UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 59

This is an archive of past UESPWiki:Community Portal discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Category Images

Hey everyone. I had a request to change the category galleries from "packed" mode to "nolines" mode. Even though the rest of the site uses "packed" mode, I think it makes more sense for categories to use "nolines", as it's significantly more organized for large numbers of images and easier on the eyes. I've already made the switch on content3, so here are a couple of places where you can see the differences:

• A typical image category (packed, nolines).
• Where "packed" is anything but packed (packed, nolines).

Alternatively, there's also the "traditional" mode, which is the default for categories. This has the advantage that all the image names are aligned. Here's an example from Commons: Wikimedia barnstars

Does anyone have any thoughts? I think either "nolines" or "traditional" are best. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 23:24, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Category galleries serve to list files, not to display images. packed mode serves to display images, which works very well in most user-defined contexts, but not this one. Beyond just the aesthetics, it creates significant x overflow in some categories, creating an undesirable user experience straight out of a web-design 101 "what not to do" example. I would suggest, however, that instead of nolines, we use traditional, the default gallery mode, as it ensures the file name hyperlinks are y-aligned. -Dcsg (talk) 23:30, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

I made a suggestion when we were considering switching to packed that we should keep nolines ready as a backup, due to how packed functions on the back end. I would be happy to switch sitewide default to nolines at this point, considering the mess that packed leaves some galleries in. (Some users have even specifically defined a different style for some galleries in direct opposition to packed being the site standard.) Until such a time where a gallery actually has functionality of defining size by height, rather than packed's approximation of height by dynamically defining widths, nolines would be cleaner. --Enodoc (talk) 17:35, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I've switched everything over to "nolines" mode. Even if we wanted to, it's not possible to change the default category mode independently, but in the process of trying to find an option to do so, I discovered that category galleries allow for a &gallerymode=whatever parameter in the URL (or use a ? instead of an & if there isn't already a ?). – Robin Hood ^(talk) 01:20, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Images in galleries seem really small after these changes. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 04:54, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Image captions seem to be centred in galleries by default now. —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:35, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

The default size is configurable, and the alignment of the captions can be adjusted through CSS, if we want. Everything's global, though, so whatever the default is for galleries is what it'll be for categories as well. It's easy enough to change, as long as we have some general consensus about what we want to do. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 00:47, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Update on Future Link/Lore Link

Some nine months after our original discussion about {{Future Link}} and {{Lore Link}}, I've finally managed to get rid of Future Link altogether. As for Lore Link, however, the problems with errors being hidden are still problems, as demonstrated by my recent edit to Lore:Ghost. Out of seven Lore Links on the page, four of them were mistakes that were readily resolved.

As a result of that edit, I changed Lore Link to start displaying red links that don't resolve to anything as red links. At first I intended that to be a temporary change, but in the process of doing that, I accidentally stumbled onto what I hope will be a good long-term solution that allows Lore Link to work as intended, but also helps to ensure that Lore Links aren't just arbitrarily being added with no verification. The short of it is that Lore Links, by default, will be considered unverified, and if they don't resolve to something, they'll show up as a red link. One option is, of course, to just leave them that way in the hopes that someone will create the page. But if that's not realistic, I've added two possible options. The first is to add a |v=1 or |verified=1 to the Lore Link template. (In retrospect, I could've made it confirmed like {{Bug}}, but we can change that later if we want.) Thus, {{Lore Link|This should be a Lore page soon|v=1}} will produce: "This should be a Lore page soon" instead of "This should be a Lore page soon". The other option is to use the new {{Lore Links Verified}} template that I just created, which will turn all red Lore Links after it into plain text. This would have to be used fairly conservatively, if at all, since it could effectively be used to prevent a page (or section of one) from any future red-link checks.

The one drawback is that this will have to be policed by other editors, much as we do the {{Bug}} template, since getting HoodBot to do it would be very labour-intensive and involve a lot of back-and-forth with the wiki as well. If we ever develop a wiki-side bot, that might be something we could automate at that point. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 04:34, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I neglected to mention, but this is very much intended as a trial, to see if it helps eliminate errors. Since the system is something newly thought up, I expect there may improvements to how it works or problems we need to figure out, or we may simply decide to scrap it altogether. It was easy enough to put into place, though, and I hope that it'll help improve some of our erroneous Lore Links without being too much of a hassle. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 05:50, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Spelling: White-Gold vs. White Gold

Greetings fellow UESPians. It has recently come to my attention that the spelling of a major Tamrielic landmark appears to be rather inconsistent. This was impressed on me by a recent bot edit to Oblivion:Green Emperor Way, which left the article with both a red-link (in the text description) and a valid link (in an image caption) to what should be exactly the same article. The page name of the article in question is spelled without a hyphen, yet the very first line of the article spells the name with a hyphen (resulting in another red-link). The lore article uses the hyphenated form exclusively, yet the relevant section in "The Towers" article uses both forms of the spelling apparently indiscriminately. A search in the TES IV Construction Set reveals that both spellings are present in Oblivion (the non-hyphenated version perhaps more so than the hyphenated version), and I'm not sufficiently conversant with lore to make any judgment regarding general usage. So my question to the community is three-fold:

1. Is there a single canonical in-universe spelling for this landmark that we should be using? or,
2. Is there a canonical in-universe reason why both spellings are valid and rules for when one should be used instead of the other? or,
3. Is there no canonical in-universe spelling, in which case should/can we as a community standardize on one spelling to maintain consistency and be able to create appropriate redirects for the alternate spelling?

Thanks for any and all clarification you can provide on the subject. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 11:52, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

There isn't a single canonical in-universe spelling, both are used in canon. There seems to be no clear differentiation between the usages, and we should not standardize to use one spelling or the other. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 12:04, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

This was discussed years ago {Lore_talk:White-Gold_Tower#Hyphenated) and generally the older games didn't have the hyphen (which is why the OB page is named as such). Today with new books (and thus from a lore perspective) the hyphen has become the standard and is used at all times in ESO, so that is the preferred option in lore articles.--Jimeee (talk) 10:54, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Jimeee is correct. It's "White Gold" in OBspace, but "White-Gold" is the modern spelling. —⁠Legoless (talk) 11:30, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification! And thanks to Legoless to fixing the Oblivion article links; I was planning to do that myself once I got clarification but ended up busy with other projects and haven't had time to pop in here since my OP. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 00:27, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Map Beta Test

We've been very busy rewriting the front end system and UI for all our online maps and its ready for beta testing at:

https://gamemap.uesp.net/

For all the details on what's changed lately you can see the public post on Patreon.

So give it a try and let us know what you think, if you find any bugs, or can think of additional features you'd like to see. -- Daveh ^(talk) 16:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

quick summary of what's changed since last beta:

• all wiki maps added (morrowind, skyrim, oblivion)
• overflow menu now works (reported by robinhood)
• ability to pin the search window added (suggested by xyzzy, daveh)
• is now at feature parity with existing uesp maps (besides editing, more on that in a bit)
• performance is 50-60% better than current existing wiki maps

feedback wanted:

the current gamemap build does not have map editing yet, but I wanted to make sure that when it does, it is something that all map editors are happy with. so I would to draw attention to and gather map editor's feedback on:

• the existing map editing experience (what are the current pain points, how do you think it can be improved?)
• thoughts on the upcoming gamemap RC changes interface (last pic in the patron post above)

with the new RC changes interface I tried to address some of the pain points I heard from other editors, being that:

• there is no way to know who did what edit
• no way to know what kind of edit it was
• no easy to see how long ago an edit was

so in addition to the new looks I am including these features which I hope map editors will appreciate:

• action type (add, delete, edit)
• what an edit did (hovering over the action type will tell you *what* was edited)
• edit author (username) shown
• relative timestamps (hovering over gives full timestamp)

please let me know any feedback you have (general wiki user's thoughts on the maps as a whole are also welcome) --Thal-J (talk) 17:12, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

new vector look

so, Wikipedia has just changed their site's look. it is called vector (the 2022 version). here is the look: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=vector-2022 why don't you make this look the same on unofficial elder scrolls page website? — Unsigned comment by Jetcold0 (talk • contribs) at 03:30 on 11 March 2023‎

We're roughly ten versions behind Wikipedia, so it's unlikely we'll be able to switch to the new Vector any time soon. Even when the time comes, re-colouring the design to fit our standards takes a surprising amount of effort. I expect we'll convert once we get there, but that'll depend on the skill sets of those who are here at the time, specifically requiring someone who's familiar with skins and someone else who's familiar with image re-colouring. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 04:58, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Vector and Vector-2022 appear to share the same code base, as in - they're functionally the same "skin" under the hood, but some parts of Vector-2022 don't work properly until 1.38, and use of it before 1.38 apparently causes issues during the upgrade process. For 1.36 and 1.37 Vector-2022 support is "unofficial" - although exactly what the issue is is unclear on a brief look through it. I think given that Vector works with the UESP Theme, the conversion should probably be relatively painless. As a good portion of the actual interface seems to use the same overall tone and layout styles, with just the actual layout itself appear to have changed considerably.

As an addendum, I believe we still use Monobook as our default skin - moving to Vector as the default is definitely possible currently for us, which is certainly more modern than Monobook. Perhaps that could be worth looking at, given Vector-2022 is still probably 5 years off being even possible at all? Kiz ^{(email - talk)} 23:50, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't matter to me personally as I've been using Vector here for years, but I agree that Vector should be more accessible than Monobook for our anonymous readers, as it was developed much more recently with modern screen sizes and readability in mind. (Anyone with an account who prefers Monobook can still set that in their preferences.) Therefore I would support making Vector the default. --Enodoc (talk) 15:39, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

I prefer Vector to Monobook, but I dislike Vector 2022 as it shrewds down width and makes everything more annoying to read/ruins existing formatting. Wikia/Fandom did the same years ago to increase ad display space and it was universally hated. I would be 100% down with updating to Vector 2021 though, or whichever version of Vector wikipedia was using before they changed up the width. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 21:20, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

@Rim - regarding the Vector-2022 width, I can't see why we'd have to keep the settings universally the same as Wikipedia when we did/could set it up, though that's a discussion for much in the future at this point in time. I think Eno's point regarding Anon's is a good one potentially, since it would make UESP's layout more consistent with nearly every other wiki out there Kiz ^{(email - talk)} 02:16, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I think the best idea would be to let the editors at English Wikipedia beta test Vector 2022 for us. At present, the layout changes it makes would be highly disruptive to this site. —⁠Legoless (talk) 16:48, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

(←) It's less a fact of them testing it, and more just a fact that we can't physically change to it. Some of the functions it uses we won't have present for the next several years... Vector (old) is stable and has been in use for over a decade. Kiz ^{(email - talk)} 18:03, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Voice types in infoboxes?

Ten years ago, Robin Hood undertook a good project to categorize every Skyrim NPC by voice type, by adding a parameter to the NPC infobox. However, all that parameter does is add NPCs to voice type categories, which are buried at the bottoms of articles, and which don't appear at all on mobile—I'm sure most readers are unaware of them. I realize we want to avoid clutter in infoboxes, but voice types are a pretty fundamental aspect of a Skyrim NPC, and I think a quick link to a list of other NPCs of the same voice type would be of more interest to the average reader than the lists of often-incomprehensible faction names such as "Favor256QuestGiverFaction" or "friends to both sides in MQ101". But I'm pretty new here, so curious of your thoughts. (By the way, I put this proposal here because it seemed too big a change for a template talk page, but feel free to move it.) —⁠Will ⁠• ⁠B ^[talk] 20:36, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I would be happy to see the VoiceTypes added to the infobox, it means that when I'm looking for them, I'll find them quicker that having to read through however many categories! --Enodoc (talk) 00:07, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Sounds like a good change to me. —⁠Legoless (talk) 15:57, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Done. Added just above the Factions. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 16:28, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

That was quick! Thanks, looks good. —⁠Will ⁠• ⁠B ^[talk] 00:19, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Has anyone looked into categorizing ESO NPCs by voicetype as well? The Rim of the Sky (talk) 02:19, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Not directly, as it would mostly need to be done by ear rather than by any technical data we have access to (similar to a lot of ESO info). e.g. I could identify a bunch of NPCs who are voiced by Tara Strong, but we don't have a full list and she may voice some other characters as well that I don't recognise. --Enodoc (talk) 17:30, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Multiple unnecessary articles

Discussion moved from UESPWiki:New Page Requests

I think there should be pages for everything of a certain thing instead of making multiple pages for multiple aspects of one thing. I think we should combine all articles on one thing and put it all in one article. An example is maybe daedra, there are multiple articles for different aspects when we could just have it all in one article. — Unsigned comment by 35.185.67.223 (talk) at 18:29 on 21 March 2023

Which namespace were you looking at? Skyrim certainly seems to take the approach you're advocating for. ESO sort of does. The splitting of each different type of daedra seems justified there due to the sheer volume of information. Even today, some people have data caps or slow connections, so the more you compartmentalize information so that people only get what they want, the better. That said, there's often a good middle ground. It would be helpful if you could clarify which namespace you're referring to and give some specific examples of what you'd do. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 04:08, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Constitution of Unofficial Lore - Four Cases

Myself, Achernar, and Tarponpet were discussing this on the Discord, transcribing the main points here. Do note that in my final steps, I will be using my own judgement, so my suggestions there may differ from those of Achernar or Tarponpet's; I am in no way claiming that these are their points, just that we reached a consensus upon the inconsistent application I will soon describe.

We feel that the UOL tag is inconsistently applied throughout certain pages. The main point, discussed by all three of us, is that Interview with a Dark Elf (IDE) is marked as official lore (OL), while Skeleton Man's Interview with Denizens of Tamriel (SM) and Interview With Three Booksellers (IBS) are marked as unofficial lore (UOL). This distinction is odd; IDE, as specified on its page, was conducted by Daveh as an email interview with Bethesda employees. No other attempts are made to verify its prescribed canonicity, but it is labeled as OL. In contrast, IBS and SM are both marked as UOL, despite their respective pages including specific references, directly from Bethesda workers, specifying that the pages' contents are copyrighted by Bethesda. They both also make direct mention of the sharability of the content, both specifying restrictions. We view this as indisputable proof that these interviews are OL material. Per UESP's own copyright policy and the rationalization of intellectual property on C0DA's page, works licensed, copyrighted, registered, trademarked, or otherwise owned by Bethesda or Zenimax are automatically official, and therefore OL.

To add another wrinkle, and to get back to the primary topic of the distinction between OL and UOL - though, to specify, this point is entirely my own and unrelated to Tarponpet and Achernar - is the inconsistent canonicity of Xanathar's Library Archive. On some pages, including the specification on its own page, Xanathar's Archive is treated as OL (ex. [1] [2]). However, vastly more pages cite it under UOL (ex. [3] [4] [5]). Certain instances, most notably Ami-El, dedicate an entire section of a listing page to information exclusive to this archive, which is against the UOL policy per consensus among the administration in the past (ex. [6]) and in UESP's Content Guidelines, insisting that while UOL-provided names may be used as redirects to brief mentions in OL articles, but not as independent pages.

Xanathar's Archive is unique, though, as it seems to be comprised of official, albeit internal, Bethesda timeline information. This can be corroborated by its similarities to Before the Ages of Man, as well as its duplicated statement on Ami-El in posts by Matt Grandstaff. However, as specified by administrators, cut content is UOL, and no mentions of Ami-El, for instance, made it into the games. For an example of the contrary being the case, From The Many-Headed Talos, by Michael Kirkbride, is a short speech written out-of-game. This speech was later tweaked by Bethesda, cutting out notable details revolving around Cyrodiil's jungle, and put into Skyrim as part of Heimskr's speech. From The Many-Headed Talos is not considered canon, and neither should Xanathar's Archive, by this standard.

The inconsistent application of the UOL tag in Xanathar's citational case may be attributed to simple miscommunication among those who use it in references. However, the blatant contradiction in the vastly more accepted opinion, a UOL tag, to the presence of a lorepage surrounding its contents, is just that — a contradiction. Steps should be taken to avoid this, and, harkening back to the consensus that myself, Achernar, and Tarponpet reached, the inconsistent definition of UOL in regards to Bethesda's ownership/copyright. I propose the following:

1. "Interview With Three Booksellers" and "Skeleton Man's Interview with Denizens of Tamriel" should be marked OL in all facets of the site, as per their copyrighted status.

2. "Interview with a Dark Elf" should be decanonized, unless confirmation from the interview itself or the interviewee of its alleged canonicity can be provided.

3. "Xanathar's Library Archive" should be decanonized, in the few instances it is cited as OL and in its page's introductory statement, as it functions as cut content.

4. An overview of other similar cases to those I have mentioned should be done, to further tighten the parameters of OL and UOL in the future.

Thank you for reading. Mindtrait0r (talk) 01:27, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I believe IDE should stay official, as we we have a pretty reliable source (Daveh himself) to confirm it. The site hosting it isn't a requirement, and IIRC uesp was hosted by Bethesda themselves at one point, possibly when the interview came out in 1999. For SMI, similar case so it should be official. When it comes to these kinds of interviews, there's two major factors I always consider:

1. If the interview has been edited by Bethesda/Zenimax
2. The answers are given from an "in-lore" perspective, from a character/standpoint in The Elder Scrolls universe

From what I know based off what Benefactor of TIL told me a while back, TIL sends in the questions, then Zenimax tells them which questions they will and won't answer, then TIL sends in their questions again with the recommended changes, Zenimax answers them, TIL edits it and sends it in for ZeniMax editing + approval, and then finally TIL gets to publish it. This is a weeks-long process, of course what I've listed is my very rough understanding of it and we could ask TIL to confirm the exact specific steps of the process, but either way ZeniMax is heavily involved in the process of publishing these interviews. Even IceFireWarden said Zenimax edited his questions before he published the interview with them, despite it being published on a site not owned by Bethesda. These cases are part of why ESO Live, which is hosted entirely by ZeniMax, is considered unofficial: the interviews are in-universe and edited, while ESO Live happens live and is presented from a developer viewpoint. Those two factors are a big reason why ESO Live is used mainly as a supplementary resource, the devs aren't being "edited" by others and it all happens in the moment, so they themselves admit everything they say should be taken with a grain of salt as there's no one to correct them. These interviews on the other hand go through a ton of checks and approvals (many by ZeniMax) before they are published so as to make sure they're accurate and factual.

There's some interviews with former employees, like Lawrence Schick and Phrastus on Altmer Culture, that I won't consider "official lore" as Lawrence left Zenimax a while before doing the interview. But for interviews done with employees while supervised and approved by ZeniMax, they should be considered official. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 04:38, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

These texts are classic use cases for the UOL tag and should be cited as such. Copyright status is irrelevant; all TES content is properly copyright Bethesda. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:34, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Mindtrait0r's points (as I was the one to bring them up on Discord in the first place); however, I agree with The Rim of the Sky's points on the matter of Interview with a Dark Elf keeping its "official lore" status mentioned in the head of the article.

