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The Official Vengeance Test Campaign Feedback Thread (Test 3)

ZOS_Kevin
ZOS_Kevin
Community Manager
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?
Edited by ZOS_Kevin on September 22, 2025 2:48PM
Community Manager for ZeniMax Online Studio and Elder Scrolls OnlineDev Tracker | Service Alerts | ESO Twitter
Staff Post
  • Ratzkifal
    Ratzkifal
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    1. Yes.
    2. Latency in crowded environments is better. Ballgroups (and bash builds) can't cause lag in Vengeance like they normally would.
    3. The simplified abilities are not fun to engage with. They are too bare bones, don't interact with sets or passives (because there are none) and give me the exact opposite experience of what I enjoy about ESO's combat.
    4. /
    5. I see Vengeance as a necessary evil, provided we use it to fix current Cyrodiil and not chase some sort of replacement that's fundamentally different. It stops being fun after the first 20minutes of play, especially since there is unlimited siege weapons, which makes defending a keep a sisyphean task because the siegers can never run out.
    6. General Feedback:
      • There are still concerns that we are having Vengeance for the sake of itself rather than to improve current Cyrodiil. These concerns have remained underaddressed, and any time a developer has commented on this, the statement was followed up with caveats reintroducing ambiguity (like on the last livestream). Particularly the addition of quality of life improvements to Vengeance has reinforced the impression for some players that the focus with Vengeance is not on improving performance - where it should be -, but on making Vengeance itself better. We don't want "better Vengeance", we want better Gray Host/Blackreach/etc. The upcoming loudouts for example don't relate to normal Cyrodiil at all. It would be great to get a strong statement on what the goal of Vengeance is, highlighting that Vengeance really is just a series of tests, with no "ifs" and "we'll see", and that it won't be the future of Cyrodiil.
    This Bosmer was tortured to death. There is nothing left to be done.
  • Stridig
    Stridig
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ratzkifal wrote: »
    1. Yes.
    2. Latency in crowded environments is better. Ballgroups (and bash builds) can't cause lag in Vengeance like they normally would.
    3. The simplified abilities are not fun to engage with. They are too bare bones, don't interact with sets or passives (because there are none) and give me the exact opposite experience of what I enjoy about ESO's combat.
    4. /
    5. I see Vengeance as a necessary evil, provided we use it to fix current Cyrodiil and not chase some sort of replacement that's fundamentally different. It stops being fun after the first 20minutes of play, especially since there is unlimited siege weapons, which makes defending a keep a sisyphean task because the siegers can never run out.
    6. General Feedback:
      • There are still concerns that we are having Vengeance for the sake of itself rather than to improve current Cyrodiil. These concerns have remained underaddressed, and any time a developer has commented on this, the statement was followed up with caveats reintroducing ambiguity (like on the last livestream). Particularly the addition of quality of life improvements to Vengeance has reinforced the impression for some players that the focus with Vengeance is not on improving performance - where it should be -, but on making Vengeance itself better. We don't want "better Vengeance", we want better Gray Host/Blackreach/etc. The upcoming loudouts for example don't relate to normal Cyrodiil at all. It would be great to get a strong statement on what the goal of Vengeance is, highlighting that Vengeance really is just a series of tests, with no "ifs" and "we'll see", and that it won't be the future of Cyrodiil.

    Where is the evidence that ball groups cause lag? If you can provide that to ZOS, maybe the testing can end early.
    Enemy to many
    Friend to all
  • abakzn
    abakzn
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    I find this kind of event of zero choice disgusting and unacceptable.
  • LPapirius
    LPapirius
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    My main PvP guild cancelled our daily raid until the 30th. We won't be playing vengeance ever again.

    Edited by LPapirius on September 22, 2025 6:31PM
  • Darethran
    Darethran
    ✭✭✭
    Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
    Yep! There were always big fights to participate in and there were some battles with all 3 factions at the same keep. While other keeps were also being attacked!

