ESO Priorities
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Warhawke_80✭✭✭✭✭
✭Class reworkDemocratically ....the poll speaks for itself....but it looks like both issues will be addressed so I'm good with that.““Elric knew. The sword told him, without words of any sort. Stormbringer needed to fight, for that was its reason for existence...”― Michael Moorcock, Elric of Melniboné0 -
CameraBeardThePirate✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Class rework
This is not entirely correct.
It can mean more population, but does not always.
The meter on PC does not go below 1 bar. This means that 1 bar could be anywhere from 0 to 120 on Vengeance. It does not automatically mean that there are more players in Vengeance in that photo than the entirety of a pop-locked Grey Host. In fact, it's quite apparent that isn't the case just by running around Vengeance. It's a ghost town.Edited by CameraBeardThePirate on 21 July 2026 17:463 -
DoofusMax✭✭✭✭✭CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »This is not entirely correct.
It can mean more population, but does not always.
True. But the point was that comparing the bars for population count between Vengeance and Grey Host or Blackreach is comparing apples and oranges. Yes, they're both bars measuring population counts, but each bar represents a different population range. Outside of special stuff like testing or Whitestrake's, Vengeance tends to be pretty solidly one-bar, however.I'm fresh out of outrage, but I could muster up some amused annoyance if required.1 -
NovelliESO✭✭✭I love not being able to enjoy PvP this week and the devs trying to force us into a mode 1% of the active PvP playerbase wants!!1 -
RedMamba✭✭✭Class reworkCameraBeardThePirate wrote: »This is not entirely correct.
It can mean more population, but does not always.
True. But the point was that comparing the bars for population count between Vengeance and Grey Host or Blackreach is comparing apples and oranges. Yes, they're both bars measuring population counts, but each bar represents a different population range. Outside of special stuff like testing or Whitestrake's, Vengeance tends to be pretty solidly one-bar, however.
Just went into Vengeance PC NA.... 1 bar and literally only like 10 players on each faction on............GH would have 2-3 bars by now and have a ton of people fighting. [snip]
[edited for baiting]Edited by ZOS_CouchTato on 22 July 2026 14:062 -
DoofusMax✭✭✭✭✭Just went into Vengeance PC NA.... 1 bar and literally only like 10 players on each faction on............GH would have 2-3 bars by now and have a ton of people fighting. [snip]
That is what probably qualifies as "useful data". The bars do not. [snip]
[edited for baiting]Edited by ZOS_CouchTato on 22 July 2026 14:07I'm fresh out of outrage, but I could muster up some amused annoyance if required.0 -
DoofusMax✭✭✭✭✭NovelliESO wrote: »
What point are you trying to make with this comment?
[snip] Oserved population is much more useful data than the population bars, and they got credit for that [snip].
[edited for baiting]Edited by ZOS_CouchTato on 22 July 2026 14:08I'm fresh out of outrage, but I could muster up some amused annoyance if required.0 -
NovelliESO✭✭✭NovelliESO wrote: »
[snip] Oserved population is much more useful data than the population bars, and they got credit for that, [snip].
Still no idea what you are trying to say, so I'll put this back on track. ESO devs prioritizing a campaign the majority of the PvP community doesn't want is a slap in the face to people who have bought the game and spent hundreds, or even thousands of dollars on it with Greyhost and similar campaigns being their reason to play.Edited by ZOS_CouchTato on 22 July 2026 14:090 -
ZOS_CouchTatoadminAfter review, we have removed some back and forth from this thread. Please keep in mind the Community Rules when posting and keep our threads civil and constructive.0 -
Arunei✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭
They're almost certainly being done by different teams. PvP has its own team, as does stuff for PvE. There are all sorts of teams that do different things, it's not everyone all doing everything.PC-NA | Been around since closed beta | Alt account: Arunei PC-NA
Avid RPer. Hit me up in-game @Ras_Lei if you're interested in getting together for some arr-pee shenanigans!
RP Characters:
Sarah Lacroix: Breton Vampire who really really REALLY likes likes learning Magick and also her Altmer husbando
Kaalhil Swiftstrike: Tiny shapeshifting monster hunter Bosmeri lady with enough sass to kill a dragon or ten
Gwendolyn Jenelle: Friendly healer with a coffee addiction and her own medical practice
Krisiel: Literally crazy Werewolf, no like legit insane. She nuts
Kiju Veran: Ex-Fighters Guild Suthay who likes to punch things and is also a spy and ALSO a Werewolf
Niralae Elsinal: Young Altmeri woman with way too much Magicka and Vampire husbando
Slondor: TESified Slenderman, except lazier and has more of a thing for deals than Clavicus Vile does
Marius Vastino: Sarah's Imperial apathetic sire who likes to monologue
Lirawyn Calatare: Traveling performer and bard who's 101% vanilla bean
Soliril Larethian: Blind alchemist who uses animals to see and brews plagues in his spare time1 -
tomofhyrule✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Class rework
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)1 -
BigPlays420✭✭✭Class reworktomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
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DoofusMax✭✭✭✭✭ZOS_CouchTato wrote: »After review, we have removed some back and forth from this thread. Please keep in mind the Community Rules when posting and keep our threads civil and constructive.
LOL! OK, you got me. "Mea culpa, mea culpa" and all that and I'll try to reduce the sodium going forward.I'm fresh out of outrage, but I could muster up some amused annoyance if required.0 -
HatchetHaro✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
Edited by HatchetHaro on 22 July 2026 17:44Best Argonian NA and I will fight anyone for it
20 Argonians
7x IR, 7x GH, 8x TTT, 5x GS, 6x DB, 1x PB, 4x SBS, 1x MM, 1x US, 2x CB, 1x Unchained1 -
NovelliESO✭✭✭HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
How "valuable" is the data if nothing ever gets implemented because of it? I would call it worthless. We had multiple instances in which we saw performance in greyhost that did not get implemented. Additionally, the vast majority of the populace to not want these tests, they want tests to just happen in Greyhost as they were before. You can claim to know the goal of the campaign yet there has never been a concrete statement as to whether or not GH will remain open, so it's just words with no real value.2 -
BigPlays420✭✭✭Class reworkHatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
PvE OTPs who never set foot in Cyrodiil—Vengeance or otherwise—shouldn’t be posting in these threads as though they know anything about PvP and its community.
