Bastion Nymic - Criticisms and General Thoughts

CoolBlast3 · June 2023

In this post I'll try to clearly elaborate on why Bastion Nymic, and the content surrounding it, is some very annoying and poorly designed content.

The Daily Quest

To enter Bastion Nymic, you need to kill FIVE wandering world bosses. At first, this may sound like a chore- especially if you're familiar with Deadlands and Galen's world bosses. It is, indeed, a chore- but for even more reasons than one expects.

Requires you to hunt down and kill the wandering seekers. Each kill drops 1 vial of essence, which you need a total of 5.
You cannot collect more than five at any given time, and you can only collect them when the daily quest is active.
They are everywhere. I swear to gods, I could not explore the Peninsula without being pulled into combat by one every minute. Even if I was nowhere near it, a tentacle would always spawn near me. This pulled me out of antiquities, dialogue, etc so many times. Once, two spawned near me at the same time and another time, I was attacked straight out of a wayshrine- like, I didn't even leave the wayshrine's blue flame! This is obnoxious

Suggestions to fix:

Change these spawn chances, please, they're so over abundant. Or make it a guarantee non-wandering spawn at X locations. These are too annoying to remain as is.
Reduce the amount of seeker essence needed, preferably to one.
Allow essences to be stockpiled, regardless of quest being active or not.

Bastion Nymic
I will only speak of the Mora wing, and a bit of the Vaermina wing.
Solo Issues:

This is basically un-soloable. At the very least, Mora's wing is. The Herald final boss puts you into a stunlock which eventually one shots you. I believe it's called "Brain Drain" or "Mind Drain" something like that.
If you, for any reason, disconnect or crash, the entirety of your progress is reset. My game CTD'd 30 minutes into Vaermina's wing and I lost all progress. I restarted and it put me in Mora's wing.

Those are the main criticisms for solo-play, as whilst I wouldn't mind some of the difficulty being toned down, it's group content after all. It should however not be literally impossible to solo.
General Issues

It's a chore. Doing this entire debacle every day for 30 days to get the 30 dailies achievement is insane. That entire 30 dailies achievement should be scrapped and just deleted. It's a chore with no rewards at all.
The difficulty is hard, sure, but that's not what makes it boring. On Mora's wing, every gods damn island has the equivalent of a mini-boss on it with constant waves of ads. I'm sure this is less bad with a full party, but it's still a drag to have the equivalent of a dungeon mini-boss every thirty seconds.

Suggestions to fix:

Normal and Veteran difficulties. Split it up, add greater rewards to vet, but allow an easier version to exist for those who wish to solo or simply grind the horrid 30 dailies achievement.
Remove anything which makes it literally impossible to solo.
Remove or dial down the 30 dailies achievement. With the way this is currently designed, it's a chore with no benefit.
Fix progress being reset on crash or d/c

The Good
I don't want to be entirely negative, so here's what I found good about this.

The design. Bastion Nymic is visually gorgeous and an awe to behold. ZOS did an incredible job with in the Mora and Vaermina areas. Can't speak for Peryite's as I have not seen it.
The puzzles are fun! I liked finding those "strange books" and eventually finding out I had to go back to them to check their symbols and unlock the portal to the second puzzle, which was a fun and neat memory game! Due to losing progress on CTD, I only partially did Vaermina's, but the whole spirit realm to destroy orbs which would eventually unlock something else was neat too!
I appreciate the attempt at harder content, even if done...in a not so good way

And just one more remark, this is not what people mean when we say "we want harder overworld content". I do not want ZOS to look at this and go "Damn ,see guys, I told you, you guys didn't want harder quest content!". What most people mean is that we'd like to do story quests without a final boss dying in 2 light attacks, not...whatever this ended up being.

I hope I got my points across well, and would like to see about what others think!

xclassgaming · June 2023

Agreed, this event is very annoying, it needs a HUGE overhaul.

Cireous · June 2023

I'm sad that this is the first Chapter without incursions, my favorite content. So, instead of a new dungeon, in a dungeon DLC, can you give us an Overland incursion in its place? Give those the switch-er-oo, too. It's only fair.

Are there at least roaming world bosses in either of the zones? I didn't see any on the PTR.

xclassgaming · June 2023

Cireous wrote: »

I'm sad that this is the first Chapter without incursions, my favorite content. So, instead of a new dungeon, in a dungeon DLC, can you give us an Overland incursion in its place? Give those the switch-er-oo, too. It's only fair.

