Writhing wall incomplete?

Gracous · October 14

What would happen if the the players did not complete the writhing wall event? One content creator suggested that we not complete it and see what happens.
So, What happens if it remains incomplete? Not that it will but it would be interesting to see what would happen if it did.
Thoughts?

Soarora · October 14

ZOS’ claim is that if it remains incomplete, we’d never get into east Solstice. Comments I’ve seen around here suggest players think ZOS will fudge the numbers anyways.

Finedaible · October 14

Worm Cult can have Solstice. The island doesn't seem to have much value if the rewards are any indication.

Now that I think about it... What is the strategic value in claiming Solstice anyway?

Soarora · October 14

Finedaible wrote: »

Worm Cult can have Solstice. The island doesn't seem to have much value if the rewards are any indication.

Now that I think about it... What is the strategic value in claiming Solstice anyway?

I theorize that it was chosen by the worm cult for being some island that most people have never heard of that would be difficult to get to (would have to go around Black Marsh, but Elsweyr has dragons.. so boat from Valenwood and hope the dragons don’t care about the water or go down from Morrowind). No idea how it is that we’ve heard of it now that I think about it.

kevkj · October 14

We need the leaders of the Stirk Fellowship and Worm Cult to sit down to work out a sustainable two state solution.

Sarannah · October 14

Not completing the writhing wall event would never ever happen... For one, many players want to get to eastern solstice, so they are doing many dailies(the event zones/quest areas are seriously overcrowded). Second, ZOS placed the unlock numbers in such a way that each platform can easily reach this number. And third, even if we did not unlock it in the end, ZOS would probably unlock eastern solstice manually anyways as we have paid for the content. (Some players suggest the progressbar/numbers are being manipulated, this is possible but I personally doubt that as I think there are plenty of players.)

Rkindaleft · October 14

Let's be real, even if everyone decided to collectively stop doing dailies they would "fudge" the numbers and make Eastern Solstice accessible anyways. It would be a monumental mess up and horrible PR if the event failed after hyping it up for 6 months and selling it as a key part of the content pass, they would never do it.

Finedaible · October 14

Yeah, I can imagine the outrage if paid content was held hostage behind a community meter. Still, they never did specify how long it would take. Either way, it makes this season pass model look worse and worse.

Danikat · October 14

Gracous wrote: »

What would happen if the the players did not complete the writhing wall event? One content creator suggested that we not complete it and see what happens.
So, What happens if it remains incomplete? Not that it will but it would be interesting to see what would happen if it did.
Thoughts?

The way the event is set up means it's almost impossible for it to never complete because there's no way for us to lose progress ("bug fixing" updates to the progress bars aside). Even if it got down to just the occasional player doing a daily because they found the quest giver or got to that point in the story and wanted the complete experience it would eventually add up to enough to complete the event. You'd never get literally every player to agree to never do any of the dailies for the simple reason that many of them wouldn't get the message.

But there's two reasons it won't get to that point:

1) In spite of all the complaints about rewards being terrible players are still trying for them. I've seen people talking about opening 80 boxes per day, and getting nothing they wanted so they're going to try again tomorrow. Yes they'll eventually get burned out but especially when you factor in all the people going for more sustainable farming (like just getting the gold boxes) there's plenty of contributions to add up before everyone gets fed up with it and stops.

2) It's entirely up to ZOS to decide how fast the event proceeds and when it ends and obviously it's not in their interest to have it 'fail' or take too long. Yes they said it's tracking our progress, but all we can see is a bar on their website and in their game showing a percentage - we don't know how that percentage relates to real numbers. If they wanted to they could say 1 completion is 1% so 100 daily quests would clear it. Or they could fake it entirely with someone picking a small semi-arbitrary amount to increase it each time it's updated, or an RNG system to do it automatically. They already have adjusted it once because of an unspecified problem (which I've seen some people speculate was just that the started the event in EU prime time and didn't want NA servers feeling like they were lagging behind from the start).

For what it's worth I don't think it's completely fake. They also have more than enough data to do it sincerely - they will know how many people typically log in each day on each server, how many of them actually play vs just collecting login rewards and how much activity has jumped or shifted from other parts of the game during other events, so it wouldn't be difficult to set realistic goals for each server. But it also wouldn't be difficult to 'make dynamic adjustments' to those numbers as the event progresses to ensure we still get steady progress even if participation drops off. (And equally if activity at the weekend jumps up far more than expected they could adjust it to require more completions for each percentage.)

