Feedback on the Battleground Update

HanYolo

I want to give some feedback on the updated battlegrounds. Used to play a lot until like a year ago, lost interest and came back quite exited for what the new update had in store. By now I have played a fair bit, some whacky meme builds and some tryhard-meta stuff. And I got to say: that update completely missed the mark. So, let’s go through the list.

The Good

• Chaosball – The addition of two more balls is great. Finally, a single immortal tank with a pockethealer can’t decide a game singlehandedly. The morph-effects that two of three balls seem to give are also nice, switches things up. Sadly, I can’t say much more about it because somehow in two weeks of playing I only got a single chaosball match. I have no idea how that is possible when all game modes should presumably have the same weighting. Which they should, given that we don’t get to choose. Or maybe just bad luck. Who knows, right ZOS?

• Deathmatch format – the three shorter rounds are much more pleasant than just one single large round. Gives a chance to reset if the momentum swings against you. Lives are also good, so a single inexperienced player can’t ruin the game alone by going 0/20. Good stuff.

The Bad

• Spawn Rules – these just don’t make any sense. Why is it possible to:

1. Get killed in spawn
2. Attack from spawn
3. Stay in spawn indefinitely

All of these should not exist like they currently do. I get it, it’s not fun to be hard losing in a deathmatch and jump back down in the meatgrinder, but having to sit out 5 minutes as the winning team just because of one spiteful player sneaking in the spawn? That’s just asking for conflict among players. Also, one or more bow snipers sitting in spawn just fighting from complete safety. Creates a weird dynamic where you can’t move into the enemy’s half of the arena and they can’t go to yours because of the covering fire, resulting in a stalemate. Weirdest part of it is that better spawn management and rules already exist – in the Imperial City. Why that didn’t get transferred over is a mystery to me.

• Team sizes – The tiny 4v4 maps are a bag of issues in itself, so maybe the larger 8v8 maps are the saving grace? Sadly not. While 4v4 still retains the identity of a BG (which is decidedly being NOT Cyrodiil) 8v8 completely erases that aspect. In 8v8 it didn’t take long for the usual group tactics to pop up, that aren’t really worth it on 4 player teams, like plaguebreak, dark convergence necro colossus and so on… Dedicated healers are as overtuned as they are in cyro and if a team gets one and the other doesn’t the match is over before it started. If I wanted any of that stuff I could just hop in a no-cp cyro campaign and have far more agency without being confined in a tiny map. It’s not terrible, there is just no reason for this format to exis because it's just more of the same. Cyro does it better and it’s not what BG players come here for.

• Pre-game Timers – this is more of an annoyance than anything else but there are just too many timers at the start if the game. You start of with a 5 min countdown for players to connect. [And given how often the last player slots don’t get filled, I find it hard to believe that it is just a matter of disconnection issues. Feels more like the games get started at ¾ of players and the system just hopes to find the rest in a reasonable amount of time. All in an effort to keep the “que” time down. But that is just me speculating.] If all slots get filled the timer gets reduced to 20-30 (?) seconds. After that the final timer kicks in for 30 or 45 (?) seconds and then the game finally starts. WHY?

The Ugly

• 2 teams instead of 3 – this feels horrible. It makes almost every BG incredibly one-sided. Both teams meet in the middle and fight and that pretty much decides the entire rest of the game. There is no more teaming up against a stronger opponent or avoiding them (more on that in the next point). The momentum of that first fight is gigantic, because your teammates are never going to wait for all to assemble and will just charge back in on their disjointed death timers, while the enemy team can keep moving as a group. This turns especially lower MMR BGs into incredibly unfun, one-sided stomps. There is no more focusing on a weaker third team to secure rewards through 2nd place, or allying against a stronger team to have a fighting chance. BGs just lost a huge part of their strategic depth and fun dynamics in exchange for absolutely nothing.

