Paid DLCs from the perspective of story

[JungHeinz]

Hi, how important are paid DLCs for each Chapters stories?

I've got the impression in some DLCs it might be pretty important culmination of story. Grand finale.
Locking this behind "MM" in MMO is terrible decision in game like ESO with 80 % content solo friendly or even preferable. It just doesn't make sense.

I find ESO storytelling the best of all ES games I've played. So I play only solo or coop with brother. Purchasing ESO+ for quick dungeon crawling is not a big deal once in a while. I am more worried about their content - they are always "4-party dungeons".
Searching a bit on forums, I feel like part of the story is locked not behind the paywall but behind the MMO wall.

I am aware this is a business and profit is the main goal. If customers accept rules and spend money anyway, they are apparently rich enough to be squeezed, no reason to play Mother Theresa. I understand why Bethesda splits every expansion into two separately sold contents - Chapter and DLC only for subs or after spending good amount of real money. They want double payment for what is really just one DLC + making sure nowhere in official sources is this practice properly explained to fool into buying as many people as possible. It may be shady but not illegal. And it just works).

But how can this work? Significant or important part of the story locked behind something as stupid as multi-player only dungeon with mechanics almost impossible to overcome solo or in a group of 2?

This wouldn't be greedy but plain stupid. Full power frontal kick to their own balls. Not anti-customer but anti-profits. Against very basics of business and market economy logic.

But then again, with big studios, corporations and other big boys so absurdly out of reality they act anti capitalistic on regular basis. Being their own worst saboteur and still without clue what's wrong...
Nothing can be taken for granted these days. Not even advanced skills of greeding and money mongering of big companies' upper management.

[Lokiator]

Originally posted by JungHeinz:

I've got the impression in some DLCs it might be pretty important culmination of story. Grand finale.

The DLC zones prior to Southern Elsweyr were more or less standalone adventures. Clockwork City had a bit of a tie-in to the Morrowind / Summerset stories, but if you played it out of order (or not at all) it didn't really affect much.

Southern Elsweyr, Markath, The Deadlands, and Firesong each contain the "epilogue" that wraps up the stories from their chapter and zone DLC. You need to finish both the chapter and zone storylines to unlock those quests.

Originally posted by JungHeinz:

Significant or important part of the story locked behind something as stupid as multi-player only dungeon with mechanics almost impossible to overcome solo or in a group of 2?

"Significant" is a bit of a stretch when it comes to the DLC dungeon stories affecting the chapters. I'd make the analogy of Rogue One and Star Wars. Rogue One is a great story, but it really doesn't affect the plot of Star Wars in any way. Most people just take it on faith that the Rebels stole the Death Star plans before the movie started and carried on enjoying the show. That's the level of impact the DLC dungeon stories typically have - an interesting backstory, but nothing plot essential.

[sandman_732]

Originally posted by JungHeinz:

Hi, how important are paid DLCs for each Chapters stories?

I've got the impression in some DLCs it might be pretty important culmination of story. Grand finale.
Locking this behind "MM" in MMO is terrible decision in game like ESO with 80 % content solo friendly or even preferable. It just doesn't make sense.

I find ESO storytelling the best of all ES games I've played. So I play only solo or coop with brother. Purchasing ESO+ for quick dungeon crawling is not a big deal once in a while. I am more worried about their content - they are always "4-party dungeons".
Searching a bit on forums, I feel like part of the story is locked not behind the paywall but behind the MMO wall.

I am aware this is a business and profit is the main goal. If customers accept rules and spend money anyway, they are apparently rich enough to be squeezed, no reason to play Mother Theresa. I understand why Bethesda splits every expansion into two separately sold contents - Chapter and DLC only for subs or after spending good amount of real money. They want double payment for what is really just one DLC + making sure nowhere in official sources is this practice properly explained to fool into buying as many people as possible. It may be shady but not illegal. And it just works).

But how can this work? Significant or important part of the story locked behind something as stupid as multi-player only dungeon with mechanics almost impossible to overcome solo or in a group of 2?

