Before I get into the details, I should note that I find fighting in Cyrodiil to be very enjoyable, and care very much for the overall health of the game in both PvE and PvP. Not everything is perfect, and there are definitely some parts that could do with improvements, tweaks, or just plain removal. However, many posts on these forums and complaints I see in-game regarding balance stem from one of four roots, which will always continue the spiral of discontent since nothing will ever please everybody.

1. Group-Focus Maneuvers

The nature of PvP in ESO encourages medium- to large-group play for the majority of the war. This is nothing new. "Zerg vs. Zerg" is to be expected when you have such a high quantity of players fighting. On paper, 24 vs. 24 seems like a fair and balanced fight. In practice, this is hardly the case. Players, especially those new to the environment, gravitate toward whoever they see being attacked to aid the fight as best they can. So, rather than 24 players' attacks being distributed across ±18 players, oftentimes the firepower is turned on 7 or 8 players. It doesn't matter how good the healers of the group are, if a player with 23,000 health starts receiving 22,000 damage per second, that player is as good as dead. This effect is more pronounced when dealing with organized groups on voice channels, as then the entire raid's focus tends to go to one target at a time.

Resulting from this magnification of damage comes the appeal of the mega-tank builds: the ability to withstand an entire raid's abuse while dealing a minimal amount of offense. Now some players, healers in particular, are able to keep their group members standing while another group doles out their moves on this now-invincible tank. As more and more players adapt a turtle-mode method of play, more damage dealers sacrifice defense in order to invest more into damage, resulting in the famed "glass-cannon" builds. With a few of them, the most sturdy of tank builds crumble before the sheer force of the combined effort.

2. Uncompromising players

Some tanks begin to say that they want a way to fight back against the opposition while keeping their rigidity, seeming to forget that they had to give up most of their offense to push more into defense. Alternatively, glass cannons that get focused on in group play or are outnumbered in the open world, and die, say that they want a way to defend while keeping their damage output. These are both cases of players that want the best of both worlds without having to give up on what they can already do. Of course, it's common sense from a balance point to not have this as an available option, but there are those that insist (and also those that provide).

3. "I would have won if..."

I have no problem admitting that I'm guilty of having this mentality a multitude of times when the reality is the defeat was inevitable. If you are not familiar with it:

• Player gets into fight.
• Player loses fight.
• Player sees loss as unjustified.
• Player thinks a different scenario would have resulted in a victory.

There are instances where it is true, such as "I would have won if they didn't dodge that execute." or "I would have beaten them if 13 of their teammates didn't come running around the corner." A lot of the time, the recipient was outplayed by a more skilled player. Unfortunately, some cases are due in part to genuinely unbalanced aspects of the game, so the "nerf this/buff that" comments that come about from unhappy players that lost to a more skilled player get mixed together with the "nerf this/buff that" comments addressing the actual issues with the game, and there's no way to filter which one is which.

4. The "Oddjob Effect"



If you ever grew up playing Goldeneye 64 multiplayer, you're already super familiar with the totally-unfair Oddjob, no "maybe" about it. Much frustration came about by this little fellow for one simple reason: he was short. He was a short man with a short hitbox in a game where being able to point the camera along the Y-axis while shooting was almost worthy of an Olympic medal. House rules virtually everywhere dictated that he was not to be used, lest ye be seen as a friend worth naught.

Those who did use him were the types who wanted to win at any cost, regardless of the method. If a mechanic is broken/overpowered, no matter how cheap it may be to use it, you can bet they will be including it in their arsenal, resulting in what I like to call the "Oddjob Effect", a collection of players that intentionally use these tactics to come out on top. Some may say "If you don't use this thing that gives you an obvious advantage, you're just gimping yourself. L2P." That may be true in some cases (using white non-set items instead of improved and enchanted set items), but there comes a point where a player has to acknowledge that they are using features in a game that are resulting in unintended, unpleasant, and imbalanced conclusions. With a game as big as ESO is, I know there's no way unspoken rules are going to catch on every patch. A few times you'll see people getting scorned for using specific setups, but there's nothing consequential to them as a player. Some randoms see them as cheap, who cares? They're still winning.

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Why did I make this post? I felt the need to outline a few thoughts I've been having regarding the way some people are behaving and why this eternal strive for "perfect balance" is in vain. There is no "separate but equal" totality to reach. There will always be players that refuse to acknowledge that they are the problem they are complaining about, ones that want their corner of the game brought up to their standards with a disregard for the parts they neglect/ignore, and those who want to win at all costs. Competition isn't about winning at all costs, or every sport would be the same gameplay, with a different ball and goal.