Any Word on Group BG Q's?

mav1234 · August 2020

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

Also, I've done a bit of premade queuing, and smashing pugs was not fun. And the very rare occasions where we would face other premades were even less fun. Ball v ball, aoe and heal spam, relying entirely on ultimate dumping, and matches that always hit the time limit with low scores. It wasn't fun, ESO is not well designed for this kind of min-max group v. min-max group play. I suspect a lot of the folks clamoring for the return of group queue and suggesting a group only queue would find premade v premade v premade a lot less fun then it was when they could farm randoms. (Assuming the population would be high enough for a group only queue to work, which even Rich doubts.)

But there should be a social option. Therefore, let solos and duos queue together.

fwiw, I think for a "group queue" to work well, it shouldn't just be a separate queue for 3 teams in the same setup we have now. IMO, it should be 2 teams of 4 each (or 2 of 6?). GvG can be quite fun and those are often smaller group sizes. I think a competitive group queue with good rewards for advancing would draw players into it.

I do not think they should simply allow 4 person groups to queue into the current queue again... But duos should definitely be allowed.

RedTalon · August 2020

Most of the BG ganes are predictable even the land grabs become routine, you play crazy kings enough you can more or less guess where each flag will pop and so on.

kargen27 · August 2020

Amunari wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Amunari wrote: »

When it comes to skill and the knowledge (ie builds) of the game, PvP Queues should not be considered. Ranking systems are the fix to the abuse of "better players farming the bracket", this is not a valid reason for preventing group queue. Actually, this is a highly beneficial thing and in my profession opinion, is THE of the most important aspects of content and its validation (ie cooperation and competition).

As for the stomping noobs aspect, its because of the power in the game. If pvp had some hard caps on it this would be significantly less of an issue. On top of that some things just need a hard cap (like being an unkillable tank in pvp, or spamming 10 abilities in 1 second).

Each problem needs to be introduced separately. If one stroke can solve a few problems, that is a more desirable stroke, provided it does not need as much development time/effort as the two separate strokes would collectively.

One things for sure, regardless of ranking systems and all that, the group pvp should not be disabled. I am so enraged at zenimax for not addressing this problem i cannot begin to express my utter and unconditional disgust as a player, and hatred for the bad name they are giving the rest of us designers/developers.

I find this to be extremely unprofessional.

Random groups can and do cooperate. Even with cooperation they often can not compete against a team that can coordinate in Discord or have discussed strategy before entering.
The ranking system is a completely separate issue. As players rise in rank they find the queue times getting longer. No ranking system means a chance for a player new to battlegrounds getting easily outdone by players with more experience and that isn't a fun experience for either most of the time. It might even cause the less experience player to not give battlegrounds another try. Without an increase in player population there is no easy fix. Going back to group queues is not the fix. In fact it is going in exactly the wrong direction. I think an antiquity lead being found in battlegrounds was a toe in the water approach to trying to get more people interested.
Might be good to have a battleground exclusive event. Something like they did with the dragons where we all got a house if a certain number of dragons were killed. Until the population increases there isn't enough players to support two separate queues except maybe at peak hours for a short time. Most the day queues would be miserable.

This is not about validating (group specific) teamwork, its about validating guilds and their existence which result in a long-term social bond.This (guild validation) is the most important aspect of an mmo. Group validation will always bet there as long as its a group vs group event.

People are trying to argue that group ques should not be because they get farmed, but this is a horrible diagnoses of the cause of the problem.

The problem ultimately is ignorance (specifically about builds) but some of it may be shifted to better skill (ability to push buttons, and push the more correctly).

IF people are being farmed (and btw, they are now with out premades), then the cause of that (ie player ignorance) should be looked at.

When it comes to solving the problem of ignorance, the solution is to remove the ignorance. There are various ways of doing this, but as designers (of what ever game we work on), the best option is to simply remove the complexity(more ambiguous options) from the game and replace it with depth (easier to understand options).

As i said in the past, complexity is the second greatest cause of imbalance in the game (the first being power). People think that removing complexity means removing options, but this is by far not he case. The truth is such people fall under that previously mentioned realm of "egotism" that is the primary driving factor of complexity.

To put this in a more simplistic way...

People get farmed in battlegrounds in a group because another group of players have sat down, invested time in learning how to break the game through its complex aspects, and then farm people with it. This would not be an issue if the complexity was not there to start with, and the "mechanic" of people having to investigate ways to break things did not exist.

More over, If the "breaking of things" was not directly tied to large amounts of power, it would not complexity would not be as bad as it is.

"The problem ultimately is ignorance (specifically about builds) but some of it may be shifted to better skill (ability to push buttons, and push the more correctly)."

I've seen your posts in a few threads. You have a severe problem of insulting (be it veiled insults) anybody that disagrees with your point of view.

