Upcoming Changes to Battleground Queues

Foto1

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

First off, thanks to everyone for participating in all the Battlegrounds queue tests over the past few months, including the most recent addition of Deathmatch-only queues over winter break. We were able to gather a lot of data from these tests regarding Battlegrounds participation and ultimately found it did not significantly affect the participation and population, and also took into account the feedback received about the majority of Battleground games being Deathmatch. We did see the suggestions for adding additional queue options and considered those as well, but doing so would splinter the Battlegrounds population too much and would lead to much longer queue times; we want to ensure the healthiest population and player experience. As such, we are making the call to remove the Deathmatch-only queue option.

Starting in Update 33, the default option for Battleground queues will be “Solo Random” and the dropdown selection will have “Group Random”. Remember, the group queue will take solo, duo, trio and full groups of players, but the solo queue will only include players that queued solo. All games modes will be in both of these queues.

This will be the last change we make to Battleground queues for the foreseeable future. Thanks again for partaking in these tests and aiding us in gathering very valuable feedback.

thanks for saving my time and money. I no longer see any reason to stay in eso after the release of the update

xDeusEJRx

Remember when this meant something?

Selot

So you prefer just to ignore the issue? Very well. Those few real PvP players staying in the game after this awful update would just treat every objective mode as a deathmatch. Bravo.

Lauranae

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

First off, thanks to everyone for participating in all the Battlegrounds queue tests over the past few months, including the most recent addition of Deathmatch-only queues over winter break. We were able to gather a lot of data from these tests regarding Battlegrounds participation and ultimately found it did not significantly affect the participation and population, and also took into account the feedback received about the majority of Battleground games being Deathmatch. We did see the suggestions for adding additional queue options and considered those as well, but doing so would splinter the Battlegrounds population too much and would lead to much longer queue times; we want to ensure the healthiest population and player experience. As such, we are making the call to remove the Deathmatch-only queue option.

Starting in Update 33, the default option for Battleground queues will be “Solo Random” and the dropdown selection will have “Group Random”. Remember, the group queue will take solo, duo, trio and full groups of players, but the solo queue will only include players that queued solo. All games modes will be in both of these queues.

This will be the last change we make to Battleground queues for the foreseeable future. Thanks again for partaking in these tests and aiding us in gathering very valuable feedback.

So because those who enjoyed battleground before and were forced to go into BG either for rewards or to raise the pvp skills or simply to hope in the luck to get some objectives match, let you draw the conclusion that anyone was ahppy as the population did not changes ? well no comment i guess or i would probably be banned.

Now, be sur that i will for sur avoid all BG or pvp from now. I guess for the time i have left (not speaking of the time of sub), i wont play as long as before but let it know that i will not enjoy the game as before.

I'll stay but it will only because of my guild and the friends i have in. Not because of you. You are a real deception

Araneae6537

I’m sorry to see it go back to all modes solo and group queues only. I do not enjoy only doing deathmatch and especially disliked the last queue experiment as the “random” queue felt like a bait and switch. But with so many who only want Deathmatch, I feel this queue should stay for everyone’s benefit: Those who want to play Deathmatch will get that and those who enjoy the other objectives will play against others who enjoy those games. Is keeping the solo and group queues more important? It’s ideal to have both, but if there can only be so many options…

I wish that it could instead be a goal to bring more players into BGs, maybe with some new arenas or modes, more interesting reward tracks, better matchmaking, etc.

vesselwiththepestle

That's great! Now turn off procs and it's good to queue for BG again!

Aldoss

Noerra wrote: »

Thanks for the Update, @ZOS_GinaBruno !

I would be super honored if you would take the time to read my post below. This is honest feedback and is in no way a criticism of anyone's character or an emotional tantrum about pvp. (I'm sorry you guys have to deal with so much of that lol!)

(1) I'm worried that "last change we make for the foreseeable future" means that you are going to ignore the pvp playerbase. We would love some continued communication and collaboration for the improvement of ESO pvp and ESO as a whole.

I would like to give some feedback as a player who loves pvp, loves elderscrolls lore, and loves mmorpgs and wants to see ESO (my favorite game) thrive and flourish in 2022 and beyond.

(2) Respectfully, I don't know if the staff is playing BGs and PvP themselves, but it is my speculation that perhaps you are making these decisions based off the numbers/statistics/data only without having personally (amongst the staff) put in hundreds of hours of pvp queuing to have a first hand experience of what it is like to be a pvp player.

The same way players can only speculate about the dev team and the decisions they have to make, I wonder if the staff is disconnected from the daily player experience in a similar way.

So for this point, my concern is that you are viewing Data and Statistics as a viable means of communication and collaboration with the player base.

Would you empathize with me for a second and reflect on some times where people thought they understood you and your issues based of a statistic or some generalization without talking with you directly? This is how we, as the pvp community, feel.

So I urge you to not set the pvp community aside again because you found a decision that you think is satisfactory for the "foreseeable future" - I believe if you and your team could make a platform for more open communication with the pvp community we could create some wonderful things!

