The human dynamics of Bastion Nymic don't work

Credible_Joe

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey all. Wanted to follow up here. We have been passing the feedback from players regarding Bastion Nymic to the dev team for them to address. We'll follow up as we get more information. However, please continue to provide your feedback here on your experience in Bastion Nymic. We'll continue to pass feedback and bugs on to the team as they work to address issues. Thanks, all.

Thanks Kevin.

I was excited for Nymics as an overland event that I would be able to solo in an instanced environment, taking NPC companions or guild mates with at my leisure. This made the hard group checks and group-oriented difficulty very disappointing.

If I recall correctly, there was some dev comments regarding overland content feedback that mentioned these world events as a measure to address those criticisms. I really feel that the mark was missed; if we can't solo them, then the whole point is moot, and overland difficulty is exactly the same.

I think group play should be rewarded, and solo play shouldn't be punished. Nymics should definitely be difficult to solo, but not impossible.

kyle.wilson

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey all. Wanted to follow up here. We have been passing the feedback from players regarding Bastion Nymic to the dev team for them to address. We'll follow up as we get more information. However, please continue to provide your feedback here on your experience in Bastion Nymic. We'll continue to pass feedback and bugs on to the team as they work to address issues. Thanks, all.

did the dev team even run with less than 4 people during the development?

Necrotech_Master

xclassgaming wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey all. Wanted to follow up here. We have been passing the feedback from players regarding Bastion Nymic to the dev team for them to address. We'll follow up as we get more information. However, please continue to provide your feedback here on your experience in Bastion Nymic. We'll continue to pass feedback and bugs on to the team as they work to address issues. Thanks, all.

Some feedback/ideas. Reduce the Amount of Seekers in the world, i have been fishing, doing antiquities and...boom! pulled out and killed because of them, there are far too many, however to count fewer, reduce the amount we need for the quest, make it one, five is too many.

Make Bastian nymic a public dungeon, like the Blackwood/Deadlands world events.

i think the biggest problem with the heralds is that their aoe attacks can target ANY player within a certain radius of them, not just the players that they are fighting, there are times ive been riding past a fight, did not get hit with anything, and suddenly i have the aoe under me that spawns a tentacle

same has also happened when i was digging up a lead, there were people fighting a herald across a river and im getting targeted by the tentacle aoe

Enodoc

I never even managed to get into Bastion Nymic on PTS. Dolmens, Geysers, Harrowstorms and Volcanic Vents all can be joined dynamically when you see one is open on the map, similarly when Dragons spawn in Elsweyr, and Oblivion Portals in Blackwood/Deadlands you can just enter which means it doesn't matter if they're not mapped. But for Bastion Nymic you can't really do it dynamically as there's never enough people around at the right time to kill a Herald's Seeker. Since I never even got that far on PTS I don't even know how to open the Edifices after that.

Jaimeh

Kisakee wrote: »

You're completely missing the point of it. The reward is not what you get out of the quest but the secrets and riddles inside, this is not meant to just be another pushover daily.

More difficult content is welcome, but the implementation with the forced grouping and the instance aspect which imo doesn't lend itself well to world events, the multiple steps involved, and yes the daily aspect of it (which is consideration given motifs, achievements, etc) is terrible. It should have been a different type of content entirely.

acastanza_ESO

xclassgaming wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey all. Wanted to follow up here. We have been passing the feedback from players regarding Bastion Nymic to the dev team for them to address. We'll follow up as we get more information. However, please continue to provide your feedback here on your experience in Bastion Nymic. We'll continue to pass feedback and bugs on to the team as they work to address issues. Thanks, all.

Some feedback/ideas. Reduce the Amount of Seekers in the world, i have been fishing, doing antiquities and...boom! pulled out and killed because of them, there are far too many, however to count fewer, reduce the amount we need for the quest, make it one, five is too many.

Make Bastian nymic a public dungeon, like the Blackwood/Deadlands world events.

I disagree here, I appreciate the increased difficulty of this event, and very much appreciate how there are actual difficult enemies that you have to be cautious of. This is a plane of oblivion, it should be dangerous. The only problem is that the other planes of oblivion aren't dangerous.

Alphawolf01A

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Alphawolf01A wrote: »

I forgot to mention the Tribute fragment and the handful of Antiquities leads that are also in there, adding to the "necessity" to complete it.

