Siege camps daily quest - the afterwards

redlink1979 · December 2

At a time there's almost no one doing the siege camp daily quest, but there's still a lot of players who might be missing the frags for the caltrops*, my question is: is there an ETA to put this type of world event inline with all the other world events in-game? Mini-bosses and bosses HP's and damage ticks are too high making them painfully long to complete as they are with only 2 or 3 players.

*The Writhring Wall event duration time was severely decreased but ZOS didn't increased the drop chance of the caltrops frags proportionally.

Sleepsin · December 2

They can be soled, it just takes a long time. Cutting down on the HP of the boss and mini boss would be nice.

spartaxoxo · December 2

At the very least, they need to nerf down the HP. It takes way too long to do these on your own.

Rittings · December 2

With a dwindling player base (which really hurts on PlayStation a lot) and the lost interest in many group world bosses (including dragons in Elsweyr) - these kinds of events need some kind of way of recognizing how many players are nearby and scaling the bosses to that number.

agelonestar · December 2

These world events - and some world bosses too - either need to be reworked to be appropriate for a very small group (or solo player), or they need the loot table drastically updated to make them more popular.

One of the biggest problems with gameplay right now is that last season’s zones are empty. New players can’t get stuck into the content until a new in-game event comes along, and players wishing to continue the content in those zones get left behind. It’s frustrating.

lillybit · December 3

Rittings wrote: »

With a dwindling player base (which really hurts on PlayStation a lot) and the lost interest in many group world bosses (including dragons in Elsweyr) - these kinds of events need some kind of way of recognizing how many players are nearby and scaling the bosses to that number.

Ordinary dolmens do that, at least in that there's more spawns when more players are there. I'm not sure but I think geyser do too. If they can already recognise players involvement you'd think they could use that mechanic to scale bosses too.

Personally I think once a zone is no longer the main chapter the world events and maybe even bosses too should get a drastic reduction, because they'll never have that many players doing them again, outside of the very occasional event. I know I'd do them more often if they weren't such a pain - I really want another lead for a vampire window!

MATH_COW · December 3

Solstice on his own seem already dead because of that event.

Maybe I'm unlucky when I'm doing world boss and camps for dailies, but I'm always alone.

The Daedric War event maybe make people be somewhere else most of the time but I doubt it would empty that much the last zone release that much. Now this event is over we will see if people come back or not.

But the fact the camps don't scale on the amount of player like most dolmen do (geyser and volcano) is really like the people behind making them never played or looked at how the game was before.

The worst is when the only one active is the middle one, which got way more side trash to do and two boss at the end. And the boss are still HP sponge like if the event was still active and clearly got some mech that does a bit too much damage imo (snake lady with that aoe that bounce a random amount of time and seem to do enough to one shot any DD without HP buff food)

Ingel_Riday · December 3

lillybit wrote: »

Rittings wrote: »

With a dwindling player base (which really hurts on PlayStation a lot) and the lost interest in many group world bosses (including dragons in Elsweyr) - these kinds of events need some kind of way of recognizing how many players are nearby and scaling the bosses to that number.

Ordinary dolmens do that, at least in that there's more spawns when more players are there. I'm not sure but I think geyser do too. If they can already recognise players involvement you'd think they could use that mechanic to scale bosses too.

Personally I think once a zone is no longer the main chapter the world events and maybe even bosses too should get a drastic reduction, because they'll never have that many players doing them again, outside of the very occasional event. I know I'd do them more often if they weren't such a pain - I really want another lead for a vampire window!

I'm in 100% agreement here.

Truth be told, I've been contemplating the same thing while wandering around Solstice. Now that the Writhing Wall event is done and people have finished the zone, they've... just left. Nobody is doing the siege camps anymore. I rarely see anyone fighting the world bosses. It's a ghost town, but all the camps and world bosses are built around it NOT being a ghost town.

It's a shame, because if you didn't get in early... good luck to you now. I made it a point to run the Calindvale Gardens public dungeon on all my characters last week once I realized that the group event boss was a bullet sponge designed for three to five people to chisel down. If I didn't get it done while a few people were still running around the dungeon, it'd be a nightmare to solo.

