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ESO PvP is NOT the game you think it is - the fun-killing cognitive dissonance of the PvP community
HiImRex
✭✭✭✭✭
What you're about to read is addressed to the ESO PvP community as a whole. Obviously, there are plenty of exceptions to this, but I'm talking in general.
November/December are slow months for me at work, so this year, I came back to ESO after a long break. I came back for the PVP ofc, b/c I like to play with and against other people.
Overall, I have definitely enjoyed myself. ESO is a fun game in its core, and I have met some really cool people. I came with personal goals for my magicka templar, and it was fun trying and failing and adjusting and theorycrafting until I was finally rewarded with a unique and effective build.
But I am probably nearing the end of my ESO run after a couple months. The fun is drying up, and the number 1 reason is not the pvp imbalance, although we all know the classes and item-sets are very much not balanced (and should be fixed).
It's the pvp community. A community plauged by fun-killing cognitive dissonance.
ESO PvP is about 40% skill, 40% class/build, and 20% luck. I don't care how it used to be or how it should be, this is reality. It has nothing to do with any particular patch, anybody that has gotten good (not "diamond league" good, I mean like top few % good) at an actual skill-based PVP game understands fundamentally that ESO PvP has never even existed in the same dimension as games like CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, League, Overwatch, Valorant, etc. Never, and not even a little.
I'm not saying ESO PvP doesn't require skill. It takes a lot of skill, but player skill is a relatively minor part of ESO PvP when compared to the above mentioned games.
A majority of the dedicated ESO PvP players know this to be true, and yet they think, talk, and act like ESO is (or absolutely needs to be) some kind of life affirming competition that proves something about them.
Pretty much everyone runs the OP meta set-ups, and then complains about other people's OP meta set-ups. When they win, they "outplayed" their opponents. When they lose, it's because "that set/build/class is broken." Bro, you're running just as broken sets on your broken 40k HP (insert any class with HP scaling abilities or passives here). And we all know there's plenty of situations in this game where you are just guaranteed to die, whether you're the one dying or you're the one doing the killing, and it had very little to do with reflexes or decision making.
Can we just all have a laugh about the hilarious proc damage that flies out and randomly kills you, or how a chunky lizard keeps spinning his hands in the air and heals to full while AOE stunning everyone for free? Or the fun things you can do with siege in Cyrodil? People doing goofy things and acting a fool because... they're trying to relax and enjoy themselves after a day full of hard work and responsibilities?
How about them werewolf packs roaming around going AWOOO AWOO AWOO before you hear the "KCHUNK" as 6 engine guardians pop out from nowhere. And then they eat you.
ESO is a goofy game.
The Elder Scrolls franchise has always been a mix of serious fantasy epic and weird Bethesda goofiness. ESO is the same way. There's lots of skill involved in ESO PvP, so you can always grow and improve--but at the same time, there's so many class and set mechanics that just does goofy things that are completely antithetical to a competitive, skill-based game design that you just can't take the "competitive" side of the game seriously.
And that's fine. That's totally fine, if the hardcore pvp community will just relax a little, and accept reality.
But man, do ESO PvPers take the pvp in this game seriously. Even in 2020, even in ESO: Markarth.
There's this ridiculous social hierarchy in the ESO PvP community, with its own unspoken but suffocating set of rules and social norms that you have to follow to get accepted and recognized. Both times I have played ESO, I have somehow been inserted into this community via friends (who are actually really good at this game) despite being only an OK player. Having been on the inside, let me say that this "elite" community is built around misguided pride over the semi-casual social game we call ESO PvP. The article of faith at the center of this community is the delusion that, despite whining 24/7 that "gaem takes no skill", you are somehow the exception and you're part of the club because you are a special omega slayer with the killer instincts of a Navy SEAL.
And boy, if you threaten that delusion even just a little bit, get ready for salt. In the 2 months that I have been pvping extensively in BGs, Cyro, and IC, I have pretty much never gotten salt from a casual, a zergball snipe ganker, a troll tank, or meme werewolves. Every time I get salt, it's some tryhard meta player whose skills were not affirmed because they don't know how to jump over a slight gap between two mushrooms in the Deeping Drome because they never had to do advanced LOS and parkour ever since slotting Arctic Blast on their bar and 40 points into health.
Strange how a 21k tooltip proc pre-malacath can't secure kills when you don't know how to press your spacebar at the right time (OSU wants a chat with you), but that can't be a learn2play issue because you're ESO PvP nobility man, your parents told you you were different from those common folk, you got noble blood in your veins. You're subbed to all the top ESO streamers. You have song request privileges. One time SypherPK was even on your friends list.
