Another Great BG.

Thoriorz · November 7

Just joined to BG, great design @ZOS_Kevin ...

i11ionward · November 7

The PVP update is just disgusting

IncultaWolf · November 7

Hey that's free AP, being put into a battleground that's about to end in 30 seconds!

fizzylu · November 7

Yeah, I was thrown into an on-going match that was super one-sided. But then again.... I also joined a match at the beginning that was also super one-sided.... kind of just how the 2 teams setup works, it seems (the 4v4s especially).

SkaraMinoc · November 7

The other day I got placed on a team with three players having less than 20k health. Then we got matched against a team with players like Arkannax (4v4 tournament champ). We didn't get a single kill. That's the way the matchmaking works sometimes, especially when the search widens due to low population.

SkaraMinoc · November 7

Take the L and go to the next game.

Major_Mangle · November 7

Outside of there not being a functional mmr system (which is a huge deal to be fair) and leaderboards being completely meaningless for multiple reasons....

I'm enjoying the new BG formats. Yes some games are very one sided but who cares. That means they'll be over quickly and you can queue for a new one straight away. Winning or losing in eso has absolutely no prestige to it.

SkaraMinoc · November 7

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Winning or losing in eso has absolutely no prestige to it.

If you play enough, you can get Rank 1 on the leaderboard without winning a single game.

Gamerscape2007 · November 7

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

The other day I got placed on a team with three players having less than 20k health. Then we got matched against a team with players like Arkannax (4v4 tournament champ). We didn't get a single kill. That's the way the matchmaking works sometimes, especially when the search widens due to low population.

Take the L and go to the next game

No wonder the pvp in this game is bottom of the barrel garbage nowadays if this is the mindset people have.

Maybe this is the pvp system Pvpers deserve for being so apathetic. Any sane person nowadays look else where.

SkaraMinoc · November 7

Gamerscape2007 wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

The other day I got placed on a team with three players having less than 20k health. Then we got matched against a team with players like Arkannax (4v4 tournament champ). We didn't get a single kill. That's the way the matchmaking works sometimes, especially when the search widens due to low population.

Take the L and go to the next game

No wonder the pvp in this game is bottom of the barrel garbage nowadays if this is the mindset people have.

Maybe this is the pvp system Pvpers deserve for being so apathetic. Any sane person nowadays look else where.

The same thing happens in other competitive games. Matchmaking isn't perfect every time.

fizzylu · November 7

@Gamerscape2007
It's crazy too since in my experience doing solo 4v4, it's not even a problem of there being a skill imbalance or something.... it legit just comes down to team composition build wise. And I'm not even sure why people keep bringing up low population on the subject of BGs to serve as some excuse as to why they're bad now since they're more popular than before currently (and probably only for a short while) with the whole "new toy" situation.

ESO's combat, unlike other MMOs where they have 2 teams in PvP settings, suffers from a multitude of problems that are heightened when you take away the tension of having a third team in the match. I mean, seriously-- we went from having a mode that allowed for build diversity and had tactical play to give players a chance to outplay even a "stronger" team to.... what? The team that was lucky to get all bruiser builds just slowly (or quickly if there's one too many gankblades or hit-and-run sorcs on the other team) beating the other into the ground until they simply walk out of spawn and to their death without even trying to put up a fight?
Talk about taking a thousand steps backwards.

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Yes some games are very one sided but who cares. That means they'll be over quickly and you can queue for a new one straight away. Winning or losing in eso has absolutely no prestige to it.

And maybe it's just me, but even if I'm winning.... it's not fun. I'd say winning or losing is far from being the problem here. And if the thought process is "well, at least it ends quickly", then yeah, I just find that real sad for this game.

Thumbless_Bot · November 7

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Take the L and go to the next game.

The next game will not be any better. That's the point of the thread and the other plethora of threads on the forums on how bland, unfun, two dimensional, lopsided, and boring battlegrounds are now.

"So go do something else" is the typical response from zos apologists on this forum. Don't want to.