The tribute fragment was moved to the open world bosses instead.

Sotha_Sil wrote: »

Alphawolf01A wrote: »

I forgot to mention the Tribute fragment and the handful of Antiquities leads that are also in there, adding to the "necessity" to complete it.

This maybe was the case in PTS but not anymore.

You can get the fragment by killing seekers. You need a group to kill them but a lot of people are doing that in zone chat so it's fairly easy to get the TOT fragment. You don't need to go to the nymic bastion anymore.

Thank you.

FantasticFreddie

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

xclassgaming wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey all. Wanted to follow up here. We have been passing the feedback from players regarding Bastion Nymic to the dev team for them to address. We'll follow up as we get more information. However, please continue to provide your feedback here on your experience in Bastion Nymic. We'll continue to pass feedback and bugs on to the team as they work to address issues. Thanks, all.

Some feedback/ideas. Reduce the Amount of Seekers in the world, i have been fishing, doing antiquities and...boom! pulled out and killed because of them, there are far too many, however to count fewer, reduce the amount we need for the quest, make it one, five is too many.

Make Bastian nymic a public dungeon, like the Blackwood/Deadlands world events.

I disagree here, I appreciate the increased difficulty of this event, and very much appreciate how there are actual difficult enemies that you have to be cautious of. This is a plane of oblivion, it should be dangerous. The only problem is that the other planes of oblivion aren't dangerous.

Are you going to do them every day, is the question. They are daily quests, with trivial rewards.

Treselegant

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey all. Wanted to follow up here. We have been passing the feedback from players regarding Bastion Nymic to the dev team for them to address. We'll follow up as we get more information. However, please continue to provide your feedback here on your experience in Bastion Nymic. We'll continue to pass feedback and bugs on to the team as they work to address issues. Thanks, all.

I'm sensing a theme here. Things that were repeatedly flagged as possible issues in the feedback from the PTS are only now being addressed. As great as it is that that these things are now being considered, I cannot help but get a feeling that it's a bit like trying to close the door after the horse bolted months ago. Wouldn't it have been easier to consider player feedback before Necrom's launch rather than rushing to get it all changed now? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

BergisMacBride

Difficulty of the content isn’t the main issue for me, it’s the terrible quest design for the instance on trying to get a group or into a group through zone chat makes it tedious, frustrating and often impossible to complete. That will only get worse when the zone depopulates once the new wears off.

What the devs has created is essentially a daily where the only world component is getting the items, followed by a really neat, complex DLC 4-player dungeon on the end but with no mechanism other than guild or zone chat spam to complete for most folks.

@ZOS_Kevin, my 2 cents:

1. Keep mob difficulty the same.
2. Decrease number of items needed to enter to 1. Also decrease the number of roaming heralds.
3. Add to group finder or make second part open like oblivion portals if you can’t do that.
4. Increase the rewards in the Nymic portion to encourage more player participation.

I think the instanced portion is really cool and I can see what the devs were aiming for in creating more challenging content, which is what many folks desire. They just completely missed the mark on creating a reliable mechanism for most of the player base to participate in or enjoy the second half.

TheValkyn

Jimbru wrote: »

Bastion Nymic, intended for a group of four. Which you will definitely need unless you're a real raid tier player. I have tried twice to get in with groups.

The first group was only three people. We found that each group of trash mobs cumulatively has as many HP as a world boss, and when we got to the actual first boss, we couldn't finish him off and ended up giving up.

The second group, we had four players and were actually in the instance and I thought we were ready to start. Then suddenly everyone's meds wore off simultaneously and they were like "I don't have the quest, we need to kill Seekers", ran out all the way to Telvanni Peninsula and scattered all over looking for Seekers. I gave up trying to get everyone back together, and now I'm probably going to miss the daily because nobody seems to be doing the daily now and there is no LFG function for it.

This kind of thing simply isn't going to work, especially not as a daily quest. Bastion Nymic either needs to be changed to scale for solo play, or there needs to be a LFG, or group mechanics somehow need to be changed to allow for this kind of chaotic behavior. The simplest solution probably would be to rework it as a dungeon and let it use the regular dungeon queue.

@Jimbru

I was in your 2nd group. After you left the group, we killed 3 seekers in a row. We weren't able to find a fourth player to round out the group so we brought a companion with us. My Arcanist was a level 16 so really 2.5 players were in the group and we finished it.

