How is this ok? Premades and their effect on BGs

Venom4You

To be fair. Many (former) small scalers expected BGs to become a meaningful ranked mode where small scale premades could finally find the challenging fights against like minded people in order to climb the ladder of the leaderboards. Unfortunately ZOS gutted the system in order to make it "sth" for "everyone" - which in my opinion was a big mistake. Most small scalers I know never have bothered with BGs after ZOS announced its fixed 4v4v4 with an illusion of meaningful ranking where the most important factor seems to be your playtime, not your skill.

I really hope they will either restructure BGs at one point in order to please the already small competitive community of ESO, or at least create a sub format that allows to create custom games including a new ranking system. I will keep my hopes up.

Waffennacht

Venom4You wrote: »

To be fair. Many (former) small scalers expected BGs to become a meaningful ranked mode where small scale premades could finally find the challenging fights against like minded people in order to climb the ladder of the leaderboards. Unfortunately ZOS gutted the system in order to make it "sth" for "everyone" - which in my opinion was a big mistake. Most small scalers I know never have bothered with BGs after ZOS announced its fixed 4v4v4 with an illusion of meaningful ranking where the most important factor seems to be your playtime, not your skill.

I really hope they will either restructure BGs at one point in order to please the already small competitive community of ESO, or at least create a sub format that allows to create custom games including a new ranking system. I will keep my hopes up.

I'm pretty confident they will. As time goes on I do expect something interesting.

I personally think CP and non CP "seasons" should exist. Similar to 30 day campaigns in conjunction with the already existing leaderboards. This could give the ranked system so many people want and allow for both CP and non CP fans a shot at bigger rewards.

I'm thinking with Morrowind being apart of Summerset we will see even more players come to bgs

Seraphayel

Premade groups are ruining battlegrounds. I don't blame them, it's ZOS fault but they make battlegrounds quite undesirable.

Most premades are made of two or more Nightblades/Stealthers, they sneak up on you and kill you in stunlock. Very effective but very frustrating as well because you can't do anything. And no, this isn't a l2p issue.

Aliyavana

Another friggin premade and it seems that top players you see in cyro take advantage of the bg situation and que in 4s.

rumple9

I just put for fast Ap don't care if my team wins loses or draws

Nihility42

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

You know, people whine about this nonstop on the Bungie forums. It's a team game, you make your team, you work together, you win. It's not a hard concept. I don't get why anyone thinks a bunch of lone wolves running off doing whatever they want should dominate teams working together. It's stupid. If you're tired of getting steamrolled, stop being a lone wolf, get a team together, and get good.

That's missing the point and creating a massive strawman. As a primarily solo pug player, I don't want "lone wolves running off doing whatever they want." I want decent lone wolves that can work together to consistently have a chance. There are plenty of matches where my team of randoms wordlessly works as a unit. Some game we dominate, some are tight battles with other pug groups. Even when you get a bad team it can still be fun. What is never fun is having a promising team and getting smashed by a team all on voice coms.

And I also play with friends in BGs, but I like playing at odd times. The group finder should allow me to e fair games alone if I want. And for prenades to do the same.

ecru

BG's can be rescued by implementing the same systems other mmo's with successful pvp have, like WoW and Rift. That means TWO TEAMS, larger teams for general pug queues, premades queueing against mostly premades, small scale matches for more serious players, and a solid matchmaking system.

ZOS has failed on all of these parts by trying to be different. Different isn't always better, and in this case it's much worse.

Feanor

If the premade "farms" you then you're simply not good enough. Watering the game down to alleviate any semblance of challenge isn't fun either. Vet BGs never were advertised as noob friendly, that's what the below 50 BGs are.

Seraphayel

Feanor wrote: »

If the premade "farms" you then you're simply not good enough. Watering the game down to alleviate any semblance of challenge isn't fun either. Vet BGs never were advertised as noob friendly, that's what the below 50 BGs are.

Not good enough? *lol*

How can you stand against a 4 man coordinated group that consists of 1 tank/healbot, 1 heal/dps and 2 stealthers? It's impossible, even if your random 4 man group has got some skill.

Challenge is great. But there need to be the same rules and conditions for everyone. That's why in sports you have different leagues for different levels.

usmcjdking

I agree with @Thogard

As a fairly decent PVPer, you get two types of BGs. BGs with no premades where there is a presence of good PVPers turns into 'whose less than stellar teammates feed the least'. And fights with premades where the premade is often the focus of attention from the other two groups and you get a somewhat competitive match.

