Main BG pain points

MincMincMinc · August 11

Resetting the mmr is just asking for endgame players to farm newer players no contest. Its boring for both sides, I can only waste so many hours sitting in que just to end up in 5 min games where I go 30/0 before I just afk outside enemy spawns during matches because players don't drop down.

EDIT: here's my MMR post:

ESO is not a competitive game by any means, so you first need to make a simple functional MMR system that is actually implementable before talking about the combat aspects. Because there shouldn't be 8v8 or 4v4 or 4v4v4 games where new pvp players ever fight someone with 5000+ hours of pvp. We shouldn't have to reset mmr for any reason.

There are really only 2 main metrics that should matter for MMR. One being your K/D/A and another being your Healing. The next question is should these be character or account bound?

K/D/A should probably be account bound as it will signify if someone is a higher tier player or not over time. If someone is repeatedly going 40/0/15, they should be bumped up. The KDA of a match signifies whether you should be bumped up or down the ladder value. New characters would place you on your account mmr but not raise your account mmr until you match the previous value. You can split up the ladder value wise however you like. This is where you could make ranks like bronze/silver/gold/platinum/diamond.....People LIVE for achieving these titles in games.

Healing mmr should be character bound. At least in this case games could pair different teams with players who tend to play healer. I can't think of another simple way of balancing out healers. The problem comes when a character switches builds. Perhaps simply save the last match's healing data for the next que. So after the overall match is paired up from KDA you would then sort the teams based on the healing mmr variable saved. Now healers don't exactly get kills, so you would also need to make a system to determine who is a healer and then weigh their kills and assists oppositely.

We all know the leaderboard is pointless, the bg "score" means nothing. I honestly don't even know how to see the leaderboard, havent cared since the first week bgs came out. Just delete it entirely or completely separate it from the MMR system. We should not be resetting the MMR system because of the leaderboard rewards. Zos doesn't have the time or knowledge to make a more complicated system that other competitive games can tailor on FAR less complicated combat systems.

Having a functional MMR system and ranking system could setup ESO for some crazy features. Quite a few mmos have Moba style matches where you have longer format games of 20-30mins with pvp and pve aspects to win. Its content that literally writes itself and keeps people logged in the game. Without having to inflate player numbers with fake daily writ logins.

Different ques separating group, solo, 4v4, and 8v8. You quite literally need an addon to be able to que up for all ques at the same time. Otherwise you will spend 4x the time sitting in que just because the game doesn't have enough players participating in ques. IMO with a functional running mmr system you don't need these different solo/group ques. 4v4 and 8v8 could also be baked together and be more of a preference setting.

Spawning is another major issue where players should spawn in defined waves together to incentivize regrouping. However even if wave spawns artificially regrouped players the next issue is dropping out of spawn breaking up the groups

Dropping out of spawn is a guaranteed death sentence. Typically we could assume the losing team is the one that died and is stuck in spawn. So now the losing team is expected to drop 2-3gcds down into an enemy team that already killed them before? You essentially are starting out a group fight down multiple players and at half health against enemies that already beat you before. ASSUMING the whole team even drops at the same time. Ideally zos changes spawn zones to be at level with the ground through a 1 way wall. This way the hesitant players can stay balled up and trail out of spawn. Many other games do soft walls with turret and heal mechanics protecting the spawns such that they can come back from a loss together. The only game mode where this could be an issue is probably chaos ball, but that could be adjusted to require the chaos ball holder to walk to objective points across the map to turn in the ball instead of camping at their spawn with it.

Incentivizing objectives. It is no secret that players like to pvp to pvp. The problem right now is that objective game modes end the game so fast if you participate. So endgame players who have been in que for 20+ minutes don't want their game to end quickly. It would be better to make the game end after a set time frame like 10 minutes or 15 minutes instead and then give AP or other rewards for completing objectives and scoring the most during the time period.

If other topics come up in discussion I can add them to this original post here

ruskiii · August 11

Well said, Minc. It has been months since we were last told they were "looking into" the effects the mmr resets are having on people.

I maintain that the MMR resets are the single biggest issue facing two-team BGs. Almost anything else is a symptom of this baffling decision. We were told that resets were to give everyone a shot at the leaderboard, but that makes no sense, and if anything it does the opposite: making it harder for newer players to get any points while they are instantly deleted.

This applies specifically to your point about needing to update the spawn points too. I dont believe this is necessary at all - good players dont get spawn camped. The 8v8 maps already have two alternative exit points in each spawn but bad players will still group up together right on the edge of the centre point and allow range players to farm them from below. They dont need turrets they need to be matched with people of a similar level.

If they were going to change anything about the spawns they should make the time you can stay in there a maximum of 20 seconds. That would cut down on trolls who waste time by hiding in there for the full 2 minutes, and also help MMR work itself out.

