Kevin, the current state of this test is unacceptable. All vengeance vs GH arguments aside, everything about this iteration is horrendously bugged. Items are unequipping themselves, two handed weapons are equipping to the off hand slot and getting stuck there, gear is disappearing from your inventory requiring a reset or campaign swap to resolve, some sets aren't working, some are working visually and on the character sheet but aren't affecting tooltip values, and the lag seems to be horrendous even at low population numbers.

At the bare minimum, the studio should have provided a list of sets known to be working. It is just absurd to say "hey, come participate in the 4th or 5th version of this test, we're taking away your preferred method of pvp for two weeks, we're adding sets but we can't be bothered to do the QA ourselves to confirm which sets work or that the environment isn't horrendously bugged".

Still no werewolf in Vengeance, not interested.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi everyone! Starting now and until the end of the current Item Set Test in the Vengeance Campaign, you will be awarded Double AP. We're looking to stress the server as much as possible in order to test for lag spikes and server frame dips.

As a reminder, the current test enables Item Sets in the Vengeance Campaign. This means the final piece bonus is the only thing active as we look at server performance with Item Sets Enabled. Stats from items’ 2-4 set bonuses are NOT active during this test.

The only way to get me to play vengeance again is to use some of the data gained from the previous "tests" to make some improvement to GH, as was the original commitment and selling point for vengeance.

@ZOS_Kevin I decided to try it (I am one of the people that can be bribed with double AP) and I noticed a pattern. A lot of people enter Vengeance not having a clue what's going on or why. If you want to draw people in, any type of ingame notification for this test would help.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Quoting myself from a different thread:

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Before any Vengeance testing can continue, please give us a rundown on what this test and every test thereafter is supposed to accomplish in the long run.

I can see how putting item sets into Vengeance could potentially get us to the bottom of Gray Host's performance issues. But we still have the issue of players being confused what Vengeance is actually about.

Permanent Vengeance has quite obviously flopped, so what is the future of Vengeance? Is this an attempt to fix Vengeance now? Or is this pursuing the original goal of fixing Gray Host's performance?
Please communicate on this because at this rate you are making both the players of Gray Host/Ravenwatch and the players that actually like the lower build variety and "skill based" nature of Vengeance unhappy.

If you don't communicate this properly people will simply and purposefully not participate in this test either.

Called it!

What are you even testing now? What's the end goal here? Making Vengeance more pallatable to Gray Host players? Adding features to Vengeance until it becomes identical to Gray Host but with better performance?
The way the playerbase looks at this, Vengeance already released and the players that do like it don't want item sets there. So it comes as no surprise that nobody is showing up to this Vengeance test. Gray Host players don't like anything Vengeance related and are upset you shut off their campaign for what they see as a waste of resources (possibly because of a lack of communication) and Vengeance players are upset that you just added pointy edges and spikes onto their bouncy castle.

The fact that we are getting "emergency double AP" because the test is not reaching the desired activity, but we still haven't gotten proper communication on a post-Vengeance-release roadmap for PvP, shows that ZOS has their priorities wrong.

Tell us what the plan is first and then people might show up for your tests again.

Well stated, Sir. Hear, Hear.

I've spent 3 hours testing which sets do and don't work to get additional buffs not available on vengeance skills and only about half work. Rattlecage does not work because of the cap on wep/spell dmg and Rallying Cry does not work because battle spirit is not active in your character sheet to name a couple. I don't care about particular sets working but it really grinds my gears to see you admit 2-4 bonuses don't work but have them highlighted as they do and then some 5 piece bonuses don't despite being highlighted. Monster sets and 2-3 piece sets are a complete miss too. I know its a test but what the actual ***, do you not care about the quality of your work.

Other issues frustrating me are the fact you cant simply change gear in Vengeance. Removing an item will cause it to disappear and you cant even view other items in your invent so every time you want to swap you have to leave!

If this isn't bad enough you still cant put down more than one siege. You do realise the keeps have siege limits right? RIGHT?!? That means even if we have 300 people at a keep we can only put 30 siege down. Nobody is on my play time (OCE) and I'm sitting here siegeing a door with 1 ballista.

