I think that this is an overblown reaction that lacks a lot of nuance. The Vengeance environment is far closer to a balanced and fun PvP experience than live Cyrodiil is.
katanagirl1 wrote: »I haven’t seen the post that this thread is referring to yet, but I am concerned about another Vengeance test because the last one had so few players and yet the performance was horrendous, worse than Gray Host.
Have they figured out why the last test was worse or are they just marching on with more additions to break it further?
I think that this is an overblown reaction that lacks a lot of nuance. The Vengeance environment is far closer to a balanced and fun PvP experience than live Cyrodiil is.
katanagirl1 wrote: »I haven’t seen the post that this thread is referring to yet, but I am concerned about another Vengeance test because the last one had so few players and yet the performance was horrendous, worse than Gray Host.
Have they figured out why the last test was worse or are they just marching on with more additions to break it further?
katanagirl1 wrote: »I haven’t seen the post that this thread is referring to yet, but I am concerned about another Vengeance test because the last one had so few players and yet the performance was horrendous, worse than Gray Host.
Have they figured out why the last test was worse or are they just marching on with more additions to break it further?
Top of General.
They are considering one of two options.
Option 1: Vengeance and Grayhost, no other campaigns.
Option 2: Vengeance and no other campaigns.
Despite “wanting” Option 1, they have announced that they have given up on trying to fix Grayhost. That it is an impossible task, and are encouraging people to just play the permanent Vengeance campaign, confirming to everyone… that it was not just a test.
Major_Mangle wrote: »katanagirl1 wrote: »I haven’t seen the post that this thread is referring to yet, but I am concerned about another Vengeance test because the last one had so few players and yet the performance was horrendous, worse than Gray Host.
Have they figured out why the last test was worse or are they just marching on with more additions to break it further?
Top of General.
They are considering one of two options.
Option 1: Vengeance and Grayhost, no other campaigns.
Option 2: Vengeance and no other campaigns.
Despite “wanting” Option 1, they have announced that they have given up on trying to fix Grayhost. That it is an impossible task, and are encouraging people to just play the permanent Vengeance campaign, confirming to everyone… that it was not just a test.
Almost like anyone with above room temp IQ could predict that Vengeance wasn't "only a test" from the start...feeling psychic.....😁
On a serious note. My guess is that Vengeance is most likely a preparation for future cross-play to allow older gen consoles to function when cross-play eventually happens. Vengeance has too much effort put into it to just be a simple "we wanna fix performance" project.
And anyone that can read between the lines will realise that option 1 isn't really an option. I don't see them having one campaign with 360 players, one campaign with 900 players, imperial city, battlegrounds and a new pvp mode. Even with crossplay there won't be enough of a population to support all different modes, assuming you want a decently pooulated PvP outside of events.
Oh great so they’re going to force changes on the PvP community which the majority do not want based on middling feedback from casual PvE players that only play reliably it there is a golden pursuit FOMOing them into doing it.
Performance on PS5 hasn’t been bad enough to warrant these changes since the server upgrade, and the performance in vengeance for me at least was actually worse than in grey host so I don’t believe them for a second that this is legitimately about performance issue.
I don’t buy for one second that population was higher in the third test than the regular baseline considering that a total of 10 people max were playing one of the alliances on PSEU and all servers reported struggling to get even one bar during the test. In fact immediately afterwards the day the test ended there was over 100 people on the leaderboard for that very same alliance. PvP players do not want to play vengeance, on the whole, and PvE/casual players will only jump in during an event or incentive like a golden pursuit. ZoS is just killing off a section of its community for 0 gain, yet again.
This is a problem. I know some people will say "oh but there is 3 of them and one of you. How can you expect to win?". My answer is the skill gap. This has always existed in ESO PVP, and is what enables outnumbered gameplay. In the current balance of vengeance, the skill ceiling is lowered dramatically and the skill floor is brought up similarly. This results in situations like the one above, where the skill gap is made meaningless. As a veteran player, it feels terrible to have all of your time and dedication be artificially made meaningless through balance like this.
Many of the people complaining bitterly about Vengeance run in ball or small man groups, and they found out that in Vengeance they died just like pugs. Without Crutch of Agony and Vapid death, plus 10 ultis etc etc in subclassed builds, they couldn't instantly round up a bunch of people and kill them, then do it again 8 seconds later for hours on end.
Without 25,000 hp heals per second, 12,000 shield per second, they found out they had no advantage as a group and any 12 pugs could kill them.
The fact is that Cyrodil has died a slow death largely due to the enormously over powered groups. ZOS has lost sight of game balance.
The math is something like this: a pug group generally has only a small bonus as a group, so 12 people = approximately a strength of n=12.This is an additive increase per player.
However, with the above changes to the game, ball groups power goes at least multiplicative and, arguably, exponentially.
