Why PVP Arena is Step 1 for Better ESO PVP - Input From a Regular PVPer from the Beginning

LegendaryMage

This is not only about arena combat, so hear us all out (we who support the idea).

I am 100% sure that ESO's arena system would be as awesome as Cyrodiil (assuming Cyrodiil was lag free, perfect fps etc) and it would bring in a lot of new players as a result.

This would not kill Cyrodiil as some seem to believe, a lot of those new players would go to Cyrodiil as well. In my opinion there are 2 main things that they need to do to make this game an awesome PVP game, and therefore expand the populations greatly. So what's first?

Add a thoroughly developed arena system. Lots of suggestions given in the past and if they asked us to open a thread and everyone post a short comment about our 'favorite' features then I'm sure we'd all do it and help them brainstorm it.

The community managers could also tell you in advance what's possible and what's not, like with the ESO live show. That would be great. I'm a strong believer this could be the first step towards fixing and improving PVP in ESO immensely. As well as enable so much needed small scale perfect performance and lag free PVP while working on the next point.

What then?

Improving and fixing Cyrodiil. Lots of suggestions everywhere as well. They need to work more closely with us, the players. We aren't all here on the forums, but there are hundreds of us who could, and would help if they only asked us directly, one thing at a time. Many others and myself have posted extensively what would we like to see Cyrodiil evolve into.

Wait, why are we even talking arenas here when we can just go and straight up improve Cyrodiil?

Because it takes time (we're 1 year in already) and pvp players are going away? Because we need an alternative right now? Because arenas just happen to be the perfect lore-friendly solution to this 'no small scale' problem ESO's pvp is facing with? That's why we need a pvp arena right now. If a player says 'I'm sick of this lag', right now he doesn't have the option to go and have small scale, he only has the option to go PVE or hit alt-f4, or worse, quit entirely and move to another game. Arena would catch 'tired' pvp players on top of everything else. It would give ESO the small scale component it's missing so badly.

Does Cyrodiil have potential even without the Imperial City?

Cyrodiil has so much potential but something has to happen, it's just too 'empty' in its current state. A bit of that emptiness feeling could go away if it had better technical performance so we could enjoy better battles, but since they have said that we're probably to blame for 'crashing' the game because of how we play it, then work with us to make it a better Cyrodiil and less people will do it as a result once there's more reasons to go someplace else than zerg every second of the time.

Right now there are just no real good incentives for a PVP player to go anywhere else other than the next keep on the map. I've been everywhere in Cyrodiil, tried everything, finished all town quests etc. there just isn't any loot, gear, reward, pvp, any incentives to go there again. I know this game's best PVP feature was advertised as epic huge battles with hundreds of players on screen, but if this is not entirely possible, then move on and improve what you can or watch it deteriorate further.

What would you do mage if you had the chance to improve Cyrodiil?

- Enable the Imperial City arena for small fights (1v1 and maybe up to 4v4). If this is not possible, then a stand-alone arena, or maybe even re-work Dragonstar for pvp somehow. DSA looks awesome, voice acting is great, there's space for real spectators where npc spectators are, why not? The argument 'all pvp should be kept in Cyrodiil' is alright, you can use the IC arena then, but it won't be true if justice system enables pvp.

- Make sure the Imperial City pvp dungeon is nicely balanced between all 3 sides. Or watch trains destroy it when they collide in a small space. And I'm sure they will eventually.

- Promote small scale fights with pve towns, Cyrodiil dungeons and caves. Add incentives to go there and fight other people and/or groups of people. Ayleid dungeons can look cool and finding more people in there (on a continual basis) would be even cooler. Add more elements to these sites, they are all across Cyrodiil, make more use of them than simple directions you get sent to via towns.

- Promote small scale fights in open fields by adding more smaller objectives. So many beautiful landscapes for fights, yet other than a occasional random encounter, that's it.

- Enable dueling option in Cyrodiil at least.

Plus many more suggested by other players.

Did Dragonstar kill PVE? Is DSA bad for PVE?

Basically, you've made dragonstar arena for pve players and trials/quests/whatever is still going on. PVE isn't suffering because of it, so there's no reason to not give us something similar for us PVP players with some kind of progression and rewards. There are a lot of us and there will be many more of us who will enjoy it. Cyrodiil will not only be fine, but much better off because a lot of us will be playing Cyrodiil as well. Then work on improving Cyrodiil long term.

