Midyear Mayhem Review : The Good, The Bad, and The Screenshots

Recremen

The Good

• Double AP is always correct
• Reward boxes for quests and from reward mail was an extra, unexpected, but delightful bonus
• All that gold jewelry
• Encouraged, at least to an extent, participation in all types of PvP except dueling
• Trouble like logon issues and server crashes were fixed relatively promptly
• New servers were apparently already prepped to launch in case the pop was too high?? Excellent move, though highly unexpected. Said servers were also launched in a timely manner
• The laurels from the achievement are GORGEOUS (except apparently on Argonians I hear, oops)
• Great little bits of lore for the event, and it's nice to have my own collection of The Song of Pelinal!
• No annoyingly-protracted followup to get the rewards for the event. Perfect delivery.
• THE SCROLL BUFF. Absolutely flawless implementation on that one. Can be used at any time, even while mounted, even in PvP, even while you already have the buff active, and it just tops off the timer without any more hassle and without being removed from your inventory. It could not have been done better.

The Bad

• Lag and disconnects are always incorrect
• No event extension despite broken achievements and the aforementioned disconnects and long queues
• Mayhem crowns were so radically different on Khajiit compared to human and elf offerings that they straight up weren't worth getting
• Can't dye laurels despite them being hats
• The event brought out the worst in people and also brought out the worst people. Problem behavior, unsportly conduct, intentional trolling, etc. were all at peak levels I truly haven't seen in years. Probably nothing you can do about it, but it's still a bad element of the event.
• There didn't seem to be any available communication regarding which PvP servers would be best for which people. Poor little nubmunsters were filing into the more competitive campaigns, getting slaughtered in droves and clogging the queues. At least at first.
• The commitment to offering nearly-useless dye stamps and to not communicating anything about it despite frequent criticism is honestly a more breathtaking display of endurance than anything I could muster for the event itself.
• Not much in the way of optional followup lore and vignettes for the event. I heard some lady in a dress (that I wore better) giving a speech about spilling the blood of elves, there were some extra NPCs I could talk to, but nothing seemed to change day to day like with the Jester festival. What was there was great, but it seemed like the thinnest pretense.

Also lots of great screenshot opportunities.




EDIT : upon further review and going through my 10-million AP's worth of Rewards For The Worthy, I've also decided that another serious The Bad is how many gosh darn forward camps I got and how they now clog up my inventory. You know those can't be put into guild banks, right??

PsychoROFLit

BAD: people who only farm and not playing in Cyro like they should to play

purple-magicb16_ESO

I agree with you. Not much changed about Cyro during this festival. The only change I saw: complete a quest or reach the next ap level, get a box. I also was hoping for an extension. I had very limited play time in the past week. I still don't see the need for the scroll to double ap gains. Just give it and don't put a time restriction. All in all, had tons of fun and never got kicked from server or experienced heavy lag. I'd definitely call my experienece a success.

Wreuntzylla

Recremen wrote: »

The Good

• Double AP is always correct
• Reward boxes for quests and from reward mail was an extra, unexpected, but delightful bonus
• All that gold jewelry
• Encouraged, at least to an extent, participation in all types of PvP except dueling
• Trouble like logon issues and server crashes were fixed relatively promptly
• New servers were apparently already prepped to launch in case the pop was too high?? Excellent move, though highly unexpected. Said servers were also launched in a timely manner
• The laurels from the achievement are GORGEOUS (except apparently on Argonians I hear, oops)
• Great little bits of lore for the event, and it's nice to have my own collection of The Song of Pelinal!
• No annoyingly-protracted followup to get the rewards for the event. Perfect delivery.
• THE SCROLL BUFF. Absolutely flawless implementation on that one. Can be used at any time, even while mounted, even in PvP, even while you already have the buff active, and it just tops off the timer without any more hassle and without being removed from your inventory. It could not have been done better.