Forget about it, what are we even doing at this point. This half baked piece of *** is barely any different to the last failed test and still has nobody playing it. If you really want to test it rip the training wheels off and offer us more. The fact you put all that effort into developing special loadouts and every classes reworked skills in here but have only managed a DK and WW rework in 9 months is embarrassing.

reazea wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi everyone! Starting now and until the end of the current Item Set Test in the Vengeance Campaign, you will be awarded Double AP. We're looking to stress the server as much as possible in order to test for lag spikes and server frame dips.

As a reminder, the current test enables Item Sets in the Vengeance Campaign. This means the final piece bonus is the only thing active as we look at server performance with Item Sets Enabled. Stats from items’ 2-4 set bonuses are NOT active during this test.

The only way to get me to play vengeance again is to use some of the data gained from the previous "tests" to make some improvement to GH, as was the original commitment and selling point for vengeance.

It seems expecting ZOS to follow through with their commitments may be expecting too much. When are we going to see some efforts put into improving GH as was the stated goal of vengeance?

My oh my, double AP? Things must be looking dire @ZOS_Kevin if yall are chiming the dinner bell for the AP piggies and trains to get in there.

Hi there, they call me 90s! I'm from the XB NA GH PvP community, one of those ones on way, way too much. Run a guild out there, talk to all factions and a lot of other guild leaders as well as their members across all forms of PvP. I've played MMOs since their inception and online gaming even before graphics back in the MUD/MUSH days. From UO, EQ, WoW, AO, Ragnarok Online, GW1/2, RIFT, SWG, Planetside 1&2, ArchAge, Darkfall, MO 1&2 etc, etc. If you name a MMO there's a really good chance I sunk an unhealthy amount of time into it and at some point climbed the pvp ladder to diamond or platinum. Heck, I even started beta testing for MMOs during Ultima Online's first expansion; back when you still had to submit your specs, hope you got selected and then actually send in detailed bug reports with feedback instead of pay a developer for the honor of 'early access'. Ahhh the good old days, when games were smaller and easier to QA. When the communities within them helped the developers and they in turn listened and improved their product with customer feedback. Good times!

Found a few dozen bugs in ESO within my first few weeks playing - not even sure what the count is up to these days at 10k+ hours. Some of the more recent exploits I've found could really upset and break PvP until they're hotfixed. The one to pull a player or NPC over 30m, through walls/terrain as well as up/down z-levels, that one is actually embarrassingly easy to do; crazy that wasn't caught in the internal QA pass prior release (it's been in game for over a year now too!).

Don't use them and keep them to myself so no worries there, games already easy enough most nights on XB without something like that. It truly is a wonderful buggy mess, I say that endearingly though I love buggy jank, comes with being an old Gray Hat. Is it really an Elder Scrolls title without that je ne sais quoi jank? Would love to submit them but I don't work for free anymore, well at least for a developer who has little to no good will left with me. You can thank SoE's handling of SWG's NGE release and Planetside 1's release of BFRs for that, sorry.

Changing the entirety of large portions of the game with no warning at all nor listening to the community afterwards at the whim of executives, sound... familiar?

But @ZOS_Kevin , my man, there's a fine line between an endearing buggy mess and misappropriation of internal resources/development payroll served with a large side of miscommunication and a big cup of "Shut up and enjoy it". What this whole thing is falls squarely in the latter camp beyond a shadow of a doubt at this point: Let's start from the top shall we?

We, the community, were told there was an internal shake up back in January. A lot of us believed it and felt the direction the game was moving seemed to be proof of that. The Night Market was an amazing example of this; Fantastic new zone for groups/guilds, excellently incorporating a lot of existing technical feats from previous expansions in clever and fun new ways, top notch atmosphere, character design and layout. Can only assume it was also a great exercise for the new team to get comfortable with the dev tools and explore the assets they have to work with. Despite being low on story drvien content this was a phenomenal free DLC.

