I'm just going to share a non-PvPers point of view on the stream:

https://youtu.be/ybeSoIoj-EE?si=D1MLjBj0-6neYoWv


I mentioned players feeling like Zenimax was seeking the casual player at the expense of the veterans, and Eigh1 Puppies seems to be getting that impression as well.

https://youtu.be/Nb7vjDtj0cs

https://search.app?link=https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/64817&utm_campaign=aga&utm_source=agsadl1,sh/x/gs/m2/4


" 'What’s the most important skill for somebody who wishes to commentate for ESO’s PvE or PvP activities?'

'In my opinion, it’s knowledge and experience in your field. You can’t just talk about what’s going on. You must help people understand why it’s significant: why such a thrilling moment is so exciting. This is especially true in such an intricate and seemingly chaotic environment like an ESO Trial. You need to know enough to explain a dangerous situation quickly and fluently. You need experience being in that situation to reflect the excitement or panic in your own demeanor, and then you have to be a little dramatic—enough to help the audience feel the excitement that you do in that particular situation.' "

Why not just do it all on the forums. You can even make anonymous polls here. When was the last time anyone saw a poll from a member of staff here?

I don't see why reddit or any other medium should be used at all.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey all, thank you for the additional replies - there are many good insights here. Increasing the amount of Q&As/AMAs we do, and adding more regular feedback surveys does seem doable. As Kevin touched on in this post earlier tonight, many of us are going to be out for Thanksgiving holiday, and we'll follow up when we return. We are making an effort to be here on the forums a bit more, and we don't want our lighter presence over the next week to send the wrong message. The Community team will still drop by as we're able in to check on things here. For those of you who celebrate, we hope you have a restful Thanksgiving with family and/or friends.

I should have acknowledged what a watershed the new Battlegrounds feel like, despite all the criticism. More feedback would be amazing, because I know PVPers have come to think, after years and years of hearing nothing: "No news is bad news". It is so incredibly welcome to have something new, and it is clear that effort went into crafting the new mode. Lobby issues aside, 8v8 is a success in my book. It is chaotic fun! 4v4 will be a success-ish in the long term, once it ceases to be the default queue, and ceases to place people who wanted to queue 8v8 back into 4v4.

In 4v4 the biggest barrier to their success is the poor state of the PVP gameplay at this moment. I know a huge number of people in the PVP community have come to feel the situation in PVP is beyond fixing, and that it's well past the point of "too little, too late". I struggle to imagine how we might get PVP back to a healthy place where core skills and gameplay really matter more than heal-stacking and big proc damage. Making Battle Spirit restrict the number of same-name heals over time you can stack to one stack over what you cast yourself would be a major contribution. Even with such an enormous nerf, ball groups and cross heals would still be incredibly powerful, but it would take bar space away from ball groups in particular who would have to run a wider range of HoT skills to achieve the effect they can currently get just by stacking up a dozen radiating regens and echoing vigors on each other. Ball grouping is a skillful playstyle, but it is painfully overtuned with very little counterplay beyond running an opposing ball group. It also lags the whole region around these groups. In Cyrodiil you can currently tell a ballgroup is coming to a keep just by the drastic drop in framerate as they approach. The huge lag spikes they can create add to the fact that - even if you aren't bait for them - it is very hard to form much counterplay. Right now, with the sheer amount of healing over time they can stack, even the huge DoTs applied by multiple fire ballista can struggle to make a dent. You will sometimes see ball groups just run right through very, very hot killboxes on a breach, and almost immediately recover off any of the damage. Without sets like Azureblight that can punish big cross-healing clusters, siege is some of the only counterplay to a ball group, but the healing is still just too strong, and modern ball groups are too fast and snare-immune to be caught in siege very often.

The sheer power of cross healing really is one of the biggest issues PVP faces. It is evident in BGs too, where you get lobbies that go the full 15minutes with barely a single kill because there are just so many cross heals stacking up.