The Bad

• Lag and disconnects are always incorrect
• No event extension despite broken achievements and the aforementioned disconnects and long queues
• Mayhem crowns were so radically different on Khajiit compared to human and elf offerings that they straight up weren't worth getting
• Can't dye laurels despite them being hats
• The event brought out the worst in people and also brought out the worst people. Problem behavior, unsportly conduct, intentional trolling, etc. were all at peak levels I truly haven't seen in years. Probably nothing you can do about it, but it's still a bad element of the event.
• There didn't seem to be any available communication regarding which PvP servers would be best for which people. Poor little nubmunsters were filing into the more competitive campaigns, getting slaughtered in droves and clogging the queues. At least at first.
• The commitment to offering nearly-useless dye stamps and to not communicating anything about it despite frequent criticism is honestly a more breathtaking display of endurance than anything I could muster for the event itself.
• Not much in the way of optional followup lore and vignettes for the event. I heard some lady in a dress (that I wore better) giving a speech about spilling the blood of elves, there were some extra NPCs I could talk to, but nothing seemed to change day to day like with the Jester festival. What was there was great, but it seemed like the thinnest pretense.

Also lots of great screenshot opportunities.

I have upgraded my hardware and the game still doesn't look that good to me. Outside of PvP I play on ultra. Is there a secret???

The difference is large generally, but the facial features are so lifelike in your screenshot.

Goobertron

I think the 'real' Good was the exposure. Lots more players were playing in Cyro who had never been there before. Also those who had tried it previously and found it a little over-whelming gave it another try and probably enjoyed it more since there seemed to be more 'grouping' than normal.

I, for one, do not do well in PvP (my son says I 'suck' at combat and he would be correct) so I don't go to Cyrodiil much unless I am bored and just want to get the crap knocked out of me every 2 seconds. But I wanted to support this event and joined one of the new campaigns ZOS created and well, I had a BLAST!
Did I die a lot? Sure.
Did I learn a lot? Yes, definitely!!
Did I get better after a while? Sure did.
Did I find some great groups to join? Yep
Will I go back now that the event is over? Yes, I will

And the most important thing? It only took a week for me to complete all the achievements on the event which is something I didn't expect to do at all.

Were there bad things? Yes, but the Good outweighed the Bad by a long shot.

rhapsodious

Yeah, I'm used to Argonians being an afterthought for facial accessories but the laurel is impressively meh. You can barely see it, and I'm not even sure how it's supposed to work - it looks more like my eyebrows got threaded than anything. At least my suction-cup Morag Tong goggles still look cool. And the Diadem from the crown... crown pack looks great on my main.

I feel like the event was, beyond the first couple of days where it was admittedly a mess, pretty fun. I'm looking forward to it next year. And I made like 4 alliance war ranks this event! Now I'm a colonel. Would have wanted to get up to Tribune or whichever first one is that gives you the crescent moon but I can do that. And it got my friends and I running BGs, so I think it got a lot more people more than nominally interested in PVP.

I think as long as "seasoned PVPers" continue to be cordial to the new or the rusty (and I'm not saying they were all jerks, far from it! just... there were definitely a few people I ran into indignant that there were scrubs in their PVP) that this event will have contributed to Cyrodiil's longevity. (:

Recremen

PsychoROFLit wrote: »

BAD: people who only farm and not playing in Cyro like they should to play

@PsychoROFLit

Unless you're talking about keep trading I don't know what you're getting at. "Farming" isn't actually a thing. Unless you're talking about "farming noobs", which is just regular fighting but with an unsportly air of superiority about it.

Recremen

purple-magicb16_ESO wrote: »

I agree with you. Not much changed about Cyro during this festival. The only change I saw: complete a quest or reach the next ap level, get a box. I also was hoping for an extension. I had very limited play time in the past week. I still don't see the need for the scroll to double ap gains. Just give it and don't put a time restriction. All in all, had tons of fun and never got kicked from server or experienced heavy lag. I'd definitely call my experienece a success.

@purple-magicb16_ESO

Having it be tied to an items is probably way easier than going into each individual character's data structure and removing the buff. With the item it should all be done in basically one location of the code.