• The tiny maps - Out of all the issues this has to be by far the worst. It is incredibly bad. It might make sense on the surface: “one less team? we need smaller maps now!” but it doesn’t play out like that at all. Objective based game modes might as well not exist anymore. Before you were able to avoid an enemy team if you were outmatched and could sneak objectives while they got caught up playing deathmatch with the other team. But now? Every map is a deathmatch and nothing else. The largest 4v4 maps have the flags round about 3 sorc-streaks apart. That’s not even enough time for a quarter of a capture bar. Annoyingly, there are two rather obvious solutions here: To fix this you would need to dramatically increased capture speed and death timers. Why deathtimers? Because if you manage to kill one strong player that is making your life hell, you have gained nothing. He will respawn in 5 seconds and be back on the flag in 8. No breathing room, no advantage gained on the map, nothing. You won’t even be done capturing a single flag in that brief moment you had to earn using all your resources and cooldowns.

• Map Quality – for some reason they decided to put form before function. Not all stairs are smooth and random outcrops of stone have hitboxes that cause you to get stuck. I can’t count the number of times I tried to break free only to find out some pebble had an L-shaped nook that caught my hitbox. There is no excusing this one, its just lazy and a lack of testing.

• The matchmaking - might be the worst I have ever encountered in a game. Either it’s suffering from an incredibly small population in the que and can’t do any better (which would be very telling in an entirely different way) or it’s just plain the worst, and that’s coming from a long time LoL player who is used to Riots clownshow. Subjectively there are two kinds of lobbies: Just-finished-the-tutorial or 10-times-emperor-5-star-supreme-overlord only lobbies. There seems to be no middle ground which is incredibly frustrating if you fall into neither of these categories. I managed to roll a single “good” lobby that contained half my friendlist and some names I recognized from cyro leaderboards as pvp veterans. Not a single inexperienced player. That was the only match I would describe as competitive and fair. Hard fought on a high level with no dead weight. And that happened once out of 40-50 games. Which should be all that needs to be said about the matchmaking.



That is about all I wanted to say on the matter.
Tldr. This ain’t it ZOS, this really ain’t it.

Aardappelboom

Nice write up, I can agree on everything you said and feel the same way. The biggest issues for me being in the spawnrules and size of the maps.

There's a lot to be excited about, but there's too much making that excitement go away. I just hope they don't give up on BG for another 6 years, it's a great addition to the game and I still love ESO PVP for what it is.

Jierdanit

I agree on almost everything, except for the 3 team format being better than 2 teams.

Especially in the 4v4 the better team should win and that was absolutely not the case in the 3 way BGs.
There it was just about which team avoided combat the most in every mode except for Deathmatch.
Also in most cases it was much more likely for the 2 winning teams to focus on the already losing team, because that is much easier than fighting each other.

The team that wins should be the one that actually beats the other team instead of the one that waits for the other teams to fight each other because just camping on flags or at a relic is beyond boring.

The main issue atm is that there still isn't a proper matchmaking that would make both teams balanced, so the average 4v4 would not be a one sided stomp.

fizzylu

I swear it's like some people have never heard of strategic gameplay, which is one thing that made ESO bgs unique from every other MMO and significantly more fun/entertaining. And now it's gone so the "stronger" team can just stomp the weaker team without worrying about some third team possibly throwing a wrench in their steamroll.

Almakor

In my opinion, 3 way was more pug friendly because the wide battlefield and chaos created by 3 opposing teams created opertunities to use all types of builds. I would switch around my characters with different pvp/pve/roles to get the daily rewards multiple times. You just had to be patient to get a good team. Waiting for me more was never more than an hour. With the 2 way pretty much confines you to purely pvp characters. The biggest pooper is why is the option to do 3 way was removed COMPLETELY!? Why no keep ALL of them?

tsaescishoeshiner

The 5-minute timer is a workaround to the fact that queues will always occasionally have issues.

In the past, battleground matches would sometimes "hang" indefinitely, leaving you no choice but to abandon. Or they would start uneven matches and never give you a full team, making the match seem a bit pointless (though not a guaranteed loss, the outnumbered team won sometimes). Or you would queue and get put into the last 2 minutes of a game lol! So this prevents some of that, even if it makes the queue issues more obvious.

