Maelstrom Arena PTS Challenge

Nifty2g

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Unfortunately the dev we need to talk to in order to solidify our options has been out sick, so we're just waiting for him to get back into the office. Hang tight, we'll get this straightened out. Sorry for the confusion.

It's all good,
I hope you guys can move it to live, I know it's a competition for something like pts but it'd be cool

ZOS_GinaBruno

Nifty2g wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Unfortunately the dev we need to talk to in order to solidify our options has been out sick, so we're just waiting for him to get back into the office. Hang tight, we'll get this straightened out. Sorry for the confusion.

It's all good,
I hope you guys can move it to live, I know it's a competition for something like pts but it'd be cool

It's something we're considering. Hopefully we can get this straightened out tomorrow!

Valrien

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Unfortunately the dev we need to talk to in order to solidify our options has been out sick, so we're just waiting for him to get back into the office. Hang tight, we'll get this straightened out. Sorry for the confusion.

It's all good,
I hope you guys can move it to live, I know it's a competition for something like pts but it'd be cool

It's something we're considering. Hopefully we can get this straightened out tomorrow!

Gina, out of curiosity, what is the reason that you gave for not being able to put all research on templates? I can't seem to find it myself.

Mcnick

lol ur all so funny none of you realize they still havent fixed any of the current issues in pts so none of you will be actually completing vet maestrom arena anytime soon i just went in note the time about 2 mins ago nothing was fixed ult gains are still not working which one of my big issues and idk what they did to the skills but most of them not working how is anyone supposed to complete/compete in this they basically just said here hurry up and test this for us and we will reward you when we have been telling them about this issue the past like week that i know of and they have done nothing... you cant complete vet maelstrom arena zos not happening until i see a video of someone actually completing it im not even walking into it id rather buy it when it comes out when youve actually resolved the issues then force us to test it and reward us with a game we basically went into and found out the problems when it shouldnt be just our jobs like isnt that why we buy the game in the first place? the way i see it you guys dont have enough people in pts in the first place so your trying to lure them in with rewards to get in your pts cuz i just went in their and its dead literally i saw no one around im gonna go back in and "TEST" your DLC but honestly you should be rewarding the people actually testing cuz by the looks of it you prob will only have 8 people in the pts for these rewards lol and let me tell you this NONE OF THEM WILL BE COMPLETING MAELSTROM ARENA ANYTIME SOON CUZ YOU GUYS HAVE FIXED ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THAT HAS TO DO WITH OUR COMBAT SYSTEM IN PTS SO NO ONE WILL BE FINISHING MAELSTROM ANYTIME SOON... i am done here :P

Nifty2g

Mcnick wrote: »

lol ur all so funny none of you realize they still havent fixed any of the current issues in pts so none of you will be actually completing vet maestrom arena anytime soon i just went in note the time about 2 mins ago nothing was fixed ult gains are still not working which one of my big issues and idk what they did to the skills but most of them not working how is it anyone supposed to complete/compete in this they basically just said here hurry up and test this for us and we will reward you when we have been telling them about this issue the past like week that i know of and they have done nothing... you cant complete vet maelstrom arena zos not happening until i see a video of someone actually completing it im not even walking into it id rather buy it when it comes out when youve actually resolved the issues then force us to test it and reward us with a game we basically went into and found out the problems when it shouldnt be just our jobs like isnt that why we buy the game in the first place? the way i see it you guys dont have enough people in pts in the first place so your trying to lure them in with rewards to get in your pts cuz i just went in their and its dead literally i saw no one around im gonna go back in and "TEST" your DLC but honestly you should be rewarding the people actually testing cuz by the looks of it you prob will only have 8 people in the pts for these rewards lol and let me tell you this NONE OF THEM WILL BE COMPLETING MAELSTROM ARENA ANYTIME SOON CUZ YOU GUYS HAVE FIXED ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THAT HAS TO DO WITH OUR COMBAT SYSTEM IN PTS SO NO ONE WILL BE FINISHING MAELSTROM ANYTIME SOON... i am done here :P

We're aware it's also a test build you're playing on, you are being rewarded by testing dlc for free
Cant really get mad over game breaking bugs in pts that aren't fixed asap. As for this challenge thing it was Probably part of their job to post it regardless

GTech_1

asneakybanana wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

Move this challenge to live when the bugs are fixed seems unfair NA has pretty much no chance but EU get to compete without the bug

LOL. So you have to buy orsinium to compete in the arena challenge that as a reward gives you a free copy of orsinium. Love it.

