If the reward most of the time is old trash that can't even be sold because everybody has it already, it doesn't really feel like a reward.

The loot needs to be separated out better. I don't need 25 of each dremora motif, but I have them. You can't even give away most of the glenmoril stuff. Mind you, most of the Witch's Festival equipment is great. I'm not saying the old stuff should be removed, but the new stuff needs to be the prioritized loot. I get to the point where getting skull drops is annoying, because I know that all it's going to do is clog up my inventory. I think there should be separated (curated) grab bags for each year to get the old stuff, while the new stuff drops from the skulls. It would also be cool to add special (non rng) loot for the bosses, like skill styles that imitate their abilities.

Also, no loot should ever be caped to 1 a day or anything ridiculous like that.

Also also, please uncap tickets.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@LuC1ll3atTh3Wh33L Thanks for the thread. Always good to see what folks think here.

For those that voted no, what would the Witches Festival event need to do for you to enjoy it? Happy to send suggestions to the team.

Khajiit would like to add this question from his other thread - this was specifically geared toward the wall event, but it also applies, at least somewhat, to the witches festival and other once-a-year events :

karthrag_inak wrote: »

To this Khajiit says "why are there not 10 different haj-motas, perhaps only varying by skin, that we can get their various pieces for?" Why are we not getting vast numbers of different reskinnings of various common assets? Why are we not getting unique variants of otherwise relatively common furnishing item, or, better yet, the recipes for such? Why are we not getting combinations of such things in every box? Why are they not even having absurd rewards at very very low rates, such as -gasp- trial gear, or -clutches pearls in horror- arena weapons?


Imagine how delightful it would have been if they -squeal- opened up every loot table in the game to the reward boxes. And, why not - why shouldn't they? It's not like this kind of event is going to ever come around again - when it's done, very soon, then it is done. After all, wasn't that the selling point, the marketing hook to get folks to purchase the season pass?

To ZOS in general : Please please please PLEASE! have something special for New Life. PLEASE! It doesn't have to be big (although it wouldn't hurt - imagine new ice skins in many different colors! whee!) but PLEASE have new things to find, new things to collect, and DON"T BE SO STINGY! These loot items, they do not come from your paycheck, yes?

I think overall the event design is great, gives people a wide variety of options to participate and encourages participation in activities that everyone may not regularly participate in.

I also think that the level/amount of rewards is good and like it being setup as the more you participate the more you can get and not just a quick activity and oh I am done for the day.

That being said I agree with others that the loot table needs a refresh, this was only my 2nd Witches Festival and I already had most of what was being dropped which kind of dulled the desire to participate. When items are so common that you already have them and can't even give them away let alone sell/trade them, not very desirable. Having more than 1 motif set, maybe an option to get regular writs instead of witches writs and maybe a slightly larger variation in the furnishings would all make it a little more enticing.

MageCatF4F wrote: »

It is one of the better returning events for several reasons, many of which other posters have highlighted.

I actually enjoyed several aspects. The loot, however, is old, stale, and in the case of Dremora Plunders not anything I want.

I would prefer a chance for those somewhat unique furnishings to drop in any plunderskull - both purple and gold.

But that steady, mind numbing stream of motifs (any of them) and Glenmoril things - I just deleted them all.

Change the loot, introduce more variety, and you have a good one.

I agree with this, the themed maps have no value and clog up inventory if you don't delete them. The style pages market value is zero, it is just more inventory clog appearing as something useful unless you are brand new. I like some of the furnishings, but there are way too many of some. I think they should retire some of this older content and get the design team inspired and passionate about creating something new and interesting for players to engage with said events.

Things like Dremora and Hollowjack should probably remain in some form as they are for achievements. I enjoyed the event for the most part but many of these old events could use some "spice" or revitilization other than the XP bonus which is the main draw other than those that enjoy Holloween/Christmas/Etc. themed events.

If the team needs some ideas, I'd like to see more spider webs, jack-o-lantern, skeletons, or even crow furnishings that are event tied and not just cash shop draws.

Oh, sure. This one is my 5th (I think; I'm to the point where I need to do math to keep track) and I had a pretty good time overall. There are some bits that I didn't particularly care for, though. For example I've got a bunch of furnishings that I'll probably never use, can't deconstruct (a problem which is not unique to this event), and aren't worth the bother of selling. Some aspects of the event paired well with the Writhing Wall dailies and others were for stuff that I don't normally do, but made for a nice change of pace. The little NPC encounters dealing with Hollowjack were a lot of fun and still I don't think I've found all of them.