This wouldn't be greedy but plain stupid. Full power frontal kick to their own balls. Not anti-customer but anti-profits. Against very basics of business and market economy logic.

But then again, with big studios, corporations and other big boys so absurdly out of reality they act anti capitalistic on regular basis. Being their own worst saboteur and still without clue what's wrong...
Nothing can be taken for granted these days. Not even advanced skills of greeding and money mongering of big companies' upper management.

Yea a lot of us Solo players don't like getting forced into grouping , Being in a group you get forced into what the group want's to do & Not want you want to do.

[AmaiAmai]

Originally posted by sandman_732:

Yea a lot of us Solo players don't like getting forced into grouping , Being in a group you get forced into what the group want's to do & Not want you want to do.

Get friends and then you all can decide what to do together and how?

It is an MMO...

Oh wait, ESO is somehow a "solo MMO" where you can't do everything solo...

[Commancho]

Originally posted by JungHeinz:

I find ESO storytelling the best of all ES games I've played.

I've stopped reading here.

[🅵🆁🅴🅳🅴🆁🅸🅺]

Originally posted by Commancho:

I've stopped reading here.

Figuring out that many things would be so much better without your unnecessary comments is one part of maturing.

[Commancho]

Originally posted by 🅵🆁🅴🅳🅴🆁🅸🅺:

Originally posted by Commancho:

I've stopped reading here.

Figuring out that many things would be so much better without your unnecessary comments is one part of maturing.

Don't be ridiculous. ESO stories are like bedtime stories for children. Evil wants to take over the world, but a knight on a white horse will save the kingdom from destruction again. No choices, no cruelty, no realism, no immersion. How does this compare to the opening scene of Skyrim where prisoners of war are executed and after which you want to grab a sword and cut down the Imperials. Have you seen anything like that in ESO?

[Midas]

Originally posted by Commancho:

How does this compare to the opening scene of Skyrim where prisoners of war are executed and after which you want to grab a sword and cut down the Imperials. Have you seen anything like that in ESO?

Like 6 times? Prison breaks as an opening is an Elder Scrolls standard, nothing special from Skyrim. In the original opening, you get to see your own execution as a ritual sacrifice and then proceed to break out of what is essentially 'hell'. Not sure chopping heads off prisoners rates higher in 'cruelty' than being sacrificed and sent to Coldharbour.

The only 'choice' in the entire helgen sequence is whether you join the blue side or the red side, and both choices play out mostly identical except for who you go with.


ESO isn't any kind of award-winning gem in the storytelling department, but neither has any other ES game been overall. The stories are all kinda basic. Most MMO stories are pretty basic too, or like WoW jump the shark so often that nothing is impressive anymore. Considering the sheer scope of quest content in this game, it's done a pretty good job telling reasonable interesting stories.

[Commancho]

Originally posted by Midas:

Like 6 times?

It's not about the prison escape itself, but about how it starts a plot that immediately draws the player into the story. About the immersion of the world, where NPCs don't stand like rag dolls but live their own lives. About the freedom of choice, the importance of decisions and awareness of the path the player takes during their adventure. ESO lacks all of that and anyone who says that ESO is a great single-player game is either lying or has never played a real open-world RPG. And what does it matter that it's an MMO? I don't care, it's just an excuse, this game is hopeless for a single player, unless someone sets the bar so low that they don't mind a completely infantile setting.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Commancho:

Originally posted by Midas:

Like 6 times?

It's not about the prison escape itself, but about how it starts a plot that immediately draws the player into the story. About the immersion of the world, where NPCs don't stand like rag dolls but live their own lives. About the freedom of choice, the importance of decisions and awareness of the path the player takes during their adventure. ESO lacks all of that and anyone who says that ESO is a great single-player game is either lying or has never played a real open-world RPG. And what does it matter that it's an MMO? I don't care, it's just an excuse, this game is hopeless for a single player, unless someone sets the bar so low that they don't mind a completely infantile setting.