The only reason not to do that (and let me be clear: this is absolutely not worth the risk) is because they said they wanted to 'make gaming history' with this event and they're over a decade late for an MMO doing a community event where completing dailies gets something new added to the game to be in any way notable. But an MMO running an event like that and it failing because the players won't do it would be huge news, the gaming media would have an absolute field day with that. It could be up there with the Corrupted Blood plague in WoW (I've never played WoW, but even I've heard about that). Again, this would not be good for the game, but it would certainly be more memorable than 'event runs as planned'.

Finedaible · October 14

Funny that you should mention the Corrupted Blood Plague because something similar happened in Craglorn a few years back.

tomofhyrule · October 14

Finedaible wrote: »

Now that I think about it... What is the strategic value in claiming Solstice anyway?

Honestly? None whatsoever.

This is the biggest issue lore-wise as well. Solstice has never existed in the lore before now. We have the TES anthology map, and as we can see…

There’s nothing there. And no references to Solstice anywhere in the lore at all. It was totally 100% invented from scratch for ESO and this story.
(re: High Isle below)

Yes, High Isle isn’t shown on that map either. However, the isles of the Systres were seen on one previous map that came with TES:Redguard, it’s just a lot smaller and a lot further out to sea than ESO’s map makes it seem.

We also have minor references to the “Druids of Galen” in Arena lore materials.

That’s definitely one of those things where it feels like everything was contrived to make the story work. “We need an isolated island somewhere. Lets just put it here, and since it’s near Black Marsh, we can just reuse a lot of our existing Argonian assets. Oh, and people like Altmer stuff, so let’s toss them in and find some way to connect them to the island. And uhh… let’s just toss some Nords in too because we haven’t used Rigurt in three seconds so we need him back. Good? What, you think they’ll be too hot wearing furs in a tropical climate? Please, how else would we be able to tell they’re Nords unless they were drunken louts in furs! Oh, and make them drunker.”

I guess the ‘actual reason’ is that since it’s an isolated island, that nobody realized the cult was reforming under their noses? But that is giving a real “Somehow, Palpatine returned” level of care to the writing and the lore.
…but I guess that is to be expected, considering that any real person can see the wall only bisects the island and doesn’t fence the other side in, so logistically everyone could just sail around it (which would be technically easier for anyone coming down from the Pact lands anyway since they already have to sail around the island to get to Sunport)

Danikat · October 14

I've been wondering why our allies couldn't just sail around the wall to get to the other side of the island, but I assumed there was an explaination somewhere in the zone story.

(When I was a kid I thought the same about the Berlin Wall. I was 5 when it was knocked down and obviously knew nothing about the politics so I just wondered what idiot built a wall all through a city to being with, why it took so long to take it down if it was annoying everyone, but also why they couldn't just go around it. I think I also had no idea how big Berlin is, I probably assumed it was about the size of my town, which you could walk across in about an hour.)

On the map it looks like the eastern side of the island is mostly cliffs, so maybe cutting off land access made it easy for the Worm Cult to effectively defend the few accessible landing zones?

SilverBride · October 14

Danikat wrote: »

I've been wondering why our allies couldn't just sail around the wall to get to the other side of the island...

Slaughterfish.

DenverRalphy · October 15

They wouldn't fudge the numbers. They'd Recalibrate the Metrics used to tabulate progress. They've done it once already to slow it down. They would just 'discover' another bug in the metrics requiring a recalculation.

Morgaledh · October 15

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

Now that I think about it... What is the strategic value in claiming Solstice anyway?

Honestly? None whatsoever.

This guy gets it.

This is the biggest issue lore-wise as well. Solstice has never existed in the lore before now. We have the TES anthology map, and as we can see… There’s nothing there. And no references to Solstice anywhere in the lore at all. It was totally 100% invented from scratch for ESO and this story.

ESO making things up entirely from scratch and claiming that it was lore all along? I can't think of any other examples in the game when they've ever done that. I mean, it's not like TES has been around since 1997, who cares what happened before Skyrim anyway? Right?

And uhh… let’s just toss some Nords in too because we haven’t used Rigurt in three seconds so we need him back. Good? What, you think they’ll be too hot wearing furs in a tropical climate? Please, how else would we be able to tell they’re Nords unless they were drunken louts in furs! Oh, and make them drunker.”

This guy really, really gets it. The only people done dirtier in ESO than the Dunmer have been the Nords. Seriously. No irony. Honestly, I really do not understand how... but of course, I do, so I'll turn the thread back over to the main topic now.
Carry on.

Illbleed · October 15

SilverBride wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

I've been wondering why our allies couldn't just sail around the wall to get to the other side of the island...

