Bastion Nymic feedback

colossalvoids

After reading several topics on a subject wasn't able to resist the urge to test it out myself. Spoilers ahead.

You're starting out with collecting vials from overland encounters with Seekers, if I remember correctly they're 1.8 mil health total so roughly an equivalent of a base game World Boss, difficulty wise it reminded me a Crowborne Horror boss from a recent Witches festival group quest addition, but with much less health to it and just one (time dependent?) mob phase. After you've collected all five, quest directs you to the Dolmen+ marker and you're ported to the Bastion itself using previously mentioned liquids.

Next phase heavily reminded me of Deadlands portals, but finally it's instanced so no more running past piles of corpses or wasting your time for a respawn. Difficulty wise it's probably just the same, might check hp values later. Met only one above trash tier mini-boss on my way and it's way less of a problem than Deadlands are having between zones with no potential to really harm you, it had around 800k health and melted without an issue along other mobs, as i noticed him in the very last moment.

Not sure if there's more different versions of it (hope so?), but what i've got were two boss encounters.
First one being a Lurcher with a pair of Watchers all around 2mil health (Lurcher being main encounter with Crowborne health pool of 2.2mil and supports of 1.8mil). Quite enjoyable fight and reminds a lot of a solo arena than a dungeon or other encounters, but more prolonged one due to their health pools.
Second one was a Seeker yet again, at a whole 5 mil health so an equivalent of a DLC World Boss, if I remember correctly, and it was a fun one. One thing that sets it apart from a WB is it's low damage output and slow reaction times.

Still a hard feeling of a solo arena so it was either a scrap of the Dungeon DLC that we'll never get this year or a whole Solo Arena that was merged with Incursion event for some reason.

-

Overall it was way more enjoyable than a Havocrel encounter in Deadlands or wandering bosses of Galen, those weren't even remotely interesting alrerady after half of the first encounter with them. And it's an improvement after a public dungeon approach of Oblivion Portals, which led to camping and a lot of waiting around for mobs\Duke. Aesthetically it was close to flawless, which isn't the case a lot of times with such content but probably not exclusive to this event, but to Apocrypha depiction overall which I didn't visited. Also no irritating NPC callouts or taunting of a Big Baddy Behind the Scene was a breath of fresh air, especially after HI fissures.

The only downside I can possibly think of is inclusion of in city daily quest and an Incursion icon to it. It's misleading as people generally expect some bite size open world event to melt with random people around and not a solo arena instance at the end of it. Which I personally enjoyed a lot, but it might get people confused. Even an arena\trial\dungeon icon would do lot better describing what people should expect of it, but this might matter less with the next update after Chapter where the new variety group finder will be in place. The lack of usual "dolmen" event is a good thing for me as those always were a sore of a zone, so to say, deforming the beauty of zones and making for another place people are driving past through. This format is way more fitting but forced grouping for new players might be a double edged sword after the content would become less and less fresh. I'd suggest no daily for it at all, making for a more adventurous approach not being directed to the task but finding it yourself at your own pace.

If people are worry about the difficulty, i'd personally rank it lower than a Harrowstorm, as you're getting bosses piece by piece and have a lot of breath room, but quite above Summerset geysers.
Don't forget a self heal this time, it's ain't a dolmen this time around.

Tommy_The_Gun

Primary issues I have (just like you have said) is how it is marketed. They call it "World Event" quest, but it has nothing to do with a world event. It is more like a Craglorn / Trial / Group Arena daily quest. It has as much to do with a World Event quest as crafting daily quest has to do with PvP daily quest. Even in Blackwood I thought they went too far with random Portals not marketed on your map, but those at least were not that hard and public-dungeon-like. World Event is supposed to be a place that is marked on your map and you can tell whenever it is active or not.

Now, when it comes to difficulty, I would not say it is easy, but at least I was able to solo World Bosses mobs that drop necessary items. Difficulty wise, it was more or less like Wandering Bosses in Deadlands. They hit hard and you have to be very tanky to solo them (Max level, 2024 CP, gold gear + mythic and I play this game since 2014. Solo-ing DLC group dungeons is not a problem for me, and yet those bosses were).

