Future of Battlegrounds

Haki_7 · October 3

I thought we would finally have a decent match because they got us in the first engagement. I was wrong.

Less than 90 seconds after my death they had completely given up. Fourth flaw:

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

P0m3k · October 3

Moonspawn wrote: »

P0m3k wrote: »

I don't understand. You're right that the old 4vs4vs4 mode was the best, but...

Even after its return, we'll complain, or at least I will. I'll repeat myself, but this game has lost any quality since literally 90% of BG players currently play surprise attack/deep/streak/merciless. Last has long been the meta, dealing more damage than most ULTIs. It's been there for a long time, and now it's become more prevalent again, with damage stacked for several seconds at a one ms time, or taking damage after 5 seconds while hiding behind walls. Of course, I support the return of the 4v4v4 mode, but I know that the only thing it will currently do is increase pve farmer's chances of hitting daily faster. First, the game needs to be fixed and minimally balanced, because without that, no mode will be enjoyable. I just want to vomit when I see the same thing over and over again: the same 8 builds and one team ending up on the balcony, no matter which side i'm on.

P.s. Look how much ESO ratings have unfortunately dropped across all platforms. This isn't out of nowhere.

But wouldn't the critical flaws of the two-sided format persist even through any and all balance changes?

Yes, the flaws would remain. However, if I had a aby choice, I would prefer to fix the things I mentioned, and in the next step, I would immediately change the mode. I just set priorities and that's what it looks like to me. It's interesting that 99% of BG pvp players would like to see the old mode come back, but it's still not done

Major_Mangle · October 3

I heard rumours that if haki and moonspawn spam this thread with more mental gymnastics for another 500 comments zos is gonna undo the battleground rework. /s

LadyGP · October 3

We need to have a conversation about the future direction of PvP as a whole in this game - if we are going to be honest with ourself.

Decimus · October 3

P0m3k wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

P0m3k wrote: »

I don't understand. You're right that the old 4vs4vs4 mode was the best, but...

Even after its return, we'll complain, or at least I will. I'll repeat myself, but this game has lost any quality since literally 90% of BG players currently play surprise attack/deep/streak/merciless. Last has long been the meta, dealing more damage than most ULTIs. It's been there for a long time, and now it's become more prevalent again, with damage stacked for several seconds at a one ms time, or taking damage after 5 seconds while hiding behind walls. Of course, I support the return of the 4v4v4 mode, but I know that the only thing it will currently do is increase pve farmer's chances of hitting daily faster. First, the game needs to be fixed and minimally balanced, because without that, no mode will be enjoyable. I just want to vomit when I see the same thing over and over again: the same 8 builds and one team ending up on the balcony, no matter which side i'm on.

P.s. Look how much ESO ratings have unfortunately dropped across all platforms. This isn't out of nowhere.

But wouldn't the critical flaws of the two-sided format persist even through any and all balance changes?

Yes, the flaws would remain. However, if I had a aby choice, I would prefer to fix the things I mentioned, and in the next step, I would immediately change the mode. I just set priorities and that's what it looks like to me. It's interesting that 99% of BG pvp players would like to see the old mode come back, but it's still not done

Majority of BG players are playing BGs or expressing their feedback somewhere else - this thread is just two people bumping it up constantly (or trying to bait people into engaging with their bad faith arguments just to bump the thread), lamenting how "terrible" team vs team battlegrounds are while for some reason continuing to play them multiple hours a day.

BGs do have a lot of issues, but the format isn't one of them nor are any of the imaginary "flaws" pointed out by people who don't understand how to even play them.

The facts are that team vs team format is the proven and true standard for any team vs team activity in not just video games, but any competitive activity. It is a solid foundation to build upon rather than inherently unbalanced one where the activities of the 3rd team decide the balance of the match rather than how well people play.

Here's some actual problems BGs have:
1. Lack of a proper MMR system - this creates huge gaps in player skill level and leads to unbalanced matches. Always has been a problem.
2. Lack of a proper scoring system. In order to have proper MMR, you need a proper way to assign score to people. The current system is awful to say the least, giving ridiculous amount of points to healers in particular, fails to give points in weird situations (like healing someone on friendly flag gives medal score, but healing someone on opponent flag doesn't etc).
3. Lack of proper incentives/rewards. We had some new shinies when BGs were reworked last year, but since then nothing has been added. It'd be nice though if ZOS looked at Tales of Tribute and how rewards/leaderboards are done there... Or other games like WoW with it's Rank 1 gladiators and unique seasonal mounts etc
4. Failed game design.
There is no reason to have 3 different chaos balls that you can't drop if you accidentally pick them up (since there's no prompt to pick them up if walking around the spawn location).
There is no reason why people are allowed to spend 2 minutes in spawn without being kicked down, often leading to griefing people to make winning opponents (and own team mates) waste time just out of spite/toxicity.
There is no reason why respawn point should be right above Relic location, leading to infinite stalemates in Capture the Relic as people respawn and interrupt faster than you can kill them. ZOS should look at how a game from 2004 did Capture the Flag and spawn locations in Warsong Gulch for an idea.
5. Lack of map variety... We used to have way more maps with the old BG format.

