it looks like ZOS wanted to separate flavour text from the text actually describing the skill.

And honestly to me Dragonknight passives look better to read than Arcanist.
I am guessing and hoping that they will reformat other class passives similarly, including Arcanist.

ZOS_Zenke wrote: »

The DK, on the other hand, is a very well-established experience in our minds. We've been playing the DK for years!

My thought was that suddenly announcing that there are orders of Dragonknights we've never talked about before (or the like), felt like the wrong approach. Which is why these flavor lines focus more on vibes and the experience of being a DK, rather than explicit worldbuilding.

Thank you all for caring about the use of AI-generated text in our project. This is something we all care deeply about as well, and I hope we can continue to talk about stuff like this in the future in a positive way.

Skills and passives, all these flavor bits are like a little window to look in for "who and how they are". ESO's classes aren't typical range/melee/tank/healer archetypes, and that makes them unique and questions about their lore come all by themselves, how-when-why all these schools, clans, orders, teachings were founded and established.
So, it would be great if the lore of the older classes were expanded one day. Or/and treated with care of what we already have.
Future reworks are still suited for this wink wink

@ZOS_Zenke Thank you for your response, I and many others will always appreciate and support transparency.

Probably a hot take but I don't want to see any more of these roleplay tidbits in the passive descriptions. When I go to read a passive I want to know what it does and how I can use it in my build. I don't want to waste my time reading meaningless guff that doesn't affect what the passive does or how it's used. Besides, as someone who's dabbled into programming, I know exactly where each passive comes from in the context of the game: They all come from the brain of a designer at ZOS and are made to work by a programmer who wrote their code.

C_Inside wrote: »

Probably a hot take but I don't want to see any more of these roleplay tidbits in the passive descriptions. When I go to read a passive I want to know what it does and how I can use it in my build. I don't want to waste my time reading meaningless guff that doesn't affect what the passive does or how it's used. Besides, as someone who's dabbled into programming, I know exactly where each passive comes from in the context of the game: They all come from the brain of a designer at ZOS and are made to work by a programmer who wrote their code.

Hot take, but if all that matters to you is math, you might as well play an excel sheet instead of a game.
Following that logic, if roleplay tidbits don't matter to you in an MMORPG then maybe you'd prefer if all the unnecessary textures got removed so we could see just the hitboxes and collision boxes which would also vastly improve performance? No, that's a horrible idea. Just like Super Mario wouldn't be the same if you replaced Mario with a square and the enemies with trapezoids. It wouldn't be the same.

The flavour is the stuff that ultimately makes us care about the numbers and calculations. Keep the tidbits.

We can have a conversation about improving clarity in skill descriptions, like which passives apply where - but that's an entirely unrelated conversation to the lore tidbits, because we can already see creative solutions for this in other games through colour coding and symbol language without the tidbits being sacrificed there.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

Probably a hot take but I don't want to see any more of these roleplay tidbits in the passive descriptions. When I go to read a passive I want to know what it does and how I can use it in my build. I don't want to waste my time reading meaningless guff that doesn't affect what the passive does or how it's used. Besides, as someone who's dabbled into programming, I know exactly where each passive comes from in the context of the game: They all come from the brain of a designer at ZOS and are made to work by a programmer who wrote their code.

Hot take, but if all that matters to you is math, you might as well play an excel sheet instead of a game.
Following that logic, if roleplay tidbits don't matter to you in an MMORPG then maybe you'd prefer if all the unnecessary textures got removed so we could see just the hitboxes and collision boxes which would also vastly improve performance? No, that's a horrible idea. Just like Super Mario wouldn't be the same if you replaced Mario with a square and the enemies with trapezoids. It wouldn't be the same.

The flavour is the stuff that ultimately makes us care about the numbers and calculations. Keep the tidbits.

We can have a conversation about improving clarity in skill descriptions, like which passives apply where - but that's an entirely unrelated conversation to the lore tidbits, because we can already see creative solutions for this in other games through colour coding and symbol language without the tidbits being sacrificed there.

That's a lot of mental gymnastics you're doing. I just said I don't want meaningless roleplay guff in the description of my passives. How exactly you extrapolated that all I care about is math from that is beyond me.