As for what Legoless is saying, it's true that these texts are "classic use cases for the UOL tag", but this is exactly what we're proposing should be changed. This is because it seems disingenuous or even unfair to treat these interview-type sources (Interview with a Dark Elf, Interview with Three Booksellers, Skeleton Man's Interview), published by Bethesda with the clear intention of them being canon lore, as the same degree of canonicity as, say, Michael Kirkbride's Posts or Ted Peterson's Posts, even ignoring the matter of copyright. More specifically, this proposal exists due to things mentioned only in these sources, such as Sand Kwoom, Velk, Malahk-Orcs, which are unambiguously intended by Bethesda to be canonical elements of the series' lore, but cannot have articles due to the current UOL guidelines limiting the use of UOL to rounding out or providing additional background information for existing Lore topics, not introducing new ones. (I believe that that aspect of the UOL policy should not change, only that certain sources mentioned in this discussion obtain OL status instead of UOL.)

Additionally, General:Unofficial Lore defines UOL as "content providing information on the world of Tamriel published not by Bethesda Softworks but by individual developers and writers, on forums or fan sites." If what Legoless says about "all TES content is properly copyright Bethesda." is true, this statement should be removed from General:Unofficial Lore, because it becomes completely meaningless.

I believe that turning the sources mentioned in this discussion to OL is an easier and more convenient solution to the "things clearly intended by Bethesda to be canon are held to the same standard of officialness as random developer forum posts" problem than modifying the UOL guidelines to introduce "tiers" of UOL; as that would require significant amounts of Original Research on things that UESP really should not have a say in.

As for the Xanathar's Library Archive, I agree with Mindtrait0r's assessment. This source should be treated as cut content and therefore UOL.

Achernar1 (talk) 18:58, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Achernar on this. As for Xan's Library, it is already classified as uol on most articles already barring a few outliers. While it is official writing from Bethesda its more of a "design document" like the earlier draft of Divad the Singer, and for cases like that they're usually considered "valid unless contradicted later on". The Rim of the Sky (talk) 19:08, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Agree with changing them to OL, it's logical for things published/conducted by bethesda/affiliates to be classed as such, standards change and with things like board game, books, etc being released with new lore is an example of this. With how at one point Bethesda basically only classed the games as canon but don't adhere to that anymore. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 19:36, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

(←) UESP is not and will never be an authority on what is official or unofficial. We allow both what we consider to be official and unofficial in lorespace as it stands. That begs the question: What purpose does the delineation serve? I believe the answer to this question should be what informs how we delineate. From my perspective, the answer is simple: it is there to help the user make their own judgements. No matter where we draw the line, there will be someone left feeling unhappy, as their line is different from ours. The fact that certain citations have UOL prepended signals to the user: take this with a grain of salt, you may choose to exempt this from your personal canon, etc. With this purpose in mind, the conclusion which I come to is that anything with an element of ambiguity ought to be marked as UOL. Nothing to do with its validity, as that is the attribute which determines if it is referenced at all via our current UOL make-a-discussion-for-each policy. I admit that I do not know the complexities of the mentioned sources, but I believe that if there is a reasonable argument for why something could not be canon, regardless of what kind of argument it would be or what the consensus is (again, not disputing that consensus should be the determining factor for inclusion) then it should be marked as UOL, to signify to the reader to engage their critical thinking. I would wager that that condition would mark most of the particular sources mentioned here as UOL, as their very controversy is likely enough to satisfy my suggested principle. -Dcsg (talk) 20:50, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Not to discredit your argument, but I feel as though your idea of shadow-of-a-doubt ambiguity is too vague to be practical. When I first came upon TES, I thought that only the main-series 5 games were canon. Then, I thought that any of the games were canon. After that, I discovered stuff like the Prima Guides and the First Pocket Guide to the Empire, all of which I deemed canon. Then, a friend showed me C0DA, and I thought it was canon, as it was made by a developer. After that, I discredited C0DA but raised in its place other developer works like the Origin of Cyrus, which is treated as canon here. My point is that what is viewed a shadow of a doubt ambiguity is itself subjective as a ranking. Some people really do believe that ESO isn't canon, and only the stuff that has since been referenced can be taken as fact. Mindtrait0r (talk) 21:18, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I said it's not up to UESP or its editors to make decisions on what is or isn't "official". It's impossible to satisfy everyone. However, the current state of the policies surrounding UOL citations is also not satisfactory to everyone.

I must admit that Dcsg's line of reasoning is sound, and is likely the basis for UOL being a delineation used by UESP in the first place. However, if the main purpose of UOL citations is to signal to the user to take something with a grain of salt, there should not be rules preventing the creation of articles with exclusively or primarily UOL sources. After all, if a user reads this article, they can see that the citations are UOL and simply make their own choice to not believe the things said in the article.

It should be an uncontroversial truth that "out-of-game source that was edited and published by Bethesda with clear intent to further the series' lore, generally through an in-character interview" and "a forum post or Reddit post that a current or former TES developer made on a whim" should not be given the same amount of credibility. Even if this isn't what the UOL tag means, it certainly might seem that way to the average reader. The former category has certain information that isn't (yet) found in the main games, such as Lore:Malahk-Orcs. The existence of this Lore article is beneficial to the UESP, but the rules regarding UOL in the Lorespace Content Guidelines contain wording that prevent it from existing. Well, in theory this wording should prevent the article from existing, but it exists anyway, because the rule is already unenforced. I wish to codify this sentiment that is already evidently shared by editors. One way to accomplish this is by "officiating" the three sources mentioned previously in this discussion. However, if that is deemed above UESP's paygrade, the alternative is modifying the UOL guidelines. The reason I didn't want to modify the UOL guidelines is the fact that it gives more weight to those "developer posts on a whim" that I mentioned.

Achernar1 (talk) 21:24, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Dcsg accurately describes the reasoning used to create the UOL system in the first place, in that it isn't about canonicity but officiality (which to be honest is effectively the same thing for people saying the UOL stuff isn't canon, what they are saying is that it isn't official, really just semantics at that point). The main issue here is that UOL stuff cannot and should not ever be used as the basis of an article, or even the majority of said article, it should only be used to expand on stuff mentioned in OL. The exact rules are "UOL should only be used when it helps to explain in-game content. The UESP need not start documenting every fact mentioned in UOL. Using solely UOL to support definitive statements of fact should be avoided. Any UOL should appear low on a single-topic page for which it is substantially relevant" (emphasis mine). I feel like many people have been using the above referenced interviews way too much on pages given their UOL status. Either the status of these interviews needs to change, or their usage as references needs to be removed on those pages where they are the sole or primary source for much of the information (this happens a lot in the bestiary when single-mentioned creatures get entries and the only source is UOL). There's really no uncertainty in our current UOL usage guidelines around here, so the above suggestion could have large implications for what is allowed in lore and what is not. Jeancey (talk) 18:30, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Dave's interview was conducted long before the current definition of UOL was written, back when the delineation was made literally based on whether it was directly from the games or not. Thus the statement that it is "official" would have been added to counter the argument that it would otherwise be considered OOG lore. Most OOG lore was moved over to UOL with the new definition, but we wouldn't really have thought about looking for things to move the other way. I have no doubt however that if that interview was conducted with today's definition in place, it would be classified as UOL without much second thought. Therefore consistency with the current definitions would imply that Dave's interview should be reclassified as UOL.

I would however be open to further consideration of relaxing lorespace guidelines to actually allow UOL to be the sole basis of an article, as long as we ensure a significantly prominent {{Notice}} is also created for that purpose. --Enodoc (talk) 21:42, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I see no justification for Interview with a Dark Elf being treated as OL whilst Interview with Three Booksellers and Skeleton Man's Interview with Denizens of Tamriel, exempting a direct statement akin to "This interview is canon lore" that was made during the original posts that is not included in its current version. There was a deliberate action taken to include the copyright in both TB and SM. Like Achernar said, the statement on the Unofficial Lore guidelines: published not by Bethesda Softworks but by individual developers and writers is useless if the copyright claim made by Legoless is true, which would also mean that there would be no reason for the interviews to mention the copyright in the first place. As a final note, 'fanfiction', which is what most Unofficial Lore classifies as (and these examples most certainly aren't), is protected by Fair Use and functions outside of Bethesda's copyright as long as it isn't for-profit... at least from what I can understand [7]. Legal stuff is hard and I am not a lawyer haha

In the interest of summarizing what has been agreed upon and the ramifications of it, the Bestiary entries of Sand Kwoom and Velk must be removed if SM is staying unofficial. Interview with a Dark Elf, if it is deemed UOL, makes Malahk-Orcs deletion-worthy, and Ami-El's entry on People (and probably his name on Tamrielic Emperors should be removed if Xanathar's Archive is staying UOL. Mindtrait0r (talk) 23:27, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Ami-El should absolutely not be removed from Lore:Tamrielic Emperors. Any use of UOL sources should be decided on a case-by-case basis per our current guidelines, not via sweeping assessments made on the Community Portal. —⁠Legoless (talk) 14:06, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we should remove Ami-El from Lore:Tamrielic Emperors, I think that's exactly where they belong. I think they should be removed from Lore:People A, with the redirect going to Tamrielic Emperors. Jeancey (talk) 18:20, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I must agree with some comments above endorsing moving sources like Skeleton Man’s interview to OL. As a licensed interview by BGS that involved active devs at the time of the interview this source very much should be changed to official and thus the decision to delete things solely found in that interview need to be reversed. Dcking20 (talk) 19:04, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

(←) The contents of these interviews are in virtually the same format as Loremaster's Archive. LA is generally a good resource and parts can be contradicted by the game itself later on, such as the situation around Murkmire's location, but the rest of the archive still remains valid. We should follow these interviews the same way, where we consider the answers official lore and the questions unofficial lore. The process behind these interviews and LA is virtually the exact same, the only difference being that LA is hosted on eso.com. But why you ask? Is it because Bethesda only wants "legitimate" interviews on their own website? Not at all, otherwise they wouldn't have gone through the trouble of making the interviews and editing them in the first place. These interviews are done as part of press and marketing, just like interviews and articles on game journalism sites are. The concept of an Exclusive is very common in media and is nothing new, and has been done before with The Guardian's concept art gallery marked as "exclusive"; its not hosted by Bethesda not because they don't want it, but because its part of the third party website's deal. Bethesda still edits it because they partner with them officially and retain copyright, and they fully intend for it to be official, the website hosting it is irrelevant as Zenimax ultimately approves it. In the same manner, the Prima Guide contains a lot of lore info from development that has been written by Kurt Kuhlmann, and is published by Prima with Bethesda's supervision. Greg Keyes novels' are in the same boat as the interviews, written and edited under Bethesda but published by Del Ray Books.

With all that said, I propose this:

• A text presented in-universe, edited by Zenimax. (Examples include the Prima Guides, Manka Naram Interview, Loremaster Archive's) These would all be considered official, as they were made with the intent of being part of the lore and were pre-approved by Bethesda. They are all considered official in some regard and are intended to be far more intrinsic for lore than any of the sources listed below, and as such this should be reflected with official status.
• Presented in-universe, but not edited by Zenimax. (ie Source of Chaos) An example would be the Lawrence Schick and Phrastus on Altmer Culture interview, where the answers are presented by a former developer with an in-universe context. These would be considered unofficial, as ZeniMax did not edit it.
• Presented out-of-universe/from a real world pespective, and edited by Zenimax (Examples include TIL Michael Zenke interview, Vvardenfell Then and Now, Ask Us Anything) These are always heavily edited by Zenimax and sometimes even hosted on their website, but they are presented in the real-world context of viewing it as a game (what Schick refers to as "devspeak"). Due to their context as being "outside" the lore and not meant to be authoritative on what the lore is, they are considered unofficial when cited in lorespace.
• Presented out-of-universe, and not edited by Zenimax (Post-ZOS interview with Lawrence Schick, Interview with Ted Peterson (2019), ESO Live) These are all made using devspeak and viewing the world of TES from an outside perspective, and are unofficial. A lot of this is already the agreed way to do it, but this will help differentiate it from the other sources listed. ESO Live, for example, talks about the lore from devspeak answers by developers and happens live on-air, so Zenimax doesn't have a chance to edit it and filter out answers the way they usually do. Its still a valuable resource, but due to its nature is secondary at best.

These factors are the only ones that matter. With this new clarification it will help us identify what out-of-game content is classified as and avoid this issue in the future. I hope that everyone can find this to be a satisfying outcome. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 21:31, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Just a tiny correction, Source of Chaos (an example from the last point in your list) is actually a post from the Redguard Forum Madness collection of threads, and it'd actually be classified as in-universe, not edited, as I imagine, most forum RP from the time.--ErfXploded (talk) 21:44, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Ah yes you're correct, just a typo on my part, I moved it back up to that section. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 21:49, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I support Rim of the Sky's proposition, it makes sense and draws a line that isn't very arbitrary. I would like to add to this that Skeleton Man's Interview with the Denizens of Tamriel, Interview With Two Denizens of the Shivering Isles, and Interview with Three Booksellers contain the following respective licensing details:

Skeleton Man: All answers © 1999 by Bethesda Softworks. Keep in mind that these answers are copyrighted by Bethesda. It is exclusive to this website, do not place it on any others. You may provide a link to it, however.

Booksellers: All answers © 2001 by Bethesda Softworks. The text was archived by The Imperial Library and has been reproduced here with permission from Qwerty.

Shivering: All answers © 2007 by Bethesda Softworks. (only included on original TIL copy)

Now, comparing these to the two instances of licensing information in The Infernal City, treated as 100% official lore on the wiki:

Dedication Page: © 2009 ZeniMax Media Inc. The Elder Scrolls, Bethesda Softworks, Oblivion, ZeniMax, and their respective logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of ZeniMax Media Inc. All rights reserved.

Back Cover: Copyright © 2009 ZeniMax Media Inc. ZeniMax, Bethesda Softworks, Bethesda Game Studios, The Elder Scrolls, Oblivion and Morrowind are trademarks or registered trademarks of ZeniMax Media Inc. in the Us and/or other countries. Used under license. All Rights Reserved.

Now, while the books do have a little bit more substance in their licensing information, you can see that they are pretty much the same. A mention of copyright holding belonging to BethSoft (others, too, in the case of the book), and a mention of permission of usage (not present in Shivering). If the books are canon, then, why aren't these interviews? These quotes from the book come from my own recent copy and are the only two found in the book. There is nothing here that isn't covered by at least one (and probably two, but being conservative here for the argument's sake) of the interviews' respective information segments. The argument that the Keyes books are only canon because they are referenced in Skyrim is also invalid, because The Many-Headed Talos is also used partially in that game, despite being UOL itself. Lastly, no logos appear on this book, so that cannot be the reason for its inclusion.

I'd also like to bring notice to the Skyrim Legendary Prima Guide. While my copy of the book has quite a few licensing statements (including logos), I'd like to bring one up to note its remarkable comparability to Skeleton Man's. Notice the explicit call to not making any other copy of the work, as well as featuring the same formatted copyright. Aside from the 'All rights reserved', which surely is not the basis of OL status, these are practically identical.

© 2013 by Bethesda Softworks LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission from Bethesda Softworks LLC. Mindtrait0r (talk) 00:31, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I also support Rim's proposal. It is going to help with the classification of the OL and UOL in the future. Tyrvarion (talk) 00:58, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure why copyright or licencing is being brought up in this discussion. The copyright of all TES content belongs to Bethesda, whether it's fan-made, fan-published, or otherwise. Rim's proposal above is in line with current consensus as I understand it and is a suitable clarification. —⁠Legoless (talk) 14:53, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

It is being brought up because of the lack of clarity in what makes things like the Keyes books and Prima Guide official. The statement given always seems to be that they are 'official, licensed Bethesda works' but what that means is never explained. My examples show that the Keyes books' "licensing" segments are the exact same in structure as my proposed UOL --> OL interviews, and that one of the Prima Guide's segments follows the EXACT same formula. The argument is not that Bethesda doesn't own all TES copyright, but that what comprises licensed Bethesda, canon, official work is in-line with what is displayed in my currently UOL examples. Mindtrait0r (talk) 15:24, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Why officially published books are treated as official sources shouldn't need explaining. Copyright notices placed on fan-published interviews don't make those texts the equal of an official novel. Are you suggesting the contrary? —⁠Legoless (talk) 15:31, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

(←) All I am asking for is a definition of 'officially published'. The indications on the Keyes books provide no obvious answer to the contrary that its licensing is equal in officiating at the very least Skeleton Man and Three Booksellers. Mindtrait0r (talk) 15:44, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

You are looking in the wrong place. A copyright disclaimer tells you nothing outside of copyright law and is irrelevant to this discussion. Trying to draw any further meaning from random copyright disclaimers is not productive; we do not define UOL based on licencing. The novels are official because they are official novels, published as physical media by Bethesda and their partners. To contrast that with what you're suggesting: I could add a legally sound copyright notice to a random piece of fanfic and it would not grant it the weight of officialdom for the purposes of citation.

Ultimately the UOL tag is a wiki-invented term and you will not find a one-size-fits-all definition. It's useful to discuss what texts should be marked as UOL, but you are giving undue weight to copyright disclaimers by misinterpreting their meaning and provenance in this context. —⁠Legoless (talk) 15:58, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I would also like to point out that the copyright notices were most likely added arbitrarily by the interviewers. They were probably (rightfully) excited to take part in an interview with the writers, and added those notices to make it stand out compared to the rest of their sites' content. You can clearly see the difference between the wording between the certainly officially added under direction from a legal department ones, and the ones that were almost certainly added without particular reason. As far as my memory recalls, these copyright notices were "trendy" on early fan sites, game faqs, early Internet videos. They probably actually have no meaning whatsoever. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 16:10, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

(←) To clarify with Rim's proposal, we need to clarify that when speaking of the Loremaster's Archive, we are talking about the ANSWERS that are fully official and should be treated as official lore. Jeancey (talk) 18:28, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Very well, good points all around. While I am in support of Rim of the Sky's classification, I do not know how the process of ZeniMax's editing would be confirmed, though that is not to say it doesn't exist. To my best understanding of in-universe and editing, I think that Skeleton Man and Booksellers would be included. Mindtrait0r (talk) 19:03, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

To Jeancey's point, Loremaster's Archive is indeed a special case and is already called out in detail on UESPWiki:Lore. While an official publication from an official website, our guidelines specify that only the answers can be cited as such. This discussion is specifically around other, older fringe cases we haven't really considered in detail before. —⁠Legoless (talk) 19:31, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I just want to make sure we don't accidentally open a massive loophole because we aren't considering it when rewriting rules. :) Jeancey (talk) 19:34, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

While I would like to support Rim's proposal, I can't in good conscience do so, as we have no evidence which specifies when something has been edited by Bethesda, unless it has been published by them (or someone happens to mention it in the published version, which none of our three case studies actually do). And when that ambiguity of "edited by Bethesda" is removed, we're back to the current state of "published by Bethesda" anyway. --Enodoc (talk) 18:56, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I spoke to former Bethesda writer who confirmed that all interviews of this nature were reviewed by producers, public communications, or marketing departments before being published. Devs could comment on the forums without running it by anyone, but articles and interviews have an official process to undergo, hence why these interviews can all be considered official while forum posts cannot. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 02:19, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era namespace request

I believe the upcoming card game is big enough to warrant a new namespace for it as well, in similar fashion to how SkyrimTAG space functions. It would be beneficial for documentation. Of course we probably can't host everything, but similarly to how it is with Skyrim The Adventure Game, there is more than enough content for this purposes. I think giving it a namespace is a probably the right way to handle this content. BOTSE can work as an acronym, it's even used by Chip Theory Games. Tyrvarion (talk) 20:49, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm starting to think that at this rate we should make a Boardgame namespace for all these cross-promotional games The Rim of the Sky (talk) 20:53, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't make much sense to me to have a single namespace for different boardgames. I think the suggestion to have a separate BOTSE namespace is the best approach. —⁠Legoless (talk) 15:07, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Legoless. A good precedent is the TES Travels games, all of which have their own namespace, despite each having less content than the board games. And of course you've got Pinball. Mindtrait0r (talk) 16:53, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

It will be needed. They also just announced an upcoming lorebook which can be found here so it will also be relevant for lorespace.Zebendal (talk) 22:27, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I'd completely forgotten about this. Okay, so BOTSE is the acronym. What about the actual namespace name? BOTSE as well? Betrayal? Something else? And then once I've created the namespace itself, we'll have to figure out what all the various fields in MediaWiki:Uespnamespacelist should be. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 01:46, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Printed UESP Morrowind Lore Book

We're happy to announce that any Wiki editor is entitled to a printed copy of the UESP Morrowind Lore Book we create for our Patreon campaign last year (while supplies last). Just enter your mailing address on our Google Form and mention "Lore Book" in the notes.

