Is it or isn't it urgent? (New Thieves Guild Storyline Spoilers)

xencthlu · July 26

Don't give me further spoilers, I'm still doing the storyline. Let me preface the post by saying this is truly not a big deal. I understand it is not a big deal.

I've been enjoying the new storyline so far. It feels very tailored to the Daggerfall locale, further fleshing out lore that was established by the base game quests in the zone, and looking into historical parts of the setting I find interesting. I was just telling my friend I liked how it built on the area in a way that made it feel more real, tying together previous unrelated story content in a new and consequential way. Not at all like the prologue quests for chapters, which often don't make sense in the way they slap chapter content into existing zones. (A Dragonguard hideout under a Dunmeri burial ground in Stonefalls? Really? No.) No matter how prologue quests seem to treat in setting geography like it's nothing. (In order to plan for the long and intense journey to Southern Elsweyr, we needed to... Ride horses from Windhelm to Hammerfell. That's a trip that would take actual months. There's multiple mountain ranges in the way. There's an entire active war zone in the way. We could have at least *sailed.*) I was thrilled to play a story where the location was treated so seriously.

Now I'm doing A Guild Grows In Glenumbra... Rols Boron doesn't want to let me use his warehouse this month, but this problem with the Koldane Cartel is really urgent. He tells me he'll let me use it sooner if I go steal something valuable for him. Cool, I think, does he want me to hit up King Casimir? I would love to rob a castle.

No. He wants me to sail to Auridon, Alik'r, and/or Eastmarch. Even the shortest of those trips would take several days. If I did two locations for two items like he asked originally, I would easily be sailing for a month. The month my character didn't want to spend waiting for his warehouse to become available. Does this guy know I'm a vestige, and vestiges have super special wayshrine teleportation powers? Does he expect me to go to the Mages Guild and pay for a portal? Either way, traveling to several different countries on errands does not convey to me "This is an urgent matter, life and death." It says to me "Someone constructing this story doesn't strongly care about distances and geography in the setting." And that's disappointing, because like I said, otherwise I think the storyline does great work treating Glenumbra like a real place with a real history. In the context of the setting and the story, asking a random thief to go to different kingdoms to steal particular items isn't a small errand. It's a huge undertaking that would take a lot of time.

I'd be interested in hearing why this choice was made here and executed the way it was.

Gabriel_H · July 26

I don't inherently disagree with your point, but I will say from a story-telling point of view, a simple line of back & forth dialogue in this instance would close the loop:

Vestige: "But it will take me days to get there."
Rols: "Travel time sounds like a you problem! Do you want the warehouse or not?"

On the wider context, there does have to be somewhat of a suspension of disbelief and not just because it's a fantasy game, but rather the passage of time itself. The days are 5.8 hours long in-game. Since the release in 2014, in Tamriel over 51 years have passed. Are you still running around in the spring of youth, or are you a doddering old man at this point?

That's before getting into the actual game mechanics. You could have taken the quest, and then gone off and pottered around doing other things for a week (more than a month in in-game time) and what would have happened to the quest? Part of that is how the quests are scripted. I for one would actually love some "urgent" quests that have timers and the like, but I am willing to bet gold that if ZOS did that people would be complaining.

xencthlu · July 26

Gabriel_H wrote: »

I will say from a story-telling point of view, a simple line of back & forth dialogue in this instance would close the loop:

Vestige: "But it will take me days to get there."
Rols: "Travel time sounds like a you problem! Do you want the warehouse or not?"

This would suffice if Rols was just intending to send the player character to Alik'r, but asking an actual stranger to sail a month or more to Auridon and/or Eastmarch is simply crazy talk. Especially when this is contemporaneous with an active war! And he wanted the player character to go to *two* places to rob.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

On the wider context, there does have to be somewhat of a suspension of disbelief and not just because it's a fantasy game, but rather the passage of time itself. The days are 5.8 hours long in-game. Since the release in 2014, in Tamriel over 51 years have passed. Are you still running around in the spring of youth, or are you a doddering old man at this point?

Yeah, but I'm not talking about the abstraction of game time to real time. I don't think that would add anything to the game's storytelling, and I think trying to fit it in would be a lot of needless work for absolutely no gain. I'm talking about a self-contained quest in a self-contained storyline. Someone (in my version of the story) nearly died! Who might be next if we wait too long? These are the facts as they were told to me by the story. Suspension of disbelief doesn't mean we pretend that the shortened in game days are a one for one with real time, and everyone is just moving around very slowly by comparison. Suspension of disbelief means we engage with the story as it is told to us. *I* know that I can log out and the Cartel won't hurt anyone. I am suspending my disbelief when Quenn, Seline are stressing this problem with the Cartel is an emergency situation. Life or death! (It's not life or death. If someone could die, that's not up to me. It's been programmed by the developers ahead of time. Here, again, suspension of disbelief.)

