How PvP Specific Skills Should Differ from PvE Skills

Stamicka

It seems like in 2025 we may see some new PvP specific skills:

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Here are some of the ideas that we are working on, some of which you may see on the live servers as tests in 2025 and beyond. Some of these will be tests and some will be improvements based on player feedback: 

• We need to seriously address Cyrodiil performance. Our (ambitious) goal is to return it to the concurrency levels we supported in 2014. So, we will be experimenting with a Cyrodiil campaign where all classes will have PvP-specific (and more performant) skills that replace the standard player skills with the expectation that we can support more players per campaign.

I think this has a lot of promise, but only if implemented correctly. There's some key ideas that PvP skills need to follow. I also think that we need PvP specific sets in addition to the PvP skills.

Redistribute Damage to Burst Skills
Right now, damage in PvP is pretty high, but it's high in all the wrong places. For some reason we have gradually moved towards a meta of wearing people down rather than bursting them down. This usually looks like stacking up on DoTs, Status Effects, Defiles, and Proc Sets. This has been horrible for the game because this type of damage can only really be countered through purifies which creates a low skill environment. For example, what is a player supposed to do if they get Zaan, the Vateshran Staff Proc, Elemental Susceptibility status effects, secondary enchant status effects, and maybe the master dual wield DoT procced on them at the same time? Other offenders have been: Jerrall's, Maarselok, and even oblivion damage lightning staff heavy attack builds.

Instead of having so much damage centered around undodgable and unblockable DoTs and "free" damage, PvP specific skills should be bursty. Things like spammables or delayed burst skills should be the heavy hitters which will lead to a much more balanced game. When damage is centered around burst skills, it reinforces the importance of timing, blocking, and rolling. Overall skill expression will be improved since the players are more in control of the damage they deal and receive. This also means that enchantments, status effects, and other DoT Procs will need serious adjustments. This isn't to say all DoTs should be removed, but they certainly shouldn't be the primary source of damage in PvP.

Bring Back Stuns
One thing about early ESO is that there were way more stuns in the game. I'm not sure why so many stuns were aggressively removed, but it's actually healthier for the game if stuns are put back on key skills. Skills like Crystal Fragments, Dizzy Swing, Shock Clench, Vampire Drain, and Blazing Spear were much more interesting and useful when they had stuns attached to them. This is also better than the current "Off Balance" system which only encourages players to hold down their block button while they are off balance. The off balance stun is much less predictable and frankly out of place for a game like ESO. When stuns are attached to skills it gives the player more control, reinforces the importance of timed blocking and rolling, and makes fights more interesting and dynamic. Stuns on damaging skills should be reintroduced with the new PvP specific Skills and off balance should no longer lead to a stun.

Healing Skills
There's no doubt that cross healing is a really big issue in ESO. The biggest culprits are auto targeting and "sticky" heals over time like echoing vigor or radiating regeneration. First, there's no way that this can be good for server performance and secondly it's terrible for the game's balance anyway. I think that these skills should be completely replaced with PvP specific versions that still offer utility, but without the ability to to be abused through heal stacking. There's many ways to go about this and there's lots of great ideas on the forums. It's also important not to introduce any new healing skills that can be abused through heal stacking when new PvP specific skills are added.

PvP Specific Sets
In addition to PvP specific skills, I think that players should only be allowed to use PvP specific sets. This would be much easier to balance and potentially more accessible and rewarding if these sets can be purchased with AP and traded. One reason that this is necessary is because repeated PvE group buffs have bled into PvP. In PvE, individual damage isn't actually much higher than it was 6 years ago, but the amount of buffs and debuffs available through sets has made PvE damage skyrocket. This sort of thing is pretty detrimental to PvP because it allows large groups to health stack while achieving high levels of damage through the coordination of buff sets. A set like Olorime on a solo player is already a very strong backbar set, but its utility only increases without drawbacks in group environments. This is not to say that all buff sets are bad, but the amount of buff sets that can currently be stacked in a group is pretty excessive.

I also strongly believe that no PvP specific set should be a proc set. Proc sets are simply impossible to balance in a PvP environment due to how skills scale. Not only would the game potentially perform better, but PvP would be much better if these sets were removed from PvP environments completely.