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HatchetHaro✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
PvE OTPs who never set foot in Cyrodiil—Vengeance or otherwise—shouldn’t be posting in these threads as though they know anything about PvP and its community.
Ah yes, because basic knowledge of game dev pipelines is locked behind high PvP prowess specifically in ESO's Cyrodiil and definitely not actual game development experience. Fascinating system.
Edited by HatchetHaro on 23 July 2026 05:49Best Argonian NA and I will fight anyone for it
20 Argonians
7x IR, 7x GH, 8x TTT, 5x GS, 6x DB, 1x PB, 4x SBS, 1x MM, 1x US, 2x CB, 1x Unchained1 -
BigPlays420✭✭✭Class reworkHatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
PvE OTPs who never set foot in Cyrodiil—Vengeance or otherwise—shouldn’t be posting in these threads as though they know anything about PvP and its community.
Ah yes, because basic knowledge of game dev pipelines is locked behind high PvP prowess specifically in ESO's Cyrodiil and definitely not actual game development experience. Fascinating system.
That is a complete straw man. Nobody claimed that knowledge of development pipelines is “locked behind PvP prowess.” The point is that generic game-development experience does not magically give you firsthand knowledge of ESO’s PvP community, its priorities, or the consequences these changes have on the people who actually play Cyrodiil every day.
You may understand how development works in theory, but that does not make you an authority on what this specific community wants—especially when you do not participate in it. Technical knowledge can inform a discussion about implementation; it cannot replace direct experience with the game mode or invalidate the overwhelming feedback coming from its active players. Fascinating attempt to substitute credentials for relevance, though.4 -
HatchetHaro✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
PvE OTPs who never set foot in Cyrodiil—Vengeance or otherwise—shouldn’t be posting in these threads as though they know anything about PvP and its community.
Ah yes, because basic knowledge of game dev pipelines is locked behind high PvP prowess specifically in ESO's Cyrodiil and definitely not actual game development experience. Fascinating system.
That is a complete straw man. Nobody claimed that knowledge of development pipelines is “locked behind PvP prowess.” The point is that generic game-development experience does not magically give you firsthand knowledge of ESO’s PvP community, its priorities, or the consequences these changes have on the people who actually play Cyrodiil every day.
You may understand how development works in theory, but that does not make you an authority on what this specific community wants—especially when you do not participate in it. Technical knowledge can inform a discussion about implementation; it cannot replace direct experience with the game mode or invalidate the overwhelming feedback coming from its active players. Fascinating attempt to substitute credentials for relevance, though.
I never said a single word about player sentiment or community priorities. All I've done is state a plain technical reality: live-ops network engineering and combat design are separate pipelines. Inventing a narrative that I'm trying to "invalidate community sentiment" is a neat straw man, but it doesn't counter the reality of how game development works.
I play plenty of PvP; assuming otherwise just because it didn't fit your narrative is as flawed as assuming a server stress test is taking away from a class rework.Best Argonian NA and I will fight anyone for it
20 Argonians
7x IR, 7x GH, 8x TTT, 5x GS, 6x DB, 1x PB, 4x SBS, 1x MM, 1x US, 2x CB, 1x Unchained1 -
ZOS_KrakenadminPlease remember to keep the thread on topic. We want to keep it open and do not want to see it derailed with back and forth arguments. Debate is good but remember to respect your fellow community members.1
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NovelliESO✭✭✭HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
PvE OTPs who never set foot in Cyrodiil—Vengeance or otherwise—shouldn’t be posting in these threads as though they know anything about PvP and its community.
Ah yes, because basic knowledge of game dev pipelines is locked behind high PvP prowess specifically in ESO's Cyrodiil and definitely not actual game development experience. Fascinating system.
That is a complete straw man. Nobody claimed that knowledge of development pipelines is “locked behind PvP prowess.” The point is that generic game-development experience does not magically give you firsthand knowledge of ESO’s PvP community, its priorities, or the consequences these changes have on the people who actually play Cyrodiil every day.
You may understand how development works in theory, but that does not make you an authority on what this specific community wants—especially when you do not participate in it. Technical knowledge can inform a discussion about implementation; it cannot replace direct experience with the game mode or invalidate the overwhelming feedback coming from its active players. Fascinating attempt to substitute credentials for relevance, though.
I never said a single word about player sentiment or community priorities. All I've done is state a plain technical reality: live-ops network engineering and combat design are separate pipelines. Inventing a narrative that I'm trying to "invalidate community sentiment" is a neat straw man, but it doesn't counter the reality of how game development works.
I play plenty of PvP; assuming otherwise just because it didn't fit your narrative is as flawed as assuming a server stress test is taking away from a class rework.
Dismissing player frustration as 'sulking' completely misses the point. ZOS shut down Greyhost and Blackreach, effectively forcing the PvP playerbase to act as unpaid QA testers for a campaign ruleset the majority doesn't want. We are customers logging in for entertainment, not employees clocking in to stress-test their servers. People have every right to be upset when the content they actually want, like the promised class refresh, gets overshadowed by mandatory stress tests.
You can't claim you 'never said a word about player sentiment' when your previous post explicitly accused players of 'sitting here and sulking' if they don't want to test Vengeance. That isn't a straw man; it's addressing what you actually typed.
Regarding development pipelines: yes, a server engineer and a combat designer are different jobs with different day to day managers, but they are building the same game under the same game director, deploying patches on the same release schedule.
