Battlegrounds still Deathmatch Only

CyberOnEso

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

I completely agree with you. What I would personally not like to see happen is ZOS only switches the labels, Deathmatch still is the only mode due to the issue with the queue statistics, and then people say that people only want to play Deathmatch.
Despite the issue being with the queue itself rather than player behavior.

ealdwin

As a side note, if the issue is BG population, the fix is quite simple.

Make BG participation a viable and potentially lucrative source of raw Jewelry plating mats and watch the numbers soar.

CyberOnEso

NagualV wrote: »

@Jaws343 answered your question about why they turned deathmatch only off in the first place, in a thread below.

When ZOS distabled "Deathmatch only" they said this: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/586410/upcoming-changes-to-battleground-queues/p1

While there were certainly a lot of players that liked only having Deathmatch available, there were just as many that didn’t enjoy it. A frequent complaint we saw, though, was the disappointment that we removed something that is ultimately at the core of our game: the freedom of choice. And in the case of this test, the data appeared to back that up as well. Although we initially saw a very slight bump in participation, it quickly declined and has left Battleground populations in a fairly unhealthy state.

ZOS's words, not mine.

NagualV wrote: »

I'm all for solutions, trust me. It wasnt exactly "fair" either when the folks who wanted to play the most popular mode were actually forced to rarely play it, if at all. Weve come full circle it looks like, now the objective based crowd is experiencing the same frustration.

I would love for there to be a way for the objective folks to have their choice, and the DM to have their choice....but were talking about a small population to begin with....

If ZOS think this is the right solution why did they say this:

in the case of this test, the data appeared to back that up as well. Although we initially saw a very slight bump in participation, it quickly declined and has left Battleground populations in a fairly unhealthy state.

In ZOS's opinion having Deathmatch only was worse for the BG population, if ZOS wants to increase the BG population, this, according to their own words, is clearly not a good option.

I am attempting to stay objective and use quotes from ZOS where possible, I am not bothered by which crowd had it worse or whatever.

I don't think the BG population is as small as many think, the leaderboards would suggest otherwise, if there are 46 dungeons that people can choose for individually, and 92 if you consider vet and normal, then clearly there can be a choice of gamemode for BG's, even if that choice is DM or, Not DM, which I am perfectly happy with.

trackdemon5512

CyberOnEso wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

They turned Deathmatch only off in the first place for a few reasons:

1. More players queued into deathmatch only, which made deathmatch the primary gamemode in the random queue. Something we are now seeing again.
2. Solo queue players being pitted against pre-made groups is a complete nightmare of an experience.

So they removed direct queue for all game modes to consolidate the queues to provide a solo and group queue. But in doing so, they made DM, the only non objective mode, appear far less frequently. Which is the problem they were trying to address

I am talking about the "Deathmatch only" test, which they said "left Battleground populations in a fairly unhealthy state.". I am unsure if we are discussing the same thing.

I personally think that a better solution to all of this would have been to weight DM in the queue differently. Should be 50% chance to get DM, and 50% chance to get objective. With the objective modes further broken out within that 50% chance. So the game first says: Will this be DM or Objective. If Objective, then it randomly pulls based on the percentage for each objective.

I think this is a better solution than what is happening at the moment, especially for times of low queue population, however, during prime time I see no reason as to why there cannot be a Deathmatch only queue and a genuinely Random queue. And then only merge the queues when required, which is what I essentially suggested in my original post.

My guess is either the system can’t even merge the two queues without running into significant problems. Like the system can’t separate players by who joined for what or in what order or who would get into a BG if the two merged queues had too many players.

And then the more likely issue is that outside of prime time NO ONE is doing BGs and they’re trying to balance just keeping the current low population somehow going.

Really it would be a lot better If they just shut down BGs completely for 3 months and tried to sort this all out. As it is right now 31 OUT OF 47 achievements for BGs are essentially impossible to get.

CyberOnEso

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

My guess is either the system can’t even merge the two queues without running into significant problems. Like the system can’t separate players by who joined for what or in what order or who would get into a BG if the two merged queues had too many players.

Maybe you're right on this, I am unsure but it sounds possible.

And then the more likely issue is that outside of prime time NO ONE is doing BGs and they’re trying to balance just keeping the current low population somehow going.

