PTS Update 45 - Feedback Thread for Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)

acastanza_ESO · January 21

XIIICaesar wrote: »

The sky in the Vengeance campaign is cool af. Could they make that sky a permanent addition to live but only during certain situations? My thought was whenever Volendrung has spawned/appeared or maybe once it's found/revealed, have the atmosphere change to the Vengeance sky & then back to normal once Volendrung disappears. Not performance related but yeah.

The Vengeance skybox when Volendrung is up would be sick, I would love that.

YandereGirlfriend · January 21

Big agree on the sky. It's the coolest part of the test by far.

Kickimanjaro · January 21

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@Kickimanjaro Just checked in with the team and what you are experiencing with the Arcanist is working as intended. You should still see your gear from outside of the campaign while you are in it. It should just be the visual applied while the stats reflect what is given in the campaign. Can you check your other characters and see if that is working properly there as well? Just want to make sure there isn't something incorrectly happening with the other characters.

I could have sworn my other characters were just naked when zoned in to the Vengeance campaign, but when I checked again just now that wasn't the case and it was as you described/as I showed with my Arcanist.

I was probably just confused.

ZOS_Kevin · January 21

Kickimanjaro wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@Kickimanjaro Just checked in with the team and what you are experiencing with the Arcanist is working as intended. You should still see your gear from outside of the campaign while you are in it. It should just be the visual applied while the stats reflect what is given in the campaign. Can you check your other characters and see if that is working properly there as well? Just want to make sure there isn't something incorrectly happening with the other characters.

I could have sworn my other characters were just naked when zoned in to the Vengeance campaign, but when I checked again just now that wasn't the case and it was as you described/as I showed with my Arcanist.

I was probably just confused.

No worries! Just wanted to check and see if there was an issue or not. Thanks for checking!

silky_soft · January 21

I disagree with tripots being used. Mag, Stam or HP. Not tripot.

Why spawn harvest nodes when you cant use them?

Why spawn npc that you cant use?

While I understand that this is for Cyro, this early phase of test should of been conducted in the 8v8 battleground. At the moment you got a bunch of duels going on. Which isn't going to show you much about balancing the skills around larger fights.

sarahthes · January 21

silky_soft wrote: »

I disagree with tripots being used. Mag, Stam or HP. Not tripot.

Why spawn harvest nodes when you cant use them?

Why spawn npc that you cant use?

While I understand that this is for Cyro, this early phase of test should of been conducted in the 8v8 battleground. At the moment you got a bunch of duels going on. Which isn't going to show you much about balancing the skills around larger fights.

I don't think any part of this test involves skill balancing.

acastanza_ESO · January 21

silky_soft wrote: »

Why spawn harvest nodes when you cant use them?

Disabling harvest node spawning is a good idea

Soraka · January 21

You can go in a delve and get the AP buff, but coming out of the delve removes it. Is this intended?

Markytous · January 21

I will be testing PTS this week for the first time ever and I am EXCITED! Regardless of the class balance, moves forward of any kind in the PVP department is a good sign to me.

I will be emphasizing testing on the core combat mechanics in the Vengeance Cyrodiil. Its expected that there will be more of an emphasis on blocking, rolling and basic attacks here. It is a key opportunity to see how heavy attack sustain, breaking free and immobilizations have aged and if there needs to be any touch-ups to them.

Looking at all the skills at the moment I can say that, yes, they are barebones but each is playable (Some moreso. Bolt Escape without cost penalty is crazy.). I'm proud of the combat team for giving each class this "naked" state so people don't ignore class spammables that already exist like Necro Skulls or Warden Cliff Racers (Crystal Shards is strong). As long as every class has a spammable skill they can fight. Even more, each character has basic attacks (Light and Heavy). We will see in time what direction the combat team takes Vengeance PVP. There could very well be a higher emphasis on the core combat mechanics, which is one way to ensure player identity/agency in a No-Set, templated build experience.

So! Initial feedback before heading in? I want to see core combat mechanics play a big role in our PVP here in Vengeance. Light/Heavy Attacks, Interrupts(Bash), Rolling and Blocking! These are the bedrock that got me on ESO to begin with - 1 second GCD, solid core mechanics. Thanks for the opportunity to test this out! Hopefully the testing here on PTS helps to shape it up to something more digestible to the Live Server audience.

