How to Repopulate BG'S

LokoMatic · October 2017

Fact: Battleground population is the lowest it's ever been.
Fact: ZOS is Adding CP to BG's next patch
Fact: This will disrupt the balance between low CP players and high CP players.
Fact: This will change the dynamic of each BG match type, and increase the skill / performance gap that currently exists.
Fact: There will no longer be a Non CP PVP option that is reasonably viable at all. (Xbox NA Non CP Campaign's are entirely dead., not sure about other platforms.)

Opinion: Adding CP's will ruin BG's; low CP players will have no incentive to play against stronger players, and the CP mechanic in a closed small scale setting will ruin the original intent of BG's.
Opinion: Players who asked for CP to be added will never re-join BG's again after witnessing 4 man tank groups dominate in 3/4 game modes.

We get it Zos, the BG launch was botched by horrible que times and a broken matchmaking system. The initial release was thwarted due to technicalities and that is over and done with.

You are now desperate to bring players back to BG's, and in an effort with very little reasoning have made the decision to add CP. This is not the solution you are looking for. This is a last ditch effort to salvage what is left of an incredibly low BG playerbase. But what this decision is really doing is sabotaging the potential for any sub 660 CP players to have competitive balanced PVP.

All and any future players interested in BG's will have no interest after playing against pre-made death squad's like the groups I run with. There will be virtually no chance for the vast majority to be even moderately competitive against capped, experienced players.

Solution: By making BG's part of the original game content Zos will dramatically increase the BG playerbase. (No brainer)
Solution: By adding better BG rewards, Zos will dramatically increase the BG player base.

Why are you adding CP again? It entirely goes against Zos's endless mission to increase balance for new players, and decrease the barrier - to - entry to play ESO PVP competitively. Still trying to find the rationale behind this switch.

ecru · October 2017

People don't want to play bg's because bg's aren't fun. They aren't fun because they're chaotic and force you to fight twice your numbers half the time, with one (or two) teams often being a premade who is taking advantage of that fact. It will never be "good" if there is no way to have fun, balanced matches, and there is no way to have those kinds of matches with the system they've tried (and failed) to implement. CP or no CP, nothing will change.

It has very little to do with the rewards themselves. A carrot on a stick won't make people enjoy a broken 4v4v4 system. Every other game in existence has two teams for a reason. Every other game balances out the premade "problem" with larger teams and a matchmaking system--think 8v8 or 12v12 with a 4 person premade on either side. There's your balanced match, because the pugs balance out the premades on either side, and no one is ever taking advantage of the fact that they have four extra teammates half the time. Even with matchmaking, Eight people have to lose out of four people queueing, meaning that even with a perfect system, it is only possible to win one third of your games. Are you, or is anyone you know, satisfied with only winning a third of the time in the best case scenario? Some players will end up with sub 30 or sub 25% win rates, and imagine how enjoyable those matches they lose will be. What do you think would happen to comp in Overwatch if people could only win a third (or less) of their games? People are barely happy winning 50% of their games.

The entire idea of three teams in small scale pvp was absurd from the start and ZOS needs to come to terms with that fact. It will never be popular. ZOS needs to look to games that have small scale instanced pvp which people actually want to play, like WoW or Rift, and emulate that. People have no problems throwing themselves in a small 10v10 match over and over again because they know who is on their side, they know who isn't, and they're never up against 20 people with their team of 10.

LokoMatic · October 2017

I struggle to see your point's about team performance. I have played on teams where we win 95% of the games we play in due to teamwork and cohesion, or just being better than everyone else in the lobby. BG's are fun to a lot of people, but they won't be fun at all if they add CP.

Sharee · October 2017

I can only speak for myself: i ignored battlegrounds and will continue to do so until random groups are made to fight other random groups, premade groups other premade groups, and never anything else. I suffered this *** forever in SWTOR (which had no cyrodil to play in), don't plan on repeating the experience.

