Dreariest event in ESO

ProfessorKittyhawk · October 27

ZOS, whatever next year's story is, don't bother with an event like this again. Just give us the second half of whatever story you're telling and leave it at that. Do an event like the Leaves of West Weald or Dragonrise or something actually fun and rewarding like that. Drawing out the release of the second part of a story by having us participate in a "once in a lifetime" event that has use doing pretty much the same thing we do any other day of the week is low effort and, quite frankly, boring and drawn out.

Also, you guys do the same events every year and STILL have issues getting those right. I can appreciate the ambition but I can't help but feel many will see this experiment as stumbling out of the gate on "trying something new".

Arunei · October 27

Mattymoo92 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Mattymoo92 wrote: »

So it’s now nearly been 2 weeks and we are still on phase one (arguably the worst phase)
Tomorrow is update 48, at this rate we won’t actually get to access its content till early/mid November. Which on paper is fine if the event itself actually felt rewarding and less of a drag.
Is there any chance they will mess with the numbers for phase 2? Because if it takes another 2 weeks to get through I personally feel that would be too long.

That's the design that it will take that long.

They want each phase to end around the same time for all servers (plus/minus a day or two), and consoles can't get to phase 3 until they get U48 mid November. That means it's pretty well expected that we won't finish phase 2 until mid November.

To follow up with an actual example, remember when they had to extend Anniversary by 2 weeks I believe? I was thrilled! Because it’s an event that actually rewards the player for any tedium.

I remember that. I was nearly dead by the end of it lmao. I almost die at the end of a normal-length Jubilee.

This event, though, really does feel lackluster for something that got so excessively hyped like it did. It can't be this "race" like ZOS says it is when half the playerbase doesn't even have access to the content for a couple of weeks after it hits PC. The "race" thus has to be paused or delayed until Console can actually take part in things. Making it a competition in the way they did just doesn't work.

And ultmately Phase to is more of the same stuff. Fetch quests. Crafting quests that are HORRIBLE and not worth doing beyond the first for the Gold box. More beating up X or Y thing again and again. The only neat thing really is the whole apparent 'numerous Dolmens active at once' thing. But there should have been more going on. Wandering WBs in different zones, for example. Places in cities and towns where random 'invasions' could have happened (like the Soul Reaper things now replacing Dark Fissures, except...in towns and cities). Different kinds of quest that aren't just fetch quest ad infinitum.

Lixiviant · October 27

ZOS, after playing this game for 10 years and really enjoying it, this has to be the worst event you've put together. I have to force myself to play and visit Solstice, and that really bums me out.

This event on where we are punching the time clock each day to try to move the progress by a percentage at a time to 100% is just painful. I've grown to hate the siege camps, crafting and collecting souls. I've decided to just visit the Guild Stores and buy whatever motifs or style sheets that are dropping.

Regarding the Witches Festival Event, one thing I don't understand: I have the Doomchar Plateau house and love it. There are others who have collected fragments just to find out you aren't offering it any more. Why not add the house back to the fragments and give those players a chance to work toward the house again?

tomofhyrule · October 27

Arunei wrote: »

But there should have been more going on. Wandering WBs in different zones, for example. Places in cities and towns where random 'invasions' could have happened (like the Soul Reaper things now replacing Dark Fissures, except...in towns and cities). Different kinds of quest that aren't just fetch quest ad infinitum.

The problem with that is that it also means that every person playing the game, whether they want to or not, would have to put everything they want to do on hold because they’re forced to do the event.

That’s what we have now with the invasions: half of the Undaunted quests can’t be used to level that skill line or unlock Companion skills since the bosses are on a two month vacation. New players with their overland build can’t hope to clear some delves because now there’s a new boss with over 1M health. Even half of the Solstice dailies and antiquities are locked away for right now because ZOS is saying that your specific server is slacking off.

Yes, we play this game to have fun. But making it hard or impossible to just play normally and enforcing this event is not fun for everyone. We should not be required to do the event to do unrelated things.

Mattymoo92 · October 27

Lixiviant wrote: »

ZOS, after playing this game for 10 years and really enjoying it, this has to be the worst event you've put together. I have to force myself to play and visit Solstice, and that really bums me out.

This event on where we are punching the time clock each day to try to move the progress by a percentage at a time to 100% is just painful. I've grown to hate the siege camps, crafting and collecting souls. I've decided to just visit the Guild Stores and buy whatever motifs or style sheets that are dropping.

Regarding the Witches Festival Event, one thing I don't understand: I have the Doomchar Plateau house and love it. There are others who have collected fragments just to find out you aren't offering it any more. Why not add the house back to the fragments and give those players a chance to work toward the house again?

