Are they trying to kill Cyro?

Cuwen · June 10

I seriously am wondering, and have been wondering since I heard about the PvP changes in Cyro with Update50, if ZoS is trying to kill pvp in Cyro. I'm not going to wait over an hour to play Grayhost, and Vengeance is dead. By offering these 2 options only, are they trying to kill Cyro?

Luneca · June 11

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

tomofhyrule · June 11

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

They've explained that one several times.

The cap in GH is 360 players total. As it is, performance is already not optimal, and increasing it any more would make it even worse.

The problem is that they seem to think that people who want to go to Cyrodiil will go to whichever mode there is, and that is demonstrably not the case. The populations who like Vengenace and Grey Host do not overlap much, and many of those players would rather log off and uninstall than go into the other mode.

The real answer would have been to have kept Blackreach up as a 'Grey Host Overflow,' at least until this new 'small-scale PvP mode' happened.

Tallon_IV · June 11

I don't think they're concerned either way. They've already given up on ever improving performance in GH.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

They've explained that one several times.

The cap in GH is 360 players total. As it is, performance is already not optimal, and increasing it any more would make it even worse.

The problem is that they seem to think that people who want to go to Cyrodiil will go to whichever mode there is, and that is demonstrably not the case. The populations who like Vengenace and Grey Host do not overlap much, and many of those players would rather log off and uninstall than go into the other mode.

The real answer would have been to have kept Blackreach up as a 'Grey Host Overflow,' at least until this new 'small-scale PvP mode' happened.

Unfortunately people wouldn't even play Blackreach when GH had long queues. They would rather AFK than go there.

Also, I thought they decreased the pop cap again to 75 per faction?

Luneca · June 11

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

They've explained that one several times.

The cap in GH is 360 players total. As it is, performance is already not optimal, and increasing it any more would make it even worse.

The problem is that they seem to think that people who want to go to Cyrodiil will go to whichever mode there is, and that is demonstrably not the case. The populations who like Vengenace and Grey Host do not overlap much, and many of those players would rather log off and uninstall than go into the other mode.

The real answer would have been to have kept Blackreach up as a 'Grey Host Overflow,' at least until this new 'small-scale PvP mode' happened.

I don't lag in Gray Host at all and have 20-60 ping at primetime, so "not optimal" arguments don't make sense to me. In fact, I haven't lagged for over 3 years.

JustLovely · June 11

Tallon_IV wrote: »

I don't think they're concerned either way. They've already given up on ever improving performance in GH.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

They've explained that one several times.

The cap in GH is 360 players total. As it is, performance is already not optimal, and increasing it any more would make it even worse.

The problem is that they seem to think that people who want to go to Cyrodiil will go to whichever mode there is, and that is demonstrably not the case. The populations who like Vengenace and Grey Host do not overlap much, and many of those players would rather log off and uninstall than go into the other mode.

The real answer would have been to have kept Blackreach up as a 'Grey Host Overflow,' at least until this new 'small-scale PvP mode' happened.

Unfortunately people wouldn't even play Blackreach when GH had long queues. They would rather AFK than go there.

Also, I thought they decreased the pop cap again to 75 per faction?

It wouldn't suprise me even a tiny bit if ZOS didn't lower the pop cap for GH with U50. The queue sure makes it seem as though they did lower the cap yet again in an effort to force players into their failed "test".

virtus753 · June 11

Luneca wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

They've explained that one several times.

The cap in GH is 360 players total. As it is, performance is already not optimal, and increasing it any more would make it even worse.

The problem is that they seem to think that people who want to go to Cyrodiil will go to whichever mode there is, and that is demonstrably not the case. The populations who like Vengenace and Grey Host do not overlap much, and many of those players would rather log off and uninstall than go into the other mode.

The real answer would have been to have kept Blackreach up as a 'Grey Host Overflow,' at least until this new 'small-scale PvP mode' happened.

I don't lag in Gray Host at all and have 20-60 ping at primetime, so "not optimal" arguments don't make sense to me. In fact, I haven't lagged for over 3 years.

Individual experiences aside, ZOS has acknowledged a general trend of “frustrating latency and related game performance issues in Cyrodiil, especially during large, sustained battles.” They have labeled this as “bad perf[ormance]” in their charts of GH vs. Vengeance:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/685603/community-update-vengeance-testing-cyrodiil/p1

If performance were not a common issue in GH, I do not think we would have had nearly as many threads discussing it over the years or ZOS testing so many things to try to fix it (before coming to the conclusion they could not realistically do so).

