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

YandereGirlfriend · January 22

I agree that we owe it to ourselves, as the ESO PvP community, to get in there and to test even if some of our main classes are... objectively dogwater vs. other options.

It'll be like going to a superhero movie: just low-effort, dumb fun (hopefully). You turn off your brain and you zerg around for a few hours, siege a few keeps, die to oils. Simplicity itself. Don't sweat the K/D Ratio for that week because it is bizarro PvP rather than actual PvP, like a Dragonbreak for Cyrodiil specifically.

Markytous · January 22

The zerg fights feel like soldiers in an army fighting it out as opposed to a ball group exploiting flawed game mechanics. In Vengeance, a group's success will be about communicating target focus, positioning and grouping instead of spamming AoE shields and "steamrolling" players with outlier sets at maximum HP. Anything is better than lazy unkillable ball groups.

Reminds me that the Catapult not being included made things a bit difficult. I'd like to see that Siege Weapon implemented somehow. Its very nice for dealing with a large number of players or NPC guards.

MincMincMinc · January 22

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I agree that we owe it to ourselves, as the ESO PvP community, to get in there and to test even if some of our main classes are... objectively dogwater vs. other options.

It'll be like going to a superhero movie: just low-effort, dumb fun (hopefully). You turn off your brain and you zerg around for a few hours, siege a few keeps, die to oils. Simplicity itself. Don't sweat the K/D Ratio for that week because it is bizarro PvP rather than actual PvP, like a Dragonbreak for Cyrodiil specifically.

I actually cant wait to go full zerg mode. We need to specifically engage in the worse possible scenarios we can think of to create lag.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · January 22

@ZOS_Kevin

Bug found: Zoning into a Delve in Cyrodiil re-equips any gear you had equipped before entering cyro (I had taken everything off prior to entering the delve). Additionally if you kill a boss within the Delve you gain the Blessing of War buff (AP buff) but upon leaving the delve (I left via the door and via death) the buff is lost.

Bug: Forward camps can no longer be placed once you have placed one camp (until it is destroyed)

Bug: Clicking on skills in the 'Skill Advisor' opens up the skill lines of those skills, you can't slot anything but it might confuse some players. - Weirdly those skill lines are capped at 20 instead of 50. Is the plan to level squish the skills?

Bug: When trying to exit cyrodiil via the wayshrine you can only see the wayshrines for the DLC zones you own as the main zones have been reset due the templated character.

Question: Why is there no infinite keep recall stone?
Question: Why is Guild guard kills messaging still on? surely that must cause some calculation lag trying to work out the player counts and how many guards they killed?
Question: Why have AOE caps been brought back in? The community spent years trying to show why this is a bad system - This just encourages zerg stacking because there is no threat due to the smart healing vs dumb damage. So now whoever has the biggest zerg will win.
Question: As NPC's cannot be interacted with, how will the Golden vendor work, double rewards the week after?

Bug/Question: Why was the support passive to increase range not included in the skills at baseline? you basically have to be against the wall to hit people on it now.

Bug: Recasting Vengeance Sun Shield didn't apply a shield to me, I still lost health instead of the shield being damaged. It's hard to tell if this is a visual error or not as I didn't let myself die but please investigate.

Bug/Question: What is the role of weapons? Sword and Board doesn't add to armour, neither does Ice staff, is it just Cosmetic / which resource is recovered?

TechMaybeHic · January 22

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I just dont get what is not clear to people? To take a serious look at this issue zos needs to eliminate the largest avenues first.

I get what they're doing, but it's not a paying gig. The game still needs to be fun.

That is the big problem. Last thing I want is a consensus NB best so majority of players sneaking around trying to gank on low crit resist targets that are forced to ride because of no recall stones and no detect pots. Cool Down on cloak or not; that's why you crouch

acastanza_ESO · January 22

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin

Bug found: Zoning into a Delve in Cyrodiil re-equips any gear you had equipped before entering cyro (I had taken everything off prior to entering the delve). Additionally if you kill a boss within the Delve you gain the Blessing of War buff (AP buff) but upon leaving the delve (I left via the door and via death) the buff is lost.

