How many players are playing PvP at these times?

moo_2021 · July 21

Desiato wrote: »

There are plenty of popular PVP games!! Like dozens.

The open world PVP game I play when I'm not playing ESO is Rust. (random video from a popular content creator... see the kind of audience a content creator gets in exciting pvp games?)

It's a very different game. Name some MMORPG that has:

- Modern action combat instead of tab based
- Not shooting based
- Therocrafting instead of templates
- Megaserver or support at least hundreds, not playing with the same people over and over again

katanagirl1 · July 21

Vengeance had its good points, but was also lacking in other areas.

Making it the future of Cyrodiil PvP would not be my choice as a daily PvPer. It possibly brings in new players, though there was low population for us on PS NA for Vengeance and that doesn’t seem likely, but changing the gameplay to suite those who don’t normally play it is not fair to those who already do play there. It’s just like all these threads wanting sweeping changes to some other part of this ten year old game so they can participate. Sorry, no.

I also am uneasy about those who have left Cyrodiil PvP and seem to have no intention of returning, but are constantly refuting what others post here about the future of Cyrodiil. I don’t like stepping on other’s toes but don’t ruin it for those of us who stay because it doesn’t matter as far as you are concerned.

I hope the devs are aware of who is currently invested in this type of gameplay when they make the decisions.

EDIT: typo

Desiato · July 21

moo_2021 wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

There are plenty of popular PVP games!! Like dozens.

The open world PVP game I play when I'm not playing ESO is Rust. (random video from a popular content creator... see the kind of audience a content creator gets in exciting pvp games?)

It's a very different game. Name some MMORPG that has:

- Modern action combat instead of tab based
- Not shooting based
- Therocrafting instead of templates
- Megaserver or support at least hundreds, not playing with the same people over and over again

That's very specific! Not many games through history would match that description outside of ESO.

The traditional MMOROPG as a genre has been completely coopted by the loot addict crowd.

Still, if you're willing to be flexible, there are a lot of great PVP games with healthy playerbases.

BXR_Lonestar · July 22

LadyGP wrote: »

I don't know of a single person who left the game (all my guilds are PvP) that have returned... for any reason lead alone subclassing.

Not sure on player numbers, they don't really share pop caps for some reason (and they won't say why they won't share those numbers). If I had to take a guess the numbers you're seeing is carryover from the vengence test and PvE people coming to PvP for one reason or another.

I'd be curious to see if this trend holds or not.

I know a lot of players are returning to play around with subclassing, but I can tell you for a fact that there are a lot of players in my guilds that have spent less time playing this game since subclassing has come out. The discords are a LOT quieter, and there seems to be a lot less enthusiasm for the game since it came out. Our average PVP groups are smaller as well.

Now nobody has said they're pulling back precisely because of subclassing, but I know there is a lot of frustration with the system and how much grind there is to make use of it. IMO, at minimum, they should have made it so that if you leveled one of every character class in the game and leveled all the class skill lines, you shouldn't have to re-level a subclassed skill line to 50. At minimum, they should respect the time we've put into the game by not making us level up those class skill lines we've leveled up on other characters. You should ONLY have to level up a subclass skill line if you never played that class or leveled up that skill line before. That would make the subclass system far less of a drag to take advantage of.

freespirit · July 22

@LadyGP An honest question, how are the constant ball groups in Grayhost any better than your summary of Vengeance as "the zerg wins format"?

I have played both and for me the ball groups are just as boring and yes I did find Vengeance getting boring much faster during the second test. 😕

scrappy1342 · July 22

how many pvp'ers now? not nearly as many as there will be day after tomorrow >.>

Major_Mangle · July 22

Stamicka wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

I really hope you're lower barrier to entry and brining in the casual Pve person makes pvp thrive. I don't have confidence they will get a core group to stick around and keep the pop up.

Why would you be against a lower barrier to entry if you want the best for PvP? Accessibility has nothing to do with making the game easier or lowering the bar, it just means people shouldn't have barriers blocking them from playing something.

High bars to enter almost always decrease participation which is exactly what we don't want.

There's also the fact that casual PvErs can grow to love PvP if the experience wasn't so horrible. ESO used to do this very well in it's earlier years. Many PvPers started out as questers or more casual players.

The barrier to enter ESO PvP used to be much lower and the experience for newer or more casual players used to be much better. The game absolutely needs to get back to that if PvP is going to get anywhere.

ESO got it right in it's 2.0 era which lasted from console release to Homestead. Vengeance is a bit too barebones and unbalanced, but if we could get back to more of an ESO 2.0 environment, PvP would be doing much better.