"But they will have long queues!" - tough. It's my free time, it is supposed to make my life fun, not make someone else's queue shorter.

brandonv516 · October 2017

BGs aren't as populated because they are behind an additional pay wall (fact). If offered for free to everyone, the population would go up significantly (or not - opinion).

But how do you not spit in the face of players who paid for it already? That's the test.

LokoMatic · October 2017

Good point. I bought this expansion just for BG's like many others. At this point though I just want them to salvage what is left.

Lexxypwns · October 2017

@LokoMatic we've discussed this before, but I truly believe forcing people to buy morrowind hurt the BGs population from the start and detaching BGs from the chapter would instantly improve population although who knows by how much

Kartalin · October 2017

I agree that the Morrowind paywall has proved a detriment. Hopefully it's opened up at some future point.

Dasovaruilos · October 2017

They really need to detach it from Morrowind.

I've never been there until the event, and then had one of my best times in ESO there. Too bad that after the event ended you just can't get in quick anymore.

They need to make it an account upgrade and price like a DLC, say, 2,5k crowns, and just give 2,5k to Morrowind purchasers to prevent or placate the whining that will follow.

It has a lot of potential, just need more people there.

Feanor · October 2017

I don’t think the paywall killed it. That they could not get it right for 8 weeks after launch and didn’t acknowledge problems for several weeks killed it.

Lexxypwns · October 2017

Feanor wrote: »

I don’t think the paywall killed it. That they could not get it right for 8 weeks after launch and didn’t acknowledge problems for several weeks killed it.

Right, I certainly think there's more than one culprit but all the issues AND you have to pay for a "chapter" after the whole subs get dlc for free fiasco is a lot to overcome. No MMR, some objectives not being well thought out and balanced, etc.

So many issues lol

kyle.wilson · October 2017

It gets really annoying when you are trying to do some randoms, and you keep getting put into the same group fighting 2 premade teams.
For the last few hours I doubt more than 20 people were playing on PCNA.

Beardimus · October 2017

Think you covered it well @LokoMatic its a real concern that this CP step is only going to make things worse. They have said its a test, so maybe it's just step 1 and the least drastic option as they saw it.

One idea would be making it free for an event, See if Pop goes wild and also how the queues cope.

I only bought MW for BG, would i be annoyed if it went free to all, not if we had some quality BattleGround action no. Though I would want the queue fixed and i think some kinda ranking / premade vs solo queue gig

Either way CP doesn't help, at all. Any 660 worth their salt has the time to create a non-CP setup. And anyone on low CP just gunna be ruled out the action

KRBMMO · October 2017

Kartalin wrote: »

I agree that the Morrowind paywall has proved a detriment. Hopefully it's opened up at some future point.

There's really no reason for a new or casual player to buy Morrowind now with CP Battlegrounds only. Who wants to pay an extra $40 to just get completely curbstomped? So not Battlegrounds are only for the Max CP crowd to fight their endless sustain no death fights.

For new players it's just another incentive to try another game. For the Casual Mid-CP crowd we will just stand back and wait for BG to die a grisly death by starvation. Then in a panic ZOS will switch it back, lol.

Motherball · October 2017

I think more players would do BGs if they were just bit larger in scale and on a more level playing field. I know this doesnt often relate well in a rpg setting with gear progression and a meta.

DosPanchos · October 2017

I play PS4. Yes, you definitely encounter premaids but it doesn't ruin the experience for me (I have the same option to run premaids if I choose).

Overall, My friends and I really enjoy the close quarter combat that BGs create, and I'm looking forward to their expansion.

BUT I completely disagree with cp-only BGs. That sucks.

del9 · October 2017

We will see what happens to the Pop when they enable CP. We already know what is going to happen to the gameplay (rip).

