Is the current state of PvP more enjoyable or less enjoyable than previous years?

ilawana

Just curious to hear everyone's thoughts.

Vaqual

Less enjoyable. (why?)

It feels that after every update the flaws in the balancing and design of sets are intended. I don't like when people think their sales tactics are working on me. This overshadows the real improvements and I feel sorry for the Devs who have to do this to their game and the players who have to play with that. PvP is usually my main motivation for improving my character. This directs me through the game. Only to then realize that I enjoy almost every other bit of the game more. Not because PvP is horrible, but because the bad decisions stand out so much that it spoils the fun.

CrazyKitty

Less enjoyable. (why?)

The pop cap in Cyrodiil right now is literally 10% of what it was a decade ago. It almost doesn't matter if it's more enjoyable or not, it's far, far less accessible now.

U35

Proc sets with free pulls like RoA and Dark Convergence

More than 5 years of neglect, with many promises made to the PvP community in that time, with virtually none of those promises fulfilled.

....I could go on unfortunately.

Stridig

Less enjoyable. (why?)

Low pop cap, healing way too overpowered, free no skill pull sets, ball group playstyle is toxic beyond belief, and stuck in combat bug which isn't anything new but [snip].... It's been years.

[edited for profanity bypass]

DaisyRay

Less enjoyable. (why?)

I don't want to go into details on why it's less enjoyable for me because I don't want to cause any drama.
(even though most of my issues were already named above)

I've been playing less and less. It's at the point that I only log in if I have a discord group so I can at least have some funny chats. I'm counting down the days for some other games to come out that I want to play. Being in cyro now is just exhausting, not fun, and a lot of stress for something that's supposed to be fun.

blktauna

Less enjoyable. (why?)

Tank meta is tedious, cross healing is out of hand, ball groups are tedious, years of neglect...

SkaraMinoc

More enjoyable. (why?)

Let's see.

• Higher TTK is good game design (TTK was absurdly low in the past)
• Oakensoul mythic for players that don't want to use two bars
• Server upgrade made Cyrodiil mostly playable
• Multithreaded rendering increased FPS
• Hidden object culling increased FPS
• Gold jewelry is no longer prohibitively expensive
• Curated set drops make farming sets possible now

ValarMorghulis1896

Less enjoyable. (why?)

Pop cap is MUCH too low now.

MasterSpatula

Less enjoyable. (why?)

The system rewards all the worst ways to play it. And as time goes on, and ZOS does nothing to address/correct this, all the players who believe in fair play and balance stop playing, and things shift more and more to the favor of the people who should never be favored.

And as the cheesiest players take over, ZOS's metrics show only the cheesiest players bother with PVP, so they continue development in ways that favor the cheesy.

xylena_lazarow

Less enjoyable. (why?)

U35 nerfs

pressure damage nerfs

melee nerfs (alongside inexplicable range buffs)

horrendous class balance and loss of class identity (RIP jabs)

overpowered healing and inflated hp pools

pointless stalemates and players playing to stall not win

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Higher TTK is good game design

nvm the above I'm gonna stalemate you so hard

fizzylu

Less enjoyable. (why?)

I prefer smaller scale PvP so I normally stick to duels, BGs, and IC. For me, PvP had gone downhill with the release of Greymoor. The proc set meta at that time was some of the worst gameplay experiences I've had across every game I've played and while Zenimax did get that mess under control a bit, I still feel like there's remnants of it still in the game.

The worst side effect from that meta is the tankiness of players. Soooo many times I just disengage from a fight because it's seriously just not going anywhere and is not worth my time since I know it will just end up being a battle of resource management, not an actual fight. This is something that I pretty much never had to do pre-Greymoor. But really, I'd be writing a novel if I try to list everything wrong with the current state of PvP.

DigiAngel

Less enjoyable. (why?)

Ball groups and immortals.

Heals_With_Orbs

Less enjoyable. (why?)

Too many ball groups
Too many vamps (who aren't vamps, just pretend to be) and the garbage undeath passive
Too many nightblades and hiding people (invisible players = not pvp)
Macro and script users
Low pop cap
45K HP tanks / chunks of metal that run up and down towers and can stand in siege without any real danger
unbalanced classes and sets - gets worse as time moves on

xylena_lazarow

Less enjoyable. (why?)

Heals_With_Orbs wrote: »

Too many vamps (who aren't vamps, just pretend to be) and the garbage undeath passive

Undeath needs to be deleted from the game, idk why it still exists, and agreed that breaks immersion for PvP minmaxers to look like vampires, a lot of those players really don't want to be vamp and hide it with skins anyway.

