Upcoming Changes to Battleground Queues

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".

npuk

DM queue should remain as a mix of group & solo players, the keep a random solo, random group queue but remove the DM players from that pool of queueing players imo

Fennwitty

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 would have expected a cycling of '1 day capture the relic', '1 day crazy king' much like the cycling of Undaunted Pledge dungeons.

And perhaps leave the deathmatch queue always available.

jaws343

Arunei wrote: »

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".

Counterpoint, if I am off killing my opponents I am in effect preventing them from completing objectives.

the1andonlyskwex

jaws343 wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

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".

Counterpoint, if I am off killing my opponents I am in effect preventing them from completing objectives.

While the 3rd team is off capturing everything without having to fight anyone. Play the objectives and that won't happen.

jaws343

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

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".

Counterpoint, if I am off killing my opponents I am in effect preventing them from completing objectives.

While the 3rd team is off capturing everything without having to fight anyone. Play the objectives and that won't happen.

That just speaks to an inherent flaw with 3 team objectives.

Also, if 1 player on a team is the reason the 3rd team isn't having to fight anyone to win objectives, it speaks more to the poor play of the other 3 players on the team than it does to the one player who is apparently holding their own against the entire other team.

To expand on this as well, if an entire team of 4 is off fighting the second team, while the third team is winning the objectives without fighting anyone, who is really losing here? The first team is winning because clearly they don't care about the objectives. The 3rd team is winning because they get to win a match without actually doing anything. The second team is just being beat. If the second team were better at PVP, they wouldn't have as much of a problem.

But if the complaint is, the second team can't win objectives because they are being killed, it's a pretty poor complaint.

Nogawd

Split the Q, put the DM people in one q and let them have at one another. Put the objectives in another.

Remove random entirely and the daily XP bonus. Players don't need bait to come pvp. They do it because they love it.

Keep adding more rewards, skins, mounts, motifs, what ever for more achievements in the modes.

I would be completely happy with that setup.

Aldoss

Less than 24 hours after the announcement, months before the proposed changes go live, and the animosity between DMers and Objectivers has already begun...

ZOS had to be aware that this would happen, chose it anyway, and then wrote "for the foreseeable future".

NotaDaedraWorshipper

What kind of dumb reasoning is it behind people who says that objective modes is not PvP and only deathmatch is PvP?

Are we not killing eachother in Chaosball? Yes, we are, we must to get and keep the ball. Are we not killing eachother when trying to capture and defend relics/flags? Hmm, yes, pretty sure we fight there to. It's all proper PvP.
Capturing flags/areas is even a very common mode in pure player versus player games.

jaws343

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

What kind of dumb reasoning is it behind people who says that objective modes is not PvP and only deathmatch is PvP?

Are we not killing eachother in Chaosball? Yes, we are, we must to get and keep the ball. Are we not killing eachother when trying to capture and defend relics/flags? Hmm, yes, pretty sure we fight there to. It's all proper PvP.
Capturing flags/areas is even a very common mode in pure player versus player games.

Most people, when talking about objective modes, aren't necessarily thinking about Chaos ball. But, chaos ball has a huge problem in that it promotes tanky/healy builds to the point of making it so that if a specific build picks up the ball the game is lost and there is almost no way to get the ball back. That flaw is present in relic as well, where a tanky/healy build can basically lock down a relic for the entirety of a fight and no team will capture that team's relic at all because they literally cannot kill the player defending.

Deathmatch doesn't have a problem with these builds. You can ignore a tanky player for the most part in DMs and kill their teammates, or ignore a team and fight the other team.

Really though, the biggest issue with relics is the 3 teams. Say you are fighting the tanky player and it takes your entire team to event try to do that, well, now they third team just walks over without a fight to take your relic. Say you ignore that tanky fight and fight the other team, well you now leave yourself open to the other team with the tanky player who can just take the other relics without a fight. The game mode literally encourages you to either stalemate or let another team win without actually fighting for opposing relics. Something a 1 team v 1 team relic match would now allow.

For domination, if you are fighting anyone you are literally doing it wrong. The game mode encourages running from every single encounter, never challenging a spot, never fighting anyone. It's pathetic ring around the rosey.

