Vengeance test key metric - player interest

robertlabrie · September 3

I'm hoping for the next vengeance campaign ZOS keeps GH running as well to evaluate the most important metric of all: what do players prefer. My hope is that both instances are pop-locked at prime time with some players enjoying the larger crowds and simpler rulesets of Veng and others wanting the epic siege battles and tuned META builds of GH. Until a "normal" campaign is left enabled during a veng test we just won't know for sure.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · September 3

This won't be done for this test

valenwood_vegan · September 3

I doubt they'll do this currently, since they've discussed how these are above all, performance tests, and they need a large population of players (ideally including as many as possible who actually act like normal pvp'ers), to get the performance data they need. Also vengeance is currently an unfinished product.

Down the line as vengeance approaches its "final" form, I would hope they'd gather data on player interest if they intend to keep the mode or something like it. I hope the Vengeance data can be used to improve the experience in "regular" cyro (ie: Grey Host), rather than replace cyro pvp entirely, so I agree it would be useful to eventually see how viable it would be for both modes to be offered at the same time.

reazea · September 3

Forcing us to play vengeance is a slap to the face. ZOS shouldn't even be putting time into developing a new PvP system. They should fix the system they already have.

It will interesting to see how it goes with no golden pursuit to draw the PvE mains though.

Darethran · September 3

Vengeance is literally them making wide sweeping changes to measure the performance impact.

MincMincMinc · September 4

reazea wrote: »

Forcing us to play vengeance is a slap to the face. ZOS shouldn't even be putting time into developing a new PvP system. They should fix the system they already have.

It will interesting to see how it goes with no golden pursuit to draw the PvE mains though.

How do you suppose they fix the system they already have? You realize they will have to test regardless..... Which people will complain about regardless....... So what's the difference? I am atleast happy that we are getting more effort than them just disabling a system and then going nope didnt work, ok we give up. They already attempted strip tests from live several times with no results. It only makes sense to go from the other side of the problem and make a platform where you can add in systems one at a time to find issues.

Its no different than having 50 addons and an error. Either you get a clear crash message and can pinpoint a fix, or the message is unclear and you have to investigate. Maybe you can guess and disable the 1/50 addon that is causing the issue. Maybe you can't after a few attempts and decide it is better to disable all addons and slowly add them back in until the error pops up again.

The problem is that the way zos has been poorly communicating their intent is making PvP players avoid the test. People are essentially boycotting it hoping it sends the message that people dont like template pvp. They don't want pvp to boil down to just unmorphed skills which is all that vengeance is right now. Test wise it has to be like this, sets can't come back until a handful of other base game systems are rewritten and introduced. You cant have sets without stat changes, stat changes don't matter unless skills are based on stats, etc.

I disagree with the boycott concept because it is counterintuitive. We already know player dilution matters. A vet pvper will induce thousands of times more lag than a brand new player who sits on the walls light attacking from 80m away. So when you boycott all you do is allow more pugs into the server who exponentially show better server performance. At the end of the day your boycott made vengeance look better data wise from what zos sees.

Also as a pvper you are shooting yourself in the foot at rejecting the only serious involvement we got in a decade. So would you rather wait another decade while complaining? I just don't get it, ive been waiting since 2015 to get a fix. The same people complain about lag say something needs to be tested and fixed, but then they wont allow the test to happen? Make up your mind or at least dont be hypocritical, state that you enjoy the lag and don't want live pvp to change.

SaffronCitrusflower · September 4

MincMincMinc wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

Forcing us to play vengeance is a slap to the face. ZOS shouldn't even be putting time into developing a new PvP system. They should fix the system they already have.

It will interesting to see how it goes with no golden pursuit to draw the PvE mains though.

How do you suppose they fix the system they already have? You realize they will have to test regardless..... Which people will complain about regardless....... So what's the difference? I am atleast happy that we are getting more effort than them just disabling a system and then going nope didnt work, ok we give up. They already attempted strip tests from live several times with no results. It only makes sense to go from the other side of the problem and make a platform where you can add in systems one at a time to find issues.

Its no different than having 50 addons and an error. Either you get a clear crash message and can pinpoint a fix, or the message is unclear and you have to investigate. Maybe you can guess and disable the 1/50 addon that is causing the issue. Maybe you can't after a few attempts and decide it is better to disable all addons and slowly add them back in until the error pops up again.

