The current state of BGs

Scott_Sterlling · January 2021

About sums it up.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/380837990307725312/797092762343440384/Untitled.png

Anotherone773 · January 2021

I am a guar... and i approve this content.

Scott_Sterlling · January 2021

to be honest I tried putting a picture and not sure it worked can anyone see a picture of a bg score

Scott_Sterlling · January 2021

If you cannot see a picture please let me know and I will delete but yeah took this earlier on a game I had, my toon Bigge had his best game wit 29 and 11 but 1 other person went 60 and 2 like wht, he pushed it in alrite.

wheem_ESO · January 2021

Stamina Warden has been OP in PvP pretty much since it launched, and it might very well be at the peak of its OPness right now. You can stack HP and procs for good damage and ludicrous survivability, or you can still run the older 1-shot builds...which are now even more potent thanks to the Vateshran 2h. For that matter, even the HP-stacked Stamina Warden aren't all that far off from being able to 1-shot a lot of people in no-CP, depending on their exact setup.

Still, the screenshot in the OP basically just shows what happens when an experienced player gets put into a low MMR game (or at least one with numerous weak targets). I've seen a ton of different Stamina builds, along with an occasional Magicka one, do similar things over the years.

Anotherone773 · January 2021

I can beat that.I had a BG like that last week i think it was. 1 of the other team had like 50 kills and all other 11 players combined didnt have but about 10 between us. It was in a capture the flag one. He tanked and killed my entire team and then tanked and killed 6 of us. I am not leet at BGs but i am well above average getting a dozen kills/assists pretty much every time and its pretty common for me to go over 20 k/a. This guy was unstoppable. It was like he was in godmode. He just melted people and would barely take damage unless you got about 3-4 people on him but he just instahealed from about a third to full in one shot.

So he had great DPS, great HPS, and could tank Molag Bal while eating Cheetos and sipping a Coke. He apologized for farming us in a whisper after, well at least to two of us. When i tried to reply i couldn't immediately after, i couldn't. He either blocked us or logged out.

wheem_ESO · January 2021

Anotherone773 wrote: »

When i tried to reply i couldn't immediately after, i couldn't. He either blocked us or logged out.

He may have been in offline mode (potentially without realizing it), which will prevent him from receiving whispers from anyone.

Grimlok_S · January 2021

Damn, that's awesome! I got a 33/0 yesterday before one team completely quit and the others just ran and ran and ran..

Wasn't fair, but it was fun for a few minutes.

Grebcol · January 2021

Current State? PvP is dead in dat game.

Galarthor · January 2021

Problem are 1) all the proc sets and how they scale with CP and 2) max-health scaling healing abilities for certain classes.

Proc sets hit a lot harder in nonCP b/c they are balanced around a CP environment. As far as I know, proc set damage does not get boosted by CPs, but you still profit from the additional mitigation from CPs. So proc sets get higher tool tip damage to "compensate" for that. But this means they are completely overpowered in a nonCP setting, where you lack the additional mitigation from CPs but the damage is still overtuned. And that is even before you factor in Malacath!

The other issue is how defenses work. While dodge roll and block are still as effective as they are in a CP environment b/c they don't scale with anything, heals and shields suffer a lot from the missing CPs and the lower stat pools. In addition, to compensate for the high proc damage output, you have to run higher max health, even further decreasing the healing boosting stats such as max magicka and spell damage.

This also explains why some classes do better than others when it comes to survivability: their healing scales of max health and with the higher HP pool, they are not just more tanky, but also have bigger heals. At the same time their damage output does not suffer proportionally due to how proc sets scale.

So basically, if you are on a magicka build which defense / heal relies on max magicka or spell damage etc, you are screwed and nothing but cannon fodder. Stamina builds got it somewhat better, but there is also a clear divide between classes.

Waffennacht · January 2021

Proc sets benefit from CP

Nick_Balza · January 2021

What is good in current BGs:

Group BG is back. We can play with friends again
Still fast queue
Random BG is challenging and interesting
Prevents teams from setting up for one type of BG

What is definitely bad:

DM kids are spoiling game experience
Many people just leave because it's not DM
Ability to get benefits from CP (even if I am using that advantage, it doesn't mean that it is fair)

It became a bit better than it was. But more work needed.

Qbiken · January 2021

Nick_Balza wrote: »

What is good in current BGs:
Group BG is back. We can play with friends again

Still fast queue

Random BG is challenging and interesting

Prevents teams from setting up for one type of BG

What is definitely bad:
DM kids are spoiling game experience

Many people just leave because it's not DM

Ability to get benefits from CP (even if I am using that advantage, it doesn't mean that it is fair)

It became a bit better than it was. But more work needed.

