Battlegrounds: Cycle of Self-Destruction

Haki_7 · February 2

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Haki_7 wrote: »

There's nothing more fun than a stalemate.

It didn't feel like a stalemate to me, I could tell I was making progress. Half my damage that match was Thrive + Talons and attached effects. Green didn't have enough damage. Not judging players just performances, we had:

Red: 2 strong DD, 1 strong healer, 5 mid to low
Green: 2 strong healer, 1 strong DD, 5 mid to low

So despite it being a low scoring attrition match, the nature of 8v8 allowed us opportunities to pressure the main healers enough to break the balls apart and kill isolated players, so it felt fun and evenly matched to me.

The entire match felt artificially tiresome. It seemed like the warden-chasing around the pillar went on for too long. Waaay too long. I'm not as tanky as a pure healer, so in these situations please just swarm me. Or any of the other players. We'll still try our best and fight until the very end. But chasing after the target least likely to die made zero sense in 4v4v4. It makes even less sense in 8v8.

I'm glad you liked it though. I remember my teammates complaining about how boring it was.

DaniimalsSF · February 2

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

DaniimalsSF wrote: »

3rd partied action is the absolute best. Nothing worse than two mini ball groups standing still spamming heals and shields. ZOS please add a 16 player free for all deathmatch queue, no team mates to save you.

I hated 3-sided but I'd love FFA, which would work much better for mindless brawling (not a bad thing) as I think a lot of us really miss the endless Memorial Brawl in Old IC. But as I'm sure you've noticed, when you throw the mindless brawlers in with the objective players in a 3-sided team game where strats matter, you get a lot of toxicity.

The first move is definitely separating deathmatch and objective modes. My ideal is 3 queues: solo FFA deathmatch 16 players, solo or group 4v4v4 objective, and solo or group 8v8 as is. Use all the maps for all queues. And fix the GD MMR!

xylena_lazarow · February 2

Haki_7 wrote: »

It seemed like the warden-chasing around the pillar went on for too long.

Green should've been able to take advantage of the tunnel vision, but lacked the damage to punish it. It didn't seem like a deliberate strat but it ended up not as bad as it looked, isolating the 55k hp Warden pro healer from their allies to prevent ball grouping helped us to close out kills. Red had issues earlier in the match when green balled up.

DaniimalsSF wrote: »

The first move is definitely separating deathmatch and objective modes.

Yeah if there's enough players for 4 queues then surely we can improve on the formats. I miss the DM queue.

Moonspawn · February 3

Decimus wrote: »

Why don't you just swap the players into different teams in Team vs Team if you think it's that simple?

Because doing this in Team vs Team would only create a grueling stalemate (or close to it), after which the participants would promptly uninstall.

Decimus wrote: »

What you also miss out on is that the easier targets will still get farmed as more experienced PvPers know to only attack each other if it's the objective or helps you win the game - rest of the time you're better off just almost instantly killing the people in PvE builds with 20k health rather than letting them parse on you.

This was a lot harder to do in a 3-sided fight. If a team started retreating and the other two gave chase, they would be forced into the same space, thus becoming vulnerable to an ult dump AND to each other. The fear of being caught in a sandwich was a powerful deterrent. I suppose it depends on your build and other factors, but I would say that, to me, the best move was always to focus experienced PVPers and help my teammates retreat. I remember that doing this amidst the chaos was sure to create all kinds of opportunities.

Decimus wrote: »

This is no different whether you have two, three, four or fifteen teams - it's common game sense. The only difference is that you're more likely to get 3rd partied the more teams there are and this can be either by RNG or simply people disrespecting/disliking you. Either case is a result of bad and unfun game design.

As explained above, a fight between two and three teams is completely different.

Decimus wrote: »

Also, three-teams BGs got sidelined because almost no one played them and there is no way to fix fundamental errors. You shouldn't be able to queue into a battleground and get into a 1-4v8 situation because people in opponent teams don't like you and finally get their chance to outnumber you.

The fundamental errors could be fixed, but considering that our beloved zenimax won't even move the 8v8 solo queue to the top of the queue list, I think I should start managing my expectations. Perhaps, at first, the most enlightened request to be made would be the replacement of the least populated queue option with 4v4v4 DM Solos Only. Which one do you think it is? 8v8 Group, 4v4 Group, or 4v4 Solo?

Haki_7 · February 3

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 29: Waiting 23 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnFQJ6fsxrQ

Decimus · February 4

Fun Battlegrounds Chapter 6: Waiting 4 minutes 20 seconds for a fun match! (Solo PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/LgyrpRAGkaU?si=w3iYCKDwPNcCxfQY

Moonspawn · February 4

Decimus wrote: »

Fun Battlegrounds Chapter 3: Dear diary, here we go again... waited 20 seconds for a fun match (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/XGejhJCGxD0?si=qiBdUNMV7RUoVwmF

Here's how this lopsided snoozefest could have been a balanced match:
Red (Fire Drakes), Yellow (Pit Daemons), Blue (Storm Lords)

The remaining 6 player slots could be filled with any combination of newcomers gunning for the daily. All 12 players earnestly competing for the objective. No cheesing the ball, no spawncamping. The fight would concentrate on the ball carrier and be unpredictable, chaotic and actually fun for everyone involved.