If I had to make suggestions for future Witches Festivals, the first would probably be to change up the plunder skull loot. One can only use so many Dremora chapters and their sale value plummets after a few days, so lots of inventory clutter (same with the furnishings). Additionally, the "don't open plunder skulls until after you've accepted the Crowborn daily" is annoying. But it's mostly a nice seasonal thing and I had a good time in spite of those issues.

I enjoyed it as usual - it's one of those events that is generally stress free, has some good pug/group vibes with the hollowjack fight, and is is easy to collect the event tickets if you're in a rush that day and don't have much time to play. I also like that we get some furnishings in the reward boxes.

Only niggle, for me personally, is that it's somewhat dry in terms of rewards for those of us that have done it many years - as others have noted, we could do with another full-style/motif to collect, and some new spooky furnishings to replace some of those that have been hanging around a bit too long. A few new/additional achievements related to the event would also be nice to keep us longer term players more interested.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@LuC1ll3atTh3Wh33L Thanks for the thread. Always good to see what folks think here.

For those that voted no, what would the Witches Festival event need to do for you to enjoy it? Happy to send suggestions to the team.

• Fix ancient bugs with ticket award before and after daily reset times and make sure daylight saving time changes are properly factored in. The dremora skulls work fine but the ticket award system has clearly not been properly mapped into the server daily reset times (currently 03:00UTC for eu, 10:00UTC for na). I and others lost tickets to this.
• Quit over-writing the base game with such crude rubbish that blocks playability of extant content. Consider a hypothetical new player who bought the game recently under sale and is playing through one of the base game zones then, inexplicably, can't complete delves, public dungeons, undaunted etc and their associated achievements because the expected content(delve and public dungeon bosses) have been clumsily replaced: what's the point in sticking around when they can go play something else that isn't as apparently broken? Ditto with longer-term players: if this kind of crude deployment can happen like this, what will be next on the hit-list of extant content to be vandalised into convenient, if arguably temporary (assuming there are no bugs when/if it reverts...) oblivion? By comparison, with one of the recent companions there is a new door in Toothmaul Gulley public dungeon and some smallish but adequate side areas serving as quest areas for solo/multiple players that, importantly, doesn't interfere with existing content - why was this approach not taken and these gold pursuit/solstice shennanigans emplaced in their own, separate shareable spaces so as not to obliterate existing content? And, likewise, why were sweepers replaced when doing so impacted on their availability and ubiquity for the Witches Festival Event and the displacing solstice/gold pursuit activities not forked off into some convenient mini-map to explore, leaving existing content available and functional?
• Don't have events overlap so much - the Witches Festival Event is one of the better ones, largely because of the x2 XP. In the past I'd log in daily for at least tickets and to use some of that xp bonus but, between event collisions and stuff being broken as described, I think I logged in maybe half the time, if that - by breaking things this way, you put up a (writhing) wall blocking my participation. And with limited play time, it is becoming an increasingly attractive prospect to look elsewhere to spend time and money rather than waste either fighting with stuff in eso that really doesn't have to be this broken.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@LuC1ll3atTh3Wh33L Thanks for the thread. Always good to see what folks think here.

For those that voted no, what would the Witches Festival event need to do for you to enjoy it? Happy to send suggestions to the team.

Better drop curation. If we have all the Glemoril pages, stop giving them to us. I can understand Dremora Motifs based on how they're sourced, but other stuff should be curated better.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@LuC1ll3atTh3Wh33L Thanks for the thread. Always good to see what folks think here.

For those that voted no, what would the Witches Festival event need to do for you to enjoy it? Happy to send suggestions to the team.

I'll be fair, the devs have over the years corrected poor decisions regarding the event. The best example I have is how one year we'd get those branch furnishings in almost every plunder skull. Hell, we got enough sticks to craft a wooden Titanic. That changed the following year. They have also introduced interesting things, such as the Hollowjack fight, which I found very cool (and was an opportunity to wear my Darloc Brae gear). The Apocrypha furnishings were also an excellent idea.

This year, though, RNGeesus just stomped me with the Wickerchain pages. It's also infuriating to get worthless Glenmoril pages by the ton and not a single Wickerchain. It didn't help I was already facing grinding fatigue because of the Writhing Wall event, which kind of spoiled the spooky mood.

I'd say up the odds of getting from the golden skulls whatever style page is new that year and send the old ones to the grab bag or regular plunder skulls. Add more cool furnishings and furnishing plans that aren't hard to obtain. Don't have two events happening at the same time, especially if weeks of grinding are involved. Another thing that'd be nice, though for all events, is if some sort of backstory could be provided for whatever style is available: I found Wickerchain so interesting that it's a shame I don't know anything about it. Just a few lines of text added to the style pages would do.

