If we had a "Lore friendly" switch -- would you use it?

Dusk_Coven · April 2020

Suppose there were a "lore friendly" switch that turned off "fancy" skins and mounts and pets and such that was "not lore friendly" and replaced them with something plain...

idk · April 2020

I would not use it

You already have such a switch by choosing to put on your character with what you consider lore-friendly. If you are asking to change what everyone else is using for their character the answer is a clear no. Zos would likely agree with that as well since they benefit from players seeing other players use items they purchased from the crown store and even with what they obtained in-game.

I did not answer the poll as the answers are overly complicated. It is a simple yes or no question.

RaddlemanNumber7 · April 2020

I would not use it

If I see things in the game that strike me as not being Lore friendly I take it as a sign that my understanding of how the World of TES works is at fault. I adjust my headcanon so that it is in accord with my experience of playing the game. Just like in real life, the evidence of experience out-weighs the just-so-stories of Lore. Lore is inherently incorrect.

For example, you may think there is no such thing as a pink palomino pony. Think again. Here's a picture of a real one. I see no reason why we can't have one in the game.

colossalvoids · April 2020

I would not use it

Amusing how people like to bend the term "lore friendly" in tes for their personal needs.

Ye_Olde_Crowe · April 2020

I would not use it

IMO:

ESO = TES
ESO lore = TES lore

So for me, everything in ESO is in accordance with TES lore - whether I like it or not.

Aigym_Hlervu · April 2020

As a player I must not be forced to bother about what mounts, pets, outfits, etc. such stuff is canon or not - this is something the devs have to think about and must not allow, say, the Terminator (it's figurative saying) appear in the game and break the existing lore. My opinion is that the players, being customers, should never be forced to decide themselves if this outfit is canon and that one is not - both outfits and their combinations must be canon. Players should bother about their tastes and personal prefernces only.

VaranisArano · April 2020

Arvak is lore friendly.
That murderous unicorn from Oblivion is lore friendly.

ESO: not the first TES game to feature "fancy" mounts.

Dusk_Coven · April 2020

Too much variety, especially concentrated in a busy place like Vivec city or other crafting hub, ruins immersion.
Would be nice to have a switch that completely hid all other players even. That was a common feature in earlier MMOs, though it was probably for performance reasons.

mikikatze · April 2020

The thing that still throws me off the most in ESO and feels "wrong" are not those sparkly mounts or glowing armors, but... Clock Work City.

Enodoc · April 2020

I already have a lore-friendly switch. It's the Play/Exit button.

Everything is lore-friendly. He says, with a slight twitch.

LukosCreyden · April 2020

I would not use it

Everything in ESO is lore-friendly. We do not get to decide what is and isn't. The Loremaster and writers do. Yes, this also includes shiny crate mounts. They are lore friendly too. They even have some blurb to give you some context.

As for skins? Also lore friendly. Each skin describes its origin and meaning in its flavor text.

Ajaxandriel · April 2020

I would use it even if the definition of "lore friendly" were not in my control

LukosCreyden wrote: »

Everything in ESO is lore-friendly.

Everything in ESO is lore-friendly. (Same finding - but different conclusion.)

What I still ask for is controllable phasing of the megaservers.
- Sort by language (I'm a french-speaker)
- Sort by Roleplay / Not roleplay

Let's be honest, most fancy raid skins are not used to roleplay a mad Dro-m'Artha or a weird metal-cursed adventurer.
They are displayed by PvE Boys to show how much they're skilled players.

Most fancy special mounts are not used to reinforce immersion with telvanni sorcerers riding atronachs beasts or bosmer spinners riding animal-shaped vines.
They are displayed by "whales" or lucky guys to show how wealthy/lucky they are.

Therefore... A way to sort server phases by roleplay/non-roleplay is the toggle you're looking for, @Dusk_Coven

redspecter23 · April 2020

The problem is that "lore friendly" is subjective.

Technically, anything currently in the game is lore friendly by definition so where exactly do you want to draw this lore line? What works for you, may not work for others. It would be impossible to add a switch that anyone would actually think is appropriate for their personal tastes.