Just to clarify:
The PTS is open to all players with active accounts.
You are automatically given 5500 crowns on the PTS.
On this PTS version, each item in the crown store, including Orsinium, only costs 1 crown.

So, technically, you are correct.
However, if you are not a subscriber, you would just "buy" Orsinium on the PTS with 1 crown.
If you win, you would receive 3,000 crowns, as well as the other reward(s), added to your Live client account.

Hope this helps,
~GTech_1

reclaimervii.sierra117ub17_ESO

Why not have 2 weeks for the competition? One for the NA characters another for the EU players? Id say push the competition back until you guys fix battle spirit bug

Personofsecrets

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

asneakybanana wrote: »

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

Battle spirit issues are still present, meaning your abilities are still costing way more than should be, as well as mobs taking 50% less damage. Why hold a competition if you haven't fixed the #1 reason no one has completed vMaelstrom yet?

Because they enjoy laughing at people dying over and over. Plus it's an achievement to kill this thing while it's still stupid.

Except that only builds with shield spamming access will be able to complete it at all this current state. This isn't a "be the best at your class" kinda thing, this is a "play whats blatantly toxic and makes our game a joke" kinda thing. I've gotten to stage 6 boss round before it becomes too much, I just don't have enough durability access as a stam build. All I have is Rally/Vigor for on demand heals, but a HoT isn't going to save me when I'm getting hit by 4+ mobs all dealing 8k with a basic light attack. Whoever thought removing stamina regen while blocking for non tanks and then released this content, was a healthy idea, needs to see a doctor and find out what healthy means.

You mean for everyone, not just non-tanks.

KerinKor

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Unfortunately the dev we need to talk to in order to solidify our options has been out sick, so we're just waiting for him to get back into the office. Hang tight, we'll get this straightened out. Sorry for the confusion.

Kind of worrying development on a major component ceases when one guy is off sick.

Not a good sign of a well staffed project methinks.

asneakybanana

GTech_1 wrote: »

asneakybanana wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

Move this challenge to live when the bugs are fixed seems unfair NA has pretty much no chance but EU get to compete without the bug

LOL. So you have to buy orsinium to compete in the arena challenge that as a reward gives you a free copy of orsinium. Love it.

Just to clarify:
The PTS is open to all players with active accounts.
You are automatically given 5500 crowns on the PTS.
On this PTS version, each item in the crown store, including Orsinium, only costs 1 crown.

So, technically, you are correct.
However, if you are not a subscriber, you would just "buy" Orsinium on the PTS with 1 crown.
If you win, you would receive 3,000 crowns, as well as the other reward(s), added to your Live client account.

Hope this helps,
~GTech_1

You know buying orsinium on the pts doesn't transfer it to live right. And if you do then I have no clue what you're getting at lol.

stevenbennett_ESO

Fat_Cat45 wrote: »

Slayer9292_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Unfortunately we are not able to have NA and EU characters copied at the same time due to technical limitations - this has always been the case.

I'm guessing the limitation is database storage size?

Why not just copy the first 4 characters on EU and NA, so we all have at least 4 characters we are familiar with to play. Most people have their mains as one of the first they made.

Or another suggestion, why not only copy people who've actually logged into the PTS server at some point. This would reduce the database needs of all the players who are copied but aren't playing on PTS at all.

Sadly the template characters don't really give us a good feel for how things are working out. At least not for me anyway. My V16 Template on PTS for IC, felt gimped compared to my character on live, even though they had full V16 end gear vs my live having V14.

The limitation is overlapping character names. User ID's are unique and can not be the same on any server. However, character names are not unique and can also be on any server.

Example: On NA I have a character called "Fat Cat". Me claiming that name does not remove it from EU character name pool. Someone on EU then makes a character called "Fat Cat". When PTS rolls around they do NA copy and my "Fat Cat" goes to the PTS. When they do EU copy, they need to delete my version of "Fat Cat" to allow the EU character of "Fat Cat" to get on the PTS.