More on leaving spawn, they could include some simple text explaining the alternate spawn exits, or telling people that if they hold direction while landing out of the spawn theyll do a fake dodgeroll animation that doesnt avoid damage but does prevent you from casting skills, making you a sitting (or rolling) duck.

The queues seem to be in a pretty healthy state right now, even group queue has been picking up. The advantage being on comms gives you is so great, if they were to mix the queues they should enable proximity chat to give pugs a chance.

One very simple change they could make which would make everyones experience better is this: move casual queue to the first option. New players/8v8 enjoyers are going into the wrong gamemode because they either didn't look at the option they chose, or because the game reset the option they had picked and defaulted to the first one , it happens all the time. Infuriating for them and the other people on the team who have to carry the game.

Moonspawn · August 11

Three-teams BGs could be balanced by placing one or two BG regulars per team and filling the rest of the slots with newcomers. You could easily create matches with extremely high probability of being fun for everyone, regardless of skill level. Doing the exact same thing in two-teams BGs just doesn't have the same result. Here's why:

Since you can't use one team against another anymore, its difficult for BG regulars to engage each other without discarding everything they know about positioning and target selection.
The most extreme form of anti-gaming imaginable is a thousand times easier now.
Spawncamping is encouraged by the two-sided format itself in every gamemode.
People just give up a lot sooner because they can no longer fight for second place.

The only solution I have to these game-breaking problems is to go back to the three-teams format. Can anyone here help me find another?

Navaac223 · August 11

Moonspawn wrote: »

The only solution I have to these game-breaking problems is to go back to the three-teams format. Can anyone here help me find another?

How about we give everyone 70k health, remove set bonuses, no damage, no healing and no sustain ?

This would prevent skilled players from making too much of a difference (thus removing one-sided matches) and pvp would become what it should be : big group vs small groups.

It would also have the positive side effect of making all pvp players leave, making room for people who want to bring their crutchcanist DD in battlegrounds for the 25 daily transmutes.

Anyone who doesn't like this idea is a toxic pvper who hates pve players btw ^^

MincMincMinc · August 11

ruskiii wrote: »

More on leaving spawn, they could include some simple text explaining the alternate spawn exits, or telling people that if they hold direction while landing out of the spawn theyll do a fake dodgeroll animation that doesnt avoid damage but does prevent you from casting skills, making you a sitting (or rolling) duck.

My reasoning is that the system should be designed such that a new NON eso player could get in their first match and not have to learn endgame pvp tech skills to animation cancel falling animation so they can cast faster before being one shot by a 175% crit damage merciless that tooltips higher than nearly every ultimate in the game. When a more simple solution resides in zos just designing it better from the start. There really isnt a downside to the one way wall idea on its own. Other than it'll be harder to camp the spawn for attackers. Again yes lategame it can be avoided as an issue if we are talking about the daily bg players, but for new players its a monumental issue.

For zos it shouldnt take that long to put in a one way wall asset and drag the spawn assets lower. For the turret concept it could even be done with just an invisible poison wall for the enemy team, mechanically it could be a copy and paste of lava or slaughterfish in the volume.

Moonspawn wrote: »

The only solution I have to these game-breaking problems is to go back to the three-teams format. Can anyone here help me find another?

The three teams were fun, but had their own problems. IMO I see no reason why we cant just have one BG que that throws us into any format of 4v4, 8v8, or 4v4v4. Seems like a waste to delete them entirely.

Endgame most 3 team bgs boiled down to whoever third partied a fight the best.

Objective based game modes like capture the flag were not viable since two teams would be fighting for a minute while the third team just ran the flag 5x to end the game for their daily reward grind. So effectively you waste 40 mins in que to pvp and someone ruins the game in 1-2 mins.

ruskiii · August 11

Moonspawn wrote: »

Three-teams BGs could be balanced by placing one or two BG regulars per team and filling the rest of the slots with newcomers. You could easily create matches with extremely high probability of being fun for everyone, regardless of skill level. Doing the exact same thing in two-teams BGs just doesn't have the same result. Here's why:

Since you can't use one team against another anymore, its difficult for BG regulars to engage each other without discarding everything they know about positioning and target selection.

The most extreme form of anti-gaming imaginable is a thousand times easier now.

Spawncamping is encouraged by the two-sided format itself in every gamemode.

People just give up a lot sooner because they can no longer fight for second place.

The only solution I have to these game-breaking problems is to go back to the three-teams format. Can anyone here help me find another?

This would be another example of how stopping the MMR resets would allow players to be separated based on something resembling skill.