Ajaxandriel · April 2020

I would use it even if the definition of "lore friendly" were not in my control

redspecter23 wrote: »

The problem is that "lore friendly" is subjective.

Technically, anything currently in the game is lore friendly by definition so where exactly do you want to draw this lore line? What works for you, may not work for others. It would be impossible to add a switch that anyone would actually think is appropriate for their personal tastes.

Again this isn't a big deal if you start by sorting people who want immersion and roleplay from others who blatantly don't care.

Aigym_Hlervu · April 2020

Ajaxandriel wrote: »

They are displayed by "whales" or lucky guys to show how wealthy/lucky they are.

I thought it all were displays of gaudiness. Hmm, "whales"!.. That's how they see themselves.. Interesting. I use the same term in my native language but never thought some of those "whales" who are actually.. "sansculotte" (how's my French

? I hope the word's correct) think that high of themselves. Nah, I won't trade my guar for any other mount, even for a slave senche-raht one traded by it's own kin Pacrooti. My tesselated guar serves me well from the very beginning and I have no reasons to change it. I called it "Gothren"

.

worrallj · April 2020

I would use it even if the definition of "lore friendly" were not in my control

It's a wierd idea... But honestly the responses here are even weirder lol. The idea that everything on the ESO servers is lore friendly by definition... I feel like that makes a mockery of storytelling.

Vevvev · April 2020

I would not use it

Everything is lore friendly but at the same time is it lore friendly in the quantities we see? Probably not but then again everyone is the main character so it makes sense the main character would have access to some interesting things. Also we do see some examples of exotic mounts like the flame atronach wolf that one merchant in Summerset uses, Guar mounts in Morrowind, and of course the Echatere in Wrothgar. As for the incredibly rare mounts Queen Ayrenn does have a Indrik mount and it is possible, though rare, for someone else to get one to. So I see nothing wrong here.... except for those Murkmire mounts. Just... I wish they were not cannon! (So ugly)

Pog_Mahone · April 2020

Twitch premium mount. Where is the lore here ? That's all I have to say.

Aigym_Hlervu · April 2020

Bookmark it guys. At least you won't find anywhere else the timestamp of that Mr. Howard's qoute about Truth during that ~6 hours live interview.

=========

"So I don't have to tell you guys this, but the lore – maybe some of your readers will know this – but the lore in Elder Scrolls is never definitive, it's always told through the eyes of people that live in the world, which gives developers – not just us, but everyone that works on Elder Scrolls – certain leeway to kind of find what that person meant when they were telling the story."
- Matt Firor, UESP's PAX 2018 Interview.

"I think people want the answers, always, like, 'What is Truth?'—but what is Truth in the history of Earth? Truth is often written by the winners, and that there are always different perspectives on what happened in history, and so we do take that approach with the lore in Elder Scrolls, where all perspectives can be correct. But which one is more correct? That's why we get in these debates over, 'Hey, what is Truth?' And so, for us, it's sort of a priority. The truth in Elder Scrolls, primarily, is what you saw on the screen. Like, you can read a thousand books and say, 'There are no dragons,' and if a dragon comes up on the screen, well, you saw it happen in a game."
- Todd Howard, BethesdaGameDays Day 1, 2019, timestamp: 2:18:19 - 2:18:57.

"... people want to know truth, but even my perspective is one version of truth of what happened in the history of Elder Scrolls and so forth."
""What's the order of priority?" If you saw it on the screen that's number one, that's the most truth. If you read it in the game, that's second truth. If you read it in an official thing outside the game, in the manual, that's the third. If you read it from a fan on the Internet that's way down there, that's like not on the list, right! But that's the main three. On the screen, something you see happen, regardless of what game it is or when it came out, that for us is the primary. A book in the game is second, and then a book that's official outside the game is third."
- Todd Howard, UESP's PAX East 2019 Interview.

"And what your character does, and says, and believes, becomes part of that world. For you, and whoever else shares the experience, what happened is now part of the lore. The non-player characters are all there, ready to share their stories with you, but it’s you who makes those stories live, because your character has agency and meaningful choices where the NPCs do not. Moreover, what your character does persists for you, and the stories you’ve told and the experiences you’ve shared with your friends live on in your own memories. You just added to the history of Tamriel.""
- A farewell letter from Loremaster Lawrence Schick to the ESO community, ESO official site, 2019.