The point of a description is to describe something. The description of a class passive should do exactly that, describe what they do. Any addition or deviation would just make it less efficient for no reason. Hence these lore tidbits are a pointless waste of a writer's time imo.

If you want lore then an appropriate way to convey it is through dialogue, quests, lore books, and environmental story telling. Forcing it where it doesn't belong is like shoehorning in Fatecarver's damage value at the start of 36 Lessons of Vivec.

I like the added lore/flavor.

C_Inside wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

Probably a hot take but I don't want to see any more of these roleplay tidbits in the passive descriptions. When I go to read a passive I want to know what it does and how I can use it in my build. I don't want to waste my time reading meaningless guff that doesn't affect what the passive does or how it's used. Besides, as someone who's dabbled into programming, I know exactly where each passive comes from in the context of the game: They all come from the brain of a designer at ZOS and are made to work by a programmer who wrote their code.

Hot take, but if all that matters to you is math, you might as well play an excel sheet instead of a game.
Following that logic, if roleplay tidbits don't matter to you in an MMORPG then maybe you'd prefer if all the unnecessary textures got removed so we could see just the hitboxes and collision boxes which would also vastly improve performance? No, that's a horrible idea. Just like Super Mario wouldn't be the same if you replaced Mario with a square and the enemies with trapezoids. It wouldn't be the same.

The flavour is the stuff that ultimately makes us care about the numbers and calculations. Keep the tidbits.

We can have a conversation about improving clarity in skill descriptions, like which passives apply where - but that's an entirely unrelated conversation to the lore tidbits, because we can already see creative solutions for this in other games through colour coding and symbol language without the tidbits being sacrificed there.

That's a lot of mental gymnastics you're doing. I just said I don't want meaningless roleplay guff in the description of my passives. How exactly you extrapolated that all I care about is math from that is beyond me.

The point of a description is to describe something. The description of a class passive should do exactly that, describe what they do. Any addition or deviation would just make it less efficient for no reason. Hence these lore tidbits are a pointless waste of a writer's time imo.

If you want lore then an appropriate way to convey it is through dialogue, quests, lore books, and environmental story telling. Forcing it where it doesn't belong is like shoehorning in Fatecarver's damage value at the start of 36 Lessons of Vivec.

Right, because descriptions about the class you are playing, about your literal character, the role that you play in this game and in the world - all that is "meaningless roleplay guff" and should be delivered entirely externally, where you don't have to read it. Because that makes so much sense.
Why do abilities even have names and descriptions anyway?
Pierce Armor might as well read:

"1H&S A1" - instant 5000 Phys. damage 7m Taunt MBreach mBreach.

That's all the relevant info you need. Everything else would just make it less efficient for no reason. /sarcasm

Do you see how silly this is? What you are suggesting is the same kind of nonsense.
Yes, the point of a description is to describe something - but you are so lazer focused on the efficiency and math part of it that you selfishly want to get rid of the lore descriptions that others actually want in their game. This might blow your mind, but there are these games that used to have stats with names like "Agility", "Intelligence", "Endurance", "Willpower" etc. They are called RPGs and the people that play them did not care that their character stat sheet said "16 Agility" instead of "8% roll dodge cost reduction". We have the technology to convey the relevant info to people that care about it. Anything beyond that is asking to get rid of the RPG in the MMORPG.

If it's efficiency you care about, how about you ask the combat devs why "Critical Rating" is still a thing and not just a %value already, because that's something that actually gets in the way of efficiency because of the conversions people need to do. Or ask about why sets like Yandir's Might do not tell you how long the duration of their stacks is. Plenty of bigger fish to fry here than asking for the removal of skill and passive flavour text that was added for a reason.

Honestly even before ZOS answered, I have not taken them for AI. They are to poetic in a way.

Fire cares not for love, or coin, or creed. It consumes.

I think an AI would have written way more generic (figurative or metaphorical descriptions are to me everything but generic). Also "creed" is not a word I would expect being used by AI, as its not really much used in usual day to day language. The way AI works is by taking probabilities of a word following another, "Creed" won't be high on that statistic.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

Probably a hot take but I don't want to see any more of these roleplay tidbits in the passive descriptions. When I go to read a passive I want to know what it does and how I can use it in my build. I don't want to waste my time reading meaningless guff that doesn't affect what the passive does or how it's used. Besides, as someone who's dabbled into programming, I know exactly where each passive comes from in the context of the game: They all come from the brain of a designer at ZOS and are made to work by a programmer who wrote their code.

