Revamping Three-Teams Battegrounds

moo_2021

Moonspawn wrote: »

If a meaningful number of trolls still decide to ignore the revamped objectives no matter what, a new Unique Debuff would have to go in effect whenever they move too far away from the objective.

a problem with "leaving" objective is that one could do a lot of help by leaving the objective zone:

• Hide in the middle between 2 hostile bases and watch a team leaving theirs exposed and before the other team comes. Doesn't work too close because you need to watch both directions.
• Intercept the team chasing your objective carrier. Drag them as long as you can while your team retreats safely.
• Suicide attack on the base of the strongest team when they're all there, stun and snare everyone, waste all their time by annoying them to death (few can escape the bait). Rinse and repeat.

Amottica

Chrisilis wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

Chrisilis wrote: »

.

Decimus wrote: »

LPapirius wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

DeadlySerious wrote: »

I think the 2 team BG is just not a good design. Plus, the maps are so dang tiny. What's up with that?

Two-team instanced PvP works well in many games, so that is not the issue. The issue with ESO BGs is the overall design of each map and the objectives themselves.

It is an issue. Your logic is like saying leaded gas worked in many cars so it's wasn't an issue. Or crisco worked to fry foods so it wasn't an issue. Or that the feudal system worked so it want an issue. I could go on.

What we had worked better than 2 teams. Zos has gone from u leaded to leaded. From trans fat free oil to crisco. From democracy to a feudal system. It works worse for most, but, technically it works. However, it it is certainly an issue.

Thanks for demonstrating my point; they went from leaded gas to leaded gas. They used the same designs, so it is still not a good design. That is irrelevant to the 2 teams vs. three-team format.

You said two teams works, so its not an issue. That is wrong. I've demonstrated why by example. Whether you chose to ignore that or not is up to you. Have a nice day.

and two teams do work and such examples are in most large MMORPGs with their successful instanced PvPs.

But the analogy of leaded and leaded or fat-free to crisco is irrelevant as it is not comparable. It only suggests someone has an opinion that one is better than another. It is not a valid example.

Further, as I pointed out, the real issue with ESO's BGs is the poor design of maps and matches, which have nothing to do with how many teams are there. It does not matter how many teams are there because the designs are the worst instanced PvP I have played outside of P2W. I only go in because some friends want to do it.

Glad some people like the designs but ESO PvP, 3 team or 2 team, is not very popular.

If we wanted 2 team PvP we'd play those other games that offer it.

Many (if not most) people do, this is why the population was down to 20-30 people queueing for the old 3-way battlegrounds towards the end of last patch & you'd see the same names every round.

If you want to participate in 3rd party PvP or running to empty flags and capturing them there is still Cyrodiil for that - they didn't remove that.


In the end, for companies looking to make money and keep their games alive it's about doing what's popular - not what a small vocal minority prefers (lots of examples lately of how that has gone for other games...)

Go check out the Battleground review vids on YouTube and read the comments. Or the reddit threads. Read the comments. Many (if not most), people are not happy with this change. For some its the loss of the content they've been dedicated to for years, for others its the fact that content they were looking forward to turned out to be bug ridden, poorly designed and implemented. How any marketing team, any business, could ignore the bad press, the bad feeling among their community that this change has generated is beyond me.

You say 2 team PvP is popular but I don't think that's accurate. 2 team PvP is standard. If there were games out there offering 3 or 4 or 6 team formats but everybody preferred two teams that would be one thing but there's not. You say they're popular but in reality they're just all there is so people play them. Maybe if developers offered a greater variety of team options it might be a different story.

And just so we're clear, you say its a small vocal minority and perhaps you're right but that minority is pssd and rightly so. The content we enjoyed, that we paid for, that we kept coming back for was taken from us and we want it back.

I will say this for two team battlegrounds. They absolutely have a place in the ESO PvP landscape. Two team Chaos Ball is good and very well suited to the two team format. Power ups are a fun addition and the larger of the new maps add some fun variety. 4v4 DM is good, quite intense and fast paced if you're looking for a short form game, decided quickly. I think 8v8 is an excellent introduction to people new to PvP in that a lack of experience/contribution to ones team isn't that noticeable when you're one person in eight. It offers new players the opportunity to get better in a low pressure setting. The new formats are a welcome and valuable addition and have, no doubt, broadened the games PvP player participation. We don't want them discontinued in favor of 4v4v4, we want all the content that could be available to be available.

Honestly, instead of arguing the merits of two team vs. three team maybe we should focus on the merits of product availability and whether or not its wise for a business to discontinue the product a small but vocal minority stayed loyal to their business for.

