Not really? Spawn camping and focusing on people who aren't actively opposing your teammates means the threats to them aren't being dealt with, and thus your team can still lose because you weren't actively contributing to dealing with the immediate threats. Instead you might have been clear across the map fighting one or two other people and leaving your team to try and win an objective with, in a way, less than a full team.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.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.
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.
Players that liked BGs were playing before DM test and treated every game like if it was DM.
Players continued doing this during DM test.
No population change (because why would it change?).
BG minority outcried on forums while the rest of us was playing the BGs and enjoing it.
If this test was supposed to give you any data, you failed miserably.
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.
NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »
It's all pvp in some form.
Disappointed, but not surprised.
Though this said (and here apologies, but the bad apples among your bunch have absolutely exhausted any last bit of patience and good faith I ever had), to every single DM crackhead swearing to camp objective players in random matches: hope you chew on a cactus. You guys are literally the reason a lot of the population that preferred objective-based BGs left BGs entirely, but it doesn't seem like you even realise it. Hell, you seem more than glad enough to go right back to this behaviour and just make it hell for everyone else yet again. Yes, ZOS created the ground for this disaster, but it's you guys being the way you are and putting your own damn need for proving your in-game girth above everyone else's is ultimately what led to the disaster we have on our hands now. You have chased away players who did not want every game to be treated like a Death Match, led to this failure of a biased test, and in result chased away what was left of people still queueing for Random in hopes that maybe, just maybe, they won't end up with a few bad apples in the match running off to butcher everything that moves just-because.
And all of that over some players crying over having to fight against premades - something that I have, ironically, found far easier to deal with in every mode but Death Match. DM is where having to go solo against premade teams was a really painful experience, precisely because that mode encourages a Team VS Team play. So every premade was optimised towards that dungeon-style, making it night impossible for people who queued solo or in pairs to compete, because they'd just get steamrolled (that did apply partially to Chaosball as well, but I found it far more easy to mitigate).
(Except then wonderful, wonderful sets like Crimson Twilight and Dark Convergence were introduced, and the cheesefest has reached a whole new level... which reminds me the period of time where proc sets were disabled in Cyro. That was the best time in Cyro I've ever had, too bad that, too, went away...)
Not gonna lie, I am glad that, at the very least, I will finally be able to play something that is not a bloody Death Match ten times per day in hopes for a miracle of getting any of the modes that I actually enjoy.
But at the same time, this decision is going to be a big loss to the community. No issues will be fixed, and rather, it seems like they're just going to be amplified. You have already diminished the PVP population purely by conducting the tests the way you did, and that's going to be a damage to the virility of the queues you are not going to be able to patch up easily. Not with this half-baked of a course of action.
I honestly agree with most people here (the ones that can think for a moment about something other than stabbing everything that moves, that is). You should have split the queues, at least partially, into DM-only and Randoms (either with or without DM in the mix, but not as a single queue with the DM-only crowd thrown in). Would the queues take a hit? Sure, maybe. But with how long they are now because of so many people leaving BGs entirely over the changes you guys have introduced, I don't think it's going to be that noticeable. As someone noted earlier in the topic, a good middle ground would have been a three-queue solution along the lines of
- Random Objective only (both solo and group in one queue)
- Death Match only (solo)
- Death Match only (group)
That way waiting times for Objective should hopefully be reduced since both solo players and parties would be combined in that one, and the DM crowd, since your tests basically turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy of them being the majority, could have their two queues, which should hopefully be quick enough to fill in.
Too bad we're likely never going to actually see a solution like this, nor even have the chance to test if it would work any better than the disaster of a test we've had served here.
As one quick aside though, to all the people thinking the reason no further tests will be conducted simply because ZOS doesn't care, just a small insight from someone who's day job is literally video game testing: this is, more often than not, not up to the devs nor the team designing the tests. Of course this might be different for this team in particular, but in my experience with different projects, you'll usually get a project set up with a firm deadline in place. You have to do what you can within that timeframe, and if you don't manage to go through all the variables you wanted to? Well, tough luck, gotta live with knowing you'll likely never finish that test case. This said, I do think the tests in this case were poorly-designed and/or poorly executed, but it's not always obvious right off the bat, and once the biases and faults in the testing come to light, it's often too late to change course and implement additional tests. So you salvage what you can and try to make do with what you have. It sucks, but at the end of the day, that's how it tends to be. Granted, this doesn't exclude the possibility that ZOS just doesn't give a damn, but that's more likely the case for the big heads of the company - and not so much the dev and/or test team. Just a sad reality of how processes like that tend to go. And trust me, for those of them who do care, seeing this bad of a result can be just as painful as it is for the players it's gonna affect in the end. But eh. C'est la vie, and all that.
@ZOS_GinaBruno
I know so many people that don't do Battlegrounds just because they hate deathmatchs or hate that other players treat each game as such. Why not try and propose separate queues for deathmatch and objectives ?
Example with 3 queues :
1 - Group random <-- (default queue and for those who want to play in group)
2 - Solo Deathmatch <-- (for those who want deathmatch over being able to play in group)
3 - Solo Objectives <-- (for those who want anything but deathmatch)
Why not give it a try ? What's a few more months of testing ?
Thanks for reading.
GetAgrippa wrote: »Guess it's back to farming objective players. What a colossal mistake, Zos.
For the love of all that is holy, Zos, if you have to do this at least make deathmatch a 50% chance. If objectives become 75% of all games again then the tank meta in bgs will come back with a vengeance. That's how you win objectives, by being unkillable. And that's not fun at all.
GetAgrippa wrote: »Guess it's back to farming objective players. What a colossal mistake, Zos.
For the love of all that is holy, Zos, if you have to do this at least make deathmatch a 50% chance. If objectives become 75% of all games again then the tank meta in bgs will come back with a vengeance. That's how you win objectives, by being unkillable. And that's not fun at all.
Disappointed, but not surprised.
Though this said (and here apologies, but the bad apples among your bunch have absolutely exhausted any last bit of patience and good faith I ever had), to every single DM crackhead swearing to camp objective players in random matches: hope you chew on a cactus. You guys are literally the reason a lot of the population that preferred objective-based BGs left BGs entirely, but it doesn't seem like you even realise it. Hell, you seem more than glad enough to go right back to this behaviour and just make it hell for everyone else yet again. Yes, ZOS created the ground for this disaster, but it's you guys being the way you are and putting your own damn need for proving your in-game girth above everyone else's is ultimately what led to the disaster we have on our hands now.
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.
Darkmage1337 wrote: »
https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/61615
"The Whitestrake’s Mayhem in-game event begins Thursday, February 17 at 10AM EST and runs until Tuesday, March 1 at 10AM EST."
Please reschedule The Whitestrake’s Mayhem event after the Update 33 (March 14th) Battleground queue changes.
AlbertVonMoosseedorf wrote: »Darkmage1337 wrote: »
https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/61615
"The Whitestrake’s Mayhem in-game event begins Thursday, February 17 at 10AM EST and runs until Tuesday, March 1 at 10AM EST."
Please reschedule The Whitestrake’s Mayhem event after the Update 33 (March 14th) Battleground queue changes.
I think the event will also encourage many PvE players to try their hand at battlegrounds.
It would be a shame to miss this chance to consistently attract new players