I don't think this behavior with Delves is really a bug. Delves, while entered through Cyrodiil, aren't technically "in" the campaign. It used to be that to leave a delve and go back into Cyrodiil you would actually end up getting stuck queueing into the campaign if it was full, they eventually (mostly) fixed this, but they're still not really inside the campaign proper. Still, considering that you can engage in PVP combat inside the delves, this behavior should probably be looked at. If it's not possible to apply the Vengeance ruleset, maybe making the inside of the delves non-PVP enabled for this test.

MincMincMinc · January 22

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin

Bug found: Zoning into a Delve in Cyrodiil re-equips any gear you had equipped before entering cyro (I had taken everything off prior to entering the delve). Additionally if you kill a boss within the Delve you gain the Blessing of War buff (AP buff) but upon leaving the delve (I left via the door and via death) the buff is lost.

I don't think this behavior with Delves is really a bug. Delves, while entered through Cyrodiil, aren't technically "in" the campaign. It used to be that to leave a delve and go back into Cyrodiil you would actually end up getting stuck queueing into the campaign if it was full, they eventually (mostly) fixed this, but they're still not really inside the campaign proper. Still, considering that you can engage in PVP combat inside the delves, this behavior should probably be looked at. If it's not possible to apply the Vengeance ruleset, maybe making the inside of the delves non-PVP enabled for this test.

I thought the delves were supposed to be disabled or not a part of the test. Hard to remember between the livestream discussion and the several threads where details were given out.

Kamchuk · January 22

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So that we can try and get back on track, we checked in with the team for an order of operations for this test, between PTS and the Live test in March. So hopefully this will help and we can get back to the core feedback needed for this portion of the test.
Functionality on the PTS server is first and the goal of that is to make sure we can provide the best play experience when this goes to the live server in March.

We look at the data from the PTS functionality test to ensure things are working properly for the live test.

If everything looks good, we move on to the test on the live server.

After the test on the live server is done, we shut down Vengeance and review the data.

Next steps will be determined based on the data. Nothing else related to the test will immediately go into the live game, including any Vengeance Class/Skill kits.

We will share next steps once we evaluate the data.

Thnx Kevin and the rest of ZOS. Revealing the scheduled plan is pretty cool.

I have to say I don't understand the reluctance to participate in the Vengeance performance test. We have all been complaining for the last 10 years about the performance. Here is our chance to participate in debugging Cyro. I play a Templar, my only toon. I do not expect to have a single kill during this test because Templars suck. But I am in there testing. One of our colleagues has suggested that we all meet Thursdays between 9:00 - 11:00 PM EST to stress the servers. Hell - (Kevin, this is where you need to cover your eyes and not read the next part) : I MIGHT create a macro to fire all my weapons in rapid succession to see if I can help crash the servers. (OK Kevin you can keep reading now.)

You guys need to get in there, both PTS and Live Servers, and see if the data we produce will help bring back the day when we had HUNDREDS of players per faction, this time without lag. Remember those fights? They were awesome.

Avran_Sylt · January 22

KiltMaster wrote: »

I know this is a test but wow this is horrible. So much for “play your way”.

You mentioned how “you actually have to use skill this way” but frankly you have to use skill now. You can put someone who’s never been in PVP before in the best gear with the best setup in skills and if they’re not skilled enough to play it, it won’t work.

You also mentioned how the goal of making everything simplified is to increase the size for fights and amount of players allowed in the campaign, but then so many of the skills are capped to only three players. I’m not sure where the disconnect is with that.

One person, one siege is also yikes. It will take forever to take down keep walls, now.

Though I guess there won’t be any lag if no one is playing in PVP anymore.

Play your way, and in this case, Cyrodiil is targeted for play with massive PvP battles. If you want smaller scale group/solo PvP I suggest Imperial City.

One person one siege, but also: You don't have to pay Alliance points for siege anymore, everyone gets it, it's auto-added to the inventory, and they never run out.

