AvA in ESO (NA) is on its deathbed

Aoe_Barbecue · December 2014

The only populated AvA server on NA -- Thornblade -- is at two-bar DC, two-bar AD, and pop-lock (though likely barely) for EP. It is only a matter of time before the DC and AD start disappearing, and the EP will follow soon after when there is nothing left to fight. If what I and others observe is true, then this fate will befall soon, perhaps before 1.6 even goes live on PTS.

As someone that has AvA'd primarily since beta and early release, I have a few comments.

First, the FPS drop bug introduced with the shadows and lighting patch turned ESO into a terminal patient. The game hemorrhaged population at that point and it took weeks to fix. The bug was utterly game breaking for most and when it became clear that it was an issue there should have been some sort of rollback immediately.

Second, after the FPS drop issue was fixed, performance in Cyrodiil continued to cause PvP population bleeding. Massive "zerg balls" were and are the default organization of players in Cyrodiil (two or more full groups stacked very closely, using primarily AoE attacks) due to AoE caps allowing larger numbers to "hide" players versus smaller numbers. The lag in Cyrodiil was caused by large groups in one place all spamming many abilities. I am not sure if upgrading the servers was even a financial option for ZoS; in this instance, they should have immediately started working on game changes that made the zerg ball meta fail.

Third, the above two points suggest to me and many other hardcore AvA-oriented players that ZoS does not prioritize Cyrodiil. This is possibly a supply and demand kind of issue; perhaps many more players play PvE? But as someone who plays this game primarily for AvA, there are many issues that seem they could have and should have been fixed sooner.

I think I'll play this game until the AvA fully dies. I think that's going to be soon. Afterwards ... well I suppose I'll have to find a new game.

Thoughts?

Sinbaar · December 2014

Hm...on EU Azura and Thornblade are usually full...but yeah, the Perfomance Issues are really...well...you know^^
They really should think about that...

briandivisionb16_ESO · December 2014

Cyrodiil is too tame. It's become repetitive due to little reward
The blue boxes and gear vendors were a step in right direction

Aoe_Barbecue · December 2014

Sinbaar wrote: »

Hm...on EU Azura and Thornblade are usually full...but yeah, the Perfomance Issues are really...well...you know^^
They really should think about that...

Interesting, so EU is still pretty active huh? I might have to reroll and play on EU then. I wish there were a way to transfer characters ...

Sinbaar · December 2014

Yeah totally..Thornblade is locked usually during late Afternoon. in the Evenings you usually have queues (last time i wanted to go there i had a queue of arround 95)

Azura is full at least at the Weekends - during the Week it's quite okay though. You always find groups there...

riverdragon72 · December 2014

I have less than zero ambition to go in and face the red zerg blob.

TheBull · December 2014

Aoe_Barbecue wrote: »

The only populated AvA server on NA -- Thornblade -- is at two-bar DC, two-bar AD, and pop-lock (though likely barely) for EP. It is only a matter of time before the DC and AD start disappearing, and the EP will follow soon after when there is nothing left to fight. If what I and others observe is true, then this fate will befall soon, perhaps before 1.6 even goes live on PTS.

As someone that has AvA'd primarily since beta and early release, I have a few comments.

First, the FPS drop bug introduced with the shadows and lighting patch turned ESO into a terminal patient. The game hemorrhaged population at that point and it took weeks to fix. The bug was utterly game breaking for most and when it became clear that it was an issue there should have been some sort of rollback immediately.

Second, after the FPS drop issue was fixed, performance in Cyrodiil continued to cause PvP population bleeding. Massive "zerg balls" were and are the default organization of players in Cyrodiil (two or more full groups stacked very closely, using primarily AoE attacks) due to AoE caps allowing larger numbers to "hide" players versus smaller numbers. The lag in Cyrodiil was caused by large groups in one place all spamming many abilities. I am not sure if upgrading the servers was even a financial option for ZoS; in this instance, they should have immediately started working on game changes that made the zerg ball meta fail.

Third, the above two points suggest to me and many other hardcore AvA-oriented players that ZoS does not prioritize Cyrodiil. This is possibly a supply and demand kind of issue; perhaps many more players play PvE? But as someone who plays this game primarily for AvA, there are many issues that seem they could have and should have been fixed sooner.

I think I'll play this game until the AvA fully dies. I think that's going to be soon. Afterwards ... well I suppose I'll have to find a new game.