Hot take, but if all that matters to you is math, you might as well play an excel sheet instead of a game.
Following that logic, if roleplay tidbits don't matter to you in an MMORPG then maybe you'd prefer if all the unnecessary textures got removed so we could see just the hitboxes and collision boxes which would also vastly improve performance? No, that's a horrible idea. Just like Super Mario wouldn't be the same if you replaced Mario with a square and the enemies with trapezoids. It wouldn't be the same.

The flavour is the stuff that ultimately makes us care about the numbers and calculations. Keep the tidbits.

We can have a conversation about improving clarity in skill descriptions, like which passives apply where - but that's an entirely unrelated conversation to the lore tidbits, because we can already see creative solutions for this in other games through colour coding and symbol language without the tidbits being sacrificed there.

That's a lot of mental gymnastics you're doing. I just said I don't want meaningless roleplay guff in the description of my passives. How exactly you extrapolated that all I care about is math from that is beyond me.

The point of a description is to describe something. The description of a class passive should do exactly that, describe what they do. Any addition or deviation would just make it less efficient for no reason. Hence these lore tidbits are a pointless waste of a writer's time imo.

If you want lore then an appropriate way to convey it is through dialogue, quests, lore books, and environmental story telling. Forcing it where it doesn't belong is like shoehorning in Fatecarver's damage value at the start of 36 Lessons of Vivec.

Right, because descriptions about the class you are playing, about your literal character, the role that you play in this game and in the world - all that is "meaningless roleplay guff" and should be delivered entirely externally, where you don't have to read it. Because that makes so much sense.
Why do abilities even have names and descriptions anyway?
Pierce Armor might as well read:

"1H&S A1" - instant 5000 Phys. damage 7m Taunt MBreach mBreach.

That's all the relevant info you need. Everything else would just make it less efficient for no reason. /sarcasm

Do you see how silly this is? What you are suggesting is the same kind of nonsense.
Yes, the point of a description is to describe something - but you are so lazer focused on the efficiency and math part of it that you selfishly want to get rid of the lore descriptions that others actually want in their game. This might blow your mind, but there are these games that used to have stats with names like "Agility", "Intelligence", "Endurance", "Willpower" etc. They are called RPGs and the people that play them did not care that their character stat sheet said "16 Agility" instead of "8% roll dodge cost reduction". We have the technology to convey the relevant info to people that care about it. Anything beyond that is asking to get rid of the RPG in the MMORPG.

If it's efficiency you care about, how about you ask the combat devs why "Critical Rating" is still a thing and not just a %value already, because that's something that actually gets in the way of efficiency because of the conversions people need to do. Or ask about why sets like Yandir's Might do not tell you how long the duration of their stacks is. Plenty of bigger fish to fry here than asking for the removal of skill and passive flavour text that was added for a reason.

All I said was I don't want meaningless roleplay tidbits in the descriptions of my class passives. It's very weird that you consider this to be "nonsense" when we had it like that for 9 years before Arcanist started including them.

The class descriptions when you're making your character, dialogue during quests, lorebooks, etc, are all perfectly acceptable and reasonable avenues to explore your class' lore. The whole point of those avenues is to explore the lore. The description of a class passive is not imo. Its purpose is to give you information about what the passive does. Nothing more, nothing less, and I would very much like it to remain that way.

Also, "selfishly want to get rid of the lore descriptions that others actually want in their game"? Mate you do realize this argument can be swung the other way, right? You are so laser focused on your roleplay that you selfishly want to shoehorn it in places where others don't actually want it and where it doesn't belong.

C_Inside wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

Probably a hot take but I don't want to see any more of these roleplay tidbits in the passive descriptions. When I go to read a passive I want to know what it does and how I can use it in my build. I don't want to waste my time reading meaningless guff that doesn't affect what the passive does or how it's used. Besides, as someone who's dabbled into programming, I know exactly where each passive comes from in the context of the game: They all come from the brain of a designer at ZOS and are made to work by a programmer who wrote their code.

