PTS Update 48 - Feedback Thread for the Writhing Fortress

ZOS_Kevin

This is the official feedback thread for the Writhing Fortress. Please try out the new campaign and let us know what you think! Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Did you complete the fortress?
• How many players were present?
• Which was the hardest encounters? Easiest?
• Was it fun?
• Did the time to complete feel right?
• How long did it take?
• Any additional feedback?

Syldras

Did you complete the fortress?
Yes.

How many players were present?
At the beginning, I was alone. At some point, we were 3. During the last boss fight some more came along and we were 6, I think.

Which was the hardest encounters?
The final boss.

Was it fun?
Dungeon design was interesting, but ending up there as a single player and realizing that you can't progress alone was not.

Did the time to complete feel right?
No.

How long did it take?
Over 2 hours.

Any additional feedback?

Since the quests leading up to this one were the usual easy singleplayer stuff, I entered the Fortress with the expectation that it might be harder content, but still doable alone (but easier with several people - basically like the difference between soloing a world boss or fighting it with 2 or 3 people coming by).

What I noticed once I was in was that it was absolutely not possible to solo it, especially not with a fastly created PTS test character - fully leveled, but not all champion points assigned, no special armor, etc. (actually my only intention for joining PTS this time was doing story quests). But I think it's not even that unrealistic to assume that many players, especially the quest-focussed ones, might not have perfect builds, because usually, it's not neccessary for doing story content.

I found the dungeon design and the tasks you needed to do intuitive and easy to understand. I also liked the design. The only problem is that it's clearly designed for several players splitting tasks. Alone, you will just be overrun by enemy waves while trying what ever needs to be done at that point (like repairing and firing ballistas). Actually, that was the common problem at the beginning: I found the way to the next location and knew what I needed to do, but couldn't progress because I was alone (or there might have been other people somewhere in the dungeon maybe, but nowhere in my vicinity). Without a group, you're lost, and spontaneously grouping with someone might be difficult or not always possible.

Note for the current status on PTS: Quest markers and spoken comments seemed to have been bugged. Markers still showed for locations that were already passed through, and npcs' comments didn't match the current situation (like some npc repeatedly yelling to "destroy the crystal" although all crystals were already destroyed). Sometimes this led to confusion because it made you wonder whether you might have missed something somewhere.

If you intend to keep this quest for people who do the Solstice main quest later (which I would generally support, since it is a nice dungeon design by itself), it needs to be altered reasonably. I'd say it should be ensured that people can finish this dungeon on their own, because old zones might be rather dead after a few years (you might be the only person there, with no one else coming by for a long time). It would be very unfortunate to lock people out from playing the second half of a zone story just because they can't solo some dungeon inbetween.

Margravigne

Did you complete the fortress?
Twice so far, once each on a copied / template alt (due to later bugs blocking progress, I might take a copied alt who hasn't completed the Planar Vortex quest through before the next patch too)
My copied alt was CP1620 with a pretty hardy stamblade 'brawler' build, and decent but not raid-level gear, and I pretty much copied her set-up to my template CP3600 alt and took some time to sort all her points etc before getting started, since I knew what I was in for.

How many players were present?
On both I solo'd the Infernium and a lot of the 'running' content, occasionally I'd cross paths with someone while firing at a gate, or run through some groups of mobs in tandem with a stranger for a while, but I only twice had more than a single other player along while travelling to reach a boss.
I was lucky to have a few mutuals arrive and group up at the Harvester on my first/copied run after attempting to solo it for around half an hour and being constantly interrupted by the respawning mobs. I'd taken maybe 10% off her healthbar, trying to repair the ballista for another two shots at the wards left me able to be interrupted by the mobs and she'd reset to being fully warded, so progress was difficult.
Similar stories with the Colossus - without numbers I was stuck grinding with minimal progress.
I think soloing the whole thing is currently almost impossible, except for those few crazy enough to regularly solo their way through vhm DLC Dungeons, (but just 4 competent builds / people who could see what was needed were able to get it done, 6-8 would be better, and 12+ would make it pretty easy).

