The lack of rank tiers is killing the battlegrounds

Surgee · January 2018

I and my friends love small scale PVP battles and we were very excited about the battlegrounds when it came out. However, the population of the BGs dropped so fast that the waiting time to get a match is 30 mins+ (xbox one eu). I believe this is mainly caused by the most worthless matchmaking system ever and lack of any tiers. Less skilled players or the ones that don't like to run the new cancer builds, get paired all the time against the ultimate meta teams. There's nothing more frustrating than that. It makes players quit the BG's very fast and never come back. As a result, we now have the super long queues and a guaranteed match against meta teams (since they're the only ones still playing BGs).

I believe ZOS should focus on proper matchmaking with ranks instead of adding new BG maps. WoW had it right. I remember being in a fairly mediocre arena team in WoW and we were always matched against other mediocre teams with similar rank, and it was lots of fun and allowed us to learn with every next game. The only thing I've learned from the ESO bg's is - run the meta or RUN!

Just a reminder, I have no idea what's the situation with BG's on ps4 and pc but I'm sure ranking system would help a lot. Some say that population is too low to divide people into ranks - if that won't be done, soon there will be no people to divide anyway, ESO is already hardcore enough and new and less skilled players are overwhelmed and quit. It's better to wait few minutes longer for a fair match than get a quick one and stand no chance. So many competitive games do it right, ESO should try too.

SshadowSscale · January 2018

Meta is a problem yes but what also caused a lot of people to quit battlegrounds where when they changed them to cp enabled wich ment that if you don't have max cp your not gonna be able to do much for example a cp 200 is not going to fair well against a cp 690 so a lot of the lower cp lvl players quit because it wasn't fun for them to not stand a chance but at least in update 17 non cp battlegounds are coming back

Surgee · January 2018

SshadowSscale wrote: »

Meta is a problem yes but what also caused a lot of people to quit battlegrounds where when they changed them to cp enabled wich ment that if you don't have max cp your not gonna be able to do much for example a cp 200 is not going to fair well against a cp 690 so a lot of the lower cp lvl players quit because it wasn't fun for them to not stand a chance but at least in update 17 non cp battlegounds are coming back

That's true, but also this problem would be fixed with the proper ranking system. A good 690cp player will not get matched against a lower cp player (because his rank in general probably would be lower) if the rank system will be implemented. I'm afraid non CP battlegrounds is not a solution because people adjust their gear to match the CP benefits. It probably will be as empty as non cp campaign in cyrodil.

zParallaxz · January 2018

SshadowSscale wrote: »

Meta is a problem yes but what also caused a lot of people to quit battlegrounds where when they changed them to cp enabled wich ment that if you don't have max cp your not gonna be able to do much for example a cp 200 is not going to fair well against a cp 690 so a lot of the lower cp lvl players quit because it wasn't fun for them to not stand a chance but at least in update 17 non cp battlegounds are coming back

That’s the thing, even without cp involved those same low levels are getting smacked.
Taking cp out a bgs will either increase the amount of bad players in the que or decrease the amount of people in bgs who don’t want to fight pugs.

Nelson_Rebel · January 2018

Surgee wrote: »

SshadowSscale wrote: »

Meta is a problem yes but what also caused a lot of people to quit battlegrounds where when they changed them to cp enabled wich ment that if you don't have max cp your not gonna be able to do much for example a cp 200 is not going to fair well against a cp 690 so a lot of the lower cp lvl players quit because it wasn't fun for them to not stand a chance but at least in update 17 non cp battlegounds are coming back

That's true, but also this problem would be fixed with the proper ranking system. A good 690cp player will not get matched against a lower cp player (because his rank in general probably would be lower) if the rank system will be implemented. I'm afraid non CP battlegrounds is not a solution because people adjust their gear to match the CP benefits. It probably will be as empty as non cp campaign in cyrodil.

Gear everyone will have access too.

Keep in mind that without CP people are all going to doing FAR less damage and take FAR more damage. The skill curve is there, yes, but that is called a learning experience.

You can adjust gear all you want, without CP you will be sacrificing a lot just to get similar damage. No matter who you are, or how meta the gear is.

NO CP battlegrounds is what is needed. The ranking system is not going to work for ESO, we have different dynamics than WoW, and population sizes. ESO does not currently have near the neccessary population size to implement that kind of feature. You would help one group of people, just to stick it to an entire other group of people trying to get in que.