It would be like if you said 'you can go questing, that's PVE - skyrim style, nothing else needed. Who needs trials, group content or any other mini games? You got quests, go pve'. PVP arena is a mini-game, another component like DSA is for PVE. It would not kill pvp, it would make it more fun. PVE now has some replay value, pvp is replayable on its own but without any options, the replay value dies down eventually. If you bothered adding so much replay value to pve, then add at least one for pvp too.

50% of your long term pvp 'fixes' lies here. Another 50% is working on Cyrodiil. And after that, maybe one day ESO will have perfect pvp. Just start somewhere already please.

Mage, we have quite a few of these threads, why are you posting a new one?

I know there's quite a few threads about this but my post is longer and I feel like I have a right to open a new thread as much as anyone else does, so please hold on with 'beating a dead horse' argument. My input is not only about 'add a pvp arena so I can have fun', but it promotes a better overall pvp performance for everyone, even people who will never step foot in it.

Yes, I am a strong believer a pvp arena would help ESO's Cyrodiil and general pvp by a factor of who knows how much. Did you see some other games with arenas in them? I spent some time watching videos and now I try to imagine a game like ESO having one and I'm already blown away. I'm 300% sure we'd see an influx of new players if we had this. It would spread like wild fire online.

I still don't understand how would an arena help Cyrodiil, again please?

It would instantly provide people with more pvp options so instead of quiting the game while something else is being 'worked on', they could go and have fun elsewhere. Cyrodiil is dying every time a pvp player quits the game, arena would help retain some of those players for sure. And if they are still playing the game, chances are they will go back to Cyrodiil pretty soon.

It would allow other strictly PVE players to get hooked on perfect pvp by giving them a perfect small scale, tops performance environment. After that, they are bound to try out Cyrodiil as well. I heard stories of people not even entering Cyrodiil because of its awful performance. But once someone has done small scale and had fun, I'm sure he/she would have a greater chance of trying out Cyrodiil as well. They will want to try more if they liked what they got.

It would help Cyrodiil because it would acquire a lot of new players overall. Videos will go viral, small scale will be promoted, people will talk and word of mouth will bring in who knows how many more players. Again, a good % of those players will go to Cyrodiil as well and help populate it further.

I don't plan to open any new arena threads, that's it from me. I hope a lot of us will discuss this further and help not only the developers, but the executives as well realize this should be the next step towards making ESO even more epic than it already is (when saying this I'm trying to imagine there's no lag and performance issues at all).

Thanks for reading.

Astien

+1

WebBull

-1

vortexman11

+2

Juraigr

+1 dunno what else to do tbh

Soris

+1000
Or just add "invite to duel" option for quick fix

Lord_Hev

+3



This is thread of the year right here, thank you for posting it.



So much to see in Cyrodiil, so many possible locations for some thrilling battles. So much of it... never used. Only time you ever get battles in the way out-of-the-way areas, is during a scroll push, and at that, if you can even get a battle. Most of the time, it's just a massive train with a scroll speeding through. Objectives can be placed in these far-out places to promote small scale PvP, which in turn spreads some people out, which in turn reduces the stress that leads to lag cluster meteor lightshows.


Gets boring, sieging BRK/Ash for the 78,438th time. ZOS has made such a gorgeous environment out there. So many landscapes, terrain, points-of-interest to explore. Why not encourage all of us to actually spend some time in this gorgeous land you guys have spent so much time making? Why must all of PvP center on the inner circle of the map? There is so much potential for some great small scale battles, while at the same time, getting the rest of Cyrodiil(It's a really big place!) to be utilized and explored.

Darklord_Tiberius

Again, like many of us that have PvPed since beta.... They need to balance and fix skills and classes before any type of structured PVP is considered. But not like it matters, they have already stated they will not be working on PVP other than Cyrodiil and the Justice System.

Sphinx2318

+6541654354325413843543436543541

Jitterbug

/hail

Alcast

Give us an Arena like you showed us 10 mmonths ago!!

https://youtu.be/gR1ccuyGCwA

Ezareth

My primary concern with an Arena is the added responsibility for ZoS to balance the arena. Right now the game I think we can all agree is being balanced from a PvE perspective with minor changes being done to balance AvAvA PvP. When you add in an Arena element the game dynamic changes quite a bit.