Lower entry level is fine, but not if it´s at the price of removing the upper end of the progression (which is kinda what Vengeance does by merging the floor and ceiling together). Higher entry level is an inevitable consequence of a game that gets older, it´s that simple, hence why the entry level used to be lower than what it currently is.

Genuine advice on how to ease the climb getting over than entry barrier is to actually interact and talk to other PvP players (not aimed towards you Stamicka specifically). So many "I just wanna play solo in an MMO" players the last few years trying to bang their head against a brick wall by refusing to interact with others (and then complain that PvP or whatnot feels overwhelming). Not saying this applies to everyone but from my own experience, the times I´ve taken noticeable steps in improving my gameplay has never been by going solo and trying to figure everything out by myself, but rather the opposite. This is a mindset issue and not a game issue.

licenturion · July 22

Cyro and Imperial are basically PvPvE zones.

And just like in ESO this only attracts a very small but hardcore fanbase.

I played a lot of games that have a part of PvPvE stuff and usually those parts of the game become very niche and after a while very inaccessible and unappealing for new of casual players who ignore that part of the game.

Examples:
- Division 2 dark zone: usually groups of max level gankers
- Diablo 4 PvP zones: empty every time I pass through them
- Sea Of Thieves: they added a ‘safer seas’ option where players can play without PvP
- New World: nobody flags for PvP and the added PvP entrance zones are patrolled by max level BIS gear stacks
- Fallout 76: PvP zones died off
- Read Dead Online: mode lost support because forced PvP drove people off within weeks.

This this type of gameplay only gets a likeminded dedicated community if the PvPvE part is the only thing that defines the whole game. DayZ, Hunt Showdown, Rust, Tarkov etc. are super popular. There is also no friction between the playerbase because everyone wants and plays exactly the same thing. This also makes it way easier for the developers to focus on updates.

Joy_Division · July 22

ESO's PVP combines two things that probably shouldn't be ever mixed: a high skill level barrier to entey ans insanely powerful proc sets/ dubious mechanics that hardly require any skill.

All this on a setting that also combines two things that shouldn't coexist: big map and a small population.

LadyGP · July 22

freespirit wrote: »

@LadyGP An honest question, how are the constant ball groups in Grayhost any better than your summary of Vengeance as "the zerg wins format"?

I have played both and for me the ball groups are just as boring and yes I did find Vengeance getting boring much faster during the second test. 😕

Say the ball groups go away. Then what? Are things magically going to get better? Is the play style going to get better?

Ball groups are just a component of Cyro - one of many components. Ball groups just look for a good fight - the pop is so dead that they all just end up flooding to literally the only fight on the map. That isn't a ball group problem that is a ZoS problem.

Ball groups also help factions... DC calls for ball groups to come clear areas, they help turn the tide in fights (for good or bad). Ball groups should be nerfed a bit, yes.

However, people are just lazy in Cyro. They just chase ball groups in a straight line. They don't block, they don't really do anything beside chase. The ball group strat has been the same for ages - it still blows my mind that people mindlessly chase into a choke ony to get pulled and bombed.

There are so many playstyles in Cyro, zerg mentality, solo, 1vX, support (perma tanks... say what you want but I've seen keep fights lost because a bunch of DC got focused on a perma tank and got bombed.. they have their use), bombers, gankers, ball groups, small man groups.

This whole ball groups destroy pvp is an exhausting argument. Can they be balanced a bit better - 100%. But if they go away everyone will just complain about something else destroying PvP.

Plus... ball groups make up a lot of players in pvp that play outside of ball groups when raids aren't going. Remove ball groups and the pop issues get even worse. Becareful what you wish for.

Deimus · July 22

My play time has definitely scaled back I might do a couple of battlegrounds and some IC dailies then log. Not touching Cyro outside of Vengeance until they address heal stacking.

With most players in battlegrounds running Storm Calling/Assassination/insert 3rd damage line mainly Animal Companions or Aedric Spear things have become too homogeneous and repetitive. At least with whatever the new shiny set they released you still had 7 distinct classes behind the proc. Funny enough it has also added another aspect of enjoyment to the last Vengeance test for me even with the restrictions I saw more diversity in builds and playstyles compared to battlegrounds.

Give players infinite choice, but if the best options by far involve using the same few skills then you really just made most of those infinite choices irrelevant. So they need to do something to encourage the build diversity, it could be giving bonuses for pure-class and running 2/3 of your base class lines or creating synergy between specific classes to stop the railroading into Streak and Spec Bow. Balance has never been their strong point and combat changes are too slow in this game for the chaos they've unleashed with subclassing. I hope next year they can get balance changes out every 5-6 weeks instead of once every 3 months show us the real difference between the Season and Chapter formats.