Positioning and grouping is much more effective now, so ball groups will still be a threat, and I'm kind of disappointed there's no single-target burst available for a player to chip off one player from the ball, but with a smaller group and a DK I assume it'd be possible to yank one person and ult dump on them before trying to run away.

React · January 22

I get that the point of this is to measure the impact that these changes have on performance. But as someone who has been here for the entirety of the game's life cycle, through every promise and test, here are my concerns.

First, the stated goal of this project is for zenimax to be able to "reach launch level population caps", allowing exponentially more players to be in the campaign at once (likely 5x the caps we have in place now, based on our estimations). There aren't this many people queuing for PVP on any given night anymore. This new system, with all of it's flaws, isn't going to suddenly inspire 5x the number of players to jump into PVP - in fact, I'd be surprised if there was any net positive population gain whatsoever given the full removal of buildcraft, skill decisions, etc. This is concerning because it gives an air of pointlessness to the entirety of the project - why gut the entire build/combat system to allow for a playerbase that doesn't exist?

Second, the environment would require HEAVY balancing from a combat team who plays PVP at a reasonable skill level. I'm not trying to suggest that all developers need to be skilled at the game, but an environment as simple as this needs to be balanced to work well, and people who do not have an in-depth understanding of PVP will not be able to do that. This is concerning because historically zenimax has never given us a reason to believe they listen to or care about player feedback in regards to balance changes, and the only PVP representation we've ever seen from zenimax in the form of the recent live stream was... lacking. If this environment comes into the game in as limited a state as it is, along with being poorly balanced, you can be damn sure this won't be played by anybody and will very likely kill off whatever small playerbase you have left on the PVP side of the game. If you are going to take real, tangible steps to ensure this environment is well balanced then lay those plans out for us, or we will assume the worst - because the worst has almost always been the case when it comes to PVP balance, historically.

I played this environment for a few hours, and I have to say it was the most painfully boring PVP I've had on this game in some time. Things are too simplified, the balance is atrocious, and there is no individual flavor or skill expression to be had. While I certainly think there is potential for a more limited environment where people don't have access to nearly as many heals, sustain, or free damage - this iteration falls incredibly short of being that. If this is what zenimax plans on investing their time into during 2025, I don't see the point in hanging around. I'm not confident that anything positive will come of it and I'm not going to just hang around for another year at probably the lowest point ever for this game's PVP while zenimax goes into year 7 or 8 of "just testing things out". I'm sorry, but the good faith was spent long ago and this project as well as the general tone we're seeing regarding it from the CMs and developers does not inspire any confidence whatsoever.

Reginald_leBlem · January 22

1) I understand this is a test, Zos did not focus on balancing the skills, just grabbed bare-bones class skills for people

2) Skills should still be adjusted slightly before live because people will be put off by some classes and not want to participate

3) Offer a big incentive. Idk what, but make it big enough that you draw a crowd. Crown crates? Style pages? A costume that says "I survived the Great Test of 2025"? The much requested KEEP House???? You need to get and keep disillusioned pvpers, and pvers that don't care about Cyrodiil.

Bottom line: many people, myself included, have participated on PTS in good faith and felt ignored when reporting everyothing from serious balance concerns to game-breaking bugs. Many people, myself included, participated in the weeks-long PVP performance testing a few years ago that resulted in several months of hell via no healing outside of group.

We are tired. We lack faith in the system. Trying to guilt or shame us into participating will not work. Give us a carrot, a REAL carrot and not the same "we are working on performance" carrot we've been getting for years and still haven't seen.

THAT SAID I too cannot figure out the gear, and why we have it. Skills all worked as expected, didn't crash, character zoned in and out as expected.

Not being able to dismiss my notifications or mail was VERY annoying, 0/10, working as expected or nah?

Alchimiste1 · January 22

One thing I would like to address more is the sustain issues on pts.

Pre-Hybridization you also had to manage your sustain more because overblocking and running out of stam would inevitably lead to you getting stun locked and that was pretty much a death sentence without the readily available burst heals. This is different on pts where your stam is almost never strained. (unless you are playing something like sorc with dark deal). Fights in generally aren't won because someone got hit with a great combo but because someone ran out of Mag sustain which slows down the pacing of the fights after the first 20 seconds.