What "review vids"? Are we talking about some 200 subscriber youtubers with clickbait titles on each video? You do realize you're talking to someone who has more audience than all of these people combined? Or reddits where you get banned if you're not part of the hive mind?

There is another content creator with a good size of following who did poll his audience for what the best BG mode was... here are the results:


You might be experiencing what is known as "confirmation bias" here.

There aren't many games offering 3-way PvP in what is supposed to be a competitive format, because that is inherently uncompetitive when you can have two teams focusing the third. I.e. who wins doesn't come down to who plays the best, it comes down to player behaviour - either sheer RNG of where the focus goes or worse: who is liked/disliked.

3-way PvP works fine in environment where the fairness of numbers is never expected in the first place, i.e. open world/Cyrodiil - but not in arena/battleground format. If it did, I'm sure battlegrounds would've been more popular in the past.


You bring up whether it's wise for a business to discontinue a product... it absolutely is - this happens all the time. You want to make things that are popular and dedicate resources to create things that are well received by a large enough amount of players.

This may not be what some people want to hear, but for a very real example look at all the TV shows & video games where hundreds of millions go into producing them and they completely flop and get cancelled - I don't want BGs to get cancelled, I want them to move in the right direction without distractions or side ventures that turn out to be a waste of time as queues never pop to an unpopular game mode.

In all honesty I probably am experiencing confirmation bias. Because, in all honesty, I hate these new battlegrounds. I find them to be boring, mundane and repetitive. I find them lacking in tactical depth or strategy of any kind beyond overwhelm with numbers.

And because I am biased perhaps I've sought out similar viewpoints but those viewpoints are out there to find. In game bg chat comments skew heavily toward the negative, in all this time I hadn't had a single person say a single positive thing.... until about two days ago when an acquaintance told us all we complain to much which is pretty funny, all things considered.

I don't want battlegrounds to be cancelled either. When it comes down to it a boring bg is better than no bg at all. But I cant help but feel cheated by the removal of three team, like truly upset that the part of the game I loved the most was taken away and replaced with a format that, to me, feels more like a chore than anything else. I tried to like them and play them the same way, for fun, as I played three team but I just can't. I find myself playing less and less and forget about Rivyn dailies, I used to do all three every day and then play till it was time to shut it down but now I only do one and sometimes not even that. Because to me, in this new format, battlegrounds has become a chore. So anyway, there's some heartfelt honesty for ya.

I guess at this point the ball is in Zos' court. I and the other people who want three team back have expressed our opinions in every way we could think of, repeatedly. We know that 3 team is gone for good unless it make sound business sense for it to be brought back. We aren't under any false assumptions that our wishes or feelings on the subject matter, or so naïve as to think we'll get it back because Zos feels sorry for us. In the end, money talks.

But I am glad you like the new format. I'm glad somebody somewhere is having a good time, getting to play they way they want. I just wish I was.

Regardless of 2-team or 3-team, I have found the overall designs of the BGs in ESO lacking. So yeah, I agree that they are mundane and boring, but I feel that way about both formats. I only go into BGs to run with some friends but I do not recall participating in instanced small team PvP that I liked less than what we have and have had here.

However, I do not expect the design to change.

Thumbless_Bot

moo_2021 wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

If a meaningful number of trolls still decide to ignore the revamped objectives no matter what, a new Unique Debuff would have to go in effect whenever they move too far away from the objective.

a problem with "leaving" objective is that one could do a lot of help by leaving the objective zone:

• Hide in the middle between 2 hostile bases and watch a team leaving theirs exposed and before the other team comes. Doesn't work too close because you need to watch both directions.
• Intercept the team chasing your objective carrier. Drag them as long as you can while your team retreats safely.
• Suicide attack on the base of the strongest team when they're all there, stun and snare everyone, waste all their time by annoying them to death (few can escape the bait). Rinse and repeat.

Agree. Objective is subjective. I, for one, think the enemy is always AN objective and every match, outside of dm, has multiple objectives. I go after the enemy. If they're dead or I'm dead that creates imbalance that one team can take advantage of. Can't stand on flags if you are dead.

Moonspawn

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

If a meaningful number of trolls still decide to ignore the revamped objectives no matter what, a new Unique Debuff would have to go in effect whenever they move too far away from the objective.

a problem with "leaving" objective is that one could do a lot of help by leaving the objective zone:

• Hide in the middle between 2 hostile bases and watch a team leaving theirs exposed and before the other team comes. Doesn't work too close because you need to watch both directions.
• Intercept the team chasing your objective carrier. Drag them as long as you can while your team retreats safely.
• Suicide attack on the base of the strongest team when they're all there, stun and snare everyone, waste all their time by annoying them to death (few can escape the bait). Rinse and repeat.

