PVP Has plenty of issues such as: Heavy lags, Imbalance and such. Some of those issues were fixed, but not in the right way(Band-aid Fixes). Plenty of the issues in PVP happened after the introduction of patch 1.6. Allow me to explain the issues and their proper fixes.

1. Large Groups: Introducing the Static Ultimate system and removing the old Dynamic system, in addition to Introducing AOE Caps, both encouraged very large groups to form all around the cyrodiil campaigns, resulting in massive lags to the popular PVP campaigns. (Dynamic Ultimate and AOE Caps will be explained below)

2. Damage Shields: Removing the "Soft Caps" system from the game (Will be explained below) and introducing the Champion Point system caused shields to become as powerful as they are now, some would say overpowered. The Soft Caps Removal was the main problem, since it limited how much a player could invest into one stat, and instead forced you to spread out the stats for maximum effectiveness, therefor shields weren't nearly as spam-able nor as high as they are now.

3. Soft Caps: The Soft Cap system meant that every stat a player had, such as resistances, Health/Magicka/Stamina, the regeneration of those stats, spell/weapon damage had a certain cap, called a soft cap. Upping a stat beyond the soft cap caused the extra bonus to be 50 % as effective. for example: Adding 500 Magicka beyond the soft cap, would actually give you only 250 more magicka instead of 500. Removing the cap allowed players to get extremely high Regeneration, max stats, Spell/weapon damage, etc, resulting in massive damage output, huge regeneration and magicka/stamina/health pools. This created plenty of problems, such as shields, shield stacking, huge heals, massive damage, and endless resources if the player is building properly.

4. Dynamic Ultimate Regeneration: The Dynamic Ultimate system meant that ultimate will only be gained from your damage output(heals/damage/critical hits). basically you could not gain ultimate if you weren't doing anything. The new Static ultimate system only requires you to hit someone with a light attack for the ultimate to regenerate by 3 each second for 10 seconds(I might be wrong about the 10 seconds). Removing this old system made solo players and small groups weaker, and the large groups a lot stronger, since the the smaller a group is, the more ultimate they can get from dynamic ultimate since there are more targets to hit, as opposed to large groups, who have less targets to hit, rewarding them with less ultimate.

5. AOE Caps: The AOE caps mean that that hitting a group of people of more than 6, will gradually lower the AOE Damage of a player by more and more. Introducing this new system to the game also helped larger groups become a lot more popular, larger and stronger, resulting in massive server lag, and imbalance.


Here are the "Band-aid" Fixes that are here to replace issues that were created since the introduction of patch 1.6, and also the Imperial city patch months later:

1. Dodge-roll Fatigue: This debuff was introduced to the game in the Imperial City patch. The Debuff means that every consecutive dodge roll would cost 33% more than the previous one within 5 seconds, Stacking endlessly. This is one of the bandaid fixes to Permanent dodge-rolling which was a major issue before the Imperial city patch, and did not exist before patch 1.6 due to the "Soft Caps" system, even without a fatigue, because regeneration and max stamina were limited.

2. Shield stacking: This issue also got a band-aid fix: The introduction of the "Shield Breaker" set(which is only good for stamina builds). every light attack deals over 2,000 Unresist-able damage to players with any kind of damage shield. So light attacking endlessly against a Magicka sorcerer for example would render their shields useless, a class that heavily relies on its shields to survive. Before the champion points, and before the removal of soft caps, shields weren't nearly as spam-able, and weren't strong.

3. Killing Big Groups: Before patch 1.6 large groups complained about getting defeated by smaller groups, since there were no AOE Caps, and dynamic ultimate was benefiting small groups more than larger ones. So a well played small group going against a non-well played large group would usually end in the small group winning. In patch 1.6 Zenimax instantly introduced the Alliance war skill "Magicka Detonation" to help take down larger groups, which is considered a band-aid fix(putting aside that the skill also highly benefited large groups and is Magicka based). In addition to that, the "Vicious Death" set that will be introduced to the game when the "Thieves Guild" DLC will arrive to the live servers, is also a band-aid fix, trying to help smaller groups beat larger groups, instead of just removing the AOE Caps and reintroducing Dynamic Ultimate.

4. Bolt Escape Fatigue: similarly to the Dodge-roll Fatigue, the Bolt Escape(Sorcerer's Teleportation Ability) fatigue is another band-aid fix to the issue where sorcerers were permanently teleporting and covering huge distances for a very low magicka cost. Before the new fatigue was introduced, Bolt escape would only cost 50% more than the first cast, if casted within 4 seconds. The new fatigue will make every consecutive bolt escape cost 50% more if casted withing 4 seconds, stacking infinitely. Before the Champion point system and the removal of Soft caps this wasn't an issue, since overcasting abilities(any ability) would cause you to lose your resources. In today's game, it's extremely hard to run out of resources with a proper PVP build.

5. The new "Battle Spirit" Buff: The new Battle spirit buff meant that all damage taken in cyrodiil was reduced by 50%, as opposed to the older buff, which was 20%. Also caused healing taken to be reduced by 50%, and Damage shields to be reduced by 50% This was changed to deal with the high damage, high healing, and high damage shields, that resulted from introducing Champion points and removing softcaps. the new buffs affected low damage classes the most, and rendered health based abilities close to useless, such as 'Dragon's Blood", "Sun Shield", "Obsidian Shield" etc. Another fix that is considered a "Band-aid Fix".

I won't go over all of the Band-aid fixes, I just want to try and share my opinion about PVP and how it should be, and that in my opinion, and also many others, the PVP before patch 1.6 was the best.

Zenimax, this question is for you.
Why are you afraid to revisit Pre-1.6? Changing back most of the things I mentioned will fix plenty of the problems, such as lags, imbalance, skillful game-play, Shield stacking, Excessive damage and more. Please stop trying to fix pvp this way, and listen to your players-base.
If soft caps will affect PVE, then only implement them in PVP.
If Dynamic ulti will affect PVE, Implement it only in PVP
If removing AOE caps will make PVE Mobs die too fast, either buff the mobs, or just don't remove the AOE caps from PVE areas, and if removing the cap completely is to much, increase it instead.
Changing to battle spirit buff to it's older version, will balance out the rest of the issues.

Changing these things back to what they were will not take long, and will be the easiest and best fix. If you do choose to make those changes, you can retry to make pvp better from that point.

I love this game, and want it to be successful, and so do thousands of other players.