I understand this isn't a balance feedback thread but perhaps some early/initial feedback might make its way into later tests.

Soraka · January 22

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin

Bug found: Zoning into a Delve in Cyrodiil re-equips any gear you had equipped before entering cyro (I had taken everything off prior to entering the delve). Additionally if you kill a boss within the Delve you gain the Blessing of War buff (AP buff) but upon leaving the delve (I left via the door and via death) the buff is lost.

I don't think this behavior with Delves is really a bug. Delves, while entered through Cyrodiil, aren't technically "in" the campaign. It used to be that to leave a delve and go back into Cyrodiil you would actually end up getting stuck queueing into the campaign if it was full, they eventually (mostly) fixed this, but they're still not really inside the campaign proper. Still, considering that you can engage in PVP combat inside the delves, this behavior should probably be looked at. If it's not possible to apply the Vengeance ruleset, maybe making the inside of the delves non-PVP enabled for this test.

The delves are odd because of the above, but I tried and you can't change mount or outfit etc in a delve still bc of the campaign disabling. So it's following some sort of rule set, just seems inconsistent.

sarahthes · January 22

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

1) I understand this is a test, Zos did not focus on balancing the skills, just grabbed bare-bones class skills for people

2) Skills should still be adjusted slightly before live because people will be put off by some classes and not want to participate

3) Offer a big incentive. Idk what, but make it big enough that you draw a crowd. Crown crates? Style pages? A costume that says "I survived the Great Test of 2025"? The much requested KEEP House???? You need to get and keep disillusioned pvpers, and pvers that don't care about Cyrodiil.

Bottom line: many people, myself included, have participated on PTS in good faith and felt ignored when reporting everyothing from serious balance concerns to game-breaking bugs. Many people, myself included, participated in the weeks-long PVP performance testing a few years ago that resulted in several months of hell via no healing outside of group.

We are tired. We lack faith in the system. Trying to guilt or shame us into participating will not work. Give us a carrot, a REAL carrot and not the same "we are working on performance" carrot we've been getting for years and still haven't seen.

THAT SAID I too cannot figure out the gear, and why we have it. Skills all worked as expected, didn't crash, character zoned in and out as expected.

Not being able to dismiss my notifications or mail was VERY annoying, 0/10, working as expected or nah?

I don't think any of those skill variants will make it to a non test environment, if what Kevin is saying above accurately represents everything.

ZOS is literally trying to see how deep the code deficit they were supposed to fix 4 years ago actually is, and they're doing that by stripping every single calculation they can out of cyrodiil and throwing in as many people as they can and seeing what happens.

People saying they need to balance this skill or that skill are focusing on a forest ecosystem while zos is only trying to measure the square footage of the forest. The trees haven't even been planted yet.

xylena_lazarow · January 22

sarahthes wrote: »

People saying they need to balance this skill or that skill are focusing on a forest ecosystem while zos is only trying to measure the square footage of the forest. The trees haven't even been planted yet.

So those of us concerned about balance are pointing out that the soil is still choked by weeds and stumps. Nothing will grow here unless you clear the crap out. If day one is unfun NB hell, there's a mass exodus, what are we testing?

silky_soft · January 22

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

DrGIggles80 wrote: »

...

There seems to be a misunderstanding here about the test. The point of this test is purely for the sake of performance, and getting calculations as low as possible on the server. So eliminating one or two things at a time will not help in the data we are trying to gather. This test for March as of right now, is purely for performance data on the live server so that we have a baseline when exploring pathways to improve Cyrodiil. That is also why we mentioned that class and skill balance is not a focus here. Because that is still several steps ahead of where we are, especially for a test that will last one week.

With the way you have done it now. I doubt many will play in the test. I was excited for this test but who ever is in charge has changed it too much. They've gone and distracted the community with balance far worse then live.

Set stats/gear are good.
No cp is good.
No proc is good.
New skills that align with nothing in live is bad.