Still fast queue

Fast queue??? Ye that´s why I need to wait anywhere from 10-15 min + for a match regardless if I play in the group queue or the solo queue. Anything that surpasses 5 minutes waiting time regardless of options or group size is unacceptable. I´d honestly say that if I need to wait more than a minute for a game then something is wrong with the design.

DM kids are spoiling game experience

If domination and capture the relic weren´t the most awfully designed game modes that promotes people to avoid PvP then I´m sure people would actually play the objectives in those games. Redesign the game mode so that you can´t win a match by avoid the enemy teams and we´ll talk.

Nick_Balza · January 2021

I need to wait anywhere from 10-15 min +

For me it takes 1-3 mins. Yeah, sometimes it happens that I am waiting 10-15 min. But nothing prevents me from re queue and getting there faster.

we´ll talk.

We are doing it right now. Objectives are made for tactics and strategy for making winning possible even for casual players.

> Awfully designed
How they have to be designed then? Can you provide at least few details? Is your oppinion supported by analytics?

> I´m sure people would actually play the objectives
People are playing objectives right now and the problem is in DM players on relics/chaosballs/land grabs. They will play DM anyway and majority of other players who do objectives is suffering. I am talking about people who deliberately ruin gaming experience of players who trying to do objectives.

SgtNuttzmeg · January 2021

Nick_Balza wrote: »

Ability to get benefits from CP (even if I am using that advantage, it doesn't mean that it is fair)

Is this a bug? I don't think I have heard of this one.

Nick_Balza wrote: »

I need to wait anywhere from 10-15 min +

For me it takes 1-3 mins. Yeah, sometimes it happens that I am waiting 10-15 min. But nothing prevents me from re queue and getting there faster.

we´ll talk.

We are doing it right now. Objectives are made for tactics and strategy for making winning possible even for casual players.

> Awfully designed
How they have to be designed then? Can you provide at least few details? Is your oppinion supported by analytics?

> I´m sure people would actually play the objectives
People are playing objectives right now and the problem is in DM players on relics/chaosballs/land grabs. They will play DM anyway and majority of other players who do objectives is suffering. I am talking about people who deliberately ruin gaming experience of players who trying to do objectives.

The main issue we have with CTR and Domination is that they reward the team that avoids PVP. When it comes down to BGs numbers really matter. Especially in games with decent players. Going in on a 3v4 can be really tough. What I see happening on these games modes is that, newer players will spread out and will run off by themselves try to take a flag. In low MMR this is not a problem because typically everybody does this. However let's say its a High or even a Medium MMR game, you will see either that player get attacked and killed or the rest of your team get attacked killed. What happens is you get to a point where you can't win fights. Usually at this point the game becomes a game of Cat and Mouse where the team with the highest movement speed values or the most nightblades wins.

So a lot of the more experienced players really don't enjoy the BG when it becomes like this because we like to feel engaged and to feel like we need to "work" for the win but this gets lost when you spend the entire game trying to fight teams that hopelessly outnumber you or you spend the entire game hunting nightblades.

You can have games where one team fights really well, is super in synced and does a really good job but ultimately loses because one of the other teams had two nightblades that know where the shift button is on their keyboard. It leaves a pretty bad taste in your mouth and it creates a divide in the population.

Mazra · January 2021

Oh, yeah, just had one of those matches. Everyone else were hovering around 5-ish kills while two players (on the same team) were in the 40's. One was a Templar, and he would just roll in and delete an entire defending team with Biting Jabs spam. Checked the damage recap, and his Biting Jabs was ticking for the same amount of damage as his Executioner. Good stuff. Definitely felt like I wasn't wasting 10 minutes of my life there.

Grimlok_S · January 2021

Mazra wrote: »

Oh, yeah, just had one of those matches. Everyone else were hovering around 5-ish kills while two players (on the same team) were in the 40's. One was a Templar, and he would just roll in and delete an entire defending team with Biting Jabs spam. Checked the damage recap, and his Biting Jabs was ticking for the same amount of damage as his Executioner. Good stuff. Definitely felt like I wasn't wasting 10 minutes of my life there.

Is it possible to learn this power? I'm, um.. asking for a Templar.

Mazra · January 2021

Grimlok_S wrote: »

Is it possible to learn this power? I'm, um.. asking for a Templar.

