The Official Vengeance Test Campaign Feedback Thread (Test 2)

MincMincMinc

After night 2 of vengeance mostly 1-3man PCNA

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes, there was a massive fight at arrius.

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
Compared to live, yes. Compared to the 1st vengeance test no. There is a clear difference when large groups of players are spamming aoe buffs and heals. Main contributors may be allowing cross heals between groups of players. Or allowing over time effect stacking.

What you think of the simplified abilities?
The simplified skills vs complicated bloated skills makes next to no difference in terms of how higher tier players experience combat. If anything without 40 buffs and effects on each character combat is far more clear. It is much easier to see the skills and incoming damage that is important. I can actually react to stuns about to hit me because they are visible and clearly animated. (except for offbalance which is the exact terrible design example of a bad mechanic..... it is not visible, has no animation, and can be triggered off-gcd) For newer players and mid tier players though being able to understand what is going on is a groundbreaking in terms of learning a videogame.

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
Again, as a test this is fine. The end result that would be ideal is to bring back build choices.....but introduce them one at a time as you iron them out. Preferably within the next test to keep people interested.

• Food is disgustingly unbalanced, max stats are near useless on live because you can run all regen food and then slot a better damage stat like pen.
• Armor enchants......triglyphs give numerically more stats, so 99% of builds only run those
• Armor Traits.....Everyone runs impen because crit damage is so efficient numerically and the base crit resist isnt enough.
• Mundus......everyone either runs pen or crit damage because it is the most efficient damage
• Jewelry......everyone runs infused damage simply because of it gives the most stats
• etc...

Do you have any general feedback?
Already balance wise there are some concerns like how you gave 2200 mag recovery, but only 1500 stam recovery. Remember if you were to run an even amount of skills stam/mag you would always run out of stam first because of dodge, block, sprint. This highlights why the above build choices are necessary. It allows players to find their own balance depending on the variety or play style skill choices they made. Currently stam skills are not usable because of this issue. You can't give more stam regen though, because then mag players will have infinite roll dodges or block more by comparison.....Stam builds can only be a part of the game if stat choices are brought back.

Many players still seem to be concerned that PvP will be deleted and replaced with only vengeance as is across the board. It may do zos well to be more clear early on what the next couple of proposed tests are. Not even a strict schedule, but a heads up of what is on the table. Adding in basic stat based vengeance gear choices would be a good start to curb these concerns.

Right now there are two main schools of thought. Either "zos is going to ruin pvp and make everything a cookie clicker" or "zos is finally fixing pvp". After 10 years of mostly in-action you are going to need to be far more transparent otherwise people are going to assume and prepare themselves to be let down again. What update are we on? 46? and at what update did lag start back in the 2014-2015 era? Update 1.2? It is now literally 10 years later that a serious attempt is being made. I was honestly surprised to hear that a second vengeance test was being done, most assumed it would have been killed off by zos higher ups to focus back on pve dlc crownstore purchasable. Who would have thought that players would play a game if it had actual gameplay instead of daily chores.

Definitely waiting for vengeance 3 though. Hoping it is in a month or two. Honestly a monthly pvp event may be a good way to get players more comfortable pvping and make people open to a completely untouched part of the game that could be developed.

xylena_lazarow

MincMincMinc wrote: »

The end result that would be ideal is to bring back build choices

Oh hell no. This test shows us just how little power creep it takes to throw balance in the toilet. NB already infinitely resets fights with cloak/offering/siphoning. Group defense and heal stacking quickly outpaces group damage output as soon as you let players build into healing, or if you introduce defensive cheese like permablock or shield spam.

L_Nici

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

Yes, obviously, if one funnels everyone into one campaign instead of three

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

Also yes, obviously if there is no complexity at all it works.

*What you think of the simplified abilities?*

They are still just boring. No flavour, no unique builds, no balance between classes, still no morphs so if you play Sorc even with weapon lines, you are still forced to play magicka for example, resulting in everyone being the same. The difference between equality and equity doesn't seem to be a concept.

*What are your thoughts on Vengeance Test?*

Its still just dissapointing, watered down to nothing. Again like last time PvE people love it, PvP people hate it and it will again impact the statistics afterwards. Great 80% of people will like it, but none of those 80% will ever play PvP again, so its unfair to base the result on them. It makes the game dull, boring and just like last time after a week everyone is bored to death. If that ever goes live permanently, PvP will die completely.