Some form of "trap" siege in Cyrodiil that circumvents Snowtreaders and Banner Bearer would be nice. Spike traps, etc. You could set it down and you get a few seconds of immobilise to siege or attack ball groups or zergs. A way for smaller - but organised - groups to have counterplay to large, coordinated healing swarms would make Cyrodiil less discouraging.

There is also the fact that very, very tanky builds can output enormous damage with proc-sets. I think Sypher during his stream after the official one even did a brief little thought experiment about having Battle Spirit apply a damage debuff once you go over a certain health threshold. That honestly doesn't sound like an awful idea.

You already have Battle Spirit. Please use it more, or otherwise implement more similar PVP-instance specific effects. It could be the solution to a great number of PVP's issues. The one thing I can't even imagine a solution to is the sheer scope of power creep that proc sets have created, and how completely ineffective nearly all the "core ability" counterplay can be in the face of their power. They just don't cost enough to players for the damage they put out, but players also need that level of damage to cut through the power of all the healing over time. If cross healing is nerfed - which needs to happen - the power creep is effectively worse due to the sudden drop in effective bulk, and I just don't have the slightest idea how to solve that issue.

Please communicate with us more, and if devs already have a clear, concise vision for the kind of PVP they want to give us, then please outline for us what that is. Right now I don't think anyone feels there is a clear, concise vision from the devs for what PVP should look like, and often the few insights we've had seem to directly contradict what has actually happened in ESO PVP. For example, devs seem to genuinely not *want* a high power proc meta, but nevertheless a very extreme one has developed. Another example, devs seem to genuinely want to foster set diversity, but then very few sets - including even most of the ones released in the most recent patch - sit well below the baseline level devs have created for a set to have PVP viability.

kiwi_tea wrote: »

In 4v4 the biggest barrier to their success is the poor state of the PVP gameplay at this moment. I know a huge number of people in the PVP community have come to feel the situation in PVP is beyond fixing, and that it's well past the point of "too little, too late". I struggle to imagine how we might get PVP back to a healthy place where core skills and gameplay really matter more than heal-stacking and big proc damage. Making Battle Spirit restrict the number of same-name heals over time you can stack to one stack over what you cast yourself would be a major contribution. Even with such an enormous nerf, ball groups and cross heals would still be incredibly powerful, but it would take bar space away from ball groups in particular who would have to run a wider range of HoT skills to achieve the effect they can currently get just by stacking up a dozen radiating regens and echoing vigors on each other. Ball grouping is a skillful playstyle, but it is painfully overtuned with very little counterplay beyond running an opposing ball group. It also lags the whole region around these groups. In Cyrodiil you can currently tell a ballgroup is coming to a keep just by the drastic drop in framerate as they approach. The huge lag spikes they can create add to the fact that - even if you aren't bait for them - it is very hard to form much counterplay. Right now, with the sheer amount of healing over time they can stack, even the huge DoTs applied by multiple fire ballista can struggle to make a dent. You will sometimes see ball groups just run right through very, very hot killboxes on a breach, and almost immediately recover off any of the damage. Without sets like Azureblight that can punish big cross-healing clusters, siege is some of the only counterplay to a ball group, but the healing is still just too strong, and modern ball groups are too fast and snare-immune to be caught in siege very often.

The sheer power of cross healing really is one of the biggest issues PVP faces. It is evident in BGs too, where you get lobbies that go the full 15minutes with barely a single kill because there are just so many cross heals stacking up.

Some form of "trap" siege in Cyrodiil that circumvents Snowtreaders and Banner Bearer would be nice. Spike traps, etc. You could set it down and you get a few seconds of immobilise to siege or attack ball groups or zergs. A way for smaller - but organised - groups to have counterplay to large, coordinated healing swarms would make Cyrodiil less discouraging.

There is also the fact that very, very tanky builds can output enormous damage with proc-sets. I think Sypher during his stream after the official one even did a brief little thought experiment about having Battle Spirit apply a damage debuff once you go over a certain health threshold. That honestly doesn't sound like an awful idea.