Slaughterfish.

Slaughterfish gonna jump out the water onto boats then run around eating people or are you saying they'll suddenly start eating boats? Swimming and sailing aren't the same, so not sure how Slaughterfish matter to the question.

Monte_Cristo · October 15

Illbleed wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

I've been wondering why our allies couldn't just sail around the wall to get to the other side of the island...

Slaughterfish.

Slaughterfish gonna jump out the water onto boats then run around eating people or are you saying they'll suddenly start eating boats? Swimming and sailing aren't the same, so not sure how Slaughterfish matter to the question.

The slaughterfish climb into your boat, put a bag over your head, kidnap you, take you to their secret cave, and force you to make tripot potions in their illegal potion sweatshop for 1000 years.

Ekzorka · October 15

tomofhyrule wrote: »

There’s nothing there. And no references to Solstice anywhere in the lore at all.

The same story was with Solstheim in 2002, but everyone accepted it without question.

daim · October 15

You should know by now that the percentage meters are only for show. They will always get to 100% .. or even 120% like in good ol' Soviet Union.

tomofhyrule · October 15

Ekzorka wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

There’s nothing there. And no references to Solstice anywhere in the lore at all.

The same story was with Solstheim in 2002, but everyone accepted it without question.

The difference is that one was good and enhanced the lore, while the other was contrived and awkward.

People are a lot better at allowing lore to be added if the reason for doing so is good and compelling. But like I said, Solstice is operating very much on the "uhh... we just need an island to bring the Worm Cult back since we can't be bothered to have any more compelling of a story," and that's why the creation of a new island just feels awkward in the first place.

Good writing and compelling stories fix a lot of things. And ESO's has... not been there for a while.

EDIT: let me even add to this further -
Solstheim in Bloodmoon added all new assets that were nothing like what we got in Morrowind. Solstice made a few new things to match with the assets they cannibalized from other zones. Solstheim expanded on the lore and added a whole new story which is as compelling (or even more, for Hircine fans like me) than the main quest. Solstice basically is the MQ all over again, but then it straight up spoils the MQ, and now the event spoils a major event from the first half. Solstheim added compelling characters and lore. Solstice reused characters and kept them pretty one-dimensional, and even brought a certain half-naked bread man back from the dead for the third time so we can all fangirl over him.

And what a coincidence that both feature a lost tribe of Nords - in one we have a really deep lore to that tribe that’s so good that two of my ESO characters are written as Skaal, and in the other they’re made as stereotypical (and frankly insulting) as possible. I guess the only race in ESO that can be more than one-dimensional is Altmer?

Look, they could have done a lot for a “Main Quest part 2,” and they didn’t. The stage was perfectly set for a Meridia-as-villain line, but ESO is trying to make Daedric Princes into benevolent gods (see what they’re doing to Sanguine on PTS, where they’re basically making him Dibella in all but name). Heck, they could even have used Solstheim for the story setting considering that Solstheim is literally empty at this point in history (not even Thirsk is built yet), so it would have been a deserted island that had only the Skaal Village there and loads of empty land for the Worms.
(I honestly am scared for ESO to do Solstheim, since I do love that land so much and I really don’t want them to shoehorn a story in and build up towns like Thirsk and Raven Rock that literally don’t exist until the 3rd era)

But again, if your writing is lazy (which it has been for ages) and the content hear has nothing new (which Subclassing is sold as the big feature when it’s really just taking existing things and throwing it in a blender and giving a giant middle finger to endgamers), then that’s definitely going to color players’ feelings. Add to that the fact that Francophone players paid for the full year and literally can’t hear the dialogue in their language and the utter lack of any attempts to balance anything, and I can’t imagine that anywhere near as many players will spring for the next season.

When your own content creation team is mostly making content for other games, and most of the content that they do make is negatively portrayed… that’s not a sign of a healthy game.

twisttop138 · October 15

Danikat wrote: »

Gracous wrote: »

What would happen if the the players did not complete the writhing wall event? One content creator suggested that we not complete it and see what happens.
So, What happens if it remains incomplete? Not that it will but it would be interesting to see what would happen if it did.
Thoughts?

The way the event is set up means it's almost impossible for it to never complete because there's no way for us to lose progress ("bug fixing" updates to the progress bars aside). Even if it got down to just the occasional player doing a daily because they found the quest giver or got to that point in the story and wanted the complete experience it would eventually add up to enough to complete the event. You'd never get literally every player to agree to never do any of the dailies for the simple reason that many of them wouldn't get the message.