A PDF version of the book is also available. -- Daveh ^(talk) 15:02, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

MetaTemplate Update

It's months later than I thought it would be, but at long last, MetaTemplate v2 is live on our servers.

What's New

Most of the changes are for template programmers, since that's basically who MetaTemplate was made for in the first place. I'll cover those in the updated documentation as I get to it over the next couple of days. A couple of things will be noticeable to most users, however, though only the first is really that big of a deal:

• Template calls are usable in saved data. This is not automatic, however, for reasons I'll get to in a moment. There are two ways that this can be done. One is on the user's side; the other is on the template's side. Both allow you to use <includeonly>/<noinclude>, if needed, to alter what's saved on the current page vs. what's sent to the loading page.
  • User-side: If you surround any template call with <savemarkup>, then when it's loaded, the template will be re-evaluated on the loading page. Thus, you could have <noinclude>map of Riften</noinclude><includeonly><savemarkup>{{Map Link|place=Riften}}</savemarkup></includeonly> and if it were saved in Lore space, it would say only "map of Riften", while in Skyrim and Online spaces, it would show a map link to the appropriate map for each space.
  • Template-side: When programming a template, saved variables can be set to automatically save templates, whether or not <savemarkup> tags are used. This will most likely be useful for book authors and descriptions and such, but the drawback is that there may be times when a template shouldn't be saved in the output, in which case the user would need to use subst to get the right value to save. This is why I didn't make it automatic for all saved data everywhere, as I imagine it would produce a lot of unexpected results.
• Data saved on a page can be reloaded on the same page without needing to purge the page after saving. This is probably most noticeable on quest pages. Previously, when you first saved the page after an edit, the Quest ID for the journal entries would disappear. It should no longer do that.
• Purging pages to get the right data to load should largely be a thing of the past. Previously, under certain circumstances, if you updated the data on a page and then you were looking at a page whose own saved values depended on the first page's values and similarly indirect scenarios, the updates would stop once the direct data had been updated. This should be fixed now and changes should propagate through no matter how indirect the relationship. Note, however, that this relies on the job queue just like it always has, so if the job queue is swamped, you'll probably be waiting a while for everything to update.

Breaking Changes

A few things will break as a result of the new update, but mostly fairly trivial things. The two things that I can think of are:

• <catpagetemplate> has been revamped and will break badly on categories that load data for multiple sets. I think that's only the Oblivion Roleplaying pages, which I'll try to rewrite ASAP. Most other things should be okay, although page names may be missing their namespaces for some catpagetemplates, depending how they were written. There's no real way of finding those easily, but I'll see if I can figure something out. For the template programmers, is should be a simple matter of updating {{{pagename}}} to {{{fullpagename}}}.
• A few templates might break. Specifically, templates that use saved variables of 20 characters or longer. The new limit is 50 characters, so templates that relied on the 20-character limit in some fashion may need to be updated. One example of this is the ESO armor dyes, but those should be fixed by the time you read this. For any template programmers, you'll have to figure out the specifics of the template, but mostly, it should just be a matter of changing {{#sub:...|20|...}} to {{#sub:...|50|...}} in the template code.

As always, if you see anything broken, please let me know, either by replying here or pinging me on Discord. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 03:15, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Just adding onto this, please purge any pages that appear to be problematic and see if they're still problematic. If they're not, then the issue has almost certainly been fixed; if they remain problematic, please feel free to get in touch. If you're not sure how to purge a page, you can go into your preferences and then click on the Gadgets page. Search for "purge" there and you'll find two different tools that can help you with that. In each case, just click to check the tool, then click on the new thing that appears (purge button or clock) and that'll cause the page to be purged. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 20:45, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm getting an internal error when trying to edit any user talk page. —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:57, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Reviving Proposal: Redirect from Plural

Originally proposed here without any feedback.

I'd like for us to adopt Wikipedia's practice of creating redirects from plural and redirects from singular. There's been a few cases where we haven't stuck with singular form over the year, a recent example is Lore:Druids, to the point that I think this makes sense for that reason alone. Some of these pages are incredibly old that it would be bad to not maintain redirects due to potential external links, even if we were to standardize to singular form preferred only. Additionally, right now if you type in a search for a plural or singular form of something, you just get sent to search results. Clearly if you typed in Lore:Wolves you wanted Lore:Wolf, so we should make that a bit simpler and just allow Lore:Wolves to automatically redirect there. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 16:48, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I've been caught out trying to link to Lore:Wolves before. To date we've just created such redirects as needed, but I have no issue with the above proposal. —⁠Legoless (talk) 16:50, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I second Legoless, seems as though normalizing redirects for plural is already fairly regular and adding them where they could be useful is sufficient. Perhaps a dedicated category could be added for redirects from plural, but it seems unnecessary. Mindtrait0r (talk) 21:59, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't be opposed, given our current redirect categories are fairly bloated. —⁠Legoless (talk) 22:49, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the creation of a category for redirects from plural for sorting and similar internal-facing purposes would be part of the fulfillment of this proposal. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 23:20, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and created Category:Redirects from Plural for this purpose. Not sure if we need an identical category for 'Redirects from Singular' - I think they should be fine grouped into the one. —⁠Legoless (talk) 14:27, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

(←) Yeah, I don't think we need both. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 14:37, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Ambiguity in Heroes for Lorespace Articles

Currently, across the lorespace, there are two approaches taken to addressing in-game quest events involving the actions of each games' respective heroes. The first is to refer to them by their given hero-title, seen here referring to the Last Dragonborn. Alternatively, some articles use vague descriptors (usually 'an adventurer' with adventurer linking to their entry on Lore:Hero), which can be seen here. There's a discrepancy here, one that should be fixed not only for sitewide consistency, but for respect to the general stance that I've seen across the site preferring discretion and ambiguity regarding all actions taken by the Heroes (recent changed on Lore:Hero notwithstanding). I propose that all direct mention to the heroes in the lorespace involving quest actions in-game be replaced with vaguer descriptions unless that quest is a main quest.

An exception to this, as pointed as by Achernar, is TES: Blades, where pretty much everything hinges upon the player BEING the Warrior. Additionally, I'm iffy on ESO, as I would generally classify DLCs' main quests in the same vein as base-game main quests, but ESO's many DLCs and relative lack of connection to the base plot at times makes that murky for me. But yeah, community portal and all, so I'm looking for alternative perspectives. Cheers. Mindtrait0r (talk) 16:26, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

All in game quests and actionable occurrences are designed with one individual in mind, the player character piloted by the player. To draw this arbitrary line between the main quest and every other in game quest as events the player character absolutely did take place in and "may or may not have taken place in" makes no sense. Regardless if it aligns with personal player role plays or not, the player taking place in a thieving guild is just as designed around the player character as the main story quest itself, and this is the case for any and all quests. We should continue to make note of when quests have diverging paths and endings but outside of that nothing has ever explicitly exonerated the player characters of each respective game from having done essentially everything. In fact, we even have sources like this one that make it quite apparent that the player character is absolutely the one completing various quests in the games, with no accounting for this arbitrary main quest/side quest distinction. Dcking20 (talk) 16:39, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Mindtrait0r on this. That's something I've done during my time contributing to the wiki. I think calling the hero by a specific title is only relevant in the context of the main story or in another quest where it applies. The player has the option to not partake in any of the story, or even leave it unfinished. They can play Skyrim for however long and not be acknowledged as Dragonborn or Arch-Mage, and so on. The Vestige is the best example of this. They have that title because they initially lacked a soul and had that taken away by Mannimarco. But now you can play ESO for as much as you want and not set those chain of events. That's not to say they wouldn't happen at all, it's just taking into consideration that not everyone is gonna do everything and people are gonna play/interpret the games however way they can. Generally, I think it's best to describe events how the Elder Scrolls world sees it and not how it looks through the fourth wall. --Vincentius1 (talk) 18:27, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I disagree, the way we've been doing it now is more consistent, and doing anything else would just be dancing around what we already know happens. An exception to make is when you do things as a group in ESO, like group dungeons, as that's referred to as "a group of Undaunted" rather than the Vestige alone. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 18:31, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it is more consistent if the exception favors ambiguity. Neither using the Hero name or vague descriptions are wrong, but using the descriptors has two positive effects. It keeps that player interpretation in mind like Vincentius said. Secondly, it builds consistency with the artifact pages, which already play by this sort of rule by not including Heros in their 'Known Wielders' sections unless explicitly stated that they did. Quest events are not enough, main quests withheld (I think... I'm not an expert on the criteria there). Mindtrait0r (talk) 18:38, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the ambiguity currently is, but I believe the existing consensus, which is the one I continue to support, is essentially what Mindtrait0r already said. References to main quest activities refer to the player character by the title they have in the main quest. References to faction quest activities refer to the player by their rank or status within the faction. Any other references, where required, refer to the player as "an adventurer" or similar. A good example of this is how the Third Era and Fourth Era timelines reference the player in each item. --Enodoc (talk) 19:22, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

(←) (edit conflict) As I outlined on Mindtrait0r's talk page, referring to an ambiguous protagonist originally came about as a result of compromises that were made when we first began documenting gameplay events in lorespace as part of the Shivering Isles Redesign Project. Some people were opposed to stating as fact that the player character completed all possible quests, so ambiguity was introduced as appropriate. However, as Rim says, we have moved away from this over the years for the sake of clarity. You will find that most lore articles now name the protagonist outright. For quests with complex or contradictory outcomes, we usually highlight the discrepancy out-of-universe in the Notes section instead (e.g. see Lore:Gildergreen).

This is a far better approach, and has been the unwritten consensus in lorespace for many years. That's not to say the ambiguous style of writing is incorrect; it's simply an outdated style of writing based on an older consensus from when it was controversial to include any gameplay events as in-universe fact.

There is nothing to stop Vincentius1 or others from continuing to make contributions to lorespace where the player's identity is kept ambiguous. What Mindtrait0r is insisting upon is that we standardise our approach for the sake of consistency. No matter how you cut it, applying a site-wide standard in this manner would involve a serious namespace-wide rewrite of complicated prose, which is usually very delicately worded. I want to kill this proposal in its tracks: there is no such standard in how lore articles are written. We do not need to codify one into existence if it leads to non-constructive rewordings as was attempted earlier today.

I would suggest we clarify the current position instead, i.e., that both styles are allowed depending on the context and consensus. If we were to pick one over the other, it would have to be the non-ambiguous style, which is common across most articles. The argument that not all game events happened or were completed by a single individual was lost sometime over the last decade of our lore project. —⁠Legoless (talk) 19:29, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

The only benefit that has been given to Hero names over ambiguity is 'clarity'. While I think that clarity alone isn't enough to counter the two benefits that I attributed to ambiguity that have so far gone uncontested, I still wish to dispute the clarity argument in significance. The connection to the Hero is not lost with ambiguity; a link remains on the description that leads to the Hero in question (ex. an adventurer). With this in mind, this proposal should not be killed in its tracks. While there may be no such standard right now, what I am proposing is exactly that. The switch from Hero name to vague description is not complicated. The vast majority of the time, it is as simple as changing one or two mentions of a Hero name to a chosen generic alternative and usually changing 'the' to 'an' or 'a'. In any event, 'an adventurer' works for every Hero of the mainline games, which comprise almost all of the instances where this would be relevant, as in a good amount of spinoffs there is only one questline.

Edit: Just realized that I forgot another point. Yes, there would be some work put in to make the changes I have suggested, but as I showed earlier today, they can be done extremely quickly and could probably be fully knocked out in a single day if some cooperation can be coordinated. Mindtrait0r (talk) 21:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

"An adventurer" or the equivalent dances around the issue and often involves more speculation than simply attributing something to the player character. It's also difficult to write a cohesive narrative about the actions of an unnamed individual. You may claim that there are benefits to edits of this nature, but I do not see any advantage to removing clarity from existing prose. This is not something that needs to be changed en masse. —⁠Legoless (talk) 21:57, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Let me again emphasize this source as it dispels this distinction that is being suggested. This source so eloquently demonstrates that the heroes take part in the events of the games (I’m shocked that could ever be in doubt) To make any of these hero titles vague for vagueness sake is arbitrary and isn’t conducive to the scholarly accuracy lorespace is aiming for. The wiki should never be concerned with "keeping the player interpretation in mind" but rather documenting the facts as they are in a scholarly manner. Dcking20 (talk) 22:08, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

My proposal benefits from the shield. 'An adventurer' is never wrong unless a quest is retconned to have ever happened (which has happened before), but in this case, both solutions would be removed anyhow. But like I said, the vague option is never wrong, even if specification is later provided. In the case of the shield, the solution can be instantly added at no cost, since the link was always there to begin with. It is in this balance of a generic description whilst having a link to the Hero in question that the best of both worlds truly shines.

"'An adventurer' or the equivalent dances around the issue" - what issue? "It's also difficult to write a cohesive narrative about the actions of an unnamed individual" These deeds would not be included on any wiki material regarding the Heroes anyhow, as can be seen in the artifact pages where you intentionally left my edit removing the Hero from the Known Wielders heading, Legoless. Mindtrait0r (talk) 22:20, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

The issue of which game events happened and by whom. If I'm trying to describe, for example, the events of a long side quest from ESO, it is a lot more fluid and natural to speak of "the Vestige" than to do the mental gymnastics involved in trying to keep it ambiguous. In contrast, any page that cites multiplayer Undaunted quests usually keeps it pretty generic, describing "a group of Undaunted". This one-size-fits-all proposal is not fit for purpose. —⁠Legoless (talk) 22:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Edit: Also, the list of Known Wielders excluding Heroes is a layout change I suggested back in March 2011 when all artifacts were listed on a single page with outdated Arena/Daggerfall descriptions and no other info. Including the Heroes in every section would have been extremely repetitive at the time, but soon afterwards I began to overhaul Lore:Artifacts by creating individual artifact pages. Their exclusion from those lists is a holdover and is totally taken out of context in this discussion. At this stage it's an arbitrary exclusion. —⁠Legoless (talk) 22:54, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

(←) The very presence of ambiguity in the ESO coverage goes to show that it doesn't require mental gymnastics to do. It only requires changing the Hero name to a generic name that applies to the situation (adventurer always works regardless) and replace any of the 'the's which go before Hero titles to 'an' or 'a'. That's it.

In the interest of further tacking on the benefits of my proposal as far as sitewide consistency goes, imagine that the Last Dragonborn was to be given a lorepage of his own. Would the accomplishments of every single side quest be included? Of course not. Same goes for the timeline pages, which include all events of substance (there are many sidequests that follow this). None of these pages (except for one exception on the Fourth Era page which I would have fixed if this discussion was not ongoing) say hero names. Once again, neither do the artiact pages, which is certainly not an arbitrary point when the subject deals directly with Hero title mentions in lorespace articles. Heroes being mentioned there would be equivalent to the quest mentions to them, meaning the opposite of their absence boosting consistency of my proposal can't just be waived. Mindtrait0r (talk) 23:06, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

That is a strawman example. The Last Dragonborn article would not document every minute detail because it's not relevant to the topic to e.g. list all the artifacts in Skyrim. In contrast and as Dcking pointed out, for an article about Hopesfire, it is eminently notable that the Last Dragonborn once obtained it. —⁠Legoless (talk) 23:12, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

That just goes to the core of the proposal, where I disagree that that is something that should be on the article, and that I think it should regard the events that took place with the weapon in the quest but not specifically that the LDB wielded it. Since that is retreading the thesis of this whole thing, I'm going to summarize my benefits compared with the status quo.

Benefits of my proposal over status quo: Sitewide consistency as far as quest summarization in lore pages go, as well as general information keeping, such as the Known Wielders Section and timeline, respect to player agency, respect to Bethesda's shown willingness to change how quests went down post-game, and the 'never incorrect' benefit in accordance with said agency/retcons.

Arguments against provided: Clarity; which I countered by pointing out that the link attached to the vague description goes back to the hero anyways, achieving a perfect balance, work load; which I countered by pointing out that my edits earlier today came out extremely quickly and required very little work for each edit, and that the edits are non-constructive; which I have yet to counter specifically but will do so now - all of my benefits listed, assuming they are accurate, which I will assume as the one putting them forth, go to disprove the notion that the edits would be non-constructive. Mindtrait0r (talk) 23:30, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

My opinions: I have been known to prefer mention of the heroes by name, though this discussion has made that opinion on the matter less strong. With that out of the way, I have some comments.

First is the matter of neutrality. By the very nature of these games being roleplaying games, each game may be used to attribute the events of the game to the actions of the player character. Whether this supersedes the benefits of ambiguity in the event of no retroactive continuity is what is on trial here. While both sides can be thought of as responses to the question "how can we best empower the reader to have the best understanding of the content," I would like to argue for why one provides a better answer than the other. Imagine that you are the average reader, who probably knows much less about TES than yourself. Consider first that you know all about how the deeds of TES player characters may be recontextualized in future installments. Upon seeing the heroes mentioned explicitly, you might have strong feelings about it, but you know and therefore can omit that detail as you read. Upon seeing the heroes mentioned ambiguously, you may either recognize the verbiage as secretly referring to a hero and catch on, or you might only be aware of if you think to click on the citation and read the segregated information (more on why relegated information is not optimal later). Imagine next that you know very little about this whole TES player character stuff. Upon seeing the heroes mentioned explicitly, no harm is done as you have been presented with the most complete interpretation of events thus far. Upon seeing the heroes mentioned ambiguously, you would have no idea and even the citation might not be so elucidating, should you even think to navigate it. From this thought experiment, it is clear to me that explicit mention of the heroes is the option which better provides the reader with what is necessary for them to best understand the content.

