The Battleground System Revamp - What Needs to Happen, Zenimax

Rizz_the_Filthy_Dino

Ranking System
Everyone is complaining about MMR, and they should be. Queue times are horrendous for high ranking MMR, and low ranks, you get put into a sort of limbo where the match just never starts. We all have our own entitled opinions on how the MMR system should be handled, and ultimately Zenimax will be the one's who manage it; however, here's what I suggest after a LOT of thought and research.

Drop the current MMR system entirely.
Set up a battlegrounds ranking system where you can visually see your BG rank. New characters that queue are not allowed to group for ten straight matches, and during those first 10 matches on his or her new character, they're placed at the rank they should be. Players should not be allowed to group with friends in a battleground if their ranks are not 5 levels in difference from the host of the group, or simply average the group's overall rank.

If you get to a certain rank level threshole, say 40+ for this instance, level decay should occur after not actively playing for a certain period of time, dropping your character's BG rank to 40. Upon which, he or she can of course climb back up to where they were, and beyond.

Ranking should be character based as well, NOT account based. I say this because skill varies based on the class you play, you may be better on your spin to win cheese warden than you are healing your team on your templar. Ranks should be based on skill, and not all players have the same skill between each of their characters.

Yeah, I am totally suggesting do what League of Legends and Overwatch do, because they work. Whether you like those games, you have to admit, they have success with their ranking systems.

Rejoining Matches
BG's crash. A lot, at least for me. I made a topic awhile back about how I crash on my Warden to login (NOT to desktop, this isn't a PC problem or external software problem) when I use Nature's Grasp and it connects to a target who then moves to far away from me too fast for my character to catch up. I have no legitimate in-game-studio source proof of this; however, I do have a plethora of videos of me crashing to login after performing the same sequence of actions. I highly suspect there is an anti-cheat system enabled in BG's where it will try to detect speed hacks; ala, me hookshotting across the map.

When you crash, you are disallowed to rejoin and are actually penalized. You are put on a 20 minute timer, don't have access to your daily win if you were winning with your team, don't get the AP from it, and your team is upset that you crashed and they're down a man. If you can rejoin in dungeons, please allow us to rejoin matches we've crashed from. Overwatch allows this in competitive ranked matches, as should Elder Scrolls Online.

Queues
If you're in a party, only the party lead should be able to accept or decline queues. Everyone should see the countdown and have the opportunity to drop out. Too often, in fact every queue that pops, someone declines, whether intentional or just in battle and they miss it. The team lead should be notified of the queue pop like normal, whether in battle or not, and accept it for his or her team.

Additionally, If there are not 12 players available, don't pop the queue, period. I can't speak for everyone reading this; however, I am personally 100% fine waiting for a queue to pop if it means I'll start the match with 4 players. On the other hand, I am NOT okay with getting only three teammates while the other two teams run around with 4 players each. Being out-manned is a pretty big disadvantage. I am consistently running around with only 3 team mates now days, and it entirely takes the fun out of a battleground when you can't get the fullest intended experience.

Role Enforcement for Solo Queue
Roles should 150% be enforced for queuing into a battleground solo, very similar to PvE dungeons. I've had people straight up rage quit from my team because I was a healer and one other was as well. It was one of those matches where you were destined to lose because the RNG gods favored the team compositions of the other two teams, and the quitter on my team found it more viable to just quit and take the penalty rather than stick it out for last place AP. He or she knew this wasn't going to be a winning team, and was probably also going for that daily win.

Give us 4v4's and 6v6's
It would be nice to have more varieties of team-based games, outside of the gametypes (CTF, TDM, etc).
6v6 and 4v4 games.

Chelo

I hate Team vs Team vs Team... I just want Team vs Team, maybe a 6v6 or 12v12.

Also want Arenas like WoW, 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 (ranked seasons). Also it would be cool a 1v1 not ranked Arena, for example how many matches can you win in a single streak.

PvP Rewards at the end of every season.

Rizz_the_Filthy_Dino

Agreed

wheem_ESO

Chelo wrote: »

I hate Team vs Team vs Team... I just want Team vs Team, maybe a 6v6 or 12v12.

Also want Arenas like WoW, 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 (ranked seasons). Also it would be cool a 1v1 not ranked Arena, for example how many matches can you win in a single streak.

