The human dynamics of Bastion Nymic don't work

Arato

Ilsabet wrote: »

Arato wrote: »

Ecgberht_confused wrote: »

Arato wrote: »

The second day I got a group together but the main problem was... one member had not killed any of the seekers yet while the rest were just needing to do the dungeon.

Only one group member needs to have 5 ichors to open the portal. The rest don't need to have collected any. I just completed a bastion without having collected any ichors.

as to the whole 4 different quests.. um, is there a way to tell which one it is specifically to find a group for that specific one?

From what I've seen, the quest giver will say something about the location of the pool when she gives you the quest, but the name of each quest is just "Bastion Nymic" so I don't think there's a way to tell without comparing quest markers within a group (which most people are not going to want to fuss with).

My plan now that I know how this all works is going to be watching zone chat for people looking for group members when they're ready to open the portal, and then taking their quest share and following them to their designated entrance. I did that today and it was a nice group who wanted to do puzzles, and after we turned in I picked up my own quest and shared it with the folks who stayed in party so we got two runs in.

The fact that only one person needs to have 5 ichors to open the portal makes the whole thing so much easier to manage, and I think quest-sharing is going to be the name of the game to get around the "same quest different doors" issue.

That is still something that definitely needs improvement. which one of the quests should be indicated in the journal, like I have the quest and a few ichors from a few days ago, and I got no clue which one I have until I get all 5 ichors I guess, but I just don't feel motivated because of how not fun it was, my group totally skipped the puzzle and had no interest in doing it either

Jaraal

Arato wrote: »

I just don't feel motivated because of how not fun it was, my group totally skipped the puzzle and had no interest in doing it either

That's a ZOS created problem, because your groupmates were probably only interested in getting to the end as fast as possible for the antiquity leads, or to get the achievement for the outfit style. It's very similar to what happens during the Undaunted events, when most of the people want to finish as fast as possible for the chance at a style page, while the new people or those doing the quests or farming gear sets are left in the dust.

It also doesn't help that the first 4.5 million HP boss doesn't have a reward chest, like the hidden boss and the final boss do. No idea why they designed it that way. But folks who are after the chests need to stop and do the puzzle, or they miss out on 50% of the drops (nobody counts getting a single piece of blue zone gear in the Necrom daily coffer as a drop), and they aren't able to go back and get it since the group dungeon evacuation timer starts as soon as the final boss is killed.

So many ways to improve this experience for all involved.

Elsonso

.

ArchMikem wrote: »

Maybe this was designed as challenging content for already pre-made groups? Like people from guilds who actually want to stick together. Sounds like ZOS didn't make this for randoms like me.

That does not sound like an unreasonable guess. The Seekers are a high enough bar that a lot of people are going to want to group up. The hassle of doing that means they will probably have trouble making an ad-hoc group out of the randoms in the zone. It will be better with guild organized events and other pre-made groups.

This may also be the case for the "Endless Dungeon" that is coming up. If people were thinking they will just pair up and head in with some random they stumble across, they may want to rethink and reset their expectations.

DP99

Maitsukas wrote: »

kind_hero wrote: »

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 player who has collected all 5 ichor can open the portal and enter the Bastion. Players with less than 5 can also enter the portal, skipping the grind and advancing towards the next stage of the quest.

No, you can’t enter the portal with less than 5 ichor, I joined a group and only had 2. The other players kept telling me to enter the portal to get to them as they were already inside while I was in with a bunch of others trying to kill the seekers.

They said to just skip that and go to the portal, I went to where they said, and there was no portal! I had to teleport to one of them, but it got me in, but at some random starting point nowhere near the final boss or wherever they were waiting for me! I tried to make my way through and got killed twice, and said sorry I’m out!

I left the instance and the group, and couldn’t even try to do more seekers because it reset my counter back to zero! I said F-this, and just abandoned it. I’m not putting up with this mess.

Necrotech_Master

DP99 wrote: »

Maitsukas wrote: »

kind_hero wrote: »

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 player who has collected all 5 ichor can open the portal and enter the Bastion. Players with less than 5 can also enter the portal, skipping the grind and advancing towards the next stage of the quest.

