BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Morrowind has a Telvanni mage that cloned himself as women and married his daughters. Divayth Fyr actually who in eso lol does not have the daughter wives yet.

Pfft! That's nothing.

TES III - Morrowind - Pilgrimage to Maar Gan
Objective: Perform the pilgrimage to Maar Gan's shrine
Then: Taunt the nearby Dremora into attacking.

Dialogue:
"I am Anhaedra. If you are a pilgrim, read the inscription on the stupid rock."

Taunt the Daedra "Your threats are weak like your flesh, mortal."
Taunt the Daedra "Continue with your insults, mortal. I long to feast on your marrow."
Taunt the Daedra "Ha! Fine words from one born from the wrong end of a guar."
Taunt the Daedra "After I kill you, I will r**e your corpse. Don't worry. I'll be gentle."

And yes, that 4 letter r-word is what you think it is. Oh, and that's base game which had a PEGI 12 rating.

Syldras wrote: »

I find it interesting how "for adults" always seems to mean more or less bawdy content (although what ESO has in that regard is super tame - I find it silly and clichéd, that's my whole problem with it), but never deeper characterisations, the avoidance of clear black/white schemes and other clichés, and complex stories not shying away from "difficult" topics (like moral dilemmas or questions of philosophy). That's what I would call "adult".

Dilemmas and questions of philosophy? You really know adults like this? I envy you, Sir.

xbluerosesx wrote: »

they're going for the mOdErN aUdIeNcE

So modern audience CAN read - that's news to me.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Morrowind has a Telvanni mage that cloned himself as women and married his daughters. Divayth Fyr actually who in eso lol does not have the daughter wives yet.

Pfft! That's nothing.

TES III - Morrowind - Pilgrimage to Maar Gan
Objective: Perform the pilgrimage to Maar Gan's shrine
Then: Taunt the nearby Dremora into attacking.

Dialogue:
"I am Anhaedra. If you are a pilgrim, read the inscription on the stupid rock."

Taunt the Daedra "Your threats are weak like your flesh, mortal."
Taunt the Daedra "Continue with your insults, mortal. I long to feast on your marrow."
Taunt the Daedra "Ha! Fine words from one born from the wrong end of a guar."
Taunt the Daedra "After I kill you, I will r**e your corpse. Don't worry. I'll be gentle."

And yes, that 4 letter r-word is what you think it is. Oh, and that's base game which had a PEGI 12 rating.

You could hear way worse things in any Xbox360 lobby voice chat, spit by random 13yo - "back in my days..."

Anyway, agree with OP and the criticism of "MCU style" of humor.

I would like to have the option of having my character swing at an NPC for trying to flirt with her.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

The average age of an MMO player is 26 with 25% of players being teenagers. Most formal definitions of "young adult" are 25 and under.

Age demographics can vary, but in the EU about 17% of the population is aged 15 to 29 - a larger bracket than just "teenagers".

So if 25% of teenagers are playing MMOs but make up less than 17% of the population, then yes in fact MMOs are favoured by young gamers more so than older ones.

Ye gods, this makes me feel like an antiquity.

liliub17_ESO wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

The average age of an MMO player is 26 with 25% of players being teenagers. Most formal definitions of "young adult" are 25 and under.

Age demographics can vary, but in the EU about 17% of the population is aged 15 to 29 - a larger bracket than just "teenagers".

So if 25% of teenagers are playing MMOs but make up less than 17% of the population, then yes in fact MMOs are favoured by young gamers more so than older ones.

Ye gods, this makes me feel like an antiquity.

Preaching to the choir my friend.

Syldras wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Still is lol different opinions and all that right. Theres serious and too serious. If you think ESO is bad lol don’t play the main series, Oblivions questlines are largely loved because the quests were so fun and sometimes crazy/not serious. Ok oftentimes.
Morrowind has a Telvanni mage that cloned himself as women and married his daughters. Divayth Fyr actually who in eso lol does not have the daughter wives yet.
This is the series you’re apart of. It has serious and not serious moments depending on a…. Certain point of view.

You don't have to explain the lore to me. I grew up with TES. I watched my father play Arena, Daggerfall and Redguard as a small child, and played Morrowind on my own in my youth (and later also Oblivion, Skyrim, TES Legends and of course ESO, and I also played TES1 and 2 later as an adult). And with that I can clearly say: There's a difference between the alienness of Morrowind, some of the funnier quests in Oblivion (like the Sanguine quest or some quests on the Shivering Isles), the humour of Cadwell in early ESO, or that "everything is a quip" writing we got in ESO today. And I have the feeling I'm not the only person who favors the writing ESO had in it's earlier years (base game and Daedric War story arc for sure, maybe Elsweyr and Greymoor, but then things changed) over the writing we get today. Otherwise there wouldn't be threads criticising the writing all the time. I've seen half a dozen over the past few months alone.

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Someone can write better…. Millennials typically don’t, and I am one so I think it’s a fair assessment of my generation lol.

I seem to be about the same age as you and have made different experiences. But I guess that doesn't matter. In any way, not everyone can become a writer, it needs talent. Even if the percentage may vary, I don't think there's any generation where no talented writers exist at all.