Thoughts?

It's been a rough day man. On a lot of fronts.

firstdecan · December 2014

PvP has been dying for a while. I've also been playing since beta, and it was my favorite part of the game (until it wasn't).

There were so many issues with PvP I decided to concentrate on making alts until those issues were reasonably fixed, so I would have a choice of characters to play. I'm probably not the only person who did this, thus the increasingly low numbers in Cyrodiil.

Cyrodiil has been interesting, it's always been dominated by OP builds (which have since been fixed) or exploiters of one kind or another. It's never been a place friendly to people who just want to play the game. I've enjoyed Cyrodiil, some of the best times in this game I've had were in 3 way battles over a single keep where ground was taken and lost inches at a time, but those times are few and far between. It's mostly been joining a zerg and trampling anyone in the zerg path, getting owned by exploiters, or having nothing to do because groups didn't want to pick up pugs.

Cyrodiil has also never been a place to be able to level your characters. You had to do PvE in order to get your toon to max level, then it made sense to do Cyrodiil with your high level gear. Now that they've nerfed grinding, people have to spend more time leveling their characters and are probably getting bored before they even get to Cyrodiil (Yes, I know you can get in at level 10, but who wants to try to be competitive with an underpowered character).

I think Zeni is placing all of their balancing hopes for the game on the champion system, and isn't going to do anything major to address other issues until that is completely rolled out. They will have an interesting time seeing how well it works in PvP, since they have less than 2000 people providing them in game data (the population of a campaign, and there's only 1 real campaign running).

Shortly after release, there were four or five highly populated campaigns in PvP, now they can barely keep 1 going. Seeing as how PvP was their answer to end game content, this should be indicative of how well they have been attracting players. I'm sure some end game players are doing DSA or Trials over and over again, but even those can only be interesting for so long.

I've been rambling for a bit, but my thoughts are this: The game is losing players overall, PvP is dying, and Zeni is looking to the champion system as a basis for a reboot of the game. Once that is rolled out they *may* look to improving PvP to give it more options \ make it more interesting. I hope it works well, I love TES games and want this to be a great game.

hammer_fella · December 2014

I don't normally like doom and gloom threads, but it's hard for me to disagree with this one. Others might point to different causes for the decline (certainly Cyrodiil has its share of problems), but I personally feel that the reduction in the number campaigns is at the root of it. Did they solve emperor farming? Yes and no... but really, I think all that was accomplished was forcing everyone into one overcrowded arena. Only the most hardcore and dedicated PvPers have any real role to play in this arena. And so, surprise surprise, population had diminished overall.

Whatever the case may be, I know I used to need convincing to leave Cyrodiil -- it was that fun for me. I'd check in at odd hours to make sure we weren't losing our hard-earned spoils. Now I can't suffer more than 15 minutes before the experience becomes decidedly unpleasant. I'd rather do almost anything else in ESO at this point. It's all the more depressing because I believe the rest of the game is getting incrementally better; sadly, I can't say the same for PvP.

aco5712 · December 2014

the recent night capping and population imbalance has really taken its toll aswell. Last night i logged in to see it all red and i legit could not even be bothered to gank or kill anyone. Im so glad i didnt really do any PvE trails so now i have something to do for a week or two. (exact reason why i never did them). PvP is unplayable and not that much fun anymore.

TheBull · December 2014

I took a 25 day break 2 months ago. It helped. The last campaign felt good.

Here's my issue. I play hard. I try to win everyday for DC. Hard earned success feels really good. It feels even worse though when that hard earned success is cheesed away.

Cheesed away by night capping. Cheesed away by a group of people standing in a corner trying to lag the server. Cheesed away by improperly functioning skills. Cheesed away by a person or people who could careless if we succeed or not.

The cheese is out of my control yet it effects success far too often. It's a downer. It's even demoralizing at times.

Aoe_Barbecue · December 2014

riverdragon72 wrote: »

I have less than zero ambition to go in and face the red zerg blob.

PvPing on DC NA on the active servers has almost always been about which faction is outnumbering you, forcing you to a certain level of play and cleverness. (Save Bloodthorn and Chillrend, though perhaps these remained blue buff servers because AD couldn't be bothered to keep them, only to occasionally attack them.) This isn't a thread complaining about night capping. I, and those I play with, have dealt with it and even overcome it. It's about more fundamental things than player choices and demographics: it's about the game and why it's now practically designed to bleed players.