Old BGs seemed fairer (even they were often lopsided) because the MMR degraded very slowly. After getting a character to max MMR tier you could not play them for months, and when you returned to it, you would still be in the highest tier MMR.

Now the MMR system isn't perfect. Even in the old BGs it would grab players who arent necessarily good, but who were playing a lot of games, and it would place them in a ranking higher than they probably should be in... but having seen the alternative of basically having no MMR for the majority of the month after each reset, we can see that the MMR sytem we had was better than nothing.

ruskiii · August 11

MincMincMinc wrote: »

My reasoning is that the system should be designed such that a new NON eso player could get in their first match and not have to learn endgame pvp tech skills to animation cancel falling animation so they can cast faster before being one shot by a 175% crit damage merciless that tooltips higher than nearly every ultimate in the game. When a more simple solution resides in zos just designing it better from the start. There really isnt a downside to the one way wall idea on its own. Other than it'll be harder to camp the spawn for attackers. Again yes lategame it can be avoided as an issue if we are talking about the daily bg players, but for new players its a monumental issue.

For zos it shouldnt take that long to put in a one way wall asset and drag the spawn assets lower. For the turret concept it could even be done with just an invisible poison wall for the enemy team, mechanically it could be a copy and paste of lava or slaughterfish in the volume.

I don't disagree that it is a problem. I'm just not convinced of the solution. The way I see it the way to solve that problem would be an even simpler fix, and that would be to have the brand new people fight eachother, instead of expecting them to compete with experienced players. A one way wall without reducing time allowed in spawn, would be a crazy incentive for people to sit there and waste everyone's life.

I know I sound like a broken record, but it comes down to MMR resets again.

Moonspawn · August 11

ruskiii wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

My reasoning is that the system should be designed such that a new NON eso player could get in their first match and not have to learn endgame pvp tech skills to animation cancel falling animation so they can cast faster before being one shot by a 175% crit damage merciless that tooltips higher than nearly every ultimate in the game. When a more simple solution resides in zos just designing it better from the start. There really isnt a downside to the one way wall idea on its own. Other than it'll be harder to camp the spawn for attackers. Again yes lategame it can be avoided as an issue if we are talking about the daily bg players, but for new players its a monumental issue.

For zos it shouldnt take that long to put in a one way wall asset and drag the spawn assets lower. For the turret concept it could even be done with just an invisible poison wall for the enemy team, mechanically it could be a copy and paste of lava or slaughterfish in the volume.

I don't disagree that it is a problem. I'm just not convinced of the solution. The way I see it the way to solve that problem would be an even simpler fix, and that would be to have the brand new people fight eachother, instead of expecting them to compete with experienced players. A one way wall without reducing time allowed in spawn, would be a crazy incentive for people to sit there and waste everyone's life.

I know I sound like a broken record, but it comes down to MMR resets again.

Did you see my explanation about Magic Matchmaking in the other thread?

MincMincMinc · August 11

ruskiii wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

My reasoning is that the system should be designed such that a new NON eso player could get in their first match and not have to learn endgame pvp tech skills to animation cancel falling animation so they can cast faster before being one shot by a 175% crit damage merciless that tooltips higher than nearly every ultimate in the game. When a more simple solution resides in zos just designing it better from the start. There really isnt a downside to the one way wall idea on its own. Other than it'll be harder to camp the spawn for attackers. Again yes lategame it can be avoided as an issue if we are talking about the daily bg players, but for new players its a monumental issue.

For zos it shouldnt take that long to put in a one way wall asset and drag the spawn assets lower. For the turret concept it could even be done with just an invisible poison wall for the enemy team, mechanically it could be a copy and paste of lava or slaughterfish in the volume.

I don't disagree that it is a problem. I'm just not convinced of the solution. The way I see it the way to solve that problem would be an even simpler fix, and that would be to have the brand new people fight eachother, instead of expecting them to compete with experienced players. A one way wall without reducing time allowed in spawn, would be a crazy incentive for people to sit there and waste everyone's life.

I know I sound like a broken record, but it comes down to MMR resets again.

Oh i can agree there, the mmr system is just completely dysfunctional. I've been playing for the past two patchs and still get qued up with brand new players that die in one hit. Maybe I just need to run objectives or something to force my mmr higher. It makes no sense how a 10 year vet rank 50 character with thousands of hours logged in cyrodil has to spend weeks hard farming their mmr to avoid pug stomping each patch.

Thumbless_Bot · August 11

Everyone is making great points. I wonder if anyone is even listening. Would be good to get some... some acknowledgement from zos

Chrisilis · August 12

MincMincMinc wrote: Different ques separating group, solo, 4v4, and 8v8. You quite literally need an addon to be able to que up for all ques at the same time. Otherwise you will spend 4x the time sitting in que just because the game doesn't have enough players participating in ques. IMO with a functional running mmr system you don't need these different solo/group ques. 4v4 and 8v8 could also be baked together and be more of a preference setting. Quote.

