Is Blackwood a flop?

spekdah

I started playing this game some months after summerset was released. It was busy. All of the chapters and mini zone have been since... except blackwood. I feel like I'm playing some old dlc that was released years ago that no one plays anymore.

spekdah

I've noticed the the reach is more busy with peeps still farming storms and dailies.

Lugaldu

Another thought: in the world events of the other zones you can see all the players gathered there, in the case of the Deadlands, on the other hand, the players are practically "invisible". So, it is also more difficult to assess how many players are currently in those public dungeons and waiting for the opponents to respawn...

Elsonso

spekdah wrote: »

I started playing this game some months after summerset was released. It was busy. All of the chapters and mini zone have been since... except blackwood. I feel like I'm playing some old dlc that was released years ago that no one plays anymore.

Yeah, if ZOS cares about appearances more then sales figures, the lesson here is to make sure people grind in the new zone, not some other zone, and put the zone event in the zone overland, not some instance where no one can see all the players.

I have no idea what sales figures look like, but just based on the clone comments, this chapter is doing pretty well. If they had made the zone reflect this, we would not be having this discussion.

shadyjane62

Grind what? There are hardly any nodes to grind. I went into a portal yesterday, it was Sat night 7 pm, there was nobody around. I could do the small fry, but I couldn't touch the Bosses.


Let me repeat the important part. It was Saturday night 10 days into a new chapter, there was NOBODY around.

Skjoldur

Hurbster wrote: »

Also, there is no overland event such as dolmens or geysers where you will find lots of players gathering. Just the portals that go to the rather disappointing public dungeon (imo).

I found Oblivion portals disappointing as well. While I did not like the out-of-control farming of the "events" in previous zones, these portals are too hard to find unless you want to keep your eyes on the zone chat all the time. And since they are instanced, there was no reason to do it like this.

And if you enter the portal at a bad time, there won't even be any monsters to slay and no mini-bosses on your way to the endboss. Not to mention that the endboss is a disappointing / horrible fight.

Sylvermynx

I've seen Oblivion portals in every area I'm questing through in Blackwood and many times I'll see two or three in a given area while questing. I'm not interested in them personally any more than geysers, harrowstorms or dolmens, but they're definitely around and really you can't miss them.

You won't generally see them from roads (at least that's been my experience so far) and if everyone's farming, racing around at the fastest speed they can accomplish, perhaps they're just flashing by them and not paying enough attention.

Elsonso

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Skjoldur wrote: »

Hurbster wrote: »

Also, there is no overland event such as dolmens or geysers where you will find lots of players gathering. Just the portals that go to the rather disappointing public dungeon (imo).

I found Oblivion portals disappointing as well. While I did not like the out-of-control farming of the "events" in previous zones, these portals are too hard to find unless you want to keep your eyes on the zone chat all the time. And since they are instanced, there was no reason to do it like this.

And if you enter the portal at a bad time, there won't even be any monsters to slay and no mini-bosses on your way to the endboss. Not to mention that the endboss is a disappointing / horrible fight.

I am guessing that these portals are hard to find because you are looking for them, so you are aware when they are not there. I am not interested in them, but I see them all over the place. It is hard for me to imagine anyone having problems, unless that was the only thing that was wanted.

Integral1900

Personally it’s been good, those portals seem pretty busy, most of the time there is nothing in there to kill, you have to wait around for a good while at the end to kill the boss, but the questing and the zone are marvellous.

Finally an expansion with a good slab of non-combat related question content. Wonderful stories, great characters, yes the companions are a bit rough around the edges but for a dry run they’re not bad. We just need to be able to stop them rabbiting on or give them a heck of a lot more lines of dialogue. Judging by fallout 4 I would say a minimum of 30 to 50 lines for harvesting for example.

As a zone and its story content, the difficulty of the world buses and so forth, I say they near nailed it. Also, it may simply be a matter of luck but I haven’t had too much trouble finding nodes in this zone. I am looking forward to my next character going through in a few months time because then I will actually be able to kill trash mobs in the portals, which will be nice.