I really like this game. But I am finding less reason every day to like it. Soon, all of my reasons will disappear. I think this might be the case for a lot of people. If ZoS means to keep those players, they should be giving us reasons to stay, not appeasing the community's whining with responsive patches. If this were the case, the issues I mentioned would have been addressed sooner and better.

If ZoS had eaten humble pie and rolled back the game version after the lightning patch, the landscape of ESO would be much different. And 1.6 is two months away and I have severe doubts that it will be implemented smoothly. (Most patches in most games don't go over perfectly; but to a dying game every bug might be the final cut.)

briandivisionb16_ESO · December 2014

Wish Sage'd keep his promise about increasing AoE

Knootewoot · December 2014

Aoe_Barbecue wrote: »

Sinbaar wrote: »

Hm...on EU Azura and Thornblade are usually full...but yeah, the Perfomance Issues are really...well...you know^^
They really should think about that...

Interesting, so EU is still pretty active huh? I might have to reroll and play on EU then. I wish there were a way to transfer characters ...

Thornblade EU has some nice action when i am on. Sadly it has much lag problems. And it wasn't me. Everyone os TS was talking about it and so was it in chat. Also other faction (my wife plays other faction then me) experienced it.

Aoe_Barbecue · December 2014

I think whoever makes the executive development decisions at ZoS is making really bad ones, in all honesty.

Artis · December 2014

I thought PvP without camps was more fun, no? Looks like players voted with their online

Aoe_Barbecue · December 2014

PvP was most certainly better without camps. Death was at worst a temporary annoyance and at best actually a boon because you could die and respawn with full resources! The game's performance issues are what is bleeding it out in AvA. I'm not really in the PvE social circle so I don't know, maybe that part of the game is flourshing.

Zed · December 2014

aco5712 wrote: »

the recent night capping and population imbalance has really taken its toll aswell

Those go hand-in-hand, don't they. A healthy, balanced population can stop pushes like what red did recently or what yellow has been able to do in the past. "Night capping" is just Oceanic / Asian players doing their thing and if that population was balanced, "night capping" wouldn't be a problem.

As a solution to population balance issues, I'd suggest reducing the number available campaigns but because server performance during NA prime time is already pretty terrible, it's a bad idea. I think that before addressing population issues, Zenimax needs to fix the lag and performance issues that plague Cyrodiil. Otherwise, population is a moot point.

EDIT: Inb4 move to Alliance War section.

AssaultLemming · December 2014

Massive battles over keeps with quick respawn times was the only fun I ever really found in PvP. The long run times now combined with the total lack of rewards I just don't see an incentive to go and play horse simulator in cyro at all. If I get tired of pve I find myself playing other games instead of going to PvP now and I don't really see that changing without the introduction of some better pvp rewards.

JaJaLuka · December 2014

Aoe_Barbecue wrote: »

The only populated AvA server on NA -- Thornblade -- is at two-bar DC, two-bar AD, and pop-lock (though likely barely) for EP. It is only a matter of time before the DC and AD start disappearing, and the EP will follow soon after when there is nothing left to fight. If what I and others observe is true, then this fate will befall soon, perhaps before 1.6 even goes live on PTS.

As someone that has AvA'd primarily since beta and early release, I have a few comments.

First, the FPS drop bug introduced with the shadows and lighting patch turned ESO into a terminal patient. The game hemorrhaged population at that point and it took weeks to fix. The bug was utterly game breaking for most and when it became clear that it was an issue there should have been some sort of rollback immediately.

Second, after the FPS drop issue was fixed, performance in Cyrodiil continued to cause PvP population bleeding. Massive "zerg balls" were and are the default organization of players in Cyrodiil (two or more full groups stacked very closely, using primarily AoE attacks) due to AoE caps allowing larger numbers to "hide" players versus smaller numbers. The lag in Cyrodiil was caused by large groups in one place all spamming many abilities. I am not sure if upgrading the servers was even a financial option for ZoS; in this instance, they should have immediately started working on game changes that made the zerg ball meta fail.

Third, the above two points suggest to me and many other hardcore AvA-oriented players that ZoS does not prioritize Cyrodiil. This is possibly a supply and demand kind of issue; perhaps many more players play PvE? But as someone who plays this game primarily for AvA, there are many issues that seem they could have and should have been fixed sooner.