Agree. Objective is subjective. I, for one, think the enemy is always AN objective and every match, outside of dm, has multiple objectives. I go after the enemy. If they're dead or I'm dead that creates imbalance that one team can take advantage of. Can't stand on flags if you are dead.

Perhaps there is a way to improve Domination and Crazy King without having to remake the modes. I wonder what would happen if any single player could turn a flag WHITE, but at least two players were needed to fully capture it.

It wouldn’t completely solve the problem, but it should slow it down enough to keep most matches on track.

karthrag_inak

This one was a die-hard fan of 3-team BGs, having found both flavors of 2-team BGs to be unpleasant, to put it nicely, but now, Khajiit's opinion has most certainly changed. After all, 639 followers of a 'content creator' say that 8v8 are best. Who is Khajiit to argue with -that-?

Estin

2 teams work in other PvP games with 2 teams because more often then not they have more than 1 spawn point to prevent spawn camping, and if there's too many players within one teams spawn, it flips. ESO battlegrounds always had 1 spawn location with the exception of eld angavar. The advantage to 3 sided battlegrounds was that 1 team usually cannot focus 1 team only. There was always a third team to shake things up. Never had I ever seen 1 team spawn camp another so the third team can easily win the objective.

2 teams does not work in ESO because there's only 1 spawn location, and if one team has the power advantage, spawn camping is inevitable within the first minute. Some maps have a large spawn where you have a different location you can drop off from, but the difference is dropping within the crowd of spawn campers and dropping 5 feet next to them.

If 2 sided battlegrounds are here to stay, the spawn system needs to be revamped. I suppose spawn flipping is out the question, but making use of eld angavar's mechanic is worth looking into. Perhaps portals can spawn 1-2 minutes into a BG that will drop players off into set locations on the map. Of course there should be multiple portals to choose from so it doesn't just create 2 spawn camping spots. The should also be named and color coded so it's easy to remember which leads where.

I doubt MMR balance is ever going to be fixed by changing it to the industry standard KDAR system (Kill/Death/Assist Ratio), so a solution they can implement are death streaks that can give players or the team a (useful) powerup buff to at least have a chance to turn things around. More often than not, the MMR will place 1-2 good players on 1 team and then place 4-6 on the other team. It makes matches heavily skewed, and it doesn't matter how good the 1-2 players are on the weaker team. They're going to get rolled along with the rest of their team. If those 1-2 good players got a power and defense buff, they can at least help even things out

katanagirl1

I did four DM BGs today and was on the losing side every game. I used to like DM, but now when people start getting killed, they turtle up at the spawn point and many won’t come down. I refuse to camp there so I jump down and get obliterated by the entire opposing team within seconds. I probably had the most deaths because of that. I was hoping to work on some BG achievements this weekend and maybe get some of those tokens, but you get nothing from losing.

Thumbless_Bot

Moonspawn wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

If a meaningful number of trolls still decide to ignore the revamped objectives no matter what, a new Unique Debuff would have to go in effect whenever they move too far away from the objective.

a problem with "leaving" objective is that one could do a lot of help by leaving the objective zone:

• Hide in the middle between 2 hostile bases and watch a team leaving theirs exposed and before the other team comes. Doesn't work too close because you need to watch both directions.
• Intercept the team chasing your objective carrier. Drag them as long as you can while your team retreats safely.
• Suicide attack on the base of the strongest team when they're all there, stun and snare everyone, waste all their time by annoying them to death (few can escape the bait). Rinse and repeat.

Agree. Objective is subjective. I, for one, think the enemy is always AN objective and every match, outside of dm, has multiple objectives. I go after the enemy. If they're dead or I'm dead that creates imbalance that one team can take advantage of. Can't stand on flags if you are dead.

Perhaps there is a way to improve Domination and Crazy King without having to remake the modes. I wonder what would happen if any single player could turn a flag WHITE, but at least two players were needed to fully capture it.

It wouldn’t completely solve the problem, but it should slow it down enough to keep most matches on track.

They could start with:

Putting relic away from spawn point(s)

Putting multiple spawn points

Putting spawn points out of reach of opponents damage (ahem, like 3 team bgs).

Bringing back three teams and maps.

Always having an odd number of objectives, in 4v4 especially, to prevent bgs turning into ring around the rosy, a steeplechase chase or obstacle course ( choose your own metaphor).

Having chaos damage go up linearly the closer you are to your spawn point(s).