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

    As a dedicated healer & support build, the heals/buffs/purge being limited to 3 people is very draining of magicka. They should have a reduction in mana cost (15% maybe?) so I can be of more use to a group for longer.

    Templar's Cleansing Ritual spell is useless for anything bigger than a 1vx fight. Make it like the Support's Purge skill that it cleanses 3 nearby but costs stamina & has a higher cost?

    What you think of the simplified abilities?

    Healers are basic but still very fun. I prefer having burst heals rather than casting many heals over time spells. But the restoration staff AoE heal is underpowered when it can't be cast multiple times & everyone has much higher health. Give it a shorter duration but more healing to compensate?

    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


    No.

    What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?

    Having a pop cap of 300 per faction is awesome, and everyone being able to get stuck into it means the barrier of entry is much smaller. The skills are still very limited and we need more skill lines. As a healer, the Psijic skill Mend Wounds is very missed. It would be good to have that as a toggle rather than taking up a skill slot for healers, as healers in vengeance are already making big trade offs.

    Do you have any general feedback?

    See how high we can push the pop caps until problems happen
    Edited by Darethran on September 22, 2025 6:34PM
    In Scotland | @Darethran

    [EU] Ervona Saranith (EP) - Lvl 50 CP >560 - Dunmer Healer
  • Ratzkifal
    Ratzkifal
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    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Stridig wrote: »
    Ratzkifal wrote: »
    1. Yes.
    2. Latency in crowded environments is better. Ballgroups (and bash builds) can't cause lag in Vengeance like they normally would.
    3. The simplified abilities are not fun to engage with. They are too bare bones, don't interact with sets or passives (because there are none) and give me the exact opposite experience of what I enjoy about ESO's combat.
    4. /
    5. I see Vengeance as a necessary evil, provided we use it to fix current Cyrodiil and not chase some sort of replacement that's fundamentally different. It stops being fun after the first 20minutes of play, especially since there is unlimited siege weapons, which makes defending a keep a sisyphean task because the siegers can never run out.
    6. General Feedback:
      • There are still concerns that we are having Vengeance for the sake of itself rather than to improve current Cyrodiil. These concerns have remained underaddressed, and any time a developer has commented on this, the statement was followed up with caveats reintroducing ambiguity (like on the last livestream). Particularly the addition of quality of life improvements to Vengeance has reinforced the impression for some players that the focus with Vengeance is not on improving performance - where it should be -, but on making Vengeance itself better. We don't want "better Vengeance", we want better Gray Host/Blackreach/etc. The upcoming loudouts for example don't relate to normal Cyrodiil at all. It would be great to get a strong statement on what the goal of Vengeance is, highlighting that Vengeance really is just a series of tests, with no "ifs" and "we'll see", and that it won't be the future of Cyrodiil.

    Where is the evidence that ball groups cause lag? If you can provide that to ZOS, maybe the testing can end early.

    I don't have the evidence other than fights with ballgroups present are lagging while zerg fights aren't lagging (as badly). Without being able to look under the hood of the game and the servers, I cannot provide that evidence ever. It's all annecdotal. I'm just one data point, but ZOS is the one who needs to connect the dots until they form a line. Not to mention, ZOS should already be aware, as the previous performance tests already identified crosshealing as a major cause of lag - it's just that turning off crosshealing entirely kills the role of a healer in PvP. Ballgroups heavily utilize crosshealing to become an unkillable ball of death (hence the name), so it should be obvious. What they should do to address this, without invalidating the role of healer or alienating the players who wish to engage in coordinated group PvP, I don't know. But finding that solution would be my #1 priority for improving performance in PvP.
    Bash builds for some reason also cause lag which you can experience in Battlegrounds and even duels, where there really shouldn't be any lag like that. Not sure what's causing that, but I can only assume it's either the caluclation of bonuses to bash damage, since regular bashing doesn't seem to cause the same lag, or the sets used by those bash builds.
    Edited by Ratzkifal on September 22, 2025 6:40PM
    This Bosmer was tortured to death. There is nothing left to be done.
  • ItsBigKai
    ItsBigKai
    Soul Shriven
    Some General feedback on the environment. For me personally the green lightening flashing every 15 or so seconds is really a no go. Maybe reducing the consistency or being able to disable this in game altogether somehow would be nice in future. It's almost an instantaneous migraine trigger for me. Makes the mode not very playable for more then 20 - 30 minutes.
  • Dovahmiim
    Dovahmiim
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    Why make it concurrent with the Undaunted Event? Populations will probably be far lower
    I'm better.
  • MincMincMinc
    MincMincMinc
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    Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?