No, you can’t enter the portal with less than 5 ichor, I joined a group and only had 2. The other players kept telling me to enter the portal to get to them as they were already inside while I was in with a bunch of others trying to kill the seekers.

They said to just skip that and go to the portal, I went to where they said, and there was no portal! I had to teleport to one of them, but it got me in, but at some random starting point nowhere near the final boss or wherever they were waiting for me! I tried to make my way through and got killed twice, and said sorry I’m out!

I left the instance and the group, and couldn’t even try to do more seekers because it reset my counter back to zero! I said F-this, and just abandoned it. I’m not putting up with this mess.

it sounds like you had a different nymic daily than the rest of the group, it would have been easier for you to just abandon it and get the share

when you port into the instance, it always places you in the main area, usually in a neutral area between the vaermina and peryite wings outside of the "middle" boss

its definitely way more confusing joining one in the middle than starting the group with all the same nymic quest and going into the nymic at the same time

Lugaldu

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

there are also like 3-4 antiquity leads that come from the nymics too (at least 2-3 of those are just for the music box), there are no other sources to get those

What?! Thats horrible! I already didnt understood why this year we have to collect 10 pieces for a music box which usually consisted of 3 pieces!

BlueRaven

Lugaldu wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

there are also like 3-4 antiquity leads that come from the nymics too (at least 2-3 of those are just for the music box), there are no other sources to get those

What?! Thats horrible! I already didnt understood why this year we have to collect 10 pieces for a music box which usually consisted of 3 pieces!

I said this in another thread, but it applies to both the new music box and the new “world event”:

BlueRaven wrote: »

The theme for this chapter has been "Turning all of your daily routines into out right time consuming slogs."

Necrotech_Master

BlueRaven wrote: »

Lugaldu wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

there are also like 3-4 antiquity leads that come from the nymics too (at least 2-3 of those are just for the music box), there are no other sources to get those

What?! Thats horrible! I already didnt understood why this year we have to collect 10 pieces for a music box which usually consisted of 3 pieces!

I said this in another thread, but it applies to both the new music box and the new “world event”:

BlueRaven wrote: »

The theme for this chapter has been "Turning all of your daily routines into out right time consuming slogs."

the only slog i find with the nymics is the ichor step, the actual nymic i think is fine as is

Wolfkeks

Leads from BN chests are:

Dark Metal Cubes - Music Box
Rust Funnelcap Paint - Mushroom Body Marks
Sporecrafter’s Grinding Stone - Mushroom Face Marks

So if you want the music box, face and body marks you have to do BN (though the drop rate seemed okay)

endgamesmug

A couple of nymics i just had to leave because it was the dreamer instance and everyone was trying to figure out the puzzle so i was getting locked out by barriers as a result. These days i just ignore all of that bs and kill everything, makes for much much faster nymic runs.

Necrotech_Master

endgamesmug wrote: »

A couple of nymics i just had to leave because it was the dreamer instance and everyone was trying to figure out the puzzle so i was getting locked out by barriers as a result. These days i just ignore all of that bs and kill everything, makes for much much faster nymic runs.

the barriers can be a problem regardless if your trying to solve the puzzles or not

one case in the vaermina wing a friend crashed, loaded back in and couldnt get through a barrier that i had ended up clearing while they were offline

in another case the barriers in the middle refused to let people through, but we kind of got around that because the boss had a pull move that pulled them through the barrier

Susan_Sto

I have only done one so far.

I don't have the time to do these daily, probably will be a weekend only task for me.

Will circle back once I'm done building rapport with the new companions.

For what it's worth, 5 ichor is too much or the Heralded Seekers are to hard (Harrowstorm hard and the requirement for those was reduced). Also, the different types of BN's need better naming so players know what one they are doing or joining.

Carcamongus

It's the second week of the new chapter and I don't see many people asking for BN groups in zone chat. This is a bad sign, which indicates people are either not interested or grouping mostly through guilds. I've done 9 so far and not one person mentioned doing the puzzles. My next step is read about them and then propose to do them whenever I group to see what happens.