Are there at least roaming world bosses in either of the zones? I didn't see any on the PTR.

Yes, like mentioned in the post, the things you have to kill to enter the area, the Seekers are basically wandering WBs.

Cireous · June 2023

xclassgaming wrote: »

Cireous wrote: »

I'm sad that this is the first Chapter without incursions, my favorite content. So, instead of a new dungeon, in a dungeon DLC, can you give us an Overland incursion in its place? Give those the switch-er-oo, too. It's only fair.

Are there at least roaming world bosses in either of the zones? I didn't see any on the PTR.

Yes, like mentioned in the post, the things you have to kill to enter the area, the Seekers are basically wandering WBs.

I do not agree.

The Seekers lack that certain tall, looming, extreme wandering ambience I love scouring the landscape to locate.

Taggund · June 2023

CoolBlast3 wrote: »

[*] Requires you to hunt down and kill the wandering seekers. Each kill drops 1 vial of essence, which you need a total of 5.
[*] You cannot collect more than five at any given time, and you can only collect them when the daily quest is active.
[*] They are everywhere. I swear to gods, I could not explore the Peninsula without being pulled into combat by one every minute. Even if I was nowhere near it, a tentacle would always spawn near me. This pulled me out of antiquities, dialogue, etc so many times. Once, two spawned near me at the same time and another time, I was attacked straight out of a wayshrine- like, I didn't even leave the wayshrine's blue flame! This is obnoxious
[/list]

These are especially annoying. No longer is it safe to park at a wayshrine while taking a quick afk. Attacked while excavating an antiquity, attacked while fishing no where close to where a seeker was being fought.

Apart from that, I'm still thinking I'll skip Bastion Nymic events unless there is something I really need in one. It's not a world event, it's a dungeon event.

Credible_Joe · June 2023

I was under the impression these world events were a measure to address overland criticisms, most of which are that overland content is too easy.

However, if you can't solo them, then the whole point is moot, and overland difficulty is exactly the same. Just because these events are in the overland doesn't mean it addresses the core issue of a gameplay loop entirely disconnected from your build and skill-- if you can't do the content anyway, it's still disconnected.

This makes me very anxious about the endless dungeon slotted for the third fourth quarter. If there are hard group checks, it entirely defeats the purpose of accessibility. More content needs to be solo-able.

We should be rewarded for grouping up, not punished for playing alone.

CoolBlast3 · June 2023

Credible_Joe wrote: »

I was under the impression these world events were a measure to address overland criticisms, most of which are that overland content is too easy.

However, if you can't solo them, then the whole point is moot, and overland difficulty is exactly the same. Just because these events are in the overland doesn't mean it addresses the core issue of a gameplay loop entirely disconnected from your build and skill-- if you can't do the content anyway, it's still disconnected.

This makes me very anxious about the endless dungeon slotted for the third quarter. If there are hard group checks, it entirely defeats the purpose of accessibility. More content needs to be solo-able.

We should be rewarded for grouping up, not punished for playing alone.

Fully agree. And again, even if these are "a measure to address overland criticisms, most of which are that overland content is too easy." that's just ZOS using it as an excuse. Since what most people complain about is story content, and how 1 shotting a god with a light attack removes all tension from the story.
As for the endless dungeon, ZOS advertised it as a singleplayer with optional co-op experience, so I'm expecting that to not be as difficult as this.

After doing a few more bastion nymic, I've realized the final boss *might* be soloable, but the one-shot mechanic is not telegraphed in the slightest, and with all the ads the boss spawns, the boss itself is very difficult to see mid-combat. Without addons, this is hell on earth to detect certain attacks coming your way

Gruumsh1 · June 2023

TBH the only disappointing thing about Bastions is the reward - or genuine lack, thereof. All of the things mentioned in the OP don't bother me, they even help break up the monotony of previous zones - I like that. The effort a Bastion entails, however, should reward you for it. It doesn't.

colossalvoids · June 2023

Credible_Joe wrote: »

I was under the impression these world events were a measure to address overland criticisms, most of which are that overland content is too easy.

However, if you can't solo them, then the whole point is moot

This makes me very anxious about the endless dungeon slotted for the third fourth quarter. If there are hard group checks, it entirely defeats the purpose of accessibility.

But it's soloable, was even before any fixes on first PTS cycle. Though it's not addressing one shoting daedric gods... At least it's more memorable of recent events, special in its own way.

