Drowned Shore Feedback Thread

commanderander

Hi everyone! Sean “Commander Ander” McCann here, and I’m excited to have everyone delve into the Elemental Evil campaign! This focus of this thread will be on all things related to the Drowned Shore.

Access
Any player level 60 or above can access Drowned Shore by completing the No Crevice Untouched, Hard to Reach Places, and Swords for Everyone, granted by Archdruid Morningdawn and Minsc in Protector's Enclave.

Players should be at least level 62/63 at the end of Drowned Shore.

Features
- Directed story content to take players through Drowned Shore

Feedback Desired
We’d like you all to focus on playing these instances and finding any potential issues with them, both from a story and a mechanical standpoint. Does something in the story not make sense? Did the quest flow from each quest not work? Let us know!
If you find a bug or have feedback, please follow the guidelines below when posting:
• Respond to this forum post.
• Type: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
• Spec: (Please enter the spec that you are providing feedback for here)
• Format: Please use “Bold” face text for the Type & Spec then type your feedback in the body of your post. If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use BLUE.
• (Bonus: Concise Feedback & Screen Shots are much appreciated)

Examples:
Bug: Quest: Herbal Malady
I couldn't click on any of the herbs!

Feedback: Quest: Mysterious Symbols
The symbols didn't really sell the idea that they belonged to Olhydra.

einsieg

Bug: Quest: Crushing Gar Shatterkeel
The voiceover for Seychell providing this quest was mixed up with that of Wraz Olg'Imar when he gives you the quest "Illithid Enclave".

einsieg

Bug: Quest: Crushing Gar Shatterkeel
In both the pre and post-battle cutscenes, Gar Shatterkeel starts his next sentence before he finishes speaking the previous one.

einsieg

Feedback: Location: Sea Elf Camp
The water elves are too far from their quest objectives. Graysen Shoreward isn't part of the quest line anymore, so now you're always being sent from the opposite side of the map from Raven Cliff Beach. This is really tedious if you only have a basic horse. I have a blue horse and it's still annoying. Making it even more frustrating is the new linear quest line. In Live, you can take 4 Vigilance quests at a time and complete your 8 quest requirement in only 2 trips. Once that's done you get to go to Graysen who is a lot closer to Raven Cliff than the elves.

two30

Feedback: Quest: Fuel on the Fire
The "Fuel on the Fire" quest is quite tedious. Because of the order in which I completed the quests, I had this quest as a progression blocker and no other concurrent progression quests. It took me 69 kills to acquire the 10 Emblems of Olhydra. (The "Show of Force" optional quest made counting very easy.) I was running in circles smashing enemy groups over and over and over. Very boring.

Bug: Quest: Cultist's Folly
Cultist's Folly indicated that I would get a Unified Elements upon completion. I did not. Maybe the Unified Elements is a random reward, but the promise and disappointment isn't fun.

beckylunatic

two30 said:

Feedback: Quest: Fuel on the Fire
The "Fuel on the Fire" quest is quite tedious. Because of the order in which I completed the quests, I had this quest as a progression blocker and no other concurrent progression quests. It took me 69 kills to acquire the 10 Emblems of Olhydra. (The "Show of Force" optional quest made counting very easy.) I was running in circles smashing enemy groups over and over and over. Very boring.

Old!EE's various collect-the-macguffin mob-drop quests almost always suffered from frustratingly low drop rates on the macguffins (environmental interact ones generally weren't bad, especially once I had a mental map of their locations). Even after the first pass of fixes on Old!EE which increased various macguffin drop rates but also usually made the quests require more macguffins (when you multiply by two and divide by two, you get the same value you started with, eh?), most of these were dismissed as quests to avoid if at all possible. When someone feels the need to make a guide to which vigilance quests suck too much to bother with (http://josephskyrim.blogspot.ca/search/label/Vigilance), player engagement is well and truly broken. Nobody enjoys having their time wasted. The above number could represent good luck with a 10% drop rate, or bad luck with a 20% drop rate. Either way, the end result is to bore and annoy the player.

By comparison, macguffin collection for the 1-60 quests don't generally require the players to kill many times the number of mobs as macguffins required. Drop rates are set high, maybe 50% or even 75%. Sure, we can say that's part of why levelling to 60 is quick, but this was and still is a bad way to put the brakes on quest completion. If it doesn't feel good and we don't enjoy it, we end up questioning why we're spending our time doing this at all. Creating this kind of general aggravation is a huge part of why Old!EE was poorly received. I'd say it's very important to avoid making that same kind of misstep. Padding the total expected playtime on a campaign by making quests take longer than they absolutely have to doesn't serve to keep players busy... it drives them off.

two30

Feedback: Quest: Worrisome Wares
The Worrisome Wares quest is also a tedious quest for random drops that doesn't have any synergy with its concurrent quest "Reporting In". I killed 46 enemies to get my 10 drops, so that's slightly better than "Fuel on the Fire". Still boring.

Feedback: Quest: Caravan Vengeance
Mossy Meg is summoned too close to the trio of Green Hags and they jump in to assist her. The Hags are on the other side of a wall that's not close to the summoning interact. So players won't anticipate this extra threat and won't clear the area beforehand.

Feedback: Quest: Shifting the Numbers
This is actually a good quest. If you get unlucky with drops, you can search for chests. It also has good synergy with the "Attack on Blackdagger Keep" quest.

two30

Feedback: Quest: Stolen Memories
A very boring 40 kills to get the 10 Guardsmen Memories. I had to do the tally myself because after 700 cumulative Drowned Shore kills, I ran out of optional slayer quests.

Feedback: Quest: The Ravenous Host
I got a Unified Elements from this quest. If that's a random reward, it shouldn't be. Unrepeatable quests shouldn't have random rewards. If it's not a random reward, but an intentional static reward to make up for the loss from Vigilance Quests, then it's an odd choice. It's a boring forgettable quest. The Unified Elements should come from one of the more important quests.


Feedback: Quest: No Room on the Shore
The Aquatic Elf Abduction heroic encounter gets in the way of launching the southermost buoy for this quest. I jumped off a cliff to reach the launch spot, then rode through the encounter to escape.


Feedback: Nieghborhood: Blackdagger Keep
For me, this has always been the most annoying area in the Elemental Evil zones, and it's still annoying. Enemy density is so high, that you can't avoid battles. Leaving the "Sea Hag's Hold" lair quests, it's better to make your character commit suicide than try to ride back to camp. Ugly.

two30

Feedback: Quest: Taking Their Breath Away
The Necklaces of Air Breathing should stack higher than 10. There's no reason that they should take up 3 inventory slots. I finished the quest after 34 kills which is a lot killing, but the drop-rate felt reasonable.


Bug: Item: Shatterkeel's Barnacles
Shatterkeel's Barnacles have a placeholder icon.


Bug: Task: Defeat Gar Shatterkeel
The campaign task "Defeat Gar Shatterkeel" states that it requires a "Prophet Trophy". It actually requires Shatterkeel's Barnacles.


Feedback: Lore: Elemental Plane of Water
I ran a new character through Drowned Shore and completed every quest except the option Heroic Encounter quests. I unlocked the lore journal entries for "Aquatic Trolls", "Commerce Catastrophe", "Hags", "Olhydra", "Sea Elves", "The Drowned Shore", and "Water Archons". The lore journal entry "Elemental Plane of Water" is nowhere to be found. It was formerly unlockable by acquiring the "Elemental Essence" quest.