So now 2 players in a group can have a strength of 2(2) = 4. A six man can have 6(2) = a power of 36, This is why you see well structured 6 man groups running around with dozens of players seemingly helpless. Of course with a 12 man 12(2) = 144, they are virtually immortal. With heals of shields they have something like 37,000 hp heals per second for the whole group.
Now an exponential claim may be overstating the group advantage as you scale up. It may only be multiplicative, eg (players) (x) where X is probably 4-5. So in the scenario some 12 man groups are as strong as 50-60 pugs.
I am all for build variety and subclassing. But group strength should not be multiplicative or exponential. It should be additive, ie a group, due to coordinated movement and strategy, as an advantage over a similar number of pugs. So a well run ball group should have 12+n, eg advantage,
This is actually the case in Vengeance and some of the old school groups with skill had a noticeable , but not hugely overpowered advantage.
Also skilled players like @React ran up 110 kills and zero deaths based on skill. They didnt like it because the skill cap was low, and a competent player could defend against them, but skill actually did play some role. If you add back subclassing and sets that boost the individual (not group in pvp) the skill cap could rise.
I am so sick , especially in lower pop later at night, of ball groups running around using Proc of agony every 8 seconds for hours at time. Every single group does this, (now even worse with broken Warden charm-- which they all use, of course). This is dead, broken, stale, boring game play that has now been the meta for at least 2 years, an eternity. Something needs to change.
BardokRedSnow wrote: »To be fair often times there’s nothing going on despite numbers because ahem, some factions refuse to move until the ballgroups do *cough* EP *cough*, in greyhost NA anyway.
People afraid to die or get tired of fighting four ballgroups because ZOS doesn’t wanna nerf heals for newcomers.
Four_Fingers wrote: »BardokRedSnow wrote: »To be fair often times there’s nothing going on despite numbers because ahem, some factions refuse to move until the ballgroups do *cough* EP *cough*, in greyhost NA anyway.
People afraid to die or get tired of fighting four ballgroups because ZOS doesn’t wanna nerf heals for newcomers.
You mean they wait for the ball groups do all the work of taking the ring keeps so the zergs can tag along.
This is a problem. I know some people will say "oh but there is 3 of them and one of you. How can you expect to win?". My answer is the skill gap. This has always existed in ESO PVP, and is what enables outnumbered gameplay. In the current balance of vengeance, the skill ceiling is lowered dramatically and the skill floor is brought up similarly. This results in situations like the one above, where the skill gap is made meaningless. As a veteran player, it feels terrible to have all of your time and dedication be artificially made meaningless through balance like this.
I have a serious question, how would fighting against 3 "unskilled players" spamming blockcast heals and, while not dying also not doing damage, be any different than fighting against 3 veteran players spamming heals and being unkillable? How is labeling them "low skill" even fair when they are clearly using their skills in a normal way? Because in the current state of the game, and probably for most of ESO history, you can't kill a player 1v1 of equal skill who is playing defensively. It's like blaming templars for being heal bots while NB and sorcs have their stealth and mobility.
Honestly I think ESO players become delusional. Being able to 1v5-10 fulfills a power fantasy that was caused by esoteric theorycrafting and takin advantage of new players. It should not be normal to 1xX any more than 3 people, and it isn't "normal" in any game I've ever played except ESO.
MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »licenturion wrote: »Many of the people complaining bitterly about Vengeance run in ball or small man groups, and they found out that in Vengeance they died just like pugs. Without Crutch of Agony and Vapid death, plus 10 ultis etc etc in subclassed builds, they couldn't instantly round up a bunch of people and kill them, then do it again 8 seconds later for hours on end.
...
I am so sick , especially in lower pop later at night, of ball groups running around using Proc of agony every 8 seconds for hours at time. Every single group does this, (now even worse with broken Warden charm-- which they all use, of course). This is dead, broken, stale, boring game play that has now been the meta for at least 2 years, an eternity. Something needs to change.
If PvP’ers think Vengeance should be cancelled because they are so afraid that the majority will switch to Vengeance, that only says they actually agree that Vengeance mode is better for the majority of players.
I have not ever seen anyone claiming that.
Only have seen people , me included WHITNESSED that vengeance is less played and populated then GH.
On PS EU while the last vengeance (and this is no joke) like 30 people participated.
As soon it was gone the server was populated, leaderboard full and for a short time even 3 bars each
katanagirl1 wrote: »I haven’t seen the post that this thread is referring to yet, but I am concerned about another Vengeance test because the last one had so few players and yet the performance was horrendous, worse than Gray Host.
Have they figured out why the last test was worse or are they just marching on with more additions to break it further?