Skjoldur

Elsonso wrote: »

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Skjoldur wrote: »

Hurbster wrote: »

Also, there is no overland event such as dolmens or geysers where you will find lots of players gathering. Just the portals that go to the rather disappointing public dungeon (imo).

I found Oblivion portals disappointing as well. While I did not like the out-of-control farming of the "events" in previous zones, these portals are too hard to find unless you want to keep your eyes on the zone chat all the time. And since they are instanced, there was no reason to do it like this.

And if you enter the portal at a bad time, there won't even be any monsters to slay and no mini-bosses on your way to the endboss. Not to mention that the endboss is a disappointing / horrible fight.

I am guessing that these portals are hard to find because you are looking for them, so you are aware when they are not there. I am not interested in them, but I see them all over the place. It is hard for me to imagine anyone having problems, unless that was the only thing that was wanted.

Actually I am not really interested in them either. I noticed however that I sometimes run into 2-3 of them in an hour, but I have also had a whole day without randomly encountering a single one of them.

Tan9oSuccka

HumbleThaumaturge wrote: »

Tan9oSuccka wrote: »

The only flop in my opinion, is companions. Pretty useless. No point in grinding out XP and skill lines if they die almost instantly from standing still in an AOE.

Companions do not die instantly. That is something that happened for (maybe) the first two weeks after Blackwood went up on the test server (PTS). We reported the problem; ZOS responded to the comments and made companions considerably more robust. I tested companions before and after these changes.

Again, companions do not die instantly. When Blackwood launched on June 1, I got both Mirri and Bastian on all 10 of my main characters. In all the days since, doing all the Blackwood content, plus some group dungeons, my Companion has died ONLY 3 times. Companions do not stand in AoE; they even dodge-roll when in trouble. I did a 2-player run of Vaults of Madness with my Mirri as Healer and the other player's Bastian as Tank. I was very impressed with Bastian as Tank. The other player said he was using the keyboard command for Companion plus right-click for Attack and left-click for Retreat. In that entire run, a companion died only once. Admittedly, I did slot a self-heal on Mirri and Bastian, but that's just sensible.

On console, I just might not know the extra commands.

Either way, I should not have to micro manage the companion to not stand in stupid until death. I’m not sure if this was patched on PC and not console. But they will 100% stand in AOE till they die. Mirri is worse than Bastion for some reason and both have self heals slotted.

When they die, they aren’t worth the soul gem to be honest.

blktauna

When I see a portal I call it out in zone. I also call out in zone if anyone else has seen one. There's generally a response unless I'm on off hours. I've also noticed that if you don't do the main zone quest a lot of the side quests dont pop up. I've finished the zone on a new toon I made for it and when I went to a quest spot with another toon, it was not available. This might be why so many say its barren. After I did the main story, barren is the last descriptor I'd use.

Necrosaro_123

Is super super boring. I had a hard time trying to complete the quests after seeing how boring it was.

Main story felt incomplete, weird, random and uninteresting...
Side stories where meh
Dwelves and Public Dungeon are meh. Not like im missing too much there.
Furniture is hard to make, super rare to find
The new house is meh....it doesnt even exist in Oblivion
And the worst thing is that "Blackwood" feels lacking in visuals and interesting things to do. Back in Oblivion it was a boring zone too

Aristocles22

Honestly, many of the new characters were just boring.

Eiregirl

In my opinion it is far from a flop. I see more people in the game playing than I have in years.

I see people all over the place in Blackwood doing the quests and world bosses and I have already had 4 of my characters there and soon will run a 5th through it

I see tons more people in other zones with their new companions leveling them up, and getting the guild skills up by doing the guild dailies and gaining rapport with their companion.

There may not be and over abundance of people IN Blackwood but Blackwood in my opinion has given people reason to spread out into the world and enjoy the entire world instead of a single zone.

