PTS Update 42 - Feedback Thread for Gold Road Main Quest [SPOILERS]

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for the Gold Road Main Quest. In order to limit spoilers for those that don’t wish to see them, please post your feedback or bug reports here. Thank you!

James-Wayne

I came here for the spoilers but see there is none.... so I guess I'm doing the main quest myself today.

I will return with feedback!

grizzledcroc

Scruut isnt wanting to show up when she needs to for me , says upper floor of the townhouse but scruut isnt there

Arizona_Steve

Error when leaving Skingrad: Pending data load error (18478571 - c000000002b7ed9)

Edit 1: I am unable to reload my character - I get the above error immediately upon loading into the game.

Edit 2: I deleted and reinstalled the PTS, still seeing the above.

Margravigne

At the Vashabar Wayshrine, speaking with Brolthelas;

I asked about the Green Pact first, and as he's describing it, the next dialogue prompts appear. The second prompt (greyed) should be for the Dawnway, (and he will respond as such), but the text onscreen refers to the Green Pack again;

Margravigne

Beragon's line fires before Scruut appears, had to exit dialogue for her to appear (then re-entered to respond to him);

Margravigne

This line fired after discussing Scruut's "we're all doomed" comment with Beragon (before speaking with Scruut);



Absolutely no idea what he's referring to, don't recall this dialogue with Nantharion, and don't think it's relevant to the scene?

James-Wayne

So I was playing through the main story, specifically the bonus questline after saving West Weald putting all the relics back when I hit this error message as soon as I left Skingrad: Pending data load error (18478571 - c000000002b7ed9)

Now I can't load my character back into the game So I can't progress any further

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Plot hole for The Missing Cohort - the quest has us retrieving the key to let the people out of the catacombs when as far as we and the NPC know at the time, the catacombs are safe and the danger is outside. No reason is given for why we want to expose them to danger we haven’t dealt with at that point in the quest.

chessalavakia_ESO

On the quest In Memory of, the location to put the blade and the tear glitch into the ground at first. Logging out and back in fixes it.

I'm not a huge fan of the Wood Elves and I'm sick of Daedric Prince struggles but, I still ended up having a pretty good time with the Main Quest because I generally liked the side characters.

I do hope it's a few years before we interact with Mora again and that perhaps the next time it happens we get an opportunity to make him not reach the outcome he wants. It would have been a bit amusing if we'd had the opportunity to choose to obtain an item that would cause his predictable attempt to make everyone else forget again also cause him to forget a significant portion of his memories.

One minor quibble is at times the instructions can get to be a bit repetitive. If the engine can handle it you might delay a reminder to do x or y until we've failed to do it for say 15 seconds or so.

FabresFour

Along these lines, the written text is not the same as the spoken one.

FabresFour

+ 1 TEXT that is not the same as the spoken dialogue

FabresFour

The part 2 of the main quest don't appear (I thought that in the PTS build wasn't necessary finish Necrom to finish Gold Road stoey... I'll try rushing Necrom tomorrow to make sure that's it that is happening

chessalavakia_ESO

FabresFour wrote: »

The part 2 of the main quest don't appear (I thought that in the PTS build wasn't necessary finish Necrom to finish Gold Road stoey... I'll try rushing Necrom tomorrow to make sure that's it that is happening

Did you use the Scribing Tools Template or the Max level template?

I used the Max level template and I didn't need to do Necrom first to get part two.

FabresFour

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

FabresFour wrote: »

The part 2 of the main quest don't appear (I thought that in the PTS build wasn't necessary finish Necrom to finish Gold Road stoey... I'll try rushing Necrom tomorrow to make sure that's it that is happening

Did you use the Scribing Tools Template or the Max level template?

I used the Max level template and I didn't need to do Necrom first to get part two.

may be is that, i used the scribing tools template, since the max level template character that i made have bugged in skingrad castle lol

i'll try a max level template, ty!

merevie

Just something to think about -scribing quest length.
Vet players have 10-16 characters each.
This is essential content.
So would really appreciate that being taken into consideration for feedback.