Same thing for Tamriel Tomes and the new dailies/weeklies. For the first few weeks of new seasons it's great to see the over world so lively as people go back to cul-de-sac zones (that's very hard to do for a MMO of this age and bloat, honestly great job on that one can't stress that enough). It has made the world feel more inhabited and was a very good call from whichever developer thought of it.

Well minus the battlepass OR PREMIUM BATTLEPASS + a dang subscription part, I mean come on man that's just greedy double dipping. When you toss that in with the recently announced job cuts? An untrained observer might think someone's trying to cut costs as low as possible while juicing their net profits on the way out or something...

The class reworks and U50? Man y'all ALMOST got a 100% on that but since you managed to massively screw up the release timeline: 60%. Seriously who on earth thought a rework of a single class (DK) prior pure class release was a good idea? I really hope y'all let that person go, awful mistake that caused a TON of the PvP community on XB NA to leave. You sure the person in charge of that wasn't playing a DK main in their off time and didn't troll you with that move?

Thankfully, U50 was actually good enough to reattract a large amount of them and even some who quit far before that. Was impressed to see that and was really hoping ESO was going to have its Warframe moment; a forgotten MMO with a relatively dwindling playerbase completely reinventing itself only to far exceed the orginal product. Imagine if this would have been released in the correct order, wonder how much healthier the playerbase would be across all platforms.

Things were looking good in many regards for the game but you guys kept sliding Vengeance in our collective rear ends without asking or communicating what the REAL action plan was for Cryo at large. Then suddenly what we were told was a 'test' campaign for improvements to a permanent campaign became a permanent one itself, next taking GH down to attempt to funnel players into Vengeance for more forced 'testing', dedicating tech/asset dev payroll to release a WHOLE nother ranking system specifically for the 'test' campaign... Red flags on red flags on red flags!!! Stranger danger levels of them!!! Sure would have been nice if GH were given even a quarter of that attention and payroll you've flushed so far on Vengeance.

This isn't just purely wastage for ZOS with their budget either, it effects far more than that when you look at it from a high level. If you were to check the offical XB club for ESO on any given random day under the uploaded clips section you would think ESO was a purely PvP game. A lot of those clips are used to create content which players publish to social media/YouTube, giving ZOS free marketing and expanding their audience reach (I know at least 6 who do so regularlly). Do you know what happens EVERY week of Vengeance testing @ZOS_Kevin? The clips sections goes vitually dead! Interesting that, innit? Have to ask myself what the unseen cost of that is in marketing. Especially in the long term should Vengeance become the only campaign, not really my domain though unfortunately. As an IT specialist I've seen eye to eye with the marketing department as often as I have the c-suite lizards.

As of 2026 July 22nd though we have seen NO improvements what so ever to GH (or Cyro in general) after several tests of Vengeance none of the gathered data or changes have been apllied in a way the end user notices or feels. So what's the point then Kevin? If we haven't seen results and the payroll is disappearing without anything to show other than outrage from the majority of the community at this point? Why on Earth do you think players would want to participate? Honestly man offering double AP with all of THAT and expecting it to work is just... No, come on do better, you can't bribe the players to go play in a game mode that they do not enjoy (doubly true as buggy as this iteration is!). As much has been made clear the past tests, this week and with the overall population of Vengeance when the other campaigns are up; that isn't just a bad look anymore, it's bad management of a bad situation.

Do you have idea how fast all that good will you and the team have been building since January is burning right now @ZOS_Kevin over the actions and miscommunication being taken with Vengeance and Cyro at large? From what I can gather in posts around here it seems like even the PvE community you tried to please with Vengence are as upset as the die hard PvPers now. The silence isn't helping any either. Nor is having multiple ZoS employees on the forums making contradicting statements like "Veng is to test for improvements to GH" yet have another one say, "We know we can't fix the performance and raise the cap in GH; its one or none" in the same day.