You already have Battle Spirit. Please use it more, or otherwise implement more similar PVP-instance specific effects. It could be the solution to a great number of PVP's issues. The one thing I can't even imagine a solution to is the sheer scope of power creep that proc sets have created, and how completely ineffective nearly all the "core ability" counterplay can be in the face of their power. They just don't cost enough to players for the damage they put out, but players also need that level of damage to cut through the power of all the healing over time. If cross healing is nerfed - which needs to happen - the power creep is effectively worse due to the sudden drop in effective bulk, and I just don't have the slightest idea how to solve that issue.

Please communicate with us more, and if devs already have a clear, concise vision for the kind of PVP they want to give us, then please outline for us what that is. Right now I don't think anyone feels there is a clear, concise vision from the devs for what PVP should look like, and often the few insights we've had seem to directly contradict what has actually happened in ESO PVP. For example, devs seem to genuinely not *want* a high power proc meta, but nevertheless a very extreme one has developed. Another example, devs seem to genuinely want to foster set diversity, but then very few sets - including even most of the ones released in the most recent patch - sit well below the baseline level devs have created for a set to have PVP viability.

I agree with a lot of this. And the best way I can analogize the state of PvP is by calling it a nuclear arms race. Everyone knows the nukes are bad and going to end the world... but no one wants to get rid of them.

StarOfElyon wrote: »

I agree with a lot of this. And the best way I can analogize the state of PvP is by calling it a nuclear arms race. Everyone knows the nukes are bad and going to end the world... but no one wants to get rid of them.

The part that is distressing, and the reason so many PVP enthusiasts are acting out, is that I'm not really saying anything new. I'm pretty confident the developers have heard everything I'm saying before across five or six years now, which probably means things are staying the way they are. We're had these problems developing for just years and years and years. An enormous number of talented players have left already.

That's why I really think it's important we understand the developers' vision for PVP in ESO. Right now everything about PVP is played close to the chest and completely mystified. We have no idea what the devs want PVP to be except by inferring things from very old interviews and the general state of the game itself. It's okay if their vision isn't what certain super-sweaty players want (I'm confident it is not), we just need to know what it is so we can begin to accept and adapt. We hear so little about PVP in ESO, and consequently there has been years of constant doommongering filling the silence. It's not fun, and it is probably only happening because the devs have no good news to give us, but please, give us bad news, give us any news. Give us your vision. We all want to understand what the goal is with this system that was, at one point, a strong selling point of the game.

OF COURSE the devs are literally PUGS LOL. We have been abandoned. There is a ZERO% chance anything will get better for PVP as long as these types of people are in charge.

I think my bottom line after watching is this: I have no ill will at all towards Brian or anyone else involved and appreciate the heck out of their participation in something involving PvP.

-BUT-

It's disheartening to see how unfamiliar he seemed with what was happening in front of him.

While I absolutely don't think his personal ability as a PvPer is integral or even important to his job, he certainly should have recognized and known everything that was present in those BG from seeing demonstrations, videos, or taking part in testing. It felt like more than just difficulty articulating things in the moment (which would probably happen to most of us in a similar situation) and more like he was seeing various Sets or Abilities in action for the very first time.

If he's not going to be hyper-involved and aware, that's fine... but someone with some authority and say in decisions needs to be, please.

We need a/some "PvP Sweat Rep(s)," for things to be their best. It's kinda unforgivable that might not already be the case, but it certainly would explain a lot of poor decisions since about U35.

Aldoss wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

silky_soft wrote: »

I don't see why reddit or any other medium should be used at all.

I figure that more players have access to the ESO subreddit or the other ESO social media outlets (like @TESOnline on X/Twitter) than they do the ESO forums. I can't imagine many of them chose to create an account specifically for the ESO forums, but they're likely to have an existing Reddit or X/Twitter account.