Haki_7 · February 4

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 30: Waiting 26 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akF9iEReddA

Decimus · February 5

Fun Battlegrounds Chapter 7: Waiting 4 minutes 40 seconds for a fun match! (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/wzpQeAGChAE?si=TOL4DLYgayqHdIk0

RedTalon · February 5

Well none of this is shocking really, I find card games to be more fun then bgs lately which is sad -sighs- Without a third team matches are either straight out loses or wins. Nothing really random happens and you can predict everything

Thumbless_Bot · February 5

As we can see above, some folks like 2 teams and some like 3. What percentage of people like which more is debatable. I guess. The sentiment i am hearing from real players is decidedly slanted against the 2 team format. However, Zos will (did) certainly claim a win with two teams even if it is not because it is in their interest to do so because of the time and money invested in it and because they probably like getting a consistent paycheck / want to keep their jobs.

After the paint has dried, they should really bring back both formats, full stop.

If 10% play 2 teams and 90% play 3 teams, or vice versa, so be it. I would rather play less of the game i want to play than be stuck playing something i dislike. Somehow, I don't think this would happen.

If they fully reverted to just three teams that would be a mistake and, well, flat out wrong. As would sticking with two teams. Also, if they did revert to just 3 teams, I wouldn't tell those that liked two teams to go play another game... or go duel... that's dismissive, condescending and wrong.

Everyone should be able to PLAY THE WAY THEY WANT.

Chrisilis · February 5

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

As we can see above, some folks like 2 teams and some like 3. What percentage of people like which more is debatable. I guess. The sentiment i am hearing from real players is decidedly slanted against the 2 team format. However, Zos will (did) certainly claim a win with two teams even if it is not because it is in their interest to do so because of the time and money invested in it and because they probably like getting a consistent paycheck / want to keep their jobs.

After the paint has dried, they should really bring back both formats, full stop.

If 10% play 2 teams and 90% play 3 teams, or vice versa, so be it. I would rather play less of the game i want to play than be stuck playing something i dislike. Somehow, I don't think this would happen.

If they fully reverted to just three teams that would be a mistake and, well, flat out wrong. As would sticking with two teams. Also, if they did revert to just 3 teams, I wouldn't tell those that liked two teams to go play another game... or go duel... that's dismissive, condescending and wrong.

Everyone should be able to PLAY THE WAY THEY WANT.

In the recent Dev post titled "Question Gathering Thread for Upcoming Eso Community Q&A - PvP," link below,

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/671765/question-gathering-thread-for-upcoming-eso-community-q-a-pvp/p1

I asked this specific question: Given the feedback regarding the recent changes to battlegrounds and the fact that many players have expressed a desire for the three team 4v4v4 format to be reinstated as an option, in addition to 4v4 and 8v8, will 4v4v4 be reinstated?

The Dev team posted the first part of their two part response to this yesterday Feb. 4th., link below

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/672867/cyrodiil-champions-live-test-community-q-a#latest

The first part of their two part response deals with Cyro and the upcoming test campaign Vengeance (which is on pc only, kinda disappointed, PS5/NA here). The second part of their response is going to address the rest of the PvP related questions they received, of which, mine was one. I'm really, really hoping to get an answer. I want to know one way or another. It would be fantastic if their answer is yes, 3 team bg's will come back, faith in humanity restored! And if the answer is no then I'll know its time to start winding down my time with ESO. If they choose not to address my question... I don't know what I'll do... expire of frustration probably. Point here is, an answer may be forthcoming. Hopefully its the answer we want to hear.

Haki_7 · February 5

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 31: Waiting 22 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyspN80Bd5c

Decimus · February 6

Fun Battlegrounds Chapter 8: Waiting 2 minutes 27 seconds for a fun match! (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/iq-B58ts_CE?si=T6MESudnjHdc_Xtc

Moonspawn · February 6

@Decimus I have a video for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Fl4DaDzFc

Are you really going to say that the players who want this combat can't have even a single one of the FOUR queue options available right now?

Haki_7 · February 6

Moonspawn wrote: »

@Decimus I have a video for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Fl4DaDzFc

Are you really going to say that the players who want this combat can't have even a single one of the FOUR queue options available right now?

Considering how ESO's combat is, this is how two-teams BGs play out:

Grossly lopsided- One team mindlessly farming the other. This is the most likely scenario.
Slightly lopsided- The superior team is determined within the initial clashes, then it becomes a matter of pointlessly going through the motions until the end of the game.
True stalemate- This is the rarest type. Pray you never have to suffer through this torture.

