SUGGESTION FOR DESIGNERS: Prologue + DLC-Starter Quest Arrow Design or Colour Change

jle30303 · March 2023

Basically: Prologue Quests, and DLC Starter Quests in the base game zones, need a new and different style of Quest Arrow - or at least a different colour of Quest Arrow over the quest giver's head (or the bit of paper that starts it): so that they may be distinguished from regular Zone Sidequests or Zone Mainquests, and indicate that by taking this quest, you are going to start or be directed to a new zone story, rather than doing a sidequest in the current zone.

This would apply to the following quests:

- The Star-Gazers (Craglorn) - yes this was originally a DLC, and it takes people out of the Main Quest Zone Story, so this applies here.
- City on the Brink (Imperial City - all three versions) - to indicate that this is not the same thing as Cyrodiil, and in fact leads to the PVE quest within Imperial City
- Partners in Crime (Thieves Guild)
- Voices in the Dark (Dark Brotherhood)
- Invitation to Orsinium (Orsinium)
- The Missing Prophecy (Morrowind)
- Of Knives and Long Shadows (Clockwork)
- Through a Veil Darkly (Summerset)
- Ruthless Competition + The Cursed Skull (Murkmire)
- The Demon Weapon + The Halls of Colossus (Elsweyr)
- The Dragonguard's Legacy + The Horn of Ja'darri (Dragonhold)
- The Coven Conspiracy + The Coven Conundrum (Greymoor)
- The Ravenwatch Inquiry + The Gray Council (Markarth)
- A Mortal's Touch + The Emperor's Secret (Blackwood)
- An Apocalyptic Situation + The Key and the Cataclyst (Deadlands)
- Ascending Doubt + A King's Retreat (High Isle)
- Sojourn of the Druid King (Firesong)
- Whatever is the prologue quest for Necrom and Apocrypha.

Since we use blue quest arrows for repeating daily quests, I'd suggest a distinct differnet colour, such as red.

jle30303 · March 2023

Further to the above: I would also suggest that Prologue Quests should NOT be counted against the limit of 25 quests, so that it's possible to pre-emptively pick them up, but only do them as you get to their areas (as in, the base-game delves and locations to which they send you.)

Aliyavana · March 2023

agreed

Aektann · March 2023

Great idea! Thank you. Zos should absolutely do this. Right now, it's a mess.

Snamyap · March 2023

Agreed. Started a new character yesterday and even for a veteran it's a confusing mess.

Saint-Ange · March 2023

Edrik · March 2023

Agreed, if I have to hear "Do you know how long I've been looking for you?". Problem is taking dlc and prologue quests can sometimes bug earlier quests for that npc.

Northwold · March 2023

Is Lyris Titanborn still on the ground floor of the Daggerfall Fighters Guild trying to take you to Greymoor while the actual main fighters guild quest giver is upstairs with a totally nondescript arrow over his head? Fun times...

MaleAmazon · March 2023

I agree, but some like Stuga already have a different style arrow. I believe the "proper" quest starters have the different arrow style, though the prologue quest starters don´t. It´s the same style as the story MQ though.

However, prologue quests (at least the Murkmire one, I just tested) are sorted as 'Prologue' in the quest log. Also you can start the quests via Collections -> Stories. Which does start the actual Zone quest and not the prologue though. So yes, a bit confusing. However, in defense of ZOS - you will be directed to the right person if you actually follow the entire questline starting with the hooded woman. If it confuses someone who deliberately skips a lot of quests and doesn´t read the dialogue, that´s unfortunate but also kind of understandable. It´s not that confusing if you take your time to read the dialogue.

If anything, they should at least double the amount of quests you can take on, though. It is strange that you have a game that throws an inordinate amount of quests at you, then prevents you from taking them on, for no discernible reason.

Having unlimited (or at least a limit like 100) quests and separating them by colour and / or shape would be a QoL improvement after all, for sure.

Is Lyris Titanborn still on the ground floor of the Daggerfall Fighters Guild trying to take you to Greymoor while the actual main fighters guild quest giver is upstairs with a totally nondescript arrow over his head? Fun times...