Edit: Even during this test now, population collapsed within 3 days, Console having 0/0/0 and even PCEU during primetime just 3/3/2, shows how much of a long time enjoyment it really is. If you want to see, if people really want to play this mode, give them an option to the same conditions (Double AP, more Pop etc) on a Vengeance and a Standard Campaign, otherwise it will end just like noCP, no Proc, dead.

MincMincMinc

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

The end result that would be ideal is to bring back build choices

Oh hell no. This test shows us just how little power creep it takes to throw balance in the toilet. NB already infinitely resets fights with cloak/offering/siphoning. Group defense and heal stacking quickly outpaces group damage output as soon as you let players build into healing, or if you introduce defensive cheese like permablock or shield spam.

Well remember that we have far above what base stats should be. Zos assumed a generic stat build off a standard where skills have set values. If they allow you to choose a regen mundus for example you wouldnt have a base of 2200 regen....it would reduce relatively down by the 310 or whatever. Maybe they rebalance mundus as they go

no need to get concerned as a blank slate, they could pick any thresholds they want that make adjustments easier later on.

Katheriah

• Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
  I did find large battles. Larger than usual.
• Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
  It was completely unplayable. Skills didn't fire or very late. The combat itself was just not fun. Everyone is running these basic skills, there's no way to play something unique. It took forever to kill people because of the amount of healing.
• What you think of the simplified abilities?
  Boring
• 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.
  No
• What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
  Please let it just be a test, or if it will be permanent then please create a separate campaign for this. The people in chat that liked this were honestly just zergsurfing and doing some pewpew. These people are not generally the ones to spend a lot of time in Cyro once the shiny new layer has rubbed off.
• Do you have any general feedback?
  I know Cyro has his lag issues, but please realize that the strong suit of ESO is the build diversity/play as you like. You will not be getting me back into this campaign unless the rewards are unreal. It's just not fun.

alaunanna

Update a few days in:

We got super laggy (ballistas busy, and skills failling for multiple seconds at a time) around 830-9pm UK time this evening -- the lag eased up slowly after that time - but we were reduced to mostly heavy attacks for a big chunk of that 30mins. So it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

And, we noticed after crashes that the weapons got reset in our cyro characters so we had to reselect them again (not that that was a huge thing though).

ichibe

Everyone that likes this campaign is over 40, disabled, or lost everyone and everything they love in their actual life. Why disable the ability to kill people who sit in all heavy armor and shoot meatbags and pour oils on people for 16 hours a day and cater to them when they cry they get killed by the evil “ball groups” or bombers. What ever happened to game IQ. Some people will just be bad at the game, it’s a reality, so stop catering to them and ruining the experience for everyone else.

Sav

I wasnt really lagging at any point at all, which is the main point of the test so thats good. However, it was some of the most boring gameplay I've ever had. With how limiting the test is currently, majority of the fights are a numbers game and if you find yourself outnumbered, then theres not much you can really do about it. So you have to join a zerg to fight a zerg (which I understand its large scale PvP but not everyone wants to be 100 deep all the time) but even in zerg fights its boring because fights are so slow due to the time-to-kill without the assistance of sets/cp/passives is too long. There being an AoE cap of 3 also doesnt feel good in combat.

katanagirl1

One thing has improved greatly, keeps do not stay flagged forever like they did on Gray Host. You can travel to the next keep in just a few seconds instead of minutes later.

Still a problem with the blue flame on the wayshrine out not appearing, and the Daedric portal to Cheesemonger’s not showing either.

EDIT: typo

nightstrike

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

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?

Get into, yes. Be useful in, no.

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

No, the latency was just as bad as normal Cyro. For example, I often found myself moving in a direction for 2-3 seconds after I stopped pressing the directional key. Or worse, I found myself standing still for 2-3 seconds after starting to press a key.

• What you think of the simplified abilities?

The simplified display makes it a lot less apparent who is doing what. For example, since you can't see the siege shield, it's not clear when it needs to be refreshed.

• 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.

No

• What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
• Do you have any general feedback?

See https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8337252/#Comment_8337252. It all still applies.

