PTS Update 44 - Feedback Thread for Two-Sided Battlegrounds

ZOS_Kevin

This is the official feedback thread for the new Two-Sided Battlegrounds. Specifically, the focus is on testing the various modes in 4v4 and 8v8 Two-Sided Battlegrounds variants. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Did you queue for 4v4 or 8v8 matches?
• What type of match did you have?
• If you played multiple matches, please note which ones you had.
• Did you enjoy Two-Sided Battlegrounds more, less, or the same as Three-Sided Battlegrounds. Why so?
• If there are particular modes or maps that standout in this respect, please include them.
• Were you able to “escape” any maps and go into non-playable spaces?

Moonspawn

You know forcing solo players to go against premades will kill battlegrounds. Why are you doing this?

ZOS_Kevin

Moonspawn wrote: »

You know forcing solo players to go against premades will kill battlegrounds. Why are you doing this?

So one thing to note after chatting with the team about this is the game logic will try to put premade groups vs. premade groups. So trying to avoid situations where solo teams match up with premades as much as possible. The team has been reading other comments like this and thinking about other ways to make sure we can avoid solo groups going against premades as much as possible.

CameraBeardThePirate

The leaderboard cannot be tied to Medal Score. Tying the leaderboard to Medal Score will make it worthless in determining player skill/a competitive experience.

Medal Score can be easily abused by spamming crit heals and other medals that award an inordinate amount of medal score.

Medal Score also leaves Necromancers and Shielder builds in the dust. Most of what Necro does fails to register on the scoreboard (pet damage and healing). Shielder builds are often more useful than healer builds, but don't register any sort of healing done on the scoreboard and do not earn medal score.

Finally, if the leaderboard is tied to cumulative medal score as on live, then what's the point of it? All it equates to on live is # of games played - if I lose 100 games earning only 200 medal score for each game, I'll be more highly ranked than someone that wins 10/10 games played earning 1500 medal score for each. How is that fair?

ForumSavant

I agree with the post above, MMR should be tied to Win/Loss NOT medal score.

In addition, I've watched people play 4v4s and 8v8s and people playing 8v8s will sometimes pop into a match and say "oh this is an 8v8 map too? it's wayyy too small" and then proceed to say how azureblight which is already strong, is extremely broken in these small 8v8 maps. Azureblight needs a fix.

Flags should always function like they do in cyro, if there is a flag game and it's a 4v4 on a single flag, and one person dies, the team with 4 on the flag slowly gains control of the flag over the team with 3 alive.

Thumbless_Bot

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

You know forcing solo players to go against premades will kill battlegrounds. Why are you doing this?

So one thing to note after chatting with the team about this is the game logic will try to put premade groups vs. premade groups. So trying to avoid situations where solo teams match up with premades as much as possible. The team has been reading other comments like this and thinking about other ways to make sure we can avoid solo groups going against premades as much as possible.

There's an existing solution for this already in the game. The queue times for group BGs is over 15 minutes on a typical night. Smashing these queues together in the hopes that groups get more action will only result in less solos playing BGs because they're tired of getting their faces melted off by premades... likely the same set of two or three premade groups over and over. Also. And probably more importantly, this isn't going to keep new players around for long in BGs.

No matter what controls you try to implement short of separate queues this will be the inevitable outcome, which will only contribute to the erosion of the relatively small BG population that still exists over time, not, as above, add to it.

When you realize the mistake and reinstate solo and group queues in q2 next year you may have already lost a good portion of the dedicated bg community that exists today for good. I play on both PC and PS and I think this sentiment permeates both games.

Jsmalls

I'm hoping what @ZOS_Kevin is stating is coded very heavily for weight in terms of matching.

Ive played 2 4v4s and 3 8v8s so far.

I'm the 2 4v4s I was matched up with grouped players (but not the same group, and might not have been a full 4 man) against what's seems like Solos on my team.

The comp'd team all had 40k health, 2 Wardens using Polar, and we're using Azure blight on a negate Sorc.

Teammates quit 1 round in both times.

I'm going to give ZoS the benefit of the doubt and say populations queuing caused this.

For 8v8s, for all three matches players stuck very close to each other (that's what you'll get when cross healing is as strong as it is).

Every single match was extremely one sided and the winning team camped the spawn of the other. I think adding a 8v8 BGs without touching cross healing is going to be serious miss in the fun factor.

Power ups were interesting.

Defense and Power felt very strong. Speed felt... Fun? Like moving fast is cool I guess.