"Go play something else" is next. Don't want to.

"Other games are the same" . Didn't have this problem in 3 team modes. That's what made them so fun and repeatable.

This applies to new bg players, casual bg players and sweaties. Population is already dwindling on pc. Tried three bgs last night and two of them timed out because we couldn't fill the teams. Queue time for each was at least 10 .minutes and no better than previous queue times. The one bg I did get into was 500-15. It was a terrible experience. At least before I didn't get pulled into a bg and have to sit there for five minutes only for the bg to close because the teams didn't fill up.

Zos completely missed the mark with this update. That's the point.

So instead of reverting zos will likely charge forward and make cosmetic changes to this dreadful form to appease their purse string holders but not have discernable positive impact on bgs... when, what they really need to do is roll back the change and do a series of lessons learned meetings and fix their systemic development problems that got them where they are. Not likely.

Tra_Lalan · November 7

90% of BGs that I played after the patch: the winning team was known after first 100 points earned. You would know from the very beggining who is better and who is going to win. Only couple of matches I played were tied till the very end. I can't remember a single match, with an underdog scenario, where a team is losing badly and suddenly is doing better which leads to their win (this used to happen in 4x4x4 from time to time). I guess that is all logical, in the 3 teams model you had more factors, the matches used to be more impredictible, but on the other hand, the score depended less on your team.

My ideass/feedback to current BG problems:
1. Make the 8x8 solo que default setting for BG ques (many people don't read, don't know what is added in u44, or that such thing like an update even happened, they think they que for daily BG, and yeah their PvP skills are on casual level too)

2. Consider adding a "give up" option, performed with a team vote. If all players agree the game would be finished and the leading team would win. (This could for example be allowed only after some time into match and only with for example 200 points advantage of one team)
(I played many maches where players from the loosing team would leave the BG, or just stop playing and wait for the end on the spawning point.)

IncultaWolf · November 7

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

The other day I got placed on a team with three players having less than 20k health. Then we got matched against a team with players like Arkannax (4v4 tournament champ). We didn't get a single kill. That's the way the matchmaking works sometimes, especially when the search widens due to low population.

Yeah I queued for competitive a few days ago on my healer, got two players with 17k hp and wearing pale order. I knew we wouldn't win, but asked them to take off that mythic at least. Neither did so I just left right after the match started.

karthrag_inak · November 7

Khajiit also votes to return 3 team bgs as an option.

i11ionward · November 7

Thoriorz wrote: »

Just joined to BG, great design @ZOS_Kevin ...

the only thing worse than this could be

great way to spend money while waiting for BG

Maybe BG should start only when 8 players from each team confirm participation? How do you like this idea @ZOS_Kevin???
I just have no words for how terribly the new BG systems are designed.

i11ionward · November 7

Please answer @ZOS_Kevin , are the developers deliberately trying to destroy the PVP part of the game, so that they can then officially disable PVP due to low online? I just can't find a reason why disgusting changes keep being released. I like ESO and I am very upset that for the last few years when an update is released the number of cons always exceeds the number of pros.

xylena_lazarow · November 7

Tra_Lalan wrote: »

1.Make the 8x8 solo que default setting for BG ques
2. Consider adding a "give up" option

Yes please, 8v8 is ironically a lot more competitive because you can cover for 1-2 weaker players, fewer lopsided matches, and even the bad ones still have some PvP unlike a bad 4v4. And some sort of mercy rule or forfeit to end lopsided matches early would be a massive improvement to the queue.

fizzylu · November 7

@xylena_lazarow
Yep, that seems to be the overall experience when it comes to 4v4 and 8v8.