Iron_Warrior

ZOS is basically saying to DM players to suck it up and populate objective modes because objective players complained too much and can't split the queues because the queues would take too long. So instead of removing DM from random BG pool and making everyone happy, you decided to sacrifice the DM players for objective players. Way to go ZOS!

xDeusEJRx

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

What kind of dumb reasoning is it behind people who says that objective modes is not PvP and only deathmatch is PvP?

Are we not killing eachother in Chaosball? Yes, we are, we must to get and keep the ball. Are we not killing eachother when trying to capture and defend relics/flags? Hmm, yes, pretty sure we fight there to. It's all proper PvP.
Capturing flags/areas is even a very common mode in pure player versus player games.

They're saying it's akin to pve because you can win theoretically without ever needing to do PVP. Does it happen? Not often, but enough to make a joke out of it. I've seen people in capture the relic games say "stay at base ill run" because they spec specifically into running relics and care nothing about healing or even trying to make a well rounded build. People don't wanna get grouped into game modes like that because it quickly becomes unfun when your BG build is made to cheese the objective as much as possible

Aldoss

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

What kind of dumb reasoning is it behind people who says that objective modes is not PvP and only deathmatch is PvP?

Are we not killing eachother in Chaosball? Yes, we are, we must to get and keep the ball. Are we not killing eachother when trying to capture and defend relics/flags? Hmm, yes, pretty sure we fight there to. It's all proper PvP.
Capturing flags/areas is even a very common mode in pure player versus player games.

Please do not rehash this topic.

This argument is like telling a devout follower of another faith, "We both believe in God, so just leave your religion and join mine. Why is that so hard?"

We've been there. It goes nowhere. ZOS has created an environment that fostered and bolstered the development of these two separate and contradictory lines of belief. Literally the least they can do now is to let them both exist within their own bubbles, queue times be damned.

gariondavey

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

What kind of dumb reasoning is it behind people who says that objective modes is not PvP and only deathmatch is PvP?

Are we not killing eachother in Chaosball? Yes, we are, we must to get and keep the ball. Are we not killing eachother when trying to capture and defend relics/flags? Hmm, yes, pretty sure we fight there to. It's all proper PvP.
Capturing flags/areas is even a very common mode in pure player versus player games.

Sorry, but what??????

3 team objective modes HIGHLY incentivize going to where there is not any conflict.
Those other games have how many teams?
TWO.
If they reworked objective modes to have fewer objectives OR reduced the number of teams to 2, the dm crowd would be mainly on board.

Beyond that, removing the ability to choose the type of bg you want to play is a bad idea. We have been there before. It is not pretty.

NagualV

gariondavey wrote: »

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

What kind of dumb reasoning is it behind people who says that objective modes is not PvP and only deathmatch is PvP?

Are we not killing eachother in Chaosball? Yes, we are, we must to get and keep the ball. Are we not killing eachother when trying to capture and defend relics/flags? Hmm, yes, pretty sure we fight there to. It's all proper PvP.
Capturing flags/areas is even a very common mode in pure player versus player games.

Sorry, but what??????

3 team objective modes HIGHLY incentivize going to where there is not any conflict.
Those other games have how many teams?
TWO.
If they reworked objective modes to have fewer objectives OR reduced the number of teams to 2, the dm crowd would be mainly on board.

Beyond that, removing the ability to choose the type of bg you want to play is a bad idea. We have been there before. It is not pretty.

I totally agree with you, and it makes me sad to see that the DM only queue is being removed. I left the game in September, but I still keep up on the forums

On your(and others)point about reworking the objective modes.....its my opinion that if they re-worked the game modes, it would end up in the same place - people would flock to complain about how certain "OP" people are dominating, it's unfair, gear this and that, etc.....people like the current objective modes precisely because they dont have to fight other players. It comes down to the playerbase ZOS wants to cater to.

I'm really tempted to think it would be awesome for the DM/PVP people to just endlessly harass, camp, and troll during objective matches.....really tempted......but I know that's not right either.

Its overall a disappointing situation for people that like DM and combat against other players....

Nogawd

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

because you can win theoretically without ever needing to do PVP. Does it happen? Not often, but enough to make a joke out of it

That's because who wins plays the objective. It's not their fault if they win because "DM" type people are fighting in the middle and ignoring the objective.

If everyone goes for the objective, there will be plenty of actual pvp.

But, the "Team DM" just want a meatfest.

xDeusEJRx

Nogawd wrote: »

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

because you can win theoretically without ever needing to do PVP. Does it happen? Not often, but enough to make a joke out of it

That's because who wins plays the objective. It's not their fault if they win because "DM" type people are fighting in the middle and ignoring the objective.

