PTS Update 26 - Feedback Thread for Western Skyrim

Cireous

On Harrowstorms:
I think the thing I love the most about Harrowstorms is how the red fog spreads out so far past the ritual site itself.

It's a really good indicator that something nearby has gone awry and requires our attention.

Also, it reinforces the immersion so much more, with the storms feeling like something that might take over all of Western Skyrim if we don't do something.

I very much appreciate that we can roam around a little and find places like this (a small open cabin) covered in glow. This gives us something to do while we wait for others to arrive.

However, I do not like that house structures are used once again as props to decorate the event site. Invariably, they are always locked, just like in Elsweyr, at the Dragon sites. I rather they were not there at all if you are going to lock them up.

Elsonso

The red fog bugs me because it conflicts with the low heath red borders.

Cireous

On The Blue Palace in Solitude:
This is one of my favorite places in Western Skyrim. It feels like a maze of rooms, hallways, and doors that harken back to Skyrim (Elder Scrolls 5) and how you could easily become lost in most interiors you find yourself in. The design feels genius in that sense. But, then I got to thinking, how exactly did they get it to feel this way? I think it may have something to do with the fact that a door on the bottom floor magically takes you to a hallway on the second floor. So your brain is still on the first floor, but now you are moving around on the second floor, and eventually you just find yourself in a loop of not knowing exactly what floor you are on at any given time. Regardless if that's it or not, I still think it's brilliant that it feels this way, like your always a bit lost. Also, A+ for not having a single unopenable door in the building.

Narvuntien

I just wanted to give kudos for how great it was to see the main storyline and the Kilkreath Temple quests intertwined with the NPCS talking to each other and light banter.

So that was really nice I hope to see more of it

Narvuntien

So I went and had a proper exploration of Blackreach today and it is extremely hard to navigate down there.

Multiple levels, lots of tunnels and that not matching with the map very well at all. I ened up runnning around in circles for a while.

The worse part is that we can see the markers for other caverns on our compass even though you have to go through a loading screen to travel to them. The markers for other caverns should not show up on compass.

ectoplasmicninja

Unsure if this has been mentioned here already, I did send in a bug report in-game as well. In the side quest Crisis at Dragon Bridge, after I seal the bolt holes, I'm not allowed to enter the smuggler caverns under the waterfall. It says I don't have the correct permissions to transfer. I mentioned it in zone chat and people said it was a well-known bug.

Ekzorka

Hello.
I have no idea what happening during development process, but since last week the main map was updated with very bold roads.


If we compare Western Skyrim map with the other Chapters' maps, we will see an obvious difference in scale. If there are needed to highlight the main roads you can make other roads thinner instead. But please, don't leave this highways on a map, they're looks very bad.

Contraptions

World Bosses
Did you fight any world bosses? If so, which ones?

No, but please make sure they are soloable at least with some effort, so no "pinning" style mechanics please. Also please adjust Ri Atarashi back in Southern Elsweyr, especially the acolytes and their ridiculous damage reflect.

Public Dungeons
Did you go into any public dungeons? (Labyrinthian or Nchuthnkarst)

Yes, both.

Public dungeons are generally balanced for two or more players of average skill and gear. Did you feel sufficiently challenged?

They were fine but samey overall. I like how some of the humanoid bosses have special abilities, would like to see normal humanoid enemies in the base game etc. get an overhaul to their abilities some day, more variety overall would be good.

Enemy variety wasn't too interesting though, not many of the new enemies were featured. I kinda felt Nchuthnkarst was a bit disappointing. The whole point of the story in there was the Dwemer machine is teleporting in "creatures from all over space and time" and yet it's the same mobs we've seen in the rest of the zones repeated over and over.

I did like how certain mob archetypes got new skills, like the Dragon priest champion in Labyrinthian gets a shock shield teleport thing, such new skills could be added to most humanoid enemies in general which would greatly spice up combat even in base vanilla zones as mentioned earlier. However, I do sense some content recycling going on. Like that fight in Labyrinthian with the guy with the frost atronach is simply Rizzuk and Avalanche from Frostvault, feels a bit lazy.

Zone
What did you think of the Western Skyrim environment?

It's average, it's ok, it's fine. I mean it's a place I've seen before in another game watered down to fit an MMO. Less caves and POI to explore, much smaller sense of scale, no verticality. I mean I get it's an MMO, it's just... bland, you know? This is like the 4th chapter for ESO and it feels zero effort was made to push any sort of gameplay or world building boundaries. I can already predict what's going to be in the 2021 chapter. There's going to be 6 world bosses, 6 delves, 2 public dungeons and 1 trial. Maybe 1 major city, and 3 craft stations. The catastrophe du jour will have 6 or so conveniently marked invasion points, where nothing actually happens unless we actually go and provoke them, and even so there are no consequences to the world even if they are left alone.