Maybe one out of every 10 are complete premade roflstomps.

Thogard

usmcjdking wrote: »

I agree with @Thogard

As a fairly decent PVPer, you get two types of BGs. BGs with no premades where there is a presence of good PVPers turns into 'whose less than stellar teammates feed the least'. And fights with premades where the premade is often the focus of attention from the other two groups and you get a somewhat competitive match.

Maybe one out of every 10 are complete premade roflstomps.

Yup! I completely agree.

At the high end of the PvP spectrum, a 4v4 is less about who's the better player, and more about which team doesn't have a weak link. As soon as you can turn a 4v4 into a 4v3, you've won. When the 4v4 gvg tournament happened, in EVERY match I participated in and watched, the first team to kill someone was the winner.

When you remove all the weak links, it then becomes about build composition and how many wardens / templars you can stack into a team.

Zinaroth

rumple9 wrote: »

I just put for fast Ap don't care if my team wins loses or draws

This is my mentatlity aswell.
Whenever I start caring about PvP in this game is whenever I stop losing interest in doing it.
Playing a Stamplar since launch has given me a very high tolerance of being stomped on in PvP in this game - but if I start caring about how unfair balance is between my spec and others or how easily a small group of players can stomp hordes of solo players I get triggered and the game stops being fun.

So I stopped caring and whenever people give me *** for being bad because they managed to gank me out of stealth, nuke me down in 3 seconds because I was out of rescources or permatank my ass to exhaustion only to have their friends or alliance members steamroll me when they finally arrive, I just tell them to roll Stamplar and show me how it is done (they are never Stamplars obviously).

houjo2000b16_ESO wrote: »

The problem with putting premades in with solo players is that you drive solo players out of pvp, which makes queues longer and longer for everyone, kills the pvp aspect of the game and ultimately you see what you're seeing now with the new xpac- no new pvp content because what's already there isn't being used by players enough to warrant the money and time into developing more pvp content.

No matter how much people cling to this being an ONLINE game and therefor should be played TOGETHER WITH FRIENDs the above argument is the truth - but like someone else said you will always get players coming into threads like this and bashing people who argue a change because these players are not interested in what is better for the game but only want to further their personal agenda of maintaining status quo so they can keep farming unorganized players in BGs whenever the population in Cyrodiil is low - after all it's fun to own "noobs".

Thogard

Zinaroth wrote: »

rumple9 wrote: »

I just put for fast Ap don't care if my team wins loses or draws

This is my mentatlity aswell.
Whenever I start caring about PvP in this game is whenever I stop losing interest in doing it.
Playing a Stamplar since launch has given me a very high tolerance of being stomped on in PvP in this game - but if I start caring about how unfair balance is between my spec and others or how easily a small group of players can stomp hordes of solo players I get triggered and the game stops being fun.

So I stopped caring and whenever people give me *** for being bad because they managed to gank me out of stealth, nuke me down in 3 seconds because I was out of rescources or permatank my ass to exhaustion only to have their friends or alliance members steamroll me when they finally arrive, I just tell them to roll Stamplar and show me how it is done (they are never Stamplars obviously).

houjo2000b16_ESO wrote: »

The problem with putting premades in with solo players is that you drive solo players out of pvp, which makes queues longer and longer for everyone, kills the pvp aspect of the game and ultimately you see what you're seeing now with the new xpac- no new pvp content because what's already there isn't being used by players enough to warrant the money and time into developing more pvp content.

No matter how much people cling to this being an ONLINE game and therefor should be played TOGETHER WITH FRIENDs the above argument is the truth - but like someone else said you will always get players coming into threads like this and bashing people who argue a change because these players are not interested in what is better for the game but only want to further their personal agenda of maintaining status quo so they can keep farming unorganized players in BGs whenever the population in Cyrodiil is low - after all it's fun to own "noobs".

It's a lot easier to farm "noob" players in cyrodil than it is in BGs. The No CP change made sure of that.

Murador178

Thogard wrote: »

Zinaroth wrote: »

rumple9 wrote: »

I just put for fast Ap don't care if my team wins loses or draws

This is my mentatlity aswell.
Whenever I start caring about PvP in this game is whenever I stop losing interest in doing it.
Playing a Stamplar since launch has given me a very high tolerance of being stomped on in PvP in this game - but if I start caring about how unfair balance is between my spec and others or how easily a small group of players can stomp hordes of solo players I get triggered and the game stops being fun.