Come on Mirri my faithful companion lets go run around Blackwood then do that quest in The Rift before we hit the Summerset dailies.

DBJ

I personally don't have that much of a problem with Blackwood but compared to the other released chapters so far, Blackwood is surely one if not the worst when it comes to long-time relevance.

The trial sets and the kilt will maybe receive a nerf when the next chapter hits next year.
SS & CR will be the meta forever.

Marillea

I think the release looks like a flop for the simple fact that nearly ALL DDs got pushed out of the new zone to lead farm in base game and Ruins of Mazzatun. Who doesn't want to purchase the latest Chapter, just to not play in it after all?
Same thing that happened with Summerset, brand new skill line, but hey, go back to base game! Why quest in this beautiful new area?

But personally, I am not really enjoying Blackwood, the hype died rather quickly. The main quest was short, literally one public dungeon (Since the second has maybe 50 mobs in it? Can't even consider it a public dungeon at this point.), dailies are a disappointment after another with a whopping 0 drops in a week and... Companions! I was enjoying Mirri. Then I entered Blackrose Prison. My fiancé pointed out Lady Minara looks exactly like her. (Same everything, they only took away vampirism and there you go! Mirri!) Well, I felt like an idiot for throwing my money at it so fast. They didn't even bother giving us actually unique NPCs.

Also, she won't shut up. I have interactions at the lowest and it's a constant loop of the same voice lines over and over! For being the main focus of this release, they could have bothered giving them more depth.

Oh and my favourite part! I lost companion gear twice before I knew about the bug. When it happened the first time I assumed gear was character bound, so I equipped a new set on my tank, then it was all gone. 3rd time they literally did a maintenance to fix it, well guess what, I lost it all again. Obviously asked for some of it back at least, we are talking green pieces as I had given up on my blue drops, and obviously they were sorry they couldn't help me.

Next time I will wait a while before purchasing a chapter.

MasterWarrior

The stuff I like about Blackwood, I really really like. The stuff I don't like, I really really don't like.

Like:
Companions and hope they improve upon in the future - more companions, companion inventory for their own gear, etc
Zone - Is very nice to explore


Don't Like
Reduction of max party size to 12
Can't find oblivion portals and they are too small. Should be a lot bigger and more noticeable.

electriczzz

I like the look of blackwood, disappointing dailies with low cost motifs by now, a delve daily where you need to go down 2-3 stages into a deadric cave just to take notes takes too much effort for possibly just another blue sword of a at best mediocre set, companions are fun but eat aoes like kids eat christmas cookies and they're just copy pasta NPC and nothing unique, deadland portals feel underwhelming and the boss/bosses aren't fun to farm due to constant invulnerability phases, I'm not much of a quester therefore I don't want to comment on anything there, 1 public dungeon is fun to run through and grind a bit. Lead locations are total arse and I totally wasted multiple days trying to get stuff together which made me wonder why did I purchase blackwood.

TL:DR - Blackwood was a massive flop for me personally, the companions are the main focus coming from this expansion and they seem half finished and if I need to hear once more"PROBLEM,SERA?" while trying to loot an urn or a corpse I think I'll go nuts.

Wolf_Eye

blktauna wrote: »

When I see a portal I call it out in zone. I also call out in zone if anyone else has seen one. There's generally a response unless I'm on off hours. I've also noticed that if you don't do the main zone quest a lot of the side quests dont pop up. I've finished the zone on a new toon I made for it and when I went to a quest spot with another toon, it was not available. This might be why so many say its barren. After I did the main story, barren is the last descriptor I'd use.

It almost feels like back in Western Skyrim, when we couldn't know which harrowstorm was up. I wonder if they made it random intentionally? Were they tired of people camping specific spots? Did they like having people call out locations in chat because it looked cool to see the community come together to get information?