FabresFour

merevie wrote: »

Just something to think about -scribing quest length.
Vet players have 10-16 characters each.
This is essential content.
So would really appreciate that being taken into consideration for feedback.

but the scribing quest only unlock the upgrades for the account, after you have done with one character, u do not need to do de questline with other character to use de scribing system, no?

chessalavakia_ESO

FabresFour wrote: »

merevie wrote: »

Just something to think about -scribing quest length.
Vet players have 10-16 characters each.
This is essential content.
So would really appreciate that being taken into consideration for feedback.

but the scribing quest only unlock the upgrades for the account, after you have done with one character, u do not need to do de questline with other character to use de scribing system, no?

Presently, you need to complete the quest for the Indrik to get full access to the system on alts after finishing the full quest line on another character.

The scripts also unlock on a character basis and appear to have a daily account wide cooldown.

So, it's probably around two weeks of dailies per character to get all of the scripts on each character.

FabresFour

i cannot interact to place abolisher in the last quest




(I logged out and back in and then worked)

FabresFour

Okay, now here we go, the quest feedback: The story of Gold Road is really, really good. The characters are interesting and the narrative is, perhaps, the most cinematic in ESO since its launch. I really liked the use of the camera on the characters, the way it turned, got closer and was relocated. Completely different from anything we've seen before.

The course of the adventure was not overwhelming, even the classic return to the hub, here, in this case, Beragon's house, seemed very natural to me (although I would prefer if we explored the province more effectively with the main quest, than such a defined hub - a trend that started with High Isle). Finishing and starting all the quests in the same place is a little... disconcerting.

The solution to Ithelia's plot is... okay. It's not bad, in fact it makes all the sense in the world and whether or not it was what everyone wanted to see, but I must admit that I'm a little sad that the status quo was maintained and that the story wasn't changed. All in all, this story was fun but yeah... Ithelia technically "never existed." Which is sad, because she's a great character (unless, somehow, we explore the plane where Ithelia ended up... Which would be very interesting in the future! An entire reality without magic, it's a fun concept).

Of all the problems I had with this story, the one that became most clear is that there are no consequences. And I don't say that lightly. High Isle and Galen questlines, as bad as they were, at least had a somewhat bittersweet ending. Here? Everyone ends happily, there is no loss. When there is no loss, sorry, but the victory seems smaller, the effort seems smaller. This story about an NPC dying or coming back, which became very common after The Reach, is starting to get quite tiring. I mean, we're not in real danger, that's clear, but it's strange not to feel the slightest fear even for the characters we should love, you know?

Gadayn is a great character, and if he had actually died during the final quest, the story might have had a greater impact and Leramil would have possibly become a MUCH more interesting character. I like Gadayn, but I think that preserving the characters infinitely is VERY detrimental to the story. (Or perhaps, the other way around. If Leramil died, Gadayn could become an excellent character!)

I'm serious. How are we going to take the threat of the new Daedric Prince seriously, if none, and I repeat, no NPC in the player's circle of friends is lost? We don't feel the urgency, the fear, the power of Ithelia, precisely because we don't have ANY consequences of her form - just as everyone forgot her, she didn't make any really impactful change to our reality (in this case, when I say this, I'm talking of the player). It's disappointing, unfortunately.

Overall, I really liked the story and the more cinematic narrative really surprised me. The final fight is perhaps the best constructed of all the game's quests. However, that disappointing point remains, I hope you consider this for the next ESO stories!

Soarora

FabresFour wrote: »

Okay, now here we go, the quest feedback: The story of Gold Road is really, really good. The characters are interesting and the narrative is, perhaps, the most cinematic in ESO since its launch. I really liked the use of the camera on the characters, the way it turned, got closer and was relocated. Completely different from anything we've seen before.

The course of the adventure was not overwhelming, even the classic return to the hub, here, in this case, Beragon's house, seemed very natural to me (although I would prefer if we explored the province more effectively with the main quest, than such a defined hub - a trend that started with High Isle). Finishing and starting all the quests in the same place is a little... disconcerting.

The solution to Ithelia's plot is... okay. It's not bad, in fact it makes all the sense in the world and whether or not it was what everyone wanted to see, but I must admit that I'm a little sad that the status quo was maintained and that the story wasn't changed. All in all, this story was fun but yeah... Ithelia technically "never existed." Which is sad, because she's a great character (unless, somehow, we explore the plane where Ithelia ended up... Which would be very interesting in the future! An entire reality without magic, it's a fun concept).

