FEEDBACK: I Don't Like Thieves Guild Content (And Dark Brotherhood For That Matter)

Horace-Wimp · July 13

TL;DR: It's optional content so don't do it. Problem solved.

I am not a fan of Thieved Guild content. I know I don't HAVE to do it and I probably won't complete much of it in Season One. I just don't have the patience needed to play it. I find it boring and TEDIOUS - picking locks, sneaking past NPCs, trespassing, etc. all while under a timer. When I fail instead of trying again I just logoff for the reasons I mentioned. Especially the TEDIOUSNESS of it all. Admittedly, I am still burned out from Season Zero and chasing Champion Points and the last thing I want to do is more questing right now. Granted, the two quests I have done are well designed and the 'connect the dots' path made it relatively easy to complete.

I just wanted to give you folks this feedback. That's all.

Oh yeah! These 'Challenges' that have replaced the old Daily Endeavours. Can you offer fetch tasks like the ones we had when there were Daily Endeavours? Instead of fetch 15 runestones or cloth plants or ore or whatever can you instead offer fetch 15 of anything involving gathering? We had those kinds of Endeavours but I haven't seen anything like them with these new 'Challenges.' This is something else that's been bugging me the last couple of months.

I still have plenty of surveys but it would be nice to not have to gather 90 or 180 of one specific material to get those Tome Points. I think others would agree it would make the 'Challenges' more fun if we could just gather 90 or 180 of any material instead of one specific kind. If you keep logs of what I did and did not complete from Season Zero you'll see that the 'Challenges' I did NOT complete were those. I re-rolled as much as I could but stopped when the gold cost got too much for my liking.

I know this looks like a "first world problem." Simple solution: don't do it. But maybe this is how I am recognizing what others have been saying for months, "ESO is no fun and that's why it's lost so many customers." I could be wrong though. /shrug

kind_hero · July 13

From my point of view, the Nowhere Vault quest should have been better placed in the Antiquarian Circle or Order of the Lamp / Mages Guild, rather than Thieves Guild. I know people who don't like thieving or want to play as a lawful character, so "forcing" people to do Thieves Guild wasn't really needed. Besides, I believe that Thieves Guild could have some really fun quests related to actual thieving, not magic realms.

I laughed, but was also annoyed, when the Lion Guard captain remembered me saving Glenumbra, and accusing me of siding with criminals. It wasn't me, captain, it was ZOS! They made do it!

Regarding "challenges", I totally agree. You said there will be less FOMO, but I see only some reskinned chores. For example, last "tome" I beat Knight Commander Panthius in the Kvatch arena so many times, that I really don't see that place again, even in TES4 where it's destroyed. It isn't fun. People end up camping the same bosses, we wait for respawns and do nothing interesting. In what way is this a tome? I thought tomes were old books with many stories or obscure texts. I don't feel that I am writing an adventure or a tome, by gathering runes or wood.

I would make these challenges more generic, like do x delve dailies or quests, x world bosses, gather x writ vouchers. However, I would tie these challenges to something that can be measured as a common goal, like the events when the servers would work to unlock milestones and rewards. Last but not least, I believe there are to many collectibles with every event or tome, and they get more and more ridiculous or flashy, like the rooster.

tomofhyrule · July 13

For me, it’s more an RP focused thing: my character is morally good, so I dislike being pressured into unlawful activities/guilds. That was really why I was rolling my eyes since the Dark Brotherhood stuff was teased, since I avoid those on my main because murder is not one of his activities.
(And then the “I’m just doing it for the achievements” crowd got bit in the butt during Blackwood, since you had to tell Eveli that you were a member in good standing during that one quest even if your RP was not)

I’ll do it on my TG alt, but I will say that both of the stories this year are designed for players who are not considering their characters on the Lawful side. I do feel a bit pushed out from that.

And if the entire raison d’etre of the Nowhere Vault is “I’m breaking and entering,” that also feels like something designed for people who are of the roguish persuasion. I’d prefer not to have to be railroaded into breaking the law.

As for the Challenges, there need to be way more options. There were so many different Endeavors we could get before, and last season brought a grand total of 23 different tasks over three months. Of course we all got every one multiple times.