So I stopped caring and whenever people give me *** for being bad because they managed to gank me out of stealth, nuke me down in 3 seconds because I was out of rescources or permatank my ass to exhaustion only to have their friends or alliance members steamroll me when they finally arrive, I just tell them to roll Stamplar and show me how it is done (they are never Stamplars obviously).

houjo2000b16_ESO wrote: »

The problem with putting premades in with solo players is that you drive solo players out of pvp, which makes queues longer and longer for everyone, kills the pvp aspect of the game and ultimately you see what you're seeing now with the new xpac- no new pvp content because what's already there isn't being used by players enough to warrant the money and time into developing more pvp content.

No matter how much people cling to this being an ONLINE game and therefor should be played TOGETHER WITH FRIENDs the above argument is the truth - but like someone else said you will always get players coming into threads like this and bashing people who argue a change because these players are not interested in what is better for the game but only want to further their personal agenda of maintaining status quo so they can keep farming unorganized players in BGs whenever the population in Cyrodiil is low - after all it's fun to own "noobs".

It's a lot easier to farm "noob" players in cyrodil than it is in BGs. The No CP change made sure of that.

So I'd prefer a scaling up system - just give low CP players in BGs max CP. No CP is bad balanced imo and proc sets are alot too strong in no CP. Just my opinion so, I got bored with bgs anyways since either u play solo and end up in a 2-3 man team vs 4 premades and get stomped or u stomp with ur friends - 500:0 wins arent fun either ...

ToRelax

On one hand, a working matchmaking system that allows for competitive matches would be highly desireable. With no paywall, a ranking system in some way based off player skill and only two teams, it might actually work.

On the other hand, we have players crying about getting stomped by premades and assuming their opponents used every advantage they could to farm random groups in battlegrounds (seriously?). As it is, few premades I've ever been part of used voice chat to coordinate and when we did, it was usually when we could actually expect a fight we might not win with equal numbers otherwise. Not to mention group composition, synergies etc., that's stuff for competitive environments - which battlegrounds clearly aren't right now. Hell, in most of the modes, we even just do our own thing, not coordinating at all.
The fact is, bad players are getting stomped. And apparently some of them send whispers in offline mode before going to cry on the forums . And chances are, whatever zos might do to make battlegrounds a more fair and competitive experience, that won't change.

Drachenfier

Tetrafy wrote: »

Disagree, the que times would be way too long for pre mades.

Probably, but it either wouldn't change for pug queues, or would actually pop faster for them.

What does that tell you?

Thogard

I’m a proponent of the separate queues, but making both queues available for both types of queues. Allow solo queuers to check BOTH boxes and they might get grouped up with others to fight in the premade queue. Allow the premades check both boxes and to queue for the group queue and solo queue, but if they got in the solo queue the teams would be randomized and they wouldn’t stay together. I’m aware that that opens it up to potential exploits but tbh that potential is already in the game. It would keep friends in the same match, even if they aren’t on the same team.

That system would keep the BGs populated and the queues moving.

CompM4s

so the problem is that in a small team based pvp arena, people are actually creating teams and playing. Sounds like what the developers wanted to happen...

VaranisArano

CompM4s wrote: »

so the problem is that in a small team based pvp arena, people are actually creating teams and playing. Sounds like what the developers wanted to happen...

So the "problem" is that in a small team-based pvp arena that also allows teams of completely random players, random players find themselves matched up with pre-made teams...sounds like what teh developers wanted to happen, sure.

But when those random players meet the same pre-made team again and again, getting crushed by them again and again, with no way to opt out of the same queue and no way to get better in a meaningful way, their only option is to keep getting farmed or quit for a while, and some get demoralized enough by the experience to just plain quit...which is probably not what the developers intended, you know?

I could be wrong. Maybe the developers really intended for the Battlegrounds population to be small enough that random players can wind up facing the same pre-made group again and again so that fights start resembling throwing themselves at a Cyrodiil resource farm group and wiping again and again...

I doubt it, personally. I suspect the developers thought the BG pop would be high enough that it wouldn't be a problem. But it clearly is and here we are.