Conclusion
One trend in each of the points I have made is that over the years, the player has actually lost a lot of control and individual responsibility in PvP. We see this through the fact that so much damage is randomly procced and is essentially unavoidable without a purify. We also see this through fact that damage may be dependent on how many buff sets a group can fit in. PvP specific sets and skills provide a unique opportunity to improve skill expression and player experience without having any impact on PvE. I'm really hoping that this opportunity is used correctly.

Rogue_Coyote

You want MORE stuns?

React

Agree with most of this, other than the off balance removal and the "PVP specific sets only" point.

Off balance is a fun to use, off GCD stun that rewards good timing and game knowledge. It's often the most effective way to catch somebody off guard in the current meta, especially for bursty specs like NB and certain dizzying builds (mainly sorc). I agree that seeing standard stuns returned to thinks like frag, dizzying, vamp drain, clench, etc all makes sense - but disagree that removing the off balance stun would be a good change.

As for PVP specific sets, I disagree entirely with limiting build craft, as least on an individual level. The ability to make and adjust your build with all of the tools available in the game is a big part of the little draw it has left. The current problems with stat density in groups come from trial team-like comps like you pointed out, and as such those specific sets are what should be targeted, rather than limiting the pool of sets overall. If they're willing to balance PVP and PVE separately, which is what I personally felt was being implied by the verbiage in the post, they should be willing to change the functionality of how these buff distribution sets work. Perhaps group scaling like rallying cry has, reducing the effectiveness of the set based on the number of players in the group. This seems like the most logical/implementable solution to me, but I'm a bit biased as a solo/small scale player only. I'm not sure what other way these sets could be adjusted without flat out removing them, or changing them in a way that still benefits 12 man trial comp style groups more than anybody else.

acastanza_ESO

Rogue_Coyote wrote: »

You want MORE stuns?

Yeah, there are some good, consensus, ideas in the OP's comment, but this one not so much, it frequently seems like you're getting stunned/feared/etc on cool-down in PVP, more stuns is the opposite of what we need. I could see an argument for making hard CCs more impactful (at least the ones that can be blocked/dodged/etc) to make messing up more punishing, but that would need to go along with better CC immunity.

On the fence about set restrictions. We tried that in no proc and it didn't work; I enjoyed the ruleset, but in general it seems that people simply want to be able to PVP in the sets they earn.

Stamicka

Rogue_Coyote wrote: »

You want MORE stuns?

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Yeah, there are some good, consensus, ideas in the OP's comment, but this one not so much, it frequently seems like you're getting stunned/feared/etc on cool-down in PVP, more stuns is the opposite of what we need. I could see an argument for making hard CCs more impactful (at least the ones that can be blocked/dodged/etc) to make messing up more punishing, but that would need to go along with better CC immunity.

I am strongly against stuns like Dark Convergence or Rush of Agony that come from sets, but yes I think the game needs more skills that damage and stun within reason. Things like crystal fragments or dizzy swing stunning allowed players to set up burst combos and added a nice extra layer of skill to ESO's combat. Most stuns could be avoided by blocking, rolling, or both. I don't really see the issue since there's a CC cooldown in the game and ESO was much better when the skills I mentioned stunned anyway.

React wrote: »

Agree with most of this, other than the off balance removal and the "PVP specific sets only" point.

Off balance is a fun to use, off GCD stun that rewards good timing and game knowledge. It's often the most effective way to catch somebody off guard in the current meta, especially for bursty specs like NB and certain dizzying builds (mainly sorc). I agree that seeing standard stuns returned to thinks like frag, dizzying, vamp drain, clench, etc all makes sense - but disagree that removing the off balance stun would be a good change.

To me the off balance stun watered down the game and made most fights a contest of who holds down their block button better while off balance. I would much prefer an activate-able skill that allows you to stun on heavy or medium attacks for x seconds rather than the current off balance system. This would at least fill the gap of an off GCD stun while taking away the aspects of off balance that I don't like. For example, with server positioning issues sometimes flanking with surprise attack happens at unexpected times. Now you're locked into a window to stun and set up a burst. There's also cases where someone can randomly or accidentally medium attack you and stun even if it's not their intent and they had no idea you were off balance. I want the player to be in control of what they do and to plan and think about these things rather than being locked into the off balance window duration.

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

On the fence about set restrictions. We tried that in no proc and it didn't work; I enjoyed the ruleset, but in general it seems that people simply want to be able to PVP in the sets they earn.