I believe endless dungeon was confirmed to be solo or maximum duo experience, but I'm not sure it's something that more easy going players should look for, as it's 99.9% will rise difficulty at every "lap" or whatever it would be, makes no sense without something like that in place.

Quethrosar · June 2023

I do not know how you solo the necro. Get it to 30% 3 of him is just nuts.

Granden_Woodleafson · October 2023

Can't believe out of all of provinces in this game, the latest, DLC Necrom and the associated event is a step back from the quality we've seen before. I was expecting something really great for this DLC and event but instead we got Bastion Nymic (BN) and the idiotic Seekers involved in it.

Albeit the Telvanni Peninsula is a beautiful place that much is evident but what a shame to have such a [snip] event that bottlenecks everyone at the BN. [snip] you raid a stupid little chest which has nothing more than the other Necrom solo-able dailies. So why do it? It's a waste of time [snip]

[edited for bashing and petition/protest]

Granden_Woodleafson · October 2023

Bashing? Petition/protest? Another reason I'm quitting this ______game (you fill in the blank). You got these developers who play god, editing any negative feedback, I'll bash it as much as I like, on different boards, go try to edit that! lol Yes, t's been a waste of time and money, there's better games to play that are more rewarding. ESO rewards gangs, PVE'ers are their well-primed prey, primed for falling for ______ events like well-known Secrets of the Telvanni (there's no secret there just gangs).

Malprave · October 2023

I liked the challenge of Bastion Nymic and enjoyed playing it. After soloing it though on my character I use for arena style content there didn’t seem to be any reason to repeat it. There should be some kind of decent reward for doing it. Unfortunately it won’t get revisited because of the pending Endless Archive drop.

Necrotech_Master · October 2023

Malprave wrote: »

I liked the challenge of Bastion Nymic and enjoyed playing it. After soloing it though on my character I use for arena style content there didn’t seem to be any reason to repeat it. There should be some kind of decent reward for doing it. Unfortunately it won’t get revisited because of the pending Endless Archive drop.

there are a bunch of rewards unique to the nymics, but the drop rates for them are pretty abyssmal

Arizona_Steve · October 2023

I dunno, would love to see more mounts as random rewards, but then there's the absurdity of pulling a mount out of a chest. Maybe I overthink things. Or the chest interiors exist in more than three dimensions...

blktauna · October 2023

Gruumsh1 wrote: »

TBH the only disappointing thing about Bastions is the reward - or genuine lack, thereof. All of the things mentioned in the OP don't bother me, they even help break up the monotony of previous zones - I like that. The effort a Bastion entails, however, should reward you for it. It doesn't.

Its a hell of a lot of work for very little return. $ of those annoying seekers just to get in is bad enough but there really is no tangible reward once you thrash your way through.

Don't get me wrong, Its a lot of fun and gives a nice difficulty for people like me, but in the end you'd best just be happy doing the fights as that's your real reward.

Malprave · October 2023

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Malprave wrote: »

I liked the challenge of Bastion Nymic and enjoyed playing it. After soloing it though on my character I use for arena style content there didn’t seem to be any reason to repeat it. There should be some kind of decent reward for doing it. Unfortunately it won’t get revisited because of the pending Endless Archive drop.

there are a bunch of rewards unique to the nymics, but the drop rates for them are pretty abyssmal

Gear? We’re talking gear here. There’s nothing. You’re talking about dyes and furnishing plans and crap like that? Even if I were a guy who’d spent some time working on a couple different homes, or liked looking at my characters in the mirror(and maybe I am) that’s not enough motivation.

Necrotech_Master · October 2023

Malprave wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Malprave wrote: »

I liked the challenge of Bastion Nymic and enjoyed playing it. After soloing it though on my character I use for arena style content there didn’t seem to be any reason to repeat it. There should be some kind of decent reward for doing it. Unfortunately it won’t get revisited because of the pending Endless Archive drop.

there are a bunch of rewards unique to the nymics, but the drop rates for them are pretty abyssmal

Gear? We’re talking gear here. There’s nothing. You’re talking about dyes and furnishing plans and crap like that? Even if I were a guy who’d spent some time working on a couple different homes, or liked looking at my characters in the mirror(and maybe I am) that’s not enough motivation.

if your after gear, then no, there is no reason to continue doing it

i more or less only did enough to get the achievement for doing 30, havent done many of them since because all the other rewards that are unique (furnishing blueprints, furnishings, etc) are way too low drop rate for the effort it takes to run them to bother continuing