IncultaWolf

How long is it going to take to nerf undeath, unnamed 30% damage mitigation contributes the most to the tank meta where fights just never end. 90% of pvpers don't even want to be a vamp, they just want to use that one passive.

Lazarus_Rising

Less enjoyable. (why?)

I always enjoy pvp when i play ESO. Problem is that after years of necro nerfs my class is in shambles and its hard to be motivated. I come back every couple months for playing like a month and then move to other games which is perfectly fine. But in that 1 month of ESO i would love to be somewhat competitive.

xDeusEJRx

Less enjoyable. (why?)

Bring back Flames of ambition's no proc era of pvp.

New CP and new armor system so the game felt like everyone was starting the game over again.

Plus completely new and fresh meta that wasn't dominated by procs so there was a lot more deaths to player kills as opposed to whatever new mini-game set ZoS has cooked up.

Nothing will beat that era of PVP for a long time. It feels like a breath of fresh air having a complete wipe/reset and everyone starting out fresh again.

ilawana

Less enjoyable. (why?)

fizzylu wrote: »

I prefer smaller scale PvP so I normally stick to duels, BGs, and IC. For me, PvP had gone downhill with the release of Greymoor. The proc set meta at that time was some of the worst gameplay experiences I've had across every game I've played and while Zenimax did get that mess under control a bit, I still feel like there's remnants of it still in the game.

The worst side effect from that meta is the tankiness of players. Soooo many times I just disengage from a fight because it's seriously just not going anywhere and is not worth my time since I know it will just end up being a battle of resource management, not an actual fight. This is something that I pretty much never had to do pre-Greymoor. But really, I'd be writing a novel if I try to list everything wrong with the current state of PvP.

I was thinking the same thing. Greymoor came with some nice changes, but it seems like as a whole, pvp has declined a lot since then. All of the proc set changes, balance changes, and changes in the skill ceiling and skill gap have made pvp way less competitive and less enjoyable. Most of the solo players seem to have disappeared, except a few who don't play nearly as often as they used to. The population has also decreased significantly (considering the changes to skill gap were intended to increase player interaction with endgame content like trials and pvp).

SandandStars

Less enjoyable. (why?)

today’s pvp is heinous

no vision = no fun

Just_Attivi

Less enjoyable. (why?)

I think most points, pro's and con's, above are valid.

I started a big rant, but its mostly the above points, so I'll spare everyone. Ive only been semi serious in PVP for ~2 years, never really set foot in cyro/IC before that (and when i did, it was in PVE set ups lol). But even in that time, Ive seen a big shift from lots of small scale pvp'ing across all of cyro with keeps and rss lit all over, to 'one giant tank blob zerg and nothing else, the entire server stacked at a single keep' from each faction on the map. intelligent strategies have left in favor of 'just stack more tanks on the door' which maybe is a player mentality issue more so, but the tank meta encourages such behavior.

But ill just stress that healing is overtuned as heck, and the tank meta is stale. I dont find it engaging to be a blob of 30+ tank/healers with 40k hp each and light attacking solo's to death, needing siege to kill any competent player. while such tactics help ''win'' the campaign, its just... boring. As much as I hate siege from resources, it at least promotes pvp that usually isnt an entire faction in one location.

I do think some sort of health cap scaling and healing stack limits with battlespirit would go a long way to alleviating the tank blobs, (I know people love 30k+ hp, but id argue it should start scaling to a cap sooner, so the average player sits closer to 27k, a fully invested tank gets closer to 35k, force people to invest into damage/sustain/learning to dodge/block/burst and actually pushing the fight rather than stacking health and being a blob waiting for more blobs to outnumber the enemy blobs. and HOTs need a limit of how many identical ones can stack, say no more than 2 Vigors/regens etc. or a 'self' version and a single 'from group' version. debuffs likely should have a stack limit too, ive seen instances where the entire debuff bar on me filled with ele sus and associated status effects, across my entire screen lol) though obviously balancing these things would need precision tools, not the sledge hammer ZOS likes to wield, so when it does change we will likely all be complaining it went too far.

Caecus0

Same. (why?)

I would say there are the cons mentioned above as well as some pros.

My biggest concern is the fact that I still have iffy experiences in Cyro, and I'm stuck doing Battlegrounds if I want any semblance of stability. It's insane to me that after the server upgrades, Cyro ran nearly flawlessly for about a week until they performed "maintenance" on it, just for it to go right back to normal or marginally better at best.

Even then, the naturally high latency of this game can often do janky things like make it seem like people are hitting you through walls only because server registered the hit BEFORE you turn the corner, but you don't see it until AFTER. It can be very immersion breaking.

Balance is and always has been an issue in one way or another. People above me have already made solid points and I don't feel the need to add to it.

