Writhing Wall Event – Consolidated Messaging Thread

VetteGal · October 21

Hiya All!!,
So, today I was doing my siege camps, and got one right away (center) and so was going to do another, so picked up the quest and waited at the center camp, thinking, it should spawn soon. HOW WRONG I WAS!! All the other camps had spawned 19, yes, NINETEEN times before the center spawned, I know they are random, but, for RNG to be that bad is crazy!!
Just had to put it out there, since I waited about an hour for the next spawn, and yes, I could have gone to another, but, after about 20 minutes, it just became trying to find out the spawn rate. I have never seen that rate happen before!! Anyway, have a wonderful day and KILL ALL THE THINGS!!

Vonnegut2506 · October 21

The blue boxes are fairly worthless. I would imagine 90% of the blue boxes I open only contain crafting materials. . . less than I used to get the blue box in the first place. I am getting style pages and motif pages from the gold boxes at least, so what exactly is my incentive to do more quests for worthless blue boxes? The furnishing plans appear to be the same exact three plans dropping over and over. I have more spyglass recipes than I could ever need, even if an attractive Wood Elf moves next door.

BretonMage · October 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

While we do that, we'd like to ask a couple related questions for future event consideration. We've seen concerns about the rewards coffers drop rates and contents, and the Writhing Wall furnishings drop rates. While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

All the events in the past that I can remember have given us a variety of items in the reward boxes: a currency of some sort (transmutes, gold, AP, writ vouchers etc), a few pieces of some uncommon ingredient (style stone, alchemy or other material), in addition to the rare event drops. This eases the disappointment of not receiving event drops.

Also, I have had a few Stirk furnishing plans drop, but as far as I can tell, there are only a small handful of available plans, which leads to repeated drops of the same plans. More variety in furnishing plans would be appreciated.

Leighlaa · October 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

Yes! I've spent HOURS farming these. I didn't really understand how these were dropping due to confusing event instructions... I have maybe 1 item per hour of killing to show for it. Do I want one from every lootable boss (~every 4 min)? No that's a bit ridiculous and would tank their value, but at the same time... who cares? It's not like these will be coming back and the joy of being here for this "once in a lifetime" event means I should be able to stock up if I 1) do the work or 2) have the gold to spend on buying up any and every one that I see. I love the witch event because I get to stock up on weird mushrooms and, if I'm lucky, RUBY FREAKIN TORCHBUGS. This event has very little of that level of excitement for me. If I farmed for an hour though, I'd like 5 greens, 3 blues, and 2 purples. There isn't even a new gold furnishing. YES there is the achievement soul trap thing, but I have to BUY IT. I'm sure it's too late to pop something cool in there, but 6 new furnishings that I'm spending FAR TOO MUCH TIME TO GET does *not* feel like a 10-year anniversary celebration to me. Goodness, even jubilee got new banners and bells.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

Definitely a combination of the two. Many other commenters have had good things to say, and I particularly like what @Virenic said about treasure maps. Solstice has particularly low antiquity RNG from maps and myself and many of my friends do not have *most* of the furnishings in triplicate yet- despite having opened MANY (expensive) maps. We should have gotten maps. And while selfishly, I like the prices of Solstice blueprints to remain high as I make money farming urns in BLT... there is a new zone coming and the mid-year event almost always makes it so I am flooded with new blueprints that I can now happily learn myself. Not this year. I'm not sure if I'm happy that I will maybe still make ok money on urn farmed purples... or if I'm sad that I don't actually feel I can learn any of them myself. I also think that the haj mota pet should, rarely, drop as a full runebox item, UNBOUND, much like the New Life pets do. SURE it means their value is reduced, on the whole, but isn't this event supposed to be a celebration? It feels utterly stingy. Do you even like us? It doesn't feel like you like us

As far as the house is concerned, I already own it, but also have yet to see the special item you supposedly get for owning it and getting it again. My alt account has yet to get it and at this point I'm losing steam wanting to try. The furnishing dailies are abysmal and feel like some sort of a scam. They REALLY make me feel like you don't like us. Improving rewards would *start* to help to that end, but also the types of rewards- why aren't there random crafting motifs? Gold materials? Jubilee-level rewards at the very least. I like housing, and I think it is the housing community holding the end-game community together and in the game (perhaps personal bias but I don't care)- you could have included NOT JUST blueprints for the stirk camps... but also actual copies of the furnishing. I don't feel rewarded for doing any of this.