On PS/NA and Im assuming Xbox, you can queue for every queue at once without an add on. So I can be in line for 4v4 group, solo, 8v8 group, solo, all at the same time and whichever pops first is the one you get. You cant do that on PC? You have to pick a single queue to wait in? Given how long some of these queue times are thats terrible. Yet another thing to add to the fix it list.

Thats one of the things I miss about three team, there was no real queue. Games popped back to back to back with what... 45 seconds in the spawn and then go time whether you had all four people or not?

I remember one game of relic back in the day, I was the only person on my team, all alone. In the first few minutes of the match I managed to snag an enemy relic and I held onto that ***** thing for the entire 15 minutes and came in 2nd. By myself! Those were good times. Good luck pulling anything like that off these days

MincMincMinc · August 12

Chrisilis wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: Different ques separating group, solo, 4v4, and 8v8. You quite literally need an addon to be able to que up for all ques at the same time. Otherwise you will spend 4x the time sitting in que just because the game doesn't have enough players participating in ques. IMO with a functional running mmr system you don't need these different solo/group ques. 4v4 and 8v8 could also be baked together and be more of a preference setting. Quote.

On PSNA and Im assuming Xbox, you can queue for every queue at once without an add on. So I can be in line for 4v4 group, solo, 8v8 group, solo, all at the same time and whichever pops first is the one you get. You cant do that on PC? You have to pick a single queue to wait in? Given how long some of these queue times are thats terrible. Yet another thing to add to the fix it list.

Thats one of the things I miss about three team, there was no real queue. Games popped back to back to back with what... 45 seconds in the spawn and then go time whether you had all four people or not?

I remember one game of relic back in the day, I was the only person on my team, all alone. In the first few minutes of the match I managed to snag an enemy relic and I held onto that ***** thing for the entire 15 minutes and came in 2nd. By myself! lol Good times

Yeah that function never hit PCNA apparently. Maybe with crossplay it will? lul

For PCNA you HAVE to somehow know to download an addon called better scoreboard. I only just learned this when Ruski told me.

Thumbless_Bot · August 12

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Chrisilis wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: Different ques separating group, solo, 4v4, and 8v8. You quite literally need an addon to be able to que up for all ques at the same time. Otherwise you will spend 4x the time sitting in que just because the game doesn't have enough players participating in ques. IMO with a functional running mmr system you don't need these different solo/group ques. 4v4 and 8v8 could also be baked together and be more of a preference setting. Quote.

On PSNA and Im assuming Xbox, you can queue for every queue at once without an add on. So I can be in line for 4v4 group, solo, 8v8 group, solo, all at the same time and whichever pops first is the one you get. You cant do that on PC? You have to pick a single queue to wait in? Given how long some of these queue times are thats terrible. Yet another thing to add to the fix it list.

Thats one of the things I miss about three team, there was no real queue. Games popped back to back to back with what... 45 seconds in the spawn and then go time whether you had all four people or not?

I remember one game of relic back in the day, I was the only person on my team, all alone. In the first few minutes of the match I managed to snag an enemy relic and I held onto that ***** thing for the entire 15 minutes and came in 2nd. By myself! lol Good times

Yeah that function never hit PCNA apparently. Maybe with crossplay it will? lul

For PCNA you HAVE to somehow know to download an addon called better scoreboard. I only just learned this when Ruski told me.

It works with a controller. I use a ps5 edge pro and can queue for all four at once with no addon. Not really a solution but if you happen to have a controller and an open USB port you can queue with that at least and then go back to kb and m.

MincMincMinc · August 12

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Chrisilis wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: Different ques separating group, solo, 4v4, and 8v8. You quite literally need an addon to be able to que up for all ques at the same time. Otherwise you will spend 4x the time sitting in que just because the game doesn't have enough players participating in ques. IMO with a functional running mmr system you don't need these different solo/group ques. 4v4 and 8v8 could also be baked together and be more of a preference setting. Quote.

On PSNA and Im assuming Xbox, you can queue for every queue at once without an add on. So I can be in line for 4v4 group, solo, 8v8 group, solo, all at the same time and whichever pops first is the one you get. You cant do that on PC? You have to pick a single queue to wait in? Given how long some of these queue times are thats terrible. Yet another thing to add to the fix it list.

Thats one of the things I miss about three team, there was no real queue. Games popped back to back to back with what... 45 seconds in the spawn and then go time whether you had all four people or not?