The decision to forcefully shut down the live Greyhost and Blackreach campaigns wasn’t made in a vacuum by a rogue coder; it was a macro-level studio decision. When leadership decides it is worth disrupting the live game to prioritize network stress testing, while simultaneously leaving the community wondering about promised class reworks, due to strange decisions, players are going to criticize those priorities. The fact that different people write the code doesn't change the fact that studio leadership is bottlenecking what actually gets delivered to the players.Edited by NovelliESO on 23 July 2026 13:571 -
HatchetHaro✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭NovelliESO wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
PvE OTPs who never set foot in Cyrodiil—Vengeance or otherwise—shouldn’t be posting in these threads as though they know anything about PvP and its community.
Ah yes, because basic knowledge of game dev pipelines is locked behind high PvP prowess specifically in ESO's Cyrodiil and definitely not actual game development experience. Fascinating system.
That is a complete straw man. Nobody claimed that knowledge of development pipelines is “locked behind PvP prowess.” The point is that generic game-development experience does not magically give you firsthand knowledge of ESO’s PvP community, its priorities, or the consequences these changes have on the people who actually play Cyrodiil every day.
You may understand how development works in theory, but that does not make you an authority on what this specific community wants—especially when you do not participate in it. Technical knowledge can inform a discussion about implementation; it cannot replace direct experience with the game mode or invalidate the overwhelming feedback coming from its active players. Fascinating attempt to substitute credentials for relevance, though.
I never said a single word about player sentiment or community priorities. All I've done is state a plain technical reality: live-ops network engineering and combat design are separate pipelines. Inventing a narrative that I'm trying to "invalidate community sentiment" is a neat straw man, but it doesn't counter the reality of how game development works.
I play plenty of PvP; assuming otherwise just because it didn't fit your narrative is as flawed as assuming a server stress test is taking away from a class rework.
Dismissing player frustration as 'sulking' completely misses the point. ZOS shut down Greyhost and Blackreach, effectively forcing the PvP playerbase to act as unpaid QA testers for a campaign ruleset the majority doesn't want. We are customers logging in for entertainment, not employees clocking in to stress-test their servers. People have every right to be upset when the content they actually want, like the promised class refresh, gets overshadowed by mandatory stress tests.
You can't claim you 'never said a word about player sentiment' when your previous post explicitly accused players of 'sitting here and sulking' if they don't want to test Vengeance. That isn't a straw man; it's addressing what you actually typed.
Regarding development pipelines: yes, a server engineer and a combat designer are different jobs with different day to day managers, but they are building the same game under the same game director, deploying patches on the same release schedule.
The decision to forcefully shut down the live Greyhost and Blackreach campaigns wasn’t made in a vacuum by a rogue coder; it was a macro-level studio decision. When leadership decides it is worth disrupting the live game to prioritize network stress testing, while simultaneously leaving the community wondering about promised class reworks, due to strange decisions, players are going to criticize those priorities. The fact that different people write the code doesn't change the fact that studio leadership is bottlenecking what actually gets delivered to the players.
Calling unproductive behavior what it is isn't dismissive. Voicing frustration is completely valid, but doing so via a false dilemma poll, backing it up with false pipeline assumptions, and using that to justify a refusal to participate in tests that gather performance data with the best chances of improving the regular Cyrodiil campaigns is just sulking.
The reality is that Gray Host and Blackreach are already down for the week. While feedback today might influence future testing plans, the only objective way to improve performance for regular campaigns right now is to participate in Vengeance and provide the network data they need. To be clear, if you don't want to because you just hate the idea of Vengeance, that's fine; you're right, you're not obligated to be their unpaid QA testers.
There are some legitimate things to criticize here too: the poor communication regarding the timeline for this iteration of Vengeance testing, the complete lack of incentives and rewards for players to join Vengeance, and of course, their taking down of Gray Host and Blackreach for this testing duration, a decision which players rightfully dislike.
Your point about studio leadership confuses deployment with development bandwidth. Yes, leadership made a macro-level decision to disrupt live campaigns for data (and yes, people can criticize that), but live-deployment scheduling still has nothing to do with combat design; those pipelines still run in parallel. Keeping Gray Host up still wouldn't speed up the class refresh by a single second. Criticize for the operational disruption and the other points I've listed above all you want, those are valid; but framing it as a development bottleneck is still factually wrong.
Edited by HatchetHaro on 23 July 2026 15:43Best Argonian NA and I will fight anyone for it
20 Argonians
7x IR, 7x GH, 8x TTT, 5x GS, 6x DB, 1x PB, 4x SBS, 1x MM, 1x US, 2x CB, 1x Unchained0 -
NovelliESO✭✭✭HatchetHaro wrote: »NovelliESO wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
PvE OTPs who never set foot in Cyrodiil—Vengeance or otherwise—shouldn’t be posting in these threads as though they know anything about PvP and its community.
Ah yes, because basic knowledge of game dev pipelines is locked behind high PvP prowess specifically in ESO's Cyrodiil and definitely not actual game development experience. Fascinating system.
That is a complete straw man. Nobody claimed that knowledge of development pipelines is “locked behind PvP prowess.” The point is that generic game-development experience does not magically give you firsthand knowledge of ESO’s PvP community, its priorities, or the consequences these changes have on the people who actually play Cyrodiil every day.
You may understand how development works in theory, but that does not make you an authority on what this specific community wants—especially when you do not participate in it. Technical knowledge can inform a discussion about implementation; it cannot replace direct experience with the game mode or invalidate the overwhelming feedback coming from its active players. Fascinating attempt to substitute credentials for relevance, though.
I never said a single word about player sentiment or community priorities. All I've done is state a plain technical reality: live-ops network engineering and combat design are separate pipelines. Inventing a narrative that I'm trying to "invalidate community sentiment" is a neat straw man, but it doesn't counter the reality of how game development works.
I play plenty of PvP; assuming otherwise just because it didn't fit your narrative is as flawed as assuming a server stress test is taking away from a class rework.