When's the last time you laughed unironically while PvPing in this game? This game's pvp is hilariously goofy. It's immensely fun when you don't take it TOO seriously. Like 40% serious, because that's about the input that your skill has on the outcome of any fight--even less, once you reach the low skill ceiling and consider the extremely assymetrical strengths and weaknesses of various classes and builds. We're not even bringing up lag.
Do elite pvpers really want to know why somebody can play ESO for years and just snipe spam in a ball group? Sometimes it's because they're toxic (and maybe you treating him like trash because he cast snipe on you in a video game 4 years ago started him on that path) but most of the time it's probably b/c they're 40 years old with wife and kids and just want to goof off in discord with a large guild they have been running with for years. And that guy is having way more fun than you are, because he knows exactly how seriously to take ESO PvP.
There's a mountain of hyper-competitive games out there that will really challenge you, with truly skill-based game mechanics and an objective ranking system. But you notice that most of these actually hyper-competitive communities goof off more and have way more fun with their super-serious game than we do in a semi-casual social game like ESO PvP. Why? Probably because the people who reach the top of truly skill-based games only reach that pinnacle because they're willing to kill their pride and face their own deficiencies as a player honestly.
Loosen up a bit, ESO PvP community. That toxic noblesse oblige mentality you have not only sucks the joy out of your own time in ESO PvP, it's also highly infectious. There's no killjoy like playing with a bunch of people who complain 90% of the time about everything that's happening in the game. And this community BREEDS this attitude. I bet many of you reading this were once a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed PvP puppy before the hardcore PvP community made you the same bitter, whiny, egotistical cookie-cutter killjoy clone as everyone else.
Listen. ESO PvP takes a good amount of skill, and skill will influence the outcome in any fight. But the floor is high, and the ceiling is low.
And if you can accept that, you will be free. Either free to play a different game that is built from the ground up to test your skills and reward you exclusively for your practice and effort...
OR, free to pvp in ESO knowing what it really is. And that frees you to just chill out, have fun, challenge yourself, and not get so mad or frustrated or scared of being "exposed" and actually laugh with friends over dumb stuff that happens in ESO PvP. Maybe you'll do some dumb things yourself and have fun doing it.
I still have a bit of time off, a couple things I want to try, and a few friends to try them with. Real life will claim me from ESO soon, but I do hope you all will get over yourselves and actually enjoy the game for what it is.
ESO is fun. But it's not competitive. So stop competing and just have fun. Whether you want to try hard and master the mechanics, build for a specific niche in pvp, try to win outnumbered fights against good players, or just want to laugh at the meme groups in Cyrodil, or BE a meme group in Cyro... try to remember to have fun.
And I bet you'll be surprised how you can goof-off AND clip a sick 2v4 AND have a nice chat with the people you just X'd.
That's the beauty of PvPing in a game like ESO, after all.
November/December are slow months for me at work, so this year, I came back to ESO after a long break. I came back for the PVP ofc, b/c I like to play with and against other people.
Overall, I have definitely enjoyed myself. ESO is a fun game in its core, and I have met some really cool people. I came with personal goals for my magicka templar, and it was fun trying and failing and adjusting and theorycrafting until I was finally rewarded with a unique and effective build.
But I am probably nearing the end of my ESO run after a couple months. The fun is drying up, and the number 1 reason is not the pvp imbalance, although we all know the classes and item-sets are very much not balanced (and should be fixed).
It's the pvp community. A community plauged by fun-killing cognitive dissonance.
ESO PvP is about 40% skill, 40% class/build, and 20% luck. I don't care how it used to be or how it should be, this is reality. It has nothing to do with any particular patch, anybody that has gotten good (not "diamond league" good, I mean like top few % good) at an actual skill-based PVP game understands fundamentally that ESO PvP has never even existed in the same dimension as games like CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, League, Overwatch, Valorant, etc. Never, and not even a little.
I'm not saying ESO PvP doesn't require skill. It takes a lot of skill, but player skill is a relatively minor part of ESO PvP when compared to the above mentioned games.
A majority of the dedicated ESO PvP players know this to be true, and yet they think, talk, and act like ESO is (or absolutely needs to be) some kind of life affirming competition that proves something about them.
Pretty much everyone runs the OP meta set-ups, and then complains about other people's OP meta set-ups. When they win, they "outplayed" their opponents. When they lose, it's because "that set/build/class is broken." Bro, you're running just as broken sets on your broken 40k HP (insert any class with HP scaling abilities or passives here). And we all know there's plenty of situations in this game where you are just guaranteed to die, whether you're the one dying or you're the one doing the killing, and it had very little to do with reflexes or decision making.
Can we just all have a laugh about the hilarious proc damage that flies out and randomly kills you, or how a chunky lizard keeps spinning his hands in the air and heals to full while AOE stunning everyone for free? Or the fun things you can do with siege in Cyrodil? People doing goofy things and acting a fool because... they're trying to relax and enjoy themselves after a day full of hard work and responsibilities?