The ESO forums is a miniscule subset of the overall playerbase and it really doesn't encapsulate all that the community actually thinks of the game. That's why it's important to use multiple social media outlets — some players only use one platform, so we should get their thoughts, too.

Having polls here would incentivize forum membership and ultimately would probably lead to more diverse conversations, since people currently tend to avoid the forums due to its bad reputation.

I understand what you're saying, but from a data gathering standpoint, creating a barrier to entry to data is a great way to induce sampling bias and ruin the value of the data.

Everyone here had the motivation to seek out the forums and get their account activated. There are people who have been banned from the forums, likely for good reason, but their input would be nonetheless just as valuable as us who are here.

The best survey to gather feedback from your players is the survey that is so simple to fill out, nearly every player does it. Each new barrier to entry will skew the data and give you an incomplete view into the real sentiments of your playerbase.

This is a good point.

I used to get irked that WoW would go to such lengths to post information on Twitter rather than use its own Forums, but WoW Forums to ESO's are apples to oranges. It was a cakewalk to join them, players were barely moderated and allowed to voice displeasure freely, and the raw number of participants was enormous and I'd assume the % of the player base was far, far larger there than here.

For whatever reason, ESO Forums have always required extra hoops to join, are tremendously moderated for negativity or complaints let alone tone or bad behavior, and the number of participants here must be a truly miniscule % of such an enormous game's players.

I love ESO and prefer it by large measure to WoW for most things, but I do miss their Forums at times and wish ours were more similar here. It does indeed make using outside locations probably a better reaching alternative, unfortunately.

This stream answered the question I've been asking myself for years - "why is PvP always ignored and why is it the way it is?"

HazierBlue wrote: »

It blows my mind that 10 years later we are still asking/answering the question "How do we communicate better". I'm not a heavy gamer but I don't think I've seen this anywhere else.

Communication isn't the main problem. It's the fact that there is generally speaking nothing to communicate. I mean, there's a complete absence of any kind of consistent drive towards structural, incremental improvements. This just would not be the case if a dedicated PvP dev team actually existed. We have to assume Brian's actually on his own and has to work with whatever dev time he can borrow from people who spend most of their time working on other things and those other things being the priority almost all of the time. So no, we shouldn't be asking for better communication. We should be asking ZOS to form a dedicated PvP dev team, even if it's just 2 people instead of 1 that would make a big difference.

Aldoss wrote: »

Muizer wrote: »

We should be asking ZOS to form a dedicated PvP dev team, even if it's just 2 people instead of 1 that would make a big difference.

The moment they make an announcement like this my wife and I will turn our subs back on and start buying chapters and crowns again.

Afaik there used to be a dedicated PvE and a dedicated PvP Dev teams, but they got fused into one when Wrobel left and Wheeler took over as Lead Combat Designer (Wheeler was the PvP Lead before that).

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/453748/combat-team-news-and-updates/p1

Aldoss wrote: »

Muizer wrote: »

HazierBlue wrote: »

It blows my mind that 10 years later we are still asking/answering the question "How do we communicate better". I'm not a heavy gamer but I don't think I've seen this anywhere else.

We should be asking ZOS to form a dedicated PvP dev team, even if it's just 2 people instead of 1 that would make a big difference.

The moment they make an announcement like this my wife and I will turn our subs back on and start buying chapters and crowns again.

Second this.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey all, it's late but I wanted to hop in and say thank you for the many constructive and thoughtful responses since I last posted, especially those from @Destai @ESO_Nightingale @ForumSavant and @Turtle_Bot. There are fair concerns, criticisms, and suggestions here. While I can't respond to all of them, please know I've read every post and we are discussing best steps forward. I know we've said this before, but we can always do better with our communication. In that line of thought, beyond forum posts what method do you all most prefer for answers to questions? What is the most visible? A Q&A post/article? A Reddit AMA? Something else?

thank you for keeping a eye on this, something needs to change