The barriers are buggy, most of the fights are uninteresting and Strix is an insufferable [censored profanity]. Unless a group finder function is added or the event is made more solo-friendly, I predict these bastions are going to be mostly empty in a few months. For comparison, think of the Deadlands Atoll of Immolation: not many people do those, but it's just enough that depending on the time of the day, it's possible to farm the motif there. This won't be possible with bastions in its current configuration.

Necrotech_Master

Carcamongus wrote: »

It's the second week of the new chapter and I don't see many people asking for BN groups in zone chat. This is a bad sign, which indicates people are either not interested or grouping mostly through guilds. I've done 9 so far and not one person mentioned doing the puzzles. My next step is read about them and then propose to do them whenever I group to see what happens.

The barriers are buggy, most of the fights are uninteresting and Strix is an insufferable [censored profanity]. Unless a group finder function is added or the event is made more solo-friendly, I predict these bastions are going to be mostly empty in a few months. For comparison, think of the Deadlands Atoll of Immolation: not many people do those, but it's just enough that depending on the time of the day, it's possible to farm the motif there. This won't be possible with bastions in its current configuration.

after you clear the puzzles, there is not as far as i could tell, much reason to do all 3 segments, one nymic i did i was able to fight the middle boss after only clearing 1 wing

the ichor step is what puts me off doing them, though the barrier bugs are also pretty annoying too, i certainly wouldnt mind doing more if people needed help though (and i do want the achievements for doing 30)

once people have all the achievements i think is when those will dry up considerably, but it is a good solo challenge to go through, probably slightly harder than craglorn delves (though the crag delves dont require any nonsense pre-req like the ichors to get to them)

Jammy420

Carcamongus wrote: »

It's the second week of the new chapter and I don't see many people asking for BN groups in zone chat. This is a bad sign, which indicates people are either not interested or grouping mostly through guilds. I've done 9 so far and not one person mentioned doing the puzzles. My next step is read about them and then propose to do them whenever I group to see what happens.

The barriers are buggy, most of the fights are uninteresting and Strix is an insufferable [censored profanity]. Unless a group finder function is added or the event is made more solo-friendly, I predict these bastions are going to be mostly empty in a few months. For comparison, think of the Deadlands Atoll of Immolation: not many people do those, but it's just enough that depending on the time of the day, it's possible to farm the motif there. This won't be possible with bastions in its current configuration.

I was in apocrypha all day and say plenty of group requests and groups playing, I think this is a ymmv situation.

Jaraal

Carcamongus wrote: »

The barriers are buggy, most of the fights are uninteresting and Strix is an insufferable [censored profanity].

He's also very buggy. When I was fighting him solo he kept duplicating himself (not his shadows, his actual 4.5m HP self). I would get him down to half, and another named version of himself would spawn. And then I would get one of him to 1/4 health and the other would go back to full health. At one point I was fighting 3 Strixes at once, plus the three shadows. I finally got one Strix killed and looted his corpse, while the other two were still beating on me. Then I killed the second.... empty corpse. And the third magically healed to full health and summoned 3 more shadows. When I finally got the last one killed after 45 mins, there were three Strix corpses on the ground.

Not fun.

Carcamongus

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Carcamongus wrote: »

It's the second week of the new chapter and I don't see many people asking for BN groups in zone chat. This is a bad sign, which indicates people are either not interested or grouping mostly through guilds. I've done 9 so far and not one person mentioned doing the puzzles. My next step is read about them and then propose to do them whenever I group to see what happens.

The barriers are buggy, most of the fights are uninteresting and Strix is an insufferable [censored profanity]. Unless a group finder function is added or the event is made more solo-friendly, I predict these bastions are going to be mostly empty in a few months. For comparison, think of the Deadlands Atoll of Immolation: not many people do those, but it's just enough that depending on the time of the day, it's possible to farm the motif there. This won't be possible with bastions in its current configuration.

after you clear the puzzles, there is not as far as i could tell, much reason to do all 3 segments, one nymic i did i was able to fight the middle boss after only clearing 1 wing

the ichor step is what puts me off doing them, though the barrier bugs are also pretty annoying too, i certainly wouldnt mind doing more if people needed help though (and i do want the achievements for doing 30)

once people have all the achievements i think is when those will dry up considerably, but it is a good solo challenge to go through, probably slightly harder than craglorn delves (though the crag delves dont require any nonsense pre-req like the ichors to get to them)

I've done the Craglorn group delves solo and the bastions are considerably harder (unless Craggy's difficulty changed since 2020, which is when I believe I did them). All the BNs I did we fought the middle boss after clearing a single wing, I didn't even know it was possible to do all segments in one go. Considering how I constantly had to sprint to catch up with the group, my impression is people go there and just want to get it done ASAP. It's not a fun thing, but a chore.