But there's two reasons it won't get to that point:

1) In spite of all the complaints about rewards being terrible players are still trying for them. I've seen people talking about opening 80 boxes per day, and getting nothing they wanted so they're going to try again tomorrow. Yes they'll eventually get burned out but especially when you factor in all the people going for more sustainable farming (like just getting the gold boxes) there's plenty of contributions to add up before everyone gets fed up with it and stops.

2) It's entirely up to ZOS to decide how fast the event proceeds and when it ends and obviously it's not in their interest to have it 'fail' or take too long. Yes they said it's tracking our progress, but all we can see is a bar on their website and in their game showing a percentage - we don't know how that percentage relates to real numbers. If they wanted to they could say 1 completion is 1% so 100 daily quests would clear it. Or they could fake it entirely with someone picking a small semi-arbitrary amount to increase it each time it's updated, or an RNG system to do it automatically. They already have adjusted it once because of an unspecified problem (which I've seen some people speculate was just that the started the event in EU prime time and didn't want NA servers feeling like they were lagging behind from the start).

For what it's worth I don't think it's completely fake. They also have more than enough data to do it sincerely - they will know how many people typically log in each day on each server, how many of them actually play vs just collecting login rewards and how much activity has jumped or shifted from other parts of the game during other events, so it wouldn't be difficult to set realistic goals for each server. But it also wouldn't be difficult to 'make dynamic adjustments' to those numbers as the event progresses to ensure we still get steady progress even if participation drops off. (And equally if activity at the weekend jumps up far more than expected they could adjust it to require more completions for each percentage.)

The only reason not to do that (and let me be clear: this is absolutely not worth the risk) is because they said they wanted to 'make gaming history' with this event and they're over a decade late for an MMO doing a community event where completing dailies gets something new added to the game to be in any way notable. But an MMO running an event like that and it failing because the players won't do it would be huge news, the gaming media would have an absolute field day with that. It could be up there with the Corrupted Blood plague in WoW (I've never played WoW, but even I've heard about that). Again, this would not be good for the game, but it would certainly be more memorable than 'event runs as planned'.

I did over 80 the first day and did about 45 yesterday and will keep going. The reason though is we hyped this event to our guild members and made groups that need to be led so folks can get it done easier. That's important to me so I will keep it going. The attendance will fizzle as discord has been nothing but disappointing posts in regards to the event.

As for not doing the event to embarrass Zos. I think that would be very funny, and the gaming press would have a grand old time. I don't think it would happen for reasons stated. No way to communicate with the entire community. Also lots of folks want to keep trying for the prize at the bottom of the cracker jack box. Also, and I believe this wholeheartedly, Zos would mess with the metrics. I very much believe they have their fingers on the scale of this event to keep it going until after update 48 drops on console. To have anyone win before would also be an embarrassment. We saw them already do this on day one, claiming a bug was found. So they'd find another bug.

Gabriel_H · October 15

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Limited knowledge by the map maker. Much like how for centuries the Americas didn't appear on Western maps.

Don't forget that Tamriel is only one part of Nirn, and that there are lands beyond our view.

BXR_Lonestar · October 15

Soarora wrote: »

ZOS’ claim is that if it remains incomplete, we’d never get into east Solstice. Comments I’ve seen around here suggest players think ZOS will fudge the numbers anyways.

Players in my zone think that the event is pre-determined, meaning that regardless of what we do, the wall will come down to give us access to additional content they've developed (and we've paid for if you bought the season pass). I tend to think there is probably some merit to this idea, but either way, what I think this speaks to is that it is bad policy to have a "community event" where the end-goal is to unlock content that you've already paid for.

At that point, you need to either rig the system so that the content gets unlocked regardless of what the community does, or you alienate paying customers who have paid for the content, but they don't get good value for it.

That is a no-win situation IMO because if the optics are that you are going to rig community events, there is NO incentive to participate in them.

tomofhyrule · October 15

Gabriel_H wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Limited knowledge by the map maker. Much like how for centuries the Americas didn't appear on Western maps.

Don't forget that Tamriel is only one part of Nirn, and that there are lands beyond our view.

Which in itself is lorebreaking, considering this map is from the end of 3E and Solstice is 2E. And don’t give me that “but but but forgotten history” if this is important enough that all alliances and guilds are sending troops.

Now, there is still the chance that the entire island could be destroyed or pulled into Coldharbour to contrive a reason for that, but why bend over backwards and do ridiculous mental gymnastics and make up one contrived reason after another when you could have… just picked an existing island from the start? There are plenty that would have worked, particularly those in the Chain in the Abecean or down near Summerset.