PTS Update 44 - Feedback Thread for Two-Sided Battlegrounds

Tcholl · October 1

The solo and group queue change, with no possibility of matching pre made groups with solos, also has my support.

It might be the foundational piece to start forming a BG population.

I understand this might not be the best option for everyone, but it is definitely one that makes sense. If you want to play in an optmized comp with comms, you can queue for that and if you just want to be in a group with your own build and using the chat, you will be able to do that too. You cannot mix those players, imo, since they are playing different games out there.

This is specially important in BGs, since you cannot avoid the comped groups and go somewhere else. You can do that in Cyro and IC, where everyone, grouped or not, can pick his/her preferred fights.

Another thing that doesn't make sense, with all due respect, is stating this queue system is against group play. Players queuing solo will still be playing in group. Your group play is not the only type of group play that exists in a MMO.

Aldoss · October 1

licenturion wrote: »

I am very happy with the solo queue changes.
We solo battlegrounders have no impact on group queue times because we would not queue.

Just to confirm, you're fine saying that at no point in the future while playing this social mmorpg, will you ever meet a new friend, get an old friend, or have a significant other that you'd like to share casual PvP with?

licenturion · October 1

Aldoss wrote: »

licenturion wrote: »

I am very happy with the solo queue changes.
We solo battlegrounders have no impact on group queue times because we would not queue.

Just to confirm, you're fine saying that at no point in the future while playing this social mmorpg, will you ever meet a new friend, get an old friend, or have a significant other that you'd like to share casual PvP with?

Yep I am fine with that. I game sometimes (other games) with my partner and I am happy to join group queue because we are indeed a group. I would not like to join solo queue as a group (more than 1 person)

Decimus · October 1

Another important point of feedback: BG queues should have a threshold where matches start even if there isn't 8 players queueing.

Today we discovered on PTS that unless you have precisely atleast 8 people queueing, the queues just won't pop. We had between 4-6 people confirmed to be queueing and instead of starting a game 2v2 or 3v3, the queue would refuse to pop even at the 30 minute marker.

If a queue hasn't popped in a while (I would recommend 10-15 minutes), I believe the game should put you in a 2v2 or 3v3 if possible - this could significantly help reduce queue times (especially group queues late at night).

Aldoss · October 2

Decimus wrote: »

Another important point of feedback: BG queues should have a threshold where matches start even if there isn't 8 players queueing.

Today we discovered on PTS that unless you have precisely atleast 8 people queueing, the queues just won't pop. We had between 4-6 people confirmed to be queueing and instead of starting a game 2v2 or 3v3, the queue would refuse to pop even at the 30 minute marker.

If a queue hasn't popped in a while (I would recommend 10-15 minutes), I believe the game should put you in a 2v2 or 3v3 if possible - this could significantly help reduce queue times (especially group queues late at night).

This is a suggestion that I can get behind.

Anything that helps remove the complete dead zones that exist in the group queue.

Thumbless_Bot · October 2

DrSlaughtr wrote: »

I just want a battle royale teamless bg with no overhead identification. 😁

A giant pit of doom with no los and no crouching and no cloaking.. just blood and death

davelbier · October 3

Aldoss wrote: »

licenturion wrote: »

I am very happy with the solo queue changes.
We solo battlegrounders have no impact on group queue times because we would not queue.

Just to confirm, you're fine saying that at no point in the future while playing this social mmorpg, will you ever meet a new friend, get an old friend, or have a significant other that you'd like to share casual PvP with?

different person here but...this is how i play, and its why i have put so much time into ESO. I can generally just hop into the game anytime i want, do some stuff, and peace out. i dont have gamer friends, my SO cant/doesnt game, so i want to get into pvp and fight other players and if i cant do that, im not playing. I dont want to seige zerg, its repetitive and boring. Same goes for fighting ball groups - repetitive and boring. I want PLAYER VS PLAYER fights, and bgs should be the answer.

but BGs have plenty of issues, and since they are trying to work on them....we should be willing give them some time to adjust whatever goes into production. im hoping that the queue/mmr issues get resolved quick enough that i can casually queue for BGs as a solo a few times a week and get some decent matches in.

in the meantime i dont play eso much in the last month since i started to play Hunt Showdown - its got its own issues, but it does provide some fun pvp action. i miss my eso twitchy mayhem though and hope that this BG renovation turns out well after some tweaks.

Nethervoid · October 7

The biggest problem with 2 sided battlegrounds (even though I have wished for this change to happen for years now) is that without the game being balanced it can be an even less enjoyable experience than 3-sided. As 2-sided battlegrounds are actually "serious" compared to a chaotic 3-sided battleground and they will highlight any underlying problems game-balance has that are currently not so obvious.

Firstly, currently the game rewards having high sustain compared to high damage. To elaborate: if Player A invests his resources to gain high penetration, high weapon damage and crit chance but has 1500 stamina recovery but Player B invests his resources into getting 2500 stamina recovery with lower penetration and lower damage output eventually Player B wins assuming they have equal skill level because Player B simply can heal through all the damage and eventually land a 5 second stun which Player A cannot breakfree due to empty stamina pool. This is further exacerbated since Battle Spirit has no impact on recovery and is neither fun or balanced.

The only way to fix this without completely overhauling core combat mechanics is to make sure that damage is always higher than healing. So for every 10k damage Player A can put out Player B should be able to only respond with a 8k healing. Which will increase the likelihood of that he will get defeated against a player with superior damage build. Ofc Player B still can survive but he has to rely on higher movement speed, clever use of game mechanics etc.

