Writhing Wall Event – Consolidated Messaging Thread

VetteGal

Hiya All!!,
So, today I was doing my siege camps, and got one right away (center) and so was going to do another, so picked up the quest and waited at the center camp, thinking, it should spawn soon. HOW WRONG I WAS!! All the other camps had spawned 19, yes, NINETEEN times before the center spawned, I know they are random, but, for RNG to be that bad is crazy!!
Just had to put it out there, since I waited about an hour for the next spawn, and yes, I could have gone to another, but, after about 20 minutes, it just became trying to find out the spawn rate. I have never seen that rate happen before!! Anyway, have a wonderful day and KILL ALL THE THINGS!!

Vonnegut2506

The blue boxes are fairly worthless. I would imagine 90% of the blue boxes I open only contain crafting materials. . . less than I used to get the blue box in the first place. I am getting style pages and motif pages from the gold boxes at least, so what exactly is my incentive to do more quests for worthless blue boxes? The furnishing plans appear to be the same exact three plans dropping over and over. I have more spyglass recipes than I could ever need, even if an attractive Wood Elf moves next door.

BretonMage

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

While we do that, we'd like to ask a couple related questions for future event consideration. We've seen concerns about the rewards coffers drop rates and contents, and the Writhing Wall furnishings drop rates. While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

All the events in the past that I can remember have given us a variety of items in the reward boxes: a currency of some sort (transmutes, gold, AP, writ vouchers etc), a few pieces of some uncommon ingredient (style stone, alchemy or other material), in addition to the rare event drops. This eases the disappointment of not receiving event drops.

Also, I have had a few Stirk furnishing plans drop, but as far as I can tell, there are only a small handful of available plans, which leads to repeated drops of the same plans. More variety in furnishing plans would be appreciated.

Leighlaa

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

Yes! I've spent HOURS farming these. I didn't really understand how these were dropping due to confusing event instructions... I have maybe 1 item per hour of killing to show for it. Do I want one from every lootable boss (~every 4 min)? No that's a bit ridiculous and would tank their value, but at the same time... who cares? It's not like these will be coming back and the joy of being here for this "once in a lifetime" event means I should be able to stock up if I 1) do the work or 2) have the gold to spend on buying up any and every one that I see. I love the witch event because I get to stock up on weird mushrooms and, if I'm lucky, RUBY FREAKIN TORCHBUGS. This event has very little of that level of excitement for me. If I farmed for an hour though, I'd like 5 greens, 3 blues, and 2 purples. There isn't even a new gold furnishing. YES there is the achievement soul trap thing, but I have to BUY IT. I'm sure it's too late to pop something cool in there, but 6 new furnishings that I'm spending FAR TOO MUCH TIME TO GET does *not* feel like a 10-year anniversary celebration to me. Goodness, even jubilee got new banners and bells.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

Definitely a combination of the two. Many other commenters have had good things to say, and I particularly like what @Virenic said about treasure maps. Solstice has particularly low antiquity RNG from maps and myself and many of my friends do not have *most* of the furnishings in triplicate yet- despite having opened MANY (expensive) maps. We should have gotten maps. And while selfishly, I like the prices of Solstice blueprints to remain high as I make money farming urns in BLT... there is a new zone coming and the mid-year event almost always makes it so I am flooded with new blueprints that I can now happily learn myself. Not this year. I'm not sure if I'm happy that I will maybe still make ok money on urn farmed purples... or if I'm sad that I don't actually feel I can learn any of them myself. I also think that the haj mota pet should, rarely, drop as a full runebox item, UNBOUND, much like the New Life pets do. SURE it means their value is reduced, on the whole, but isn't this event supposed to be a celebration? It feels utterly stingy. Do you even like us? It doesn't feel like you like us

As far as the house is concerned, I already own it, but also have yet to see the special item you supposedly get for owning it and getting it again. My alt account has yet to get it and at this point I'm losing steam wanting to try. The furnishing dailies are abysmal and feel like some sort of a scam. They REALLY make me feel like you don't like us. Improving rewards would *start* to help to that end, but also the types of rewards- why aren't there random crafting motifs? Gold materials? Jubilee-level rewards at the very least. I like housing, and I think it is the housing community holding the end-game community together and in the game (perhaps personal bias but I don't care)- you could have included NOT JUST blueprints for the stirk camps... but also actual copies of the furnishing. I don't feel rewarded for doing any of this.