Although instead of slapping band-aid solutions onto 4v4, I really wish people would just ask for them to bring 4v4v4 back as the default competitive BG mode, leave 8v8 as the casual option, and make 4v4 what it should have always been: PvP deathmatch arenas. That way people who do like the micro Cyrodiil style fighting can still have it, and you know, players who did enjoy the previous BGs that get nothing out of 4v4 and little out of 8v8 will still actually desire to play the game.

xylena_lazarow · November 7

fizzylu wrote: »

I really wish people would just ask for them to bring 4v4v4 back as the default competitive BG mode

Maybe it should come back as an option but not the default, there's absolutely nothing competitive about playing for 1st only to get third-partied by a troll group. 8v8 casual should be the first mode players see, and where they learn, then they can go into 4v4 hardcore if they want.

fizzylu · November 7

Ah, the future is doomed.

Joy_Division · November 7

Gamerscape2007 wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

The other day I got placed on a team with three players having less than 20k health. Then we got matched against a team with players like Arkannax (4v4 tournament champ). We didn't get a single kill. That's the way the matchmaking works sometimes, especially when the search widens due to low population.

Take the L and go to the next game

No wonder the pvp in this game is bottom of the barrel garbage nowadays if this is the mindset people have.

Maybe this is the pvp system Pvpers deserve for being so apathetic. Any sane person nowadays look else where.

Hold on. I understand, it's frustrating. However, there are many PvPers who are highly active in the game, in the community, and do all sorts of things to try and make the PvP experience in the game better (such as running build guides, PvP events in guilds, communicating with ZOS for suggestions to improve PvP, advertise ESO for free with their social media presence). Speaking just for myself, I have spent many, many of my leisure hours doing various things to help PvPers (I made my Maelstrom guide because I knew many PvPers might not know where to turn to for PvE advice). And there are many player have done a lot more than me.

We needed more love from ZOS. Not updating any battleground map since update 21, not ever nailing down an effective MMR, not addressing the imbalance of healing, stacking HoTs, and shield spam with offensive were all things ZOS should have done to maintain a healthier BG experience and a smoother transition with Update 44.

fizzylu · November 7

@Joy_Division
The problem is that Zenimax seems to listen to and think like the people who are okay with things not being okay, the bare minimum, and that have the bar set really low.
I mean, seriously.... even in this thread you have someone saying that 8v8 feels more competitive than 4v4, but also 4v4v4 shouldn't be returned to it's original state because it's not competitive in their mind and instead 4v4 is?
Like call me crazy, but I don't see how that's adding up here.... but I also know that Zenimax is more likely to listen to feedback like that than to actually admit that removing 4v4v4 has isolated a part of the playerbase and has resulted in all those problems you mentioned becoming even more blatantly obvious and detrimental to the gameplay experience.

I never noticed huge issues with MMR in BGs before, just complaints from people who didn't like that it didn't reward them properly since it went off of the medal system and not what they thought it should go off of. Then the imbalance in matches now doesn't even seem to have anything to do with MMR, but simply, again, all of the fundamental problems with ESO's combat.... which cannot be fixed. Like healing.

Healing will never be addressed because with this games combat system, there IS no way to properly address it. ESO has combat built around being able to spam your abilities.... and as long as anyone can slot a heal and anyone with a heal slotted can spam said heal, there will be healing/sustain issues way more problematic than in any other MMO (and that's even before you include things like proc sets). Unless they were to use battlespirit to basically completely negate the weight of healing, but there's no way that will happen since healers will not be cool with that and one of the main PvP devs themselves mains a healer. And honestly, even I don't think that'd be a good solution anyway.

And sure, shields could be removed/nerfed into the floor.... but what does that do about the classes/playstyles that can just build for a ton of defense and health, yet still hit like a truck and heal like a healer???? Either way there will be sustain issues unless they completely restructure and revamp the combat.... which is wild to even think of as a possibility.

At least before BGs had a format that worked around the issues with ESO's combat.... but now, instead, we have something that highlights everything wrong with it and players would be completely okay with a forfeit button and are saying things like "at least the matches end fast"???? And yeah, that's just what every PvP player wants to hear about PvP:

"At least you can get out when it's hopeless and if you can't, it ends fast anyway." -ESO BGs, 2024

moderatelyfatman · November 8

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Winning or losing in eso has absolutely no prestige to it.

