Markytous wrote: »

Without 3-Team Battlegrounds, this game is basically dysfunctional Guild Wars 2. I'm sorry. I had to say it. I have contributed to these conversations regarding PVP in Elder Scrolls Online and everything regarding this game's unique identity regarding combat, thematics and PVP have been stripped away. Having 3-Team Battlegrounds was a unique feature that was a non-negotiable when it comes to content. The fact that it was removed for generic 2-Team Battlegrounds which exists in basically every game/genre (We Valorant now, boys.) pits this game against competition that it never had to worry about. 3-Team Battlegrounds was a lot of things, but nobody could deny that it was unique in the MMORPG space. Now we have dysfunctional PVP that now appears to be trying very hard to be WoW or GW2 (both games that can support a vastly larger amount of players on screen in their respective PVE and PVP content). Since ESO is essentially only viable as a small-scale PVE and PVP instanced game, having 2-Team and 3-Team Battlegrounds as options together would have been the right call. However removing the established Battlegrounds vision and replacing it with something generic greatly hinders the experiences for a vast majority of players. Nobody likes 4v4 and 8v8 is just queue for rewards and hope it ends soon.

Oh, and nobody go and say that the current meta is high damage. The last Capture the Relic 8v8 I did last week had unkillable players walking about just grabbing relics and jogging across the map. Whether they tooled their stats or actually were that tanky to sustain being dogpiled by an entire team solo doesn't matter. It's unfun PVP. I get it, though. People who advocate for this system secretly want PVP put down and they've succeeded.

I can relate to this here; that’s all pretty spot on. I don’t think many people, myself included, stopped to think about how those elements made ESO stand out from other MMO titles. … When you said Valorant .. lol, you’re not wrong. … imagine a BG with one side is all Clove, yeah, feels like that lol.

The current meta is high damage but that’s not the only “meta” .. healing is also very broken. You’ve got players that will see they’ve been put into a Relic match and quickly change their skills & gear to literally do nothing but “relic run”. High resistance, Rally Cry, broken self heals, & swiftness. …They can’t do anything else but they can take a relic and just run away with it.

Moonspawn wrote: »

Markytous wrote: »

Oh, and nobody go and say that the current meta is high damage. The last Capture the Relic 8v8 I did last week had unkillable players walking about just grabbing relics and jogging across the map. Whether they tooled their stats or actually were that tanky to sustain being dogpiled by an entire team solo doesn't matter. It's unfun PVP. I get it, though. People who advocate for this system secretly want PVP put down and they've succeeded.

@Markytous Do you see a way for tanks to ruin the three-sided objective modes if these small changes were made? They wouldn't be able to flip flags alone, and the healing debuff from relics and chaosballs would make surviving concentrated damage impossible.

Don't worry bro when Cyrodiil was burning down into unplayable laggy refuse I was taking refuge in 3-Team BGs. Once they announced they were making changes then subsequently announced that they would remove 3-Team (falsely announced that they would do 3-Team Modes on weekend events maybe) I got my wife, who was new to ESO at the time, to spend some quality time in the BGs. We both miss them now and getting Class Mastery Script Scraps is a bore/chore even for a ESO PVP vet like me (now ESO Refugee greatly enjoying GW2 BGs and WvW PVP). You go to Cyro to lose control of your character due to latency/packet loss server side, see all the enemies you lock down and burst streak away out of fear because of subclassing and walk through the majesty of the Imperial City (the most unique PVP in the modern MMO space currently) in all of its unplayed/dead pop glory. What do I have that is left? 3-Team BGs was all that was left, friend. Its not coming back and no new content since 2018 shows nothing really will. Its too late. Vengeance is a side-order; NOT a content drop. Subclasssing and Vengeance are admissions of defeat. Nothing more, nothing less. I still support Vengeance because it's literally better than nothing but when ESO turns to try and compete with more functional MMORPG combat systems how can I keep hoping/coping? ZOS could do one lil patch to make No-Subclassing PVP and 3-Team BGs. Its content that is probably still wasting space in the gigantic file size of ESO so couldn't be hard to make menus to access and queue 3-Team again.

It was impossible for an unpredictable 4v4v4 match to be boring. As long as no one cheesed the ball, three-sided Chaosball had the potential to be the most unpredictable game mode of all. Instead, here's what we get:

This time, I was lucky enough to briefly catch a glimpse of a single opponent at the beginning of the match.

NxJoeyD wrote: »

You’re still also going to have those players (especially some running meta builds) who don’t play objective and only go to duel, leaving the rest of the squad to fend for themselves. That will never change but the current state rewards those players by proxy by giving them a harvesting field of players to mow through.

First and second aspects of the third critical flaw of two-sided BGs:
3. Spawncamping is encouraged by the two-sided format itself in every gamemode.