Ecgberht_confused

After going through it with pugs a couple of times, where they mostly rushed and skipped, I finally managed to solo it (with Azandar as healer) so I can have my own time discovering and working out the puzzle. I started with the subverted wing, which went smoothly with a cute puzzle. The boss was interesting but not hard. And then I realised I could sneak past the herald and go do the plagued wing first (is that common or was it a lucky bug?). Again it went alright with even a much easier boss this time if you're ranged dps. After that I had to face the irrefutable herald and there was no way to sneak to the third wing.

Up to that point I hadn't died at all. I died to the herald 5 or 6 times before I got the hang of it (so much cc and breaking free which is not great for a magicka arcanist with flail as spammable). After that I had to leave the bastion.

Overall I liked the design and bosses and puzzles, but I had to pretend it's a dungeon in order to like it. There's absolutely no world event elements to it. Pugging it was not a good experience because people skip and rush. But as a solo event with no real rewards, there isn't a real incentive to keep doing it. Sure the challenge is interesting but once dine that's that. I'll still go back to the dreaming wing for the achievement, but I doubt I'll be visiting often unless it had some interesting rewards.

Tldr, it's designed very well and was challenging as solo, but it definitely wasn't a world event.

peacenote

I expected this content to be just awful, as the negative feedback in the PTS threads was clearly laid out.

However my friends and I must be in "the target audience" for the content as honestly I loved it. Duo-ed it with a friend and we both talked about how nice it was to have some formidable casual enemies. Took us... maybe 15 min? .. with 2 people. Given all the naysayers I was shocked at how much unexpected fun I had with this. Way more so than with other dailies. So I have to say, I sure hope ZOS doesn't change it too much. It is a good time!

The other thing I want to raise is... I don't agree that dailies have to be fast and that they all have to be similar effort. There is no way a person could do all the dailies in the game, every day. If you don't like the Necrom ones, can't you do the Summerset ones or the Crag ones or the Elsweyr ones? Some of the objections seem to be because it is the zone daily so it needs to be a certain amount of time. Seems like flawed logic. I mean, the card game has two dailies which each require three ToT WINS to get maximum reward. That's a decent amount of time to put in, and both players in the game don't win the match, so there is zero guarantee you'll complete the dailies quickly if at all. Why do zone dailies with combat all have to follow a "quick turnaround" method? I would support the idea of increasing the rewards over nerfing the content, if people are feeling short-changed, but you could spend WAY more time doing things like ToT or BG dailies and if you lose a bunch of times before you win, you don't get a better reward because it took you longer. So now, having done the content, I don't quite get why so many people are up in arms. I can get through it much faster than many other dailies. <shrug>

Lugaldu

peacenote wrote: »

Why do zone dailies with combat all have to follow a "quick turnaround" method?

I can only speak for myself, but in new zones I only do the dailies to get the new motifs, leads or furniture plans and materials. I'm happy when dailies can be done as quick as possible and once I have everything that I wanted I never do them again.

Edit:

peacenote wrote: »

I mean, the card game has two dailies which each require three ToT WINS to get maximum reward. That's a decent amount of time to put in, and both players in the game don't win the match, so there is zero guarantee you'll complete the dailies quickly if at all.

And yes, those ToT dailies to gain all achievements was just horrible...

Holycannoli

This sounds like a nightmare. I'm not yet at the point with my arcanist to start doing these but I feel like I just want to ignore them and pretend they don't exist.

pklemming

We had a couple of issues with Nymic, but these were just bugs. People in group randomly not being able to join a fight( blocked by a wall the rest of us got through). This only seems to happen if you do multiple wings and not if you do the 2 boss clear.