If you play enough, you can get Rank 1 on the leaderboard without winning a single game.

Damn, there's hope for me after all!

moderatelyfatman · November 8

fizzylu wrote: »

@xylena_lazarow
Yep, that seems to be the overall experience when it comes to 4v4 and 8v8.

Although instead of slapping band-aid solutions onto 4v4, I really wish people would just ask for them to bring 4v4v4 back as the default competitive BG mode, leave 8v8 as the casual option, and make 4v4 what it should have always been: PvP deathmatch arenas. That way people who do like the micro Cyrodiil style fighting can still have it, and you know, players who did enjoy the previous BGs that get nothing out of 4v4 and little out of 8v8 will still actually desire to play the game.

It's a really sad yet ineveitable result when the people in charge of PvP don't actually PvP and won't consult the people who do.

Parrot1986 · November 8

I’m someone who was never really a big fan of the old BGs and mainly just stuck to Cyro for pvp so was interested to see what the changes were like and in short it’s been generally pretty positive for me and it’s taken up most of my playing time over the last week.

I have definitely preferred 8v8 in terms of getting balanced and ironically competitive bg fights. I do think this should be the default queuing option though. Yes some have been complete rollovers in both directions but the majority have had a strong competitive mix to them. The only format I’ve consistently had a bad game in is capture the relic which just turns into a deathmatch game really. Would like an additional relic for the higher player count for this.

For 4v4 I’ve played a bit but definitely less as generally these games have always been too one sided to enjoy either way. The lack of group roles in solo queue has lead to being in teams where I was the only DD with a health tank and 2 healers and playing against the reverse.

In this “competitive” mode I really wish there was a better way to solo queue and have some sensible group composition.

Adding in a 3rd team of may help the balance so wouldn’t be against that but I’d love to see what the smaller format is like with a better group system too.

Overall I’ve definitely enjoyed the BGs much more than I ever have, ticked off a lot of achievements that I never could be bothered grinding like Choas Ball carrying and tried out healing roles and it’s been overall good to see some changes happening and trying to bring some life into BGs which is long overdue. Adding in the special effect chaos balls, new maps and power buffs have also made for some interesting fights too.

It’s obviously not perfect but as long as this isn’t the final state and a stepping stone towards more I think it’s pretty good.

Treeshka · November 8

I think the new battlegrounds are good but there are some pain points. I only played competitive mode though so my comment is purely about that mode.

In my opinion you should not be able to cast any skill in the base. Maps are small and one person can just stand there and cast heals to allies or even Negate as far as i remember.

In some matches there is only two flag spawning which makes the game a bit repetitive. Generally games with two flag goes like this; one team captures one flag, other team captures other one. Then constant fight about flipping those two. I believe two flag Domination games are a bug because in some cases there are three flag Domination matches in the same map.

silky_soft · November 8

8v8 is poo, make it 8v8v8 or 4v4v4v4. You either get over 30 kills which is more then the whole match combine. Or the whole match get less then 30 kills combine. Sometimes less then 20 combine. Also completely remove those 2 small maps from 8v8 rotation, they also poo.

xylena_lazarow · November 8

Fair to enjoy 3-sided BGs, but they're about as "competitive" as 3-way Smash with all items and stage hazards turned on. I did casually enjoy 3-sided DM but the 3-sided objective modes were horrendous, ranging from unfun to nonfunctional. Fighting hard then getting randomly third-partied by some troll is a feel-bad for casual play, and uncompetitive when you're playing for the win. The small population of self-selected 3-sided BGs players misses the mode, but it wasn't popular.

Parrot1986 wrote: »

I’m someone who was never really a big fan of the old BGs and mainly just stuck to Cyro for pvp so was interested to see what the changes were like and in short it’s been generally pretty positive for me and it’s taken up most of my playing time over the last week. I have definitely preferred 8v8 in terms of getting balanced and ironically competitive bg fights.