The problem is that the way zos has been poorly communicating their intent is making PvP players avoid the test. People are essentially boycotting it hoping it sends the message that people dont like template pvp. They don't want pvp to boil down to just unmorphed skills which is all that vengeance is right now. Test wise it has to be like this, sets can't come back until a handful of other base game systems are rewritten and introduced. You cant have sets without stat changes, stat changes don't matter unless skills are based on stats, etc.

I disagree with the boycott concept because it is counterintuitive. We already know player dilution matters. A vet pvper will induce thousands of times more lag than a brand new player who sits on the walls light attacking from 80m away. So when you boycott all you do is allow more pugs into the server who exponentially show better server performance. At the end of the day your boycott made vengeance look better data wise from what zos sees.

Also as a pvper you are shooting yourself in the foot at rejecting the only serious involvement we got in a decade. So would you rather wait another decade while complaining? I just don't get it, ive been waiting since 2015 to get a fix. The same people complain about lag say something needs to be tested and fixed, but then they wont allow the test to happen? Make up your mind or at least dont be hypocritical, state that you enjoy the lag and don't want live pvp to change.

I can't speak to what the person your inquiring to will say, but I know what most of us PvP mains will say.

ZOS needs to limit heal and shield stacking to only one instance of each shield or heal at any given time. This is what we've been asking for going on 5 years or more now.

And people should complain about how things are being managed these days. We are getting far less for the same $ now days, the AI ZOS uses went live years before it was ready, etc. ....

No reason those of us who will never play any version of vengeance no matter what to help ZOS test a system that, if implemented, will be the end of ESO for us.

MincMincMinc · September 4

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

Forcing us to play vengeance is a slap to the face. ZOS shouldn't even be putting time into developing a new PvP system. They should fix the system they already have.

It will interesting to see how it goes with no golden pursuit to draw the PvE mains though.

How do you suppose they fix the system they already have? You realize they will have to test regardless..... Which people will complain about regardless....... So what's the difference? I am atleast happy that we are getting more effort than them just disabling a system and then going nope didnt work, ok we give up. They already attempted strip tests from live several times with no results. It only makes sense to go from the other side of the problem and make a platform where you can add in systems one at a time to find issues.

Its no different than having 50 addons and an error. Either you get a clear crash message and can pinpoint a fix, or the message is unclear and you have to investigate. Maybe you can guess and disable the 1/50 addon that is causing the issue. Maybe you can't after a few attempts and decide it is better to disable all addons and slowly add them back in until the error pops up again.

The problem is that the way zos has been poorly communicating their intent is making PvP players avoid the test. People are essentially boycotting it hoping it sends the message that people dont like template pvp. They don't want pvp to boil down to just unmorphed skills which is all that vengeance is right now. Test wise it has to be like this, sets can't come back until a handful of other base game systems are rewritten and introduced. You cant have sets without stat changes, stat changes don't matter unless skills are based on stats, etc.

I disagree with the boycott concept because it is counterintuitive. We already know player dilution matters. A vet pvper will induce thousands of times more lag than a brand new player who sits on the walls light attacking from 80m away. So when you boycott all you do is allow more pugs into the server who exponentially show better server performance. At the end of the day your boycott made vengeance look better data wise from what zos sees.

Also as a pvper you are shooting yourself in the foot at rejecting the only serious involvement we got in a decade. So would you rather wait another decade while complaining? I just don't get it, ive been waiting since 2015 to get a fix. The same people complain about lag say something needs to be tested and fixed, but then they wont allow the test to happen? Make up your mind or at least dont be hypocritical, state that you enjoy the lag and don't want live pvp to change.

ZOS needs to limit heal and shield stacking to only one instance of each shield or heal at any given time. This is what we've been asking for going on 5 years or more now.

Agreed, this is how the game was originally, but pve raid groups had too many overlapping skills because we had far less options back in the day. Now we have too many options that can all stack. Another benefit other than just the calculations saved is that you prevent meta abuse. You can't suddenly release a proc set or skill like the famous Soultrap + Sloads meta and have everyone use it......since it wont stack you wont see everyone abuse it, and youll avoid the headache.

The counterargument in this case is "Oh but I run a 48 man zerg and we wont be as efficient". At a certain point we have to wonder, how much does it hurt a group to overlap a few skills? Where in reality they are already casting into a void. Likely the loss is never really felt, witnessed, or quantified, but the benefit of XXX less possible calculations is huge.