Additional issue: siege is problematic. The battles are so big that there's either no space on the ground to drop siege, or all slots are already taken by other people.

And please fix the age gate on the survey when you send it out.

Theignson

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes and with minimal lag

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
Yes, very responsive. But I played later PST with servers not pop locked.

What you think of the simplified abilities?
Adding in the assault, support and weapon skills is a big improvement. For example, rapid maneuver is a huge QOL improvement. There is more build diversity with weapon skills added.
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.
No
What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
Cyrodil is much more fun without the completely unbalanced sets and OP ball groups. You actually have to cast skills to win battles, not just proc ridiculous sets.
It is great to see big battles and you can absolutely get reasonable combat. I believe skills, eg how to do combos, are just as important in Vengeance as in live Cyrodil.
Also while it is not yet balanced, there is a definite opportunity cost and you can't "have it all" (tanky, healing, dps, speed, super resists) like you can in Cyrodil. So it is actually much more balanced than normal Cyrodil.
There are many more players online in my time zone than usual and that is also a good thing. The populations were more balanced.
If you are a solo player and overcommit, you get slaughtered, which is as it should be.
Sure, I miss all the theory crafting and the new subclass combinations, but this is still fun.

Overbowed

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

Yes, they are unavoidable at this player cap. I normally play solo in PVP and having pop caps this high somewhat degrades the experience due to lack of small scale fights. More people on the screen =/= more fun.

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

Combat responsiveness is a huge issue for me. At first I was really impressed with the performance when just looking at the screen, but as soon I start fighting in populated areas I notice huge delays in certain skills firing/connecting.

I was running incapacitating strike and could not get it start the animation even though I am right on top of the player, may be some sort of positional desync. I switched to berserker strike and having the same issues to a lesser extent. Same happens with surprise attack, but surprisingly not things like spectral bow. I will be well within the 7 meter range spamming the button (off the global cooldown) and nothing happens.

This made me quit vengeance for the time being, I do recall incap being an issue in the first test. But the other skills are new issues/getting worse.

What you think of the simplified abilities?

This test made me realize how important the major/minor buffs and secondary effects are to the flavor of the game. The game feels very bland and player agency is reduced massively. I was excited for the weapon skills to be included to add a bit of variety but when the only difference between surprise attack and wrecking blow is one has a 2k higher tooltip but has a cast time... the excitement quickly faded. Especially with the loss of passives, the decisions all just seem trivial.

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.

No corruptions for me.

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?

The combat system is this game's biggest selling point in my opinion, and the reason there are full time PVPers. If you are willing to push through the initial barriers to entry it is a system that has years of re-playability as you master it.

Vengeance feels like it is demoting the PVP aspect of the game to a MOBA style minigame, not something you can do full time. It is fun for the people who don't normally PVP, but in my opinion the lack of depth won't keep people engaged for long. To be honest, if I wanted to play a MOBA, there are better options. ESO's niche is action based combat with a small skill bar but a large pool of active skills/gear to choose from, and I feel like implementing anything close to this test in the future would go against the philosophy of the rest of the game.

Do you have any general feedback?

As PVP communities are generally smaller than PVE communities in MMOs, there is a real risk of the people who will only play whatever PVP content is proposed for an hour or two as a distraction disproportionately swaying the opinion of the devs. The PVPers then have to deal with negative consequences in the slice of the game they play full time, and can feel unheard. I don't have a good solution on how to filter feedback, but even a simple "how often do you participate in PVP" question could help you weight your decisions, to try and strike a balance between the needs of both groups.

Namacc

I played vengeance using a 2h snb "stamina warden". I prefer duels, 1vX and small scale gameplay but did participate in large scale fights.

Here's the skills I used
Front Bar

• Uppercut
• Scorch
• Reverse Slash
• Falcon's Swiftness
• Momentum
• Berserker's Strike

Back Bar

• Living Vines
• Frost Cloak
• Vigor
• Arctic Wind
• Shield Charge
• Shield Wall

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, but fights are boring. Whichever side has the most players wins.

What you think of the simplified abilities?
Too simple.