You might be surprised to find out that the pvp community is a lot more wholesome than you might think, it has been my observation that the toxic expressions from the pvp community towards the devs is mostly about not feeling their voices are heard. Being quiet and polite seems to go largely ignore which is why frustration grows and the means to achieve attention turns into louder and more blatant expression.

(3) I'm not surprised at all with this outcome. Without having DM queuing for a long time, of course that's what people are going to flock to.

Beyond DM queuing being the "new and shiny" thing, it is simply more rewarding as it takes less time to complete a DM match compared to some of the other game modes that can drag on.

When it comes to completing BG quests and accumulating alliance points, it is simply more efficient to queue DM.

In addition to this, those that have higher mmr and are dedicated to mastery of the game and it's combat system want to test themselves in combat rather than chasing down speedy peeps and chonker tanks.

We appreciate the testing you have done because it makes us feel like you haven't forgotten about us... yet at the same time it feels like you are examining our elbow when we have an issue with out knees. What I mean is, it feels like there is a huge disconnect with actually knowing, from a first hand experience, what is wrong with PvP.

It's a clear demonstration that there could be better communication.

I've been following you on twitter, Gina, and am very pleased to see you are more passionate than ever to better communicate with the ESO player base this year!

But at the same time... again ... this decision to not continue to collaborate with us on finding a BG system that makes both of us happy as you are setting this down "for the foreseeable future" has me worried again that we are going to get the same lack off communication we have been getting over the years.

(4)It sounds like, from your post, that a big part of this whole experiment was to cultivate a healthy population. If this is the core goal then I would make a suggestion.

First off I'll just say if you wanted to gather data on what gametype was most popular, you should have rotated the BGs every week to see that... one week only DM, next week only Relics, etc....

You would have seen which BGs people were "meh" about and which ones people were "woohoo!" about. That would be useful data that could help you strategize making a decision on how to manage the queuing system imo.

I agree that switching back to random queuing only is the best decision for the time being as BGs don't seem to have been any more popular than before... and switching back to random would ensure other gametypes are not neglected.

But, Gina ... this doesn't solve anything... we are right where we started with no statement from you that you are committed to working with us to create a pvp bg queuing system we are both happy with... instead your statement is telling us you are reverting back to the previous way with no future plans or testing... This isn't an improvement, it is just more "shuffling the surface" rather than making a deep change in the quest for improvement.

Yes, you are right that option queueing would create "splintering" as you called it - but only if you do so without rewarding each gametype!

The problem with PvP population is that there is no goals for us to pursue that feel meaningful or reward our efforts.

Imagine you are an Athlete on an Olympic team and you practice everyday with no possibility of actually testing yourself and getting rewarded with a medal. Unless you live for the daily activity itself, there is no reason to be passionate and dedicated.

We need goals to pursue, Gina. The Class Balance is SO good right now and ESO combat is a one of a kind masterpiece. We pvp every day because we love it, but like the analogy above, unless we live for the Mastery itself, there is no reason to Queue BGs daily without a goal in sight.

So if populating Battlegrounds is the issue you were seeking to improve with the queuing system , I can guarantee you success if you give us a reward track.

And I mean much more than simply titles like "battlegrounds butcher" or motifs you get in the mail.....

If you want people to flood the Battlegrounds there are lots of options you could do.

Let me list a few below as (5) and (6)

(5) Make MMR visible - Having a number to push higher is it's own challenge and reward. It's a good feeling seeing your number improve because it means that you yourself are improving... it's also good feedback for us as players if we don't see it go higher because we can take that information and try out different strategies or builds that are more efficient.

This would get your already BG queuing players to queue more often increasing population in BGs.

You could reward players who reach a High MMR with a Title and Mount or something too.

There might be some people that feel upset about a reward that is attainable via pvp... but hey, a lot of people also don't want to do trials so those people won't ever get the sunspire mount and skin. Why can't pvp players have a cool unlockable too! I actually think it's a good thing that each part of the game rewards something unique!

I would say go one step further and bring back Deathmatch Queuing and Radom Queuing, only this time take DM queuing out of Random...

Make Random and DM have separate visible MMR rating and give a unique reward track to each!

Example:

I'm a player that likes Objective-based Battlegrounds so I queue for Randoms a lot... I see that at 400-700 mmr I get a title, 700-1000 I get a Skin, 1000-1300 I get a Costume, 1300-1600 I get a weapon style bundle, 1600-1900 Another title + Armor style, 1900-2200 a Mount!

(not that exactly of course but just an example)

And because those rewards are visible to me, I'm going to want to queue up over and over and get better at that type of gameplay to unlock those rewards!

The problem: No one queues for random, everyone just wants DM

Solution: Randoms separate from DM and are populated because of a reward track

(and the same for DM queuing)

Naturally, the better players will end up in DM queues while the less sweaty pvpers will end up in Randoms... making pvp more accessible to newer players as well.

(6) Utilize your art team to create a variety of rewards to unlock behind various achievements.

I think that the Trebuchet emote was a cool addition. It gives you a little unlockable for a a certain achievement. PVP would be a lot more rewarding if there was a lot more emotes, mementos, skins, polymorphs, major/minor adornments, hats, and costumes to unlock in a similar manner. The goal is clear/direct and very easy to accomplish...