Hot take, but if all that matters to you is math, you might as well play an excel sheet instead of a game.
Following that logic, if roleplay tidbits don't matter to you in an MMORPG then maybe you'd prefer if all the unnecessary textures got removed so we could see just the hitboxes and collision boxes which would also vastly improve performance? No, that's a horrible idea. Just like Super Mario wouldn't be the same if you replaced Mario with a square and the enemies with trapezoids. It wouldn't be the same.

The flavour is the stuff that ultimately makes us care about the numbers and calculations. Keep the tidbits.

We can have a conversation about improving clarity in skill descriptions, like which passives apply where - but that's an entirely unrelated conversation to the lore tidbits, because we can already see creative solutions for this in other games through colour coding and symbol language without the tidbits being sacrificed there.

That's a lot of mental gymnastics you're doing. I just said I don't want meaningless roleplay guff in the description of my passives. How exactly you extrapolated that all I care about is math from that is beyond me.

The point of a description is to describe something. The description of a class passive should do exactly that, describe what they do. Any addition or deviation would just make it less efficient for no reason. Hence these lore tidbits are a pointless waste of a writer's time imo.

If you want lore then an appropriate way to convey it is through dialogue, quests, lore books, and environmental story telling. Forcing it where it doesn't belong is like shoehorning in Fatecarver's damage value at the start of 36 Lessons of Vivec.

Right, because descriptions about the class you are playing, about your literal character, the role that you play in this game and in the world - all that is "meaningless roleplay guff" and should be delivered entirely externally, where you don't have to read it. Because that makes so much sense.
Why do abilities even have names and descriptions anyway?
Pierce Armor might as well read:

"1H&S A1" - instant 5000 Phys. damage 7m Taunt MBreach mBreach.

That's all the relevant info you need. Everything else would just make it less efficient for no reason. /sarcasm

Do you see how silly this is? What you are suggesting is the same kind of nonsense.
Yes, the point of a description is to describe something - but you are so lazer focused on the efficiency and math part of it that you selfishly want to get rid of the lore descriptions that others actually want in their game. This might blow your mind, but there are these games that used to have stats with names like "Agility", "Intelligence", "Endurance", "Willpower" etc. They are called RPGs and the people that play them did not care that their character stat sheet said "16 Agility" instead of "8% roll dodge cost reduction". We have the technology to convey the relevant info to people that care about it. Anything beyond that is asking to get rid of the RPG in the MMORPG.

If it's efficiency you care about, how about you ask the combat devs why "Critical Rating" is still a thing and not just a %value already, because that's something that actually gets in the way of efficiency because of the conversions people need to do. Or ask about why sets like Yandir's Might do not tell you how long the duration of their stacks is. Plenty of bigger fish to fry here than asking for the removal of skill and passive flavour text that was added for a reason.

All I said was I don't want meaningless roleplay tidbits in the descriptions of my class passives. It's very weird that you consider this to be "nonsense" when we had it like that for 9 years before Arcanist started including them.

The class descriptions when you're making your character, dialogue during quests, lorebooks, etc, are all perfectly acceptable and reasonable avenues to explore your class' lore. The whole point of those avenues is to explore the lore. The description of a class passive is not imo. Its purpose is to give you information about what the passive does. Nothing more, nothing less, and I would very much like it to remain that way.

Also, "selfishly want to get rid of the lore descriptions that others actually want in their game"? Mate you do realize this argument can be swung the other way, right? You are so laser focused on your roleplay that you selfishly want to shoehorn it in places where others don't actually want it and where it doesn't belong.

C_Inside wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

Probably a hot take but I don't want to see any more of these roleplay tidbits in the passive descriptions. When I go to read a passive I want to know what it does and how I can use it in my build. I don't want to waste my time reading meaningless guff that doesn't affect what the passive does or how it's used. Besides, as someone who's dabbled into programming, I know exactly where each passive comes from in the context of the game: They all come from the brain of a designer at ZOS and are made to work by a programmer who wrote their code.

Hot take, but if all that matters to you is math, you might as well play an excel sheet instead of a game.
Following that logic, if roleplay tidbits don't matter to you in an MMORPG then maybe you'd prefer if all the unnecessary textures got removed so we could see just the hitboxes and collision boxes which would also vastly improve performance? No, that's a horrible idea. Just like Super Mario wouldn't be the same if you replaced Mario with a square and the enemies with trapezoids. It wouldn't be the same.

