Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-32767830-20190221210044/@comment-25356303-20190527224151

Right, I wouldn't classify all non-playable men/mer as creatures. I also think that since a lot of ghosts were at one point humans, it would be a little strange to consider them creatures after death, if they can still communicate and/or if they still act like characters (i.e. they are still sentient). In Skyrim, I think their Creation Kit data still uses traditional racial info too; there's just a checkbox for "ghost." Although ESO doesn't have a CK, I suspect that the way they trigger something being a ghost is very similar. So if something uses the model of a creature and is a ghost, like a ghostly elk, it's a creature.

With that said, I agree with Wendigohmer's sentiment; we should aim for a straightforward decision that won't require that attention be given to individual cases in the future. How about this:


 * All playable races are characters (naturally)
 * All men and mer are characters (covering races like the human Akaviri or the Ayleids)
 * Anything that uses the model of one of the races covered above is a character (e.g. ghosts)
 * Anything whose race is unclear in ESO but is defined in a previous game uses the most recent such appearance's unambiguous classification (through the CS/CK) as the classification in ESO (e.g. Dremora in ESO would be considered characters because they are considered characters in Skyrim)
 * Anything else is a creature? (e.g. the new races that ESO has that aren't covered by the above)

That sounds like it would be fairly manageable. Still, I feel like I must be missing something, but I'm not quite sure what. Maybe we need to work in some lore classifications? Like, if someone in ESO describes a creature as a character (would that happen?), we could consider that reason to classify said creature in that way. Not sure.