PvP has a problem in ESO and that is it does not generate revenue. I am told that Zenimax attempted to generate revenue with BGs by making them part of a chapter but that not enough PvP players were interested in paying for it so Zenimax was forced to make it part of the base game.

If it does not generate revenue then it will be second fiddle.

cyro to me still feels vastly different than it did in 2014 lol, even though its the same zone

most of the time i was in cyro in the early days was back when each faction basically controlled a map because the buffs carried over to pve, and there were a lot more campaigns (so there was a main one and then each faction had their own that they basically had 95% control of the map almost constantly, it was amazingly easy to get the gate skyshards lol)

there were still some massive battles when one of the opposing factions felt brave enough to try to retake one of their trikeeps

also remember back then that those 3 towns had no easy port to them, gates were not destroyable (but resource towers were), there has been a lot of changes throughout the years even though the zone as a whole is the same

i like IC for farming (sewers) and occasional pvp (surface), but changes they have made for that area has damped some of the fun (especially on the surface), i dont mind they added flags to give bonus tel var for controlling the districts, but the fact that the flag control also determines if you can respawn on the surface is a MAJOR detriment, since if your faction controls no districts and you die and you need to respawn, your forced to sit through 2 load screens to get back to the surface action

my perspective is i dont live in cyro (i did kind of live in IC for years after it released, but not for pvp lol), but i still feel like over the years theres been enough changes to alter some of the dynamic

• the things i see as most problematic for cyro would be the pop caps and performance
• the things i see as most problematic for IC would be the flags controlling respawns on the surface
• the things i see as most problematic for BGs would be it needs a ranked/unranked mode kind of like ToT and a way to do a queue/lobby type setup so you could do a 1v1v1 all the way to 4v4v4 (this would help most of the competitive people, as i feel battlegrounds are actually one of the least friendly things to newer pvpers due to the sheer lack of real MMR and no way to separate competitive with non-competitive people)

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

@Necrotech_Master, I’m glad you still find enjoyment in those things after years, there’s just no denying that most of us have fallen off, we have only three above 50 campaigns now, nowhere near the amount we had on launch, even a year or two after launch. More campaigns keep getting shut down, and the size caps of those campaigns is consistently diminishing.

It goes back to my point earlier, when you provide no new content; people burn out running the same thing for years. Simply adding convenience QoL spawn points or destructible bridges, does not constitute new content.

We need more variety, more maps, different objectives, different matchmaking options like you touched up on earlier… we have yet to have matchmade dueling, or team vs team.

Updating old content is nice, but we haven’t received anything new. Updates don’t sell.

i think part of what helps is i dont live in cyro 24/7, i play there maybe a few hours here, or there, or maybe like a weekend or so (im still working one of my characters to hit rank 50)

on the topic of the variety, for BGs i completely agree and it makes sense, im not sure how it would work for cyro unless they introduced an entirely new cyro-like area (i wouldnt want them to get rid of cyro as it currently is either though)

but i also see the zos problem with it too, you cant "sell" bg maps as a feature for a dlc or expansion because bgs are base game (also a reason why we see virtually no updates with ANY of the base game content, the only free content is the small series of prologue quests added to old zones), they also would have a problem selling a "new cyro" map as the feature for an expansion because if it required people to pay for it, then when you talk about pvp you also talk about not enough population issues (such as current issues with say the no proc cyro pops or BGs not getting the split queues)

i wish they would do more base game updates in general, like adding a new POI to a low density section of a base game zone, or even a new world boss or 2, but as i see it, its the same problems as with pvp, they dont really have a way to "sell" the content (since thats what like 99% of new content is in this game is paid for, and its only slowly been added to the base game after like 5 years (examples IC and morrowind), which benefits new players not having to pay for those contents, but does nothing for long term players)

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

PvP has a problem in ESO and that is it does not generate revenue. I am told that Zenimax attempted to generate revenue with BGs by making them part of a chapter but that not enough PvP players were interested in paying for it so Zenimax was forced to make it part of the base game.

If it does not generate revenue then it will be second fiddle.