She is, however:

-The quest she gives is clearly not an introduction to the Fighters Guild.
-The game explicitly states that you will fast travel away if you choose to start the quest.
-Her quest is sorted under 'Prologue' in the quest log.
-Basil Fenandre is not upstairs but right next to her, and is labeled 'Hall Steward'.

So that one is mostly on the player, really.

I think a lot of this is due to people spamming 'activate' for dialogue choices. I don´t mind that - I do it myself. ESO is not great literature. But sometimes that comes with some consequences.

Destai · March 2023

What about adding some sort of supplementary icon next to the quest icon. Consider the Group Delves in Craglorn, they have a + as a superscript character. Why not come up with a specific icon for each DLC and then append that to the existing quest icon as a superscript character?

Northwold · March 2023

MaleAmazon wrote: »

Is Lyris Titanborn still on the ground floor of the Daggerfall Fighters Guild trying to take you to Greymoor while the actual main fighters guild quest giver is upstairs with a totally nondescript arrow over his head? Fun times...

She is, however:

-The quest she gives is clearly not an introduction to the Fighters Guild.
-The game explicitly states that you will fast travel away if you choose to start the quest.
-Her quest is sorted under 'Prologue' in the quest log.
-Basil Fenandre is not upstairs but right next to her, and is labeled 'Hall Steward'.

So that one is mostly on the player, really.

I think a lot of this is due to people spamming 'activate' for dialogue choices. I don´t mind that - I do it myself. ESO is not great literature. But sometimes that comes with some consequences.

None of this would strike a new player, ever. It most certainly is not on them. It's simply awful design. Go to a faction main city these days as a new character -- they are absolutely drowning in quests, almost none of which make clear on their face what they even are.

In the Fighters Guild example, is the player supposed magically to know what a guild starter quest is supposed to sound like (if anyone does know, please tell me because I don't), that the fighters guild quest isn't supposed to take you to Skyrim, and that the less important marker in the venue is the actual Fighters Guild quest? Are they supposed to know what a "Hall Steward" is in the head of an ESO designer?

I get that over time the game has become unwieldy, but often it feels like the design gives no thought to new players and what it plays like *at all*.

I've said this before but the developers' allergy to breaking the fourth wall, to labelling in plain English what things actually do, makes the game almost impossible for new players to understand. A mysterious hooded figure comes into contact with you. Well, *obviously*, that's the single most important quest in the game (sarcasm).

I remember on my first play skipping the main quest entirely, thinking, "well that sounds like amazingly generic side quest number 73," granted in the days when main story quests didn't have a different marker, but it doesn't exactly scream "stop everything and play me". It took me months to find out the main quest even existed. Without the main quest, quite frankly, the game was directionless, confusing rubbish and I dropped it twice. It would take virtually nothing to flag it as "main quest" in the quest arrow text prompt and dialogue heading and you'd probably get an improvement in new player retention even from doing just that. Better would be to stick it in the journal from the outset.

But these are just instances of a problem that pops up everywhere. (And not just in arrows and quest text but also in things like not thinking about new players not knowing the interface of the game. So I started with Morrowind and a letter of some kind. And I had absolutely no idea whether I was supposed to do anything with that letter, whether if I lost it I wouldn't be able to play part of the game and, within about an hour, I couldn't even find it again in the inventory because, again, it was written in the lingo of Tamriel as if I lived there, rather than saying "this is important" or "don't worry you can bin this no one cares".)

MaleAmazon · March 2023

None of this would strike a new player, ever. It most certainly is not on them. It's simply awful design. Go to a faction main city these days as a new character -- they are absolutely drowning in quests, almost none of which make clear on their face what they even are.

In the Fighters Guild example, is the player supposed magically to know what a guild starter quest is supposed to sound like (if anyone does know, please tell me because I don't), that the fighters guild quest isn't supposed to take you to Skyrim, and that the less important marker in the venue is the actual Fighters Guild quest? Are they supposed to know what a "Hall Steward" is in the head of an ESO designer?

I get that over time the game has become unwieldy, but often it feels like the design gives no thought to new players and what it plays like *at all*.

I've said this before but the developers' allergy to breaking the fourth wall, to labelling in plain English what things actually do, makes the game almost impossible for new players to understand. A mysterious hooded figure comes into contact with you. Well, *obviously*, that's the single most important quest in the game (sarcasm).

