Writhing fortress broken?

tomofhyrule · November 14

Correct me if I’m wrong - this is essentially a public dungeon, right? Not a group instance?

Out of curiosity, why? If people are running in whenever, that means not one of us will be able to see the logical progression of upstairs/downstairs and the bosses.

I get wanting to let people go in with PuGs, but would it really have been so bad if it allowed private raid group instances so trial trams could go in and see the whole thing?

Dock01 · November 14

Bobby_Digital81 wrote: »

It's crazy there is no testing or bug fixing before content is released. Just release the content according to the deadline and the players can beta test and report any feedback on bugs/glitches through the forums and fix them in the upcoming weeks and months.

I realize ZOS is trying to help with fixing issues but seems like it's a reoccurring thing which each update. Paying for finished content seems reasonable.

90$ plz

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · November 14

Hi all, last update for tonight. We believe we've narrowed down the root cause of what is happening with the Writhing Fortress and are testing potential fixes. We'll have another update in the morning. Thank you all for your understanding.

Syldras · November 14

tomofhyrule wrote: »

To say nothing of the fact that very few regulars did PTS this round in the first place since there were so few combat changes, and the testers were unable to get enough people to get through the Writhing Fortress for the first few days.

We did get through it, but it took us over 2 hours as we were only 6 people, some of them in average gear or random testing characters.

majulook · November 14

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi all, last update for tonight. We believe we've narrowed down the root cause of what is happening with the Writhing Fortress and are testing potential fixes. We'll have another update in the morning. Thank you all for your understanding.

Can you just stop the "clock" until you fix it?
OR
Is it just going to be broken till you fix it, making the time we have available to do it less?

twisttop138 · November 14

majulook wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi all, last update for tonight. We believe we've narrowed down the root cause of what is happening with the Writhing Fortress and are testing potential fixes. We'll have another update in the morning. Thank you all for your understanding.

Can you just stop the "clock" until you fix it?
OR
Is it just going to be broken till you fix it, making the time we have available to do it less?

"Oh sorry. We know it's not ideal but the way the fortress is coded, there's just no way we will be unable to erase it. The spreadsheet commands it." Or something to that effect.

Orbital78 · November 14

Oh how the tables have turned.

Nemesis7884 · November 14

I mean look at fallout anniversary edition...i cant remember anything, any release that they didnt manage to completely break since Skyrim 🤣

Hotdog_23 · November 14

My god talk about a failure. All this talk and build up and can't even do the event tonight. Who test this stuff? You had a whole year and still the main part of the event you release broken. 🫤

Mantorok-Minion · November 14

So...what if I followed quest markers and brought down the Writhing Wall without doing the Fortress first?

ajkb78 · November 14

At this point if you've got to fix it anyway, why not just make the writihing fortress a permanent feature so we don't have to worry about the timing? It must be apparent by now that this idea of a one-off event is about as popular as the Knahaten plague...

lillybit · November 14

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi all, last update for tonight. We believe we've narrowed down the root cause of what is happening with the Writhing Fortress and are testing potential fixes. We'll have another update in the morning. Thank you all for your understanding.

Thanks for the update. Are you also looking at why the quest won't complete, even if you were in the group that completed the fortress?

StihlReign · November 14

tomofhyrule wrote: »

This was on PTS… but with the caveat that PTS was only while phase 3 was up. We were not able to test U48 in phase 1, U48 in phase 2, or U48 after the wall.

To say nothing of the fact that very few regulars did PTS this round in the first place since there were so few combat changes, and the testers were unable to get enough people to get through the Writhing Fortress for the first few days. There’s no way PTS would have been able to test if the instances did properly reset.

Not to mention quite a few testers have stayed away since the Account lockout rollback happened...that was just a bit too much trauma for many of the folks who were really dedicated to game.

I'm sure they'll fix it in the AM...mostly

Ingenon · November 14

lillybit wrote: »

Thanks for the update. Are you also looking at why the quest won't complete, even if you were in the group that completed the fortress?

My experience on PS/NA was doing the Writhing Fortress with the crowd of players when the PS/NA timer wound down at 8 PM yesterday. I was on an alt that I typically use for trials that had not completed the main quest line in Western Solstice. The quest would not complete. I logged out, logged in on another alt that has completed the main quest line in Western Solstice, traveled to Rampart Camp, talked with the quest people near the Meridian Lens, and the quest finished. Hopefully this helps.

iKillElves4Septims · November 14

*slow clap*

almost impressive work

allochthons · November 14

Ingenon wrote: »

lillybit wrote: »

Thanks for the update. Are you also looking at why the quest won't complete, even if you were in the group that completed the fortress?

My experience on PS/NA was doing the Writhing Fortress with the crowd of players when the PS/NA timer wound down at 8 PM yesterday. I was on an alt that I typically use for trials that had not completed the main quest line in Western Solstice.

I was also in that group on PS/NA, and on an alt that hadn't done the Western Solstice quest. I took the portal back to the main siege camp and turned in the quest just fine. So the bug isn't universal.

Ingenon · November 14

allochthons wrote: »

I was also in that group on PS/NA, and on an alt that hadn't done the Western Solstice quest. I took the portal back to the main siege camp and turned in the quest just fine. So the bug isn't universal.