    Yes/No, there were not enough players logged in to the campaign on the first day PCNA 8pm EST. The AD faction was only about 60-100 players. More players were on by 10pm but still only about half the previous test population. So fights were much larger than typical Greyhost, but not nearly as large as test 1 and 2.

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

    There was only a few large scale battles. I suppose there was no lag the whole night during the aleswell trifaction seige around 9pm EST PCNA. A couple of my guildies had FPS issues even with 3070 series graphics cards. I had no issues all night with my 5070ti. I think alot of people are still messing up FPS and ping issues.....kinda sad tbh that people cant distinguish client and serverside issues in 2025.

    What you think of the simplified abilities?

    The simplified abilites play fine. Some skills having cooldowns is a dangerous precedent to have, it would be better to just have higher costs on these skills. Crit surge having a slotted berserk buff is also a dangerous precedent to have.....the whole point of vengeance is to not have extra tacked on effects. Once these doors are open what is to stop future patches from tacking on more buffs and then we will be right back to live pvp where every skill has multiple passive buffs tacked on.

    IMO you should be focusing efforts to think of pvp specific gamerule changes to prevent lag.
    • For instance vengeance has more aimed single target heals instead of massive aoe smartheals for everything. This is a great change.
    • Another one would be to make all effects nolonger stack to cut down on large groups making a black hole singularity of effects during breach fights.
    • Another would be to make hots drop off once you overheal to cut down on persistent abusive group healing.
    • Another would be to limit crosshealing or make morphs specific for crosshealing and less efficient by comparison to group only heals.
    • Another would be to make ults have no aoe caps, but put aoe caps on more spammed skills. Caps around 6 players is around the point where you stop to notice. Damage caps being 6 and healing caps being 3 would be fine I believe.
    • dots are capped at 6-10 ticks, then timing and the tooltip could be played with instead.
    • Maybe the first 3 or 4 skills in skillines are more streamlined as the bread and butter common spammable skills. Then have the ult, 5th and maybe the 4th skills as the more taxing unique defining skills.
    • etc, there are so many more you could do where general gameplay is not impacted that much.

    What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
    • The notion of splitting pve and pvp skills is an amazing idea, mainly because you can now impose game rule changes as I listed above to target and remove unnecessary calculations.
    • Simplifying skills and cutting out the bloat is a good idea not even just for performance, but combat has become so much more clear animation wise. New players have a much easier time understanding what is happening to their character because they can see better.
    • Making ACTIVE skills chosen for their ACTIVE effect is a good idea. Many live skills are only chosen for their passive effects which ruins the purpose of an ACTIVE skillbar.
    • Healer skills being more AIMED single target is a huge step in the right direction. This is a huge boost in player skill.
    • Player movement speed feels in a better spot. This movement speed is in tension with mechanics like gapclosers. The worrying part is that when you add back in speed buffs how do things stack? Live has the issue where there are so many easy choices most average builds sit at 150-170% movement speed without sprinting. So combat trivializes mechanics like gap closers and snares.
    • Mount speed is another concern. Many new players learn to pvp through ganking. On live pvp most people have infinite mount stamina and travel at lightspeed on their mounts, making ganking gameplay impossible for people to learn through. Vengeance almost feels close to being right, however mount stamina is too high I think. There is going to be a sweetspot of balance where you either choose to risk being ganked and get to the fight faster or you play it safe and slow with a reserve of mount stamina.
    • Template loadout pvp is a terrible idea longterm. People want to use item sets and enchants and potions and food and cp. I would design the loadout and perk system to be a simple window where people can "slot" gear, change their "mundus" with a dropdown menu, or change their "enchants" with a dropdown. Not only would this help teach new players building with an easy free menu, but you also wont *** off your pvp community into thinking their game is being ruined.