Same here, I love the 8v8 even if it's not perfect, hope they continue to improve it. Simply adding multiple objectives, splitting the ball blobs and having enough players to support the mode, was brilliant. Hope they do that for CTR too.

xylena_lazarow · November 8

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

It's a really sad yet ineveitable result when the people in charge of PvP don't actually PvP and won't consult the people who do.

Oh but they did, and that's why we have unkillable ball groups, troll tanks, cracked Sorcs...

Joy_Division · November 8

fizzylu wrote: »

@Joy_Division
The problem is that Zenimax seems to listen to and think like the people who are okay with things not being okay, the bare minimum, and that have the bar set really low.
I mean, seriously.... even in this thread you have someone saying that 8v8 feels more competitive than 4v4, but also 4v4v4 shouldn't be returned to it's original state because it's not competitive in their mind and instead 4v4 is?
Like call me crazy, but I don't see how that's adding up here.... but I also know that Zenimax is more likely to listen to feedback like that than to actually admit that removing 4v4v4 has isolated a part of the playerbase and has resulted in all those problems you mentioned becoming even more blatantly obvious and detrimental to the gameplay experience.

I never noticed huge issues with MMR in BGs before, just complaints from people who didn't like that it didn't reward them properly since it went off of the medal system and not what they thought it should go off of. Then the imbalance in matches now doesn't even seem to have anything to do with MMR, but simply, again, all of the fundamental problems with ESO's combat.... which cannot be fixed. Like healing.

Healing will never be addressed because with this games combat system, there IS no way to properly address it. ESO has combat built around being able to spam your abilities.... and as long as anyone can slot a heal and anyone with a heal slotted can spam said heal, there will be healing/sustain issues way more problematic than in any other MMO (and that's even before you include things like proc sets). Unless they were to use battlespirit to basically completely negate the weight of healing, but there's no way that will happen since healers will not be cool with that and one of the main PvP devs themselves mains a healer. And honestly, even I don't think that'd be a good solution anyway.

And sure, shields could be removed/nerfed into the floor.... but what does that do about the classes/playstyles that can just build for a ton of defense and health, yet still hit like a truck and heal like a healer???? Either way there will be sustain issues unless they completely restructure and revamp the combat.... which is wild to even think of as a possibility.

At least before BGs had a format that worked around the issues with ESO's combat.... but now, instead, we have something that highlights everything wrong with it and players would be completely okay with a forfeit button and are saying things like "at least the matches end fast"???? And yeah, that's just what every PvP player wants to hear about PvP:

"At least you can get out when it's hopeless and if you can't, it ends fast anyway." -ESO BGs, 2024

I would agree that Zenimax probably thinks that people are ok with a low bar when it comes to PvP. There's no other way to explain them literally not adding anything to Cyrodiil in 5 years and allowing the many problems to fester. That is total apathy. That apathy is on is Zenimax, not the players. PvPers have responded to that apathy by leaving or not playing. It was not that long ago, when I had to ask my group, "What server are we playing on?" because there were multiple servers with active populations (this was with a higher cap). They are gone. It's hard to play a game in which you are passionate, but that is not reciprocated.

I do not agree that ZOS's combat isn't fixable. Here's something to chew your brain on:

Searing Strike today costs 120% more than it did from 2016, yet deals 43% less damage per tick. The same drop in damage can be seen on most skills in the game such as Dark Flare, Crystal Fragments, Snipe, etc., etc.

Meanwhile, heals in the game have *not* been nerfed. Honor the dead heals the same amount as it did at launch. Dragon's Blood has been buffed 4 times. Everyone knows about the buffs and accessibility of vigor and Radiating Regen,

ESO's combat is broken because ZOS broke it by constantly nerfing our damage. That is absolutely fixable. The problem is ZOS won;t fix it. The devs are allergic to providing their players options to do damage.

This doesn't even get into that the best PvP meta builds used to run around with 20K health, not 38K.

The issue with ESO's PvP is it has bad combat, not the format PvP takes place in. Duels, Cyrodiil, BGs, it all feels bad when players are so survivable and we all are hitting like wet noodles.