I hope one day we have three-teams BGs again, where (with some very minor tweaks) every single match could have been like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Fl4DaDzFc

Decimus · February 7

Thanks, that's a great video to showcase all the problems of 3-way BGs:

20 seconds in, the person recording the video steals a kill from the green team (who do all the damage to the target while he's chilling in the background), after which green team (and a random purple) just 5v2 and delete his team mates whom he was with while he's... running after the random purple.
After this he gets to 2v1 a green who chased him after that team fight. Not judging, it is a deathmatch and I assume he's trying to win. Directly after this he and his team try (and fail) to 4v1 a purple.
After this a team fight where his team is focused by both enemy teams, and this sets the pace of the match: weakest team to be farmed... he's well on his way to a negative KDR (and I'd assume extremely frustrating) battleground with his team trailing by more than 10 kills as something happens: a person in his team rage quits. Wow, what a sign of a fun battleground... right?
Replacement arrives and turns out to be a competent player, it's time to steal kills and focus down the purples who now become the weakest team!
End of the BG, after 10 minutes of killstealing... a tie, and instead of their team it's purple who has a miserable time due to matchmaking and being focused by 8 people.

Now, team mates do split in team vs team BGs as well and outnumbered fights happen... but the difference is that while you're being outnumbered in team vs team, your team is outnumbering the rest of the opponents. That is balance: you can buy your team kills and objectives by just being a good player and surviving outnumbered.

If you do this in 3-way BGs, not only are you outnumbered, but so is your team - splitting into two groups just turns your fight into two 2v4s instead of one 2v4 and team being able to 6v4 meanwhile for example. This forces a ball group style gameplay on people, which is the last thing battlegrounds need. Fundamental problem, glad it's gone.

Now I understand a lot of people enjoy this less skill-oriented gameplay of sitting behind (possibly healing) meat shields and stealing kills with things like mage's wrath or jbeam... I would highly recommend these people to try Cyrodiil, which has exactly that type of 3-way PvP content.

That, or just practicing and improving... almost every BG can be fun, even without third partying - just takes a bit more effort.

Thumbless_Bot · February 7

Some objectivity is warranted here.

Objective facts:

Players like different formats... some players like 4v4, some like 8v8, some like 4v4v4 and other like all or a subset of them. I. For instance, like 4v4v4, 8v8 to a lesser extent and I do enjoy the sigils.

It takes more skill to survive against two opponents than it does one, all else being equal. This is simple logic and any arguments to the contrary defy the simplest of logical analysis and critical thinking skills. A conclusive statement can be made from this that three teams takes more skill because you are all always outnumbered, but i wont make that statement here.

More people quit 2 team bgs than did 3 team. Why is anyone's guess, but I do not think anyone would argue that this is not the case on PS5 or on PCNA, where i still play (different name on ps5).

This is true in spite of the fact that there is now a 15 to 30 minute penalty for doing so. Why is subjectivr and covered below. However, it is safe to say that at least some people would rather quit and not be able to requeue for up to 30 minutes than suffer through a 2 team bg. This speaks volumes about the 2 team format.

Balance:

We can objectively say that each person in each team, whether it is 4v4v4 or 4v4 or 8v8 is up against the exact same obstacle and has, in theory, the same tools at their disposal.

In 4v4 you have three teammates and four people trying to kill you, or whatever.

In 4v4v4 you have three teammates and 8 people trying to kill you, or whatever.

Everyone has the exact same odds. This is objectively balanced and there is no fact can dispute this.

I would say that, as an objective fact, a tripod is more stable than a two-legged chair. It just is.

Which leads into...

Team composition:

There are more tanky healbots in 4v4 than there used to be in 4v4v4. This is likely due to broken medal scoring, but no one can really say objectively why... however, there they are there.

Queue times (as a % of overall playing time):

Most bgs are over far quicker than they used to be. Whatever your queue time experience is, and these apparently vary wildly for some unknown reason, you are stagnating there for a longer percentage of your overall playing time than you used to because of this shortened duration. If you wait five and play two, you are playing less of a percentage of your overall playing time than if you wait 10 and play 15. This is math.

Reviewing my experience:

These objective facts alone make 2 team bgs less fun and far less enjoyable for me. Not a fact, just how the facts impact my playing experience.

Subjective things:

Why people quit bgs:

They lost their internet connection.

Their boss called while they were "working" from
home and asked where the presentation that was due yesterday is... pure conjecture here, but I'm sure it's happened to someone.... someone with thumbs anyway...but never me... never...

They're not enjoying the bg.

Whatever the reason, more people are quitting in the middle of bgs regardless of the timeout penalty.

A bit of logic on this to illuminate the point:

Premise 1: people had the same or similar jobs when 3 teams existed.

Premise 2: people had crummy internet when 3 teams existed at the same rates they do now.

Conclusion: people are quitting more because they are enjoying the bg experience less.

There are obviously innumerable reasons why people quit bgs in the middle. My point here is that all of these reasons existed before and exist now. The only variable is the format.

Question: why would zos deem it necessary to implement a draconian timeout that was never needed or even problematic before? I would hazard a guess that they knew people wouldn't quit more with this new format and they wanted to mitigated this risk with the timeout. Let that sink in for a bit before moving on.

Balance:

There is certainly a subjective component to balance and people can view this differently, as seen by the comments on this thread. Intelligent people will and do disagree on this.

Some think a final score that is tied equates to balance.

Some think that a tied score isn't balanced if one team has 100 kills and two deaths.

Some think kda is all that equals Balance, no matter what the objective is.

Some think a bg lasting longer equates to balance.

These are all subjective ways of looking at balance. They all matter.