Plenty of people have touched on the manipulations to the progress bars and the effect that has on the players. On the ground level, in our guilds, it all feels arbitrary. The rules feel made up and the points don't matter. Let's play, who's wall is it anyways? I'd have loved to have more choice in the matter- if we're trying a new event style or content formula/rollout/whatever... maybe let us fight FOR Molag Bal? Or have your server's alliances actually be counted so you can see, on which server, who is fighting the most against molag bal and then if you were majorly fighting for that alliance, THAT'S how you get the title.. I don't know, something that doesn't feel redone and under-rewarding. People have also mentioned choice of reward- let me pick what type of animal I get as my golden reward worm animal... I don't ride bears but a wormwrithe guar? HOLY POOP YES PLEASE I'LL FIGHT EVERY DAY AND DO EVERY GOLDEN PURSUIT. I don't feel like I want to do anything with my server (pc na) to "beat" the other servers/consoles... it doesn't feel like we're working together. Could be loser talk because we're in last, but even on day one, it felt like a weird... "competition" to force on us. I miss the N. Elsweyr release days where, as a server, we worked TOGETHER to unlock some incredible and unique rewards that will NEVER come back... and saved kitties doing it. THOSE were memorable events. This one I'm already tired of and we're not even 1/3 through it.

The worst part of all this? There is little, if any, motivation to do anything in phase 2 or 3. If you save up enough boxes in phase 1, you'll get the needed fragments for the skill style in phase 2 without having to actually DO anything. What is my motivation to care? I couldn't care LESS about the 1-week fortress thing... are there unique rewards? I don't know because the communication about this event has been bleh. And everything I've seen so far leads me to believe that no, it won't get better. I plan on spending all my time farming plunder skulls for ruby candleflies and waiting for Eastern Solstice to come out so I can fish for the 6 new sunport pack furnishings. That's literally all I'm holding on to right now. Pretty sad.

I do not feel like this event was made with tender loving care. It was made sadly and sloppily and with little regard to good advice from PTS. Do you even like us?

spoqster · October 21

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all. After investigating some user reports, we have confirmed that there are some instances where completing a Writhing Wall event crafting activity will result in you spending more materials than you receive in your rewards. This was not our intent and unfortunately this issue is not something we are able to hotfix. We have a bug in for the team to investigate and looking to see if there is an opportunity to fix this during U48 launch. We have added this update to our dev tracker.

I just don’t believe it. It was obvious after the first turn in that the rewards were less than the crafting cost. My first thought was that you guys wanted to create a resource sink to combat the slight inflation created by the introduction of tradable surveys. Fair enough. But just be honest about it. Don’t lie and pretend the obvious thing that became immediately evident to everyone doing the quests was an oversight and that it only happened to “some” players.

shadyjane62 · October 21

It's easy to understand. The stuff we are getting is trash. It it not worth the price to travel.

Aliniel · October 21

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all. After investigating some user reports, we have confirmed that there are some instances where completing a Writhing Wall event crafting activity will result in you spending more materials than you receive in your rewards. This was not our intent and unfortunately this issue is not something we are able to hotfix. We have a bug in for the team to investigate and looking to see if there is an opportunity to fix this during U48 launch. We have added this update to our dev tracker.

I would actually advocate leaving them as they are. This way they act as a "mat sink" of sort. On the other hand, we are getting huge EXP from these quests. Things shouldn't just come for free, and I believe we're on the receiving end with these quests.

agelonestar · October 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Man you guys will communicate about whatever you can (thank you for that) to not address the elephant in the room. Friday you guys said you were discussing the large community complaints of rewards dropping very infrequently, making the grind for this event unfun. You guys went out of your way to state people thought it was unrewarding because the meter wasn't moving fast, I don't know how you could be so wrong. I'm told I shouldn't assign malice and I'm trying to stick to that but your communication around every issue but that is weird. Is it your intention that rewards should be scarce in this event or not?

We're working on getting you all an answer to the rewards question. I was hoping we'd have that for you today, but we need a bit more investigation in the morning to determine what is possible.

While we do that, we'd like to ask a couple related questions for future event consideration. We've seen concerns about the rewards coffers drop rates and contents, and the Writhing Wall furnishings drop rates. While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

The "more desirable items" being the ones below under "a low chance at" from the event article.

Rewards from the coffers available from Vitrified Souls quests include:
A piece of gear from a Western Solstice set, with a chance of a second

A chance at a style item for the Fellowship of Stirk crafting style (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)

A low chance at one of the following items (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
A page of a Wormwrithe armor outfit Style

A page of a Wormwrithe weapon outfit Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A fragment for the Wormwrithe Haj Mota pet

A fragment of the Caltrops, Bone Skill Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A chance for a sellable treasure of varying value (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
This reward has a very low chance to be replaced with the Coldharbour Surreal Estate if you do not already own it, or with a sellable treasure of exceptional value if you do.