The flavour is the stuff that ultimately makes us care about the numbers and calculations. Keep the tidbits.

We can have a conversation about improving clarity in skill descriptions, like which passives apply where - but that's an entirely unrelated conversation to the lore tidbits, because we can already see creative solutions for this in other games through colour coding and symbol language without the tidbits being sacrificed there.

That's a lot of mental gymnastics you're doing. I just said I don't want meaningless roleplay guff in the description of my passives. How exactly you extrapolated that all I care about is math from that is beyond me.

The point of a description is to describe something. The description of a class passive should do exactly that, describe what they do. Any addition or deviation would just make it less efficient for no reason. Hence these lore tidbits are a pointless waste of a writer's time imo.

If you want lore then an appropriate way to convey it is through dialogue, quests, lore books, and environmental story telling. Forcing it where it doesn't belong is like shoehorning in Fatecarver's damage value at the start of 36 Lessons of Vivec.

Right, because descriptions about the class you are playing, about your literal character, the role that you play in this game and in the world - all that is "meaningless roleplay guff" and should be delivered entirely externally, where you don't have to read it. Because that makes so much sense.
Why do abilities even have names and descriptions anyway?
Pierce Armor might as well read:

"1H&S A1" - instant 5000 Phys. damage 7m Taunt MBreach mBreach.

That's all the relevant info you need. Everything else would just make it less efficient for no reason. /sarcasm

Do you see how silly this is? What you are suggesting is the same kind of nonsense.
Yes, the point of a description is to describe something - but you are so lazer focused on the efficiency and math part of it that you selfishly want to get rid of the lore descriptions that others actually want in their game. This might blow your mind, but there are these games that used to have stats with names like "Agility", "Intelligence", "Endurance", "Willpower" etc. They are called RPGs and the people that play them did not care that their character stat sheet said "16 Agility" instead of "8% roll dodge cost reduction". We have the technology to convey the relevant info to people that care about it. Anything beyond that is asking to get rid of the RPG in the MMORPG.

If it's efficiency you care about, how about you ask the combat devs why "Critical Rating" is still a thing and not just a %value already, because that's something that actually gets in the way of efficiency because of the conversions people need to do. Or ask about why sets like Yandir's Might do not tell you how long the duration of their stacks is. Plenty of bigger fish to fry here than asking for the removal of skill and passive flavour text that was added for a reason.

All I said was I don't want meaningless roleplay tidbits in the descriptions of my class passives. It's very weird that you consider this to be "nonsense" when we had it like that for 9 years before Arcanist started including them.

The class descriptions when you're making your character, dialogue during quests, lorebooks, etc, are all perfectly acceptable and reasonable avenues to explore your class' lore. The whole point of those avenues is to explore the lore. The description of a class passive is not imo. Its purpose is to give you information about what the passive does. Nothing more, nothing less, and I would very much like it to remain that way.

Also, "selfishly want to get rid of the lore descriptions that others actually want in their game"? Mate you do realize this argument can be swung the other way, right? You are so laser focused on your roleplay that you selfishly want to shoehorn it in places where others don't actually want it and where it doesn't belong.

It is nonsense. It's not like Arcanist passives are completely unreadable. You may find it cringe, and, sure, we can talk about the specifics of how hit-or-miss many of them are. But you are acting like the very idea of flavour text is somehow harmful, despite the many games out there that have it and are better for it. That is nonsense.
But sure, we could even have a setting switching detailed descriptions and "efficient" descriptions on everything.
The possibilities are infinite and yet the solution you came up with is "get rid of it". That's dumb and frankly, a skill issue.

ZOS_Zenke wrote: »

Hey everyone! Michael Zenke here, Loremaster at large and incredible fan of flavor text.

I just wanted to call out that these were not made with AI. All of the text shipped for the Elder Scrolls Online is hand-written, by humans, no exceptions.

The Arcanist strings, as well as these Dragonknight entries, were an attempt by us to inject a little more context and flavor into our skills. The feedback I'm seeing here that the Arcanist was more successful on this front is super interesting, and I want to say I deeply appreciate that you all care enough to think about them.