So to me, the timer itself isn't the issue, it's the matches not filling and the queues having some problems.

fizzylu

Almakor wrote: »

With the 2 way pretty much confines you to purely pvp characters.

Having two teams, but 4v4 especially, simply kills build diversity. I see really good, skilled gankblades and hit-and-run sorcs I used to see in 4v4v4 underperforming in 4v4. Well, I did see.... now they basically all queue for 8v8 only or aren't playing BGs very much at all and I've been playing a different game mostly myself because of these new BGs. But anyway....

People keep wanting to talk about how players in the new BGs, especially 4v4, having under 30k health must be PvE builds and like "stronger" means just super tanky, proc set running, heals for days teams.... but they completely forget that there are PvP builds that function around low health in exchange for crazy burst damage and not the whole "keep hitting my opponent but only have the win determined when one of us can no longer sustain our magicka/stamina" type of fighting. Which makes this update and players who claim to like it so much even more baffling because that type of stacking health/armor PvP building and playstyle is one of the things many people believe has made PvP in this game worse over the years (fall-out from the Greymoor proc set meta, imo).

Also.... some of these players claiming 2 teams is more competitive or challenging don't realize that if they personally and/or had teams that got tunnel vision on one enemy team, left openings for the third, etc.... well, haha, then they were the "weaker" player/team-- just not in the way they think.

And what's also funny, is that in 8v8 I actually started partially running my PvE setup.... something I would have never been able to do in 4v4v4-- and it's crazy how well it performs. Make of that what you will, but in my mind that doesn't really support the whole "it's more challenging/serious(?) PvP builds only" notion.

Jierdanit

fizzylu wrote: »

Having two teams, but 4v4 especially, simply kills build diversity. I see really good, skilled gankblades and hit-and-run sorcs I used to see in 4v4v4 underperforming in 4v4. Well, I did see.... now they basically all queue for 8v8 only or aren't playing BGs very much at all and I've been playing a different game mostly myself because of these new BGs. But anyway....

People keep wanting to talk about how players in the new BGs, especially 4v4, having under 30k health must be PvE builds and like "stronger" means just super tanky, proc set running, heals for days teams.... but they completely forget that there are PvP builds that function around low health in exchange for crazy burst damage and not the whole "keep hitting my opponent but only have the win determined when one of us can no longer sustain our magicka/stamina" type of fighting. Which makes this update and players who claim to like it so much even more baffling because that type of stacking health/armor PvP building and playstyle is one of the things many people believe has made PvP in this game worse over the years (fall-out from the Greymoor proc set meta, imo).

If a build only performs well if they can hide more than half the time than it is really not great for BGs. Because that means that their team is basically one person down most of the time.

And even in the 4v4v4 if those builds did well that usually either meant that their team was by far the strongest or that their team was having a horrible time because their teammate spent most of the BG hiding or running away.

fizzylu wrote: »

Also.... some of these players claiming 2 teams is more competitive or challenging don't realize that if they personally and/or had teams that got tunnel vision on one enemy team, left openings for the third, etc.... well, haha, then they were the "weaker" player/team-- just not in the way they think.

Its not about tunnel vision. Most good players knew that the third team was just going for flags or relics or holding the chaosball, they just didnt care. It was just a lot more fun to still keep fighting the team that actually wants to PvP instead of
chasing people who started running away as soon as anyone tried fighting them.
Also there was basically no rewards for actually winning a BG.

fizzylu wrote: »

And what's also funny, is that in 8v8 I actually started partially running my PvE setup.... something I would have never been able to do in 4v4v4-- and it's crazy how well it performs. Make of that what you will, but in my mind that doesn't really support the whole "it's more challenging/serious(?) PvP builds only" notion.

Basically anything can work in 8v8, because with group sizes that big one weak link is not very noticeable.
Also no one said that the 8v8 is supposed to be more competitive, if you want more casual pvp then the 8v8 is actually pretty nice for that i think.
4v4 is supposed to be more competitive, because there every member of your group actually matters.