PvP Rewards at the end of every season.

I wouldn't want team sizes bigger than maybe 6v6, unless those games were played on much larger maps that forced people to be more spread out. Other than that, I don't disagree. I've really wanted something like WoW's Arena system for as long as I've played ESO.

Ranked games of one team facing off against another (without "special" objectives) is quite fun, if potentially a bit frustrating at times. I was on a backwater server in WoW, and never got a decent team besides 2v2. Our composition(s) weren't "meta" by any means (Warrior/Shaman and DK/Shaman, back in 2009 and before), and some other team setups were straight hardcounters. Considering that everyone is on the same server in ESO, and there aren't any faction restrictions on forming a group to queue up with, that shouldn't be as much of an issue in this game.

I'd also prefer that the PvP rewards for ranked games were nothing but cosmetics/mounts/titles/etc...rather than special gear sets that could give some players an advantage over others.

Mihael

it Would also be nice if wins went towards your leaderboard score rather than your points per game

MrUntouchable

Chelo wrote: »

I hate Team vs Team vs Team... I just want Team vs Team, maybe a 6v6 or 12v12.

Also want Arenas like WoW, 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 (ranked seasons). Also it would be cool a 1v1 not ranked Arena, for example how many matches can you win in a single streak.

PvP Rewards at the end of every season.

I'm with you on this. If they added this to the game I would live there.

del9

Ambitious post, but OP must be new here. It is futile to ask for such wide and complex changes. ZoS is more likely to make a change if it is reasonably easy and doesn’t require a complete overhaul of the whole system. The recent improvement in Q times is an example of a baby step that is actually feasible.

Not to discount any of your points OP, but they’ve all been discusses already thoroughly in thia category and among the BG community.

Rizz_the_Filthy_Dino

del9 wrote: »

Ambitious post, but OP must be new here. It is futile to ask for such wide and complex changes. ZoS is more likely to make a change if it is reasonably easy and doesn’t require a complete overhaul of the whole system. The recent improvement in Q times is an example of a baby step that is actually feasible.

Not to discount any of your points OP, but they’ve all been discusses already thoroughly in thia category and among the BG community.

The OP has an Imgakin Monkey.

del9

@Rizz_the_Filthy_Dino

By new here, I mean ‘here’ as in the BG forums, or forums or BGs in general.

Think small!

Rizz_the_Filthy_Dino

del9 wrote: »

@Rizz_the_Filthy_Dino

By new here, I mean ‘here’ as in the BG forums, or forums or BGs in general.

Think small!

Ahhh okay, yeah I don't post a lot on forums or reddit really.

Danklord

If you want this, there should be 2 different BGs. I wouldn't want a ranking system. I wanna play with whoever i want, whenever i want in a BG. I don't wanna have to re create chars just to play with a low ranked friend. This idea works for a competitive system. But Bg isnt competitive in that sense. Its something casual you can jump into whenever you feel like kicking some ass.

For me, the MMR system is fine, so idk what to say about it persay. But i don't want a ranking system blocking out the possiblity to play with my friends, just because i happens to be a bit better than them. And i dont wanna queue being afraid my rank will drop or have ppls rage at me for lowering their rank. Sometimes i just wanna play a Bg to try out my new set, see if it works.

I agree with alot of your points, but the ranking system is a bad idea.

Edit: also you cant compare an MMORPGs casual Bgs with overwatch or Lol. Its not the same. Besides both overwatch and lols casual pvp, which Bg is, casual, doesnt have a rank restriction.

wheem_ESO

Danklord wrote: »

If you want this, there should be 2 different BGs. I wouldn't want a ranking system. I wanna play with whoever i want, whenever i want in a BG. I don't wanna have to re create chars just to play with a low ranked friend. This idea works for a competitive system. But Bg isnt competitive in that sense. Its something casual you can jump into whenever you feel like kicking some ass.

For me, the MMR system is fine, so idk what to say about it persay. But i don't want a ranking system blocking out the possiblity to play with my friends, just because i happens to be a bit better than them. And i dont wanna queue being afraid my rank will drop or have ppls rage at me for lowering their rank. Sometimes i just wanna play a Bg to try out my new set, see if it works.

I agree with alot of your points, but the ranking system is a bad idea.

