Do you want more unique one time events like the Writhing Wall Fortress in Phase 3?

BardokRedSnow

So people have been discussing this for a good long while and its pretty obvious most people didn't enjoy phase 1 and 2... I personally definitely never want another event like that again that focuses on repeating dailies. I get that it probably was necessary to some extent due to their new model for content, but it should be stated that its a bad model.

What should also be stated though that this was the coolest public dungeon they've ever done. When it works anyway. There's bugs I didn't personally encounter but I ported to a guildmate's instance where the worm straight up doesn't move to destroy the gate in the Writhing Wall Fortress for example and for those people I feel bad. But my personal experience was very positive. It was crazy, chaotic and for once actually felt like everyone was needed to complete this mission. Also I jumped in as soon as I was able and am pretty sure I was in one of the first instances to do it, and complete phase 3, and that was very surprising to see something I did in game with others actually affect the actual world... Not just my instance but change something for everyone. That was insane to see we actually punched a hole in the wall for everyone.

I wanna see more of stuff like this, where Zos has the balls to make "once in a lifetime events" actually feel that way and you had to be there or you just miss out. That was the most excitement I've had doing any sort of public anything since the first few elsweyr dragons.

I wonder if I'm alone in that or was this also the one cool part of the event for others. Hard to tell since apparently there's a lot of technical difficulties. But for me I've done this public dungeon three times now, first one I've enjoyed that much.

Would you want to see more unique events like this that can't be repeated after some time?

Koshka

I want more engaging content. Writhing wall was not very engaging, despite having a good core idea.

tomofhyrule

No I do not want more one time events

No. Not at all.

There should never be anything that you can't do. If this is supposed to be a game that lasts for a decades, what's the benefit of locking anyone out of anything because of when they started? What's the benefit of saying to the I've-been-subscribed-since-day-one-and-my-mother-just-died-so-I-had-to-take-a-week-to-go-to-the-funeral person that they don't deserve to participate because they're not devoted to the game like the person who just picked up a free code from a streamer yesterday and then never signs in again after they get the thing?

FOMO is utter [snip]. Down with FOMO.

There was nothing wrong with the old Chapter model. There was nothing wrong with the old Chapter celebration events. There was everything wrong with this one - I actually can't think of a single part of the entire Wall event that didn't have some kind of an issue, and most were rather major issues.

Change for the sake of change is not an improvement. Don't fix what ain't broke.

And on the "more engaging" thing - something can be engaging without being some big spectacle. People were really engaged for the Wrothgar story and the Daedric War story. Why? The writing was good. The game was fun. People were enjoying themselves. And here? Grindgrindgrindgrind for a bunch of literal trash rewards (but a 0.00001% chance of a 1M gold house; may the odds be ever in your favor, suckers!) and then zerg through a trial with 100 of your closest friends that's already 3/4 finished when you enter without even understanding what's happening.

Yes, make it engaging. But don't use FOMO and flashbangs as a substitute for story, because that's just surface-level. That's not "engaging," that's just frustrating.
[edited for profanity bypass]

Nemesis7884

I dont like time gated main story content in mmos in general...

BardokRedSnow

I just want more engaging content like this, not necessarily one time only

tomofhyrule wrote: »

No. Not at all.

There should never be anything that you can't do. If this is supposed to be a game that lasts for a decades, what's the benefit of locking anyone out of anything because of when they started? What's the benefit of saying to the I've-been-subscribed-since-day-one-and-my-mother-just-died-so-I-had-to-take-a-week-to-go-to-the-funeral person that they don't deserve to participate because they're not devoted to the game like the person who just picked up a free code from a streamer yesterday and then never signs in again after they get the thing?

FOMO is utter [snip]. Down with FOMO.

There was nothing wrong with the old Chapter model. There was nothing wrong with the old Chapter celebration events. There was everything wrong with this one - I actually can't think of a single part of the entire Wall event that didn't have some kind of an issue, and most were rather major issues.

Change for the sake of change is not an improvement. Don't fix what ain't broke.

And on the "more engaging" thing - something can be engaging without being some big spectacle. People were really engaged for the Wrothgar story and the Daedric War story. Why? The writing was good. The game was fun. People were enjoying themselves. And here? Grindgrindgrindgrind for a bunch of literal trash rewards (but a 0.00001% chance of a 1M gold house; may the odds be ever in your favor, suckers!) and then zerg through a trial with 100 of your closest friends that's already 3/4 finished when you enter without even understanding what's happening.