I have no idea what kind of gear he was wearing, but I did a double take when I saw the damage log. Biting Jabs was 3,500 per tick while Executioner was 3,600 per hit. Not sure why he even bothered slotting Executioner. Maybe he was filling up Soul Gems, who knows?

Grimlok_S · January 2021

Mazra wrote: »

Grimlok_S wrote: »

Is it possible to learn this power? I'm, um.. asking for a Templar.

I have no idea what kind of gear he was wearing, but I did a double take when I saw the damage log. Biting Jabs was 3,500 per tick while Executioner was 3,600 per hit. Not sure why he even bothered slotting Executioner. Maybe he was filling up Soul Gems, who knows?

I'd have to agree, that's a ridiculously low Executioner for those kind of jabs.

I don't think I'm even critting that high with 12k pen and 4.5k WD.

Deadly might be involved.. hard to say.

Goregrinder · January 2021

That looks pretty normal for low mmr. I can easily drop 30 bombs with my gankblade, so a 60 bomb on a stamden in a low rank seems right. The higher mmr you go, the more players you run into that are running REAL builds and know how to PVP, so the KDR's begin to balance out.

Fischblut · January 2021

I always queue solo, and almost always I queue for Random BG (for groups)

We had premades mixed with solo players for almost all time of existence of battlegrounds, so all kinds of possible imbalance neither suprise nor scare me

There are other things about BGs which make me sad:

- time spent in queue (sometimes it's instant, sometimes it's up to 15 minutes

) Rarely, when it's more than 15 minutes, I requeue as Solo.

Just yesterday I crashed closer to the end of Deathmatch with good group, had to restart the game, waited the penalty before trying to queue, and then spent 14 minutes in group queue without any result... I re-queued as Solo BG hoping for instant match, and still spent 5 minutes in queue there before I finally found the match

Based on totally random queue times (it's not even rare for me to arrive into the match in progress as a replacement for somebody who crashed) and many recognizable names, I wonder how many players on the whole megaserver are playing BGs

- crashes (wasting time and any possible AP gain)

- not full groups

Sadly it's not rare to see teams like 3 - 2 - 2, 4 - 3 - 2, but in last few days I started seeing 4 - 4 - 1

Both times it was in group queue. I guess only 9 people wanted to play BGs at that given time on the whole megaserver, so group finder decided not to keep everyone waiting and start the match anyway. Even 7k AP for third place in Chaosball is better than getting no match at all:

But I would really prefer to have matches with, if not good, at least full teams

Grimlok_S · January 2021

Fischblut wrote: »

I always queue solo, and almost always I queue for Random BG (for groups) We had premades mixed with solo players for almost all time of existence of battlegrounds, so all kinds of possible imbalance neither suprise nor scare me

There are other things about BGs which make me sad:

- time spent in queue (sometimes it's instant, sometimes it's up to 15 minutes ) Rarely, when it's more than 15 minutes, I requeue as Solo.

Just yesterday I crashed closer to the end of Deathmatch with good group, had to restart the game, waited the penalty before trying to queue, and then spent 14 minutes in group queue without any result... I re-queued as Solo BG hoping for instant match, and still spent 5 minutes in queue there before I finally found the match Based on totally random queue times (it's not even rare for me to arrive into the match in progress as a replacement for somebody who crashed) and many recognizable names, I wonder how many players on the whole megaserver are playing BGs

- crashes (wasting time and any possible AP gain)

- not full groups

Sadly it's not rare to see teams like 3 - 2 - 2, 4 - 3 - 2, but in last few days I started seeing 4 - 4 - 1 Both times it was in group queue. I guess only 9 people wanted to play BGs at that given time on the whole megaserver, so group finder decided not to keep everyone waiting and start the match anyway. Even 7k AP for third place in Chaosball is better than getting no match at all:

But I would really prefer to have matches with, if not good, at least full teams

I see matches like that one a lot. For some reason the group finder fills one team first, then the second and third start to fill. Not uncommon to see 4-3-3 or 4-3-1 team balances.. I do wonder if your characters hidden MMR decides which of these teams you find yourself on.

redspecter23 · January 2021

A few thoughts from a very casual pvp BG player.

1. The queue takes too long. It should be 1 minute or less assuming there are at least 12 people in the queue. I believe it is broken or bottlenecks unnecessarily for unknown reasons.

2. Matchmaking based on MMR simply doesn't work to balance anything so making the queue take longer in order to try and balance things isn't worth it. If you can't make MMR do what it should do, remove it and ignore it.