There is also the matter of undue weight. This concept is relevant in many different ways. There is how tip-toeing around certain words gives undue weight to the fringe theory that all player character actions are done by other characters unless otherwise specified. There is also the concern that, when a hero is labeled as "an adventurer," the weight given to the deed is unbefitting of something done by a character so important. Were it so important that the deed be done by an anonymous random person, there would likely be a source by now overriding the player character attribution. When a deed which was very obviously undertaken by a hero is stated to have been performed by only some adventurer, there is weight given to the implication that it actually wasn't them which is undue.

Lastly is accessibility. It has been mentioned in this discussion that, due to hyperlinks, using ambiguous verbiage but specific hyperlinks achieves the best of both worlds. I would like to point out that the associated benefit is lost upon depending on your device setup and to what degree you are abled. It is for those reasons and more that it is generally a bad idea to relegate information to anything not immediately apparent. -Dcsg (talk) 05:28, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Using both formats is appropriate depending on the context. Lore pages are generally written as if they are recounting history and how history remembers certain individuals. It makes sense to use Vestige/Dragonborn when quest givers, npcs, etc refer to you as such. On the other hand when you are seen as a local mercenary or soldier of an alliance, then its appropriate to use a more vague description.

Your solution of a link attached to the vague description that goes back to the hero for every instance site-wide is not good for people who are unfamiliar with the events of the games - its gives readers more work to have to constantly check which "adventurer" we are talking about.

Lastly, there isn't any evidence that the method we use now is causing any confusion among readers. It wouldn't be the only reason to enact a change of course, but it would be a major one. --Jimeee (talk) 08:35, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Dcsg makes a good point regarding accessibility. WP:TRANSPARENCY calls these kind of links "Easter egg links", where readers are required to open/hover over them before understanding where they lead. It's not good syntax. —⁠Legoless (talk) 08:50, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

(←) You don't have to click on the link to know what game its from, you can always just look at the game mentioned in the citation. Plus, knowing the Hero name for each game requires a similar amount of understanding. However, I can't lie and say that I haven't been given a good bit to think about here. Still, though, there's an issue of consistency. Although it is against what I personally believe should happen, if it is decided that the usage of Hero names is preferable, I move that the uses of ambiguity be changed accordingly, that way even if there happen to be downsides to Hero names, at least consistency would have been achieved. Mindtrait0r (talk) 13:51, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Hopping back on this to hearken back to a previous argument I made that was dismissed as a strawman. I'd like to rephrase it a little.

So, if Hero names are used, most of these Heros would deserve lore articles for just how much stuff they have done. For instance, the Agent of Daggerfall, the Nerevarine, the Last Dragonborn, and the Warrior would deserve their own articles for wielding Volendrung alone. Now, the Heroes have gained a LOT of artifacts over the games, going by them completing all quests. Add all the great foes defeated, long long places rediscovered, mysteries solved, whatever else is 'important' and these articles would probably be MASSIVE. That's part of my worry with canonizing all of these side quests, miscellaneous quests, and maybe even unmarked world objectives. The boundaries become clear and the pages get more necessary to keep track of it all, and longer for how much they do. Mindtrait0r (talk) 23:36, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

This stagnated out, so I'm fine with letting it die, I'm not too diehard on this. I am curious, though; if I am correct in my understanding that the status quo is that both ambiguity and hero names are acceptable but that hero names are preferred, would it therefore be constructive editing to change ambiguity when it appears to hero names? Mindtrait0r (talk) 00:09, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Promotional renders in lorespace

I have noticed a general trend recently of replacing in-game ESO screenshots with promotional renders on lore articles. I'm not outright opposed to inclusion of promotional material in lorespace, but I would like to point out that there are several reasons we have historically discouraged the use of these:

• For copyright reasons, UESP-licenced imagery is preferable to images from other sources.
• Many of these promotional images do not meet our image standards, such as centering and aspect ratio requirements. This has been alleviated in some instances recently by cropped re-uploads.
• These promotional images are out-of-game renders and are not an accurate depiction of the in-game item or creature. This is more relevant in gamespace, but it is still preferable to use a high-quality in-game screenshot.
• Some articles are using extracted Crown Crate card assets. This is totally unacceptable. These images are for use with the {{ESO Crate Card List}} template which provides the border. Used in isolation, they are low-quality, poorly cropped extracted game assets and should not be used if at all possible.

I don't think it's productive to have an outright ban on these images in lorespace. They often have a better background and higher texture quality than can be achieved with in-game screenshots. Mounts, in particular, can be difficult to screenshot in-game without a player character as the rider. Crown Store artifact styles are another good use case. However, with the above in mind, I will be continuing to remove and revert the use of promo renders when alternate UESP-licenced gameplay screenshots are available. —⁠Legoless (talk) 16:48, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Have to heavily disagree with not using promotional renders, they are 95% of the time, higher quality due to having access to rendering tools we lack. A lot of the user-screenshots of mounts/pets/etc, are low-quality, have half-naked players in them, or have races like Argonians wearing Imperial clothes and then put on a lore article about Imperials Online:City Isle Tunic Dress, Online:Cyrod Gentry's Town Gown, etc. It looks unprofessional, and in my opinion, lore pages should be using the highest quality depictions. I do agree with not using 'card art', as I agree that it is low quality. I have no issue with prioritising user images in gamespace, as it makes sense there as that's what the actual mount/pet looks like in game and is useful to the player, but in the case of lore, I don't see the need for a prioritisation of in-game images if a higher quality version exists. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 17:42, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I mostly parrot Impbat's opinion to the letter. I see it as more or less a hand wrapped gift basket from the devs to us when they give us high quality renders, very often times with lore pertinent background themes, and I believe we absolutely must take advantage of said gift. I also parrot the opinion on the current style of player generated screenshots for many eso things we rely on that they are poor in comparison. Player created characters is a matter of subjective taste and I’m of the mind that very often these player characters look silly and non thematic, doubly so considering the insistence on stripping them down to their underwear for whatever reason. Overall I think developer generated renders are almost always the preferable option and if they lean away from image standards ideally we will crop them when possible but even in the event we don’t crop them and they don’t perfectly align with image standards I still find them more ideal than the underwear clad beefy bearded Nord in the floral dress or the scaly argonian modeling a Dunmer weapon style. Dcking20 (talk) 18:24, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Also repeating what's been said. IMO, if there's a render, then that's what should be used, not a player screenshot. Also think that having them not obey the image standards is much better than the same 2 argonians showcasing every culture's outfit. (Not to throw shade at whoever took those screenshots, as they're better than nothing and the time spent is appreciated, but renders are better) CoolBlast3 (talk) 19:34, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Legoless for the most part: I think Crown Crate cards shouldn't be used at all. However, I'm not necessarily opposed to the use of Crown Store Renders on the subject of mounts (as long as the renders being used in lorespace are also being placed on the proper gamespace pages). I take a great deal of mount screenshots, and especially where my older, blurrier images are concerned, it bugs me to see my player character casually slapped in the middle of a lore page.

Many of these Collections screenshots are time-sensitive: we often don't have a lot of time to take them while that timer for the Crown Store is ticking down, and while I make it a point to shoot in the middle of the day, ensuring that the sun is behind the "cameraman" while I'm sitting in the Crown Store preview window for optimal lighting, I wouldn't consider some of the rider shots something I (as a reader, not an editor) would find to be the best image to use on a lore page. I'm usually dressed to impress, but sometimes I'm not, and I don't think the same orange-scaled Argonian being in the shot of 75% of these mount images is a boon to lorespace.

Do not misunderstand: these images are perfectly suited to the gamespace pages: in fact, a mount with a rider is the standard for mounts. I'm of the opinion that it's better for there be a high-res image of a mount with a rider than a poor quality image of a mount in a house, and if we really need a riderless image, I would encourage users to relegate those shots to "03" editions: File:ON-mount-name.filetype being the infobox image, File:ON-mount-name 02.filetype consisting of the mount with upgrades, and File:ON-mount-name 03.filetype being an extra image, such as a riderless mount in a house. Riderless mount images are acceptable as per the UESPWiki:Online Collectible Images Project, but something like 80% of primary mount images contain a rider and are of suitably high resolution ("primary" meaning "the image that appears on alphabetical mount lists and is placed in the img field of the Online Collectibles Template"), and it's not worth it to go out of the way to replace all of them for the sake of lore. If we must take riderless images, I support relegating them to a numbered "gallery image" (03, 04, etc). That way, we can have images that showcase a character riding the mount (shows people what they look like riding it, perfect for gamespace) and a pretty image of the mount standing in a well-lit environment (satisfies us loreheads who might think it jarring to see a player character riding a mount in lorespace).

I think lore-worthy mount images are an acceptable idea, but I don't think we should obsess over taking them because that would require having enough disposable income to procure the mount one would like to pose in a suitable house, and it would cause undue stress to editors if we mandated that every main image for mounts should be riderless because it's better for lore (especially considering Radiant Apex-level mounts). .jpg is the correct file type for Collections images: storage should not be an issue. By all means, as someone who maintains Collections pages, I say feel free to provide an extra image of a mount in a house for lore: the more the merrier. Barring that, I think Crown Store renders (never cards!) are an acceptable alternative for lorespace. That's how I feel about riderless images from a gamespace perspective: go ham with them, but rider-inclusive images are the unwritten "standard" for primary mount images at this point.

Back to the crux of the discussion at hand, I disagree with Imperialbattlespire on most collectible items: pet images should never have players in a highly visible spot and most of them are indeed "good enough" for lore. I think we can rectify the issues Dcking, Impbat, and Coolblast have with player characters with regards to costumes by using screenshots of NPCs wearing those costumes, which there is definitely no shortage of. We do not need to be using Crown Store renders for costumes when we have a wealth of NPCs at our disposal that are simply wearing them.

I do not think we should be using Crown Store renders over in-game images: mounts are my exception. -MolagBallet (talk) 19:45, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I must disagree around promotional renders being removed from lorespace indiscriminately. Much of the policies around using renders were put in place before ESO, so they were written with the singleplayer main series in mind, where you can use console commands and other tricks to take photos that are even better than the screenshots Bethesda takes themselves. In ESO, we do not have these capabilities, so a majority of the time the promo renders will be better than photos taken in-game.

There are some renders which I don't think should be used, mainly "scenes" like File:ON-render-Domihaus in Falkreath.jpg which are very much staged and don't work in lorespace in a majority of circumstances. There are better static renders such File:ON-crown store-Dragonscale Frost Senche.jpg which don't depict a scene and just show something in an environment, and due to how particle effects work, are better than any photo we can capture in-game. Renders should be used in lore on a case-by-case basis in case they're better than what we can take photos of ourselves with the limitations ESO places.

Promotional renders should be allowed in lorespace if they are useful, high resolution, and centered. They should also be cropped if need be, ie File:ON-statue-Peryite.jpg from this render. I would also propose we add these renders into more galleries on Online: space pages instead of keeping them on just the screenshots page. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 20:03, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Rim here. Promotional renders should not be removed from lorespace on sight as long as they adhere to the aspect ratio (which only seems to be an issue on list pages). It stands to reason that the best image possible be used, and if a render exists then the chances are that render is superior to the in-game image. I don't see a solid rationale to blindly replace renders with in-game.

I don't think its a valid argument to say that because renders are out-of-game (thus not an "accurate depiction" of in-game items, etc), they are somehow inferior and not appropriate for lorespace. That might have been the case 5 years ago, but not now as media/content from non-game sources are just as "accurate" and appropriate to use in lore articles as in-game sources.

For example we use decade-old paper and pencil sketches from MK, images from the novels, or tons of ESO official concept art on lore pages - These examples are not in-game, are odd aspect ratios and are also grey areas when it comes to copyright, but they are perfectly acceptable to use and we consider them to be "accurate". To reject these renders on an accuracy-basis is inconsistent and cherry-picking.

I think its ok to use the card images in the gallery only, if there isn't a better alternate image. --Jimeee (talk) 10:24, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

My point is that the in-game screenshot is the better image, by our own rationale. I'm not suggesting replacing all promo renders en masse. Rather, I'm raising an objection to what I have seen happening: perfectly good UESP screenshots being replaced by poorly-cropped 3D renders like those Crown Crate card assets. This pattern of behaviour assumes the renders are superior to our own images in all contexts, whereas the opposite is true in many cases. Absolutely we should be able to use them when appropriate, the same way we use concept art etc. —⁠Legoless (talk) 10:33, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

But I'm just replying to your original position of "I will be continuing to remove and revert the use of promo renders when alternate UESP-licenced gameplay screenshots are available." - To me that implies that even if a render exists and is "better" than an in-game shot, you would still replace or revert it on general principle - which is disagree with.

What is defined as "better" is largely the problem. You personally may consider an in-game shot to be "better" and Imp thinks the render is "better" - so it becomes a subjective argument that goes nowhere. Of course renders are not superior to our own images in all contexts... but most of the time they are in my opinion. Replacing a good UESP image with an even better render is ok and should not be discouraged. --Jimeee (talk) 11:41, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

(←) I agree with Jimeee. If by better you are refering to aesthetics, I really dislike the stone wall background images that a chunk of these render replacements are. Generally the renders just look more natural and avoid having to use player characters that are 'normal looking' as the renders are all designed to fit their outfit. Mindtrait0r (talk) 13:12, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

My opinion is that in cases where we have have images created by UESP users that are of similar quality and purpose to an official one, and we can only use one, we should have a preference for UESP images. There are definitely many cases where we won't have an image of similar quality however, especially with ESO where image capture can be very complicated/expensive/tedious. That said, it may be worth trying to capture some appropriate and unique images ourselves when we can, instead of just the base images we have, but that will be entirely dependent on editor interest in doing so. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 09:02, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

AI Voice Readings

As I'm sure a lot of you are aware, AI voices have become a large subject lately. I am wanting to propose that we utilise this technology to voice our articles, similar to how Wikipedia has "Listen to this article" by people reading out the article. AI voices would allow us to have 'standardised' voices for reading out articles, this would be useful to blind / hard of sight users, users who want to simply listen to articles whilst playing a game/browsing the internet/etc, and would put us at the forefront of modern technology.

I am aware of the potential 'moral' implications of this technology, which is why I'd like to suggest that we could either use voices from the games, or use more generic voices that don't 'belong' to anyone. Nexus mods have allowed AI voice mods, but will remove certain mods if the voice actors requests that they do so, so we could potentially follow this same style.

I have an example here of the Imperial Male from TES3 reading Ordo Legionis that I have done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcPwH1TsFOg

An example of a 'generic' AI voice reading can be found here: https://youtu.be/SmhAv42VXqE

Imperialbattlespire (talk) 15:53, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

The moral implications are what worry me- even voices from games is a bit...frankly put- disgusting. If it's done with normal text-to-speech, such as Microsoft Zira/David or with the explicit consent of voice actors, then I can see it as a good addition for those hard of sight. Otherwise, simply using un-consented in-game voices sounds more like wanting to do the AI gimmick for the sake of it than actually wanting to be helpful. In-game voices can also sound very weird when AI spliced, which makes the less morally ambiguous specifically designed TTS voices more helpful for those hard of sight anyways. CoolBlast3 (talk) 16:03, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

tentative support, but I can foresee legal issues. we'd also probably want to make it clear on any voice reading that it's unofficial and not canon.Thal-J (talk) 16:06, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Sounds like a great option for the users to use, as long as everything legally is cleared up --ErfXploded (talk) 16:08, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

It's definitely an interesting technology and idea. However, there are major concerns about this technology right now, and even major strikes adjacently related to it happening at this moment. I don't think it is viable at this time unless we did something like CoolBlast suggested and got explicit permission to use a voice, or as Daveh and Imperialbattlespire suggested and "invent" a voice altogether. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 16:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to go soft oppose. I can see some uses for AI voices, but this is not one of them. They would need to be updated every time the page is edited, unless they read the page dynamically, and at that point anyone who needs that will likely already have a functional screen-reader that is specifically designed for this purpose.

I would be more interested in looking into this specifically for lorebooks, which do not change, if we can come up with a good legal position to start from. --Enodoc (talk) 16:38, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Interesting concept but the potential legal issues are a big one. Generic is fine, but I'd honestly need to see hard evidence readers actually need this feature in order to support it fully. Blind users already use existing tech to read webpages (Screen Readers), so they are out of the picture. It seems like a very much "nice to have" feature. --Jimeee (talk) 16:45, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

(←) I think the proposal to use voice actors from the games is dead in the water legally. If we have a licenced text-to-speech program I can't see the harm in adding voiced articles for accessibility purposes, but there's no need to bring AI tech into it and sample voice files we don't have permission to use. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:42, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Hex-Editing Files

I recently undid an edit by an anonymous user who provided instructions for hex-editing a Daggerfall save file in order to circumvent a bug with one of the quests. I did so because, to my understanding, this is not the type of information we normally provide on this site and could (potentially) fall into a legal grey area. The bug in question is also fixed by a third-party mod, the use of which would negate the necessity of editing save files in this manner. The user who posted the information politely questioned my removal of the information and I have outlined my concerns in response; however given the circumstances I decided to put this out to the wider community for additional input. Is this type of information acceptable in the circumstances (bug fix) or is this not a road which we want to go down? Any comments, concerns and clarifications are welcome. Thanks! — Wolfborn^(Howl) 02:06, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the issue here. Hex editors are not illegal, and Daggerfall is a singleplayer game. What's wrong with documenting cheats? You mentioned EULA concerns; where in Daggerfall's EULA is this sort of modification called out? —⁠Legoless (talk) 08:28, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I think we have a precedent in an Arena page that showcases save-game editors and even hacked save-game files. Compared to those, I'm inclined to think that the original content (ie. hex-editing for a specific bug fix) is safe enough. Can't comment on whether or not it's legal, though. Salamangkero (talk) 11:20, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Since no one else has expressed any concerns, I have restored the original edit to the article. Apologies for the waste of time and the misunderstanding. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 03:36, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Lore Race Summary

Currently working on establishing an infobox template for the lore race pages. The current live example is on Lore:Ayleids. I'm still pretty wet behind the ears template-wise, and I can see some ways it can be improved upon further. I wanted to open up a conversation for comments on how to develop it further, and any concerns with it that should be addressed. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail}

Since the template has already been created, it makes sense to keep the discussion on the talk page so I posted my reply at: Template talk:Lore Race Summary. --Jimeee (talk) 10:57, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

UESP Youtube

There's a number of Youtube channels that heavily rely on UESP content, to the point where I would consider some of their videos to consist of the host more or less just reading UESP articles. While I have a degree of interest in doing this myself, I figured I'd ask if anyone else would be interested in taking part in this project.