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

Forcing us to play vengeance is a slap to the face. ZOS shouldn't even be putting time into developing a new PvP system. They should fix the system they already have.

It will interesting to see how it goes with no golden pursuit to draw the PvE mains though.

How do you suppose they fix the system they already have? You realize they will have to test regardless..... Which people will complain about regardless....... So what's the difference? I am atleast happy that we are getting more effort than them just disabling a system and then going nope didnt work, ok we give up. They already attempted strip tests from live several times with no results. It only makes sense to go from the other side of the problem and make a platform where you can add in systems one at a time to find issues.

Its no different than having 50 addons and an error. Either you get a clear crash message and can pinpoint a fix, or the message is unclear and you have to investigate. Maybe you can guess and disable the 1/50 addon that is causing the issue. Maybe you can't after a few attempts and decide it is better to disable all addons and slowly add them back in until the error pops up again.

The problem is that the way zos has been poorly communicating their intent is making PvP players avoid the test. People are essentially boycotting it hoping it sends the message that people dont like template pvp. They don't want pvp to boil down to just unmorphed skills which is all that vengeance is right now. Test wise it has to be like this, sets can't come back until a handful of other base game systems are rewritten and introduced. You cant have sets without stat changes, stat changes don't matter unless skills are based on stats, etc.

I disagree with the boycott concept because it is counterintuitive. We already know player dilution matters. A vet pvper will induce thousands of times more lag than a brand new player who sits on the walls light attacking from 80m away. So when you boycott all you do is allow more pugs into the server who exponentially show better server performance. At the end of the day your boycott made vengeance look better data wise from what zos sees.

Also as a pvper you are shooting yourself in the foot at rejecting the only serious involvement we got in a decade. So would you rather wait another decade while complaining? I just don't get it, ive been waiting since 2015 to get a fix. The same people complain about lag say something needs to be tested and fixed, but then they wont allow the test to happen? Make up your mind or at least dont be hypocritical, state that you enjoy the lag and don't want live pvp to change.

No reason those of us who will never play any version of vengeance no matter what to help ZOS test a system that, if implemented, will be the end of ESO for us.

I understand not wanting to have to beta test something that shouldn't need to be. Ultimately it was poor management and standard book keeping over the years that lead to the spaghetti code and power creep in calculations.

IMO you either do nothing and have your voice not heard, or you participate and point out all of the issues in vengeance while enforcing things that are the right direction........ Like for instance you just pointed out the effect stacking issue on live. That issue ONLY gets fixed by using vengeance's PvP and PvE split system where the new pvp skills can abide by different rules that the PvE power creep has forced on us.

MincMincMinc · September 4

@SaffronCitrusflower This is from another post, but I had written out a bunch of potential rule changes that would be possible using the vengeance platform with new PvP separated skills or designs. Considering they already talked about doing different aoe cap concepts it would be a good time to suggest any or all of these concepts.

maybe spammable skills like surprise attack or dizzy swing go back to being simpler and do not have 3-4 effects on them with paragraph explanations. These animations can be kept simple and performative while also having more important animations like CC being the most visible and understood. Then more rarely used higher cost skills like streak would be later on in the tree.
Maybe less skills have aoe elements that dont need them. Maybe costs are higher and ramp
Maybe dots hots and effects do not stack like they used to
Maybe status effects should be simplified non stacking debuffs applied by certain actions
Maybe heals need to be more aimed single targets like their damage counterparts are, instead of giant aoe conal smart heals that go through walls
Maybe aoe heals and buffs shouldnt transfer outside of group, but the targeted simplified ones can.
Maybe group sets need to be far more situational and shorter duration instead of giving a constant 1500-3000wd bonus per 5 piece with 100% uptime.
maybe aoe dot skills shouldnt update each tick and should snapshot stats at cast.

xR3ACTORx · September 5

No more vengeance pls. On xbox EU cyro population dropped hard since the previous vengeance campaign.

Stridig · September 5

I think people would be less confused about vengeance if ZOS would have been more transparent with all the testing we did a few years ago. We've already done this. Why are we doing it again? Also, just end the conflict within the community and give us both. The people who like live can stay there. The people who want skyshards and zerg fights can go to vengeance.