React wrote: »

As for PVP specific sets, I disagree entirely with limiting build craft, as least on an individual level. The ability to make and adjust your build with all of the tools available in the game is a big part of the little draw it has left. The current problems with stat density in groups come from trial team-like comps like you pointed out, and as such those specific sets are what should be targeted, rather than limiting the pool of sets overall. If they're willing to balance PVP and PVE separately, which is what I personally felt was being implied by the verbiage in the post, they should be willing to change the functionality of how these buff distribution sets work. Perhaps group scaling like rallying cry has, reducing the effectiveness of the set based on the number of players in the group. This seems like the most logical/implementable solution to me, but I'm a bit biased as a solo/small scale player only. I'm not sure what other way these sets could be adjusted without flat out removing them, or changing them in a way that still benefits 12 man trial comp style groups more than anybody else.

I think that the amount of sets currently in the game has become bloat honestly. So many sets are badly balanced with each other, and there's so many ways to outbuild another person which lessens the importance of skill. I also think the overwhelming amount of sets is an accessibility issue that traps inexperienced players due to how poorly balanced sets are, it makes the game much harder to get into naturally.

I don't have an issue with build diversity and there's a way to implement it without balance issues. I do have a problem with proc sets and sets that are so overturned that there's no reason to use anything else. As it stands though, many sets may be balanced for PvE purposes but very broken for PvP purposes. I think a PvP specific set system would really help with all of the problem points (bloat, accessibility, skill, balance). It's much easier to balance a smallish group of stat based sets than it is to balance 100s of sets with both PvE and PvP uses. Something like the New Moon set is great, it gives more damage than Hundings at the expense of sustain. You could make a bunch of stat based sets that are all balanced with each other by using the same idea like more damage at the expense of resists, more resists at the expense of damage, etc. As long as there's a clear meaningful choice and the alternatives are balanced, but different.

Taril

React wrote: »

As for PVP specific sets, I disagree entirely with limiting build craft, as least on an individual level. The ability to make and adjust your build with all of the tools available in the game is a big part of the little draw it has left.

Well, the literal entire purpose of this notion of "PvP specific skills" is to limit build craft.

Since, the more limited things are, the easier it is to balance as there are less variables to interact.

Sure you can just say "LMAO just balance all 500+ sets perfectly and hope you don't break PvE when you have to constantly nerf PvE sets because of how they perform in PvP"

Or, the more logical solution is to limit PvP to the smaller pool of PvP sets. Of which there are still a significant number (And can have more created) to enable build diversity. Whilst most PvP sets are useless in PvE so balance changes on them won't affect PvE (Just like the new PvP specific skills)

Of course, the biggest issue with limiting PvP to only PvP sets, is how to deal with things like new PvPers (Such as when an event or promotion pushes people into PvP). As you'd need to ensure they had some gear to utilize (I suppose you could simply do some Torc of the Last Ayelid King style set bonus suppression)

Stamicka

Taril wrote: »

React wrote: »

As for PVP specific sets, I disagree entirely with limiting build craft, as least on an individual level. The ability to make and adjust your build with all of the tools available in the game is a big part of the little draw it has left.

Of course, the biggest issue with limiting PvP to only PvP sets, is how to deal with things like new PvPers (Such as when an event or promotion pushes people into PvP). As you'd need to ensure they had some gear to utilize (I suppose you could simply do some Torc of the Last Ayelid King style set bonus suppression)

This is not an issue in my opinion. Currently PvP mains have a lot of AP that they don't need to use. If these PvP sets are purchasable with AP, but tradeable, players could make money listing these sets on the guild store or just trading them with people. This would at least give more incentive to get AP. I also think that in addition to current gold materials like tempering alloys, there should be an option to buy a special "pvp" temp with AP that can only be used to upgrade PvP specific sets.

I think in general AP needs more uses and it also would be nice for PvP to be sustainable solely by PvPing (no more PvE grinds for sets). This would also involve making tri pots purchasable with AP, but that's a different discussion.

Taril

Stamicka wrote: »

This is not an issue in my opinion. Currently PvP mains have a lot of AP that they don't need to use. If these PvP sets are purchasable with AP, but tradeable, players could make money listing these sets on the guild store or just trading them with people. This would at least give more incentive to get AP. I also think that in addition to current gold materials like tempering alloys, there should be an option to buy a special "pvp" temp with AP that can only be used to upgrade PvP specific sets.