DenverRalphy · July 13

There's no need to actually do any Thiefy activities in the questline. You can just hack n slash your way through all of it without picking locks or sneaking. The only lock that needs to be picked is at the very beginning, and it's a Trivial difficulty simply clicking Force Lock gets you through it in a blink.

anadandy · July 13

tomofhyrule wrote: »

And if the entire raison d’etre of the Nowhere Vault is “I’m breaking and entering,” that also feels like something designed for people who are of the roguish persuasion. I’d prefer not to have to be railroaded into breaking the law.

Trying to avoid spoilers, but as the quest proceeds it is clear that's not the raison d’etre of the Vault even of it seems to start that way. It is weird they tied it to the TG but I'm OK with it as it played out.

Gagoimaliu · July 13

I loved the stealth sections (even ones that were enraging like the Lion Guard quest near the end of Thieve's Guild 2) because it forces me to slow down, to think "Oh I can go through here, to there, wait for the guard to pass"

Usually as a Dragonknight my gameplay loop is just "Kill anything that moves" which gets old after the 50th time. And Abah's Landing gave me some vibes of being 11 and playing Prince of Persia way back in the day

Nemesis7884 · July 13

Can we just stop these pointless "i personally dont like this one aspect of this massively multiplayer game so dont do it"
They are abolutely pointless - guess what its not your game, its ours and a lot of people enjoy it.

karthrag_inak · July 13

khajiit has been having a ball. Everything this year has been great! This one is actually quite sad the Night Market is not still around, lthough it is understandable that making it periodic retains some bit of its novelty. Khajiit eagerly awaits its return.

And Thieves guild content... dont get khajiit started! At the risk of sounding like a cliche, khajiit LOVES Thieves guild quests. Khajiit has finished base game TG quests on all 19 Khajiit characters (and of course the 1 Argonian with fluffy delusions as well) and, since she loves heists, has maxed rapport with Ember on all 20 characters as well, along with every achievement, activity, ability, benchmark or skill that is even remotely related to sneaking, pickpocketing, or any other method of wealth redistribution or property-law reinterpretation.

So when khajiit saw that they were building on the already sleek and delightful TG story with more adventures, this one squealed with delight (literally- you can ask Mrs Karth, she witnessed, and rolled her eyes at, khajiit's profound excitement)

The quests have been great fun. Khajiit has made it through the full quest on two of his khajiit, and earned all the pieces for the TG armory except one.

Khajiit's only complaints - (not the yvierry gate lock, which this one actually enjoyed the challenge of finding. First challenging lock khajiit has faced in nearly a decade)

1. Nowhere keys are living up to their name a bit too literally. khajiit assumes this is an oversight and will be adjusted soon.

2. No khajiit in TG proper in any official capacity AGAIN. What kind of bald-bottom shenanigans and nonsense is this? Khajiit finds this last omission frankly most disappointing and even somewhat offensive . Seriously? All the best thieves in Glenumbra and the region and no Khajiit would rise to the top? For.real? we have a Redguard AGAIN and two bald-bottom women of nondescript but markedly non-khajiit heritage (Khajiit apologizes - most bald-bottoms look kinda the same to this one. Is quite vexing to tell them apart, it is known) but no Khajiit?

Other than this, though, these new quests have been delightful and most welcome

tomofhyrule · July 13

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

Can we just stop these pointless "i personally dont like this one aspect of this massively multiplayer game so dont do it"
They are abolutely pointless - guess what its not your game, its ours and a lot of people enjoy it.

None of the posts have been hostile, so I don’t know why you are taking such offense to it. Nobody’s coming around with “ugh ZOS sux b/c I hate it and I’m the only one who matters.”

Some people like this. Some don’t. But if a story railroads you into something, then you will be default turn people off.

Let’s use Skyrim as an example: they added a whole questline with the Dark Brotherhood. But what about goodie-two-shoes players who don’t enjoy playing sneaky stabby? Well, they had an alternate ending to that questline that involved destroying it. In essence, there was a path for the evil morality and a path for the good morality.