"As the Loremaster, he had ample opportunity to force his authorial will on the material, but he didn't. He urged us all to give the lore some breathing room — to keep things open to interpretation. It's very good advice, and I plan on following it!"
- Leamon Tuttle Loremaster 2019 Interview regarding Lawrence Schick and TES lore.

AdamBourke · April 2020

I would use it if I could be excluded from "not lore friendly" (but everything else is decided for me)

I would probably use it if it existed.

However, I dont think that they should do it. People pay real money or just plain time to customise their character, and for some people they do it to stand out.

What actually do you think is non-canon though? It's not the individual things that are non-canon but the quantity of those things. Ghost horses are already canon in TES. Maybe everyone having a ghost horse is less canon, but how do you choose who gets them?

Is it dyed armour you dont like? But why cant I have green cloth instead of blue? And by that extension, why cant I have pink? Pink paint exists in the game because I have a picture of aurudon in my home, so why not pink dye?

Honestly for me, the rubedo swords etc look a bit too crazy even without weird dyes. I much prefer oblivion's glass armour... oh no, wait.. that's crazy too...

Anumaril · April 2020

I would use it even if the definition of "lore friendly" were not in my control

There was a forum post a while back that was about this, so I'll just post my response from that here:

Totally agree that many mounts/pets are bizarrely lore-breaking and in no sane person's mind should be considered canon, but sadly this kind of thing will never be implemented.

The first problem would be that people buy cosmetic items (outfit styles, mounts, pets) not just so that their character can look good in their own (the player's) eyes, but so that every other player can also see the awesome cosmetic and see how "cool" they look. If a lot (of not most) of players turned off such cosmetics, whether it be for performance reasons or lore reasons, then fewer people would buy those bizarre lore-breaking cosmetics because a majority of the player base would not see them. This would result in Crown Store sales plummiting, and is generally not something a company would be caught dead doing (rule #1 of any MMO: never undermine your microtransactions shop).

Another issue of course would be "who gets to decide what is lore-breaking?" I certainly have my standards but they would likely be considered conservative by most. For example: bear mounts (of any kind) would be eliminated immediately from the game if I had any input in the toggle setting. Bears are simply not ridable creatures, and considering them to be mounts requires a great deal more suspension of disbelief from my part than, say, Senche mounts (which to me make much more sense given the lore of Elsweyr). Indriks would also be booted immediately as they are even more of a wild animal than bears. The closest thing we have to a tamed Intrik in the lore is Ayrenn's Indrik from the Sil-Var-Woad questline in Summerset, but if you played that questline you would know that her Indrik is not very tame at all and certainly not suitable to mount. Quite a few skins would also go, such as "Sunspire Ice-Fire", "Fabrication Sheath", "Dro-M'athra", "Z'maja's Shadow", and "Sanctified Silver", among many others. This is by no means a comprehensive list of things I would add to your proposed toggle setting, but already you can see that it covers a lot of (popular) cosmetics. ZOS' Crown Store revenue would tank should anyone approaching my lore standards have any say in the setting, but revenues would still dip regardless because of the aforementioned dilemma. You can also imagine the uproar from the player base should any of the cosmetics they bought with real money be hidden from the world by some game setting.

Overall, I would love for such a setting to exist, but it will never happen because it simply can't.

Dusk_Coven · April 2020

Cygemai_Hlervu wrote: »

Bookmark it guys. At least you won't find anywhere else the timestamp of that Mr. Howard's qoute about Truth during that ~6 hours live interview.

Irrelevant.

When they create a Nowehr Pony for a MARKETING PROMOTION with Twitch Prime and Amazon Prime -- that's for marketing, not lore.
You obviously don't know the difference between fake lore for promotion and lore genuinely meant for the game.

When too many people in one location use too many fancy fake-lore things with lame implausible flavour text -- that breaks immersion.

Aigym_Hlervu · April 2020

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Cygemai_Hlervu wrote: »

Bookmark it guys. At least you won't find anywhere else the timestamp of that Mr. Howard's qoute about Truth during that ~6 hours live interview.