I think in general AP needs more uses and it also would be nice for PvP to be sustainable solely by PvPing (no more PvE grinds for sets). This would also involve making tri pots purchasable with AP, but that's a different discussion.

Yeah, but that doesn't solve the issue.

Since that involves people 1) Having the forethought to go and trade with other players for the items and 2) Having the resources to actually buy these items.

Someone who's new or is only checking out PvP because of a stupid event task, isn't likely going to go hit up some Guild Traders and shell out for a complete set of PvP gear (To say nothing about the under level 50 PvP scene... Who's going to be selling level 1-50 PvP gear?) just to complete 1 BG game or putz around in Cyro/IC for a bit.

Lags

Stamicka wrote: »

It seems like in 2025 we may see some new PvP specific skills:

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Here are some of the ideas that we are working on, some of which you may see on the live servers as tests in 2025 and beyond. Some of these will be tests and some will be improvements based on player feedback: 

• We need to seriously address Cyrodiil performance. Our (ambitious) goal is to return it to the concurrency levels we supported in 2014. So, we will be experimenting with a Cyrodiil campaign where all classes will have PvP-specific (and more performant) skills that replace the standard player skills with the expectation that we can support more players per campaign.

I think this has a lot of promise, but only if implemented correctly. There's some key ideas that PvP skills need to follow. I also think that we need PvP specific sets in addition to the PvP skills.

Redistribute Damage to Burst Skills
Right now, damage in PvP is pretty high, but it's high in all the wrong places. For some reason we have gradually moved towards a meta of wearing people down rather than bursting them down. This usually looks like stacking up on DoTs, Status Effects, Defiles, and Proc Sets. This has been horrible for the game because this type of damage can only really be countered through purifies which creates a low skill environment. For example, what is a player supposed to do if they get Zaan, the Vateshran Staff Proc, Elemental Susceptibility status effects, secondary enchant status effects, and maybe the master dual wield DoT procced on them at the same time? Other offenders have been: Jerrall's, Maarselok, and even oblivion damage lightning staff heavy attack builds.

Instead of having so much damage centered around undodgable and unblockable DoTs and "free" damage, PvP specific skills should be bursty. Things like spammables or delayed burst skills should be the heavy hitters which will lead to a much more balanced game. When damage is centered around burst skills, it reinforces the importance of timing, blocking, and rolling. Overall skill expression will be improved since the players are more in control of the damage they deal and receive. This also means that enchantments, status effects, and other DoT Procs will need serious adjustments. This isn't to say all DoTs should be removed, but they certainly shouldn't be the primary source of damage in PvP.

Bring Back Stuns
One thing about early ESO is that there were way more stuns in the game. I'm not sure why so many stuns were aggressively removed, but it's actually healthier for the game if stuns are put back on key skills. Skills like Crystal Fragments, Dizzy Swing, Shock Clench, Vampire Drain, and Blazing Spear were much more interesting and useful when they had stuns attached to them. This is also better than the current "Off Balance" system which only encourages players to hold down their block button while they are off balance. The off balance stun is much less predictable and frankly out of place for a game like ESO. When stuns are attached to skills it gives the player more control, reinforces the importance of timed blocking and rolling, and makes fights more interesting and dynamic. Stuns on damaging skills should be reintroduced with the new PvP specific Skills and off balance should no longer lead to a stun.

Healing Skills
There's no doubt that cross healing is a really big issue in ESO. The biggest culprits are auto targeting and "sticky" heals over time like echoing vigor or radiating regeneration. First, there's no way that this can be good for server performance and secondly it's terrible for the game's balance anyway. I think that these skills should be completely replaced with PvP specific versions that still offer utility, but without the ability to to be abused through heal stacking. There's many ways to go about this and there's lots of great ideas on the forums. It's also important not to introduce any new healing skills that can be abused through heal stacking when new PvP specific skills are added.

PvP Specific Sets
In addition to PvP specific skills, I think that players should only be allowed to use PvP specific sets. This would be much easier to balance and potentially more accessible and rewarding if these sets can be purchased with AP and traded. One reason that this is necessary is because repeated PvE group buffs have bled into PvP. In PvE, individual damage isn't actually much higher than it was 6 years ago, but the amount of buffs and debuffs available through sets has made PvE damage skyrocket. This sort of thing is pretty detrimental to PvP because it allows large groups to health stack while achieving high levels of damage through the coordination of buff sets. A set like Olorime on a solo player is already a very strong backbar set, but its utility only increases without drawbacks in group environments. This is not to say that all buff sets are bad, but the amount of buff sets that can currently be stacked in a group is pretty excessive.