Dynamic nature of bgs:

Lead changes seem to happen far less than they used to, which is probably an objective fact, but I put it here because I never really paid attention to it before and can't be confident in this. However, in 4v4, it typically takes 30 seconds or less to know who will win and these leads rarely change... even when a new player joins, which happens a lot, it almost always doesn't help. I have joined a dm and turned the tide a few times, but this is rare. Maybe people don't care about this, maybe they do, but I'm pretty sure this is due to the complete lack of dynamics, outside of more people quitting in the middle of course...

Fun:

What is fun for one can be horrible for others. This is an objective fact, but fun itself is subjective.
Also, people should be able to play the format they want to have fun. But this itself is a subjective statement.

Which leads to, My thought on subjective things:

These boards show that there are those who think we should stay where we are and abandon the three team format altogether for the health of the game and there are those who think we should immediately revert to three teams completely, for the same reason. None of us know what the right thing is for the long term health of the game. Most of us just want to have fun and play the game we want to for as long as zos keeps the lights on.

We should all be able to play the game we want so we should have both formats. This should help keep the game healthy today and into the future. Limiting to two teams alienated a large portion of the existing playerbase and potential future olayerbase who is turned off by the two team format. Reverting to three teams could do the same.

I just want my evening fun back that zos took away. So, instead of playing bgs for the past hour, I've been here, typing this out... hoping...

Decimus · February 7

Not going to get into the whole personal preferences argument, but just correcting some "facts" thrown around:

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Some objectivity is warranted here.

Objective facts:

It takes more skill to survive against two opponents than it does one, all else being equal. This is simple logic and any arguments to the contrary defy the simplest of logical analysis and critical thinking skills. A conclusive statement can be made from this that three teams takes more skill because you are all always outnumbered, but i wont make that statement here.

You can be outnumbered in team vs team battlegrounds as well, the difference is that when this happens you're not leaving your team fighting the 3rd team outnumbered, i.e. inting the battleground - in fact you're making sure your team is the one outnumbering the opponents wherever they're fighting.

Whether you're outnumbered or outnumbering more in 3-way BGs is a coinflip of whether you're in the weakest team (the one that gets farmed by the other two) or not.

It's either more difficult to survive than in team vs team, or significantly easier to survive (but also harder to get the killing blows).

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

More people quit 2 team bgs than did 3 team. Why is anyone's guess, but I do not think anyone would argue that this is not the case on PS5 or on PCNA, where i still play (different name on ps5).

This is your personal observation, not an "objective fact". Over the 7 years I played them, I have seen entire teams leave 3-way battlegrounds multiple times up to the point where the BG is completely empty apart from your team and everyone gets kicked for inactivity.

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Balance:

We can objectively say that each person in each team, whether it is 4v4v4 or 4v4 or 8v8 is up against the exact same obstacle and has, in theory, the same tools at their disposal.

In 4v4 you have three teammates and four people trying to kill you, or whatever.

In 4v4v4 you have three teammates and 8 people trying to kill you, or whatever.

Everyone has the exact same odds. This is objectively balanced and there is no fact can dispute this.

No, you cannot say that... because "player aggro" doesn't distribute evenly - you cannot be hitting two targets at the same time with your single target spammable or execute. Who is going to be focused the most is always the squishiest and easiest targets... and if you happen to be in the team full of them, you are in fact fighting 4(being generous here)v8 and the other teams are fighting 8v4 since they are ignoring each other i.e. not doing damage to each other with those single target spammables and executes.

Even in the case where teams are more or less balanced (good luck with that) player composition wise, you'll have uneven amount of damage taken by each team... if Team A & B land even 60% of their damage on Team C, that's already a huge disadvantage for Team C.

So no, as a matter of fact not every team is up against the same obstacle, because for one of the teams there's usually two of them rather than one.

Now you might like this kind of "balance", but please don't confuse it for facts - that's all.

Thumbless_Bot · February 7

Decimus wrote: »

Not going to get into the whole personal preferences argument, but just correcting some "facts" thrown around:

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Some objectivity is warranted here.

Objective facts:

It takes more skill to survive against two opponents than it does one, all else being equal. This is simple logic and any arguments to the contrary defy the simplest of logical analysis and critical thinking skills. A conclusive statement can be made from this that three teams takes more skill because you are all always outnumbered, but i wont make that statement here.

You can be outnumbered in team vs team battlegrounds as well, the difference is that when this happens you're not leaving your team fighting the 3rd team outnumbered, i.e. inting the battleground - in fact you're making sure your team is the one outnumbering the opponents wherever they're fighting.

Whether you're outnumbered or outnumbering more in 3-way BGs is a coinflip of whether you're in the weakest team (the one that gets farmed by the other two) or not.

It's either more difficult to survive than in team vs team, or significantly easier to survive (but also harder to get the killing blows).

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

More people quit 2 team bgs than did 3 team. Why is anyone's guess, but I do not think anyone would argue that this is not the case on PS5 or on PCNA, where i still play (different name on ps5).

This is your personal observation, not an "objective fact". Over the 7 years I played them, I have seen entire teams leave 3-way battlegrounds multiple times up to the point where the BG is completely empty apart from your team and everyone gets kicked for inactivity.