I’m a long-standing player - I’ve been here since 2014. Here’s my take:

1. There are four quest givers, yet only 3 golden reward boxes. That makes no sense.
2. The golden reward boxes are mostly filled with junk - where are the higher value, more desirable rewards? Getting a style page or motif drop doesn’t seem guaranteed - far from it. And only two significant rewards for an event that lasts as long this? That’s just crazy.
3. The blue boxes are entirely filled with junk. The is literally no incentive to completing more than 3 quests per day. I have completed the golden pursuit on 3 accounts - I haven’t had anything in the blue boxes except weapon/armour drops. They’re not even good sets! You could, for example, put sets in here I haven’t got in my sticker book. That would be a better incentive than bad zone sets, which I don’t need.
4. Getting anything of value from the camp boss chests is one a million. Again, no incentive for the average person.
5. Your main “prize”, the Coldharbour estate, is a kick in the teeth for anyone who already bought it (as I have, more than once!). Where’s the similarly valued alternative for your long-standing players? You guys always screw over your best customers.
6. The golden pursuit and community rewards are lazy. Another pet, another mount….zero creativity given the scale of the “world changing” event. Previous golden pursuits have been better, previous community events have been much, much better.

This whole event feels like the Temu version of previous years. The whole thing feels untested, drops rates suck, and the rewards themselves were grabbed from the discount bin by the back door.

This year has really left a bad taste in my mouth, and has coloured whether I would buy a “season pass” in advance ever again.

Apollosipod · October 21

agelonestar wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Man you guys will communicate about whatever you can (thank you for that) to not address the elephant in the room. Friday you guys said you were discussing the large community complaints of rewards dropping very infrequently, making the grind for this event unfun. You guys went out of your way to state people thought it was unrewarding because the meter wasn't moving fast, I don't know how you could be so wrong. I'm told I shouldn't assign malice and I'm trying to stick to that but your communication around every issue but that is weird. Is it your intention that rewards should be scarce in this event or not?

We're working on getting you all an answer to the rewards question. I was hoping we'd have that for you today, but we need a bit more investigation in the morning to determine what is possible.

While we do that, we'd like to ask a couple related questions for future event consideration. We've seen concerns about the rewards coffers drop rates and contents, and the Writhing Wall furnishings drop rates. While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

The "more desirable items" being the ones below under "a low chance at" from the event article.

Rewards from the coffers available from Vitrified Souls quests include:
A piece of gear from a Western Solstice set, with a chance of a second

A chance at a style item for the Fellowship of Stirk crafting style (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)

A low chance at one of the following items (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
A page of a Wormwrithe armor outfit Style

A page of a Wormwrithe weapon outfit Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A fragment for the Wormwrithe Haj Mota pet

A fragment of the Caltrops, Bone Skill Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A chance for a sellable treasure of varying value (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
This reward has a very low chance to be replaced with the Coldharbour Surreal Estate if you do not already own it, or with a sellable treasure of exceptional value if you do.

I’m a long-standing player - I’ve been here since 2014. Here’s my take:

1. There are four quest givers, yet only 3 golden reward boxes. That makes no sense.
2. The golden reward boxes are mostly filled with junk - where are the higher value, more desirable rewards? Getting a style page or motif drop doesn’t seem guaranteed - far from it. And only two significant rewards for an event that lasts as long this? That’s just crazy.
3. The blue boxes are entirely filled with junk. The is literally no incentive to completing more than 3 quests per day. I have completed the golden pursuit on 3 accounts - I haven’t had anything in the blue boxes except weapon/armour drops. They’re not even good sets! You could, for example, put sets in here I haven’t got in my sticker book. That would be a better incentive than bad zone sets, which I don’t need.
4. Getting anything of value from the camp boss chests is one a million. Again, no incentive for the average person.
5. Your main “prize”, the Coldharbour estate, is a kick in the teeth for anyone who already bought it (as I have, more than once!). Where’s the similarly valued alternative for your long-standing players? You guys always screw over your best customers.
6. The golden pursuit and community rewards are lazy. Another pet, another mount….zero creativity given the scale of the “world changing” event. Previous golden pursuits have been better, previous community events have been much, much better.

This whole event feels like the Temu version of previous years. The whole thing feels untested, drops rates suck, and the rewards themselves were grabbed from the discount bin by the back door.

This year has really left a bad taste in my mouth, and has coloured whether I would buy a “season pass” in advance ever again.