Solariken · January 21

I'm super excited for this. Classes are wildly imbalanced as many others have pointed out, but I think it will be fine since everyone has access to all classes.

I am super pumped that most ally heals will require actual targeting. This is a beautiful change that should have been made on the live servers a long time ago.

Any reason why Sorcerer's Winged Twilight heal is exempt and doesn't require a target?

Markytous · January 21

Solariken wrote: »

I'm super excited for this. Classes are wildly imbalanced as many others have pointed out, but I think it will be fine since everyone has access to all classes.

I am super pumped that most ally heals will require actual targeting. This is a beautiful change that should have been made on the live servers a long time ago.

Any reason why Sorcerer's Winged Twilight heal is exempt and doesn't require a target?

Could be an opportunity to see "Tab Targeting" allies/groupmates start to be needed. We can target specific enemies to prevent "bodyblocking" the target, so I think with this brilliant shift to manual targeting heals/buffs it would be a need to have that as a general feature going forward. Just an idea!

MincMincMinc · January 22

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I havent gotten home yet to check, but I sure hope the team disabled status effects as they are a whole other level of ticks and effects on the server.

What is sad is that some of the skills seem better than live.
Curious how overload works

Maybe atronach will actually do enough damage to be used in pvp, instead of a pve buff

Surge should be a hot considering sorc already has ward and matriach. A hot closer aligns with the original intent of healing every time you crit.

Sorc not having a spammable is concerning, Itd be better to just make frags an instant cast with normal damage. Or even make it only a 33% proc so people can still do the timed burst playstyle.

Darkdeal being instant heal and resource return is AMAZING, it closer aligns with the sorc playstyle of running a deficit build. Where this was changed on live to be a poor copy of warden's sustain method of return over time.

Overload is targeted, you look at the player and hit the key and it fires a lightning ball, each ball costs 25 ult. It isn't a toggle in Vengeance.
Dark Exchange is not instant, it is still a 1 second cast time, they just removed the resource return over time component.

yes, sorry i meant the resources were instant not over time

Alchimiste1 · January 22

If anyone is curious, I actually think necromancer is the strongest class in pts rn lol

OtarTheMad · January 22

Classes look unbalanced but honestly it doesn't matter, if this helps get Cyro anywhere near what it was then I'm down.

We can't have it both ways:
We can't ask ZOS to fix Cyro, which they seem more dedicated than they ever have been but not want to help them when they've said for years it's hard for them to duplicate the issues internally. The class changes aren't permanent, just to get data.

We need to suck it up for a week and just give them the data they need. I'll be hopefully jumping on tomorrow to test some things out and prepare for when it hits live later in 2025.

SillyGT · January 22

MASSIVE W THIS IS GREAT, sustain a little iffy but everything else is amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! only suggestion is to add resources on heavy and everything is pretty much great

(I have 27k hours in pvp and I don't sit on siege)

SillyGT · January 22

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

First impressions:

There are WILD power imbalances between the classes (as we all feared there would be...).

Some classes actually feel feature-complete, with things like access to buffs, gap-closers, delayed burst, both ranged and melee spammables, executes, and CCs, while others are like empty shells, heavily nerfed downgrades of what we have on live. It's evident that the devs simply threw their hands up with some wonky abilities, such as the Necromancer tethers, and changed them to fit this format without much regard to crafting an actually useful skill.

Nightblade is BY FAR the best-in-slot class, followed by DK and Warden. As is tradition. If you want EZ Mode, play Nightblade. If you want Hard Mode, play Necro or Templar.

Nightblade, in particular, still has Cloak... but there is no mechanism for stealth detection available in the game mode. Like, WHAT?!

Necromancer somehow got even worse, as they gave us Sacrificial Bones and stripped-out Blastbones completely.

Any class that relied upon things like Weapon Abilities or passives to round-out their toolkit is basically unplayable.

DOTs appear to be quite oppressive due to the near absence of HOTs.