Complete nonsense. Almost everything you just said about skyrim is true of ESO, too, except NPCs not wandering around because the game has actual players wandering around instead. The fact that you even name Skyrim for these examples is hilarious when skyrim's 'freedom of choice' basically boils down to "do whatever because nothing matters". You can be the archmage of winterhold knowing only 2 spells, and the guy wants to talk about 'importance off decisions'. The only mutually-exclusive decisions that are even available in Skyrim are picking Stormcloaks or Empire (which are almost identical), and choosing to destroy the dark brotherhood, which just gives you a single short questline that disables a much bigger questline. Outside of that, you can do basically everything in every play through, and the other choices are almost all just cosmetic.

[Commancho]

Wandering players... ahahaha. Riding on tastless flashing mounts that don't even exist within ESO's lore while wearing a clown costumes and carrying legendary weapon from Crownstore. Not only are quests in ESO a monotonous slog through dialogue, but completing them is also completely unsatisfying. Defeating any quest boss takes literally a few seconds of mindless, blind clicking. The loot for completing the quests is so abysmal and generic that it's practically not worth of your efforts. Best rewards are in the crownstore.

Imagine face of someone who has recently completed CP2077, Witcher 3, TES: Oblivion Remake, Pathfinder: WOTR, WH40K: Rogue Trader or Baldurs Gate 3 and who purcharsed ESO based on the comments saying that its a great single player experience

[Midas]

Originally posted by Commancho:

Wandering players... ahahaha. Riding on tastless flashing mounts that don't even exist within ESO's lore while wearing a clown costumes and carrying legendary weapon from Crownstore. Not only are quests in ESO a monotonous slog through dialogue, but completing them is also completely unsatisfying. Defeating any quest boss takes literally a few seconds of mindless, blind clicking. The loot for completing the quests is so abysmal and generic that it's practically not worth of your efforts. Best rewards are in the crownstore.

Imagine face of someone who has recently completed CP2077, Witcher 3, TES: Oblivion Remake, Pathfinder: WOTR, WH40K: Rogue Trader or Baldurs Gate 3 and who purcharsed ESO based on the comments saying that its a great single player experience :WH3_greasus_rofl:

I would have to first imagine someone dumb enough to to expect single-player grade rpg storytelling in an mmo, who can't keep comments regarding its single player experience within that context.

Or at least normally I'd have to imagine it. Here we have you.

[JungHeinz]

Originally posted by Commancho:

Originally posted by 🅵🆁🅴🅳🅴🆁🅸🅺:

Figuring out that many things would be so much better without your unnecessary comments is one part of maturing.

Don't be ridiculous. ESO stories are like bedtime stories for children. Evil wants to take over the world, but a knight on a white horse will save the kingdom from destruction again. No choices, no cruelty, no realism, no immersion. How does this compare to the opening scene of Skyrim where prisoners of war are executed and after which you want to grab a sword and cut down the Imperials. Have you seen anything like that in ESO?

I guess we play different game.

Shadowfen - I've seen mass liquidation of one whole generation of children of untermenschen (Argonians) in real time, they infected nutrition of our eggs with poison and I was trying to save as much our future population as possible why every 2 seconds one child died by blast. I guess it's not grim enough if you see eggs but pretend they are children and this is happening straight after being born or inside mothers womb. Better?

I spent lots of time and went deep - I dare to say deeper than most people - with real genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, spoke to survivors and heard stories no horror author would be able to imagine and that would make you vomit in disgust. And this specific moment with eggs still hit hard. And not only because Argonians are my personal favourite.

Deshaan -cult of old dark elves ancient gods led by woman whose son was executed by new living goddess craving for vengeance was plaguing their fellow citizens. Killing them in terrible pain and agony, some of them raising from dead to create havoc. Hoping people lost faith in Tribunal and turn away from them.

Everywhere I go I see war crimes so normal ones like killing civilians on daily basis I don't even count. But let's say pirates raiding shore villages and massacre all their folks or enslaving them and kidnapping to sell them on slaves trades are kind of ethnic cleansing and little dark as well. Then we seen torturing experiments on prisoners of war or civilians on daily basis, like burning them alive with the help Daedra to create Skinstealers...

Maybe not as visual as in reality but trust me, there are no many options to chose and wasn't already mentioned.