Yet we don't have much of those achievable via battlegrounds.

Examples:
-Get 5million heals in a single Deathmatch as a Warden to get a Spirit Deer Non-Combat Pet
-Capture 100 Relics to receive "Aegis Sprinter" title or something and Winged Boots Motif
-Hold the ChaosBall in 30 different matches to get a "Iron body" skin type
-Kill 1000 players as a Sorcerer in Deathmatches to receive a "Arcane Throne" for your house or something
-etc... etc... etc....
-Earn a mount for completing ALL the battlegrounds achievements!

To make sure you could effectively target these rewards, give us the option to queue for specific gametypes. With a reward track you would attract lots of players to battlegrounds and no gametype would be empty of queues because each gametype would have attraction via rewards.

---

Anyways - I could keep writing out lots of possibilities.... all of them would need to be refined anyways in terms of logistics and details - and they would need testing...

The TL;DR is.... please don't just set us aside again... please communicate with us.... please collaborate with us.... we are willing to keep testing things out if you need more data... we are happy to! .... us PVP players are so passionate about this game and will accommodate anything you need to try out for us to see improvement.

for the "foreseeable future" scares me without a statement that you are committed to the future of PvP and Battlegrounds.

I felt so much hope for 2022 from your recent Twitter posts, you obviously love your job and we love you, but now I am worried the same level off communication on PvP topics will continue.

@ZOS_GinaBruno,

I'm tagging this comment because I saw your tweet about wanting to improve communication and I wanted to draw attention to a passionate commenter/ESO player who took real time to write one of the most polite criticisms, and to also add that I fully expect to hear nothing more from you or anyone else at ZOS about it.

I appreciate your devotion to this community and trust your willingness to improve on something that ZOS is notorious for lacking, but actions speak louder than words. Tagging this commenter and coming back to this thread might feel worthless, but this community has endured years of neglect. You'd be amazed at how far a little bit of thoughtful attention can go.

Please do not leave this thread. Please show us that commenters with this amount of passion and empathy are seen, heard, and appreciated by ZOS.

As for ZOS and this decision:

I shouldn't be shocked, but color me surprised... I'm amazed at how quickly ZOS can go from having myself and an entire community of rejected, yet devoted players sing ZOS' praises, to feeling completely and totally empty.

It bothers me that no one at ZOS is acknowledging that this decision is harmful, counterproductive, and senseless.

To every person who saw Gina's message and instantly cheered:

This is NOT what you want, I promise you.

This decision will do nothing but create a cyclical timelapse of the last year that lead up to the DM-only test.

Don't get me wrong, you will get objective modes. You'll likely get 80-90% objective modes....

And you will hate 9 out of 10 of them.

Why?

Because ZOS doesn't care about your enjoyment and they don't care about DMers either. If they did, they would have done literally anything but this.

Your matches will include DMers who don't queue for BGs for any achievement, any xp, any title, nor any style page. They queue because they passionately love the unique ESO BG combat. They're there to combat.

Call them toxic. Call them griefers. Call them whatever you want. They don't care.

You will come to forums and complain. You'll create tickets about it. You'll curse ZOS' inaction, and eventually you will stop queuing.

How do I know this?

It literally just happened! We were all literally just here last year and ZOS thinks that this dumpster fire of a PvP environment is better than devoting an ounce of creative capital towards trying to improve it for yours and our collective enjoyment.

ZOS just gave us something powerful - unity. They took objective player's feedback and they took the DM player's feedback and said "screw it" and just went backwards.

Want data?

When this thread was created to announce the start of the DM only test, the first 30 unique, on topic commenters fell into these categories:

Positive = 11
Mixed = 7
Negative = 12

Then, Gina announced the end of the test and the major queue update (our current situation):

Positive = 11
Mixed = 12
Negative = 9

This subset is flawed, given that many of these players who wrote mixed comments would eventually go on to write multiple negative comments about how broken and heavily skewed the queue was to their least preferred option.

Now you have this announcement:

Positive = 3
Mixed = 1
Negative = 26

If ZOS doesn't come to the forums because of the toxicity, they need only to look in the mirror to know what caused it.

The biggest frustration for players like myself and 350+ other BGers on pcna is that we love ESOs combat more than anything. We love it more than running on a horse. We love it more than dealing with random NPCs strewn about. We love it more than sieges and zergs. We love it more than exp, gold, item rewards, titles, or emotes. We think that this combat system is hands down the most amazing thing ever developed...

And then are witnesses every day to the management of this gold mine squander and waste it.

What a tragedy to read "for the foreseeable future". It's so final. How far does ZOS see this future? How far are you willing to see this future?

RedTalon

Going back to how it was, oddly will be better then it is now Than you guys, better then matches that take to long and no clear winners half the time.

Can't wait for things to get mixed up.

ketsparrowhawk

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

First off, thanks to everyone for participating in all the Battlegrounds queue tests over the past few months, including the most recent addition of Deathmatch-only queues over winter break. We were able to gather a lot of data from these tests regarding Battlegrounds participation and ultimately found it did not significantly affect the participation and population, and also took into account the feedback received about the majority of Battleground games being Deathmatch. We did see the suggestions for adding additional queue options and considered those as well, but doing so would splinter the Battlegrounds population too much and would lead to much longer queue times; we want to ensure the healthiest population and player experience. As such, we are making the call to remove the Deathmatch-only queue option.