I remember one game of relic back in the day, I was the only person on my team, all alone. In the first few minutes of the match I managed to snag an enemy relic and I held onto that ***** thing for the entire 15 minutes and came in 2nd. By myself! lol Good times

Yeah that function never hit PCNA apparently. Maybe with crossplay it will? lul

For PCNA you HAVE to somehow know to download an addon called better scoreboard. I only just learned this when Ruski told me.

It works with a controller. I use a ps5 edge pro and can queue for all four at once with no addon. Not really a solution but if you happen to have a controller and an open USB port you can queue with that at least and then go back to kb and m.

Ahh so the ui element quite literally isn't there for keyboard.

ruskiii · August 12

MincMincMinc wrote: »

For PCNA you HAVE to somehow know to download an addon called better scoreboard. I only just learned this when Ruski told me.

Better scoreboard OR controller UI the only way. No idea why it was never added to the KBM UI. You could also set your game to gamepad or accessibility mode to access the queue options with a mouse and keyboard, but that is an insane work around for something that should be included as standard.

ruskiii · August 13

Chrisilis wrote: »

Thats one of the things I miss about three team, there was no real queue. Games popped back to back to back with what... 45 seconds in the spawn and then go time whether you had all four people or not?

It's the second biggest issue behind the MMR resets, that the games don't start without having full teams. I can't think of any one I have ever met in the game who would rather waste 5 minutes of their life trapped in spawn, instead of starting at a disadvantage and waiting for a fill.

The way the queue works now, is it offers a spot to a person that they have 45 seconds to decide whether they accept or not. The game will not offer this spot to anyone else while that person is waiting, but that isn't the end of it. If they don't accept they get a 30 second cooldown where they can't queue again for battlegrounds. During this 30 seconds the game is still not offering the queue spot to another person. You get a grace period of 35-45 seconds, where as long as you queue within something like 5-15 seconds of the cooldown ending you will be placed in the game you failed to accept.

That is a great idea when you missed the queue by accident and you still have a chance to get in. It's not such a great idea when it only takes 2 or 3 afk people missing queue and it can tank a whole lobby for 7-15 other people. This is also the reason you will see far more games fail to start during PVP events where games should be more active. There is a higher percentage of people just queueing for a daily quest or whatever and doing other things while they wait. Nothing against those players, they have their own priorities. It's too easy for people to blame casual players when this entire problem is recent and a direct result of the changes they made to how games start in U44, when they brought in 2-team BGs.

If ZOS let the games start again, those players wouldn't be responsible for wasting 5 minutes of everyone's time. If they stopped resetting MMR, when the casual players do finally accept their queues, they would be placed with/against other similarly casual players and everyone would have a better time.

Chrisilis · August 13

MMR should be a mild guideline at best. I dont remember this game catering to my noobness back in the day, no, it was sink or swim, get gud kid, "maybe you should stick with PvE" whispers from vets after getting stomped before I even knew what a build was. Good times. Very motivating. There was no weekly reprieve from this, if you wanted to keep playing you had to put in the effort to get better.

But MMR does seem to function, in a weird way. Had a match the other day where every single person on my team was under level 50. How I got there, level 2400, no clue. The other team was similarly low level. And mostly I dont see anyone under CP300-400-500 in matches I play. So maybe it is working somewhat.

People seem to think MMR is the root cause of all the balance issues but I dont think that's it. I dont think there can be balance in a two team format. The few "balanced" games I've played were boring stalemates, 15 minute slogs beating on each other getting nowhere. I'd rather the new normal stomp fests where at least you win or lose in a clear cut fashion. You need the third team for balance, period. Two mid teams, 1 OP team = balance. 3 mid teams= balance, any combination thereof, were more balanced than this because of the third team wild card factor. They will never achieve balance with two teams, period. Not with MMR and not without it. Like a scale, you need the third team to pivot around. Sigh.

MincMincMinc · August 13

Chrisilis wrote: »

MMR should be a mild guideline at best. I dont remember this game catering to my noobness back in the day, no, it was sink or swim, get gud kid, "maybe you should stick with PvE" whispers from vets after getting stomped before I even knew what a build was. Good times. Very motivating. There was no weekly reprieve from this, if you wanted to keep playing you had to put in the effort to get better.

But MMR does seem to function, in a weird way. Had a match the other day where every single person on my team was under level 50. How I got there, level 2400, no clue. The other team was similarly low level. And mostly I dont see anyone under CP300-400-500 in matches I play. So maybe it is working somewhat.

People seem to think MMR is the root cause of all the balance issues but I dont think that's it. I dont think there can be balance in a two team format. The few "balanced" games I've played were boring stalemates, 15 minute slogs beating on each other getting nowhere. I'd rather the new normal stomp fests where at least you win or lose in a clear cut fashion. You need the third team for balance, period. Two mid teams, 1 OP team = balance. 3 mid teams= balance, any combination thereof, were more balanced than this because of the third team wild card factor. They will never achieve balance with two teams, period. Not with MMR and not without it. Like a scale, you need the third team to pivot around. Sigh.

