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Western Skyrim: Now a dead zone?

  • volkeswagon
    volkeswagon
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    I think Harrowstorms are fine during primetime when there are lots of peoole but at non peak times they can be impossible because of the way powerful adds continually spawn regardless if you killed the previous ones or not. That's why so often people end up abandoning them. They are poorly designed and the loot is poor.
    Edited by volkeswagon on October 8, 2020 11:13PM
  • doomette
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    craybest wrote: »
    didn't the event just end? people are probably burned out of the zone for a while, but i still see people everywhere in it. give it a few days.

    That’s me. I’ll be back, there are still some structural furnishing patterns I want. But I had to take a break, if I had to hear that one NPC’s annoying scholar personality snort (seriously, why? why a snort??) one more time, I’d lose my marbles.
  • Enemy-of-Coldharbour
    Enemy-of-Coldharbour
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    I was trying to do an HS last night during prime time and it took forever to find enough players interested in doing it. :/

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  • renne
    renne
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    Raideen wrote: »
    I posted in another post about this issue.
    One day after the event, the current expac is dead.

    I am seriously doubting the player count being healthy at all. World of Warcraft has AI/bots that mimicks PVPers and how they play. PVE is much easier to create AI/bots for. I have to strongly consider that the game is not as heathy as we are led to believe.

    And as I said to your other post, expecting a zone to be equally as busy the day after an event is unreasonable as is not expecting that people who have been grinding that zone for days straight wouldn't be sick of it for now. Players will come back. It's the new starter zone.

    A region being empty immediately after an event is ZERO indication of the health of the player base, it literally just means that players are done with playing the same content over and over for rewards for an event. If you're going to make statements about the player count "the day after an event" is not the proof you're looking for.
  • barney2525
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    IMHO, its gonna be like Elsweyr

    You can't solo a dragon ( as far as I know ), so if there is nothing special to entice the players After the event ends, it will naturally become a ghost town.

    :#
  • barney2525
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    ZOS has added Dragons and Harrowstorms which are almost impossible to solo and a pain to complete without enough people but rewards are total trash. It doesn't make any sense. Why not add sth rewarding that will lure people into farming them? Why not make them drop e.g. an account bound special weapon or armor set with a very low drop rate, like those we get in Arenas? I think sth like that would make people really motivated to go back to farming them.

    Most of the time Harrowstorms and Dragons are dead areas. Yesterday I visited N.Elsweyr to farm the lunar phases lead and there were 3 Dragons spawned and 0 battles taking place. And when a battle finally started, we were 4 people against the dragon.



    Rather than thinking in terms of specific items and/or gear, maybe the better option is Currency. Farm Dragons/Storms for telvar or AP or some new currency to be able to buy stuff from a vendor. Maybe the PvE player would have more interest in joining in PvP IF they could get access to PvP gear First - just to be competitive.

    IMHO

    :#
  • Raideen
    Raideen
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    renne wrote: »
    Raideen wrote: »
    I posted in another post about this issue.
    One day after the event, the current expac is dead.

    I am seriously doubting the player count being healthy at all. World of Warcraft has AI/bots that mimicks PVPers and how they play. PVE is much easier to create AI/bots for. I have to strongly consider that the game is not as heathy as we are led to believe.

    And as I said to your other post, expecting a zone to be equally as busy the day after an event is unreasonable as is not expecting that people who have been grinding that zone for days straight wouldn't be sick of it for now. Players will come back. It's the new starter zone.

    A region being empty immediately after an event is ZERO indication of the health of the player base, it literally just means that players are done with playing the same content over and over for rewards for an event. If you're going to make statements about the player count "the day after an event" is not the proof you're looking for.

    Well here we are towards the end of the week and its not any better.

    This did not happen last year in northern Elsweyr. After the dragon event was over there were still people to be found, obviously not as many but you could get a dragon down.

    In Skyrim it's a ghost town.

    The issue is not "burn out" from the event, I mean sure there ARE people who feel that way but its not the primary cause. The issue is the rewards being lackluster and the content not scaling to the group of people like dolmens.
  • fred4
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    I bought Greymoor, but what's a Harrowstorm? Also: There was an event? Nope. Don't answer that, but forgive me for thinking the expansion was about the mythics. I'd forgotten Western Skyrim even exists. [ <--- when a PvPer reads the General forum. ]
  • AdamBourke
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    I liked the way Dolmens and Abyssal Pearls worked, where they scale difficulty by the number of players.

    They made a good move with dragons and harrowstorms being different in gameplay style from the dolmens / pearls, but not with the difficulty. They are fine during events (With harrowstorms i'm not going to go as far as to say they are fun...), but impossible when the zone is empty.

