PvP and PvE split + ranked PvP + balance issues + ideas to improve

Yserill

EDIT: I put all the additional comments of mine together thus resulting in quite long brainstorming (will try to shorten it in the future and make the important stuff bold for better visibility etc.) will still hopefully reach the community and ZOS if people agree. I am also copying it from general discussion as it's mostly PvP based.

Hello ... let's adress PvP. For me it is as important as PvE. The same reason why people love LoL, loved ranked arenas in WoW or love competitive games in general. The thrill, the competition who is the best from the best. The fame. I still remember times of vanilla WoW or TBC where you walked in front of the city and people started using /bow because YOU were that PvP god who meant free win in BG (later in 1.12.1) in your team or insta lose when in enemy team. It was so great and rewarding. same with arenas later in TBC and WotLK. I think ESO needs this kind of PvP.

I mean ... I totally love the game. So much. The graphics, the story, nearly every side story, the way NPC talk about you when you walk around them etc. Awesome action combat... It got the immersion WoW lost years ago or maybe never even had. But apart from technical issues due to not being a giant company like Blizz with very limited tech team aka maintenance during the day for EU, no proper EU only team etc. etc. (Which I think should be adressed asap) it really misses on the PvP aspect of the game.

I think PvP is a loved content in any game, pretty much the reason for eSports. And if adressed properly in ESO it would bring even more players to play it. Especially if ZOS introduced arenas and ranked BGs. Not just an icon showing you are no-lifing PvP to be lvl 50 (tho grand marshall used to be similiar). PvP is kinda too casual atm with no proper rewards. It would be nice to have some actual ranks that would gift you items at the end of the week (I mean ... good items like getting maelstrom bow from PvP if you are pro at it but suck at solo PvE etc)

Or even make completely separate skill set (like Guild Wars) or item sets (Like TBC and WotLK used to have with resilience) that will make it a must have for given content (PvP items in WoW used to be utter sh*t in PvE with no healing, no DPS, no tankability and the other way around .. if you had PvE items with no resilience in PvP you died in 1 hit)

I am 110% sure PvE-only players would extremely appreciate such change. Because (personal experiance from trial guild) they get super angry at indirect nerfs to PvE because people cry about stuff in PvP. Making items like earthgore that used to be awesome healing set in PvE useless. It would obviously requiere a lot of work but it would 10000% pay off. Happier ad larger community means more money in the end.

Nerfs/Buffs resulting in every class in the game using the same set of skills etc is ... well ... not exactly a good change. It is insanely lazy change. What should be done instead is redoing class skills and it's morphs to make them very tempting to use and to make each class more unique. As well as adding more dual morphs to classes aka 1 magicka 1 stamina.

Well it could also be that the PvP community is smaller exactly due to these issues. It is simply not rewarding enough thus people opt for competitive options like LoL or even WoW free servers (WotLK mostly) to play arenas (MMORPG or MOBA, excluding FPS because they just got completely different feel and most people playing those will not be interested in MMO pvp no matter how good). I am also trying in BGs (even with pugs) to play tactics (former PvP guild leader and BG leader from WoW) and tell people what to do, ask them what builds they play to team them up for split domination play 2+2 or 3+1 (for experienced 1vX players and builds like DK or Stamcro who can take on more people alone etc) and so on. But noone replies or they reply in deadric (meant as fun) (really no offense, but you should try to learn to speak English or ZOS could make russian servers if they got troubles during peak times resulting in better latency and easier queues as well as removing languague barrier, unless it would make both servers too underpopulated) half the party is afk or in PvE setup just saying: "trying to level up vigor and stuff." And well ... it kinda makes sense they do not want to listen and play for real, they just wanna have fun. In the end it is NOT ranked but it totally breaks the game for someone who wants to tryhard it without having to look for premades Making normal BGs and then ranked BGs would be such a great idea. It would simply be only for hardcore PvPers who take it seriously even as pugs with visible MMR/rating that would also scale your rewards (possibly sets specifically made for PvP to stop nerfing sets for PvErs).

I mean ... there is also Cyrodiil but .... even tho it is a nice idea it is poorly executed. Lags, map is too big so it's more like a running simulator (PvP imo needs to be constant action like BG) so the map defo needs to get smaller imo. Plus well ... it is zerg or get zerged which is kinda harsh in no-CP cyro (hate CP PvP) as you just can't 1v30 easily

I think that outside of the fact that PvP is interesting but not really competitive and limited to 2 modes (they could add 2v2, 3v3 rankeds arenas, ranked BGs and BGs that are not 4x4x4 but like 10x10 as well thus creating more flexibility and kinda excluding PvE players from ranked tryhard -> would most likely make PvP more interesting for PvE players trying to get vigor and stuff when paired with other PvE players who are not some PvP gods in "normal BGs" like normal X ranked in LoL ) they real problem is nerfing all the sets because of PvP.

Like Pirate skelly now, Malubeth or Earthgore in the past ... I like how Minotaur described the problem "so ... it is nerfed because it was overused and kinda overperforming. So now people will prolly move towards bloodspawm, when people start crying it gives too many stats will they nerf it too? Making people move toward sets like Zaan and when they are overused by majority they will get nerfed as well till there are no sets left" and he is right. ZOS said they are listening to the community considering Pirate skelly and thus making it overnerfed (they should have just upped CD to 20 sec or just make it major defile instead of minor imo). Well the biggest issue in this is that ... people satisfied with it will just use it. People who don't like it will "yell". So the community wishing for change is often not even quarter of the playerbase. There should be specifically chosen representatives or PvE, PvP who are at the best of the best you can find that will be the ones to throughoutly discuss and decide what needs to be tuned. Not just random people "crying" about anything that killed them or saved their enemy instead of thinking about how to counter it and adjust their builds for the meta thus shifting it naturally.

There is simply too many issues with PvP .. not getting enough love and at the same time getting too much "hate" nerfing PvE and thus lowering the all around experience in the game.

Cheers!

Yserill

Try to put as many input on the matter as possible to come up with a meaningful solution to address these problems the way it would please majority of the playerbase. I see people craving for ranked arenas and BGs in my guilds on daily basis same as being unhappy with PvP changes affecting PvE in a negative way. I just don't see it discussed out loud. Ty!