It's actually probably a lot more complicated than that. User IDs ARE actually the same on EU and NA -- because a single account can log into and create characters on both. (This is how you can access your characters on PTS as well, because your account is the same there…) So there are several obvious database conflict limitations:

1) A user who has characters on both EU and NA is reusing character slot indexes. Since I strongly suspect a lot of the data is tagged by a value which combines account ID and character slot index, this would have all kinds of conflicts.

2) A user who has characters on both EU and NA will have two distinct banks, mailboxes, account wide achievements and collections, which would need to be merged somehow.

3) As you noted, character names can be duplicated between the two servers

There may be other conflicts, but these stand out as the major ones. That said, I've done Database programming for a *very* long time, and those conflicts are probably NOT the major reason they don't do it. It's a speed issue.

Sure, it might be possible to write some code which would deal with these issues on an account by account basis *if* the copy was being done by transferring data on each account individually, but the odds are pretty good that's NOT how the character transfer is being done, because that method of doing database copies is ridiculously slow. Nobody actually copies databases row by row like this unless they have a LOT of time to spare or they need to do some kind of major revision to the data during the copy.

FAR more likely is that there's some kind of database replication scheme which works on a table by table basis instead of an account by account basis - entire tables of data (character list, item list, bank list, etc…) are being copied at once without paying attention to specific accounts. This is much much quicker, as the PTS is doing sequential access to the table files during the copy, and the table indexes don't need to be rebuilt -- were talking at least an order of magnitude faster, and more likely several orders of magnitude.

So yes, they could technically merge the data between the two servers (particularly if a user only has characters on one of the two), but it's a lot more complex than just changing the character names, and it probably goes from a couple of hours long process to a couple of DAYS long process to accomplish. (Weeks, even!)

Now, based on the comment that they might copy *some* of the NA characters, I'm thinking they might do a middle of the road approach - copying the EU tables, then running an account-based copy and convert for a very limited subset of NA accounts based on a narrow set of criteria. I'd guess criteria might be something along the lines of: only copy over NA accounts which don't have any EU characters, have no name conflicts, have at least one VR16 character, and have logged into the PTS at some point since the Orsinium patch was applied. That's got to be a fairly small subset of the whole, and probably wouldn't add TOO much time to the overall process, assuming that they have account copy code in place already. (Probably dusting off the Console account copy code…) Note that this is simply an educated guess at best, but that's the kind of approach I would use in their position...

EDIT - Now that I think about it, they'll probably also only do the copy, if they can do it at all, based on player request - perhaps setting up a form for such a request. Much easier to limit the number that way.

stevenbennett_ESO

KerinKor wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Unfortunately the dev we need to talk to in order to solidify our options has been out sick, so we're just waiting for him to get back into the office. Hang tight, we'll get this straightened out. Sorry for the confusion.

Kind of worrying development on a major component ceases when one guy is off sick.

Not a good sign of a well staffed project methinks.

It's probably not the major component in question, nor stopping development -- it's probably one of their DB experts who deals with rarely done things like copying individual accounts from server to server...

Personofsecrets

Any news on this @ZOS_GinaBruno ,

I don't want to waste time trying to complete the arena if the date of the contest is to be changes. I also want to be in the arena if the contest period is staying the same.

Xjcon

I will more then happily try my hand at this challenge but I don't think it would be fair to all players if this is done on live. Everyone would be on even footing if done on PTS with V16 templates and gear.

Personofsecrets

I would prefer pts as well. Gives us a chance to dump resources into doing something that we would be more hesitant toward dumping resources into if on life.

ZOS_GinaBruno

We talked about this on the livestream today but just to officially bring this thread up to speed, we will be moving this to be a live contest, rather than on the PTS. There's no guarantee we can copy additional NA characters with the EU character copy next week, and we want it to be fair for everyone.

We'll work on adjusting the rules and prizing, and will re-post everything soon. Currently, we're looking at awarding a prize to the first person to appear on the Veteran Malestrom Arena leaderboards for each megaserver, but still need to get those plans solidified.