"People get farmed in battlegrounds in a group because another group of players have sat down, invested time in learning how to break the game through its complex aspects, and then farm people with it. This would not be an issue if the complexity was not there to start with, and the "mechanic" of people having to investigate ways to break things did not exist."

In this case the complexity is gear, skills, group dynamics and experience. Removing the three that could be removed makes for a boring game. Experience is always going to be a big part of the deciding factor. That is true whether it is individual queues or group queues. Groups compound the problem. I know it is anecdotal but I've had a higher percentage of fun competitive matches since the removal of groups in battlegrounds. Higher by a pretty good amount.

As I said earlier I would like to group with friends and guild mates again in battlegrounds. I would even like an option to have twelve people group together and have those twelve make up the three teams. I know that going back to how it was before isn't a good idea. I'm also fairly certain the current population can't support two queues. I know it can't during some of the times I can play.
I've not seen a good solution presented yet. A start would be an event to try and attract a larger population. Better rewards might help but they can't be so good that people feel compelled to play just for the rewards. That leads to other problems that undermine the long term health of the game.
It's good to have the conversation. Your veiled insults do not add to the conversation.

luen79rwb17_ESO · August 2020

Premades are long gone... Good riddance!

sharquez · August 2020

luen79rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Premades are long gone... Good riddance!

Yep and we have the only team game where you cant choose your team ever in all of gaming history that I can find. [snip]

[Edited to remove Rude Comment]

DrCanabis · August 2020

I was in a team deathmatch. We didn't have one healer on our team. Green had 2 max gear templars. How is that supposed to be more balanced? Also this is an MMO. If they are gonna remove premades altogether should call it Elder Solo Scrolls MSP (Massive Single Player). It's way more unbalanced now without premades

Tandor · August 2020

crjs1 wrote: »

Removing premades was the absolute best thing that has happened to BGs. Prior to the change pre mades destroyed the BG experience for anyone else. In a perfect world you could have a separate queue for premades but I just don’t see a high enough population for that.

And contrary to what some believe, there aren't thousands of wannabe PvPers out there just waiting on some fictional improvement to be enticed into PvP. Some simply cannot accept that this is not a PvP-centred game, and every time that ZOS fall for the demands to add more PvP content - Imperial City, duels, battlegrounds - it just spreads the PvPers even thinner, as well as driving away some more PvPers who don't like the way that the new content is provided. ZOS have the ingame metrics, and if they say that the PvP population doesn't support two types of BG queue then people need to accept that.

TequilaFire · August 2020

No but there are enough people who loved PvP in this game that would return if it was fixed to have a decent population.

trackdemon5512 · August 2020

PVPers are arguably the most fickle population of all of ESO. This group doesn’t need to buy the latest dlc as their activities are focused on content that is accessible to all with the base game. Because they don’t need to buy expansions/ESO+ they don’t have the investment to anchor them to the game and thus are the crowd that easily screams the loudest about quitting the game patch after patch.

I make this point because this fickleness means routinely trying to appease them does not work out in the favor of the ESO population as a whole. The vast majority of players are PVE who occasionally dip a toe into BGs or Cyro. But because of the hardcore toxicity/imbalances of PVP they often stay out. You can blame that disconnection on the fact that the PVE aspect of ESO is designed so that ALL players can complete the content regardless of build, lvl, etc.

Groups in BGs amplified the counter sentiment that without top gear and a group you were going to lose. You don’t have the gear and your team is going to lose. Your experience in that kind of mode is limited and you were going to lose. And losing over and over and over isn’t fun. That drove those players out and drove them out in numbers that a BG population started to collapse in on itself like black hole. Sure you could get a few new players into the mode but players continued to leave in greater numbers. And eventually even hardcore PVPers left because they kept fighting the same players over and over again. It was self defeatist.

In a perfect world where BGs were balanced and fair and the population for the mode was healthy you can have groups and you can have separate queues for ranked and unranked play. Both FPS and fighting games exemplify this in the current age. But without the population to back up such a thing you cannot have groups.

And consider that while PVE content has expanded quarterly and at a solid rate for the last several years, that groups population has increased to its highest ever. We have more people actively playing than ever before. And yet the populations for BGs continues to go down. Single queue may have brought back a few older players and some newer but as ZOS pointed out it wasn’t to the numbers that were healthy or likely even sustainable. Remember that PVPers will leave the game at the drop of a hat.

ZOS is continuing to make moves to try and address this. The latest is perhaps reorganizing the Assault Skill unlock so that Rapid Maneuvers requires BG play to unlock (because no one is going to travel around Cyro without rapids all the way up to lvl 4). This will get some ppl into BGs but doesn’t address the long standing issue of creating a strong balanced population. Until that can creatively be addressed don’t expect to see group play back in BGs. It’s best left to Cyro at this point.

DrCanabis · August 2020

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

PVPers are arguably the most fickle population of all of ESO. This group doesn’t need to buy the latest dlc as their activities are focused on content that is accessible to all with the base game. Because they don’t need to buy expansions/ESO+ they don’t have the investment to anchor them to the game and thus are the crowd that easily screams the loudest about quitting the game patch after patch.