Yes, make it engaging. But don't use FOMO and flashbangs as a substitute for story, because that's just surface-level. That's not "engaging," that's just frustrating.

Quick note, when I say engaging, I mean that it actually feels like multiple people were needed to accomplish something. I felt involved.

I am commenting on the spectacle factor specifically, I agree writing is important, and wrothgar is probably still the best example of it in eso, plus having actual consequence from your decisions. But that’s you being engaged with the story not necessarily the engagement factor of doing something with others. I hope that the rest of the dlc is much more interesting than the first part of Solstice.

I feel there’s room for spectacle and writing here, and the spectacle for me while cool was second to having to work with the other players to proceed and progress through the public dungeon. That’s also what I mean by being engaging. The act of doing was actually fun.
[edited to remove quote]

tomofhyrule

No I do not want more one time events

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

No. Not at all.

There should never be anything that you can't do. If this is supposed to be a game that lasts for a decades, what's the benefit of locking anyone out of anything because of when they started? What's the benefit of saying to the I've-been-subscribed-since-day-one-and-my-mother-just-died-so-I-had-to-take-a-week-to-go-to-the-funeral person that they don't deserve to participate because they're not devoted to the game like the person who just picked up a free code from a streamer yesterday and then never signs in again after they get the thing?

FOMO is utter [snip]. Down with FOMO.

There was nothing wrong with the old Chapter model. There was nothing wrong with the old Chapter celebration events. There was everything wrong with this one - I actually can't think of a single part of the entire Wall event that didn't have some kind of an issue, and most were rather major issues.

Change for the sake of change is not an improvement. Don't fix what ain't broke.

And on the "more engaging" thing - something can be engaging without being some big spectacle. People were really engaged for the Wrothgar story and the Daedric War story. Why? The writing was good. The game was fun. People were enjoying themselves. And here? Grindgrindgrindgrind for a bunch of literal trash rewards (but a 0.00001% chance of a 1M gold house; may the odds be ever in your favor, suckers!) and then zerg through a trial with 100 of your closest friends that's already 3/4 finished when you enter without even understanding what's happening.

Yes, make it engaging. But don't use FOMO and flashbangs as a substitute for story, because that's just surface-level. That's not "engaging," that's just frustrating.

Quick note, when I say engaging, I mean that it actually feels like multiple people were needed to accomplish something. I felt involved.

I am commenting on the spectacle factor specifically, I agree writing is important, and wrothgar is probably still the best example of it in eso, plus having actual consequence from your decisions. But that’s you being engaged with the story not necessarily the engagement factor of doing something with others. I hope that the rest of the dlc is much more interesting than the first part of Solstice.

I feel there’s room for spectacle and writing here, and the spectacle for me while cool was second to having to work with the other players to proceed and progress through the public dungeon. That’s also what I mean by being engaging. The act of doing was actually fun.

But again, "oh there's a lot of people" isn't necessarily a good thing as much as "this flows narratively."

Consider any trial: you group together with friends/guildies/randos and you know each person has a job to do. You all og in to work together to perform the task. You start at the beginning where you get the basic idea of a story, you have a general direction to go in, and then you solve the mechanics and defeat enemies. You communicate with those around you and strategize. You then get to the final boss and feel a sense of accomplishment.

Now consider the Fortress as it is: you go to the portal in a zerg and Keshu tells you that you need to finish the wings. You start running to the left portal but then a notification pops on your screen that the west portal is done. You saw none of it. You didn't do a thing for it, but now a whole zerg of people blows past you while you wonder where they came from. Nobody says a word. You turn around to go to the east wing and go through the portal, but you picked the big portal instead of the small portal so there are no enemies around and you're running through an empty field until you finally make it to the boss just as it dies, again missing the entire fight. At least you can follow the zerg to the final boss, right? And then you keel over because there was no indication that the water was bad. By the time you resurrect yourself, the zerg has blown on and you're just following behind.

Which one makes you feel like part of a team? Which one makes you feel like you were needed?
[edited to remove quote]

Mai_Selph

No I do not want more one time events

NEVER AGAIN.

The event is broken, the Infernium thing doesn't break any gates, a whole bunch of people cannot progress, and it's a weekend, so it's unlikely it'll be fixed quickly.

I'd rather have the content I paid for be available immediately, not locked behind a grindy event with barely any reward which culminates in a broken PD.