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Balance:

We can objectively say that each person in each team, whether it is 4v4v4 or 4v4 or 8v8 is up against the exact same obstacle and has, in theory, the same tools at their disposal.

In 4v4 you have three teammates and four people trying to kill you, or whatever.

In 4v4v4 you have three teammates and 8 people trying to kill you, or whatever.

Everyone has the exact same odds. This is objectively balanced and there is no fact can dispute this.

No, you cannot say that... because "player aggro" doesn't distribute evenly - you cannot be hitting two targets at the same time with your single target spammable or execute. Who is going to be focused the most is always the squishiest and easiest targets... and if you happen to be in the team full of them, you are in fact fighting 4(being generous here)v8 and the other teams are fighting 8v4 since they are ignoring each other i.e. not doing damage to each other with those single target spammables and executes.

Even in the case where teams are more or less balanced (good luck with that) player composition wise, you'll have uneven amount of damage taken by each team... if Team A & B land even 60% of their damage on Team C, that's already a huge disadvantage for Team C.

So no, as a matter of fact not every team is up against the same obstacle, because for one of the teams there's usually two of them rather than one.

Now you might like this kind of "balance", but please don't confuse it for facts - that's all.

I wish you the best.

DaniimalsSF · February 7

My current experience in 8v8 is that I’m often on teams that are farming the other team so hard, that the players on the winning team leave the BG out of sheer boredom. I usually just stand there playing my lute as I watch the other team die in spawn. I personally think it would be more fun if I had the threat of a third team attacking me.

xylena_lazarow · February 7

Haki_7 wrote: »

Considering how ESO's combat is, this is how two-teams BGs play out

Here's how 3-sided BGs played out for me:

"hey stop bullying the cp140 guy on the 3rd place team and get on the objective so we can win"

"no screw you im here to PvP not roleplay"

For the next 15 minutes, forget playing the objective, I can't even deathmatch against real players without getting "enemy stole the kill" or outright 6v1'd because my teammates refuse to do anything but bully the weakest player(s) on the field, and any attempts to reason with my own team from that point is met with words I can't type here on the forums.

This toxic problem is 100% solved by moving to the 2-sided format.

Thumbless_Bot · February 7

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Haki_7 wrote: »

Considering how ESO's combat is, this is how two-teams BGs play out

Here's how 3-sided BGs played out for me:

"hey stop bullying the cp140 guy on the 3rd place team and get on the objective so we can win"

"no screw you im here to PvP not roleplay"

For the next 15 minutes, forget playing the objective, I can't even deathmatch against real players without getting "enemy stole the kill" or outright 6v1'd because my teammates refuse to do anything but bully the weakest player(s) on the field, and any attempts to reason with my own team from that point is met with words I can't type here on the forums.

This toxic problem is 100% solved by moving to the 2-sided format.

This is a really awesome sentiment coming from a really awesome player. Zos, you have die-hard players on both sides of this issue... whatever will you do...

Chrisilis · February 7

Decimus wrote: »

Fun Battlegrounds Chapter 8: Waiting 2 minutes 27 seconds for a fun match! (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/iq-B58ts_CE?si=T6MESudnjHdc_Xtc

So I went to Youtube and watched some of the videos in your Bg's playlist. Looks like you've spent a lot of time in battlegrounds over the years and have put together some impressive builds. Of the 47 vidoes in your bg playlist seven of them are in the new two team format and the rest are three team (I skimmed them, I'm at work and cant watch 15 hours of Youtube so if I got something wrong I apologize). Far as I can tell you took a two year break from posting bg vids and only started posting again with the format change. Did the two team format inspire you to get back into ESO? Or to start posting to YT again? That's great. Since you've seen fit to share your new two team bg vids with us I thought I'd go check them out and read the comments. All 10 of them. I was interested in gauging how your audience felt about the format change but unfortunately there were no comments pertaining to format preference. My favorite comments were the ones that asked "what game is this?" but the one guy who asked if it was WoW was pretty funny. I am glad to see the game being promoted in a positive light, I'm gonna have to take a closer look at your vids and see if theres a warden build in there...been thinking of making one you see.

In regards to your post on page nine of this thread, the poll you cited showing format preference, could you post a link to that please? I'd be interested in seeing that post/vid/poll in context, if you don't mind.

And lastly, a genuine question. You've been a vocal advocate for two team bg's in this thread and several others. You've given some clear and concise breakdowns of gameplay and how, in your opinion, two team gameplay is superior to that of three team. Maybe you're even right, I don't know, I'm not a bg guru. What I do know is, subjectively, you like two team and I like three team. I want you to be able to play the way you want. Why don't you want us to be able to play the way we want? We want everybody to get what they're asking for. You seem dead set against the return of three team. Why is that? And before you cite population/participation as the reason, that the population wont support that many queues please note that this thread has been viewed 13.8K times. That's a lot of views for a subject nobody's interested in, for a part of the game nobody plays. So if participation is there, why don't you want everyone to be able to play the way they want?

xylena_lazarow · February 7

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

This is a really awesome sentiment coming from a really awesome player. Zos, you have die-hard players on both sides of this issue... whatever will you do...

