We did this test based on your feedback about stalemates between healing versus damage output. How have your battles have been going?
The 6 man target cap on damaging AOE abilities is nice, but I think it should be pushed further to 9 or 12 (or removed entirely from damage skills). Battles still seemed to be determined solely by who has the larger group, 90% of the time.

If you hit stalemates, could you provide additional content around the fight?
Most stalemates seem to be coming from nightblade cloak. The reset power it gives is just too much in the vengeance environment, especially when combined with siphoning attacks. I'd recommend removing the burst heal from cloak so it doesn't enable nightblades to reset the fight so easily.

What day and time of day were you playing? (Day or Night)(NA/EU)
I have been playing during prime time on both PC EU and PC NA, which is roughly 1PM-5PM EST on PC EU and 7PM-11PM EST on PC NA.

What did the battle look like player wise? Where there a lot of players around, or a smaller group? Photos/Videos will help here.
Battles are a good mix, which is nice. Keep fights tend to devolve into who has the larger group, which again I think could be improved by doubling or removing entirely the target cap on damaging AOE skills. Fights between keeps have been quite enjoyable which is something that doesn't happen as often in Grey Host due to the lower population cap and people moving as one consolidated group from keep to keep.

General Feedback

I am not a supporter of vengeance. I think that it feels like a cop-out to continuing work on normal PVP, and I feel like we were misled from early on with what the true intentions were for the environment. That said, if it is being forced upon us, I would at least like for the environment to be well balanced and enjoyable to play. At the very least, with proper balancing and support I do think it can serve it's purpose as a low barrier-to-entry environment for people to dip their toes into ESO PVP. I have played every test so far, and in this current test I've played multiple hours every day. Here are my observations about what works, what can improve, and what can be done to ensure vengeance is a meaningful addition to the game and not a "dead in a month" flop that is abandoned post-launch.

Mobility

Mobility in vengeance is downright awful. It makes the gameplay feel slow and unenjoyable, and reduces the ability for skill expression especially in regards to outnumbered PVP. Without being able to create distance from your opponents, there is just very little room to outplay people. Further, things like roots, snares, and chains are disproportionately rewarding for their ease of use - often times just one person spamming a root or a snare is the most effective thing a group can have, forcing their targets to dodge roll until they're out of stamina with no reliable counterplay.

I would recommend adding more sources of expedition, but more importantly adding a snare immunity in one or more places. Snare immunity skills are crucial to ESO PVP as a counterplay option to roots and snares. This could be done with the addition of a psjic skill line (race against time equivalent), added to the medium armor skill (shuffle), or otherwise incorporated to existing skills. I think that just adding this counterplay opportunity with a snare immunity and perhaps access to some globally accessible sources of expedition (major or minor), the environment would immediately improve dramatically.

Build Options

The perk system is... mediocre. With only three perks to choose from, I would like to see the green perk tree completely reworked to be all combat related perks, and any other non-combat perks (such as those that improve out-of-combat regen) to be completely reworked into combat related perks. It would make for more interesting buildcraft options if the system wasn't already boiled down to the same 1-3 "must take" options from each category. Perhaps adjusting the drawbacks of some things to be less significant would help, too. Thinks like "Increase crit chance, reduce crit damage" are just counter intuitive and not reflective of build choices within the main game.

Armor weight choices should be incorporated to matter, to increase build diversity. I think the main game is a great template to use for this with it's benefits and drawbacks system. For example, light armor could increase base move speed, crit chance, penetration, and magicka recovery - but reduce resistance, increase block cost. Medium armor could increase sprint speed, weapon damage, stamina recovery, have reduced core combat ability cost. Heavy armor could have increased health, resistances, and healing taken - but reduced move speed, increased roll/sprint cost, reduced crit damage, etc.

Simple weapon passives would be good to add. Just things that reflect how they function in the main game, so it's not like your weapon choices are completely irrelevant in most cases. Increase block effectiveness for s&b/ice, increase damage for DW & 2H which reflects the sword/axe/dagger/hammer choice, perhaps increased crit chance and access to major expedition for bow, maybe penetration & some kind of damage modifiers for ice/lightning.

Jewelry and armor glyphs would be another nice feature for some mild customization. Just Weapon/spell damage, magicka regen, or stamina regen glyphs for jewelry, and then just Health, Magicka, and stamina glyphs for armor - with the health glyphs being lower value than the magicka & stamina glyphs.

Mundus stones could be added as well, with reduced values, just to further imitate the buildcraft of the maingame.

All of these things should be fairly simple and calculation-minimal things that would go a long way towards creating buildcraft within vengeance.

Damage - Dots vs Direct

Currently, the damage meta in vengeance on pretty much every spec is to run 2-4 dots, and typically a spammable that is hybrid dot & direct damage such as ice clench, poison arrow, or twin slashes. Dots are so effective in vengeance for several reasons - you have very limited healing that can easily be matched with dot pressure, and you do not have the sustain to endlessly match that dot pressure without running out. Landing a DOT is higher value than landing a direct damage skill, because the net damage is similar and can be stacked with further instances of damages in the following global cooldowns. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does not make for particularly engaging gameplay when you play essentially a static rotation of DOT->DOT->DOT->STUN->BURST SKILL/ULT->HOT->REPEAT.

I think that the effectiveness of dots globally should be brought down by a small amount, and the hybridized DOT/Direct skills should have more damage shifted from their direct portions into their dot portions. Further, direct damage melee skills could probably stand to be buffed marginally, especially in the case of things like dizzying swing and class spammable options. DOTS should be worth running as supplemental pressure, but not the absolute best option on every setup. DOTS lack the counterplay that direct damage has, and it doesn't make for a fun PVP experience when you're being attrition-ed to death all the time with no way to skillfully outplay it.