Of all the problems I had with this story, the one that became most clear is that there are no consequences. And I don't say that lightly. High Isle and Galen questlines, as bad as they were, at least had a somewhat bittersweet ending. Here? Everyone ends happily, there is no loss. When there is no loss, sorry, but the victory seems smaller, the effort seems smaller. This story about an NPC dying or coming back, which became very common after The Reach, is starting to get quite tiring. I mean, we're not in real danger, that's clear, but it's strange not to feel the slightest fear even for the characters we should love, you know?

Gadayn is a great character, and if he had actually died during the final quest, the story might have had a greater impact and Leramil would have possibly become a MUCH more interesting character. I like Gadayn, but I think that preserving the characters infinitely is VERY detrimental to the story. (Or perhaps, the other way around. If Leramil died, Gadayn could become an excellent character!)

I'm serious. How are we going to take the threat of the new Daedric Prince seriously, if none, and I repeat, no NPC in the player's circle of friends is lost? We don't feel the urgency, the fear, the power of Ithelia, precisely because we don't have ANY consequences of her form - just as everyone forgot her, she didn't make any really impactful change to our reality (in this case, when I say this, I'm talking of the player). It's disappointing, unfortunately.

Overall, I really liked the story and the more cinematic narrative really surprised me. The final fight is perhaps the best constructed of all the game's quests. However, that disappointing point remains, I hope you consider this for the next ESO stories!

I totally agree about Gadayn coming back. I had no emotional impact because the incident was so sudden there was no time to think about what just happened, and the whole time I just knew ZOS was going to bring him back anyways. Thats what made Summerset so good to me, that the deaths are permanent (as much as I want Darien to come back, there's plenty of other NPCs in the quest who are permadead).

I still think that a Jyggalag mention somewhere would have been appreciated, because it really feels like he was made for one Oblivion DLC and forgotten about by everyone forever.

I'm not mad about the ending for Ithelia though, she wasn't put right back where she was. The entire story just felt like ZOS wanted to try out moral greyness, which was starting to get frustrating because I didn't understand why we had to defeat Ithelia because she seemed fine, but the way the quest worked out answered my frustration and gave an ending that didn't make me feel evil.

But on the Ithelia note, her face is extremely uncanny. It's like her clothes and hair are the most detailed thing in the entire game and then her face is bad motion capture. I don't know if the uncanny is on purpose because she's a Daedric Prince (I would accept this answer honestly) or if it was a mistake. But her eyelids aren't well shaped (they're more squiggly than "(" shaped), she has no light in her eyes, and her lips move strangely when she talks.

Oh, I like the callback to Fargrave too. Apparently, my character hasn't done the Fargrave quest yet so I don't know if there's dialogue for "hey, I know this place!", but it's nice to get some answers with that, though it feels like knowing who Fargrave belongs to and that some Bosmer have Ayleid blood are the only lore things I got out of this. I feel like the Imperial lady and maybe even Gadayn seemed too calm about Fargrave though. Like, it's her first time in a Daedric realm supposedly and neither of them have any business knowing what Fargrave is.

I think this Chapter also suffers strongly from "the player character is dumb" disease with all the repeating what was just said or just happened. Sometimes I can say it's just the NPC talking things through for themselves to keep things ordered, but it happens a lot.

Generally, I think this Chapter could've taken the concept and gone a different way-- hopping through quests we've done but in different realities, some kind of Jyggalag mention, bringing Darien back from an alternate reality or at least seeing him in one of the flashbacks since supposedly he's been around a long time, seeing more of the Princes (I know voice acting is probably expensive but even just their models to show what they did to assist the situation), finally giving an explanation for the Cyrodiil jungle... but too late now.

FabresFour

Oh, and perhaps: A little warning that "to continue this story, do zone X" for this type of content is quite valid, huh?

I mean, imagine a first-time player jumping straight into Gold Road, loving the story and ending it on a big cliffhanger? I genuinely don't doubt that they'll simply not know that can continue the story by making Necrom.