I'm a proponent of replacing one of the 4 queues with 4v4v4 solo casual, even if I'm not into 3-sided BGs myself. If they can't make the 4v4 solo competitive function properly, replace that one, because it's in currently in horrendous shape. The 8v8 solo casual is the best thing they've added to PvP in a long time and should be the top of the queue list.

Decimus · February 7

Chrisilis wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

Fun Battlegrounds Chapter 8: Waiting 2 minutes 27 seconds for a fun match! (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/iq-B58ts_CE?si=T6MESudnjHdc_Xtc

So I went to Youtube and watched some of the videos in your Bg's playlist. Looks like you've spent a lot of time in battlegrounds over the years and have put together some impressive builds. Of the 47 vidoes in your bg playlist seven of them are in the new two team format and the rest are three team (I skimmed them, I'm at work and cant watch 15 hours of Youtube so if I got something wrong I apologize). Far as I can tell you took a two year break from posting bg vids and only started posting again with the format change. Did the two team format inspire you to get back into ESO? Or to start posting to YT again? That's great. Since you've seen fit to share your new two team bg vids with us I thought I'd go check them out and read the comments. All 10 of them. I was interested in gauging how your audience felt about the format change but unfortunately there were no comments pertaining to format preference. My favorite comments were the ones that asked "what game is this?" but the one guy who asked if it was WoW was pretty funny. I am glad to see the game being promoted in a positive light, I'm gonna have to take a closer look at your vids and see if theres a warden build in there...been thinking of making one you see.

In regards to your post on page nine of this thread, the poll you cited showing format preference, could you post a link to that please? I'd be interested in seeing that post/vid/poll in context, if you don't mind.

And lastly, a genuine question. You've been a vocal advocate for two team bg's in this thread and several others. You've given some clear and concise breakdowns of gameplay and how, in your opinion, two team gameplay is superior to that of three team. Maybe you're even right, I don't know, I'm not a bg guru. What I do know is, subjectively, you like two team and I like three team. I want you to be able to play the way you want. Why don't you want us to be able to play the way we want? We want everybody to get what they're asking for. You seem dead set against the return of three team. Why is that? And before you cite population/participation as the reason, that the population wont support that many queues please note that this thread has been viewed 13.8K times. That's a lot of views for a subject nobody's interested in, for a part of the game nobody plays. So if participation is there, why don't you want everyone to be able to play the way they want?

I'm not really that active on Youtube as I've been mostly focusing on Twitch these past 5 or so years... I might do some multistreaming on both platforms in the future though as they've somewhat recently relaxed the Twitch terms of service in that regard.

That's really the main reasoning behind not posting too many videos over the last few years, but of course it's much easier to get good videos in the new format compared to previous one.

My builds I usually put up on my website and keep up to date there - not sure how the forum rules are on linking websites, but you can find a link to it in description of my videos - got my magden & melee/ranged stamden builds there (melee stamden is featured in BG video #44).

Regarding your other question, it's mostly about the limited development resources and how they're spent. You might have noticed that there is very little BG or balance changes in the upcoming Update 45 - this is because they have very limited resources and those are all spent on working on the upcoming Cyrodiil changes. This is from the recent Q&A posted on the forums:

Q. Will these Cyrodiil tests, whether they go well or poorly, have any implications for other PvP content such as Imperial City or Battlegrounds? – ParalyzerT9
A. In terms of the test, the team working on Cyrodiil Champions is the same team that would be working on other PVP content, so their focus is on the test for the time being. Anything beyond that, we need to see how the test goes.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/672867/cyrodiil-champions-live-test-community-q-a/p1

In other words, if we want them to keep meaningfully supporting and improving the existing battlegrounds, first of all we have to pray these Cyrodiil tests are over soon... and secondly they cannot introduce different battlegrounds (even if they were already developed) because these battlegrounds will require maintenance, updated rewards, improvements based on feedback... and most importantly: player base. Spending the very limited development time and resources into reintroducing something that's just going to be ridiculously long queues is development time and resources taken away from the team vs team battlegrounds, which do need a lot of changes, additions and improvements (they're also far from perfect).

This thread has been viewed a lot because it's on the front page of the forums... as a result of being bumped up by some random "Destruction of Battlegrounds" video being posted the moment the thread dips into the second or third page. And it's being bumped up right now by me posting this reply, but this is how public spaces work... if you're not there, other people will fill the void with their own agenda.

I do wish everyone could have a fun game mode for themselves, but there's a cost to everything. Towards the end of the 3-way BG era there were very few people left playing battlegrounds - I know this first hand from playing daily on the most populated megaserver. They decided to change the format and there's now a bigger player base... if they keep building on that maybe the player base might be big enough eventually to support new (or returning) game modes, but right now I think it'd just take away from the existing one both in player base & development resources without providing anything new due to the aforementioned population issues and queue times.

Moonspawn · February 7

Decimus wrote: »

Thanks, that's a great video to showcase all the problems of 3-way BGs:
20 seconds in, the person recording the video steals a kill from the green team (who do all the damage to the target while he's chilling in the background), after which green team (and a random purple) just 5v2 and delete his team mates whom he was with while he's... running after the random purple.

