The Official Vengeance Test Campaign Feedback Thread (Test 2)

ZOS_Kevin

This is the official feedback thread for the new Vengeance Test. Please try out the new campaign and let us know what you think! Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
• Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
• What you think of the simplified abilities?
• Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.
  • account name
  • character name
  • What happened to trigger the corruption (leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, etc)?
  • Time of day this occurred
  • screenshots and video
• What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
• Do you have any general feedback?

Radiate77

Console player here; have to say, I’m having a blast playing with the rule set.

- I was able to get into a large scale fight on Xbox NA early morning.
- The fights felt better, but knockbacks still break your game and getting hit by a Javelin feels terrible.
- I’ve been saying for years that abilities do too much, water them all down was a massive improvement.
- No corruptions yet, thankfully.
- My initial thoughts are that if this rule-set gets iterated upon, it could really stand out and welcome players from all backgrounds of the game.
- My only feedback was that the TTK was pretty long, maybe a little too long, I would tone it down just a little bit.

GimpyPorcupine

XB-NA, tons of lag during a big 3-way in Sejanus, then crashed to desktop at BRK.

It'll be interesting to try again later on my Series-X and see if that does better.

SugaComa

So far this is great,

Playstation 5.

Little to no lag,

Positives the 1 slot siege is great means everyone has to put down or you're going to struggle ... Battles require actual roles, no more super tanks with burst kill abilities ... You needs healers , you need damage dealers you need to play as a team with out it being an unkillabke ball group

Add in morph for the skills add in armour weights and make it so it's just heavy makes you slow and tanky but reduces your damage output, medium would be where we are now , light increases speed and healing at the cost of tankiness and damage and I think this would be the most fun we would ever have

A return of skill and not who can manipulate the maths leave proc set and champion points to pve

React

• Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
  Yes
• Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
  The performance is fine until prime time, then it completely falls apart. Here is an unlisted video demonstrating the absolutely unplayable, awful performance from 7/1/25 between 9PM EST and 10PM EST.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1T09FY4YRw
• What you think of the simplified abilities?
  Clunky and awful to play with. Not enough damage, far too much healing now.
• Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.
  I hit a loadscreen at one point while riding my mount near sejanus, which is something that happens normally as presumably the map loads in chunks - this loadscreen has always been there. However when I came out, I was no longer able to barswap. Couldn't barswap with my controller or my mouse/keyboard. Tried reloading Ui, tried re equipping my weapons, nothing at all worked. Had to relog, which then booted me from the campaign.

• What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
  The first test felt better than this, but there are likely two reasons for that. Firstly, that test had far less healing. The amount of healing available now with vigor and resto staff is far stronger than the amount of damage, especially given the AOE cap of 3. When the balance is allowed to be this way, the game is not fun. Which sort of leads to my second observation - this test feels twice as bad because the current live patch with subclassing is a "damage meta" where for the first time in years basically anybody can die. It feels great.
• Do you have any general feedback?
  There should not be an AOE cap of 3. Not only is it absurdly low, but any AOE cap on damaging abilities just removes the ability to outplay people who outnumber you. It turns PVP into a numbers game where the greater numbers win every single time. It'd be fine to implement these on healing to curb the strength of coordinated groups, but on damage skills they serve no purpose other than to deteriorate the experience.

Radiate77

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

XB-NA, tons of lag during a big 3-way in Sejanus, then crashed to desktop at BRK.

It'll be interesting to try again later on my Series-X and see if that does better.

I can’t believe I missed the Sejanus fight!!!

I heard it was crazy, but I was making lunch, that being said, I had an extremely large fight north-west earlier using my Series X and felt little to no lag, other than some clown hitting me with a javelin and destroying my game.

Radiate77

React wrote: »

• What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
  … Which sort of leads to my second observation - this test feels twice as bad because the current live patch with subclassing is a "damage meta" where for the first time in years basically anybody can die. It feels great.

Yeah, definitely a strange choice to not allow Subclassing in Vengeance. In the future I would like to see it added.

ForumBully

I do have some immediate feedback. Does double barring the same weapon cause lag? Because I only have one of each. Are the Smiths on strike again?