    Do you have any general feedback?

    This first day is a loss performance data capture wise. The only data to pull from is that the PVE crowd of players cares more about the undaunted event to no surprise. The PvP crowd hates template pvp and has no incentive to participate in the test. Keep in mind that you NEED the pvp players to participate since THEY are the problem. PvE players simply do not know how to pvp and do not contribute the same amount of lag as pvp players would. With a diluted population any test data will be useless. Maybe we can cram 400 pve players on a server, but maybe only 250 or 300 pvp players are enough to cause lag.

    You have to ensure that vengeance is not a longterm solution and it is just a means for answers. PvP people do not want to participate because they believe zos will see it as though people want vengeance as it currently is. There are three paths I see the game going at this point:
    1. Zos removes live pvp for template vengeance as is or with the loadout/perk system
    2. Zos gives up on vengeance after this test and the december test showing no population due to other events or options. Live pvp returns and lag intensifies until faction caps reduce cyrodil down from 100v100v100 all the way to 12v12v12
    3. Ideally Zos continues and slowly introduces more and more old systems back into vengeance. Food, enchants, armor, passives, morphs, item sets. Ideally with pvp specific rules or performance balance in mind to keep things split from pve power creep.
    Edited by MincMincMinc on September 23, 2025 2:08PM
    Zos should hire pvp consultants
  • ADawg
    ADawg
    ✭✭✭
    Initial thoughts: why? why take away everyone's build to force them into a cookie cutter style of play? I don't want to hear its a test, we have a PTS for that.

    General feedback:

    - Don't do this...just stop.
    - Fix pvp by forcing players to choose the tried and true "Holy Trinity" of MMOS: DPS/TANK/HEALER.
    - At no point should a player be able to do all 3 in PVP.
    - Decouple healing power from DAMAGE modifiers to fix this

    If Vengeance becomes the only forced PVP in this game I am deleting the game and unsubbing. Why? Because all of my thousands of hours build crafting for my own unique ideas will be gone, flushed to oblivion for what? Balance?

    I'm going to BALANCE my wallet by unsubbing, its that simple.
  • ADawg
    ADawg
    ✭✭✭
    Ratzkifal wrote: »
    Stridig wrote: »
    Ratzkifal wrote: »
    1. Yes.
    2. Latency in crowded environments is better. Ballgroups (and bash builds) can't cause lag in Vengeance like they normally would.
    3. The simplified abilities are not fun to engage with. They are too bare bones, don't interact with sets or passives (because there are none) and give me the exact opposite experience of what I enjoy about ESO's combat.
    4. /
    5. I see Vengeance as a necessary evil, provided we use it to fix current Cyrodiil and not chase some sort of replacement that's fundamentally different. It stops being fun after the first 20minutes of play, especially since there is unlimited siege weapons, which makes defending a keep a sisyphean task because the siegers can never run out.
    6. General Feedback:
      • There are still concerns that we are having Vengeance for the sake of itself rather than to improve current Cyrodiil. These concerns have remained underaddressed, and any time a developer has commented on this, the statement was followed up with caveats reintroducing ambiguity (like on the last livestream). Particularly the addition of quality of life improvements to Vengeance has reinforced the impression for some players that the focus with Vengeance is not on improving performance - where it should be -, but on making Vengeance itself better. We don't want "better Vengeance", we want better Gray Host/Blackreach/etc. The upcoming loudouts for example don't relate to normal Cyrodiil at all. It would be great to get a strong statement on what the goal of Vengeance is, highlighting that Vengeance really is just a series of tests, with no "ifs" and "we'll see", and that it won't be the future of Cyrodiil.