But the good news is that there are SOME improvements. Performance (not necessarily latency) has definitely improved. There is more build variety than ever before which makes chronic theory-crafters like me pretty happy.

Overall, I'd say the pros and cons make the experience neither worse nor better... But that isn't necessarily a great thing.

Amottica

Most who are serious about PvP are no longer here. The significantly lower pop cap tells us that. As such, it seems the majority is no longer here to answer because of real-life issues, or they no longer enjoyed PvP in ESO.

Of course, we do not know how many left due to real-life issues vs how many left due to no longer enjoying the game. That would require a poll specific to them but they are not here to vote.

Mesite

More enjoyable. (why?)

If I want to I can mostly walk around for ages and do the quests without bumping into anyone at all. It's great.

GooGa592

Less enjoyable. (why?)

Amottica wrote: »

Most who are serious about PvP are no longer here. The significantly lower pop cap tells us that. As such, it seems the majority is no longer here to answer because of real-life issues, or they no longer enjoyed PvP in ESO.

Of course, we do not know how many left due to real-life issues vs how many left due to no longer enjoying the game. That would require a poll specific to them but they are not here to vote.

Most of the PvP community left because ZOS ran them off. They didn't leave by choice. They left because of things like the "Waaaa Waaaaa Waaaa" video and the sentiments most of the ZOS dev team exhibited towards PvP in their streams and how poorly supported Cyrodiil has been since 2019. We aren't even allowed to type PvP or Cyrodiil in live streams by ZOS without getting silenced.

NordSwordnBoard

Less enjoyable. (why?)

After joking about a player with 17k health ("In this day and age? Heresy!") we reminisced about how that would be acceptable in the past. How the TTK is inevitably lower if you don't get to 35k-40k health without giving up much in return. Pull sets remove player agency in an already burdened server, so idk how we could even go back to 20k-25k health when you have to sustain a certain amount of damage without access to any defense. Even knowing full well how to avoid pulls and bombs, it just gets tedious as a constant mechanic. I also admittedly have pull builds, because its foolish not to utilize something useful.
The question going forward is, what's the next VD/RA/DC? Scribbin stuff? Then what?

xylena_lazarow

Less enjoyable. (why?)

NordSwordnBoard wrote: »

After joking about a player with 17k health

I've encountered hardcore minmax groups consisting of multiple 17k hp NB gankers. If you don't one shot combo kill them, they one shot heal to full with Healthy Offering (either their own or from an ally NB) and vanish while the others take advantage of your attempt to go on the offensive. Even a 17k hp squishball survives a disturbing amount of pressure when healed by 3x Healthy Offering spam from minmax gank builds with high offensive stats.

reazea

Less enjoyable. (why?)

The current pop cap of 60-80 players is way too small. The original pop cap was literally 10x higher. What happened? The pop cap reductions are not the result of a lack of interest.

RomanRex

Less enjoyable. (why?)

stale and dwindling player base.

the last meaningful “pvp” content added was ToT, which is almost universally disliked by pvp players.

more outside competition from other games with better balance and more frequent updates.

Amottica

GooGa592 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Most who are serious about PvP are no longer here. The significantly lower pop cap tells us that. As such, it seems the majority is no longer here to answer because of real-life issues, or they no longer enjoyed PvP in ESO.

Of course, we do not know how many left due to real-life issues vs how many left due to no longer enjoying the game. That would require a poll specific to them but they are not here to vote.

Most of the PvP community left because ZOS ran them off. They didn't leave by choice. They left because of things like the "Waaaa Waaaaa Waaaa" video and the sentiments most of the ZOS dev team exhibited towards PvP in their streams and how poorly supported Cyrodiil has been since 2019. We aren't even allowed to type PvP or Cyrodiil in live streams by ZOS without getting silenced.

Most of the PvP community had left long before the waaa waaa waaa video. The pop caps were small years before then.

Alchimiste1

Less enjoyable. (why?)

Far less.
Classes don't feel unique anymore.
Health is too high, and everyone has a burst heal.
Animation canceling/bash weaving and other mechanics that added some skill replaced by proc sets.

Stale meta.
procs
dots
status effects

xylena_lazarow

Less enjoyable. (why?)

Alchimiste1 wrote: »

Classes don't feel unique anymore.
Health is too high, and everyone has a burst heal.
Animation canceling/bash weaving and other mechanics that added some skill replaced by proc sets.
Stale meta, procs, dots, status effects

Agree on the first couple things, maybe you're referring to duels after that, but pressure damage is pretty underpowered in Cyro with the inflated hp and healing on top of the u35 dmg nerfs... MagSorcs and NBs generally run stat sets.