How about them werewolf packs roaming around going AWOOO AWOO AWOO before you hear the "KCHUNK" as 6 engine guardians pop out from nowhere. And then they eat you.
ESO is a goofy game.
The Elder Scrolls franchise has always been a mix of serious fantasy epic and weird Bethesda goofiness. ESO is the same way. There's lots of skill involved in ESO PvP, so you can always grow and improve--but at the same time, there's so many class and set mechanics that just does goofy things that are completely antithetical to a competitive, skill-based game design that you just can't take the "competitive" side of the game seriously.
And that's fine. That's totally fine, if the hardcore pvp community will just relax a little, and accept reality.
But man, do ESO PvPers take the pvp in this game seriously. Even in 2020, even in ESO: Markarth.
There's this ridiculous social hierarchy in the ESO PvP community, with its own unspoken but suffocating set of rules and social norms that you have to follow to get accepted and recognized. Both times I have played ESO, I have somehow been inserted into this community via friends (who are actually really good at this game) despite being only an OK player. Having been on the inside, let me say that this "elite" community is built around misguided pride over the semi-casual social game we call ESO PvP. The article of faith at the center of this community is the delusion that, despite whining 24/7 that "gaem takes no skill", you are somehow the exception and you're part of the club because you are a special omega slayer with the killer instincts of a Navy SEAL.
And boy, if you threaten that delusion even just a little bit, get ready for salt. In the 2 months that I have been pvping extensively in BGs, Cyro, and IC, I have pretty much never gotten salt from a casual, a zergball snipe ganker, a troll tank, or meme werewolves. Every time I get salt, it's some tryhard meta player whose skills were not affirmed because they don't know how to jump over a slight gap between two mushrooms in the Deeping Drome because they never had to do advanced LOS and parkour ever since slotting Arctic Blast on their bar and 40 points into health.
Strange how a 21k tooltip proc pre-malacath can't secure kills when you don't know how to press your spacebar at the right time (OSU wants a chat with you), but that can't be a learn2play issue because you're ESO PvP nobility man, your parents told you you were different from those common folk, you got noble blood in your veins. You're subbed to all the top ESO streamers. You have song request privileges. One time SypherPK was even on your friends list.
When's the last time you laughed unironically while PvPing in this game? This game's pvp is hilariously goofy. It's immensely fun when you don't take it TOO seriously. Like 40% serious, because that's about the input that your skill has on the outcome of any fight--even less, once you reach the low skill ceiling and consider the extremely assymetrical strengths and weaknesses of various classes and builds. We're not even bringing up lag.
Do elite pvpers really want to know why somebody can play ESO for years and just snipe spam in a ball group? Sometimes it's because they're toxic (and maybe you treating him like trash because he cast snipe on you in a video game 4 years ago started him on that path) but most of the time it's probably b/c they're 40 years old with wife and kids and just want to goof off in discord with a large guild they have been running with for years. And that guy is having way more fun than you are, because he knows exactly how seriously to take ESO PvP.
There's a mountain of hyper-competitive games out there that will really challenge you, with truly skill-based game mechanics and an objective ranking system. But you notice that most of these actually hyper-competitive communities goof off more and have way more fun with their super-serious game than we do in a semi-casual social game like ESO PvP. Why? Probably because the people who reach the top of truly skill-based games only reach that pinnacle because they're willing to kill their pride and face their own deficiencies as a player honestly.
Loosen up a bit, ESO PvP community. That toxic noblesse oblige mentality you have not only sucks the joy out of your own time in ESO PvP, it's also highly infectious. There's no killjoy like playing with a bunch of people who complain 90% of the time about everything that's happening in the game. And this community BREEDS this attitude. I bet many of you reading this were once a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed PvP puppy before the hardcore PvP community made you the same bitter, whiny, egotistical cookie-cutter killjoy clone as everyone else.
Listen. ESO PvP takes a good amount of skill, and skill will influence the outcome in any fight. But the floor is high, and the ceiling is low.
And if you can accept that, you will be free. Either free to play a different game that is built from the ground up to test your skills and reward you exclusively for your practice and effort...
OR, free to pvp in ESO knowing what it really is. And that frees you to just chill out, have fun, challenge yourself, and not get so mad or frustrated or scared of being "exposed" and actually laugh with friends over dumb stuff that happens in ESO PvP. Maybe you'll do some dumb things yourself and have fun doing it.
I still have a bit of time off, a couple things I want to try, and a few friends to try them with. Real life will claim me from ESO soon, but I do hope you all will get over yourselves and actually enjoy the game for what it is.