This is a problem. I know some people will say "oh but there is 3 of them and one of you. How can you expect to win?". My answer is the skill gap. This has always existed in ESO PVP, and is what enables outnumbered gameplay. In the current balance of vengeance, the skill ceiling is lowered dramatically and the skill floor is brought up similarly. This results in situations like the one above, where the skill gap is made meaningless. As a veteran player, it feels terrible to have all of your time and dedication be artificially made meaningless through balance like this.
I have a serious question, how would fighting against 3 "unskilled players" spamming blockcast heals and, while not dying also not doing damage, be any different than fighting against 3 veteran players spamming heals and being unkillable? How is labeling them "low skill" even fair when they are clearly using their skills in a normal way? Because in the current state of the game, and probably for most of ESO history, you can't kill a player 1v1 of equal skill who is playing defensively. It's like blaming templars for being heal bots while NB and sorcs have their stealth and mobility.
Honestly I think ESO players become delusional. Being able to 1v5-10 fulfills a power fantasy that was caused by esoteric theorycrafting and takin advantage of new players. It should not be normal to 1xX any more than 3 people, and it isn't "normal" in any game I've ever played except ESO.
I think that this is an overblown reaction that lacks a lot of nuance. The Vengeance environment is far closer to a balanced and fun PvP experience than live Cyrodiil is.
Vengeance is closer to 2016 Cyro than it is to 2025 Cyro. The same 2016 Cyro the old PvP veterans who left the game long ago and pine for, but who say Vengeance is trash.
Of course, the reality of Cyro's history is very different: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/658524/the-glory-days-of-cyrodiil
This is a problem. I know some people will say "oh but there is 3 of them and one of you. How can you expect to win?". My answer is the skill gap. This has always existed in ESO PVP, and is what enables outnumbered gameplay. In the current balance of vengeance, the skill ceiling is lowered dramatically and the skill floor is brought up similarly. This results in situations like the one above, where the skill gap is made meaningless. As a veteran player, it feels terrible to have all of your time and dedication be artificially made meaningless through balance like this.
I have a serious question, how would fighting against 3 "unskilled players" spamming blockcast heals and, while not dying also not doing damage, be any different than fighting against 3 veteran players spamming heals and being unkillable? How is labeling them "low skill" even fair when they are clearly using their skills in a normal way? Because in the current state of the game, and probably for most of ESO history, you can't kill a player 1v1 of equal skill who is playing defensively. It's like blaming templars for being heal bots while NB and sorcs have their stealth and mobility.
Honestly I think ESO players become delusional. Being able to 1v5-10 fulfills a power fantasy that was caused by esoteric theorycrafting and takin advantage of new players. It should not be normal to 1xX any more than 3 people, and it isn't "normal" in any game I've ever played except ESO.
Oh great so they’re going to force changes on the PvP community which the majority do not want based on middling feedback from casual PvE players that only play reliably it there is a golden pursuit FOMOing them into doing it.
Performance on PS5 hasn’t been bad enough to warrant these changes since the server upgrade, and the performance in vengeance for me at least was actually worse than in grey host so I don’t believe them for a second that this is legitimately about performance issue.
I don’t buy for one second that population was higher in the third test than the regular baseline considering that a total of 10 people max were playing one of the alliances on PSEU and all servers reported struggling to get even one bar during the test. In fact immediately afterwards the day the test ended there was over 100 people on the leaderboard for that very same alliance. PvP players do not want to play vengeance, on the whole, and PvE/casual players will only jump in during an event or incentive like a golden pursuit. ZoS is just killing off a section of its community for 0 gain, yet again.
Agreed! They cannot convince me that the third test had 900 folks in there for NA ps. They can apply vengeance to PvE if they want to have their work go somewhere, but I do not like vengeance for PvP. I think many people have already told them to a dead horse, that AOE sets and the stacking healing uncapped is problematic and likely creating performance issues but the won’t look at that because these are all their creations. They won’t kill their baby convergence or VD… instead they’ll rather burn the house itself.
MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »licenturion wrote: »Many of the people complaining bitterly about Vengeance run in ball or small man groups, and they found out that in Vengeance they died just like pugs. Without Crutch of Agony and Vapid death, plus 10 ultis etc etc in subclassed builds, they couldn't instantly round up a bunch of people and kill them, then do it again 8 seconds later for hours on end.
...
I am so sick , especially in lower pop later at night, of ball groups running around using Proc of agony every 8 seconds for hours at time. Every single group does this, (now even worse with broken Warden charm-- which they all use, of course). This is dead, broken, stale, boring game play that has now been the meta for at least 2 years, an eternity. Something needs to change.
If PvP’ers think Vengeance should be cancelled because they are so afraid that the majority will switch to Vengeance, that only says they actually agree that Vengeance mode is better for the majority of players.
I have not ever seen anyone claiming that.
