This is not how ZOS killed PvP. BG's are dead because 2 team BG is just bad design that practically guarantees one team gets rolled. Cyrodiil is dead because of performance and balance issues that ZOS, for some reason, seems to be unwilling to change; namely they need to limit heal and shield stacking and remove free pull sets. But they won't do these two very simple fixes for some reason even though we've been begging for years for the changes.

You do have a point about the 12 man groups being too small. PvP requires newbies to be able to get in groups and learn how to build and play the map and 12 man groups are too small to have any dead weight in them, so it's very hard for those who want to learn PvP to do so.

Performance issues are by far the main reason ZOS has bled PvP players for years. Reducing the population cap to literally 10% of the original population cap is a big factor too.

Now the new dump on PvP players are these nonsense vengeance tests. If ZOS doesn't know what's causing the performance issues already, more tests aren't going to get them the information they need to make the fixes. ZOS is either incapable of fixing the performance issues or the bean counters at ZOS have determined the cost is too high to implement. Either way, the customer loses and may as well move on so long as ZOS refuses to even try the changes outlined above.

Vengeance is just a betrayal of the entire PvP community.

Waseem wrote: »

1) Reduced group sizes from 24 to 12
Result: Many PvP focused guilds disbanded altogether, guild nights chilling in PvP disappeared.
Playing the supposed and advertised "Mass Scale Player versus Player" Experience got a new level of horrible

2) Made the Bridges destroyable
I have no clue which Zenimax employee had to bring Battlefield features to Elder Scrolls Online
This alone terminated the enjoyable Alessia Bridge battles which lasted 30 mins to 2 hours about every night to non-existent

3) Removed the doors from all resources ( Mine,Lumber,Farm)
Capturing a resource and play the hide and seek? not anymore !

These 3 crimes had the worst effect on Cyrodiil since the "lighting and player behavior tracking" patch which destroyed PvP long time ago in 2014 when Zenimax had to reduce the number of players in Cyrodiil from 900 to 300

The Bridge is the most important objective in Cyrodiil. How can you not know this?

MorallyBipolar wrote: »

This is not how ZOS killed PvP. BG's are dead because 2 team BG is just bad design that practically guarantees one team gets rolled. Cyrodiil is dead because of performance and balance issues that ZOS, for some reason, seems to be unwilling to change; namely they need to limit heal and shield stacking and remove free pull sets. But they won't do these two very simple fixes for some reason even though we've been begging for years for the changes.

You do have a point about the 12 man groups being too small. PvP requires newbies to be able to get in groups and learn how to build and play the map and 12 man groups are too small to have any dead weight in them, so it's very hard for those who want to learn PvP to do so.

Performance issues are by far the main reason ZOS has bled PvP players for years. Reducing the population cap to literally 10% of the original population cap is a big factor too.

Now the new dump on PvP players are these nonsense vengeance tests. If ZOS doesn't know what's causing the performance issues already, more tests aren't going to get them the information they need to make the fixes. ZOS is either incapable of fixing the performance issues or the bean counters at ZOS have determined the cost is too high to implement. Either way, the customer loses and may as well move on so long as ZOS refuses to even try the changes outlined above.

Vengeance is just a betrayal of the entire PvP community.

Very well said.

Vengeance is what we needed all this time. Cyrodiil was clearly on a skeleton crew if that, and No-Proc was a half-baked (if we're being charitable) attempt at helping performance. Instead it just confused everyone, nothing was clear, and Zenimax did not even do the bare minimum to clarify things.

But Vengeance? They're now quickly iterating on huge changes to the game's skill lines (WITH PVP-ONLY CHANGES!), a tripled population cap, and pushing a higher skill ceiling on strategy rather than pushing higher stats on gear & skills. I gave up completely on ESO until I heard about the vengeance tests, and had an absolute blast on the 2nd testing phase. If that comes back, I'll be back to playing it as my main game.

Cyrodiil kept my interest for hundreds of hours, but it was rotting over the years. And Vengeance had constant fights that were just as entertaining as my peak experience back in 2017 when defending Chalman and Sejanus. The fights were glorious, and it brought back a bunch of Pact PvP guildees for that one week. We all had a turn with being amazed at how fun Cyrodiil was again and how it felt like the good old days.

AngryPenguin wrote: »

Darethran wrote: »

Vengeance is what we needed all this time. Cyrodiil was clearly on a skeleton crew if that, and No-Proc was a half-baked (if we're being charitable) attempt at helping performance. Instead it just confused everyone, nothing was clear, and Zenimax did not even do the bare minimum to clarify things.