    Where is the evidence that ball groups cause lag? If you can provide that to ZOS, maybe the testing can end early.

    I don't have the evidence other than fights with ballgroups present are lagging while zerg fights aren't lagging (as badly). Without being able to look under the hood of the game and the servers, I cannot provide that evidence ever. It's all annecdotal. I'm just one data point, but ZOS is the one who needs to connect the dots until they form a line. Not to mention, ZOS should already be aware, as the previous performance tests already identified crosshealing as a major cause of lag - it's just that turning off crosshealing entirely kills the role of a healer in PvP. Ballgroups heavily utilize crosshealing to become an unkillable ball of death (hence the name), so it should be obvious. What they should do to address this, without invalidating the role of healer or alienating the players who wish to engage in coordinated group PvP, I don't know. But finding that solution would be my #1 priority for improving performance in PvP.
    Bash builds for some reason also cause lag which you can experience in Battlegrounds and even duels, where there really shouldn't be any lag like that. Not sure what's causing that, but I can only assume it's either the caluclation of bonuses to bash damage, since regular bashing doesn't seem to cause the same lag, or the sets used by those bash builds.

    Does an ISP stop your internet service to fix bugs in their system? Why not? Because you, as a customer, would be pissed that you have no internet.

    Does an auto manufacture prevent people from driving their cars to work out some steering tuning or engine performance? No, they figure that out.

    Does a streaming service stop streaming to millions of customers to fix some buffering problems on their servers? No, the service continues and the engineers do their job.

    Paying for this game to play in a campaign and not being able to is frustrating. [insert reason here] doesn't bode well when people are literally paying for a product.
  • reazea
    reazea
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    The feedback that matters most is simple, and we don't need another vengeance "test". We don't need vengeance, don't want vengeance, hate vengeance, and we aren't going to spend another minute of our lives playing vengeance mode.

    ZOS isn't even offering any rewards for mandating that people participate in the "test".

    All ZOS needs to know is that a mandated vengeance mode will be the death of PvP in ESO. So just don't do it.
  • Stridig
    Stridig
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    PC/NA right now 2 bars AD, 3 bars EP, 1 bar DC. People don't want to play it.
    Enemy to many
    Friend to all
  • Erickson9610
    Erickson9610
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ✭✭✭
    1. Yes, I got into several large scale battles against both opposing factions at once.
    2. The latency was good, although my game client started losing frames when approaching a keep. The gameplay experience was overall tolerable — despite the lag, I was able to move my character how I wanted to, and the abilities felt responsive and fun to use.
    3. I love the Vengeance abilities. They're simple enough to make an effective toolkit with.
    4. I logged out in Cyrodiil, so I haven't left it yet. Nothing game breaking happened in previous tests when leaving Cyrodiil, but I'll edit this post if I discover anything has happened.
    5. Vengeance Test 3 was just like the first two Vengeance tests, but with more abilities to use. I'm glad the server was active, and I had a lot of fun both in 1v1s and in large crowds.
    6. Please add the Werewolf skill line to a future Vengeance test, and make the transformation last until manually toggled off. Removing the transformation timer would make the Werewolf playstyle bearable in Vengeance, since we lack the Passive Abilities from regular Cyrodiil which usually make the transformation practically unlimited. Removing the timer is also sure to improve performance on the server side — just balance the Vengeance Werewolf abilities to account for 100% uptime in-form.
    PC/NA — Lone Werewolf, the EP Templar Khajiit Werewolf

    Werewolf Should be Allowed to Sneak
    Please give us Werewolf Skill Styles (for customizing our fur color), Grimoires/Scribing skills (to fill in the holes in our builds), and Companions (to transform with).
  • blktauna
    blktauna
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ✭✭
    Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
    yes PCNA was 33 and 2 pop several 3 way battles and general mayhem. This was 8-10 pm EST. I don't know where that guy above was but it was moving nicely at Alessia and Glade.

    Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
    Range still sux but everything chugged along acceptable. I only ran into 2 tiny stalls but nothinge else.

    What you think of the simplified abilities?
    tolerable. I liked the addition of the weapons skills etc. More to use. Still quite stripped down but I made it work

    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?
    Movement speed is still glacial. It takes far too long to get anywhere. Sustain is crap but I made it work. The guards are ridiculous and annoying. Still enjoyed myself and will be in tomorrow am to test the waters on PCEU

    Do you have any general feedback?
    I see you only have base class skills and no multiclassing. Love it. Love the sky but yeah the flashing gets a bit much. Ill add more as I can.
    PCNA
    PCEU
  • ibeprofun
    ibeprofun
    ✭✭✭
    The population is so dead nothing can be tested.

    the question was asked, "how do you feel about the stripped down skills?"

    we spend a lot of time to get those sets of armor and skills, so to have them all suddenly taken away makes you question all your effort youve sunk into the game over the last few years. it makes you wonder if its pointless to continue playing because anything else you work towards may also be yanked away from you.

    it makes me question my commitment to the game, because im concerned about who is making these decisions.

    im concerned about the reason vengeance was made. to test performance? there has got to be another way to test performance.

    the fact your character moves slower during stealthed. how does that affect performance in ANY WAY? I question the changes, they seem irrelevant to performance issues, and feel more like balance issues.

    the default settings for PS5 cause lag. you have to change several settings on the user interface. I play in cyrodiil daily, after fixing my settings, i experience almost zero lag.

    if you are sincerely seeking ways to mitigate lag, investigate my settings. you will find a major improvement vs the default settings.
  • Master_Assassin999
    Master_Assassin999
    Soul Shriven
    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.)?

    Waay. waaay better than normal, yes

    What you think of the simplified abilities?

    For Vengeance, they are cool, some times, this is good to have, but if I had the choice, I would definitely prefer the "base game" skills

    What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?

    Vengeance is NOT a necessary evil, fixing lag? In terms of ping, yes, sure it makes smoother (at the cost of a lot of fun). What it is solving for people is the fact that they can avoid playing the game. Why would you need to learn and progress in PvE but not in PvP ? People complaining should simply seek PvP guilds and learn from there instead of asking from you guys to deny us the results of having played your game, Vengeance is definitely not fair, definitely not a good option for the future, we played your game, we enjoyed it, don't punish us for it

    Do you have any general feedback?
    Make Vengeance optional please.
  • Overbowed
    Overbowed
    ✭✭✭
    Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?

    No. I logged in around primetime (5-8pm EST PCNA) and the campaign was 1 bar AD/1bar DC/ 2 bar EP population wise. Anecdotally most of my PVP friends take the week off during these tests. I plan on doing the same in the future, this form of PVP is not sustainable.

    Please make the vengeance campaign optional next time. No more week long blackouts.

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

    Very responsive as the campaigns were dead.

    What you think of the simplified abilities?

    These tests 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.The feeling of incremental progression ability wise and skill wise is the lifeblood of MMOs.

    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.
    Edited by Overbowed on September 23, 2025 11:45AM
    The Cyrodiil deer died for your particle effect mounts.

    Bring back ground oils 2025.
  • Seyer530
    Seyer530
    ✭✭✭
    I hate this. No one wants to play this. We worked our hardest to build our toons to be so personalized and how we want them that this is more like an Apex game where you pick premade characters. If this is what we can expect from ESO, I’m out.
  • L_Nici
    L_Nici
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    1. Well kinda, but it was very evident how much lower the population is during this test compared to the last. Until Primetime it was hard to get any big fights and even in Primetime the server was never Poplocked, not even 3 bars all across (PC EU).

    2. No, what I define as a large battle was actually terrible. Skills getting stuck, not able to break free, sometimes getting stunned without you even realising (BRK around 20:00 MESZ, the biggest battle I had yesterday with about 100 AD and 75 EP).