It comes back every so often in the assistant merchant

James-Wayne · October 27

Id say PC NA gave up after the first week, we wont be playing the content till at least mid December at this rate haha The fact we paid for content but cant access it till the entire server does hours and hours of some long grindy mini game with little reward is pretty damn sad in this day of age. The event idea was great but the implementation missed hard!

Ive been playing ESO everyday since launch but this year was the first year I found myself missing days. I used to take leave during the content drops but no need anymore so I guess Ill go play Outer Worlds 2 for a bit and come back when the content is available.

I wont be buying seasons up front if locking content away is the norm moving forward. Ill just buy the season at the end of the season and take my leave to play everything in one go., Thankfully lots of great games are due next year so will be easy to do.

Hotdog_23 · October 28

To me this “event” has been a big failure. Starting to feel very grindy and no longer any fun at all. Why should I continue to push to bring the wall down? The rewards are not much. Already did the Golden Awards. Sure, I earn the daily gold boxes, but after that I quit doing the whole bring-down-the-wall thing. Grinding does not equal fun.

Overall, my playtime is down a lot.

Stay safe

BretonMage · October 28

James-Wayne wrote: »

Id say PC NA gave up after the first week, we wont be playing the content till at least mid December at this rate haha The fact we paid for content but cant access it till the entire server does hours and hours of some long grindy mini game with little reward is pretty damn sad in this day of age. The event idea was great but the implementation missed hard!

Yeah, making people grind hard for content they already paid for was not the best idea. The participation metre is good for extra goodies like free houses or what not, but a paid-for zone? That's in addition to the boring quests and meagre reward coffers. You can really see their new direction of minimal rewards, and it's not a good look.

kind_hero · October 28

SilverBride wrote: »

I don't know how we can be expected to do multiple repeatable quests to bring down the wall with the Witches festival running at the same time. I do 3 dailies for the gold coffers and that's it.

I really worry about what phase 2 bring.

Same. I tend to do only two dailies, the crafting and the camps one, and if I feel willing enough to bother grind sap/souls whatever, I do the third. But it really feels like a waste of time. My only hope with the gold boxes is the Coldharbor house, so if I would get that, I would stop doing dailies completely, and stop playing until the east of the island is unlocked. I really don't understand what the devs were thinking, how they thought this event layout would keep players involved for several weeks.

lostineternity · October 28

SilverBride wrote: »

I don't know how we can be expected to do multiple repeatable quests to bring down the wall with the Witches festival running at the same time. I do 3 dailies for the gold coffers and that's it.

I really worry about what phase 2 bring.

You can check right now, yesterday I saw dozens of people behind the wall killing bosses and getting achievements.
I know how to get behind the wall and I can assure you most of them get there accidentally. Seems QA of this patch was not a thing at all.

SilverBride · October 28

I keep telling myself that I'm going to buckle down and do all of the quests on at least one character just to try to get this over... but then I don't. Watching our progress go up soooooo slowly kills any motivation I had.

Syldras · October 28

lostineternity wrote: »

You can check right now, yesterday I saw dozens of people behind the wall killing bosses and getting achievements.
I know how to get behind the wall and I can assure you most of them get there accidentally. Seems QA of this patch was not a thing at all.

Probably it happens when teleporting to someone or reviving at a wayshrine if the closest wayshrine to the character's location is on the eastern side of the wall? Would make sense as it's not separate map.

Maybe we should just all do that and ignore the wall

MotherOfMoss · October 28

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

I gave up on doing all the crafting dailies over the weekend; between the tedium and the number of other once-a-day chores the game has now, it’s not worth the time even for the XP.

Dear ZOS, in the future please refrain from having more than one event at the same time.

While I agree absolutely that the Writhing Wall event quests are grindy and not rewarding enough, and I really don't like the "you gotta buy the expansion and then unlock it too" philosophy here, I think running this together with the Witches Fest is not a bad thing. Having numerous easy dailies to do with the Witches XP boost on means good easy grindable XP for anyone who is, say, levelling subclassing like I was on a couple of characters.

So I'd actually say having the Witches boost and plunder skulls on top of the Writhing Wall drops works to rescue the Writhing Wall event from its blandness, if only a little bit. Even so, I really wish this had been like the earlier chapter celebration events where you do the zone dailies and get all the goodies associated with those. With the Writhing Wall event sapping everyone's time and energy, there's very low pop on WBs, so doing the Solstice WB dailies hasn't been productive, when during earlier celebration events WB dailies have been nice and fast to do.

That said I do respect the experiment here. Unpopular opinion: I like the Solstice zone and I am glad ZOS are recycling assets; it's done tastefully enough, the zone is pretty and has its own vibe, even if on paper it is just Argonian meets High Elf meets OG main quest. The game has so much content it makes no sense to churn out a big new chunk every year while the bugs and issues crop up. I am more than happy with a smaller zone (I actually prefer it, I don't get out of breath looking at the map) and the promise of more time spent improving what is already in the game. And I can totally understand them wanting to try out a new kind of event that would get people to play the new content while it's new.