I wish you would have stayed because the group was quite patient and understanding. You would have been a welcome addition! The solution here is to just try to practice a touch more patience. We all feel stressed or rushed sometimes but when it comes to people not everything can be done right away. All the time.

Good luck today!

Carcamongus

I did a Bastion Nymic daily yesterday and here are my impressions.

Killing 5 seekers every single day is going to get old very fast, even if you get help. At least they're fairly common, though they tend to inconvenience players who are far away and want nothing to do with them.

Considering it was the very first day of the new content, there weren't many people advertising Nymic groups. A great deal also appear to be unaware how those work. If the devs wanted this to be a group activity, they should've added it to dungeon finder.

I got a group and found a problem: the leader's daily required them to hit a different bastion than mine. The solution was to port to them after they had entered. For some weird reason, the 4-person instance was laggy as hell and the mob fights were meh at best. Our boss, Kyanureeves Whatshisname was a hard and incredibly annoying fight with his splitting apart and jumping around like a monkey on skooma. Then there's the final boss, which seems a bit ripped off from "A Quiet Place". You have to kill it several times, so it's a repetitive and dull fight.

The good: the zone is quite beautiful, especially the Apocrypha side and at least the final boss doesn't have that insufferable invincibility shield of the Duke Whobewhatson from the Atoll of Immolation.

The bad: you can't farm the place like with other world events because it's dependent on having a quest; now it's easier to get a group, but when the zone becomes older and people have already got what they wanted from it, tackling the bastion will become a bigger pain in the posterior; the difficulty of the mobs and bosses isn't the problem, but requiring a premade group is.

Suggestions: lower or scrap the requirement to kill herald seekers, add bastions to the dungeon finder or make them open like the Atolls of Immolation, make the final boss less repetitive by reducing how many times you need to kill it (increasing its HPs to make up for it), change herald seekers' pathways so they don't come near wayshrines or antiquity dig sites and reduce the radius of their powers so they'll stop affecting people far away. I can see myself getting tired of these bastions quite soon.

Necrotech_Master

Carcamongus wrote: »

I did a Bastion Nymic daily yesterday and here are my impressions.

Killing 5 seekers every single day is going to get old very fast, even if you get help. At least they're fairly common, though they tend to inconvenience players who are far away and want nothing to do with them.

Considering it was the very first day of the new content, there weren't many people advertising Nymic groups. A great deal also appear to be unaware how those work. If the devs wanted this to be a group activity, they should've added it to dungeon finder.

I got a group and found a problem: the leader's daily required them to hit a different bastion than mine. The solution was to port to them after they had entered. For some weird reason, the 4-person instance was laggy as hell and the mob fights were meh at best. Our boss, Kyanureeves Whatshisname was a hard and incredibly annoying fight with his splitting apart and jumping around like a monkey on skooma. Then there's the final boss, which seems a bit ripped off from "A Quiet Place". You have to kill it several times, so it's a repetitive and dull fight.

The good: the zone is quite beautiful, especially the Apocrypha side and at least the final boss doesn't have that insufferable invincibility shield of the Duke Whobewhatson from the Atoll of Immolation.

The bad: you can't farm the place like with other world events because it's dependent on having a quest; now it's easier to get a group, but when the zone becomes older and people have already got what they wanted from it, tackling the bastion will become a bigger pain in the posterior; the difficulty of the mobs and bosses isn't the problem, but requiring a premade group is.

Suggestions: lower or scrap the requirement to kill herald seekers, add bastions to the dungeon finder or make them open like the Atolls of Immolation, make the final boss less repetitive by reducing how many times you need to kill it (increasing its HPs to make up for it), change herald seekers' pathways so they don't come near wayshrines or antiquity dig sites and reduce the radius of their powers so they'll stop affecting people far away. I can see myself getting tired of these bastions quite soon.

interesting, if you can port into the bastion as long as your in the group, realistically only 1 person needs to have the quest, open the portal and then they could have 3 other people come help them and port into their instance (for instance through guild chat or friend list)

so thats not too bad, though if everyone was trying to do their own daily that could get annoying

i also was confused by the nymic portal opening too that it has to be at a specific site, i was going to try to open it from the telvanni sites but it didnt do anything because the quest i had was pointing me to a specific spot in apocrypha

if they all go to the same place, it shouldnt matter which site you use to open the portal

Finedaible

Haven't tried Bastion Nymics since I haven't bought Necrom, but from all accounts I've seen the lack of rewards for your time and effort do not interest me in the least. Overland sets haven't been interesting since Orsinium in 2015, and I don't really care that much about housing or ToT. There's just nothing meaty in the rewards, it's overland sets you could find in a chest, and reskins which will never compare to gamble crate cosmetics... So, where's the beef?