I also strongly believe that no PvP specific set should be a proc set. Proc sets are simply impossible to balance in a PvP environment due to how skills scale. Not only would the game potentially perform better, but PvP would be much better if these sets were removed from PvP environments completely.

Conclusion
One trend in each of the points I have made is that over the years, the player has actually lost a lot of control and individual responsibility in PvP. We see this through the fact that so much damage is randomly procced and is essentially unavoidable without a purify. We also see this through fact that damage may be dependent on how many buff sets a group can fit in. PvP specific sets and skills provide a unique opportunity to improve skill expression and player experience without having any impact on PvE. I'm really hoping that this opportunity is used correctly.

if they wanted pvp specific sets they should have made BGs competitive and added them there. Something like GW2 does. Normalizing gear with a pool of lets say 25 sets and gyphs for the competitive mode. Pvp sets over all would be too restrictive. Dueling, cyrodiil, IC, ya no way. But in competitive BGs specifically, it could be a good idea. But seeing as they just wasted their "pvp update" clickbait on updating BGs, and we didnt see this, i doubt we ever will.

Avran_Sylt

Be sure to remove Unblockable/Undodgeable stuns though.

Then take a hard look at block cost and compare it to roll-dodge cost.

Aldoss

To anyone excited about the idea of "PvP specific skills", ask yourself, "who is going to design these skills?"

The same people that made Jabs and Flurry 2.0 will.

The same people that haven't touched Polar Wind in multiple patches will.

The same people that made Grave Lord's Sacrifice will.

I have 0 faith that they can do this without it flopping, hard.

Avran_Sylt

Aldoss wrote: »

To anyone excited about the idea of "PvP specific skills", ask yourself, "who is going to design these skills?"

The same people that made Jabs and Flurry 2.0 will.

The same people that haven't touched Polar Wind in multiple patches will.

The same people that made Grave Lord's Sacrifice will.

I have 0 faith that they can do this without it flopping, hard.

Then start making suggestions.

This forum IMO is by far the most dead when it comes to discussing game mechanics and balance between the players themselves.

Quackery

I'm all for it if it means the end of ball groups.

Vonnegut2506

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Aldoss wrote: »

To anyone excited about the idea of "PvP specific skills", ask yourself, "who is going to design these skills?"

The same people that made Jabs and Flurry 2.0 will.

The same people that haven't touched Polar Wind in multiple patches will.

The same people that made Grave Lord's Sacrifice will.

I have 0 faith that they can do this without it flopping, hard.

Then start making suggestions.

This forum IMO is by far the most dead when it comes to discussing game mechanics and balance between the players themselves.

Yes, because they have a proven track record of not ignoring feedback, right? I mean it's not like anyone told them the Jabs and Flurry change were terrible. It's not like there weren't multiple posts about Grave Lord's Sacrifice. It's not like there weren't pages and pages of feedback about the terrible U35 patch. I'm sure this time they will listen though.

Avran_Sylt

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Aldoss wrote: »

To anyone excited about the idea of "PvP specific skills", ask yourself, "who is going to design these skills?"

The same people that made Jabs and Flurry 2.0 will.

The same people that haven't touched Polar Wind in multiple patches will.

The same people that made Grave Lord's Sacrifice will.

I have 0 faith that they can do this without it flopping, hard.

Then start making suggestions.

This forum IMO is by far the most dead when it comes to discussing game mechanics and balance between the players themselves.

Yes, because they have a proven track record of not ignoring feedback, right? I mean it's not like anyone told them the Jabs and Flurry change were terrible. It's not like there weren't multiple posts about Grave Lord's Sacrifice. It's not like there weren't pages and pages of feedback about the terrible U35 patch. I'm sure this time they will listen though.

You beat that dead horse till it's a fine paste and sticks like glue.

Aldoss

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Aldoss wrote: »

To anyone excited about the idea of "PvP specific skills", ask yourself, "who is going to design these skills?"

The same people that made Jabs and Flurry 2.0 will.

The same people that haven't touched Polar Wind in multiple patches will.

