hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

"Who are you again?" -Vestige, to Lyris"

Lyris, the person I sacrificed to defeat Molag Bal. I don't think the Vestige has brain damage, the player just seems to remember events that never took place.

There's an element of the game's writing that really fractures in places because they don't know what you have, and haven't done.

If you want a justification, it's probably that your character remembers just fine, they just ask inane questions to torment the people around them because they know they can get away with it. Sort of like walking up to Abnur Tharn and saying, "what are you doing?" on repeat until he snaps.

There's also some amusing gaps. During the werewolf quest in Glenumbra, you're handed an amulet and told it can force any werewolf who looks at it to transform.

Werewolf Vestige: "You're sure this thing works?"
NPC: "Yes, why?"
Werewolf Vestige: "No reason."

And of course, the many, many, base game instances of:
NPC: "I'm a vampire hunter."
Vampire Vestige: "And you know how to recognize them on sight?"
NPC: "Of course, I'd never be fooled by one. Now, let's work together."

EDIT:

Thinking back on it, it's not just the player.

Vestige: Didn't I kill you?
Sai Sahan: It's good to see you too, let's kill a dragon.
Vestige: Don't change the subject, why aren't you dead?
Sai Sahan: The Dragon God of Plot Contrivances brought be back.
Vestige: That doesn't make any sense. I used your soul like a slurpie. There shouldn't be anything to bring back.
Sai Sahan: Uh... I got better.

I prefer to see the Vestige as a very intelligent, perhaps even a manipulative conversationalist.

e.g. when the Vestige asks, "Who is Mehrunes Dagon?" they are doing so in order to find out what the other person knows about that Prince and what their attitudes towards him are. Getting someone to explain something will also force them to review their knowledge of the subject, focus their attention on the matter at hand, maybe remember things about it they'd forgotten, and perhaps even reconsider their previous assumptions about it.

You might want to ask yourselves how the Vestige can ask all these questions without actually vocalising a single word. I know why. Do you?

I like to think that the Vestige is really Sheogorath in disguise and these questions are there to troll the living hell out of everyone. And also why he could go around overland and destroy absolutely everything with very little effort. And why everything that has happened until now has only taken one year to accomplish. Maybe this is all in Sheo’s imagination?

ESO is doing this rather poorly. You can look at Mass Effect how to do these kinds of questions. Don't have to look far, just in the first minutes of any playthrough.

You get a dialogue option that says "Protheans". In any other game, the character would say "who are Protheans?", leading to other characters looking at him like he's a complete moron, quite righfully. Mass Effect instead frames the question as asking about a specific topic about the Protheans and the player getting his answer that way.

Kalontas wrote: »

ESO is doing this rather poorly. You can look at Mass Effect how to do these kinds of questions. Don't have to look far, just in the first minutes of any playthrough.

You get a dialogue option that says "Protheans". In any other game, the character would say "who are Protheans?", leading to other characters looking at him like he's a complete moron, quite righfully. Mass Effect instead frames the question as asking about a specific topic about the Protheans and the player getting his answer that way.

Then look at 2 and 3 where Shepard needs to be reminded who the protheans are, once again. (Not that it matters, but one of the quirks with Mass Effect is that the species names aren't proper nouns. So, you only capitalize prothean when it's the begining of a sentence... or if you're speaking Deutche, I guess.) Ironically, Mass Effect is an example of some pretty scuffed dialog at other times. Such as interacting with Ashely in 2, "Why didn't you call me?" "I was dead." "But, why didn't you call me?"

Mass Effect benefits from being a linear narrative experience. You'll start on Eden Prime, go to The Citadel, eventually get the option to pick between four worlds, after you've finished three you get sent to Vermire, then finish off the final one, go back to The Citadel, get sent to Illos, back to The Citadel, and you're done. There is no path that takes you to Vermire where you haven't been introduced to the krogen. So, Shepard doesn't need to have the genophage explained to them. Though, it will be explained to them, again, in case the player was snoozing when they first picked up Wrex. Then roll the plot forward into 2, and Morden needs to explain the Genophage... multiple times. And into 3, when Morden needs to explain the Genophage, multiple times.

Oh, right.

In contrast, with ESO, if a player is in Blackwood, it's possible they've completed every piece of content leading up to this moment, or that they are fresh off the boat with the Blackwood tutorial. So, the game has no way of knowing whether you (the player) knows vampires exist. Walk into the wrong cave, talk to the wrong NPC, and you may need that bit of dialog. However, expecting the entire game to check an ever growing list of flags on what your character knows can easily leave the player confused. They ran into a vampire but didn't realize it was a big deal, forgot about it, and now two hundred hours later they're going, "wait, are these guys vampires? What the snot!?"

hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

"What's the three banner's war?" -Vestige, in Blackwood, who literally fought in the three banner's war, on all 3 sides

Except, that dialog isn't there for a player who's been in the game since 2014, it's there for someone who picked up the box, thought, "hey, I liked Skyrim, maybe this is worth a shot," and is now left wondering, "what is The Three Banners War?"