Sadly, Halloween is an imported custom in my country, so the Witches Festival is the closest I get to experiencing the spookiness, with the added bonus of a TES context.

I don’t like that there are so many events running at the same time and back to back to each other. Event fatigue is real. I missed my last set of tickets this morning since there’s so much going on to keep track of both in game (Pursuit, Wall & Witches) and IRL holidays and obligations that there just isn’t enough time for everything. This makes me want to play less, not more.

The announcements banner only shows the ongoing wall event and not the Witches event, which ended sooner. IMO, Witches event ending should have been given banner priority as every one knows about the wall event at this point. I realize that it’s likely there for marketing reasons, but QoL for paying customers should take priority here. I mention this as this banner is how I usually keep track of the length of events, which helps me track my tickets, as they insist on capping those.

The rewards for events are stale & need to be curated, old event rewards should be put in the grab bags. More quest variety & reward variety would go a long way to help engage and revitalize the events.

I just learned this year that there’s a secret quest(?!?) but I missed the chance to do it, as there isn’t really anything in game that points you to it (that I’m aware of anyway).

The quest items that aren’t marked as such get easily lost in your bag & sold by mistake.

I enjoyed partaking in the Hollowjack fight again this year, the art & effects are neat.

In general there are so many great ideas and concepts in this game, but many of them fall short because they are incomplete, buggy and seemingly abandoned after creation for reasons unknown to us. More care needs to be given to fully flesh these out (including but not limited to: stories, quests, scribing, armory system, champion points, companion AI, combat, etc.)

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Meh. Same as always.

It did hit different this year after a solid two weeks of wall quest grinding, so it was a lot more of a set of chores than anything fun though. I definitely didn’t do as much this round as I have in the past.

But yeah, this wall is overtaking everything and just making the whole game in general feel like a chore. I really hope that “FOMO grind” is not what they’re ‘transitioning’ to, but I have a feeling some executive or dev is just sitting there thinking this is an incredible way to boost engagement regardless of the player reception.

This. I normally like the Witches Festival, but this year with the wall event going it was just too much. As it has been said in other threads, the wall event has just dragged out too long and the rewards are too meh for a once in a lifetime event. So this interfered with my ability to enjoy the Witches Festival for what it is, and I’m also in agreement that it does need to be changed up a little after all this time, new rewards, old rewards, put on the Assistant, the grab bag made less expensive, etc.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@LuC1ll3atTh3Wh33L Thanks for the thread. Always good to see what folks think here.

For those that voted no, what would the Witches Festival event need to do for you to enjoy it? Happy to send suggestions to the team.

Filter out the old rewards and add something worth aiming for. Not everyone is into houses and clothing, put a new mount,skin or polymorph in there. Also dont overlap it with another event! People have jobs and lives.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

freespirit wrote: »

Oh and I have spent an unhealthy amount of time in The Vale of Revelry delve trying to bag the beautiful Harp plan too!!

Beautiful Harp plan?!? What is this wonderful item? I can’t find any thing that mentions it, and I’ve wanted a harp furnishing forever!

Not a string harp. It's just a series of wine glasses intended to be played by rubbing the rim of the glass (but unlike the Armonica, I don't think this one is interactable)

Ahh, I see, thanks for the info!

I've been playing since 2019. I get swarmed with furnishings I hardly want and all the motifs I got were ones I already had, ones I used to grind for because they used to have value. I like the Hollowjack fight but I couldn't even be bothered to grind boxes since the rewards are so undesirable and couldn't be bothered to do the Hollowjack fight.

I really think ZOS needs to take a page from the book of other games. Guild Wars 2 and even Red Dead Online have fun seasonal events that include entirely new limited time game modes. Interactive activities that are so fun that the return of them becomes a part of the holiday. No more new fetch quests. Give us minigames! Seasonal dungeons/trials/arenas (no trifecta associated with them due to the time constraint), seasonal PvP modes (in Red Dead Online, the only thing that's done for Halloween is 2 PvP modes-- one where there's hunters fighting against another player whose turned into a Creature and another that's PvPvE with players fighting zombies, each other, and finding masks to turn them into Creatures), seasonal puzzles like the design philosophy with IA and Naj sides, maybe even a temporary zone in the realm of the most associated Daedric Prince ripe for exploration and with many good screenshot locations.

Decorating towns was a fantastic step in the right direction but we need less grind, better rewards, and more fun things to do.