But. This event is just not doing a very good job of selling all of the above, for all the reasons already mentioned here. (Also, why on Nirn did they choose such a dreary name for the expansion? "2025 content pass", what an exciting and informative title! How about "The Return of the Big Bad and Time-Tested Worm-Themed Arch Villain Cult w/ a Limited-Time Cool Event" in the future

)

twisttop138 · October 28

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I really worry about what phase 2 bring.

Even more crafting dailies. Several dolmens active at once. A new world boss, but not before November 12 (not exactly sure how that works since phase 2 should be over already at that date if progress remains on the current level).

The new WB will come when we have both Phase 2 and U48, so PC would be expected to have him spawn as Phase 2 starts as expected. Console would have to wait.

Also, considering Phase 3 is not included in the U47 patch, there's no way that any server would be allowed to reach phase 3 until Console gets the U48 patch in mid-November, and they'll move the goalposts as necessary to make it so.

This is insanity. I'm on psna and I've already killed this boss. Just turn him on for God sakes when we get to phase 2. Considering people are already in Eastern Solstice on accident, they just need to drop the pretense and let PC into phase 3 and let console in on Nov 12th like any other release. Just say GGs. We tried something new and it didn't hit. We'll try again.

Barovia87 · October 28

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

I gave up on doing all the crafting dailies over the weekend; between the tedium and the number of other once-a-day chores the game has now, it’s not worth the time even for the XP.

Dear ZOS, in the future please refrain from having more than one event at the same time.

Every single time they stack events they get a plethora of the exact same feedback: don't. It's too much. It feeds burnout in their game. The most fun Event(s) in the world become CHORES (and the Writhing Wall isn't landing as oodles of fun - it's an ugly slog). Witches festival is one of the more beloved ESO events, but the split focus is really dragging it down IMHO.

"WE DO NOT STACK IN-GAME EVENTS" should be a Golden Rule when planning ESO roadmaps. Yet they patently refuse to learn. Give it 12 to 24 months. It'll happen again.

Ingenon · October 28

Barovia87 wrote: »

Every single time they stack events they get a plethora of the exact same feedback: don't. It's too much. It feeds burnout in their game. The most fun Event(s) in the world become CHORES (and the Writhing Wall isn't landing as oodles of fun - it's an ugly slog). Witches festival is one of the more beloved ESO events, but the split focus is really dragging it down IMHO.

"WE DO NOT STACK IN-GAME EVENTS" should be a Golden Rule when planning ESO roadmaps. Yet they patently refuse to learn. Give it 12 to 24 months. It'll happen again.

I believe that it will not take 12 to 24 months before we see this again. This year from Sept 22 to Sept 30 the Vengeance test campaign was stacked on the Undaunted event. Apparently running multiple events on the same days is now the rule, not the exception.

allochthons · October 28

While I agree with many of the sentiments here, I'm not annoyed by the 6 (soon 12) crafting quests for the Wall. They provide a fair amount of XP, and I've been using them to level the final skills on my characters. Skills I'll never use, but it bugs me they're not leveled.

Overlapping events, though. Please don't do that, ZoS! I'm retired, I have all the time in the world, and this is too much. I can't imagine doing it with a job and kids. The burnout is real.

SilverBride · October 29

I tried to do more of the quests today and ended up doing 6 crafting quests, 6 siege camp quests and 2 vitrified souls quests, and I just could not do any more. I kept watching the progress and gaining .1 every hour or so is not very encouraging.

I am about ready to go beat my head against the Writhing Wall.

Mattymoo92 · October 29

SilverBride wrote: »

I tried to do more of the quests today and ended up doing 6 crafting quests, 6 siege camp quests and 2 vitrified souls quests, and I just could not do any more. I kept watching the progress and gaining .1 every hour or so is not very encouraging.

I am about ready to go beat my head against the Writhing Wall.

I genuinely think if everyone stopped doing the event it would still move .1 every hour lol

mdjessup4906 · October 29

[quote
And all of that is before we get to the fact that ZOS have admitted to changing the participation requirements twice already to keep us on their schedule. If everyone did completely stop doing anything which contributes to the event they'd fake it and let everyone believe other people were still playing it. quote]

If they have a schedule to keep why bill this whole thing as a race?

I also expected this thing to be more group oriented, even optionally. Wasn't the big sell players all cooperating to bring down the wall. The witches quests are way better for that. Or even at all, since i still havent done solstice mq I can only do the solo strik quests. One of which is literally not worth even taking because grind is so inconsistent. My perspective of the big event is literally an alt parked in front of the craft guy to turn in pre crafted junk for gold box.