Chilly-McFreeze

Jierdanit wrote: »

fizzylu wrote: »

Having two teams, but 4v4 especially, simply kills build diversity. I see really good, skilled gankblades and hit-and-run sorcs I used to see in 4v4v4 underperforming in 4v4. Well, I did see.... now they basically all queue for 8v8 only or aren't playing BGs very much at all and I've been playing a different game mostly myself because of these new BGs. But anyway....

People keep wanting to talk about how players in the new BGs, especially 4v4, having under 30k health must be PvE builds and like "stronger" means just super tanky, proc set running, heals for days teams.... but they completely forget that there are PvP builds that function around low health in exchange for crazy burst damage and not the whole "keep hitting my opponent but only have the win determined when one of us can no longer sustain our magicka/stamina" type of fighting. Which makes this update and players who claim to like it so much even more baffling because that type of stacking health/armor PvP building and playstyle is one of the things many people believe has made PvP in this game worse over the years (fall-out from the Greymoor proc set meta, imo).

If a build only performs well if they can hide more than half the time than it is really not great for BGs. Because that means that their team is basically one person down most of the time.

And even in the 4v4v4 if those builds did well that usually either meant that their team was by far the strongest or that their team was having a horrible time because their teammate spent most of the BG hiding or running away.

Hit and run should be just as viable as other playstyles. Or do you think face tanking brawlers with pocket healers are the only way BGs should be played?

Jierdanit wrote: »

fizzylu wrote: »

Also.... some of these players claiming 2 teams is more competitive or challenging don't realize that if they personally and/or had teams that got tunnel vision on one enemy team, left openings for the third, etc.... well, haha, then they were the "weaker" player/team-- just not in the way they think.

Its not about tunnel vision. Most good players knew that the third team was just going for flags or relics or holding the chaosball, they just didnt care. It was just a lot more fun to still keep fighting the team that actually wants to PvP instead of
chasing people who started running away as soon as anyone tried fighting them.
Also there was basically no rewards for actually winning a BG.

That's the point. They didn't care. I watched a lot of sekaars vids lately and he still doesn't care. He's in it for the fun (and the views), which means deathmatching while ignoring the objectives. Others do so too. OP is right about too small 4v4 maps + too short revive timers. If maps were bigger it would still be obvious that people more likely want to fight instead of going for objectives.
Ironically in 8v8 it's sometimes different. I already saw two trains running past each other flipping flags without ever stopping to brawl. Drive by pew pew and that was it.

Major_Mangle

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Jierdanit wrote: »

fizzylu wrote: »

Having two teams, but 4v4 especially, simply kills build diversity. I see really good, skilled gankblades and hit-and-run sorcs I used to see in 4v4v4 underperforming in 4v4. Well, I did see.... now they basically all queue for 8v8 only or aren't playing BGs very much at all and I've been playing a different game mostly myself because of these new BGs. But anyway....

People keep wanting to talk about how players in the new BGs, especially 4v4, having under 30k health must be PvE builds and like "stronger" means just super tanky, proc set running, heals for days teams.... but they completely forget that there are PvP builds that function around low health in exchange for crazy burst damage and not the whole "keep hitting my opponent but only have the win determined when one of us can no longer sustain our magicka/stamina" type of fighting. Which makes this update and players who claim to like it so much even more baffling because that type of stacking health/armor PvP building and playstyle is one of the things many people believe has made PvP in this game worse over the years (fall-out from the Greymoor proc set meta, imo).

If a build only performs well if they can hide more than half the time than it is really not great for BGs. Because that means that their team is basically one person down most of the time.

And even in the 4v4v4 if those builds did well that usually either meant that their team was by far the strongest or that their team was having a horrible time because their teammate spent most of the BG hiding or running away.

Hit and run should be just as viable as other playstyles. Or do you think face tanking brawlers with pocket healers are the only way BGs should be played?