I think I'll play this game until the AvA fully dies. I think that's going to be soon. Afterwards ... well I suppose I'll have to find a new game.

Thoughts?

Dragon Age: Inquisition is pretty good

TehMagnus · December 2014

My main problem with PVP (besides of the lag & all the issues & the dull zerging gamestyle) is that it lacks flavor

World is mostly empty besides of few small towns and some camps. You're almost always fighting for the same keeps in the inner circle and your home keeps unless your alliance is in "conquer" mode...

Once you conquered it all, then it's just start over again for the same thing. Same thing over and over again. Merchants in keeps aren't really used. Most of the general population has little to none interest for going into Cyrodill, there is no real impact on the world except for the PVP buffs. PVP just fees like rince & repeat which for me got old very fast.

In AIon, there are random portals in the world where a limited group can enter them and do incursions into enemy territory with quests to fulfill but you have to stay quiet because if you make too much noise then people come to hunt you down. That was exciting, thrilling non scripted, never the same experience, never the same encounters. If TESO could implement something unknown then it would be awesome...

Adding a PVE faction in PVP like Aion has, could also be a nice addition to the game, forcing people to fight hundreds of Daedra that are pushing for a fort and then trying to get back the fort from the Daedra, but oh damn, AD decided it was the perfect time to attack as well and take the fort for themselves which ends up in a 3 way fight, but then the smurfs where also there, waiting for the AD/EP and Daedra to fight each other before breaking a hole into the North wall and quickly capturing the keep...

Unscripted sutff..

This one thinks that lag and FPS issues is just the top of the issues iceberg...

.

kevlarto_ESO · December 2014

I wonder with the general consensus, there will be nothing new for pvp until sometime around April, that a lot of folks are taking a break maybe, I am on the fence about the April thing not my conclusions but it could be about right maybe.

GreyBrow · December 2014

Aoe_Barbecue wrote: »

PvP was most certainly better without camps. Death was at worst a temporary annoyance and at best actually a boon because you could die and respawn with full resources! The game's performance issues are what is bleeding it out in AvA. I'm not really in the PvE social circle so I don't know, maybe that part of the game is flourshing.

Unfortunately, PvE is also bleeding characters. Other than revolving door Noob/pug guilds with 500 people who recruit in zone and will take anyone, most of the end game oriented, serious raiding guilds are at 20-25% activity on scheduled raid nights. If you look at the rosters of most of these guilds, and scroll about halfway down, you start to see "Last online 1 month ago" and "Last online 2 months ago".

This is a pretty ominous sign when serious players with 50+ days of ingame time call it quits.

The WoW update stole a bunch of people. It's pathetic that zenimax had absolutely no response to this. I was praying that the imperial city, justice system, or champion system would be released in time to prevent a massive exodus of players, but alas, no one at ZOS has that much common sense.

When they failed to even try to compete against the WoW release, I held out hope that they were faking a retreat so that they could come back at full strength and release a BIG patch right before christmas to draw players back, and hopefully boost christmas sales.

So far, it looks like they're planning to miss the boat again, and will release the updates in january... after gamers have already blown their christmas cash on other games, and gotten hooked on WoWcrack or the new CoD or whatever.

Anyone who claims that ESO isn't dying hasn't been playing long enough. Sure, the early zones are revolving doors of players buying the game, realizing that its boring, broken, and not at all fun, and then quitting, but if you go to any of the VR1-10 zones, they're ghost towns. Not a single soul, much less enough players to overflow into a second instance like the good old days.

If you want to see this first hand, go to the most populated zone in your faction (For AD, it's Reapers March) and hang out there for a few hours for a couple of nights. You'll start to recognize the big names, the 3-4 end game guilds in each faction with about 30-60 active players per guild.

Eventually, what you come to realize as you travel in and out of the zone, in and out of the bank, relogg, and everything else, is that everytime you come back to the town, you're in the same instance that you were in before you left.

Anyone with common sense should be able to deduce that since you're seeing the same 50-100 names over and over, there aren't even enough people to fill two separate instances in the most populated zone in your faction.

Combine this with the PvP campaigns, and I would give ESO a generous estimate of having about 6000 active players per faction.

As for the number of subscribers... well who can say how many people they scammed into paying for 6 months worth of subscription time.