The new battlegrounds have been successful at getting more players into PvP from what they reported. They were highly enjoyable preU46 and even during the first few weeks of subclassing when players were actually trying different things. With Cyro Vengeance is the first thing they've tried in I think 4 or 5 years? So it's probably safe to say there isn't anything else lined up aside from that. Even if it doesn't result in a lot of changes to get players back into PvP at least it was successful in scratching that itch current Cyro just can't reach.

AngryPenguin · July 25

Deimus wrote: »

My play time has definitely scaled back I might do a couple of battlegrounds and some IC dailies then log. Not touching Cyro outside of Vengeance until they address heal stacking.

With most players in battlegrounds running Storm Calling/Assassination/insert 3rd damage line mainly Animal Companions or Aedric Spear things have become too homogeneous and repetitive. At least with whatever the new shiny set they released you still had 7 distinct classes behind the proc. Funny enough it has also added another aspect of enjoyment to the last Vengeance test for me even with the restrictions I saw more diversity in builds and playstyles compared to battlegrounds.

Give players infinite choice, but if the best options by far involve using the same few skills then you really just made most of those infinite choices irrelevant. So they need to do something to encourage the build diversity, it could be giving bonuses for pure-class and running 2/3 of your base class lines or creating synergy between specific classes to stop the railroading into Streak and Spec Bow. Balance has never been their strong point and combat changes are too slow in this game for the chaos they've unleashed with subclassing. I hope next year they can get balance changes out every 5-6 weeks instead of once every 3 months show us the real difference between the Season and Chapter formats.

The new battlegrounds have been successful at getting more players into PvP from what they reported. They were highly enjoyable preU46 and even during the first few weeks of subclassing when players were actually trying different things. With Cyro Vengeance is the first thing they've tried in I think 4 or 5 years? So it's probably safe to say there isn't anything else lined up aside from that. Even if it doesn't result in a lot of changes to get players back into PvP at least it was successful in scratching that itch current Cyro just can't reach.

Why hasn't ZOS done anything about heal stacking despite so many requests to limit it? Instead they went on to the vengeance fail.

aslan06 · July 25

I truly enjoyed vengence mode, because I felt like it purely relies on your skill, rather than your build.

As of now... tell me - why would a lot of people play it when there's so much problems with balance? You either play some exploit build where you immortal tank, that oneshots everyone, or you die. And subclasses made things worse. Idea is self is not bad, but not in this game, not with those insane balance issues.

SeaGtGruff · July 25

I think the population must vary quite a bit by server, alliance, campaign, and time of day. There are times on PC NA Gray Host when all three alliances are pop-locked, and times when one or more of the alliances have just one, two, or three bars.

Joy_Division wrote: »

ESO's PVP combines two things that probably shouldn't be ever mixed: a high skill level barrier to entey ans insanely powerful proc sets/ dubious mechanics that hardly require any skill.

All this on a setting that also combines two things that shouldn't coexist: big map and a small population.

I love Cyrodiil's big map.

I mean, sure, it can be a real pain if you want to get somewhere specific that's on the far side of the map and there's nowhere close by that you can port to, meaning you need to get on your mount and ride and ride and ride-- if you can mount.

And, sure, it can be frustrating if there are multiple keeps being sieged in different areas of the map and you want to join in on all of them to help capture or defend the keeps.

But I love all of the delves, and the towns with daily quests, and the Fighters Guild bounty quests with mobs all over that can be killed to fulfill the bounties, and just having so much area to ride around in and explore.

Arrodisia · July 25

I'm seeing many g mates in cyro. The game is "down low" hot right now.

moo_2021 · July 25

aslan06 wrote: »

As of now... tell me - why would a lot of people play it when there's so much problems with balance? You either play some exploit build where you immortal tank, that oneshots everyone, or you die. And subclasses made things worse. Idea is self is not bad, but not in this game, not with those insane balance issues.

Why care about balance? I build to push and break balance.

Have you ever beat someone much better than you by coming up with a superior build? It feels awesome.

Learning skills is just uncreative and not fun for RPG, since everyone do the same things in the end.

Dock01 · July 26

yeah they should've gotten someone who does pvp instead

aslan06 wrote: »

I truly enjoyed vengence mode, because I felt like it purely relies on your skill, rather than your build.

As of now... tell me - why would a lot of people play it when there's so much problems with balance? You either play some exploit build where you immortal tank, that oneshots everyone, or you die. And subclasses made things worse. Idea is self is not bad, but not in this game, not with those insane balance issues.

Now this I agree, no more players vs gear. Just pure skill, the way real PvP should be.