Edit: also you cant compare an MMORPGs casual Bgs with overwatch or Lol. Its not the same. Besides both overwatch and lols casual pvp, which Bg is, casual, doesnt have a rank restriction.

I don't think you're quite understanding what a lot of people mean when they say ranking system. Speaking for myself, I mean something akin to what WoW had with Arenas: You create a team, similar to how one would create a guild, and add certain characters to the team. Some number of team members (2, 3, 4, or whatever) then queue for a game against another team of the same size, with no random players involved at all.

After a certain number of placement matches, your team is given a rating, and begins to be matched against teams of a somewhat similar rating. Winning will cause your rating to go up, while losing will cause it to go down (the amount of increase/decrease would be based at least partly on the rating difference between you and your opponents). Such a system would hopefully draw more players into Battlegrounds (perhaps helping with Vivec-Cyrodiil lag a bit in the process), so that it would be sustainable without having to face the same teams over and over, or stomp on ones that have a far lower rating.

What you're saying you don't want is sort of how MMR works right now (though you are able to queue with people of different MMR levels). There is a huge chunk of the Battlegrounds player base that I never really see, due to my MMR being fairly high.

Danklord

But iam saying exactly what you mean. You want a system, where you face people with your rank and you can't go with peoples lower than your rank and i do not want that. Im not sure how my explanation is any different to yours??? Where is your system any different to what i just said there.

You are talking about a competitive system, in a non competitive game. It will not work.

wheem_ESO

In the type of system that I'm talking about, individual players don't have rankings - teams do. There would be no built-in system which would prevent a high ranking team from adding a brand new player that just hit level 50, and doesn't even have 160 CP yet. (Side note: It would be bad for the system if such a player could simply join the team and get all the same rewards without actually playing in any games, so there would have to be some sort of requirement for each member to play at least X number of games, or Y% of the total games over a certain time period.)

I'd also be completely fine with players having more than one team in any given team format. For instance, if there were 2v2 and 4v4 brackets for these premade teams, I think it'd be OK for you to have two different 2v2 teams; one you play with a low ranking buddy (or a few different buddies, just one at a time), and another that you play more "seriously" with another high ranking player.

Even if such a system gets implemented at some point (and I'm hoping that it does), that doesn't mean that current Battlegrounds would get replaced. I've never seen anyone asking for premade-vs-premade games to be the sole way of PvPing in ESO, just that it'd be good to have as an option.

ChunkyCat

I’m pretty tired of playing against the same 6-7 people every 20 minutes.

kessik221

A ranked system would definitely make more sense for the leaderboard too, I crank out 5-6 games every last day of the boards to get my free gold item. It takes no skill its a plain and simple time commitment.

Danklord

I dont wanna play with teams man, nor do i wanna constantly have to add or leave/join other teams etc. Thats just annoying. It worked in Wows arena, cuz the only time you'd play arena was to PUSH RATING, to receive the high rating rewards. In a competitive scene.

I've said it 15 times already, let me say it the 16th time. ESO bgs are not competitive, they should not be and i dont think Zos will ever make them competitive. So a COMPETITIVE SYSTEM in a NON COMPETITIVE BG is NOT viable.

Edit: A ranked system would not make more sense. Because you don't add rank system in casual content. Look at ANY multiplayer game, look at their casual games, do they have any type of rating? No. How do they differ newbs from more experienced? MMR and your lvl. Which Zos already has, its not 100% perfect, but i sure as hell prefer that over rating, teams or ranked system. Zos can def improve their mmr, i agree. But your solution is not the solution.

wheem_ESO

Maybe you missed the part where I said that a team-vs-team system with rankings wouldn't necessarily entail any changes whatsoever to the current Battlegrounds system. Some people want a competitive ranking system, and you don't. That just means you don't need to play it if one ever gets added to the game - just pretend it doesn't exist.

jcm2606

@Danklord You're missing the point he's trying to convey. With the system he's proposing, you are not forced into teams, you can solo queue all you like. In fact, in solo queuing, you wouldn't deal with competitive ranking, as competitive ranking would only apply to teams (ideally, there'd be a ranked queue for both solo queues and teams, instead of just blanket applying competitive ranking to teams).