And then I read books. Do you? I even find they took inspiration from some pieces like Chamberlians The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century or Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races.
I was actually laughing positively surprised reading my favourite lorebook "Argonians Among Us" as it was perfectly - style, language, certain naive and simplistic tone to typical for cca 150 years old pamphlets of this kind. I hope writers who did these texts were paid adequately as they really did their research and managed to imitate the Zeitgeist brilliantly.

I agree with no choice or very limited here but I wouldn't expect it in MMO. Not to mention I haven't experienced better choices in Skyrim nonetheless. But still, I, myself, can sometimes do little crime against humanity myself. Like decide to enslave souls of old Elven warriors to make them fight for us against enemy, causing them pain whenever they try to get out of their ethereal chains, or free them.

And that's just few examples from basic game and one Alliance.

Honestly, I was positively surprised by adult topics exactly compared to bland and pretty naive, generic and childish narrative of Skyrim. I remember Oblivion being better but Skyrim was, well... I don't understand their appraisal.

I don't compare it to children bedtime stories because our bedtimes stories were originals or early versions of Grimm fairytales, Hans Christian Andersen's Erben or Nemcova, Dyk... Disney wasn't here yet but his inspiration was.
As these stories were created as a warning for children, they are full of rape, torture, body mutilation, terrible executions and overly harsh punishments for little misdemeanours. Do you know evil step mother of Cinderella cut off toes of her daughter to make her feet fit to Cinderella's glass slipper? Pied Piper was pedophile who kidnapped children and then drown them in river. Match Girl froze to death, lighting matches to warm her body while having hallucinations about better world in fire compared to frozen and desperate living condition of poor in real life. If was fairytale, she died happy thinking she's going to better place. I remember my mother giving it to me when 5 years old. She was thrilled saying I should have definitely read it as it had caused her amazing traumatic depression and was crying for weeks when she was child soobviously, it was and still is her most favourite fairytale.
In general, it was pretty normal children were secretly crying, sometimes terrified sometimes just depressed from fairytales. When American action movies came to our TV, they were less gory and bland compared to fairytales. "So his whole family was murdered.... and how else would it have to start?" And Disney...? Meh. Fairytales for adults.

[JungHeinz]

Originally posted by Commancho:

Wandering players... ahahaha. Riding on tastless flashing mounts that don't even exist within ESO's lore while wearing a clown costumes and carrying legendary weapon from Crownstore. Not only are quests in ESO a monotonous slog through dialogue, but completing them is also completely unsatisfying. Defeating any quest boss takes literally a few seconds of mindless, blind clicking. The loot for completing the quests is so abysmal and generic that it's practically not worth of your efforts. Best rewards are in the crownstore.

Imagine face of someone who has recently completed CP2077, Witcher 3, TES: Oblivion Remake, Pathfinder: WOTR, WH40K: Rogue Trader or Baldurs Gate 3 and who purcharsed ESO based on the comments saying that its a great single player experience :WH3_greasus_rofl:

Oh yes, forgot my favourite like straight from Idi Amin regime or DRC:
Dominion soldier fried and ate Argonian eggs.

Ah I see you compare single player story-driven RPG/adventures with MMORPG that includedf story and think these variables are comparable or even in close categories so...

Thank you for your opinion. I wish you all the best and good time full of enjoyment whatever game you choose to play. And have a nice day

[Chronocide]

I enjoyed the clockwork one. Other DLC have been....forgettable....or maybe I haven't done them yet.

[Commancho]

Originally posted by JungHeinz:

Ah I see you compare single player story-driven RPG/adventures with MMORPG that includedf story and think these variables are comparable or even in close categories so...

Thank you for your opinion. I wish you all the best and good time full of enjoyment whatever game you choose to play.And have a nice day

Well, I'm not the one who is looking for a great story in a MMO lol

I'm currently into Pathfinder: WOTR, then WH40k Rogue Trader and hopefully I will finish before new DLC for M&B Bannerlord will come out. All these games costed me half of the price of ESO's new Season Pass (granted I buy games on sales, but it still applies).