Tavore1138

I just want more engaging content like this, not necessarily one time only

Wife and I had a blast working our way through the fortress just after the wall came down - not sure on the numbers but a lot of people having to mutually figure out multiple sequential mechanics, what was dangerous and not and so on. Like that first bridge where most people stood around getting roasted until we realised that there were platforms off to the sides. And then we'd knocked off two parts of the wall but we're still blocked because there's a third set of ballistas round the back and so on. The lack of coordination made it feel so much more entertaining because we were all discovering it together.

The downside is that it must be a fair amount of work for the devs to build an experience that can only feel like that one time around and can only work when you have enough players eager to hit it together. I'd love to see a couple of these per year if it could be done without diluting other content too much.

Not saying it fully made up for a month of dailies but it was the sort of beautiful chaos i remember from the first couple of months of Cyrodiil before *that* patch ruined it.

colossalvoids

No I do not want more one time events

An open entrance event where you can arrive mid progress and just be recapped about it? No, Ty.

Lugaldu

No I do not want more one time events

I think it's a waste of development time to create such an extensive dungeon that's then unavailable after just one week. Visually, it was very appealing, but I completely fail to see the point of so much work if it's all going to disappear afterward.

Ishtarknows

I just want more engaging content like this, not necessarily one time only

The Writhing Fortress felt and looked like something that took up a fair bit of Dev time (and maybe a big enough part of the budget?). It seems a waste that players can't experience it for the first time/ again at their leisure later, next year etc.

In a year where forums are littered with complaints about the increase in cost for the Season Pass Vs the decrease in content, the choice to get rid of the Fortress only adds to the feeling of being short changed.

MasterSpatula

No I do not want more one time events

If you're going to release content for a limited time, it had better be rock solid. There's no excuse, defense, justification, or rationalization for one iota less. You need to meet the absolute highest standards of quality. And ZOS won't even spend the manhours to reach the minimum acceptable levels of quality.

After this absolute fiasco of a year, no, I don't want them ever to do anything that's reliant on quality.

CoronHR

I just want more engaging content like this, not necessarily one time only

my feeling is that the end of the event was ok but not worth waiting for. if they had put something like this between phase 1 and 2 (which i wrongly thought they were), then it would have made completing phase 1 more rewarding. the worst thing was realising that b/tn phase 1 and 2, there was very little difference, and that' was very bad because phase 1 was full of the horrible repeatable dailies, for which i lost interest fast. i think phase 1 could have been the dailies (and better ones ... crafting was fine b/c it was easy, the siege camp and vitrified souls was ok, and the 4th one -- collecting heavy pelts etc from mobs, was awful and i barely did it). then phase 2 could have led us into what phase 3 offered, but maybe split up a bit, then phase 3 could be the finisher. also, phase 1 and 2 needed to have much faster progession metres. they initially had a slow as xmas progression, which they adjusted to make it faster, but not really fast enough. then about 2/3 of the way through phase 2, suddenly the progression jumped and when i logged back in, phase 2 was done. it was as if zos realised 'oh god this is awful, let's just end it', which were my sentiments exactly. so yeah, lot of things went wrong, very little was right except the end, which was not bad. yeah, i enjoyed the writing fortress, although i was kind of confused along the way but that's ok

licenturion

No I do not want more one time events

Nope this was a big waste of everybody their time and money: players and devs.

The only tiny redeeming thing was the fortress itself but even their my quests and progress are bugged without characters not appearing. A disappointment from start to finish.

I say no to one time fomo things, no to drip feeding paid content and other arbitrary gating mechanisms.

Bethgael

No I do not want more one time events

People paid for this content.

In future, people will pay for the same content... which they will not be able to do any more.

It's grubby. Stop it.

ETA: I'm talking about any FOMO event, mind. No one wants to do this nonsense, specifically, again. But things like public dungeons should NEVER be timed events. If you can't do phasing, then do it differently.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

[snipped quotes]
But again, "oh there's a lot of people" isn't necessarily a good thing as much as "this flows narratively."

Consider any trial: you group together with friends/guildies/randos and you know each person has a job to do. You all og in to work together to perform the task. You start at the beginning where you get the basic idea of a story, you have a general direction to go in, and then you solve the mechanics and defeat enemies. You communicate with those around you and strategize. You then get to the final boss and feel a sense of accomplishment.