You see how that level of... miscommunication can cause an issue don't you @ZOS_Kevin ? To say that this is a test for improvement without giving the community a clear roadmap when we've seen NO improvements in GH after all these tests, then in the same day someone on your team admits ZOS -knows- GH isn't fixable? I'm sorry but I refuse to accept whoever the lead developer or project manager overseeing this doesn't know the overall goal of a project like this; if that is the case then you shook the dang place up too hard and broke your project manager's brain, try to be more gentle next time.

It's becoming more and more painfully apparent with each 'test' of Vengeance that whatever planned development for Cyro is, it is so bad that even your internal team doesn't want to share the full details.

Not that hard to read between the lines here for me. I was the first one to call out in zone chat during the first Vengeance test day 1 that it was not a test. It was the new long term vision for Cyro. Since crossplay/mergers are one of the only places left for an MMO to go at this point in it's life cycle. You could not have possibly accommodated the amount of players you planned to bring into GH with a merger like that without Q's that would be regularlly measured in hours during prime time. So Vengeance was obviously the only workable answer someone in-house thought up. Not to mention winding down costs by shutting down/merging servers is pretty bog standard by this age for a MMO. I'm fully anticipating that this whole test is to axe GH/BR, the issues associated with it and shrink the processer usage of Cyro down to just Vengeance.

As mad as that made me? I sympathized BIG with the poor tech devs, I could NOT imagine being given that spaghetti code with what I can only assume is poor support documentation or any of the orginal tech dev staff who knows it's ins and outs of the codebase still there. Only to then get told by a lizard in a suit:

"Oh hey by the way, we need you to make sure our major PvP zone can handle having almost three times the active users it has now despite the massive on-going issues we're having with it. Also you have no opex or capex budget for a real hardware refresh on the racks either. Just tell them we did one and lower the pop cap again like we've been doing, good luck!".

Even if they did have the budget though, as someone who's done network integration jobs as large as the Chicago Bull's stadium, I shudder to think of trying to get 10+ year old spaghetti code to play nicely on shiney, brand new hardware in a rack. The migration alone... that is a tallllllll order even with experience.

Makes the coder in me terrified even thinking about having as massive of a turd project like that dropped on my desk; there's no easy or workable elegant answer to that for most software at this point in it's life cycle. Personally know how rough those kinds of positions can be when suits make insane, out of touch, unrealistic demands of an IT department. Poor guys and gals on the tech dev team do have my best wishes trying to find a workable solution, seriously a rock and a hard place.

Cancel the test, apologize to the community, commuicate the long term plan with Cyrodiil not using vague language. Your team has already said it was possible to full stop this Vengeance test round should any major issues come up. I know you and the team aren't so blind as to not consider all this a major issue. For crying out loud people are wearing 2Hers and shields running around in there it's so fundamentally broken on a code level, come on man is that the hill you'll die on for Vengeance? Really?! Start trying to salvage what good will ZOS has left with the PvP community while beginning damage control with clear and concise commuication ASAP.

You clearly need more people actively involved in the PvP aspect of this game working with your team or at minimum in your corner. As it stands now it's pretty clear too many of us long time PvPers that you don't have anyone on team that does PvP at a medium to high skill level, understands the deeper mechanics of it, nor do you bother to have a community manager actively engage with us DIRECTLY in-game. The video of someone on the team PvPing is seriously a meme among a lot of PvPers that's passed around and still laughed at to this day (at least in XB communities).

Stop falsing thinking that players know how to use the Feedback option in-game and CERTAINLY don't expect your users to jump through the million ring hoop show that is getting registered to post on these forums.

When you put all that together it's plain as day why everything the team does seem so out of touch with the larger community's desires for this game.

There are so many ways your team could be active instead of responseive that would, and could, save ZOS a ton in the budget over all this while improving the parts the community wanted addressed.

A GM/dev coming out to GH at this point to get direct feedback is one of your best hopes as far as I see it. You need to engage with people PLAYING the game; not on the forums, not on Discord, etc. Speak to regular ACTIVE players in those spaces you're trying to improve or change DIRECTLY. That isn't just about feedback, it's about visability to the community on a scale to show ZOS is working on changing and addressing these issues.