    They should nerf harrowstorms (IMO, they should reduce the health/attack of the minibosses, but make them spawn more frequently as more players arrive, and additionally give the witch pikes lower health, but add a healing effect (maybe via the spirits) and they should make the reward from killing dragons much larger- to draw more people to Elsweyr. (I would think that dragon farming should be one of the best PvE gold farms in the game, and maybe a good source of crafting/furnishing materials as well).
    PS4 - EU

    Please put the Eyevea/EarthForge wayshrines back on the map?
  • Vevvev
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    barney2525 wrote: »
    IMHO, its gonna be like Elsweyr

    You can't solo a dragon ( as far as I know ), so if there is nothing special to entice the players After the event ends, it will naturally become a ghost town.

    :#

    You can solo a dragon and a harrowstorm, but it's not something that will take a reasonable amount of time or something a non-veteran kitted player could pull off. It'll be a slug fest that will take over 30 minutes to do for not that much reward.
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  • Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo
    Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo
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    A bit of a let down (my feeling on Greymoor)
  • starlizard70ub17_ESO
    starlizard70ub17_ESO
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    Western Skyrim is like a lot of zones really. The quests and story maybe fun the first time or two, but the WB and hotspot (ie. dolmens, etc) grind aren't usually worth the effort after that. Most zones you visit during festival times and when picking up T-maps or surveys. Very few zones are active like Gold Coast and Hew's Bane year round. Oddly enough, I always see a lot of people running around Coldharbor when I'm there.
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  • RaddlemanNumber7
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    At last, I can enjoy Solitude :D

    Reminds me of the old Cadwell zones.
    PC EU
  • phwaap
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    Event burn out for sure but the zone is so boring and certainly not lucrative.
  • ThePlayer
    ThePlayer
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    The more time passes the more boring the game becomes, and yet ZOS has the courage to talk about TamrielTogether - ESO's Group which should be updated, a massive update!
    Edited by ThePlayer on October 9, 2020 6:15PM
  • ForeverJenn
    ForeverJenn
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    It's not an interesting zone because instead of focusing on Nords, we're mostly dealing with vampires....AGAIN. Lyris isn't interesting enough to care about like Tharn and Darien were to compell you to bother.

    It's a gorgeous zone suffering from dull writing imo.
    Edited by ForeverJenn on October 9, 2020 8:33PM
  • Grandchamp1989
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    Problem 1 - City layout
    It doesn't have good crafting spot like Rimmen or Alinor
    It doesn't have guild traders near everything you need (including shrine) like Mournhold

    Problem 2. Wayshrines are still annoying, you literally have to run around they're always horse riding distance from anything important. Not like Deshaan where there's wayshrines near literally everything.

    Problem 3. there's no harrowstorm map marking like for dragons and when you finally spot a harrowstorm, you have to spam chat because they're not really soloable.

    Skryim is just really inconveniant. and when it's competing with a lot of other zones it's no wonder people abandon it.
  • Lumsdenml
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    Raideen wrote: »
    I posted in another post about this issue.
    One day after the event, the current expac is dead.

    I am seriously doubting the player count being healthy at all. World of Warcraft has AI/bots that mimicks PVPers and how they play. PVE is much easier to create AI/bots for. I have to strongly consider that the game is not as heathy as we are led to believe.

    The population is in constant flux, obviously, but the steam chart says it is just about as strong as it has been (though it has backed off a bit from the peak 6 months ago...

    https://steamcharts.com/app/306130#All
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  • Varana
    Varana
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    Morwaenna wrote: »
    It's boring waiting ages for a Harrowstorm for such awful rewards. RIP Skyrim.

    So, how many people still don't know that Harrowstorm spawns are random and the fastest way to do them is to ask in zone where the active one is and go there?

    How exactly are players supposed to find out that there's always one active?
    Lots of people asking in zone "is there a storm up?"
    Not once someone asking "which storm is up?"
    Not once did someone answer with "there's always one up".
  • Jaraal
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    Lyris isn't interesting enough to care about like Tharn and Darien were to compell you to bother.

    Plus the base game status of Lyris for many of us lends an air of incredulity and disbelief in the whole story.

    I haven't bothered with the Western Skyrim main quest for this very reason. They should have introduced a new hero, rather than devaluing previous quests.


    Edited by Jaraal on October 9, 2020 10:39PM
  • whitecrow
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    Another option would be to make enemy bodies lootable. For dolmens and geysers we get two opportunities for decent loot: the final boss and the chest/shell. And you can get a little loot from some of the lesser adds. The only thing you can get loot from at storms are the blobs and they disappear quickly. At least put some stuff on the final boss!
  • Lunerdog
    Lunerdog
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    EU primetime Friday evening...