ToddIngram · September 5

Stridig wrote: »

I think people would be less confused about vengeance if ZOS would have been more transparent with all the testing we did a few years ago. We've already done this. Why are we doing it again? Also, just end the conflict within the community and give us both. The people who like live can stay there. The people who want skyshards and zerg fights can go to vengeance.

Yes. Giving us a choice is fine. Forcing us to only have one or the other seems to be a problem with everyone with an opinion on the issue.

Iriidius · September 5

Keeping Grey Host additional to Vengeance would have worked the first and second test and for future tests without parallel pve event but with the most time consuming pve event taking place at the same time and getting a goldenpursuit probably replacing Vengeance golden pursuit the pvp population wont be enaugh to fill any of them as players will bebusy doing dungeons.

Iriidius · September 5

Iriidius wrote: »

Keeping Grey Host additional to Vengeance would have worked the first and second test and for future tests without parallel pve event but with the most time consuming pve event taking place at the same time and getting a goldenpursuit probably replacing Vengeance golden pursuit the pvp population wont be enaugh to fill any of them as players will bebusy doing dungeons.

If not both campaigns get full because of dungeon event ZoS and players wanting everyone to play after their preferred ruleset will take that as proof that having both regular and Vengeance PvP won't work disregarding that players would be busy with undaunted event.

Iriidius · September 5

xR3ACTORx wrote: »

No more vengeance pls. On xbox EU cyro population dropped hard since the previous vengeance campaign.

So all these players who couldnt bear beeing unable to play Grey Host for 1 week now that it is back for 2 month have lost interest playing it rather than trying to make up the week they lost? Wasnt the PvP population on console already in free fall
before the first Vengeanc test started? Sounds like
someone twisting to fit his agenda.
Maybe Vengeance made some players realize how bad live pvp actually is so they boycott it but that is not a valid reason to stop Vengeance.

ToddIngram · September 5

Iriidius wrote: »

xR3ACTORx wrote: »

No more vengeance pls. On xbox EU cyro population dropped hard since the previous vengeance campaign.

So all these players who couldnt bear beeing unable to play Grey Host for 1 week now that it is back for 2 month have lost interest playing it rather than trying to make up the week they lost? Wasnt the PvP population on console already in free fall
before the first Vengeanc test started? Sounds like
someone twisting to fit his agenda.
Maybe Vengeance made some players realize how bad live pvp actually is so they boycott it but that is not a valid reason to stop Vengeance.

The PvP players I know who have left have done so because they think vengeance will become mandated in the future. They recognize there are lots of problems with live PvP, but vengeance is such a hard "Never" for them they just don't care anymore.

xR3ACTORx · 10:40AM

Iriidius wrote: »

xR3ACTORx wrote: »

No more vengeance pls. On xbox EU cyro population dropped hard since the previous vengeance campaign.

So all these players who couldnt bear beeing unable to play Grey Host for 1 week now that it is back for 2 month have lost interest playing it rather than trying to make up the week they lost? Wasnt the PvP population on console already in free fall
before the first Vengeanc test started? Sounds like
someone twisting to fit his agenda.
Maybe Vengeance made some players realize how bad live pvp actually is so they boycott it but that is not a valid reason to stop Vengeance.

On Xbox EU there was a very well perceived Mayhem in January
. There were queues, crashes, alliances on 3 bars etc.
After that Mayhem cyro pvp was still well crowded for being Xbox EU at mostly. Alliances were at 2 bars and on the weekend sometime an alliance could gain 3 bars.

Then vengeance started.
On first day it was crowded.
On day 2 first avid pvpers were already gone to other games (yea, including me)
Vengeance on XEU also didn't bring many pve players into pvp as I heard.
Some people played vengeance, some stayed away and waited for Mayhem.

Then there was another Mayhem. It was the less crowded and most imbalanced mayhem I ever witnessed. So during that Mayhem already more players left.
Sure there was still activitiy in cyro (at beginning of mayhem 2-3 bars, then after a week mostly at 1-2 bars for each alliance.

Now many people changed to Helldivers 2 due to it's console release (yea.. Including me).
Now, when logging in into cyro alliances are mostly at one bar at evening. Sometimes at 0 bar on Friday night at 9 pm.

XEU server was still well populated in the evening until Vengeance. Since Vengeance cyro population dropped.

So no more vengeance pls.

No offense, but are you sure that it's not you, who is "twisting to fit his agenda"?