Power felt like was doubling my damage. This may need to be toned down, but the respawn seemed pretty long so hard to say for sure.

Defense felt like it was in a good spot. I could still die and I can't Blow up the whole other team with one ultimate like the Power sigil.

Edit: Oh also Power ups spawning at the start of the match needs a delay or something. Otherwise Sorcs will get the spawn Power ups every time, Streak is just too fast. I say this as a Sorc who got the Power ups every match start...

Thumbless_Bot

Every BG is a death match, always has been, but even more so now, no matter what the stated objective is. Kill your opponents until they're out of lives and then take the objective. I mean, they're called battle grounds, emphasis on battle. This is pvp not pv: objective or door or environment.

You're going to have 9 out of 10 BGs with the stronger group waiting at the spawn point of the other group for the weaker players to log out or get yeeted of the wall by the new mechanic. Once they're dead/logged you win.

This literally sounds like the antithesis of fun, even if you're on the winning team. I hope for the best but this sounds like it will get stale in one day and I'm a die hard bg fan.

I really wish there was some level proactive community engagement on this stuff. Roadmaps should be developed in conjunction with end users and stakeholders, not cloistered away in a corner hoping whatever you cooked up is going to be good and/or fit for purpose. It's dev 101.

Aggrovious

Just turn battle grounds into Super Smash Bros. Maps like Foyada Quarry are fun because you can knock your opponent into the lava. This will allow the weaker players to have a fighting chance. Furthermore, you should look into 1v1 opportunities or creating environments to have players naturally want to do them. BG have the potential to be really fun, but the head to head style of 3 teams is just bad. With it being 1v1 teams, have more knock out, traps etc to break up the 4 man jumping on 1 player.

Techwolf_Lupindo

As long there is a que mode that does NOT include deathmatch, I, and many others that have quit battle grounds over the years, will return for the fun.

Aldoss

In a healthy game, the concerns over queue strategy is naturally solved by volume and MMR, two things ESO does not have.

Low volume is directly related to the neglect from the combat team for the last 7 years. Lack of true MMR is one factor that contributed.

As @CameraBeardThePirate stated, the medal score is a terrible implementation for this. I'm super excited for this announcement, and I remember watching the live stream and trying to push back the jaded voice in the back of my head saying that ZOS was going to ruin this somehow, but this is honestly it.

The moment you actually implement a skill based MMR, this problem solves itself. People of all skill levels start to have more fun and decide to queue more, solving the volume issue.

The outward disgust from a vast majority of ESO players towards the PvP side of this game is directly related to ZOS' lack of investment. People hate getting trounced, but as a whole, people love to feel like they're learning and progressing. Learning by challenge works best on an 80/20 scale, where someone succeeds 2 out of 10 times.

In the current live version of BGs with the quantity > quality medal score model, the group queue is dead most of the day because no casuals join. On nights when the queue does pop, all it takes is 1 group in the queue to completely kill the mode because people who are still learning the game literally can't learn anything when they die from one rush combo or triple ult dump and have no idea what they can do to stop that from happening.

Increase the rewards for joining the queue and create a medal score that incentivizes players to try and learn how to beat people that are slightly within their competitive range. If I have a skill score of 1500, I shouldn't be penalized for losing to a 4 stack group of fully coordinated builds, and I should still be compensated. If I have a skill score of 2200, and I lose to a team with a score of 1500, I should lose a week's worth of progress on that score.

Without a true MMR, you're just going to have the exact same empty queues, but with more animosity between casuals and sweaties because now there is no option for them to "win" by avoiding PvP.

ZOS, you haven't learned from your mistakes. This isn't fully baked and you're setting this up for eventual failure yet again. It needs a skill based MMR and fast.

Alaztor91

Can't wait to Solo Q and be matched against premades with a class that hasn't been able to get correct scoreboard numbers since 2019.

This game mode already failed back in 2017 when you decided to make it 3-team. Please be a little more careful this time.

xylena_lazarow

I'll probably avoid this mode as a solo queue enjoyer, no interest in being farmed by 4 man premades.

IncultaWolf

Necromancers will always have the lowest medal scores because their blastbones and pets don't count towards damage and healing on the scoreboard

West93

Why allow 4man premades to run down everyone in proposed "8v8 casual?" It will be impossible to play during evening prime time hours without avoiding such groups.

I won't queue to battleground till there is solo queue option only.

chessalavakia_ESO

Day One Battlegrounds Feedback:

I did 8 v 8 matches.

I got Team Death Match, Death Match , and Crazy King.

