Phase Percent - Immersion Breaking

Leighlaa · October 14

While this is a small thing, I can't help but think that the percent bars filling up that everyone is so frustrated about (and many, with good reason)- don't make sense at all anyways for this event. In the past, when we were, for example, killing dragons- the bar going up made sense because that's how many dragons we had killed. Kill a million dragons or whatever, BAM! Event done! We killed all the dragons guys! We took on the million dragon army! Like... the RP of a progress bar made sense.

I'm struggling to understand how this progress bar makes sense. Is this dremora we've slain? The wall is that much % weaker? Is it getting lower? Is this the percent of the army I've now geared? The story is lost, the progress makes no sense.

I don't mind a repetitive event, most mmo events are monotonous. But this one is particularly so with very little ability to even TRY to RP it as a community. While I like the idea of taking down a wall to access more map together, this seems really not well-thought-out. I'm confused and so much is broken and poorly done.

I sorta just want it to be over so I can get my giant bushes from the home goods vendor (though the patch notes to this point confuse me as the name mentioned is the skingrad vendor, but it says sunport.... par)

Soarora · October 14

When you turn in a daily quest, one of the rewards is shown as “+ writhing wall event progress”. So, I think phase 1 progress is focused on gearing the group and getting fuel for the lens.

tomofhyrule · October 14

Watsonian explanation: progress comes from completing dailies. You have “Writhing Wall Progress” as a quest reward.

Doylist explanation: progress is whatever it needs to be to ensure that Phase 1 ends sometime around the 29th-ish for all servers, and Phase 2 ends sometime around the 17th of November. That means everyone can start Phase 3 around the same time and while the Pursuit is still up.

Syldras · October 14

I think OP was about how this progress is explained story- or roleplay-wise. Like, it would make sense if tasks about powering the Meridian Lens contribute to the Wall getting increasingly weakened, percent by percent. While arming two soldiers wouldn't, in principle, contribute to weakening the wall.

Leighlaa · October 14

Syldras wrote: »

I think OP was about how this progress is explained story- or roleplay-wise. Like, it would make sense if tasks about powering the Meridian Lens contribute to the Wall getting increasingly weakened, percent by percent. While arming two soldiers wouldn't, in principle, contribute to weakening the wall.

Exactly this! I understand the non-RP daily reward given, I understand that ZoS just wants a controlled release to the content... my post was just that I'm struggling with connecting it to the story itself. To Skordo and Raz and all my homies.

tomofhyrule · October 14

Leighlaa wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

I think OP was about how this progress is explained story- or roleplay-wise. Like, it would make sense if tasks about powering the Meridian Lens contribute to the Wall getting increasingly weakened, percent by percent. While arming two soldiers wouldn't, in principle, contribute to weakening the wall.

Exactly this! I understand the non-RP daily reward given, I understand that ZoS just wants a controlled release to the content... my post was just that I'm struggling with connecting it to the story itself. To Skordo and Raz and all my homies.

At least one of the dailies does give an explanation though. The Vitrified Souls are used to empower the Meridian Lens to be able to punch a hole in the wall when it’s powered enough.

The other dailies more deal with arming/supplying soldiers who are starting to siege on this side of the wall at the camps. But I’ll grant that it’s a bit incongruous that we hear things like “any quality will do, we just need resto staves!” when we don’t see anyone engaging in war at all. Just adding a bunch of generic fighting NPCs all along the wall may have sold that better.

Danikat · October 14

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Leighlaa wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

I think OP was about how this progress is explained story- or roleplay-wise. Like, it would make sense if tasks about powering the Meridian Lens contribute to the Wall getting increasingly weakened, percent by percent. While arming two soldiers wouldn't, in principle, contribute to weakening the wall.

Exactly this! I understand the non-RP daily reward given, I understand that ZoS just wants a controlled release to the content... my post was just that I'm struggling with connecting it to the story itself. To Skordo and Raz and all my homies.

At least one of the dailies does give an explanation though. The Vitrified Souls are used to empower the Meridian Lens to be able to punch a hole in the wall when it’s powered enough.

The other dailies more deal with arming/supplying soldiers who are starting to siege on this side of the wall at the camps. But I’ll grant that it’s a bit incongruous that we hear things like “any quality will do, we just need resto staves!” when we don’t see anyone engaging in war at all. Just adding a bunch of generic fighting NPCs all along the wall may have sold that better.

I suppose this is one advantage of not having the content pass. I can't get to Solstice and haven't seen it since it was first on the PTS so I collected and turned in the dailies on Stirk and I assumed there were NPCs attacking the wall or daedric fortresses along it or whatever and I could imagine my supplies are being sent to them.

I agree they should add NPCs fighting so it looks like your supplies are actually being used. (Ideally NPCs dressed in a random mix of items, like rubedo pauldrons with an iron breastplate and oricalcium greaves.)

tsaescishoeshiner · October 14

If you look in the center of the camp, you can see the Meridian Lens getting built and more intricate with more features as progress is made.