Let's go over a real example: Imagine two magicka nightblades with equal weapon damage and equal attributes (4000 Spell Dmg + 40k magicka); one hitting the other with Concealed Weapon and the other just healing himself with Healthy Offering. (Edit: This is a very simple example without counting in buffs debuffs passives etc but it serves to make a valid point regardless.)

Concealed Weapon: = 0.11363 MaxStat + 1.1931 MaxDamage = 9317 Damage (Costs: 2295 magicka)
Healthy Offering: = 0.15495 MaxStat + 1.6270 MaxDamage = 12706 Healing (Costs: 3510 Magicka)

Do you see the problem here? The game is designed in a way that it assumes that simply because Healthy Offering costs more these numbers are okay. They are not because the healing side can have more recovery since the healer doesn't have to invest in penetration so that he can keep healing the damage until the attacker is drained of Magicka. Healers always have "full penetration" while healing themselves in a sense. Healing should be reduced MORE while under Battle Spirit.

The other facet of the same problem is damage mitigation through Blocking. Block mitigation can be used to achieve same results (with even less effort) to defeat an attacker. Blocking costs very little when you are a tank build and mitigates SO MUCH MORE than it should. Again for this reason tank player can simply hold block and use some heal over time to drain it's attacker from all resources and simply stun the opponent to kill him after there. Block mitigation should be limited under Battle Spirit.

Without these changes 2 sided battlegrounds will be full of tanks and healers trying to win through attrition. The ONLY choice left to damage players to win against this is playing: A ) 1-shot gank builds that can kill someone before they can respond B ) Bomber builds that can kill multiple people before they can respond. While these builds are fun and should be included in the game's PVP environment they should not feel "mandatory" to actually defeat people. Also it's not possible to "1-shot" a high Health target anyways.

IF ZoS releases 2-sided battlegrounds before making these changes very shortly after the patch 2 things will happen:

1) Most people will stop playing battlegrounds because they will not be fun. Only a limited group of "try-hard" people can endure this.
2) Said players will try to have fun in Cyrodil and then if they don't like that either they will simply quit this game.

Wycks · October 7

The current mindless hot/shield spamming ballgroup in Cyro causes players to log because they feel useless. The map empties out or goes AFK, and the ballgroups log out of boredom.

Zos's response: Lets create a ballgroup battlgrounds.

Until they implement some limitations on hots/shields/immunity to cc, this is bound to be lopsided garbage.

Nethervoid · October 7

One other VERY important thing I forgot to mention since now we are progressing into "serious PVP" territory: Please make it so that Tri-Restoration Potions are sold by PVP vendors for Alliance Points. For most builds in the game they are almost mandatory. If anyone wants to be a serious PVP player they will need to spend 100x per day and this is not possible without spending all your gold into making these potions. 100 of these cost approximately 42.000 gold. It may seem affordable for long lasting players who have millions (like me) but anyone new to the game or anyone who cannot spend too much time to actually accumulate gold is basically barred from acquiring these.

It may be made so that they cost more AP than the currently available ones (Unstoppable, Prophecy, Savagery potions) but this is very very crucial for everyone to PVP at a more or less equal footing. It is possible to buy these through Crown Store which is outright "Pay to Win" if the only other option to get 100 per day is to spend half your day grinding gold or alchemy ingredients. However if PVP vendors sell these for AP it'd then be fair to sell them at Crown Store too.

PS: Also ZoS should reduce the Crown price of these potions to be honest if they wanna actually sell them. They are currently way too pricy. If they make a 66% discount on the crown price they will see a lot of revenue on this one item lol.

PS2: On a side note it would be an amazing quality-of-life change if ZoS changed the name of the player crafted versions of this from "Essence of Health" to "Essence of Tri-Restoration" or if that's difficult to do please change their color to purple so they can be easily discerned from regular dungeon drop Essence of Health. Every single time I spend time to find the correct ones in my bag.

Parasaurolophus · October 21

The thread about the main feature of the update is already on the third page.

CameraBeardThePirate · October 21

@ZOS_Kevin Is there any official dev comment as to why Necromancers and Shielders are going to be completely shafted in the new "Competitive" leaderboards? These 2 builds/playstyles don't earn medal score anywhere close to the same rate that others do, and despite having pointed this out many times over the past years (and especially many times during the past PTS cycle), the dev team decided to push forward with a leaderboard system that puts Necros and Shielders at an unfair disadvantage.

What's the point of a competitive system if it doesn't treat all builds fairly?

Aldoss · October 21

Heavy skepticism once again that next patch will fix the completely ruined group queue.

DM weekend is mine and my wife's favorite weekend. We should be spamming these games.

Instead, last night, we got an insta queue, which is either really good, or really bad.

A 4-man premade was in the queue working almost exactly like a mini-ballgroup, complete with snow treaders.

It didn't matter what you did. Rush, fear, ult dump, wipe. Every time. I'm on a healer, so I started staying away from my team and resto ulting on the pull. Nothing could save them.

After the first game, and our teammates complaining, the queue died. We waited 10 min (which is short for the group queue). Another pop. Same 4-man. Our teammates were happy to be finally put on a team with us. We informed them of the ball group and they were optimistic for all but 30 seconds. 500-0-0 for the second time in a row.

Again, the queue died. Another 10min wait. 3rd pop. Same. Freaking. Team.

1 4-man in the group queue will 100% ruin the queue. We logged off early.

If you're going to have a 4v4 mode already, there is 0 reason to allow 4's in the 8v8 group queue. The group queue is completely supported by casual duos. We're 99% of the group queuing population.

The new patch won't fix this.