For example with my particular build I'm not nearly as effective fighting inside a keep. There is far less open space to move around in and I'm unable to utilize the open space to split up and isolate my foes. In an Arena they could make the Arena large, but not large enough for me to always remain at max range from my melee opponents as I do in Cyrodiil.

If they add Arena, it basically becomes a third consideration for ZoS to keep in mind with balance changes and the more elements you start trying to balance for, the more you end up needing to homogenize the classes to keep things balanced...and that s something I do not want.

I support and share the desire to have an Arena, I just personally don't think ZoS is capable of giving it to us in a format that fits what we really expect it to be.

My 2 cents.

Juraigr

Darklord_Tiberius wrote: »

Again, like many of us that have PvPed since beta.... They need to balance and fix skills and classes before any type of structured PVP is considered. But not like it matters, they have already stated they will not be working on PVP other than Cyrodiil and the Justice System.

WHAT

joshisanonymous

No.

Forestd16b14_ESO

Talk about it here. http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/165653/request-for-a-arena#latest

Lava_Croft

I rather not see any PvP resources being spent on anything besides fixing Cyrodiil.

melodeath

Lava_Croft wrote: »

I rather not see any PvP resources being spent on anything besides fixing Cyrodiil.

it is fixing cyrodiil by reducing the amount of players in it so you dont have to wait 5 minutes before your attack finally starts going off. (peak hours that is)

in the early hours theres not much going on in cyro but when the peak hours comme all campaigns are just full and im sick and tired of logging in just to notice that pvp is unplayable because of all the zergs.
With arena the people who dont want to be bothered by lag can do that and at the same time reduce the lag in cyro.

less people in cyro on peak hours= less lag.

ToRelax

Darklord_Tiberius wrote: »

Again, like many of us that have PvPed since beta.... They need to balance and fix skills and classes before any type of structured PVP is considered. But not like it matters, they have already stated they will not be working on PVP other than Cyrodiil and the Justice System.

Arenas would help to find out what things are "to balance and fix" in the first place...

james_vestbergb16_ESO

+1 Obviously.

Why be against it? If you dont like it, dont step in there, and I highly doubt Zeni will direct resources already busy with other areas. These ppl do this for a living, I'm sure they can do 2 things at a time...

Derra

Since pvp is barely playable in the evening when roaming solo (150+ ping when you´re shields are on the other bar can be a death sentence) i no longer oppose the idea.
I don´t think they have any idea how to really fix cyrodiil performance by now. I´m not saying they should give up on that but i´d really like to be able to play in the evenings solo or with a couple of friends not running around in a paintrain.

Itoq

Arena's will be released but the question is when and how much will it cost. I suspect that most of the details have already been decided upon.

WraithAzraiel

Didn't the most recent ESO Live episode with Brian Wheeler state that Arenas and other types of PvP were nowhere on the To-Do List for the foreseeable future?

PeggymoeXD

I agree with @Darklord_Tiberius, but at the same time, I agree with OP.

ZOS obviously has structured PvP sitting on a devs' hard drive somewhere because of what they showed us in the tournament. I prefer AvA but when the lag is insane, instanced PvP would take pressure off of the campaigns, and provide for a quick fix of small scale PvP. When I'm in Cyrodiil, that's basically what I'm searching for anyway, normally just to get wrapped up in a keep defense that becomes a hilarious "who can spam R the fastest" battle. I absolutely hate those battles. Players being spread out between Cyrodiil and arenas would really help lag imo.

But of course, if they opened up Arena style PvP before fixing Cyrodiil overall, that would just be a bummer. I would hate for arenas to come out and them become where I go because I was lagged out. I would like to know I have the option of small scale structured PvP or a more stable AvA experience. I'm sure if this game does well enough, there are many more things to come for the community. Arenas would surely have to be one of them, but I do hope they rework balance and make large scale battles more stable before implementing them.

Jakeol

OP brings up a very valid point about the empty space...cyrodiil is so empty if its not a keep or a point between two keeps. There is so much space that can be utilized to do something (even if its not arenas) to bring small scale pvp in. The other issue is populations, at peak times the game is literally unplayable and at night during the AU TZ there is often almost no one to fight. There's two extremes here and I hope there is some sort of balance that can be found.