Dismissing player frustration as 'sulking' completely misses the point. ZOS shut down Greyhost and Blackreach, effectively forcing the PvP playerbase to act as unpaid QA testers for a campaign ruleset the majority doesn't want. We are customers logging in for entertainment, not employees clocking in to stress-test their servers. People have every right to be upset when the content they actually want, like the promised class refresh, gets overshadowed by mandatory stress tests.
You can't claim you 'never said a word about player sentiment' when your previous post explicitly accused players of 'sitting here and sulking' if they don't want to test Vengeance. That isn't a straw man; it's addressing what you actually typed.
Regarding development pipelines: yes, a server engineer and a combat designer are different jobs with different day to day managers, but they are building the same game under the same game director, deploying patches on the same release schedule.
The decision to forcefully shut down the live Greyhost and Blackreach campaigns wasn’t made in a vacuum by a rogue coder; it was a macro-level studio decision. When leadership decides it is worth disrupting the live game to prioritize network stress testing, while simultaneously leaving the community wondering about promised class reworks, due to strange decisions, players are going to criticize those priorities. The fact that different people write the code doesn't change the fact that studio leadership is bottlenecking what actually gets delivered to the players.
Calling unproductive behavior what it is isn't dismissive. Voicing frustration is completely valid, but doing so via a false dilemma poll, backing it up with false pipeline assumptions, and using that to justify a refusal to participate in tests that gather performance data with the best chances of improving the regular Cyrodiil campaigns is just sulking.
The reality is that Gray Host and Blackreach are already down for the week. While feedback today might influence future testing plans, the only objective way to improve performance for regular campaigns right now is to participate in Vengeance and provide the network data they need. To be clear, if you don't want to because you just hate the idea of Vengeance, that's fine; you're right, you're not obligated to be their unpaid QA testers.
There are some legitimate things to criticize here too: the poor communication regarding the timeline for this iteration of Vengeance testing, the complete lack of incentives and rewards for players to join Vengeance, and of course, their taking down of Gray Host and Blackreach for this testing duration, a decision which players rightfully dislike.
Your point about studio leadership confuses deployment with development bandwidth. Yes, leadership made a macro-level decision to disrupt live campaigns for data (and yes, people can criticize that), but live-deployment scheduling still has nothing to do with combat design; those pipelines still run in parallel. Keeping Gray Host up still wouldn't speed up the class refresh by a single second. Criticize for the operational disruption and the other points I've listed above all you want, those are valid; but framing it as a development bottleneck is still factually wrong.
You are missing the forest for the trees regarding studio priorities by hyper-fixating on the literal coding process.
No one is arguing that canceling a server test magically injects code into a combat designer's keyboard to finish a class refresh faster. That is a completely literal and uncharitable reading of the community's frustration.
While combat design and network engineering might be parallel tracks, the overarching studio machinery is not. Deploying a live stress test doesn't happen in isolation. It requires QA verification to clear the build, liveops scheduling, community management messaging, and above all, executive focus and approval. All of these are shared, finite resources.
When leadership decides to push a highly disruptive, mandatory stress test onto the live servers, while simultaneously fumbling the communication and failing to provide good rational, which we agree on, it shows exactly where the studio's operational focus currently lies. The frustration isn't based on a 'false pipeline assumption'; it’s a valid critique of project management. Leadership chose to bulldoze the primary PvP camp for data harvesting, leaving players with a disrupted game while they wait for the content they actually want.
You can't handwave the overarching frustration by hiding behind 'parallel pipelines.' The people running the game dictate what hits the live servers, and right now, they prioritized forcing a test environment over maintaining the campaigns the community actually logs in to play.
Also, to state "the only objective way to improve performance for regular campaigns right now is to participate in Vengeance and provide the network data they need" is just objectively wrong. There are a literal infinite number of ways to improve performance, I'm sure you can agree with that, so I don't know why you'd even try to make that point.
Edited by NovelliESO on 23 July 2026 16:071 -
GulmarAvocado✭✭✭Class reworkHatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
PvE OTPs who never set foot in Cyrodiil—Vengeance or otherwise—shouldn’t be posting in these threads as though they know anything about PvP and its community.
Ah yes, because basic knowledge of game dev pipelines is locked behind high PvP prowess specifically in ESO's Cyrodiil and definitely not actual game development experience. Fascinating system.
That is a complete straw man. Nobody claimed that knowledge of development pipelines is “locked behind PvP prowess.” The point is that generic game-development experience does not magically give you firsthand knowledge of ESO’s PvP community, its priorities, or the consequences these changes have on the people who actually play Cyrodiil every day.
You may understand how development works in theory, but that does not make you an authority on what this specific community wants—especially when you do not participate in it. Technical knowledge can inform a discussion about implementation; it cannot replace direct experience with the game mode or invalidate the overwhelming feedback coming from its active players. Fascinating attempt to substitute credentials for relevance, though.
I never said a single word about player sentiment or community priorities. All I've done is state a plain technical reality: live-ops network engineering and combat design are separate pipelines. Inventing a narrative that I'm trying to "invalidate community sentiment" is a neat straw man, but it doesn't counter the reality of how game development works.
I play plenty of PvP; assuming otherwise just because it didn't fit your narrative is as flawed as assuming a server stress test is taking away from a class rework.
You do not “play plenty of PvP,” and you know perfectly well that I am not making a blind assumption. I know your actual involvement in Cyrodiil.Edited by GulmarAvocado on 23 July 2026 16:30I like avocados2 -
HatchetHaro✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭NovelliESO wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »NovelliESO wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
PvE OTPs who never set foot in Cyrodiil—Vengeance or otherwise—shouldn’t be posting in these threads as though they know anything about PvP and its community.
Ah yes, because basic knowledge of game dev pipelines is locked behind high PvP prowess specifically in ESO's Cyrodiil and definitely not actual game development experience. Fascinating system.
That is a complete straw man. Nobody claimed that knowledge of development pipelines is “locked behind PvP prowess.” The point is that generic game-development experience does not magically give you firsthand knowledge of ESO’s PvP community, its priorities, or the consequences these changes have on the people who actually play Cyrodiil every day.