Out of curiosity which server do you play on? Before the "DM Only" stuff on PC EU every night I tried doing BG's at 1-2AM in the morning and found a queue pop in 20 mins, which was fine.

There will be times when no one is playing, and that is fine, I don't think merging the queues to fix this edge case is a must.

If you queue into Lair of Maarselok at 4AM you won't get a queue pop either, and that is fine.

Really it would be a lot better If they just shut down BGs completely for 3 months and tried to sort this all out. As it is right now 31 OUT OF 47 achievements for BGs are essentially impossible to get.

Yeah, the achievement point is a real issue and I really hope they put out their ideas of the path forward soon.

Mandragora

I would say majority players will queue for DM for now, because all others simply gave up BGs. They do anything else and don't even try, so you have DM players + those who don't care or don't know. So I will try to be positive that ZOS is trying to be fair, but:

Question is - if the random queue is really 2nd option, so majority, who don't care what they will play, will click on DM anyway, and only those, who really don't want DM will choose 2nd option, why put them into queue with DM? I mean for now it is filled from players who do deafult and neutral anyway, right?

If those players, who really don't want DM, will wait too long and they know that default is DM, they can switch manually or not? If they will decide that it is not worth of the waiting, but this way they can feel forced into it?

When I have heard that non groups BGs are 2nd option, I decided to try queue for a cetrain time before switching to default groups again - they don't force players to groups if they decide for non groups right? So why they do it for random non DMs if they want really to play something else?

NagualV

CyberOnEso wrote: »

NagualV wrote: »

@Jaws343 answered your question about why they turned deathmatch only off in the first place, in a thread below.

When ZOS distabled "Deathmatch only" they said this: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/586410/upcoming-changes-to-battleground-queues/p1

While there were certainly a lot of players that liked only having Deathmatch available, there were just as many that didn’t enjoy it. A frequent complaint we saw, though, was the disappointment that we removed something that is ultimately at the core of our game: the freedom of choice. And in the case of this test, the data appeared to back that up as well. Although we initially saw a very slight bump in participation, it quickly declined and has left Battleground populations in a fairly unhealthy state.

ZOS's words, not mine.

NagualV wrote: »

I'm all for solutions, trust me. It wasnt exactly "fair" either when the folks who wanted to play the most popular mode were actually forced to rarely play it, if at all. Weve come full circle it looks like, now the objective based crowd is experiencing the same frustration.

I would love for there to be a way for the objective folks to have their choice, and the DM to have their choice....but were talking about a small population to begin with....

If ZOS think this is the right solution why did they say that

in the case of this test, the data appeared to back that up as well. Although we initially saw a very slight bump in participation, it quickly declined and has left Battleground populations in a fairly unhealthy state.

In ZOS's opinion having Deathmatch only was worse for the BG population, if ZOS wants to increase the BG population, this, according to their own words, is clearly not a good option.

I am attempting to stay objective and use quotes from ZOS where possible, I am not bothered by which crowd had it worse or whatever.

I don't think the BG population is as small as many think, the leaderboards would suggest otherwise, if there are 46 dungeons that people can choose for individually, and 92 if you consider vet and normal, then clearly there can be a choice of gamemode for BG's, even if that choice is DM or, Not DM, which I am perfectly happy with.

Fair enough.....

I've stated my opinion on it, and I'll be the first to admit if I'm wrong about it. I do believe I'm correct, however.

Well just have to wait and see how its addressed. The way they structured it, for whatever reason it is, is now locking the objective based players from playing their preferred mode. Which is frustrating, and ideally we dont want that, just like we dont want the DM players to be frustrated either.

At the end of the day, I can armchair quarterback this all day, but ZOS ultimately has the most data and info to make the decision.

trackdemon5512

CyberOnEso wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

My guess is either the system can’t even merge the two queues without running into significant problems. Like the system can’t separate players by who joined for what or in what order or who would get into a BG if the two merged queues had too many players.

Maybe you're right on this, I am unsure but it sounds possible.

And then the more likely issue is that outside of prime time NO ONE is doing BGs and they’re trying to balance just keeping the current low population somehow going.

Out of curiosity which server do you play on? Before the "DM Only" stuff on PC EU every night I tried doing BG's at 1-2AM in the morning and found a queue pop in 20 mins, which was fine.

There will be times when no one is playing, and that is fine, I don't think merging the queues to fix this edge case is a must.

If you queue into Lair of Maarselok at 4AM you won't get a queue pop either, and that is fine.