More random details:

1. All abilities cost Magicka
2. Battle Spirit is not applied to either healing or damage
3. Templates have 70k Health
4. Tri-Pot is the only potion
5. AOE abilities are capped at 3 targets

TLDR: This needs more time to "cook", so to speak. If every class were as feature-complete as Nightblade then the format would be interesting. But as it is, there are clear haves and have-nots. For an optimistic take, such class imbalance should be an obvious signal to the devs for which classes need love on Live (cough, Necro and Templar, cough).

nercromancer/arcanist has insane aoe damage potential and nightbalde cloak has a cooldown. and the reason why its strong now because with hardly building into it on live most people have like -20 stealth detection meters. this is not an issue

Kamchuk · January 22

• Do characters properly zone into Cyrodiil with templatized Stats and Gear?
o YES

• Do characters earn XP/AP/Gold upon leaving?
o YES

• Do siege weapons still function with the limitations of only deploying 1 type at at time?
o YES. I tried to stop using one siege in order to start up another and the first siege weapon was set on fire.

• Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.
o NO – everything was fine for me. I even went back and forth from Cyro to Telvani multiple times to check. Nothing bad happened.

• What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)?
o I play a Magplar. Needless to say I was pathetic. I dueled 2 NB (1v1 each), and they completely kicked my butt. I had better luck with a Necro. My class damage is just not strong enough on their own merits. The Necro told me that other Templars are suffering the same scenario from this Vengeance setup. I get it that you aren’t necessarily looking at class balance just yet. But this should provide SOME feedback when you do start.

• Do you have any general feedback?
First – for the player base, more people need to jump in and attack and defend a keep. Right now I have had to ride to Alessia and Ash in order to find and dual a few players. That isn’t going to provide any useful data. It would be very fun to have all players meet at one keep to fight and see what the performance is. For example: BRK and/or ASH.

Second, for ZOS, I assume that you will start adding stuff back in, to test performance, and to find where the break even point is. Do you plan on providing a schedule of changes as you tweak the system?

Alondil · January 22

Yes characters properly zone into Cyrodiil with templatized Stats and Gear?
i do not know if characters earn XP/AP/Gold upon leaving
i do not know if siege weapons still function with the limitations of only deploying 1 type at at time
none of my characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, etc
What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)
- Performance felt the same no noticeable increase but this may be simply due to the fact that: A. its on PTS B. Its not fun
enough to encourage players to play

Do you have any general feedback?

As a long time PVP player i can say that there are no noticeable performance increase thus far. however the design choice for the skills are awful. Other folks have gone on and on in this thread about the class imbalance etc. This may not matter for the test at hand which is performance but i can tell you this if the game mode is not fun by the time it releases to the live server test no one will play it. If no one plays it during the live test then you will get bad data. I would advise actually looking at what you would invasion a super simplified PVP specific game mode to look like with each skill tailored for a PVP scenario and all needed buffs provided to each class weather its through the skills or through the templates. Skill expression is extremely important in PVP so if you provide and unbalanced game mode folks will not have fun and thus do something else instead of providing the live data feedback you need.

Furthermore I'm sure as this is just a performance test the super simplification of Cyrodill is the first iteration and that more build craft will be added back in as the tests go on. However if that is not the case i would stress that PVP build craft along with the combat system is a major part of why this games PVP is so loved by the community that plays it and to do away with it would be a grave injustice.

TechMaybeHic · January 22

Test will be DOA.

I was actually excited to just have a brief shake up, but had quite a few friends saying they won't be on that week. Now that I see how badly this is done? I mean balance shouldn't matter but it mattered enough to merge together both morphs of cloak for a stealth and a heal? Funny how that works.

I'm out. Good luck

MincMincMinc · January 22

@ZOS_Kevin

After reviewing all of the skill lines in pts I have some concerns. Mainly the whole point is to run this test by removing bloated complicated skills and have only core essentials. While I understand that necro and arc have their stacking systems as some sort of "identity", the skill lines were basically ignoring the whole purpose of the test.

To top it off these two classes have extra buffs needlessly tacked on to some skills that other classes have. A general rule of thumb that should have been followed was that a skills shouldn't have multiple AND statements in them "Does damage AND generates a corpse AND does a dot AND does a debuff AND gives a buff AND does offbalance AND.......AND........AND........."

If a skill is more than a paragraph long, it needs to be simplified.

Also I think it would be best to make sure the status effect system was turned off. I didnt get to check this tonight, but it is essentially added procs on every single action done in the game. Can't be healthy for the server. Probably why phys damage and mag damage didnt have status effects for so long, as they were the most common forms of damage.

YandereGirlfriend · January 22

MincMincMinc wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin

After reviewing all of the skill lines in pts I have some concerns. Mainly the whole point is to run this test by removing bloated complicated skills and have only core essentials. While I understand that necro and arc have their stacking systems as some sort of "identity", the skill lines were basically ignoring the whole purpose of the test.