LegendaryMage

I am sure that they have tried quite a few things with Cyrodiil in the past, even reduced population caps twice. So as much as I want to agree with everyone that 'we should find a way to fix Cyrodiil soon', you need to realize that this has been going on for a year and there's nothing indicating that it won't go for another 2 years before something significant happens.

On the other hand, we have been talking about arenas since launch. We have waited long enough for them to 'fix Cyrodiil' without success.

Arenas could help fix Cyrodiil by taking away some stress off of it while at the same time provide people (who want it) with a different pvp experience they are simply unable to get elsewhere.

In the end, it is what it is guys, I don't like it either but we have to consider the possibility that it may take a very long time before anything significant happens in terms of Cyrodiil's performance.

Aimelin

LegendaryMage wrote: »

This is not only about arena combat, so hear us all out (we who support the idea).

I am 100% sure that ESO's arena system would be as awesome as Cyrodiil (assuming Cyrodiil was lag free, perfect fps etc) and it would bring in a lot of new players as a result.

This would not kill Cyrodiil as some seem to believe, a lot of those new players would go to Cyrodiil as well. In my opinion there are 2 main things that they need to do to make this game an awesome PVP game, and therefore expand the populations greatly. So what's first?

Add a thoroughly developed arena system. Lots of suggestions given in the past and if they asked us to open a thread and everyone post a short comment about our 'favorite' features then I'm sure we'd all do it and help them brainstorm it.

The community managers could also tell you in advance what's possible and what's not, like with the ESO live show. That would be great. I'm a strong believer this could be the first step towards fixing and improving PVP in ESO immensely. As well as enable so much needed small scale perfect performance and lag free PVP while working on the next point.

What then?

Improving and fixing Cyrodiil. Lots of suggestions everywhere as well. They need to work more closely with us, the players. We aren't all here on the forums, but there are hundreds of us who could, and would help if they only asked us directly, one thing at a time. Many others and myself have posted extensively what would we like to see Cyrodiil evolve into.

Wait, why are we even talking arenas here when we can just go and straight up improve Cyrodiil?

Because it takes time (we're 1 year in already) and pvp players are going away? Because we need an alternative right now? Because arenas just happen to be the perfect lore-friendly solution to this 'no small scale' problem ESO's pvp is facing with? That's why we need a pvp arena right now. If a player says 'I'm sick of this lag', right now he doesn't have the option to go and have small scale, he only has the option to go PVE or hit alt-f4, or worse, quit entirely and move to another game. Arena would catch 'tired' pvp players on top of everything else. It would give ESO the small scale component it's missing so badly.

Does Cyrodiil have potential even without the Imperial City?

Cyrodiil has so much potential but something has to happen, it's just too 'empty' in its current state. A bit of that emptiness feeling could go away if it had better technical performance so we could enjoy better battles, but since they have said that we're probably to blame for 'crashing' the game because of how we play it, then work with us to make it a better Cyrodiil and less people will do it as a result once there's more reasons to go someplace else than zerg every second of the time.

Right now there are just no real good incentives for a PVP player to go anywhere else other than the next keep on the map. I've been everywhere in Cyrodiil, tried everything, finished all town quests etc. there just isn't any loot, gear, reward, pvp, any incentives to go there again. I know this game's best PVP feature was advertised as epic huge battles with hundreds of players on screen, but if this is not entirely possible, then move on and improve what you can or watch it deteriorate further.

What would you do mage if you had the chance to improve Cyrodiil?

- Enable the Imperial City arena for small fights (1v1 and maybe up to 4v4). If this is not possible, then a stand-alone arena, or maybe even re-work Dragonstar for pvp somehow. DSA looks awesome, voice acting is great, there's space for real spectators where npc spectators are, why not? The argument 'all pvp should be kept in Cyrodiil' is alright, you can use the IC arena then, but it won't be true if justice system enables pvp.

- Make sure the Imperial City pvp dungeon is nicely balanced between all 3 sides. Or watch trains destroy it when they collide in a small space. And I'm sure they will eventually.

- Promote small scale fights with pve towns, Cyrodiil dungeons and caves. Add incentives to go there and fight other people and/or groups of people. Ayleid dungeons can look cool and finding more people in there (on a continual basis) would be even cooler. Add more elements to these sites, they are all across Cyrodiil, make more use of them than simple directions you get sent to via towns.