The 'hooded figure' quest is literally labeled "Main Quest" in the quest log even before you talk to her. Really, how much hand holding do you want?

ESO states in plain English what things do, far more than other RPGs like The Witcher 3, for example. And some of the somewhat problematic stuff comes from the fact that the game came out almost 10 years ago and has had content added. Lyris is in several places at once. So are the crafting quest givers. You are no longer locked into your starting alliance but can travel between them immediately. Quite a bit of suspension of disbelief is required, and yes, it adds some confusion. Personally I really like the new starting tutorial which helps newbies with where to start. Far better than the auto-start in Morrowind that came with that chapter, for example.

There is some stuff that IMO are bad design / bad design changes. Armor skills not showing up until you have a certain number of armor pieces on, for example. Joining the Fighters Guild however... there is nothing strange or wrong about that quest. You can get the quest to join from a handbill and it explicitly states who to talk to. Though for some reason the handbills seem to have been removed from the regular starting zones and they should be put back in (I don´t know this for absolute sure, but I could only find them in Vivec City at the moment). If you choose to just join up, yes I do not find it very confusing that you do not join by talking to a character in the Main Quest (which you skipped) who explicitly talks about travelling to a different zone, while the game explicitly states (breaking the fourth wall as you put it) that you will be leaving the zone to go chase down a coven if you pick that dialogue choice.

But it might be that I´m old and remember the days when games did not have arrows pointing you everywhere you needed to go.

The game could use some cleaning up, but quite frankly, ZOS has done quite a bit of cleaning already.

Northwold · March 2023

MaleAmazon wrote: »

The 'hooded figure' quest is literally labeled "Main Quest" in the quest log even before you talk to her. Really, how much hand holding do you want?

Honestly, I think your perception is coming from your knowing the game and, presumably, having got to know it long before it became this convoluted. Why would you be looking in your journal to check what every quest is when you're ten minutes into playing a game and, in some cases, have been presented what must be 20 different possible quest arrows. You'd have to *know* to do that AND have picked up the quest.

Unless they've changed it, when you start the main quest doesn't even appear at all until you've left chapter zones, which the game used to force you to start in and the room with portals still enables you to start in.

The answer to "it is difficult for new players to know how this game works" cannot be "they just need to know how it works".

Witcher 3, incidentally, is not an example of a game doing it worse. It's an example of exactly how it should be done. Quests are sorted between monster quests, side quests and main story quests in the journal under clear, separate headings with clear tooltips. Meanwhile, the entrance to the world is managed in such a way that the player familiarises themselves with the mechanics of how the game works -- *including its interface/systems* -- with progressively more complexity before they are let loose. ESO badly needs to work out how to do that.

My own view is that, along with different colour arrows for different things, there is now so much content that different content types might be better off being grouped in kiosks in cities designed for that content.

Yes, it's artificial, but what is better for a new player in terms of playing the game (or indeed an existing player): go to the crafting skills kiosk and be told in plain language how to become a master crafterer, to the guild kiosk to be told in plain lanaguage how to join an in game guild, what exactly that means, and where to go, to the DLC kiosk to pick up the quest for a DLC, or, alternatively to have random strangers appear in random places and say "Hi, talk to me" instead of saying "hello I'm giving you the X chapter quest"? Why would I talk to that person over the 20 others?

Treeshka · March 2023

Prologue quests should be removed from default game. They should be activated through another menu. So if a new player starts, this menu would allow them to turn those quests on. So they can just go their respective cities and take them.

Currently if you just start as Aldmeri Dominion and reach Auridon you will be seeing at least eight or more prologue quest givers. Which would be very overwhelming. Not the mention some of them ports you to other cities directly which would create even more overwhelming situations.

MaleAmazon · March 2023

Honestly, I think your perception is coming from your knowing the game and, presumably, having got to know it long before it became this convoluted. Why would you be looking in your journal to check what every quest is when you're ten minutes into playing a game and, in some cases, have been presented what must be 20 different possible quest arrows. You'd have to *know* to do that AND have picked up the quest.