Surgee · January 2018

Nelson_Rebel wrote: »

Surgee wrote: »

SshadowSscale wrote: »

Meta is a problem yes but what also caused a lot of people to quit battlegrounds where when they changed them to cp enabled wich ment that if you don't have max cp your not gonna be able to do much for example a cp 200 is not going to fair well against a cp 690 so a lot of the lower cp lvl players quit because it wasn't fun for them to not stand a chance but at least in update 17 non cp battlegounds are coming back

That's true, but also this problem would be fixed with the proper ranking system. A good 690cp player will not get matched against a lower cp player (because his rank in general probably would be lower) if the rank system will be implemented. I'm afraid non CP battlegrounds is not a solution because people adjust their gear to match the CP benefits. It probably will be as empty as non cp campaign in cyrodil.

Gear everyone will have access too.

Keep in mind that without CP people are all going to doing FAR less damage and take FAR more damage. The skill curve is there, yes, but that is called a learning experience.

You can adjust gear all you want, without CP you will be sacrificing a lot just to get similar damage. No matter who you are, or how meta the gear is.

NO CP battlegrounds is what is needed. The ranking system is not going to work for ESO, we have different dynamics than WoW, and population sizes. ESO does not currently have near the neccessary population size to implement that kind of feature. You would help one group of people, just to stick it to an entire other group of people trying to get in que.

I believe that's not true at all. Ranking system would solve all of the mentioned issues in this topic. I think you have forgotten about no CP in Cyrodil for 2 weeks that ZOS implemented few months ago. We still had 1vs3 battles. Still same meta builds worked because it's more about OP skills+gear+most importantly player skill. What kind of dynamics are you talking about that ESO has that prevent it from having a ranking system? Removing CP will change nothing. It will just complicate things more, especially for the newcomers.

While I consider myself a hardcore gamer, I think ESO needs to take more steps to make the game more accessible, because, without those more casual and mediacore players, the population will only decline.

Olupajmibanan · January 2018

I've asked many times for ranked system with tier brackets only by being rejected by majority who zerg-surf in Cyrodiil only anyways and never tasted the true PvP - ranked PvP.

It's absolute non-sense to have PvP without ranked mode. Name one mmo outside ESO, without ranked mode for their PvP. ESO had Cyrodiil only (which we can agree all, isn't capable of having ranked mode). But we have battlegrounds now, a perfect tool to bring long-missing core aspect of PvP - competition. And what we got? BG leaderboards which are just another grindfest (like emperor) reflecting only time played and not actual player performance.

Lacking competition is exactly what's ESO PvP missing and that is also the main cause of BGs gradually loosing population.

Imagine Olympics being for fun-only (just like ESO BGs). Seriously, who would watch that or even participate in that?

Surgee · January 2018

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

I've asked many times for ranked system with tier brackets only by being rejected by majority who zerg-surf in Cyrodiil only anyways and never tasted the true PvP - ranked PvP.

It's absolute non-sense to have PvP without ranked mode. Name one mmo outside ESO, without ranked mode for their PvP. ESO had Cyrodiil only (which we can agree all, isn't capable of having ranked mode). But we have battlegrounds now, a perfect tool to bring long-missing core aspect of PvP - competition. And what we got? BG leaderboards which are just another grindfest (like emperor) reflecting only time played and not actual player performance.

Lacking competition is exactly what's ESO PvP missing and that is also the main cause of BGs gradually loosing population.

Imagine Olympics being for fun-only (just like ESO BGs). Seriously, who would watch that or even participate in that?

This. I still wonder why ZOS focuses on releasing new BG maps instead of adding ranks.

zParallaxz · January 2018

Surgee wrote: »

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

I've asked many times for ranked system with tier brackets only by being rejected by majority who zerg-surf in Cyrodiil only anyways and never tasted the true PvP - ranked PvP.

It's absolute non-sense to have PvP without ranked mode. Name one mmo outside ESO, without ranked mode for their PvP. ESO had Cyrodiil only (which we can agree all, isn't capable of having ranked mode). But we have battlegrounds now, a perfect tool to bring long-missing core aspect of PvP - competition. And what we got? BG leaderboards which are just another grindfest (like emperor) reflecting only time played and not actual player performance.

Lacking competition is exactly what's ESO PvP missing and that is also the main cause of BGs gradually loosing population.

Imagine Olympics being for fun-only (just like ESO BGs). Seriously, who would watch that or even participate in that?