Except most of the 4v4v4 objective games didn´t include the "hit" part, chaosball being one of the few exceptions, but even there the best tactic was to just run around/away with the ball. Crazy king was alright until more than 1-2 flags had spawn, then it was just down to running away/avoiding the enemy teams. In my book avoiding other players in a PvP environment isn´t actually PvP.

heaven13

Jierdanit wrote: »

Its not about tunnel vision. Most good players knew that the third team was just going for flags or relics or holding the chaosball, they just didnt care. It was just a lot more fun to still keep fighting the team that actually wants to PvP instead of chasing people who started running away as soon as anyone tried fighting them. Also there was basically no rewards for actually winning a BG.

People like this are the reason I stopped playing BGs. I like to try to actually do the objective. If I just wanted to fight, I'd go to Cyrodiil. I was attempting to get all the achievements at some point and all the style pages but gave up because the achievements relied on certain modes and doing the objective and the style page reward system was designed so poorly that the more pages you had, the less likely you would get one because it wasn't a curated drop and they weren't tradeable so game said "here, have a style page, oh wait, you have that one, well empty slot in reward bag for you" and called it a day.

It's been a long time since I attempted BGs because of all this but nothing about what I've seen of the new ones interest me.

Stafford197

Totally agree but will add one more point, which is how ZOS decided it was a great idea to activate a Domination-only ruleset since Friday….. just 2 days after patch release.

In other words, people queuing up for the new 8v8 can only play Domination right now. Queues are already getting rough for 8v8 matches.

Such poor planning.

fizzylu

Jierdanit wrote: »

If a build only performs well if they can hide more than half the time than it is really not great for BGs. Because that means that their team is basically one person down most of the time.

This is definitely just your opinion because I loved having a good gankblade or something on my BG teams. They could get an enemy player or whole team trying to find them and not focused on the objectives or the players in clear view, but you're obviously speaking from the perspective of someone that likes two teams just clashing with no real strategic play so I get that you wouldn't get that. I personally even found playing against them fun because they added their own little spice to the experience.

Jierdanit wrote: »

Its not about tunnel vision. Most good players knew that the third team was just going for flags or relics or holding the chaosball, they just didnt care. It was just a lot more fun to still keep fighting the team that actually wants to PvP instead of
chasing people who started running away as soon as anyone tried fighting them.

Oh please, some teams/players 100% had or got tunnel vision and could not strategize to actually win objectively with two enemy teams. I had many matches where the "stronger" team, who were in fact going for objectives, got outplayed because they would make the mistake of getting focused on one enemy team or were unable to play to go for multiple objectives.

Jierdanit wrote: »

Also no one said that the 8v8 is supposed to be more competitive, if you want more casual pvp then the 8v8 is actually pretty nice for that i think.

People have said this though? Maybe not you, but others have. Not everyone here are big-time PvP players, and that's who that was for; those that may be thinking they can't suddenly PvP anymore because the two team setup, NOT necessarily 4v4.

And if you've actually understood what I wrote, I don't want "more casual PvP". We just have different definitions of what is fun, good competitive PvP.

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Or do you think face tanking brawlers with pocket healers are the only way BGs should be played?

This is exactly what they think. Which again, is hilarious since this type of playstyle/meta is one of the biggest complaints players have had about ESO PvP for years now.... and now BGs, something that had so much to offer from a gameplay perspective, are just micro-Cyrodiil.... how fun.

Jierdanit

fizzylu wrote: »

This is definitely just your opinion because I loved having a good gankblade or something on my BG teams. They could get an enemy player or whole team trying to find them and not focused on the objectives or the players in clear view, but you're obviously speaking from the perspective of someone that likes two teams just clashing with no real strategic play so I get that you wouldn't get that. I personally even found playing against them fun because they added their own little spice to the experience.

Might just be my opinion, but my experience with gankblades was still basically the opposite of yours. They mostly just hid in sneak for most the BG and only attacked if your team was already outnumbering someone and they could try stealing a kill.