- Promote small scale fights in open fields by adding more smaller objectives. So many beautiful landscapes for fights, yet other than a occasional random encounter, that's it.

- Enable dueling option in Cyrodiil at least.

Plus many more suggested by other players.

Did Dragonstar kill PVE? Is DSA bad for PVE?

Basically, you've made dragonstar arena for pve players and trials/quests/whatever is still going on. PVE isn't suffering because of it, so there's no reason to not give us something similar for us PVP players with some kind of progression and rewards. There are a lot of us and there will be many more of us who will enjoy it. Cyrodiil will not only be fine, but much better off because a lot of us will be playing Cyrodiil as well. Then work on improving Cyrodiil long term.

It would be like if you said 'you can go questing, that's PVE - skyrim style, nothing else needed. Who needs trials, group content or any other mini games? You got quests, go pve'. PVP arena is a mini-game, another component like DSA is for PVE. It would not kill pvp, it would make it more fun. PVE now has some replay value, pvp is replayable on its own but without any options, the replay value dies down eventually. If you bothered adding so much replay value to pve, then add at least one for pvp too.

50% of your long term pvp 'fixes' lies here. Another 50% is working on Cyrodiil. And after that, maybe one day ESO will have perfect pvp. Just start somewhere already please.

Mage, we have quite a few of these threads, why are you posting a new one?

I know there's quite a few threads about this but my post is longer and I feel like I have a right to open a new thread as much as anyone else does, so please hold on with 'beating a dead horse' argument. My input is not only about 'add a pvp arena so I can have fun', but it promotes a better overall pvp performance for everyone, even people who will never step foot in it.

Yes, I am a strong believer a pvp arena would help ESO's Cyrodiil and general pvp by a factor of who knows how much. Did you see some other games with arenas in them? I spent some time watching videos and now I try to imagine a game like ESO having one and I'm already blown away. I'm 300% sure we'd see an influx of new players if we had this. It would spread like wild fire online.

I still don't understand how would an arena help Cyrodiil, again please?

It would instantly provide people with more pvp options so instead of quiting the game while something else is being 'worked on', they could go and have fun elsewhere. Cyrodiil is dying every time a pvp player quits the game, arena would help retain some of those players for sure. And if they are still playing the game, chances are they will go back to Cyrodiil pretty soon.

It would allow other strictly PVE players to get hooked on perfect pvp by giving them a perfect small scale, tops performance environment. After that, they are bound to try out Cyrodiil as well. I heard stories of people not even entering Cyrodiil because of its awful performance. But once someone has done small scale and had fun, I'm sure he/she would have a greater chance of trying out Cyrodiil as well. They will want to try more if they liked what they got.

It would help Cyrodiil because it would acquire a lot of new players overall. Videos will go viral, small scale will be promoted, people will talk and word of mouth will bring in who knows how many more players. Again, a good % of those players will go to Cyrodiil as well and help populate it further.

I don't plan to open any new arena threads, that's it from me. I hope a lot of us will discuss this further and help not only the developers, but the executives as well realize this should be the next step towards making ESO even more epic than it already is (when saying this I'm trying to imagine there's no lag and performance issues at all).

Thanks for reading.

players do have the options to walk away from the zergs and find spots where small scale pvp happens.

as someone stated in another thread, PvP in eso is sandbox, the players determine what they do and how about they do it. if you want to find small scale pvp, you'll find it, if not you create it.

I much rather have them focus their resources to fixing the lag & performance issues than adding another system ontop that might eventually lag too with all the people queueing up for it.

I'm not entirely against arenas or battlegrounds, but don't go off calling it competitive and structered pvp, caus there are ALOT of things broken and things that need to be rebalanced before you can even THINK of uttering those words.

my main issue with asking for arenas is going to be BALANCE.

Looking at the state of the game right now, stam builds rule supreme, if they're not spamming 2H they're spamming some other one trick skill combined with the broken CC system in this game.

Example: get petrified, cc break, get wrecking blowed immediately after, cc'd again (knockback/knockdown) ... WUT ??? CC immunity is like, im fuggen outta here dude. Who ever thought it was a briliant idea to diferenciate soft cc and hard cc with both not having an immunity timer, needs to get fired.

once things are fixed im all for having arenas, but right now, with all the fotm 1 button spam builds and balance issues it's going to be a nightmare and the real QQ threads will start popping up.