Future of Battlegrounds

Markytous

Without 3-Team Battlegrounds, this game is basically dysfunctional Guild Wars 2. I'm sorry. I had to say it. I have contributed to these conversations regarding PVP in Elder Scrolls Online and everything regarding this game's unique identity regarding combat, thematics and PVP have been stripped away. Having 3-Team Battlegrounds was a unique feature that was a non-negotiable when it comes to content. The fact that it was removed for generic 2-Team Battlegrounds which exists in basically every game/genre (We Valorant now, boys.) pits this game against competition that it never had to worry about. 3-Team Battlegrounds was a lot of things, but nobody could deny that it was unique in the MMORPG space. Now we have dysfunctional PVP that now appears to be trying very hard to be WoW or GW2 (both games that can support a vastly larger amount of players on screen in their respective PVE and PVP content). Since ESO is essentially only viable as a small-scale PVE and PVP instanced game, having 2-Team and 3-Team Battlegrounds as options together would have been the right call. However removing the established Battlegrounds vision and replacing it with something generic greatly hinders the experiences for a vast majority of players. Nobody likes 4v4 and 8v8 is just queue for rewards and hope it ends soon.

Oh, and nobody go and say that the current meta is high damage. The last Capture the Relic 8v8 I did last week had unkillable players walking about just grabbing relics and jogging across the map. Whether they tooled their stats or actually were that tanky to sustain being dogpiled by an entire team solo doesn't matter. It's unfun PVP. I get it, though. People who advocate for this system secretly want PVP put down and they've succeeded.

NxJoeyD

Markytous wrote: »

Without 3-Team Battlegrounds, this game is basically dysfunctional Guild Wars 2. I'm sorry. I had to say it. I have contributed to these conversations regarding PVP in Elder Scrolls Online and everything regarding this game's unique identity regarding combat, thematics and PVP have been stripped away. Having 3-Team Battlegrounds was a unique feature that was a non-negotiable when it comes to content. The fact that it was removed for generic 2-Team Battlegrounds which exists in basically every game/genre (We Valorant now, boys.) pits this game against competition that it never had to worry about. 3-Team Battlegrounds was a lot of things, but nobody could deny that it was unique in the MMORPG space. Now we have dysfunctional PVP that now appears to be trying very hard to be WoW or GW2 (both games that can support a vastly larger amount of players on screen in their respective PVE and PVP content). Since ESO is essentially only viable as a small-scale PVE and PVP instanced game, having 2-Team and 3-Team Battlegrounds as options together would have been the right call. However removing the established Battlegrounds vision and replacing it with something generic greatly hinders the experiences for a vast majority of players. Nobody likes 4v4 and 8v8 is just queue for rewards and hope it ends soon.

Oh, and nobody go and say that the current meta is high damage. The last Capture the Relic 8v8 I did last week had unkillable players walking about just grabbing relics and jogging across the map. Whether they tooled their stats or actually were that tanky to sustain being dogpiled by an entire team solo doesn't matter. It's unfun PVP. I get it, though. People who advocate for this system secretly want PVP put down and they've succeeded.

I can relate to this here; that’s all pretty spot on. I don’t think many people, myself included, stopped to think about how those elements made ESO stand out from other MMO titles. … When you said Valorant .. lol, you’re not wrong. … imagine a BG with one side is all Clove, yeah, feels like that lol.

The current meta is high damage but that’s not the only “meta” .. healing is also very broken. You’ve got players that will see they’ve been put into a Relic match and quickly change their skills & gear to literally do nothing but “relic run”. High resistance, Rally Cry, broken self heals, & swiftness. …They can’t do anything else but they can take a relic and just run away with it.

Moonspawn

Markytous wrote: »

Oh, and nobody go and say that the current meta is high damage. The last Capture the Relic 8v8 I did last week had unkillable players walking about just grabbing relics and jogging across the map. Whether they tooled their stats or actually were that tanky to sustain being dogpiled by an entire team solo doesn't matter. It's unfun PVP. I get it, though. People who advocate for this system secretly want PVP put down and they've succeeded.

@Markytous Do you see a way for tanks to ruin the three-sided objective modes if these small changes were made? They wouldn't be able to flip flags alone, and the healing debuff from relics and chaosballs would make surviving concentrated damage impossible.

Markytous

Moonspawn wrote: »

Markytous wrote: »

Oh, and nobody go and say that the current meta is high damage. The last Capture the Relic 8v8 I did last week had unkillable players walking about just grabbing relics and jogging across the map. Whether they tooled their stats or actually were that tanky to sustain being dogpiled by an entire team solo doesn't matter. It's unfun PVP. I get it, though. People who advocate for this system secretly want PVP put down and they've succeeded.