I make this point because this fickleness means routinely trying to appease them does not work out in the favor of the ESO population as a whole. The vast majority of players are PVE who occasionally dip a toe into BGs or Cyro. But because of the hardcore toxicity/imbalances of PVP they often stay out. You can blame that disconnection on the fact that the PVE aspect of ESO is designed so that ALL players can complete the content regardless of build, lvl, etc.

Groups in BGs amplified the counter sentiment that without top gear and a group you were going to lose. You don’t have the gear and your team is going to lose. Your experience in that kind of mode is limited and you were going to lose. And losing over and over and over isn’t fun. That drove those players out and drove them out in numbers that a BG population started to collapse in on itself like black hole. Sure you could get a few new players into the mode but players continued to leave in greater numbers. And eventually even hardcore PVPers left because they kept fighting the same players over and over again. It was self defeatist.

In a perfect world where BGs were balanced and fair and the population for the mode was healthy you can have groups and you can have separate queues for ranked and unranked play. Both FPS and fighting games exemplify this in the current age. But without the population to back up such a thing you cannot have groups.

And consider that while PVE content has expanded quarterly and at a solid rate for the last several years, that groups population has increased to its highest ever. We have more people actively playing than ever before. And yet the populations for BGs continues to go down. Single queue may have brought back a few older players and some newer but as ZOS pointed out it wasn’t to the numbers that were healthy or likely even sustainable. Remember that PVPers will leave the game at the drop of a hat.

ZOS is continuing to make moves to try and address this. The latest is perhaps reorganizing the Assault Skill unlock so that Rapid Maneuvers requires BG play to unlock (because no one is going to travel around Cyro without rapids all the way up to lvl 4). This will get some ppl into BGs but doesn’t address the long standing issue of creating a strong balanced population. Until that can creatively be addressed don’t expect to see group play back in BGs. It’s best left to Cyro at this point.

PvP isn't PVE. Should learn the difference. Also this is an MMO. Not being able to queue with friends defeats the purpose of an MMO. Also casual PVErs are gonna get steamrolled in PvP even without premades I watch it happen all the time. Wonder what the excuse you people have now that there aren't any premades and you're still getting stomped?

Taleof2Cities · August 2020

DrCanabis wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

PVPers are arguably the most fickle population of all of ESO. This group doesn’t need to buy the latest dlc as their activities are focused on content that is accessible to all with the base game. Because they don’t need to buy expansions/ESO+ they don’t have the investment to anchor them to the game and thus are the crowd that easily screams the loudest about quitting the game patch after patch.

I make this point because this fickleness means routinely trying to appease them does not work out in the favor of the ESO population as a whole. The vast majority of players are PVE who occasionally dip a toe into BGs or Cyro. But because of the hardcore toxicity/imbalances of PVP they often stay out. You can blame that disconnection on the fact that the PVE aspect of ESO is designed so that ALL players can complete the content regardless of build, lvl, etc.

Groups in BGs amplified the counter sentiment that without top gear and a group you were going to lose. You don’t have the gear and your team is going to lose. Your experience in that kind of mode is limited and you were going to lose. And losing over and over and over isn’t fun. That drove those players out and drove them out in numbers that a BG population started to collapse in on itself like black hole. Sure you could get a few new players into the mode but players continued to leave in greater numbers. And eventually even hardcore PVPers left because they kept fighting the same players over and over again. It was self defeatist.

In a perfect world where BGs were balanced and fair and the population for the mode was healthy you can have groups and you can have separate queues for ranked and unranked play. Both FPS and fighting games exemplify this in the current age. But without the population to back up such a thing you cannot have groups.

And consider that while PVE content has expanded quarterly and at a solid rate for the last several years, that groups population has increased to its highest ever. We have more people actively playing than ever before. And yet the populations for BGs continues to go down. Single queue may have brought back a few older players and some newer but as ZOS pointed out it wasn’t to the numbers that were healthy or likely even sustainable. Remember that PVPers will leave the game at the drop of a hat.

ZOS is continuing to make moves to try and address this. The latest is perhaps reorganizing the Assault Skill unlock so that Rapid Maneuvers requires BG play to unlock (because no one is going to travel around Cyro without rapids all the way up to lvl 4). This will get some ppl into BGs but doesn’t address the long standing issue of creating a strong balanced population. Until that can creatively be addressed don’t expect to see group play back in BGs. It’s best left to Cyro at this point.

PvP isn't PVE. Should learn the difference. Also this is an MMO. Not being able to queue with friends defeats the purpose of an MMO. Also casual PVErs are gonna get steamrolled in PvP even without premades I watch it happen all the time. Wonder what the excuse you people have now that there aren't any premades and you're still getting stomped?

(sigh)

You can still queue with friends in IC or Cyrodiil ... I don't know how many times that's been mentioned in this thread alone.

