I think ZOS did a good job with the Writhing Wall event

Ingel_Riday

TLDR: please see above title.

Otherwise, I’m going to ramble just a bit here. Overall… I think the event is perfectly fine. I’ve done a bunch of stuff tied to it now and, by and large, it’s been solid. I’ve only seen three quirks in the past five days:

1. Depending on the instance of Solstice that I’m in, the central Meridian Lens is at different phases. I’ve been in some with no angled support-lenses. I’ve been in sum with the central glass panel present. Said central glass panel is MIA in most other instances. Not at all a big deal, but kind of amusing since all instances share the same % complete bar.
2. Occasional false flags of “siege camp under attack.” I just a few seconds to make sure it doesn’t flash away, and it’s happening much less than it was on day 1.
3. A wandering world boss meant to spawn in Phase 2 popped up once or twice and killed us all with an invisible wall, haha. It was fine. He appears to have gone on vacation again… for now.

Live events can be nightmares. Bugs, crashes, what-have-you. From what I have personally experienced, though, you QA’d this proper. It’s impressively stable and I’m quite pleased. I appreciate you taking the time to get it right. A lot of skill went into coding this. It’s readily apparent.

As for the daily quests, I think they’re mostly good. I did have “collect zhevra hoofs and lion teeth” war flashbacks doing the “gather X of Y from zone Zed” daily, which was something. Killing 10 trolls to get 1 fat of the 8 that I need while competing with a swarm of other yahoos in a small spawn area felt like going back in time to 2005 MMO game design and I’m not a fan of that at all, haha. But it feels like the drop rates got adjusted to be less cruel. That or I’m just used to it again now and have fallen back into my old 2005 ways (20 years older, balder, and apparently no wiser). I can’t tell.

But the other three dailies aren’t shabby. The crafting one is a gentle breeze and the vitrified soul daily pairs perfectly with the siege camp daily. Good synergy and fun enough times. I respect it. I do wonder if the siege camps will eventually scale based on number of total players at said siege camps, because someday Western Solstice will be as quiet as Western Skyrim and I don’t know how one or two players are supposed to do these. It’ll be the Bastion Nymic / Harrowstorm problem all over again.

Also, and I don’t know how to say this without coming across as rude (which I can be. I get warnings on forums sometimes and, though I’m loth to admit it, I often totally deserve said warnings), but this event fits the MMO mold to a T. It does what it needs to do. In a single player game, expecting me to do the same 4 dailies every day for two months to fill up a % complete bar would be an unforgiveable offense. Making drop rates of pages / crafting blueprints exceedingly low on blue reward crates with the anticipation that I'll do each daily six times every day just for the chance of the RNG dice rolling in my favor would irritate me to no end.“Dost thou not value my time, sera? I work 40 hours a week. I have a spouse, a kid, and a cliche need to compensate for thinning hair with bigger muscles via gym stuff. You're killing me, Smalls!”

But this is a MMO. It’s different rules. This is 15 to 20 minutes of dailies a day (do NOT do them each six times per day per character. It's not worth it) for two months to keep up engagement and player activity. The page drops aren’t curated because it forces players to socialize and trade with each other, either via chat or guild traders. It’s trying to give players something to do with enough lore connections and zone-specific flavor to feel unique and intriguing, and I think it succeeds at that.

Would I have rather had an hour and a half long unique quest with cool set pieces and pay-offs for all my hero’s work in Western Solstice? Yep… but ironically, that kind of already exists too. It’s getting doled out over time, with the first part already available with Darien. Players that come into the game post-event will see that questline in full and be fine story-wise and gameplay-wise. It ties in perfectly and will meet that need.

So yeah, it’s good. The lack of brutal FOMO is appreciated, too. From the sounds of it, the style pages and creature parts will still be available via the daily coffers after the event… so no one will be permanently missing out on those. They just won’t see the camps build up and the lens get constructed.

The only genuinely awful experience that I have had during this entire event was mostly of my own making. Specifically, I was having a wonderful time playing my Templar alt and totally forgot that crafting pages are not account-wide, for reasons only known to Hermaeus Mora. I realized that I had used three Stirk fellowship pages on a character that will never do crafting writs… so instead of being 4 out of 14 done, I’m really more like 1 out of 14 done. Light at the end of the tunnel shifted to the right because I forgot about the crafting page quirk. Ugh. I was pissed. Again, from an MMO perspective, it makes sense that crafting pages are unique to each character to increase play time and keep up demand for guild traders. From a player perspective though, it's awful. At least I can transmog my gear to look like Stirk gear on all my characters, but what a pain in the rear for actual crafting.

But yeah… anyhoots, thanks for reading. I’ve enjoyed this event. I would genuinely recommend it to others, with the caveat that you need to look at it from the MMO mindset. It is a MMO event, and those are different beasts.