Starting in Update 33, the default option for Battleground queues will be “Solo Random” and the dropdown selection will have “Group Random”. Remember, the group queue will take solo, duo, trio and full groups of players, but the solo queue will only include players that queued solo. All games modes will be in both of these queues.

This will be the last change we make to Battleground queues for the foreseeable future. Thanks again for partaking in these tests and aiding us in gathering very valuable feedback.

What an incredible disappointment.

ketsparrowhawk

This does not promote a healthy BG environment at all. The las time we had random-only, the environment was VERY TOXIC. Every single match there were arguments among players about playing objectives vs fighting other players. This will not ensure the healthiest player experience.. quite the opposite. Can't wait.

Skoomah

ZOS, why can’t we have the queue system when BGs first came out? Players checked off the game modes they wanted to play and hit the queue up button. Players got to play the types of game modes they wanted to every time. Instead, all this decision does is antagonize the player base against each other.

You half assed the queue system so that all other game modes back filled Deathmatch the only queues which led to almost all games being Deathmatch. It is your failure as developers that made it people can’t play the game modes they want. This is not how you build and maintain a healthy community. You are failing at your jobs.

SkaraMinoc

Preventing the splintering of queues by combining two sets of players that don't want to play with each other is not a good decision. It's better to have longer queue times.

15 minute queues with good gameplay



5 minute queues with terrible gameplay

Skoomah

ZOS, you need to implement baseline tools that every other game on the planet has which is a custom lobby. We want to be able to group up with twelve of our friends, hit a button, and instantly get into a match. EVERY GAME ON THE PLANET HAS A LOBBY. Please go pay a college freshman a few thousand dollars and let people play how they want. Every night, my guild has to sit in queue for hours waiting for a match to start when we have 12+ people ready and sitting in Discord bored out of the minds instead of playing the game.

gariondavey

Aldoss wrote: »

Noerra wrote: »

Thanks for the Update, @ZOS_GinaBruno !

I would be super honored if you would take the time to read my post below. This is honest feedback and is in no way a criticism of anyone's character or an emotional tantrum about pvp. (I'm sorry you guys have to deal with so much of that lol!)

(1) I'm worried that "last change we make for the foreseeable future" means that you are going to ignore the pvp playerbase. We would love some continued communication and collaboration for the improvement of ESO pvp and ESO as a whole.

I would like to give some feedback as a player who loves pvp, loves elderscrolls lore, and loves mmorpgs and wants to see ESO (my favorite game) thrive and flourish in 2022 and beyond.

(2) Respectfully, I don't know if the staff is playing BGs and PvP themselves, but it is my speculation that perhaps you are making these decisions based off the numbers/statistics/data only without having personally (amongst the staff) put in hundreds of hours of pvp queuing to have a first hand experience of what it is like to be a pvp player.

The same way players can only speculate about the dev team and the decisions they have to make, I wonder if the staff is disconnected from the daily player experience in a similar way.

So for this point, my concern is that you are viewing Data and Statistics as a viable means of communication and collaboration with the player base.

Would you empathize with me for a second and reflect on some times where people thought they understood you and your issues based of a statistic or some generalization without talking with you directly? This is how we, as the pvp community, feel.

So I urge you to not set the pvp community aside again because you found a decision that you think is satisfactory for the "foreseeable future" - I believe if you and your team could make a platform for more open communication with the pvp community we could create some wonderful things!

You might be surprised to find out that the pvp community is a lot more wholesome than you might think, it has been my observation that the toxic expressions from the pvp community towards the devs is mostly about not feeling their voices are heard. Being quiet and polite seems to go largely ignore which is why frustration grows and the means to achieve attention turns into louder and more blatant expression.

(3) I'm not surprised at all with this outcome. Without having DM queuing for a long time, of course that's what people are going to flock to.

Beyond DM queuing being the "new and shiny" thing, it is simply more rewarding as it takes less time to complete a DM match compared to some of the other game modes that can drag on.

When it comes to completing BG quests and accumulating alliance points, it is simply more efficient to queue DM.

In addition to this, those that have higher mmr and are dedicated to mastery of the game and it's combat system want to test themselves in combat rather than chasing down speedy peeps and chonker tanks.

We appreciate the testing you have done because it makes us feel like you haven't forgotten about us... yet at the same time it feels like you are examining our elbow when we have an issue with out knees. What I mean is, it feels like there is a huge disconnect with actually knowing, from a first hand experience, what is wrong with PvP.

It's a clear demonstration that there could be better communication.

I've been following you on twitter, Gina, and am very pleased to see you are more passionate than ever to better communicate with the ESO player base this year!

But at the same time... again ... this decision to not continue to collaborate with us on finding a BG system that makes both of us happy as you are setting this down "for the foreseeable future" has me worried again that we are going to get the same lack off communication we have been getting over the years.

(4)It sounds like, from your post, that a big part of this whole experiment was to cultivate a healthy population. If this is the core goal then I would make a suggestion.