Recremen

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

I have upgraded my hardware and the game still doesn't look that good to me. Outside of PvP I play on ultra. Is there a secret???

The difference is large generally, but the facial features are so lifelike in your screenshot.

@Wreuntzylla

The only special thing I've done is turn the MIP distance or whatever it is down. I don't use any special shaders or anything. Have you upgraded your monitor as well as your video card?

Jemcrystal

Reddit.

Seems people had mostly a positive view.

StormWylf

@Recremen Outstanding review!

newtinmpls

Well

I occasionally PvP, so I was familiar with the pain in the $%#^$ which is resetting your "home" and "guest" campaigns.

I did like the gift boxes, the items weren't always what I wanted, but such is life. It was fun to get them at all. I really was glad that alliance style materials were included, that was really nice. I've never seen so many forward camps in use, I now understand better how to use them (I didn't get one myself, but I did get to rez into them many times).

For this event, partly to make it easier for new players, or people new to PvP, I would have said it would be best to disable any cost for resetting guest campaign so that people could get in to somewhere to play on any given day/time (as much as was possible).

PS I think farming refers to those folks who just redo the same set of limited activities (retake the same few farms/mines or refight the same keep) over and over and over and .... you get the idea. They aren't there to accomplish anything other than accumulate AP.

.

Recremen

newtinmpls wrote: »

Well

I occasionally PvP, so I was familiar with the pain in the $%#^$ which is resetting your "home" and "guest" campaigns.

I did like the gift boxes, the items weren't always what I wanted, but such is life. It was fun to get them at all. I really was glad that alliance style materials were included, that was really nice. I've never seen so many forward camps in use, I now understand better how to use them (I didn't get one myself, but I did get to rez into them many times).

For this event, partly to make it easier for new players, or people new to PvP, I would have said it would be best to disable any cost for resetting guest campaign so that people could get in to somewhere to play on any given day/time (as much as was possible).

PS I think farming refers to those folks who just redo the same set of limited activities (retake the same few farms/mines or refight the same keep) over and over and over and .... you get the idea. They aren't there to accomplish anything other than accumulate AP.

.

@newtinmpls

See, that definition of farming doesn't hold up at all. There are a very limited number of objectives : 18 keeps, 54 resources, three outposts, and a fewchokepoints/open field areas where fighting is likely to happen. There is a high degree of interdependence for most of those objectives. For example, if you take a keep you are going to take the resources. If you hit an outpost then you either have moved through or are going to move through one of the chokepoints and open field areas to go hit the next keep. For anyone playing more than an hour "accomplishing anything" is indistinguishable from "farming".

Just as an example, for most of the day my group was very small last week, fielding at most eight people. We did some fighting at keeps, most especially in the defense or recapture of our home keeps, but most of the time we were up hopping between Pact and Daggerfall sides hitting resources and pulling people off to fight that way. Usually we would face groups more or less our size until they got tired of "getting farmed" (READ : being fought like normal people literally indistinguishable from any other kind of fighting) and they'd get 20-30 people to come out and try to chase us. This took a lot of pressure off of our home keeps and let the larger, zergier groups accomplish more objectives while a large force was chasing eight people. And even when people didn't come initially, flipping resources still transitus-locks a keep, so we were still disrupting the enemy.

So yeah, I'm really not buying the whole "AP farming" thing outside of intentional and coordinated keep flipping between factions, and they put the timer in there to prevent that from being too much of an issue. The only time I hear someone say that they're going to go farm AP is when they're talking about farming "scrubs" for AP, which is a bit too condescending for people in my guild to be saying.

purple-magicb16_ESO

Recremen wrote: »

purple-magicb16_ESO wrote: »

I agree with you. Not much changed about Cyro during this festival. The only change I saw: complete a quest or reach the next ap level, get a box. I also was hoping for an extension. I had very limited play time in the past week. I still don't see the need for the scroll to double ap gains. Just give it and don't put a time restriction. All in all, had tons of fun and never got kicked from server or experienced heavy lag. I'd definitely call my experienece a success.