There's already no new class, no new weapons and no new craft skills, and the antiquity system is a gimmick at best. I was hoping for more honestly.

Also resource node density in Western Skyrim just feels terrible. The land is barren even on the PTS where no one is harvesting in general. Compare that to Wrothgar or other zones and the difference is huge.

I also think the blue tint on your screen near the northern shore could be removed. It's not like I'm losing health or actually getting slowed in the cold.

What did you think of the Blackreach environment?

On the other hand, I didn't like Blackreach at all. It feels completely ruined and I absolutely hate what's happened to it.

Lorewise and gameplay wise, in Skyrim, even reaching Blackreach was a feat in itself. You had to progress the main story enough, get the attunement sphere, fight your way through an entire Dwemer ruin, and only then could you even get in the front door. And once you got in, the sense of discovery was wonderful, like if you were the first surface dweller to set foot in a ancient, hidden ruin in a long time. Lorewise, Blackreach was the mythical lost city of the Dwemer and here you are, in the flesh. It's mostly you, the local fauna, the Falmer and of course the automatons still guarding a long dead city. And it's yours to explore.

Furthermore, in Skyrim the layout of Blackreach makes sense. There are pumping stations extending into underground lakes. There's a central city with a debate hall, food hall and a artificial sun. There are underground farms and Dwemer houses for workers. There's a war room, and of course the orrery tower with the scroll. All in all, Blackreach feels plausible within the world of the Elder Scrolls.

Now, in ESO, it seems any random yahoo with a pickaxe can simply waltz right in. There are Dwemer elevators located on the main roads (?) for anyone to freely use (???). And not just that, there' a FREAKING TOWN in Blackreach with a pub and all. With the people going in and out, why isn't Blackreach common knowledge across Tamriel already? And even better, the vampires have apparently built an entire *** castle the size of a small city overlooking the lava pits ala Greymoor Keep. Gee, I guess the vampires must be even better engineers than the Dwemer. There are random Dwemer ruins scattered all over the place. There are glowing crystals the size of houses. Why are there giant summoning rituals taking place underground (?????), are they gonna make the Daedra and undead take lifts up to the surface instead of you know, summoning them on the surface where all the mortals live?

Even navigating Blackreach in ESO is a pain, there are rock formations, crystals, lava flows and other garbage constantly blocking the main paths, you can't even take a straight path from A to B in most cases without having to take a massive detour around a pile of rocks or up a cliff. The sections on the left side and bottom of the map are especially bad.

To enjoy most fiction you need to suspend your disbelief and ESO is generally fine in this regard. But the overall design and layout of Blackreach in ESO just feels terribly wrong to me. Like it's the world design equivalent of jumping the shark. And I hate that, since I desperately wanted to revisit the place that had given me that sense of wonder 9 or so years ago. It's probably too late to change anything significantly though, what a shame. Given how Blackreach is like 40% of this chapter, I'm probably gonna wait for a deep deep sale before I even bother with this.

Did you enter Blackreach on your own or as part of a Quest?

On my own.

Did you have any issues navigating between Blackreach and Western Skyrim?

No, thanks to those lifts all over the place. Ridiculous.


Did you encounter any new monsters you haven't seen before? What did you think of them?

Yes, the vampire lords and the chaurus were the only truly new enemies I've found. The rest are just the same NPCs I've seen many times in other zones. Overall, I feel there aren't that many new mobs in the Chapter zones in general. Is it really so hard to model and animate more than what, 2 new mobs? It's 60 dollar content for goodness sake.


Harrowstorms
Did you see any Harrowstorms? If so, what did you think of their general look and feel?

The red effect isn't particularly nice looking from far away but it's obvious enough. Kinda looks like a traffic cone in the sky. Up close, please remove that annoying red glow/tint all over the floor/UI. It's seriously causing the default red combat telegraphs to be practically invisible. I had to change them to bright pink to get any significant contrast, please adjust this.

Did you try to fight in any of them? Harrowstorms are group events, like Geysers or Dark Anchors. Knowing that, how did the experience feel?