3 teams is just hoping that there are more chances of having two balanced teams. The same issues of spawn camping and no contest fights were still prevalent. Even worse in the aspect of 30 min ques would be followed by a 3min game because two teams were actually pvping while cp100 team ran objectives for daily quests.

I still never understood the reasoning behind completely removing the old bg system and maps. It should all just be rolled into one que considering how little of a playerbase there is.

xylena_lazarow · August 13

MincMincMinc wrote: »

3 teams is just hoping that there are more chances of having two balanced teams.

Isn't that the same thing as hoping you can cheese an easy 8v4? Seemed to be the main appeal of 3s.

MincMincMinc · August 13

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

3 teams is just hoping that there are more chances of having two balanced teams.

Isn't that the same thing as hoping you can cheese an easy 8v4? Seemed to be the main appeal of 3s.

When the bg discord was huge on PCNA there were times when we would luck out and have a 12 man match of all guildies for a good match. However alot of the times itd be two teams of guildies and one random group of pugs just doing dailies not interested in pvp. Which effectively turns the game into a 2min 4v4 while the questers run flags. It only turns into an 8v4 when the 8 pvpers would spawncamp to prevent the questers from ending the match quicker.

If people want to ignore pvp and ruin the game, why make it easy for them?

Moonspawn · August 13

MincMincMinc wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

3 teams is just hoping that there are more chances of having two balanced teams.

Isn't that the same thing as hoping you can cheese an easy 8v4? Seemed to be the main appeal of 3s.

When the bg discord was huge on PCNA there were times when we would luck out and have a 12 man match of all guildies for a good match. However alot of the times itd be two teams of guildies and one random group of pugs just doing dailies not interested in pvp. Which effectively turns the game into a 2min 4v4 while the questers run flags. It only turns into an 8v4 when the 8 pvpers would spawncamp to prevent the questers from ending the match quicker.

If people want to ignore pvp and ruin the game, why make it easy for them?

12 BG regulars playing DM= 15 minutes of dancing around each other.
one or two BG regulars per team playing DM= fun, competitive and impossible to predict. Anything can happen.

Newcomers trying to get their dailies aren't the problem. They never were.

Since the biggest problem of 3-teams was the third team completing the objective uncontested, why not just make it harder? Wouldn't that basically convert every objective mode into variants of 3-sided Deathmatch?

MincMincMinc · August 13

Moonspawn wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

3 teams is just hoping that there are more chances of having two balanced teams.

Isn't that the same thing as hoping you can cheese an easy 8v4? Seemed to be the main appeal of 3s.

When the bg discord was huge on PCNA there were times when we would luck out and have a 12 man match of all guildies for a good match. However alot of the times itd be two teams of guildies and one random group of pugs just doing dailies not interested in pvp. Which effectively turns the game into a 2min 4v4 while the questers run flags. It only turns into an 8v4 when the 8 pvpers would spawncamp to prevent the questers from ending the match quicker.

If people want to ignore pvp and ruin the game, why make it easy for them?

12 BG regulars playing DM= 15 minutes of dancing around each other.
one or two BG regulars per team playing DM= fun, competitive and impossible to predict. Anything can happen.

Newcomers trying to get their dailies aren't the problem. They never were.

Since the biggest problem of 3-teams was the third team completing the objective uncontested, why not just make it harder? Wouldn't that basically convert every objective mode into variants of 3-sided Deathmatch?

No it circles all back to a dysfunctional MMR system. On top of a game that doesn't teach people how to play or build. While also being a game so far power crept that players in generic gear are 1s TTK to a pvper. The disparity is so great that killing these players isn't the problem, making a fast enough build is the only thing stopping you from getting a higher K/D

Lets say we fixed the mmr system. Ok now lets say we make something like capture the flag end after 15 mins and not after 5 captures. You would need a monetary incentive to get people to play the objective. (shocker I know, actually making a worthwhile incentive for pvping?)

Lets go with the capture the flag or objective win condition route? How quickly would Call of duty die out if you spent 20+ mins waiting in que just for a 0min-2min match? A well tailored system could still have objective win conditions, but the win condition should be obtained around the match time limit.

xylena_lazarow · August 13

MincMincMinc wrote: »

If people want to ignore pvp and ruin the game, why make it easy for them?

Dunno but I'll die on the hill that running up one's personal KDA against noobs is not PvP either.

Moonspawn · August 13

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

3 teams is just hoping that there are more chances of having two balanced teams.