Well no one said that having your soul ripped out didn't come with some measure of side effects!

Kalontas wrote: »

The game doing it worse later doesn't address at all it doing it well before. The whole point is that you just need to frame the dialogue better.

So instead of saying:
"What is the Three Banners War?"
You could say:
"How is the Three Banners War going lately?"

and any new player would then ask

hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

"What's the three banner's war?" -Vestige, in Blackwood, who literally fought in the three banner's war, on all 3 sides

you're all forgetting that this is only an issue if you play the content in order, a new character (or even player) that pops up in blackwood has no idea what happened before.
there's really no easy solution to this, either you go the FF14 route and force people to play content in order to get anywhere (good luck telling people they have to play 5 years of content to get to the new shiny expansion they just bought) or make every dialog a mess of different flags to reflect how old your char is, which quests you did, in what order you did them asf. (which is not worth the trouble spending time and money on developing it just for some out of place sentences)

on top of that after the main quest the vestige is just a stand-in for the player character, or not even the vestige yet. like the trailers have always someone else for the player, and up to blackwood the old tutorials were part of the individual chapter, which plays after the main quest.

TLDR: it's a mmo catering to different players at once, some parts you simply have to willfully ignore.

EDIT: @starkerealm beat me to it (should've kept reading till after the mass effect part <_<)

Lol at the people in the thread taking the OP seriously.

We all know why the game does this, it's just funny when you take it out of context.

It would be nice to have different dialogue options for stuff you completed, like talking to the dark elf siblings in blackreach in Greymoor when you completed the main quests in Vvardenfell, Summerset and Elswyer.

That being said, to have multiple combinations of dialogue for what your character has gone though (Main quest, main alliance quest, guilds, Cyrodiil in general, cads silver, gold, craglorn, thieves guild, db, orsinium, IC, vvardenfell, cwc, Summerset/Arteaum, murkmire, N. Elswyer, S. Elswyer, W. Skyrim, and finally the Reach) may be too time consuming. Or it may not. Idk.

hakan wrote: »

Krym wrote: »

Kalontas wrote: »

The game doing it worse later doesn't address at all it doing it well before. The whole point is that you just need to frame the dialogue better.

So instead of saying:
"What is the Three Banners War?"
You could say:
"How is the Three Banners War going lately?"

and any new player would then ask

hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

"What's the three banner's war?" -Vestige, in Blackwood, who literally fought in the three banner's war, on all 3 sides

you're all forgetting that this is only an issue if you play the content in order, a new character (or even player) that pops up in blackwood has no idea what happened before.
there's really no easy solution to this, either you go the FF14 route and force people to play content in order to get anywhere (good luck telling people they have to play 5 years of content to get to the new shiny expansion they just bought) or make every dialog a mess of different flags to reflect how old your char is, which quests you did, in what order you did them asf. (which is not worth the trouble spending time and money on developing it just for some out of place sentences)

on top of that after the main quest the vestige is just a stand-in for the player character, or not even the vestige yet. like the trailers have always someone else for the player, and up to blackwood the old tutorials were part of the individual chapter, which plays after the main quest.

TLDR: it's a mmo catering to different players at once, some parts you simply have to willfully ignore.

EDIT: @starkerealm beat me to it (should've kept reading till after the mass effect part <_<)

i mean yeah i know it but thats not an excuse really when the game;

cant satisfy pvp players cuz of the horrible balance that makes no sense whatsoever and those players get blamed on even though the solutions doesnt even help. Also horrible server performance with a lot of bugged skills.

cant satisfy pve'ers cuz of nerfs that are results of either pvp balancing or zos doesnt want people to hit those high numbers in pve too easily.

cant satisfy story players since game barely know about your character and doesnt even have a very good story, more of the same every year tbh.

cant satisfy the roleplayers/home decorators cuz of how more of the same low effort mounts, war paints that doesnt differ much, barely any new hair style, horrible costume/armor choices with ugly flaps etc. and low furniture limit allowed on houses. Like they arent even trying to cash in those cosmetics lol.

Good game design doesn't become bad game design because other parts of the game aren't well designed. The game has these there for refreshers and they are optional dialogue that you can and should skip if you don't need the reminder. This is a years old mmorpg, which allows players to play things in any order they want. Something has to give and that's silly dialogue tree options.

PVP balance is irrelevant to that.