(No offense to the "get friends and git gud" crowd, but that's a long term solution that requires a player to not be completely demoralized by the experience AND have/make friends who like Battlegrounds. All of us who succeeded at PVP put up with the long, hard learning curve, but its a problem for the already low pop BGs if new players are driven off because in my experience, its hard to learn anything whilst you are getting farmed by a group you've got no hope of matching right now without a lot more help and practice - aka a long term solution.
Moreover, the "get friends and git gud" solution only creates more pre-made groups out of those persistant enough to stick around. Which is great for the health of Battlegrounds amongst experienced PVPers, but creates a gauntlet for newer and random players who lack those advantages.

Also, no offense to the "Go to the Below Level 50 BGs!" crowd, but that's not really a workable solution for anyone who's trying to learn to PVP or wants to experience Battlegrounds on a character that's above level 50. Which I imagine is most people, I might be wrong, but I started PVPing with a high level character and so never experienced the joys of low-level PVP. I know that "go do low level BGs" would not have been a good solution for me. )



I guess what it comes down to is this:

Organized pre-made groups often but not always have advantages of superior experience and communication over the PUGs they fight.

Do we simply accept the status quo in which pre-mades and PUGs fight each other with no option for pre-mades to choose to fight other pre-mades or PUGs to fight other PUGs?

Or do we advocate for an option in the queue for groups to fight groups that have similar levels of advantage, or to opt to fight anyone and everyone. Pre-mades would have the option to fight other premades or random pugs who agreed to fight pre-mades. Random PUGs would have the option to only fight other PUGs or to be included in the pool to also fight premade groups.

Obviously, the quickest queue pop would go to randoms willing to fight anyone and everyone.

Admittedly, that solution benefits pre-made groups who want to play against experienced players and PUGs who want to avoid being farmed by the same groups again and again at the expense of premade groups who want to fight and farm random players.

Open to suggestions and corrections, but I think its worth being honest about what we are discussing here, the impacts it would have, and how we can make Battlegrounds better for experienced players and new players alike. People have been pointing out from the beginning that getting smashed by the same group over and over with no option than to "get friends and git gud", play low level, or quit is demoralizing and hurts the retention of new Battlegrounds players. So its a worthwhile discussion to have about what can be done to address that problem.


TLDR: The problem isn't the existence of pre-mades. Don't be disingenuous. The problem is that players getting crushed by the same groups over and over again get demoralized and quit because they're only options are:
A. "Get friends and git gud" - a long term solution that requires not being completely demoralizes aAND making/having friends who like NGs
B. Low-Level queuing with a new character - not everyone wants to or should have to make a low level character to experience and learn battlegrounds. I suggest most players want to play with the characters they already have.
C. Taking a break or quitting. - Battlegrounds already has a small population, so this hurts everyone.

A possible solution is to give pre-mades the option to queue against other pre-mades or randoms and give randoms the option to queues against just randoms or against everyone including pre-mades. Random players who queue against everyone will get the fastest queue time.

Aliyavana

My teammates said, "If this is how all bgs are like I'm gonna just not do them, *** bgs!"
How is this ok at all. Kills any motivation for any new players to battlegrounds

Aliyavana

My teammates gave up and stayed in spawn after being wrecked so hard, along with the other team losing badly, is it zos intentions to leave it like this? having pugs avoid the gameplay?

TelvanniWizard

aliyavana wrote: »

My teammates gave up and stayed in spawn after being wrecked so hard, along with the other team losing badly, is it zos intentions to leave it like this? having pugs avoid the gameplay?

Sad. Shameful. We NEED separate queues.

Drachenfier

Problem is, if queues are separated 90% of the premades will stop queuing, because they are only in it to steamroll. It happened when Rift separated the queues, it happened when Swtor implemented the 8v8 premade queues....most of them will run at the first sign of actual competition

VaranisArano

Drachenfier wrote: »

Problem is, if queues are separated 90% of the premades will stop queuing, because they are only in it to steamroll. It happened when Rift separated the queues, it happened when Swtor implemented the 8v8 premade queues....most of them will run at the first sign of actual competition

They might stop queuing entirely now that they can't roflstomp randoms, sure.

They might also stop queuing as full premades, instead teaming up in 2s and 3s, filling the random queue and still giving other random players a chance.

I confess, I havent heard a lot of the good premade groups going "Ill quit if I can't farm random PUGs anymore!" Maybe I've missed it?

