My Midyear Mayhem Postmortem

UrQuan

I just thought I'd pop in briefly to post about my experiences during this year's Midyear Mayhem event.

First off, let me make something clear: I'm not much of a PVP guy. I just flat-out like PVE better. When I do PVP, I almost always do it using PVE builds because I generally can't be bothered to come up with something that's better for PVP. Needless to say, I'm not exactly that good at PVP. Having said all of that, I'm not the type of PVE player who hates PVP. It can actually be a lot of fun, it's just not what I usually prefer to do.

Last year due to RL my gaming time during Midyear Mayhem was extremely limited and it was unpredictable when I'd be able to log on or for how long. That made it a real struggle to try to get the achievements to get the Star-Made Knight title & the laurel.

In the end I just wasn't able to get a Battlegrounds win, as almost every time I queued I either got put into a match already in progress as a replacement (this typically meant that the team I got put on was already losing badly due to being down a player), or ended up on a team that lost a player partway through. I actually kept track of all of the matches I got put into, and one of those 2 things happened with over 75% of them.

So this year I had 3 goals for Midyear Mayhem:

1. Win a Battleground on my main to get the Star-Made Knight title & that sweet sweet laurel.
2. Get enough AP in Cyrodiil to get to tier 1 or higher end of campaign rewards on all 15 characters on my main account in a 30 day campaign (for those transmute crystals).
3. Get to Assault/Support 6 or higher on the 10 characters on my main account who weren't there yet (most of them were at 4, I think 2 were at 3 and I think 1 or 2 at 5).

I got my Battlegrounds win on the very first one I queued for. I queued with @Casual_Ranger and we ended up randomly getting grouped with @BenevolentBowd and 1 other person who I didn't know. It was an awesome match - we happened to have really good group composition (I was very tanky, Bowd was throwing out lots of heals, and Ranger & the other guy were doing a good job of dealing damage), and worked really well together as a team to keep on taking and holding objectives until they vanished and we had to move on and find the next one. It turned out to be a super fun match, and 3 of us got our Star-Made Knight titles from it.

Based on how quickly I was getting AP in Cyrodiil I figured right away that it would be really easy to get to tier 1+ campaign rewards on all of my characters as long as I didn't end up having to spend forever waiting in queues. I heard a lot of horror stories about people being 268 in the queue (or whatever) and having to wait over an hour just to get into a campaign. Maybe I kept getting lucky with the timing for when I was trying to get into a campaign, or (more likely) most of the people with huge queue times were trying to get into Vivec, while I was going for Sotha Sil (when it comes to PVP I just prefer no-CP, as it feels like a more even playing field to me). Even when the campaign was showing as pop-locked, there were only 2 times during the entire event when I had to actually wait in a queue, and the longest it took was about 15 minutes. Needless to say, I was able to get all of my characters to tier 1, and the majority of them got to tier 2 or 3.

I didn't think I'd actually be able to get all of my characters to Assault/Support 6 or higher. This one was the one that was a stretch goal for me. When Sunday morning rolled around, however, I had only 1 character left to go. About an hour or two of PVP later, and I was able to check this goal off my list too.

Aside from a few Battlegrounds (including one in which I found that my silly super non-optimal PVE sorc pet build actually makes a great Chaosball runner - I got over 4K in medal points in that match from carrying the ball for the vast majority of the time, and my team won handily by a 300 point margin), I spent all of my Mayhem time in Cyrodiil in PUGs or running around by myself when I couldn't find a PUG. Obviously some PUGs were way better than others, but I almost universally had a really good time with it.

My largest single AP tick was a D-tick of 176K after a long difficult battle. Only once did I ever run into any lag or other performance-related issues, even when I was in the middle of massive zerg-on-zerg battles. Again, I don't know if this was just me being lucky, but I strongly suspect that a no-CP campaign would just be less susceptible to performance issues due to having fewer server-side calculations that need to be made.

All in all, I had really good experiences during this year's Midyear Mayhem. It was so much better for me than last year. I know that wasn't everyone's experience, but for me personally this event was a lot of fun. Now that the event is over and people have had a little time to reflect, I'd be curious to see other people's overall experiences, whether good or bad.

BigBragg

It's awesome to read a positive report from somebody who normally doesn't partake in that aspect of the game.

Katahdin

I also had a good time.
I do participate in pvp a bit but so the double AP was very welcome so I can finish off Militant Ordinator motifs on my crafter

I even stepped out of my comfort zone a bit and spent lots of time leading full groups around capping keeps and fighting. It was fun.

Tandor

Even as a pure PvEer I enjoyed the OP's read, and it was refreshing to see (a) someone who actually enjoys PvP rather than complains about it, and (b) someone who managed a complete appraisal of the event without mentioning any significant issues with queues, loading screens, lag, disconnects, overpowered skills and cheating. Kudos @UrQuan - I'm glad you had a good time and achieved your targets, thanks for sharing your experience here.

geonsocal

good to see you posting urquan...I hope you are feeling well

geonsocal

I had a great time with midyear mayhem also...I spend most of my time in cyrodiil already - but, it was great to see the map (ps4/na/vivec) so alive...

after the first week, the queue times died down considerably...

I harn't played in battlegrounds since last midyear mayhem, so, I was a little surprised to see how much I really enjoyed it...

in particular being able to queue for only deathmatches - I really enjoyed the one map (mages guild) located in IC...