In 4v4v4, ditching the team to go farm some newcomers was a bad move in almost every scenario. In 8v8 it's not. It is also easier, because the pvpers on opposing team are always tempted to do the same.

PS: You can replace ''spawncamping newcomers'' with ''isolating and focusing newcomers''.

Moonspawn wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

You’re still also going to have those players (especially some running meta builds) who don’t play objective and only go to duel, leaving the rest of the squad to fend for themselves. That will never change but the current state rewards those players by proxy by giving them a harvesting field of players to mow through.

First and second aspects of the third critical flaw of two-sided BGs:
3. Spawncamping is encouraged by the two-sided format itself in every gamemode.

• Spawncamping in a 3-sided match meant leaving your teammates outnumbered against the third team. Doing the same thing in 2-sided gives your own team the numerical advantage.
• If PvPers on both sides perceive the newfound usefulness of spawncamping, there's a decent chance they'll spend the entire match on opposite ends of the map. Not having to fight each other only makes the practice easier.

In 4v4v4, ditching the team to go farm some newcomers was a bad move in almost every scenario. In 8v8 it's not. It is also easier, because the pvpers on opposing team are always tempted to do the same.

PS: You can replace ''spawncamping newcomers'' with ''isolating and focusing newcomers''.

Not necessarily. Even with a 4v4v4 layout, if one team has, say, two players running top meta builds and nobody else in the match is running a top meta build; then whichever squad of 4 has the metas is going to run raggshot on the match.

We've all seen the match recaps over and over where one or two players have excessively high kill counts, even against other players with experience simply because mechanics weren't available enough to counter those metas.

In 4v4v4 we didn't have meta gaps as high we do now. Back then, sure, it was a bad move to go run off and try to spawn camp. It was also much harder spawn camp back then, it's not like that now.

We can't just cite how BG's used to operate back when we had 3 teams because the landscape of combat mechanics had changed so significantly now. It's not just a matter of how many people are in a BG, it's the spread and weight of where not just the experience is but where the mechanics are also. This is where mechanics and MRR become bigger factors.

You'd still have to do more to address the problems than just going back to a 3 team layout. That's not going to be enough.

If we want to kill spawn camping & one sided BG matches here's a few very simple adjustments that would have an immediate effect:

1) Healing: Adjust critical healing so that heals taken on a players SELF only crit at a max of 25% rather than scaling off of the existing crit modifier. This would ONLY apply to heals a player casts that affect THEMSELVES and only when Battle Spirit is active. A healing player who is outwardly healing members of their group would continue to scale critical healing as normal, however, they would only be subject to the 25% on themselves. This would still enable strong group healing but would also re-introduce the aspect of strategy. Groups would need to be more attentive to their healers as nobody would be ablet to self heal for sky high values based off their own high crit modifiers.

2) Critical Resistance: Add a named Major & Minor buff that specifically addresses critical resistances. Similarly to how Major & Minor Resolve affect base resistances these buffs would affect attackers crit modifiers by reducing them by more significant amounts. This is essential because it's become more commonplace in PvP for players to achieve critical damage modifiers so high above the soft cap that even with 7 pieces of Impen & Rally Cry that an attacker is still at or near the soft cap; which means players are allocating significant resources to protect themselves which are having near zero affect. Nobody should be committing to 7 gear traits plus a full 5 piece gear set, specifically to address crit damage and then still taking the full brunt of someone's crits.

If we look at the mechanics of what are contributing to consistent spawn camps we see a trend and it all revolves around crits. Critical healing is providing outward AND self heals that are so excessive that even dealing high damage can be mitigated in single bursts. Further, enabling critical modifiers so high that can't be properly countered means that further ability mechanics can be overly exploited; abilities like Fissure, Resolve, & Topple have too much speed of execution and follow up, if we're going to leave the lions share of these abilities as they are (which I'm sure the Devs will), then we need to give players the ability to offset the crit factor properly in their builds.

Moonspawn wrote: »

There are dozens of ways to make spawncamping harder, including fantastical ones like mystical matchmaking that require population to be a hundred times what it is right now. Don't you think it's far more elegant to deftly remove the very reasons spawncamping became so useful in the first place?

I do, but when I’m looking at current spawn camping I’m taking note of the “how” and “why” and “whom” it’s happening with.

Pre subclassing the spawn camping wasn’t nearly as much of an issue or impact as it is now. Yes, it happened but not nearly as frequently.

MRR modification is one way to address BG issues. It’s not difficult to do nor does it require some massive population. A modified MRR will simply better allocate the pool of players it’s given by using different criteria than it does now.

If I have 20 players I can sort 20 players efficiently or poorly; but either way, I can still sort them.