The bottom line, though, is that ZOS wouldn't have made the change if they had data to support your statement, @DrCanabis.

Dihaki · August 2020

Well, this topic is of great importance for producing more content in the game, let's get to the points.

1. There will never be a rank balance in the game, since many experienced players create new accounts to win more easily from other less experienced players.
2. MMORPG's are used to connect friends.
3. If you don't fix the problem with group synergy, BG will still continue to be unbalanced.

Solution: Encourage more with BG's rewards and create a group mode separate from the individual, so we will have a greater number of players in the BG's and whoever wants to play solo random will have the opportunity.

Cinbri · August 2020

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

DrCanabis wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

PVPers are arguably the most fickle population of all of ESO. This group doesn’t need to buy the latest dlc as their activities are focused on content that is accessible to all with the base game. Because they don’t need to buy expansions/ESO+ they don’t have the investment to anchor them to the game and thus are the crowd that easily screams the loudest about quitting the game patch after patch.

I make this point because this fickleness means routinely trying to appease them does not work out in the favor of the ESO population as a whole. The vast majority of players are PVE who occasionally dip a toe into BGs or Cyro. But because of the hardcore toxicity/imbalances of PVP they often stay out. You can blame that disconnection on the fact that the PVE aspect of ESO is designed so that ALL players can complete the content regardless of build, lvl, etc.

Groups in BGs amplified the counter sentiment that without top gear and a group you were going to lose. You don’t have the gear and your team is going to lose. Your experience in that kind of mode is limited and you were going to lose. And losing over and over and over isn’t fun. That drove those players out and drove them out in numbers that a BG population started to collapse in on itself like black hole. Sure you could get a few new players into the mode but players continued to leave in greater numbers. And eventually even hardcore PVPers left because they kept fighting the same players over and over again. It was self defeatist.

In a perfect world where BGs were balanced and fair and the population for the mode was healthy you can have groups and you can have separate queues for ranked and unranked play. Both FPS and fighting games exemplify this in the current age. But without the population to back up such a thing you cannot have groups.

And consider that while PVE content has expanded quarterly and at a solid rate for the last several years, that groups population has increased to its highest ever. We have more people actively playing than ever before. And yet the populations for BGs continues to go down. Single queue may have brought back a few older players and some newer but as ZOS pointed out it wasn’t to the numbers that were healthy or likely even sustainable. Remember that PVPers will leave the game at the drop of a hat.

ZOS is continuing to make moves to try and address this. The latest is perhaps reorganizing the Assault Skill unlock so that Rapid Maneuvers requires BG play to unlock (because no one is going to travel around Cyro without rapids all the way up to lvl 4). This will get some ppl into BGs but doesn’t address the long standing issue of creating a strong balanced population. Until that can creatively be addressed don’t expect to see group play back in BGs. It’s best left to Cyro at this point.

PvP isn't PVE. Should learn the difference. Also this is an MMO. Not being able to queue with friends defeats the purpose of an MMO. Also casual PVErs are gonna get steamrolled in PvP even without premades I watch it happen all the time. Wonder what the excuse you people have now that there aren't any premades and you're still getting stomped?

(sigh)

You can still queue with friends in IC or Cyrodiil ... I don't know how many times that's been mentioned in this thread alone.

The bottom line, though, is that ZOS wouldn't have made the change if they had data to support your statement, @DrCanabis.

No matter how many times it will be repeated it still dead argument.
IC is dead because it dont have incentives to play there for pvpers like it was during IC dlc when everyone farmed cp160mats. Even during Mayhem most ic campaigns were dieing near the end or were low pop in primetime where you could barely meet even 10 opponents. Only opponents in IC are telvar farmers and low level new players questing there; killing them again and again is far more frustrating than stomping pugs as 4man premade on bgs.

Mentioning Cyro is pure ignorance as primetime in cyro (also thanks to "perfomance improvements") is simply unplayable, unless you enjoy 40min waiting in queue just to get 10fps with constant 999+ ping and disconnects. For that reason groups 2-4 friends dont play in primetime. Even 1hour group q bgs were less frustrating than 10min in primetime cyro.

So, where is those "lot of options for pvp" that you can play with friends, even if it just 1 friend? Cyro in its disfunctional state and IC where you can fight only npcs and the most unexpirienced pve pugs in the game are not a valid options. At least during group q you could play together with couple friends and actually have non-laggy gameplay where you will be placed against other pvpers, not pvers who has no other option for pvp.

Zos showed this *** situation on Quakecon when during ESO stream group of named streamers had to play in almost dead Imperial City desperately searching for enemies, and then killing unorganized pve farmers and questers who barely could fight back. And than half of players simply were lurked into IC by stream to get on screen.
Cant play cyro because it unplayable, no wonder main pvp content wasnt shown on Quakecon coz pure lagfest would be so emberracing to show... Cant play bgs because reasons... But can play IC against pvers and npcs...

somehow i dont think that pvpers coming for pvp content just to fight npcs.