Asking me to suspend my disbelief about the travel time is contingent on me also still suspending my disbelief that any of this is urgent, or that anything matters. You can't stack one on top of the others. A story isn't jenga.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

That's before getting into the actual game mechanics. You could have taken the quest, and then gone off and pottered around doing other things for a week (more than a month in in-game time) and what would have happened to the quest? Part of that is how the quests are scripted. I for one would actually love some "urgent" quests that have timers and the like, but I am willing to bet gold that if ZOS did that people would be complaining.

It's not the convention in games with storytelling to hold writers accountable for player action. Suspension of disbelief begins when a player starts the game (or engages with the content) and ends when the player stops the game (or disengages from the content.) It's not a reasonable expectation, and no one holds it. But it is a very small thing to ask a story to treat the game world as if physical distance is real and matters. Here, think on this: What does it add to the story that the character is asked to travel across the world on a small errand versus asked to rob the royal castle in the same city? What does the story lose by making the choice that had been made, instead? The actual errand is incredibly throw away and in my estimation doesn't add anything to the story or the gameplay - the "painting" of Ryain Direnni I robbed from Auridon was somehow hidden in a tiny jewellery box in a stock standard base game home.

From an in character perspective, it genuinely makes more sense to wait the month he wanted. So, I am interested. What was the thought that motivated this piece of the story? It seems at odds with a lot of the thought and craft that's gone into the rest of it. So far, at least.

Edit: Also, this guy? He's a ship captain. The reason why he doesn't want to loan the warehouse to the player character for a month is because he wants to sail somewhere else and do some trading first, then come back. Come on! By these rules, distance matters for everyone except the player character.

Nestor · July 26

I believe if you push him around with Dialog you can skip the errands.

xencthlu · July 26

Nestor wrote: »

I believe if you push him around with Dialog you can skip the errands.

I did, actually! I did all the pushing I could. That's how I negotiated him down from two cross-continental robberies to one. But, again, the "issue," such as it is, isn't that we're asked to run an errand at all. It's that, from the perspective of a character within the setting, we're asked to travel a month's (or more) distance to save waiting a month's time. Writing thing, not a gameplay thing. It doesn't make sense in the context of the story, and I am interested in why the writers went with this decision.

emilyhyoyeon · July 26

This same thing stood out to me during the questline as well.

xencthlu wrote: »

Here, think on this: What does it add to the story that the character is asked to travel across the world on a small errand versus asked to rob the royal castle in the same city? What does the story lose by making the choice that had been made, instead?

Exactly! I'm actually surprised the devs didn't do this to begin with. My only guess being that maybe the default approach is to get players moving around the game map to help expose them to more things, basically trying to boost playtime/activity or whatever.

SerafinaWaterstar · July 27

Wayshrines?

opaj · July 27

This drives me crazy. Having quests that casually send you across the continent when you're supposed to be dealing with something local makes the whole world feel smaller.

Come to think of it, Skyrim often did the same thing. At least in that game, you were dealing with a single province instead of all of Tamriel. The prologue quests are especially bad at this, and the High Isle prologue is especially especially bad for world scaling.

DoofusMax · July 27

xencthlu wrote: »

Don't give me further spoilers, I'm still doing the storyline. Let me preface the post by saying this is truly not a big deal. I understand it is not a big deal.

<snip>

I'd be interested in hearing why this choice was made here and executed the way it was.

Azandar tells you to your face: "Can't we just take a portal?" Abnur Tharn is a bit saltier about it: "Come along. I can't maintain this portal indefinitely."

Instantaneous or relatively instantaneous travel between the far-flung reaches of Tamriel are a daily thing. It's mostly large numbers of travelers and bulky cargo which need to take the long way.

raystormusa · July 28

DoofusMax wrote: »

… Instantaneous or relatively instantaneous travel between the far-flung reaches of Tamriel are a daily thing. It's mostly large numbers of travelers and bulky cargo which need to take the long way.

Molag Bal should have respecced into Prince of Logistics with his planemeld and Dolmen portal abilities. The Ogrim seem to carry goods well with training. Oh wait… maybe the Domination thing was just a cover for the true goal of Capitalism?!?

Back to the topic, for the Thieves Guild questline which should be an early-game activity, I do agree that Rols should have directed the player to steal something within reasonable effort, within Glenumbra. Otherwise, I’d read the unreasonable request as another attempt to brush the player off, ie the alternative “no, the warehouse is not available”. .

TX12001rwb17_ESO · July 28

You know Teleportation is a thing, quite common in the second era.

AzuraFan · July 28

This is common in a lot of games. You're told something is urgent, but you're allowed to take your time. Also, there are times when something is supposed to be urgent, but there are containers lying around in the dungeon or whatever, so of course you take the time to loot them, explore the area, etc., even though you've been told time is of the essence.

But the alternative would be worse - a countdown timer. I'm willing to look the other way over "it's urgent" but "Take your time. Loot. Explore. Do other quests. In a month, I'll still be here, tied up, waiting for you to put out the fire." Realistic would mean, "You have 60 seconds and then I'm dead." Sixty seconds later - quest failed. Start over.