• No skills with snare removal so if the zerg snares you - you're dead.
• Not enough stuns, warden has no stun in it's class kit in vengeance and uppercut has no stun. You need a stun as part of a burst combo to kill anyone decent in pvp. I was using shield charge but it's too expensive. I would do my burst combo (uppercut into scorch and berserker's strike) then shield charge but often lacked the stamina afterwards for execute.
• I like that dots have short duration this encourages higher APM and dots actually have decent pressure now.
• AoE caps on damage skills shouldn't exist, this greatly limits the 1vX, small scale and ballgroup playstyles. Large scale also becomes predictable - the bigger zerg always wins.
• Nb cloak is too powerful without counterplay. Add detection potions and/ or detection skills like camo hunter and inner light
• Scorch at 3 seconds is great. Increase the damage, similar to second fissure hit in normal gameplay. When you add sub assault and fissure keep them at 3 secs with higher damage like before update 35.

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.
No

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
Boring but good that you guys are trying to fix performance. Removal of sets that do damage or heals for you is great (mara's balm, hist sap, zaan, kjalnar's nightmare, tarnished, master duel wield, Relequen etc). When you add sets to vengeance avoid bringing these types of sets.

Do you have any general feedback?

I played a 2h snb warden and stamina sustain was too low in outnumbered fights and in 1v1. I was using snb heavy attacks constantly and still struggling to sustain. The addition of weapon skills and pvp skills allows the creation of more stamina focused builds but they are garbage. I found using vines and vigor with 100% uptime needed for survivability but you can't maintain full uptime on vigor and also use a stamina spammable like vengeance uppercut every global, there's just not enough stamina sustain for this. So if I tried to do so I had pressure and burst for a bit but couldn't follow it up with stun or execute most times, causing endless stalemate in 1v1 or leading to death in solo/ small scale outnumbered.

Magicka sustain was good because I was using my magicka for buffs, heals and scorch. Vengeance favours mag builds or hybrid builds leaning towards mag more due to the 2200 mag recovery and 30k magicka versus 1500 stamina recovery and 30k stamina.

Adding stamina skills is not enough to make stamina builds or hybrid builds leaning into stamina viable. To fix this don't increase the base stamina recovery of the template builds (the 1500) instead add various build aspects like passives, morphs, sets, buff food etc with the same focus on performant abilities. Until then this is too boring and I would quit if this was the only cyrodiil and kept permanently.

Tzirzhalir

PS5 NA - Still cannot interact properly with doors whilst in combat. Get rubber banded. Sej still has load screen areas around it, Keep walls, posterns etc still not working properly.
Pros of Vengeance -
less lag, bigger zerg activity.
Cons of Vengeance -
Unable to wear gear of your choice, skills are way too expensive cannot sustain resources, use of one oil? No subclassing.

How I would like to see Cyrodiil in the future. All PVP content to be NO CP enabled. CP is the biggest problem because players are becoming too overpowered. leave the gear sets and everything else. Nerf healing, ball groups rely too much on the heals majority of them only using ultimates to destroy the enemy, in fact take ultimates out completely but leave all other skills, might be a plan. Fix every single keep and upgrade the look of them, new alliance flags etc, introduce moats, take out the crappy towns, Cropsford etc and replace them with proper outposts. Give players better end of campaign rewards, introduce alliance mounts for the winning campaign or fragments to create a mount or outfit. You have to make people want to be in cyrodiil unfortunately it has become really stale for a long time. If you want to succed ZOS then give your players something to work towards. AP, gold and jewellery is not cutting it. Put a stop to the neverending scroll trolling would be nice. Aesthetic means alot to most people, so making cyrodill look better and brighter with a few new additions would bring people back.

xylena_lazarow

ichibe wrote: »

Everyone that likes this campaign is over 40, disabled, or lost everyone and everything they love in their actual life.

Only if they play Nightblade /s

The reflex requirements are the same in either format. Sweaty competition is still dependent on animation cancelling. Only the pre-fight math puzzle has changed, and it's in favor of button pressers, not spreadsheet authors.

The common thread I've noticed amongst anti-Vengeance players is that they're all fine with unexplained random instant death, and don't realize or care that this is an instant quit for the majority of gamers across demographics.

A lot of the anti-Vengeance players are just salty they can no longer cheese instant kill combos (or the proc sets that enable instant kills), having no idea how to actually fight someone without their cheese.