I agree with everything you've said here. The GP is just more reskinned garbage. The event is an exercise is tedium that is blatantly lazy and disrespectful of the player's time. I also bought the house some time ago so there goes another reason to participate in this. Even the Stirk motif itself really lacks detail and doesn't look any different than so many other motifs. The whole event lacks anything to distinguish it from previous events in terms of gameplay. Just more of the same. I really want to keep supporting ESO but with the recent interview that said they want the game to be "unpredictable" I have to say this event has been anything but

anadandy · October 21

Agreed with a lot of what has been said about the lackluster rewards. I did enough of the daily quests to bang out the pursuits (do 5, 10, 20) and now I'm only doing two for golden (don't own Solstice).

Blue set pieces are not worth the hassle of these quests. Grind aside, every time I turn in I can't get off Stirk unless I port to a friend, jump to one of my houses or take the ferry - all of which add one more step/load screen to the destination to do another tedious fetch quest for a single piece of blue gear.

Furnishing plan drop table is too limited. The excitement of getting something other than gear is dampened when it's the 4th "tattered red flag" pattern.

Field Marshall Furnishing drop rate is also too low. Again, I did the pursuit and then some - finally got one bottle. I really would like the scroll, but not worth the tedium.

I'm tired of event drop rates seemingly being balanced on having multiple characters/accounts. I do have those but that shouldn't be the expectation when planning event rewards.

twisttop138 · October 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Man you guys will communicate about whatever you can (thank you for that) to not address the elephant in the room. Friday you guys said you were discussing the large community complaints of rewards dropping very infrequently, making the grind for this event unfun. You guys went out of your way to state people thought it was unrewarding because the meter wasn't moving fast, I don't know how you could be so wrong. I'm told I shouldn't assign malice and I'm trying to stick to that but your communication around every issue but that is weird. Is it your intention that rewards should be scarce in this event or not?

We're working on getting you all an answer to the rewards question. I was hoping we'd have that for you today, but we need a bit more investigation in the morning to determine what is possible.

While we do that, we'd like to ask a couple related questions for future event consideration. We've seen concerns about the rewards coffers drop rates and contents, and the Writhing Wall furnishings drop rates. While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

The "more desirable items" being the ones below under "a low chance at" from the event article.

Rewards from the coffers available from Vitrified Souls quests include:
A piece of gear from a Western Solstice set, with a chance of a second

A chance at a style item for the Fellowship of Stirk crafting style (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)

A low chance at one of the following items (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
A page of a Wormwrithe armor outfit Style

A page of a Wormwrithe weapon outfit Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A fragment for the Wormwrithe Haj Mota pet

A fragment of the Caltrops, Bone Skill Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A chance for a sellable treasure of varying value (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
This reward has a very low chance to be replaced with the Coldharbour Surreal Estate if you do not already own it, or with a sellable treasure of exceptional value if you do.

Wow, thank you very much for your reply. I'm sad I didn't see it yesterday to respond. I appreciate your being forthright and plain spoken about the issues some are having. I won't speak for everyone, just myself and the people in guild and discord who've been discussing this a lot.

A big frustration is that the event was hyped up. A lot. I will only speak to rewards as you guys have been at work on the drops for quest stuff and the bugged camps. Many of us were super hyped for this so we put big guild groups together and got after it. After 500 plus boxes, I have 5 furnishing plans. The same 2. Spyglass and tattered flag. We spent hours and hours killing field marshals, waiting the 5 minutes instead of just killing the same one over and over in a delve, and I have 1 green little bottle furnishing.

For many people,getting the special event furnishings and plans are the goal of the event. Imagine spending hours trying to get the thing you want and opening 50 or 60 boxes in total and walking away with only 1 or 2 pieces of worthless zone gear per box and a couple treasures to sell. That's crushing to people's spirits. I understand that we only get 1 style page of the new style per day, not complaining about that but there's been days where I got none. No style page. No motif. It's begins to feel like you're not respecting our time.

I don't want to get into rehashing arguments about this year, the lack of content etc but this event was supposed to make it worth it. It was billed as *the* thing that made the new season pass worth more money for less content then a chapter. To be fair, this event should be throwing rewards at us. There's tons of new worm cult furnishings that, while we'll get plans later, could be in these boxes. Just turn up the drops. Add some of those worm cult furnishings. And to be fair, for all the hype, the worm cult house should've been the capstone reward of this event.

In the end, people love ESO. That's why we're here. We want to have fun, solo or with our friends. We want the game to thrive. When it comes to events, people want to feel rewarded for their time spent. You guys have done it right before. Many times. Jubilee was insanely rewarding for our time. If you don't think it should be that rewarding, why? Spreadsheet concerns about too much good stuff out there? Who cares? Anyway, sorry for the book. Thanks.