Which was the hardest encounters? Easiest?
This is on the assumption of there being a dozen players, or a smaller group able to co-ordinate well:
The Harvester would be the easiest, except that the colours for the wards are so faint that I think a lot of people can't tell which they're aiming at, and some vision-impaired players will not be able to tell the difference between the blue/orange at all:


The Colossus can be confusing for people who've run in along a pre-cleared road and arrive on the platform then stay there, not realising there are things to clear below. I'd sometimes spot one standing around doing nothing when I took shortcuts over the top to get to where the next target was while avoiding the plasm.

And the final boss is definitely the hardest with the various mechanics, and may be a problem with larger numbers because of people having to wait for the orbs to respawn to refresh their shield if another player beats them to it, these are going to become camping points slowing the pace unless they can be spawned in faster, or otherwise changed to account for a crowd.

Was it fun?
When it wasn't deserted and tedious, yes, very much so.
I love the scale of it, and I think this is the one time I'm actually looking forward to the madness and crowds of the first weeks post-Update on Live, because it's going to be utter chaos in the best way.
Being able to backtrack and help the other NPCs after they spilt up was a relief, too, I was worried the initial choice would lock me into only half the content.

Did the time to complete feel right?
Again, depends on numbers, they made a huge difference to the boss fights.
Is it possible to scale the mobs' respawn rate/numbers based on the number of players present in the instance to make the experience more consitent regardless of how many might be there?

How long did it take?
As mentioned above, soloing the Harvester I achieved maybe 10% over half an hour, but once there were enough players that a couple could stay on the ballistae full-time while others dealt with the mobs or making repairs, she melted pretty quickly.
Second run (on template) was 20-ish minutes with 4 people present for the chest once a few friendly strangers turned up, and we moved on and got the Colossus in just under 10. If not for wiping with barely 5% to go on the Titan it would have been about 20 minutes, still the same 4 people as far as I could tell. I had a disconnection during round 2, and by that point more players were arriving so round 3 was already half over by the time I reconnected and sprinted through to rejoin.

Any additional feedback?
Overall it's pretty self explanatory - I like that we're not given as much hand-holding in dialogue screens and are left to follow shouted directions, it feels much more realistic.
Less repetition from the NPCs giving us instructions, would be good though, please... "Yes, Walks, I know I need to use the Coldfire Ballista against the blue wards, but I'm drowning in mobs right now, stop shouting and help me..." is probably the most polite thing I can repeat here from attempting to solo the Harvester, but it got a little repetitive elsewhere, too, and was sometimes contradictory to what the actual task was as things progressed.

Before we leave the Rampart Camp to head to the breach/portal to the Writhing Fortress, if Darien is spoken to he'll have this line:

The implication seems that he's coming with us, but he stays behind.
Is he supposed to be a follower for this? (please, please, pretty please?)
Or is the line supposed to be related to something else? It happened on both copied and template alts.

Once at the Wall, the directions were inconsistent and a bit confusing:

Skordo speaks to the soldiers guarding the golden Breach to Eastern Solstice, before he runs though that rather than entering the blue Portal to the Writhing Fortress.
The map marker also indicates to go through the breach instead of the portal:

Charliebug3

• Did you complete the fortress?
  - Yes.
• How many players were present?
  - 2-5, when I started there were only 2 of us, but gradually we got up to around 5 players.
• Which was the hardest encounters? Easiest?
  - The hardest encounter to me was easily the giant Harvester, not necessarily due to outright difficulty but mostly because of the constant add spawns, the speed at which she puts the wards back up leaving you time to get maybe two ballista shots in before you have to break the wards again, and the sheer amount of health the boss has. I ended up only having one other player to do this with for the vast majority of the fight, and we essentially just had to have them draw aggro from all the enemies so that I could do the ballista shots. It took 2 entire hours just to get past this one boss. I feel like this boss may end up being almost too easy once the amount of players there are on live servers get to it because there isn’t much difficulty, just frustration, but doing it with 2 players was massively time consuming. That same boss also gets my vote for easiest at the same time, because depending on the amount of players it will become a cake walk. Even 10 people would shred it, and I have a feeling there will be a lot more on the live servers. I will say, Zysax was also quite difficult, it hit very hard and had a lot of persistent AOEs, but aside from the grapple hooks being weirdly difficult to lock on to, I was able to figure out the mechanics and that boss went down a lot faster.
• Was it fun?
  - I can tell that this will be fun to do with a full live server amount of players, but with the limited amount of people on the PTS, combined with the issue that forces you to complete it in order to progress the main quest, it did feel like a slog. Got a lot better after the giant Harvester boss though.
• Did the time to complete feel right?
  - No. 3 hours was way too long and I could feel myself get frustrated as time went on. I'm fairly certain that with a full server's amount of players, it will take a reasonable amount of time, though.
• How long did it take?
  - Roughly 3 hours, give or take a bit. I had to pause and take a break waiting for other players at certain points because it was impossible to do solo.
• Any additional feedback?
  - I've read in other forum posts that it is not intended that you are required to personally participate in and complete the Writhing Fortress to progress the main story, so if that is true then I really don't have much feedback outside of maybe making the grapple posts in the final boss fight easier to grapple to because I found myself having to take a leap of faith to get close enough to grapple, and also dialing up the saturation on the wards in the Harvester fight (I have great color vision and even I couldn't tell what the actual colors were, I just ended up remembering that fire is first and coldfire is second). If it IS intended that you have to do the WF for the main story, then it absolutely needs to have some form of player population scaling. I think it would be physically impossible to progress if you happen to be trying to do this storyline after the initial hype, since I cannot see a player successfully soloing this unless they are perhaps a top of the line meta endgamer.

Ilsabet

Did you complete the fortress?

Yes. I completed it on my copied main character who had progressed through the Solstice questline up to the objective to clear the Fortress.

How many players were present?

It's hard to say since everything was so chaotic and people were spread out throughout the instance. I'd guesstimate around a dozen by the time we all got to the last boss. Probably 4-6 on the harvester boss, which was the first one I did, and then more joined in as we made our way toward the last boss.

Which was the hardest encounters? Easiest?

They were all probably harder than they needed to be, given that I spent much of my time not really knowing what I was supposed to be doing, so we were doing a lot of flailing around without making progress. Also I missed the boss on the east side, so I don't know what that encounter is like. Nevermind I just realized the colossus was the boss on the east side. I think the one I missed was the infernium.

I'd say the harvester wasn't bad once enough people understood the ballista mechanic to deal with the wards, so maybe that was the easiest? And the titan was probably the hardest because there was a lot going on and it was hard to even target the big boy.

Also they would all suck without a lot of people, so I second the calls for dynamic scaling based on how many players are there.

Was it fun?

Ehhhh...

It'll probably be more fun on Live with more people and more who know what they're doing. I enjoyed the epic feeling of a big group assaulting a wide-scaling fortress and making progress on multiple fronts at once, so the concept is good. But in practice, especially without a big group, it feels like more of a slog than an exciting dungeon rush.

Particularly for my first time going through it, I'd say it was more confusing and overwhelming than fun. Other than disembodied NPCs shouting out vague instructions, and the one Stirk Fellowship mage guy who told me about the balls I could break for a shield, I had no guidelines about what I was supposed to be doing so I had to figure out a lot of stuff on the fly (like the orange/blue ballista mechanic and the fact that there were grapple points to get around). I got the sense that a lot of other people were also confused and just fighting whatever mobs were swarming them without a clear objective.

