ill say indifferent

i do like the witches festival, though i dont directly farm it anymore because its repetitive (i use a 2nd acct to semi afk farm while im doing something i actually want to do)

i will say that the rewards for this years witches festival, moreso from the gold skulls, was extremely disapointing, it felt like 50% of the time it was all horrid old junk (glenmoril style pages/maps + dremora motif) with no other items of value, the purple skulls were significantly better value. the newer drops were also far less common

i dont think it made a huge difference that writhing wall was going on the same time, since you got the plunder skulls half the time doing stuff for the wall anyway (siege camps)

i dont usually bother as much with the xp buff since im almost cp3000 so i dont really need the xp for much (i have a few project characters im working on subclasses with, but im not in any rush to finish them)

No. Having two big events stacked at once basically took over my daily play time, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. I log in, do my daily writs on all my toons (seven, one of each class), daily endeavors, and do the daily portions of the two events on my main toon. By the time I'm done with all that, presuming I haven't suffered any interruptions, I've used up around two to three hours, thanks to all the running about and the (expletives deleted) Vitrified Souls. It leaves me wondering, at what point am I supposed to have time to just...you know...play the game?

freespirit wrote: »

Oh and I have spent an unhealthy amount of time in The Vale of Revelry delve trying to bag the beautiful Harp plan too!!

OMG what?? Ugh, I hate how hard it is to keep track of all the stuff that's being added and where. I completely missed this. I feel like you always have to go through articles and patch notes and player-made guides with a fine-tooth comb to discover things like this.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@LuC1ll3atTh3Wh33L Thanks for the thread. Always good to see what folks think here.

For those that voted no, what would the Witches Festival event need to do for you to enjoy it? Happy to send suggestions to the team.

The event that animated me the most was the Undaunted Celebration of 2018.

The reason for being excited for that event is that it had a special drop table which included costumes that I missed out on such as the Blacksmith and Chef (these had been discontinued for some time) and also exclusive pets that were pretty cool which were the Frostbane pets such as Jingles the Guar.

Likewise, the most exciting part of the Writhing Wall event is the possibility of getting a unique drop, the Surreal Estate. I've wanted to get that home for quite a while now, but the million gold is just a bit much.

I'd like to point out that the game has alot of cool seldomly relesaed collectibles. It would be cool to seem them again some time.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8283285/#Comment_8283285

And even if the team can't make those available, learn from 2018.

Anyhow, the good aspects that I found in the Witches Festival was that it was fun to group up for the bosses. I also found some enjoyment doing normal trials for a plunder skull and they were sort of nice to go back through. I tried to get every gold plunder skull for a few days and that's where the Witches Festival sort of took a turn for me. Although I like the Wickerchain style, I ended up just buying the missing pages that I had as getting the skulls became too time consuming, tedious, and without the liklihood that I wanted to get a desired drop.

Back in 2018, I was getting a special drop almost every day. I even leveled up characters to do the quests with and I've never done that before or since then. Cool drops with a decent chance to get some of them is a path to player time investment.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@LuC1ll3atTh3Wh33L Thanks for the thread. Always good to see what folks think here.

For those that voted no, what would the Witches Festival event need to do for you to enjoy it? Happy to send suggestions to the team.

The event is OK, the problem is how it becomes stale after you get the same rewards you have completed for years, like the Dremora motif.

I keep saying here that players should be able to work towards the rewards they want or need. So, if, instead of getting the same motif pages I completed years ago, I could get a token that could be turned in for something else, it would be more interesting to do dolmens and delves etc.

Another idea is to look for motif completion, and stop offering the old motif for that char, instead give loot from a different tier. If I want more dremora motifs, I could play on an alt.


I would be very interested to play secret delve areas, do secret bosses or totally new dungeons that would be available only during such festivals. It seems you worked out the technical part to do this, with the Worm Cult infested dungeons. It would be cool to have themed bosses and areas for certain festivals, with unique rewards or fun experiences!

I mostly voted no because of the Wall event which overlaped, and I felt like it's too much for me to grind both events. I have already posted several times what I didn't like about the wall too. I hope this feedback helps, I am here because I love the game.

As with all the regular events, It needs a complete reworking - It used to be my favourite event, but as other have said, it's gone stale now. The loot isn't inspiring me to grind for plunder skulls (or "the crates of disappointment" as I call them) I really don't need any more Dremora Motifs or Glenmoril maps, guild banks are full of them! and I didn't even bother with the hollowjack & crow bosses - been there done that! TBH my only involvement this year was to pick up event tickets and plunder skulls while doing the Writhing Wall Siege Camps.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

For those that voted no, what would the Witches Festival event need to do for you to enjoy it? Happy to send suggestions to the team.