It'd be nice if things scaled like dolmens. Maybe not to the point of pure triviality like dolmens, but enough that people could actually do the stuff. Bastion Nymics, Harrowstorms, Elsweyr dragons, Siege Camps, Ithelia crystal fonts, and so on are pretty much done for unless their respective zones become special event centers for 12 days.

DoofusMax · December 3

They can be solo'd (been there, done that). It takes a good while and I've burned through a small pile of soul gems to do it on a few occasions because a couple of the "minibosses" have got one-shots. What irks me more than anything else is that with few or no other players to help out, I'm basically having to dish out ~30M damage (plus trash) in exchange for a motif chapter, a style mat, a piece of overland gear that I've already collected, and a few hundred gold, and that assumes that I don't die, causing one or more more boss resets. Siege camps are a blast with a couple or three other players (the more the merrier, even if subclassing makes it look like a Star Wars convention), but the juice ain't worth the solo squeeze. Writhing Wall burned out so many players on Solstice and it's likely to stay that way for a while. A pity because those camps can be a lot of fun.

Gabriel_H · December 3

The coffers need to be curated for motif, style, and fragment.

I've solo's them, I do not recommend it. Even at peak hours I was the only one there and it took 15 - 25 mins to get done. And that is just the outlier camps, not the main camp that has more minis and 2 bosses.

twisttop138 · December 3

Rittings wrote: »

With a dwindling player base (which really hurts on PlayStation a lot) and the lost interest in many group world bosses (including dragons in Elsweyr) - these kinds of events need some kind of way of recognizing how many players are nearby and scaling the bosses to that number.

I believe, correct me if I'm wrong (that's the sport here) that this is already a feature in game. I was doing a vent in Galen maybe a couple weeks ago. It was just us. I could have sworn when someone else popped in, the boss we were fighting got more HP. That wasn't the first time I thought I saw this on a vent. I could just be crazy though.

Gabriel_H · December 3

twisttop138 wrote: »

Rittings wrote: »

With a dwindling player base (which really hurts on PlayStation a lot) and the lost interest in many group world bosses (including dragons in Elsweyr) - these kinds of events need some kind of way of recognizing how many players are nearby and scaling the bosses to that number.

I believe, correct me if I'm wrong (that's the sport here) that this is already a feature in game. I was doing a vent in Galen maybe a couple weeks ago. It was just us. I could have sworn when someone else popped in, the boss we were fighting got more HP. That wasn't the first time I thought I saw this on a vent. I could just be crazy though.

Other Dolmens and some WBs scale off number of players nearby. Some WBs will also do different attacks if there are more than 1 player.

ssewallb14_ESO · December 3

World event scaling has needed to be a thing for a while now.

Gabriel_H · December 3

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

World event scaling has needed to be a thing for a while now.

It is already a thing. Siege Camps seem to have been left out of the system though.

code65536 · December 3

Gabriel_H wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

World event scaling has needed to be a thing for a while now.

It is already a thing. Siege Camps seem to have been left out of the system though.

Not really, no. Scaling is the exception, not the norm. World bosses are not scaled. Of the incursion-type events, dragons, harrowstorms, atoll of immolation, vents, mirrormor incursions, and siege camps are not scaled. I think dolmens and maybe geysers are scaled (not sure about geysers, actually).

And scaling is very limited in its efficacy, since it affects only the number of waves that spawn. Boss health is unaffected. Which makes sense. It's easy to add extra waves when people arrive, but jacking up the health of a dragon mid-fight doesn't really work. Not to mention the other limits of scaling (e.g., look at how ineffective it is against the zergs of Alik'r).

Personally, this is why I've mostly ignored open-world PvE in this game. The vast majority of players will never be able to solo a dragon, but during an event, the greatest challenge is getting to the dragon before the massive zerg kills it in under 30s. It's rare that you get to experience an open-world encounter with an "ideal" number of players.

Instanced content, where you know how many players will be present and what roles will be present (designing a clever heal-check mechanic for an open-world encounter where you don't know if there will be a healer present doesn't make sense) allows for far better-designed and better-balanced encounters that are way, way more fun than the open-world stuff. They kinda tried it with the bastion nymics, but completely screwed the execution by the annoying outside phase of hunting seekers and adding too much running around and trash on the inside.

Gabriel_H · December 3

code65536 wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

World event scaling has needed to be a thing for a while now.

It is already a thing. Siege Camps seem to have been left out of the system though.