You may understand how development works in theory, but that does not make you an authority on what this specific community wants—especially when you do not participate in it. Technical knowledge can inform a discussion about implementation; it cannot replace direct experience with the game mode or invalidate the overwhelming feedback coming from its active players. Fascinating attempt to substitute credentials for relevance, though.
I never said a single word about player sentiment or community priorities. All I've done is state a plain technical reality: live-ops network engineering and combat design are separate pipelines. Inventing a narrative that I'm trying to "invalidate community sentiment" is a neat straw man, but it doesn't counter the reality of how game development works.
I play plenty of PvP; assuming otherwise just because it didn't fit your narrative is as flawed as assuming a server stress test is taking away from a class rework.
Dismissing player frustration as 'sulking' completely misses the point. ZOS shut down Greyhost and Blackreach, effectively forcing the PvP playerbase to act as unpaid QA testers for a campaign ruleset the majority doesn't want. We are customers logging in for entertainment, not employees clocking in to stress-test their servers. People have every right to be upset when the content they actually want, like the promised class refresh, gets overshadowed by mandatory stress tests.
You can't claim you 'never said a word about player sentiment' when your previous post explicitly accused players of 'sitting here and sulking' if they don't want to test Vengeance. That isn't a straw man; it's addressing what you actually typed.
Regarding development pipelines: yes, a server engineer and a combat designer are different jobs with different day to day managers, but they are building the same game under the same game director, deploying patches on the same release schedule.
The decision to forcefully shut down the live Greyhost and Blackreach campaigns wasn’t made in a vacuum by a rogue coder; it was a macro-level studio decision. When leadership decides it is worth disrupting the live game to prioritize network stress testing, while simultaneously leaving the community wondering about promised class reworks, due to strange decisions, players are going to criticize those priorities. The fact that different people write the code doesn't change the fact that studio leadership is bottlenecking what actually gets delivered to the players.
Calling unproductive behavior what it is isn't dismissive. Voicing frustration is completely valid, but doing so via a false dilemma poll, backing it up with false pipeline assumptions, and using that to justify a refusal to participate in tests that gather performance data with the best chances of improving the regular Cyrodiil campaigns is just sulking.
The reality is that Gray Host and Blackreach are already down for the week. While feedback today might influence future testing plans, the only objective way to improve performance for regular campaigns right now is to participate in Vengeance and provide the network data they need. To be clear, if you don't want to because you just hate the idea of Vengeance, that's fine; you're right, you're not obligated to be their unpaid QA testers.
There are some legitimate things to criticize here too: the poor communication regarding the timeline for this iteration of Vengeance testing, the complete lack of incentives and rewards for players to join Vengeance, and of course, their taking down of Gray Host and Blackreach for this testing duration, a decision which players rightfully dislike.
Your point about studio leadership confuses deployment with development bandwidth. Yes, leadership made a macro-level decision to disrupt live campaigns for data (and yes, people can criticize that), but live-deployment scheduling still has nothing to do with combat design; those pipelines still run in parallel. Keeping Gray Host up still wouldn't speed up the class refresh by a single second. Criticize for the operational disruption and the other points I've listed above all you want, those are valid; but framing it as a development bottleneck is still factually wrong.
You are missing the forest for the trees regarding studio priorities by hyper-fixating on the literal coding process.
No one is arguing that canceling a server test magically injects code into a combat designer's keyboard to finish a class refresh faster. That is a completely literal and uncharitable reading of the community's frustration.
While combat design and network engineering might be parallel tracks, the overarching studio machinery is not. Deploying a live stress test doesn't happen in isolation. It requires QA verification to clear the build, liveops scheduling, community management messaging, and above all, executive focus and approval. All of these are shared, finite resources.
When leadership decides to push a highly disruptive, mandatory stress test onto the live servers, while simultaneously fumbling the communication and failing to provide good rational, which we agree on, it shows exactly where the studio's operational focus currently lies. The frustration isn't based on a 'false pipeline assumption'; it’s a valid critique of project management. Leadership chose to bulldoze the primary PvP camp for data harvesting, leaving players with a disrupted game while they wait for the content they actually want.
You can't handwave the overarching frustration by hiding behind 'parallel pipelines.' The people running the game dictate what hits the live servers, and right now, they prioritized forcing a test environment over maintaining the campaigns the community actually logs in to play.
Also, to state "the only objective way to improve performance for regular campaigns right now is to participate in Vengeance and provide the network data they need" is just objectively wrong. There are a literal infinite number of ways to improve performance, I'm sure you can agree with that, so I don't know why you'd even try to make that point.
Glad we agree on the core point: Vengeance testing, at least in this iteration, did not delay combat design work.
But let's not pretend that "nobody was arguing that". The entire premise of this thread was that development resources spent on Vengeance were directly stealing bandwidth from the class reworks. Now that we've established that the pipelines run in parallel, shifting the definition of "resources" to include Community Manager time, QA deployment windows, and "executive focus" is just moving the goalposts.
By that logic, literally any operational activity ZOS engages in, like Crown Store updates and deploying Holiday events, is a "project management bottleneck" for the class reworks. It dilutes the concept of "pipeline bandwidth" until it means nothing.
As for your semantic point: yes, ZOS could re-write their legacy architecture or buy new server hardware, but there are plenty of technical and architectural reasons why it isn't that simple, and one of those is because they have done that. Besides, within the context of a live test running this specific week, participating and generating network data is the immediate, actionable objective. You are entirely free to boycott the test out of protest, but changing what "resource" means still doesn't turn a live-ops schedule into a combat design delay.
Edited by HatchetHaro on 23 July 2026 16:59Best Argonian NA and I will fight anyone for it
20 Argonians
7x IR, 7x GH, 8x TTT, 5x GS, 6x DB, 1x PB, 4x SBS, 1x MM, 1x US, 2x CB, 1x Unchained0 -
JustLovely✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »Improve performance in GH.