Stealing the kill from 4 other people with a dizzying swing was a pretty baller move. It's a shame it ended up costing the lives of his teammates. Both teams made the mistake of not staying together and protecting each other, especially this early in the match. This should have been the ''feeling each other out'' stage. Not ideal, but part of what made BGs so unpredictable, chaotic and fun for everyone involved.

Decimus wrote: »

After this he gets to 2v1 a green who chased him after that team fight. Not judging, it is a deathmatch and I assume he's trying to win. Directly after this he and his team try (and fail) to 4v1 a purple.

Unpredictable and chaotic. There was no telling what would happen next.

Decimus wrote: »

After this a team fight where his team is focused by both enemy teams, and this sets the pace of the match: weakest team to be farmed... he's well on his way to a negative KDR (and I'd assume extremely frustrating) battleground with his team trailing by more than 10 kills as something happens: a person in his team rage quits. Wow, what a sign of a fun battleground... right?

Unpredictable and chaotic. There was no telling what would happen next.

Decimus wrote: »

Replacement arrives and turns out to be a competent player, it's time to steal kills and focus down the purples who now become the weakest team!

Unpredictable and chaotic. There was no telling what would happen next.

Decimus wrote: »

End of the BG, after 10 minutes of killstealing... a tie, and instead of their team it's purple who has a miserable time due to matchmaking and being focused by 8 people.

I would love to be on the purple team. I would protect my teammates, focus the warden on orange and the templar on green. They would have to focus me, especially in this situation. All three of us would remember this match fondly. Hopefully, our teammates would too.

Decimus wrote: »

Now, team mates do split in team vs team BGs as well and outnumbered fights happen... but the difference is that while you're being outnumbered in team vs team, your team is outnumbering the rest of the opponents. That is balance: you can buy your team kills and objectives by just being a good player and surviving outnumbered.
If you do this in 3-way BGs, not only are you outnumbered, but so is your team - splitting into two groups just turns your fight into two 2v4s instead of one 2v4 and team being able to 6v4 meanwhile for example. This forces a ball group style gameplay on people, which is the last thing battlegrounds need. Fundamental problem, glad it's gone.

BG regulars understand that it is nearly impossible to finish off someone who wants to be chased, they (usually) don't fall for any batting eyelashes. Not that I'm doubting your loveliness, mind you. Three-teams BGs were played by staying together, avoiding the sandwich, and focusing the targets by order of squishiness (usually). If you think that these are ''problems'' and ''ball group style gameplay'' then I can see why you don't want them back. But I also see the beauty in 4 solo players working together to accomplish these things. I wish that you could too.

Decimus wrote: »

Now I understand a lot of people enjoy this less skill-oriented gameplay of sitting behind (possibly healing) meat shields and stealing kills with things like mage's wrath or jbeam... I would highly recommend these people to try Cyrodiil, which has exactly that type of 3-way PvP content.
That, or just practicing and improving... almost every BG can be fun, even without third partying - just takes a bit more effort

A healing petsorc with enough damage to successfully execute people with mage's wrath would have some major flaws in the build. They just don't have the skill slots for it. Anyway, in a 3-sided fight it is important to not fully commit if you don't know what the third team is doing. Some light skirmishing is fine though, feeling each other out generates ultimate , but if both teams are always on the lookout for the third one (as they are supposed to be), I don't see what the problem is.

Chrisilis · February 7

@Decimus, thanks for your prompt and thoughtful response. I do wonder about the limited resources issue. I get there's only so many people on the ESO team, that like any business, the staff can only do so much with what time and resources they have but... this is a multi billion dollar game. A game that supposedly incorporates its player feedback into its operations. I understand it may take time to implement change especially on the heels of other changes. But I find it hard to credit the idea they're on a shoestring with no wiggle room. Or that reimplementing a single pre-existing Bg queue at the request of its players is beyond them or would stretch them so thin its impossible. Or that a 12 person queue would make that big a difference in the overall queue experience. The population would surely be past the point of recovery if 12 people could make or break it. In any case, thanks again for your response. I'll let ya know how that stamden works out.

Thumbless_Bot · February 8

Just got into a BG on a Friday night in the U.S., during a BG event, only to have my BG canceled for not enough players. Anecdotal, but thought I'd share...

I left Cyro for this too... that's like icing on cake...

Then I get into another BG, because I'm thinking it was a glitch. This BG is in the middle of a slaughter where the other team has two sorcs and an acuityden (thanks zos) and my team getting killed in spawn. One of my team has already left (which happens a lot more now whether anyone at zos wants to acknowledge that or not... this should be read 'people would rather leave and do so more now, even with a 30 minute penalty'), which is why I was there in the first place. Another has just died a third time as I spawn in. Again, this is what I walked into by queueing for 4v4... So I have a choice: go down and fight 1v4, because one teammate is dead and can't respawn (thanks zos), the other two remaining teammates are hiding behind a rock wall trying not to get killed in spawn by two sorcs spamming frags and overload because ranged damage is still not balanced (thanks zos) and there is no safe zone in the spawn point (thanks zos), or nope out and take a 15 minute penalty (thanks zos).

This is BGs now. This is my Friday night. I'm pretty much done with BGs until zos fixes this.