I think the problem is that ZoS still considers new motifs to be a satisfying reward, but most players these days would probably disagree. With the 118+ motifs thast exist now (not even counting styles), players treat them more as checking off another achievement box or being afraid to miss out on something than they are getting excited for something they can actually use. I myself haven't felt the need to change my outfit style on my main since I first created it like 4 years ago. If they want players to feel rewarded then they are going to have to do more than re-skins and start adding stuff that actually helps you enjoy the game more, perhaps via feeding back into and facilitating the gameplay loop. Ultimately though I think the game needs to evolve combat in a way that doesn't involve more armor sets or mythics to become interesting again.

RicAlmighty

I played this on the PTS and it was one of the primary reasons that I chose to not buy Necrom on release. In my opinion, it is the single worst event in the history of ESO and that is not an exaggeration, it is terribly unfun and tedious.

There were other reasons that I am holding off on Necrom for now, but that was certainly a big one. Interesting to see if they actually listen to their players on this one.

Dagoth_Rac

People did not want harder group content. They wanted harder solo content.

The game is stuffed to the gills with difficult group content, and all of it is easier to group for and easier to get everyone on the same page. So why do this convoluted, difficult group content?

"Harder overland" absolutely has to be instanced. We understand that. There is no way around that. You cannot have some players toggled to "super difficult" fighting side by side with players toggled to "super casual". It would be like having a Trial group where 6 players are on Normal and 6 are on Veteran Hard Mode. That just will not work in any way, shape, or form. You cannot have some players able to faceroll the enemies that are supposed to be a challenge to the players next to them.

But if it must be instanced, let it be a solo instance. And let players use their Normal/Veteran toggle to control difficulty, just like with Maelstrom or Vateshran.

"Harder overland" should have been daily mini-arenas that are solo instanced and can be done either normal or veteran.

There are 25 base game 4-man veteran dungeons.
There are 28 DLC 4-man veteran dungeons
There is a base game 4-man arenas.
There is a DLC 4-man arena.
There are 3 base game 12-man trials
There are 9 DLC 12-man trials.

Difficult group content, both moderately difficult and extremely difficult, is well covered.

There are 2 DLC 1-man arenas.

Difficult solo content is severely lacking. This would have been a great chance to add that. And maybe even a first step toward adding more of these daily solo mini-arenas to other zones, gradually expanding solo content. Instead we got awkward, tedious, 4-man group content that is not as much fun and not as rewarding as literally dozen and dozens of existing 4-man content instances. Heck, even Craglorn stuff like Rahni-Za and Shada's Tear is more enjoyable 4-man quasi-overland content than this.

MasterSpatula

Jumpin' J****s on a Pogo Stick, having those Seekers running into randos who aren't trying to do anything with them is horrid design. "What is this thing? And why am I in combat with it even though I'm nowhere near it? How long is this fight going to last. It feels like it's been five minutes already? A one-shot after five minutes? What?" That's not how good designers do it, guys.

Just_Attivi

So, I did the Necrom Dailies for the first time this morning. My input, as a mid tier PVE/PVP player with basically no trial experience and homemade builds, from our first time in Bastion (we did it twice, from right before daily reset and right after).

-delve/world boss daily- great way to explore the world in bite sized chunks in your potentially limited play time, getting directed around to eventually see everything. But also Casual and easy.

-Bastion Nymic- as a party of 2
-While yes, this is longer than a normal daily, I was thrilled to have such a fun challenge. Myself and a partner were exploring Necrom together and worked out the seekers (5 is a bit much, I think 4 to match the 'appropriate group size'' would be better) but we had a great time finding them all over (and happened to find 2 super close to eachother, so we pulled them both and had an epic tentacle filled fight with 2 at once). We only needed to kill 3, as a group of 2 let us get 2 ichor from each one.