This. Why are we even talking about anything else at this point?4 -
NovelliESO✭✭✭HatchetHaro wrote: »NovelliESO wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »NovelliESO wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
PvE OTPs who never set foot in Cyrodiil—Vengeance or otherwise—shouldn’t be posting in these threads as though they know anything about PvP and its community.
Ah yes, because basic knowledge of game dev pipelines is locked behind high PvP prowess specifically in ESO's Cyrodiil and definitely not actual game development experience. Fascinating system.
That is a complete straw man. Nobody claimed that knowledge of development pipelines is “locked behind PvP prowess.” The point is that generic game-development experience does not magically give you firsthand knowledge of ESO’s PvP community, its priorities, or the consequences these changes have on the people who actually play Cyrodiil every day.
You may understand how development works in theory, but that does not make you an authority on what this specific community wants—especially when you do not participate in it. Technical knowledge can inform a discussion about implementation; it cannot replace direct experience with the game mode or invalidate the overwhelming feedback coming from its active players. Fascinating attempt to substitute credentials for relevance, though.
I never said a single word about player sentiment or community priorities. All I've done is state a plain technical reality: live-ops network engineering and combat design are separate pipelines. Inventing a narrative that I'm trying to "invalidate community sentiment" is a neat straw man, but it doesn't counter the reality of how game development works.
I play plenty of PvP; assuming otherwise just because it didn't fit your narrative is as flawed as assuming a server stress test is taking away from a class rework.
Dismissing player frustration as 'sulking' completely misses the point. ZOS shut down Greyhost and Blackreach, effectively forcing the PvP playerbase to act as unpaid QA testers for a campaign ruleset the majority doesn't want. We are customers logging in for entertainment, not employees clocking in to stress-test their servers. People have every right to be upset when the content they actually want, like the promised class refresh, gets overshadowed by mandatory stress tests.
You can't claim you 'never said a word about player sentiment' when your previous post explicitly accused players of 'sitting here and sulking' if they don't want to test Vengeance. That isn't a straw man; it's addressing what you actually typed.
Regarding development pipelines: yes, a server engineer and a combat designer are different jobs with different day to day managers, but they are building the same game under the same game director, deploying patches on the same release schedule.
The decision to forcefully shut down the live Greyhost and Blackreach campaigns wasn’t made in a vacuum by a rogue coder; it was a macro-level studio decision. When leadership decides it is worth disrupting the live game to prioritize network stress testing, while simultaneously leaving the community wondering about promised class reworks, due to strange decisions, players are going to criticize those priorities. The fact that different people write the code doesn't change the fact that studio leadership is bottlenecking what actually gets delivered to the players.
Calling unproductive behavior what it is isn't dismissive. Voicing frustration is completely valid, but doing so via a false dilemma poll, backing it up with false pipeline assumptions, and using that to justify a refusal to participate in tests that gather performance data with the best chances of improving the regular Cyrodiil campaigns is just sulking.
The reality is that Gray Host and Blackreach are already down for the week. While feedback today might influence future testing plans, the only objective way to improve performance for regular campaigns right now is to participate in Vengeance and provide the network data they need. To be clear, if you don't want to because you just hate the idea of Vengeance, that's fine; you're right, you're not obligated to be their unpaid QA testers.
There are some legitimate things to criticize here too: the poor communication regarding the timeline for this iteration of Vengeance testing, the complete lack of incentives and rewards for players to join Vengeance, and of course, their taking down of Gray Host and Blackreach for this testing duration, a decision which players rightfully dislike.
Your point about studio leadership confuses deployment with development bandwidth. Yes, leadership made a macro-level decision to disrupt live campaigns for data (and yes, people can criticize that), but live-deployment scheduling still has nothing to do with combat design; those pipelines still run in parallel. Keeping Gray Host up still wouldn't speed up the class refresh by a single second. Criticize for the operational disruption and the other points I've listed above all you want, those are valid; but framing it as a development bottleneck is still factually wrong.
You are missing the forest for the trees regarding studio priorities by hyper-fixating on the literal coding process.
No one is arguing that canceling a server test magically injects code into a combat designer's keyboard to finish a class refresh faster. That is a completely literal and uncharitable reading of the community's frustration.
While combat design and network engineering might be parallel tracks, the overarching studio machinery is not. Deploying a live stress test doesn't happen in isolation. It requires QA verification to clear the build, liveops scheduling, community management messaging, and above all, executive focus and approval. All of these are shared, finite resources.
When leadership decides to push a highly disruptive, mandatory stress test onto the live servers, while simultaneously fumbling the communication and failing to provide good rational, which we agree on, it shows exactly where the studio's operational focus currently lies. The frustration isn't based on a 'false pipeline assumption'; it’s a valid critique of project management. Leadership chose to bulldoze the primary PvP camp for data harvesting, leaving players with a disrupted game while they wait for the content they actually want.
You can't handwave the overarching frustration by hiding behind 'parallel pipelines.' The people running the game dictate what hits the live servers, and right now, they prioritized forcing a test environment over maintaining the campaigns the community actually logs in to play.
Also, to state "the only objective way to improve performance for regular campaigns right now is to participate in Vengeance and provide the network data they need" is just objectively wrong. There are a literal infinite number of ways to improve performance, I'm sure you can agree with that, so I don't know why you'd even try to make that point.
Glad we agree on the core point: Vengeance testing, at least in this iteration, did not delay combat design work.
But let's not pretend that "nobody was arguing that". The entire premise of this thread was that development resources spent on Vengeance were directly stealing bandwidth from the class reworks. Now that we've established that the pipelines run in parallel, shifting the definition of "resources" to include Community Manager time, QA deployment windows, and "executive focus" is just moving the goalposts.
By that logic, literally any operational activity ZOS engages in, like Crown Store updates and deploying Holiday events, is a "project management bottleneck" for the class reworks. It dilutes the concept of "pipeline bandwidth" until it means nothing.