GimpyPorcupine

Radiate77 wrote: »

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

XB-NA, tons of lag during a big 3-way in Sejanus, then crashed to desktop at BRK.

It'll be interesting to try again later on my Series-X and see if that does better.

I can’t believe I missed the Sejanus fight!!!

I heard it was crazy, but I was making lunch, that being said, I had an extremely large fight north-west earlier using my Series X and felt little to no lag, other than some clown hitting me with a javelin and destroying my game.

I look forward to trying it this evening on my Series-X, after I get my event tickets of course.

Why they run this during an event is baffling.

Velocious_Curse

Thoughts: hate it. Make it go away
We've dealt with lag on xbox for 8 years. We're fine

Wolfkeks

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes


Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
What you think of the simplified abilities?
Better than during normal PvP on Cyto but it was more laggy than the last Vengeance test


Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc?
No


What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
Wasn't sure about it at first considering how many Cyro tests we had already but pleasently surprised that it's working better than expected


Do you have any general feedback?
There is more lag and skill delay than expected

xylena_lazarow

Nightblade is a pain point as usual. The mode lacks efficient counters to its semi-spammable invisibility, which it can do indefinitely thanks to the nigh infinite sustain granted by Siphoning Attacks, replicating the exact miserable unfun play patterns that have plagued Nightblade PvP combat for a decade. Please adjust, as now encountering more than one Nightblade will send a clear message of never leave the zerg. This is bad.

Xv1 chain pull spam is also miserable to play against, usually you'll end up feeling like you just automatically die, outnumbered players need a chance to get away, not to have the playing field rigged in favor of the X who can spare a guy to spam chains 47 times in a row. Likewise, the message is never leave the zerg. Also bad.

colossalvoids

Pc EU, whilst last test was buttery smooth and you still had quite a lot of gameplay freedom and impact new skill lines seems to counter both the performance and the balance for the worst, probably that's still a cross healing related issue. So the fun factor obviously goes down with it also, especially for people for whom that's the first test I imagine.

QB1

No subclassing in vengeance???

ZOS_Kevin

QB1 wrote: »

No subclassing in vengeance???

No subclassing in Vengeance. We did highlight this in the FAQ. If you haven't read it, it is linked here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/679844

demonology89

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes


Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
What you think of the simplified abilities?
Yes! When I first jumped in, there was a large fight at Aleswell between DC and AD. A couple breaches, I was on the front line and skills were very responsive. No lag zerg vs zerg or in small scale fights. It's definitely taking some adapting to the simplified skills and I've only played my warden, but I think they're fine.


Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc?
No none of this has happened yet after 3 or 4 hours of gameplay


What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
At the moment, I am enjoying no proc sets or cheese. I'm finding balanced 1v1s across the map with fellow players that don't follow the zerg. Cyro feels alive again. Skills feel responsive and it feels great to line up burst and actually kill players.


Do you have any general feedback?
Is there any chance to rectify not being able to use gear and war research vendors during the Zenithar event? ALSO, it is amazing there is no stuck in combat!

Defatank

@ZOS_Kevin Have the team look at the battle at BRK that lead down to Sej from approx 5:30 Eastern to 6:10 Eastern 6/30/25. Pretty decent 3 way faction fight at BRK then lead to EP vs AD at Sej for about 15 to 20 min. Massive amounts of players.

Gameplay for myself was fairly decent but I was noticing some frame drops at the Sej battle around 5:55pm Eastern. Normal frames I've been seeing without much going on is around 80fps. The large battle I'm referencing had me at times around 25fps with an average of about 30 - 40fps, but I dont really want to focus so much on the actual fps which I think is really good I'd rather draw the attention to the "freezing" for a lack of better term. It wasn't severe but you could definitely tell things was under alot of pressure and leaning towards "bad performance" that we have seen in Cyrodiil over the years. Again this was not severe in this battle but it definitely felt ominous of the poor performance we've seen.


To provide some answers to your OP. Overall so far its very easy to find big battles. Performance seems to be just as solid as the original Vengenance test (exception to what I posted above), but I will continue to test as I've not put alot of time in here yet

If you need additional info on what addons I'm running or PC stats just let me know and I'll post it

Thank you,
Defatank

QB1

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

QB1 wrote: »

No subclassing in vengeance???