During the Crazy King, I was the only person playing the objective for most of the match and I quit playing the objective before the end because I felt the queue time was long enough that I might as well let them Death Match the time out if that was what everyone else wanted.

I would say that my initial take is that the two way is less enjoyable for me than the three way at least with eight people with the PTS population. It felt like both teams were trying to imitate Ball Groups from Cyrodiil which at least to me represents some of the least fun PvP in ESO. It was hard to turn things around once your team started hitting deaths or leavers as you end up being outnumbered in the fight. With the three way, it's easier to feel like you are accomplishing something even when you are losing.

The Team DeathMatch felt a bit better than the DeathMatch because the reset after the round gave our team time to vent and adjust rather than just continuously trickling once things started to go bad. My team went from losing badly to stomping the other team after the reset.

I wasn't able to escape the maps but, I wasn't trying to do so much either.

gariondavey

8v8 should be max duo queue

Aldoss

gariondavey wrote: »

8v8 should be max duo queue

This is a great suggestion

LukosCreyden

Solo queue enjoyer here. Not loving the idea of matching against sweaty premades in both modes.
As it currently stands, I will likely do the new BGs enough to get whatever rewards I want (if any), then dip.

Major_Mangle

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

The leaderboard cannot be tied to Medal Score. Tying the leaderboard to Medal Score will make it worthless in determining player skill/a competitive experience.

Medal Score can be easily abused by spamming crit heals and other medals that award an inordinate amount of medal score.

Medal Score also leaves Necromancers and Shielder builds in the dust. Most of what Necro does fails to register on the scoreboard (pet damage and healing). Shielder builds are often more useful than healer builds, but don't register any sort of healing done on the scoreboard and do not earn medal score.

Finally, if the leaderboard is tied to cumulative medal score as on live, then what's the point of it? All it equates to on live is # of games played - if I lose 100 games earning only 200 medal score for each game, I'll be more highly ranked than someone that wins 10/10 games played earning 1500 medal score for each. How is that fair?

Wanna start by saying that I 100% agree that tying leaderboard to medal score is horrible and shouldn´t be a thing.

I can also 100% get behind the suggestion to change so that the damage and healing from pets should count as "your damage/healing", but with the shield I disagree. You´re not exactly "healing" your team but rather doing damage prevention or giving them "temporary extra HP". If you wanna add another medal type that evolves around shielding allies then that´s a topic worth discussion I guess, but if the main problem is to prevent "abusive medal score behavior" then shield healers/support doesn´t need t to be added to that pool as well, since it´s probable one of the more overtuned defensive mechanics currently.

On topic of the two sided battlegrounds:

8v8 needs to not allow premade groups, maybe (big maybe) it could allow duos to queue in. Leave the 4v4 for premades who wanna fight other premades. It´s going to be un-avoidable the first few weeks that games will be one sided due to new mmr/ranking systems etc, but there is no reason to make it worse than it has to be.

licenturion

I am mainly a PVE player who sometimes dabbles in some solo battleground action and most of the time I have fun because every team has the same handicap of being a solo player without voice chat or synergized builds.

If I get matched against premade groups I will just probably leave the match if we are getting insta-stomped and try another match. And if it doesn't get better I will probably drop battlegrounds altogether from my rotation.

There should be a solo queue with a decent MMR check system IMO.

But hey if you chase away all the solo battlegrounders the balance issues will fix themselves because it will be only sweaty premade versus sweaty premade.

Jsmalls

From previous PTS testing I'm worried that the first day will be the ONLY time the game modes would have been possible to test.

It's rare to see 1-2 people in common areas on the PTS after the first couple of days, let alone 16 players interested in queuing for a BGs match.

My experience of these BGs definitely left a sour taste for all the matches I participated in. Both the ones my team dominated and the matches where my team got dominated.

I understand it's too far in development to change too much but.... The 4v4v4 definitely reduced the chance of spawn camping so it wasn't as much of an issue in that scenario. But something HAS to be done or this content will 100% be dead on arrival.

I played a game with a similar game mode to this (Black Desert Online) and this exact same scenario happened in 50%+ of the matches. Same concept where it was ~8v8 two sided fight, but having one spawn point is... Asking for problems. Which is definitely something that could have been communicated to the development team if a conversation had been started earlier with your playerbase.

Can we have some feedback on how this might be addressed?

I understand the "spawning in Waves" is suppose to help this situation. But you're still dropping into a group of 6-8 players. You're going to be CC'd and killed as you hit the ground.