Skorro · October 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Man you guys will communicate about whatever you can (thank you for that) to not address the elephant in the room. Friday you guys said you were discussing the large community complaints of rewards dropping very infrequently, making the grind for this event unfun. You guys went out of your way to state people thought it was unrewarding because the meter wasn't moving fast, I don't know how you could be so wrong. I'm told I shouldn't assign malice and I'm trying to stick to that but your communication around every issue but that is weird. Is it your intention that rewards should be scarce in this event or not?

We're working on getting you all an answer to the rewards question. I was hoping we'd have that for you today, but we need a bit more investigation in the morning to determine what is possible.

While we do that, we'd like to ask a couple related questions for future event consideration. We've seen concerns about the rewards coffers drop rates and contents, and the Writhing Wall furnishings drop rates. While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

The "more desirable items" being the ones below under "a low chance at" from the event article.

Rewards from the coffers available from Vitrified Souls quests include:
A piece of gear from a Western Solstice set, with a chance of a second

A chance at a style item for the Fellowship of Stirk crafting style (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)

A low chance at one of the following items (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
A page of a Wormwrithe armor outfit Style

A page of a Wormwrithe weapon outfit Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A fragment for the Wormwrithe Haj Mota pet

A fragment of the Caltrops, Bone Skill Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A chance for a sellable treasure of varying value (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
This reward has a very low chance to be replaced with the Coldharbour Surreal Estate if you do not already own it, or with a sellable treasure of exceptional value if you do.

Personally to add and to echo a few here:

- haj mota/caltrops (phase 2), motifs furnishing recipes, furniture, etc should still have a good chance of dropping from blue boxes, at the moments blue boxes are trash
- overland gear from the zone is not a reward.. most would have sticker books mostly full from playing the zone. Rather drop style material you'd need to craft the furniture (as it's not a guaranteed drop from decon.
- add decent loot as a rare drop: undaunted plunder, 2 seals of endeavor/crown gems - something to make it feel like there is any purpose to this. Anniversary event is a great example!

Also just a bit worried about your comment on furnishing, please don't just bloat the boxes with 1 or 2 furnishing (looking at you jester coffers and banners).

twisttop138 · October 21

Skorro wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Man you guys will communicate about whatever you can (thank you for that) to not address the elephant in the room. Friday you guys said you were discussing the large community complaints of rewards dropping very infrequently, making the grind for this event unfun. You guys went out of your way to state people thought it was unrewarding because the meter wasn't moving fast, I don't know how you could be so wrong. I'm told I shouldn't assign malice and I'm trying to stick to that but your communication around every issue but that is weird. Is it your intention that rewards should be scarce in this event or not?

We're working on getting you all an answer to the rewards question. I was hoping we'd have that for you today, but we need a bit more investigation in the morning to determine what is possible.

While we do that, we'd like to ask a couple related questions for future event consideration. We've seen concerns about the rewards coffers drop rates and contents, and the Writhing Wall furnishings drop rates. While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

The "more desirable items" being the ones below under "a low chance at" from the event article.

Rewards from the coffers available from Vitrified Souls quests include:
A piece of gear from a Western Solstice set, with a chance of a second

A chance at a style item for the Fellowship of Stirk crafting style (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)

A low chance at one of the following items (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
A page of a Wormwrithe armor outfit Style

A page of a Wormwrithe weapon outfit Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A fragment for the Wormwrithe Haj Mota pet

A fragment of the Caltrops, Bone Skill Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A chance for a sellable treasure of varying value (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
This reward has a very low chance to be replaced with the Coldharbour Surreal Estate if you do not already own it, or with a sellable treasure of exceptional value if you do.

Personally to add and to echo a few here:

- haj mota/caltrops (phase 2), motifs furnishing recipes, furniture, etc should still have a good chance of dropping from blue boxes, at the moments blue boxes are trash
- overland gear from the zone is not a reward.. most would have sticker books mostly full from playing the zone. Rather drop style material you'd need to craft the furniture (as it's not a guaranteed drop from decon.
- add decent loot as a rare drop: undaunted plunder, 2 seals of endeavor/crown gems - something to make it feel like there is any purpose to this. Anniversary event is a great example!

Also just a bit worried about your comment on furnishing, please don't just bloat the boxes with 1 or 2 furnishing (looking at you jester coffers and banners).

I'd like to echo this last bit here. The furnishing plans for the boxes seem to be 3 maybe 4 plans. The drops for the field marshals are god only knows. There are 80+ new furnishings and plans coming with update 48. There's tons of already released solstice furnishings and plans. Lets get some stuff in there, plus treasure maps etc.

Sarannah · October 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

While we do that, we'd like to ask a couple related questions for future event consideration. We've seen concerns about the rewards coffers drop rates and contents, and the Writhing Wall furnishings drop rates. While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

No, for me that would not. But for those chasing the furniture drops, it might a little.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

Neither. The fact that some quests are a pain to finish due to questitems not dropping at all(vitrified souls), or not dropping due to overpopulated quest areas. That is the frustrating part.