As for your semantic point: yes, ZOS could re-write their legacy architecture or buy new server hardware, but there are plenty of technical and architectural reasons why it isn't that simple, and one of those is because they have done that. Besides, within the context of a live test running this specific week, participating and generating network data is the immediate, actionable objective. You are entirely free to boycott the test out of protest, but changing what "resource" means still doesn't turn a live-ops schedule into a combat design delay.
It isn’t 'moving the goalposts' to accurately describe how software development actually works. You brought up Crown Store updates and Holiday events as a reductio ad absurdum, but ironically, you stumbled onto the exact reality of game development; shared pipeline bandwidth.
A patch has finite allocation for QA, bug fixing, and deployment. If the QA and liveops teams are bogged down deploying, monitoring, and hotfixing a massive, disruptive PvP stress test, they physically cannot be testing and verifying a sweeping class refresh in that same deployment window. That isn't 'diluting' the concept of a pipeline; that is literally how you manage a finite release schedule. By choosing to push Vengeance to the live servers now, leadership actively chose to allocate that shared deployment bandwidth toward a test instead of other deliverables.
When the community complains that 'resources are being wasted on Vengeance instead of class balance,' they are talking about the overarching delivery of the product to the consumer. Assuming they literally mean a combat designer is being forced to code server architecture is just you forcing an overly literal interpretation onto colloquial feedback.
In addition, my "semantic point" was in response to your OBJECTIVELY WRONG statement. And the best part about it is you go to the most absurd example of how they can fix issues when as I stated before, there are a literal infinite amount and you don't engage with any of the much less strenuous ones.
Edited by NovelliESO on 23 July 2026 17:171 -
HatchetHaro✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭NovelliESO wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »NovelliESO wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »NovelliESO wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »HatchetHaro wrote: »BigPlays420 wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
There is one team for Combat in general, both PvP and PvE. That means both the Class Reworks and all PvP content go through the same team led by Brian Wheeler.
See here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8439676#Comment_8439676
They have also previously said that the Class Reworks are essentially meaning we will therefore get no new Combat things (e.g. new Classes or Skill Lines) until they are finished.
(I’m on mobile and Forum Search is awful so I can’t find the quote, but it was from Kevin talking about the addition of new Classes or Weapons would take a backseat until the refreshes are done)
Correct, the team is wasting valuable time and resources on developing this “campaign” that could be spent elsewhere, like the class reworks and balancing/improving Gray Host or even adding or lightly reworking traditional Cyrodiil mechanics.
Vengeance's goal has always been network optimization, which is a task for ZOS's live-operations engineering team. From the posts complaining about the item sets not working, it's evident that no balancing work has been done on them, no edge-case testing, nothing. This is just a full blind re-enabling of all the final set bonuses to stress test the item sets' impact on the Vengeance server, and so there's most likely close to zero work in this current Vengeance iteration from the combat design team.
This is still valuable data that they can use to improve Gray Host performance. In a sterilized and standardized environment like Vengeance where they have data from all of their iterations, it'd be much easier to find and debug any inefficiencies in regards to the code for item sets. Networking stuff like replication, prediction, and error correction is always more complex than you think.
Or people can just sit here and sulk about it and contribute nothing to improving performance on their favourite campaigns; their choice.
PvE OTPs who never set foot in Cyrodiil—Vengeance or otherwise—shouldn’t be posting in these threads as though they know anything about PvP and its community.
Ah yes, because basic knowledge of game dev pipelines is locked behind high PvP prowess specifically in ESO's Cyrodiil and definitely not actual game development experience. Fascinating system.
That is a complete straw man. Nobody claimed that knowledge of development pipelines is “locked behind PvP prowess.” The point is that generic game-development experience does not magically give you firsthand knowledge of ESO’s PvP community, its priorities, or the consequences these changes have on the people who actually play Cyrodiil every day.
You may understand how development works in theory, but that does not make you an authority on what this specific community wants—especially when you do not participate in it. Technical knowledge can inform a discussion about implementation; it cannot replace direct experience with the game mode or invalidate the overwhelming feedback coming from its active players. Fascinating attempt to substitute credentials for relevance, though.
I never said a single word about player sentiment or community priorities. All I've done is state a plain technical reality: live-ops network engineering and combat design are separate pipelines. Inventing a narrative that I'm trying to "invalidate community sentiment" is a neat straw man, but it doesn't counter the reality of how game development works.
I play plenty of PvP; assuming otherwise just because it didn't fit your narrative is as flawed as assuming a server stress test is taking away from a class rework.
Dismissing player frustration as 'sulking' completely misses the point. ZOS shut down Greyhost and Blackreach, effectively forcing the PvP playerbase to act as unpaid QA testers for a campaign ruleset the majority doesn't want. We are customers logging in for entertainment, not employees clocking in to stress-test their servers. People have every right to be upset when the content they actually want, like the promised class refresh, gets overshadowed by mandatory stress tests.
You can't claim you 'never said a word about player sentiment' when your previous post explicitly accused players of 'sitting here and sulking' if they don't want to test Vengeance. That isn't a straw man; it's addressing what you actually typed.
Regarding development pipelines: yes, a server engineer and a combat designer are different jobs with different day to day managers, but they are building the same game under the same game director, deploying patches on the same release schedule.
The decision to forcefully shut down the live Greyhost and Blackreach campaigns wasn’t made in a vacuum by a rogue coder; it was a macro-level studio decision. When leadership decides it is worth disrupting the live game to prioritize network stress testing, while simultaneously leaving the community wondering about promised class reworks, due to strange decisions, players are going to criticize those priorities. The fact that different people write the code doesn't change the fact that studio leadership is bottlenecking what actually gets delivered to the players.
Calling unproductive behavior what it is isn't dismissive. Voicing frustration is completely valid, but doing so via a false dilemma poll, backing it up with false pipeline assumptions, and using that to justify a refusal to participate in tests that gather performance data with the best chances of improving the regular Cyrodiil campaigns is just sulking.