    3. The same as the last times, they are to flat, plain boring not enjoyable and as long as we don't even get morphs at least for the class skills the build diversity is a catastrophy. Also its all to slow, I want Speedbuffs on skills like Lightning Form, NB does get one, why no one else?

    4. No

    5. As this is the third installment of it, my not so initial thoughts anymore are very much against ever playing it again. Its to flat, to slow, to dumbed down. Its a simple Numbers Game, not a matter of actual skill. Bigger Zergs wins. There is no strategy, no builds matched to buff one another, its like playing a shooter in slow motion. Eeverything that made ESO such a great game for PvP was removed.

    6. Regarding the Meatbag catapults, what where you thinking removing the one thing that made it good, its DoT, thats why we wanted it, it just deals one tiny hit of damage doesn't even seem to affect healing at all. Seriously thats the perfect description of Vengeance. Give players what they want, but remove any reason why they did.
    Edited by L_Nici on September 23, 2025 12:27PM
    PC|EU
  • Taggund
    Taggund
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    Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
    > Not really. Seemed to be fewer players. The few keep battles were one sided with a larger attacking group, and no way to defend against them.

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

    What you think of the simplified abilities?
    Not much. Most likely people will find the unbalanced class lines, and we'll start seeing them more (like it seems so many are running a necro colossus ult these days).

    What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
    > It's not fun. I left to do other things. Most of my PVP guild were doing dungeons last night instead of vengeance.

    Do you have any general feedback?
    > Need to maintain the gameplay variety that is available in Cyro, and makes it fun to play. Vengeance is not that.
  • SaffronCitrusflower
    SaffronCitrusflower
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    ✭✭
    Feedback:

    Please don't waste our time with any more vengeance nonsense.

    Fewer and fewer PvP mains are logging back on after every "test". We aren't going to play vengeance so just make it the one and only campaign available right now or cut your losses and stop with the vengeance. We're tired of ZOS taking out it's vengeance on us.
  • DJfriede
    DJfriede
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    Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?

    Yes.
    They tend to lag less than on live, with the occasional slowdowns.

    What you think of the simplified abilities?

    They feel really weak (not saying that they are, just looking at the numbers -- but they feel so). In fact, fights drag on for far too long. Adding the cooldowns on some abilities, it seems like I am whittling down enemies one skill and one light attack at a time. Super slow, super boring.

    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?


    Simply put, I am not a fan.

    Pros:
    • No ballgroups and thus fewer laggy or unplayable situations.
    • Fewer tower trolls and tanks.
    • Performance is better (but not great), battles are larger.

    Cons:
    • Combat feels slow, clunky, without impact, not modern, like a beta game. There is no sense of power.
    • Unlimited sieges and camps drag battles out sooo much longer than they should.
    • No variation in builds. Compared to the subclasses, it feels like we are back to 2017.
    • Very stale fights, no surprises, no bursts, no variation. It's all the same pew-pew style where the guy wins who brought more of his friends. The bigger zerg wins.
    • Performance is not so much better to justify the extremely simplified skills and combat systems.

  • ToddIngram
    ToddIngram
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    I purchased ESO to play PvP.

    If I was satisfied with template versions of PvP I wouldn't have purchased ESO in the first place. Lots of templated PvP games out there to choose from. Now templated PvP is mandated in ESO, so no reason for me to play now.
  • Romilly
    Romilly
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    This just sucks. The PVP server is basically dead right now, 10pm pacific. This is not normally the case on Grey Host. I know my PVP guild has basically cancelled Cyrodiil until Vengeance stops.

    It feels like this test is just pointless - it's basically the same boring bigger zerg beats smaller zerg, whereas with ball groups functioning, a skilled, determined group of 12 can slow down a zerg quite dramatically.

    If you don't have a handle on what is causing desync, lag etc in Cyrodiil at this point, you won't ever get it.
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