Again, your experience may be different, and people may have different ideas of what is good or bad or acceptable or unacceptable, but ZOS saw enough of a problem with the performance on their end that they labeled it “bad.”

Necrotech_Master · June 11

Tallon_IV wrote: »

I don't think they're concerned either way. They've already given up on ever improving performance in GH.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

They've explained that one several times.

The cap in GH is 360 players total. As it is, performance is already not optimal, and increasing it any more would make it even worse.

The problem is that they seem to think that people who want to go to Cyrodiil will go to whichever mode there is, and that is demonstrably not the case. The populations who like Vengenace and Grey Host do not overlap much, and many of those players would rather log off and uninstall than go into the other mode.

The real answer would have been to have kept Blackreach up as a 'Grey Host Overflow,' at least until this new 'small-scale PvP mode' happened.

Unfortunately people wouldn't even play Blackreach when GH had long queues. They would rather AFK than go there.

Also, I thought they decreased the pop cap again to 75 per faction?

they have confirmed multiple times since they started testing vengeance that the pop caps have been 120/faction in GH and other normal cyro camps

vengeance pop cap is 360/faction

Necrotech_Master · June 11

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

They've explained that one several times.

The cap in GH is 360 players total. As it is, performance is already not optimal, and increasing it any more would make it even worse.

The problem is that they seem to think that people who want to go to Cyrodiil will go to whichever mode there is, and that is demonstrably not the case. The populations who like Vengenace and Grey Host do not overlap much, and many of those players would rather log off and uninstall than go into the other mode.

The real answer would have been to have kept Blackreach up as a 'Grey Host Overflow,' at least until this new 'small-scale PvP mode' happened.

there already is a "small scale" pvp option, its called imperial city lol

and like others noted, ive seen it where blackreach would be dead but there would be a queue of 100+ in GH, even though the entirety of that queue could have poplocked blackreach too

Cuwen · June 11

Can't they just create a 2nd Grayhost?

Luneca · June 11

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

They've explained that one several times.

The cap in GH is 360 players total. As it is, performance is already not optimal, and increasing it any more would make it even worse.

The problem is that they seem to think that people who want to go to Cyrodiil will go to whichever mode there is, and that is demonstrably not the case. The populations who like Vengenace and Grey Host do not overlap much, and many of those players would rather log off and uninstall than go into the other mode.

The real answer would have been to have kept Blackreach up as a 'Grey Host Overflow,' at least until this new 'small-scale PvP mode' happened.

there already is a "small scale" pvp option, its called imperial city lol

and like others noted, ive seen it where blackreach would be dead but there would be a queue of 100+ in GH, even though the entirety of that queue could have poplocked blackreach too

It's because in both of those places, choices don't matter. People want to feel as if they are working towards a goal. Well, this is also a problem with ZOS' focus and desire to push an endless grind.

amiiegee · June 11

I would rather not play then playing vengeance so I also rather sit in a queue then playing vengeance

Necrotech_Master · June 11

Cuwen wrote: »

Can't they just create a 2nd Grayhost?

technically speaking, blackreach WAS basically identical to grey host minus the faction locks and in recent times nobody was playing there and just queueing for GH

Monte_Cristo · June 11

I just want a normal non-faction locked campaign. With this new setup, we can only do the Cyro delves, town quests, get skyshards, etc, in a faction locked campaign, which locks you out of going there with a toon from another faction for a month.

agelonestar · June 11

Like everything with ZoS right now, the direction seems to be off.

I like some of the new stuff, some of the QoL improvements, but we have to be honest: content creation is a fraction of what it was, and instead of getting what ESO should always be about (great stories, exploration, lore) we're getting experimental stuff that makes little sense other than in the context of "fight harder".

PVP has gone the same way. Instead of finishing the work to understand why Cyrodiil lags with larger populations, we end up with a half-baked solution that nobody likes, that feels rushed into place.

What we're seeing is a game in its final years, going into Microsoft-sponsored maintenance mode. Such a crying shame.

Gabriel_H · June 11

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Cuwen wrote: »

Can't they just create a 2nd Grayhost?

technically speaking, blackreach WAS basically identical to grey host minus the faction locks and in recent times nobody was playing there and just queueing for GH

Because the population of Cyro across all campaigns was so low, because the performance was so bad, and the class imbalance was terrible.

Gabriel_H · June 11

agelonestar wrote: »

PVP has gone the same way. Instead of finishing the work to understand why Cyrodiil lags with larger populations, we end up with a half-baked solution that nobody likes, that feels rushed into place.