Not really, no. Scaling is the exception, not the norm. World bosses are not scaled. Of the incursion-type events, dragons, harrowstorms, atoll of immolation, vents, mirrormor incursions, and siege camps are not scaled. I think dolmens and maybe geysers are scaled (not sure about geysers, actually).

I was responding specifically to world events, I had noted earlier than only some WBs were scaled.

Vents definitely are. Have been close to soloing more than a few when someone else turns up and the bosses health jumps back to 50%.

Harrows and dragons and mirrormoor and geysers, the scaling is in the number of adds. The less players around, the less adds. I think with harrows and mirrormoor the bosses health is also less, not by much and I would have to check as it's been a while since I've been near any.

None of that happens with Siege Camps. Same number of add waves regardless of player numbers, and no changes in boss health.

Drinks_from_Ponds · December 3

I really hope they do something; I still need to finish the skill styles and soloing is not the answer.

Fischblut · December 3

I predicted this, so when I still missed some fragment for Caltrops after the event ended, I bought it from traders. It was very good decision.

New world boss and world event design is horrible because they doesn't scale to 1-3 players. They scale for zerg, and the times when I enjoyed testing my build against world bosses ended 5-6 years ago

Also, if developers see this: it's what the game will be if you listen to "increase overland difficulty" crowd and not make it optional...

Brave NPC archers try to fight against the army of daedra. I wished them luck and rode away:

Wow, whole 4 players at siege camp? Oh wait, those are two players and their companions... Thanks for companions feature, at least

...or not

prof-dracko · December 3

I noticed pretty much all the bosses in Solstice have absurd amounts of health. I guess they assumed people would be swarming the place. 10 mil for a standard wb? It's ridiculous. They could halve the hp of every boss in the zone and lose nothing. It's just a needless grind.

barney2525 · December 3

They have not figured out that Zones should not have Major Events tied to them. These are not Dolmens. Or even Geysers.

Creating a new zone is Fine, with it's own Main Quest and if not dolmens, something similar. But how many players are doing dragons after the Great event ended? How many players are going through West Weald to knock our those rotating events that remained after the big Initial event ended ?

Imho if the Initial event ends, and what remains can NOT be reasonably solo'd by an AVERAGE character, that is a mistake. You're just creating a dead area. You are already adding WBs with the new zone.

Gabriel_H · December 3

prof-dracko wrote: »

I noticed pretty much all the bosses in Solstice have absurd amounts of health. I guess they assumed people would be swarming the place. 10 mil for a standard wb? It's ridiculous. They could halve the hp of every boss in the zone and lose nothing. It's just a needless grind.

They do have a lot BUT the Eastern Solstice WBs are considerably weaker than the Western ones, who weren't particularly high in the damage output to begin with.

twisttop138 · December 3

Gabriel_H wrote: »

prof-dracko wrote: »

I noticed pretty much all the bosses in Solstice have absurd amounts of health. I guess they assumed people would be swarming the place. 10 mil for a standard wb? It's ridiculous. They could halve the hp of every boss in the zone and lose nothing. It's just a needless grind.

They do have a lot BUT the Eastern Solstice WBs are considerably weaker than the Western ones, who weren't particularly high in the damage output to begin with.

Very much agreed. I helped a friend yesterday get his Eastern Solstice WB kills and we duoed them. It took a little extra but they're simple enough to kill. They don't even kill my glass cannon raid too or my buddies HA sorc. It wasn't too too hard to lay down 100k dps. Plus most of the mechanics are reskins or not even reskins just copies. I will say though, I can see how some could have trouble.

Gabriel_H · December 3

twisttop138 wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

prof-dracko wrote: »

I noticed pretty much all the bosses in Solstice have absurd amounts of health. I guess they assumed people would be swarming the place. 10 mil for a standard wb? It's ridiculous. They could halve the hp of every boss in the zone and lose nothing. It's just a needless grind.

They do have a lot BUT the Eastern Solstice WBs are considerably weaker than the Western ones, who weren't particularly high in the damage output to begin with.

Very much agreed. I helped a friend yesterday get his Eastern Solstice WB kills and we duoed them. It took a little extra but they're simple enough to kill. They don't even kill my glass cannon raid too or my buddies HA sorc. It wasn't too too hard to lay down 100k dps. Plus most of the mechanics are reskins or not even reskins just copies. I will say though, I can see how some could have trouble.