@Markytous Do you see a way for tanks to ruin the three-sided objective modes if these small changes were made? They wouldn't be able to flip flags alone, and the healing debuff from relics and chaosballs would make surviving concentrated damage impossible.

Don't worry bro when Cyrodiil was burning down into unplayable laggy refuse I was taking refuge in 3-Team BGs. Once they announced they were making changes then subsequently announced that they would remove 3-Team (falsely announced that they would do 3-Team Modes on weekend events maybe) I got my wife, who was new to ESO at the time, to spend some quality time in the BGs. We both miss them now and getting Class Mastery Script Scraps is a bore/chore even for a ESO PVP vet like me (now ESO Refugee greatly enjoying GW2 BGs and WvW PVP). You go to Cyro to lose control of your character due to latency/packet loss server side, see all the enemies you lock down and burst streak away out of fear because of subclassing and walk through the majesty of the Imperial City (the most unique PVP in the modern MMO space currently) in all of its unplayed/dead pop glory. What do I have that is left? 3-Team BGs was all that was left, friend. Its not coming back and no new content since 2018 shows nothing really will. Its too late. Vengeance is a side-order; NOT a content drop. Subclasssing and Vengeance are admissions of defeat. Nothing more, nothing less. I still support Vengeance because it's literally better than nothing but when ESO turns to try and compete with more functional MMORPG combat systems how can I keep hoping/coping? ZOS could do one lil patch to make No-Subclassing PVP and 3-Team BGs. Its content that is probably still wasting space in the gigantic file size of ESO so couldn't be hard to make menus to access and queue 3-Team again.

NxJoeyD

IMO 3 team would still be chaos.

Could it curb some things? Maybe … but even with 3 teams that would just give us three teams of garbage mechanics rather than two; which would be equally chaotic.

There’s no way in getting around what Subclassing has done for PvP; it’s enabled builds to exist that simply shouldn’t in any functional MMO combat.

Crit builds with damage modifiers that are sky high is one thing, but when you enable those builds to also gain access to excessively strong self healing, now you’ve created a problem. That’s the current state individual meta. The only counter play to that is another of the same build.

The cost needed to achieve such a strong damage output should be such that it would not leave room for self healing & durability that strong, that’s balance … yet here we are.

The gap between that meta and, say, the next strongest theory of builds is now much larger than before. In current state PvP you either build the meta to be able the counter the meta or you’re on the struggle bus.

There’s no avoiding mechanics and subclassing is sloppy to say the least. Whether it’s 3 teams or 2 teams you’re still going to have the abundance of broken mechanics at play. Those mechanics are going to dominate the matches.

You’re still also going to have those players (especially some running meta builds) who don’t play objective and only go to duel, leaving the rest of the squad to fend for themselves. That will never change but the current state rewards those players by proxy by giving them a harvesting field of players to mow through.

Look, we’re all having pork chops for dinner with BG’s whether we like them or not. When it comes to 3 teams vs 2 team it’s basically do you want one pork chop or two pork chops? It’s not as though adding the 3rd team back will see you having chicken instead.

Until the devs address the mess they made BG’s will be chaotic. Some have recommended factoring outgoing healing into MRR and I, again, agree with that suggestion, that could help in the here & now.

It does look as though they’ve been tinkering with MRR; at least on XB NA as I’m seeing changes in queue times and team makeups so I’m curious what, if anything, they might be doing or if it’s changes in player base / population.

Haki_7

It was impossible for an unpredictable 4v4v4 match to be boring. As long as no one cheesed the ball, three-sided Chaosball had the potential to be the most unpredictable game mode of all. Instead, here's what we get:

This time, I was lucky enough to briefly catch a glimpse of a single opponent at the beginning of the match.

Moonspawn

Haki_7 wrote: »

It was impossible for an unpredictable 4v4v4 match to be boring. As long as no one cheesed the ball, three-sided Chaosball had the potential to be the most unpredictable game mode of all. Instead, here's what we get:

This time, I was lucky enough to briefly catch a glimpse of a single opponent at the beginning of the match.

It's hard to tell, but that looks like the map where they bungled the Chaosball points, the normal one is granting 10, while the other two are only worth 3 each. Do you think it's related?

Moonspawn

NxJoeyD wrote: »

You’re still also going to have those players (especially some running meta builds) who don’t play objective and only go to duel, leaving the rest of the squad to fend for themselves. That will never change but the current state rewards those players by proxy by giving them a harvesting field of players to mow through.

First and second aspects of the third critical flaw of two-sided BGs:
3. Spawncamping is encouraged by the two-sided format itself in every gamemode.

• Spawncamping in a 3-sided match meant leaving your teammates outnumbered against the third team. Doing the same thing in 2-sided gives your own team the numerical advantage.
• If PvPers on both sides perceive the newfound usefulness of spawncamping, there's a decent chance they'll spend the entire match on opposite ends of the map. Not having to fight each other only makes the practice easier.