The same people that made Grave Lord's Sacrifice will.

I have 0 faith that they can do this without it flopping, hard.

Then start making suggestions.

This forum IMO is by far the most dead when it comes to discussing game mechanics and balance between the players themselves.

Look at my comment history.

moderatelyfatman

Given that most PvP builds are inherently based around proc-sets, there's no fixing PvP skills without rewriting how the proc sets work in PvP as well.
I honestly don't see how ZOS have the resources to make these changes.

Erickson9610

I'd play a campaign where the only item sets and abilities I could use were balanced against one another for PvP specifically. Even if it means the majority of my abilities and item sets are disabled or changed in some way in this campaign, I'd hope that such an experience would be more engaging.

Avran_Sylt

Erickson9610 wrote: »

I'd play a campaign where the only item sets and abilities I could use were balanced against one another for PvP specifically. Even if it means the majority of my abilities and item sets are disabled or changed in some way in this campaign, I'd hope that such an experience would be more engaging.

Now that they’re unionized, maybe they’ll be able to get some people working on overhauling sets effects to make them less resource intensive to address some of that tech debt. (Aside a while across the entire game, not just PvP).

Aurielle

Here’s my concern with Matt’s wording:

a Cyrodiil campaign

Meaning … one campaign, meaning … it will be as dead as the no proc campaign.

For this to actually work, it needs to be a campaign-wide change. As much as we’d all like to think people will naturally gravitate to the campaign where they can get the best performance and not have to deal with ridiculous population caps, we know from experience that people tend to stay in the “main campaign” (a.k.a. the campaign where ball groups are free to destroy performance for everyone).

Major_Mangle

Erickson9610 wrote: »

I'd play a campaign where the only item sets and abilities I could use were balanced against one another for PvP specifically. Even if it means the majority of my abilities and item sets are disabled or changed in some way in this campaign, I'd hope that such an experience would be more engaging.

They tried similar ruleset with no proc and the campaign died off completely. We don't need srict rulesets (and potentially "presets") and its clear that the ingame population doesn't want it either, as no proc wasn't very popular.

Sure the test is poorly worded in my opinion and it opens up for a lot of ways for interpretation, but the way I see it, it looks like they'll force people into
"You're only allow to use these sets/skills and nothing else". ESO doesn't need to take after games like Guild Wars where you've a limit amount of options of what can be used in PvP. All it will do is kill the remaining PvP population (assuming it's later forced into all PvP campaigns rather than a temporary test)

Aurielle

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

I'd play a campaign where the only item sets and abilities I could use were balanced against one another for PvP specifically. Even if it means the majority of my abilities and item sets are disabled or changed in some way in this campaign, I'd hope that such an experience would be more engaging.

They tried similar ruleset with no proc and the campaign died off completely. We don't need srict rulesets (and potentially "presets") and its clear that the ingame population doesn't want it either, as no proc wasn't very popular.

Sure the test is poorly worded in my opinion and it opens up for a lot of ways for interpretation, but the way I see it, it looks like they'll force people into
"You're only allow to use these sets/skills and nothing else". ESO doesn't need to take after games like Guild Wars where you've a limit amount of options of what can be used in PvP. All it will do is kill the remaining PvP population (assuming it's later forced into all PvP campaigns rather than a temporary test)

Eh, I don’t think it would kill off PVP. As long as the skills feel powerful and diverse enough, people will still play. Cyrodiil remains the only place where you can get that sandboxy AvAvA siege experience in a modern(ish) MMORPG. The only thing is, the skill changes need to be campaign-wide. If they aren’t, people will take the path of least resistance and continue to bash their heads against Gray Host, where they don’t have to tweak their builds.

Set limitation would be the bigger problem. It’s a problem that could easily be solved though by actually making better use of Battle Spirit. PVE set placing too much calculation strain on the server? Use Battle Spirit to tweak how many calculations it can perform while in Cyrodiil instead of destroying how the set works in PVE, instead of saying “welp, this set can’t be used in Cyrodiil.” Everyone’s happy, EASY. I’ve been saying for AGES now that ZOS needs to make better use of Battle Spirit on sets. Sure, it would be an enormous pain in the rear to add Battle Spirit conditions for the approximately five million sets that exist in this game, but now that they’re not releasing chapters anymore, they’ll hopefully have a little more free time to implement common sense solutions that work for ALL players, not just some.