For some behind the scenes on this, Dragonknight and the other 'base game' classes offer a bit of a different challenge than Arcanist did. As a brand-new class, we had kind of 'blue ocean' (Mora joke) to explore when it came to their lore context. Hence the references to ancient Arcanist orders and mysterious figures.

The DK, on the other hand, is a very well-established experience in our minds. We've been playing the DK for years!

My thought was that suddenly announcing that there are orders of Dragonknights we've never talked about before (or the like), felt like the wrong approach. Which is why these flavor lines focus more on vibes and the experience of being a DK, rather than explicit worldbuilding.

Thank you all for caring about the use of AI-generated text in our project. This is something we all care deeply about as well, and I hope we can continue to talk about stuff like this in the future in a positive way.

Is this rationale the same used for the flavor text added to the Werewolf skills/passives in Update 50? Also, we know that werewolves have insatiable hunger — but since "Devour" is more of a synergy than a passive, asking us to press the button to "Insatiable Hunger" a corpse doesn't read as clearly. Hopefully Vampire's "Feed" isn't renamed to "Bloodthirst" or something, for the same reason.

The flavor text is cool, but when I'm looking at abilities, I'd rather see the function more clearly. Maybe the flavor text can be colored differently or made italicized so that we know it's separate from the part of the ability which describes its function?

@ZOS_Zenke

Ratzkifal wrote: »

ZOS_Zenke wrote: »

Hey everyone! Michael Zenke here, Loremaster at large and incredible fan of flavor text.

I just wanted to call out that these were not made with AI. All of the text shipped for the Elder Scrolls Online is hand-written, by humans, no exceptions.

The Arcanist strings, as well as these Dragonknight entries, were an attempt by us to inject a little more context and flavor into our skills. The feedback I'm seeing here that the Arcanist was more successful on this front is super interesting, and I want to say I deeply appreciate that you all care enough to think about them.

For some behind the scenes on this, Dragonknight and the other 'base game' classes offer a bit of a different challenge than Arcanist did. As a brand-new class, we had kind of 'blue ocean' (Mora joke) to explore when it came to their lore context. Hence the references to ancient Arcanist orders and mysterious figures.

The DK, on the other hand, is a very well-established experience in our minds. We've been playing the DK for years!

My thought was that suddenly announcing that there are orders of Dragonknights we've never talked about before (or the like), felt like the wrong approach. Which is why these flavor lines focus more on vibes and the experience of being a DK, rather than explicit worldbuilding.

Thank you all for caring about the use of AI-generated text in our project. This is something we all care deeply about as well, and I hope we can continue to talk about stuff like this in the future in a positive way.

@ZOS_Zenke Thanks for the quick response! I do have a follow-up question regarding the DK passive "The Storm Voice".
Do you take this as confirmation that Dragonknights are using the Storm Voice aka Thu'um? All of them? Or are we to understand these flavour texts as something others attribute onto Dragonknights which may or may not reflect the truth?

It was my understanding from what little books we do have on Dragonknights, that they are a kind of practitioner of Akaviri/Tsaesci martial arts with no (direct) connection to the Thu'um, who are applying ordinary magic in a colourful way to look like dragons. Or that alternatively, being part of their martial art the "Akaviri Kiai" - like Dwemer Tonal Architecture or the Thu'um - is a kind of reality-warping sound-based magic that gives Dragonknights their draconic powers while also being distinct and separate from the Thu'um / The Storm Voice.
The most boring explanation would be that the Akaviri Kiai and the Thu'um are one and the same, which would also make the description of the Thu'um in "Children of the Sky" very redundant. But it would explain why DK's have that passive.

If I could make a suggestion I would change this passive to be more ambiguously worded, perhaps referencing Reman ("Reman's Battlecry"?), which would neatly tie Tsaesci Akaviri lore, dragonborn, the Thu'um, the Blades and Dragonknights together without confirming or denying anything and keeping the mystery alive. Personally, I would find that preferable to Dragonknights being confirmed to using the Thu'um. It's not the Dovahkiin class after all.

I'm thinking the Storm Voice passive is talking about the Kiai, not the Thu'um.

ZOS_Zenke wrote: »

Hey everyone! Michael Zenke here, Loremaster at large and incredible fan of flavor text.