Just make the class skill lines as they are, with their morphs to chose from. No class passives. Eliminate all other skills lines and their passives.

The test needs to be inviting and have familiarity. It currently is not.

Reginald_leBlem · January 22

sarahthes wrote: »

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

1) I understand this is a test, Zos did not focus on balancing the skills, just grabbed bare-bones class skills for people

2) Skills should still be adjusted slightly before live because people will be put off by some classes and not want to participate

3) Offer a big incentive. Idk what, but make it big enough that you draw a crowd. Crown crates? Style pages? A costume that says "I survived the Great Test of 2025"? The much requested KEEP House???? You need to get and keep disillusioned pvpers, and pvers that don't care about Cyrodiil.

Bottom line: many people, myself included, have participated on PTS in good faith and felt ignored when reporting everyothing from serious balance concerns to game-breaking bugs. Many people, myself included, participated in the weeks-long PVP performance testing a few years ago that resulted in several months of hell via no healing outside of group.

We are tired. We lack faith in the system. Trying to guilt or shame us into participating will not work. Give us a carrot, a REAL carrot and not the same "we are working on performance" carrot we've been getting for years and still haven't seen.

THAT SAID I too cannot figure out the gear, and why we have it. Skills all worked as expected, didn't crash, character zoned in and out as expected.

Not being able to dismiss my notifications or mail was VERY annoying, 0/10, working as expected or nah?

I don't think any of those skill variants will make it to a non test environment, if what Kevin is saying above accurately represents everything.

ZOS is literally trying to see how deep the code deficit they were supposed to fix 4 years ago actually is, and they're doing that by stripping every single calculation they can out of cyrodiil and throwing in as many people as they can and seeing what happens.

People saying they need to balance this skill or that skill are focusing on a forest ecosystem while zos is only trying to measure the square footage of the forest. The trees haven't even been planted yet.

I understand all that perfectly.

I also understand that if they don't make some minor changes to a couple of classes, the people that tried those classes on PTS are unlikely to show up, and people who try those classes on live are unlikely to stay.
Would it REALLY be so much hassle to make frags insta cast? Or matriarch heal yourself for the same amount as it heals an ally? I would grudgingly accept that blastbones is too complicated for what they want to test, but some other classes could get some minor quality of life changes and people would be more likely to participate. That's all I am many others are saying. We aren't asking for a sweeping balance change.

MincMincMinc · January 22

silky_soft wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

DrGIggles80 wrote: »

...

There seems to be a misunderstanding here about the test. The point of this test is purely for the sake of performance, and getting calculations as low as possible on the server. So eliminating one or two things at a time will not help in the data we are trying to gather. This test for March as of right now, is purely for performance data on the live server so that we have a baseline when exploring pathways to improve Cyrodiil. That is also why we mentioned that class and skill balance is not a focus here. Because that is still several steps ahead of where we are, especially for a test that will last one week.

With the way you have done it now. I doubt many will play in the test. I was excited for this test but who ever is in charge has changed it too much. They've gone and distracted the community with balance far worse then live.

Set stats/gear are good.
No cp is good.
No proc is good.
New skills that align with nothing in live is bad.

Just make the class skill lines as they are, with their morphs to chose from. No class passives. Eliminate all other skills lines and their passives.

The test needs to be inviting and have familiarity. It currently is not.

You dont understand the point of the test, the current skills are what they are testing....... they cant use the current skills......the current skills are a part of the problem

xylena_lazarow · January 22

MincMincMinc wrote: »

You dont understand the point of the test, the current skills are what they are testing....... they cant use the current skills......the current skills are a part of the problem

How does it help performance to staple a burst heal to NB cloak?

Muizer · January 22

React wrote: »

If this is what zenimax plans on investing their time into during 2025, I don't see the point in hanging around.

Good thing then that it isn't. Or at least, they have not said or implied it. Not does this approach betray such intentions. It is obviously a bare-bones implementation of PvP, which is consistent with what they say it is for (testing max capacity of players).