Not to mention having someone on the tech team check any and all logs daily for visable irregularities, odd amounts of connections dropped in a fights (doubly true for watching the accounts who didn't drop/lag out that consistently reoccur around those mass d/c'd events) and ghost in to monitor fights/performance that occur in GH.

Make the one of the next events soon focused on rewarding players with an incentive to submit Feedback using the in-game system to educate them on where the option is. Tell them how important that is for your team to know what we want, as well as like or dislike, as players. You'd be surprised how far small, easy to do things like giving a player a NPC named after them for submitting valuable feedback that get's patched in, will go if done correctly. Damage control and feedback are the name of the game at this point and quickly.

Can ZOS pivot to have a Warframe moment or do you keep digging in like Sony Online Entertainment always used too in their forums decades ago, watching their empire burn around them from the megalomania of an executive?...

Don't make ZOS become the modern day Sony Online Entertainment; Star Wars Galaxies post-NGE removing the most rich, deep complex character system a MMO ever had to replace it with a literal WoW clone with ZERO warning to it's community? Planetside 1's insane over promising and under delivering of completely broken BFRs and how they would be great for large groups/outfits but ended up being for solo players? Cause that's the path I see ahead right now @ZOS_Kevin , BIG John Smedley vibes these days whoevers helming the ZoS ship. Seen it happen enough to notice a pattern when a team has completely lost touch with it's playerbase and is floundering with no clue how to course correct. You sure M$ didn't sneak him in the building during the lay offs and shake up? Did hear he was forced out of Amazon's gaming division recently, the 4th time he's done so poorly he got kicked off a MMO team. He might be hiding in the walls there.

Oh but here's a free one on the way out at least; your register button at the bottom on a thread? Redirects to the thread you're in instead of a register page. Alongside an almost impossible to find way to register an account here without searching; could maybe, possibly be a part of the problem with gathering good feedback? The UX/UI is trashed and rotted even here, nothing is streamlined and the process felt like revisiting a forum from the 2000s; if something like that's gone unreported or noticed this long, sheesh... Just remove it, it's not like you can directly register to these forums anyways. Honestly had teeth pulled that were a more pleasent experience than figuring out how to log into ESO's forums for the first time as an XB account. Though I will say going through the whole ordeal felt very true to form for the ZOS experience these days! Bravo if that's the reason it's still there I guess; an empty promise that just leads you around in an endless loop until you quit.

Feel free to contact me in private if you'd like to continue this conversation or reach out, I've worked on both sides of the trenches; Project management and SW dev teams. Honestly I'm open to helping with deep, constructive feedback and possible solutions if your team is receptive to listening but I'd need to see real improvement not more empty promises and miscommunication.

Good luck with it all this though! Really looks like you'll need it!

-Best wishes and regards from the KindButFeral guild on XB NA, we do try to live up to our name.
o7
/micdrop

It seems expecting ZOS to follow through with their commitments may be expecting too much. When are we going to see some efforts put into improving GH as was the stated goal of vengeance? [/quote]

This has to be the 5th or 6th iteration of vengeance at this point and barely anything has changed. There is nowhere near enough players to generate any meaningful data and even if it did how could they relate it to GH given its so different. Why not work backwards and remove things that are causing issues from GH as a test for a week instead? Hell they could even bump the player numbers at the same time.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi everyone! Starting now and until the end of the current Item Set Test in the Vengeance Campaign, you will be awarded Double AP. We're looking to stress the server as much as possible in order to test for lag spikes and server frame dips.

As a reminder, the current test enables Item Sets in the Vengeance Campaign. This means the final piece bonus is the only thing active as we look at server performance with Item Sets Enabled. Stats from items’ 2-4 set bonuses are NOT active during this test.

There aren't enough carrots or sticks in this world to get me to play vengeance again. I fear that the community is being deceived about the future of GH. And even if that's not the case, vengeance is still a horrible version of PvP not worth our time.