As for difficulty, we spend longer finding heralds than clearing a 2 boss Nymic. Ichors are sped up a lot, but having more people in group. Kill a herald with 4 group members near gives 4 ichors, so you only need 2 heralds. I suspect adding a 5th person to the group would require only one herald kil. The, you obviously dump them afterwards as Nymic only supports 4 people....

Regarding the boss that heals up and one shots. That is an interruptible mechanic that should be done by the tank, or you can put one of your DDs on crushing shock as a spammable.

The dreamer puzzle was annoying. I suspect a bug again. We had 2 people in shade form, and cleared an orb. Both people lost shade form, not the just the person that cleared it. As far as I know rifts don't respawn, so you are locked out of the vault.

We also had people with wearing off green and red buffs in the plague wing. I know there is an hour timer, but their buff cleared in around 5 minutes, making it annoying to do the statue.

Fixed, it is fun. Not knowing if your tank, or dd can reach the final boss due to an invisible wall, not fun.

pklemming

Also, yeah, on last boss, I was the only one that could get through the barrier on one run.. That was fun. Pulled it to the barrier people could not get through and killed it with pets... Luckily, I was the tank, or I doubt we could have done that.

It didn't stop the boss from killing people on the other side of the barrier, mind.

BlueRaven

Lugaldu wrote: »

peacenote wrote: »

Why do zone dailies with combat all have to follow a "quick turnaround" method?

I can only speak for myself, but in new zones I only do the dailies to get the new motifs, leads or furniture plans and materials. I'm happy when dailies can be done as quick as possible and once I have everything that I wanted I never do them again.

Edit:

peacenote wrote: »

I mean, the card game has two dailies which each require three ToT WINS to get maximum reward. That's a decent amount of time to put in, and both players in the game don't win the match, so there is zero guarantee you'll complete the dailies quickly if at all.

And yes, those ToT dailies to gain all achievements was just horrible...

Yeah, and I am not sure if anyone here has seen the ToT boards recently, but the complaints there is that the pve daily’s are taking far too long to complete since the Necrom patch.

jirusan

Meanwhile in the zone chat...

BlueRaven

jirusan wrote: »

Meanwhile in the zone chat...

“Need 4…”?

But yes. This generally feels like how our discord chat went about the subject.

TBH unless they do a top down redo of the whole thing, and make a big announcement about it. I think the well is pretty much poisoned at this point. Even with nerfs, few people I know will be willing to go back and give it a try.

Fenris_Arainai

peacenote wrote: »

If you don't like the Necrom ones, can't you do the Summerset ones or the Crag ones or the Elsweyr ones?

Will I get the achievement to get the nix-ox mount for 30 Summerset or Craglorn dailies? No? Then no, I can't do them instead.

AlienSlof

This stuff happening all over the place while I am questing is getting extremely tiresome now. Even wayshrines are not safe from being engulfed in tentacles. Way too many, way too frequent. Let us quest in peace.

My friends and I did one Bastion Nymic, found it fun enough, but waaaaay too much work for the trash reward.

On top of that, no leads dropped for me. Everyone else got one, but not me. RNG was not my friend!

Necrotech_Master

Jaraal wrote: »

Carcamongus wrote: »

The barriers are buggy, most of the fights are uninteresting and Strix is an insufferable [censored profanity].

He's also very buggy. When I was fighting him solo he kept duplicating himself (not his shadows, his actual 4.5m HP self). I would get him down to half, and another named version of himself would spawn. And then I would get one of him to 1/4 health and the other would go back to full health. At one point I was fighting 3 Strixes at once, plus the three shadows. I finally got one Strix killed and looted his corpse, while the other two were still beating on me. Then I killed the second.... empty corpse. And the third magically healed to full health and summoned 3 more shadows. When I finally got the last one killed after 45 mins, there were three Strix corpses on the ground.

Not fun.

i think thats his mechanic, you only need to kill the real one though, not the clones, target markers make that fight a lot easier to keep track which one is the real one lol

my annoyance with a lot of these bosses is they are jumping around like a spaz or have invuln phases

Carcamongus wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Carcamongus wrote: »

It's the second week of the new chapter and I don't see many people asking for BN groups in zone chat. This is a bad sign, which indicates people are either not interested or grouping mostly through guilds. I've done 9 so far and not one person mentioned doing the puzzles. My next step is read about them and then propose to do them whenever I group to see what happens.