Plenty of people have touched on the manipulations to the progress bars and the effect that has on the players. On the ground level, in our guilds, it all feels arbitrary. The rules feel made up and the points don't matter. Let's play, who's wall is it anyways? I'd have loved to have more choice in the matter- if we're trying a new event style or content formula/rollout/whatever... maybe let us fight FOR Molag Bal? Or have your server's alliances actually be counted so you can see, on which server, who is fighting the most against molag bal and then if you were majorly fighting for that alliance, THAT'S how you get the title.. I don't know, something that doesn't feel redone and under-rewarding. People have also mentioned choice of reward- let me pick what type of animal I get as my golden reward worm animal... I don't ride bears but a wormwrithe guar? HOLY POOP YES PLEASE I'LL FIGHT EVERY DAY AND DO EVERY GOLDEN PURSUIT. I don't feel like I want to do anything with my server (pc na) to "beat" the other servers/consoles... it doesn't feel like we're working together. Could be loser talk because we're in last, but even on day one, it felt like a weird... "competition" to force on us. I miss the N. Elsweyr release days where, as a server, we worked TOGETHER to unlock some incredible and unique rewards that will NEVER come back... and saved kitties doing it. THOSE were memorable events. This one I'm already tired of and we're not even 1/3 through it.

The worst part of all this? There is little, if any, motivation to do anything in phase 2 or 3. If you save up enough boxes in phase 1, you'll get the needed fragments for the skill style in phase 2 without having to actually DO anything. What is my motivation to care? I couldn't care LESS about the 1-week fortress thing... are there unique rewards? I don't know because the communication about this event has been bleh. And everything I've seen so far leads me to believe that no, it won't get better. I plan on spending all my time farming plunder skulls for ruby candleflies and waiting for Eastern Solstice to come out so I can fish for the 6 new sunport pack furnishings. That's literally all I'm holding on to right now. Pretty sad.

I do not feel like this event was made with tender loving care. It was made sadly and sloppily and with little regard to good advice from PTS. Do you even like us?

spoqster

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all. After investigating some user reports, we have confirmed that there are some instances where completing a Writhing Wall event crafting activity will result in you spending more materials than you receive in your rewards. This was not our intent and unfortunately this issue is not something we are able to hotfix. We have a bug in for the team to investigate and looking to see if there is an opportunity to fix this during U48 launch. We have added this update to our dev tracker.

I just don’t believe it. It was obvious after the first turn in that the rewards were less than the crafting cost. My first thought was that you guys wanted to create a resource sink to combat the slight inflation created by the introduction of tradable surveys. Fair enough. But just be honest about it. Don’t lie and pretend the obvious thing that became immediately evident to everyone doing the quests was an oversight and that it only happened to “some” players.

shadyjane62

It's easy to understand. The stuff we are getting is trash. It it not worth the price to travel.

Aliniel

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all. After investigating some user reports, we have confirmed that there are some instances where completing a Writhing Wall event crafting activity will result in you spending more materials than you receive in your rewards. This was not our intent and unfortunately this issue is not something we are able to hotfix. We have a bug in for the team to investigate and looking to see if there is an opportunity to fix this during U48 launch. We have added this update to our dev tracker.

I would actually advocate leaving them as they are. This way they act as a "mat sink" of sort. On the other hand, we are getting huge EXP from these quests. Things shouldn't just come for free, and I believe we're on the receiving end with these quests.