This is very possible. I´ve taken several long breaks (many months) though. And I haven´t found quest starts to be very confusing. At some point you have to take some responsibility. If someone forcibly contacts you and puts a quest called "Main Quest" in your quest journal, yes that is IMO on you if you don´t notice that for months.

Unless they've changed it, when you start the main quest doesn't even appear at all until you've left chapter zones, which the game used to force you to start in and the room with portals still enables you to start in.

Well I agree that it was a bit silly to force-start you in DLC zones. The current system is better. Still, that was a design choice that they went with - that new players would want to do the newest content. For some reason. I would not have made that same decision I think.

Witcher 3, incidentally, is not an example of a game doing it worse.

Not saying it did. Just said it doesn´t hand-hold half as much as ESO.

Look, I agree that the game can be confusing. But this is largely because of the tons of content it has, and some of it is unavoidable. The new quests are located in easy to reach areas, the trade-off is those areas get crowded.

You can always start the new quests via the interface by going to Collections -> Stories. That is pretty fourth wall-breaking and the design choice they went for. Along with story quest arrows looking different. But sure, paint them neon pink for all I care.

However, just for fun I started a new character to see how the tutorial plays out (I am a veteran so I tend to speedrun it if I make a new character). And really, it´s much improved. It teaches combat well, skyshards, stealth etc. And at the end you can explicitly ask about the different zones and what´s happening. And as you enter the portal it (again, sort of breaking the 4th wall) tells you explicitly what story will start in that zone.

So, at least ZOS have improved the game quite a bit in this regard IMO.

Northwold · March 2023

MaleAmazon wrote: »

However, just for fun I started a new character to see how the tutorial plays out (I am a veteran so I tend to speedrun it if I make a new character). And really, it´s much improved. It teaches combat well, skyshards, stealth etc. And at the end you can explicitly ask about the different zones and what´s happening. And as you enter the portal it (again, sort of breaking the 4th wall) tells you explicitly what story will start in that zone.

So, at least ZOS have improved the game quite a bit in this regard IMO.

I cannot imagine how many players give ESO one try and then never return. Honestly, while the portal cave thing gives players a choice where to start, in some ways it actually makes things worse because it doesn't explain anything. It just says you can start here, here, here or here and then dumps you in exactly the same problems that have been growing the more the game has developed, but with even less direction.

In an ideal world, if there isn't one already, it might be an idea to set up a dedicated team of developers to work solely on the new player experience, including updating existing content (at least the text) so that it actually makes sense.

Part of this is just plain bad design in that what worked for the base game simply doesn't when you have this much additional content. But part of this is also because the move to One Tamriel made much of the base game content incoherent, but nothing in the game explains that because it's been left in exactly the same shape it was before One Tamriel happened.

Why, as a new player, are you helping an entire army break through a gate from one zone to another when there's a wayshrine *right next to it* that allows you to port there immediately?! It's utterly baffling. What exactly is Cadwell's Silver and Gold when you've already done most of the content it leads you to -- have you played the game wrong? Have you broken something? What does this mean?

It also feeds into other things that presumably were more intuitive when the game started with walled off factions. For instance, Wayrest is the capital of the Daggerfall Covenant. Which means some things only happen there. And when the game was launched that didn't need much discussion in the writing because you didn't need it: the zones were literally walled off so the player *knew* that factions mattered and where was where. But that intuitive sense of capital and membership of a faction has essentially evaporated -- your faction is essentially irrelevant and something you never have reason to even think about except when howlers come up like that "we must get through the gate" example of "what on earth is going on here" -- so players do need some help with something in the status screens saying (for example) "your capital city is Wayrest and you need to go to the capital to do X, Y and Z". And with subsequent DLC, a new player would be entirely within their rights to assume the capital of the Aldmeri Dominion was in Summerset, for example.

Another major problem, the zone story quests. Since they in the base zones form part of the main story and can be played out of sequence, they either need numbers added or some sort of warning that they are part of the main quest and you are playing them out of order. Those quests also need to be made persistent in the journal. Unless this has been changed, you can actually drop them right now and never be able to find where you were again. Indeed, there are instances when the game sends you from one quest *to find* the next one, without telling you precisely where it is. Fun game design when there aren't many quests to look for, almost impossible now that the quest numbers have bloated.

