Dragons are great. It’s awesome to see a large shadow go by, to look up to see a Dragon flying, and to ride off after it.
Dragons are truly challenging open world content as they have a ton of health and make sure the players are busy with environmental damage and spawned minions.
I hope that later this year we face Dragons that have more shouts as well as interesting & challenging mechanics in place.

NOTE: On a side note wit would be cool to see the Dragons from Skyrim in ESO, not only for nostalgia but also for more visual variation among the Dragons we face. Perhaps we’ll see different types in the Q4 DLC.
The Bosses of the main story was another matter.
They were mediocre because it caters to beginning players
Mechanically they were bland and consequently made those points in the story anti-climatic

The first dragon boss fight, in the battle for Riverhold, was shooting it down with one shot from a ballistae and everyone saying they believe in you while you fight it one on one.
This fight would have been better if the Dragon destroyed buildings of the town and everyone rose up to fight it after Khamira’s speech.
It would have made more sense if after you shot the dragon down, you distracted him as the townspeople position the ballistae to kill him.

Cadwell the Betrayer was the greatest warrior of his time? Didn't seem like it.

Final Boss
The entire fight between the Euraxians was strictly 1 v 2 combat which made things significantly less epic, seeing as how you were supposedly facing an army.
The journey to get to Mulaamnir was riddled with 1 v 2 combat encounters while he shot at you from a distance.

When you finally reach Mulaamnir he spends most of his time snapping at you while being stationary, and sometimes flying around so then you could use a special attack, but he never really shows off his full power as a Dragon.
Mechanically it is a very bland boss fight. Which is a shame because I was looking forward to fighting him after our conversation.

I think this is another consequence of designing this content for beginning players. Again, it doesn’t have to be as hard as a dungeon but more effort could have been made to make these fights more mechanically interesting as opposed to something that could be beaten by a complete novice.

Edited by Iccotak on January 9, 2020 10:40PM
  • sionIV
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    I agree with most of your points. Good critique.
  • Imza
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    I created a necro character and started straight into the storyline quest.
    I became the Champion of Anequina at lvl 14.
    The only time I had to stop and do some research was the final dragon fight, where I could not hear Abnur Tharn's instructions unless I was standing in the central ring, which I was not doing, and ended up wiping several times.

    Apart from that fact - I loved the story, the graphics are beautiful, the lore is awesome and I feel I got more than my moneys worth.

    Awesome job ZoS.

    I do however agree that the storyline is sort of jumbled up now.
    My suggestion would be to have the hooded figure appear right outside the tutorial, with a little more detail about the story chronology, so that the player can make an informed choice about what to do.

    EDIT:

    I posted here because on the one hand I agree with @Iccotak and on the other hand - I don't.

    There should however be areas in the game that are more difficult than the starting areas.
    Edited by Imza on May 24, 2019 5:53AM
  • Sevalaricgirl
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    Going to add something to this even though I am almost a month late to the party, I don't like that my khajiit are not recognized as Khajiit. It really puts a damper on my wanting to go through it with my khajiit. I have three of them.
  • jainiadral
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    Interesting the idea of the Vestige facing consequences, and a major downside of the yearlong story approach: I forgot to do the prelude quests. And, running only solo, I'll never be the one who unleashed dragons. So Elsweyr's calamities felt extremely disconnected. My Vestige was the one called in to mop up everyone else's mistakes again. And she very much was the hero :D

    I get the feeling that disconnection's only going to get worse as more story gets locked behind another set of DLC dungeons. I really hope ZOS never does this again. Because the story's fundamental point apparently gets lost.

    Frankly, I thought the difficulty was fine, and I can't wait for the Year of the Sky Rat to go away. Had enough of those damned things in Skyrim.
  • khajiitNPC
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    @Sevalaricgirl I’ll need to redo the quests on a couple of Khajiit I made, but I’m almost positive there were at least two instances where I was recognized as a Khajiit. Again I’ll have to do a new playthru.
  • Sylvermynx
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    @Iccotak - as for the story arc including consequences, while that's almost a given in novels, it would be novel in a game.... and I'm not sure a game would sell with that sort of "non-ending".
  • Sevalaricgirl
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    khajiitNPC wrote: »
    @Sevalaricgirl I’ll need to redo the quests on a couple of Khajiit I made, but I’m almost positive there were at least two instances where I was recognized as a Khajiit. Again I’ll have to do a new playthru.

    So far, I haven't seen one of course I'm very new to Elsweyr. Summerset knew my high elf was a high elf
    Edited by Sevalaricgirl on June 17, 2019 8:02AM
  • barney2525
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    Just one comment on your opening, since I really did not want to quote the entire passage.