To top it off these two classes have extra buffs needlessly tacked on to some skills that other classes have. A general rule of thumb that should have been followed was that a skills shouldn't have multiple AND statements in them "Does damage AND generates a corpse AND does a dot AND does a debuff AND gives a buff AND does offbalance AND.......AND........AND........."

If a skill is more than a paragraph long, it needs to be simplified.
Also I think it would be best to make sure the status effect system was turned off. I didnt get to check this tonight, but it is essentially added procs on every single action done in the game. Can't be healthy for the server. Probably why phys damage and mag damage didnt have status effects for so long, as they were the most common forms of damage.

There aren't going to be any Necros on during the test anyway if you look at their actual toolkit vs. NB or DK.

Decimus · January 22

Testing this on PTS might've been the most un-fun thing I've ever done in ESO.

First of all, testing on PTS as an EU player is almost impossible due to the insane delay on everything (much worse than just playing on regular NA server) - I had cases of my character just swinging light attacks in the air for 3 seconds instead of casting Soul Tether for example. No issues of similar kind on EU or NA Live servers.

Second of all, as has been pointed out already... PvP has devolved into slow stalemate heavy attack spam, running out of resources before you can finish off your opponent who switched to defense until one person gets bored or makes a mistake. I don't see anyone surviving when fighting outnumbered after these changes since the sustain is just not there, nor is the burst damage.

Class balance is also wayyy off, with necromancer (ironically) and nightblade being a lot stronger than the rest.

Overall though, I think the gameplay diverges too much from how the game has been working for ages now. There is little room for skill expression, no class has off balance for example, roll catches aren't rewarded since you can't capitalize off of them (and everyone does almost same damage with their AoE abilities anyway), there's no usage for stamina really a lot of the time (all abilities apart from Dark Conversion & whip which is 50/50 cost magicka) or you're forced into some awkward dodge roll spam because you decided not to heavy attack in the last 5 seconds and ran out of magicka... it's just spam same rotation over and over again & try to out sustain your opponent while you both struggle sustain wise and are forced to spam heavies. Kinda like how it feels like to play a bad build right now on Live server - not very pleasant.

Good thing there's BGs, but if this is some long-term direction for PvP in Cyrodiil it just feels like wasted development time.

Estin · January 22

I got to try it out for a bit. I decided to try necro and it wasn't so bad. Necro has strong healing and a ranged spammable. It's hard to make any decisions about how balance would be though since there's only like 10 people on PTS instead of the large amount ZOS built it for. I haven't experienced any issues loading in or leaving. One thing I have noticed is that it doesn't look like being stuck in combat is an issue. I was fighting someone but we both left. They were still in combat with guards, but I was able to mount up. Not sure if it's due to the lack of players or not, but it was decent surprise.

I will say that the vengeance skeletal mage is a pretty great skill concept and is what the stamina version of blastbones should've been over GLS. It spawns an skeleton that walks towards an enemy and deals damage over 4 seconds. Please change stamina blastbones to this and revert GLS back to stalking blastbones.

Alchimiste1 · January 22

Decimus wrote: »

Testing this on PTS might've been the most un-fun thing I've ever done in ESO.

First of all, testing on PTS as an EU player is almost impossible due to the insane delay on everything (much worse than just playing on regular NA server) - I had cases of my character just swinging light attacks in the air for 3 seconds instead of casting Soul Tether for example. No issues of similar kind on EU or NA Live servers.

Second of all, as has been pointed out already... PvP has devolved into slow stalemate heavy attack spam, running out of resources before you can finish off your opponent who switched to defense until one person gets bored or makes a mistake. I don't see anyone surviving when fighting outnumbered after these changes since the sustain is just not there, nor is the burst damage.

Class balance is also wayyy off, with necromancer (ironically) and nightblade being a lot stronger than the rest.

Overall though, I think the gameplay diverges too much from how the game has been working for ages now. There is little room for skill expression, no class has off balance for example, roll catches aren't rewarded since you can't capitalize off of them (and everyone does almost same damage with their AoE abilities anyway), there's no usage for stamina really a lot of the time (all abilities apart from Dark Conversion & whip which is 50/50 cost magicka) or you're forced into some awkward dodge roll spam because you decided not to heavy attack in the last 5 seconds and ran out of magicka... it's just spam same rotation over and over again & try to out sustain your opponent while you both struggle sustain wise and are forced to spam heavies. Kinda like how it feels like to play a bad build right now on Live server - not very pleasant.