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Dilemmas and questions of philosophy? You really know adults like this? I envy you, Sir.

It's not uncommon among my peers.

Good you know the series as do I, and I respectfully disagree Solstice was a large leap from the past, to me its rose tinted glasses.

From my perspective being a lurker thats only recently participating, this community would complain whether the writing was good or not, its their favorite pastime.

I don't even fully disagree, it can be better yea, and Wrothgar was its best example imo, but there sure is a ton of nitpicking going on in here also with no acknowledgement of what actually was improved, which I'd say Solstice is a step in the right direction and gets more right than wrong with emphasis on choice and outcome on at least the side quests.

Im 33, there's not a single millennial writer I could say I am impressed with but yea that is my personal experience. I'm sure there's some somewhere but they're much fewer and further between than previous ones and AI will only make it worse, conversation for another day.

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Good you know the series as do I, and I respectfully disagree Solstice was a large leap from the past, to me its rose tinted glasses.
From my perspective being a lurker thats only recently participating, this community would complain whether the writing was good or not, its their favorite pastime.
I don't even fully disagree, it can be better yea, and Wrothgar was its best example imo, but there sure is a ton of nitpicking going on in here also with no acknowledgement of what actually was improved, which I'd say Solstice is a step in the right direction and gets more right than wrong with emphasis on choice and outcome on at least the side quests.

I've just recently repeated the base game zones and started to replay Morrowind on a side character, basically right before and after I played West Solstice on my main. I've also finished East Solstice on PTS twice (and playing it on Live now, of course). And I clearly see differences in writing. The humour is different, the whole writing style and speech style feels more complex in earlier chapters than it is now, there's much more lore even on small, unremarkable locations (every place has at least some lorebook, even if it's a tiny ruin somewhere in the wilderness - there's always some kind of background about what that place is or what had happened there), there was just more attention to detail and more care to present the fictional world to us through different lore sources. Topics were also often more serious and tragic situations could actually remain tragic without some npc cracking a joke every three seconds.

Do I like that they give us more different dialogue options now? Of course. I'm a roleplayer, of course I appreciate everything that lets me play my characters more the way I imagine them. I just wished many options weren't worded to exaggeratedly, and that we actually got to choose how we feel about people - most of the time, there's no real choice, but it's predefined for us whether we are supposed to like someone or not. What big difference does it make if the only options are "friendly", "even friendlier" or "funny"? I'd rather see contrary options; for every friendly one there should also be an unfriendly option. Of course giving us options at all is a step into the right direction. Now if they refine this it could get interesting.

But on the other hand there's also many things that are worse than in early chapters: The permanent quips, the colloquial 21st century speech, the decreased background lore,... Why was it even called "Season of the Worm Cult" when we got no new lore on the cult, on Mannimarco, on Wormblood, or anything related to that? We have the situation of Mannimarco and Galerion meeting again, which one would think is a really meaningful situation in terms of lore - and then we don't really get anything from it. Mannimarco's return also didn't really bring any new lore, and another Planemeld wasn't the most creative story choice either.

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Eso writing has been terrible for ages and I never understand people who think eso has good quests, lore and storytelling (with very few exception).

I remember the Gold Road story line where Hearmeus mora "didn't think about" the option to force Ithelia to create a new reality where she doesn't have her powers, as an option to fix the problem.....

So you want me to believe that a daedric deity known for possesing infinite knowledge more or less, with the ability to see past, present and future simultaneously, "didn't think of it"?....like really....

I headcanon this as hermie playing games with us like he does in skyrim. He having ulterior motives and acting innocent is because he needs us to do the thing and he thinks that will get him what he wants. Of course we the player only have the option to blindly believe in Good Guy Mora. Being able to at least sass him while we suck it up and play our part in the grand design would have been nice.

Wouldn't be surprised if writing is already done by ChatGPT

Is this the first time "laid" was used in this context in the Elder Scrolls franchise? I can't remember.

Apollosipod wrote: »

I'm currently playing through eastern Solstice and I am struggling due to the writing decisions this team has made. At one point you actually have our character make the comment "How did the assault go? I was busy rescuing prisoners and stuff."

Am I the only one that really hates this? I don't find it clever or funny. It's just immersion breaking. Why can't any of the dialogue be written like it's not an episode of a sitcom?

Honestly, I didn't mind that so much.

Outside of Ashbound Hall, I've not been too annoyed by the writing thus far.
High Isle's main quest was so shoddy, poorly written, and full of new-speak that I had to fast forward through the dialogue to get through it. West Weald's main quest left me glaring at the screen more often than not. The epic story from Necrom petering out to nothing. The Imperial warrior-woman complaining about the Bosmer invasion while constantly doubling back to remind me how much she LOVES immigration and how she is one of the good ones, but still, but yet, but still. On and on. The constant re-iterations that it was okay for the Bosmer to invade because they have a right of return to their ancestral lands (which... what a topic to stumble onto), but it's also okay becuse nobody was living in the region anyway... except the first quest takes place in the ravaged CITY of Ostumir, most of the shallow pools in the newly grown jungle are full of civilian corpses, ruins of vineyards and farms are strewn about and also filled with corpses, and... don't worry about it. NO ONE lived in the area anyway, right? Right. ;-)

Oh, and it all ends with a "diversity is our strength" party in which the Count of Skingrad willingly gives away the invaded lands because he's on the right side of history. Then the new leader of the Bosmer says something along the lines of: "I can't give you back what our former leader took from you, but we promise to be great neighbors going forward (on the land we STOLE from you and ethnically cleansed which we could give back but won't give back because we don't want to. Har har har)." Which... what? What's the point of it all, anyway? By the 3rd era, the invaders are all dead and no trace of the forest remains. It was all utterly meaningless.

