PTS Update 41 - Feedback Thread for the Gold Road Prologue Quest

ZOS_GinaBruno · January 30

This is the official feedback thread for the Gold Road prologue quest, Prisoner’s of Fate. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

How did you initially acquire the quest? (ie: was it through the Crown Store or from the NPC)
Did you have any trouble starting or completing the quest?
In what order did you investigate the sites?
If you played on a copied character, did you already have the Necrom main story completed on that character?
Do you have any other general feedback?

Destai · January 30

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the Gold Road prologue quest, Prisoner’s of Fate. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:
How did you initially acquire the quest? (ie: was it through the Crown Store or from the NPC)

Did you have any trouble starting or completing the quest?

In what order did you investigate the sites?

If you played on a copied character, did you already have the Necrom main story completed on that character?

Do you have any other general feedback?

Please don't put the questgiver in Vulkhel Guard or similar locations. There was a change in the last few patches where NPCs were removed from those areas, and put in a single lore-appropriate location. Please, pretty please, do the same thing here. Thanks!

chessalavakia_ESO · January 30

How did you initially acquire the quest? (ie: was it through the Crown Store or from the NPC)

NPC

Did you have any trouble starting or completing the quest?

No

In what order did you investigate the sites?

Grahtwood- Stonefalls- Reaper's March

If you played on a copied character, did you already have the Necrom main story completed on that character?

No

Do you have any other general feedback?

It really doesn't feel great to be in situation after situation where you are going to save the fate of everything from a "threat" and you aren't able to engage the "threat" when it's standing right in front of you.

RaddlemanNumber7 · January 31

How did you initially acquire the quest? (ie: was it through the Crown Store or from the NPC)
Crown Store

Did you have any trouble starting or completing the quest?
No

In what order did you investigate the sites?
Stonefalls Grahtwood then Reaper's March

If you played on a copied character, did you already have the Necrom main story completed on that character?
I'm using a Template

Do you have any other general feedback?
I like all the lore presented, especially the nostalgic stuff from old TES games.

If that final boss fight is in an instanced location I think a lot of players will struggle to complete it on their own. Some unexpected and unexplained mechanics there. This is a once-and-done questline, not a Trial we need to learn through repetition.

Some of the audio was a little indistinct outside of dialogues. I struggled to make some of it out. The three self-sacrificing NPC's in particular. Also, most if not all of the NPC speech relating to the prologue wasn't showing up in the chat text window.

In the last dialogue with Torversard he kept swinging in and out of view every time he had something to say.

James-Wayne · February 1

How did you initially acquire the quest? (ie: was it through the Crown Store or from the NPC)
I used to love finding the character in game but with so many starter NPCs now days I just go Crown store

Did you have any trouble starting or completing the quest?
None that stopped me in anyway but I did notice in the final scene when your talking to Torvo he's animation was jumping forward out of camera view and back again like constantly while he is talking to you. Didnt stop me from completing the quest.
EDIT: There was also one instance after the first location I did where the portal was going to be created but the portal was already there, look weird but just an animation or scripting thing.

In what order did you investigate the sites?
Stonefalls, Reaper's March, Grahtwood which I thought was almost the perfect order to do them but I have not done the others so dont know how different it is.

If you played on a copied character, did you already have the Necrom main story completed on that character?
Yes I already had the Necrom story totally complete.... what a cracker ending to the prologue, probably the best prologue I have played if I'm honest. From set building to story to the final outcome, bella bella bella!!

Do you have any other general feedback?
I dont want to drop too many spoilers here and I did provide internal feedback through /bug but WOW, I can totally see you designing a complete zone underwater now, its very much achievable and reminds me of our in depth discussion back in 2016 I think where we discussed if swimming underwater in ESO is possible.... yes it kind of is now

That final set piece that contains ***** looked so GOOD!!! I cant wait for Gold Road now!! Hats off to the Prologue team!

Kendaric · February 1

[*] How did you initially acquire the quest? (ie: was it through the Crown Store or from the NPC)

I got the quest to meet Leramil from the store

[*] Did you have any trouble starting or completing the quest?

As I using a freshly created character without CP, I had some problems with the Recollection guy (Grahtwood) and the shard manticora. In the Grahtwood fight, Beragon's synergy didn't seem to do anything when I activated it.

[*] In what order did you investigate the sites?

Stonefalls > Grahtwood > Reaper's March

[*] If you played on a copied character, did you already have the Necrom main story completed on that character?

As stated above, I created a fresh level one character and did not apply CP

[*] Do you have any other general feedback?

Yes

I loved the visit to the Holamayan (?) monastary, I've wanted to get in there since the Morrowind chapter.
The dialog with the Dunmer Gavayn (?) felt strange, I obviously hadn't played through the Necrom story, yet in his dialog it was implied that I been working with Leramil and him before. I think the wording was "I'm glad to see you continue working with Leramil". This felt rather strange for a newly created character.

Tyrvarion · February 2

How did you initially acquire the quest? (ie: was it through the Crown Store or from the NPC)
-Did prologue twice - once I used crownstore, once I found an npc in Elden Root.