React wrote: »

I get that the point of this is to measure the impact that these changes have on performance. But as someone who has been here for the entirety of the game's life cycle, through every promise and test, here are my concerns.

First, the stated goal of this project is for zenimax to be able to "reach launch level population caps", allowing exponentially more players to be in the campaign at once (likely 5x the caps we have in place now, based on our estimations). There aren't this many people queuing for PVP on any given night anymore. This new system, with all of it's flaws, isn't going to suddenly inspire 5x the number of players to jump into PVP - in fact, I'd be surprised if there was any net positive population gain whatsoever given the full removal of buildcraft, skill decisions, etc. This is concerning because it gives an air of pointlessness to the entirety of the project - why gut the entire build/combat system to allow for a playerbase that doesn't exist?

Second, the environment would require HEAVY balancing from a combat team who plays PVP at a reasonable skill level. I'm not trying to suggest that all developers need to be skilled at the game, but an environment as simple as this needs to be balanced to work well, and people who do not have an in-depth understanding of PVP will not be able to do that. This is concerning because historically zenimax has never given us a reason to believe they listen to or care about player feedback in regards to balance changes, and the only PVP representation we've ever seen from zenimax in the form of the recent live stream was... lacking. If this environment comes into the game in as limited a state as it is, along with being poorly balanced, you can be damn sure this won't be played by anybody and will very likely kill off whatever small playerbase you have left on the PVP side of the game. If you are going to take real, tangible steps to ensure this environment is well balanced then lay those plans out for us, or we will assume the worst - because the worst has almost always been the case when it comes to PVP balance, historically.

I played this environment for a few hours, and I have to say it was the most painfully boring PVP I've had on this game in some time. Things are too simplified, the balance is atrocious, and there is no individual flavor or skill expression to be had. While I certainly think there is potential for a more limited environment where people don't have access to nearly as many heals, sustain, or free damage - this iteration falls incredibly short of being that. If this is what zenimax plans on investing their time into during 2025, I don't see the point in hanging around. I'm not confident that anything positive will come of it and I'm not going to just hang around for another year at probably the lowest point ever for this game's PVP while zenimax goes into year 7 or 8 of "just testing things out". I'm sorry, but the good faith was spent long ago and this project as well as the general tone we're seeing regarding it from the CMs and developers does not inspire any confidence whatsoever.

It sounds as if you're evaluating the vengeance setup as if it is a beta version of Cyrodiil 2.0. We have not been told that it is. It has not been implied that it is. The setup does not suggest that it is. Conversely, everything we've seen is consistent with this being the stress test we've been told it is.

So, you have a choice. You can assume ZOS are playing games here, or you can assume the test is the most thorough approach to tackling Cyrodiil performance yet. At stake for you: a single week of boring, unbalanced game play.

sarahthes · January 23

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

People saying they need to balance this skill or that skill are focusing on a forest ecosystem while zos is only trying to measure the square footage of the forest. The trees haven't even been planted yet.

So those of us concerned about balance are pointing out that the soil is still choked by weeds and stumps. Nothing will grow here unless you clear the crap out. If day one is unfun NB hell, there's a mass exodus, what are we testing?

But they might be measuring the size of the forest to go plant it somewhere else.

I really don't think that this is a preview of cyrodiil 2.0, nor anywhere close to it. I think it's just a login simulator so they can see how many real accounts (not simulated) they can pack into one instance before it goes wobbly.

And I think anyone who actually cares about PvP in ESO will participate in these tests even if the classes themselves are not balanced. For the purpose of the test I don't think it matters if there's 1000 nbs and 3 necros. What matters is there's 1003 people.

Djennku · January 23

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the new Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign) in Update 45. Please try out the new campaign and let us know what you think! Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:
Do characters properly zone into Cyrodiil with templatized Stats and Gear?

Yup. Character zones in, fully setup with all necessary gear, template and skills

Do characters earn XP/AP/Gold upon leaving?

wasn't able to kill anything myself so cannot confirm this

Do siege weapons still function with the limitations of only deploying 1 type at at time?
Didn't test siege much.