First off I'll just say if you wanted to gather data on what gametype was most popular, you should have rotated the BGs every week to see that... one week only DM, next week only Relics, etc....

You would have seen which BGs people were "meh" about and which ones people were "woohoo!" about. That would be useful data that could help you strategize making a decision on how to manage the queuing system imo.

I agree that switching back to random queuing only is the best decision for the time being as BGs don't seem to have been any more popular than before... and switching back to random would ensure other gametypes are not neglected.

But, Gina ... this doesn't solve anything... we are right where we started with no statement from you that you are committed to working with us to create a pvp bg queuing system we are both happy with... instead your statement is telling us you are reverting back to the previous way with no future plans or testing... This isn't an improvement, it is just more "shuffling the surface" rather than making a deep change in the quest for improvement.

Yes, you are right that option queueing would create "splintering" as you called it - but only if you do so without rewarding each gametype!

The problem with PvP population is that there is no goals for us to pursue that feel meaningful or reward our efforts.

Imagine you are an Athlete on an Olympic team and you practice everyday with no possibility of actually testing yourself and getting rewarded with a medal. Unless you live for the daily activity itself, there is no reason to be passionate and dedicated.

We need goals to pursue, Gina. The Class Balance is SO good right now and ESO combat is a one of a kind masterpiece. We pvp every day because we love it, but like the analogy above, unless we live for the Mastery itself, there is no reason to Queue BGs daily without a goal in sight.

So if populating Battlegrounds is the issue you were seeking to improve with the queuing system , I can guarantee you success if you give us a reward track.

And I mean much more than simply titles like "battlegrounds butcher" or motifs you get in the mail.....

If you want people to flood the Battlegrounds there are lots of options you could do.

Let me list a few below as (5) and (6)

(5) Make MMR visible - Having a number to push higher is it's own challenge and reward. It's a good feeling seeing your number improve because it means that you yourself are improving... it's also good feedback for us as players if we don't see it go higher because we can take that information and try out different strategies or builds that are more efficient.

This would get your already BG queuing players to queue more often increasing population in BGs.

You could reward players who reach a High MMR with a Title and Mount or something too.

There might be some people that feel upset about a reward that is attainable via pvp... but hey, a lot of people also don't want to do trials so those people won't ever get the sunspire mount and skin. Why can't pvp players have a cool unlockable too! I actually think it's a good thing that each part of the game rewards something unique!

I would say go one step further and bring back Deathmatch Queuing and Radom Queuing, only this time take DM queuing out of Random...

Make Random and DM have separate visible MMR rating and give a unique reward track to each!

Example:

I'm a player that likes Objective-based Battlegrounds so I queue for Randoms a lot... I see that at 400-700 mmr I get a title, 700-1000 I get a Skin, 1000-1300 I get a Costume, 1300-1600 I get a weapon style bundle, 1600-1900 Another title + Armor style, 1900-2200 a Mount!

(not that exactly of course but just an example)

And because those rewards are visible to me, I'm going to want to queue up over and over and get better at that type of gameplay to unlock those rewards!

The problem: No one queues for random, everyone just wants DM

Solution: Randoms separate from DM and are populated because of a reward track

(and the same for DM queuing)

Naturally, the better players will end up in DM queues while the less sweaty pvpers will end up in Randoms... making pvp more accessible to newer players as well.

(6) Utilize your art team to create a variety of rewards to unlock behind various achievements.

I think that the Trebuchet emote was a cool addition. It gives you a little unlockable for a a certain achievement. PVP would be a lot more rewarding if there was a lot more emotes, mementos, skins, polymorphs, major/minor adornments, hats, and costumes to unlock in a similar manner. The goal is clear/direct and very easy to accomplish...

Yet we don't have much of those achievable via battlegrounds.

Examples:
-Get 5million heals in a single Deathmatch as a Warden to get a Spirit Deer Non-Combat Pet
-Capture 100 Relics to receive "Aegis Sprinter" title or something and Winged Boots Motif
-Hold the ChaosBall in 30 different matches to get a "Iron body" skin type
-Kill 1000 players as a Sorcerer in Deathmatches to receive a "Arcane Throne" for your house or something
-etc... etc... etc....
-Earn a mount for completing ALL the battlegrounds achievements!

To make sure you could effectively target these rewards, give us the option to queue for specific gametypes. With a reward track you would attract lots of players to battlegrounds and no gametype would be empty of queues because each gametype would have attraction via rewards.

---

Anyways - I could keep writing out lots of possibilities.... all of them would need to be refined anyways in terms of logistics and details - and they would need testing...

The TL;DR is.... please don't just set us aside again... please communicate with us.... please collaborate with us.... we are willing to keep testing things out if you need more data... we are happy to! .... us PVP players are so passionate about this game and will accommodate anything you need to try out for us to see improvement.

for the "foreseeable future" scares me without a statement that you are committed to the future of PvP and Battlegrounds.

I felt so much hope for 2022 from your recent Twitter posts, you obviously love your job and we love you, but now I am worried the same level off communication on PvP topics will continue.