React

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

ichibe wrote: »

Everyone that likes this campaign is over 40, disabled, or lost everyone and everything they love in their actual life.

Only if they play Nightblade /s

The reflex requirements are the same in either format. Sweaty competition is still dependent on animation cancelling. Only the pre-fight math puzzle has changed, and it's in favor of button pressers, not spreadsheet authors.

The common thread I've noticed amongst anti-Vengeance players is that they're all fine with unexplained random instant death, and don't realize or care that this is an instant quit for the majority of gamers across demographics.

A lot of the anti-Vengeance players are just salty they can no longer cheese instant kill combos (or the proc sets that enable instant kills), having no idea how to actually fight someone without their cheese.

This isn't even remotely true.

The TTK in this iteration of vengeance is absurdly high, and essentially anyone that knows how to defend themselves cannot be killed by one person, without being fully run out of resources first which will only occur after an extended period of very poor gameplay and decisions.

The skill ceiling in vengeance is far lower than that of normal pvp, as is the APM. There isn't enough room for skill expression with how limited your personal capabilities are in regards to burst damage, maintaining pressure, etc. You essentially have two options for offense; do a static dot rotation until your opponent runs out of resources and dies, or play a direct damage oriented setup that lacks the damage or pressure to kill anyone relatively decent at the game. You cant even afford to maintain high apm throughout this because the resources don't allow it; NB is genuinely the only class that can do it because of the ability to go to your backbar and hit siphoning in between offensive casts.

You say "people will say they're fine with 100-0 combos" but I dont think you realize that this is a positive thing. The game at its peak allowed for this exact kind of burst damage - massive blockable/dodgeable combos that punished you for not played correctly. This has been brought back with subclassing in some regards, and while there are certainly outliers like some proc sets, double spec bow, crescent + BL, restoring light being too good, etc this is the most enjoyable the game has been in a long time.

The vast majority of support for vengeance comes from people who dont pvp at all. They are happy the skill ceiling has been lowered so dramatically that they're now able to guarantee the death of a much higher skill player by simply spamming a stun/root on them, or that they're able to effortlessly survive a much high skill player by rotating one or two heals. Catering to this sort of individual is a massive slap in the face to people who have dedicated their time to mastering pvp mechanics over the past decade. Artificially deleting the skill gap in this manner will undoubtedly drive the most dedicated PVP players away who otherwise would have stuck with ESO indefinitely.

The only positive thing I see about this test is the inability for ball groups to exist. That isn't enough to justify how far the PVP experience has been degraded.

StihlReign

The Vengeance tests 7 day period has been awesome, offering time for adjustment for players deeply vested in the tank, block, and rallying cry metas. Good move by the devs.

It's been fun watching game mechanics as well as tactics evolve. The PvE community has been great, sometimes out sieging vets, while veteran PvPers still exert massive control via deep game knowledge. lotta fun, few more days...

LPapirius

Server performance this time around is quite bad, even with standard sized fights. I've had more disconnects, rubberbanding and freezing in vengeance this time around than I get in normal live Cyrodiil.

I hope these are just tests. A mandated version of vengeance mode will likely be the end of PvP in ESO and while the PvE mains don't realize it, the PvP mains spend the most on the game over any other subset of players, and there will certainly be massive repercussions for the games future if ZOS runs off what little remains of the PvP community.

Garethjolnir

I've had flawless 3-4 hour sessions in Vengeance EU-PC prime time with mass zergs every night of the campaign until tonight, 03/07, and getting often 999+ latency and disconnects again like original Cyro.

Not sure if it's the server, or my end, but everything seems to be working fine on my end. Just a heads up if it's important at all.

xylena_lazarow

React wrote: »

You say "people will say they're fine with 100-0 combos" but I dont think you realize that this is a positive thing.

That's the thing about a self-selecting population. Of course it's a positive thing for the few dozen remaining regulars or whatever pitiful number build PvP is down to, just like how the 3-sided BGs debate keeps coming up.

Do you believe that 100-0 combos can help the population of build PvP recover? I don't, and I'd bet my account that it does the complete opposite. Gatekeeps noobs and burns out regulars to quitting. This game just isn't sweaty enough for instant death as punishment, especially not with awful performance guaranteed to eat away your precious milliseconds.

olsborg

I love these vengeance tests, no sublclassing, no lagg, no proccset or aids-meta and no ballgroup/pullgroup. The only thing that would make this gamemode perfect is reworking how healing targeting works, so you can heal yourself even if you have 5 friendly targets in your screen, even npcs. Only reason i decided to play this week is this test, i havent played since february.