Fur_like_snow · August 2020

I like the idea of duo queue. If this brings players back to BGs it’ll make games pop faster.

luen79rwb17_ESO · August 2020

sharquez wrote: »

luen79rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Premades are long gone... Good riddance!

Yep and we have the only team game where you cant choose your team ever in all of gaming history that I can find. [snip]

[Edited to remove Rude Comment]

One thing is premades and other team game. There's plenty of team game in Cyrodiil but I guess it's hard to grief 8+ people there.

If you want "team game" at least have the decency to ask ZOS to match you against other structured teams like your own.

I guess ZOS has already done the math and noticed there's not that many of you for BGs.

I only go to those hellish pits for the rewards and thankfully I can get over that in just 1 or 2 matches at most. Back on the premade days it was truly hell, facing the same premade over and over. It was pathetic. So yeah I hope if it ever comes back it will be on a totally separate queue.

mairwen85 · August 2020

luen79rwb17_ESO wrote: »

sharquez wrote: »

luen79rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Premades are long gone... Good riddance!

Yep and we have the only team game where you cant choose your team ever in all of gaming history that I can find. [snip]

[Edited to remove Rude Comment]

One thing is premades and other team game. There's plenty of team game in Cyrodiil but I guess it's hard to grief 8+ people there.

There is zerg surfing and ball grouping, and other options, yes. Battlegrounds, by design, are small scale, objective driven PvP. Different animal and not comparable. It's a moot argument, much like IC--IC being PvPvE is far more solo player friendly than battlegrounds; it just requires more investment (time and effort). As you elaborate further down, it's clear why your preference is instead in battlegrounds.

luen79rwb17_ESO wrote: »

If you want "team game" at least have the decency to ask ZOS to match you against other structured teams like your own.

You mean like all the posts in this thread suggesting ways to make that happen (i.e. group queues, more modes and options, incentives and rewards, rankings, leagues, solo-friendly objectives, group objectives)?

luen79rwb17_ESO wrote: »

I guess ZOS has already done the math and noticed there's not that many of you for BGs.

I only go to those hellish pits for the rewards and thankfully I can get over that in just 1 or 2 matches at most. Back on the premade days it was truly hell, facing the same premade over and over. It was pathetic. So yeah I hope if it ever comes back it will be on a totally separate queue.

So you want the queues to stay as they are because it's easier for you to get your rewards now, but for the rest of it, you don't like and are not interested in battlegrounds? Interesting... When we're talking about population, i wonder how this and similar shared attitudes impact those numbers.

Cinbri · August 2020

mairwen85 wrote: »

So you want the queues to stay as they are because it's easier for you to get your rewards now, but for the rest of it, you don't like and are not interested in battlegrounds? Interesting... When we're talking about population, i wonder how this and similar shared attitudes impact those numbers.

If you read through all the comments you will notice that this is attitude of all people who happy with solo q - they simply dont care about bgs, and for that reason they not trying to play it competitive and for that reason they got stomped by people who invested time in bgs. Simple logical chain of events.

Vanagrand · August 2020

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

PVPers are arguably the most fickle population of all of ESO. This group doesn’t need to buy the latest dlc as their activities are focused on content that is accessible to all with the base game. Because they don’t need to buy expansions/ESO+ they don’t have the investment to anchor them to the game and thus are the crowd that easily screams the loudest about quitting the game patch after patch.

I make this point because this fickleness means routinely trying to appease them does not work out in the favor of the ESO population as a whole. The vast majority of players are PVE who occasionally dip a toe into BGs or Cyro. But because of the hardcore toxicity/imbalances of PVP they often stay out. You can blame that disconnection on the fact that the PVE aspect of ESO is designed so that ALL players can complete the content regardless of build, lvl, etc.

Groups in BGs amplified the counter sentiment that without top gear and a group you were going to lose. You don’t have the gear and your team is going to lose. Your experience in that kind of mode is limited and you were going to lose. And losing over and over and over isn’t fun. That drove those players out and drove them out in numbers that a BG population started to collapse in on itself like black hole. Sure you could get a few new players into the mode but players continued to leave in greater numbers. And eventually even hardcore PVPers left because they kept fighting the same players over and over again. It was self defeatist.

In a perfect world where BGs were balanced and fair and the population for the mode was healthy you can have groups and you can have separate queues for ranked and unranked play. Both FPS and fighting games exemplify this in the current age. But without the population to back up such a thing you cannot have groups.

And consider that while PVE content has expanded quarterly and at a solid rate for the last several years, that groups population has increased to its highest ever. We have more people actively playing than ever before. And yet the populations for BGs continues to go down. Single queue may have brought back a few older players and some newer but as ZOS pointed out it wasn’t to the numbers that were healthy or likely even sustainable. Remember that PVPers will leave the game at the drop of a hat.