@purple-magicb16_ESO

Having it be tied to an items is probably way easier than going into each individual character's data structure and removing the buff. With the item it should all be done in basically one location of the code.

True, but in non-tech terms they could insert it as a flag or switch. Maybe a "festival" switch that allows them to make specific code active by defining it in the switch (i.e. event=mayhem festival, so run this code between these dates). The event handler could even be activated by a date (I personally think that would be inviting the devil to dinner tho - lol!). But I do see your point on placing it on an item to activate for greater control. In the end, you're probably right. As a developer (long time ago), I do recall the KISS method being paramount ;-)

BFT88

The Bad: Men'do and the 50 AD he ran with constantly.

Megabear

The Good

Akaviri motifs, AP, Hakeijo

The Bad

WhiteCoatSyndrome

I would like to second the complaint regarding the scanty lore. Covenant side didn't even get a scene between the lady and her minion (Dominion and Pact had her bad-mouthing elves and him trying to gently coax her into stopping because we're surrounded by elves). They kept the incredibly corny 'AND DOUBLE YOUR REWARDS!!!' line I complained about when it was on the PTS. (The only one who sounded at all like she was participating in a conversation and not advertising in a video game was the orc warrior lady; everyone else who spoke on the subject was painful to listen to.) YES it's a PvP event, but I don't believe that to be an excuse to shirk on these sorts of things.

On a side note, it was my understanding (courtesy of the single lorebook sitting next to the preacher-lady and a few scattered reports of loot drops on the forums) that they added four more 'Song of Pelinal' books. Did anyone grab the text from those? I gather the Water-thinker book next to the preacher was one of them, but it mentioned '9-12' so that leaves three more.

Recremen

BFT88 wrote: »

The Bad: Men'do and the 50 AD he ran with constantly.

@BFT88

If by "constantly" you mean "when pushing/defending keeps" then yeah, obviously, there were other AD groups to attack and defend with the small crew I was helping to run throughout the event. The hell were we supposed to do with 50+ DC and 50+ EP showing up at said keeps, sometimes at the same time? I know Fantasia is amazing but we can't fight THAT many with just 8-12, let's be realistic.

In any case we were, in fact, mostly hopping around resources this week trying to pull off smaller fights, starting to hit keeps once we hit 12. Small fights, unfortunately, would often turn into 20-30+ DC/EP responding to resources, but hey at least that left the larger pug AD guilds some breathing room down south so they could secure, recapture home keeps.

But, let me guess... you were innocent in all of this and immediately ran away as soon as more than 10 of your faction were stacked in one location, since large fights are evil and definitely not intended by the developers.

Morgul667

BAD

LAG

Cannot enter home campaign nor play with guildmates who arrived and queued earlier

Lots of loading screen

newtinmpls

I'd said:

newtinmpls wrote: »

I think farming refers to those folks who just redo the same set of limited activities (retake the same few farms/mines or refight the same keep) over and over and over and .... you get the idea. They aren't there to accomplish anything other than accumulate AP.

Recremen wrote: »

See, that definition of farming doesn't hold up at all.

<much snippage>

I'm really not buying the whole "AP farming" thing outside of intentional and coordinated keep flipping between factions, and they put the timer in there to prevent that from being too much of an issue. The only time I hear someone say that they're going to go farm AP is when they're talking about farming "scrubs" for AP, which is a bit too condescending for people in my guild to be saying.

Sounds like you have a definition that works for you.

I got my use of "farming in Cyrodill" from many invites (and some participation) in quite repetitive activities such as circle around a keep, take all the resources, do this back and forth between 2-3 keeps with others from other alliances jumping in too, but only rarely is there direct conflict between the alliances. It's mostly AP earned from taking and re-taking the keeps.

For me, it's not so much more fun than running the rounds of wasps and mats in Craglorn, so I don't tend to do it much. It's the occasional conflict, and the occasional ganker ... and to be honest the occasional zerg-of-a-color-that's-not-mine that keeps the adrenaline up.