The main key areas of this project would be:

• Writing (researching ideas and creating scripts)
• Filming (This would involve producing/sourcing assets for the video itself, both actual footage as well as sourcing/producing static assets)
• Voiceover (this is the part we've had the most trouble filling in previous attempts, if you have any interest in this aspect please let us know)
• Editing (putting together the video)

Please be sure to let me know if you would have any interest in this project, or if you have any suggestions about the concept as a whole. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 21:54, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

In regards to U39

So, y'all know how we redirect some achievements directly to the relevant pages, like how the Bewan Explorer page redirects to the subsection on Bewan? Should we do this for the mass of new achievements for the public dungeon rewards (like Big-Eared Ginger Kitten), or for the Antiquities? Oath2order (talk) 03:13, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Also, same question for like, Music Boxes and Fragment-Antiquities. Oath2order (talk) 07:11, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

In my experience it seems a lot easier to keep track of achievements when we give them individual pages. It seems like a lot of public dungeon reward achievements are getting their own pages too. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 08:39, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

While I don't exactly remember what it was that I saw that made figure "eh, might as well go ahead and make them", that is what I ended up doing. The public dungeon ones are created now, and the antiquities will be tomorrow. Oath2order (talk) 08:42, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

ESO Map Issue

I tried opening our ESO map just now and received an error which says, "TypeError: t.coords is null". It worked fine yesterday and the old map edit link on my userpage still works. --Xyzzy ^Talk 23:56, 30 August 2023 (UTC) fine.

Never mind. I purged my cache and now it's working fine. --Xyzzy ^Talk 02:46, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Offical Lore Creatures, UOL Names

Having a discussion about a specific UOL issue. If a creature exists fully in lore, is depicted, but is only named outside of the game by a dev source, is it allowed to have a bestiary entry? I fully understand the issue, but for the case of Parrapton, and to a lesser extent N'chorbal, these are creatures fully depicted in offical canon works but are only named by devs in external sources, such as answering a fan question. Would this really mean that their bestiary entries can't exist for "being unoffical lore" when what they are is offical just unnamed in the source?

I'm of the opinion that things like Parrapton should be permitted to stay. Parrapton and N'chorbal are the only examples of this.

tarponpet (talk) 1:40 PM, 10 September 2023 (EST)

I'm in support of doing this, as these creatures fully appear in official content, their names just didn't come up in the game. With the pacing of the Origins of Cyrus comic, it would have been unnatural for Tobias to randomly say "Oh by the way Cyrus, these winged creatures are called parraptons", so Ted was nice enough to give them a name outside of it. Similarly, this same issue occurs for many other things in the games that only get explained by supplementary materials, such as statues in Oblivion. A large statue of Alessia appears in the Imperial City, but never in the entire game does anyone talk about it; we only know the name from the guide. This topics didn't go unnamed in official content because they were bad names or something, it just wasn't key to the plot to go in-depth about them. For a similar scenario in a different franchise, the character of Mansaku Nijimura from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure goes unnamed in the manga. The JoJo Wiki only considers content from the manga and comments from the author has hard canon, but the character does get a properly fitting name in the live-action movie adaption, so the Wiki opted to use that name as the main article title as its the most fitting name the character will get. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 17:55, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Just a few point for clarity, current policy is we don't allow a names or terms that are 100% Unofficial Lore to be used as individual articles or entries, regardless of if details of said term exist in official lore. This discussion has come about as there is an argument that certain things (Parrapton and N'chorbal) already exist in official lore to a degree, but their names are 100% unofficial - so should we change policy to allow these (and potentially other UOL terms in the future) to be given their own pages or entries?

Currently we have a few 100% UOL redirects that take readers to pages related to the thing in question (for example Lore:Pankratosword redirects to Lore:Shehai) - these are similar but not quite the same situation, and under the current policy, a separate page named "Pankratosword" could not exist. One solution was to move the lore information about Parrapton and N'chorbal to related pages (Lore:House Dres and Lore:Muatra) and give them an inline UOL citations that mention their given unofficial names, per policy. Another proposed solution is allow this change in policy, but cite UOL immediately after the bolded name on the article.

Personally, I can see both sides of the argument, but I've also seen how setting such a precedent now can become untenable (especially given the huge number of obscure UOL terms MK uses in his texts) - and how this can have far reaching (and often unforeseen) consequences, so I'm undecided as of now.--Jimeee (talk) 18:06, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Just to speak towards bestiary (since that’s the topic at hand) if a beast has been mentioned in Unofficial lore but has not been depicted or mentioned in any official source, it would not deserve its own entry in the bestiary page and would instead need mentioned elsewhere if at all, in the case of the N'chorbal and the Parrapton, they have been depicted in official sources thus the names given in unofficial lore serve their function of expanding our knowledge of an existing topic. In short, they should be allowed to be the primary name for the bestiary entry. To touch on the Pankratosword point, I would have the same logical consistency with that, if we were to make an article for the Shehai that sunk Yokuda, I believe the use of the name Pankratosword for the article would be appropriate. Dcking20 (talk) 18:17, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

As usual, I think a case-by-case approach is best when it comes to UOL sources. I agree with Jimeee that a general rule on this isn't great precedent. —⁠Legoless (talk) 22:34, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

There's definitely a lot of other topics that could benefit from this, where If the concept itself exists in the game, its an option to make a page from a name given elsewhere. When it comes to people for example, Alabar the Oddly-Colored is mentioned as "his (Ysgramor's) personal Clever Man" word-for-word in a mount description and the 500 companions text, and though his name is only dropped in the latter, I think it'd be fair to make a page using Alabar for the article name. I'd be alright with a Pankratosword page too should anyone want to make it. When it comes to locations, the River Thir appears prominently on the map in Arena, and can be explored in ESO. The name itself only comes up in TES III concept maps and ESO files, and the main reason its not mentioned directly in ESO is because... ESO really sucks at naming rivers and bodies of water in general no matter how big they are, so it would be fine to make a page for that too. If we're to make individual articles for certain names derived from out-of-game sources, I'd be fine with discussing it on its situation beforehand. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 22:54, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

I definitely agree on this kind of thing being case-by-case. I feel there's a difference between something like a creature or object name confirmation, as opposed to a whole concept. At the very least I feel something like these two examples would be fine, especially the fact they outright visually appear and aren't some book mention. tarponpet (talk) 6:55 PM, 10 September 2023 (EST)

(←) I've suggested for a while that UOL should be discussed on wiki prior to inclusion. So if consensus says to include the UOL name, then that works, but if it doesn't then we wouldn't include it. This should be for all UOL, since it's inherently controversial and having consensus prior to inclusion seems like a good way to head off any issues there. A lack of a response would have to be taken as no consensus. But this allows for a case by case basis inclusion of things like UOL names as the primary name of the page, and then the discussion on inclusion would be archived on the talk page of the page in question, so any future issues/complaints about the UOL name can just point to the discussion where consensus was reached. Jeancey (talk) 17:03, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Permission to make a UESP club in Street Fighter 6

Not entirely sure if this is the right place to ask but I was wondering if I could have permission to make a UESP club in Street Fighter 6. For anyone who doesn't know, it's the game's equivalent of ESO's guilds. I was thinking of calling it "UESPWiki" or "uesp.net" or something like that, giving it the maximum of 100 members and making it as open as possible for anyone. Think about it, it could be advertisement for a different audience. --Vincentius1 (talk) 00:40, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I just said screw it and made it anyway. Here is the new UESP club in Street Fighter 6. If anyone wants to join they can join immediately on the game itself. I couldn't quite replicate the logo so I took some creative liberties and I went with the character Marisa on the front because she's vaguely Imperial adjacent and her costume and motif are gladiator-inspired, kinda like the Imperial Legion. Whether you're on Playstation, Xbox, or PC, you can join. --Vincentius1 (talk) 00:41, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

How to Treat Verified Creations

With the new Skyrim update comes a return of a new paid mods system, and how to document them. First, I think we should come to an agreement that without explicit evidence otherwise, all of these new Creations should be treated as not appropriate for lore, due to this line from the official FAQ:

We are immensely proud of the Creation Club Program, and what its members achieved. In continuing to evolve with the Skyrim community, we wanted to expand on Creation Club’s potential giving our Creators more flexibility with the new Verified Creator Program.

With Creation Club, members were hired and paid as professional contract developers. Now, Verified Creators can be professionals who earn royalties directly from the sale of their Creations, with an easier path to releasing their work.

Verified Creators also have fewer requirements for releases:

• Content does not require a game patch to release
• There is no restriction on including voice over
• Content has no requirement to be lore friendly, although this is called out when that effort is made
• Must follow any platform restrictions for content and storage
• May not be localized in multiple languages

However, I still feel we should document these Verified Creations, as they are products that are being sold by Bethesda for Skyrim. Where and how will need to be decided if we do decide to cover them, however. At the moment, I can see a few paths for what to do (open to additional suggestions):

1. Just simply not document verified creations.
2. Document them in Skyrim-space.
3. Document them in their own, new namespace.
4. Document them in the Skyrim Mod namespace.

My own personal preference would be to document them in the Skyrim namespace, but I also would not mind them being documented in the Skyrim Mod namespace. I'm opposed to the creation of a new namespace for them, as well as not documenting them at all.

For now, those two points (if we should consider these creations for lore, and where we should document these on the wiki if anywhere) are the most pressing topics that I believe need consideration by us, but if anyone has related thoughts about Verified Creations feel free to bring them up. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 19:21, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

With Bethesda explicitly stating that the content has no obligation to be lore friendly, I see us referencing these creations in footnotes (similar to UOL) at most, although I prefer not at all.

The development process is quite different from Creation Club. Whereas with CC, BGS was regularly involved in the development process, they now only see the content in its finished state, and just slap a "it works, can be sold" stamp on it. That's not what I'd call an "officially developed plugin". Therefore I propose the documentation on Skyrim Mod space at most, though I wouldn't make it a priority to document these. -- SarthesArai ^Talk 19:31, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

My $0.02 worth off the top of my head, having just read this:

1. These mods should not qualify for Lore, due to the "doesn't have to be lore-friendly" clause;

2. These mods should not be treated as official content and should be documented either in Skyrim Mod space or their own space.

From a quick read, I interpret this as Bethesda opening a mods store to give modders an avenue through which to sell their mods, where Bethesda is providing a "store-front" service and not necessarily endorsing the content of the product. As such, I think these "paid mods" should be treated similarly to other fan-made content: documented, but not official content.

I may have more thoughts when further information and clarification of exactly what this whole "paid mods" thing entails becomes available. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 19:42, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Verified Creations are third party mods. The naming will cause confusion when comparing them to Creation Club Creations, but that's a problem for Bethesda's marketing department and shouldn't affect our documentation. They should be documented in modspace like Skyrim Mod:Paid Mods. —⁠Legoless (talk) 20:19, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Agree that these new CCs should not be included in lorespace in any form. Bethesda doesn't care about them being lore friendly, so we shouldn't consider them as such. CoolBlast3 (talk) 20:32, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I am also in agreement with the above. These are fan creations that just happen to be being sold through a Bethesda service, they aren't official content. Therefore they have no business being in namespaces reserved for official content (Skyrim, Lore). The only caveat I would add is that if Bethesda release some of their own Creations this way as well, those probably should be treated as official content, just like the original Morrowind Plugins. I haven't seen the new storefront yet, but if it includes an Author field, then that should be easy to determine.

As a secondary caveat, if any of the old Creation Club content does not have an Author of Bethesda Game Studios in the new storefront, I would seriously consider reviewing that particular Creation and where it is documented (for consistency, if nothing else). --Enodoc (talk) 22:58, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

These paid mods definitely shouldn’t come anywhere near lore. As for the matter of all of the old creations though, they don’t need a second thought as to remaining in lore space. Once the entire original batch of creations were released as a part of a base game Skyrim via Anniversary Edition it removed all gray area in regards to them being canon or not. In short new stuff remains out of lore space, and old stuff remains in lore space, that’s my take. Dcking20 (talk) 23:07, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Anniversary Edition is a good point to be fair. If there's still a clear indicator of that content having a slightly different status from the new stuff (easiest comparator is Elianora's new house vs the five Creation Club ones - are the CC ones still clearly different in some way from the new one?), then I think I would agree. --Enodoc (talk) 23:53, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

We should not add Verified Creator content to lorespace, unless in the future Bethesda adds their own offical content to the program. Even then, we'd have to verify if it should on a case-by-case basis. For example, when Cartogriffi was asked if cross games items should count as canon, he stated "Promotional items are sort of a category of their own." Zebendal (talk) 01:41, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

1. Document them in Skyrim-space

2.Rename the existing article Creation Club and call it Creations or Verified Creator program while also adding formerly Creation Club to the beginning of the article, and add the Verified Creations of the Verified Creators to the existing list on the Creation Club page while also creating new articles i.e. Skyrim:East Empire Expansion. Or create a new article for the Verified Creator program and create a list of Verified Creations on that article like the one in the Creation Club article while still creating new individual articles for the new creations with Skyrim in front of their names.

Is the idea I presented above too far-fetched? --KevinM (talk) 15:47, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Agree with most of the above. Document Verified Creations in Skyrim Mod space, but don't include them in Lore space. Old CCs should be in both Skyrim and Lore now that they have (sadly) been subsumed into "official" content by the Anniversary Edition. --SerCenKing (talk) 17:33, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Adding Verified Creator program to the Skyrim Mod:Main Page wouldn't hurt but what would happen if there is a 15th anniversary edition or 20th and all of the new creations are added to those editions, I'm sure that will be addressed around that time and I'm sure Verified Creator program would have to be moved somewhere else. --KevinM (talk) 18:46, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

(←) Cartogriffi has given us a very clear statement on the matter over on BGS Discord, which I think aligns with what most of us have said here already: "Verified Creations by community members are not official, whereas Creation Club content is." He even loosely weighed in on "canon" a bit further down: "the conservative approach is to limit "canon" to official releases" (which is also our approach at UESP). I think this answers our original question. As for pages, we need a new gamespace article about the new definition of Creations, to clearly indicate how the new definition is distinct from the content produced by Creation Club, but I would treat all Creations from this point forward (Verified or otherwise) exactly the same as Mods (document them according to Modspace Guidelines) because that's exactly what they are; unofficial fan-created content. --Enodoc (talk) 20:24, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification --KevinM (talk) 02:01, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

So it will look like this -> Skyrim Mod:Verified Creator program and Skyrim Mod:East Empire Expansion etc. --KevinM (talk) 04:40, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Cartogriffi's statement clears pretty much everything up. Creation Club content that was included with the Anniversary Edition stays as is, and they're marked as BGS being the author anyway so we treat them the same as we do stuff like Oblivion's official plug-ins. Verified Creator mods can go in the Skyrim Mod space. Bethesda introduced the new categories of Gear, Load Order Neutral, Lore Friendly, Visuals, World and right now six Verified Creations are marked as Lore Friendly. If one day Bethesda decides to bundle some of these Creations into a "25th Anniversary" edition of Skyrim, we can reevaluate it, but for now I think we've figured out how to treat these new creations. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 05:24, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

The main distinction between Creation Club Creations and Verified Creations is that the latter disable achievements. This to me speaks to their quality and status as third party mods, compared to officially released and supported microtransactional content. —⁠Legoless (talk) 21:09, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Oblivion "Bugs" - Volume 1

Discussion moved from User talk:C0rTeZ48

I noticed you've been adding "bugs" to many of the Oblivion NPC pages about their magicka being lower than what it should be. I don't have time right now to check all of your edits, but I did check Orintur's record in the CS and saw that he does not have the auto-calculate flag set for his stats, which means his stats were custom-set. So, yes, his magicka is lower than it would be if his stats were auto-calculated, but can we really say it's a "bug" if it was a deliberate decision by the developers? The Unofficial Patch team apparently doesn't think so because they make a couple of corrections to Orintur but leave his stats alone. I believe this information should be moved to the Notes section for this type of case instead. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 17:18, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's 100% definitely a bug: the magicka is a result of the devs simply taking the NPCs Intelligence, without multiplying it by 2.5. Then the race/birthsign brings it to what it is in-game. Orintur is not the only one: all the NPCs I edited follow this simple pattern. The UOP is not the be-all end-all either. They simply did not take a closer look at it. The UOP therefore still has some work to do. Also, these NPCs are some very minor, friendly side-characters, which are usually not fought against in gameplay. That also makes it far less likely their stats were looked over. It also took me looking over the CS extensively over and over again, comparing stats between NPCs. Also, take a look at the legend and Master of blade Alix Lencolia, you truly think it's normal for someone like him to suffer from very low stats? And even more: even if this all weren't true, wouldn't it be weird if all other NPCs in general follow the Intelligence times 2.5 + race/birthsign ability magicka formula, but then only a very tiny minority being an outlier for no specific reason? So even if it's a deliberate decision by the devs, I'd say it's a real darn coincidence all these NPCs magicka follow the Intelligence times 1 'trajectory'. EDIT: oh, and also, it's also a real big coincidence pretty much all these NPCs seem to be either priests, specific Mage Guild members and later DLC additions. It really looks like it's the oversight of one specific dev which was tasked on working on these specific NPCs. Perhaps if these totally random NPCs had a decent reason relating to specific dialogue or rumors, I'd somewhat agree with you, but this absolutely and clearly looks like a bug. C0rTeZ48 (talk) 17:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

As I said, I didn't have time when I wrote my OP to check all of your edits. I just happened to check Orintur's, noted the lack of the auto-calculate flag, and thought I'd bring it up as a discussion point in case you hadn't taken that into consideration; it seems you have taken it into consideration, however. I've also had time to do a test in the Construction Set, and auto-calculate is not the default setting when creating a new NPC, it has to be deliberately set, which lends fuel to your theory that these were simply oversights by a dev and not a deliberate choice. So these discrepancies do appear to be bugs after all. You might want to consider reporting your findings on AFKTrack for the Unofficial Patch team to take a look at.

Regarding Alix Lencolia, his stats are changed by the UOP (ver. 3.5.1), so you might want to add that info to the page.

Regarding your reply to SerCenKing above, specifically with regards to the UOP, you should be aware that the UOP Version History is also not the be-all end-all of every change made by the patch. I've found a few instances of records being changed by the UOP which aren't documented in the Version History (at least, not that I could find), so undocumented fixes do exist in the patch. (Which is not surprising when you consider that the patch makes literally thousands of edits; a (relatively) few undocumented fixes which simply got overlooked is not something unexpected.) The easiest way to check for changed records (for me, anyway) is using xEdit, which will display all changes made to a record by any and all mods that do so. Using xEdit, I can confirm that Falcar's stats are indeed changed by the UOP, as you can see in the screenshot to the right.

Thanks for continuing to dig through this stuff! — Wolfborn^(Howl) 01:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Hey no problem Wolfborn! I just wanted to give some extensive reasons for why I was completely sure it was a bug! It's too bad auto-calculate wasn't the default setting when the devs made Oblivion. I could still literally scan all the NPCs in-game for checking whether they are auto-calculated, but that would take me so much time I don't have, that I much rather just check the more important characters (so excluding ordinary lower-leveled citizens one never fights in-game).

And okay, I'll do that as well, last months I found out so many bugs that it will take me also quite some time to dig through my old contributions and report those bugs to AFKTrach as well. I will go through these somewhere the coming weeks/months.

Kind of silly of me btw, but unfortunately I don't have Oblivion for PC haha! Just for Xbox360! So I can't check out xEdit. But I still think of buying Oblivion with all DLC for PC somewhere in the future! — Unsigned comment by C0rTeZ48 (talk • contribs) at 08:32 on 1 December 2023

I actually disagree that it was a bug. Because auto-calculate isn't set, they have specifically chosen to set a value for the NPC, that should be taken as the intended value. In addition, not all changes made by UOP are considered bugs, and thus we do not include all changes on UESP. Rebalancing of stats is definitely one of those situations that we do not consider bugs and thus we don't note on the page that UOP changed those values.