Good thing there's BGs, but if this is some long-term direction for PvP in Cyrodiil it just feels like wasted development time.

accurate

I haven't even tried all the classes, but I think I have seen enough.

IncultaWolf · January 22

Necromancer actually feels really strong on the pts cyrodiil funny enough, I enjoyed dueling on it more than sorcerer. The mechanics of the spirit mender feel better than the live server also, and the animation is just better.

Didn't notice any performance changes, when I played there were about 20 players in one area just dueling each other

Estin · January 22

I've noticed that we don't have access to keep recall stones. I don't see any mention of them being disabled in the patch notes, but there is no way to obtain them. Is this intended?

Alchimiste1 · January 22

I just want to add two things. I think the guards are a bit too strong for the casual players to have to deal with under these rules

Also the necro spirit mender animation is actually very cool. Bring that animation to live

Oh and lastly heads up to anyone. If you are using healthy offering( or potentially other heals that can target friendly players) even if you are at 10% health if you are looking directly at an ally even if they are full health the heal will go to them instead.

Adamus · January 22

EVERY THURSDAY 9-11PM EST/6-8PM PST (2-4 UTC friday)
Army of the Pact (EP) plans to organize a raid on the PTS. Welcome all groups to join to help in the early testing stages. Would be great to get some competition on the map.

Adamus · January 22

Would note that "Iliad Well Buffs" are still active on the map and increase health 10% while active. Not sure if keeping that buff on the map was intentional.

Markytous · January 22

I spent some time in Vengeance, solo'd a Keep on the Nightblade template. I wanted to send in some feedback while it's fresh in my mind.

So for now, yadda yadda class balance, identity, melee vs ranged, weapon choices, lacking passives etc and etc. There are plenty of things that can be said about these right off the cuff but I won't weight in much with this because we're mainly doing a stress test here. That being said, I do like the effort to capture the essence of each class (I will be going in with other classes soon) as it says the team is interested in establishing their identity and steers us in the direction of making sure each are uniquely powerful - good implications for the entire game going forward.

As far as performance goes, I queued in, set up my bars with skills of my choice and did some fights (mobs, resource and keep). No issues. Everything feels responsive. I actually *GASP* had a bit of fun challenging myself with these streamlined, no passive templates. It feels heavy, though. You really feel like you're an infantryman fighting for your faction. Not too much room for heroism here, however this also means that bringing a few friends to play grouped up will feel very satisfying as well. I can see this being a fun test of personal knowledge and skill of the game's core mechanics once we're comfortable adding things like Weapon Skills and AvA Skill lines in. The bones are good! It's just a bit rough depending on the class you decide to roll with. As a Nightblade I just spam Leeching Strikes to get my Magicka back, but I understand just about every other class needs to do Staff Heavy Attacks just to play. I have a concern though that the general audience may find Vengeance intolerable in its current state. A lot can change in a month but I'm just sharing my concern that if most people won't opt in to try it out when the patch goes live we won't be able to stress test the server with a decent amount of players. Sure, I'll be there on Live, but I think for most Cyrodiil-goers we may have to sweeten the deal somehow. What's fun for me probably isn't fun for them. Lots of people are going to see the skills all Magicka with limited sustain options and nope out.

Here's the thing. I don't know if simply reducing the amount of active/passive effects happening in the server will get us to 2014 levels of sustained population capacity. Of course, it's worth a shot and I'm on board with any and all projects on the PVP side - especially Cyrodiil! During that time, the servers were calculating a lot on the client's side (correct me if I'm wrong) and.. well thinking of that, maybe Vengeance reducing the overall server calculations actually can help. If it doesn't though, finding a safe method to get certain calculations client side again may be the way if that is even possible.

Last thing for now. Some skills on Vengeance are actually better than live! In this thread some people indicated some skill effects and/or animations are an improvement over live. For me, its the Bolstering Darkness ultimate - on Live it's not very useful as the effect is mainly for group utility. In Vengeance, it gives YOU and some mates around you Invisibility and Major Protection. Brilliant! Wouldn't mind if this managed to get into Live in some form. I see some good things happening with this test.