Oh indeed. Not expecting everyone to be able to solo/duo them, but they are not the likes of Stri the Fate-Eater, Recollection Leaders or Oakenclaw.

Edit: Or [expletive] Vro-Kuul-Sha

DoofusMax · December 3

barney2525 wrote: »

They have not figured out that Zones should not have Major Events tied to them. These are not Dolmens. Or even Geysers.

Creating a new zone is Fine, with it's own Main Quest and if not dolmens, something similar. But how many players are doing dragons after the Great event ended? How many players are going through West Weald to knock our those rotating events that remained after the big Initial event ended ?

Imho if the Initial event ends, and what remains can NOT be reasonably solo'd by an AVERAGE character, that is a mistake. You're just creating a dead area. You are already adding WBs with the new zone.

The impression I get is that incursions (ignoring dolmen) are more of an endgame thing for solo PvE'ers. I avoided them like the plague unless there was a related event happening, but am now to the point where I'm sufficiently geared/skilled that solo'ing them is possible. It takes a decently large amount of time to do it, especially with boss resets due to character death. I generally figure on 20-30 minutes for Siege Camps and Mirrormoor incursions and a bit less for the others. But I still agree with the overall point that incursions are mostly dead zones outside of those events. I'd like to see them softened up to the point where they are soloable by more players without making them into total pushovers like dolmen.

Onomos · December 3

It's high time for ZOS to do for world events what they do for BGs. Every so often (or maybe even every weekend), they should just do a double XP or gold weekend focused on one of these events. I don't really see any other way to get more people to show up to things like dragons or harrowstorms without an extra incentive.

Ingenon · December 3

On PS/NA, I solo'ed a siege camp two days ago on a one bar oakensoul build, and it took a painfully long time to complete. Yesterday I did a siege camp with a guild mate, with both of us on one bar oakensoul builds, and it still took a painfully long time to complete.

ZOS, please

Nerf the siege camps. They are painfully slow to complete solo or duo. And on PS/NA, it is hard to find other players to do them.
Increase the drop rate for caltrop fragments. I am still getting the fragments for the pet most times I complete a siege camp, while the caltrop fragments drop rate is microscopic.

jle30303 · December 3

Yes. Absolutely this.

I'm trying to remember, *in terms of simply its Health pool alone*, which was the biggest world boss in the game before Eastern Solstice...

I think it may still have been the Gryphons of Summerset, Haeliata and Nagravia... Which were 4.1 million each, making 8.2 million.

The rest of Summerset ranged up from... 2.9 million to 5.1 million. Basically, the Gryphons should have had 4.1m health *between* them, not each, to not stick out from the rest like the proverbial sore thumb.

West Weald world bosses were suddenly a lot bigger than, say, even Necrom (whose worst boss, Nightmare Den, was still 4.1m but also had a tendency to one-shot players, and immunity phases.)

Mirrormoor Incursions were bigger than any incursion has ever been before...
- 3x having to fight an enemy with 3m hp (but it disappears at 1.3m, thus effectively having 1.7m hp at that stage). Plus trash, some of which is "super strong trash" with between 100-300k hp.
- Go to central area. Boss has between 4m and 8m hp depending on how many people turn up (and will gain more hp if more people turn up mid-fight). But the fight is in five phases (down to 70%, Intermediate 1, down to 40%, Intermediate 2, Kill Boss), and the boss is invulnerable during the two Internediate phases... one of which brings back the 3m-hp bosses you fought earlier, all three in succession (and knock them down to about half health before they disappear), then the second one brings them ALL back at once, and at full strength (and you have to be able to deal with all of them).

And then Solstice world bosses have got bigger still. 8 million (3x 2.9) for the Voskronas? Over 6 million for Gaulm? Tidewrack is half the size - he's the "manageable" one in West Solstice... if it wasn't for the sheer number of his adds, the constant dodging of waves that can knock you down, AND the fact of his constantly teleporting around.

And then Ghishzor turns out to be 20m health, which is frankly Trial boss strength, in his "guest appearance" in Western Solstice - but with no good reason to actually fight him, no quest pointer, no achievement (except the basic one which is the same as for beating him in his usual place in Eastern Solstice), and no special rewards, so after the first couple of days he was completely deserted, nobody WANTED to fight him because just far too tough for too little reward. And then his regular Eastern Solstice incarnation turns out to be 10m health, which again is waaay too big for a world boss.