The difference for my account was that the writhing wall was still visible from the platform at the Rampart Camp when I turned in the quest on the alt that had not done the Western Solstice main quests. When I logged out, logged in on another character that had completed the Western Solstice main quests, traveled to Rampart Camp, and interacted with the quest pointer on the platform, then the writhing wall faded away.

Separately I thought that was a nice visual effect (writhing wall fading away).

Enodoc · November 14

Ingenon wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

This was on PTS… but with the caveat that PTS was only while phase 3 was up. We were not able to test U48 in phase 1, U48 in phase 2, or U48 after the wall.

To say nothing of the fact that very few regulars did PTS this round in the first place since there were so few combat changes, and the testers were unable to get enough people to get through the Writhing Fortress for the first few days. There’s no way PTS would have been able to test if the instances did properly reset.

Thanks! With your details I can see how the instance reset bug may have been in the code all along and was not caught during PTS testing.

Yeah it seemed to be working on PTS but I have no idea if the instance I was wandering around in by myself was the "first run" or if it had properly reset after a previous run.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · November 14

We have an update for everyone. We have a fix for the Writhing Fortress issue, and will be pushing it to all servers via a hotfix today. This hotfix will require no downtime, and the current window for deployment is between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM Eastern Time. When the hotfix is complete, we will let everyone know.

Syldras · November 14

So 3 pm EST is 2 hours after the countdown to phase 3 ends for PC EU? I guess no need to enter it directly when it opens, then (unless the fix is finished earlier).

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · November 14

Syldras wrote: »

So 3 pm EST is 2 hours after the countdown to phase 3 ends for PC EU? I guess no need to enter it directly when it opens, then (unless the fix is finished earlier).

It should be a one hour difference, unless we end the hotfix process early. (7:00 PM GMT/2:00 PM Eastern Time flip over and 8:00 PM GMT/3:00 PM Eastern Time hotfix process completion.)

ZOS_Finn · November 14

Hey folks,

To give a little clarity. The Writhing Fortress operates very similar to a public dungeon but there are some key changes to the zone structure to support the linear nature and ensure players do not enter completed versions. It’s in these changes (which are new) where the problems surfaced. There is a new ‘gating’ mechanism which should prevent players entering once the Titan is defeated. For those that played on PTS they may remember that this issue was not present. Therein lies the challenge for us to find the link in the chain that is not working and remedy it quickly, if possible. We have found a solution for this which should allow new instances of the Writhing Fortress to spin up correctly and gate properly.

The hotfix we are rolling out will be to all servers and will fix any server running into issues with Fortresses spinning up so those that unlock at 2PM ET will still have at least one version of the Fortress operate correctly and then once then operate normally after the hotfix.

Gwythyr · November 14

@ZOS_Finn Will this also fix the Skyshards issue in the Eastern part of Solstice? I haven’t collected them but they show up as collected and I can’t get them (they don’t glow etc).

ZOS_Finn · November 14

Gwythyr wrote: »

@ZOS_Finn Will this also fix the Skyshards issue in the Eastern part of Solstice? I haven’t collected them but they show up as collected and I can’t get them (they don’t glow etc).

That is a different issue that is still being investigated.

twisttop138 · November 14

Thank you for the communication, I'm sure many would agree that it's appreciated. It can be hard to find goodwill for Zos as a whole after this event and this year as a whole, but you guys have had decent communication around issues during this event, about event related stuff. So for that, thank you.

Aylish · November 14

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

So 3 pm EST is 2 hours after the countdown to phase 3 ends for PC EU? I guess no need to enter it directly when it opens, then (unless the fix is finished earlier).

It should be a one hour difference, unless we end the hotfix process early. (7:00 PM GMT/2:00 PM Eastern Time flip over and 8:00 PM GMT/3:00 PM Eastern Time hotfix process completion.)

I know you‘re just the messenger for that info but LOL, sorry.

You guys know how to fix it and will fix it one hour after the fortress opens on PC servers. Why? What is so hard in performing the hotfix before the bug can happen on PC?

Draka46 · November 14

Off the top of my head, I'd assume it's because any significant code change has to be accompanied by testing procedures to ensure the change doesn't unwittingly impact or break anything else.

And since this didn't happen on PTS, they can't test it on there. Testing it on live servers maybe requires setup and special personnel at hand to make sure there's no overlap with normal game.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · November 14

Hello! The hotfix for this issue has been successfully deployed, so those of you whose servers are flipping over to Phase 3 at 2:00 PM and 8:00 PM Eastern Time should not encounter this issue at all.

Thank you everyone!

Ingenon · November 14

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We have an update for everyone. We have a fix for the Writhing Fortress issue, and will be pushing it to all servers via a hotfix today. This hotfix will require no downtime, and the current window for deployment is between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM Eastern Time. When the hotfix is complete, we will let everyone know.

Thanks! I was able to earn the Writhing Fortress achievement yesterday alongside seven guild mates and a crowd of other players, but we all know there are more folks that weren't able to arrange their real life schedule to be available yesterday at 8 PM for the one time that the instance worked. And I would like to run it again on a different alt to fight the enemies on the other side of the fortress.

majulook · November 14

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hello! The hotfix for this issue has been successfully deployed, so those of you whose servers are flipping over to Phase 3 at 2:00 PM and 8:00 PM Eastern Time should not encounter this issue at all.

Thank you everyone!

Can you fix the drop rate of the Shard of Writhing Bone?

I am getting multiple of Writhing Haj Mota Scale daily but the bones are few and far between