Really it would be a lot better If they just shut down BGs completely for 3 months and tried to sort this all out. As it is right now 31 OUT OF 47 achievements for BGs are essentially impossible to get.

Yeah, the achievement point is a real issue and I really hope they put out their ideas of the path forward soon.

I play PS4 NA. 20 mins for a queue at any time is a lot of time. And considering the DM diehards will queue over and over again for DM Random Solo it all but ensures that virtually every BG will be a DM with such a low population. We’ve already pointed out that these individuals see no point in flag games, heck they play them as if they’re DMs. So the option for them to opt out has been given and yet in a wildly disproportionate way they’ve been given virtually all control to choose DMs all the time.

I know consoles have yet to get the patch but we’re already discussing the implications of the queue issues now. Many of the casuals just don’t want to come back to BGs if it’s still just DM all of the time. That’s what we’re getting from generally asking around and not asking the committed players.

Joy_Division

Here's a crazy suggestion: learn from the 4+ years of common complaints about Battlegrounds so they are more enjoyable to play.

NylAR

CyberOnEso wrote: »

With the change to the Battleground queue, nearly all battleground matches are deathmatch only.

In my opinion, this is an issue, especially since ZOS said after their Deathmatch only tests

Although we initially saw a very slight bump in participation, it quickly declined and has left Battleground populations in a fairly unhealthy state.

I predicted this before the patch went live here. And now it's out ZOS, or Rich Lambert doesn't seem to think it is an issue. As "Deathmatch only is still the top queue" (Because, as he points out, it's the first one on the dropdown menu).

If we presume "Deathmatch only" has 51% of the people queuing for it (As "it's the top queue"). Then due to sheer probability, 99.984% of all games played will be Deathmatch. Which I think is an issue as 49% of hypothetical players want something else other than Deathmatch, as they went out of their way to change the drop-down to select it.

0.99984% = 1-(((1-0.51)^12)*0.8)

Rich Lambert did reveal that there were some non- deathmatch games running, which I personally think is a miracle. And shows that a significant amount of people are queuing into "Random Queue", meaning they went and changed a drop-down because they want another game mode than "Deathmatch", for whatever their reasons are, but the game will not give them one.

Rich Lambert describes the queue as a set of buckets, with each bucket being assigned a gamemode. "Random Queue" puts a ticket in each of the buckets and "Deathmatch Only" puts a ticket into the "Deathmatch" bucket. When one bucket is full (has 12 people) the queue finder will start a match of that type.

Due to sheer probability, any other bucket will never fill faster than the "Deathmatch" bucket, because you cannot choose to not put your ticket into the "Deatchmatch" bucket.
It is frankly maddening how no one at ZOS saw this coming, or how this isn't seen as an issue. They seem to think if "Deathmatch Only" is the most popular queue (despite being the default) then all matches being Deathmatch is fine, which in my opinion is crazy especially considering how many achievements are tied to non- deathmatch battleground modes.

This thread is not meant as an opinion on which mode is better or whatever, it is meant to hopefully get across a point that the new battleground queue has been poorly thought out and will likely

[leave] Battleground populations in a fairly unhealthy state

I just want to point out that I am aware ZOS did say this

One thing to keep in mind is the random queue will include all game modes (Flag Games, Land Grabs, and Deathmatch) so the likelihood of getting Deathmatch is going to be higher for those queueing into that game mode, specifically.

Just because you said getting Deathmatch is more likely doesn't mean that it is a good idea or that people didn't understand, please don't treat your player base like we are stupid. We care about this game, we read what you said, however, I personally disagree with it.

I may be a stupid player that has no idea how complex your impressive systems are. But I think this is an issue that should be seriously looked into as I personally don't want to see the Battleground population in a 'fairly unhealthy state', again.

Quotes from Rich Lambert from: https://twitch.tv/videos/1198116853 starts around 4 hours in.