I actually liked the chaos and intensity of the two Harrowstorm fights I did. I would like Dark Anchors to be similar to Harrowstorms in difficulty honestly, with increased XP and rewards of course. Fight waves of strong Daedra, destroy pinions, avoid Coldharbour meteors etc. and then fight an actual boss at the end that needs a group or so to deal with. And when Molag Bal calls one of the special generals, it should be a more challenging fight in the vein of the Imperial City roaming bosses or Xivkyn generals in the sewers in terms of intensity and difficulty (or more, given how Anchors tend to attract larger groups in general). In general, Harrowstorms convey the "otherworldy invasion of powerful monsters" idea way better than Dark Anchors or even the Abyssal Geysers in Summerset. Overall, good job on this, I hope to see something like this expanded to old content as mentioned. In future, perhaps the Daedra could even spread out from dolmens if they are left unclosed?


Do you have any other general feedback?

This is general QOL feedback for both Blackreach and Western Skyrim. Please place wayshrines much much nearer to places that players are likely to constantly revisit like daily quest NPCs, delves, Harrowstorm sites, world bosses and public dungeons. For example, the northern part of Western Skyrim has two Harrowstorm sites, two delves and 1 WB, and practically no wayshrines. Deepwood Vale wayshrine is practically next to Dragon Bridge wayshrine. Circle of Champions WB and the nearby ritual site could use a shrine serving them.

The Dusktown Wayshrine could be moved to better serve the two ritual sites nearby and Nchuthnkarst public dungeons as well.

In Blackreach, compass icons for locations in a different cavern than the one I am in are also showing up, making navigation unnecessarily confusing.

Fata1moose

I kind of hope Skyrim is next year's expansion as well. Would love to see Whiterun+Falkreath for the Chapter and then Winterhold DLC.

heaven13

heaven13 wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for Western Skyrim, mainly focusing on the zone, side quests, and other types of content found in the area. If you have specific feedback on the main story, please visit this thread so others can avoid spoilers. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Tutorial
  • Did you play through the new tutorial?
  • What did you think about the combat tutorial (Vitrus the Bloody)? Was it more or less informative than previous tutorials? Is there something you wish it would have taught you that it didn't?
  • Did you find sufficient items to loot in Deepwood Vale? Were they noticeable enough?
  • Did you encounter the optional lockpicking tutorial? Did you feel rewarded for completing it?
  • What did you think about the tutorial boss fight (Matron Urgala)? How was the difficulty?

• Yes and this feedback is specifically related to it.
• Combat tutorial was fine, probably as informative as Elsweyr's which is good. However, it might be beneficial to start including AoE that cannot be interrupted in these fights as well, to teach players to move out of 'red'.
• Once again, we are left with no restoration staff. It has been 3 tutorials now where the lack of a resto staff is very apparent (you could sometimes find one in Summerset, never in Elsweyr). It took getting further into the barrows to find a waist piece as there was not one in the room with Vitrus the Bloody. There was also no pants of any weight to be found throughout the tutorial.
• I found Deepwood Tower but the items located in it to loot and the two enemies within were insubstantial. Probably wouldn't waste my time with it on other characters.
• The difficulty of Matron Urgala is fine, considering this is a tutorial and characters will have access to one skill only and then light/heavy attacks. The focus on interrupting, rather than blocking, is good as that seems to be a weak combat skill for newer players.

Some additional observations:

• The atmosphere is great. It's a good looking tutorial and the variance in outdoor/indoor and heights with the ramparts and the towers is really nice.
• Fennorian follows too close and the interact radius feels larger than it should be. It makes looting things incredibly obnoxious since half the time you end up talking to him instead. Sure, this could be considered a throw back to the original main quest, but let's not.
• Small pet peeve, but there were a lot of backpacks that visually looked full but were empty. I like to loot everything and a lot of objects were empty or had no loot interaction. I also did not find any furnishing plans for the new chapter in any loot. Both Summerset and Elsweyr tutorials typically dropped at least one furnishing plan from the new region.
• I felt like I leveled up less in comparison to the previous tutorials. I killed all enemies I found, including the wolves in the corner and barely hit level 3 after killing Matron Urgala. Previous tutorials put me at level 4.

A final note: the initial look at Western Skyrim is great once you exit the tutorial. Until you turn right. Those mountains look like very low quality 2D backdrop.

I played through the tutorial again, to check and see if any adjustments had been made that hadn't been noted in the PTS. Unfortunately, no. I have the same issues now as I did week 1.

• No pants in any weight.
• No resto staff.
• Locked room provides no incentive to go in.
• No furnishing plans.
• Lots of visually full sacks/backpacks that are labeled as empty.

Dovahkiin02191973

I got to the part where your first speak to Lyris and then to the Queen. Bug is on the Queen's voice over. Basically it didn't play. I went through the dialogue silently. This didn't impact or hurt progression of the game but still needs to be looked into not only for this incident but for others that might exist.