    I think the new tutorial is Great. I also think that having tutorials completely separate from the Wailing Prison beginning is the best way to go. You get to prepare your character for the start of the Main Quest. If you want to get all your skill lines open beforehand, maybe expand your inventory "bag", get a costume or outfit dyed and put on, or whatever. Maybe you have XP scrolls in your bank you want to use.

    I much prefer going in to the Wailing Prison on my terms, when I have the character ready. Additionally, the new Elsewyr tutorial is IMHO the best one yet.


    IMHO

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  • Czekoludek
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    I must say OP, your ending would be SO MUCH BETTER. It would build Kaalgrontiid as a really dangerous enemy, not another "bad guy that will be defeated easily". After main quest I felt okay'ish but it failed to build right emotions (I like Khamira but that's all) and show us that this chapter is high-stakes game. Orsinium, Clockwork, Summerset or even Murkmire had better, bitter-sweet, endings. This one was like from not so good tale for childrens
  • jainiadral
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    barney2525 wrote: »
    Just one comment on your opening, since I really did not want to quote the entire passage.

    I think the new tutorial is Great. I also think that having tutorials completely separate from the Wailing Prison beginning is the best way to go. You get to prepare your character for the start of the Main Quest. If you want to get all your skill lines open beforehand, maybe expand your inventory "bag", get a costume or outfit dyed and put on, or whatever. Maybe you have XP scrolls in your bank you want to use.

    I much prefer going in to the Wailing Prison on my terms, when I have the character ready. Additionally, the new Elsewyr tutorial is IMHO the best one yet.


    IMHO

    :#

    Yeah, I just rolled a new necro last night and the tutorial was phenomenal! It teaches you step-by-step and with repetition how to block, do heavy attacks, and develop a bit of a flow with combat. You have nicely spaced out enemies, so that you can fight them with what new skills you can unlock and have enough room between to heal up, etc. and without aggroing the next one. You also have enough that you can get a couple levels in and some new skills before you're dumped out into the cold, hard world.

    Plus, it's a great intro to the Elsweyr main storyline, and you don't have to deal with the painful visual distortion of Summerset's tutorial.
  • Iccotak
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    I find the only instances of people working together by choice is when it is world bosses and public dungeons.
    People will help each other out to clear mobs and kill the bosses.

    general questing content is rather isolated. I would say take lessons from Craglorn as well as the group content and see how to create areas that encourage (rather than force) players to work together - those instances make for good stories

    "Vet zones" were a failure because you were forced to group up with other players. it was designed more like a group Dungeon, that was riddled with other group dungeons, rather than a public dungeon.

    In the case of a Final Boss I would like to see the instance as an unlock-able public dungeon. Make the build up to the final confrontation somewhat hard - encourage players to work together to tackle the threat. Utilize the fact that this game is an MMORPG
  • Iccotak
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    Well good news is that the theme of consequences comes up in Dragonhold as Abnur Tharn pays for releasing the Dragons.
    It was a fitting end to an arrogant character that found his heart. However.

    The conclusion to the "Season of the Dragon" story seemed rushed after completing the Dragonhold main story. It felt a bit like a whimper more than a bang.
    The final confrontation against Kaalgrontiid just didn't sit right. As a threat to our existence, he never felt consistently present like Molag Bal or Nocturnal did in their stories so defeating him didn't feel like a big pay off but more like; "Oh yeah he exists and we should deal with that".
    What might have improved that was:
    • Have the Dragons you fight in the open map talk about their Leader (if you haven't beaten him yet)
    • Have the Q3 dungeon DLC more closely linked to the story of the Season, as opposed to events that are somewhat related. Drive home that this is a threat to all Tamriel

    Personally I really liked the Summerset expansion as a conclusion to the "Daedric War" storyline and I think that story arc was more successful because it had complete first, second, and third acts. That all worked together.

    1st Act: Morrowind
    2nd Act: Clockwork City
    3rd Act: Summerset

    The story of Dragonhold just felt too unrelated to Kaalgrontiid. Makes me wonder what if they released a DLC Zone in Q2 as a build up to an epic expansion to end the year on in Q4.

    Q1 - Prologue + Dungeon DLC
    Q2 - Story Zone DLC
    Q3 - Season Story Dungeon DLC
    Q4 - Epic Expansion conclusion

    Also I might not mind seeing the final bad guy to a Season Story as an Epic Dungeon Boss Fight - it could be completed on Normal. However I understand that the Solo crowd would rather NOT do that.
    Edited by Iccotak on January 9, 2020 10:13PM
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