That's just off the top of my head, but atleast the foundation is solid to build upon now and these are all solvable problems with easy solutions.

Moonspawn · October 3

Major_Mangle wrote: »

I heard rumours that if haki and moonspawn spam this thread with more mental gymnastics for another 500 comments zos is gonna undo the battleground rework. /s

I don't understand. Don't you want the critical flaws to be corrected?

Haki_7 · October 3

The pursuit of second place would have kept them fighting until the very end. It might have even carried them to victory. It's a shame. Because of the fourth flaw, we'll simply never know 😢.

Don't we all miss the short queues we used to have in 4v4v4?
Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 100: Waiting 24 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/zu_rD-j4eF0

Moonspawn · October 4

Let us consider how a perfect matchmaking would affect the third flaw. Here it is:

''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.

Here's a visual representation of how spawncamping would play out in 4v4v4:

@MincMincMinc Do you notice how the orange team would be left outnumbered against purple if any of its members decide to spawncamp green?

Jierdanit · October 4

Haki_7 wrote: »

The pursuit of second place would have kept them fighting until the very end. It might have even carried them to victory. It's a shame. Because of the fourth flaw, we'll simply never know 😢.

Don't we all miss the short queues we used to have in 4v4v4?
Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 100: Waiting 24 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)
https://youtu.be/zu_rD-j4eF0

No we do not all. I don't know anyone else who has queues nearly as long as you. Most of my BG queue times are between like 2-5 minutes with 10+ minutes barely ever happening. Unless of course you try to queue early in the day, in which case the queue times have always been long.

Moonspawn wrote: »

Let us consider how a perfect matchmaking would affect the third flaw. Here it is:

''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.

Here's a visual representation of how spawncamping would play out in 4v4v4:

Do you notice how the orange team would be left outnumbered against purple if any of its members decide to spawncamp green?

Do you notice how that same image you got there shows that in 3 team BGs fighting is always going to be discouraged and the best option is basically always to try to avoid fighting as long as possible?

Iriidius · October 4

Moonspawn wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

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 turning them white, but 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.
@MincMincMinc Do you see any problem with these changes?

No that makes sense. Really its more like zos just needs to tune the games to be a standard duration. No matter the game mode you shouldnt be able to end it objectively in 2 mins, when other games are 15mins full duration.

Things like chaos ball being held at spawn, why not make it only held in a designated area so they are more prone to actually fighting over it?

3 team CTF is probably the hardest to deal with. Nothing to stop the third team from running 5 flags uncontested within a minute if they really wanted to. Youd probably have to require them to capture both enemy flags in order to gain points. CTF is really more of a two sided gamemode.

Crazy king also shouldn't be spamming uncontested flags all over the place, incentivizing people to not pvp

Two objective modes down, two to go. I'm leaving CTR for last, but there is a plan for that too.

Chaosball

PROBLEMS
Ball carrier could move around the map at high speed. Would be all but impossible to catch.

Players could take the ball to cheesy places where they couldn't be damaged OR where you had to give up your life to damage them.

SOLUTIONS
Reduce ball carrier speed by 30%

Fix cheesy places.

Anything missing?

Cheesy places should be fixxed.
Reducing ball carrier speed by 30% hits players without speed increase the same and relatively even more. Should rather set a speedcap for ballcarrier (lower than the cap for anyone else). Can be hardcap or sofcap (with reduced speed increase above).

@Iriidius I believe a speed cap would be better too, but I very much doubt ZOS is capable of cooking up something that would play nice with every speed altering effect in the game . It's the only reason I went with a flat 30% reduction.

Both changes wouldn’t require changing more than a few numbers and variables in code:
Speed reduction by 30%:
Speed=Speed-30%
Hard cap to 150%
Speed=minimum(Speed,150%)
Soft cap above 130%:
Speed=minimum(Speed,130%)+0.5*(Speed-130%)

Moonspawn · October 4

P0m3k wrote: »

It's interesting that 99% of BG pvp players would like to see the old mode come back, but it's still not done

@P0m3k It's almost like they were afraid the vast majority of players would choose the old BGs over the new, so they took away their choice.

Haki_7 · 12:40PM

Standard 8v8 Domination:

Green: 1,4,6,8
Orange: 2,3,4,5,6,8
This time there were TEN players that could've been assigned to teams of newcomers in 4v4v4 to create unpredictable matches, fun for everyone, regardless of skill level. It's obvious that doing the same thing in two-sided BGs doesn't work, and now we know why.

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 101: Waiting 20 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/SrepgeKxibQ

Moonspawn · 8:18PM

Haki_7 wrote: »

The pointless staring contests with ball carriers are getting out of hand. When the MMR is reset tomorrow, will these matches become somehow even worse than they already are?

How is it possible for these matches to become worse?