The_Meathead

"We need to seriously address Cyrodiil performance. Our (ambitious) goal is to return it to the concurrency levels we supported in 2014. So, we will be experimenting with a Cyrodiil campaign where all classes will have PvP-specific (and more performant) skills that replace the standard player skills with the expectation that we can support more players per campaign."

Keep in mind their goal here - they want to reduce strain on their servers, because 2014 performance was successful when calculations were done on the user-side and not the server-side.

That ended because of cheating by players, and once all the calculations were done on the server-side things lag appeared and populations had to be drastically lowered to combat it.

I think it's leaping too far to think these are going to be PvP-specific abilities in the sense that they're separating PvP skills from PvE for reasons like the OP optimistically and thoughtfully suggested. Given that the only descriptor given is "...and more performant," I think it's WAY more likely that they mean the Abilities are being altered in a fashion where less Server calculations have to be done, so that they produce less strain and allow for a larger population.

If that's the case, I'd hazard they're going to be some sort of universal amount that doesn't require as much individual character interaction with the hardware and we're possibly gonna see some very boring scenario where everyone using Ability X does the exact same damage as everyone else using Ability X, and we lose a large part of agency over builds and their impact on playing.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's far too early to hope these are going to be PvP-specific abilities in the sense they have more uniquely PvP-appropriate effects or dynamics and its way more likely they're going to be stripped down versions of the Abilities designed to function with far less interaction/strain on the Servers.

The_Meathead

Like so many others have said already in various places, all I wanted was a hard limit on Cross-healing and -shielding.

Aurielle

The_Meathead wrote: »

"We need to seriously address Cyrodiil performance. Our (ambitious) goal is to return it to the concurrency levels we supported in 2014. So, we will be experimenting with a Cyrodiil campaign where all classes will have PvP-specific (and more performant) skills that replace the standard player skills with the expectation that we can support more players per campaign."

Keep in mind their goal here - they want to reduce strain on their servers, because 2014 performance was successful when calculations were done on the user-side and not the server-side.

That ended because of cheating by players, and once all the calculations were done on the server-side things lag appeared and populations had to be drastically lowered to combat it.

I think it's leaping too far to think these are going to be PvP-specific abilities in the sense that they're separating PvP skills from PvE for reasons like the OP optimistically and thoughtfully suggested. Given that the only descriptor given is "...and more performant," I think it's WAY more likely that they mean the Abilities are being altered in a fashion where less Server calculations have to be done, so that they produce less strain and allow for a larger population.

If that's the case, I'd hazard they're going to be some sort of universal amount that doesn't require as much individual character interaction with the hardware and we're possibly gonna see some very boring scenario where everyone using Ability X does the exact same damage as everyone else using Ability X, and we lose a large part of agency over builds and their impact on playing.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's far too early to hope these are going to be PvP-specific abilities in the sense they have more uniquely PvP-appropriate effects or dynamics and its way more likely they're going to be stripped down versions of the Abilities designed to function with far less interaction/strain on the Servers.

The flipside of this is that success in PVP would become more about physical skill than about sets — which is how most PVP games work. How often have people here bemoaned the fact that they’re getting killed by overtuned sets or class abilities, not by skilled players? Particular guns in FPS games all have the same damage output for all players, but player skill and knowledge of terrain / enemy behaviour is what ultimately determines who wins in a PVP FPS game. FPS games seem to be doing alright despite the lack of build agency…

The_Meathead

Aurielle wrote: »

The flipside of this is that success in PVP would become more about physical skill than about sets — which is how most PVP games work. How often have people here bemoaned the fact that they’re getting killed by overtuned sets or class abilities, not by skilled players? Particular guns in FPS games all have the same damage output for all players, but player skill and knowledge of terrain / enemy behaviour is what ultimately determines who wins in a PVP FPS game. FPS games seem to be doing alright despite the lack of build agency…

I have seen a lot of people say that over the years, but I'm not one of them for two reasons.

First, builds are a huge part of ESO's PvP. It would be dull as dirt without full control of them to me, and I'd probably go play another MMO. It's where RPG meets PvP imo, and I don't play FPS games because they lack the same feeling. While OPed outliers often exist and do indeed tarnish things, that's a balance issue that should be corrected quickly and ideally a temporary and infrequent price to be paid for the fun of designing your own character in way that suits your own play.