We'll unsticky this thread in the meantime, but will leave it open for discussion.

Personofsecrets

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We talked about this on the livestream today but just to officially bring this thread up to speed, we will be moving this to be a live contest, rather than on the PTS. There's no guarantee we can copy additional NA characters with the EU character copy next week, and we want it to be fair for everyone.

We'll work on adjusting the rules and prizing, and will re-post everything soon. Currently, we're looking at awarding a prize to the first person to appear on the Veteran Malestrom Arena leaderboards for each megaserver, but still need to get those plans solidified.

We'll unsticky this thread in the meantime, but will leave it open for discussion.

Can you still do the reward for each class leader?

Artis

What type of prizes? -.- Is it going to be something no one else will be able to get? Not cool if that's the case.

Nifty2g

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We talked about this on the livestream today but just to officially bring this thread up to speed, we will be moving this to be a live contest, rather than on the PTS. There's no guarantee we can copy additional NA characters with the EU character copy next week, and we want it to be fair for everyone.

We'll work on adjusting the rules and prizing, and will re-post everything soon. Currently, we're looking at awarding a prize to the first person to appear on the Veteran Malestrom Arena leaderboards for each megaserver, but still need to get those plans solidified.

We'll unsticky this thread in the meantime, but will leave it open for discussion.

Awesome news
It would be even more awesome if for a prize you could have a custom title for each of the classes @ZOS_GinaBruno just throwing ideas out there lol

Nifty2g

I think a competition how it was originally planed for PTS but for Live see what 4 classes are the top overall after a week an award a special title and something else for 4 players at #1 for Sorc / nightblade / templar / dragonknight, a title that can't be obtained elsewhere. Maybe separate EU and NA for that then have a prize for an overall winner? Just my thoughts, but damn that title thing would be amazing

meistermeuchler1b16_ESO

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We talked about this on the livestream today but just to officially bring this thread up to speed, we will be moving this to be a live contest, rather than on the PTS. There's no guarantee we can copy additional NA characters with the EU character copy next week, and we want it to be fair for everyone.

We'll work on adjusting the rules and prizing, and will re-post everything soon. Currently, we're looking at awarding a prize to the first person to appear on the Veteran Malestrom Arena leaderboards for each megaserver, but still need to get those plans solidified.

We'll unsticky this thread in the meantime, but will leave it open for discussion.

yeah let´s make a contest where the first person wins. in europe it will probably be a person who starts playing as soon as the servers are online in the morning (remember europe is patched at 2 am or something like that). but thats only fair, isn´t it? why should somebody who is working or has a slow internet connection have a chance.
you should stop this whole contest. each proposal is worse then the one before.

HeroOfNone

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We talked about this on the livestream today but just to officially bring this thread up to speed, we will be moving this to be a live contest, rather than on the PTS. There's no guarantee we can copy additional NA characters with the EU character copy next week, and we want it to be fair for everyone.

We'll work on adjusting the rules and prizing, and will re-post everything soon. Currently, we're looking at awarding a prize to the first person to appear on the Veteran Malestrom Arena leaderboards for each megaserver, but still need to get those plans solidified.

We'll unsticky this thread in the meantime, but will leave it open for discussion.

Gina, would you consider having a drawing to reward folks that participate in completing the arena rather than the best completion time? I like the idea that folks that took the time to test the arena to find these bugs get a chance to get the DLC or some reward.

Changing this to a live event challenge doesn’t reward the folks that spent the time testing (which seemed considerably less than Imperial City) and it only acts as a rebate after you buy the DLC/ESO plus, since you can't participate without the DLC, and to get the prize of Orsinium you'd have to have Orsinium?

=(

BuggeX

the Arena on vet is difficult right?

why dont make a challenge whoever is able to complet the Arena within 1 week after releas is getting a Price?

Nifty2g

Just to remind people, it's a competition, it's competitive there isn't meant to be over 10 winners lol
This type of thing is a way for them to promote content in game and shows fun in game competition something zos don't do that often if all this is the first I've heard of it

HeroOfNone

Nifty2g wrote: »

Just to remind people, it's a competition, it's competitive there isn't meant to be over 10 winners lol
This type of thing is a way for them to promote content in game and shows fun in game competition something zos don't do that often if all this is the first I've heard of it

It was a little more than that though, it was a contest for folks that spent the time and effort testing and it was a chance to get the new dlc without paying for it. With this change it negates both of those benefits.