ADawg

olsborg wrote: »

I love these vengeance tests, no sublclassing, no lagg, no proccset or aids-meta and no ballgroup/pullgroup. The only thing that would make this gamemode perfect is reworking how healing targeting works, so you can heal yourself even if you have 5 friendly targets in your screen, even npcs. Only reason i decided to play this week is this test, i havent played since february.

Something something RAVENWATCH LOL

We all said leave it alone but NO it would "fix the dead campaign"...

Why am I back on this game? oh yeah SUBCLASSING lol. Too bad I can't use it in Cyrodiil right now!

ADawg

LPapirius wrote: »

Server performance this time around is quite bad, even with standard sized fights. I've had more disconnects, rubberbanding and freezing in vengeance this time around than I get in normal live Cyrodiil.

I hope these are just tests. A mandated version of vengeance mode will likely be the end of PvP in ESO and while the PvE mains don't realize it, the PvP mains spend the most on the game over any other subset of players, and there will certainly be massive repercussions for the games future if ZOS runs off what little remains of the PvP community.

Yup those of us that only leave Cyrodiil to craft more tri-stat pots don't care what the PVE community thinks about Cyrodiil.

also, what even is a trial LOL never done one!

DrGIggles80

Can anyone tell me what is the max population in vemgance vs what we currently have in grey host.. also how do I be apart of the survey? @ZOS_KevinO

MacCait

PS5 EU

I used to be a hardcore player in ESO, both PvE and PvP, playing everyday, every week, every month for years. I eventually left the game after years of getting fed up of:
• having the whole game redesigned every 3 months
• years of attempting balance in PvP and PvE and never actually achieving it
• years of having PvE nerfed becuase the sets were too OP in PvP
• years of issues of lag in PvP, and ballgroups, and heavy armour meta turning Cyrodill into a constant headache

My biggest pet peave with ESO is no consistency or stability, with the game changing every three months, and the constant grind for whatever is the current optimal PvE and PvP meta builds, to remain competitive, with so much gold gear that is no longer of any use.

Now and then I return to play a little and see how the game has changed, and to do a bit of landscape design in housing.

Recently I returned. Initially I wasn't going to try Vengeance test after hearing others moan about it, however last night myself and a mate decided to give it a try and we ended up playing throughout the night til 4am and had a total blast playing it. I was very happily surprised at how much fun it was. It reminded me of what Cyrodill was like circa 2014/2015 and the fun we had back in the days of old Cyrodiil. I think this is great and I LOVE it! I'll be back on it tonight, it's made me want to play PvP again.

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes, had a few last night and it felt fun

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
Yes, experienced no lag, however the server was not full. I think many are not even giving it a proper test. I was nearly one of them. Combat felt very responsive and balanced. I had a TON of fun and really enjoyed playing PvP again. It felt the most balanced it has been in many many years.

What you think of the simplified abilities?
Initiallly we were both like WTF is this? But going through the skills and testing them, I loved it. I think this is a great idea and serves to actually solve issues and achieve a balance in Cyrodiil. I had a lot of fun playing a PvP Nightblade again after years of giving up on that class.

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.
Nope

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?

Logged on around 9pm, played til 4am and was so involved I couldn't even grab a coffee. I had a ton of fun and was very surprised at how much fun it was with simplified skills, no actual gear sets, no passives, and the simplified rules. When I heard about it I thought JUST NO, but actually playing it, I was really surprised and it felt great. It reminded me of how much fun Cyrodiil was back in the very beginning.

I was suprised at how balanced it felt fighting other classes. Everyone was on par with each other. No ball groups, no secret magical builds that one-shot you in a second with insane damage in a non-gank open fight situation, 1vX was fun and possible for everyone, no situations of players relying on proc-set damage.

If this or something similar is a possible future for PvP in ESO, I can see myself becoming a regular player again in ESO again.

Do you have any general feedback?