BTW, if you want my thoughts on the "Warsong gulch" issue, or "De_Dust2" issue,

1. Create two buckets one labeled "Deatchmatch" one labeled "Not Deathmatch"
2. When you queue into "Random Queue" you place your ticket in the "Non-Deatchmatch" bucket, when you queue "Deatchmatch Only" you place your ticket into the "Deathmatch" bucket.
3. If after 5 minutes of being in the "Non-Deatchmatch" bucket you still are not in a match you then place a ticket into the "Deathmatch" bucket also.
4. As soon as either bucket has 12 players the match starts, the "Deatchmatch" bucket will be deathmatch the "Non- Deathmatch" bucket will be a random "Non- Deathmatch" mode.
5. That creates a system where players are given a legitimate choice as to which mode to play. And allows the "Random" queue to help the "Deatchmatch" queue ensuring people get into matches in a reasonable time.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

A frequent complaint we saw, though, was the disappointment that we removed something that is ultimately at the core of our game: the freedom of choice.

All this needs is a giant tick button "INCLUDE DEATHMATCH".

FeedbackOnly

Still have at least 20 matches nothing but deathmatch while being in proper queue for solo

FeedbackOnly

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Here is an extremely rough transcript of what Rich said about BGs on the stream. Please don't quote this as it's not cleaned up and may have inaccuracies. It should be mostly right but I typed this as I listened and have NOT had the chance to listen a second time and read the chat to edit for accuracy.

QcellESO: turns out that BGs are still only-deathmatch, even when queueing for random is the team aware? Any hotfixes planned?

Rich: So, that was the problem right? When you click random. Random is gonna put you into the queue with everybody. And what it does is...there's a bucket, right? So, for each game mode it puts you into each one of those buckets. If people are just queuing deathmatch and solo deathmatch is the top one, random is gonna be always deathmatch. Because, it just goes to try to make a game and if sees that if everybody is queued up, or the majority of people are queued up for deathmatch, then it's just gonna start deathmatch. So, told everybody that was gonna happen. And now it happens, so um, we're gonna watch it. We'll see. But it definitely does work. But, the majority of people are just queuing for deathmatch.

Brokenmolde: If no one queues for anything other than DM, all randos will be DM lol

Rich: Yup, because that's what the buckets are. Everybody is in the bucket, and it looks at people, and that's the way it goes.

QcellESO: Someone did the math and the chance of a non-DM is <0.1%, since a single DM can make 11 others end up in DM. Is this seen as an issue? Should we expect changes before the Q1 DLC?

Rich: Haha, someone did the math? Let me see here, I'm gonna go...Let me go see here. Uh, Battlegrounds (dogs barks, rich to dog: Shut the front door) This report takes a little while to load. And we can't really do anything, if everyone is queueing up for Deathmatch still. We can't really change that, right? Like, the only thing we could possibly do is have a deathmatch only and a non-deathmatch only. But, then that fragments the player base even more than it already is. Like, let's see...Yup, there are definitely other than deathmatch games going on. There's not a lot. Everyone is still queuing up for deathmatch, as it's the top queue. That's kinda what, that's absolutely what I thought was gonna happen, so...um, there's a choice there. And y'all can choose. But, because this is the first one, everybody clicks that. If solo random was there, it would be random. But, you'd still get Deathmatch games. Especially if people switched it down to Deathmatch.

doinstrun: I've only had 1 objective game since the patch. 99% deathmatch. That's random btw

Rich: I don't know if you ever heard what I said doinkstrun, but what random does is puts an entry into each of the buckets. So if there's 4 game types, what random does is put you into 4 different queues or 4 different buckets. And then everybody else goes in and clicks deathmatch only, they just go in the deathmatch only queue. And what the queue does is it goes and looks "how many players are in here?" and "What are the likelihood of me starting s game in anything other than deathmatch?" Or you know, and it goes "Oh hey, look! The likelihood of me starting a game of deathmatch is higher!" So, it starts a deathmatch game. That's how it works. That's how we said it was gonna work. I'm not sure what to say, or how we could change it. Like we could totally split it out, like I said, and say "Random is everything but Deathmatch." But then, randoms just won't ever start up because people are still going and queuing for Deathmatch. So, right, like how do you want to do it? WoW has the exact same problem with Battlegrounds. When they do, you know, Warsong Gultch. People back in the day hated Warsong Gultch and never queued up. And people were like "Hey, your queue is broken. Warsong Gultch never pops," and it's like "yeah, because nobody is queuing up for Warsong Gultch." Like, I'm not sure how to fix that. At least this way Deathmatch is playing the objectives instead of everything being Deathmatch. It's one of those things, it's glass half full, glass half empty kind of weirdness there.