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. N/A
account name

character name

What happened to trigger the corruption (leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, etc)?

screenshots and video

What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)?

Could be interesting, but I have alot of concerns with combat and survivability

Do you have any general feedback?

The way the character is setup with zero passives and just a few skill/ no other abilities makes your character really weak compared to cyrodiil on live. It may not be as significant with a large group, but by myself, I struggled to kill even a single npc at a resource

xylena_lazarow · January 23

sarahthes wrote: »

And I think anyone who actually cares about PvP in ESO will participate in these tests even if the classes themselves are not balanced. For the purpose of the test I don't think it matters if there's 1000 nbs and 3 necros. What matters is there's 1003 people.

They're not getting 1003 people unless they put forth a product that 1003 people are excited about. Diet Cyrodiil with an unbalanced unfun NB hell meta isn't gonna be it. They're gonna need to deal with at least that. There's no performance reason to mash together a burst heal with invisibility, guess we forgot what we learned from Hardened Ward.

My concept of caring about PvP is to not accept a product released in this state, test or not.

Erickson9610 · January 23

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

And I think anyone who actually cares about PvP in ESO will participate in these tests even if the classes themselves are not balanced. For the purpose of the test I don't think it matters if there's 1000 nbs and 3 necros. What matters is there's 1003 people.

They're not getting 1003 people unless they put forth a product that 1003 people are excited about. Diet Cyrodiil with an unbalanced unfun NB hell meta isn't gonna be it. They're gonna need to deal with at least that. There's no performance reason to mash together a burst heal with invisibility, didn't we already go through this with Hardened Ward?

Current Cyrodiil isn't exciting enough for 1003 people. This test, with standardized templates, is the most exciting update to Cyrodiil in a long time. A lot of people hate it, but a lot of people are interested by it, too. This will bring in many players when it hits Live.

xylena_lazarow · January 23

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Current Cyrodiil isn't exciting enough for 1003 people. This test, with standardized templates, is the most exciting update to Cyrodiil in a long time. A lot of people hate it, but a lot of people are interested by it, too. This will bring in many players when it hits Live.

That's fair, but they aren't keeping them if they can't address balance issues. It took over 6 months and over 2000 posts before we saw a change to Hardened Ward, we're now in a similar boat with Rushing Agony. Unfortunately I have no reason to expect their approach to balancing Vengeance will be any different. Not until I see more aggressive balancing.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · January 23

I have to say I don’t think I’m going to even try playing my (Sorcerer) main for this, as she relies too much on non-class skills in her normal power set. I might bust out my Templar since he mostly has class skills equipped.

I would like to echo that the sky is really cool, though.

silky_soft · January 23

MincMincMinc wrote: »

silky_soft wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

DrGIggles80 wrote: »

...

There seems to be a misunderstanding here about the test. The point of this test is purely for the sake of performance, and getting calculations as low as possible on the server. So eliminating one or two things at a time will not help in the data we are trying to gather. This test for March as of right now, is purely for performance data on the live server so that we have a baseline when exploring pathways to improve Cyrodiil. That is also why we mentioned that class and skill balance is not a focus here. Because that is still several steps ahead of where we are, especially for a test that will last one week.

With the way you have done it now. I doubt many will play in the test. I was excited for this test but who ever is in charge has changed it too much. They've gone and distracted the community with balance far worse then live.

Set stats/gear are good.
No cp is good.
No proc is good.
New skills that align with nothing in live is bad.

Just make the class skill lines as they are, with their morphs to chose from. No class passives. Eliminate all other skills lines and their passives.

The test needs to be inviting and have familiarity. It currently is not.

You dont understand the point of the test, the current skills are what they are testing....... they cant use the current skills......the current skills are a part of the problem

I disagree with them. You need a reference where people are familiar and as many players as possible providing data.

As it is, you'll have 3 classes playing after 5 minutes testing and 5 forum topics about why did you change the skills, it's too different, I'm not interested.

sarahthes · January 23

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

And I think anyone who actually cares about PvP in ESO will participate in these tests even if the classes themselves are not balanced. For the purpose of the test I don't think it matters if there's 1000 nbs and 3 necros. What matters is there's 1003 people.