- Once inside, we loved how it will bring you different starting points and direct you through a unique wing each time (you dont need to clear the whole place, just your directed wing and center boss) providing a kind of unique run each time (though a few bugs involving barriers were found). There are puzzles to solve, mechanics to work out, and while the mobs were beefy, they are overland difficulty, so our low pen builds had no trouble melting them. dont be intimidated by seeing big HP numbers!

-Finding secrets all throughout it was some of the most engaging fun we have had in ESO in awhile.
-After the first boss and being directed to the central chamber for the real boss, our first encounter was a relatively easy encounter. nothing too scary. Our second time in, we had a Seeker boss that had a brain eating, charming mechanic that took us a bit to work out (but ultimately boiled down to hold block when its head glows). It was an epic encounter with tons of moving parts, a real worthy challenge! we died twice figuring out the brain eating thing, but once we had it, while stil la spicy fight, it was /FUN/
EDIT- Got the same boss today (1 day after original post) and... just holding block did not work this time. lots of wipes. He would seemingly do the the brain eating thing continuously, im talking 10+ times in a row, and then full heal when either my partner or I died or even when we lived and it went off, damaging us through block but not killing. I put crushing shock on my bar and basically would have to spam it through that phase and pray my mag recovery was strong enough. That felt really broken. I assume he does the brain eating thing at certain percentages of HP left, but the fact that he can back-to-back chain spam them seems ridiculous. Ive never had to cast so many interrupts in my life lol. Thank god I wasnt on my Arcanist beaming away.

Id personally love to see more stuff like this. theres 2 dailies for easy casual runs. let one be an actual adventure to encourage grouping and engaging gameplay that is like a 'light' version of a dungeon. I do think its rewards could be improved to match the challenge, as it is a daily, but I really enjoyed it thoroughly and am eager to explore more of it later!
-I recommend you just do this one as a premade group if you are struggling. ask friends, guildies, zone even, though that is tough with everyone being a baby arcanist right now, before you go get seekers. one person share the quest with everyone. get your 4, kill some seekers, go have fun unlocking the secrets of Bastion Nymic!

Edit due to a different user linking to my post as a solution in a different thread, but my experience updating to reflect that while blocking worked perfectly the first time, it did nothing the second time, and continuous interrupts seem to be the answer. Still a great fun dungeon, but that one boss does seem a little busted.

Quethrosar

I did a lfg and no reply so I haven't done it. I did the trial 2 times tonight.

Faulgor

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

"Harder overland" absolutely has to be instanced. We understand that. There is no way around that. You cannot have some players toggled to "super difficult" fighting side by side with players toggled to "super casual". It would be like having a Trial group where 6 players are on Normal and 6 are on Veteran Hard Mode. That just will not work in any way, shape, or form. You cannot have some players able to faceroll the enemies that are supposed to be a challenge to the players next to them.

What on earth are you talking about. Every MMO ever has worked like that. ESO right now works like that.
Sure, there is some scaling, but a high level geared out char is definitely stronger than someone who just logged on for the first time, and they play together just fine. Both in overland, and in group instances. And in PvP.

As for the Bastion Nymics, I did it twice yesterday with groups of 2-4 people, and had a lot of fun.
Solo it was a bit too tiresome for my taste, but even with 2 max level people it's mostly a breeze. If you just do one section for the daily, it's really quite fast with 4 people. And that's not any organized dungeon group, just 4 DDs whacking away.

The seeker portion feels a bit disjointed, but because the Ichor is shared in group, if you have 3 or 4 people you really only need to kill 2 Seekers. IMO it could probably be lowered to just 1 Seeker for any group size, even though it wasn't a major roadblock for us, it might be for many people.

We tried to do the puzzles, but it felt like you could only do one per run? Or that you can't backtrack certain puzzles? I'm not sure yet, will have to figure that out another time.

I can see that some people would like a lower bar for entrance, but the content itself is great. For years we have been asking for something else besides the differently colored Dark Anchor rehash, and I really like this approach. Just hope they'll add some worthwhile rewards soon.

As for adding it to the group finder - I'm not opposed to that if they can make it work, but honestly, it was refreshing to actually have to talk to people for once. Even in dungeons, more often than not, people don't even say hi. And the bar for grouping is not any higher than it is for Dolmen farm groups in Alik'r. Right now there just doesn't seem to be a high demand for groups because there are no rewards, and people don't quite understand the group ... I don't even want to say requirement, encouragement?

kyle.wilson

kyle.wilson wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey all. Wanted to follow up here. We have been passing the feedback from players regarding Bastion Nymic to the dev team for them to address. We'll follow up as we get more information. However, please continue to provide your feedback here on your experience in Bastion Nymic. We'll continue to pass feedback and bugs on to the team as they work to address issues. Thanks, all.

did the dev team even run with less than 4 people during the development?