Isn't that the same thing as hoping you can cheese an easy 8v4? Seemed to be the main appeal of 3s.

When the bg discord was huge on PCNA there were times when we would luck out and have a 12 man match of all guildies for a good match. However alot of the times itd be two teams of guildies and one random group of pugs just doing dailies not interested in pvp. Which effectively turns the game into a 2min 4v4 while the questers run flags. It only turns into an 8v4 when the 8 pvpers would spawncamp to prevent the questers from ending the match quicker.

If people want to ignore pvp and ruin the game, why make it easy for them?

12 BG regulars playing DM= 15 minutes of dancing around each other.
one or two BG regulars per team playing DM= fun, competitive and impossible to predict. Anything can happen.

Newcomers trying to get their dailies aren't the problem. They never were.

Since the biggest problem of 3-teams was the third team completing the objective uncontested, why not just make it harder? Wouldn't that basically convert every objective mode into variants of 3-sided Deathmatch?

No it circles all back to a dysfunctional MMR system.

When you say “no” to turning the 3-sided objective modes into interesting variations of deathmatch, do you mean you don’t want it to happen, or that you think it’s impossible?

MincMincMinc · August 13

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

If people want to ignore pvp and ruin the game, why make it easy for them?

Dunno but I'll die on the hill that running up one's personal KDA against noobs is not PvP either.

It gets old real quick for sure.

Moonspawn wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

3 teams is just hoping that there are more chances of having two balanced teams.

Isn't that the same thing as hoping you can cheese an easy 8v4? Seemed to be the main appeal of 3s.

When the bg discord was huge on PCNA there were times when we would luck out and have a 12 man match of all guildies for a good match. However alot of the times itd be two teams of guildies and one random group of pugs just doing dailies not interested in pvp. Which effectively turns the game into a 2min 4v4 while the questers run flags. It only turns into an 8v4 when the 8 pvpers would spawncamp to prevent the questers from ending the match quicker.

If people want to ignore pvp and ruin the game, why make it easy for them?

12 BG regulars playing DM= 15 minutes of dancing around each other.
one or two BG regulars per team playing DM= fun, competitive and impossible to predict. Anything can happen.

Newcomers trying to get their dailies aren't the problem. They never were.

Since the biggest problem of 3-teams was the third team completing the objective uncontested, why not just make it harder? Wouldn't that basically convert every objective mode into variants of 3-sided Deathmatch?

No it circles all back to a dysfunctional MMR system.

When you say “no” to turning the 3-sided objective modes into interesting variations of deathmatch, do you mean you don’t want it to happen, or that you think it’s impossible?

I'm not saying no to doing that. We are talking about PVP afterall. Killing and fighting will always be 50% of the reason to be there.The whole point of pvp is to fight each other. BGs are nothing more than call of duty or halo matches.

You are effectively making the same multiplayer system as these games from 15-20 years ago. Why do objectives feel more satisfying in those games?

Does MMR placing equal skilled players make the games more rewarding to win?
Do the matches feel like balancing on a tightrope whether you win or lose?
Does the UI showing score appear larger or place emphasis on the gamemode?
Does the after action scoreboard show or highlight who captured the most flags? Top healer? Top DPS?
Are the rewards or progression clearly shown after each match for top performers?

Moonspawn · August 13

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I'm not saying no to doing that. We are talking about PVP afterall.

That's a relief. Thought I was having a stroke there for a moment. There are four main reasons two-teams BGs are so much harder to balance when compared to three-teams. Can you explain how a better MMR system is supposed to help with any of them? This is the first:
''1) Since you can't use one team against another anymore, its difficult for BG regulars to engage each other without discarding everything they know about positioning and target selection.''

Explanation:

1) Here's a typical 8v8 Deathmatch, pointless, horrifying and destined to die the moment that players are allowed to return to the three-sided version. Very unbalanced, yes?

2)Now let us assume we had a Magic Matchmaking capable of doing this:

3)And here's the target order. Although there are exceptions, it will generally be determined by squishiness. Tanks and pure healers at the back, gankers and bombers at the front.

4) Do you notice how the BG regular is number 6 out of 8? It means that numbers 1,2 and 3 will just keep coming back before it's time to engage number 6. And if not, 4 and 5 are right there.
The format being 4v4v4 would decrease number 6 position all the way to 3 or 4. If their team was inside a sandwich, it would drop even lower.
Do you see how it was much easier for BG regulars to engage each other in 4v4v4?

MincMincMinc · August 14

ESO is not a competitive game by any means, so you first need to make a simple functional MMR system that is actually implementable before talking about the combat aspects. Because there shouldn't be 8v8 or 4v4 or 4v4v4 games where new pvp players ever fight someone with 5000+ hours of pvp. We shouldn't have to reset mmr for any reason.