They're not getting 1003 people unless they put forth a product that 1003 people are excited about. Diet Cyrodiil with an unbalanced unfun NB hell meta isn't gonna be it. They're gonna need to deal with at least that. There's no performance reason to mash together a burst heal with invisibility, guess we forgot what we learned from Hardened Ward.

My concept of caring about PvP is to not accept a product released in this state, test or not.

I'm excited that they're actually doing something to try to fix cyrodiil. The gameplay loop of that test really doesn't matter to me if it results in meaningful change.

MincMincMinc · January 23

@ZOS_Kevin

I spent a good couple of hours testing sorc, nb and dk against my friend's nb, dk, templar. As far as I can tell from a high end dueling standpoint the classes are balanced fairly well. Sustain feels fine, tankiness feels fine, healing is fine.

Combat is really fun even just dueling. It is raw skill based combat. Class diversity is surprising better than live as I expected.

DK feels like the dot pressure CC king........................ You want to choose skills by balancing out costs
Sorc feels like the ranged timed combo kit..................You want to do curse>scamp>overload>>>Endless
NB is high burst in your face kill closure......................You want to keep your debuff and dot then merciless into incap execute
Templar is a good pressure setup

Tomorrow I plan on testing the dlc classes but i expect them to be fine.

One concern is that staves will only be used because there is no incentive to use melee weapons. Resto will be chosen first because it can do instant light attacks at ranged. GRANTED this is only for a week and without weapon skills. So it can be ignored for now.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Speed:
- I noted how clunky bolt escape is. It is literally as slow on PTS as mist form is on live server where it takes min half a second of doing nothing before it teleports. ZOS has clearly changed something within the code for that ability on PTS. Just straight movement speed is already more than enough to keep up with streak on live servers (as has been proven countless times with video evidence on other threads) where streak is significantly faster than what bolt escape is on the PTS.
- Bolt escape is also a very unreliable stun on PTS, I ended up switching it to back bar to use exclusively as an escape tool since the stun is no longer along the entire length of the teleport, but only in a small AoE on landing point (another thing that makes the skill clunky to use compared to live).
- Why do people think the other classes don't have any stuns or CC on top of their speed to catch sorc (not just PTS but on live too), it's almost like CC abilities, gap closers and speed buffs just vanish from the other classes kits when players complain about sorc/streak.

I dont think streak on pts is any slower, on live I think they just move your character model and camera faster that it actually happens. Its why you can still attack sorcs at the origin location, even though they have already moved to the end. Pretty sure zos put this change on live to help players not get confused when they streak into a new environment. Basically if they move the camera before it actually happens, players can look around for the rest of the gcd to prepare for the next gcd.

Live streak is much faster than what BE was on PTS, even if it is just the camera moving on the live servers. Like I said, it actually felt like I was casting mist form or live version of Arc portal instead of BE when testing on the PTS. The stutter/delay with the skill was horrible for the flow of combat if I was trying to cast more than just streak.

Streak on pts worked fine for me and performed just as it does on live. The stun feels like a skillshot and probably would solve a lot of the complainer's issues that we constantly hear on the forums.

DaniimalsSF · January 23

1. Very happy that PvP is getting some attention.
2. The communication in this thread is great. This is the type of back and forth between gamers and employees that should happen in at least the top 10% of active threads.
3. It is very clear what ZOS wants to get out of the test, and that they can’t get it with many hours of their customers time.
4. ESO has made over $2billion in revenue from all of us. We are now being asked to use a week of our bought and paid for playtime to perform a test for this corporation. The requests for playable balance and worthwhile rewards should be strongly considered. Otherwise you won’t get the numbers you need for the test. Maybe it is too much work on too short of a timeline to balance the classes. Fair enough. If so then the rewards need to be improved. AP is kind of a joke. Think more along the lines of seals of endeavor, crown gems, crown crates, gold, fee ESO+, arena weapons, etc. Be creative.