The very nature of what was done in One Tamriel more or less demands an explanatory note that is not remotely in Tamriel lingo of "when we started this game the three factions were zone locked and then we decided to change it; some of the story content was made before that happened". But there also needs to be clear differentiation of which zones *were* the base zones in the first place, and which came with subsequent DLCs.

At the end of the day, it almost feels like what's needed is an actual new player *town* or *city* with a dedicated storyline designed for new players to set you up. This is probably how the game felt when you started from the starter zones. It certainly doesn't feel like that for a new player now. What is there is not nearly enough.

the1andonlyskwex · March 2023

Northwold wrote: »

MaleAmazon wrote: »

However, just for fun I started a new character to see how the tutorial plays out (I am a veteran so I tend to speedrun it if I make a new character). And really, it´s much improved. It teaches combat well, skyshards, stealth etc. And at the end you can explicitly ask about the different zones and what´s happening. And as you enter the portal it (again, sort of breaking the 4th wall) tells you explicitly what story will start in that zone.

So, at least ZOS have improved the game quite a bit in this regard IMO.

I cannot imagine how many players give ESO one try and then never return. Honestly, while the portal cave thing gives players a choice where to start, in some ways it actually makes things worse because it doesn't explain anything. It just says you can start here, here, here or here and then dumps you in exactly the same problems that have been growing the more the game has developed, but with even less direction.

In an ideal world, if there isn't one already, it might be an idea to set up a dedicated team of developers to work solely on the new player experience, including updating existing content (at least the text) so that it actually makes sense.

Part of this is just plain bad design in that what worked for the base game simply doesn't when you have this much additional content. But part of this is also because the move to One Tamriel made much of the base game content incoherent, but nothing in the game explains that because it's been left in exactly the same shape it was before One Tamriel happened.

Why, as a new player, are you helping an entire army break through a gate from one zone to another when there's a wayshrine *right next to it* that allows you to port there immediately?! It's utterly baffling. What exactly is Cadwell's Silver and Gold when you've already done most of the content it leads you to -- have you played the game wrong? Have you broken something? What does this mean?

It also feeds into other things that presumably were more intuitive when the game started with walled off factions. For instance, Wayrest is the capital of the Daggerfall Covenant. Which means some things only happen there. And when the game was launched that didn't need much discussion in the writing because you didn't need it: the zones were literally walled off so the player *knew* that factions mattered and where was where. But that intuitive sense of capital and membership of a faction has essentially evaporated -- your faction is essentially irrelevant and something you never have reason to even think about except when howlers come up like that "we must get through the gate" example of "what on earth is going on here" -- so players do need some help with something in the status screens saying (for example) "your capital city is Wayrest and you need to go to the capital to do X, Y and Z". And with subsequent DLC, a new player would be entirely within their rights to assume the capital of the Aldmeri Dominion was in Summerset, for example.

Another major problem, the zone story quests. Since they in the base zones form part of the main story and can be played out of sequence, they either need numbers added or some sort of warning that they are part of the main quest and you are playing them out of order. Those quests also need to be made persistent in the journal. Unless this has been changed, you can actually drop them right now and never be able to find where you were again. Indeed, there are instances when the game sends you from one quest *to find* the next one, without telling you precisely where it is. Fun game design when there aren't many quests to look for, almost impossible now that the quest numbers have bloated.

The very nature of what was done in One Tamriel more or less demands an explanatory note that is not remotely in Tamriel lingo of "when we started this game the three factions were zone locked and then we decided to change it; some of the story content was made before that happened". But there also needs to be clear differentiation of which zones *were* the base zones in the first place, and which came with subsequent DLCs.

At the end of the day, it almost feels like what's needed is an actual new player *town* or *city* with a dedicated storyline designed for new players to set you up. This is probably how the game felt when you started from the starter zones. It certainly doesn't feel like that for a new player now. What is there is not nearly enough.

100% this.

The new tutorial is fine for teaching basic controls (just like all of the old tutorials), and it's okay for reminding veteran players which starting zones are what, but it's awful as a new player experience.