If we're being honest, what you don't want already happens, to an extent. From what we understand about MMR, a given group's MMR is determined by the average MMR of all members of the group, after each member's individual MMR is weighted depending on the size of the group. Assuming MMR within the current matching is actually indicative of skill (I'll explain this shortly), your group is already competitively ranked, with your low MMR friend dragging the group's MMR down, putting you all in a more reasonable bracket. Let me remind you, though, that MMR is a complete mystery, so for all we know, Zenimax might have weighted the group's MMR such that a lower MMR players drags the average down further than it would otherwise.

The thing is, MMR is no where near a viable ranking metric, for numerous reasons.

Firstly, it appears to be based off of the sum of your total medal score for that character. It can only ever rise, and it more so takes play time into account, rather than actual individual skill. Compare a meh player to a good player. The meh player, say, scores 1500 points in a given match, while the good player scores 4500 points. These are made up numbers, so they aren't indicative of actual in-game numbers, but they'll work for this example.

Lets say the good player does 12 matches back-to-back, which gives them a total of 54000 points to their MMR (again, these are made up numbers, I'm pretty sure points-to-MMR isn't straight cut and linear like this, but whatever). Since MMR is based off of the sum of your medal score, the meh player could play 36 matches, scoring 1500 points each match, for the same total of 54000 points.

The worse player simply has to play more matches, and they can achieve the same total medal score of a good player. This fundamentally goes against the entire idea of a ranked match making system, and I'm sure is a core problem with MMR.

Secondly, MMR seems, to some degree, to be account-based. I can play a couple matches on my main, which I've sunk hundreds of matches into, meaning that character's MMR is astronomically high. Then I can jump onto a brand new character I've never ran in a BG, and I could end up with similar if not the exact same type of matching as my main. A brand new character that I've never played in a BG before, so MMR is supposedly 0, and yet it's the same type of matching as my main. How am I expected to learn new classes and playstyles with this?

Thirdly, PVP just isn't popular. I would wager that maybe two to three dozen players are playing in the top MMR brackets, which is likely why queues take so long. With this few players, it doesn't surprise me that ranked match making simply fails.

Danklord

So you would want 2 separate Battlegrounds. One for ranked, one for casual. And within casual have queue as team and queue as solo queue. Tho as you say Jcm, it wouldnt work since pvp isnt very popular, even less so bgs. Tho what i want, is what we have already. I believe its fine as it is. Maybe im biased because i havn't faced these issues. But for me the system works alright.

While the mmr is flawed in the sense that it only ever goes up, the fact that a better player ranks up faster, makes sense. I mean, if the noob and good player, plays the same amount of games, the noob will never catch up. The only time he does if he plays 3x as much using your scores.

I doubt adding a ranked system will change anything. Whats going to happen is, the best comp will become meta, it will be the only thing played, because people wants to rank up and receive whatever reward is at the end. People play until reached that goal and got what they want. While this is happening both queues are horribly long, then ranked queue will die down and people will go back to casual, because they don't wanna face the 4 comp meta. And that is if you only have one queue for ranked. If you separate 4 premade and solo queue, the queues will be even longer and solo queue will survive a bit longer seeing as it wont guarantee you facing the meta and most likely take peoples a bit longer to get the reward.

jcm2606

The problem is, MMR doesn't work now. The entire point of MMR is to ensure that players are always matched against those at a similar level of skill. Good players are matched against other good players, bad players against other bad players. When a bad player can earn the same amount of MMR "points" as a good player, by simply playing more matches, MMR becomes pointless. Why have a ranked match making system if a bad player is ranked the same as a good player?

This much is evident simply by looking at the BG leaderboards. Quite a few of the top players are honestly pretty bad. In a huge skirmish they might do alright, but get them one-on-one, and you'll destroy them, because they just don't know how to play. Nothing against them, it isn't their fault. Leaderboards, and by extension MMR (since, if our guess is correct, they're both practically the same), are based off of total games played, not your personal skill. Most of these bad players end up on the leaderboard simply by playing many matches back-to-back.

I've done it before. I'll log in, want to get on the leaderboard, just play a dozen or so matches, and by the end of it I'm already half way up the leaderboard. Play some more, I'm in the top 20. Log out, log back in the next day, I'm not even on the leaderboard anymore.