I just wanted to call out that these were not made with AI. All of the text shipped for the Elder Scrolls Online is hand-written, by humans, no exceptions.

The Arcanist strings, as well as these Dragonknight entries, were an attempt by us to inject a little more context and flavor into our skills. The feedback I'm seeing here that the Arcanist was more successful on this front is super interesting, and I want to say I deeply appreciate that you all care enough to think about them.

For some behind the scenes on this, Dragonknight and the other 'base game' classes offer a bit of a different challenge than Arcanist did. As a brand-new class, we had kind of 'blue ocean' (Mora joke) to explore when it came to their lore context. Hence the references to ancient Arcanist orders and mysterious figures.

The DK, on the other hand, is a very well-established experience in our minds. We've been playing the DK for years!

My thought was that suddenly announcing that there are orders of Dragonknights we've never talked about before (or the like), felt like the wrong approach. Which is why these flavor lines focus more on vibes and the experience of being a DK, rather than explicit worldbuilding.

Thank you all for caring about the use of AI-generated text in our project. This is something we all care deeply about as well, and I hope we can continue to talk about stuff like this in the future in a positive way.

Hi Zenke! Thanks for the response on this topic. Whilst I did not believe it was AI I did find the DK ones a bit lackluster compared to Arcanist's. Arcanist's abilities had lovely lore fluff that even the UESP lore page on the class was able to source them as reference. DK's meanwhile, they're neat but they really are fluff in the most literal sense.
IMO you shouldn't be afraid about introducing orders, referring to texts, figures in lore and so on like Arc did. Perhaps Warden's passives can mention Boldekh, the Warden from the cinematic (or his fallen companion!). Maybe Nightblade's could refer to Azra Nightwielder's studies and so on. Things like these make the classes feel less "ESO-Y" and more as a part of Tamriel, instead of them just being almost isolated things.

However the other suggestion of class based quests being made is something I love also, but can see why that takes up time than skill lore.

BloodstainedFay wrote: »

ZOS_Zenke wrote: »

Hey everyone! Michael Zenke here, Loremaster at large and incredible fan of flavor text.

I just wanted to call out that these were not made with AI. All of the text shipped for the Elder Scrolls Online is hand-written, by humans, no exceptions.

The Arcanist strings, as well as these Dragonknight entries, were an attempt by us to inject a little more context and flavor into our skills. The feedback I'm seeing here that the Arcanist was more successful on this front is super interesting, and I want to say I deeply appreciate that you all care enough to think about them.

For some behind the scenes on this, Dragonknight and the other 'base game' classes offer a bit of a different challenge than Arcanist did. As a brand-new class, we had kind of 'blue ocean' (Mora joke) to explore when it came to their lore context. Hence the references to ancient Arcanist orders and mysterious figures.

The DK, on the other hand, is a very well-established experience in our minds. We've been playing the DK for years!

My thought was that suddenly announcing that there are orders of Dragonknights we've never talked about before (or the like), felt like the wrong approach. Which is why these flavor lines focus more on vibes and the experience of being a DK, rather than explicit worldbuilding.

Thank you all for caring about the use of AI-generated text in our project. This is something we all care deeply about as well, and I hope we can continue to talk about stuff like this in the future in a positive way.

Hi Zenke! Thanks for the response on this topic. Whilst I did not believe it was AI I did find the DK ones a bit lackluster compared to Arcanist's. Arcanist's abilities had lovely lore fluff that even the UESP lore page on the class was able to source them as reference. DK's meanwhile, they're neat but they really are fluff in the most literal sense.
IMO you shouldn't be afraid about introducing orders, referring to texts, figures in lore and so on like Arc did. Perhaps Warden's passives can mention Boldekh, the Warden from the cinematic (or his fallen companion!). Maybe Nightblade's could refer to Azra Nightwielder's studies and so on. Things like these make the classes feel less "ESO-Y" and more as a part of Tamriel, instead of them just being almost isolated things.

However the other suggestion of class based quests being made is something I love also, but can see why that takes up time than skill lore.

I agree with this take. I'd like future descriptions to share something about how we go about using the abilities or why we have them. General statements like "fire burns" is kind of just here and doesn't really add to class lore or our characters.