They know why it lags. Their tests showed the reason. The same reason some of us have been saying for years: Multiple HoTs, DoTs, Shields, AoEs.

It's also not been "rushed into place". They've made it Live with some big caveats. It's still undergoing changes, things may still be added depending on performance. They need however a consistent stream of test data at this point, which the PTS was not providing.

CalamityCat · June 11

Luneca wrote: »

I don't lag in Gray Host at all and have 20-60 ping at primetime, so "not optimal" arguments don't make sense to me. In fact, I haven't lagged for over 3 years.

Then you're fortunate. Just before update 50, my guild had almost two full groups and we had several fights vs one or two ballgroups + their friends and quite a few of us were noticing lag in one way or another. When you're in smaller fights it's okay, but multiple full groups in one place can be a menace. That's on PC EU. It's frustrating because we were pretty outnumbered, but I wanted to die because of a skill issue rather than being stuck to the spot for 5 seconds.

I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow night's queue is 2hrs+ for GH, but I really don't think it could handle more players. I think we need Blackreach back online, because no queue length will lure some PvPers into Vengeance and the long queues are just frustrating everyone.

ceruulean · June 11

Monte_Cristo wrote: »

I just want a normal non-faction locked campaign. With this new setup, we can only do the Cyro delves, town quests, get skyshards, etc, in a faction locked campaign, which locks you out of going there with a toon from another faction for a month.

You can do quests and harvest nodes in Vengeance. Golden vendor is available. All QOL PvE systems other than the sets and green CP are active. This has been the case for the past year of tests. Why people rely on outdated info instead of actually going in, playing, or talking to players seriously beats me.

jle30303 · June 11

ceruulean wrote: »

Monte_Cristo wrote: »

I just want a normal non-faction locked campaign. With this new setup, we can only do the Cyro delves, town quests, get skyshards, etc, in a faction locked campaign, which locks you out of going there with a toon from another faction for a month.

You can do quests and harvest nodes in Vengeance. Golden vendor is available. All QOL PvE systems other than the sets are active. Why people rely on outdated info instead of actually going in, playing, or talking to players seriously beats me.

That was never possible in previous Vengeance incarnations.

Also, it seems that you can't even morph your own character skills (e.g. to choose the stam or mag morph for your stam or mag character).

We don't want to be stripped of our toys: we want the game to work properly WITH our toys.

ceruulean · June 11

jle30303 wrote: »

That was never possible in previous Vengeance incarnations.

Also, it seems that you can't even morph your own character skills (e.g. to choose the stam or mag morph for your stam or mag character).

We don't want to be stripped of our toys: we want the game to work properly WITH our toys.

PvE has been possible since September and December tests. So saying it was never possible is untrue.

xylteh · June 11

Tallon_IV wrote: »

I don't think they're concerned either way. They've already given up on ever improving performance in GH.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

They've explained that one several times.

The cap in GH is 360 players total. As it is, performance is already not optimal, and increasing it any more would make it even worse.

The problem is that they seem to think that people who want to go to Cyrodiil will go to whichever mode there is, and that is demonstrably not the case. The populations who like Vengenace and Grey Host do not overlap much, and many of those players would rather log off and uninstall than go into the other mode.

The real answer would have been to have kept Blackreach up as a 'Grey Host Overflow,' at least until this new 'small-scale PvP mode' happened.

Unfortunately people wouldn't even play Blackreach when GH had long queues. They would rather AFK than go there.

Also, I thought they decreased the pop cap again to 75 per faction?

Many ESO players I know quit after subclassing and especially during the dk only meta because it became boring and repetitive to play and see others playing exact same builds for months. Now with U50 and "pure class" being playable again many people came back to the game, im pretty sure there would be plenty of players in BR now. I don't remember last time (at least on PC EU) we had 3 bars of each alliance playing at 1 am in the middle of the week

BardokRedSnow · June 11

Tallon_IV wrote: »

I don't think they're concerned either way. They've already given up on ever improving performance in GH.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

They've explained that one several times.

The cap in GH is 360 players total. As it is, performance is already not optimal, and increasing it any more would make it even worse.

The problem is that they seem to think that people who want to go to Cyrodiil will go to whichever mode there is, and that is demonstrably not the case. The populations who like Vengenace and Grey Host do not overlap much, and many of those players would rather log off and uninstall than go into the other mode.

The real answer would have been to have kept Blackreach up as a 'Grey Host Overflow,' at least until this new 'small-scale PvP mode' happened.

