reazea wrote: »

I'm convinced ZOS is maneuvering for an excuse to remove GH from the game. I was willing to participate in vengeance when it was just a test, but not anymore. The focus has changed. These resources going to develop vengeance should be going to improve GH.

It's ZOS that has pitted GH players against vengeance players. They have nobody to blame but themselves.

Number one reason why I wont set foot in there, the trust has been gone for a while now.

I'm not sure.

I really hate the PvP meta right now with unkillable WWs and 15k+ Flame Whip DKs running around tanking dozens of people at a time.

Vengeance removes that, evens out the playing field and I get to keep my crispy 140 fps! Sure things are simpler for now, but if that's the price we have to pay for a fairly balanced and optimized PvP then I think we should have the option to do so.

They should still keep the Gray Host campaign of course, let the metaslaves battle it out against each other; I have no interest in minmaxing anymore, I'm just happy my skill fires when I press it.

nb_rich wrote: »

I don’t play pvp but noticed a lot of people hating on Vengeance, I have no clue what it is though.

I seen it has a lot of rewards for leveling up so why is everyone complaining about it? The rewards actually have me considering to give it a try.

It's a very different experience from normal PVP, that is why. It's slower, its hard to kill even in 1v1's because of the limitations on the game, and it really only feels fun if there is a booming population for the mode and you can get into some 300+ people battles. But the population hasn't been there to support Vengeance like that since the first Vengeance, at least on Xbox NA.

nb_rich wrote: »

I don’t play pvp but noticed a lot of people hating on Vengeance, I have no clue what it is though.

I seen it has a lot of rewards for leveling up so why is everyone complaining about it? The rewards actually have me considering to give it a try.

Vengeance was sold to us as a test bed to learn how to improve performance in GH. Now it appears to be on track to replace GH. That's worthy of a non stop protest if for no other reason than it's ZOS doing a bait and switch on us.

Beyond that, ZOS has disabled the content we log in to play, and is trying to force us to be beta testers against our will at the same time. It's pretty disrespectful on a number of levels.

PVP Main for ~4 years, definitely not the best but halfway decent. Came back after ~7 months to check out the state of things, hearing about a busted mythic being nerfed and class masteries adding some semblance of balance/variety ... and we are Locked to Vengeance. Cool, can't even play GH.

I spent some time in vengeance today, because a lot has changed and I figured I should look. logged onto my AD sorc, found out my gear literally couldnt work due to skill changes, and apparently weapon/spell power dont actually affect anything, and it seemed like I was the only one on my alliance (PC NA, ~9am CST). Swapped to an EP to zerg surf, hoped to play an old sheer venom bow build, but alas, skill changes made the set not work with poison injection (because vengeance skills) but at this point, whatever, Im just gonna hop in and be mediocre.