If Zenimax wants ranked match making, they need to make it based off of personal skill somehow. Win/loss ratio? K/D ratio? Something. And it should take losses into account, as that would allow it to balance out. Started getting into balanced matches? Your MMR will stop climbing as much, and will hover around where you should sit. Maybe you take a break for a bit, hop back in, and are a bit rusty? MMR will drop as you gradually lose more and more, getting you into easier and easier matches, allowing you to figure it out again.

Or, better yet, simply remove MMR.

You said you haven't ran into any issues caused by MMR, but MMR has just caused me nonstop headaches. Solo queue? I'll be thrown in with one to two 4-man premades with full group composition, sucking the fun out of the match. Wanting to just sit back and do some BGs to wind down? Have to sit through a 5-10 minute queue. Daily random? Better be a deathmatch, otherwise good luck dealing with those tanky builds dedicated to <insert gamemode here>. And god forbid you want to have some variation between matches, as it is just the same two to three dozen players on rotation.

Most of these issues are just due to how few players are in my MMR bracket. Premades are fine if you only see them for a match or two, but in this case, they're the only players I can match against. Queue time I feel is directly tied to the lack of players at the top MMR brackets, and would see a huge reduction if more players would participate in BGs. Dedicated builds are always going to be a thing, but more players means your chances of matching against these sort of builds will generally be lower.

If there aren't enough players to sustain a ranked match making system without hurting the experience in these ways, it is just better to remove ranked match making, than continuing to tweak and tweak and tweak. Tweaking only works when you have an ample amount of people in the pool. For BGs, there just isn't. Stop tweaking, start removing.

Danklord

If what you say is true, then mmr needs a rework. Not sure if a huge one. But atleast take losses into account. And perhaps give different mmr based on what you play. 1 MMR for each game mode. Because if you play a *** ton of Deathmatch on your dd, then wanna try it as a tank and your mmr is the same in chaosball, you will get your face smashed in.

Usually i face the same people if i queue back to back, but then its usually just a few of them. I might not be on the top tier mmr. Tho i do always end on top of my team but then again, trying to catch up to the top tier now, GL Xd.

The problem with ESO i think is that the skillroof is huge and people play all kind of different builds and roles. That it becomes hard to know what exactly to give points for. I mean its not like you having some transmutation set on is gonna count for you buffing your teammates. Now its just kills, assist, dmg, healer and double/triple kill etc. Tho i wish they gave assist if you heal someone killing another player from like half hp to full, because now you get 0 for it.

I agree with pretty much everything you say. I hate the other gamemodes besides DM. Chaosball needs to stop favor tanks so insanely hard. The more resistance - the more dmg you take. So one cant survive an entire round with pocket healers.

jcm2606

Yep, completely agree. All game modes need addressing IMO.

Deathmatch honestly does need a loose objective added. I'd actually be interested seeing deathmatch be turned into a category, with different gamemodes, like your traditional team deathmatch, free-for-all, tag team (duos), etc.

I actually like chaosball, my favourite game mode behind deathmatch, but completely agree. The ball should deal increased damage to tanky specs. Tankiness through mitigation is easy. Your method works, but doesn't count general damage reduction from buffs and skills like Corrosive Armor. My suggestion here would be to have damage scale based on how much final damage, ie damage taken after all mitigation is taken into account, the previous tick dealt. Tankier specs will see quicker ramping up in damage, squishier specs sees slower ramping up in damage. Tankiness through healing is a different story, not sure how to deal with this outside of straight reducing healing taken.

Capture The Relic needs a rework, IMO. Absolutely hate the fact that you have to hold your own relic to capture your opponents' relics. It opens up some very interesting strategy, but I find it slows the pace of battle and just forces one or two players to go defense if your team wants to actually do anything.

Crazy King isn't too bad, but it does fall victim to tanky and heal-y builds dominating too much, and rewards outnumbering too much IMO.

Domination needs a rework to direct players to certain flags. This gamemode isn't about PVP, it's about avoiding fights to push flags in peace. If the game would direct players to certain flags, say scoring increased points for capturing a specific flag for a certain period of time, then it would incentivise actually fighting other players, rather than dipping out of the fight to capture some random flag in the middle of nowhere.

ChunkyCat

The more BG matches you play, whether you win or lose, your MMR goes up. Play enough matches and your MMR will be high enough for you to be placed in the bracket with tougher opponents. The major drawback to this is if there are not enough players queuing within your high MMR bracket, then you wait in queue longer and longer.