Unfortunately people wouldn't even play Blackreach when GH had long queues. They would rather AFK than go there.

^me

No faction locked cyro = siege simulator

BXR_Lonestar · June 11

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

Server performance was so bad across the board last night, I couldn't imagine what GH would be like if they increased the cap.

Went into IC for our weekly sewers event - just 1 bar of red in there (not a huge amount of people). And the frames would freeze every 5 seconds on the dot and then rubberband and catch up. This wasn't just for me, it was literally for everyone in my group, so it clearly wasn't a "me" issue.

So we decided to see if GH was better. Sat in que for 15-20 minutes, got into GH, and same issue, plus skills wouldn't fire (though resources would drain), couldn't get a bar swap when you wanted, and eventually I got kicked out of the game.

So came back and tried some PVE. Went into IA. Seemed to be going okay, until we got to the later arcs, and a maurader came, and the maurader was OHK from across the map, so the game was clearly desynced.

I don't know what is going on with server performance, but if these issues are present under current load, expanding GH population will only make things exponentially worse.

Lesson: Fix the damned servers already.

Necrotech_Master · June 11

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Cuwen wrote: »

Can't they just create a 2nd Grayhost?

technically speaking, blackreach WAS basically identical to grey host minus the faction locks and in recent times nobody was playing there and just queueing for GH

Because the population of Cyro across all campaigns was so low, because the performance was so bad, and the class imbalance was terrible.

the performance was generally better in blackreach when it was busy compared to GH, but my understanding at least what i heard on PC NA was that there was a major guild that mained in blackreach that the leader got banned and then the guild collapsed, shortly after that population in blackreach dwindled (for clarification: i do not know what exactly happened and only heard it secondhand)

ever since then the only times ive seen it tick back up is during the whitestrake events

SerafinaWaterstar · June 12

Oh my god. Whitestrakes. It will be disbolical.

(Perhap list Vengeance above GH then all those that just click on the top of the list can go in there rather than fill up the main campaign & complain when they get killed.)

katorga · June 12

Luneca wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

People should be asking why the cap wasn't increased in Gray Host rather than why the other two camps that were empty most of the time were cut. Either way, it doesn't really matter. See, I want to fire siege right now, but I know the queue is long. Know what that means? I'm not logging in.

They've explained that one several times.

The cap in GH is 360 players total. As it is, performance is already not optimal, and increasing it any more would make it even worse.

The problem is that they seem to think that people who want to go to Cyrodiil will go to whichever mode there is, and that is demonstrably not the case. The populations who like Vengenace and Grey Host do not overlap much, and many of those players would rather log off and uninstall than go into the other mode.

The real answer would have been to have kept Blackreach up as a 'Grey Host Overflow,' at least until this new 'small-scale PvP mode' happened.

I don't lag in Gray Host at all and have 20-60 ping at primetime, so "not optimal" arguments don't make sense to me. In fact, I haven't lagged for over 3 years.

Me too. The only performance issues I see are related to ball group and the cloud of lag they generate. My gut says that is an exploit because not all ball groups generate the massive lag. Cyro actually performs better for me than vengeance at pop cap.

And no, they are not investing any time in improving GH performance. They will move to vengeance and drop Cyro. 90% of the player base does not touch PVP. Vengeance is more accessible to the majority of casual players.

Yudo · June 12

Unironically, the answer is yes because GH is already announced dead. They have confirmed they cannot and will not fix GH and rather focus on replacing it with Vengeance and maybe a mini GH format we still do not know much about.
Why draw such a firm line that GH cannot be fixed I don't really understand.

The next best thing will be the mini GH with one central Keep to fight for on a much smaller map (and even smaller pop?).
Will it also phase out GH completely, do we keep GH along side? Time will tell.

decairn · June 12

Yeah simple things miss ZOS product team - put the campaign you'd prefer people to go to at the top.

Definite across the board performance issues with this patch on the server side - GH, IC, PVE worlds getting stuttering / rubber banding and lagging ability responses.

smallhammer · June 12

Vengeance is not "dead." Was there last night, and there were a good number of players. Had fun, actually. Could have been more players, yes, but was enough to play and, like I said; have fun. (PC EU)

Since it is almost impossible now, to get into GH prime time, I have been in Vengeance a couple of evenings this week, and it was better than what one reads in many threads on the forums.

amiiegee · June 14

Everywhere people are compaining about this, GH Pop needs to be increased or BR to be reopened