3. If they could actually set up a working MMR system that we could see in action, it might be worth implementing matchmaking based on that. One match will see me go in and annihilate 6 - 8 opponents without breaking a sweat and the very next match 4 hardcore premades will go 85-0. The disparity is massive currently. Matchmaking based on skill does not work, at least not well.

4. Do not DC me when porting in or in the middle of a match. This is unacceptable. To attach a penalty as well as making me unable to group back up with my team is also unacceptable. The number of unintentional disconnects outnumbers intentional ones by about 10,000:1. If I really don't want to be in a match, I don't DC, I just leave the group and eat the penalty. If I DC, it is ZOS doing that to me. Don't punish me for ZOS coding issues.

Waffennacht · January 2021

Random solo queue is always full groups.

Grimlok_S · January 2021

Waffennacht wrote: »

Random solo queue is always full groups.

I usually see the lopsided matches fill by the 4 minute mark.. but the score is pretty one-sided by that point.

wheem_ESO · January 2021

I solo queued into the group queue the other day, and ended up as the only person on my team against two full premades. The other two teams deathmatched each other in a Chaos Ball game for the full 15 minutes while I sat back and watched, without ever getting a single teammate.

Some games are like that, where one team starts with 1 or 2 players, and never gets anyone else. Others can sometimes seem like a revolving door, where people who either quit or crash get replaced pretty quickly.

Nick_Balza · January 2021

SgtNuttzmeg wrote: »

Nick_Balza wrote: »

Ability to get benefits from CP (even if I am using that advantage, it doesn't mean that it is fair)

Is this a bug? I don't think I have heard of this one.

Nick_Balza wrote: »

I need to wait anywhere from 10-15 min +

For me it takes 1-3 mins. Yeah, sometimes it happens that I am waiting 10-15 min. But nothing prevents me from re queue and getting there faster.

we´ll talk.

We are doing it right now. Objectives are made for tactics and strategy for making winning possible even for casual players.

> Awfully designed
How they have to be designed then? Can you provide at least few details? Is your oppinion supported by analytics?

> I´m sure people would actually play the objectives
People are playing objectives right now and the problem is in DM players on relics/chaosballs/land grabs. They will play DM anyway and majority of other players who do objectives is suffering. I am talking about people who deliberately ruin gaming experience of players who trying to do objectives.

The main issue we have with CTR and Domination is that they reward the team that avoids PVP. When it comes down to BGs numbers really matter. Especially in games with decent players. Going in on a 3v4 can be really tough. What I see happening on these games modes is that, newer players will spread out and will run off by themselves try to take a flag. In low MMR this is not a problem because typically everybody does this. However let's say its a High or even a Medium MMR game, you will see either that player get attacked and killed or the rest of your team get attacked killed. What happens is you get to a point where you can't win fights. Usually at this point the game becomes a game of Cat and Mouse where the team with the highest movement speed values or the most nightblades wins.

So a lot of the more experienced players really don't enjoy the BG when it becomes like this because we like to feel engaged and to feel like we need to "work" for the win but this gets lost when you spend the entire game trying to fight teams that hopelessly outnumber you or you spend the entire game hunting nightblades.

You can have games where one team fights really well, is super in synced and does a really good job but ultimately loses because one of the other teams had two nightblades that know where the shift button is on their keyboard. It leaves a pretty bad taste in your mouth and it creates a divide in the population.

- Team is not avoiding PvP, when team is doing objectives. Chess is a PvP game aswell. You don't need to eliminate all figures on the board for getting victory.
- "Decent players". Who they are? We need a definition of "decent player" because your definition may not feat to other "decent players".
- "Usually at this point the game becomes a game of Cat and Mouse". That's tactics and strategy were designed for. And it is fair that victory can be obtained not only in hand-to-hand slaughter. Any war consists not only from fighting units. There are assassins, archers, healers and etc. They have own tactic purpose and own flaws/advantages. It is a problem of "decent experienced players" that they don't want to think about what happens on battlefield where they arrived. Nightblade is not an issue when "decent player" is equipped with pots, CC, detection skills.
- "We need to work for the win". Surprise! Everyone has to work for the win. Winning without effort makes game dull and you are not able to value your victory. Contribution is also talking to others, building a game plan.
- "one team fights really well, is super in synced and does a really good job but ultimately loses because one of the other teams had two nightblades that know where the shift button is on their keyboard".
It seems like team is not that good if they don't know where is the shift button on their keyboards, right? And totally clueless about nightblade class.