For me personally the coffers and their contents aren't the problem. Being able to enjoy farming the quests is the problem. When I can do a vitrified soul quest within 5 minutes one day, and the next day it takes me over 90 minutes in the same spot, that is just frustrating and a waste of time as I could have had fun doing the other eventquests instead(but I can't know this beforehand). It shouldn't matter how many players are in one area farming the questitems or how the questitem drops are regulated, the questitems should drop at a regular rate for everyone all the time in all their respective droplocations.

When I only do the three other quests, except vitrified souls, I am actually enjoying this event mostly. Sometimes overcrowded areas is a pain for the other fetch quests, but atleast that can be controlled by the player(me going elsewhere or trying to wait for spawns). Atleast the questitems drop there, even if I barely get any kills. Which isn't frustrating. Frustrating is farming somewhere endlessly and not getting anywhere, which I assume is a bug with the questitem droprate.

So for me, the drops inside the event coffers themselves aren't the frustrating part.

Thanks for gathering information for future events!

PS: For a once in a lifetime special event you guys could have gone a bit further with drops. For example one of these: Only purple and higher treasure drops with 1 guaranteed, random motif pages(similar to the other event that does this), random stacks of 10 upgrade materials, etc. Something special that makes it worth farming for, giving that "oehw cool drop"-moment on occasion. Maybe something different for each phase!
PPS: The chance for a house is pretty cool though! Not sure if this also drops for those who already own this house? (If we already own it, maybe drop a token so we can choose one other house to receive. The ones already owning the house are the ones spending money on this game afterall, throwing them a bone could go pretty far with goodwill.) Note: Ofcourse keep this an extremely low dropchance, and like winning the lottery lucky!

necro_the_crafter · October 21

Its related to the event I guess, Yenadar from Jode's Light have been replaced by event bosses, and those doessnt drop Moonstone Ring Bearing Lead for monomyth reforged.

None I know or met in that dungeon hasnt been able to get this lead since event started, while some of the other instanses do drop leads as intented. Me and at least 5 other people filed bug report in game.

Is it a known issue, is it planed to get fixed?
Maybe implement some workaround? like add this lead to Ool or Tel-var merchant for event duration?

Its frustrating to be locked out of paid content becuse of the bug that caused by the event.

Finedaible · October 21

This is just so weird. I do not comprehend why there is so much confusion from a studio regarding feedback. It almost seems intentionally obtuse at this point.

I'll assume goodwill for now, but if it helps any, there seems to be a lot of misinterpretation regarding community feedback because the developer teams appear to be relying on middlemen (forum moderators perhaps?) to relay what the community is saying. If this is the case, I can see how important details might get left out of the general comuniqué, especially with ZoS's penchant for 'high level' messaging and corporate jargon. There's simply no need for that kind of generalized messaging between a game studio and it's consumer base.

If any of the above rings true, I would strongly suggest dropping the corporate approach and that the devs themselves start reading the forums and getting down into the nitty and gritty. I've never seen a studio with a developer team that was so hands-off when it comes to their forums and community feedback. If the devs are truly passionate about what they create, I would hope they at least follow up on it to see what people think.

Just my two cents.

Leighlaa · October 21

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

Its related to the event I guess, Yenadar from Jode's Light have been replaced by event bosses, and those doessnt drop Moonstone Ring Bearing Lead for monomyth reforged.

None I know or met in that dungeon hasnt been able to get this lead since event started, while some of the other instanses do drop leads as intented. Me and at least 5 other people filed bug report in game.

Is it a known issue, is it planed to get fixed?
Maybe implement some workaround? like add this lead to Ool or Tel-var merchant for event duration?

Its frustrating to be locked out of paid content becuse of the bug that caused by the event.

ANOTHER HUGE ISSUE WITH THIS EVENT. I've had multiple people in the wild, when I'm farming furnishings in the delves that have been invaded... ask if the regular boss is there somewhere too. NOPE. NO HE IS NOT! SORRY FOR YOUR QUESTS AND LEADS! Instead, here! Kill this Field Marshal who DROPS. NOTHING.

BIG L on this one ZoS, BIG L.

Ingenon · October 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

While we do that, we'd like to ask a couple related questions for future event consideration. We've seen concerns about the rewards coffers drop rates and contents, and the Writhing Wall furnishings drop rates. While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

I rarely get anything in the blue boxes except gear from Solstrice. And the market is flooded with gear from Solstice, so it isn't selling in guild traders anymore. Increasing the drop rate for Writhing Wall furnishings would ease some frustration. Thanks!