And I'm not talking about a tutorial, which appears once, but every time something like this happens (like in the annual stories, or in Necrom and Gold Road), having a warning would be very coherent!

CoolBlast3

I am a bit disappointed at the ending to the Main Quest. Don't get me wrong, I still think this is -peak- ESO. It's a really fun multi-year arc with very interesting characters on all sides.

To me it however just feels like the main quest heavily implies or even outright says it's Mora's fault that Ithelia's like this, that it'd be different if he hadn't imprisoned her in the first place and yet Ithelia's the one that gets punished for it...
It feels very "victim blame-y" especially since her punishment is literally retconning her out of the setting, making a character we've grown to like and relate with just be..shafted and meaningless in the long run of things.

I would've much preferred a Jygallag styled ending, where she just leaves to roam Oblivion (and beyond maybe? Magna Ge after all!). Her not interfering with Nirn because her presence destroys it or something would be a fair way to explain this. But instead, it just feels like 2 years of content were "wasted" by making the primary discovery, Ithelia, just get deleted again. Hell, I'd be fine-ish with her deletion if at least most people were allowed to REMEMBER and learn about her. But it seems overkill to teleport her to a far away realm with no magic, sever the path AND delete her memory again.

I'd just like for her to stick around in lore so to speak. Sure, she's still there for us, the player, but ultimately in-world it means nothing if she's just deleted from 99% of Tamriel's memory again...

KingArthasMenethil

CoolBlast3 wrote: »

I am a bit disappointed at the ending to the Main Quest. Don't get me wrong, I still think this is -peak- ESO. It's a really fun multi-year arc with very interesting characters on all sides.

To me it however just feels like the main quest heavily implies or even outright says it's Mora's fault that Ithelia's like this, that it'd be different if he hadn't imprisoned her in the first place and yet Ithelia's the one that gets punished for it...
It feels very "victim blame-y" especially since her punishment is literally retconning her out of the setting, making a character we've grown to like and relate with just be..shafted and meaningless in the long run of things.

I would've much preferred a Jygallag styled ending, where she just leaves to roam Oblivion (and beyond maybe? Magna Ge after all!). Her not interfering with Nirn because her presence destroys it or something would be a fair way to explain this. But instead, it just feels like 2 years of content were "wasted" by making the primary discovery, Ithelia, just get deleted again. Hell, I'd be fine-ish with her deletion if at least most people were allowed to REMEMBER and learn about her. But it seems overkill to teleport her to a far away realm with no magic, sever the path AND delete her memory again.

I'd just like for her to stick around in lore so to speak. Sure, she's still there for us, the player, but ultimately in-world it means nothing if she's just deleted from 99% of Tamriel's memory again...

Honestly this.
Ithelia and Mora are very weirdly handled in this story from Mora being the cause of the threat to reality and Ithelia being victim blamed.

That contract we sign has just ended up being a "No Mora won't betray you like a lot of our characters do because we love a betrayal".

TenebrisEquitem

Ithelia was a breath of fresh air and I was quick to love her character. She's by far the most relatable, likable and human of the Princes. I know that a portion of the fanbase weren't onboard with her simple design when she was initially revealed, but considering her story arc, it makes complete sense as to why she'd look the way that she does. There's no way they'd have been able to tell this story if she looked like an eldritch horror.

BUT like what others have already said here, her "fate" is very disappointing. There was a 2 year build up to that ending. You spend a good chunk of the main story making the player like her and root for her. You even set up the very interesting concept of a Daedric Prince yearning to be mortal. But cue the epilogue quest and we must punish Ithelia because of what's essentially Mora's mistake. We banish her to real life and erase the memory of her from this universe, again.

I don't know if there was a mandate from BGS to keep the status quo as is, or if this was always the intention. I also don't know how the wider fanbase will react to the epilogue's ending, but I just really think that permanently erasing her after everything is a really really big mistake, especially given the sheer potential for future storylines.
It was also much too soon. I get that there's a formula to maintain and we needed to wrap this story up, but now we're completely deprived of learning anything else about a brand new Daedric Prince who happens to be really interesting and fun.