A major complaint that will stand is the pre-made vs PUG issue. I don't see ZOS adding matchmaking functionality to mitigate this problem within the next patch or two, let alone having enough pop to make two separate queues work for PMs and PUGs. CYRO at least has a zone chat for PUG wrangling, and at least in Vivec any casual player who wants a group can often find one.

In BGs if a group is PM chances are they are serious players. Any guilds that supply groups to BGs are also very serious at this point. Without ZOS addressing this it may be up to the player community to improve group finding. Large guilds active in the BGs space would improve group finding. Even if there was zone chat that was a hub for LFG in BG, that would improve grouping and increase casual population in the groundz.

Crom_CCCXVI · October 2017

With the current state of CP, and the absurd surviveablitly even moderately decent players have in CP--- adding CP to BG games is literally the worst idea in 3 years...... These games won't even function, people actually need to die, and die frequently for this to have any success

FearlessOne_2014 · October 2017

I stopped playing BGs when it first came out because teams was completely imbalanced.

Also most of my matches was complete blowouts, with me having no chance of winning. More so when I'm on a team of 2 players getting put against two teams of 4 players. Like WTF? *** like this..... https://imgur.com/TSfIgfX made me stop playing BGs and never looking back. I'm a consumer, not someone else's reward farm pinata.

As long as full on teams of Premades, can go against full on teams of random PUGs. I will not subject myself to such.

Thogard · October 2017

Lately I’ve been trying to get 2 or more full groups of premades together and coordinating the queues so that we all go against each other. It’s a ton of fun because we can rebalance the teams as needed.

If we don’t field two premades so we can fight each other then it’s just not fair for our opponents. This week there haven’t been as many premades as usual. I think most solid small groups are either in Vivec or farming DSA / VMA for weapon changes.

Urza1234 · October 2017

KRBMMO wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

I agree that the Morrowind paywall has proved a detriment. Hopefully it's opened up at some future point.

There's really no reason for a new or casual player to buy Morrowind now with CP Battlegrounds only. Who wants to pay an extra $40 to just get completely curbstomped? So not Battlegrounds are only for the Max CP crowd to fight their endless sustain no death fights.

For new players it's just another incentive to try another game. For the Casual Mid-CP crowd we will just stand back and wait for BG to die a grisly death by starvation. Then in a panic ZOS will switch it back, lol.

Or at least one of the players on your team can have maxed Siphoner, which is being changed to affect all sources of resource gain.

I've been traveling and thus unable to try the PTS, can someone confirm that the Non-CP BGs are being completely removed, or are they just adding a CP enabled option?

Azurya · October 2017

Coming to the BG, unexperienced, and getting slaugthered by a 4-player group, doing this all day as a group, is no fun.

the first time you think , I try again, but if you meet these guys over and over and gets t-bagged, well after some tries you give up!
There are other things which make definetelly more fun!

BG are due to those hotheadded grps surely NO-FUN!

Adernath · October 2017

Regardless of what they want to try out, there should be at least one option to do a BG:

No CP, no group joining possible and standard gear (i.e. you choose if you want to fight in light, medium or heavy armor, similar to the arena fights in oblivion).

Only then we truly have a fair competition for everyone, even the causal player, where only skill matters. Like a true e-sports.

Rohaus · October 2017

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JWillCHS · October 2017

The premade problem isn't as big as you think. The BG population is just SUPER small. I consider myself a decent player, but not one you would recognize in a populated competitive game. My guildmates don't do BGs and 95% of the time I queue solo.

There have been a few weeks where I was away on business, only had the weekend to play, and still broke the Top 100 players. In fact last week I was in the Top 20 for Deathmatch after visiting Melbourne and Jacksonville for work through the weekday.

You run into other people who play BGs continuously all the damn time who are soloing queue. Even if you're not a premade you know how they perform.

The BG population is so small, one Saturday I had 4 back to back games with the same people queuing individually. After wrecking the opposing teams 4 games in a row we decided to play together. Right on our 5th game we started a long loosing streak. lol