Now consider the Fortress as it is: you go to the portal in a zerg and Keshu tells you that you need to finish the wings. You start running to the left portal but then a notification pops on your screen that the west portal is done. You saw none of it. You didn't do a thing for it, but now a whole zerg of people blows past you while you wonder where they came from. Nobody says a word. You turn around to go to the east wing and go through the portal, but you picked the big portal instead of the small portal so there are no enemies around and you're running through an empty field until you finally make it to the boss just as it dies, again missing the entire fight. At least you can follow the zerg to the final boss, right? And then you keel over because there was no indication that the water was bad. By the time you resurrect yourself, the zerg has blown on and you're just following behind.

Which one makes you feel like part of a team? Which one makes you feel like you were needed?

This. In its entirety.

licenturion

No I do not want more one time events

Bethgael wrote: »

People paid for this content.

In future, people will pay for the same content... which they will not be able to do any more.

It's grubby. Stop it.

ETA: I'm talking about any FOMO event, mind. No one wants to do this nonsense, specifically, again. But things like public dungeons should NEVER be timed events. If you can't do phasing, then do it differently.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

[snipped quotes]
But again, "oh there's a lot of people" isn't necessarily a good thing as much as "this flows narratively."

Consider any trial: you group together with friends/guildies/randos and you know each person has a job to do. You all og in to work together to perform the task. You start at the beginning where you get the basic idea of a story, you have a general direction to go in, and then you solve the mechanics and defeat enemies. You communicate with those around you and strategize. You then get to the final boss and feel a sense of accomplishment.

Now consider the Fortress as it is: you go to the portal in a zerg and Keshu tells you that you need to finish the wings. You start running to the left portal but then a notification pops on your screen that the west portal is done. You saw none of it. You didn't do a thing for it, but now a whole zerg of people blows past you while you wonder where they came from. Nobody says a word. You turn around to go to the east wing and go through the portal, but you picked the big portal instead of the small portal so there are no enemies around and you're running through an empty field until you finally make it to the boss just as it dies, again missing the entire fight. At least you can follow the zerg to the final boss, right? And then you keel over because there was no indication that the water was bad. By the time you resurrect yourself, the zerg has blown on and you're just following behind.

Which one makes you feel like part of a team? Which one makes you feel like you were needed?

This. In its entirety.

Yeah especially they have stuff for this already in the game. Either make 20 people queue up through the activity finder and all start when it is ready. Or just put 20 pressure plates at the entrance like they do in trials to start the event together.

shadyjane62

No I do not want more one time events

If I had known...


I would never have resubbed for a year. Total waste of money.

Jaimeh

I just want more engaging content like this, not necessarily one time only

The Writhing Fortress is indeed really cool: the visuals, the fights, the multiple paths and actions, the coordination between participants... but the fact that it is an open instance in which you zone in at a random stage of completion, means that you don't really get to see and enjoy all the fights in their entirety or just the ambience in general, and like another comment said, it's just a rush to the next objective. And the reason for that is they put a time limit to a it (and a title) so people are rushing to get it done. If it was a closed group instance, like the Nymics, so that you would go in with a premade group and clear things sequentially, it would have been so much better (even if it would take longer). It's a pity to finally have a cool overland piece of content that, by design, we can't really engage in and enjoy to the max.

Katheriah

No I do not want more one time events

I would rather have them spend the limited developer resources on permanent additions to the game instead of temporary ones.

Chili_Pepper

No I do not want more one time events

"but a 0.00001% chance of a 1M gold house" - almost a Ber rune drop chance!

Yudo

Well out of context, yes obviously we want them. Events are nice and a chance to bring the community together but if they execute it with painful daily quest over a too long period of time, then ofc no thank you. Done with that for sure.

DinoZavr

No I do not want more one time events

No, thanks!

FOMO is utterly bad for the any MMO game, as the MMOs are for long-term activities.
And it is easy to miss such "once-in-a-lifetime" events due to:
- hospital
- vacations
- deadlines
- business trips
and many other distractions.
Games idea is to make players relax and joyfully waste theirs precious lifetime, but not to nervously wait for alarm clock ring.

Also the sheer number of bugs, which went live is very discouraging, thanks to QA dept.

SilverBride

No I do not want more one time events

I have to say no because I'm afraid they would be grind fests, too. And please, no more dividing the servers! Let us work as the united community we should be.

LunaFlora

I just want more engaging content like this, not necessarily one time only

Yes, but i want it to be permanent or return regularly.