Obviously ESO can’t be as expansive as something like BG3 where you can do literally anything. But by railroading a specific quest path, you are breaking peoples’ RP if they wouldn’t normally do it. See also the number of complaints after High Isle’s story of “but I want to work with the Ascendant Lord because I also hate the alliance war and how it tramples on the people! Why can’t we work with him?”

The further problem there is when storytellers mandate that one side is “good” and the other is “evil” because shades of grey are verboten in today’s society, and therefore they’ll then take the designated villain (who may have made good points) and then they are forced to make them jump the shark in the most comically supervillain way just so it’s clear that they’re the bad guy. Again, like High Isle.

Season One is very tailored towards players who enjoy the Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Evil standard morality. As such, it’s not going to hold the interest of players who favor a more Lawful Good standard morality. We’ve had loads of stories that railroad Lawful Good and bore the more Chaotic side. So yes, have things for everyone.
… but as an MMO, that starts to fall apart when the game actively pushes for a one-character-for-everything system, since now you have a character who is railroaded into several different moralities.

One of the biggest complaints about the writing is how disjointed it is. And this is just an example of how it gets so fragmented.

Kiash · July 13

I really enjoyed the new thieves guild stuff personally, but I went into with the idea of "I'm a fallen dragonknight turned to thievery to pay the bills." If I had tried to do it on a character I feel is lawful, or didn't match the content, I could totally see how this was not a fun quest line. It really requires immersing yourself into the role and mindset, and that's not gonna be everyone's jam. Hopefully they'll make something more akin to what you enjoy in the next updates!

wolfie1.0. · July 13

The underlying problem is that character interactions dont have consequences.

Outside of character creation there ar not any real choices that have significant impact to your characters world state, the only two that I think are still around are quests like bleakrock and the last mages guild quests.

The one that frustrated me the most is that apparently the decision of who to sacrifice to defeat Molag Bal is a choice but it really isnt. Canonically the story forces you to act like you sacrificed Varen, even when you didn't. If you sacrifice Sai or Lyris (i am still upset that we cant sacrifice Tharn) they come back in dlcs. Varen even if you save him, has never and will likely never ever return to the game.

AzuraFan · July 13

I pretty much always play good characters in games, except for TES. I always want to do all the guild quests, so I just go ahead and do TG and DB stuff. I'll often skip them on subsequent playthroughs, though.

It's only fair that there's stuff in the game for people who like to play morally gray characters. Not everyone wants to play a goody two shoes.

AScarlato · July 13

Like many roleplaying, I have designated an alt for all the morally ambiguous stuff so pushed my Nightblade into Werewolf/TG/DB all in one.

While most of my hideously saccharine characters won't participate in these quests, I like that they exist for other types of characters and gameplay and to add awareness that there is more going on in the world that we can engage with other than blatant heroism.

SilverBride · July 13

I don't actively roleplay but I have my own inner stories about who my characters are, and they all have their own personalities. I completed Hew's Bane and the Gold Coast on all my characters but only developed the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood skills on one character. She will also be my only character to do the new Thieves Guild quest line.

I created a Dark Brotherhood training facility at Ebonheart Chateau and am going to create a Theives training facility at Rogue's Refuge.

Shlomo666 · July 13

tomofhyrule wrote: »

For me, it’s more an RP focused thing: my character is morally good, so I dislike being pressured into unlawful activities/guilds.

Use or create a RP character who is morally more flexible problem solved.

Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild are an integral part of Elderscrolls games for many,many years.

tomofhyrule · July 13

Shlomo666 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

For me, it’s more an RP focused thing: my character is morally good, so I dislike being pressured into unlawful activities/guilds.

Use or create a RP character who is morally more flexible problem solved.

Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild are an integral part of Elderscrolls games for many,many years.

It feels like you didn’t read my thoughts. Or maybe you just picked one line to object to and ignored the rest.

As I said:

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I’ll do it on my TG alt, but I will say that both of the stories this year are designed for players who are not considering their characters on the Lawful side. I do feel a bit pushed out from that.

I have alts for tgem. I will do these quests on them.

That still doesn’t mean that railroading is a good thing.