PvP doesn’t generate as much revenue because they don’t expand upon it. If dungeons and trials received the same level of support that PvP has received over the years; it would be the exact same scenario. We were getting 2 dungeons packs a year though, and a guaranteed trial with each chapter. Fashion is the real seller in this game and it doesn’t matter what content you play; we all pay for it.

In regards to Quests, they will always sell, storytelling has always been at the forefront of Elder Scrolls and players are always eager to learn more about our world.

Incorrect. They did expand on PvP, as I stated in the statement you quoted. They tried monetizing the new PvP they added but did not get the support and were moved to the base game.

Dungeons and trials get the support they do because players financially support that content, hence it generates revenue. Money is the driving factor in all of this.

Jaraal wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

PvP has a problem in ESO and that is it does not generate revenue. I am told that Zenimax attempted to generate revenue with BGs by making them part of a chapter but that not enough PvP players were interested in paying for it so Zenimax was forced to make it part of the base game.

If it does not generate revenue then it will be second fiddle.

You will find a higher concentration of polymorphs, arms packs, and radiant apex mounts in Cyrodiil than you will anywhere else. PvP players spend as much, if not more on this game than anyone. And ZOS knows it.

There’s a lot at stake in keeping PvP players active and happy.

And a lot of people play both PvP and PvE. I go into Cyrodill with my fancy mount and more but the only reason I enter PvP in ESO is to join friends. Otherwise, I PvP in games where PvP flourishes because it is monetized.

The fact remains that outside of buying the base game for 20 USD, much less when it is on sale, PvP does not generate any direct revenue. As such Zenimax has no reason to provide regular significant updates material for PvP.

Who says PvP players don't produce revenue? i had spent houndreds of dollars in lot of crown crate to have lots of radiant apex mounts and apex mounts, also i bought every chapter to stay up to date with meta sets and mythics, but no more, i said to my self i wil not spend one more single dollar in this game till i see the devs giving the same treatment to PvP that they do for PvE, which means, new PvP content each year.

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

For many players like me, PvP is the most entertaining aspect that ESO provides, and it’s completely player driven.

Time after time PvP is an afterthought when it comes to ESO. Over the course of its release, we’ve seen Cyrodiil, Imperial City, Dueling and Battlegrounds, systems that are implemented, and then forgotten.

One massive disconnect between us and our developers is this misunderstanding…

Adding new sets, or new trophies/styles, does not substitute for new content. We have been fighting in the same terrain for years, with the same objective… for years… and it’s exhausting.

There’s this general sense of fatigue in our community, it feels so unfair to watch our favorite game rust away.

This game had such potential on launch, all it took was support. Imperial City was a massive hit, One Tamriel brought us so many awesome things, including Dueling, then Morrowind came out and people were ecstatic, they ignored the expansion price tag because the content was substantial! Everybody got something, it didn’t matter what content you enjoyed in the game, you felt satisfied. This was the first chapter we got, and set an amazing precedent.

It’s 2023 now; we have received Summerset, Elsweyr, Greymoor, Blackwood, and High Isle… what have we received for PvP?

Tales of Tribute?… and it’s not even combat oriented!

Ever since Morrowind, outside of minor additions, we haven’t received any love because to consider Tales of Tribute in a traditional PvP sense, you have to ignore its entire lack of combat, in a combat centric game.

What’s worse, is the trend continues. We have an entirely PvE focused year again for 2023; and our Midyear Mayhem event is pushed back to indefinite date!

Now, to my detriment, I’m extremely active in this game’s social spaces, and lately, to no surprise, Content Creators have been recommending to everyone that if you enjoy PvP, this isn’t the game for you.

How is this acceptable in management?

Look at the bestselling titles for any platform, you will see maybe 1-5 Singleplayer or Coop focused titles; and 6-50 PvP focused ones.

The Elder Scrolls: Online currently resides nowhere near the top, while it has such an amazing combat system and an incredibly loyal cult fanbase, it could easily be one of those 6-50 titles and all it would take is some support, and that’s what we, this community, have been saying for years.