No subclassing in Vengeance. We did highlight this in the FAQ. If you haven't read it, it is linked here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/679844

Yup, must have missed that. Either way, still excited for the weapon and pvp skills being added in. But I was excited at the idea of subclassing + vengeance. Maybe we'll have that for Vengeance #3?

SeaGtGruff

I've only been able to participate for about 45 minutes so far, but I think I'm having more fun this time than the first time due to the availability of weapons and alliance war skills.

So far the responsiveness seems less smooth than before, but that could be a result of my computer (MacBook Air). I'll try it on a different computer (Windows gaming laptop) after dinner to see if that makes a difference.

One thing I really liked was that my quick slots wheel seemed to be set up already, presumably saved from the way I had it set up during the first test. That was one less thing to worry about when I arrived in Cyrodiil and started setting up my skill bars-- which also seemed to be saved from the first test, although I changed them quite a bit before rushing off into battle.

dcrush

This is for PC NA.

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes.

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
Better, but there were still latency issues and fps drops. Several times I could see stutter in other players’ movement and then suddenly the server would “catch up” and things would speed up again. This also includes suddenly getting the impact of multiple skills from the same player hitting me all at the same time.
I also crashed to desktop during one fight at Alessia bridge.

What you think of the simplified abilities?
The AOE cap reinforces that numbers matter most, and whoever has the most players wins the fight.

Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc?
Not corrupted, but after my crash I logged back in and my character was not in Cyrodiil anymore despite there being no queue and when I queued back in I was carrying my regular weapons and not the ones I had selected in Vengeance.

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
Small scale fights and even 1:1 often turn into a stalemate because the healing is so powerful. Large scale fight outcomes are determined by numbers. Whichever alliance brings the most people wins. Very little skill involved. It’s fun in the beginning to see the big fights but after a while it becomes very repetitive because you already know who is going to win based on the number of players you see either on your side or the opponent’s side. I also think numbers will go down quickly after people who don’t normally pvp get their golden pursuit done. I got mine done in less than an hour btw so it’s very easy to complete.

Do you have any general feedback?
Assuming this won’t be the last test, it would be nice if missions were not disabled during testing so that people can still get their tokens from the coffers and things like class scripts for scribing.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes, multiple times.

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
The lag seems a little worse than the previous Vengeance iteration and I got the Stuck In Combat message a few times. It still wasn’t as bad as normal PvP though.

I’ve also had a few times where effects were disappearing/not showing - for example I set fire to an enemy Forward Camp and couldn’t tell until it collapsed because the flames weren’t appearing. Another time I threw up a Siege Shield and it immediately vanished.

What you think of the simplified abilities?
I am pleased I can effectively play my main (whose usual loadout is mostly Resto/Destro skills with a few other skill lines sprinkled in) instead of falling back on an alt this time!

Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.
Didn’t get booted. Logged off normally.

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
Glad to see it return!

Do you have any general feedback?
Saw some confusion over the Alliance Points not being awarded in zone chat.

artyhues

Last time I crashed in Cyro was months ago. I rarely crash, and play 3 or more hrs in Cyro every day. Was in group today in Vengeance and crashed twice. Screen froze, and nothing. Had to end program. 2 times.

minnowfaun

PC EU Day 1

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?

Approx: 22:30 Warsaw My partner's game crashed less than 5 minutes into cyro. The queue was so long to get back in I left to join them in PvE.

Later, July 1 03:00 Warsaw I joined on my own. No real large scale battles.

What you think of the simplified abilities?

Boring.

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?

I really hope it's a test. Or if you make it a live mode do not remove Greyhost and Blackreach.

Do you have any general feedback?

Why do you ask what are our thoughts on the Vengeances Test? Are you asking if you think we might like it as a playable mode (no, not really, at least not the only one)? Or are you asking if we hope you get the data you need (I hope you do.)?

The Good

it's nice to be able to have small scale fights where I can kill people.
No real ball groups is nice.