FioFioFIO: It worked before you combined the queues tho

Rich: So people used to say that Deathmatch only popped up, and the reason we combined the queues is you couldn't specifically choose the game types.

Brokenmolde: would it be a bad idea to do like only x% of matches started per timeframe can be DM?

Rich: yes, it would be a very bad idea Brokenmolde. Because then games just wouldn't start at all. And players would be complaining that games don't start at all.

Caindele: make it two buttons, join DM join non-DM, the drop down isn't intuititive.

Rich: So if we do that, players will actually get to a point where they could never get a game. The game could never start, which is bad. Which is why we've done the system we've done where it's buckets. If they are exclusive buckets then 3 people can be in 1 queue, and 6 people could be in another queue, and a Battleground could never start. That would be bad, right? Never want that to happen. In my opinon, any battleground is better than no battleground, even if it's not necessarily a game type that I want to play. Same thing, you know, perfect example, when I was queuing earlier on my tank I was queuing specifically for dread cellar, and I was waiting forever. Soon as I did random, I got in right away instantly.

Elistix: People complain that objective maps don't get any pvp, so they go for DM where they face other players. But what if objective modes just had 1 objective that players had to fight over? It would be deathmatch but with an extra step.

Rich: I'm not sure what you mean by that. There's an objective if you have to do but you have to fight over it? Isn't that Capture the Flag is, you capture the flag? Isn't that what holding an area is?

QcellESO: Last question: If non-DM BGs are inaccessible, is removing the non-DM achievements something you guys would consider?

Rich: Maybe so, if it ever gets to that point. I don't think it will ever get to that point but...

NesESO: the issue with Battlegrounds that many players have is dm is seen as pvp. the other game modes other ppl can avoid pvp the entire match and still win and this is why ppl love or hate obj game modes.


Rich: (reading comment I can't see?) You'd be surprised how many go into pvp but don't actually want to pvp. (seems to be answering question) They just want to run around on the flags. Yup. It's a huge divide in playstyles. (reading comment I can't see?) 80% of your players want to DM (seems to be answering question) I mean it depends on the circles you run in bro. All the elites just want to kill people, right? They want to prove they are better than everybody else and they do that by killing them. There's a lot of other people that enjoy being in pvp but not necessarily having to kill players. Objective based stuff is a ton of fun, Sammy.

(I also can't see this question) Can you move the dropdown rate below the button or is the dropdown not the problem?

Rich: So the problem and you see this everywhere is most players just click the button, they don't change the dropdown, right? So, that is one thing. But, the exact same thing happens in campaigns. They see this list of campaigns here, right, and they just click and they do the first one. They don't click on these other things. It's just human nature. You see the first thing, you click it, you go, right? And we've experimented with changing that so this patch we actually changed this to solo, it used to be group being the top one. We changed it to solo to see what would happen. And guess what happened? More people are queuing solo than they were before. It is just because we changed the drop down. It's all we did was change the dropdown.

doinkstrun: I just want fast bgs

Rich: That's what we all want. for sure

(answering unseen question) Elites in pvp won't fight each other? yeah, they want to hunt the sheep. They want the easy kills. BTW, I am a sheep. So I'm not being mean. (question I can't see) Wait times are gross? Not sure how to solve that problem Doink. To be perfectly honest, if people aren't queueing for specific things or the thing you're queueing up for it's tough to solve. But, we have ideas of things we could do. But ultimately it comes down to, players gotta queue. [transcriber note: I think this might be about dungeons]

Rich lost touch with players. PvP is still it's a objective mode against players

spartaxoxo

Personally I think it should work like this

1) make random the top option. As they said in the stream, a lot of people just click whatever is the first option. Since Deathmatch is already the most popular game mode by far, it doesn't also need the help of being first on the list.

2) Make random queue prioritize making non-DM matches. After x timeframe, then automatically priotize DM. They can figure out which timeframe is the most realistic, as of course they aren't gonna want to have situations where people don't get a match or have people wait half an hour.

With these two options most games would still be DM only but you'd at least be able to find non-DM games at times where the pop is relatively higher.

jle30303

If say, 60% of people are queuing for Deathmatch, then 60% of games should be deathmatch.

Not 99.9%, which is what is happening with the current queue.

People who are queueing for a NOT DEATHMATCH random are being dragged out of the NOT DEATHMATCH buckets and put in the DEATHMATCH queue where they did not want to be.