ZOS is continuing to make moves to try and address this. The latest is perhaps reorganizing the Assault Skill unlock so that Rapid Maneuvers requires BG play to unlock (because no one is going to travel around Cyro without rapids all the way up to lvl 4). This will get some ppl into BGs but doesn’t address the long standing issue of creating a strong balanced population. Until that can creatively be addressed don’t expect to see group play back in BGs. It’s best left to Cyro at this point.

All the guys from my PvP guipd are Eso+ members and most of them have apex mounts. And they are not the exception, take a look of Cyro mounts.

You can build and argument on a falacy but that doesnt make it true.

Amunari · August 2020

kargen27 wrote: »

Random groups can and do cooperate. Even with cooperation they often can not compete against a team that can coordinate in Discord or have discussed strategy before entering.
The ranking system is a completely separate issue. As players rise in rank they find the queue times getting longer. No ranking system means a chance for a player new to battlegrounds getting easily outdone by players with more experience and that isn't a fun ex

"The problem ultimately is ignorance (specifically about builds) but some of it may be shifted to better skill (ability to push buttons, and push the more correctly)."

This is a by-product of Complexity, which is why we (the intelligent designers) do not intentionally place it in the game and why there is an standard in the industry to generally avoid loose class design. I am not saying that avoid it is a good thing (because we need to storm the waters to push on forward to something better then what we have), but its problematic to use such systems.

kargen27 wrote: »

I've seen your posts in a few threads. You have a severe problem of insulting (be it veiled insults) anybody that disagrees with your point of view.

[snip]

kargen27 wrote: »

"People get farmed in battlegrounds in a group because another group of players have sat down, invested time in learning how to break the game through its complex aspects, and then farm people with it. This would not be an issue if the complexity was not there to start with, and the "mechanic" of people having to investigate ways to break things did not exist."

This is exactly What i said before. Complexity breeds this abuse, There is a direct tie because psychological/sociological problems and individuals advocating for such systems. [snip]

kargen27 wrote: »

In this case the complexity is gear, skills, group dynamics and experience. Removing the three that could be removed makes for a boring game. Experience is always going to be a big part of the deciding factor. That is true whether it is individual queues or group queues. Groups compound the problem. I know it is anecdotal but I've had a higher percentage of fun competitive matches since the removal of groups in battlegrounds. Higher by a pretty good amount.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with group ques into normal non-grouped players. It works totally fine. In fact i think the game just needs a few hardcaps in pvp to really bring down the complexity a lot. For example, tanks should not be unkillable, or anywhere near it, especially when they jump around playing leap frog AoE 1 shotting things.

Put a hardcap on resist/crit resist will fix this problem significantly and put everyone on the same level when it comes to gear, and builds. After that, its all "skill".

kargen27 wrote: »

Better rewards might help but they can't be so good that people feel compelled to play just for the rewards. That leads to other problems that undermine the long term health of the game.

One of the things you learn as a designer is how efficient people are. If you start putting in 2-3 daily rewards for tank, healer you will likely see a fix to that problem in ques, but that would require them to actually heal, so it may look something like a conditional reward. For example, if you queue heals, you will be required to heal x amount, and the dev team sets that amount at a level where only healers that are really healing can meet it. For tanks, its as simple as successfully completing the instance. Some sort of conditional system like this or "bonus" system should fix it for pve.

As for the long-term health of the game this is rather silly, with the massive amounts of spam of gear, i dont really see an issue with another piece, or some more xp.

kargen27 wrote: »

It's good to have the conversation. Your veiled insults do not add to the conversation.

[snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

mairwen85 · August 2020

Cinbri wrote: »

mairwen85 wrote: »

So you want the queues to stay as they are because it's easier for you to get your rewards now, but for the rest of it, you don't like and are not interested in battlegrounds? Interesting... When we're talking about population, i wonder how this and similar shared attitudes impact those numbers.

If you read through all the comments you will notice that this is attitude of all people who happy with solo q - they simply dont care about bgs, and for that reason they not trying to play it competitive and for that reason they got stomped by people who invested time in bgs. Simple logical chain of events.

Shame, but unfortunately true...

Anfieldkris · August 2020

Adding my 2p’s worth to this thread as a lament to battlegrounds being a fun social experience, which it no longer is. I’m on PS4 EU.

When group queues were possible, battlegrounds were a regular part of my (mainly PVE) guild’s activities. There were maybe 8-10 of us who would regularly do random and specific battlegrounds, often including new guild members, and we’d try to make sure that we agreed who would do what in the group before we queued. Amongst those 8-10 were AD, DC and EP. Someone (or all of us) needed to bring heals, we’d have someone tankier and everyone was on mic. Chuck on some impen, set up the group and join the queue. That was it though as far as planning was concerned. Definitely no min maxing or meta chasing.