For years Cyrodiil has faced many issues that took away much of what was originally enjoyable about it's unique PvP mode. This idea seems to finally solve those issues. It feels nice to be able to honestly congratulate the team on a great idea, and I would like to see more of this.

While initially I was not fond of the idea of playing without set-gear and a build, I quickly got used to it and found it to be way more balanced, even though I missed the set gear. After testing for 7 hours I would happily sacrifice the set-gear builds for this much more balanced version of Cyrodiil.

I get why many will hate it. Especially those that invested a lot of time with special PvP builds and the latest secret knowledge in PvP, and in the past I may have been one of those. But I feel this simplified more balanced version of Cyrodiil can succesfully solve so many issues.

As well as making Cyrodiil more playable, more balanced, and a lot of fun again... I think about how much dev work time will be saved by staff not having to try and balance PvE and PvP sets every three months. That dev time could be put into other aspects of the game, including developing Cyrodiil in other ways.

I think for any other business that tried hard to achieve a balance in something and solve major issues, but in a decade never actually achieved that, then we would say that is a failure. Perhaps this is a solution that finally helps to bring balance and solve issues, while keeping Cyrodiil fun for all, and also allowing more time to be spent on developing Cyrodiil itself, and other aspects of ESO. I actually feel excited to see where this could go!

Even if this was only made into something like a non-cp campaign, I would play this rather than a more unbalanced version with 100's of different set-builds.

Mancuso

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

Yes, consistently, and based purely on anecdotal evidence, it is/was not simply a numbers game insofar as the faction with the largest number of players was guaranteed victory in a battle.

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

Far more responsive compared to standard iterations of Cyrodiil. There are still vestiges of delays with "skills firing", but nowhere near the degree experienced previously.

What you think of the simplified abilities?

The lack of customization is a bit jarring at first, but the lack of latency/lag, the elimination of "ball groups", "tower humpers", "immortal/unkillable players" in many ways counters this. If the question was "Would you play a Vengeance Campaign consistently if it were implemented as an alternate and permanent solution?" the answer would be a resounding YES.

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.

No.

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?

This is very similar to Guild Wars 2 in terms of standardizing gear and character skills, which incentivizes far more focus on playing the game and implementing strategy rather than the endless grind for the "best-in-slot" homogenized approach/META, "ball groups", etc. to achieve success in Cyrodiil.

Do you have any general feedback?

Again, if this were implemented as a permanent and alternate Cyrodiil campaign, I would likely live there. This represents a huge step in the right direction for many, many reasons. Subclassing, raiding, et al can happily live adjacent to this stand-alone campaign.

Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC), one of the most successful (if not THE most successful) large-scale Realm vs. Realm based games released, saw the beginning of the end when more and more complexity and "trinkety" aspects to RvR combat were introduced. The Trials of Atlantis expansion is overwhelmingly regarded as its death knell, arguably forcing a player to raid for both gear and skill lines/abilities, ushered in a host of complexity (which was impossible to balance) into the mix. This sharply deviated from everything that made DAoC a raging success, and rather than reverting to its successful roots, it doubled-down and continued on this path which led to its demise. Granted, other aspects were certainly a factor, but RvR, which was the focus of the game, was no longer the focus for the developers as they continuously attempted to "WoWify" the game until the doors were all but shuttered.

YandereGirlfriend

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles: Yes, those are basically the only sorts of fights that exist in the campaign.

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.): In general, yes. Though I did experience some rubber-banding and several folk in my group experienced crashes.

What you think of the simplified abilities: The biggest red flag of this entire test is the existence of offensive AOE caps. Such mechanics have no place in a game that purports to have action-style combat. This was already considered and abolished by previous teams of ESO devs and so you should not discard their wisdom in viewing such mechanics as failures. Not only do they defy common sense (you clearly HIT something but do not hit something) they are also very much anti-skill and enforce the deterministic "larger number win" style of fights that Vengeance is becoming known for.

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test: This should replace Icereach and exist as an optional campaign alongside classic rules Grey Host.

Do you have any general feedback: Please have a test that bans add-ons. You might think that you know their performance cost but consider the case of Bandits UI and Map Pins in the API. That exploit flew under your noses for years. Do we really think that is the only such loophole or exploit? That would be very naive. All computation has a cost and we deserve to know the cost of rampant and uncontrolled add-on use.

birdmann1230

I like the idea of what this is doing with a leveled playing field but I do miss the variety of playstyles that we currently have and how limited some of the play is in vengeance. Maybe something in between would be ideal. Many of my pvp friends (who only pvp) have said they’d enjoy it sometimes but wouldn’t want it to be the only campaign.

