if Tank was not used,
would you have fully understood what the quest is about?

Last'One wrote: »

I really don’t want to repeat myself again and again and again… but… what "immersion"? In ESO, immersion is completely gone. There’s no immersion left at all, just don’t even try to argue otherwise. We can’t start with a criminal act and end up talking about subclassing. Everything goes 100% against the immersion that any Elder Scrolls game once had. It’s completely broken.

Nah. There's still some pretty good quests and other immersive elements. Subclassing makes the game closer to the Elder Scrolls lore, which predates this game.

LunaFlora wrote: »

if Tank was not used,
would you have fully understood what the quest is about?

Yes

It might be just a little event quest in this case, but the tendency to seemingly not show that much care to how speech affects atmosphere and immersion, has already been visible for a few years. It's the tendency that makes some people worried; not one single occurrence.

Wording that feels completely off is still an exception, luckily, but more often I come across generic-sounding dialogue, obviously real-world-ish attitudes by npcs, those "lessons" that we often heard at quest endings last year, etc, that could take place anywhere and don't make you think you're experiencing, and learning about, Tamriel now.

If we focus on the usage of speech and on exact wording - it matters. It contributes to world-building and atmosphere. And it doesn't only tell us about the world the story takes place in, but also about the person we meet. If you watch a historical or fantasy movie taking place in the Middle Ages (or some fantasy world inspired by that), you'd aspect a peasant to talk differently than a scholar and also differently than a nobleman. If you sit down in the evening and watch a movie taking place in Ancient Rome, you'd expect the people to talk in a specific way that differs from today's colloquial language, and not sound like the chatter by random people you've come across when you were grocery shopping an hour before.

And it's not like ESO hadn't taken care about this before. If it wouldn't matter what characters say and we could just imagine they say whatever they say in Tamrielic and we're only reading some random translation for 21st century modern humans anyway, Zerith-var wouldn't sound the way he does. Isobel wouldn't throw in slang words every now and then that she grew up with as a Systres islander. The Dunmer would just say "fellow" instead of "f'lah", and from angry Altmer you'd just hear a threateningly intonated "foreigner" instead of "nebarra". But they chose to establish a few words in these fictional languages. For flavor, atmosphere, immersion.

And just like those terms pull you deeper into this fictional world, words clearly referring to today's online gaming slang throw you out. Not everyone, of course. But for some people, it does.

LunaFlora wrote: »

if Tank was not used,
would you have fully understood what the quest is about?

Yes. He even explains how and why he tanks anyway. And this dialogue is better because it feels like an in-universe explanation of what's happening rather than a video game.

Last'One wrote: »

I really don’t want to repeat myself again and again and again… but… what "immersion"? In ESO, immersion is completely gone. There’s no immersion left at all, just don’t even try to argue otherwise. We can’t start with a criminal act and end up talking about subclassing. Everything goes 100% against the immersion that any Elder Scrolls game once had. It’s completely broken.

Just because the ship has sailed it doesn't mean we should quietly and peacefully accept the armada.

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

LunaFlora wrote: »

if Tank was not used,
would you have fully understood what the quest is about?

Yes, because it's obvious and not profound the slighest. I'm an adult and even though I've my moment of having a brain smooth as butter, it's not that smooth.

Maybe it's still part of the play and we just don't know it. Maybe Dreams really is a profound director and is aware of the metaphysical Prisoner role in lore, and knows secretly that the real play is their world !! CHIM achieved?

I dunno what about your immersion, but the "daedric explosion" moment was the best thing happened to me this week
I guess I woke up my neighbors in the middle of the night.

Malyore wrote: »

Maybe it's still part of the play and we just don't know it. Maybe Dreams really is a profound director and is aware of the metaphysical Prisoner role in lore, and knows secretly that the real play is their world !! CHIM achieved?

Oh, so she might be a genius after all? Now I almost regret sending out my courier with a letter of art appreciation...

alternatelder wrote: »

Among all the major things that break immersion for most people- flashy, loud mounts, flashing skills, exotic pets. This has to be on the very bottom of the list of things that I thought would break someone's immersion.

So, off-setting writing is the least of our worries? What am I reading.

Emeratis wrote: »

alternatelder wrote: »

Among all the major things that break immersion for most people- flashy, loud mounts, flashing skills, exotic pets. This has to be on the very bottom of the list of things that I thought would break someone's immersion.

Mileage may vary, I guess. What other players do is less immersion breaking for me than official quests. Other players in a shared multiplayer space are going to do what they want. Some will have meme names and run around in clowny costumes and getups and that's their prerogative. Even on launch we had people in the orcish boob window or doing creative use of lining up emotes to simulate certain acts in the middle of town/the bank/the main hubs. After a while it's easier to tune out. For quest text and story thought, yes I expect it to be a bit more immersive because of it's greater implications on the lore. This example is not as big of a deal to me and more a sigh/groan moment and move on, but I also don't think it's fair to compare player actions with quest/story text/actions since they hold a different weight on things.

