PTS Update 48 - Feedback Thread for Season of the Worm Cult Part 2 Main Quest [SPOILERS]

ZOS_Kevin · September 15

This is the official feedback thread for the Seasons of the Worm Cult Part 2 Main Quest. In order to limit spoilers for those that don’t wish to see them, please post your feedback or bug reports here. Thank you!

Margravigne · September 17

For this first run, I'm on a copied alt who's completed pretty much everything relevant (MQ / guild quests / Cadwell's Gold / all DLC Chapters / Zone questlines) and I'll be focusing on quests and dialogue.

I'm having loads of fun so far, and I love the ghostly 'sreaming souls' addition to the Writhing Wall's animation when you're up close, but I have a few things to ask about already (several are repeats from last PTS which weren't resolved or responded to).

The 'revive point' wayshrine inside Tarnur Mine still has an activation prompt visible (not interactive though) which I've also noticed on PC/Live recently:

The binding energy flows to the shrines, not from them as the dialogue states it should, can this animation be reversed?
https://youtu.be/PBPJbkNA2ys

With the delve quests, Darien will only act as a follower on the way to the first location (per previous PTS patches), but I'd noticed even then his dialogue is different depending on which point you visit first, and it seems more relevant with the 'first / second' location dialogue if you visit Li-Xal Pass before Tarnur Mine, vs the other way around.
(I'll record a clean run of this later showing both versions with all dialogue and post the link as an Edit)

These lines still only trigger after we examine the points in the Wall, despite Darien being the one who's supposed to locate and 'react with' the distortions so we can see them:
First location is Tarnur Mine:

Second location is Li-Xal Pass:

It's great that Mannimarco's note to Necromancer Hezsatari in the Tarnur Mine shrine location can now be read, but the 3 cultists
and their bone colossus still respawn far too fast - after only 15 seconds - so there's too little time to read it before they're back and interrupting you:
https://youtu.be/r0H8BRlvPhA

Whereas the cultists at the end of the Seacave have glitchy or nonexistent shields, with the only one visible sitting much higher than the ones at the other site:

Also, Darian delivered his 'destroy it' line mid-fight in Tarnur, rather than closer to the shrine itself afterwards:

In the Sea Cave shrine location, Darien delivers his 'destroy it' line once we reach the foot of the stairs leading to it, which is much better placement, but the line used seems to be more relevant if this was the first shrine we'd found:

Then after the Fissure Ruins delve, why does Darien imply he'll be coming along once we've made the initial breach in the Wall? He doesn't switch to follower mode, and there was no sign of him at any point on the way to the Wall, at the portal, or in the Writhing Fortress' pocket of Coldharbour. Nothing. He stayed right here and just repeated himself when I came back to recheck:

Is the line intended for a different quest?

These might need the colour saturation dialled up (left are blue, right are orange, for those who're struggling):

I have no issue differentiating colours (qualified gemologist with a zero on all color blindness tests), but even I find these too washed out in-game when they're all on the same setting and other effects are going on all around me, so they could be a big problem for players with genuine sight issues.
Another solution might be to have a different symbol for each version?

Soarora · September 17

I'm not sure where to put this so I'm putting it here-- why did you make us do the writhing wall quest to test the 2nd half of the story? Is the version on the PTS the version that players would experience after the writhing wall event has concluded or is it a part of the event? It was conceptually interesting but painful and confusing given that there were 3-5 of us doing a 20+ person job on suboptimal builds. I had to subclass mid event just to lessen the pain.

Additional comments on writhing wall:

Repeatedly confusing. NPCs continue to yell directions even when the objective is complete (ex. break the crystal but the crystal is already broken and the bridge is up). The quests were also not updating correctly (ex. "clear a path to the colossus" but the path is already cleared, had me confused on what to do even though the path was right there).
In the final boss fight, the grapples were hard to target. You have to blindly move your cursor around underneath the platform and ones I had clear line of sight on were not letting me use them.
Because the final fight took so long (and we wiped 2x), the prince's constant directions were getting really frustrating. I knew what to do at that point.
I'm not sure the lightning stacks will do anything when there's the total amount of people. Having to hide to cleanse the stacks was hardly a concern even with so few people.

Despite my frustrations, I hope that the attack on the writhing wall can be a part of future "celebrate Solstice" events. I can tell a lot of effort went into it and most people probably won't see the effort as I imagine on live everything will just be obliterated unless its heavily buffed. I think this kind of event is a step in the right direction (sans confusing quest directions and constantly repeating dialogue, it would be nice to have an event of this scale for each of the in-game holiday events instead of more fetch/fight this one thing quests) and reminds me of the turnout of GW2's world events, so it's a shame to only happen one time.

ZOS_JasonBarnes · September 17

Hi Soarora,

Thanks for the feedback! We’ll review the points you called out.

Regarding the main story issue, the quest should progress once the wall is breached on the server. We’ll investigate this internally and fix it in an upcoming PTS patch so that when the wall opens, the quest advances properly to the next phase.

Margravigne · September 18

On a template alt, CP3600, having picked up 'The Worm Turns' from Azah:

We meet Skordo in the Grand Juncture Pass and he relays a dead Argonian's final words to us, before saying he'll head back to update Prince Azah.
But he then runs further east to the barricade at the top of the rise with the other soldiers, rather than heading back towards the Rampart Camp, and will repeat the same dialogue about taking Azah the news:

owaindraig · September 18

The game crashes so much it is nearly unplayable — I have never had ESO crash so much on three different PCs and different internet connections, by the way. I thought, “maybe it was me.” Most of the game is playable if I turn the graphics settings way down and use no companion — but the Writhing Fortress is impossible. Did anyone figure out a way to bypass it to get to the rest of the zone story in the East? It seems you have to do the “Helping the Fellowship” quest to get to the power source, which continues the zone story. Is it possible to teleport to another player who already got past that? The crashes in the fortress, plus the difficulty, are not fun.

drip_fromtheinkwell · September 19

Standing too close to the altar (behind it) during the explosion in the "destroy the ritual altar" phase of Crossing the Wall can cause you to get stuck in the collision of the platform Mannimarco is on.

Now Mannimarco can properly catch these hands

Freelancer_ESO · 12:57AM

It was definitely a big difficulty swing from doing the Fortress to doing some of the main quests where bunches of the npcs had less than 20k hp.

I would note that on the Dark Acolyte Harvester fight my Potato PC had significant difficulty with processing the environment and got horrible FPS.

The fight was easy enough on my build with a companion that it didn't matter but, someone on a worse build without a companion might get stuck on that fight if they have similar levels of bad performance.

it might have been a fluke but, it might be something you might want to check if you've got access to a horrible PC/old console.

My companion did end up dying multiple times to the improved soul reapers as she followed me even after I attuned into the Argonian thing.

Any chance we could get a variant of the Argonian thing as a Chaos Ball Transformation at some point it was kinda fun but, we didn't get that much time to use it.

The finishing blow on the final boss was quieter sound wise than I expected.

Overall, I'd say the experience for the main story was pretty good with the story both being finished and also offering possible future stories down the line.