I would rather play objective, ANY objective, than Deathmatch. I want a fair chance of getting a NOT DEATHMATCH game.

Take Deathmatch out of the "random" queue... Deathmatch queue will still fill faster... but there will be people getting their random non-Deathmatch battlegrounds still.

trackdemon5512

jle30303 wrote: »

If say, 60% of people are queuing for Deathmatch, then 60% of games should be deathmatch.

Not 99.9%, which is what is happening with the current queue.

People who are queueing for a NOT DEATHMATCH random are being dragged out of the NOT DEATHMATCH buckets and put in the DEATHMATCH queue where they did not want to be.

I would rather play objective, ANY objective, than Deathmatch. I want a fair chance of getting a NOT DEATHMATCH game.

Take Deathmatch out of the "random" queue... Deathmatch queue will still fill faster... but there will be people getting their random non-Deathmatch battlegrounds still.

Or they just add the step where after you assign each individual a ticket you tally the total amount of tickets for each type of event and then assign a probability that said game type comes up.

That way if 1 person wants Deathmatch and 11 others want Random BG (including Deathmatch) there is only a 26.7% chance of getting Deathmatch and a 24.4% chance of getting the other modes.

ZOS really borked this one.

spartaxoxo

jle30303 wrote: »

If say, 60% of people are queuing for Deathmatch, then 60% of games should be deathmatch.

Not 99.9%, which is what is happening with the current queue.

People who are queueing for a NOT DEATHMATCH random are being dragged out of the NOT DEATHMATCH buckets and put in the DEATHMATCH queue where they did not want to be.

I would rather play objective, ANY objective, than Deathmatch. I want a fair chance of getting a NOT DEATHMATCH game.

Take Deathmatch out of the "random" queue... Deathmatch queue will still fill faster... but there will be people getting their random non-Deathmatch battlegrounds still.

They can't do that because there's not always enough players that want objective games.

trackdemon5512

spartaxoxo wrote: »

jle30303 wrote: »

If say, 60% of people are queuing for Deathmatch, then 60% of games should be deathmatch.

Not 99.9%, which is what is happening with the current queue.

People who are queueing for a NOT DEATHMATCH random are being dragged out of the NOT DEATHMATCH buckets and put in the DEATHMATCH queue where they did not want to be.

I would rather play objective, ANY objective, than Deathmatch. I want a fair chance of getting a NOT DEATHMATCH game.

Take Deathmatch out of the "random" queue... Deathmatch queue will still fill faster... but there will be people getting their random non-Deathmatch battlegrounds still.

They can't do that because there's not always enough players that want objective games.

Do what I said above and change the SOLO RANDOM DEATHMATCH option from a guarantee to one where you’re promised a higher chance of getting into a Deathmatch. Problem solved while allowing for all game modes based on just popularity.

The need to adhere to only Deathmatches breaks the entire system as it is.

redspecter23

spartaxoxo wrote: »

jle30303 wrote: »

If say, 60% of people are queuing for Deathmatch, then 60% of games should be deathmatch.

Not 99.9%, which is what is happening with the current queue.

People who are queueing for a NOT DEATHMATCH random are being dragged out of the NOT DEATHMATCH buckets and put in the DEATHMATCH queue where they did not want to be.

I would rather play objective, ANY objective, than Deathmatch. I want a fair chance of getting a NOT DEATHMATCH game.

Take Deathmatch out of the "random" queue... Deathmatch queue will still fill faster... but there will be people getting their random non-Deathmatch battlegrounds still.

They can't do that because there's not always enough players that want objective games.

But is the reason for that because the queue is currently (essentially) still only DM driving the objective players away?

Even if what you say is true and the objective queue would fill slower, there may be many objective players that would rather have a wait time instead of 90%+ chance of deathmatch which will likely just keep them from playing altogether if they don't enjoy that format.

If the queue really doesn't have 12 people in it for a non DM BG at all times, then only have a non DM queue active during peak times. If it can't support 12 players even at peak times, they need to look at the format and figure out why.

We are dealing with a massive lack of information that ZOS has access to. What if we could see the number of people in any given queue? We're just guessing right now. ZOS has the info and then plays the "I told you so" game which isn't fair when the players don't have the data or even the knowledge of how the bucket system functioned up until about 2 days ago.

jle30303

There is absolutely no way that fewer that, across of all of the literally hundreds of thousands of players who play ESO, fewer than 12 are going to be interested in a non deathmatch Battleground.

