War, war never changes. And subclassing owns. Adapt, overcome.

There are a lot of reasons and I'm definitely not a serious enough pvp'er to get into it all. I'll leave that to more knowledgeable folks.

But at at least from my own perspective and a lot of players I know; for those of us who don't live and breathe pvp, I think vengenace gave us a glimpse of how it might actually be fun and brought even more attention to the problems in current live pvp. And then subclassing came at the same time and kinda doubled down on the things that make pvp awful. And it sorta becomes this self-reinforcing problem where fewer non-regular pvp'ers are interested in mayhem, and then others see the population is low and either don't bother, or maybe try mayhem out and see that it's just the regulars and the bigger battles they might remember from past mayhems, which generally included a fair number of newer / casual / inexperienced pvp'ers, aren't happening, and they have little chance of finding any enjoyment, so they log out and the cycle repeats.

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

Because I can't be tasked to do activities I don't enjoy just for some item in a video game, and I would guess many people feel the same way about PvP.

I understand. There’s a significant amount of players who participated in Midyear Mayhem in the past, but didn’t participate this time though.

I’m not sure if they quit or what, but it’s a very noticeable drop off. It’s pretty interesting to see from a game design perspective. I’m wondering what’s led to such a dramatic change this time.

Evil_Rurouni wrote: »

One word:

Multiclassing.

Yeah I think if I had to condense what I said, this would be it. A lot of my regular social group and people I know in my guilds (myself, included) are already pretty inactive since u46, and even among the more active ones... few have finished grinding out / wrapping our heads around multiclassing on the pve side of things. A lot are in "wait and see" mode about what the next nerfs and changes will be.

Definitely even fewer have put any effort into new multiclassed pvp builds. Or they just wanna sit it out because all balance has been thrown out the window.

Danikat wrote: »

I suspect it's because it's August and a lot of people go away for at least part of the month, either because of school holidays or in the Northern Hemisphere taking advantage of (hopefully) nicer weather, so ZOS didn't want to include anything which would disappoint people who miss it because other things take priority over a game.

So they would rather disappoint the people that actually show up to play the game in order to not "disappoint" the people that don't show up?

And they wonder why people don't spend more money or spend more time here.

Switching from 3 teams to 2 in Battlegrounds has turned the game into a stale, lopsided mess. With just two teams, scoring becomes a farce and gameplay feels like it’s stuck in a rut. Three teams, on the other hand, offer a more dynamic experience and make matches feel like they actually matter. If the concern is not enough players for three teams, maybe they should consider adding better rewards as an incentive. Because this “improved” system certainly isn’t going to fix the matchmaking disaster we’re dealing with. No matter how you spin it, two teams create a funneling effect—skill gaps be damned—while three teams naturally lead to more varied and exciting gameplay. The current change just feels like a cheap shortcut that nobody asked for.

Oh, and if they’re really worried about participation, they could toss in:

*Increased XP boosts for winning teams

*Rare cosmetics like mounts, skins, or titles—if they can part with those

*Higher chances for crafting materials

*Exclusive pets to make us feel like we earned it

***Maybe even a loot box if you rack up enough wins in the month

But, hey, don’t hold your breath for that one.

[*] Did your ability to play and/or complete certain types of game content improve after the launch of Update 46? no
[*] If so, prior to the launch of Update 46, what was your character build? predominantly magsorc, but i could play all classes and specs.
[*] What did you change to your character build when Update 46 launched that allowed you to play or complete content that you had trouble with before? i swapped builds 3 times trying to make magsorc work in pvp, however it is now obsolete and is no longer capable of competing in pvp.
[*] What game content was it? pvp


overall the introduction of subclassing has rendered the majority of old classes obsolete. it has reduced build diversity to a small handful of builds (like i predicted before patch was launched as this was quite obvious). what this has done to the playerbase is this. small scale/solo/and ball group players who have fully embraced the system, and sorted thru all the classes to boil it down to what is the most powerful.... are dominating. their builds have been buffed by upwards of 75%, which has led to the casual player is getting destroyed. this has led to cyrodiil becoming a ghost town mostly.

the game was literally upended, we told you this would happen, you did it anyways.

the analogy i gave before is sadly the same as today. imagine zos is a soldier gone rogue, ignored all orders and advice, and is now standing on top of an anti personel mine. if you step off.... roll back the patch.... you will lose your leg. you wont die, but you're losing 30% of revenue immediately and there will be huge backlash.... bleeding all over..... but you live.

if you dont step off, and intend to ride this out.... you will end up starving in the desert slowly. slowly dieing as your faithful playerbase of 10 years reluctantly looks for other games that dont destroy themselves by not listening to the playerbase. this was such an avoidable issue but the EGO of the studio was too big to listen to filthy degenerate gamers.

this is such a bad design choice, and the studio has made so many choices while ignoring feedback.... it would be funny if it werent so sad.

even during the pvp event people arent playing. perhaps you can blame the public testing, and the pvp event before that for the lack of participation.... but let me tell you bro. i have a friends list with 100 SWEATS from pvp on it..... the majority of them have stopped playing daily. i used to have 20 people on every night in cyrodiil.... its around 4 people and usually not in cyro anymore.

with subclassing you now choose one of 3 pvp builds, and if you dont you are like 60% power and have no chance at winning. this means you either must throw away your class fantasy and play in one of those 3 ways, or quit. and the majority of pvp veterans have decided to quit.

I suspect because people are a slightly burned out with the Vengeance campaign/pursuits having been somewhat recent. There are also some new cracked builds out there now which have little counter-play. Imperial City feels especially empty compared to previous Mayhems though which is kinda sad, but there's not much in unique rewards to get there this year either. Maybe there's too many campaigns this time.

ESO feels like a full-time job honestly. For the person who already works a full-time job and has other responsibilities, it's kind of a pain to manage redoing builds every month or so, gilding out sets, making enough gold to fund those upgrade mats... even doing the daily crafting writs begins to become a chore when you just want to jump on and have fun after a long day. Idk, maybe I'm just getting too old for ESO, but I feel like some other games like Warframe respect your time better.

Extremely Low Midyear Mayhem Turnout, Why?

Perhaps because the Event concept is now very old and quite monotonous for anyone who has done teh events before?

In this particular event I do the bare minimum, there is no real incentive to doing any more.

4v4v4 Classic, random mode, random classic map
8v8 solo
4x4 solo
4x4 group

Still 4 queues.
In theory this setup takes less players than the current set up while maintaining four queues , swap 8v8 group = 16 players for 4v4v4 = 12 players

I agree, having read the article referenced above, its nice to see someone is listening, about something at least. Who knows, maybe with the change in leadership other things will change as well. Its okay to hold out hope, but I wouldnt hold my breath