@ZOS_GinaBruno,

I'm tagging this comment because I saw your tweet about wanting to improve communication and I wanted to draw attention to a passionate commenter/ESO player who took real time to write one of the most polite criticisms, and to also add that I fully expect to hear nothing more from you or anyone else at ZOS about it.

I appreciate your devotion to this community and trust your willingness to improve on something that ZOS is notorious for lacking, but actions speak louder than words. Tagging this commenter and coming back to this thread might feel worthless, but this community has endured years of neglect. You'd be amazed at how far a little bit of thoughtful attention can go.

Please do not leave this thread. Please show us that commenters with this amount of passion and empathy are seen, heard, and appreciated by ZOS.

As for ZOS and this decision:

I shouldn't be shocked, but color me surprised... I'm amazed at how quickly ZOS can go from having myself and an entire community of rejected, yet devoted players sing ZOS' praises, to feeling completely and totally empty.

It bothers me that no one at ZOS is acknowledging that this decision is harmful, counterproductive, and senseless.

To every person who saw Gina's message and instantly cheered:

This is NOT what you want, I promise you.

This decision will do nothing but create a cyclical timelapse of the last year that lead up to the DM-only test.

Don't get me wrong, you will get objective modes. You'll likely get 80-90% objective modes....

And you will hate 9 out of 10 of them.

Why?

Because ZOS doesn't care about your enjoyment and they don't care about DMers either. If they did, they would have done literally anything but this.

Your matches will include DMers who don't queue for BGs for any achievement, any xp, any title, nor any style page. They queue because they passionately love the unique ESO BG combat. They're there to combat.

Call them toxic. Call them griefers. Call them whatever you want. They don't care.

You will come to forums and complain. You'll create tickets about it. You'll curse ZOS' inaction, and eventually you will stop queuing.

How do I know this?

It literally just happened! We were all literally just here last year and ZOS thinks that this dumpster fire of a PvP environment is better than devoting an ounce of creative capital towards trying to improve it for yours and our collective enjoyment.

ZOS just gave us something powerful - unity. They took objective player's feedback and they took the DM player's feedback and said "screw it" and just went backwards.

Want data?

When this thread was created to announce the start of the DM only test, the first 30 unique, on topic commenters fell into these categories:

Positive = 11
Mixed = 7
Negative = 12

Then, Gina announced the end of the test and the major queue update (our current situation):

Positive = 11
Mixed = 12
Negative = 9

This subset is flawed, given that many of these players who wrote mixed comments would eventually go on to write multiple negative comments about how broken and heavily skewed the queue was to their least preferred option.

Now you have this announcement:

Positive = 3
Mixed = 1
Negative = 26

If ZOS doesn't come to the forums because of the toxicity, they need only to look in the mirror to know what caused it.

The biggest frustration for players like myself and 350+ other BGers on pcna is that we love ESOs combat more than anything. We love it more than running on a horse. We love it more than dealing with random NPCs strewn about. We love it more than sieges and zergs. We love it more than exp, gold, item rewards, titles, or emotes. We think that this combat system is hands down the most amazing thing ever developed...

And then are witnesses every day to the management of this gold mine squander and waste it.

What a tragedy to read "for the foreseeable future". It's so final. How far does ZOS see this future? How far are you willing to see this future?

On the money, as always.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin

Rex-Umbra

Objective based PvP is 100% more enjoyable to me. I can't compete with meta PvP builds and stopped participating in BGs since it became DM only.

Erissime

It appears that zos fails to understand that their tests were biased. The moment they said they will bring back the other games - they actually never did. Honestly, why don't you start queuing for the games yourselves and see what happens? Because you clearly think you have given the chance to other games back since novemeber, when in fact you never did! What is so HARD to understand!?

As for the deathmatch option and the so called "care" for the players complaining about try-hards only in for butchering ( death-match) completely ignoring (thus leading to loss of team) all the other games - that sounded too good to be true from the begining. As it stands, it clearly will never happen. So what is the meaning of this in the end?

SkaraMinoc

Skoomah wrote: »

Please go pay a college freshman a few thousand dollars and let people play how they want.

I would develop ESO PvP enhancements for free. Client and server programming, UI, art assets, map design, everything.

gariondavey

Skoomah wrote: »

ZOS, why can’t we have the queue system when BGs first came out? Players checked off the game modes they wanted to play and hit the queue up button. Players got to play the types of game modes they wanted to every time. Instead, all this decision does is antagonize the player base against each other.

You half assed the queue system so that all other game modes back filled Deathmatch the only queues which led to almost all games being Deathmatch. It is your failure as developers that made it people can’t play the game modes they want. This is not how you build and maintain a healthy community. You are failing at your jobs.

Amen.

SkaraMinoc

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

Objective based PvP is 100% more enjoyable to me. I can't compete with meta PvP builds and stopped participating in BGs since it became DM only.

What makes you think it will be enjoyable for you once they combine the queues again?

Players will deathmatch and spawn camp you with meta PvP builds anyways. They should have never made this decision.

Erissime

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

Objective based PvP is 100% more enjoyable to me. I can't compete with meta PvP builds and stopped participating in BGs since it became DM only.

What makes you think it will be enjoyable for you once they combine the queues again?