Second, my experience in other MMOs over the past couple decades has shown that when "PvP Templates" or the like are added late in a game's life, it hasn't been a positive despite initial vocal support for the reasons you mentioned. It's been less colorful and fun, less player-driven, and gets reverted back after participation drops off because it's bland, some players always figure out a way to manipulate it, and most of all it takes away the drive to play the game because the reward of greater strength for playing, doing, and "go get the next item or upgrade" is such an integral aspect of continued enjoyment and drive to participate.

You're certainly not wrong that it's a commonly voiced sentiment and absolutely everyone's fully entitled to their own opinion, but in my experience when it's happened elsewhere it hasn't ended well.

Four_Fingers

If they do limit PvP sets, do you think they could actually come up with a list of sets that work this time?
Was fun guessing what sets worked in no proc! lol

edward_frigidhands

Unless this is confined to a singular campaign like they mentioned, I am probably done with the game.

edward_frigidhands

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

I'd play a campaign where the only item sets and abilities I could use were balanced against one another for PvP specifically. Even if it means the majority of my abilities and item sets are disabled or changed in some way in this campaign, I'd hope that such an experience would be more engaging.

They tried similar ruleset with no proc and the campaign died off completely. We don't need srict rulesets (and potentially "presets") and its clear that the ingame population doesn't want it either, as no proc wasn't very popular.

Sure the test is poorly worded in my opinion and it opens up for a lot of ways for interpretation, but the way I see it, it looks like they'll force people into
"You're only allow to use these sets/skills and nothing else". ESO doesn't need to take after games like Guild Wars where you've a limit amount of options of what can be used in PvP. All it will do is kill the remaining PvP population (assuming it's later forced into all PvP campaigns rather than a temporary test)

I didn't know guild wars 2 limited pvp in this way.

Joy_Division

Rogue_Coyote wrote: »

You want MORE stuns?

Yes. Whether there are 4035454434559324859 stuns or 3 stuns it doesn;t matter because every 7 seconds you are going to get stunned if you are playing a good opponent. With the 3 stun model, that just limits build variety and shuts out classes that had theirs removed (or forced them to buy Gold Road for scribing).

Players need to die. ZOS needs to stop catering to their complaints like overindulgent parents who turn their children into spoiled brats that are incapable of accepting any responsibility.

Aurielle

The_Meathead wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

The flipside of this is that success in PVP would become more about physical skill than about sets — which is how most PVP games work. How often have people here bemoaned the fact that they’re getting killed by overtuned sets or class abilities, not by skilled players? Particular guns in FPS games all have the same damage output for all players, but player skill and knowledge of terrain / enemy behaviour is what ultimately determines who wins in a PVP FPS game. FPS games seem to be doing alright despite the lack of build agency…

I have seen a lot of people say that over the years, but I'm not one of them for two reasons.

First, builds are a huge part of ESO's PvP. It would be dull as dirt without full control of them to me, and I'd probably go play another MMO. It's where RPG meets PvP imo, and I don't play FPS games because they lack the same feeling. While OPed outliers often exist and do indeed tarnish things, that's a balance issue that should be corrected quickly and ideally a temporary and infrequent price to be paid for the fun of designing your own character in way that suits your own play.

Second, my experience in other MMOs over the past couple decades has shown that when "PvP Templates" or the like are added late in a game's life, it hasn't been a positive despite initial vocal support for the reasons you mentioned. It's been less colorful and fun, less player-driven, and gets reverted back after participation drops off because it's bland, some players always figure out a way to manipulate it, and most of all it takes away the drive to play the game because the reward of greater strength for playing, doing, and "go get the next item or upgrade" is such an integral aspect of continued enjoyment and drive to participate.

You're certainly not wrong that it's a commonly voiced sentiment and absolutely everyone's fully entitled to their own opinion, but in my experience when it's happened elsewhere it hasn't ended well.

Yeah, well I can’t even play the game right now because performance is so bad. I don’t even have it installed on my computer anymore. I’d rather have a smooth, functional experience at the expense of less build diversity, if that’s what it takes. Build diversity is not what drew me to Cyrodiil in the first place — it was the fun of capturing and defending keeps with friends, the fun of stealing scrolls with friends. While theorycrafting can certainly be fun, it’s not the main drive of Cyrodiil for a lot of people.