PigofSteel

Ghost Zone...

grizzledcroc

I love people complaining about them adding stuff to base zones when the point of the game is never to funnel people into one area . Also with the new tutorial I imagine not a lot of new people are popping into Blackwood. But damn guys lol

alanmatillab16_ESO

Warstory wrote: »

For the past few days of doing the Blackwood dailies and some harvesting and I rarely seen any other players, even in the cities. I've never seen a chapter so dead right after release and it's kinda disheartening.

Everyone has gone and unlocked the companions and camping Shadowfen for the lead drop or levelling the companions in public instances/soloing old group content.

You will also have a load of players like myself that are waiting for all of the content to be released before doing the latest expansion thus avoiding the crowds.

So no, not a flop.

Orion_89

grizzledcroc wrote: »

I love people complaining about them adding stuff to base zones when the point of the game is never to funnel people into one area . Also with the new tutorial I imagine not a lot of new people are popping into Blackwood. But damn guys lol

If you're adding something to the base game, than add it free, because we already bought it. I don't mind that guild's dailies and some other old activities are useful now, but why should I give away extra money for this?

AbysmalGhul

I did notice that the new zone died within a few days of release (PS4). Murkmire still has a bigger population

Wolfshead

Warstory wrote: »

For the past few days of doing the Blackwood dailies and some harvesting and I rarely seen any other players, even in the cities. I've never seen a chapter so dead right after release and it's kinda disheartening.

Have you guys every hear of something call SUMMER I have been playing this game since early beta and I can tell you ZoS do always release June which basically mean less player playing the game I for one spend less time in front of my computer when in summer and sun is out serious blackwood is not flop.

I have seen this very year when ZoS release there expansion beside you need to keep in mind when school close for summer and people that work go on vacation people tend to not play computer and it is not just ESO it is in all MMO game fewer people play under summer that is known fact.

Also, a reminder when more countries ease up on their covid-19 restricted and more people get covid-19 vaccinate do you really think they are going to sit inside when most like have seen their friends and family for over 1 year???

ArchMikem

I just finished the Chapter Questline, but even though it did take me several days, I intentionally played it slowly in increments while dividing my time up with other games. I know if I focused an entire day on Blackwood I would have finished same day.

Anyone else feel the Questline was really short? The ending snuck up on me and seemed abrupt, especially compared to the Anequina Questline which felt like it just kept going. I'm just left with a big feeling of "meh" from this. Greymoor was somewhat a similar experience, but the mystery behind the Dark Heart and Dwemer involvement helped bring it back up a bit.

....are the writers losing touch?

REiiGN15

The Zone? Yes

Companions? Not really, not the best but it's a start

Mythic? Yes

Houses? No

dcam86b14_ESO

No, I see tons of active players in zone.
What is a flop is the reactivation of proc sets in cyro....man the non proc was so much fun....oh well

aaisoaho

ArchMikem wrote: »

I just finished the Chapter Questline, but even though it did take me several days, I intentionally played it slowly in increments while dividing my time up with other games. I know if I focused an entire day on Blackwood I would have finished same day.

Anyone else feel the Questline was really short? The ending snuck up on me and seemed abrupt, especially compared to the Anequina Questline which felt like it just kept going. I'm just left with a big feeling of "meh" from this. Greymoor was somewhat a similar experience, but the mystery behind the Dark Heart and Dwemer involvement helped bring it back up a bit.

....are the writers losing touch?

I did the same, did a quest a day and listened to each dialogue. I did a bunch of side quests too just to let the story sink in. To be honest, the story was immersive and I enjoyed it.

I was surprised the quest I did was the last quest on the main questline. Like the story just picked up some pace and set up the story nicely and then stopped like it hit a wall or something. Yes, I know the story continues in Q4, but unlike previous years, this story does not feel like two continuous stories but a one single story cut in half.

This time the plot twist was a surprise tho. I really did not see it coming.

the plot twist in question is the nature of the four ambitions.