Players will deathmatch and spawn camp you with meta PvP builds anyways. They should have never made this decision.

That is not so much the problem - if they want to hard-pvp, when the objectives are others, well one can only better themselves and compete. The PROBLEM is when they do NOT help in achieving the other objectives, still leading to the loss of the team! I mean I've seen such players around - killing others in a blink of an eye, and still loosing games - that's just their incapacity of understanding how this works. At this point - we honestly have no other games, while a lot of fuss has been made of the so called popular death-match, when clearly the population is spread in between, and zos's tests were biased to the core.

SkaraMinoc

This is how things used to be prior to the queue test:

Objective players hate deathmatchers who aren't participating towards winning the match.
Deathmatch players hate objective players for ending the match too soon and forcing players back into the queue.

Now that there's no future for competitive Team Deathmatch, players will hate each other even more.

This is not a way to unite the community.

spartaxoxo

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

First off, thanks to everyone for participating in all the Battlegrounds queue tests over the past few months, including the most recent addition of Deathmatch-only queues over winter break. We were able to gather a lot of data from these tests regarding Battlegrounds participation and ultimately found it did not significantly affect the participation and population, and also took into account the feedback received about the majority of Battleground games being Deathmatch. We did see the suggestions for adding additional queue options and considered those as well, but doing so would splinter the Battlegrounds population too much and would lead to much longer queue times; we want to ensure the healthiest population and player experience. As such, we are making the call to remove the Deathmatch-only queue option.

Starting in Update 33, the default option for Battleground queues will be “Solo Random” and the dropdown selection will have “Group Random”. Remember, the group queue will take solo, duo, trio and full groups of players, but the solo queue will only include players that queued solo. All games modes will be in both of these queues.

This will be the last change we make to Battleground queues for the foreseeable future. Thanks again for partaking in these tests and aiding us in gathering very valuable feedback.

I still don't understand why we can't try the testing the way it's done in Overwatch with the Yeti hunter game mode.

In the game mode, it's 1 v 5 but the one player is super powered. The yeti is the one, the hunters are the many.

They have two options prefer being the Yeti or prefer Hunters.

They mode first tries to give you a game with what you prefer. If it can't find one fast enough, it ignores the preferences and just makes a match with people randomly assigned a role.

So how would this work in BGs.

Prefer Deathmatch
Prefer Objective Modes

First the game would try to only put you into the game mode you prefer. If the queue can't do that because it has taken too long to find a match, then and only then is a match randomly started with all the available players regardless of their preference. During high pop times you'd basically always get what you want or during your guilds events possibly. But when pop is too low to sustain two queues it wouldn't need to do that.

You guys say you can't just let us queue into what we want and only what we want because it would take too long, then why can't it just be a preferred queue? Wouldn't this address the long queue times?

MurderMostFoul

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

And now you're essentially saying you'll permanently prevent players from choosing the battlegrounds mode they prefer.

nightstrike wrote: »

This isn't entirely accurate. Every mode is available. You'll get the one you want some percentage of the time.

What!?

My statement is 100% accurate. You literally can't choose the mode you prefer when all the queues are random mode.

the1andonlyskwex

spartaxoxo wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

First off, thanks to everyone for participating in all the Battlegrounds queue tests over the past few months, including the most recent addition of Deathmatch-only queues over winter break. We were able to gather a lot of data from these tests regarding Battlegrounds participation and ultimately found it did not significantly affect the participation and population, and also took into account the feedback received about the majority of Battleground games being Deathmatch. We did see the suggestions for adding additional queue options and considered those as well, but doing so would splinter the Battlegrounds population too much and would lead to much longer queue times; we want to ensure the healthiest population and player experience. As such, we are making the call to remove the Deathmatch-only queue option.

Starting in Update 33, the default option for Battleground queues will be “Solo Random” and the dropdown selection will have “Group Random”. Remember, the group queue will take solo, duo, trio and full groups of players, but the solo queue will only include players that queued solo. All games modes will be in both of these queues.

This will be the last change we make to Battleground queues for the foreseeable future. Thanks again for partaking in these tests and aiding us in gathering very valuable feedback.

I still don't understand why we can't try the testing the way it's done in Overwatch with the Yeti hunter game mode.

In the game mode, it's 1 v 5 but the one player is super powered. The yeti is the one, the hunters are the many.

They have two options prefer being the Yeti or prefer Hunters.

They mode first tries to give you a game with what you prefer. If it can't find one fast enough, it ignores the preferences and just makes a match with people randomly assigned a role.

So how would this work in BGs.

Prefer Deathmatch
Prefer Objective Modes

First the game would try to only put you into the game mode you prefer. If the queue can't do that because it has taken too long to find a match, then and only then is a match randomly started with all the available players regardless of their preference.

You guys say you can't just let us queue into what we want and only what we want because it would take too long, then why can't it just be a preferred queue? Wouldn't this address the long queue times?

That would require someone to actually code up an algorithm, and it seems pretty clear that ZOS doesn't want to do anything that would require even the smallest amount of effort.