I'll go to cyro for a while then go watch YouTube videos of old BGs. It's better than playing in this mess.

ps. I was queued for blackreach when I went into the BG at position 3. it's 30 minutes later and I'm still at position 3... I have to log off and requeue... this bug has existed for years... more icing I guess..

Moonspawn · February 8

Decimus wrote: »

Chrisilis wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

Fun Battlegrounds Chapter 8: Waiting 2 minutes 27 seconds for a fun match! (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/iq-B58ts_CE?si=T6MESudnjHdc_Xtc

So I went to Youtube and watched some of the videos in your Bg's playlist. Looks like you've spent a lot of time in battlegrounds over the years and have put together some impressive builds. Of the 47 vidoes in your bg playlist seven of them are in the new two team format and the rest are three team (I skimmed them, I'm at work and cant watch 15 hours of Youtube so if I got something wrong I apologize). Far as I can tell you took a two year break from posting bg vids and only started posting again with the format change. Did the two team format inspire you to get back into ESO? Or to start posting to YT again? That's great. Since you've seen fit to share your new two team bg vids with us I thought I'd go check them out and read the comments. All 10 of them. I was interested in gauging how your audience felt about the format change but unfortunately there were no comments pertaining to format preference. My favorite comments were the ones that asked "what game is this?" but the one guy who asked if it was WoW was pretty funny. I am glad to see the game being promoted in a positive light, I'm gonna have to take a closer look at your vids and see if theres a warden build in there...been thinking of making one you see.

In regards to your post on page nine of this thread, the poll you cited showing format preference, could you post a link to that please? I'd be interested in seeing that post/vid/poll in context, if you don't mind.

And lastly, a genuine question. You've been a vocal advocate for two team bg's in this thread and several others. You've given some clear and concise breakdowns of gameplay and how, in your opinion, two team gameplay is superior to that of three team. Maybe you're even right, I don't know, I'm not a bg guru. What I do know is, subjectively, you like two team and I like three team. I want you to be able to play the way you want. Why don't you want us to be able to play the way we want? We want everybody to get what they're asking for. You seem dead set against the return of three team. Why is that? And before you cite population/participation as the reason, that the population wont support that many queues please note that this thread has been viewed 13.8K times. That's a lot of views for a subject nobody's interested in, for a part of the game nobody plays. So if participation is there, why don't you want everyone to be able to play the way they want?

I'm not really that active on Youtube as I've been mostly focusing on Twitch these past 5 or so years... I might do some multistreaming on both platforms in the future though as they've somewhat recently relaxed the Twitch terms of service in that regard.

That's really the main reasoning behind not posting too many videos over the last few years, but of course it's much easier to get good videos in the new format compared to previous one.

My builds I usually put up on my website and keep up to date there - not sure how the forum rules are on linking websites, but you can find a link to it in description of my videos - got my magden & melee/ranged stamden builds there (melee stamden is featured in BG video #44).

Regarding your other question, it's mostly about the limited development resources and how they're spent. You might have noticed that there is very little BG or balance changes in the upcoming Update 45 - this is because they have very limited resources and those are all spent on working on the upcoming Cyrodiil changes. This is from the recent Q&A posted on the forums:

Q. Will these Cyrodiil tests, whether they go well or poorly, have any implications for other PvP content such as Imperial City or Battlegrounds? – ParalyzerT9
A. In terms of the test, the team working on Cyrodiil Champions is the same team that would be working on other PVP content, so their focus is on the test for the time being. Anything beyond that, we need to see how the test goes.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/672867/cyrodiil-champions-live-test-community-q-a/p1

In other words, if we want them to keep meaningfully supporting and improving the existing battlegrounds, first of all we have to pray these Cyrodiil tests are over soon... and secondly they cannot introduce different battlegrounds (even if they were already developed) because these battlegrounds will require maintenance, updated rewards, improvements based on feedback... and most importantly: player base. Spending the very limited development time and resources into reintroducing something that's just going to be ridiculously long queues is development time and resources taken away from the team vs team battlegrounds, which do need a lot of changes, additions and improvements (they're also far from perfect).

This thread has been viewed a lot because it's on the front page of the forums... as a result of being bumped up by some random "Destruction of Battlegrounds" video being posted the moment the thread dips into the second or third page. And it's being bumped up right now by me posting this reply, but this is how public spaces work... if you're not there, other people will fill the void with their own agenda.

I do wish everyone could have a fun game mode for themselves, but there's a cost to everything. Towards the end of the 3-way BG era there were very few people left playing battlegrounds - I know this first hand from playing daily on the most populated megaserver. They decided to change the format and there's now a bigger player base... if they keep building on that maybe the player base might be big enough eventually to support new (or returning) game modes, but right now I think it'd just take away from the existing one both in player base & development resources without providing anything new due to the aforementioned population issues and queue times.

Let me translate that for you @Chrisilis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isFIv3-aHPY

The streamer hive mind is permanently fixed on one unifying goal: to perpetuate the seal clubbing for as long as possible by any means necessary.

It would burn the future of Battlegrounds and PVP itself to the ground for youtube videos.

Understanding that the vast majority would choose the 3-teams format has caused it to be beset by panic.