Good morning/afternoon/evening, and welcome to another rant/discussion thread. I'm going to talk about, what I believe are, the main issues in PvP at the moment and how Zenimax is doing a pretty good job killing their own game. This is gonna be a fairly long read so sit down son, and watch the show!
The amount of bugs in this game make me sick. The game is in a beta state and things ARE NOT getting fixed. It's as simple as that. The broken Caltrops bug, it's going on for... what now? 1 or 2 weeks? Has it been hot-fixed yet? No. Now, to all of you people that don't know what the broken Caltrops do, well, it makes your siege equipment useless cause it negates 100% of the damage. I don't know why or how this is happening, but if you throw down friendly Caltrops, and stand on it - you, your buddies, and your siege weapons take no damage at all. There, I said it. This tactic has become the bane of oil pots, fire trebuchets and ballistaes. It really feels like you're showering the enemy not with oil, but more like soup, or honey pudding.
Another issue in Cyrodiil, if you get into a group with more than 12 players, most people, if not everyone crashes. This has been happening ever since "The Patch", and the PvP guild that I'm in, is now running about 3 separate groups with no more than 12 players in each group - in order to prevent everyone from crashing. Another thing that hasn't been fixed: if you are in Cyrodiil and invite someone that is not in Cyrodiil, about 50% of your group disconnects. Why? Nobody *** knows, and it seems like Zenimax doesn't know anything either because its not fixed yet and its been in the game for a long time. But hey, grouping in this game in general is pretty bad, both in PvP and PvE, but the crashing and random disconnecting is making me sick.
Anyhow, moving on:
We all know that with The Patch came along the buffing of NPCs in Cyrodiil and new Archers. Every single NPC in Cyrodiil is now VR5. For defending/attacking keeps, this is pretty good and fun, cause it makes it more challenging. At least, that what it was supposed to be. In reality, it's a lot different. It is rather frustrating really. (well, if you just have one massive lag-zerg, taking a keep is no problem.) The VR5 NPCs are fine, BUT... their respawn timer is a little too fast. It needs to be nerfed, just by a tiny little bit. That would be enough. When The Patch was released, me and about 7 guildies tried to take over a keep, we had an awesome tactic and it worked out great. We got to the 1st flag and killed them all, once we got to the 2nd flag, the NPCs we killed before re-spawned, and took back the initial flag. Then we all died cause we got overrun.
Also, the damage that these mages can do is ridiculous. Their AoE is insane, let alone their single-target abilities. Sometimes they put down about 2 or maybe even 3 lightning AoE's. Once that happens - you're ***. No healer can heal through that.
And that brings us to another thing! Mage Mercenaries that you can buy with AP. These guys... oh god... did Zenimax even test this? I think not. And if they did, they *** suck. Why did they put these Mercenary NPCs in the game anyway? Waste of development time.
The issue with these NPCs is that about 75% of them are UNTARGETABLE. That's right. You cannot target them, you cannot AoE them, you cannot do anything about them. The issue is that the enemy usually buys about a few dozen of them and stacks them up inside a keep. What happens? *** *** of damage and chaos, and combined with enemy players that are defending, your chances of actually taking a keep (combined with the Caltrops bug, etc) are 0.001%.
Anyhow, moving on to an other annoying bug that's been in the game since Beta (and I've reported this bug way too many times). Siege equipment, forward camps in particular, often feel like bugging out. What this means for forward camps is:
1. You're too close to another friendly graveyard, this probably means another friendly camp is nearby and/or it bugged out and prevents people from re-spawning, and prevents you from setting up a new one.
2. You place down a forward camp, and it simply sits there. This happens quite often. You place it down, and it doesn't show on the map and prevents people from re-spawning.
3. But wait! This also happening to regular siege equipment, such as trebuchets and ballistaes. You place it down, and you cannot interact with it nor use it. It simple stands there until it dies. And it also fills up a siege spot so you can't spawn anything near it in a ~15 foot radius.
There also is a bug where you fall through the world. It's been in the Beta since day #1 and it's still there. It's still *** there people. In fact, not too long ago I fell through the world at Fort Aleswell. But I'm not going to put a screenshot down here since I'm getting pissed just thinking about it.
Well, I think I've summed up most if not all PvP game-breaking bugs at the moment. This stuff has been going on for a while and has not been fixed. In most MMOs these bugs would have been fixed by the next day. BUT HEY! Zenimax is too busy adding care-bear PvE content and extra VR levels, turning the game into a massive VR grind-fest. The game is losing players on every side and it will continue like this if they not get their heads out of their arses.
FIX YOUR CURRENT GAME CONTENT BEFORE ADDING NEW GAME CONTENT. PERIOD.
So that was my rant, or whatever you want to call it. I have spoken. Feel free to flame me and so forth, I can't wait for the fanboys and white knights to defend this.