I ran it solo for the daily today on my Warden and companion. It wasn't as difficult as I was being led on to.

kind_hero

One ichor to open the portal should be enough.

I undestand that ZOS wanted players to group, but what happens is you get people in the group which are on different stages, like one has all ichors, some two, and others have just started collecting. So, the group is going back and forth killing like 10 seekers until the dungeon could be started.

The dungeon is not very interesting to be honest. Can't wait to get what I need from it to never to it again.

In my opinion it would work as a public dungeon, same like the Deadlands portals. The chest at the end is not worth the effort.

Or an other idea is to have some one time quest to skip the farming ichor part. ZOS has to think how this content will be played in a few months or after a year.

pklemming

Bastion Nymic was a lot of fun, though the RvR was kinda poor. I enjoyed it, but it would be nice if the chest had transmutes, or undaunted plunder. Something to differentiate it from the normal overland content.

ZigoSid

Just like ancestral motif : good idea, poorly executed.

SerafinaWaterstar

Kisakee wrote: »

You all just speak for yourself - we did is as three and it was harder than we thought but fun nontheless. We really enjoyed it and wish that more of this harder content comes up in the future.

Enough with this wishy-washy "I am the chosen one and kill everything in Overland with two klicks" casual baby content. Finally we're having a real challenge and i want it to stay that way. If anyone can't complete it you should start becoming serious about your character, green gear and random skills are not cutting it anymore.

If you actually read most of the responses, the feeddback is not about how hard it is, but that it is time-consuming, the rewards are paltry, and it’s hard to find a group - for something that is supposed to be a daily quest.

So no need to be disparaging about “wishy-washy” “casual baby content.” A vast majority of people enjoy Overland the way it is, and don’t feel the need to prove anything.

NoxiousBlight

Yup. Said a lot of this during the PTS cycle.

Having to kill 5 overland mobs with 1m HP is already a chore. Let's say I am lightning quick and it takes ~10 minutes.

Then I have to either A. Solo the dungeon or B. Find a party.

If I solo it, while I am capable, it still takes around 20 minutes. If I die on the last boss, which happens because of the one-shot in the second phase, it can take up to 30 minutes.

I am never, ever, ever, ever spending 40 minutes on a daily. Ever. The Deadlands portals had a similar problem in that they are trying to do way too much for a daily task.

If I get a group, which I did the second day, it was such a cluster it probably only saved me 5 minutes. Not to mention the downtime of trying to find people. And even still, these groups will be impossible to find a year from now. And it will absolutely take me a year to do 30 of these things because they are fun once or twice then they become a chore. I will passively gather the ichor when questing then try every once in a while when the mood strikes me.

At least with the regular incursions once they become a chore it only takes 5 minutes. Bastion Nymics take chores to a whole new level.

I appreciate the harder content, I really do, but it seems the devs went over the top with it for a daily task.

My suggestion is that gathering the ichor be reduced to a mere one so that it shaves off ~8 minutes or so. I don't know how to reduce the time threshold for Bastion Nymics themselves, but they feel about twice as long as they should be.

Jaraal

LonePirate wrote: »

I completed this once earlier today and it was clearly designed by someone who has never played the game. During my run, I counted no less than 10 bosses/enemies each with at least 1.5M health, all of which spawned numerous trash mobs and/or other mechanics that inflicted a lot of pain or even death if you were positioned wrong. Essentially, it was a vet dungeon but with much less XP and even worse rewards.

There is no reason whatsoever to kill five seekers at the start of the quest. It's unnecessary busy work that eats up valuable player time with no purpose other than killing five dungeon boss level enemies. It might not be so bad except these seekers (along with the world boss that also counts toward the five kill count) are scattered across the Telvanni and Apochrypha maps which prevents masses of players from taking them down. It's nothing but a pointless time sink. Why not kill 1 or even 2? Why does it need to be 5?