Heal Targeting

On one hand, I do like that healing in vengeance is "skill based". Having to target your allies to heal them with most skills is something I always wished was in the main game, as healing has historically been disproportionately strong compared to damage, while being an easier role to perform as well. That said, there are a few big issues with how it functions currently. Firstly if I am sitting on 25% HP trying to heal myself, but I am hitting nearby friendly players who are at 100% HP because they're walking in front of my reticle, that is a huge issue. I think that if it was possible, it would be good to impose smart healing on self only, so that if you're low HP targeting an ally who is higher HP, you'd always heal yourself first.

Second, I should not be able to heal guards or npcs. Ever. Guards shouldn't receive any healing AOE or direct from players, and the random NPC quest givers hanging around shouldn't be targetable with heals either.

Class Balance

I'm not going to go into detail about class balance here, because it would require a full breakdown of everything. I do think there is room for improvement across many classes though, and I hope that the team would continue taking feedback and trying to make these improvements in the immediate future after introducing vengeance.

Guards in Vengeance

My god. PLEASE reduce the effectiveness of guards. Guards are genuinely almost as strong as real players in here, perhaps stronger than inexperienced players. These things need to have their damage and health reduced by like 50%. You genuinely cannot walk up to a resource and take it by yourself without first meticulously killing the guards one at a time, starting with those that will follow you into the tower. I don't think its even possible to take a keep or outpost solo if you did somehow manage to get inside, because the guards would either kill you, or it would take you so long to deal with them that by the time you started flipping the flags, they'd be respawning already.

Reward Structure and Incentive to participate - An interesting proposal

As a veteran PVP player, one thing that stood out to me was the ability to progress fresh characters from scratch in vengeance. The typical leveling loop of making a new character on ESO for probably 75%+ of veteran players is to leave the creation screen, group up with a friend, and do 1-2 hours of nBRP/skyreach or grind writs to hit max level, followed by hours of grinding skill lines, skill points, etc. But with vengeance I'm able to head in there at level 15 and get assault 10 as well as some alliance war skill points early on, in addition to nominal EXP.

But what if vengeance offered new ways to progress characters? Firstly, I'd suggest removing the level 10 requirement to enter vengeance, and removing the level 15 requirement to barswap from the entire game. The level 10 requirement is fine for normal cyrodiil. The level 15 requirement to barswap serves no purpose whatsoever than an inconvenient roadbloack for veterans, and a mechanical disservice to new players.

Next, give vengeance a significant EXP modifier on everything PVP related, and slightly less significant EXP modifier for PVE actions (to allow for old grind spots such as cracked wood cave). Grinding mobs, killing players, performing faction/siege objective related functions. Make it so that if you are actively playing in vengeance, you could leave the environment in 5-10 hours with enough EXP to go straight to 50. This will create an engaging way for new and old players alike to level their characters, instead of the same old loop of nBRP/skyreach/writs that we've all done for 8+ years now. It might also create a decent way to grind champion points, too.

But why stop there? Let's talk rewards. We do of course have the PVP reward track coming, but it is..underwhelming. There isn't a whole lot on offer, the capstone rewards feel uninspired, and the vengeance rewards in the early ranks feel like a cop-out just to fill them out. But with the idea that vengeance could be a place for leveling new characters in mind, what if we allowed for EXP, skill points, and similar rewards to be earnable here? Some examples;

• Skill points - Earning skill points on new characters is awful. You need to collect SO many skyshards, do public or normal dungeons, level alliance war lines, etc. What if we could spend our AP in vengeance to purchase skill points directly, up to maybe 50 total or so? This would create a much more enjoyable gameplay loop than the typical grinding we endure, without completely devaluing those other sources.
• EXP Commendations - What if we could purchase scrolls to instantly level weapon & armor lines to 50? For example, the "Two Handed Commendation - Major" scroll could instantly level the line to 50. You'd still need to morph skills, but could gain access to all of them right away for a more fluid leveling process.
• Race changes, Alliance changes - This is more of a personal wish, but it would be great to see race changes/alliance swaps earnable ingame. For years these have been exclusively purchased for crowns, not even offered for gems/seals/tome points, despite being a crucial purchase for many people. It would certainly provide an incentive for veteran players to participate in vengeance if we could earn these rewards there.

Campaign Duration

Make Vengeance a one week campaign, and let us earn tier one transmute geodes in here. Transmutes for newer players are hard to come by, and you need SO MANY of them to start trying PVP builds, or putting together your various PVE setups. Allowing us to earn tier ones on a variety of characters (including low level characters!) would get a ton of people into vengeance on a weekly basis for these transmutes alone.

Conclusion

Again, I think vengeance has potential as an introductory space for PVP. That said, without some of the changes I've gone over here, I do not think it will sustain anywhere near the population it aims to. The environment is too simple, has too many issues, and lacks meaningful progression for your account and skills as a PVP player in it's current form. I sincerely hope if this is intended as a permanent feature, that significant work continues to go into it in the immediate future.

Hi all, quick update for the weekend of Vengeance Testing. With the current population, we're seeing good performance on 3 for AE healing cap and 6 for AE offense cap. Given some of the feedback, we're now looking at a cap of 6 for AE healing and a cap of 12 for AE offense, to see how that feels in battles as opposed to 3 and 6.

Please let us know what you thing if you play over the weekend. Thanks in advance for the additional feedback!