The state of affairs is really terrible, actually, which is so disappointing to those of us who genuinely want the game to thrive. It would be a terrible shame to see all the end game player's hard work go to crap and become worthless because this game keeps hemorrhaging even the most hardened dedicated gamers.

Dekkameron · December 2014

TheBull wrote: »

I took a 25 day break 2 months ago. It helped. The last campaign felt good.

Here's my issue. I play hard. I try to win everyday for DC. Hard earned success feels really good. It feels even worse though when that hard earned success is cheesed away.

Cheesed away by night capping. Cheesed away by a group of people standing in a corner trying to lag the server. Cheesed away by improperly functioning skills. Cheesed away by a person or people who could careless if we succeed or not.

The cheese is out of my control yet it effects success far too often. It's a downer. It's even demoralizing at times.

Are you Sheogorath? ^^

Razzak · December 2014

GreyBrow wrote: »

...

Anyone who claims that ESO isn't dying hasn't been playing long enough. Sure, the early zones are revolving doors of players buying the game, realizing that its boring, broken, and not at all fun, and then quitting, but if you go to any of the VR1-10 zones, they're ghost towns. Not a single soul, much less enough players to overflow into a second instance like the good old days.

If you want to see this first hand, go to the most populated zone in your faction (For AD, it's Reapers March) and hang out there for a few hours for a couple of nights. You'll start to recognize the big names, the 3-4 end game guilds in each faction with about 30-60 active players per guild.

Eventually, what you come to realize as you travel in and out of the zone, in and out of the bank, relogg, and everything else, is that everytime you come back to the town, you're in the same instance that you were in before you left.

Anyone with common sense should be able to deduce that since you're seeing the same 50-100 names over and over, there aren't even enough people to fill two separate instances in the most populated zone in your faction.

...

This is one of the most disturbing facts about ESO. I was hoping their mega server would solve this, but it looks like any other MMO with different servers and low population. Empty.
Starting areas and Craglorn still have some life in them, 10-50 are almost empty and Vet level zones make you feel like you are playing single player game.

Where are the benefits to playing on mega server? Compared to other games with many different servers, ESO doesn't feel any better. Why?

TheBull · December 2014

Dekkameron wrote: »

TheBull wrote: »

I took a 25 day break 2 months ago. It helped. The last campaign felt good.

Here's my issue. I play hard. I try to win everyday for DC. Hard earned success feels really good. It feels even worse though when that hard earned success is cheesed away.

Cheesed away by night capping. Cheesed away by a group of people standing in a corner trying to lag the server. Cheesed away by improperly functioning skills. Cheesed away by a person or people who could careless if we succeed or not.

The cheese is out of my control yet it effects success far too often. It's a downer. It's even demoralizing at times.

Are you Sheogorath? ^^

It was skeevers all along, smh, smh.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO · December 2014

The mega server idea works well at large scales, because it handles a high population by dynamically splitting people into several instances. It has been a while since I saw a busy area, but at launch the mega server worked fine to keep the starter zones from becoming overcrowded.

A mega server is also good at making zones look reasonably active even with a declining population, but only to a certain point. When the total number of worldwide players in a zone drops low enough, you will never see more than a few people around you, and the game will feel empty. It is now becoming obvious that many zones are really short on players. I hope this is just a temporary drop while people are waiting for the Champion System to be implemented, and not a mass exodus.

RinaldoGandolphi · December 2014

I will say, last night on NA Thorn was pretty disheartening. 2 bars for AD and DC, EP pop locked and an all red map.

As it stood EP had enough pop to fight both other factions at the same time and hang on. When I went to bed, AD and DC were both attacking glademist I think, not sure if they won or not...the way the pops are now it just may be the beginning of the end.

I spent my time last night ganking EP at my home gate around Rayles with 3 others, the rest of the map was red. Not much else one could do.

SoulScream · December 2014

Yep pop way down last night. I like the game still but I haven't been playing as much. The large ep zergs make lag and I'm just not interested.

Thechemicals · December 2014

I would suggest finding a new game op. You can return when they offer imperial city and the justice system; a place where you can function as a small and medium scale pvp unit and be successfull and happy.

Sallington · December 2014

Agreed on all points. I basically bought this game for the AvA, but just cancelled my sub a couple days ago and am just leveling an alt until my time runs out.

Everything from turning the whole map a certain color overnight, the zerg ball meta, cutting my FPS to 1/4 of what it normally is, lack of attention or updates from devs just made me lose interest.