Ithelia telling us that she wishes she could be mortal, and seeing that her power is tangible matter which Torversad absorbs led me to believe that the solution to all this was to imprison Ithelia's power instead of imprisoning her.
It even got me excited while fighting Torversad that we were not only gonna keep her around, but also see what a Daedric Prince turned permanent pseudo-mortal was like.

But now it seems like she's goner than gone and it sucks. The only conceivable way of seeing her again is visiting that reality we sent her off to, or have an alternate reality Ithelia visit us, but that's more unlikely than Darien coming back. It's sort of a testament to how well written she was that I feel this way and I think Alix Wilton Regan (her English VA) should be commended for doing such a good job.

Tandor

I purposely haven't done this main quest yet, but before I do I would like to know please - is any final encounter as tough/impossible as the main quest ending in Necrom? If the intention with new chapters is for new players to be able to level up significantly in just the chapter zone then there's no point in ending the main zone quest with a solo encounter that's more equivalent to a group world boss!

Enodoc

FabresFour wrote: »

Oh, and perhaps: A little warning that "to continue this story, do zone X" for this type of content is quite valid, huh?

I mean, imagine a first-time player jumping straight into Gold Road, loving the story and ending it on a big cliffhanger? I genuinely don't doubt that they'll simply not know that can continue the story by making Necrom.

And I'm not talking about a tutorial, which appears once, but every time something like this happens (like in the annual stories, or in Necrom and Gold Road), having a warning would be very coherent!

I'm using the template so I had it all unlocked anyway, but the last time they did this setup (i.e. for the year-long stories), if you hadn't already done the "first" zone, then after finishing the "second" zone story, one of the NPCs would send you back there. This would be an obvious use for Leramil in this case.

But I guess that would only actually work if you owned the other content... and I wouldn't like to see a "Buy this DLC to continue the story!" sort of marketing announcement either...

acastanza_ESO

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

FabresFour wrote: »

merevie wrote: »

Just something to think about -scribing quest length.
Vet players have 10-16 characters each.
This is essential content.
So would really appreciate that being taken into consideration for feedback.

but the scribing quest only unlock the upgrades for the account, after you have done with one character, u do not need to do de questline with other character to use de scribing system, no?

Presently, you need to complete the quest for the Indrik to get full access to the system on alts after finishing the full quest line on another character.

The scripts also unlock on a character basis and appear to have a daily account wide cooldown.

So, it's probably around two weeks of dailies per character to get all of the scripts on each character.

Scripts should absolutely be account wide @ZOS_GinaBruno I'm pretty sure that was what we were told would be the case

chessalavakia_ESO

Tandor wrote: »

I purposely haven't done this main quest yet, but before I do I would like to know please - is any final encounter as tough/impossible as the main quest ending in Necrom? If the intention with new chapters is for new players to be able to level up significantly in just the chapter zone then there's no point in ending the main zone quest with a solo encounter that's more equivalent to a group world boss!

I didn't find either the end bosses of the main quest or the end bosses of the capper to be as hard as Necrom's when I did them on my quickly set up template char. I will note that capper bosses do have over a million hp but they don't hit that hard.(You'd need to do Necrom as well to start the capper which would level you a bit higher.)

Arizona_Steve

I played through the main quest until I was unable to progress when defeating the Shardborn. She was on a platform fighting Tribune Alea, and nothing else happened. No way to reach the platform and nothing to fight below.

I've written notes on and screenshotted a number of other things I saw, but it's late and I'll post them tomorrow.

TheImperfect

I'm having issues with the quest 'Hold The Line'. After talking to Alea in the barracks it asks me to go to the gate and when I do Shardmaster Vargas opens a portal and goes through and Alea Idolus follows her. It asks me to go through the portal after her and when I do I enter Mirrormoor and can see Alea and Vargas fighting up above but cannot reach them, I think some daedra are supposed to appear to be defeated but they never show up.

I tried portalling to a wayshrine and going back through and tried abandoning the quest twice and retaking it but it gives me the same result. The first time I entered the area on the sandy floor in the middle, the second two times exactly as it shows in the screenshot. I tried jumping down and looking around but it didn't help.





Apologies, thought it was part of main quest but can now see it's a side quest.