The year-long system

Cons
- Overarching story continuity is forced, and results in lower quality stories. Villains that make brief appearances but do nothing for the plot, convenient 'ooh they got away, we'll see more of them soon' connections. Repetitive rehash of themes for people who did do previous instalments, like Greymoor taking ages to get to the 'great mystery' when we already knew many things from the dungeons, the prologue quests, and the tutorial.
- And a complete mish-mash of themes all shoved into one gimmicky year to tick boxes, instead of coming up with naturally sensible stories may have future connections, but stand on their own. Like the year of the 'dragons, but with necromancers, in a Khajiiti setting fighting against Imperials' nonsense.
- Makes it harder to get into the game, new players won't be able to jump into the current episode as easily. And people who only want to play part of the game, will be forced to buy and play through previous instalments to get a resolution (you needed to buy Dragonhold AND Elsweyr to get a resolution; but you didn't need to own Morrowind and CWC to play and enjoy Summerset including its finale).
- More recycled locations (instead of Summerset and Murkmire, or Morrowind and CWC, we get Elsweyr and Elsweyr 2.0)
- Less content (Dragonhold had no new arena/trial like Murkmire and CWC, no new furniture schematics, no new assets)

Pros
- Cheaper to produce
- More hype catchphrases for the company for a whole year
- Allows for deeper characters (potentially, but not guaranteed - as we can see with Abnur who had a good character arc but compared to the terrible writing in Greymoor such as Lyris being a bland brute with none of her humanising characteristics that made her so good in the main quests, or with Svana going from lifelong tavern drunkard to protector of her people in the span of a single quest).

So yeah... their panel about the 'year-long' story was quite telling, as none of the reasons they gave for 'why it would be a great idea for the players and the game' made sense, and in fact was a step back from better things. The only reasons that became clear is that it's easier for them to market, and cheaper to produce slight variations on the same theme rather than having to come up with something original.

The idea is a good one to me. I thought Elsweyr was good in that you have a release schedule where each release more or less connected. If you did Northern (before or later) it gave you the conclusion of the year in Southern. But you didn't feel like you were missing something if you didn't. I think you miss the crowning of Khamira just *** Southern so they knitted together in more than one way.

What Greymoor has done it seems was break up one story (and so far a pretty thin one) across releases so that the story content feels very much unfinished as we go. A year is too long to do this with only four releases and two being dungeon DLC. Summerset followed releases which lead into the next with Morrowind leading into Clockwork City leading into Summerset. Greymoor gave us a Western Skyrim which looks great but a sad storyline that only promises to be better down the road. No where near the Daedric War model. And much more predictable so far.

I had a good time with Elsweyr and wished they had spend more time in what they did do in all of them. I still believe these chapters should be full enough to get every new player to level 50 before going out to the rest of the world where timelines start to unravel (such as meeting people for the first time after you have already met them). This gives them a level playing field they can enhance going forward and older players get a setting that builds upon the whole. These chapters seem to be getting less and less worth the price while their skill with them should be increasing.

I still look at it as you charging us 2/3 of the price of the base game at launch (I think as I didn't buy it at launch) where you know how the combat works, how the world will look, what the gearing should follow all done so all you have to do is work on any new systems and the new area/quests/items. Instead I'm not even sure we're getting 2/3 of Orsinium (a DLC). Chapters either need to follow what was setup when Morrowind was launched and where they fit into the game or disappear. I think it was Rich who explained what chapters were going to be and what they would bring to the game. So far its not been what the hype was but it was a good start. I thought Morrowind nowhere near what it should have been and they've gone down from there with Summerset the only one to actually rise above. And I'm not sure that's not just because they did it better than any of the rest. Or maybe I like elves more than I thought.

Integral1900 wrote: »

I’m a little confused why it’s called a year, let’s face it, it’s basically six months where we get two zone expansions. The rest is just a bunch of half deserted dungeons full of glitchy one shot mechanics loosely bolted on to pad it out 😂🤣😆

Ironically dungeons are less bugged, made more polished due to size and always offering actually great main quests, at least the ones before all this year long thing appeared. Also only piece of content requiring some effort to be done which makes them memorable.

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

JD2013 wrote: »

A problem is, of course, none of these stories have ANYTHING to do with The Vestige. We seem very third wheel in all of these plots, and it feels like, with Greymoor at least, things would have turned out exactly the same had we not gone.