Results were mixed. We won quite a few very easily just by being on mic and being coordinated on flag games. All of us got merciless, battleground butcher and most of the achievements, I was top of the weekly leaderboards several times. We also got utterly wrecked quite a few times by super coordinated groups who were just better than us. Didn’t feel the need to cry about it or break the controller, just joined the queue again. Main thing was it was great fun, a good way of getting into pvp for newer members if our guild and an opportunity for us to pvp together when we were from different alliances.

With the solo only queues, all of that stopped, so we definitely lost something which was previously fun. Each of us did a few more BGs, but then gave it up as a bad job. I only went back in recently chasing the lead for the antiquity or MYM achievements, and I didn’t like it at all. No one was on mic, my non meta outdated armour build was good enough for me to be top scorer in 10 of the 12 BGs that I did but I was usually grouped with people who treated every game mode as if it was a death match and wouldn’t coordinate. It definitely wasn’t fun. It definitely wasn’t social.

I would really like to see group queues brought back. I have no issue with not winning every time. It would improve the social pvp options for my mixed alliance guild.

mairwen85 · August 2020

Anfieldkris wrote: »

Adding my 2p’s worth to this thread as a lament to battlegrounds being a fun social experience, which it no longer is. I’m on PS4 EU.

When group queues were possible, battlegrounds were a regular part of my (mainly PVE) guild’s activities. There were maybe 8-10 of us who would regularly do random and specific battlegrounds, often including new guild members, and we’d try to make sure that we agreed who would do what in the group before we queued. Amongst those 8-10 were AD, DC and EP. Someone (or all of us) needed to bring heals, we’d have someone tankier and everyone was on mic. Chuck on some impen, set up the group and join the queue. That was it though as far as planning was concerned. Definitely no min maxing or meta chasing.

Results were mixed. We won quite a few very easily just by being on mic and being coordinated on flag games. All of us got merciless, battleground butcher and most of the achievements, I was top of the weekly leaderboards several times. We also got utterly wrecked quite a few times by super coordinated groups who were just better than us. Didn’t feel the need to cry about it or break the controller, just joined the queue again. Main thing was it was great fun, a good way of getting into pvp for newer members if our guild and an opportunity for us to pvp together when we were from different alliances.

With the solo only queues, all of that stopped, so we definitely lost something which was previously fun. Each of us did a few more BGs, but then gave it up as a bad job. I only went back in recently chasing the lead for the antiquity or MYM achievements, and I didn’t like it at all. No one was on mic, my non meta outdated armour build was good enough for me to be top scorer in 10 of the 12 BGs that I did but I was usually grouped with people who treated every game mode as if it was a death match and wouldn’t coordinate. It definitely wasn’t fun. It definitely wasn’t social.

I would really like to see group queues brought back. I have no issue with not winning every time. It would improve the social pvp options for my mixed alliance guild.

It's interesting how those advocating permitted grouping are mostly talking about adding to and extending Battlegrounds, creating a community etc and those against seem to be more for isolar play and taking away from what they could be. Yet the notion of premade is still the big bad pvp bully boogeyman, aparently...

Minyassa · August 2020

I was told that whether you win or not, you get AP/some rewards from BGs, and so winning wasn't worth a bucket of warm hamster vomit to me when I decided to try them. Unfortunately, I never *got* to try them, because that was when they implemented the solo-only queue. The only reason in the world I had to try BGs was to play with my friends, just like the only reason in the world several married couples I know who only ever play with their spouses had to play in BGs was to play with their spouse. There is zero reason to play them now since being grouped with strangers for anything is awkward, stressful, and pointless in a short-term grouping since you don't have time to get to know anyone. It's a shame because they sounded like fun back when my guildies were playing and their streaming their play, and all the fun they had even if they got pounded was what enticed me to decide to try it in the first place. I was literally about to respec my PvE main when the bad news came out. So much for any type of enjoyable PvP in this MMO.

DrCanabis · August 2020

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

DrCanabis wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

PVPers are arguably the most fickle population of all of ESO. This group doesn’t need to buy the latest dlc as their activities are focused on content that is accessible to all with the base game. Because they don’t need to buy expansions/ESO+ they don’t have the investment to anchor them to the game and thus are the crowd that easily screams the loudest about quitting the game patch after patch.

I make this point because this fickleness means routinely trying to appease them does not work out in the favor of the ESO population as a whole. The vast majority of players are PVE who occasionally dip a toe into BGs or Cyro. But because of the hardcore toxicity/imbalances of PVP they often stay out. You can blame that disconnection on the fact that the PVE aspect of ESO is designed so that ALL players can complete the content regardless of build, lvl, etc.

Groups in BGs amplified the counter sentiment that without top gear and a group you were going to lose. You don’t have the gear and your team is going to lose. Your experience in that kind of mode is limited and you were going to lose. And losing over and over and over isn’t fun. That drove those players out and drove them out in numbers that a BG population started to collapse in on itself like black hole. Sure you could get a few new players into the mode but players continued to leave in greater numbers. And eventually even hardcore PVPers left because they kept fighting the same players over and over again. It was self defeatist.