    I'd been at that Harrowstorm for a while too. :(

    nhachkC.jpg


    Quest givers.

    H9wib1h.jpg
    Edited by Lunerdog on October 9, 2020 11:52PM
  • SeaGtGruff
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    Problem 1 - City layout
    It doesn't have good crafting spot like Rimmen or Alinor
    It doesn't have guild traders near everything you need (including shrine) like Mournhold

    I don't understand why everyone thinks Rimmen and Alinor have such great crafting areas.

    Rimmen's crafting station layout is okay, although it's easy for me to get turned around and head in the wrong direction when I pull away from certain crafting stations-- in particular, the Clothing, Blacksmithing, and Woodworking stations, but sometimes also the Enchanting station. Still, it's usually possible to complete all seven writs pretty quickly. But then the turn-in spot isn't as close as I'd prefer, and if you need to fence or launder anything you stole from the containers around the turn-in crates then you've got to go out of your way to visit the Outlaw's Refuge.

    As for Alinor, you have to weave in and out of the nooks where the various crafting stations are placed-- which isn't so bad, but then you have to navigate around the crazy Altmer architectural style that puts those square or rectangular structures inside of passageways, such that you have to circle around to the left or right. And if you're crafting on a low-level character who's still taking riding lessons, you have two ways to go from the turn-in crates to the stable, one which involves yet another crazy passageway with a structure in the middle, and the other which requires going out of your way as though you're going to the bank-- which is also a bit distant from the crafting area and turn-in crates-- and neither of which could possibly be called "a short distance away."

    As long as you don't need to worry about riding lessons, have your own banking and merchant assistants, and aren't in the habit of pilfering everything, then Rimmen and Alinor aren't that bad. But in my opinion Vivec City easily beats both of them.

    Solitude's crafting setup isn't that horrible-- not nearly as bad as, say, Wayrest. I usually let each of my characters craft in whatever city they're currently based out of-- Daggerfall, Vulkhel Guard, Solitude, Rimmen, Alinor, Wayrest, Vivec City, etc.-- mostly because I want to experience for myself how convenient or inconvenient each city's layout is. Even the inconvenient layouts aren't so bad once you get used to them and develop whatever route and routine works best for you.

    The worst thing about Solitude, in my opinion, is the Outlaw's Refuge. You've got to go down, turn, go down, turn, go down, turn, go down, turn, etc. And then when you're done, you've got to do it all over again in reverse.
    I've fought mudcrabs more fearsome than me!
  • Sylvermynx
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    Vivec is the best for easy crafting. I don't use Outlaw Refuges much, but Vivec's is also very easy. And, on top of that.... the bankers have no load screen....
  • rnklippel
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    barney2525 wrote: »
    Rather than thinking in terms of specific items and/or gear, maybe the better option is Currency. Farm Dragons/Storms for telvar or AP or some new currency to be able to buy stuff from a vendor. Maybe the PvE player would have more interest in joining in PvP IF they could get access to PvP gear First - just to be competitive.

    IMHO

    :#

    Oooh... what if they dropped transmute crystals? That could attract some more players.
  • MeltyLotus
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    It's not the player base as it is just amount of content. ESO has so much freaking stuff to do. Players are spread thin.

    Hell there's 5 starting zone 7 is you count the 3 factions. 7 starting zones
  • idk
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    A lot of people were just in there every day, day in and day out. Of course, the population will drop after such an event because so many are burned out from doing the same thing every single day.
  • Ratzkifal
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    Avoranti wrote: »
    PS4 NA,

    It’s sad to see. Since the event has ended, Western Skyrim has become even more of a ghost town than Murkmire or Clockwork City. Can’t even complete the dailies because there just aren’t enough players in the zone to help. The harrowstorms wouldn’t be so bad to solo if the crows weren’t so OP. Are the other platforms experiencing a similar situation in Skyrim? Just curious.

    Yeah, I noticed it too. But I also think there are too many phases of Western Skyrim around right now so the players are spread unnecessarily thin as well. A zone with so much group content shouldn't really be spread out that thinly.
    This Bosmer was tortured to death. There is nothing left to be done.
  • Palidon
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    It is always that way. Event on crowded. Event ends dead.
  • Swordancer
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    HS are hard to do with small group and rewards are usless. There is no point to grind them. WB are easy to solo, boring quests, usless zone sets, weak opponents. Large house that cannot be bought with gold. This zone is incredibly boring to me.
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