But Vengeance? They're now quickly iterating on huge changes to the game's skill lines (WITH PVP-ONLY CHANGES!), a tripled population cap, and pushing a higher skill ceiling on strategy rather than pushing higher stats on gear & skills. I gave up completely on ESO until I heard about the vengeance tests, and had an absolute blast on the 2nd testing phase. If that comes back, I'll be back to playing it as my main game.

Cyrodiil kept my interest for hundreds of hours, but it was rotting over the years. And Vengeance had constant fights that were just as entertaining as my peak experience back in 2017 when defending Chalman and Sejanus. The fights were glorious, and it brought back a bunch of Pact PvP guildees for that one week. We all had a turn with being amazed at how fun Cyrodiil was again and how it felt like the good old days.

Vengeance will be the death of PvP if implemented as the only option. It's for the PvE crowd that won't stick around for any mode of PvP for any significant amount of time.

Vengeance is for testing possible ways to reduce problems and improve performance in Cyrodiil. It is intended for the PvP crowd who have been complaining for years about performance issues in Cyrodiil.

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

AngryPenguin wrote: »

Darethran wrote: »

Vengeance is what we needed all this time. Cyrodiil was clearly on a skeleton crew if that, and No-Proc was a half-baked (if we're being charitable) attempt at helping performance. Instead it just confused everyone, nothing was clear, and Zenimax did not even do the bare minimum to clarify things.

But Vengeance? They're now quickly iterating on huge changes to the game's skill lines (WITH PVP-ONLY CHANGES!), a tripled population cap, and pushing a higher skill ceiling on strategy rather than pushing higher stats on gear & skills. I gave up completely on ESO until I heard about the vengeance tests, and had an absolute blast on the 2nd testing phase. If that comes back, I'll be back to playing it as my main game.

Cyrodiil kept my interest for hundreds of hours, but it was rotting over the years. And Vengeance had constant fights that were just as entertaining as my peak experience back in 2017 when defending Chalman and Sejanus. The fights were glorious, and it brought back a bunch of Pact PvP guildees for that one week. We all had a turn with being amazed at how fun Cyrodiil was again and how it felt like the good old days.

Vengeance will be the death of PvP if implemented as the only option. It's for the PvE crowd that won't stick around for any mode of PvP for any significant amount of time.

Vengeance is for testing possible ways to reduce problems and improve performance in Cyrodiil. It is intended for the PvP crowd who have been complaining for years about performance issues in Cyrodiil.

What changes has ZOS made to live Cyrodiil PvP as a result of what they've learned from vengeance? Any?

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

AngryPenguin wrote: »

Darethran wrote: »

Vengeance is what we needed all this time. Cyrodiil was clearly on a skeleton crew if that, and No-Proc was a half-baked (if we're being charitable) attempt at helping performance. Instead it just confused everyone, nothing was clear, and Zenimax did not even do the bare minimum to clarify things.

But Vengeance? They're now quickly iterating on huge changes to the game's skill lines (WITH PVP-ONLY CHANGES!), a tripled population cap, and pushing a higher skill ceiling on strategy rather than pushing higher stats on gear & skills. I gave up completely on ESO until I heard about the vengeance tests, and had an absolute blast on the 2nd testing phase. If that comes back, I'll be back to playing it as my main game.

Cyrodiil kept my interest for hundreds of hours, but it was rotting over the years. And Vengeance had constant fights that were just as entertaining as my peak experience back in 2017 when defending Chalman and Sejanus. The fights were glorious, and it brought back a bunch of Pact PvP guildees for that one week. We all had a turn with being amazed at how fun Cyrodiil was again and how it felt like the good old days.

Vengeance will be the death of PvP if implemented as the only option. It's for the PvE crowd that won't stick around for any mode of PvP for any significant amount of time.

Vengeance is for testing possible ways to reduce problems and improve performance in Cyrodiil. It is intended for the PvP crowd who have been complaining for years about performance issues in Cyrodiil.

What changes has ZOS made to live Cyrodiil PvP as a result of what they've learned from vengeance? Any?

How soon are people expecting them to make changes to live PvP after a Vengeance test is over? How much time will people allow them to collect feedback and analyze data from the tests? And are people expressing how eagerly they're looking forward to any changes, or are they expressing outrage and threatening to rage quit if any changes are made?

One thing I've noticed ever since the first Vengeance test is that if I get into a fight and then can't mount up because I'm still in combat, it doesn't take nearly as long as it used to for me to get out of combat and be able to mount up. And right after that big three-way fight at Roe that they asked everyone to participate in at a certain day and time a few months ago, I remember Gina saying in an ESO Live stream that the devs had identified at least one issue that was causing disconnects, and I think they made some adjustments based on that discovery.

PvP died with the loss of dilution.