Addendum: Also, I don't know if links are allowed here. I'm going to try and provide one for the younger bucks that don't have any idea what zhevras are. This was 2005 MMO questing at its finest. https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/dz5y6z/remember_this_old_comic/

RebornV3x

I don't mind the event its OK but the problem is it was over hyped and it gave nothing new really. The rewards for repeating the dailies are bad so theirs no point in repeating them when this entire event revolves around people repeating the quests.
I don't know this entire event has been a shitshow and shows the disconnect between ZOS and the player base.

fizzybeef

Are you getting paid for that post?

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO

fizzybeef wrote: »

Are you getting paid for that post?

This. It's a shame that a set of basic dailies and a replica of Alikr's dolmens are called "event".

Ttree

Then you are in the massive minority

MasterOfWisdom1618

They did implement four repeatable daylies and that sums up pretty much one third of the whole event.

JiubLeRepenti

I don’t understand how you can possibly think ZOS did a good job with this event.

There are so many factual problems with it:
- Fetch quests
- Stupidly easy dolmen bosses that get nuked in 15 secs
- Very small quest areas to farm certain mobs
- Poor rewards and very low drop rates
- Many bugs
- Etc.

And we paid the full price for that. What a shame.

JiubLeRepenti

The lack of brutal FOMO is appreciated

Unpopular opinion: I personally think that FOMO would be very useful for that kind of event if ZOS wants to bring players back.

Ingel_Riday

fizzybeef wrote: »

Are you getting paid for that post?

Haha, no. I'm on furlough during the US government shutdown and just trying to keep busy. Taking the family out to stuff, goofing around with side projects, trying to make headway on some foreign language studies, and so on and so forth. Nothing very exciting. I very much miss my job and crew.

Kind of felt like giving my two cents on the event. Figured it'd be fun to doodle out my thoughts. Didn't realize that I was such an outlier! Guffaw!

I guess... I don't follow most of the news about this game anymore. Outside the launcher updates, I don't bother. Pointless backstory: I had my chat privileges revoked on ESO's twitch channel during the Tanlorian reveal for posting a negative comment. "I don't appreciate 21st century American politics being overtly crammed into my fantasy escapism. Once I finish the achievements and get the reward, I'll be benching this character forever more." = lifetime chat ban. Seemed extreme as heck, but hey... you do you ZOS.

Left a really bad taste in my mouth and I checked out completely on the media front. "You belong here, but you better speak the right-think or we'll cut out your tongue." Real recipe for a thriving, inclusive community of diverse opinions that you've got there. So I had no exposure to any major hype for this thing. I saw the launcher notification and assumed that this event was going to be a holiday event where you ran the same dailies over and over again for X number of days. You know, like all the holiday events are. Just longer and with multiple phases of the repetition. That was my expectation going into it.

And... it is that. I expected chicken alfredo and I got chicken alfredo. I mean, chicken alfredo with a side of 2005 Barrens nightmare fuel (them trolls must be lean and them critters must be bald), but chicken alfredo. From my perspective, it seems perfectly fine. It's a fairly polished, stable, functional holiday event with some solid coding clearly behind it. I've been in innumerable twenty player swarms whacking the kneecaps of cartoonishly gargantuan uber-daedroths (again, massive World of Warcraft war flashbacks. Whacking kneecaps is not heroic feeling, haha) and never experienced a crash. To quote the Todd, it works. I'm 100% satisfied on my end.

In a very weird way, I guess my lifetime chat ban on Twitch did me a favor. I drank not of the hype elixir. :-P

Edit addition: I'm 100% expecting the Writhing Fortress public dungeon to be a Coldharbour version of the Deadlands public dungeon in Blackwood. You know, the one in Blackwood that you have to access via the random daedric portals dotting the swampy landscape. We're 11 years in. They're not re-inventing the wheel at this point. It's going to be a more refined, polished version of what we've already seen with a motif tweak... and I'm good with that. I love the Deadlands public dungeon, save for the fact that it doesn't scale based on number of players and that final boss can get REAL annoying when you're solo'ing him.

Ingel_Riday

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

The lack of brutal FOMO is appreciated

Unpopular opinion: I personally think that FOMO would be very useful for that kind of event if ZOS wants to bring players back.

Personally, I don't think FOMO brings back players. I think that it helps retain existing players, but it creates a massive psychological barrier to entry for returning players.

My best friend quit this game 5 years ago. I miss seeing him in it. He was a fun, theory-crafting mad-lad and I adored his builds. I'd love to see him return, but let's be real... he's missed five years of events, special cosmetics, free homes, and so on. Like my Oaken Order armor? Well, that was tied to a Galen event that ended 2+ years ago. You'll have to wait and hope that they repeat the event someday, at which point you'll be able to get it by buying catch-up bags that cost 2 event tickets each. 200 crowns for each ticket, and you'll need 14 tickets total. 2,800 crowns. That's effectively $25 bucks. Maybe you'll get lucky and find some pages on the auction houses to reduce the overall cost. Welcome back!