The barriers are buggy, most of the fights are uninteresting and Strix is an insufferable [censored profanity]. Unless a group finder function is added or the event is made more solo-friendly, I predict these bastions are going to be mostly empty in a few months. For comparison, think of the Deadlands Atoll of Immolation: not many people do those, but it's just enough that depending on the time of the day, it's possible to farm the motif there. This won't be possible with bastions in its current configuration.

after you clear the puzzles, there is not as far as i could tell, much reason to do all 3 segments, one nymic i did i was able to fight the middle boss after only clearing 1 wing

the ichor step is what puts me off doing them, though the barrier bugs are also pretty annoying too, i certainly wouldnt mind doing more if people needed help though (and i do want the achievements for doing 30)

once people have all the achievements i think is when those will dry up considerably, but it is a good solo challenge to go through, probably slightly harder than craglorn delves (though the crag delves dont require any nonsense pre-req like the ichors to get to them)

I've done the Craglorn group delves solo and the bastions are considerably harder (unless Craggy's difficulty changed since 2020, which is when I believe I did them). All the BNs I did we fought the middle boss after clearing a single wing, I didn't even know it was possible to do all segments in one go. Considering how I constantly had to sprint to catch up with the group, my impression is people go there and just want to get it done ASAP. It's not a fun thing, but a chore.

i think it depends on which crag delve, some of them are considerably harder than others (shadas tear for instance is still one of the hardest ones)

i have only experienced running these nymics on a tanky character with like 8-10k dps and a companion, so far the fights have certainly not really been difficult, they just take awhile when every mob has the same hp as a non dlc vet dungeon (they definitely dont hit as hard as a vet dungeon though, felt about the same as the crag delves in terms of mob dmg output)

Jaraal

peacenote wrote: »

I expected this content to be just awful, as the negative feedback in the PTS threads was clearly laid out.

However my friends and I must be in "the target audience" for the content as honestly I loved it. Duo-ed it with a friend and we both talked about how nice it was to have some formidable casual enemies. Took us... maybe 15 min? .. with 2 people. Given all the naysayers I was shocked at how much unexpected fun I had with this. Way more so than with other dailies. So I have to say, I sure hope ZOS doesn't change it too much. It is a good time!

The other thing I want to raise is... I don't agree that dailies have to be fast and that they all have to be similar effort. There is no way a person could do all the dailies in the game, every day. If you don't like the Necrom ones, can't you do the Summerset ones or the Crag ones or the Elsweyr ones? Some of the objections seem to be because it is the zone daily so it needs to be a certain amount of time. Seems like flawed logic. I mean, the card game has two dailies which each require three ToT WINS to get maximum reward. That's a decent amount of time to put in, and both players in the game don't win the match, so there is zero guarantee you'll complete the dailies quickly if at all. Why do zone dailies with combat all have to follow a "quick turnaround" method? I would support the idea of increasing the rewards over nerfing the content, if people are feeling short-changed, but you could spend WAY more time doing things like ToT or BG dailies and if you lose a bunch of times before you win, you don't get a better reward because it took you longer. So now, having done the content, I don't quite get why so many people are up in arms. I can get through it much faster than many other dailies. <shrug>

If the rewards were guaranteed to be good, I wouldn't mind spending the extra time. But I have, on more than one occasion, spent an hour killing five Herald's Seekers and the associated filler mobs, plus all three bosses inside the Nymic and hundreds of trash pack NPCs and adds only to get nothing better than blue quality set pieces... including a single blue piece of armor from the daily rewards coffer. And I deconstructed all of it, due to the marginal nature of the new sets.

For me personally, there are far more efficient, profitable, and fun ways to spend my limited play time in ESO.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i think thats his mechanic, you only need to kill the real one though, not the clones, target markers make that fight a lot easier to keep track which one is the real one lol

I killed three "real ones," and about 30 clones. I guess I should have screenshotted the three Kynmarcher Strix corpses, but I was so annoyed by the continually resetting fight that I was just happy to get on to the final boss.