The reality is that Gray Host and Blackreach are already down for the week. While feedback today might influence future testing plans, the only objective way to improve performance for regular campaigns right now is to participate in Vengeance and provide the network data they need. To be clear, if you don't want to because you just hate the idea of Vengeance, that's fine; you're right, you're not obligated to be their unpaid QA testers.
There are some legitimate things to criticize here too: the poor communication regarding the timeline for this iteration of Vengeance testing, the complete lack of incentives and rewards for players to join Vengeance, and of course, their taking down of Gray Host and Blackreach for this testing duration, a decision which players rightfully dislike.
Your point about studio leadership confuses deployment with development bandwidth. Yes, leadership made a macro-level decision to disrupt live campaigns for data (and yes, people can criticize that), but live-deployment scheduling still has nothing to do with combat design; those pipelines still run in parallel. Keeping Gray Host up still wouldn't speed up the class refresh by a single second. Criticize for the operational disruption and the other points I've listed above all you want, those are valid; but framing it as a development bottleneck is still factually wrong.
You are missing the forest for the trees regarding studio priorities by hyper-fixating on the literal coding process.
No one is arguing that canceling a server test magically injects code into a combat designer's keyboard to finish a class refresh faster. That is a completely literal and uncharitable reading of the community's frustration.
While combat design and network engineering might be parallel tracks, the overarching studio machinery is not. Deploying a live stress test doesn't happen in isolation. It requires QA verification to clear the build, liveops scheduling, community management messaging, and above all, executive focus and approval. All of these are shared, finite resources.
When leadership decides to push a highly disruptive, mandatory stress test onto the live servers, while simultaneously fumbling the communication and failing to provide good rational, which we agree on, it shows exactly where the studio's operational focus currently lies. The frustration isn't based on a 'false pipeline assumption'; it’s a valid critique of project management. Leadership chose to bulldoze the primary PvP camp for data harvesting, leaving players with a disrupted game while they wait for the content they actually want.
You can't handwave the overarching frustration by hiding behind 'parallel pipelines.' The people running the game dictate what hits the live servers, and right now, they prioritized forcing a test environment over maintaining the campaigns the community actually logs in to play.
Also, to state "the only objective way to improve performance for regular campaigns right now is to participate in Vengeance and provide the network data they need" is just objectively wrong. There are a literal infinite number of ways to improve performance, I'm sure you can agree with that, so I don't know why you'd even try to make that point.
Glad we agree on the core point: Vengeance testing, at least in this iteration, did not delay combat design work.
But let's not pretend that "nobody was arguing that". The entire premise of this thread was that development resources spent on Vengeance were directly stealing bandwidth from the class reworks. Now that we've established that the pipelines run in parallel, shifting the definition of "resources" to include Community Manager time, QA deployment windows, and "executive focus" is just moving the goalposts.
By that logic, literally any operational activity ZOS engages in, like Crown Store updates and deploying Holiday events, is a "project management bottleneck" for the class reworks. It dilutes the concept of "pipeline bandwidth" until it means nothing.
As for your semantic point: yes, ZOS could re-write their legacy architecture or buy new server hardware, but there are plenty of technical and architectural reasons why it isn't that simple, and one of those is because they have done that. Besides, within the context of a live test running this specific week, participating and generating network data is the immediate, actionable objective. You are entirely free to boycott the test out of protest, but changing what "resource" means still doesn't turn a live-ops schedule into a combat design delay.
It isn’t 'moving the goalposts' to accurately describe how software development actually works. You brought up Crown Store updates and Holiday events as a reductio ad absurdum, but ironically, you stumbled onto the exact reality of game development; shared pipeline bandwidth.
A patch has finite allocation for QA, bug fixing, and deployment. If the QA and liveops teams are bogged down deploying, monitoring, and hotfixing a massive, disruptive PvP stress test, they physically cannot be testing and verifying a sweeping class refresh in that same deployment window. That isn't 'diluting' the concept of a pipeline; that is literally how you manage a finite release schedule. By choosing to push Vengeance to the live servers now, leadership actively chose to allocate that shared deployment bandwidth toward a test instead of other deliverables.
When the community complains that 'resources are being wasted on Vengeance instead of class balance,' they are talking about the overarching delivery of the product to the consumer. Assuming they literally mean a combat designer is being forced to code server architecture is just you forcing an overly literal interpretation onto colloquial feedback.
In addition, my "semantic point" was in response to your OBJECTIVELY WRONG statement. And the best part about it is you go to the most absurd example of how they can fix issues when as I stated before, there are a literal infinite amount and you don't engage with any of the much less strenuous ones.
Retconning the literal claim that Vengeance dev time takes away from class reworks into "colloquial feedback" is just rewriting the argument after it got debunked.
Claiming that a Vengeance stress test blocks class reworks in QA assumes that a class rework is already fully developed and sitting in a deployment queue waiting for QA clearance. We don't know that. Both the Dragonknight and Werewolf reworks have been teased and detailed well before their respective PTS releases, and the complete radio silence around the Warden rework heading into the twice-delayed U51 PTS strongly suggests that it is still in active design and iterative balancing. Given the recent layoffs, it could be delayed even further; we'll just have to wait for their revised roadmap to see.
About that "objectively wrong" statement, I was actually referring to players, but I didn't clearly specify that, so that slip of ambiguity is on me. I'll clarify now: I was saying that participating in this iteration of Vengeance is the only objective way for players to contribute data towards improved performance for regular campaigns. As for the "millions of ways" ZOS can improve regular Cyrodiil performance, well, I think you can see they are at a dead-end when rewriting architecture and upgrading hardware isn't giving the results the players want. You are free to make more suggestions.
We both agree that shutting down Gray Host causes operational disruption and frustrates players. But trying to stretch "resource allocation" to cover QA queues, Community Managers, and executive calendars just to avoid admitting that live-ops engineering and combat design run on parallel tracks is the very definition of moving the goalposts.Best Argonian NA and I will fight anyone for it
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