Again, as for “but but but DB/TG has been a thing in TES for a while!”
Yes. I know. I acknowledged that too. As I said:

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Let’s use Skyrim as an example: they added a whole questline with the Dark Brotherhood. But what about goodie-two-shoes players who don’t enjoy playing sneaky stabby? Well, they had an alternate ending to that questline that involved destroying it. In essence, there was a path for the evil morality and a path for the good morality.

So there were different paths for different playthroughs. Almost like letting you roleplay in an RPG.

ESO even did used to have meaningful choices in basegame, like how you could play the OG Mages Guild line to save Valaste from Sheogorath or play it on Sheo’s side and give her to him for power. You had a choice.

And again, this is not exclusive to the TG. We had a lot of these gripes back in High Isle, because we were railroaded into helping the Alliances with the peace talks instead of working with the Ascendants overthrowing the squabbling idiots who don’t care about the little people.
But, as in most cases, they saw the Ascendant Lord was making too good of an argument so they had to quick shoehorn in an “I’m actually here to destroy the world lol” plot so we would have a reason to believe think he was the bad guy.

Choices make a good story. Not railroading.

It’d have been cool if they just added dialogue options of “I’m not going to help you steal, but I will protect you from these other bandits” or the like. I don’t think we could reasonably expect a whole alternate version of “I’m working with the city guard to take over the Outlaw’s Refuge,” but giving choices is also a key feature of TES games.

They’re noticing how much people are going nuts over adding a second dialogue option with a heart in front of it so you can flirt. Why not add secondary options for things like “I’ll work with you but we aren’t friends.”?

AScarlato · July 13

tomofhyrule wrote: »

They’re noticing how much people are going nuts over adding a second dialogue option with a heart in front of it so you can flirt. Why not add secondary options for things like “I’ll work with you but we aren’t friends.”?

Most of the heart dialogues don't really change anything. A line here and there and most of these "flirtations" as I can't really call them proper romances go nowhere. Like Raz for example, who says after each one that you can talk about your relationship when the troubles are over but then flees the island before doing so. (LOL)

It seems like more would have to change for these alternate paths in a quest to make them make sense. I don't recall there being "I'll be your bodyguard but don't like your organization" options for TG or DB in other games. I suppose the alternative would be for them to have to write multiple truly branching quests and I'm not sure we have the resources for that. Would be nice though but this likely would have to change the world state to truly work against a faction in a way that this game doesn't.

Pixiepumpkin · July 13

I am with you OP. I think I did the thieves guild questline on one of my toons years ago, I hated it then.

I started the new quest the other night, got done with one quest and logged. Have not played since. It really does nothing for me.

I really wish they'd go back to chapters where we had new zones and new questlines and new enemies or returning enemies to face off against. Maybe some new classes or skill lines. The new "seasons" system does not draw my wife or I in to the game at all.

edit spelling

karthrag_inak · July 13

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

Can we just stop these pointless "i personally dont like this one aspect of this massively multiplayer game so dont do it"
They are abolutely pointless - guess what its not your game, its ours and a lot of people enjoy it.

None of the posts have been hostile, so I don’t know why you are taking such offense to it. Nobody’s coming around with “ugh ZOS sux b/c I hate it and I’m the only one who matters.”

Some people like this. Some don’t. But if a story railroads you into something, then you will be default turn people off.

Let’s use Skyrim as an example: they added a whole questline with the Dark Brotherhood. But what about goodie-two-shoes players who don’t enjoy playing sneaky stabby? Well, they had an alternate ending to that questline that involved destroying it. In essence, there was a path for the evil morality and a path for the good morality.

Obviously ESO can’t be as expansive as something like BG3 where you can do literally anything. But by railroading a specific quest path, you are breaking peoples’ RP if they wouldn’t normally do it. See also the number of complaints after High Isle’s story of “but I want to work with the Ascendant Lord because I also hate the alliance war and how it tramples on the people! Why can’t we work with him?”.

would it not be.delightful if there were a few relatively major quest lines with substantial divergences in the final resolution? Like 'save or destroy the (insert organization name here)' or 'work with or kill the (insert big bad enemy name here)'

Sometimes khajiit is good for money, sometimes khajiit is bad for money. Sometimes the chronological distance between both options is as wide as whisker-tip. Khajiit wishes he had more opportunities to do both.