Oi vei... bleh. By comparison, Solstice is great. Sure, I've scoffed every time someone calls me a they instead of "adventurer." I've chortled every time a dead prisoner or slave has been referred to as "they" because he or she died before Skordo could confirm a gender identity. "I found this prisoner dying of their wounds. They didn't make it." I literally looked at the dead male Argonian, looked at Skordo, rolled my eyes, and clicked next.

But that's it. Minor nothings. The whedon quips and occasional 21st century overly-casual dialogue ("Now they've made new reapers that kill us when we just get near 'em? Man, I hate these guys.") are Shakespeare compared to West Weald and High Isle's main quest. It's fine. All the tacky flirting lines can be skipped, so I just ignore them and never select them.

I'm fine. I'm still not sure why Molag Bal bothered to help the Worm Cult free Mannimarco in the first place and I think the core plot has enough holes to occasionally resemble swiss cheese, but I'm still fine. The writing quality is high enough that I didn't find it too jarring to jump from base game zones on an alt to Solstice. I'm satisfied enough that my character talking like a cast member of Firefly from time to time is perfectly acceptable. :-P

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

High Isle's main quest was so shoddy, poorly written, and full of new-speak that I had to fast forward through the dialogue to get through it. West Weald's main quest left me glaring at the screen more often than not. The epic story from Necrom petering out to nothing. The Imperial warrior-woman complaining about the Bosmer invasion while constantly doubling back to remind me how much she LOVES immigration and how she is one of the good ones, but still, but yet, but still. On and on. The constant re-iterations that it was okay for the Bosmer to invade because they have a right of return to their ancestral lands (which... what a topic to stumble onto), but it's also okay becuse nobody was living in the region anyway... except the first quest takes place in the ravaged CITY of Ostumir, most of the shallow pools in the newly grown jungle are full of civilian corpses, ruins of vineyards and farms are strewn about and also filled with corpses, and... don't worry about it. NO ONE lived in the area anyway, right? Right. ;-)

Oh, and it all ends with a "diversity is our strength" party in which the Count of Skingrad willingly gives away the invaded lands because he's on the right side of history. Then the new leader of the Bosmer says something along the lines of: "I can't give you back what our former leader took from you, but we promise to be great neighbors going forward (on the land we STOLE from you and ethnically cleansed which we could give back but won't give back because we don't want to. Har har har)." Which... what? What's the point of it all, anyway? By the 3rd era, the invaders are all dead and no trace of the forest remains. It was all utterly meaningless.

my fatigue has fatigue at this point

High Isle's zone story actually had potential IMO. the bad guy was someone who wanted to kill the Alliance leaders in the name of EqUaLiTy. OFC by the time Galen comes around the zos writers turn that on its head and he turned out to be just a generic big bad evil guy who wanted to rule Tamriel

The plots are banal (world domination for the sake of world domination) and predictable (villains always leave behind a cache of evidence that makes them easy to identify and find).
Villains are always permanently evil, without any gray morality or anti-heroism.
The plot NPCs act like children (they always ask us for help, but they themselves sit in a corner, either exhausted after one spell and asking us to continue alone, or separated from the protagonist and fell into a trap). All of this has happened, and more than once.
The villains' plans always fail. Absolutely everything. They've never won. And I'd like to see what happens if the villains win.

Ithelia was a good idea, but it was defeated too easily. With three faces... Mehrunes Dagon was also defeated by three snouts. Villains are defeated too easily. The final battle should have featured more NPCs participating in the fight (it would have been more epic), and Itelia shouldn't have been so ineptly abandoned. It simply vanished into thin air, with no way to visit it and no hope of a return.

I'm sure that no one would complain about one weird line or two. But ESO's writing style, including the utilized language, has changed a lot over the years, and sadly not for the better. It felt especially jarring when I played both Solstice Part 1 on my main and the base game main quest on a side character last summer. I had the direct comparison. It was never Shakespearean in quality, but there's a difference like day and night between the lines of the base game companions (all of them) and what's presented to us now.

Of course no one expects real medieval language to be used in this game (let alone the random person wouldn't probably understand Old or Middle English that well), but for a game that takes place in a fictional pseudo-historical world, people don't expect the characters to sound like a group of random kids hanging around at the local bus stop. A certain language style is part of the genre and one thing that contributes to immersion.

I suppose the modern day language wouldn’t seem like a problem to you if you are a young person hearing that all the time. The rest of us are like, “Pepperidge Farms remembers…”