If we don’t want to look at MRR or we think that will be less effective then we can simply adjust critical self healing and critical resistance as mentioned above.

We know that these two elements of BG’s are root causes of increased spawn camping and there’s no counter to them. You can’t stop someone from critically healing themselves to full in one burst and you can’t protect yourself from crits if the opponents modifier is so far above the soft cap.

Thats precisely why I’ve been saying for a while now that we don’t have proper counter play mechanics. The only counter for the crit meta is another crit meta and nothing else.

So to your question, yes, I’d very much like to address the root cause of the increased spawn camping, but just simply going back to 3 team isn’t going to solve our problem because that does nothing to address the mechanics which would still be present.

4v4v4 could still see spawn camping; just having that extra team does not mean they’re going to be able to save you from the meta-fest, or that they’ll even try.

Haki_7 wrote: »

It was impossible for an unpredictable 4v4v4 match to be boring.

Moonspawn wrote: »

I was very careful when describing the four critical flaws. Let us carefully review the third one word for word:

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

• Spawncamping in a 3-sided match meant leaving your teammates outnumbered against the third team. Doing the same thing in 2-sided gives your own team the numerical advantage.
• If PvPers on both sides perceive the newfound usefulness of spawncamping, there's a decent chance they'll spend the entire match on opposite ends of the map. Not having to fight each other only makes the practice easier.
• It's no longer possible to use one team against another to escape the sandwich.

Disregarding whatever other factors you believe are at play, like critical damage and healing, do you disagree with anything there?

Yes, I do disagree.

Two team game modes like Domination, & Crazy King don’t encourage spawn camping because to win the match objective one cannot spawn camp.

It’s only IF the one team chooses to spawn camp over playing the objective AND ONLY if the one team is mechanically capable of spawn camping the other.

Again, spawn camping wasn’t as prevalent in 2 team BG’s before subclassing so the blanket statement that a 2 team format, itself, encourages spawn camping in every game mode is false.

You always had some players that would choose not to support their team and would go run off and try to do nothing but snatch kills, but that didn’t usually result in a spawn camp.

We’ve seen one sided match results in the 3 team format which is evidence in & of itself that the two team versus 3 team format is not the main cause of the issue.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Haki_7 wrote: »

It was impossible for an unpredictable 4v4v4 match to be boring.

How was this match unpredictable?

Hes showing that even 4v4v4 ran into spawncamping boring matches. Its one of those grass is always greener nostalgia kind of things where people think the old 3 team bgs were perfect with no issues.

Which i think we already discussed pages ago, pointing out that 3 teams were not as bulletproof as others make them sound.

I must have missed the part where it was stated that 3 team bgs were ''perfect with no issues'' or ''bulletproof''. Can you point out where?

Moonspawn wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

So if the matchmaking search had to expand enough it would still put players of vastly different skill levels in the same matches, right?

Yes, (...) Even if the population of bgs collapsed to say 30 people, the MMR system would still function, but in these more niche scenarios you would then start leaning on other mechanics to prevent issues.

Ok so assuming that mixing high and low MMR players is inevitable, we need to find ways to make the three-sided objective modes fun for everyone, regardless of skill level.

Here's how I'd fix Domination and Crazy King:

• Reduce the amount of points each flag gives per tick. Domination from 8 to 4, Crazy King from 8 to 6.
• Modify flags to require a minimum of two players to be fully captured. Solo players would still be able to hinder the opponents' progress by discoloring their flags, but to get any points they would need the help of at least one teammate. Running around without even drawing weapons would no longer be the ultimate winning strategy.

Even in the worst case scenario (two teams fight while the third flips all remaining flags uncontested), it would be impossible to end any of these matches in less than 10 minutes. Most would last 15.
@MincMincMinc Do you see any problem with these changes?

Solo players already have enaugh disadvantages and you can’t rely on randoms in your team to come and help you take flag when you need and ask them nor unasked.
Solo already take much longer to turn a flag.
It is not like all and only solo players ending alone at a flag are PvP-avoiding objective only players.

Players can also take flags fast in 2 duos and turn each flag much faster while not dropping immediately against one player and there are not enaugh unprotected flags for each team member anyway, with 4 flags the other teams will still be at 1 or 2.

You say you want to make battlegrounds fun for everyone but make it unfun for soloplayer as collateral dmg while trying to makeit unfun for PvP avoiding objective players. In mixed MMR and Strength Battlegrounds you make it only fun for the strongest most coordinated team.

15 minutes is timelimit not intended duration, otherwise ZoS already would give so few or require so many points to reach cap that it would normally not happen in battlegrounds but for many players deathmatch ending by timeout not one team reaching 500 is boring tankfest.
There also wouldn’t be so many flags if it was not intended for teams to sometimes split to take multiple simultaneously.