ESO is fun. But it's not competitive. So stop competing and just have fun. Whether you want to try hard and master the mechanics, build for a specific niche in pvp, try to win outnumbered fights against good players, or just want to laugh at the meme groups in Cyrodil, or BE a meme group in Cyro... try to remember to have fun.
And I bet you'll be surprised how you can goof-off AND clip a sick 2v4 AND have a nice chat with the people you just X'd.
That's the beauty of PvPing in a game like ESO, after all.
11
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MurderMostFoul✭✭✭✭✭
✭Sounds like you need solo queue BGs. That's where I spend most of my time. Drop in, drop out, no drama.“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”1 -
oXI_Viper_IXo✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭So you take PvP seriously enough to write this essay on how we shouldn't take it seriously... hmmm. Ok.14 -
geonsocal✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭most of the folks I run in to are just there to have some fun and be distracted for awhile...PVP Campaigns Section: Playstation NA and EU (Gray Host) - This Must be the Place1 -
You have some fair points you raise.
I think though that it's human nature for bubbles to form, and anyone in those bubbles to reinforce their opinions into what they think is reality.
1 -
WreckfulAbandon✭✭✭✭✭
✭inb4 "who even are you"
Just consider yourself lucky if you've never experienced any of this cliquish behavoir... recently had a rando pop in discord and talk real big, dropping names left and right and putting people down since he knew/played with certain "top" players. Totally insufferable, and it was rich since I've recently broken some of his role models over my knee. Don't be that guy who says "who are you," only a few people can legitimately say that and even then its still a massive *** move.PC NA
All my comments are regarding PvP0 -
thatESOdude✭✭✭Stopped reading after you started talking about CS GO, Valorant and other competitive games in a post about pvp in an MMORPG.
Next4 -
Sungod✭✭✭That was alot of effort and negativity that you surround yourself with.
Dont let it bother you, shrug, smile and have your fun.2 -
DucLIX✭✭✭He's right, you can troll him as much as you want.
Fact is, all pseudo "elite" "smallscalers" "solo" should realise that they're not more than players and reduce their expectations about the "recognition" they should have, it's not because people are sckin these "pvp heroes" dcks to have their build and stats, because they win 98% of their duels, because they can kill 30 pugs in a keep that they are venerable and above all the pvp community as they think.
Simple to see when you take a look at videos from that kind of players, I'll not mention anyone to respect the forum rules (hi zos team), but everyone knows them, not to say they're fundamentaly bad, but their egos and need of recognition makes them bad.
I remember a former player and team, you know the ones that are running in "smallscale" because they're better than you apparently, that threatened me to send the whole cyro "best players" community to my butt because I killed him and his friend while doing a simple 2v2 be cause he "knew everyone".
That's an example of how ego-based players are and their "wannabe"/""fans" too.
Tbh I'm not writin this like I'm an angel, I've been like that and realised it's utterly stupid and that you're just losing your time trying to prove something to someone or to yourself, if it's to yourself, do not bother other players, except you.
faster guys kill kill2 -
idk✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭oXI_Viper_IXo wrote: »So you take PvP seriously enough to write this essay on how we shouldn't take it seriously... hmmm. Ok.Toxic threads complaining about toxicity are my favorite
I am tossed between these two for who came closest to the bullseye. It is like two arrows hitting the same mark.most of the folks I run in to are just there to have some fun and be distracted for awhile...
But this person notes why we do what we do. If we are not enjoying an activity in a game then we should not be doing it.4 -
Decimus✭✭✭✭✭I hope the OP realizes that a significant amount of players finds fun in competition and that people have sunk years and years into the game, only to watch it become less and less competitive over the years (rather than the contrary), favouring the more casual "let's goof around" playerbase.
I'm not sure how this thread is supposed to keep these players from complaining, or moving on to other more promising upcoming MMOs that actually care about the PvP portion of their game - it just reads as a giant "fu this is our game now", something which has been blatantly obvious for years now.Edited by Decimus on December 18, 2020 3:44AM3 -
Psiion✭✭✭✭Greetings,
Seeing as this thread is Baiting in nature, as well as non-constructive, we've decided to close it down. Please keep in mind that Baiting is against the Forum's Community Rules as stated below:Trolling or Baiting: The act of trolling is defined as something that is created for the intent to provoke conflict, shock others, or to elicit a strong negative or emotional reaction. It is okay and very normal to disagree with others, and even to debate, but provoking conflict, baiting, inciting, mocking, etc. is never acceptable in the official Bethesda.Net forums. If you do not have something constructive or meaningful to add to a discussion, we strongly recommend you refrain from posting in that thread, and find another discussion to participate in instead. It is also not constructive or helpful to publicly call out others and accuse them of trolling, or call them a troll—please refrain from doing so. If you genuinely believe someone is trolling, please report the post or thread to the Bethesda.Net, and leave it at that.1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLikThis discussion has been closed.