The siege camps, also, need to be reduced. To the kind of size that is reasonably doable by, say, 3-4 AVERAGE players - not top-end skill players, AVERAGE ones. The bosses are simply too big - even when they don't hit particularly hard. Their health needs to scale back down. The side bosses, at a million each, are not the problem: but the central bosses, at 14-16m each, are simply too big, and the centre camp has 2 of them which is near impossible to complete without an army. Knock them down to 4-5m each, giving 8-10m for the two at the central camp, that would be more reasonable. Otherwise they're just ridiculous bullet sponges.

Which wasn't a problem when there were so many players there that they still got killed before having a chance to even render on the screen... but it's a problem NOW, and FOREVER IN THE FUTURE as new players who weren't here for the event start wanting to do siege camps themselves.

DinoZavr · December 4

was duoing them camp bosses on my plarsorc together with a random arcplar samaritan
this is, definitely, possible without deaths, but, honestly, does not worth the time spent (as it takes a long time for 2 players)

i understand Shards of Writhing Bone are about 60K a piece on PC EU, but considering how much time required to get these Caltrops style fragments - it is still more logical to buy shards farming gold elsewhere.

Regarding them fragments, i, of course, would like to question @ZOS about the drop rate.
i don't believe game makers with 11+ years of experience goofed that huge
as (in my statistics) these fragments drop rate is at least twice lower than "everyone happy" level:
i was doing Solstice dailies on 8 accounts (4 PC NA, 4 PC EU). every day.
i ended up with 2x25 + 14 on EU, and 2x25 + 7 on NA (though "happy" drop rate should in theory result in 100+, not 50+)
provided i was doing my best - i still got 2x less fragments than i was hoping for.
And these numbers are already representative. My guildmates also confirmed they were noticeably lacking them shards.
if Event was carefully planned, there should be no need to purchase the missing thingies.
On the other hand there also were pet fragments (Wormwrithe Haj Mota Hatchling) drops, and i have got all accounts provisioned with the said cute pet, plus i have also got about extra 60 on EU and extra 50 on NA (and these are dirt cheap nowadays). So the drop rate of the later fragments exceeded "normal" roughly about 1.5x
Zenimax, why?
Is that new normal to leave players (who grind every day) unhappy?
You are doing Events for many years, you have stats how many players participate. Isn't drop rate a simple math?

Yes, i would also ask our dear game-makers to adjust camp bosses HP inline with Summerset Geysers bosses (as geysers trashmobs waves are scaled to number of players, but geysers bosses HP is not), as hardly these Camps incursions would attract many players in a foreseeable future, considering the final chest rewards are not that stellar and the zone is rather desert after some players burnt out.

Drinks_from_Ponds · December 4

Will we get an update after they lower the event mob health? I would like to go back and do them for the skill styles

redlink1979 · December 5

Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts.

code65536 wrote: »

(...) I think dolmens and maybe geysers are scaled (not sure about geysers, actually).(....)

Geysers scale according to the player amount in their radius. Harrowstorms, awhile ago, seemed to be scaled for a short amount of time but I think they were simply "bugged" at that time because their behavior was "fixed" later on.

Let's hope ZOS doesn't take too long to apply changes to siege camps. It's imperative.

SkaiFaith · December 5

So, I am after the Dwarven Sphere pet from the achievement for 30 daily Nymics... It happens that I come out of one and find a player standing there asking me "when does this event start?" I proceed explaining what he needs to do and share him the quest. Few moments later I get whispered "900K HEALTH???" And it was just one out of four Herald Seekers... Followed by an entire "group dungeon".

The guy gave up, and I get it: I often ask in zone chat if anyone wants to join me in doing my Nymics and no one answers. I am thankful to guildies when they are able to join, but I'm solo otherwise.

Definitely we need a scaling system in fights which doesn't prevent us from getting achievements.
Ideally a 5 stage difficulty settings: 1, story mode (one shot anything); 2, easy mode (solo anything); 3, balanced mode (as it is now); 4, hard mode (corresponding to current Veteran); 5, group mode (if you aren't grouped you can't possibly succeed).
When multiple players with different settings are present should auto adjust accordingly.