The queue will populate, even if it takes minutes rather than seconds.

Casul

I'd rather wait then have to do DM.

I played during the test, it was ok. But I want my CTR and chaos ball back.

AlbertVonMoosseedorf

jaws343 wrote: »

Should be 50% chance to get DM, and 50% chance to get objective. With the objective modes further broken out within that 50% chance. So the game first says: Will this be DM or Objective. If Objective, then it randomly pulls based on the percentage for each objective.

Thats far from beeing random: You have deathmatch, Relic, Domination, Crazy King, or Chaos Ball means 5 different modes

Random means you have a equal percentage to get one of this 5 BG's if you choose random.

Minyassa

Yeah, I was very disappointed when I read that they were adding Deathmatch to the random queue. I don't *want* Deathmatch, that's just Cyrodiil with a different skin on it. Boring. I want the other games that are actually something different from vanilla PvP. And it's dismaying to learn that "higher chance" of Deathmatch means "all the time." So still no point in trying, and I will contribute to the low population they think is because nobody wants objective matches, when actually it's the inevitability of getting DM that's keeping me from queueing.

jaws343

AlbertVonMoosseedorf wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

Should be 50% chance to get DM, and 50% chance to get objective. With the objective modes further broken out within that 50% chance. So the game first says: Will this be DM or Objective. If Objective, then it randomly pulls based on the percentage for each objective.

Thats far from beeing random: You have deathmatch, Relic, Domination, Crazy King, or Chaos Ball means 5 different modes

Random means you have a equal percentage to get one of this 5 BG's if you choose random.

But it is random, because you have two types of gamemodes:
Objective
Deathmatch

The fact that objective is further broken out is irrelevant. it's still objective. A 50/50 shot of getting either DM or Objective is far more random than a 20% chance of getting DM and an 80% chance of getting Objective.

BalticBlues

You always wonder how much worse PvP can get in ESO...
BG modes were the last viable PvP area for me in ESO - less lag, more fun.
But Deathmatch only now to me means BORING ONLY.

PvP bites the dust.

DerAlleinTiger

Minyassa wrote: »

Yeah, I was very disappointed when I read that they were adding Deathmatch to the random queue. I don't *want* Deathmatch, that's just Cyrodiil with a different skin on it. Boring. I want the other games that are actually something different from vanilla PvP. And it's dismaying to learn that "higher chance" of Deathmatch means "all the time." So still no point in trying, and I will contribute to the low population they think is because nobody wants objective matches, when actually it's the inevitability of getting DM that's keeping me from queueing.

Can confirm. Just played 8 rounds of BG's last night, all on different characters. Every. Single. One. Was TDM. Even my sub-50 attempt. TDM. I'm just not going to play BG's anymore at this rate. I would rather sit in a queue for 30 minutes to get a single objective mode than play 2 rounds of TDM in that time. I don't like TDM. I have never liked TDM. I will not like TDM anytime soon. It's not even that I'm bad at it. I won 5 or 6 out of the 8 rounds I played and I was consistently 1st or 2nd on my team. It was fun winning and all, sure, but it's simply not the game mode I wanted to play. It doesn't matter how much I win or how high my score is. I don't want to play it. It's not fun for me.

I. Don't. Want. To. Play. TDM. That is why I specifically did NOT select the TDM queue, yet I'm still getting TDM 100% of the time.

I saw immediately what the problem was. You have two queues: One random, including TDM. One only for and with a guarantee of TDM. The former is taken from to create the latter. So you can have 11 people who want anything but TDM, but they get thrown into a TDM because 1 person specifically ordered it. That is neither fair nor good design.

I don't care if I have to wait longer. I don't want TDM. It doesn't matter how fast it is; if it isn't what I want then what's the point of it being faster?

It's like saying "I want a plane ticket to go to Germany." and being told "We don't have any flights to Germany available for another 3 days, but we have one to Japan leaving in 1 day!" That's great and all, and I'm sure Japan is a beautiful country, but why would I say "Sure, give me the ticket to Japan!" if I have business in Germany I want to see to, just because it's three times faster to get there?

If TDM really is the most popular game mode, then TDM queue should be more than capable of filling out games all on its own. Most objective players, though, don't care about which specific game mode they get. Generally speaking, they just want anything but TDM. They don't care if it takes longer. They just want NOT TDM.