This. I still wonder why ZOS focuses on releasing new BG maps instead of adding ranks.

True in tired of fighting the same old low levels spamming light attacks

Waffennacht · January 2018

Your match making is taking a long time because you're in a group.

If you que solo it takes about 30 secs to find a match

Get rid of the pre mades and play like a Boss

RebornV3x · January 2018

Before BGs came out I mentioned a system like this social/quickmatch ie( all random teammates no premades no restrictions similar to random dungeons and no cp)
and ranked game modes( pre made groups allowed as well as queuing for CP and no CP alike and maybe a rank system similar to games like Starcraft or Halo 3 would help)

I also suggested everyone in the group be a different class and every queue require 2 dps, 1 healer and 1 tank ( these would help cut down on the cheese groups I admit it wouldn't stop hardcore groups and probably make BGs a pain but BGs are already dead sooooo... We can make it any worse at this point )

Its sad I was so hyped for BGs but I saw the train wreck that it was so much could have been done seems like all the effort was wasted in my opinion BGs was dead on arrival.

Surgee · January 2018

Waffennacht wrote: »

Your match making is taking a long time because you're in a group.

If you que solo it takes about 30 secs to find a match

Get rid of the pre mades and play like a Boss

Nope. Same thing with group or solo.

Olupajmibanan · January 2018

RebornV3x wrote: »

Before BGs came out I mentioned a system like this social/quickmatch ie( all random teammates no premades no restrictions similar to random dungeons and no cp)
and ranked game modes( pre made groups allowed as well as queuing for CP and no CP alike and maybe a rank system similar to games like Starcraft or Halo 3 would help)

I also suggested everyone in the group be a different class and every queue require 2 dps, 1 healer and 1 tank ( these would help cut down on the cheese groups I admit it wouldn't stop hardcore groups and probably make BGs a pain but BGs are already dead sooooo... We can make it any worse at this point )

Its sad I was so hyped for BGs but I saw the train wreck that it was so much could have been done seems like all the effort was wasted in my opinion BGs was dead on arrival.

I've suggested ranked tiers similar to that of League of Legends in: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/361816/bg-ranking-system-suggestion#latest

Suggested ranked queues as solo/duo and full 4-premade queues only, without matching these two groups together.

Class restriction isn't the best option in terms of socialising. Imagine, you can't queue with your friend because you have only 1 char which si DK and your friend has the same.

I must say at this point, that splitting CP and non-CP queue isn't the best choice either. Competitive PvP experience gets better with more players joined, so splitting the population in halves may be more of damage rather than salvation. Majority of end-game PvP players admited anyways, that non-CP environment offers much more dynamic gameplay along with better balance.

Beardimus · January 2018

I'm xbox EU and have never had a 30min queue. If i queue more than a couple minutes i leave queue, rejoin and in.

That said CP has killed BattleGrounds, most the low CP players i know left and a chunk of 690's too as the pace has been less fun. At first there were alot of new names appear from vivec but even them over time have dwindled. But still its rare as a solo player i queue over 5 mins even now.

I played BG from launch regularly but have left it the last month or so but will back as will many i played with before when NO CP is back

If i want drawn out fights and zergs i play Vivec

Olupajmibanan · January 2018

I am actually surprised how few people even mention the lack of ranked mode. If you ask people if they like BGs without ranked brackets, they will say "yeah sure" but you'll see continuous lose of population in BGs just because for-fun only mode can't hold you there long enough. You'll do all the achievments and that it is, bye bye BGs.

Ranked mode is needed!
Or do we have to play PvE only? Because currently when I have need for some serious ranked PvP action, I start another game like Overwatch. And it's not because I want to, it's because I am forced to, because ESO does not have any type of ranked PvP.

jerj6925 · February 2018

Yea the first time I played the battle grounds I thought it was lots of fun, good fights even though our team lost, next match we won and the match after we won. Then we got put up against a team that destroyed everyone, none of the other teams could score against this other team. it was so bad that I don't think we even could move the life bars on this team. Oh well just road out the match and waited for the next to begin... next match same thing one team scored all the points and the other teams just got destroyed and you couldn't make the life bars flinch, yea OK everyone just waited up by the start point as it was just wasted time for us at this point. played a third time and yep just the same thing matched up against another team and no one could score on them, at this point we all just quit out and never went back again.

I wont go back to that wast of time.