I am also noticing a trend of them making our characters fit to NPC's who become the leads of the story as opposed to other ES games where the hero is the main character.

I agree with pretty much everything else you said, but I honestly like when the vestige/player character isn't the one that the story is centered around. I always pretend/headcanon that none of my characters are the vestige, or the hero of Kvatch, or the dragonborn, etc. I always pretend my characters are always the people on the side assisting the mains if that's not already the plot.

I think this is a personal preference thing rather than an objectively better approach though. I honestly can't say which I think is better, and as you said one is traditional TES plot style and one isn't.

I honestly wouldn’t mind so much if it was a bit more balanced insomuch as we have reasons to be there beyond “you go hit things now.”

I’d be okay with the NPC’s taking centre stage if they were well written characters that you can connect to, but I have to say that all the big NPC’s in Greymoor just aren’t well written to me or interesting enough to care about.

Orsinium did it well insomuch as it wasn’t about The Vestige but we genuinely felt needed to be there and there were some really good character moments, like for example when Kurog had that meeting with the leaders of the other orc tribes in the throne room and went a bit mad.

I like it BUT there are big problems with it so I would like it if they changed it up sometimes as we saw basically the same story in greymoor as we did elsweyr as in we kill the second in command/lackey to the big bad, I wish sometimes we got to kill the big bad in the actual chapter and then something else happened instead of us scaring the big bad away. Also, I would like it if they kind of alternated between this format and the old one so one year we could have a year-long story and the next we could have a summerset/orsinium like story.

Hard to say as I am a newer player. Only started in March of this year straight away into Elsweyr before I even realized there was a main story. Once I got over that awkwardness I went back and played the main story even so far as finishing my alliance before taking on Molag Bal. From there I dipped my feet into TG and DB to get a feel for it. Nice little side stuff to break up the game and easy side missions when you don’t have time to play. From there to Orsinium. Loved it which pointed me to the Daedric wars story.

Daedric wars was fantastic. I did every quest and side quest in Vvardenfell before moving on. I was thoroughly impressed. I did most of Clockwork City and it was an interesting diversion from the rest of ESO. I found the length of story just right because it felt more like a long elaborate quest and for such a small niche zone it was appropriate. I put Summerset off for a while and got more into my character building.

During that off time I went back to complete Dragonhold to wrap up the Elsweyr storyline. I will eventually play that arc in order because I think the overarching story is pretty good and I wish I hadn’t broken it up. After that I went back to Summerset because I wanted to get the zone unlocked fully. I found the story generally pretty good and thematically it’s a very interesting and beautiful environment. I also did the psijic quests which felt to me like they went on and on forever. I wanted a couple skills to build my magplar up so stuck with the endless running all over Tamriel to complete the line.

Haven’t touched Murkmire or Craglorn yet. Haven’t touched Greymoor either outside of the prologue quest and tutorial on a new toon. I probably won’t get into Greymoor until the fall either. I’ve got a character idea I want to run through it from beginning to end.

Personally I’m a fan of long reaching story arcs but I feel like having a few other short self contained zones wouldn’t be a bad thing either, and if they could be plugged into a year long story that would be fine as well.

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

JD2013 wrote: »

A problem is, of course, none of these stories have ANYTHING to do with The Vestige. We seem very third wheel in all of these plots, and it feels like, with Greymoor at least, things would have turned out exactly the same had we not gone.

I am also noticing a trend of them making our characters fit to NPC's who become the leads of the story as opposed to other ES games where the hero is the main character.

I agree with pretty much everything else you said, but I honestly like when the vestige/player character isn't the one that the story is centered around. I always pretend/headcanon that none of my characters are the vestige, or the hero of Kvatch, or the dragonborn, etc. I always pretend my characters are always the people on the side assisting the mains if that's not already the plot.

I think this is a personal preference thing rather than an objectively better approach though. I honestly can't say which I think is better, and as you said one is traditional TES plot style and one isn't.

Then how do you explain your characters ability to revive?

I'm a fan of bug free games 🤷‍♀

The year long story line is basically like taking a big swing in baseball. They are going for a home run, but there is always a risk of a big whiff.

It's pretty unfortunate the people who appreciate a robust story over more smaller stories are a minority.

Because of double dungeon DLCs we get each year i dislike this system.
Also, imho it had more meaning last year. I think Elsweyr as a whole is superior content in every way to this year's story