Lady_Galadhiel wrote: »

S0Z0H wrote: »

Can we fix this???

No.

YES

Northwold wrote: »

Even trying to think about the sheer amount of writing and quest design that would be involved in giving these kinds of choices made my brain melt. But there is an easy way: you say no to Queen Ayrenn. You are then executed.

Not only that but if they would add such option to one storyline they would literally need to add options to not help this guy or this king to all the other stories too. Perhaps they could just make another game then at this point.

Northwold wrote: »

Even trying to think about the sheer amount of writing and quest design that would be involved in giving these kinds of choices made my brain melt. But there is an easy way: you say no to Queen Ayrenn. You are then executed.

Right lol, with so many more pressing issues in ESO, I would be floored If a key dev read this and placed this as top priority for the game.

Still , going forward , more earth shattering decision like found in Skyrim should be allowed.

For instance, if this was a hard core game, I would allow the option to kill the queen and the effect would be that toon being bared from entering Auridon and Summerset or at least on arrival , the gaurds will be attacking u if they see you lol. But the other alliances will get you special armor or honorary weapon motif and u get a title called "Traitor To The Crown" lol

If you don't want to participate in any given quest, you always have the option to walk away and just not do it. The quest will sit there, incomplete along with the zone, but that's a choice. You've chosen not to do it.

Unlike other games, there are very few consequences in game for just not doing a quest. You can still participate in all the dungeons and trials without "keying" for them in questlines. You can still do nearly every daily quest in the game, harvest nodes, furnish your house.

Just walk away from the quest if your character doesn't agree with it for some reason.

skip ad questline

MMOs don't really do that. They may give you some minor choices (like what do you pick at the end of the Mage's Guild questline), but overall the Big Story has to end the same place for everyone. Because the next expansion/etc needs to be able to continue from that.

For all that MMORPGs have "RPG" in the name, they're not terribly strong RPGs. Just like ARPGs and JRPGs generally aren't, either. If you want the big full range of choices, you need to either play the higher-end CRPGs, or you need to play tabletop with a GM who can tweak things on the fly in response to your decisions & actions. You're not going to get that level of freedom out of the majority of digital games.


But especially not MMOs. /shrug

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Though I find Queen Ayrenn has very good (but naive) intentions and don't mind trying to help her, I do understand OP's concern. The problem is that you cannot simply walk away from this one without abandoning the basic main questline and advancing to Cold Harbour (if AD is your alliance). There are a small number of quests my elf wrinkles her nose at and walks away from but they are independent side quests. The biggest questline she simply walks away from or ignores is the DB.

Agree, the ESO Dominion is not the one in Skyrim, its just an reuse of an popular name, 3rd reich is an obvious parallel.
The first 3 zones is basically killing racist Altmers in the veiled heritance. Before getting Bosmer and later Khajiit arches in the main story in the two last zones.
Done the DB a many times even if they are mad fanatics simple because the shadow rider is nice, you got lots of skill points and the story is good. No issues with the TG but this one is an Khajiit

S0Z0H wrote: »

more earth shattering decision like found in Skyrim should be allowed.

Northwold wrote: »

But there is an easy way: you say no to Queen Ayrenn. You are then executed.

You literally have two other alliances quest lines to do instead those are your alternative options.

Slight spoilers ahead for Orsinium.

OP, I strongly agree, and its one of my biggest wishes for the writing in the future.

I felt the exact same way as you did about the Maormer, but with the Orsinium storyline: if you pay attention to the story, there's actually no moral imperative that the Orcs have over the Winterborn Reachmen. Both consider the territory to be their ancestral home. My character from Bangkorai has some degree of sympathy for the Reachmen, but none for the Orc clans from Wrothgar (who, during certain quests in the base game, are shown to be quarellous and driven by a desire for revenge against the Bretons). And while close attention can give you sympathy for the Winterborn (Iceheart's pre-combat dialogue is spot-on; he's exceptionally perceptive in regards to Kurog's character faults), you have no choice but to shrug, ignore the compelling writing and just plow on and kill them all and drive them out of Wrothgar. I didn't want to kill Iceheart. My char had nothing against him, and honestly, no real motivation. It kinda sux, tbh.

Wrothgar is an absolutely beautiful zone, maybe my absolute favourite. I didn't need another world to explore. But it would have been absolutely amazing to have explored the story from a different pov: through that of the eyes of The Winterborn Reachmen. It feels like they might have had a story to tell. And given the outstanding quality of the writing in the Orsinium main quest, I feel like it could have been done well. I think its important because at their core, roleplaying games are supposed to be about choice, and a good one should at least make an attempt at providing agency. It would have added to the depth of story for people to engage and explore, touch on more of the established lore and history for that world, and offered a good deal of replayability as people would be able to engage the story from both perspectives via alt replays.

There are other examples where choosing another faction would have been really good. I bought the Thieves Guild DLC, but I don't want to play a thief. So the sentiment expressed by someone else above is just "well you have a choice, don't play it" is the only "character agency" I have, which is pretty lame. Its the same with the Dark Brotherhood. I bought it, but the story content is just useless to me if I don't want to play an edgy murdering mofo. Joinable factions have been a signature of the Elder Scrolls games. Why can't I choose to join the Iron Wheel, or opt for one of the many Temples like from Daggerfall and play an inquisitor who hunts down the dark, immoral assassins? There's a plot that occurs across the DB DLC, and I can't see that it wouldn't have been possible to explore it from more than one angle.

I understand the argument against it- more writing, more voice acting. Everything must be done at the cost of something else, and resources are limited. They will allocate those resources where they see value, where it can make the game shine. I think there's a case to be made for increasing the depth, explorability and replayability of the stories they tell by giving us alternate points of view. I think that choice and agency are absolutely something that should be given a much higher priority than it currently has in a game which calls itself an RPG. Its actually a credit to the world-building that there are people engaging it deeply enough to have feelings about the factions they create and the plots they engage. It can just be very disheartening to be told that your curiosity doesn't matter, that there's nothing to explore here, that there's no other angle get back on those rails and ride them to plotsville.

What are you going on about? The Bosmer and Khajiit are members by choice through diplomacy and serve on the Thalmor. Any hatred and discrimination they face you literally fight against it and the Queen elevates the Khajiit and Bosmer to equal status with the Altmer and opened up Summerset to all outsiders.

Nobody makes you help her. Just don't do that questline. God knows this game is not lacking for quests. Be another faction or just do the DLC and expansions. This isn't a bioware game where they promise your choice matters (when it never really does).

LostHorizon1933 wrote: »

You are dead. Molag Bal killed you.

Everything else is just a hallucination, while you mine whatever that crap is in Coldharbour for all eternity.

And: Mannimarco also killed Harry Potter.

Lol ...this should be the canon ending whenever they decide to pull the plug on ESO