Drachenfier

VaranisArano wrote: »

Drachenfier wrote: »

Problem is, if queues are separated 90% of the premades will stop queuing, because they are only in it to steamroll. It happened when Rift separated the queues, it happened when Swtor implemented the 8v8 premade queues....most of them will run at the first sign of actual competition

They might stop queuing entirely now that they can't roflstomp randoms, sure.

They might also stop queuing as full premades, instead teaming up in 2s and 3s, filling the random queue and still giving other random players a chance.

I confess, I havent heard a lot of the good premade groups going "Ill quit if I can't farm random PUGs anymore!" Maybe I've missed it?

Of course they don't say it, it's just that history has proven it to be true. Rift is a good example: When the game launched, lots of premades were steamrolling pugs and killing the bg queues (threads like these were clogging up the Rift forums at the time), so Trion instituted a premade only queue alongside the pug queue, which rather quickly caused the premade population to disappear. All of those premades that were steamrolling pugs for weeks on end were suddenly nowhere to be found, and the actual competitive premade guys were complaining they had no one to queue against.

Trion ended up reverting the change after only a few weeks, and suddenly premades were everywhere again, like magic!.

Another example of these people's mindset: back in EQ2's open world pvp heyday, we ran a dedicated group that hunted gank squads - those guys that would roam zones picking off questers, etc. When soloers started complaining about a gank squad farming them, we'd run out there and kill the gank squad, and, amazingly, they'd all disappear afterwards, nowhere to be found. This happened so many times it became running joke on EQ2F.

Bottom line is, most premades are there simply to farm easymode.

TelvanniWizard

As long as we have a pug queue I don´t mid if steamrollers flee after having a taste of their own "steaming". I´ll be in the solo queue. If premade queue is deserted I almost don´t mind.

Thogard

VaranisArano wrote: »

Drachenfier wrote: »

Problem is, if queues are separated 90% of the premades will stop queuing, because they are only in it to steamroll. It happened when Rift separated the queues, it happened when Swtor implemented the 8v8 premade queues....most of them will run at the first sign of actual competition

They might stop queuing entirely now that they can't roflstomp randoms, sure.

They might also stop queuing as full premades, instead teaming up in 2s and 3s, filling the random queue and still giving other random players a chance.

I confess, I havent heard a lot of the good premade groups going "Ill quit if I can't farm random PUGs anymore!" Maybe I've missed it?

On PC NA there are a few premades that will get demoralized and stop queueing when they get beaten by a more prepared or more balanced premade.

It takes the winning premade a game or two to realize that their competition isn’t queueing anymore and to then break up and go to cyrodil.

I get a lot of hate for running premades in the BGs on PC NA, but the fact is I won’t put together a full team unless there is another premade that I’m trying to hunt down and compete against. But that being said, I’ve played over 7000 bg matches and it took quite a few for me to get bored of PUG stomping. I don’t go above a duo if there aren’t any premades on, so what we do is get a few people together and synchronize the queues so that we’re in the same game but fighting against each other. My group loves fighting each other - that’s how we improve - and it allows us to “squad up” quickly when we spot a Premade that’s pug stomping.

The premade issue is a bigger problem during Aussie prime time. There used to be some good Japanese groups that would offset the aussies, but I haven’t seen them in a long time, and I don’t have a very deep bench of players to choose from when I stay up late and need to make a group to compete

Thogard

I’d also like to say a sincere “Sorry” to anyone* that has been steamrolled by one of my 4 man groups while they are solo queueing. When we put 4 together, it’s specifically to hunt and queue against other premade groups... but due to the nature of the Bg queue system, we do not always get matched against the team we want to fight. And even if we do, often times the third team is a pug that gets caught in the middle.

I love 4v4 fights - both in cyrodil and the BGs - and I try to have as many as possible. It is my favorite thing to do in ESO. Unfortunately, sometimes in order to get to the 4v4, we have to pug stomp, and for that I apologize to everyone*

*Except stamblades. If you play a stamblade in no cp BGs, you deserve to get pug stomped

Aliyavana

Oh look, came across the same premade the next day for almost 4 ques in a row

How surprising that was

Thogard

aliyavana wrote: »

Oh look, came across the same premade the next day for almost 4 ques in a row

How surprising that was

Lot of premades on tonight. It’s a shame they keep missing each other