Considering that Firor and Wheeler were once devs for Dark age of Camelot and Warhammer Online, you'd think they would have pvpers' backs in this whole mess.

But after "3 years and 9 months", I would (did, actually) just take the hint.

I agree, I mean at the very least it would be nice to see ONE (1) new Battlegrounds map.

I don't even PVP much in Battlegrounds much anymore and it wouldn't really benefit me personally. But it would say "we do still have a content team somewhere in the organization developing for PVP," which would be nice to hear.

Somebody could say, that ToT is new PvP content. It would fit definition of PvP, but I understand that it hardly could satisfied PvP ESO players.
Other content, which could be marked as new and PvP are sets, what look to me more like undesirable attention.

However some redesigning of PvP content, OP mentioned, look to me like good balance between how much players play PvP and resources demand of such change.

Imperial City was fun before flags. There were some huge long lasting battles because it was easy to respawn and get back into the fight. With flags we can see during the event when a big battle starts the faction with the flag soon dominates because of the quicker return to battle time and the fight ends early
I've suggested once or twice a month disabling the flag for a weekend in one district so all three factions can spawn back to their balconies on death. I think that would allow for some of those big long lasting fights to take place again.

GreatGildersleeve wrote: »

Don’t be surprised if they eventually phase out PvP completely. With Lambert saying 90% of the player base is overland, Elder Scrolls solo type players, the PvP poses problems that are easier to remove than fix.

If that day ever comes I'll be able to free up 100.96 gigabytes on my hard drive at least.

GreatGildersleeve wrote: »

Don’t be surprised if they eventually phase out PvP completely. With Lambert saying 90% of the player base is overland, Elder Scrolls solo type players, the PvP poses problems that are easier to remove than fix.

I'm unironically scared too they might flat out delete Cyrodiil. I hope we never have to see that day.

An ocean/jungle themed Battleground would have been great to include as part of the High Isle chapter or Firesong DLC.

Over the last 3 years I have seen soooooooo many skilled, knowledgeable and experienced pvpers (mainly bg players) leave the game. The last 6 months have been especially bad for this.
Among my bg discords there is apathy, depression, despondency, and a general consensus that the game, at least in a bg/ic sense is dying.
It is so sad because so many of these players love the game and would play the heck out of it if it wasn't giving off the impression that bgs/pvp doesn't matter.

Also, good posts, react.

Amottica wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I think new content for PvP would be detrimental to PvP. The population is already thin and any new content would spread that population even farther. I would like to see some new dynamics in content we already have available. There is some things they could do with Imperial City to spice up that area.
For the most part adjusting to other players provides what new content for PvE provides. Where we play isn't as important as who we are killing.

I agree that PvP needs to be stabilized. Cyrodiil has emptied out over the years due to performance.

I think BG formats can use a change after they fix overall performance. 4v4 or even 8v8 would be better than the three-team groups. Even then, the actual formats could use a change, such as providing an incentive and a need to defend the flag once it has been obtained.

Though I think IC is a lost cause. Without making it a mini-Cyrodiil I do not see anything providing a sustained reason to be there.

I disagree completely about IC, and I think it is the most viable candidate for a rework. I linked a post that I wrote in an above comment detailing how they could reinvorgiate IC and provide lasting/meaningful rewards as well as engaging PVP.

If anything was a lost cause, it would certainly be cyrodiil given the awful performance.

I do agree that two teams would be far better than three, and I'd love to see them rework battlegrounds to accommodate that. Whether that is 6v6, 8v8, etc.

Amottica wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I think new content for PvP would be detrimental to PvP. The population is already thin and any new content would spread that population even farther. I would like to see some new dynamics in content we already have available. There is some things they could do with Imperial City to spice up that area.
For the most part adjusting to other players provides what new content for PvE provides. Where we play isn't as important as who we are killing.

I agree that PvP needs to be stabilized. Cyrodiil has emptied out over the years due to performance.