Zinaroth

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We talked about this on the livestream today but just to officially bring this thread up to speed, we will be moving this to be a live contest, rather than on the PTS. There's no guarantee we can copy additional NA characters with the EU character copy next week, and we want it to be fair for everyone.

We'll work on adjusting the rules and prizing, and will re-post everything soon. Currently, we're looking at awarding a prize to the first person to appear on the Veteran Malestrom Arena leaderboards for each megaserver, but still need to get those plans solidified.

We'll unsticky this thread in the meantime, but will leave it open for discussion.

Don't make it the first to appear, this will only encourage people who are able to get up early and sit online to wait for the client to update, and who have very high download speed, to participate.

Make it the highest score after a week or something, or within a time limit.

Also it's better to split the price pool up in four and award one person from each class leaderboard. Instead of encouraging people to only play the class that eventually will dominate the arena.

My bet is we will only see magicka NBs compete for this if it goes down like the way you posted.

asneakybanana

Zinaroth wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We talked about this on the livestream today but just to officially bring this thread up to speed, we will be moving this to be a live contest, rather than on the PTS. There's no guarantee we can copy additional NA characters with the EU character copy next week, and we want it to be fair for everyone.

We'll work on adjusting the rules and prizing, and will re-post everything soon. Currently, we're looking at awarding a prize to the first person to appear on the Veteran Malestrom Arena leaderboards for each megaserver, but still need to get those plans solidified.

We'll unsticky this thread in the meantime, but will leave it open for discussion.

Don't make it the first to appear, this will only encourage people who are able to get up early and sit online to wait for the client to update, and who have very high download speed, to participate.

Make it the highest score after a week or something, or within a time limit.

Also it's better to split the price pool up in four and award one person from each class leaderboard. Instead of encouraging people to only play the class that eventually will dominate the arena.

My bet is we will only see magicka NBs compete for this if it goes down like the way you posted.

Sorc is OP as well. Hardened ward does wonders.

MrTtheDK

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We talked about this on the livestream today but just to officially bring this thread up to speed, we will be moving this to be a live contest, rather than on the PTS. There's no guarantee we can copy additional NA characters with the EU character copy next week, and we want it to be fair for everyone.

We'll work on adjusting the rules and prizing, and will re-post everything soon. Currently, we're looking at awarding a prize to the first person to appear on the Veteran Malestrom Arena leaderboards for each megaserver, but still need to get those plans solidified.

We'll unsticky this thread in the meantime, but will leave it open for discussion.

Something you might want to consider is this would encourage the user to use all the buffs in all the rounds as opposed to being a top score. You could just set a time like a week and keep the same rules as before.

Nikkor

I'm reading through this and I have a concern. I play a lot on the ps4 and with a lot of different players. I'm all about this being difficult to complete. But it if it's difficult to complete for pc gamers with a year of champion points more than console. Will there be different diff untied or will console players need to just wait 6 months or so while they earn champ points before getting up to par?

asneakybanana

Nikkor wrote: »

I'm reading through this and I have a concern. I play a lot on the ps4 and with a lot of different players. I'm all about this being difficult to complete. But it if it's difficult to complete for pc gamers with a year of champion points more than console. Will there be different diff untied or will console players need to just wait 6 months or so while they earn champ points before getting up to par?

God you console people have no idea lol. Champion points werent a thing until march and most people started with 70. By the time that console rolled around in june players that had grinded and levelled toons and played pretty much every day were around 300. Now the average dedicated pc player is probably in the ballpark of 500. But thats beside the point. Its hard because its broke. It will get slightly easier when they fix the mitigation bug as we will be able to do full damage on mobs but they also mentioned they will be upping mob health to make sure it doesnt get too easy. I would say a dedicated player w/ 90 cp would be able to get through the first 5 rounds of vet as it is right now. Then round 6+ it starts to get a little more dicey but i think would still be doable if they have the proper build which is basically mag nb or shield stack sorc/temp.