Did you have any trouble starting or completing the quest?
No issues were encountered when it comes to elements vital to the quest progression

In what order did you investigate the sites?
Elsweyr->Valenwood -Morrowind and Elsweyr->Morrowind->Valenwood

If you played on a copied character, did you already have the Necrom main story completed on that character?
Both times on template character, I am EU player.

Do you have any other general feedback?

-The Nine Coruscations Volmue 1 book was impossible to interact with.
-Some Daedra have Vaermina banners

I assume Ithelia one is not yet created, but story would suggest those Daedra are Ithelia aligned

-Occasionally npcs dialogues were interrupted (maybe twice through the entire questline) by other events from the storyline and it was impossible to get them to say the same thing.
-Story and lore bits revealed all feel really promising.
-Monastery remains locked after the questline. I suppose it would make sense for story reasons, but it's a shame for its such a nice location to revisit.

Aliyavana · February 5

How did you initially acquire the quest? (ie: was it through the Crown Store or from the NPC)
Crown Store
Did you have any trouble starting or completing the quest?
No
In what order did you investigate the sites?
Left to Right
If you played on a copied character, did you already have the Necrom main story completed on that character?
N/A
Do you have any other general feedback?
I really liked the inclusion of the Senche-raht Old Ri'Jhaad in Reaper's March. It makes sense for other furstocks to be in Elsweyr aside from the playable Cathay. Should consider populating older Elsweyr zones with the newer furstocks, specifically khenarthi's roost and reaper's march

DoofusMax · February 6

Source: Crown Store starter

Starting: no major problems. I tend to look at the journal before anything else and was in Rimmen at the time, so I headed for the local Outlaw's Refuge (per the journal) and found nothing. I did note that the quest marker was on the local Navigator, which was a good clue that the two were not in agreement, but checked the Refuge anyway. The Navigator took me through a couple of stops before I ended up in Mournhold and in the correct Outlaw's Refuge, where I was able to start the quest with no problems.

Order: I don't recall, but I did Grahtwood last. It's been a few days, but I believe all of the dialogue up to that point kind of pointed there, so I took the less obvious choices first. The stops actually make more sense if done in a particular order with Grahtwood first (the clues were kind of obvious), but it still mostly made sense when done in the "wrong" order.

Character: copied character and the one who has done all of the base-game and chapter stories EXCEPT Necrom's (did that on a different character). This is probably going to come across as a bit brutal, but the writers' working assumption is that the player will have completed Necrom's story before doing Gold Road is a very bad assumption.

Narratively, this is a beastly difficult needle to thread if you're going with a "go anywhere, do anything" approach to story sequence. You need to give the player enough information to get them interested in (and hopefully invested in) the story you're about to tell, but you don't want to ruin their enjoyment of the content they haven't done because you can't say, "come back and talk to me after you've gone over there and done that."

"Prisoner of Fate" hits the major plot points of the Necrom story right out of the gate. Speaking for the character who did the Prologue, no, they hadn't signed an agreement with Hermeus Mora, they had zero idea who Torvesard is or what he wanted, they had never heard of Ithelia, they did not know what glyphics are, they had never entered the Mythos, but they did sort of remember Leramil as the weird lady standing by the Necrom wayshrine saying, "Fate needs you, proxy" during the Telvanni event (I don't think they did the Prologue for Necrom, either). Personally, I'm just adding these as more points in favor of my head-canon explanation that all of ESO is happening during a Dragon Break. We'll just wait and see what kind of bow y'all put on all of this when the time comes.

The story told by the Prologue is quite good and I think it's more than good enough to get a player interested in the Gold Road story (too bad you can't put big "Spoiler Warning for Necrom" tags around it). It was a fun mission and I ran into nothing other than some not-quite-aligned textures and Torvesard's weird animations during his conversations. All in all, it's very well done and very enjoyable, and I have a head-canon for the stuff that didn't make sense at the time.

ThelerisTelvanni · February 12

How did you initially acquire the quest? (ie: was it through the Crown Store or from the NPC)
Crownstore

Did you have any trouble starting or completing the quest?
No

In what order did you investigate the sites?
Valenwood -> Elsweyr ->Morrowind

If you played on a copied character, did you already have the Necrom main story completed on that character?
played on a premade one

Do you have any other general feedback?
It was kind of strage to find a shrine of Azura behind a fleshgarden. Azura is considered one of the "good" Daedra and having her shrine behind something like that flesh garden, feels kind of wrong. Wehnever I met her Azura, she was kind and helpful. She was never crule.

Marquesta · April 7

How did you initially acquire the quest?
Crown Store
Did you have any trouble starting or completing the quest?
No trouble starting, but I couldn't complete it. It glitched at Ithelia's prison. I can follow thru the portal, but there are no NPCs, just an empty room
In what order did you investigate the sites?
Stonefalls, Reaper's March, Grahtwood
If you played on a copied character, did you already have the Necrom main story completed on that character?
I did not play on a copied character, but I do not have Necrom main story completed.
Do you have any other general feedback?
I ran into a few glitches along the way, but none quest-ending until I followed Torvesard into the prison.