We see this in vengeance, where there are players of all skill levels literally everywhere. Newbies trying to solo in 2025, who would imagine? We can also see this effect in MyM where combat gets diluted with new players. What happened to the natural influx of new players though?

Earlier on there were entry stairs to climb through the lowbie u50 campaign then to the nocp and then to the vet campaign. The problem is that cyrodil was never designed to be low population. When unbalanced the winner is not only incentivized, but rewarded for holding the entire map. This simple effect of seeing the map all one color stopped new players from logging in. Keep in mind that over the years it got harder and harder to solo pvp so new players are never going to flip the map back. Simple skills like dk wings, harness magicka sustain, siphon strikes sap, etc gave solo players the ability to level the playing field when out numbered without being abuse able while grouped.

---

u50 PvP over time dissolved when an imbalance happened enough times in a row for people to quit. For PCNA the main death factor was AD having all of the Aussie players night capping the map. EP never had a solid zerg guild and pugs got tired of logging in to have to fight uphill all night. Either players learned to solo and moved up to nocp on their own, or they had a 50/50 chance of a guild group surviving the swap to nocp.

NoCP then ran into the same issues where over time no new players came in from u50. It became a constant issue of night flipping and fighting an uphill battle. Eventually the night cappers get bored and everyone has moved to the one remaining pop locked campaign.

Vet now is the last functional pop balanced campaign, but it is such a laggy mess that probably half or more of the potential pvp population doesn't even consider logging in.

BGs played a unique roll in speeding up this process. Since u50 and nocp were non functional, people would dip their toes into a bg match and then get out. Unlike cyrodil where new players may group up and talk to people, bgs are non interactive and do not socially keep players together. Until you get to the pure endgame high mmr playerbase of like 50 people.

---

Combat wise and cyrodil wise we could talk for days on things like Campaign rules, keep seiges, bridge fights, the Hammer, cross healing, Over time stacking, Unique skill loss to "standardization", Mount speed and stamina, etc

MincMincMinc wrote: »

PvP died with the loss of dilution.

We see this in vengeance, where there are players of all skill levels literally everywhere. Newbies trying to solo in 2025, who would imagine? We can also see this effect in MyM where combat gets diluted with new players. What happened to the natural influx of new players though?

Earlier on there were entry stairs to climb through the lowbie u50 campaign then to the nocp and then to the vet campaign. The problem is that cyrodil was never designed to be low population. When unbalanced the winner is not only incentivized, but rewarded for holding the entire map. This simple effect of seeing the map all one color stopped new players from logging in. Keep in mind that over the years it got harder and harder to solo pvp so new players are never going to flip the map back. Simple skills like dk wings, harness magicka sustain, siphon strikes sap, etc gave solo players the ability to level the playing field when out numbered without being abuse able while grouped.

---

u50 PvP over time dissolved when an imbalance happened enough times in a row for people to quit. For PCNA the main death factor was AD having all of the Aussie players night capping the map. EP never had a solid zerg guild and pugs got tired of logging in to have to fight uphill all night. Either players learned to solo and moved up to nocp on their own, or they had a 50/50 chance of a guild group surviving the swap to nocp.

NoCP then ran into the same issues where over time no new players came in from u50. It became a constant issue of night flipping and fighting an uphill battle. Eventually the night cappers get bored and everyone has moved to the one remaining pop locked campaign.

Vet now is the last functional pop balanced campaign, but it is such a laggy mess that probably half or more of the potential pvp population doesn't even consider logging in.

BGs played a unique roll in speeding up this process. Since u50 and nocp were non functional, people would dip their toes into a bg match and then get out. Unlike cyrodil where new players may group up and talk to people, bgs are non interactive and do not socially keep players together. Until you get to the pure endgame high mmr playerbase of like 50 people.

---

Combat wise and cyrodil wise we could talk for days on things like Campaign rules, keep seiges, bridge fights, the Hammer, cross healing, Over time stacking, Unique skill loss to "standardization", Mount speed and stamina, etc

2 team BG's have killed BG's for the most part. And vengeance mode will kill Cyrodiil PvP once and for all. Is that what the PvE crowd really wants?

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Waseem wrote: »

2) Made the Bridges destroyable
I have no clue which Zenimax employee had to bring Battlefield features to Elder Scrolls Online
This alone terminated the enjoyable Alessia Bridge battles which lasted 30 mins to 2 hours about every night to non-existent

Unfortunately this was a player suggestion, I was there when it was made and was one of those arguing against it but they listened to this player/sub group instead. It does sound like a cool idea when you discuss it though to be fair.