And unless your entire team is dead it'll likely be dropping into an outnumbered fight as well.

Joy_Division

There are quite a few reasons I have thousands of PvP hours and hasn't played a BG match since 2018. This update solves one of them (3 team format), but isn;t changing much else. By far the most frustrating aspect about playing BGs was the imbalanced teams. It is really boring if your team is so much better than the others and really frustrating when your team is so much less talented.

If 8v8 is supposed to be "casual mode," then I can't think of anything less casual than a team of 4 highly skilled players joining it with coordinated builds and in voice coms. That belongs in the 4v4 competitive BG mode. If these highly skilled players want to be casual, then they do not need to run complementary preplanned builds and coordinate their ultimate dumps.

I'd imagine people who disliked getting repeatedly wiped against premades are going to be like me and gravitate toward the 8v8 when they are solo. If we coming here to get away from organized groups, the last thing we want to see are organized groups.

As a side note, I'm not sure why ZOS can;t get the MMR system right. Do a search for MMR on the forums for like 2017 and it will be clear as day that the accumulated total system that ZOS uses is completely inaccurate when it comes to grouping players by skill. That's 7 years ago this feedback was given and probably 17 years before that MMOs realized that total game-time played isn't a good indicator of player skill. Why are we still here? We get these imbalanced teams because the game thinks piling up empty damage while constantly losing is an S tier player whereas the Arcanist shielder support player who always wins is low tier trash.

CameraBeardThePirate

@ZOS_Kevin I really hope the feedback on the leaderboard/medal score is passed along quick. If the current iteration of the leaderboard makes it to live, the leaderboard will be dead on arrival.

It cannot be tied to medal score.

jcaceresw

<quote>Starting with the new Galeskirmish Gladiator style pages, which are currently exclusive to leaderboard rewards.</quote>

I am sorry but I don't like this change. I don't have all the time or the skills to be pursuing a leader board spot. I do like to do some casual battlegrounds matches considering the toxic premade issue and the inexplicable long death recap when they oneshot me with just a light attack (which also happens on Cyrodiil and Imperial City as many times I have reported). Anyway, move the style as part of either daily or mailer rewards.

Aldoss

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin I really hope the feedback on the leaderboard/medal score is passed along quick. If the current iteration of the leaderboard makes it to live, the leaderboard will be dead on arrival.

It cannot be tied to medal score.

The leaderboard and the entire investment into this revamped system will be dead on arrival.

The rewards aren't good enough to motivate casuals to stay and get clobbered.

I'm against the idea of a solo only queue because this game is a mmo and casual players should be allowed to group together without having to face off against full groups just the same, but I agree that allowing 4mans into the 8v8 is a recipe for disaster. Duo is great.

I sat in both queues last night for 90 min and nothing popped. I'm worried that ZOS will be relying on the feedback of just 16 people for this entire pts run.

Rhaegar75

@ZOS_Kevin it's paramount that especially the 8 vs.8 mode is not poisoned by premades slaughtering solo and random players.

PVP and BGs require new players and I really look forward to a logic based MMR that allows you to fight people who are, more or less, in your skill bracket.

This would be derailed if premade groups were allowed to share the same queue as solos - in one strike you would be killing any chances of increasing the PVP/BG population. Let's face it: most common sense driven players will not stick to a mode where they are unlikely to stand a chance. Being farmed by pro-players (i.e. streamers, 8 hours per day players etc.) and premades is not great fun

ForumSavant

The vast majority of these comments echoing the same sentiment that BGs should be tied to win/loss and not medal score. If it somehow comes out to live being tied to medal score it's quite evident ZOS does not take any feedback into account and only has these threads to serve it's own interest.

4v4s are meant to be competitive, the people that want to play these want them to be competitive, these players will not be turned off with an MMR and leaderboard based off of win/loss, this is the case for literally any other competitive game.

Oh, and azureblight is still insanely broken in BGs.

albertberku

The moment i read 2 groups and 8v8 or 4v4 in BG, i thought this is going to be bad. 4v4v4 with objectives like capture the flag was fun and forgiving in solo queues. Now, i have the feeling that it is going to be only Deathmatch and in ESO PvP group with +1 is in huge advantage. 3 different groups somehow mitigated it, now it will be either crush or get crushed. If someone from dev team came to me and told me that they are changing BG to that, my first question would be "Why?", like if my goal would be making the BGs less played, i would probably offer exactly this change.

So, i can imagine that when BG changes go live, there will be half hour queues due to low population. If you have to farm anything from there, better be quick before PTS goes live in a month...