Cause I don't have an agenda. I am just speaking my mind and I really don't care about what you think of this. I am also not interesting in convincing you believing this.
I mean I'm already on HD2 and pre ordered Battlefield 6 and I'm just speaking facts from the perspective of someone who spent a lot of time and money in eso over the years (top 1% in playtime in eso according to my Xbox stats) and who knows that ESO isn't the only game.

See.. As it was mentioned above those folks just don't care anymore (yea.. Also including me).
Just logged into this forum, said what I had to say and logging off again

I'm aware of that for pc players the reality about cyro is a different reality than the reality of cyro for console players is.

SolarRune · 11:29AM

ToddIngram wrote: »

The PvP players I know who have left have done so because they think vengeance will become mandated in the future. They recognize there are lots of problems with live PvP, but vengeance is such a hard "Never" for them they just don't care anymore.

How can anyone make that decision when we dont know what vengenace will be - with vengeance 2 it was alreayd not "template" PvP. I expect the final incarnation of what vengeance provides to be a lot closer to current live than the previous tests as they recode elements and bring the functionality back in. If not participating in tests, dont complain about the product that comes out of it - participate and make constructive feedback for ZOS to use in forming the final product. People quitting when something is in development feels like people looking for an excuse to leave, and by leaving when something is in development, they also lose the right to influence.

Those asking for more calculations to be added to the overall server calculation load are ignoring what vengeance has shown to date - removing battlespirit, making skills shorter, limiting the number of players HOTs/DOTs can do is exactly what has made vengeance deal with the massively increased population - reducing the computational load, not increasing it by adding more conditional scenarios, is where we need to go to get a more performant PVP experience.

AngryPenguin · 4:40PM

SolarRune wrote: »

ToddIngram wrote: »

The PvP players I know who have left have done so because they think vengeance will become mandated in the future. They recognize there are lots of problems with live PvP, but vengeance is such a hard "Never" for them they just don't care anymore.

How can anyone make that decision when we dont know what vengenace will be - with vengeance 2 it was alreayd not "template" PvP. I expect the final incarnation of what vengeance provides to be a lot closer to current live than the previous tests as they recode elements and bring the functionality back in. If not participating in tests, dont complain about the product that comes out of it - participate and make constructive feedback for ZOS to use in forming the final product. People quitting when something is in development feels like people looking for an excuse to leave, and by leaving when something is in development, they also lose the right to influence.

Those asking for more calculations to be added to the overall server calculation load are ignoring what vengeance has shown to date - removing battlespirit, making skills shorter, limiting the number of players HOTs/DOTs can do is exactly what has made vengeance deal with the massively increased population - reducing the computational load, not increasing it by adding more conditional scenarios, is where we need to go to get a more performant PVP experience.

I've been around long enough to know that "tests" in cyrodiil have never benefited the customer. What makes anyone think vengeance will be any different?

aetherix8 · 6:36PM

AngryPenguin wrote: »

SolarRune wrote: »

ToddIngram wrote: »

The PvP players I know who have left have done so because they think vengeance will become mandated in the future. They recognize there are lots of problems with live PvP, but vengeance is such a hard "Never" for them they just don't care anymore.

How can anyone make that decision when we dont know what vengenace will be - with vengeance 2 it was alreayd not "template" PvP. I expect the final incarnation of what vengeance provides to be a lot closer to current live than the previous tests as they recode elements and bring the functionality back in. If not participating in tests, dont complain about the product that comes out of it - participate and make constructive feedback for ZOS to use in forming the final product. People quitting when something is in development feels like people looking for an excuse to leave, and by leaving when something is in development, they also lose the right to influence.

Those asking for more calculations to be added to the overall server calculation load are ignoring what vengeance has shown to date - removing battlespirit, making skills shorter, limiting the number of players HOTs/DOTs can do is exactly what has made vengeance deal with the massively increased population - reducing the computational load, not increasing it by adding more conditional scenarios, is where we need to go to get a more performant PVP experience.

I've been around long enough to know that "tests" in cyrodiil have never benefited the customer. What makes anyone think vengeance will be any different?

I did benefit from those tests that led to no-proc RW - it resulted in a new player friendly environment to learn pvp and I was able to improve, although not as far as I would like to because it got aborted.

Am I the only one who thinks vengeance tests are radically different from other tests that zos have run in the past?

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