Tallon_IV · October 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Man you guys will communicate about whatever you can (thank you for that) to not address the elephant in the room. Friday you guys said you were discussing the large community complaints of rewards dropping very infrequently, making the grind for this event unfun. You guys went out of your way to state people thought it was unrewarding because the meter wasn't moving fast, I don't know how you could be so wrong. I'm told I shouldn't assign malice and I'm trying to stick to that but your communication around every issue but that is weird. Is it your intention that rewards should be scarce in this event or not?

We're working on getting you all an answer to the rewards question. I was hoping we'd have that for you today, but we need a bit more investigation in the morning to determine what is possible.

While we do that, we'd like to ask a couple related questions for future event consideration. We've seen concerns about the rewards coffers drop rates and contents, and the Writhing Wall furnishings drop rates. While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

The "more desirable items" being the ones below under "a low chance at" from the event article.

Rewards from the coffers available from Vitrified Souls quests include:
A piece of gear from a Western Solstice set, with a chance of a second

A chance at a style item for the Fellowship of Stirk crafting style (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)

A low chance at one of the following items (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
A page of a Wormwrithe armor outfit Style

A page of a Wormwrithe weapon outfit Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A fragment for the Wormwrithe Haj Mota pet

A fragment of the Caltrops, Bone Skill Style (from Phase 2 onward)

A chance for a sellable treasure of varying value (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
This reward has a very low chance to be replaced with the Coldharbour Surreal Estate if you do not already own it, or with a sellable treasure of exceptional value if you do.

A lot of people (myself included) only go for the three gold reward boxes and then log off. The regular reward boxes only ever have a blue world drop in them. Why would I keep doing repeatable quests for that? It's worse than Destiny's "two tokens and a blue" fiasco.

Radiate77 · October 21

Tallon_IV wrote: »

It's worse than Destiny's "two tokens and a blue" fiasco.

I audibly laughed at that one. Got on yesterday because New World’s servers went down for maintenance and decided I would do a few of the monotonous dailies to try to get my style page and after 12 quests, nope.

Kind of funny how the motifs and style pages all have 24 cooldowns yet you can burn all of your dailies and not even get one.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · October 21

Hi everyone. We wanted to hop in and answer more of your questions, especially related to any additional changes we will be making to the Writhing Wall event and learnings for future new in-game events.

We hear you that that the 12-player monster credit list cap is frustrating during events like this, where there is a higher than usual concentration of players going after event quest mobs. For future events, we are investigating if this is something we can raise.
In regard to the event quest item drops, while we did push a hotfix last week to make Vitrified Souls more easily available by adding them to Dark Anchors, we are making some adjustments to the other event quest item drop rates for Phases 2 and 3, so your time spent doing the event quests feels better. This hotfix is going out this afternoon (Oct. 21.)
- We have also identified a technical bug resulting in some inconsistencies with quest item drops from monsters. While we are working on a fix, it will require more time and testing to fix than we can accomplish during this event.
We've also heard from you that the event rewards in Phase 1 don't feel as rewarding as you would like. We are increasing the drop rates for the Writhing Wall Furnishings in a hotfix this afternoon (Oct. 21). The change will be immediate once the hotfix is live. As a reminder, Wormwrithe weapon outfit Style pages and Caltrops, Bone Skill Style fragments become available as drops in Phase 2 as well.
- In regard to the feedback about the blue reward coffers, we are unable to make changes to the contents or drop rates of items within them, but we will keep all your feedback in mind as we design rewards for future events. For a little added context, while drop rates are something we can generally adjust via hotfixes, there are a limited number of hotfixes we can push between incremental patches and updates, and each in-game adjustment counts towards that limit.
Related to rewards feedback, we are also making some beneficial adjustments to Writhing Fortress boss rewards and drop rates in Phase 3 based on your Phase 1 and PTS feedback. Specifically, the Writhing Fortress bosses will award the equivalent of a Glorious Writhing Reward Coffer (gold.) Please note that players may still obtain only one Stirk Fellowship motif page per day from any source.
Your feedback on the general fun factor of this event and the daily quests and event quest item drops is also heard loud and clear, and is valuable as we plan out future events.