I think BG formats can use a change after they fix overall performance. 4v4 or even 8v8 would be better than the three-team groups. Even then, the actual formats could use a change, such as providing an incentive and a need to defend the flag once it has been obtained.

Though I think IC is a lost cause. Without making it a mini-Cyrodiil I do not see anything providing a sustained reason to be there.

Cyrodiil, sure, it’s laggy and unplayable anywhere near primetime so it’s understandable to wait for fixes there. Why they have to wait to update battlegrounds when this part of pvp barely have any performance issues? Imho, instead of neglecting pvp for years entirely devs should have tried to add, update and incentivize small scale pvp. Battlegrounds seems like far more popular addition than new card game, yet it was abandoned with nothing new for several years.

Elsonso wrote: »

React wrote: »

So are we to understand that there will be no new pvp content in 2023?

I think they will focus on getting existing PVP content improved before adding new content. That said, nothing that Gina said confirms no PVP content in 2023.

I am all for them reworking the existing content. As I mentioned above, I wrote a detailed post about how imperial city could be reworked. I do think it would be ideal that they rework the existing content rather than adding new content, even though I would love to see a new zone.

If what Matt said in January still stands, then what Gina said today nearly confirms that there won't be pvp content in 2023, until they come out and explicitly tell us otherwise.

New zone, more BG maps and gametypes, IC rework, new classes, more skill lines....whatever there is a few things that would shake up and revitalize Pvp in ESO.

React wrote: »

Furthermore, what about the "special rulesets for cyrodiil" that Matt promised us?

They're coming... They just need to finish up on that U35 Q&A first.

Jokes aside, I was also initially excited when I saw that. I thought, hey, maybe they'll remember Ravenwatch exists and do something, anything, about it.



I am no longer excited.

React wrote: »

In the January PVP update from @ZOS_MattFiror , he said the following.

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

we won’t be adding any new features to PvP until the work mentioned above is complete

In today's update from @ZOS_GinaBruno regarding the work mentioned by Matt in the above post, she says the following.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We have also been working on the re-architecture we originally mentioned earlier this year. It's worth noting this isn't a single item that will go into an individual update, but contains many smaller pieces that will be released over multiple updates starting next year.

All I can read into Gina's statement is that these many smaller pieces will take a while to all roll out, and, given the complexity of the task we're talking about here, I see no indication or guarantee that it'll take just 2023 to do so, just a vague commitment that they'll start implementing then. You could well be looking at 2024 with no pvp, 2025.. After all, we're talking about rather complicated server architecture that the whole game is hanging on here being gradually reimplemented from scratch - U36 was supposed to be a chill, change-nothing update, and we saw how well that went.

React wrote: »

Matt mentions that the main reason that they will not add content to pvp is that they "do not want to exacerbate the issue of poor performance". What about imperial city? It's been dying for a rework for years now. What about battlegrounds? People have been begging for custom BGs, or new formats/sizes of BGs for years. What about dueling? People have been asking for group dueling since dueling's inception. The cyrodiil performance issues do not affect any of these.

The community has asked for years about new content for pvp, things other than Cyrodiil that wouldn't be affected by the bad performance there, and I think we've gotten a grand total of, oh let's see, some emotes, a couple of costumes and the funny side effect of the performance tests that no proc Ravenwatch is? So, some fluff and another dead campaign (a campaign, which, at least on PC EU, used to be as popular as Grey Host back before the changes). Apart from that, all I can think of is bg weekends and 10% bonus xp, which I don't view as new content.

Draw whatever conclusions you want from that, but for me, actions speak louder than words, and I'm sorry to say this, but their actions over these past years give me no confidence that they'll give us anything worthwhile anytime soon. The way I see it, the dev team is hard at work producing new quests, zones, dungeons and crown store content to keep up with their established yearly format, while pvp's been relegated to this side activity that's left there as a "take it as it is" for the minority that still cares for that kind of experience in ESO. Maybe in the mystical future when the re-architecturing is complete and performance is improved that trend'll change, assuming there's still enough of a pvp player base to justify the cost of making that content.