If everyone goes for the objective, there will be plenty of actual pvp.

But, the "Team DM" just want a meatfest.

But that's not necessarily true. If i bring my max speed stam sorc into BG's, you're not gonna win the objective no matter what. I've seen builds specced for max speed with wild hunt and cowards gear, in chaos ball and relic run, they're literally uncatchable and the game ends in less than 2 minutes. It's really op in 90% of the game modes, even with the chaos ball having the ramping damage, they just suicide off the map respawn and run and grab it again. Some of these BG builds literally cheese objectives and can win without needing to do any PVP. Can pvp happen in objectives? Of course, but sweaty objective players are undesirable to play with, same as objective players not wanting to play with sweaty TDM players. I don't wanna play with a 200% movement speed sorc, nor a 50k tank, nor an unkillable tank-healer they all make BG's unfun to play against and they're way more prevalent in objective gamemodes because they can cheese most game modes with ease

McTaterskins

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin


Hear me out for a moment here:

Want to talk about communication? This is how this whole scenario feels:

This will fall on deaf ears as we have all just learned:

It does not matter what people actually want to see in the game. It doesn't matter that a full consensus would have been good with DM Only and Random Only queues being separate buckets and giving the options. Even if queues would be longer. (Which they wouldn't after all the objective folks come back. So many people have fallen off since the beginning of this whole BG thing.) - On Xbox, I actually see multiple objective games every week even with the current system. I rarely wait more than 5 minutes for a game to pop. This is more than acceptable to me and many many many others.

As a whole, this is an absolutely terrible decision.

It is also incredibly terrifying that your "data" is that far out of touch with the reality of the situation. What data were you collecting? Does it factor how many people stopped playing BGs or playing altogether?

I don't like nonstop deathmatch myself. I prefer the random queue. However, I don't care for 5 capture the relics in a row either and sometimes just want to DM. I even prefer if my first game or two of the evening are DM. Or even if I could have an "every other" scenario. I'd be completely satisfied. So would most of my guild mates and friends. But that's supposed to be what it's about, right? Didn't you state on the last change that we aren't all about [i]taking choices away[/i] here?

Queues should have been set to DM only and Full Random (Solo and Group options) and just leave it.

So many people have stopped pvp'ing due to the system being jerked around one way or the other. So many others quit due to the sets that were implemented.

The "foreseeable future" won't be long. Guaranteed that much becomes apparently within the next cycle or two.

And - Without updates to Cyro performance or an update to IC or other new content? Having no alternatives for folks to go to after this change settles in? We'll be seeing the slow bleed turn into a real gusher sooner rather than later.

PvPers spend a lot more money on subs and in the crown store than they're given credit for. This will have a far heavier impact on revenue than your "data" may be capturing. For example. I came here for PvP and have spent $2k+. on ESO across myself and other family accounts. This is sans the 4 current subs to ESO+.



TLDR?

Terrible decision. Results will be catastrophic in the form of increasing the speed of the slow death. Could have been avoided if you guys did the interview and conversation with TheRealGodzilla. Like we all wanted. (Literally thousands of people wanted.....)

ZOS_Ragnar

We have removed a few posts that were not adding to the discussion. We understand that sometimes discussions can get heated but please avoid attacking each other with rude or insulting comments. We encourage you to take a few moments to ensure your comments abide by our Community Rules before posting.

gariondavey

McTaterskins wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin


Hear me out for a moment here:

Want to talk about communication? This is how this whole scenario feels:

This will fall on deaf ears as we have all just learned:

It does not matter what people actually want to see in the game. It doesn't matter that a full consensus would have been good with DM Only and Random Only queues being separate buckets and giving the options. Even if queues would be longer. (Which they wouldn't after all the objective folks come back. So many people have fallen off since the beginning of this whole BG thing.) - On Xbox, I actually see multiple objective games every week even with the current system. I rarely wait more than 5 minutes for a game to pop. This is more than acceptable to me and many many many others.

As a whole, this is an absolutely terrible decision.

It is also incredibly terrifying that your "data" is that far out of touch with the reality of the situation. What data were you collecting? Does it factor how many people stopped playing BGs or playing altogether?