Worse yet, after you have killed these five seekers, you have to group up with at most three other players or embark on a solo suicide mission through a labyrinthine, instanced dungeon fighting more bosses for no reason, some with lethal mechanics that follow some sort of RNG placement. After a few boss encounters and some scattered groups of trash mobs, you finally reach the end boss, which was the 10th boss overall for my group, if count the 5 seekers at the beginning. It was a tedious fight with no purpose, just like everything else in the quest, except it was made worse by completely useless junk as a reward. Maelstrom, Vateshran, Blackrose and Dragonstar at least offer somewhat useful loot that you makes the grind tolerable. I cannot say the same for the Bastion Nymic event. The loot was trash which made the entire experience even worse, especially since you can clear Maelstrom and Vateshran faster than you can clear Bastion Nymic.

I honestly don't know what ZOS was thinking, if they were, when they implemented this. There are several things that need to change.

My feeling is that this is a live server test of mechanics and player capabilities for the upcoming instanced two player "endless dungeon." You can bet that data is being analyzed and numbers crunched for use in future content. I would not be surprised at all to see difficulty and procedure altered in upcoming patches to try and get everything dialed in for later.

I also think that this is a response to the limited player request for "harder overland" content. But a balance should be struck between easy AFK type battles and hardmode dungeon / easy trial level of difficulty. If there's one thing they should have learned from Deadlands, it's that players generally don't like long, grindy, and time consuming content with little reward. This is also why I feel that, after the novelty wears off, endless dungeons will also become ghost content.... especially if the rewards are not superlative. People just don't want to spend a lot of time for mediocre rewards.

Tommy_The_Gun

Overland part:
I think that there is a problem of having very strong enemies that you can stumble upon even if not doing the daily quest and it will make stuff you are going to do (example: fishing) kinda frustrating.

I think that enemies like this should be curated a bit more. Even in Craglorn you have a warning message "entering group area" indicating that enemies you encounter will be stronger. The overland enemies in the 1st part of this quest are stronger than world bosses. They are still possible to solo, but since those are not marked on the map, it is pure luck if some one will show up to help you. And after 1 or 2 months you most likely will be on your own.

Maybe it would be good idea to simply reduce the item required to open the portal to 1 and make it so that the World Bosses would drop them instead.

Dungeon part:
The biggest issue of this part is that it creates an artificial barrier. It is possible to solo, but way to hard & it takes too long. If done in a group it is kinda easy.

Personally, I think that dungeon part of this quest could be converted to the new upcoming "endless dungeon" that is supposed to be scaled to 2 players (or 1 player & 1 companion). The current system of 4 man dlc dungeon could stay, but you could have a pop-up window when entering dungeon part asking you what mode you want to go to - just like when you go into Fungal Grotto dungeon, the game asks you if you want Fungal Grotto I or II.

The whole "world event" in the new zone feels overwhelming, overcomplicated, overengineered and needlesy long. It is not consistent with other types of "world event" activity in other zones. I think that the idea was to make overland more challenging, but it missed the mark by a mile. Overland part of the quest is... I would say time consuming, but not difficult. I don't feel like I have done something hard. I feel like I wasted my time.
The dungeon part of the quest has nothing to do with Overland. It is a dlc group dungeon that gates players, because there is no group finder / solo mode.

RevJJ

I just asked if anyone was grouping for this in zone chat and, right on cue, crickets actually started chirping in-game.

Also, nobody answered.

Necrotech_Master

i did my first nymic last night

as i noted before, the amount of herald seekers you have to kill to even open the nymic is far too high, it should be 1-2 tops

the actual nymic was kind of interesting (spent a lot of extra time working through the puzzles, and mostly 2 player 2 companion group)

the enemies dmg incoming was about that of a normal dungeon, while their hp was scaled to that of a vet dungeon (the trash mobs had about 125-140k hp, elite mobs had about 400-500k hp, minibosses had about 800k-1mil hp, and the end-of-section bosses had around 4-6 mil hp)

if you werent looking to do the puzzles, you could probably complete a nymic in about the same time as a dungeon (roughly 15-30 min depending on group comp) (and this time is not including the time needed to get the 5 herald seekers either)

most of the drops were basically overland gear set items, though the final nymic boss chest sometimes contained furnishing blueprints

i dont think the achievement for needing to do 30 of these is a problem, but they definitely need to reduce the number of herald seekers you have to kill to get to the instance, since the instance itself can be a grind if your in a small group or solo due to the sheer mass of hp on the enemies (maybe incorporate some scaling to the hp depending on how many players are in the instance)