I'm not sure how the story is lost when each NPC has an explanation for how their quest contributes, and you can see the soldier NPCs in the camp and siege locations. It's not so different from a normal story quest where you arrive at a Covenant camp and they need you to pick up supply for them, just actually has more progress.

Stopping the siege camp attacks is a lot like fighting dragons to me, at least (albeit the dragon fights are much, much better), and it's clearly about defending the Worm Cult assaults that have increased due to the events of Western Solstice's main quest, while the next Fellowship assault and plan is prepared.

I think it would feel better if the siege camps weren't just a bunch of enemies being 1-shot by players who are camping, but it's hard to beat dragons. : p

shadyjane62 · October 14

Soarora wrote: »

When you turn in a daily quest, one of the rewards is shown as “+ writhing wall event progress”. So, I think phase 1 progress is focused on gearing the group and getting fuel for the lens.

Gearing the group? The stuff coming out of the boxes is only fit for deconing and it's only blue at that.

Soarora · October 14

shadyjane62 wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

When you turn in a daily quest, one of the rewards is shown as “+ writhing wall event progress”. So, I think phase 1 progress is focused on gearing the group and getting fuel for the lens.

Gearing the group? The stuff coming out of the boxes is only fit for deconing and it's only blue at that.

I meant gearing the NPCs by getting crafting materials and crafting but you do make a good point that we are also a part of the group and certainly aren’t being geared. Shoulda given us potions and upgrade mats.

PunkAben · November 7

Writhing Wall – The Art of Doing Nothing and Calling It Progress

I’d really like to know what the point is of taking part in an event where you can’t measure, see, or even feel your contribution.
We run dailies, kill enemies, clear camps – and for what? The progress bar moves about as fast as a guar in quicksand, and nobody at ZOS seems willing to tell us how it actually works.

How much effort equals 0.1% progress?
A hundred quests? A thousand? Fifty thousand? Who knows – apparently, that’s top secret information.

So, we’re all grinding away blindly, hoping our actions might somehow matter, while the game gives us absolutely zero feedback.
It’s like shouting into a void and being told your echo is “community progress.”

If ZOS wants players to feel invested, they should at least respect us enough to show the numbers.
Right now, Writhing Wall feels less like an event and more like a placebo – something that looks active, but accomplishes nothing you can actually see.

When players can’t measure or understand their own impact, the event stops being motivating. It just becomes background noise disguised as “content.”

ESO_player123 · November 7

Leighlaa wrote: »

While this is a small thing, I can't help but think that the percent bars filling up that everyone is so frustrated about (and many, with good reason)- don't make sense at all anyways for this event. In the past, when we were, for example, killing dragons- the bar going up made sense because that's how many dragons we had killed. Kill a million dragons or whatever, BAM! Event done! We killed all the dragons guys! We took on the million dragon army! Like... the RP of a progress bar made sense.

I'm struggling to understand how this progress bar makes sense. Is this dremora we've slain? The wall is that much % weaker? Is it getting lower? Is this the percent of the army I've now geared? The story is lost, the progress makes no sense.

I don't mind a repetitive event, most mmo events are monotonous. But this one is particularly so with very little ability to even TRY to RP it as a community. While I like the idea of taking down a wall to access more map together, this seems really not well-thought-out. I'm confused and so much is broken and poorly done.

I sorta just want it to be over so I can get my giant bushes from the home goods vendor (though the patch notes to this point confuse me as the name mentioned is the skingrad vendor, but it says sunport.... par)

This bar represents the percentage of players contemplating completely abandoning the whole idea to bring the wall down and wanting to see what would happen if the wall stays put.

That is one of the ways to look at it ...

Carcamongus · November 8

ESO_player123 wrote: »

Leighlaa wrote: »

While this is a small thing, I can't help but think that the percent bars filling up that everyone is so frustrated about (and many, with good reason)- don't make sense at all anyways for this event. In the past, when we were, for example, killing dragons- the bar going up made sense because that's how many dragons we had killed. Kill a million dragons or whatever, BAM! Event done! We killed all the dragons guys! We took on the million dragon army! Like... the RP of a progress bar made sense.

I'm struggling to understand how this progress bar makes sense. Is this dremora we've slain? The wall is that much % weaker? Is it getting lower? Is this the percent of the army I've now geared? The story is lost, the progress makes no sense.

I don't mind a repetitive event, most mmo events are monotonous. But this one is particularly so with very little ability to even TRY to RP it as a community. While I like the idea of taking down a wall to access more map together, this seems really not well-thought-out. I'm confused and so much is broken and poorly done.

I sorta just want it to be over so I can get my giant bushes from the home goods vendor (though the patch notes to this point confuse me as the name mentioned is the skingrad vendor, but it says sunport.... par)

This bar represents the percentage of players contemplating completely abandoning the whole idea to bring the wall down and wanting to see what would happen if the wall stays put.