Essentially, unless there is a overwhelmingly specific reason to assume a value isn't intended (which I can't really even think of at the moment) I see no reason to assume that non-autocalculated values for health, magicka or stamina would be bugs, and we shouldn't be labeling them as such... Jeancey (talk) 17:06, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

The devs choose to not make the stats simply be derived from the attributes (which they could've easily done by enabling the Auto calc stats tickbox which is present in the CS).

Because they could have easily done so, but did not, we have to assume that they did it intentionally. -- SarthesArai ^Talk 17:16, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

(←) (edit conflict) Have only just caught up to all the unpatrolled edits relating to this. Think we need to slow down for a second and re-assess rather than rushing into this headlong. A few points on working out what, if anything, is a bug in this case.

First, it's worth reminding ourselves of what the "Auto-calc Stats" button does. When checked, the button will adjust all Attributes and Skills to match the NPC's level, based on the formulae detailed here. Leaving the button unchecked allows you to manually tailor an NPC's Attributes and Skills, rather than being stuck with the single auto-calc result. The Magicka formula by definition only applies to NPCs that have auto-calc checked, thus the logic that if an NPC does not have auto-calc checked, their Magicka must be 2.5 times their Intelligence just doesn't work. The whole point of the box is to give the devs flexibility around attributes (inc. Magicka) and skills.

Secondly, there are actually a variety of cases for what happens when you tick the Auto-calc box. You aren't able to see this quickly in CSList but it's very easy in the CS. Having tested out 11 NPCs, the results are thus:

• NPCs where ticking the box results in no changes to Attributes (i.e. these were already scaled to the NPC's level). This was only the case for two NPCs: Isa Raman and Bralsa Andaren.
• NPCs where ticking the box results in no changes to Intelligence, but causes changes to other Attributes. This was the case with 9 NPCs: Orintur, Athragar, Volanaro, Ohtesse, Inius Colus, Eris Senim and Esbern. In each case, for example, Willpower fell and sometimes significantly: for Volanaro from 100 to 87 and Inius Colus from 100 to 88.
• NPCs where ticking the box results in changes to Intelligence. In both cases this was negative: Vigge the Cautious and Beem-Kiurz saw drops of 82 to 77 and 71 to 61 respectively.
• The effects on Magicka was mostly positive, except for Vigge, whose Magicka dropped from 205 to 192.
• The effect on Health was always negative. In some cases very minor (1 point; Athragar, Ohtesse, Beem-Kiurz, Eris Senim, Esbern, Vigge) but e.g. for Orintur from 150 to 132.
• The effect on skills was quite a mixed bag. For some there was no change (e.g. Ohtesse and Bralsa Andaren); for others there were some changes but not to their major skills (e.g. Athragar and Vigge the Cautious); for others their major skills increased (e.g. Volanaro).

Thirdly, while Orintur is given as an example, he is actually quite unique. Of the 11 NPCs listed, he was the only one alongside Volanaro whose Magicka was exactly the same as his Intelligence. In all 9 other cases the Magicka value was not the same as Intelligence and there was not clear pattern about why (+9 for Athragar, +110 for Vigge, +14 for Ohtesse, +10 for Inius Colius, etc).

Fourthly, I note that already one element of the bug theory is steadily eroding: that this is a circumscribed problem purportedly caused by a single lazy dev. In a few days we've moved from a couple of NPCs to around 70 by my latest count, and from a few mages and priests to trainers and Fighters Guild members. I'm going to go out on a limb and venture that the more you look, the more you'll find. Judging from the CS, there are about 300 NPCs (once you exclude dead, test, etc) that have the auto-calc flagged unchecked. So already we're at 20-25% being supposedly bugged.

So to summarise, we have a situation where:

1. The initial logic that non Auto-Calc NPCs must follow the Magicka formula is flawed to start with
2. There is wide variation in impacts (both positive and negative) on NPCs Attributes, Magicka, Health and Skills from using the Auto-Calc button
3. There is no clear pattern between hard-coded Magicka and Intelligence
4. The "issue" is not circumscribed to a couple of NPCs

All of which, I'm afraid to say, makes it pretty clear to me that this is not a bug. It's widespread and random enough that there is no way of saying things are not working as intended. We have no way of divining the intentions of a dev almost 20 years ago but given the varied effects on attributes, we cannot definitively say they wanted more Magicka for this or that NPC. Perhaps they wanted to give some NPCs more Magicka (Vigge), perhaps less. Perhaps they wanted to give some more Intelligence (Beem-Kiurz) or some more Willpower (Orintur, Athragar, Volanaro, etc). Perhaps they wanted everyone to have just a bit more Health. There is no way of knowing and with such scattered effects we simply cannot call it a bug.

To Wolfborn's initial point about including in Notes. This has some merit, but in the very specific circumstance of when it actually has a concrete and direct impact on gameplay. That is when the hardcoded Magicka and/or Skill levels mean the NPC cannot cast one or more of their spells and when the Auto-Calc values of those would instead allow them to cast it. It should be phrased along the lines of "NPC's Magicka is lower than might be expected given his level and the Magicka formula (X instead of Y). As a result, s/he is unable to cast Spell 1/2/3, which would s/he would otherwise have been able to".

Hope this is clear. More generally, it is good wiki practice to hold a discussion (e.g. here) and seek a consensus about such 'bugs' before starting to make series of edits that touch on 70 pages and counting. Otherwise it risks creating lots of unnecessary work to potentially undo/amend edits. Please keep this in mind for future such issues. --SerCenKing (talk) 17:56, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

We should also be careful for those concrete and direct instances not to count NPCs who have spells as part of their class but that are unable to use due to magicka as 100% necessarily indicative of a bug. Some of the lower level Mages Guild members could have a bunch of spells because of being in the guild/being of a magic using class, but if they are supposed to be a lower level member of the guild, it's entirely possible that not having enough magicka to cast them is indicative of a template conflict and not some sort of "magicka too low to use intended spells" mistake. If that makes sense....

In addition, trying to determine whether the magicka is too low or if they have spells that are too high level is difficult. Jeancey (talk) 18:53, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you all for contributing to this subject. I've read all comments, and SerC especially made an interesting post with some intesting aspects to consider. However, I'm still not fully convinced that these aren't bugs we're talking about. I've taken a closer look and found out many more interesting aspects we need to take into consideration. In fact, I've now become even more indisputably convinced it's a magicka bug we're dealing with here. I will first build my case why I'm sure it's definitely a bug, and while doing so I will also do by best to reply to some points made by others (including the four objections SerC brought forward). However, before anyone decides to edit some pages, as SerC also pointed out; let’s take a step back first, and take our time to have a closer look at all relevant pages, so we can contemplate on the best possible decision. Hope everyone does their best to re-assess points made, and think stuff over. And please, take your time to shift through my contributions of the last week.

I’ve spent many hours looking stuff over, and spent more hours writing this very long reply. When I saw these comments, I knew it had to be a pretty long one, since a lot of things need to be pointed out to give a detailed, clear view of the issues we’re talking about.

First of, there seems to be quite some confusion between two different types of phenomenon we can observe. Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough about these: there is auto-calculation, and there is what I call the ‘magicka bug’. Auto-calculation being turned off is something I have no problem with. I agree that the devs may have wanted to use slightly different stats (attributes/skills/health/magicka/fatigue) here and there. Take Volanaro and Inius Colus f.e. as SerC pointed out: the devs probably and likely wanted to buff their Intelligence to 100 to make them a little stronger, since their Intelligence was close to 100 already anyway. Or S'drassa whose Intelligence was buffed by 15 points, since it fits S’drassa being a researcher on Skooma addiction. Off course it’s impossible to speculate what reasons the devs had for choosing this for particular NPCs, but I consider it pretty obvious the devs explicitly intended it (and therefore I don’t see it as bug). I already knew this, and therefore did not mention it. Since a large, significant proportion of the objections were on the auto-calculation, rather than the ‘magicka bug’, I will spend no further attention to this.

But then there is also something called the ‘magicka bug’, which I still absolutely think is a bug. And I have many reasons for thinking why this is, which I will do my best to explain.

But before getting into the reasons I have, there was something interesting I found out: As SerC pointed out, magicka being equal to Intelligence (x1) isn’t always the case, since some NPCs had a slightly higher amount. But here’s the kicker I got after looking a bit more into the subject: each and every one of these other NPCs had a magicka equal to EXACTLY x1.2 Intelligence, rather than x1. I found out about half of them has x1 INT, but the other half has x1.2. This is a very interesting first find.

I would’ve had no issue if magicka would’ve been a little bit lower, like perhaps 10 or 20 points or so. But I do when it literally always follows the x1 AND x1.2 trajectory, instead of the usual x2.5 trajectory. In contrast to the slightly-adjusted Attribute points for some NPCs, this is very noteworthy, since this makes it much more likely multiple devs (at least 2) may have erroneously thought the magicka equation was either x1 OR x1.2, rather than the much more common x2.5 trajectory. This is just speculation, but given the large amount of NPCs suffering the magicka bug, the opposite of what you would expect, it does give some credence to his theory (much more on this way further down below by the replies to the four objections SerC made).

However, doing speculation on what may have gone wrong in the development of the NPC stats is fun, but we may never get an answer on it. But even then, does it even matter?

But even IF someone would reason that the x1 or x1.2 INT = Total Magicka makes sense, since it’s a way to heavily nerf particular NPCs, then why is it that these particular ‘trajectories’ are always used? And why do they seem to be implemented OPPOSITE of what one would expect? It’s more than often NOT the lower-leveled, lower-ranked NPCs that are nerfed with lower magicka, but the HIGHER-leveled, higher-ranked NPCs that are nerfed!! Here is a list of pretty much every group of NPC I’ve edited in the last week (when going by chapel or guild hall, since it makes the bugs far more obvious):

• NPCs of the Cheydinhal MG: what sense does it make that literally Trayvond and especially Eilonwy are the ones with a magicka far higher than the other Cheydinhal Guild members? Absolutely nothing!! Falcar, Deetsan and Orintur should’ve had way higher magicka compared to them, when going by level and guild rank!
• Leyawiin MG: Why does ONLY Dagail suffer from the magicka bug, for no apparent reason, when she is literally the highest-level, highest-ranked guild member in the entire Guild Hall, AND being THE literal Master Trainer in Mysticism?! Even Alves’s magicka is about twice that of Dagail, and she’s the lowest ranked member (S’drassa’s magicka is supposed to be 217, but not yet added on the page)!
• Bravil MG: Delphine Jend, the higher-leveled Advanced Trainer in Destruction, renowned for making the Enemies Explode spell, has lower magicka than even Ita Rienus, the lowest-ranked guild member…?! If her magicka was normal, it was much more what you would from someone her stature!
• Chorrol MG: Alberic Litte having 300 rather than 170 magicka fits him better, since he is the Level 20 Advanced Trainer in Conjuration, but most of all Athragar, who truly suffers from the magicka bug: Athragar can’t even cast a single spell!!
• Bruma MG: Volanaro having 245 rather than 158 makes more sense, since his level and rank is in between of the other guild members, and the new magicka stat would also make this the cast. As of now it’s the lowest, DESPITE being an Altmer…
• Anvil MG: Makes more sense if Marc Gulitte indeed gets more magicka, when comparing him f.e. to the lower-leveled Felen Relas.
• NPCs of the Cheydinhal Chapel: Gruiand Garrana, Primate of the Chapel, and level 25, has FAR too low magicka for her level! Hil’s magicka is also too low for being a Basic Illusion trainer. And most of all: somehow it’s logical that Ohtesse’s magicka is lower than that of Errandil?! Ohtesse literally is a level 17 Advanced Restoration trainer, whereas Errandil is merely level 4!
• NPCs of the Bravil Chapel: Why does Chana Mona have far more magicka than Marz, a literal Advanced Restoration trainer with a far higher level, and Uravasa, a literal spell merchant with a higher level?! And why is a level 4 Olava’s magicka being about equal to these two as well?!
• NPCs of the Chorrol Chapel: Why does Otius Loran, a high-ranked Primate, have far lower magicka than both Orag and Gureryne, two lower-ranked Acolyte and Disciple?!
• NPCs of the Bruma Chapel: Cirroc, a level 18 NPC, literally has about half the magicka of Isa Raman, a level 4 NPC! If Cirroc’s magicka was normal, his magicka would’ve been a bit higher than hers. Also, Arentus Falvius, the level 13 Advanced Conjuration Trainer with a lot of unique, high-level spells, has a magicka lower than Isa Raman. He also is the Primate of the Chapel. IF his magicka was normal, it would’ve been far higher than Isa’s, pretty much as you would expect from a NPC of his stature!
• Skingrad, Anvil and Leyawiin Chapels: then suddenly, none of them seem to suffer from the ‘magicka bug’... Why? What makes these NPCs apparently better, or just different than those of the other Chapels? What good justification is there even to make their magicka be normal as you’d expect, but not those of specific other chapels?! It makes no $#@&#!$ sense!!
• Bralsa Andaren: literally THE Master Trainer in Destruction of whole Cyrodiil. Literally a very high level 30 NPC, having a very, very low mere 120 magicka for her class… How in the %*&# could this ever make any sense whatsoever?! If there would be any NPC deserving of having high magicka, it would literally be her. How could anyone truly justify someone like her stature having such low magicka? She should be one of the strongest magic-based NPCs in the entire game!
• About the same reasoning goes for Oleta: she is even a level 40 NPC, also a Master Trainer, but then of Restoration! And more: even Lenka Valus, a simple level 4 Commoner, and Guilbert Selone, a level 10 Commoner, both from the same Kvatch Chapel, have higher magicka than the Cyrodiil-renowned Oleta… how much more silly must this all get?!
• Tooth-in-the-Sea: and here we have yet another Master Trainer (this time Alteration) suffering the magicka bug. And that when the Advanced Alteration Trainers even have far more magicka than Tooth has!!! Really makes you wonder why these are so often chosen. Perhaps since this was all clearly NOT a deliberate decision made by the devs?! Ask yourself: why are it the Master Trainers that so often suffer this bug, rather than the Advanced or Basic trainers?!
• Leyawiin FG: Brodras and Sherina getting a normal amount of magicka makes much more sense, since it will then be higher of the other Leyawiin guild members, who are in a far lower level!!
• Skingrad FG: Fadus Calidius not suffering the magicka bug makes him about equal to Parwen, which makes far more sense.

But all of this evidence is still not all I wanted to show. I have a list of questions I would like everyone to ponder over. And I’d love to see well-constructed rebuttles against the following arguments why I argue it’s definitely a bug we’re dealing with:

• 1. As Wolfborn pointed out earlier, auto-calc is off by default when making a new character. Considering the fact that it’s pretty much always the HIGH-leveled, HIGH-ranked NPCs that suffer the magicka bug, it’s very much reasonable this was the case. These NPCs seem to be completely by accident.
• 2. So the NPCs who "suffer" the magicka bug are often the high-leveled, high-ranked NPCs. Now if f.e., the choice had been made that all kinds of weaker citizens get x1.2 instead of x2.5, I could follow the logic, and would likely even agree with it. Or if for example the weaker MG, FG, Chapel workers or Trainers would have had that, I wouldn’t consider it to be a bug either. But in this case, as per the many examples stated above, it absolutely looks like a bug.
• 3. Even if it IS intentional, why are there so many merchants and mage guild members who simply can’t even perform many of their higher-leveled spells because they lack sufficient magicka? It seems MUCH more likely the devs were not aware of this and completely forgot about it (so did not consider it)!
• 4. And another argument why devs are not necessarily best, and perhaps shouldn’t be the decisive factor at all in the discussion: their intentions sometimes conflict with the in-game lore as well. At occassions they don’t even seem to respect established rumors and lore. Take all Master trainers f.e.: their skills are always lower than what it is supposed to be (100). And also note how clumsy the devs were: Athragar f.e. is a complete mess; he can’t cast any spells he sells since his magicka and certain magic skills are very low, he does not sell or cast any Alteration spells despite offering training in it, and Alberic Litte claims he can cast frost spells, which he can not. His Spellsword class makes him unable to effectively cast many spells, since his magicka cost isn’t lowered considerably by having high-leveled skills. The devs did a pretty bad job here and there to make NPCs work. In fact, this is all over Oblivion. F.e., Olyn Seran, a Master Trainer in Conjuration can’t even summon a single creature! How does that even make sense?!

This is the danger with preferring the devs' intention as a decisive factor above everything else. They're just ordinary people who also make mistakes, and their intentions should not be deciding factor. In-game lore, rumors and game balancing (especially when sufficiently reasoned), should be just as respectable, important and decisive factors.

• 5. AND EVEN IF this is all is exactly as the developers intended (which I honestly doubt), then why would the intention even be important for all these reasons in the first place?!
• 6. And what’s even more interesting to me is that there never was likewise confusion on health or fatigue! Ask yourself this: if auto-calc being off enabled devs to alter stats, why was it only magicka following a different trajectory so often, rather than health or fatigue?! This also lends more credence to it being a bug. More on this on my reply to SerC’s Point 2 down below.
• 7. And then what about npcs like Kovan Kren whose stats are all a very striking 50?! Are their very low stats done on purpose too?! Like the Legend and Master of blade Alix Lencolia?! You truly think it's normal for someone like him to suffer from very low stats?! All the other NPCs discovered thus far that suffer from this bug are: Thaurron, Stanet, Jesper, Kellen and Torbern.
• 8. And so final, to anyone who still disagrees with me: why is then that FOR EVERY SINGLE CHAPEL, GUILD OR MAGIC-BASED TRAINERS SUFFERING FROM THE x1/x1.2 INT = NPC MAGICKA BUG, its literally the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you would expect, without any good explanation at all?!?! How does it make sense that many lower-leveled, lower ranked NPCs somehow have magicka higher than that of higher-leveled, higher ranked NPCs?! This fact alone makes it 100% clear that we’re dealing with a bug here! This is all absolutely silly and ridiculous in my opinion.

Remember, if you disagree with me, you’re basically dogmatically defending all these atrocious game choices that make absolutely NO sense from an in-game lore perspective, AND an mechanistic game-balance perspective. All apparently JUST for the reason that some devs MAY have made these atrocious choices for no good reason at all! It may have aall just been an accident!

So I literally dont know what to say anymore, it literally cant get any clearer than this. I’m absolutely convinced we’re definitely dealing with a bug here…

And then my rebuttles against the four objections SerC made, including his final conclusion and remark:

• Point 1.1) Leaving the button unchecked allows you to manually tailor an NPC's Attributes and Skills, rather than being stuck with the single auto-calc result.

I do wonder though if it’s always absolutely necessary to have auto-calc off before it’s possible to change stats, since Irlav Jarol has auto-calc on, but also has quite different attributes and skills one would expect with auto-calculation turned on (calculate these manually yourself, you’ll notice this as well. F.e., all his major skills are exactly 20 points lower than what one would expect).

• Point 1.2) The Magicka formula by definition only applies to NPCs that have auto-calc checked, thus the logic that if an NPC does not have auto-calc checked, their Magicka must be 2.5 times their Intelligence just doesn't work. The whole point of the box is to give the devs flexibility around attributes (inc. Magicka) and skills.