The Bad

Keep gates seemed to take a little while to open.
Unfortunately, with the cookie cutter design the faction with the most players wins.
Additionally I use vampire heavily, without that I can't play it my way.

Joy_Division

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes. Vengeance is full of them.


Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?

For me anyway, latency was fine.


What you think of the simplified abilities?

These can work, but the balance had got to be better (lol 4K magicka just to put major breech on a player). Some of the are actually better than what's on Live (Templar Backlash and Destro ultimate).


Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.

Vengeance does not corrupt my characters. But ESO has terrible connection problems; often kicking me out of the game every ten minutes. Everything works fine except ESO.


What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?

For this test, I am having fun with the big battles. A lot of fun. But there are things that worry me. It is inconceivable to me that there would be an AoE damage cap of three when ZOS's own developers admitted on Live that AoE caps of 6 (i.e, double) negatively impacted performance and made for undesirable AvAvA gameplay. It's like ZOS won't even learn from its own history and are going into this like a brand new studio with no experience. What the critics say about the bigger zerg winning is, unfortunately, correct.

I want you to pay attention to the kill-feed in these large battles. What you will see often - too often - is a mass of consecutive alliance victories against another's defeats. That precisely because once one side has a critical; mass of numbers against the other, defeat is not only investable but horrible as well as 30 people can't even manage to kill a single enemy. I also think it's crazy the best way I can get through a breech is to just charge right in with 20 other people knowing no matter how much enemy ability damage and even ultimates are covering that breech, I'm super safe as hardly any of that will hit me.

I do think the extra ability lines added some much needed variety. This was a positive development.

Do you have any general feedback?

Yes. It doesn't seem as if any of the positive feedback from Vengeance is being considered for Live and that is discouraging. What did people say they liked about Vengeance? Big battles, no oppressive organized groups, no obnoxious proc sets, able to mount on command, active map, no super builds that can do everything, among others. If we liked it and Vengeance showed this stuff was possible, why was absolutely nothing done with Live this last update? I get it, the pop caps are what they have to be, but I'm still stuck in combat, the awful Rush of Agony was not adjusted, heal stacking is still the same, organized groups are far too powerful driven by broken mechanics, and subclassing has pushed the capabilities of builds so far their now nuking down 30K health high resist builds in a global cooldown. It's almost as if ZOS is actively avoiding trying to improve Live.

Avran_Sylt

• Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?

Yes, frequently.

• Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?

Much better, but some latency was noticed during pop-lock across all factions in tri-faction fights.

• What you think of the simplified abilities?

Simple to use. The addition of the weapon skill-lines breathes some fresh air and gives some form of customizaiton.

I really do like the distinction between player AoE being capped, while siege AoE is uncapped. Gives more reason to use seige in ball-fights. But where Meatball?

Things like the NB Offering though I've had issues where it prioritizes other targets instead of myself when I'm low HP, though I've circumvented that by looking directly at the ground when I need to heal myself in a large group of people.

• Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.
  • account name
  • character name
  • What happened to trigger the corruption (leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, etc)?
  • Time of day this occurred
  • screenshots and video

I have not encountered this.

• What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?

It's fun. I like not having a slide-show when there's just a handful of players in a battle. The smootheness of the camera as a line of 100+ players traverse to a point on mounts is cinematic.

Oils are deadly. You will typically need to bust more than one hole in a keep if you only used the front door with adequate defenders. Seeing/needing to break down multiple sections feels more siege-like than zerging through the FD.

• Do you have any general feedback?

Come up with some new siege weapon/utility types, eg: Razor wire (line AoE area denial that is targetable with high dodge chance (favoring aoe damage to destroy)) and test them out in these campaigns too.

tincanman

pc-na.

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?

Yes. All factions were population locked so plenty of running battles/sieges.

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?

Not really. There still seemed to be an issue with skills not firing or slower response but positional desynch was less of an issue.

What you think of the simplified abilities?

'limited' or 'restricted' would be better descriptors. max of 3 targets for all aoe including ultimates made some skills seem comparable or superior to ultimate abilities.

Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc

No.

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?