Even when you start losing more and more, your MMR continues to go up. So as people have mentioned already, even if you’re not a good player, if you play enough BG matches then you will get stuck playing against players that clearly outmatch you. On top of that, you waited twenty minutes in the queue just to get wtf stomped on.

So yeah, the current MMR system is wtf broken.

Putinof

Dont allow any sort of groups in solo queue.

Increase the rewards for premades.

End this three way nonsense already and give us proper battlegrounds where 2 teams compete against eachother.

Urvoth

Chelo wrote: »

I hate Team vs Team vs Team... I just want Team vs Team, maybe a 6v6 or 12v12.

Also want Arenas like WoW, 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 (ranked seasons). Also it would be cool a 1v1 not ranked Arena, for example how many matches can you win in a single streak.

PvP Rewards at the end of every season.

It really doesn't make sense that ZOS tried to copy the alliance war thing over to BGs, they're entirely separate and every other competitive PvP game is team vs team for a reason. The overall BG system needs to be fleshed out a lot more, and the only way for something like seasons to work well is for a team vs team gamemode to be introduced.

Urvoth

wheem_ESO wrote: »

Danklord wrote: »

If you want this, there should be 2 different BGs. I wouldn't want a ranking system. I wanna play with whoever i want, whenever i want in a BG. I don't wanna have to re create chars just to play with a low ranked friend. This idea works for a competitive system. But Bg isnt competitive in that sense. Its something casual you can jump into whenever you feel like kicking some ass.

For me, the MMR system is fine, so idk what to say about it persay. But i don't want a ranking system blocking out the possiblity to play with my friends, just because i happens to be a bit better than them. And i dont wanna queue being afraid my rank will drop or have ppls rage at me for lowering their rank. Sometimes i just wanna play a Bg to try out my new set, see if it works.

I agree with alot of your points, but the ranking system is a bad idea.

Edit: also you cant compare an MMORPGs casual Bgs with overwatch or Lol. Its not the same. Besides both overwatch and lols casual pvp, which Bg is, casual, doesnt have a rank restriction.

I don't think you're quite understanding what a lot of people mean when they say ranking system. Speaking for myself, I mean something akin to what WoW had with Arenas: You create a team, similar to how one would create a guild, and add certain characters to the team. Some number of team members (2, 3, 4, or whatever) then queue for a game against another team of the same size, with no random players involved at all.

After a certain number of placement matches, your team is given a rating, and begins to be matched against teams of a somewhat similar rating. Winning will cause your rating to go up, while losing will cause it to go down (the amount of increase/decrease would be based at least partly on the rating difference between you and your opponents). Such a system would hopefully draw more players into Battlegrounds (perhaps helping with Vivec-Cyrodiil lag a bit in the process), so that it would be sustainable without having to face the same teams over and over, or stomp on ones that have a far lower rating.

What you're saying you don't want is sort of how MMR works right now (though you are able to queue with people of different MMR levels). There is a huge chunk of the Battlegrounds player base that I never really see, due to my MMR being fairly high.

I would love a team ranking system. There is so much potential for something like that if team vs team games became a thing. Streamed/publicized team vs team games are one of the best ways to bring new PvP players to ESO and encourage existing players to start playing BGs. Competitive seasons with team rankings/leaderboards, stats, playoffs, etc, were my favorite part of CS:GO by far (though it was through an external client), and something like that would work really well in ESO as well imo.

By having it separated from the standard BG queues, it doesn't affect the players that want to just play casually, yet is a huge motivator and gameplay component for anyone that wants to take things more seriously.

validifyedneb18_ESO

I dont really feel the need for a role system if the MMR system was good.

As for MMR, I dont really want the game to become ultra competative ranked-mode trihard etc... and I dont think zeni does either (hence the current system), so while the current system obviously needs changing, It would be nice if it didnt do much more that separate the newer players or newer builds from the experienced players with completed full yellow gear builds.

This could probably be more of less achieved by capping the current MMR system at a maximum that most players will hit after a few dozen BGs, not perfect but fast, gives newer players some breathing room before they join the big bois and stops the horrendous queues that literally the entire PVP community is up in arms about.