For example:
1) It completely messes up the main quest when you choose to go to a base game starting zone. Those zones all have stories that are intended to come after the coldharbour tutorial, but you just get dropped in and have to go to the mainland to start the quest.
2) When you get to the mainland you're overwhelmed with quest givers, most of which start DLC or chapter prologues, without any real indication of which is what. This is a pain even for veteran players, who essentially have to memorize which quest givers they can ignore in every new city.
3) Within the base game zones, you have no idea what order to do things. The main quest can give some clues, but it's super easy to start doing things out of order if you do any exploring. Before One Tamriel you could infer the quest order from the quest level, but now it's totally opaque.
4) Even the order from one zone to the next is a mess (because you can go pretty much anywhere at any time). This is particularly problematic with the alliance capitals, which aren't really explained anywhere.
4) Skyshards barely make sense without the old coldharbour tutorial. The new tutorial tries, but its explanation doesn't fit the rest of the story. Similarly, there are quests all over the place that talk about you not having a soul, and they only make sense after the coldharbour tutorial.
5) The mages' and fighters' guilds aren't handled particularly well in the chapters, so if you choose to start in a chapter you basically can't progress them without going back to the base game (which then drops you into the middle of a storyline you don't understand unless you also start the main quest).

I could go on and on.

MaleAmazon · March 2023

I cannot imagine how many players give ESO one try and then never return. Honestly, while the portal cave thing gives players a choice where to start, in some ways it actually makes things worse because it doesn't explain anything. It just says you can start here, here, here or here and then dumps you in exactly the same problems that have been growing the more the game has developed, but with even less direction.

Look. The game has a tutorial that explains the basics, and actually does it well this time. At the end, it is explained to you exactly where the different portals go to, and a little of what you can expect in terms of story for each portal. I just tested it. If you choose to start the Aldmeri Dominion Alliance questline, you step into the portal to Khenarthi´s Roost and the quest giver is literally right in front of you with a large arrow pointing to him. Same thing for Bleakrock, and I would assume for Stros M'kai as well but I honestly can´t be bothered to test it.

If you require more hand-holding than that to play, maybe ESO isn´t for you. That´s ok, I know people who are up in arms that they have to actually press a button in order to attack, and think this should be made automatically. I guess people have different expectations.

The game in a sense made more sense, back when you could only start in an Alliance, and you could not even go to any other alliance until you had finished the MQ.

Now what they could and IMO should do is allow you to go straight to the Coldharbour prison to start the MQ, after the tutorial. That option is lacking. However, the tutorial is skippable (a good thing) meaning you need to be able to start it without the tutorial.

And some stuff is messier, yes. Then again, you get your soul back by the end of the MQ, and yet you can still revive with soul gems and use wayshrines afterwards, as well as before you start the MQ, which kind of contradicts lore. At this point, people will have to accept that ESO, for better or worse, is a bit less coherent than at launch.

But whatever confusion you experience is the price you pay for the game being so much better and freer than it was back then. You are free not to skip ahead and pick up quests, if they confound you.

4) Skyshards barely make sense without the old coldharbour tutorial. The new tutorial tries, but its explanation doesn't fit the rest of the story. Similarly, there are quests all over the place that talk about you not having a soul, and they only make sense after the coldharbour tutorial.

Well, they did redo the starts if you play the tutorial, so AFAIK it is no longer referenced that you fell out of the sky since you don´t (there can be remnants). You also start with the quest giver right in front of you - so actually it works rather well under the circumstances. Skipping the tutorial does dump you in a DLC zone which I agree is a bit confusing and wrong. But then, you deliberately skip the tutorial in order for this to happen, so I mean... making that choice sort of implies that you know the original story.

I am not saying it is perfect or cannot be improved, but credit where credit is due - after having the messy new tutorials for Morrowind and Elsweyr, at the moment the game is actually pretty coherent, especially given the fact that some DLC takes place after the original MQ with the MQ characters participating - so some disorientation is inevitable unless you want to lock away content, something that would suck immensely and was thankfully done away with years ago.

the1andonlyskwex · March 2023

MaleAmazon wrote: »

Well, they did redo the starts if you play the tutorial, so AFAIK it is no longer referenced that you fell out of the sky since you don´t (there can be remnants). You also start with the quest giver right in front of you - so actually it works rather well under the circumstances. Skipping the tutorial does dump you in a DLC zone which I agree is a bit confusing and wrong. But then, you deliberately skip the tutorial in order for this to happen, so I mean... making that choice sort of implies that you know the original story.