I don't like nonstop deathmatch myself. I prefer the random queue. However, I don't care for 5 capture the relics in a row either and sometimes just want to DM. I even prefer if my first game or two of the evening are DM. Or even if I could have an "every other" scenario. I'd be completely satisfied. So would most of my guild mates and friends. But that's supposed to be what it's about, right? Didn't you state on the last change that we aren't all about [i]taking choices away[/i] here?

Queues should have been set to DM only and Full Random (Solo and Group options) and just leave it.

So many people have stopped pvp'ing due to the system being jerked around one way or the other. So many others quit due to the sets that were implemented.

The "foreseeable future" won't be long. Guaranteed that much becomes apparently within the next cycle or two.

And - Without updates to Cyro performance or an update to IC or other new content? Having no alternatives for folks to go to after this change settles in? We'll be seeing the slow bleed turn into a real gusher sooner rather than later.

PvPers spend a lot more money on subs and in the crown store than they're given credit for. This will have a far heavier impact on revenue than your "data" may be capturing. For example. I came here for PvP and have spent $2k+. on ESO across myself and other family accounts. This is sans the 4 current subs to ESO+.



TLDR?

Terrible decision. Results will be catastrophic in the form of increasing the speed of the slow death. Could have been avoided if you guys did the interview and conversation with TheRealGodzilla. Like we all wanted. (Literally thousands of people wanted.....)

Great post

Necrotech_Master

I'm not really all that surprised that they are reverting the queues to how it was prior to all this "testing"

if anything fractured the BG community, it WAS all of this nonsense testing (first forcing people to only do DM, then heavily rigging towards DM with no objective only option to go along with it)

I'm looking forward for random to actually be random, but I don't think going back to an only-random queue was their best move (there still are objective people who don't want to get DM at all, and there are DM people who go back to only having 20% chance to get the game that they want)

imagine trying to do the daily pledges without being able to queue for a specific dungeon, that would be a roughly 3 in 30 chance to get the dungeons you need for the days pledges

SkaraMinoc

ZOS_RyanM wrote: »

We have removed a few posts that were not adding to the discussion. We understand that sometimes discussions can get heated but please avoid attacking each other with rude or insulting comments. We encourage you to take a few moments to ensure your comments abide by our Community Rules before posting.

It's taken intentional effort to stay civil. Thank you moderators for understanding this is not an easy situation for competitive Deathmatch players to deal with.

McTaterskins

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

It's taken intentional effort to stay civil. Thank you moderators for understanding this is not an easy situation for competitive Deathmatch players to deal with.

Agreed.

turlisley

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.

For the sake of the future as well as overall transparency, would you be willing to share all or any of the data that led to these design decisions?

mandricus

It's incredible how almost everyone on this thread is saying the same thing: please, do the test. Take out DM from the random queue and see what happens. They said that the queue will be too long. But players are saying "we don't care, let us try please". Why do you want to protect players from longer queues if the players are telling you that they do not want this kind of "protection"? Why can't we run a test for 3 months and then (only then) revert the situation as suggested, if we see with our own eyes that queue time will be unbearable? Everyone will agree with you Zos at that point. We tried, didn't work, we have to revert the situation and go back where it started. Is it too much effort to avoid putting the random players "ticket" in the DM bucket and let us see what happens?

jaws343

mandricus wrote: »

It's incredible how almost everyone on this thread is saying the same thing: please, do the test. Take out DM from the random queue and see what happens. They said that the queue will be too long. But players are saying "we don't care, let us try please". Why do you want to protect players from longer queues if the players are telling you that they do not want this kind of "protection"? Why can't we run a test for 3 months and then (only then) revert the situation as suggested, if we see with our own eyes that queue time will be unbearable? Everyone will agree with you Zos at that point. We tried, didn't work, we have to revert the situation and go back where it started. Is it too much effort to avoid putting the random players "ticket" in the DM bucket and let us see what happens?

I also think that taking dm out if random and having it be it's own queue would be a good idea.

But I also see the counter argument to it. All these players saying they don't care about queue time will likely be the same players beating the drum when it takes hours to find a random match. Assuming Zos is correct and most do not want objective modes. People say they want it now until they realize they'll almost never again ual play because there aren't enough people queuing.

As someone who prefers DM over the way this game has objective modes set up, it wouldn't bother me at all if objective players could never find a match with the split queue. But I at least acknowledge the complaining over it that would surely happen would be unbearable.

Erissime

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?