I don't know how this wasn't foreseen as an issue before this went live, and it's utterly baffling how it isn't being seen as an issue right now when it's so obvious! The math is right there, conducted by someone who is far better at math than I am, only confirming in numbers what is obvious through simple logic alone. The numbers don't lie. The PC-EU leaderboard stats someone mentioned earlier are too hard to ignore alone, and simply depressing for anyone who wants to play anything but TDM.

ADDITIONALLY: I would like to add I am quite glad that I already got all of the dyes from the BG achievements and class kill achievements in the past two years. It would be essentially impossible to complete any of them but the class kills and the BG kills right now. I feel bad for anyone who hasn't gotten the Pit Daemon's Poison or the Stormlord's Lightning yet. You'll never get them so long as this system is in place the way it is! Just getting Pit Daemon's Poison alone would be atrocious. It was already a pain before, but now it's so much worse. You would need to literally play thousands of BG matches. At minimum, you would need to play 8000 matches to get it, assuming that every time you got an objective mode (less than once every 100 matches, statistically) the odds were even for each objective mode (extremely unlikely), and that you managed to not only win every single one of the CTR matches you got but also personally made all 5 captures for every single win (yeah right, good luck). That. Is. Insane.

In reality, we are talking at minimum 10,000 BG matches, or more likely 20,000 to 30,000 matches just for a single dye unlock. This is absurd, and you cannot tell me this is intentional with a straight face.

gamma71

I would like to work on the non death match achievements. Dm is getting boring and the q is get longer

FreeMaN_A

spartaxoxo wrote: »

After x timeframe, then automatically priotize DM. They can figure out which timeframe is the most realistic, as of course they aren't gonna want to have situations where people don't get a match or have people wait half an hour.

No, thx, I'd better wait. Just. Separate. Dm and Objective. And give an option to choose both. This is the simpliest solution with no need of "testing". But ZOS did this in the worst way ever possible.

spartaxoxo

FreeMaN_A wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

After x timeframe, then automatically priotize DM. They can figure out which timeframe is the most realistic, as of course they aren't gonna want to have situations where people don't get a match or have people wait half an hour.

No, thx, I'd better wait. Just. Separate. Dm and Objective. And give an option to choose both. This is the simpliest solution with no need of "testing". But ZOS did this in the worst way ever possible.

There's not enough people for that. You might get games if you play at a high pop time, but they want everyone to be able to get any game over none. And that's pretty reasonable

trackdemon5512

spartaxoxo wrote: »

FreeMaN_A wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

After x timeframe, then automatically priotize DM. They can figure out which timeframe is the most realistic, as of course they aren't gonna want to have situations where people don't get a match or have people wait half an hour.

No, thx, I'd better wait. Just. Separate. Dm and Objective. And give an option to choose both. This is the simpliest solution with no need of "testing". But ZOS did this in the worst way ever possible.

There's not enough people for that. You might get games if you play at a high pop time, but they want everyone to be able to get any game over none. And that's pretty reasonable

Except ZOS and the developers were warned many times that catering to the DM only crowd would only screw over BGs. There’s post after post on these forums stating that the problem isn’t players wanting Deathmatch but that a few bad apples aren’t playing toward objectives and ruining the mode for everyone else.

For the last two months ZOS swung hard to cater to Deathmatchers. And the community responded naturally. The populations of BGs fell off a cliff to extremely problematic points. Now instead of issuing a mea culpa ZOS has doubled down with is clearly a very broken queue system.

BG players shouldn’t have to just accept playing DMs until the population gets better because ZOS is clearly doing everything in its power against that.

So those that remain are doing the easiest and most effective thing possible, quitting the mode.

Now is ZOS going to wise up and completely change BGs, like they did the overland in order to actually get more players to engage? Or are they going to continue to try and woo the hardcore crowd and further alienate general players until there is literally no one left to play?

Amottica

With the DM queue drawing from the random queue it only takes one player queing for a DM to draw 11 players from the random queue. Considering the recent BG-only test experienced a decline to unhealthy levels the DM only population is not that large so it makes sense we are experiencing this issue.

The best solution is to have the DM only queue only draw from those that queue only for DM. Zenimax would be giving them their choice and if it means longer queue times then that is life.

Also, maybe provide something in objective BGs that discourages DM behavior.