Like my Balfieran armor? Me too. Looks perfect on a templar. Got it in the Ragebound Loot Crates, and Mora only knows when those are going to be sold again. You'll probably have to spend $42.99 to get enough crates to unlock all the pieces. Welcome back! Oh, my Aetheriusbound Staff? Yeah, it's awesome. Should have been here back in December 2024, bro.

FOMO takes a toll on the psyche. Past a certain point, you can feel like you've missed too much to bother returning mid-game lifecycle. You're too far behind in Fashion Scrolls. It's over.

He's never coming back. ZOS could do Central Elsweyr, which he longed for with baited breath, and have an epic plot involving Khajiiti fighting cannibal elves in thick jungles while Hircine hooted and hollered overhead like a raging dungeon master. He still wouldn't come back. His barrier to entry is too vast, to my chagrin.

spartaxoxo

Where even is the Meridian lens? I've been wanting to look at but haven't seen it.

Syldras

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Where even is the Meridian lens? I've been wanting to look at but haven't seen it.

It's this thing:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/File:ON-item-Meridian_Lens.jpg

kevkj

The event is not like the worst thing ever, just not the super amazing event they talked up before release.

Also, I don't think any donut shop in the world can replicate this kind of glazing.

"ZOS did a good job because the servers didn't crash and the dailies are quick to do" is just unreal. You can feel that people are going overboard with the complaints without resorting to getting on your hands and knees.

Imagine going to a concert and saying it was a job well done because the stage didn't collapse and you were able to find parking.

Getsugatenso

this event is terrible

spartaxoxo

Syldras wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Where even is the Meridian lens? I've been wanting to look at but haven't seen it.

It's this thing:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/File:ON-item-Meridian_Lens.jpg

Thank you!

spartaxoxo

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

I don’t understand how you can possibly think ZOS did a good job with this event.

There are so many factual problems with it:
- Fetch quests
- Stupidly easy dolmen bosses that get nuked in 15 secs
- Very small quest areas to farm certain mobs
- Poor rewards and very low drop rates
- Many bugs
- Etc.

And we paid the full price for that. What a shame.

It being a fetch quest is objective. That being a problem is subjective. I don't agree with OP but they're allowed to enjoy them. I would assume some people out there have to like them a lot because video games often have them. Also I'm sure those dolmen bosses would be harder if less people were doing them. It seems to me it's their refusal to scale content properly to the number of people doing it that remains the issue. Oh also, fyi, you don't have to farm the mobs within the quest areas.

Anyway, I'm not really enjoying phase 1. For me, it's the overly low drop rates and generally poor rewards. Also the tasks are too repetitive.

Ingenon

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

TLDR: please see above title.

Thanks for this post! I don't agree with everyone of your details, but overall I think this Writhing Wall event is okay. Not great, and not terrible. I'm making progress on collecting the Wormwrithe armor style pages that are dropping, and also making progress on collecting the Stirk motif pages that are dropping. I'm finding that I have to do more than just three gold boxes per day on some days in order to get one style page and one Stirk motif, but so far I have not had to do all the possible quests on even one alt before I get one of each of them to drop for that day. And then I quit doing the event quests for that day. Oh, and I'm collecting what you called the creature parts, and it looks like at the rate I'm collecting them that I will have collected 25 pet fragments before this event ends.

SilverBride

I like that it gets us out into all of Tamriel, which I think we need more of. I can't think of much else that I am enjoying about it though.

GeneralGrundmann

It's all about expectation management I guess.

Gabriel_H

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

I don’t understand how you can possibly think ZOS did a good job with this event.

There are so many factual problems with it:
- Fetch quests
- Stupidly easy dolmen bosses that get nuked in 15 secs
- Very small quest areas to farm certain mobs
- Poor rewards and very low drop rates
- Many bugs
- Etc.

And we paid the full price for that. What a shame.

- There are 2 types of quest in any game: 1) Go somewhere and get something. 2) Go somewhere and kill something.
- They aren't easy, there are just too many players. ZOS should have lowered the instance cap for Solstice.
- They aren't small. Those are just guides. Coveneant Furs drop from any furry mob in Covenant zones and nearby enemy NPCS.
- ZOS decided that 24 quests per day with low drop rate was better than 4 quests per day with higher rates. MIstake imo, but SIege Camps also have a chance to drop the rewards.
- A few.

It's a typical community event seen in any MMO. It's fine. *shrug*

SCP343

Unironically I wonder, did you get paid by any chance?

SeaGtGruff

Ttree wrote: »

Then you are in the massive minority

Then I'm the massive minority, too. And glad of it.