aetherix8 wrote: »

Cooperharley wrote: »

I don’t think “people don’t like Vengeance” is universally true, but I do think the reaction shows a real problem: Vengeance and Grey Host are serving very different audiences.

Vengeance can be useful as an entry-level or lower-friction PvP mode. I understand why some players like being able to jump in without farming sets, copying builds, or getting deleted by optimized groups. That part has value, especially for newer or more casual PvPers.

But it should not be treated as a replacement for Grey Host or as proof that regular Cyrodiil cannot be improved. A lot of veteran PvP players are not rejecting change just because it is change. They are rejecting a mode that removes too much of what makes ESO PvP feel like ESO: buildcraft, gear choices, class identity, CP, counters, and long-term character investment.

The right path, in my opinion, is:

Keep Vengeance as an optional campaign for players who want that style.
Keep Grey Host as the main traditional Cyrodiil experience.
Stop removing or sidelining Grey Host during tests.
Use real population, retention, queue, and platform-specific data before calling Vengeance a success or failure.
Continue working on Grey Host issues like performance, heal/shield stacking, proc balance, faction imbalance, and ball group counterplay.
If Vengeance lives alongside Grey Host, great. More options are good. But if Vengeance becomes the answer to every Cyrodiil complaint, then it is going to keep frustrating the exact players who have stuck with ESO PvP for years.

ZOS should not frame this as “Vengeance or nothing.” The better answer is Vengeance for the players who enjoy that format, and meaningful Grey Host improvements for the players who still want traditional ESO PvP.

General remark, and not a direct answer to your post, Cooperharley: while reading this thread and others that are related, I notice a significant lack of clarity in most posts.

Players talk about fixing Cyrodiil, but their discourse is vague, to put it gently.

Fix what exactly? It is important to express one's ideas as precisely as possible if any tangible results are to be obtained.

My take on the "fixing Grey Host" question is as follows, and is based on this thread's OP https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/685603/community-update-vengeance-testing-cyrodiil/p1

Gray Host performance cannot be fixed, and the devs won't be pursuing this goal anymore.

Gray Host balance can be fixed , as it isn't at all said otherwise. More than that, ZOS recently adjusted how HoT stacking works in Cyrodiil, which proves that the devs are still committed to improving the balance.

I believe it is very worthwhile to keep pushing for balance adjustments, while specifying the 'balance' part of the equation. Performance appears to be a lost cause.

Edit emphasis

Trier_Sero wrote: »

I think they should remove this whole appearance change token stuff and just allow us change character appearance for gold

Frayton wrote: »

U50 DPS meta is going to be the IA class sets, so I've been trying to farm them, but good grief it's so mind numbingly boring that I just logout of ESO after a few cycles and play a different game.

ZOS please improve this experience.

- The cycles are too spread apart. Having an option to lump several or all of them together, so that you can get through the monotonous slog faster would be nice.

- Why in Oblivion are all the gear pieces broken up into each individual weight? This game has so much bloat with sets. It would lessen the grind and bloat if each gear slot only required 1 drop. An example would be 1 head piece covers all head weights (heavy, medium, light). The same way motif style pages work.

- Let the class gear be tradable so I can give someone who enjoys that place some gold or other items in exchange for IA gear. If this is impossible, then let us buy the gear with gold or add IA sets to the Golden Vendor to purchase with gold or fortunes to lessen the horrible boring grind.

Ordinator199 wrote: »

PrinceShroob wrote: »

Your own writing would be significantly improved by using paragraphs.

I'm afraid I just don't think your criticisms of the writing are particularly salient--you're mainly just leveling an accusation of being "cringy" and "for 8-year-olds" without any elaboration or specifics. There's excellent media "for 8-year-olds," like Paper Mario, a personal favorite of mine, and atrocious media for adults that's full of violence and sex and has all the depth of a saucer.

Southern Elsweyr has one of my absolute favorite quests, "Chiaroscuro Crossroads," which I found to be an emotionally compelling story about terminal illness and the capriciousness of Daedric Princes.

moo_2021 wrote: »

Why can't we side with whoever want to destory the world, scam antique collectors, go house to house with scary looking companions to collect protection fees, or take a heavy bag of gold from some shady merchant to murder a good honest judge?

Firstly, a cursory examination of discussions around story-driven single-player games like Baldur's Gate 3 shows that people typically choose the "good" path first. It makes sense to invest the most development time in that path, since the majority of people will see it.

Secondly, due to the reality of this game being a MMO, you can't have huge departures from the status quo. You destroy the world, you're stuck with it that way. What, you want Mehrunes Dagon to atomize Tamriel and then do writs in the rubble? Sometimes it's interesting to have an evil option available if only to make your choice to be good more poignant--but the game doesn't usually offer those because you can't just reload to "see what happens."

Thirdly, there's no shortage of petty nastiness you can get up to, such as robbing roadside merchants or doing the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood questlines. Hell, if you've never met Darien Gautier before Solstice, you can tell him to kill himself.

Thanks grammar grandma

You’re proving my point without realizing it. You wrote three paragraphs defending the concept of simple writing instead of addressing why ESO’s actual dialogue constantly sounds sanitized, predictable, and emotionally weightless.

Nobody said media aimed at younger audiences can’t be good. Paper Mario works because it has charm wit timing, and confidence in its tone. ESO writing often sounds like it was filtered through five layers of corporate HR review until every character speaks with the same safe, Marvel-style cadence z generation style.

And pointing to one decent questline out of years of content doesn’t really refute the criticism. Every long-running MMO has isolated moments of good writing. The issue is the overall pattern: endless “quirky” dialogue, zero meaningful player agency, and villains who monologue like they’re auditioning for a Saturday morning cartoon.

Your BG3 comparison also kind of hurts your argument. People choosing the good path first doesn’t mean evil paths shouldn’t exist or shouldn’t matter. BG3 is praised precisely because it respects player choice enough to let people roleplay beyond “generic helpful adventurer #482.”

The world doesn’t react in a meaningful way, your character doesn’t meaningfully diverge, and five minutes later the game shoves you back onto the same rails anyway.