Irlav Jarol also brings the last sentence into question, even though I think that many devs weren’t aware auto-calculation does not necessarily have to be turned off in order to alter stats. The second statement also doesn’t necessarily follow logically either: just because many NPC with auto-calc turned off have their magicka equal to either x1 INT, or x1.2 INT, doesn’t automatically mean that we can assume this was done intentionally, since it may still have been a development oversight. Considering the vast amount of examples I stated above by going along every single chapel, guild and trainer in depth, I definitely disagree with this statement. It seems all the more obvious to me that something went wrong, since the NPCs ‘chosen’ to have their magicka lowered seem to be completely random. In fact, it’s quite the opposite of what one would expect; it’s not the lower-leveled lower-ranked NPCs that have their magicka nerfed, it’s pretty much always the higher-leveled higher-ranked ones. So I have no problem with many NPCs having auto-calc turned off, and having many stats altered slightly (abilities, skills, health, magicka and fatigue), but I do have a problem with the totally random, no justifiable ‘magicka bug’.

• Point 3) In all 9 other cases the Magicka value was not the same as Intelligence and there was not clear pattern about why (+9 for Athragar, +110 for Vigge, +14 for Ohtesse, +10 for Inius Colius, etc).

I have already addressed this by now, but so just once more for completion; these NPCs follow the x1.2 INT ‘trajectory’ (initial magicka has to be rounded down in general first), rather than the x1 ‘trajectory’. There are many more NPCs following the x1 trajectory btw: Ilav Dralgoner, Otius Loran, Tandilwe and Falcar being some of them. SerC is wrong on Vigge btw, he simply follows the x2.5 trajectory (82 x 2.5 = 205). And just in case ppl may not understand how f.e., Ohtesse works: it’s 72 x 1.2 = 86 + 100 (High Elf ability) = 186.

• Point 4) Fourthly, I note that already one element of the bug theory is steadily eroding: that this is a circumscribed problem purportedly caused by a single lazy dev. In a few days we've moved from a couple of NPCs to around 70 by my latest count, and from a few mages and priests to trainers and Fighters Guild members. I'm going to go out on a limb and venture that the more you look, the more you'll find. Judging from the CS, there are about 300 NPCs (once you exclude dead, test, etc) that have the auto-calc flagged unchecked. So already we're at 20-25% being supposedly bugged.

Since it’s obvious now that there are two other ‘trajectories’ magicka amount follows, it does indeed seem less likely that it was merely the work of just one developer. At the very least there must’ve been at least two or more devs working on NPC stats. It’s hard to tell off course, since we may never get an answer on this. But what seem to be much more likely instead, when going by what we can see, is that there very well may have been confusion on how NPC magicka was calculated. One or more devs may have thought that magicka was equal to intelligence, whereas (an)other dev(s) thought it was x1.2. It’s absolutely interesting that it’s either 2.5, 1 or 1.2 every single time for no apparent reason! And the weirdest thing is that it seems to be completely random! And what’s even more interesting to me is that there never was likewise confusion on health or fatigue! Ask yourself this: if auto-calc being off enabled devs to alter stats, why was it only magicka following a different trajectory so often, rather than health or fatigue?! This also lends more credence to it being a bug.

• Point 2) Btw, this also brings me to Orintur, since SerC pointed out that with auto-calc turned on; Orintur’s [health went] from 150 to 132. This is a result of his Strength and Endurance simply being lowered. It’s NOT the manual handwork of a single programmer, since 150 is actually the result of normal auto-calculation: 100 END + 87 STR / 2 = 93.5 + 19 x 3 (Orintur is level 20, so he gained +3 health 19 times) = 150.5, rounded down to 150, just as one would expect. For the others SerC mentioned it’s the same going on, since Ahtragar’s health f.e. is also the result of what you would expect: 51 + 48 / 2 = 49.5 + 13 x 3 = 88.5, rounded down to 88.

The other stuff mentioned at point 2 is irrelevant, since those are about particular small changes the devs made turning auto-calc off, rather than the magicka bug. But as I mentioned above, I have no problem with the devs making some small, random particular changes. It’s just the magicka stats I object to, since these changes, unlike attribute and skill changes made to many NPCs, are instead actually the opposite of what you would expect (those literally ALWAYS nerfing the stronger, higher-ranked NPCs). At least the small attributes and skill changes made to particular NPCs are definitely deliberate, since those were often small changes to buff or nerf NPCs a little bit. There are also other objections I have to the magicka bug, but I mentioned these earlier so I wont go over these again…

All of which, I'm afraid to say, makes it pretty clear to me that this is not a bug. It's widespread and random enough that there is no way of saying things are not working as intended. We have no way of divining the intentions of a dev almost 20 years ago but given the varied effects on attributes, we cannot definitively say they wanted more Magicka for this or that NPC. Perhaps they wanted to give some NPCs more Magicka (Vigge), perhaps less. Perhaps they wanted to give some more Intelligence (Beem-Kiurz) or some more Willpower (Orintur, Athragar, Volanaro, etc). Perhaps they wanted everyone to have just a bit more Health. There is no way of knowing and with such scattered effects we simply cannot call it a bug.

So as I have made clear by now, I definitely disagree with this conclusion, at least on the ‘magicka bug’ part, not the ‘auto-calc’ part (which I never also stated in the first place, just to be clear). Bugs not potentially being bugs because they are widespread is completely irrelevant, and does not logically follow, since bugs simply CAN be widespread. All what we can observe definitely makes me convinced it’s a bug we’re dealing with. I won’t re-address other points I’ve made earlier, since I rebuttled these earlier, some of them at point 2.

To Wolfborn's initial point about including in Notes. This has some merit, but in the very specific circumstance of when it actually has a concrete and direct impact on gameplay. That is when the hardcoded Magicka and/or Skill levels mean the NPC cannot cast one or more of their spells and when the Auto-Calc values of those would instead allow them to cast it. It should be phrased along the lines of "NPC's Magicka is lower than might be expected given his level and the Magicka formula (X instead of Y). As a result, s/he is unable to cast Spell 1/2/3, which would s/he would otherwise have been able to".

And off course, I also disagree with this point, since I’m absolutely convinced we’re talking about a bug here. And since these are simply bugs, they should be addressed on UESP. NPCs that can cast spells are definitely impacted, whether they are allies or enemies, since they may cast spells more or less often in a given timeframe. So it’s not about merely being able to cast certain spells or not. About how things should be ideally phrased is something worth having a good discussion about.

Hope this is all clear. I think I’ve made my case well enough. Since there is so much to talk about, I still likely may have missed something. If anyone has questions, please let me know. C0rTeZ48 (talk) 15:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I have to agree with SerCenKing that this is not a bug. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 16:49, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Can you perhaps provide evidence for your opinion? I would like someone to at least try to refute my arguments in order to maintain a constructive and fruitful discussion... C0rTeZ48 (talk) 17:02, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

(←) Hi C0rTeZ, thank you for taking the time to look into this in detail and setting out your reasoning. As an overall point however, please measure your tone in future responses. All of us can get frustrated and worked up when we disagree with others, but we can always take some time to cool off before we hit send. All caps, various expletive substitutes, etc are not how we should interact on this wiki.

On the substance, having read through all your post (and reflecting on other posts & edits you've made), I think the fundamental issue is that you have an idea in your head about how a game should be and you've decided to transpose that onto the OB pages. Anything that the actual devs did which causes discrepancies with that idea then appears to you as a bug. Unfortunately, that's just not how this wiki works. We are here to document the devs' work, not to second-guess it. We are not in the business of reverse engineering the game and opining on how the devs should have done their work.

None of the additional information you've brought up really changes this fact. So we now know non-autocalc'ed NPCs have a Magicka that is either 2.5, 1.2 or 1 times their Intelligence. Great, but we're still no closer to knowing the devs intentions. What we know is that we have dozens and dozens of NPCs for whom the devs decided to make a whole host of changes to attributes and stats, and that that has a bunch impacts both 'positive' and 'negative' compared to auto-calc'ed NPCs. That's it. I get where you're coming from - I really do - but I'm afraid all you're offering is just a lot of speculation and conjecture about rogue/lazy devs or reverse engineering of "lore" onto NPC stats.

If you developed a game, I'm sure it would be fully internally coherent from both gameplay and "lore" perspectives. But this wiki is not about that game, it's about Oblivion. And we have to take Oblivion at face value, not as we would like it to be. Many of the things you see as bugs or illogical are just design choices and features (of a game whose developed started almost 20 years ago, I should add). You even say it yourself: "In fact, this is all over Oblivion". It is! And that should perhaps give you pause, because that's the whole point. I think it's pretty clear the OB devs were simply not interested in the same design choices as you, and focused on getting the game "to work" rather than obsessing about consistency.

Remember that the vast, vast majority of named NPCs are there to populate the world and make it richer in terms of content, dialogue, etc. They are not there for you to fight. So it is frankly irrelevant from a design and gameplay perspective whether or not they have 'right' amount of magicka or not. It's clearly something the devs didn't care about it, and this is their game. Where there is an impact on gameplay (i.e. NPCs and creatures you are actually meant to fight), you'll find things like enemy leveled lists and consistent levelling of attributes and equipment. To me this speaks to a pretty clear design aim.

There isn't a "Law of ES" that says that NPCs that are higher level or in higher positions in Guilds need to have relatively higher or lower attributes or stats. The game is full of what look like under-leveled NPCs or NPCs whose nominal faction rank and their CS faction rank don't match. Do any of these things prevent these NPCs from exercising their functions, do they prevent you from completing a quest, from talking to them? No!

There is similarly nothing that says that trainers need to have skill levels to match their training level. Is it a bit "odd" from a meta-perspective? Sure. But does it stop them from doing their job of providing you with training? No! They only way you'd even notice is if you're in the tiny minority of players who pulls up their CS statistics. Again, the devs clearly didn't see "lore" as the defining factor here. Same goes for spell merchants - their role is to sell you spells: it doesn't matter to the game if their own skills don't match.

A few small points on specific issues you raised:

• Irlav Jarol's stats in CSList are simply wrong and don't match the CS (which has the correct stats on e.g. major skills at 74) so any arguments based on him as an example are void.
• Your numbers on Orintur are just wrong: his Strength is 61 and Endurance 87, not 87 and 100 respectively.
• Alix Lencolia, Stanet et al are not comparable to other NPCs listed here. All of those NPCs have exactly the same stats (all Attributes 50, Personality 30, all Skills 5, H/M/F all 50) which just so happen to be the default settings when you create an NPC in the CS. That is different from the tailoring of stats mentioned above. For these NPCs, I think it's worth having this information on the page, but in a Note. We can't say it's a bug, but I'd argue it is odd and uncommon enough to be mentioned.

In terms of where does this leave us, my suggestion would thus be:

• Bugs: should be very strictly restricted to specific cases with direct gameplay impact as per my earlier message
• Notes on individual NPC pages: only for NPCs like Alix Lencolia; remove all others
• Notes on other pages: I could be persuaded (still a bit on the fence) to have a general note on each of the following pages:
  • NPCs (Magicka section): noting that the 2.5 formula applies to all auto-calc'ed NPCs; for non auto-calc'ed there's a range (2.5, 1.2, 1)
  • Trainers: noting most don't have associated skill level one might expect
  • Spell Merchants: noting most don't have associated skill level/magicka one might expect

PS - as a sidenote, much of my reasoning above also applies to the NPC skill notes mentioned in the section below. --SerCenKing (talk) 21:00, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Been undecided ever since I came across these edits on OB NPCs. However, given the last post about how this wiki is not about some hypothetical, perfectly-consistent version of Oblivion (as well as some time to think), I will have to agree that this is not a bug. Most of the purported bugs are neither significant (ie. has no meaningful impact to players' experience with the game) nor noteworthy (ie. does not provide any value whatsoever to UESP readers).

Also, for them to be considered bugs, there were a lot of assumptions that had to be made: that stats should always be consistent with in-game lore, that stats should make sense from a game-balance perspective, that low-leveled/-ranked NPCs should always have lower magicka than higher-leveled/-ranked ones, that players cared enough to look at an NPCs INT and to have specific expectations on how much magicka they should have, that UESP readers experienced confusion as to why magicka is not as straightforward as health or fatigue, that developers made atrocious choices for no good reason, that setting auto-calc off requires devs to mess with stats other than magicka, that hard-coded Magicka should (or should not?) equal a consistent multiple of INT, etc.

Thus, by Occam's Razor, I believe it is more likely that this is not a bug. I also agree with the first two bullets of SerCenKing's suggestions. Salamangkero (talk) 10:06, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

First a reply to SerC:

Thank you for your reply. Based on it, I have so many arguments and things I want to ask that I will do my best to put them forth. But before replying to the arguments you've made in a future post, there are some other things I want to say and ask first:

So first, in your last reply, I only noticed a reply to some of the arguments I've brought forth. I would like you, and everyone else taking their time to reply to this post, to try to refute all my stated arguments on a point-by-point basis. That way, anyone reading this topic section, can instantly see what arguments are weaker, and which ones are stronger. Yes, as a negative consequence, this will take more time, but I think it at least does maintain the quality of the discussion. Now it seems like you could simply not provide a reasonable rebuttal to some of my arguments. I think a best decision should be made on building two separate cases, and then deciding what is best, based on the best evidence, and most persuasive arguments put forward. So I would like a point-by-point reply, where the argument is criticized, and a counter-argument is put forth. If not, then I have to re-evaluate my interaction with specific UESP posters, since there is too much of a fundamental disagreement about how one should go about reasoning and deciding matters. I want a discussion where I can be persuaded and convinced of the opposite opinion, where I will honestly relinquish my own position, but unfortunately, as I perceive it now, it is met with entrenchment and inflexibility of an adamant position where further reasoning seems just a waste of time, supplemented with a bit of lip service.

Which brings me to my second point: I may be wrong, but it seems you've already made up your mind, and any amount of time I'll take to reply to yours is just a waste of my valuable time. Based on your response, I get the feeling that no matter how many well-meant, highly-persuasive arguments I, or anyone else put forward, you will not change your mind. As I just mentioned: I may be wrong, since you did not mention so explicitly, and you also mentioned at the end you merely want to do a suggestion, but it's just what I get from your answer. So all I want from you before I reply, is that you're willing to admit your opinion of the magicka bug not being a bug may be wrong. That's all. Hope you can understand this, since it would otherwise just be a waste of my time. If you're not willing to, then I actually wonder why you put this section here at the Community Portal in the first place.

That being said, I just want to reply to a few minor things you mentioned (more major points perhaps later, depending on your reply):

• First, you mentioned my tone: As an overall point however, please measure your tone in future responses. All of us can get frustrated and worked up when we disagree with others, but we can always take some time to cool off before we hit send. All caps, various expletive substitutes, etc are not how we should interact on this wiki.

If this was an offense to you, then I apologize. I just want to mention I specifically added the exclamation marks and censor-marks to underline and accentuate the absolute silliness and foolishness of the current NPC stats of Oblivion. I still absolutely feel this way. However, it is mistaken this was a consequence of any frustration: I thinks it's all just silly, that's it. It's not something you, or anyone else can figure out by reading such a reply, but I consider it all as just so silly, that I chuckle about it all, even now. There is no frustration or anger to anyone, rather, it's all just so silly that I can't believe the devs released the game in this state, and it was a means to underline and accentuate my point of it all being so extremely convincing in favor of my position.

• Second, you mentioned you consider I'm rather headstrong: I think the fundamental issue is that you have an idea in your head about how a game should be and you've decided to transpose that onto the OB pages.

In my defense, my last reply was motivated by something I recently noticed. Yes, I thought the evidence is very strong, and I still do, but as I also stated in my last reply: Now if f.e., the choice had been made that all kinds of weaker citizens get x1.2 instead of x2.5, I could follow the logic, and would likely even agree with it. Or if for example the weaker MG, FG, Chapel workers or Trainers would have had that, I wouldn’t consider it to be a bug either. Does this seem like a reply from someone who merely wants to transpose a stuck idea onto a Wiki? Also, I think your judgment is unfair, since I can think of multiple instances of our interaction where I relinquished my position in favor or a proposal you put forth, even if just be accepting an edit you made on a page I made earlier. And my past with UESP is further evidence of that. Yes, I am willing to admit I'm someone who at least needs well-constructed arguments from the opposite side, before I'm willing to relinquish my position. And to you, it may seem like that is me just transposing my ideas onto OB pages, but I can honestly and confidently tell you I'm perfectly willing to admit I'm capable to forgo and forfeit any position I have, in light of it being unreasonable, in favor of a stronger one. This is also why I absolutely agree f.e. with the auto-calc turned off not being a bug, since I think it is unreasonable to hold the other position. I formed a particular opinion, based on all the facts I gathered. Basically, the more I looked into the topic, the more evidence I saw in favor of this opinion. Imo, this is how I see how decisions should be based on.

• Third, on the few specific issues I raised: can you then perhaps tell me here what Irlav Jarol's real vanilla (non-UOP) stats are? And on Orintur: I did indeed made a mistake, however, my point actually still perfectly stands, since his Health is a result of his health increasing 4 per level (since Endurance as a Favored Attribute always gives another +1 per level). So the 150 is a result of 87 + 61 / 2 = 74 + 19 x 4 = 150. But perhaps you already noticed this?

And on Alix Lincolia et al.: This actually does raise a very interesting theory on the x1/x1.2 INT = magicka theory: Since many Oblivion:Races start with either 40 or 50 INT, some devs may have thought magicka is equal to INT... But okay, I get your point, but you're not completely right: Thaurron's stats ARE actually somewhat different, as well as the fact that the Personality differs between these NPCs (either 30 or 40). And now we're on it, since the Personality differs between NPCs, can you check if it's correct that it's the Race that determines base Personality?

And I have a question specifically about Thaurron: Would you consider his stats being specifically tailored or not? Yes or no? Because if you do, just to let me test your logic, you think that a dev specifically tailored a random Mage Guild member, for no specific reason (he is the ONLY Mage Guild member to have so), to get specific Attribute and Skills numbers about equal to a Level 1 Imperial? So you literally don't think it's a bug that a Level 10 Bosmer has an Attribute and Skill set pretty much equal to a Level 1 Imperial, for no specific reason? Not just his magicka, but ALL his other stats too?! And if you don't think it's tailored, what reasons you have for that? I will note your reply for a future reply of mine, since I have more points to address. C0rTeZ48 (talk) 16:02, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

And then a reply to Salamangkero:

I disagree with some things you've mentioned, but since they're just opinions brought forth without further argumentation, there is nothing to criticize here. Also, these are agreements in line with SerÇ's earlier comment, which I will perhaps reply later on anyway (based on what his response will be), so I will leave these for now.

Nevertheless, I can critique the utilization of Occam's Razor to draw conclusions in a statement, as it is merely a heuristic and should not be employed to prematurely conclude a discussion by favoring the theory with the fewest assumptions. It cannot guarantee a correct outcome. The correct explanation may simply use more assumptions and complexity than the false one, and is therefore a form of fallacious reasoning. Let me provide real-life examples of where potential use of Occam's Razor leads to false conclusions: many conspiracy theories, the geocentric model, phlogiston theory, ether as a medium for light and spontaneous generation are some theories that offered simpler explanations with fewer assumptions than later theories that turned out to be correct. Complex variables were overlooked, which is also why psychological disorders turned out to be more established in scientific theory than previous theories.