The changes are extremely low effort band aids that barely cover the very first conversation after you arrive in the starter zone. They basically say they don't know how you wound up half drowned and within minutes some other NPC is talking about how the only way you could have possibly done this or that is because you don't have a soul.

Regardless, this thread is supposed to be about the specific problem of cities being cluttered with distracting prologue quests, and I have no idea why you seem to be so against trying to fix it. As far as I can tell, you're just white knighting for ZOS and blindly defending their obviously terrible new player experience. We shouldn't be praising the poop sandwich just because the pooper managed to eat some fiber this time.

MaleAmazon · March 2023

I have no idea why you seem to be so against trying to fix it. As far as I can tell, you're just white knighting for ZOS and blindly defending their obviously terrible new player experience.

1. I am not against it. But it doesn´t need 'fixing'. The prologue quests are not necessary for the story but were put in essentially as teasers for chapters to be played before the chapter first came out, and they are still in there for completeness. If everything is so confusing, just google UESP prologue quests.

2. ZOS does many things badly, so IMO we should acknowledge when they do something right. Story quests have their own kind of arrow, it´s not that hard to recognize them. They put in a better tutorial and remade the starts to fit in better with that tutorial. These are good things.

3. In order for quests to make perfect sense you should play them in order. You have the freedom not to, but then if you do that, you should not complain that quests don´t make sense. Should we remove Lyris and the Western Skyrim questline for all characters until they´ve completed the vanilla MQ because otherwise the game "doesn´t make sense"?

Anyway I´m done with this thread.

the1andonlyskwex · March 2023

MaleAmazon wrote: »

3. In order for quests to make perfect sense you should play them in order.

I agree, and this thread exists largely because there isn't a good in-game indicator of what the correct order is.

FluffWit · March 2023

That pic shows how little they care guys. Its Stuga with the "this is the base game main story!" icon over her head. It's been like that for years.

Destai · March 2023

Treeshka wrote: »

Prologue quests should be removed from default game. They should be activated through another menu. So if a new player starts, this menu would allow them to turn those quests on. So they can just go their respective cities and take them.

Currently if you just start as Aldmeri Dominion and reach Auridon you will be seeing at least eight or more prologue quest givers. Which would be very overwhelming. Not the mention some of them ports you to other cities directly which would create even more overwhelming situations.

1000% behind this.

I think the solution is having a Stories menu enhancement. Some functionality is already there. Thinking about Dungeon DLCs stories - we can go there and adopt them. Why not just add ALL story content to that menu? That way you can remove prologue pop-up ad NPCs from the world so players can have a more immersive experience. Prologues could then be solely adopted from there or the store.

Too many questgivers behave like pop-up ads and are quite intrusive. The prologues are the most obvious offenders, but the general quest experience relies on pestering people into content adoption. Base game has a lot of these, but even DLC zones are like this.

Deter1UK · March 2023

Take all the prologue guest givers out of the main city and scatter them in interesting places: put bounty / message boards up in as many towns as you like with quest descriptions and directions to the quest giver.

Colour main and zone quest markers including mages and fighters differently to side quests.

It can be done for writs , and dailies in Gold Coast so it’s obviously not impossible.

Job done.

Destai · March 2023

Deter1UK wrote: »

Take all the prologue guest givers out of the main city and scatter them in interesting places: put bounty / message boards up in as many towns as you like with quest descriptions and directions to the quest giver.

Colour main and zone quest markers including mages and fighters differently to side quests.

It can be done for writs , and dailies in Gold Coast so it’s obviously not impossible.

Job done.

It's a good idea and I'd welcome it. But my only arguments against are the volume of quest icons and it doesn't imply any order or questline associations. One of the core complaints I've seen from new players is the volume of icons they have to do deal with. Having things in the story menu would be better at conveying quest chronology and other contextual information. Of course, like I said - good idea - so it'd be a welcome change anyways just to cut down on some of the noise.