Also saying there was "strategic play" in 3 way BGs is ridiculous. The only strategy that they had was either trying to get as many kills as possible or trying to run from every fight trying to get the objectives.
Maybe 1 in 20 BGs actually had any really strategic gameplay.
(Btw there is actually quite some strategy in two teams clashing, IMO a lot more than in the 4v4v4 BGs)

fizzylu wrote: »

Oh please, some teams/players 100% had or got tunnel vision and could not strategize to actually win objectively with two enemy teams. I had many matches where the "stronger" team, who were in fact going for objectives, got outplayed because they would make the mistake of getting focused on one enemy team or were unable to play to go for multiple objectives.

I can only really speak for myself here, but from my perspective i can tell you that i barely ever had something like tunnel vision cause me to lose a BG (and even then i didnt really care about losing). Most of the time i just didnt want to bother chasing some PvE players who were just trying to get their daily BG rewards without actually PvPing.

fizzylu wrote: »

People have said this though? Maybe not you, but others have. Not everyone here are big-time PvP players, and that's who that was for; those that may be thinking they can't suddenly PvP anymore because the two team setup, NOT necessarily 4v4.

Well then I guess I'm wrong about that, I agree that the 8v8 is very playable for casual PvP players.

fizzylu wrote: »

And if you've actually understood what I wrote, I don't want "more casual PvP". We just have different definitions of what is fun, good competitive PvP.

Well we just have different opinions there. I think the Team vs Team is a lot more fun and competitive than the 4v4v4 BGs, but if you dont then that is perfectly fine.
The thread is quite literally about feedback for the BG update. The only thing im doing is giving my feedback that i think most of the changes made BGs a lot better.

fizzylu wrote: »

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Or do you think face tanking brawlers with pocket healers are the only way BGs should be played?

This is exactly what they think. Which again, is hilarious since this type of playstyle/meta is one of the biggest complaints players have had about ESO PvP for years now.... and now BGs, something that had so much to offer from a gameplay perspective, are just micro-Cyrodiil.... how fun.

There is a huge amount of builds in between a facetanking brawler and a gankblade that dies in 3 seconds if it tries to stay in combat.

Its not just black and white. You can absolutely play more hit and run playstyles, but you should really not be complaining about dying a lot if you ignore your entire defense to get more damage.

I mainly play stamSorc, which definitely is a class that usually has a hit and run playstyle. I cant facetank any decent damage for a long amount of time, but I can still stay actively engaged in combat most of the time while just occasionally getting out to reset my ressources and buffs.

Silaf

I want to add a complaint about the new "Galeskirmish Gladiator" pages being limited to only 100 players in the leaderboard.

Obtaining a page require way too much and even a dedicated player will never obtain them.

My suggestion is to switch a the reward for the leaderboard with something like AP, talvar ecc and let all have a chance to get the pages.

Aldoss

fizzylu wrote: »

I swear it's like some people have never heard of strategic gameplay, which is one thing that made ESO bgs unique from every other MMO and significantly more fun/entertaining. And now it's gone so the "stronger" team can just stomp the weaker team without worrying about some third team possibly throwing a wrench in their steamroll.

You call it "strategy", I call it "self-harm". Both are matters of opinion and neither one of us is correct.

I never participated in 4v4v4 objectives because doing so forced me to actively work against my entire motivation for joining BGs in the first place... combat.

Additionally, the absolute worst experience was waiting 15-30min in the group queue (which is where I spend 90% of my BG time), only to get a relic game that ended in 3 min because we got engaged in combat with one team, couldn't disengage, and the 3rd team back capped all the relics. Nothing was fun or enriching about that experience. You ever get a relic match where players held onto a relic even though they could have capped? That's why. I'm not condoning that behavior. I think it qualifies as harassment. But I understand why they might do it because they likely spent 30min in queue and didn't want the game to end in 1/10th of their queue time.

As much as I think the 4v4 should only be a deathmatch arena now, and as much as I hate the Domination mode in that small format, I 100% love that I actually feel rewarded for fighting on a flag and engaging in combat. I love that Domination is now: match where the enemy goes, engage, then react based on the outcome. If you win, go for the next flag. If you lose, regroup and figure out how to split the team to cap some flags.