In a perfect world where BGs were balanced and fair and the population for the mode was healthy you can have groups and you can have separate queues for ranked and unranked play. Both FPS and fighting games exemplify this in the current age. But without the population to back up such a thing you cannot have groups.

And consider that while PVE content has expanded quarterly and at a solid rate for the last several years, that groups population has increased to its highest ever. We have more people actively playing than ever before. And yet the populations for BGs continues to go down. Single queue may have brought back a few older players and some newer but as ZOS pointed out it wasn’t to the numbers that were healthy or likely even sustainable. Remember that PVPers will leave the game at the drop of a hat.

ZOS is continuing to make moves to try and address this. The latest is perhaps reorganizing the Assault Skill unlock so that Rapid Maneuvers requires BG play to unlock (because no one is going to travel around Cyro without rapids all the way up to lvl 4). This will get some ppl into BGs but doesn’t address the long standing issue of creating a strong balanced population. Until that can creatively be addressed don’t expect to see group play back in BGs. It’s best left to Cyro at this point.

PvP isn't PVE. Should learn the difference. Also this is an MMO. Not being able to queue with friends defeats the purpose of an MMO. Also casual PVErs are gonna get steamrolled in PvP even without premades I watch it happen all the time. Wonder what the excuse you people have now that there aren't any premades and you're still getting stomped?

(sigh)

You can still queue with friends in IC or Cyrodiil ... I don't know how many times that's been mentioned in this thread alone.

The bottom line, though, is that ZOS wouldn't have made the change if they had data to support your statement, @DrCanabis.

Again Cyrodil is not the same as BGs. Two completely different game modes. Cyrodil is for large scale zerg guilds. I am not in a zerg guild. BGs are small scale PvP battles which I prefer because it's more tactical and takes more skill than zerging in Cyrodil. Explain how one team having no healer while another team has 2 max gear templars in BGs is more "balanced" matchmaking? [snip] Not being able to queue with friends in BGs defeats the purpose of an MMO. [snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

DrCanabis · August 2020

[snip] Matchmaking in BGs is way more unbalanced without premades. It's all random. You can be stuck with no healer in BGs while they give one team 2 max gear templars. That's not balanced at all when you give one team no healer and the other team gets 2 max gear templars.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

SamanthaCarter · August 2020

I carried thousands of new players vs premade group and won

TequilaFire · August 2020

SamanthaCarter wrote: »

I carried thousands of new players vs premade group and won

And here all this time I thought it was Jack O'Neill who carried the team. lmao

Sevn · August 2020

DrCanabis wrote: »

Seems like these casuals just want everything handed to them on a silver platter. I queued solo against premades in PvP. I didn't complain about getting steamrolled against premades. It's how you get better. Casuals don't want to get better. They want the easy way. Should be called Elder Solo Scrolls MSP (Massive Single Player). Matchmaking in BGs is way more unbalanced without premades. It's all random. You can be stuck with no healer in BGs while they give one team 2 max gear templars. That's not balanced at all when you give one team no healer and the other team gets 2 max gear templars.

ESO IS a casual game. It just is. If you and your friends only play and enjoy ESO because of BG'S then in all honesty with zero malicious intent, you all should play a dedicated pvp game [snip]

Casuals just aren't interested in getting better at pvping in a mostly pve game as this is not a pvp centric game.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

DrCanabis · August 2020

Can someone explain how matchmaking is supposedly more balanced without premades when I was in a deathmatch with no healer on our team and they gave an enemy team 2 max gear templars? Taking away premades made balancing worse. Matchmaking is completely random. They can give your team no healers and give another team 2 templars with max gear. I don't see how one team having 2 templars and another team having 0 healers is ZOS idea of balanced matchmaking.

DrCanabis · August 2020

Sevn wrote: »

DrCanabis wrote: »

Seems like these casuals just want everything handed to them on a silver platter. I queued solo against premades in PvP. I didn't complain about getting steamrolled against premades. It's how you get better. Casuals don't want to get better. They want the easy way. Should be called Elder Solo Scrolls MSP (Massive Single Player). Matchmaking in BGs is way more unbalanced without premades. It's all random. You can be stuck with no healer in BGs while they give one team 2 max gear templars. That's not balanced at all when you give one team no healer and the other team gets 2 max gear templars.

ESO IS a casual game. It just is. If you and your friends only play and enjoy ESO because of BG'S then in all honesty with zero malicious intent, you all should play a dedicated pvp game [snip]

Casuals just aren't interested in getting better at pvping in a mostly pve game as this is not a pvp centric game.

PvP is not casual. PvE is casual. If you don't want to get better at PvP then you shouldn't queue for PvP. I wonder what you guys next excuse will be now that there are no premades and you still get steamrolled. I don't think premades was the reason you were getting steamrolled. I think it's because you admitted you refuse to get better.