Markytous

Vengeance is back and better than ever! Thanks again ZOS for this opportunity to test this new vision of Cyrodiil PVP. I have very few complains, as more skills get added to Vengeance means players have more ways to express themselves on this skill-based iteration of the Three-Banners War.

I main suggestion as we come to a consensus on PVP is that, while Vengeance is a massive success on the performance/server latency side of things, we must keep Grey Host where it is now and forever (perhaps name-change it so it's not locked in Greymoor naming heck forever? lol). It is important that the small handful of people who enjoy their procs, subclassing and ball groups can continue to enjoy this kind of gameplay and won't feel pressured by the existence of the Vengeance project. Nobody wants to feel like content they have come accustomed to is being taken away and thusly some have viewed Vengeance as a threat to proc/ballgroup Cyrodiil. It shouldn't be this way - many of the PVP crowd felt that kind of way when 3-Team Battlegrounds was fully removed from the game (I feel heartbroken by this and I've seen a majority of people who miss them as well). So lets keep updating and testing with Vengeance until a consensus is made as to where it belongs, release it for Live to enjoy for the foreseeable future, but keep Grey Host alive so streamers and proc/ballgroup players can stay in there.

Resource management is key in Vengeance and for the most part it's all there! However some classes do enjoy better resource sustain than others. As we move forward into the future with Vengeance, I think that since performance has been proven to be absolutely amazing we can start looking into balancing the skills and perhaps even looking into morphs for them! Lets see each class represented in their glorious personas, each one! Also can we get Vengeance Bolstering Darkness into live? I keep suggesting so-called "Theorycrafters" use Bolstering Darkness in their subclassing builds and they keep telling me they don't know that skill or what it does. Obviously they do but its just so bad that nobody dare touch it.

I immensely enjoyed playing Templar and Dragonknight in Vengeance (DK was my go-to in the previous test) and I'm looking forward to see every class come alive in Vengeance! Shoutouts to whoever made Arcanist a master escape artist with the portals.

BooksAreBetter

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles? Yes (pc/na), for the first couple of days, but then most of the "large-scale" battles only happened at night. The last couple of days the map has been almost entirely one color for hours in the afternoon because the population for the other two factions is just not high enough to fight the larger populated faction. You would think the losing two factions would join forces and try to split the one that's ruling the map...but nope. Ah well

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)? On the first day, I had quite a bit of lag at the larger fights, as well as troubles bar swapping. Every day since then, the lag hasn't been as horrible, but the rendering of friends and foes alike has been awful. A breach will look empty and then you move two steps to push in and suddenly there are 10 enemies standing in the way. That was unfortunate for me

What you think of the simplified abilities? Too simplified imo, but I understand the appeal of not having to learn and memorize a ton of skills and passives.

Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? Nope, but this also hasn't happened to me before in all my years playing

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test? Fun the first two days, then it got boring.

Do you have any general feedback? I'm glad for Vengeance in the sense that it means you're publicly working on improving pvp performance. I also think it's nice for casual pvp-ers and also pve-mains that want to dip their toes into pvp but have been hesitant to do so. The fact that you're taking polls about the fun that people are having, versus how performance was, indicates that you are looking into making Vengeance a permanent thing. If that is the case, you should be transparent to the player base because right now it feels like pro-vengeance people vs anti-vengeance people and it's just making everyone argue over even the possibility of it being permanent. I'm not opposed to Vengeance at all, I think it's a good step to increase the population of pvp, which has been decreasing a lot (at least pc/na, idk about console or eu). However, Vengeance is only fun if there's population, and I can safely say that if Vengeance was the only option for pvp, it would die faster than Ravenwatch when it went to no-proc. If you DO want to make it permanent, then I would suggest removing Ravenwatch, Blackreach, and the Under50 for Vengeance and keep Gray Host. It forces the pvp population to choose between two campaigns instead of spreading us out into four or five (not including IC), which means you should, in theory, have enough people to have a good time and not be super unbalanced.