I just had a 4v4 today that was Domination and it ended with one team getting 500pts and we got 496. On top of that, there were a total of 60 deaths in the BG, nearly evenly disbursed throughout both teams. I've never had such a thrilling Domination match!

gamma71

I like the update

JinKC98

Can't stress enough about the SPAWN RULE. The Bow Sniper cannot and should not be a thing.

My team once fought a NB Bow sniper on opposite side, our member was taken down one by one, I shouted out in group chat, no one read, and was farmed. The other 3 enemy players are probably tanks and debuffers as they have high health.

The other instance, I was grouped with yet another NB bow sniper (I swear it's always NB). He refused to come down and just crouched on base, taking potshots at whoever passed by our base. The fight was spread out, we could not sustain and was defeated. Sniper guy had like 3 lives left and called the rest of us "incompetent". Pissed off everyone naturally. We all left.

TL:DR - Please force teleport players down after like 10 secs, and while staying up on base, players are immune to damage and cannot deal damage.

Cooperharley

JinKC98 wrote: »

Can't stress enough about the SPAWN RULE. The Bow Sniper cannot and should not be a thing.

My team once fought a NB Bow sniper on opposite side, our member was taken down one by one, I shouted out in group chat, no one read, and was farmed. The other 3 enemy players are probably tanks and debuffers as they have high health.

The other instance, I was grouped with yet another NB bow sniper (I swear it's always NB). He refused to come down and just crouched on base, taking potshots at whoever passed by our base. The fight was spread out, we could not sustain and was defeated. Sniper guy had like 3 lives left and called the rest of us "incompetent". Pissed off everyone naturally. We all left.

TL:DR - Please force teleport players down after like 10 secs, and while staying up on base, players are immune to damage and cannot deal damage.

Just like the immortal DK or Sorc shouldn’t be a thing. The sniper isn’t the problem it’s just the spawn lol. You can kill these guys easily. It’s a high risk high reward playstyle. Fix the spawn and this isn’t an issue

fizzylu

@Aldoss
See, that's the weird thing.... I loved BGs because of the small scale fighting and the fact that there was always something going on. I was almost always engaged (only exception really was capture the relic since I would stay back and defend a lot in that one, and sneak cap if I saw the opportunity). Yet you guys talk like everyone was just constantly sneaking around, running away and not fighting-- it seriously makes no sense to me because that was not my experience. Even if I broke away from my group to go for a flag, I would usually encounter an enemy player or two and fight them for it. There was always fighting, but with the added strategy needed for the three teams and more objectives setup if you did actually care about objectives (which I did). It wasn't just two teams constantly going head to head with no strategy play objective wise. Even if my team was losing or behind, there was almost always something we could try to turn the tide. People rarely just gave up and sat in spawn, suddenly filled with a strong desire for a forfeit button. Which brings me to the second weird thing....

I have had no matches in 4v4 like what you just described. Not a single one. All it has been is one team openly dominating the other (mind you, I have only played solo queue in the new 2 team setup so that is probably making a difference in our experiences as well and only did group queue occasionally with the old ones). I get closer matches in the 8v8, but even those tend to be pretty one-sided mostly.

What we can agree on is that 4v4 should have just been it's own feature in the form of a PvP deathmatch arena though.... but I'll never think replacing the 4v4v4 BGs with it was a good idea and I see my time in this game going forward being very minimal because of it.

Cooperharley

Still no reward structure in place. The bear mount is a cool idea, but there should be seasonal rotations with thematic mounts and cosmetics exclusive to the season that you can chase after.

I enjoy the 2 teams - there’s some growing pains like leaderboard/medal issues, spawn trapping/camping/sniping, etc etc, but the underlying issue for me was never the team composition. It was lack of retention and incentive for long term gameplay. They are so behind in this compared to other MMOS STILL after 10 years and it’s actually astonishing