LordSylvestrion · February 2018

I completely agree with this post. It's enough that non-CP BGs were removed for people that were interested in them without being slaughtered by CP 690s. Currently Battlegrounds is extremely dull and people don't want to play it because unless they are CP 690 and extreme try-hards they have no place there. It is frustrating. They should really add match-making. Problem is if they had the same level CPs only fighting similar level CPs then queues might be even longer...

But then again, if they fixed it and promoted it they could very much get more people playing them. I myself was also excited as hell and a few matches were fun but it slowly really becomes extremely unfair.

LordSylvestrion · February 2018

This thread deserves to get some attention from mods.

Maulkin · February 2018

LordSylvestrion wrote: »

This thread deserves to get some attention from mods.

It's already been discussed ad nauseam.

Based on:
a) how frequently we see the same opponents, game after game after game and
b) how easily you can get on the Leaderboards after a handful games even on a 5-day-old Leaderboard.

I reckon there's precious little evidence to suggest that a fragmentation of the player base in ranks would be viable, in terms of finding enough players of similar ability to form games.

The minimum you could consider is a 3-tiered system (bronze, silver, gold), while many modern games have 6-7 tiers. But like I said, I don't think even splitting the player base 3-ways would be possible.

Then on top of that, ranking alone won't completely prevent unbalanced games unless we have even further fragmentation along the line of randoms vs premade. Because premade vs randoms is something that currently happens and no other game out there allows. A 4-man Silver premade on voice comms is nowhere near the same as 4 Silver randoms, for example.

Which is why everyone says that splitting the player base 2-ways, in 1 premade queue and 1 random queue:
a) Is the smallest possible fragmentation, which is important given the lack of population
b) Requires the least amount of development (i.e money) to implement, compared to the complexity of ranks. And...
c) Will have the biggest impact in terms of delivering more fun games.

Olupajmibanan · February 2018

Maulkin wrote: »

LordSylvestrion wrote: »

This thread deserves to get some attention from mods.

It's already been discussed ad nauseam.

Based on:
a) how frequently we see the same opponents, game after game after game and
b) how easily you can get on the Leaderboards after a handful games even on a 5-day-old Leaderboard.

I reckon there's precious little evidence to suggest that a fragmentation of the player base in ranks would be viable, in terms of finding enough players of similar ability to form games.

The minimum you could consider is a 3-tiered system (bronze, silver, gold), while many modern games have 6-7 tiers. But like I said, I don't think even splitting the player base 3-ways would be possible.

Then on top of that, ranking alone won't completely prevent unbalanced games unless we have even further fragmentation along the line of randoms vs premade. Because premade vs randoms is something that currently happens and no other game out there allows. A 4-man Silver premade on voice comms is nowhere near the same as 4 Silver randoms, for example.

Which is why everyone says that splitting the player base 2-ways, in 1 premade queue and 1 random queue:
a) Is the smallest possible fragmentation, which is important given the lack of population
b) Requires the least amount of development (i.e money) to implement, compared to the complexity of ranks. And...
c) Will have the biggest impact in terms of delivering more fun games.

I proposed in more threads making two different queue types each with it's own brackets. Let's assume the ranks you proposed - bronze, silver, gold. Easy solution for the premade vs solo problems is making separate solo/duo and full premade queue. (Two duo premades against 4 solo players isn't that much of a deal. Actually (talking from experience from other games) solos often perform better than duo premades.)

So my suggestion is to make solo/duo queue. If you queue in this section you will be put ONLY against players from this section.
If you queue in full premade queue, you can be put only against another full premade teams. Queue times would be longer for this queue for sure, but for most people the extra wait time would be worthy the challenge.

Both queue should have separate ranked brackets. So you could reach gold rank in solo/duo and gold rank in full premade independantly on each other. Rewards would be for the highest rank earned from any of the two queue types. This is nothing new, League of Legends has Solo and Flex queue, Hearthstone has Standard and Wild queue etc. etc. Many games use two or more queue types with it's own brackets independant on the others and it seems to work nicely.

This way we would achieve relative team balance without taking away the option to play with a friend.

Maulkin · February 2018

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

Maulkin wrote: »

LordSylvestrion wrote: »

This thread deserves to get some attention from mods.

It's already been discussed ad nauseam.

Based on:
a) how frequently we see the same opponents, game after game after game and
b) how easily you can get on the Leaderboards after a handful games even on a 5-day-old Leaderboard.

I reckon there's precious little evidence to suggest that a fragmentation of the player base in ranks would be viable, in terms of finding enough players of similar ability to form games.