Also after talking to a few people I have realized that I missed a bunch of stuff including NPC interactions that are supposed to happen at the beginning of the instance. When I got there, the only NPC I saw was Keshu, so I wasn't able to talk to Azah or Walks-in-Ash or Mirmal or anybody else. I presume this is because the instance was in-progress and a lot of the objectives had already been completed. So if any of those NPCs had helpful explanations, or if any of those completed objectives were designed to teach me about mechanics, I missed out on all of them. (I'm also annoyed in general about not getting the chance to talk to everyone.)

Did the time to complete feel right?

It took significantly longer than I expected, especially for a necessary step in main quest progression. It'll probably be faster on Live with more people, but I'll still need to set aside a substantial amount of time to make sure I can complete it in one sitting. (Especially since if you can't complete the final objective before you have to leave, it means you'd have to start all over again with a new instance, so all that work is wasted.) And since the time investment is completely dependent on the number of people and the amount of wheel-spinning you have to do to get anywhere, the probability of a drawn-out slog is relatively high.

How long did it take?

I spent about an hour actively participating. Some objectives had already been completed, so I'd estimate that I experienced only about 60% of the content in the instance within that timeframe.

Any additional feedback?

• The orange and blue wards need to be made waaaay more distinct. It's way too hard to tell that there's even a difference between them.
• The encounters that involve ballistae get significantly less wheel-spinny once the barrels of repair parts spawn in. I presume that's something that happens after a certain amount of time has passed? If we have to rely on the green circles to spawn after killing mobs, then we end up spending more time grinding mobs than using the ballistae to actually progress the boss fight. So more barrels plz. Okay nevermind upon second visit I see that the barrels are there from the beginning, so we can chalk that up to yet another "I don't know what I'm doing yet" moment.
• Where is Darien during the Writhing Fortress operation? His earlier dialogue suggests that he's coming with the group, but then he's nowhere to be seen. If he's staying behind to guard the main camp or something, then this should be acknowledged either by him or by another NPC. (And if the choice to have him stay behind is related to his "condition" after recent events, then it would be good to have that established too, and to know if that was his choice or if another NPC insisted on it, and how he feels about it in the latter case.)
• Please find a way to make the grapple points way more obvious. I spent a stupid amount of time running through bathwater trying to get back up to a bridge before someone told me I could grapple up there.
• The mob spawns could stand to be toned down, especially in areas where the actual objective involves interacting with the environment (like repairing and firing ballistae). Especially for solo players or small groups, the trash mobs can completely interfere with progress.
• Having the portal entrance (the blue circle) right next to the gold tunnel to eastern Solstice is confusing, especially since the quest marker is currently marking the tunnel. Also that's where Skordo ran when he was leading the way to the Fortress. Like you're going the wrong way bro.

Freelancer_ESO

Did you complete the fortress?

Yeah

How many players were present?

On the run when I completed it I think we probably had eight+

Which was the hardest encounters? Easiest?

I couldn't really tell as the number of players varied a fair bit on my runs and the understanding level of the mechanics varied as well.

Was it fun?

Being done with it felt nice and like I'd made it through an epic struggle however, I would say that the journey part didn't feel great at any point and I don't see myself really replaying it really.

Did the time to complete feel right?

It ran long enough that I probably wouldn't repeat it but, it did feel like a Battle.

How long did it take?

I joined in when it was already decently in progress and it took over an hour. I'd tried to do it earlier a couple of times but I didn't have the time at those times to finish it with the number of people present.

Any additional feedback?

On the last boss the group I was with didn't target the lightning people for quite a while and people were dying regularly to the ground because they didn't grab the buff.

My potato of a computer was struggling with the amount that was going on at times.

I and one of the groups I was with definitely spent 10+ minutes fighting the endless waves at the bottom rather than moving up to open the barrier.

I think the actual difficulty of the experience would depend heavily on your group. Some parts of the runs I was in would probably have gone much much faster with better builds and more knowledge from the group doing it.