There are really only 2 main metrics that should matter for MMR. One being your K/D/A and another being your Healing. The next question is should these be character or account bound?

K/D/A should probably be account bound as it will signify if someone is a higher tier player or not over time. If someone is repeatedly going 40/0/15, they should be bumped up. The KDA of a match signifies whether you should be bumped up or down the ladder value. New characters would place you on your account mmr but not raise your account mmr until you match the previous value. You can split up the ladder value wise however you like. This is where you could make ranks like bronze/silver/gold/platinum/diamond.....People LIVE for achieving these titles in games.

Healing mmr should be character bound. At least in this case games could pair different teams with players who tend to play healer. I can't think of another simple way of balancing out healers. The problem comes when a character switches builds. Perhaps simply save the last match's healing data for the next que. So after the overall match is paired up from KDA you would then sort the teams based on the healing mmr variable saved. Now healers don't exactly get kills, so you would also need to make a system to determine who is a healer and then weigh their kills and assists oppositely.

We all know the leaderboard is pointless, the bg "score" means nothing. I honestly don't even know how to see the leaderboard, havent cared since the first week bgs came out. Just delete it entirely or completely separate it from the MMR system. We should not be resetting the MMR system because of the leaderboard rewards. Zos doesn't have the time or knowledge to make a more complicated system that other competitive games can tailor on FAR less complicated combat systems.

Having a functional MMR system and ranking system could setup ESO for some crazy features. Quite a few mmos have Moba style matches where you have longer format games of 20-30mins with pvp and pve aspects to win. Its content that literally writes itself and keeps people logged in the game. Without having to inflate player numbers with fake daily writ logins.

EDIT: I added this to the main post for reference.

xylena_lazarow · August 14

Like how hard would it really be for them to convert the spawn zone to a non-interactive safe zone like IC or Cyro towns? That alone would solve a ton of format problems.

MincMincMinc · August 14

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Like how hard would it really be for them to convert the spawn zone to a non-interactive safe zone like IC or Cyro towns? That alone would solve a ton of format problems.

I think I touched on it, but you can just see what other games do for Moba or even Overwatch.

Just make one way wall safe spawn zones. It CAN be as simple as that. Or go a step further and make teams spawn in waves. A step further and make spawn zones have layers so there is a completely safe inner layer you can buff in before being pushed out after 15s into the moderately safe zone where enemies could dive into (think slaughterfish for the enemy dive)

Moonspawn · August 14

MincMincMinc wrote: »

ESO is not a competitive game by any means, so you first need to make a simple functional MMR system that is actually implementable before talking about the combat aspects. Because there shouldn't be 8v8 or 4v4 or 4v4v4 games where new pvp players ever fight someone with 5000+ hours of pvp.

Once you understand all the four reasons you might change your mind about this. For all intents and purposes, 90% of ppl in BGs are only there for rewards. This is where we are right now. This is where we've always been. Talking about ''better MMR'' is all well and good, but it's been happening from the start, and it led absolutely nowhere. It's not impossible to put the 5000+ hours pvpers and newcomers in the same matches, because even if a few of them think they want to go 40/0/15 and then complain, there are pvpers who only want to kill each other by any means necessary, and maybe win the match while they're at it.

Can you please explain how your MMR system would help with this problem , which is specific to 8v8?

MincMincMinc · August 14

Moonspawn wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

ESO is not a competitive game by any means, so you first need to make a simple functional MMR system that is actually implementable before talking about the combat aspects. Because there shouldn't be 8v8 or 4v4 or 4v4v4 games where new pvp players ever fight someone with 5000+ hours of pvp.

Once you understand all the four reasons you might change your mind about this. For all intents and purposes, 90% of ppl in BGs are only there for rewards. This is where we are right now. This is where we've always been. Talking about ''better MMR'' is all well and good, but it's been happening from the start, and it led absolutely nowhere. It's not impossible to put the 5000+ hours pvpers and newcomers in the same matches, because even if a few of them think they want to go 40/0/15 and then complain, there are pvpers who only want to kill each other by any means necessary, and maybe win the match while they're at it.

Can you please explain how your MMR system would help with this problem , which is specific to 8v8?

The rest of the post explained it. By separating the leaderboard/rewards system from the MMR system you could then just have mmr based on simple concepts like KDA. Accounts would then just climb or lower on the ladder as such separating the new pvp and higher tier pvp players. Its not really specific to 8v8 or 4v4 or 4v4v4, the simplified system would work for all.

4v4v4 was not the silver bullet people remember. There were plenty of games that boiled down to spawn camping or pug stomping all the time. Sometimes it was even easier to go 40/0 because you had less allies stealing kills since it was 4v8 instead of 8v8.