Doesn't the game have repair kits? ZOS even consolidated the various types of repair kits into a single all-purpose repair kit. What is stopping players from buying repair kits and repairing destroyed bridges, just as they do with destroyed milegates? Sure, you can't repair sonething if it's taken damage too recently. But you can try to take out any siege engines that are doing damage, and have players from your alliance go around to the other side of the destroyed bridge to try to take out any siege engines on the other side. There are ways around destroyed milegates and bridges.

I'm not voicing an opinion on whether it was a good or bad idea to let bridges be destroyed. I'm just pointing out that there are ways to deal with destroyed bridges.

LPapirius wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

PvP died with the loss of dilution.

We see this in vengeance, where there are players of all skill levels literally everywhere. Newbies trying to solo in 2025, who would imagine? We can also see this effect in MyM where combat gets diluted with new players. What happened to the natural influx of new players though?

Earlier on there were entry stairs to climb through the lowbie u50 campaign then to the nocp and then to the vet campaign. The problem is that cyrodil was never designed to be low population. When unbalanced the winner is not only incentivized, but rewarded for holding the entire map. This simple effect of seeing the map all one color stopped new players from logging in. Keep in mind that over the years it got harder and harder to solo pvp so new players are never going to flip the map back. Simple skills like dk wings, harness magicka sustain, siphon strikes sap, etc gave solo players the ability to level the playing field when out numbered without being abuse able while grouped.

---

u50 PvP over time dissolved when an imbalance happened enough times in a row for people to quit. For PCNA the main death factor was AD having all of the Aussie players night capping the map. EP never had a solid zerg guild and pugs got tired of logging in to have to fight uphill all night. Either players learned to solo and moved up to nocp on their own, or they had a 50/50 chance of a guild group surviving the swap to nocp.

NoCP then ran into the same issues where over time no new players came in from u50. It became a constant issue of night flipping and fighting an uphill battle. Eventually the night cappers get bored and everyone has moved to the one remaining pop locked campaign.

Vet now is the last functional pop balanced campaign, but it is such a laggy mess that probably half or more of the potential pvp population doesn't even consider logging in.

BGs played a unique roll in speeding up this process. Since u50 and nocp were non functional, people would dip their toes into a bg match and then get out. Unlike cyrodil where new players may group up and talk to people, bgs are non interactive and do not socially keep players together. Until you get to the pure endgame high mmr playerbase of like 50 people.

---

Combat wise and cyrodil wise we could talk for days on things like Campaign rules, keep seiges, bridge fights, the Hammer, cross healing, Over time stacking, Unique skill loss to "standardization", Mount speed and stamina, etc

2 team BG's have killed BG's for the most part. And vengeance mode will kill Cyrodiil PvP once and for all. Is that what the PvE crowd really wants?

The thing killing BGs is the mmr system refreshing all the time. No reason every other month or so I should come back to the game just to Also the spawn system requiring you to drop down to your death is beyond ridiculous. The spawn zones should have one way walls such that the losing team doesn't literally trickle down into the enemy team. Dropping down one by one losing 2 gcds entering the fight guarantees spawn camping. The two team system otherwise is fine. Group vs solo que IMO simply just doesnt have enough players to exist.

Cyrodil has been dead for years. The player cap is down to about 50-60 players per faction with nightly ball group runs. So in reality if a zerg guild runs there are 36/60 slots left. Add in a ball group or two and your faction only has 12/60 slots available for solo/new players to join. No wonder it is mount simulator, because all of the players are in 2-3 groups standing within 8m of each other at any given moment.

Vengeance is literally just tests and as far as we can tell there will be 4+ more tests before any sort of gear or passives start getting added. Gear is what people want the most, but sadly game design wise and testing wise, it will be the last thing to get added. its been a 10 year decline (520 weeks) I think its fine to spend 5-10 weeks doing a test that could give insight as to why the server has issues especially if we want another 10 years.

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Gear is what people want the most

Welcome back, ball groups!

lol maybe we just shouldn't have gear that gives 12x people a bonus that is 1/2 a normal 5 piece.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Gear is what people want the most

Welcome back, ball groups!

lol maybe we just shouldn't have gear that gives 12x people a bonus that is 1/2 a normal 5 piece.

Maybe they should try limiting heal stacking like we've been asking for for years now.

So many things in pvp changed that not much can be addressed any longer. It is draining energy like a sinkhole. Zenimax is not reaching the pvp players in the right way. Now we have Vengeance as a good booster.

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Group size reduction was made due to population limit ninja nerf. I mean Imagine if we had 24 man groups nowadays. Lag & inability to counter this play-style aside, one group would be like 1/4 of the entire alliance or something like that...

Thing is though is that we used to have 24 man groups and I don't remember the lag being all that terrible. It existed, sure, but was it like it is now? I don't believe so.