All of the above true true and true. It is admirable to see so much dedication and passion for what is ultimately a game. But there is one thing I myself felt and will underline again - it is clear the devs don't play. One cannot make accurate decisions based on "data". One needs to be in the actual game, and see for themselves what it is so many players are trying to make clear in forums ( with too little attention still from said devs). For the love of this game and its chances to improvement hire yourselves a true pvp-er to do your testing - or start playing yourselves! (since apparently most of the comments do fall on deaf ears - or as it were - blind eyes, cause writing).

Araneae6537

jaws343 wrote: »

mandricus wrote: »

It's incredible how almost everyone on this thread is saying the same thing: please, do the test. Take out DM from the random queue and see what happens. They said that the queue will be too long. But players are saying "we don't care, let us try please". Why do you want to protect players from longer queues if the players are telling you that they do not want this kind of "protection"? Why can't we run a test for 3 months and then (only then) revert the situation as suggested, if we see with our own eyes that queue time will be unbearable? Everyone will agree with you Zos at that point. We tried, didn't work, we have to revert the situation and go back where it started. Is it too much effort to avoid putting the random players "ticket" in the DM bucket and let us see what happens?

I also think that taking dm out if random and having it be it's own queue would be a good idea.

But I also see the counter argument to it. All these players saying they don't care about queue time will likely be the same players beating the drum when it takes hours to find a random match. Assuming Zos is correct and most do not want objective modes. People say they want it now until they realize they'll almost never again ual play because there aren't enough people queuing.

As someone who prefers DM over the way this game has objective modes set up, it wouldn't bother me at all if objective players could never find a match with the split queue. But I at least acknowledge the complaining over it that would surely happen would be unbearable.

If the queue times were really so terrible for an non-deathmatch only queue then I would say it was that queue that should be removed and not the deathmatch only. I prefer having a variety of game modes but if not enough other players feel that way, how would it be in any way fair to insist the majority compromise their desires for mine? No, I wish that ZOS would implement separate queues (with or without solo and group options) and we could all see what the queue times actually are once everyone interested in battlegrounds had an option that suited them.

mandricus

jaws343 wrote: »

But I also see the counter argument to it. All these players saying they don't care about queue time will likely be the same players beating the drum when it takes hours to find a random match. Assuming Zos is correct and most do not want objective modes. People say they want it now until they realize they'll almost never again ual play because there aren't enough people queuing.

I also see the counter argument, but there are two very easy answers:

- If people get bored of waiting hours for a random objective BG, they can always queue for a deathmatch and have a quick game (deathmatch queues are supposed to stay and to keep working as of today... they will just take a little bit longer because they will no longer mix random queue players in the queue).

- If people will start complaining on the forums about queue being too long, we will all know at that point that there is a good reason to revert to the original solution (random queue with all modes).

A test is a test, as as such a test cannot fail by definition. At the end of the test, we all will learn something new, in any case. There are only two possible outcomes here:

- Overall BG population will increase, DMers will keep playing DM, objectives players will keep playing objective bgs, everyone happy -> test will be a success for both ZOS and the playerbase.

- BG population will stay the same, queue will be unbearably long, people will start complaining on the forum about the fact that they are not able to get a match -> test will be a success for ZOS. They will be able at that point to revert to the original implementation as proposed, having the evidence to support that, knowing that no one will be entitled to complain about that decision: they tested separate queues, they tried, didn't work.

so, at the end of the day, running this test has only two possibile outcomes, and both are a win for ZOS in any case. If it goes well or if it goes bad for the BG population, it will be irrelevant, ZOS will win in any case.

That's the reason why I really don't understand why they are not willing to run this test. It really does not make any sense.

The only i can think of it could be that modifying the group finder and the queue having people that queue for objective bgs to not put the ticket in the DM bucket it's not as easy as it sounds, so they can't allocate the effort / resources to this task at this moment in time, due to other priorities / deadlines they have to deal with. But I think that when someone wants to find a solution to a problem, expecially clever guys like any dev team that is behind any game (most people think that managing a game, expecially an MMO, is an easy task, but I'm an IT professional and believe me, it's not!), they always do. So may be the problem is that they do not want to try to fix it, because they simply don't care, given the fact that the BG crowd at the moment is quite small in this game.

Foto1

Erissime wrote: »

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.

we understand how it works. we do this on purpose. victory on BG is worthless, so only the process itself is important