AcadianPaladin · March 2023

I agree that the current situation is. . . irritating. When I enter a new area, I like to at least check out every quest arrow I see so I don't miss anything related to the zone I'm working. The writs and daily quests are fine because I can see what they are based on the blue color and know they are not current zone one time quest. It is all the prologue and dlc questgivers that give me a headache as well described in many posts above.

Some great ideas above. I see three reasonable solutions:

1. Different quest icons for prologue/dlc quests. You'd still have a sea of quest arrows but at least you'd know which you could ignore.
2. Double the size of the questlog and let us move quests around among two sections - quests 'in my queue' and quest I'm not going to do now or maybe ever. Drawback would be collecting 'never gonna do' quests just to be rid of the questgiver markers.
3. Best option though is to activate prologue/dlc quests via a different menu instead of randomly encountering questgivers. The questgivers for those quests would only have a quest icon over their head if you have activated their quest from the prologue/dlc quest menu.

Mik195 · March 2023

When I first started, I picked up the quest from a guy in a tavern - eye of something or other - that has you running all over the place keeping shadows from killing mages. I was new enough that I thought this was normal ESO and I wasn't a fan. Helping new people understand the types of quests would help with the confusion.

My character started in Vardenfall, when I finished up there, I took a boat and ended up in Gratwood and was very confused that the quest I was following wanted me to run to Haven and leave.

evan302 · March 2023

I would definitely support anything which makes the different types of quest clearer. It's very confusing as a new player and so easy to lose your way. I recently started the game and even trying to follow the excellent 'ESO in Order' post on the forum, I got lost several times.

I cannot imagine how many players give ESO one try and then never return. Honestly, while the portal cave thing gives players a choice where to start, in some ways it actually makes things worse because it doesn't explain anything. It just says you can start here, here, here or here and then dumps you in exactly the same problems that have been growing the more the game has developed, but with even less direction.

I totally agree with this. This game is brillant for anyone who just wants a huge world to freely explore and/or who has no interest in the story.
If you came for the lore though, the starter experience is pretty unfriendly and frustrating.

Northwold · March 2023

MaleAmazon wrote: »

3. In order for quests to make perfect sense you should play them in order. You have the freedom not to, but then if you do that, you should not complain that quests don´t make sense. Should we remove Lyris and the Western Skyrim questline for all characters until they´ve completed the vanilla MQ because otherwise the game "doesn´t make sense"?

As another poster has pointed out, there is literally nothing in the game to tell players what the correct order actually *is*, nor, indeed, anything that even says that there is a correct order in the first place! The quests are presented simply as standalone quests.

Forgive me for repeating myself, but the answer to "it is difficult for new players to know how this game works" cannot be "they just need to know how it works".

zaria · March 2023

Agree, this was totally annoying doing all the guests again, not only does Vulkhel Guard overflow with these these but many its hard not to pick up like ensuring security if you plan is to do all the quests.

MaleAmazon · March 2023

Ok, I said I was done with this thread, but I guess I´m a liar...

As another poster has pointed out, there is literally nothing in the game to tell players what the correct order actually *is*, nor, indeed, anything that even says that there is a correct order in the first place! The quests are presented simply as standalone quests.

This is not really true, though. The tutorial tells you what the different zone stories are, and it tells you about the Alliance questlines. If you warp to the newbie islands, the quest giver is literally right in front of you with a quest arrow pointing them out. And every quest leads directly to the next one, with quest arrows pointing to them clearly once you finish the previous quest. Zone after zone, all the way to the end of the Alliance questline. Now, there are a few exceptions where you can miss the next quest giver if you run off in the 'wrong' direction (Stonefalls Tormented Spire -> Deshaan comes to mind). However, knowing that there *is* a quest giver nearby is something that, yes, people can learn.

Also, the DLC quests can be started from the 'stories' section of Collections, where they are listed in reverse chronological order.

Forgive me for repeating myself, but the answer to "it is difficult for new players to know how this game works" cannot be "they just need to know how it works".

It need not be one thing. Yes, the game could present quests more clearly. But really, if someone, like you wrote earlier in the thread, takes months to figure out there´s a main quest, apparently never googling "ESO main quest" or bothering to see the "Main Quest" title in their quest log... I mean, what do you expect ZOS to do, really? They have a quest giver literally run up to you who forces a quest called "Main Quest" into your quest log.