That is one of the ways to look at it ...

I'll go even further: it's the percentage of players seriously contemplating joining the Worm Cult to put an end to this endless grind.

Danikat · November 8

PunkAben wrote: »

Writhing Wall – The Art of Doing Nothing and Calling It Progress

I’d really like to know what the point is of taking part in an event where you can’t measure, see, or even feel your contribution.
We run dailies, kill enemies, clear camps – and for what? The progress bar moves about as fast as a guar in quicksand, and nobody at ZOS seems willing to tell us how it actually works.

How much effort equals 0.1% progress?
A hundred quests? A thousand? Fifty thousand? Who knows – apparently, that’s top secret information.

So, we’re all grinding away blindly, hoping our actions might somehow matter, while the game gives us absolutely zero feedback.
It’s like shouting into a void and being told your echo is “community progress.”

If ZOS wants players to feel invested, they should at least respect us enough to show the numbers.
Right now, Writhing Wall feels less like an event and more like a placebo – something that looks active, but accomplishes nothing you can actually see.

When players can’t measure or understand their own impact, the event stops being motivating. It just becomes background noise disguised as “content.”

They won't tell us how many quests make up 0.1% progress because apparently it's different for each platform to allow for different populations, and if we had that information people would attempt to use it to reverse-engineer estimates of how many players the game has.

Imagine if they told us one server had to complete 100,000 quests to finish a phase, but another only had to complete 30,000 - the forum (and likely other bits of the internet) would be full of people declaring it 'dead' even more so than they already were with some servers.

Not to mention people adding all the numbers together, insisting they'd be based on every single registered account doing every single quest every day and using that to produce extremely low total player counts for the game as a whole and declare that dead and/or doomed to fail soon.

Admittedly we don't know what the requirements are based on, but I suspect they at least factored in how many accounts typically log in daily and maybe things like typical completion rates for other daily quests. Assuming that e.g. most people who do the normal crafting dailies will do the event ones is much more sensible than assuming all players will do them.

I agree there should be something to make the progress feel meaningful though. Apparently the status of the camps and some machinery on Solstice is supposed to change as we progress, but it's bugged and randomly switches between states instead of progressing consistently, so that doesn't really work.

MashmalloMan · November 8

While it would of been more immersive to tell players the exact quantity required, not really possible due to the way the event is designed to be a competition between servers, which in effect means each server regardless of player count and engagement needs to be somewhat competitive with one another.

ZOS loves to be shady about their concurrent player count, giving each server a specific amount to reach in proportion to their player volume would highlight information they don't want the general public to know. Using a percentage allows them to fudge the data behind the scenes to make the "competition" fair.

For example, if PC NA has 50,000 players and XBOX NA has 10,000, so PC NA should reach their goal 5x quicker, but it needs to be fair, so PC NA has to have 5x higher goals to reach. Now imagine they didn't use a percentage and instead said PC NA needs to complete 1,000,000 dailies while XBOX NA needs only 200,000. Well cats out of the bag, now we know XBOX has 5x less players.

Why do they care? Probably PR and revenue. Many people love to say X game is dying by comparing player count between popular games without understanding how much money it takes to keep the lights on vs how much money the game is making. So why give out that data at all unless it's astronomically high, it's the main reason they focus on things like: "killed 1 trillion mudcrabs."

Only recently we found out the game generated 2 billion dollars over 10 years and they see it as a 30+ year project. The dev team is probably not massive, so that is an insane profit margin. From personal experience alone, I can say over the past 10 years I've spent 20-30x more than the closest game I have spent money on. With Microsoft owning ESO and WOW, it's no wonder they didn't want to take a risk on ZOS's new mmo when they have 2 sure things under their belt in an era of cost cutting and endless AAA flops.

The event is artificial anyway, if a server is completing it too quick or slow, they'll just mess with the goals to make things appear like it's a close race. Since we paid for the content pass, they can't lock out the East zone for an unreasonable amount of time or they'd be facing lawsuits and a PR nightmare.

Since they couldn't be transparent from the beginning, I'm not sure why they went ahead with the event thinking people would be comfortable with esentially being hamsters on a treadmill for a month, with nothing but fetch quests, terrible rewards, and locking out 1/3 of our usual chapter outing. Shrug. Hopefully they learnt their lesson.

Toanis · November 8

In previous progress bar events it was pretty reasonable to assume that the progress bar was completely fake. Can you imagine the press when metrics provided by the devs show that nobody is interested in the latest expansion?

This time goals are adjusted on the fly and the percentage jumps back and forth. So the bar may actually be affected by ingame activities, but it still needs to be adjusted so the event succeeds in time. Obviously the event can't fail, folks already paid for the content it "unlocks", but it also can't succeed before the content is available.