AzuraFan

I just want more engaging content like this, not necessarily one time only

To be clear, I want more engaging content. I don't want more one-time locations. It seems like a waste of development effort when there's less permanent content being released.

jfgribbin

No I do not want more one time events

I don’t want more disappearing content because before Subclassing was confirmed I had started 6 more characters beyond the 3 I already had so that I would have at least one of every class. I started them with the Gold Coast and Hew’s Bane areas first before doing just the very beginning of the main quest but before I go to The Harborage I have been running all of them throughout all of the base game alliance zones; one after the other. So since they weren’t story wise up the proper point I haven’t used any oif them for the new content this year. But by the time their stories bring them to the proper point in the role playing timeline the Writhing Wall will never be and I am not even sure how much of the Season of the Worm Cult will be here either. When this is over will a new quest line be added to Solstice as the reason to go if the worm cult is gone? Plus having disappearing components certainly lowers the desire to start from the beginning again at any point. I still need an imperial character but holding out in the hopes that they would create a new class. I love the idea of time moving forward because if you think about it; Tamriel has had a horrible 2E Year 582. In that one year almost every “evil” daedric prince has attacked at least one of the zones not to mention all of the human plots. I mean that is a very busy year.

Destai

No I do not want more one time events

Absolutely not.

This game has long relied on FOMO and I truly believe that's held it back from greatness. So much work goes into making these things. It feels like such a waste of time for everyone involved. If this is how future content will be, I won't support the game anymore. I've already sat out Phase 2 and now Phase 3 on principle. It was bad enough when it's the crown store rotation, but now with actual content, it's just too far.

I want this game to get back to the greatness we saw peak with Greymoor. The chapter releases were great, such dense content overall. Sadly, I don't think we'll see that again.

Onomos

I just want more engaging content like this, not necessarily one time only

As this whole event shows, people want unique and special events. But considering how bad Phase 1 and 2 were and now how broken Phase 3 is, making it one-time only emphasizes a failure of execution. The way things are, I might not finish the Writhing Fortress because I can't get an instance where the final boss isn't bugged. If something is "limited time," it needs to work 100% of the time during that window.

Ezhh

No I do not want more one time events

Given the work and dev time that goes into content and how limited the amount of new content seems to be, I'd much rather that effort be put into things that will stick around or at least repeat.

This is especially true for story related content. I want to see the whole thing, but now I can't manage to get into an instance that isn't half complete, and even then the instances have been broken and won't reach the end.

When most of the limited event time is spent fighting to even see the content, not fighting within the content itself, it is just bad. And then in one week it is gone forever and I can't even try again, or decide to hold a guild event for it in a few weeks when it's less busy or... anything. It's just gone.

The work could have been put into something permanent that won't make the story incomplete for people who come after.

Ingel_Riday

No I do not want more one time events

No. Not at all. Nope.

I detest FOMO on principle, and I especially detest it when the FOMO is tied to story content.

It's bad enough that someone coming to Solstice a year from now will be out of luck for the siege camps because they don't scale based on number of players and offer such poor rewards that nobody will be bothering to do them anymore. That sucks, but it's suckage that is common. Look at Harrowstorms. Look at a significant portion of new zone World Bosses. Unless you have some VERY supportive guildmates / friends, you better get to it early.

But you can still do it. Just is inconvenient.

The Writhing Fortress is just going to be gone. Even if you could somehow find a zerg group (and good luck with that. I ran it one last time this morning to lock it into my memory banks and the zerg was anemic as heck), it's going to be gone. Will a smaller, scripted, single player version of it be added so that someone coming in later can still experience taking down the wall? We'll see. Maybe ZOS will just edit things so you go straight to the Stirk camp, shoot the lens, blow up the wall, and nobody ever mentions a power core or writhing fortress at all. Like it never happened.

Bleh. I am not a fan of the game going this direction. I don't want new players, or me on my alts for that matter, to get a half-baked experience with noticeable gaps in plot and action just because we didn't jump to it early. "YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS OUT, BRO!!!"

majulook

No I do not want more one time events

While I believe the idea of this one time event was not the issue, and I do not mind things being a little bit of a grind, but this one time event was way over the top. I do not believe that it was worth the amount of money charged.

If they had turned the fortress into a real, and permanent Trial it might have been a little bit better. But I did not like any of this Content Pass.

I actually feel disappointed that the devs spent time on this one time event and not something more substantial.
Considering the price was on par with all of the past Chapters it was not what it should have been.