Margravigne

A couple more things to add while attempting to run my third alt through this:

For the Titan:
Please give us a barrel at the entrance before it starts. Just one, back near the landing platform, please?
Otherwise it's the usual feedback of the grappling hooks needing more range on their activation points, the shouted instructions becoming annoying (especially when it's been a few hours because it's deserted).

I can't wait to run this with proper crowds, and then never have to ever do it again unless I'm feeling nostalgic and deluded that it wasn't really as soul destroying as I remember it being, surely?

Sadras

Did you complete the fortress?

I first did the single-player sections of the quest with the delve-like parts, then had to leave for a while, and when I came back later, I joined a party that was camped at the Titan boss, and we completed it.

How many players were present?

We were 4 total.

Which was the hardest encounters? Easiest?

I only saw the last boss, but that was rather difficult for the number of players.
But seeing people's screenshots of the Harvester: Those disks look just white to me. I couldn't discern any colour in there at all.

Was it fun?

Initially it was, especially with the fun group, but it got tedious after a while, and was also rather overwhelming. I'm glad we were able to complete it because failure and having to start the whole fortress battle all over again on another day would have been beyond frustrating.

Did the time to complete feel right?

Even having been only present for the last fight it felt too long. I wasn't sure what awaited me and wasn't initially planning on playing for that long, but once I got the scope, I wanted to get it done that day and with that group.
And then imagining the whole scope of what I had missed in between...
With a comparable number of players, this is way too long, and one comes in after the single-player delve sections and doesn't expect this to be quite like this.

How long did it take?

I don't remember exactly, but for the last boss I think something between an hour and two.

Any additional feedback?

I'm not sure if I undesrstood it right how it'll be handled on live, but I think if this quest stays mandatory and one has to do this later on live and there are no or few people present, as often in older zones, or also on some platforms in general, this will be impossible for many people, and if one has a few others gathered, still very hard and tedious, and taking too long.

I can imagine it being fun with a full server present all helping out on the first day.
But to do once and feeling accomplished, not to do over and over again on several characters. There I'd long for a skip button.

Especially the mobs got overwhelming and covered everything, and it was hard to know what to do and how to get to objectives like finding ballista parts and shooting them because mobs kept overrunning the area and the ground was covered in red.

Also, the grapple hooks were sometimes hard to find and target; there were times the NPCs were yelling to use the grapple hooks but I couldn't or didn't find how. I played on controller, and getting the interaction prompt targeted and for it to show up at all could be finicky.

Some more info:
I was on a copied character that was a pure quester/casual healer: completely unoptimised; a few hundred CP, in the middle of levelling subclasses and with a healing backbar. Gear a mix of easily attainable and crafted. It was fine for the delve sections of course, but for the Titan boss, at least in the low numbers we had, I was glad for the higher CP and more deliberately set-up characters there.
For lower numbers present, if you arrive on lower-level characters, or just expecting to quest, I don't think this will be possible.

So all in all, I think for a one-time event for a whole server, this could be great, but making it mandatory after it's been done on the server once would be a mistake. People would get blocked there after the first hype has died down.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Went in alone, followed Raz up until I got to the top of his path and the monsters just kept spawning indefinitely and realized I wasn’t going to be able to progress after I jumped down to Mirmal and he mentioned waiting for the ‘other team.’ 😐 Fight up to that point was merely tedious; the monsters are all bullet sponges that hit like wet noodles, though I could absolutely see them causing problems for people who weren’t geared up and relatively veteran.

EDIT: Tonight I noticed a few (2-3) people at the start of the Harvester branch and joined in. Got as far as the boss, took off about a third of her health but everyone else had dropped by that point and then I found out she resets if you exit the arena. 😮‍💨

The wards could do with a little more contrast; Walks-in-Ash kept yelling to hit the orange and blue wards but they’re barely tinted with those colors, my first thought was that they all looked white. 🙃 The pattern is the same for every round so I was able to figure it out anyway, but my assumption is that the population on live is going to be going through the fight faster.