They didn't put any (noticeable) effort into making sure their initial test would provide useful data, they didn't put any (noticeable) effort into their attempt at split queues, and their final "solution" of just reverting everything is pretty much just the lowest effort thing they could do that's (barely) better than the current situation with broken random queues.

Hotdog_23

Do a test for four modes. To gage the reaction of the player base and see if it helps the population of BG's. Because right now the only thing you did was, make everyone unhappy.

1 - Solo DM only
2 - Solo Objective Modes
3 - Group DM only
4 - Group Objective

Stay safe

Valabrog

Thank you!!! Really good news

Taggund

The majority of responses to the current state were negative. There has been a multitude of threads other than just the responses in this one (in this and the general forum). In my guilds, i mostly heard negative. It had to be changed from the current state, but ZOS set themselves up for failure in this "test" and their changes.

The order of the solo/group queue is a change I wanted to see before the "test", because whatever is at the top of the list is what is the most popular. However, this "test" has shown the division in BGs and that a change is still needed to give DM only to those that want DM only. Not sure why they did not reorder the queue so random would be the default and otherwise keep it as is (and to truly see how long a wait there is for either selection).

I think in general the response we're getting is because the BG crowd is much smaller than anything else in ESO, so priorities are elsewhere. Maybe it will eventually be addressed, and maybe an approach that can give true rotation through modes instead of a RNG based approach that results in the same mode multiple times in a row, will be coming. I just don't see anything else coming for awhile.

As someone that wants random, and OK with it including DM, I'll be back to playing BGs once this new change is implemented. I'm also still going back to other MMOs, so for me, the "test" just got me to spend less time playing ESO.

agelonestar

hafgood wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the wrong decision and I cannot believe that you as a company have decided to implement it.

What this means is that every battleground will be treated as a deathmatch, so back how it was before you made the deathmatch queue.

What you should have done is leave the split between deathmatch and random but removed deathmatch from the random queue.

That way those wanting a deathmatch get a deathmatch, those wanting to play the other modes get to play the other modes.

You talk about longer queue times, I would welcome a longer queue time if it meant I got a non deathmatch game without anyone playing it as a deathmatch

I'm sorry but this was the only logical decision to make, reverting to one solo & one group queue is a huge backwards step.

Thank you for not listening to the player base

To my mind, the longer queues are simply an indication of how few people want to engage with PVP in any form in this game any longer.

First they slowly strangled Cyrodiil to the point that filling a group is just plain hard work now, and then they played around with BGs so much that people moved on.

PVP in ESO doesn't need a medic, it needs a priest.

Tafvsulke

Here's my two cents:

I hate 99% DM.

I enjoy 100% variety.

Split the two ques. Objective Que and Deathmatch Que. Remove DM from the random que. Dont even give it a 1% chance of popping up in Objective Que.

If any of us want to just butcher players, we can go to the DM Only Que.

Who gives a crap about que times increasing? We already have to wait for long periods to get into Greyhost Cyrodiil. Gives us time to get up, stretch our legs and maybe take a shower while we wait.

Arunei

Decimus wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

So...ZOS was willing to do a DM-only test, but aren't willing to try an Objective-only test? They aren't willing to try splitting the queue and see if it makes queue times as long as they fear? They'd said before that when BGs were DM-only the BG population dropped to unhealthily low numbers. Wouldn't that mean that perhaps most people doing BGs actually do prefer Objective? Wouldn't it be worth it to test?

This just feels like such a copout, and I don't even play BGs. It's like ZOS got tired of testing and decided "eff it we're done lel". Like...this is so half-arsed man. If you're going to do testing at least so the next two logical tests too and get an actual array of data.

Also, a question for people who just want to DM: why not just go into Cyrodiil if you want fights? Dragging down your teammates in Objection BGs seems incredibly selfish.

I don't know if you've been to Cyrodiil in the past 7 years, but the word on the street is that it's pretty damn laggy 20/24 hours...

Also, some people prefer a balanced, fast-paced team vs team fight over getting 20v1'd by a ball group and/or riding 30 minutes to find some poor quester to fight.

I usually only go into Cryo during Midyear, and for some reason the servers always seem to magically fix themselves for that event before crapping out again, but I can tell from people who PvP often that it's no good there most of the time performance-wise.

As to the other part of your answer, I don't do BGs but I used to, and judging from past experiences and what people mention here forums...BGs are hardly balanced, especially since MMR seems wonky. And BGs aren't just about strictly team fights (and by that I mean they aren't all DM-focused), but as someone else mentioned...playing the Objectives will get you fights, as you have to fight other players to take relics or get the Chaos Ball or whatever.

Potentially making your team lose an Objective-based BG because you wanted to kill everyone else rather than contribute to a team-oriented goal still strikes me as rude and selfish. And I use 'you' here in a general sense. If you want team-based combat, being off on some random part of the map farming kills and ignoring your team...isn't team-based combat.

This is a huge reason why they need to at least TEST if splitting the Random and DM queues would be as bad as they think it will be. In the end people will just stop playing when we go back to players treating every game like DM. It's what led to the testing and stuff to begin with. What was even the point of testing if they weren't going to try every available test to see what actually does and doesn't work? It just doesn't make any sense and reeks of "We're tired of trying the players can just deal with the original problem".