Initially, due to what appears to be large numbers of players and big battles, it seemed quite encouraging. However, any optimism fades very quickly when it rapidly becomes apparent that the biggest zerg wins and this becomes the de facto strategy. It gets boring very fast after this, same as 1st test, a few minutes in.

Do you have any general feedback?

Ultimate abilities shouldn't have the same limits as skills with respect to maximum number of targets. Also, get rid of cast times - they are complete unnecessary in this context.

Arrow312

PC EU

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes
Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
yes
What you think of the simplified abilities?
awful
Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.
account name
character name
What happened to trigger the corruption (leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, etc)?
no Probs
Time of day this occurred
screenshots and video

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
to simple to boring larger zerg wins
Do you have any general feedback?
If this should be the future of PvP i will quit ESO. I spent days of farming, Build crafting. This is boring and just good for "casual" player who doesnt want spend time and thoughts
On normal "cyro" nerf Rush of agony and the shield / heal stacking and it will be better.

Ulvich

Originally I wasn’t going to do Vengeance, but yesterday I got board so I figured I would try it out. Now I am here to give my report, but first a little back story.
In case you don’t already know I play ESO on a laptop, and last year I picked up a new unit. I am now using a Samsung Galaxy Flex series which has improved my experience ten fold. I have had no problems with graphics or lag at all in any zone including Cyrodiil. That is until yesterday.
Yesterday I experience a lot of lag that would cause the surrounding environment and players to freeze. I would also experience terrain rendering issues that would cause me to stop at the place which was rendering. For example the ground. If the ground was not rendering fast enough I would stop at that point until it was completed. Yesterday was first time I had ever experienced rendering issues in Cyrodiil in the 10+ years I have been going there. I suspect that this was due to the massive amount of other players in my area at the time. I have never seen this high number of players in one spot in any part of the game, ever.
With the high lag and the rendering issues I don’t think I would be able to continue in Cyrodiil. I will have to wait for the population to drop a little.

U/N: @Ulvich
Character Name: Syq
PC / NA
Time: Late Afternoon (Pacific Time)

Major_Mangle

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?

Yes and no, at the beginning of the evening performance was acceptable but as "primetime" happened performance decayed really really hard. Went from stable 80-100 FPS down to 30 with huge ping spikes up to 300-400 and sometimes more. This was re-occurring throughout the evening.

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?

It felt much much worse compared to the previous tests. I could be imagining things but the population felt a lot smaller than previous test as well. Sure it´s probably more than in regular Cyrodiil, but it felt like there were fewer people in this 2nd round of test compared to the 1st. I did not find it fun because you´ve absolutely 0 impact on the outcome of larger fights. It´s just a pure numbers game where more numbers win. Large fights means nothing from a fun perspective if the only/easiest way to win is to bring more players.

What you think of the simplified abilities?

Absolutely horrible and I pray it never leaves the test environment that is Vengeance.

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?

Don´t like it, it removes the "RPG" from MMORPG by removing the option to customize and theorycraft.

Do you have any general feedback?

Can you for once answer the question what the actual ENDGAME with Vengeance is? Me and a lot of other players are highly skeptical that this is "only a test". We´ve experience the same cycle back with the no-proc tests where you said it was only a test and then a 180 degree turn was made and it replaced the most popular campaign on PCEU at the time (which eventually killed the campaign completely). I´m not against Vengeance if it´s only a data collection test, but please be honest if you actually plan to "force" Vengeance on players in the future.

Also, if this is a "performance test", why are so many of these feedback questions related to whether or not players like the format or not? Same with the survey that was send out after the first test, majority of questions had nothing to do with the performance experience but rather "Do you like the format".

DreadKnight

Xbox NA

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes, plenty of battles going on

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?

Yes they felt more like the old days (Haderus/Scourge). Combat feels very limited though (obviously).

What you think of the simplified abilities?

Too restrictive, too limited, ultimates not balanced with only 2 seconds on some.


Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.
account name
character name
What happened to trigger the corruption (leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, etc)?
Time of day this occurred
screenshots and video

Still suffered from the 0 stamina recovery bug. Stamina bar gets stuck and no recovery, cannot now fix it by exiting to cheesemongers. Persists after death, reload ui doesn't fix it. Also experienced it in IA last week. Acc name Dreadnought2858, usually happens on templar and magicka warden but also mag sorc last week. Character name Jabby Jenkins, 30th June around 10pm BST NA server xbox series x. Have screenshot. Also had some occurrences where character stuck in heavy attack animation (lighting staff) but roll dodge seemed to fix it, oh but wait, no stamina to roll.......

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?

Step in the right direction, makes us think that you're finally serious about fixing cyrodiil but restrictive skills became boring after a few hours..

Do you have any general feedback?

Feedback needs to be acted upon. We need to feel that you're really listening and care about fixing bugs, not just focusing on '% of people had fun'. Lot of complainers not able to adapt to old-school combat without their rushing agony crutch. Combat was much more fun without pull/charm abilities! Skills need expanding, sets need adding but overall certainly a step in the right direction.

alaunanna

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes, they were everywhere. No-one crashed out when "arriving" at an already long going mega battle (usually arriving at a long mega battle means a few of us would get booted from server as they enter the keep).
Outside of the major server lagfest start of the night from 6pm-7pm uk time, a few crashes did happen during our 3hrs run from 730pm-1030pm uk time (4 people out of 36 crashed - at different times of the night - about the number of crashes we expect on a "good" night in cyro - but more than we had crash out on the first vengeance test).

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
To normal battle in Cyro, yes. No-one was complaining of skill lag, or people not being able to be targeted (we assume that's usually because they are desync'd from the position we see them).
I did notice we didn't get out of combat quite as fast as we did in the first vengeance campaign, but it was pretty close

What you think of the simplified abilities?

• Warden has the ability to give three people major resolve and it costs a bomb, but everyone has major resolve... While in normal cyrodiil this can make sense, as you can do a good chunk of the group with the buff, the warden currently has to be 1in3 of any group to make this skill work as intended, as otherwise noone can rely on getting it from the warden, so everyone brings it anyway? Maybe just make it only do themselves, and make it cheaper? -- Unless you felt the mag drain in this skill was necessary on the Warden to balance it. --- I didn't notice any wierdness like this with the other classes.
• Otherwise, I saw plenty of variety available for brawlers, gankers, "wall-support", healers, and general group play, and the addition of alliance skills and weapons helped stregnthen those role options... I'm happy to see the alliance skills back in for our group play - as staanding in the ram is more manageable than the last campaign, although rams do still die painfully fast. Can siege shield look after the ram again?
• The 3 person cap for heals, siege shield and purge is tricky to handle in a full sized group, but acceptable with the damage cap also being 3 unless we just stand in siege AOEs - so it feels balanced, even if more difficult.
• Ressing takes forever without the CP I had to call "leave the dead behind" on a few pushes - I wasn't keen on calling it eventhough it was tactically wise - so I'd like to see ressing sped up!
• Buffs and debuffs seemed ample to fill our bars up with useful buttons to click for 7 class builds for group play with me only wishing I could fit three more buttons across the whole setup (which with time I could probably find slots for as I over egged some skills just becasue we're not used to the 3 person caps) - so I think spreading the buff/debuffs separate from the damage/heals didn't hurt too much, and removing some of the buffs/debuffs available also brings the roof down from 12man groups to a 7man groups (and I think you can go smaller without losing too much too due to the 3target caps) which will help everyone (other than the premade sweaty groups) - which will make cyro more accessible to zoney groups of people just getting started, while still allowing premades to be better for their efforts - which is nice!
• I like the balance between heals being expensive but strong, and damage being cheaper but less powerful (so you run out of resources when you willy nilly overheal, but if you play balanced builds and play wise, you can play well 2v5, or 3v8).

Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc?
No corruptions reported yet.

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
I like that there are no builds running around that take up half an alliance just running around the walls after them, not aware that they take too long to kill (queue benny hill music). I love the no lag, no combat bug, huge fights, and an exciting active map.

Do you have any general feedback?
Good job making a cyrodiil that we can feel has longevity, after the years of bobbing back and forth between mini lag, extreme lag, and the constant combat bug, and the first test being a bust, this window into a lag free cyro is an awesome addition to our enjoyment of the three-way capture the flag with sieges