The minimum you could consider is a 3-tiered system (bronze, silver, gold), while many modern games have 6-7 tiers. But like I said, I don't think even splitting the player base 3-ways would be possible.

Then on top of that, ranking alone won't completely prevent unbalanced games unless we have even further fragmentation along the line of randoms vs premade. Because premade vs randoms is something that currently happens and no other game out there allows. A 4-man Silver premade on voice comms is nowhere near the same as 4 Silver randoms, for example.

Which is why everyone says that splitting the player base 2-ways, in 1 premade queue and 1 random queue:
a) Is the smallest possible fragmentation, which is important given the lack of population
b) Requires the least amount of development (i.e money) to implement, compared to the complexity of ranks. And...
c) Will have the biggest impact in terms of delivering more fun games.

I proposed in more threads making two different queue types each with it's own brackets. Let's assume the ranks you proposed - bronze, silver, gold. Easy solution for the premade vs solo problems is making separate solo/duo and full premade queue. (Two duo premades against 4 solo players isn't that much of a deal. Actually (talking from experience from other games) solos often perform better than duo premades.)

So my suggestion is to make solo/duo queue. If you queue in this section you will be put ONLY against players from this section.
If you queue in full premade queue, you can be put only against another full premade teams. Queue times would be longer for this queue for sure, but for most people the extra wait time would be worthy the challenge.

Both queue should have separate ranked brackets. So you could reach gold rank in solo/duo and gold rank in full premade independantly on each other. Rewards would be for the highest rank earned from any of the two queue types. This is nothing new, League of Legends has Solo and Flex queue, Hearthstone has Standard and Wild queue etc. etc. Many games use two or more queue types with it's own brackets independant on the others and it seems to work nicely.

This way we would achieve relative team balance without taking away the option to play with a friend.

2 queues with their own ranked brackets means splitting the player base 6 ways. If you think there's enough people to split 6 ways, great.

I believe there's hardly enough people to split 2 ways.

AkromaAngelOfWrath · February 2018

A ranking system would improve battlegrounds if the population grows.
First though, for that to happen what's needed is to let people choose the options they actually want to play:

CP/no-CP/don't care
Game type (or at least choose between deathmatch and the objective-focused modes)
Premades only/Random group only/don't care

I know it seems obvious and others have said this before; and zenimax think allowing choice would split the player base too much.
The opposite is true - right now, there is NO PLAYER BASE TO SPLIT because the forced random mode means that the chance of getting an enjoyable match is too low so very few players bother.

Olupajmibanan · February 2018

I am not really fan of idea to make option to choose game mode. That would bring deathmatch inflation.

But to satisfy everyone. How about making option to choose game mode with no rewards and no brackets, just for fun. And a random BG queue with rewards and ranked brackets. Those from specific queue couldn't be put with those from random to prevent queue cheating.

Anethum · February 2018

Surgee wrote: »

I and my friends love small scale PVP battles and we were very excited about the battlegrounds when it came out. However, the population of the BGs dropped so fast that the waiting time to get a match is 30 mins+ (xbox one eu). I believe this is mainly caused by the most worthless matchmaking system ever and lack of any tiers. Less skilled players or the ones that don't like to run the new cancer builds, get paired all the time against the ultimate meta teams. There's nothing more frustrating than that. It makes players quit the BG's very fast and never come back. As a result, we now have the super long queues and a guaranteed match against meta teams (since they're the only ones still playing BGs).

I believe ZOS should focus on proper matchmaking with ranks instead of adding new BG maps. WoW had it right. I remember being in a fairly mediocre arena team in WoW and we were always matched against other mediocre teams with similar rank, and it was lots of fun and allowed us to learn with every next game. The only thing I've learned from the ESO bg's is - run the meta or RUN!

Just a reminder, I have no idea what's the situation with BG's on ps4 and pc but I'm sure ranking system would help a lot. Some say that population is too low to divide people into ranks - if that won't be done, soon there will be no people to divide anyway, ESO is already hardcore enough and new and less skilled players are overwhelmed and quit. It's better to wait few minutes longer for a fair match than get a quick one and stand no chance. So many competitive games do it right, ESO should try too.

I don't believe they can create working ranking system.
Remember how long they fixed (and still didn't it right) simple grouping tool. ~ 2 years.
Think they have no experienced staff in designing and programming these things.
Let them at least separate premade teams and randomly grouped first at least.