The Game Design of BG's is Embarrassing

Mashille · April 21

Some of the design decisions behind BGs are awful and I cannot believe they haven't been fixed yet.

Item 1 - Not Leaving The Spawn

Playing deathmatch? Have fun waiting around for more than half the match while 1 of the enemy players sits on the spawn platform for 3+ minutes. This has to be changed as it's such a waste of time.

Item 2 - Entering the Map by falling off a Platform

Is your team behind in a deathmatch? Well get ****ed, now you all have to be CC'd for 1.5 seconds when re-entering the fight because, after respawning, you have to enter the map by falling off a platform. And while falling, the enemies can hit you with abilities, but you can't do anything about it.

Genuinely embarrassing game design.

CameraBeardThePirate · April 21

Mashille wrote: »

Item 2 - Entering the Map by falling off a Platform
Is your team behind in a deathmatch? Well get ****ed, now you all have to be CC'd for 1.5 seconds when re-entering the fight because, after respawning, you have to enter the map by falling off a platform. And while falling, the enemies can hit you with abilities, but you can't do anything about it.

Genuinely embarrassing game design.

Quick pro tip, if you let go of your movement keys until you hit the ground, you won't do the little somersault when hitting the ground and you get to start casting immediately.

I do agree with everything you said though. Spawn should teleport you to the ground level rather than having to jump down, and the timer for getting forced out of spawn needs to be like 15 seconds max, and ideally done in waves so that anyone in spawn is ported down at the same time (to avoid a trickle effect).

Mashille · May 10

5 matches in a row. All of them has pretty much 0 pvp and were instead 10 minutes of sitting waiting for the round to end while 1-2 enemy players refuse to leave spawn.

Make the max time on spawn 10 seconds my god this is so boring.

Also new item for the list...

Item 3 - Enemy players refusing to respawn
As if sitting on the spawn platform wasn't bad enough. Players can also just choose not to respawn in Deathmatches making the round timer last the full 5 minutes with 0 PvP.

Complete waste of time

React · May 10

Yeah, the two team format just does not work well in ESO. This became even more glaringly clear after the recent 3 team format event gave us an up-to-date comparison in how the two formats compare.

At this point I really feel like the best option for them would be to remove the 4v4's entirely, and have the queue be separated into 8v8s and 4v4v4s.

Schlaflos · May 10

I don’t understand why people are demanding the removal of 4v4 instead of being vocal about the fact that this mode simply needs an upgrade. ESO is missing a true competitive game mode with a solid ranking system and seasonal rewards. In ESO PvP, there really isn’t anything that fully represents that kind of experience.

Cyrodiil is what it is — a war zone. You go into battle either with a coordinated group or alone, you run into another group that might team up with a second one, suddenly you’re outnumbered, and so on. You all know how it goes, and honestly, that’s fine. Cyrodiil is good for what it is. It just needs a few adjustments here and there.

But now on the Battlegrounds side, people are asking for the removal of 4v4 — the mode that is closest to being ranked — because they would rather have 4v4v4 or 8v8? In modes where there is absolutely no real competitive environment? In 4v4v4, there’s constantly a third team interfering in fights. I genuinely can’t understand that mindset.

I can understand the discussion when it comes to 8v8 or 4v4v4, sure. But ESO PvP honestly needs a mode with an actual competitive level to it.

4v4 was a good starting point. The problem is that the mode was never fully developed. It needs proper MMR, deathmatch-only queues, rankings, MMR gain/loss based on wins and defeats, and even a solo shuffle system where teams rotate between rounds over the course of a match. Instead of saying “this mode is trash, remove it,” we should be giving feedback and ideas on how to improve it, because the mode has real potential.

You could even turn it into a true 3v3 arena system with an optional healer queue. Add a debuff after a certain amount of time that reduces healing in order to prevent endless stalemates where nobody dies. There are so many good possibilities.