LootAllTheStuff · July 13

AScarlato wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

They’re noticing how much people are going nuts over adding a second dialogue option with a heart in front of it so you can flirt. Why not add secondary options for things like “I’ll work with you but we aren’t friends.”?

Most of the heart dialogues don't really change anything. A line here and there and most of these "flirtations" as I can't really call them proper romances go nowhere. Like Raz for example, who says after each one that you can talk about your relationship when the troubles are over but then flees the island before doing so. (LOL)

To be fair, that does seem to be totally in keeping for Raz. (Looks back at the N. Elsweyr quests involving him...)

AScarlato · July 13

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

AScarlato wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

They’re noticing how much people are going nuts over adding a second dialogue option with a heart in front of it so you can flirt. Why not add secondary options for things like “I’ll work with you but we aren’t friends.”?

Most of the heart dialogues don't really change anything. A line here and there and most of these "flirtations" as I can't really call them proper romances go nowhere. Like Raz for example, who says after each one that you can talk about your relationship when the troubles are over but then flees the island before doing so. (LOL)

To be fair, that does seem to be totally in keeping for Raz. (Looks back at the N. Elsweyr quests involving him...)

For sure, but I think in general the option to flirt with him or not didn't really change the basic structure of the quests. Most flirts in the game outside Darien all felt very fleeting and just wouldn't be the same level of work as changing the PC's relationship with an entire faction or type of quest.

Horace-Wimp · July 14

I was wrong. I think I confused Golden Pursuit tasks for old Daily Endeavours tasks when it came to gathering crafting materials of one specific type to any crafting material. Oops!

Please accept my apologies.

Lekjih · July 14

kind_hero wrote: »

From my point of view, the Nowhere Vault quest should have been better placed in the Antiquarian Circle or Order of the Lamp / Mages Guild, rather than Thieves Guild. I know people who don't like thieving or want to play as a lawful character, so "forcing" people to do Thieves Guild wasn't really needed. Besides, I believe that Thieves Guild could have some really fun quests related to actual thieving, not magic realms.

I laughed, but was also annoyed, when the Lion Guard captain remembered me saving Glenumbra, and accusing me of siding with criminals. It wasn't me, captain, it was ZOS! They made do it!

I agree with the first bit, but you know, we killed off Gabrielle (it's ok she still writes me letters when I dig stuff up... ) to bring back the increasingly annoying Darien so this was the next best thing.

And I swear the amount of monologuing at the Captain I did. I think of my main char as chaotic good, he's sat there calling me all sorts of names and I just "Sir, I am helping out an old friend. Sir if you don't pipe down I will display martial prowess. Sir. Sir. Sir."

Lekjih · July 14

karthrag_inak wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

Can we just stop these pointless "i personally dont like this one aspect of this massively multiplayer game so dont do it"
They are abolutely pointless - guess what its not your game, its ours and a lot of people enjoy it.

None of the posts have been hostile, so I don’t know why you are taking such offense to it. Nobody’s coming around with “ugh ZOS sux b/c I hate it and I’m the only one who matters.”

Some people like this. Some don’t. But if a story railroads you into something, then you will be default turn people off.

Let’s use Skyrim as an example: they added a whole questline with the Dark Brotherhood. But what about goodie-two-shoes players who don’t enjoy playing sneaky stabby? Well, they had an alternate ending to that questline that involved destroying it. In essence, there was a path for the evil morality and a path for the good morality.

Obviously ESO can’t be as expansive as something like BG3 where you can do literally anything. But by railroading a specific quest path, you are breaking peoples’ RP if they wouldn’t normally do it. See also the number of complaints after High Isle’s story of “but I want to work with the Ascendant Lord because I also hate the alliance war and how it tramples on the people! Why can’t we work with him?”.

would it not be.delightful if there were a few relatively major quest lines with substantial divergences in the final resolution? Like 'save or destroy the (insert organization name here)' or 'work with or kill the (insert big bad enemy name here)'

Sometimes khajiit is good for money, sometimes khajiit is bad for money. Sometimes the chronological distance between both options is as wide as whisker-tip. Khajiit wishes he had more opportunities to do both.