It takes around 15 minutes per boss. 15 minutes of clicking x5 (assuming you will find other mobs right away). I honestly thought that after 5 bosses it is the end of the quest. Seriously. It is a "World Event" quest. It should not be this long. Even if you are in group it takes way too much time.

TLDR (My 2 cents / Feedback):
- Quest is far too long for a "World Event" category of quest (even if you are in group). Either scrap the 1st part where you kill bosses and you go directly to 2nd part (group dungeon) or scrap the 2nd part with the dungeon entirely.
- For a "World Event" quest it is also far too difficult.
- No Group Finder support means that it will be dead content shortly after release. As soon as guilds will get mythic leads & achievements.
- Solo/ random / un-grouped players will have no hopes on finishing "World Event" quests. People are more likely to do the remaining 2 daily twice (main & alt) vs wasting time on this tapeworm.
- "More challenging overland" is not the case. Bosses in the 1st part can be killed solo, but it requires a lot of time. It is not about difficulty, but rather time.
- 2nd part of the quest seems impossible to solo with companion. The difficulty dissappears entirely once you group & it gets easier - meaning that again the concept of more challenging content falls flat (especially overland since 2nd part is not overland). The dungeon is simply put - too hard (again, this comes from someone who is able to solo most normal DLC group dungeons).
- In current state it is not a "World Event" type of quest, but rather a Craglorn style daily quest or daily trial quest. It is misleading. This quest should be marked as such (group quest), with proper icons, indicating that it should be done in a group.
- Location with "Overland Bosses" mobs should have Craglorn style "Warning, Entering Group Area" message pop-up when approaching near.
- Quest giver NPC should be moved somewhere else, so that players will know that it is not a regular daily zone quest, but rather a daily trial / dungeon / Craglorn style quest.
- The zone has pretty much 2 daily quest with a 3rd Trial / Arena quest disguised as a Dolmen / Harrowstorm quest.
- It would be ideal to simply scrap it & convert it somehow into a proper World Event. I know, I know... some people would not like it, but I also think that it is way too confusing & overengineered quest. It does not fit into the game imho. Almost as if they were trying to re-use some scrapped content.
- Maybe it should be a 4th optional daily quest, as right now zone is missing World Event activity & associated quest entirely.

Edit:
Just a thought I had. I remember that in the past, Dolmen, Harrowstormsc etc were changed to scale to the amount of people doing them. It was an issue because if there weren't enough people around - it was impossible to do.

So... maybe it would be the right thing to do for this special group dungeon too ? Since this is supposed to be a "World Event", it would make sense to scale it to either 4 man pre-made group or to use this new 2 man (or 1 player + companion) scaling from "endless dungeon" if you are solo.

colossalvoids

I was solo there, so it's soloable. Tried it a second time at it seems you can explore it all at once, way more bosses, "puzzles", lore etc. When I was writing my post the first time doors were closed for me and I just thought that other parts would be accessible at the other event spot, but was probably wrong about it.

Then I invited one person over and it felt different, it seems like there might be some scaling involved as we even wiped at a time, both having enough experience in previous PvE content, might be an arcanist l2p issues though or a lack of sleep, need couple more tries later to actually see if there's a difference being solo, duo or group. Overall it feels fresh but it's not an incursion as people are thinking of it, it's an arena more of, and probably with difficulty higher than normal. Doesn't feel actual vet though.

Faulgor

Please post this in the PTS forum as well.

colossalvoids

Faulgor wrote: »

Please post this in the PTS forum as well.

Actually thought I chosen PTS category before posting, ehm... I probably will do after 100% it later this week to actually have fleshed out feedback, as apparently there was more to it that I wasn't able to access the first time and later didn't had time for more runs going every single room out there, as some are getting locked after clear and some bosses might bug out as "cleared" while they're not in reality probably affecting ability to interact with some stuff, so need a slower paste run without any mob skips so less chances of anything breaking in a process.

Edit: still not sure how many bug reports will be filled at the end.

Snamyap

Sounds interesting, but indeed a tad lengthy. If there's a motif style attached to this daily it might be a good money maker... 😏

ZOS_Volpe

Hello!

We've gone ahead and moved this thread to a category we think is more suitable for this topic, Public Test Server.

Thanks for your understanding!