In 4v4v4, ditching the team to go farm some newcomers was a bad move in almost every scenario. In 8v8 it's not. It is also easier, because the pvpers on opposing team are always tempted to do the same.

PS: You can replace ''spawncamping newcomers'' with ''isolating and focusing newcomers''.

Haki_7

Moonspawn wrote: »

Haki_7 wrote: »

It was impossible for an unpredictable 4v4v4 match to be boring. As long as no one cheesed the ball, three-sided Chaosball had the potential to be the most unpredictable game mode of all. Instead, here's what we get:

This time, I was lucky enough to briefly catch a glimpse of a single opponent at the beginning of the match.

It's hard to tell, but that looks like the map where they bungled the Chaosball points, the normal one is granting 10, while the other two are only worth 3 each. Do you think it's related?

Nothing to do with the map. Here:

How many unbelievably fun three-sided matches could've been formed with these players?

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 96: Waiting 22 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://youtu.be/4sGIxoxabZ0

NxJoeyD

Moonspawn wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

You’re still also going to have those players (especially some running meta builds) who don’t play objective and only go to duel, leaving the rest of the squad to fend for themselves. That will never change but the current state rewards those players by proxy by giving them a harvesting field of players to mow through.

First and second aspects of the third critical flaw of two-sided BGs:
3. Spawncamping is encouraged by the two-sided format itself in every gamemode.

• Spawncamping in a 3-sided match meant leaving your teammates outnumbered against the third team. Doing the same thing in 2-sided gives your own team the numerical advantage.
• If PvPers on both sides perceive the newfound usefulness of spawncamping, there's a decent chance they'll spend the entire match on opposite ends of the map. Not having to fight each other only makes the practice easier.

In 4v4v4, ditching the team to go farm some newcomers was a bad move in almost every scenario. In 8v8 it's not. It is also easier, because the pvpers on opposing team are always tempted to do the same.

PS: You can replace ''spawncamping newcomers'' with ''isolating and focusing newcomers''.

Not necessarily. Even with a 4v4v4 layout, if one team has, say, two players running top meta builds and nobody else in the match is running a top meta build; then whichever squad of 4 has the metas is going to run raggshot on the match.

We've all seen the match recaps over and over where one or two players have excessively high kill counts, even against other players with experience simply because mechanics weren't available enough to counter those metas.

In 4v4v4 we didn't have meta gaps as high we do now. Back then, sure, it was a bad move to go run off and try to spawn camp. It was also much harder spawn camp back then, it's not like that now.

We can't just cite how BG's used to operate back when we had 3 teams because the landscape of combat mechanics had changed so significantly now. It's not just a matter of how many people are in a BG, it's the spread and weight of where not just the experience is but where the mechanics are also. This is where mechanics and MRR become bigger factors.

You'd still have to do more to address the problems than just going back to a 3 team layout. That's not going to be enough.

If we want to kill spawn camping & one sided BG matches here's a few very simple adjustments that would have an immediate effect:

1) Healing: Adjust critical healing so that heals taken on a players SELF only crit at a max of 25% rather than scaling off of the existing crit modifier. This would ONLY apply to heals a player casts that affect THEMSELVES and only when Battle Spirit is active. A healing player who is outwardly healing members of their group would continue to scale critical healing as normal, however, they would only be subject to the 25% on themselves. This would still enable strong group healing but would also re-introduce the aspect of strategy. Groups would need to be more attentive to their healers as nobody would be ablet to self heal for sky high values based off their own high crit modifiers.

2) Critical Resistance: Add a named Major & Minor buff that specifically addresses critical resistances. Similarly to how Major & Minor Resolve affect base resistances these buffs would affect attackers crit modifiers by reducing them by more significant amounts. This is essential because it's become more commonplace in PvP for players to achieve critical damage modifiers so high above the soft cap that even with 7 pieces of Impen & Rally Cry that an attacker is still at or near the soft cap; which means players are allocating significant resources to protect themselves which are having near zero affect. Nobody should be committing to 7 gear traits plus a full 5 piece gear set, specifically to address crit damage and then still taking the full brunt of someone's crits.

If we look at the mechanics of what are contributing to consistent spawn camps we see a trend and it all revolves around crits. Critical healing is providing outward AND self heals that are so excessive that even dealing high damage can be mitigated in single bursts. Further, enabling critical modifiers so high that can't be properly countered means that further ability mechanics can be overly exploited; abilities like Fissure, Resolve, & Topple have too much speed of execution and follow up, if we're going to leave the lions share of these abilities as they are (which I'm sure the Devs will), then we need to give players the ability to offset the crit factor properly in their builds.