I didn't have any other freezing issues that were going on the week prior in cyrodiil, but, I did run into some old glitches like the invisible walls and players; also, being able to move with everyone else frozen - then getting booted from the server...

I've come to accept and tolerate some of the performance issues associated with cyrodiil though...it's either that or don't play...

all in all, another good event (I also enjoyed the jubilee anniversary event)...

I really wish zos would host more pvp themed events throughout the year...

bongtokin420insd16

WoW had weekend PvP themed double xp events. was actually super cool. You would get double rewards and alliance rank. Was usually at least once a month based on mode i think.

FakeFox

I made six million AP by running in circles. Overall very succesfull event.

geonsocal

FakeFox wrote: »

I made six million AP by running in circles. Overall very succesfull event.

UrQuan

BigBragg wrote: »

It's awesome to read a positive report from somebody who normally doesn't partake in that aspect of the game.

I had a lot of fun with it, and was lucky enough to not really run into the issues I heard the most complaints about from other players...

Katahdin wrote: »

I also had a good time.
I do participate in pvp a bit but so the double AP was very welcome so I can finish off Militant Ordinator motifs on my crafter

I even stepped out of my comfort zone a bit and spent lots of time leading full groups around capping keeps and fighting. It was fun.

Nice to hear you were trying your hand at running some groups! I don't do enough PvP to feel comfortable with that yet myself, but last year I was taught some of the tricks of the trade (like how to efficiently run multiple siege, ballista placement when using a ram, etc), so this year I didn't feel like quite as much of a PvP noob as I'm used to...

Tandor wrote: »

Even as a pure PvEer I enjoyed the OP's read, and it was refreshing to see (a) someone who actually enjoys PvP rather than complains about it, and (b) someone who managed a complete appraisal of the event without mentioning any significant issues with queues, loading screens, lag, disconnects, overpowered skills and cheating. Kudos @UrQuan - I'm glad you had a good time and achieved your targets, thanks for sharing your experience here.

It really was a lot of fun for me. I had a couple of frustrating moments, but they were few and far between.

As far as cheating goes... There was only one time during the entire event when I witnessed anything that could be considered cheating. Exploiting really. I had joined a PUG from /zone and we were trying to take an outpost. One of the others in the PUG said that the postern wasn't there for them, and the leader of the PUG started excitedly asking who could glitch through it to take the outpost without siege. I was disgusted and dropped group and got the hell out of there. In retrospect I should have stayed in group long enough to get the names of the exploiters and report them, but in the moment I just wanted to distance myself from those pathetic losers.

Other than that one incident, though, everything I saw seemed to be totally fair play.

geonsocal wrote: »

good to see you posting urquan...I hope you are feeling well

Thanks, I've recovered about as well as possible and most of the time I'm back at my usual pre-nerve injury levels of pain
I do have to be more careful than before, and I still haven't had a full night of sleep since Nov 2016, but otherwise I'm mostly back to normal For the last while the real thing keeping me from being active on the forums has been that I've been too busy at work, rather than my nerve issues, so that's OK.

geonsocal wrote: »

I had a great time with midyear mayhem also...I spend most of my time in cyrodiil already - but, it was great to see the map (ps4/na/vivec) so alive...

after the first week, the queue times died down considerably...

I harn't played in battlegrounds since last midyear mayhem, so, I was a little surprised to see how much I really enjoyed it...

in particular being able to queue for only deathmatches - I really enjoyed the one map (mages guild) located in IC...

I didn't have any other freezing issues that were going on the week prior in cyrodiil, but, I did run into some old glitches like the invisible walls and players; also, being able to move with everyone else frozen - then getting booted from the server...

I've come to accept and tolerate some of the performance issues associated with cyrodiil though...it's either that or don't play...

all in all, another good event (I also enjoyed the jubilee anniversary event)...

I really wish zos would host more pvp themed events throughout the year...

I only played a few battlegrounds, as I spent most of my time in Cyrodiil, but the few I played I actually enjoyed far more than I had in the past. I might actually have to start doing them more often. I don't think I'll queue for only deathmatches like you though - I'm not good enough at PvP to do well with that. My only hope to contribute decently in battlegrounds is playing the objectives

bongtokin420insd16 wrote: »

WoW had weekend PvP themed double xp events. was actually super cool. You would get double rewards and alliance rank. Was usually at least once a month based on mode i think.

Once a month sounds too frequent to me TBH. I'd kind of like to see more frequent PvP events that get PvE players like myself to give PvP more of a chance, but I feel like if they were as often as monthly the PvE players would just kind of ignore them as being a regular thing rather than try them out because they're special and don't come around that often.

FakeFox wrote: »

I made six million AP by running in circles. Overall very succesfull event.

lol Imperial City districts maybe?

Ragebull

PvP is a lot of fun when not crashing or lagging

Nightfall12

Mine started out awesome too, the first few days i set some goals and hit the. But the timing did not line up great for me this year, if it had been 1 week earlier i would have been golden! As it was I was away and my internet connection on the road was oh soo sllooooooww. I tried but i was just AP fodder for everyone else...really a squirrel could have ganked me..So it was pretty clear i all i could do while away was crafting and logging in for those daily rewards, even trying a normal delve was to slow.I'm not complaining, as the first part on my regular computer i was great virtually no lag on the new camps. So i missed a good week to travel. Enjoyed it i think they should do something like this more maybe twice a year or quarterly