Prince Naemon on Solstice.

MasterSpatula · July 14

Lekjih wrote: »

Prince Naemon on Solstice.

Ah yes, the quest that forced my goody-two-shoes main to murder innocents and harvest their souls. I'm still angry and shocked that was allowed to go anywhere near live. Last year was a weak year for content, and I've considered quitting many times over the years, but that was the first time I've ever seriously considered cancelling and unistalling over the writing/quest design.

And yeah, I'll just skip to an alt to do the questline in this new stuff, but I do wish they'd given my hero-type more to do.

Gabriel_H · July 14

Horace-Wimp wrote: »

But maybe this is how I am recognizing what others have been saying for months, "ESO is no fun and that's why it's lost so many customers." I could be wrong though. /shrug

The game is massive. I am probably an outlier because I play every aspect of the game. Staying too long on one aspect can get dull, which is one reason I switch around.

I've heard people say "it's boring". I always ask them what parts of the game they play and why don't hey try XYZ. The response is usually along the lines of "oh I don't want to group", or "Trials seem hard", or "I don't like PvP".

If all someone is doing is overland content, it's going to get boring, it's more finite than the rest of the game. Sure, it may only take 30 minutes to clear a dungeon, compared to 6 hours of grind to clear an overland chapter, but whack it onto hardmode and see how long getting the trifecta takes.

MMOs aren't for everyone. They are multiple game genres all rolled into one.

Gabriel_H · July 14

kind_hero wrote: »

From my point of view, the Nowhere Vault quest should have been better placed in the Antiquarian Circle or Order of the Lamp / Mages Guild, rather than Thieves Guild. I know people who don't like thieving or want to play as a lawful character, so "forcing" people to do Thieves Guild wasn't really needed.

The Nowhere vault will be randomized rooms and involve puzzles, traps and stealth, so It does fit in with the Thieves Guild. Also "forcing" is a huge overstatement. You don't need to do the Thieves Guild quest to access the vault or get keys.

Usureki · July 14

Truth to be told I don't like the fantasy of being a petty thief or a mass murderer. This content is all about that and while I recognize that many other people have fun playing this kind of fantasy (there are way better games to live that fantasy btw so idk why ESO aims for this audience) I also have to realise that this content is not for me, for me, the beginning of Season One is just empty. Ah, yeah, we have the Freerunner quests. They are so weak I wish they were not.

Gabriel_H · July 14

Usureki wrote: »

there are way better games to live that fantasy btw so idk why ESO aims for this audience

See: Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim

peacenote · July 14

DenverRalphy wrote: »

There's no need to actually do any Thiefy activities in the questline. You can just hack n slash your way through all of it without picking locks or sneaking. The only lock that needs to be picked is at the very beginning, and it's a Trivial difficulty simply clicking Force Lock gets you through it in a blink.

Yes, I am horrible at sneaking and am very happy that there aren't negative ramifications if you fail as you go through the quest.

I also really like that we can hide behind curtains now. Sometimes it's the little things.

Lekjih · July 15

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Lekjih wrote: »

Prince Naemon on Solstice.

Ah yes, the quest that forced my goody-two-shoes main to murder innocents and harvest their souls. I'm still angry and shocked that was allowed to go anywhere near live. Last year was a weak year for content, and I've considered quitting many times over the years, but that was the first time I've ever seriously considered cancelling and unistalling over the writing/quest design.

And yeah, I'll just skip to an alt to do the questline in this new stuff, but I do wish they'd given my hero-type more to do.

The fact that you could make an impactful decision at the end is the only good thing about this quest. I hated that both of them were angry or belittling through the entire thing. Cariel was SUPER ruthless, Naemon was very forgetful of his and his wife's wrongdoings with no way to ask if he'd ever been in on Estre's plot or if the vicereeve had mindbent him or something, but I wasn't subjecting him to existence as a statue so if we see him again, I hope he's fixed his attitude.