Having no guaranteed or curated drops of the new items (excluding the rare drop for the Coldharbour Surreal Estate) is a big pain point. We have discussed this in another thread but I do not believe this is a welcomed drop mechanic. I personally do not agree with this system even though I understand that drops are not curated and not guaranteed.

The big RNG grind was for the free Coldharbour Estate, and this RNG I am ok with. But to equate the drop for this house to a 10K gold substitute treasure item is a slap in the face to all your players, especially those of us who used 5600 CROWNS or 1,000,000 gold to purchase this. It demonstrates a disconnect on perceived value between the Devs and the game’s players.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8382362#Comment_8382362

The scaling of the Lord Hollowjack is another that needs rework. A large enough portion of the playerbase still refuse to learn or perform the intended mechanics, leading to big groups, max Resource drain in the fight, and friction amongst participants - some deny mechanics, others spread misinformation, a few troll “… lololol math nerd gtfo… who made you teacher…. stfu professor...”, and the rest remain oblivious. As CODE65536 pointed out last year, the scaling needs to be worked to be similar in difficulty be it large or small groups :

code65536 wrote: »

What they should've done is scale the strength of the resource drain so that the amount of drain per wave is the same regardless of group size. Dispelling each wave in a larger group would still require more people, but each wave for a 12-person group shouldn't be draining 4x as much as a wave in a 3-person group.

IMO a better approach is scaling to boss HEALTH to group size, or maintaining the same rate of Drain, rather than scaling UP the Resource Drain and Crows per wave to large groups (current scaling). This will offset persistent collective ignorance of players, level the playing field and reduce frustration with this fight (and TY to all who bothered to perform boss mechanics to help your PUG groups).

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8211794#Comment_8211794

Finally, the VISUAL LANGUAGE of the draining crows is inconsistent with how the the game teaches it. The current VISUAL cue is a green solid circle around the crow when they land. From tutorial island and a vast majority of the game, solid green circle = safe/allies/heals. I have observed players in the Hollowjack fight
- crouch and do nothing but stay inside the circle (they believe they are shielded or get healed inside)
- when rezzing, run TO the circle (they believe it is some safe area), and make the boss rush to this player when they materialise, killing other players in process of doing crow mechanics.
- attempt to attack the crow (why, no idea)

A better way is to use a different shape or colour to indicate a mechanic far removed from suggesting any “heal here”, ie NO GREEN SOLID CIRCLE. There are many alternatives, for example, use -
- an orange or yellow,
- ring shape,
- persistent solid or blinking animation

Edit: phrasing, typos

I enjoyed it for sure but overlapping with the wall event was definitely a bummer

I also agree about retiring the older styles and such, I destroyed so much stuff this event, but it needs to be obtainable in a better way than the grab bag. The grab bag has too much stuff in it as is and it needs to either give more items in each or some need moved out of the grab bag in some fashion

Definitely need to change it up. I like the idea of putting the older stuff in grab bags. Dremora style isn't worth anything because everyone has it. I kept asking people if they needed witches' writs and no one did.

Hallowjack was probably a welcome change for many. But not for me. I don't like mechanics like that and usually avoid trials. It sucked trying to group for crow only, yet I'd get invited to HJ.

Good question on how to make it better. Just to change it up somehow, furnishing rewards?

It's okay. I have played it before tho, so it has kinda lost its luster.

I always do. I get tickets and extra rewards for doing things I would be doing anyway.

Always the same boring nonsense

one of the many things i enjoyed about the witches festival were the random encounters with werewolves after telling an npc, who appeared out of nowhere, i was afraid of them. that was fun.

Kind of a mixed bag in my opinion but leaning towards bad.

Witches Festival is one of the better events when compared to the awful Jester's Festival, but the RNG tables this year were heavily lopsided towards very old rewards, and there was no attempt to improve the QoL at all. They even introduced two new non-stacking runeboxes to join the hoards of other inventory fodder the festival brings which just left a lingering bad taste. For a year that focuses on QoL it was disappointing to see. Having it during the Writhing Wall event was also a bit too much daily time investment for pitiful rewards. End result was not much progress or enjoyment.

What I would really like to see in events is more evergreen rewards that are useful for ESO's gameplay loop. Enough motifs and reskins, they are not useful or desired anymore. I don't know how anyone would need or even use all the motifs and overland set fodder we have in the game now. No more redundant sustain sets, please for the love of Mara.