Agree 100%. Unless I'm in RP, I pretty much pretend other players do not exist as far as immersion goes.

Else I'd have to believe a band of fat orcs in low cut wedding dresses have moved next to Daggerfall that spend all of their time dancing in the nearby delve as they wait for their event boxes.

Though the current meaning of "terrorism" is modern, "terror" is a Latin word that was already known in Antiquity, meaning "fear". Forming the word "terror + ist" for "person trying to reach their goals through acts that induce fear in people" doesn't seem far-fetched to me.

But everyone draws their line at a different point, and that's fine.

To add: The term terror/terreur was also used a lot in 18th century France.

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

Nothing screams medieval low-fantasy setting more than 21st century terminology. Whoo. :-P

Singular "they" for a person who's gender is unknown or unimportant has been a normal use case for hundreds of years. Not that the existence of any group of people is automatically politics. Setting aside that political dog whistle, Shakespeare is hardly 21st century.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

Nothing screams medieval low-fantasy setting more than 21st century terminology. Whoo. :-P

Singular "they" for a person who's gender is unknown or unimportant has been a normal use case for hundreds of years. Not that the existence of any group of people is automatically politics. Setting aside that political dog whistle, Shakespeare is hardly 21st century.

No, sorry.

My first Master's was in English Literature. Six years of wasting my time reading very old texts and stories that no rational person would ever care about. Enjoyed the journey, though my Master Degrees in Accounting and Business Administration have served me better fiscally.

It was not a normal use case. It was never a normal use case. The normal use case was "he" in general. Once you knew the subject was a woman, then you used "she." Otherwise, "he" was the default. Gender neutral was "it." There was no they/them. That's a 21st century thing. Every now and then a writer messed up his or her grammar and used a plural pronoun to refer to a singular entity, but that was either a grammar mistake or (in the case of Shakespeare) an effort to rhyme / maintain meter. Even back in 2010 when I earned my degree, doing that would get you points deducted. Because it was a typo.

Now when I was in school, the "singular they" was a debate topic. "He" as the general default was seen as offensive, so they tried "she." But "she" only ever refers to woman, so it was actually less inclusive. So they tried "s/he," but no one knew how to pronounce it. Then they went with oscillating pronouns, but then a police officer was female in parapgraph one and male in paragraph two and female again in paragraph three. Made no sense. Then they tried "singular they," but it violated noun/pronoun agreement and academics didn't like that. So they tried to making everything plural, but that felt stilted (Sorcerers are powerful spellcasters. They have mighty magic. What? Oh, what happens if a sorcerer gets silenced. When sorcerers get silenced, they... look, I can't talk about one sorcerer. Why? BECAUSE. You're putting me in a corner here, zer.).

It went on and on. The academics were passionately feuding when I graduated. Good riddance.

Point being, if the "singular they" was a storied tradition of English with a normal use case, that debate WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN HAPPENING. You are woefully misinformed.

Also, no... I'm not trying to humble-brag by mentioning my degrees. I don't consider spending years in English Major poverty as I trained to be an accountant anything to brag about, but people seem to think that when I talk about this and no, I am not bragging. It was a bad life decision that I regretted for literally years, haha.

Also, back on-topic... that quest made me think about ALL of the above. It took me completely out of the moment. But again, it was a small thing. This event was great. I hope more are like this. A lot more.

Edit addition: also, I'm not joking about the academics debating. It was weird and it sucked. Depending on the professor, you had to change your entire use of pronouns and sentence structures. Also, none of them would warn you. You just had to feel each one of them out. I loathed the shifting goalposts.

Edit addition addition: fixed two typos. I'm sloppy in my older age, but I feel like I should tone down the typos in a post where I mention having an English degree. You know, out of a sense of propriety. Guffaw!

From another fancy language-related degree holder, singular "they" is not only older than Billy-boy Shakespeare's use of it, it wasn't solely used "mistakenly." And if you're mad about singular "they," you must be furious about singular "you."

But, of course, your posting history (in particular, previously removed posts) makes it clear it's not actually about being a language stickler that's your issue.

I think a lot of the issue people have with the writing is that they aren't USED to the types of terms and language used. If "tank" had been in play in Elder Scrolls language since like Oblivion days, no one would much care. There's a bunch of speech in Elder Scrolls pre-ESO that is much more modern than you'd expect in this type of fantasy, but because it's so widely used across fantasy in general, not just TES, we don't notice it, even if it wouldn't really make sense for what it's being used in. So, yeah, "tank" used in the context of a gaming term caught me off-guard, as does that guy in Gonfalon Bay who keeps saying "This sucks!" But I know it's because I'm not used to hearing it in ESO or Elder Scrolls in general, and it wouldn't bother me overly much if I were.