Rather than resorting to mere heuristics, I'd offer anyone to debunk arguments I brought forth on a point-by-point basis. The most robust case, supported by the strongest arguments that withstand scrutiny, should be considered the most correct, at least in my view. C0rTeZ48 (talk) 16:36, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi C0rTeZ. I'll admit I found your second paragraph slightly baffling, but sure: my opinion may well be wrong, I just don't happen to think it is. I also think my previous on here suggests I am open-minded and willing to compromise. In this instance, it's not that I don't want to change my mind, it's just that I haven't found your arguments convincing.

I'd be interested to hear which arguments exactly you think haven't been addressed, as I'd say my reply covers all salient ones. I didn't think there is a particular need to go to "point by point" because I'm instead trying to demonstrate the flaw in the underlying premise of all your main arguments. And to be clear, it's not meant as an indictment on your character: I'm not saying its pigheadedness on your part. I'm just pointing out that the mindset you're coming at this issue from is in my view flawed and that when you apply it to the OB pages on this wiki, you're thus drawing the wrong conclusions.

In any case, for the record, my "general critique" covers all of your message before the numbered section, as well as all numbered points except 3 and 7. The former is a "non-point" in that it's never been suggested that NPCs not being able to cast their spells is not a bug. The latter is covered by my specific reply on Alix Lencolia et al. Similarly for Points 1.1 and 1.2, via the Irlav Jarol bullet (you can see his stats here). My original Point 3, as I mention above, still stands in that we just know there are 3 different Magicka formulae now, that's it. On Point 4 and the Orintur stats, I never said that Health or Fatigue had different formulae when comparing auto-calc and non. I said that the tailoring of stats (allowed for by not having auto-calc ticked) had as a common side effect that of boosting both, in contrast to often reducing Magicka. The point being (and I note you just decided to dismiss this) that the impacts on NPCs vary across stats.

On Thaurron, I admit I'd skimmed past him in the previous post and not noticed him specifically. Now looking at him I'm unclear why he's even being included in the same bracket as Alix Lencolia or Stanet when his situation is clearly different. In any case, your line of thinking here just further demonstrates the point I'm making: you keep looking at these stats from your own "consistency" lens without looking at how the game actually is. Why Thaurron has those stats is neither here nor there: perhaps he was initially meant to be an Imperial, perhaps they messed around with this level, perhaps the 0 in 10 is a typo, who knows. It is not something we can divine twenty years down the line. Beyond the bug that his skills & Magicka combo impact his spell-casting ability, there is nothing else to it worth noting. --SerCenKing (talk) 21:51, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

(←) I am going to close out this discussion on the basis that we do not want bugs like this noted on Oblivion NPC articles. I will be entirely candid here and admit that I have not read the entirety of the above wall of text, but it seems to me that consensus points towards this being a case of manually-added non-autocalc stats rather than some sort of unintentional fault of the game's logic. A general note like SerC suggests may be the best way to capture this information succinctly. —⁠Legoless (talk) 18:14, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

This topic is now closed.

Oblivion "Bugs" - Volume 2

Discussion moved from User talk:C0rTeZ48

Given that some of the underlying logic is common with the thread above, I also post here a separate discussion about whether additions such as those here, here and here (i.e. an NPC not having spells for one of their major skills) are either bugs and/or worthy of inclusion on OB pages. Rather than move the whole thread I've transposed the last two replies from myself and C0rTeZ48 (edited for brevity in my case, integral for C0rTeZ48).

The World According to C0rTeZ48

Mmmh, okay, but for many other magic skills until now, we did decide to leave it on the page. There are many current pages (f.e. the Necromancer and Mannimarco pages), for which we decided to keep it as a bug that they have a certain magic major skill, despite not having any such spells in their repertoire. Since the devs at multiple times gave specific NPCs specific spells, without taking notice of their magic skills as a result of it being a minor or major skill, we can reason it also happened the other way around (deciding a NPC should have a major skill, without then adding at least one spell to their repertoire). Then also by this reasoning, the same would go for mentioning that no single Hereitc variation wears Heavy Armor, despite having it as a major skill. The other point is that there are quite some Zealots that actually do wear Light Armor. That's why I figured it would be a good addition on the Heretic page. Therefore, for Zealots at least, I think the devs actually wanted to make use of their Light Armor major skill specifically. At least imo, it's very interesting they did, since they are the only magic-based NPCs in the entire game to do so, and I'm pretty sure the skilled devs were aware about things like Magic Effectiveness and the fact that no other magic-based NPCs like Necromancers or Conjurers wear any armor, after working on a game for 6 years or so by that point. And in addition, when going by your (b) point; it actually impacts gameplay, for example by underpowering melee attacks or preventing the NPC from casting spells they know, I think it does indirectly affect gameplay, since a given NPC is now less strong than what the devs had for them in mind. F.e., on the Vampire page, there are two Bloodcrust Vampire variations (Spellsword and two Warriors) which suffer from bad armor (and weapon) listing, which we decided to keep on the page. At least, you 'agreed' with this since you decided to keep it in last change. At the very least, I would argue for a (c) point: that we can reasonably argue that the devs had a particular spells/weapons/armor listing in mind when going by a given NPC skill. And then last but not least, even if it would be better to exclude all these things, we still have go back again over all pages we made changes to the last months, which frankly I'm not too fond of. For all these reasons, I really think I have made a strong case for why this really is the best way to keep it as it is on all relevant pages.

Regarding the skill notes: It's entirely possible they were not interested in giving some NPC an Alteration spell but wanted that NPC to have a certain class with certain other skills. Given they could only create a set number of classes but have hundreds of NPCs I don't find it strange that not everything is aligned. On this point, my first argument is that it doesn't even matter whether something is intended or not. That has never been sth I argued for. But even if the devs had that in mind, it would still impact gameplay, since it would make a certain NPC less strong than others. Personally, I think this is actually rather a reason why it should be labeled as a bug. But besides that, I have some more reasons for my case: first being that magic and armor skills are not passive, but active. They require at least one spell or armor piece to make use of it in some form, unlike other skills. Definitely for battle-oriented NPCs, I think this should be the case for balance gameplay reasons.

And it's not asking for much, just one spell for major magic skills f.e. should be sufficient to make use of it. Some skills like Block and Hth are always handy in battle, since every NPCs can block or make use of their hands. So I think it's utterly reasonable to require just one spell for a NPC 'making use' of the skill. Even more, magic-oriented NPCs sometimes have at least one spell for minor skills, while lacking at least one spell for their major skill. Imo, this is absolutely silly, and should definitely in itself already be a good reason for including it at the bugs section, rather than the notes section, no matter what was intended by a developer. Especially when it comes to something like pre-determined leveled spells lists, in those cases major magic skills should definitely include just one spell. Final, you can actually see devs doing their best of finding classes and spells together, f.e. when Conjurer spells and heavy armor are given to Sorcerer classes.

Beyond this, I still stand at some other points of an earlier comment of mine. That being that it's a bug when the devs may have forgotten about major magic skills when assigning certain spells or spell lists to NPCs, it may also be labeled a bug when it happens the other way around: deciding a NPC should have a major skill, without then adding at least one spell to their repertoire. In these cases I'd also say it does not even matter whether it's intended or not. So I still think I have strong, clear and concise reasoning for my case. I still didn't quite understand what you meant by I also hadn't come across these Notes before, so grateful if you could share a few links, so perhaps you can expand a bit on this point.

The World According to SerCenKing

I think we should be cautious about trying to reverse engineer the devs' minds too much and making assumptions about what may or may not have been intended. It's entirely possible they were not interested in giving some NPC an Alteration spell but wanted that NPC to have a certain class with certain other skills. Given they could only create a set number of classes but have hundreds of NPCs I don't find it strange that not everything is aligned. Each case may or may not be an oversight, but it's hard for us to know and we shouldn't speculate.

The first question to ask when including information on the wiki is noteworthiness. The wiki cannot accommodate all information, otherwise it becomes unwieldy and loses its purpose: that of being useful to the player. A general rule of thumb for noteworthiness and inclusion is the "so what?" test. That is: "Ok, I now have this information, but so what? What concrete impact does this have in-game?"

I find these Notes fail this test. There is only a hypothetical impact (the NPC could have had another spell) rather than a direct and measurable impact (e.g. they can't actually cast one of the spells they would rely on, or they carry a sword but have a low Blade skill) on gameplay. Yes, the NPC could have been 'stronger' if they had an extra spell. But equally they could have been stronger with +10 Strength, or a Block skill of 86 rather than 41, or with +13 Magicka, etc. The possibilities are infinite if you follow this hypothetical reasoning and, crucially, do not consider intent. Clearly we can't just add a note to each NPC page saying "well they could have had 100 in all Attributes and Skills, but alas". So for me this type of hypothetical note does not make the cut.

Which brings us back to intent. To consider this information relevant for inclusion, you'd therefore have to make that case that it is noteworthy because what's happening goes against the intent of the devs. Or put simply, that it is a bug, because a bug is by definition when something is not working as expected, anticipated or intended.

An NPC not having sufficient magicka or the right skill level to cast one of the spells they've been assigned is clearly a bug: they were meant to be able to cast it (otherwise it wouldn't have been added) but can't. However, an NPC not having a spell for one of their major skills does not qualify as a bug. There is nothing to say that it was intended on the part of the devs for an NPC to have a certain spell just because they have a certain major skill. As I mentioned above, pre-set classes mean you physically cannot tailor all major skills to all NPCs. These kind of things are a feature, not a bug. To give you a counterexample to further illustrate the point, when an entire class-based spell list does not includes a spell from the "right" school, when all other lists match magic schools and major skills, that's clearly a bug (e.g. Sorcerer - incidentally fixed by the UOP). When it's an individual NPC, it isn't the case.

So we are left with information that cannot be conclusively called a bug, and that fails a noteworthiness test. As such, it remains a set of mildly interesting hypothetical trivia, but not one that merits inclusion. And to cover here your second question at the end: what I meant was that I had never come across these notes before you started adding them to pages (though let me know if I missed any!) So then arguing that they should stay because they are also on other pages (e.g. here) is rather circular :)

Interested in hearing other users' views on theses too. --SerCenKing (talk) 17:46, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

My thoughts on this are that any such note should be assessed on a case-by-case basis for noteworthiness. Systemically adding notes to NPC pages for every instance of spells/skills not aligning does not sound like useful info and would only count as trivia if it had serious consequences on gameplay. To me a good example of this would be Finger of the Mountain, a spell which at higher levels is literally unusable due to magicka costs. Another example is the note on Morrowind:Onnissiralis, where an NPC was given light armor but actually chooses to fight without any armor due to her skill being low. —⁠Legoless (talk) 18:21, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

With thanks to Legoless for his response, a final call for any further opinions. Otherwise, given the time since the post, I think we can consider this conversation closed with a (marginal!) consensus to focus on individual noteworthiness based on significant gameplay impact. Thanks all. --SerCenKing (talk) 07:54, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

King Edward and our interpretation of sources

I have decided to make a CP entry on this issue as I believe it is important issue that covers a good breadth of articles on the website and also might apply to the interpretation of other sources and thus cast an even wider scope.

Several edits were made in lore space to remove any weight whatsoever to citations involving King Edward, after some back and fourth a slight variant was made in allowing the citations but casting a net of doubt on all of them and emphasizing the book as a fictional source. So where is this coming from? King Edward itself makes no statement on what category type the book is although based on the prose and style of writing it seems clear the book is written as a historical fiction, which is much different than a strictly fiction book so where is this language coming from? None other than the in universe author of the text, Marilyn Wasserman.

"These books should be regarded as historical novels, not official lore or history."

The above quote is the quote in question from Marilyn in regards to KE. There are different interpretations of what specifically she means when she says the books aren’t official lore or history, however the debate should begin and end with her initial statement in the quote "These books should be regarded as historical novels" There it is! The confirmation of categorization of King Edward is indeed Historical Fiction, which yes cannot be trusted to be fully accurate verbatim in the same way a Non-fiction book can, (thus her statement that it is not official lore or history) is still not to be confused with a text that is fully fiction, which this book is not by any known accounts official or otherwise.

So yes, per any historical fiction some of the characters and narrative and conversations present in King Edward may or may not be wholly true or accurate depending on the passage, it as a whole is impossible to say what would be history as it truly was or an authors imagination filling in the gaps line by line. This is why I would argue against the majority of these notes that state a certain statement made or character presented in King Edward might be fiction as we do this for no other book of this magnitude on the wiki and the basis of doing it in this particular instance hasn’t been made clear.

Furthermore I would point out I believe there is a level of nuance to all of this and some of the clarifying notes I don’t see near as much issue with. A mysterious metaphysical speaking bard in Geoffrey or an otherwise never heard of Queen of dragon kind in Ma-Tylda have plenty of justifiable reason to have doubt cast on just how real they are. On the other hand former kings of Ebonheart who are introduced in the story in a matter of fact, understood to history manner in Cruethys and Kronin have no reason to have these same notations unless we are directly questioning every single statement made in King Edward and as this argument seeks to point out, that should not be the case as this is a historical fiction novel not a fictional novel. Dcking20 (talk) 00:06, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't see anything objectionable about adding a qualifier to articles where citing a work of historical fiction when we know this to be the case. —⁠Legoless (talk) 00:54, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

These figures come from historical fiction so I have no reason to doubt that they were legit much like info we get from 2920 and the Wolf Queen. We should be fine to make articles on these topics, and its fine to put something like "much of the info about them comes from the historical fiction King Edward" somewhere in the article but not in the first sentence. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 01:21, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I fully agree with Dcking's points, especially considering no other historical fiction lorebooks are targetted in such a way. This recent crusade against KE to me just feels like a very small group of people going "KE bad >:c". King Edward has proven reliable in some regards, such as the Crystal Tower trolls. Just the mere fact that some of the book is accurate makes this idea of entirely discrediting this source in every single article preposterous. "Some of it might be wrong" is no valid excuse for doing this, considering that applies to literally every single lorebook or piece of dialogue in the setting. This'd set an insane precedent to entirely disregard sources just because a small group of people don't like said sources. CoolBlast3 (talk) 08:58, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

"No other historical fiction lorebooks are targeted in such a way": this just is not true. It didn't take very much searching to come across Lore:Savirien-Chorak, where 2920 is cited with the exact same qualifier that is being discussed for KE. I don't believe this info should be removed from lore articles, but objecting to any kind of neutral wording around the legitimacy of a work of fiction is non-constructive in my view. ESO writers have taken heavy inspiration from these books and they have proven quite accurate as a result, but we as a wiki do not have the same luxury to be making those determinations. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:43, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

By targetted in such a way, I meant what has happened recently- edit wars on many, many articles utilising KE- to the point of outright discrediting lore we know is objectively true, such as Moraelyn in the Ra'athim lore page being tagged as a fictional person... CoolBlast3 (talk) 09:55, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Moraelyn was due to the only source on that line being KE. I went and found another source and replaced KE with one that was more reliable, in universe, as it has been described as "incredibly well researched" rather than "shouldn't be considered lore". Also, none of the edits involved were edit wars. They were certainly some back and forth editing, but neither dcking or myself resorted to edit warring. I don't think mischaracterizing the situation to make it seem more hostile helps this discussion. Regardless, we have always qualified statements from certain sources, and I don't see a reason why that should change. I think more clearcut guidelines in this area would probably help, instead of just relying on institutional knowledge of which books might need a qualifier and which don't. Jeancey (talk) 16:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

(←) I think an indicator for potential unreliability is dangerous. A lot of the books in TES games are laden with unreliable narration. I'd go as far to say that ANY book featuring dialogue (that isn't specifically a transcription like The Black Arts on Trial) is in the realm of historical fiction, meaning a whole lot of books would get the modified treatment. Mindtrait0r (talk) 16:54, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

^ This is the crux of my issue with this, I’m not seeing any reason why King Edward in particular is getting singled out for a type of writing that dozens and dozens of books share across hundreds of lore pages on Uesp. The Wasserman comments aren’t a strong enough reason to justify this as again, she confirms they are historical novels not fictional ones. Dcking20 (talk) 17:31, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Historical fiction is still fiction. It's just fiction based around real people. Compare, for example, Wolf of the Plains, a historical fiction novel about Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan definitely existed. But most of the book isn't going to be anywhere close to real events, because it's fiction. That's what we are dealing with here. Historical fiction is different from a biography. This is explicitly a fictional book in universe, albeit one centered around a real figure. I'm not sure where the idea that historical fiction is 100% accurate comes from, but that isn't the case. Jeancey (talk) 18:43, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Nobody whatsoever from what I can tell is saying historical fiction is 100 percent accurate, just that it isn’t strictly fiction and depending on the text in question could be more accurate than it is inaccurate. 2920, the historical fiction written in universe by Carlovac Townway is said to be a book that strives greatly for accuracy, with the only holes Carlovac filling in by his own admission being conversations. This has been validated by eso time and time again pulling lore from 2920 nearly verbatim to depict in game attesting to its accuracy, and the misleading nature of conflating it with true fiction just because it’s a *historical* fiction.

As for King Edward itself, many things that originate from the text are validated elsewhere. For example I'ric Harad Egun has shrines that can be found throughout Illiac Bay in Daggerfall. Why does an Altmer archmage have shrines dedicated to him throughout Illiac Bay? Because naturally, the events of King Edward that feature I'ric traveling alongside Edward and company was taken literal and not written off as mere fiction. King Edward is the first text to describe Akatosh as a golden dragon which has been validated in several later depictions of the time god. Real Barenziah, and the Light and the Dark mention characters and events of King Edward not as if they are tall tales, but as if they are legitimate historical figures found from a real story. Real Barenziah validates the relationship between Edward and Moraelyn and his brother Ephen, and Moraelyns Ra’athim bloodline and the fact that said bloodline ruled over Ebonheart for generations..I could go on.

The point is, King Edward absolutely features both real historical figures, and real historical events, given its nature as a historical fiction it’s also true that it most likely features events and characters that were not legitimate, but we don’t know where and how to draw the line and as Mindtraitor stated, the large majority of books in tes that we cite go into this gray area reliability wise King Edward is far from unique in this, so it doesn’t need wholly unique treatment. Dcking20 (talk) 20:37, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Apotheosis articles?

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, so forgive me if I'm wrong. I'm just curious if this wiki will have articles on Apotheosis when it releases. I know it's a mod and not canon, but there are articles for CC content which aren't really official canon either. — Unsigned comment by 24.226.123.224 (talk) at 06:30 on 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Creation Club content actually is official canon since the content was officially released by Bethesda. I haven't heard anything about Apotheosis, but if it is a third-party mod, it would be covered in Modspace the same as all other third-party mods. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 06:41, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

See discussion above. All content from Verified Creators is confirmed as not official (in contrast to Creation Club, which was official content), and therefore Verified Creations will be documented in Modspace, if at all. --Enodoc (talk) 14:25, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

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