Kalam0n

I was only able to get into one 8v8 BG so far. I waited in both queues for at least 10 minutes afterward hoping to get a 2nd round, but no luck. I would love to see a PTS BG weekend event, maybe with some sort of small incentive for anyone who participates to encourage people to come help test. I think you really need to get the casuals onto the PTS and not just BG enthusiasts.

The one match I did get was completely lopsided, a truly poor experience as my side got spawn camped while the other side held all 3 chaos balls and quickly won the match. My biggest concern coming out of the preview livestream was that there seemed to be no new spawn protection, no mechanics to help turn the tide, and no real incentive to regroup and try to regain momentum. I'm all for the switch to 2-sided BGs, but without a third team to help alleviate these problems, I'd like to see something added to mitigate these issues that are sure to be more prevalent in 2-sided matches, particularly in the casual 8v8 battlegrounds. I'm less concerned with 'fun' in 4v4 competitive.

Previously, even if one team was clearly running away with the win, you were incentivized to fight for 2nd place. If one team was spawn camping another, the third side could freely run objectives or flank the dominant team and steal a couple kills. In this new format, the problem is not that one team is hiding in their spawn, it's that they have no incentive to leave their spawn. No one wants to just get farmed for AP. Other games have addressed this by putting overpowered NPC guards in the spawn areas to nuke spawn campers who stray too close, or by empowering the underdogs if the match gets too lopsided, and possibly adding extra incentives for a near-win. In the case of Chaos Ball, the solution could be as simple as modifying the damage done by a Chaos Ball based on how disparate the score is. The more lopsided the match, the more difficult it becomes for the dominant team to manage the chaos ball damage, giving the underdogs a shot at reclaiming the chaos ball for a bit and getting some points on the board.

In my opinion the goal of a casual battleground queue should be to encourage participation across the player base and make every match as fun as possible. If MMR alone can't create equitable matches, then mechanics should make up the difference. Otherwise, you'll likely see players grind for the rewards they want before abandoning the content which would be a shame.

Also, the suggestion that '8v8 should be max duo queue' is an excellent idea.

Jsmalls

Kalam0n wrote: »

I was only able to get into one 8v8 BG so far. I waited in both queues for at least 10 minutes afterward hoping to get a 2nd round, but no luck. I would love to see a PTS BG weekend event, maybe with some sort of small incentive for anyone who participates to encourage people to come help test. I think you really need to get the casuals onto the PTS and not just BG enthusiasts.

The one match I did get was completely lopsided, a truly poor experience as my side got spawn camped while the other side held all 3 chaos balls and quickly won the match. My biggest concern coming out of the preview livestream was that there seemed to be no new spawn protection, no mechanics to help turn the tide, and no real incentive to regroup and try to regain momentum. I'm all for the switch to 2-sided BGs, but without a third team to help alleviate these problems, I'd like to see something added to mitigate these issues that are sure to be more prevalent in 2-sided matches, particularly in the casual 8v8 battlegrounds. I'm less concerned with 'fun' in 4v4 competitive.

Previously, even if one team was clearly running away with the win, you were incentivized to fight for 2nd place. If one team was spawn camping another, the third side could freely run objectives or flank the dominant team and steal a couple kills. In this new format, the problem is not that one team is hiding in their spawn, it's that they have no incentive to leave their spawn. No one wants to just get farmed for AP. Other games have addressed this by putting overpowered NPC guards in the spawn areas to nuke spawn campers who stray too close, or by empowering the underdogs if the match gets too lopsided, and possibly adding extra incentives for a near-win. In the case of Chaos Ball, the solution could be as simple as modifying the damage done by a Chaos Ball based on how disparate the score is. The more lopsided the match, the more difficult it becomes for the dominant team to manage the chaos ball damage, giving the underdogs a shot at reclaiming the chaos ball for a bit and getting some points on the board.

In my opinion the goal of a casual battleground queue should be to encourage participation across the player base and make every match as fun as possible. If MMR alone can't create equitable matches, then mechanics should make up the difference. Otherwise, you'll likely see players grind for the rewards they want before abandoning the content which would be a shame.

Also, the suggestion that '8v8 should be max duo queue' is an excellent idea.

This. So much this. This echoes every point I made as well. Which shows that out of your small sample population of testers its seen over and over again.

So please tell us what the intended fix is going to be. I've been playing this game for ~10 years, I want to see it succeed. I'm not a huge fan of BGs (I prefer Cyrodiil) but I don't want to see this content completely die after the first month.