Irrelevant.

When they create a Nowehr Pony for a MARKETING PROMOTION with Twitch Prime and Amazon Prime -- that's for marketing, not lore.
You obviously don't know the difference between fake lore for promotion and lore genuinely meant for the game.

When too many people in one location use too many fancy fake-lore things with lame implausible flavour text -- that breaks immersion.

Marketing promotion does not mean the items implemented cannot be explained within the lore concept. You obviously are too fast to make conclusions on what I know and what I don't know. I didn't mean to convince you in anything, that post of mine was given to those interested on what is lore and what is not through quoting the devs commentaries on that at one place. So instead of arguing with me, you tell the devs if you think they do not understand something either in the lore and marketing - I might change my opinion in the future if the devs change their views on the lore dramatically, but today I will not support you on that. So, if you dislike what you see in TES that seriously, you can always quit, like I left the universes of Star Wars and Might & Magic. I think TES devs have not gone that far yet and I'm much grateful to them for that. Calm down, mate. I did not mean to offend neither you, nor your point of view there.

emilyhyoyeon · April 2020

I would use it only if I could decide what to exclude as "not lore friendly"

I actively respect and wholeheartedly accept TESO lore in the same way I do with the lore in the other TES games, but when I see a ''lore friendly button,'' I always take it as something that hides things like names such as ''iphones are cool'' which truly are lore unfriendly. This IS a game, there ARE things in the game for game reasons and not lore reasons, which is totally ok, but yeah

ArchMikem · April 2020

I would use it even if the definition of "lore friendly" were not in my control

I want the world to be what it's supposed to be, not what I want it to be.

Anumaril · April 2020

I would use it even if the definition of "lore friendly" were not in my control

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Cygemai_Hlervu wrote: »

Bookmark it guys. At least you won't find anywhere else the timestamp of that Mr. Howard's qoute about Truth during that ~6 hours live interview.

Irrelevant.

When they create a Nowehr Pony for a MARKETING PROMOTION with Twitch Prime and Amazon Prime -- that's for marketing, not lore.
You obviously don't know the difference between fake lore for promotion and lore genuinely meant for the game.

When too many people in one location use too many fancy fake-lore things with lame implausible flavour text -- that breaks immersion.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Lore made up on the spot to justify rediculous shiny/glowy things in the Crown Store is somehow almost more insulting than if they didn't bother with the pathetic justifications at all. Marketing "lore" breaks immersion just as much as things that are outright lore-breaking.

MusCanus · April 2020

Would it also transport all the Argonian and Khajiit players and NPCs to the plantations in Morrowind?

Ajaxandriel · April 2020

I would use it even if the definition of "lore friendly" were not in my control

Anumaril wrote: »

Totally agree that many mounts/pets are bizarrely lore-breaking and in no sane person's mind should be considered canon

Nice to learn we (and the devs themselves) are no sane persons

MADNESS

Anumaril wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Cygemai_Hlervu wrote: »

Bookmark it guys. At least you won't find anywhere else the timestamp of that Mr. Howard's qoute about Truth during that ~6 hours live interview.

Irrelevant.

When they create a Nowehr Pony for a MARKETING PROMOTION with Twitch Prime and Amazon Prime -- that's for marketing, not lore.
You obviously don't know the difference between fake lore for promotion and lore genuinely meant for the game.

When too many people in one location use too many fancy fake-lore things with lame implausible flavour text -- that breaks immersion.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Lore made up on the spot to justify rediculous shiny/glowy things in the Crown Store is somehow almost more insulting than if they didn't bother with the pathetic justifications at all. Marketing "lore" breaks immersion just as much as things that are outright lore-breaking.

Absolutely disagree with this. Because obviously they'll keep on creating commercial stuff like that. So you ask it for having no "lore" at all. This way it will be in-game and not anchored in its universe.

That kind of Purist state of mind of yours ruined Warcraft for years yet, dude.
Now you should hear Cygemai_Hlervu's advice and quit already. It seems WoW Retail is waiting for you.

The Elder Scrolls Online

If we had a "Lore friendly" switch -- would you use it?

If we had a "Lore friendly" switch -- would you use it? 76 votes