How about ZOS makes some improvements to GH instead? That would be a much better use of dev time and it would be doing what ZOS has said it's been doing for years, fixing GH.

How about some effort to limit heal and shield stacking? That's what the PvP community has been begging for since about 2018. Work backwards from GH, not forwards with vengeance. That way ZOS will be working on a product we log in to play.

Feral_bard wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

I fear that the community is being deceived about the future of GH. And even if that's not the case, vengeance is still a horrible version of PvP not worth our time. ...

Work backwards from GH, not forwards with vengeance

The two are connected. GH is not tenable once crossplay comes. Crossplay cannot come until there is a solution to the performance/population issues in Cyrodiil. This is the part they're not wanting to say out loud.

As a PC player it's unacceptable to me that I would have to make any more sacrifices to accommodate game boxes. If eliminating GH is what ZOS' plan is to enable cross play then ZOS is planning on losing a lot of customers and cross play is not worth it.

hiyde wrote: »

Disclaimer: I don't PvP and have no valid feedback to offer.

@Feral_bard please let me know when you write your first novel, I will absoutely purchase it. Well, your 2nd novel. I feel like I just read the first one. 🤣

"Things were looking good in many regards for the game but you guys kept sliding Vengeance in our collective rear ends..."

I am STILL laughing. Well done.

Thank you! I'm glad even with the typo I missed, the joke landed (should have been 'you guys kept a sliding Vengeance in our')

If you agree with any of my thoughts feel free to quote them in other post regarding Vengeance, would very much appreciate it.

Galatherys wrote: »

So I’ve been grinding the vengeance campaign today (PC EU) to finish the last 7 veterancy ranks (I was grinding battlegrounds until then) and there seemed to be a healthy amount of people around for the test…probably because it was either this campaign or NO campaign but still xD

I’m not a pro PvPer. I’m a grade 2 Warlord close to the next promotion who only got there by being patient, just accepting my squishiness and grinding on regardless. My main motivation in doing PvP is to reach the rank of Grand Overlord to unlock the Elder Scroll achievement furnishing. I tried build after build, read guides, and used HUNDREDS of transmute crystals experimenting but none have felt effective or fun at all so I just decided to use what feels good enough to me and not get stressed or take it too seriously. Unsurprisingly I get obliterated in battlegrounds and the same used to happen in Cyrodiil during close combat BUT in this Vengeance campaign I actually stand a chance against others and that’s a friggin miracle!!

I don’t like how you can’t open the rewards for the worthy etc when in the campaign and I do miss Volendrung (unless it still spawns in vengeance and I just missed it?) but that’s made up for with the changes like infinite siege weapons, infinite tri stat potions, buffs and skills to pick and choose and of course the double AP.

I can understand why so many more…intense PvPers who’ve spent hours perfecting their builds to become basically immortal are unhappy about this campaign, and it has its flaws, but I really like how it levels the playing/battle field and gives casual PvE’ers like me more of a leg up

THIS is exactly the role Vengeance should be playing in the ESO PvP ecosystem. A place to learn PvP and have fun with other PvP casuals while Grey Host serves as a home for the end game PvP crowd. Vengeance and Grey Host can complement one another quite nicely, I believe. However, Vengeance will NEVER replace Grey Host. If Grey Host is removed, Vengeance will also fail. I am sincerely happy though that you are enjoying it @Galatherys.

Vengeance is dumb, please get rid of it or just make it a sub campaign and give us Gray Host back!

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi everyone! Starting now and until the end of the current Item Set Test in the Vengeance Campaign, you will be awarded Double AP. We're looking to stress the server as much as possible in order to test for lag spikes and server frame dips.

As a reminder, the current test enables Item Sets in the Vengeance Campaign. This means the final piece bonus is the only thing active as we look at server performance with Item Sets Enabled. Stats from items’ 2-4 set bonuses are NOT active during this test.

So when is ZOS going to use the data from these "tests" to improve aspects of GH, as was the opening statement from ZOS about why vengeance was created in the first place?