But instead, there are genuinely people who don’t want something like that and would rather play 4v4v4 where you can win by capturing flags or where fights constantly get interrupted by a third team jumping in, which honestly kills the fun immediately.

What I’m saying is that alongside those modes, ESO also needs a proper rated arena mode. Anyone who has played other MMOs like World of Warcraft knows exactly what I mean. Good MMOs usually have a mode like this available as an option.

MRAW · May 10

You are right, only thing I doubt is there are enough players. For being able to estimate an MMR in 4vs4 you need a lot of games and if you want to match 8 players with similar MMR you need like several hundred players who want to play at the same time. I assume there are only less than 50 players interested in competitive BG at the same time. Most ESO players are rather PvE anyways

moo_2021 · May 10

Schlaflos wrote: »

But now on the Battlegrounds side, people are asking for the removal of 4v4 — the mode that is closest to being ranked — because they would rather have 4v4v4 or 8v8? In modes where there is absolutely no real competitive environment? In 4v4v4, there’s constantly a third team interfering in fights. I genuinely can’t understand that mindset.

Eh, you can't solve 4v4 by ranking because even one good player or one PvE healer could make a huge difference, and then the game would become hopeless for the other team.

4v4v4 was annoying but at least playable most of time, especially in objective modes. And they could easily fix objective modes to force engagement (like the smallest arena map back then). The previous problem was mostly poor map design and objective design - anyone played proper CTF would know it can be a lot more sweaty than TDM consistently.

Decimus · May 10

Schlaflos wrote: »

I don’t understand why people are demanding the removal of 4v4 instead of being vocal about the fact that this mode simply needs an upgrade. ESO is missing a true competitive game mode with a solid ranking system and seasonal rewards. In ESO PvP, there really isn’t anything that fully represents that kind of experience.

Cyrodiil is what it is — a war zone. You go into battle either with a coordinated group or alone, you run into another group that might team up with a second one, suddenly you’re outnumbered, and so on. You all know how it goes, and honestly, that’s fine. Cyrodiil is good for what it is. It just needs a few adjustments here and there.

But now on the Battlegrounds side, people are asking for the removal of 4v4 — the mode that is closest to being ranked — because they would rather have 4v4v4 or 8v8? In modes where there is absolutely no real competitive environment? In 4v4v4, there’s constantly a third team interfering in fights. I genuinely can’t understand that mindset.

I can understand the discussion when it comes to 8v8 or 4v4v4, sure. But ESO PvP honestly needs a mode with an actual competitive level to it.

4v4 was a good starting point. The problem is that the mode was never fully developed. It needs proper MMR, deathmatch-only queues, rankings, MMR gain/loss based on wins and defeats, and even a solo shuffle system where teams rotate between rounds over the course of a match. Instead of saying “this mode is trash, remove it,” we should be giving feedback and ideas on how to improve it, because the mode has real potential.

You could even turn it into a true 3v3 arena system with an optional healer queue. Add a debuff after a certain amount of time that reduces healing in order to prevent endless stalemates where nobody dies. There are so many good possibilities.

But instead, there are genuinely people who don’t want something like that and would rather play 4v4v4 where you can win by capturing flags or where fights constantly get interrupted by a third team jumping in, which honestly kills the fun immediately.

What I’m saying is that alongside those modes, ESO also needs a proper rated arena mode. Anyone who has played other MMOs like World of Warcraft knows exactly what I mean. Good MMOs usually have a mode like this available as an option.

This.

If they made solo shuffle in ESO they could make the experience even more fun by introducing proper roles based on the one selected in group finder:
Healer: +50% Healing Done, -50% Healing Received, -50% Damage Done
DD/Tank: -50% Healing Done, +50% Healing Received

...this way you'd have less crosshealing, no unkillable healer (since Healing Received penalty would be there to off-set Healing Done) and more defined healer role around which other players can rotate, plus a limitation of only one Healer per team.

There's a lot of options for them to turn BGs into something fun, just gotta look at how other games do it.