Pros:
- I didn't need to farm any gear I now needed to slot appropriate gear to compete, increasing the barrier to entry.
- I was able to use the same gear as on GH/the rest of the game as stated above, had a build using oblivions Foe on my AD, but no soul magic skills. Fine, swap to a sheer venom bow build, but again, vengeance skills are different and prevented this idea from working. This is a barrier, players thinking they will have a build only to find that their entire plan doesnt work due to vengeance skills being fundamentally different from the rest of the game.
- It really felt like it was balanced lol no balance, play DK or NB and win, or sorc/arcanist and forever run away. Once a zerg shows up, you just lose regardless.
- No bombers/toxic "crutch" builds that carry people in GH lol watched a door bomb happen. It wasnt great, and they only got a few, but its there.
- No broken mechanics! lol we added universal stealth skills, but no detect pots? with slow move speed, clearing keeps is near impossible. semi short range (40 meter?) detect pots would be amazing, the 45 second cooldown is a fair trade. As it stands, tracking/pulling people from stealth is beyond frustrating, also why is a heal tied to a cloak ability?
- Simplified Skills! No paragraph long descriptions! I dont want to read in my RPG we added more skills and perks, many of which the vengeance skill tooltips are kind of on par with Live as far as complexity and multi effects (the thing I thought we were avoiding?)
- We are pretty much forced to play as a team! : No crossing this one out. actual positive point. You can definitely still 1vx, but general objectives are harder to do solo. However....
- Huge population caps! there will always be massive battles! my couple of hours on showed only 1 faction with any population, and it was largely pvdoor. zerg size was on par with what youd encounter in GH (never went past 1 bar on any faction, which is sub 100 players in vengeance, probably would have been close to a pop lock GH on the one faction with players), but opposing players had minimal tools to actually combat a force so large. Very boring, unfair, and undesirable gameplay.
- Ruleset was simple and intuitive to jump in and have fun! Vengeance as a concept isnt terrible. This execution of it is. Skills function so much more differently than on live, PVE or PVP, that suddenly you need to relearn the game just to play, scouring every tooltip to try to make a build, or use the default loadouts and entirely relearn what skill set ups would have normally been familiar to you. This is a barrier to entry. With new item sets active, but only the 5 piece (and half of them dont work/do nothing with no clarity about it), now theres no even playing field, players need to spent hours grinding gear. barrier to entry. Perks are locked behind veterancy, this can be either good or bad, depending on how you view it, but the beginning selection is.... hot garbage.
- Balanced! LOL, this is worse balance than GH. slap a few hots on your backbar, youll stalemate every fight against equally skilled/latency opponents.
- Fast Paced excitement, such an adrenaline rush! with the abysmally slow movement speeds, Vengeance ruleset is better suited to the teased midsize map. alternatively, give us some passive speed.
- Performance is amazing! as a ~100 ping player, it honestly felt the same as GH when no ball group is around. perhaps looking closer at precisely why ballgroups generate lag would be a better solution (I know, i know, GH performance "can't" be fixed).
- Skilled counterplay! as someone who competed with the meta while wearing Not meta set ups, usually just in Torc of the ayleid king because lazy (also because I stopped buying the p2w mythics and dungeons for gear), so no "crutch sets to carry" me... not even any procs most of the time .... Veng isnt balanced nor skillful. It is slow, and mathematically flawed, to the point that some classes can infinitely reset otherwise fair fights, via infinite sustain and overperforming hots vs underperforming dots/burst. and again, eventually, it just boils down to number of players, which this game mode doesnt attract, so one side seems to always have a population advantage and generally steamroll the others (yes, there are exceptions, but generally, the 60v10s favor the zerg)
- Amazing Siege tools! Miss your shot? Just reload and fire again! I believe thats how they advertised meatbags appearing in vengeance "Just reload and fire again!". Entirely missing the point of meatbags, They are meant to create an area of denial, penalizing healing while hurting you, so you dont want to go through it, blocking entries and creating choke points. Veng meatbags are just underwhelming instant damage, with inaccurate fire.

Cons:
- oh woops, looks like I covered these already. must have mislabeled the above section.

Better ideas?
- rather than ... all this vengeance stuff.. make some free PVP mythics, like literally costs Zero AP, only works in PVP environments, that basically clone the Torc of the Last ayleid king, but with varying bonuses, so that new to PVP players can keep their current skills and understanding of those skills, and not need to grind gear to compete. Have a selection box be gifted for completing PVP training. Would these be on par with the meta? probably not, but people that spent the time grinding out gear should have an advantage. That said, giving a single item that lets a new CP 160 player suddenly be competitive, maybe on par with Markyn/trainee/a defensive crafted 5 piece/an offensive crafted 5 piece, and a little extra to compensate for monster sets, would do a whole lot to help level the field compared to people coming out in their PVE pajamas. There could be several flavors of this item too, to fill different roles. By skills functioning the same as on live, and offering easy to acquire PVP gear, barriers to entry are being removed. You can still offer some "load out" skills if you wanted , to make things easier for less PVP-savy players.
- To the point of performance: I dont run the servers, I dont have the data. Correlation does suggest that there are certain things that seem to generate a whole lot of lag, and at least from what was vocalized, these things werent tested/addressed. but maybe the data shows otherwise. Either way, a 'better performing cyro' that is too boring to play and has more barriers to entry and remains largely unpopulated does not seem like a great solution. Ive always been against this, but maybe just make a PVE Cyro for people to zerg hit doors and such, that resets every 6 hours or something. I'm fine with Vengeance coexisting, but I hate seeing so many resources put towards it while we lack so much attention elsewhere.
- I think it was a ReactFaster post, but i could be mistaken, but it was suggested that doing tests that try different performance affecting factors for a week on live GH might generate better data (just as an example, limiting heals to party only, see if it improves performance. Theres plenty of things that could be tested, this is just an example). as someone who was an avid PVP'er, id rather tolerate slightly experimental rules occasionally in GH, rather than losing GH everytime a Vengeance idea pops up.

What now?
Honestly, Vengeance was beyond boring. My desire to give ESO a try after these 7 months is gone. I think there was a lot of good direction for the game, but such a slow pace and poor balancing decisions. Will I come back? I dont know, but if I do, probably not until all class refreshes are done.