Only have seen people , me included WHITNESSED that vengeance is less played and populated then GH.
On PS EU while the last vengeance (and this is no joke) like 30 people participated.
As soon it was gone the server was populated, leaderboard full and for a short time even 3 bars each
That's what's confusing me. There is something very not right about the data ZOS is presenting about these vengeance tests. There may have been 900 players at one time during the first test, but the last test the population never went higher than about 50 players/faction. Maybe 10% of the PvP mains will play vengeance, and then they'll get bored and quit too.
ZOS is not being honest about these participation numbers. That's why the player number axis on those graphs is blurred out.
katanagirl1 wrote: »I haven’t seen the post that this thread is referring to yet, but I am concerned about another Vengeance test because the last one had so few players and yet the performance was horrendous, worse than Gray Host.
Have they figured out why the last test was worse or are they just marching on with more additions to break it further?
Exactly. ZOS is not presenting the data from the last iteration of vengeance. The population was WAY down from previous tests, and performance was roughly the same as normal live cyrodiil with more players.
I feel like we're being played with this vengeance effort.
MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »Only have seen people , me included WHITNESSED that vengeance is less played and populated then GH.
The player cap on Live is 360, and on Vengeance it's 900. 1 Bar on Vengeance is roughly the same as 3 bars on Live.
ZOS have posted graphs of the player numbers.
Respectfully and if you would be a pvp player you would acknowledge that; You can tell if there are 360 people running arround in cyrodiil, even in Vengeance
There are indicators for activity aside of the bars let me sum them up for you:
- Combat signs (being found on the map, looking like crossed swords, they have different sizes wich show if its a small or big battle)
- a active zone chat, as more people are online, as more chatty it is
- Objectives are getting targeted (In Cyrodiil the objective is to capture and hold keeps and outposts or ressources to gain points for the scoreboard, there are temples wich open by holding certain keeps, to capture and hold the name giving elderscrolls, what gives extra points and buffs)
- map flipping, with this it‘s meaned that the names keeps, outposts or ressources have the colour on the map of the alliance who have captured and are holding them.
If these stay stale in the same colour, it‘s a indicator nothing is going on, meaning nobody is online.
- last but not least the cyrodiil artifact spawning and not being picked up, well these can happen for certain reasons but its also one, when nobody is online to do it.
So unfortunatily, i dont take that statement quoted above to serious but good fun with graphs and numbers.
I heared the graphs showing the whiting wall progress were also well going.
Oh wait
This is a problem. I know some people will say "oh but there is 3 of them and one of you. How can you expect to win?". My answer is the skill gap. This has always existed in ESO PVP, and is what enables outnumbered gameplay. In the current balance of vengeance, the skill ceiling is lowered dramatically and the skill floor is brought up similarly. This results in situations like the one above, where the skill gap is made meaningless. As a veteran player, it feels terrible to have all of your time and dedication be artificially made meaningless through balance like this.
I have a serious question, how would fighting against 3 "unskilled players" spamming blockcast heals and, while not dying also not doing damage, be any different than fighting against 3 veteran players spamming heals and being unkillable? How is labeling them "low skill" even fair when they are clearly using their skills in a normal way? Because in the current state of the game, and probably for most of ESO history, you can't kill a player 1v1 of equal skill who is playing defensively. It's like blaming templars for being heal bots while NB and sorcs have their stealth and mobility.
Honestly I think ESO players become delusional. Being able to 1v5-10 fulfills a power fantasy that was caused by esoteric theorycrafting and takin advantage of new players. It should not be normal to 1xX any more than 3 people, and it isn't "normal" in any game I've ever played except ESO.
When you've played the game for as long as I have, its very easy to assess how efficient people are with using their abilities, managing their resources, weaving their core combat functions, etc. When this environment is enabling players with zero PVP experience to brainlessly survive players with 10k-20k hours of experience, while not managing their resources, utilizing block or roll properly, not even breaking free most of the time - there is clearly a balance issue between damage and healing. The combat system in eso SHOULD punish you for failing to properly counterplay things, and the ability to face-tank brainlessly through anything is what has led the live environment to the point where it is at now, where it is almost universally disliked.
You can argue that this is possible in the live environment too for inexperienced pvp players by playing tank or healer builds, and I'd agree with you. The difference is that in vengeance, these players have the EXACT same stats as you - but the healing values are simply too high to overcome. In the live environment, if those players were to play a damage oriented setup like the ones that most efficient solo players use, they'd get folded instantly due to the inability to properly interact with the combat system.
It really isn't that hard to understand and has nothing to do with delusion. The environment is poorly balanced and needs to be addressed if it is expected to have any longevity. Nearly every single veteran I've seen advocate for vengeance agrees that the balance in the most recent iterations is far too much in favor of healing and grouping in general.