Lastly, we've seen some questions about what activities you can expect to see during Phases 1, 2, and 3, and if all event phases will be the same as Phase 1. Here's a breakdown:

Phase 1: Supply & Defense

Daily Quests: Vitrified Souls, Supplies, Siege Camp Defense, and Crafting (6)
Skirmishes at the Siege Camps
Delves and Public Dungeons across Tamriel are taken over by the Worm Cult forces
The latest installment of the Seasons of the Worm Cult story becomes available in Solstice

**Spoilers ahead! Don’t read beyond this point if you want to be surprised about Phases 2 and 3.**

Phase 2: The Assault Begins

Daily Quests: Vitrified Souls, Supplies, Siege Camp Defense, and Crafting (12 – 6 new ones added that include Alchemy, Provisioning, and Enchanting)
Siege Camp attacks will be more frequent and deadly as the forces from the Writhing Wall launch multiple attacks at once.
Continue battling the Worm Cult forces in Delves and Public Dungeons across Tamriel

*The Daedra Ghishzor, a powerful Maldrith, appears as a world boss on Solstice when the servers are patched up with Update 48 content.

Phase 3: Fall of the Writhing Wall

Daily Quests: Vitrified Souls, Supplies, Siege Camp Defense, and Crafting (6 – the new ones added in Phase 2)
Siege Camp attacks continue with the same frequency and force as in Phase 2
Continue battling the Worm Cult forces in Delves and Public Dungeons across Tamriel
The Writhing Fortress opens for players

*After Phase 3 concludes, the Eastern Solstice zone opens and the final installment of the Seasons of the Worm Cult story is available.

Orbital78 · October 21

Is the event going to effect Ossien Cage at all?

UrQuan · October 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

We have also identified a technical bug resulting in some inconsistencies with quest item drops from monsters. While we are working on a fix, it will require more time and testing to fix than we can accomplish during this event.

Can you confirm if this technical bug resulting in "inconsistencies" with quest item drops is the reason why sometimes you only have 1 drop for every 15-20 eligible mobs killed and have to spend an hour to complete a boring fetch quest, and sometimes you'll actually get the drops at a reasonable rate?

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · October 21

UrQuan wrote: »

Can you confirm if this technical bug resulting in "inconsistencies" with quest item drops is the reason why sometimes you only have 1 drop for every 15-20 eligible mobs killed and have to spend an hour to complete a boring fetch quest, and sometimes you'll actually get the drops at a reasonable rate?

Yes, unfortunately. We identified the issue today during our investigations related to the reported quest item drop inconsistencies.

Tyrobag · October 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Please note that players may still obtain only one Stirk Fellowship motif page per day from any source.

I have to say, this mentality is the problem. There should never be a hard cap stopping you from getting a drop. If you did the content to earn it, you should have an equal chance to get it. Does zos not remember how great the anniversary event used to be back when it was generous? People actually participated because there was a reasonable chance at getting something good. Now with these events I get my tickets and gold box then get out without bothering to earn any junk boxes. How about instead of trying to force people to log in every day, you make them want to log in because they're having fun?

ZOS_Finn · October 21

Orbital78 wrote: »

Is the event going to effect Ossien Cage at all?

Only the event specific content for Writhing Wall will be affected once the wall is breached. That includes the dailies and the lens, etc. None of the Western Solstice content will be affected and that includes Ossein Cage.

As a matter of fact, Ossein Cage is a good place to get Vitrified Souls for the event too.

Orbital78 · October 21

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Orbital78 wrote: »

Is the event going to effect Ossien Cage at all?

Only the event specific content for Writhing Wall will be affected once the wall is breached. That includes the dailies and the lens, etc. None of the Western Solstice content will be affected and that includes Ossein Cage.

As a matter of fact, Ossein Cage is a good place to get Vitrified Souls for the event too.

When will we get our double drops on weapons/jewelry again in there?

DrGIggles80 · October 21

Biggest problem with this event is the horrendously low loot drops. 1000+ boxes farmed no house what n absolute joke. Newsflash some of us have real life to take care of.

code65536 · October 21

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Orbital78 wrote: »

Is the event going to effect Ossien Cage at all?

Only the event specific content for Writhing Wall will be affected once the wall is breached. That includes the dailies and the lens, etc. None of the Western Solstice content will be affected and that includes Ossein Cage.

As a matter of fact, Ossein Cage is a good place to get Vitrified Souls for the event too.

@ZOS_Finn The previous years' chapter celebration events included double drops for the trial as something to reward the group-PvE crowd. The omission of trial double drops makes this event feel much worse than previous years' chapter events for this segment of the player base.

UrQuan · October 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Can you confirm if this technical bug resulting in "inconsistencies" with quest item drops is the reason why sometimes you only have 1 drop for every 15-20 eligible mobs killed and have to spend an hour to complete a boring fetch quest, and sometimes you'll actually get the drops at a reasonable rate?

Yes, unfortunately. We identified the issue today during our investigations related to the reported quest item drop inconsistencies.

Thanks Jessica, that explains a great deal, and I guarantee it's the primary reason so many people (including myself) have been complaining about the drop rates for these event quests.