Remember... what was it... beginning of 2022 I think? During this time they did extensive testing of the PvP servers, especially how well certain proc vs non-proc sets performed, including other metrics as well.

The result of that testing has proven a couple things. One, ZOS is still very much interested in PvP but I don't think they have a plan for how to move forward with it yet. Two, that many players preferred the non-proc setup and so based on these results, including forum posts and streamers advocating for a non-proc pvp environment, they gave us a cp server as well as a non-cp server.

Now stay with me. The non-cp, no proc set server is basically a ghost town, especially compared to the 30 day cp/all/any server. So everyone flocks to the cp servers and the non-cp server is the step-child of the pvp servers.

Perhaps a better question here is not so much why isn't there new pvp content but what the hell happened? This is one example where ZOS was responsible about this issue, they picked up the gauntlet and ran with it, they gave the community, streamers also, what they asked for and now look what we're left with over time.

If that be the case then playing devil's advocate it kind of makes sense why ZOS hasn't been leading the charge to doing anything big with PvP recently. Because the last time they did, ZOS had a great idea for PvPing with no-cp/no-proc, it was widely accepted (I was then and still am for it) and many demanded this but over time the community has dropped it like a bad meme. I know for a fact last year several major guilds pulled out of that server too so this is not me just going by personal opinion.

We know there's a MYM coming by July at the latest. They also did say there's a second, so we'll either get two very close together if they pop the other around May, or we'd likely see one around November.

I get that the PvP community has been the neglected stepchild lately. I can understand though that there's a lot more that goes into dealing with PvP that they don't have to consider with the PvE world, specifically the 'casual overland' players. Because of that, it makes it a lot harder to do anything for the PvP community.

1. Players are obviously a requirement for PvP. Any new things that ZOS could introduce would need to be enticing to a part of the community, but also not affect the current PvP playerbase. This is one of the major problems with Battlegrounds is that there's a finite number of players in BGs, and it is not in ZOS's interest to further reduce the number of people in BG queues. Yes, it would be great if we still had the option of choosing our game mode (DM requires a different build than CTR), but that was shown to leave queues untenable. Overland zones with only one player can still run. Battlegrounds with only one... can't.
2. PvP requires a certain mindset, which is not common among players. There are always so many more complaints about "you're making us pee vee pee!!!!" during the PvP events than there are during other events. That's because a large percentage of the playerbase is coming from single player RPGs where dying means "you did bad." These players are not comfortable being in a circumstance where dying is accepted. They will quit the game before they get into PvP. That means it's very difficult to grow the PvP community, and any new content is more likely to spread out the existing playerbase rather than bring in new players. (see point 1)
3. Regarding the point above, the PvP event is one of the times that one person can actively prevent players from earning their tickets. Yes, they're all PvE quests, but it's totally possible for enemy players to camp the quest givers or quest objectives and gank players just trying to get tickets. Is it common? No. Does it happen? Yes. And with the types of players making their first steps into PvP, getting ganked like that is a great way to ensure they throw it down and leave in frustration. There is a difference between "people get killed in PvP" that's not toxic and "I specifically want to farm AP by camping the questers" which is.
4. The constant meta shifts are tiring. We have 4 our of the current 6 classes being called "literally unplayable!!!11! the worst class in the game!!!11!1" Based on the PTS forums and many of the dev comments, most of these shifts are designed to balance players in PvP areas. Now whether they do that or not is another matter, but it does lead to a large resentment for the PvP world. The big problem is that the PTS testing is numbers-driven, and there is simply not enough of a playerbase on PTS to do anything more than duels with a friend. That was why all of the "Cyrodiil tests" we had a few years back had to be done on live, because there was no population otherwise.
5. There are also PvP forms in the game which are not counted as "real PvP" by a large portion of the playerbase. Yes, while Tales of Tribute is technically PvP as you can play against another player, I do understand how that doesn't scratch that itch. But we also have people who claim that the objective BG matches are not 'real PvP' because there's a goal other than 'kill people.' At that point, are players asking for PvP or just PK? And again, see point 2 above.
6. Yes, ESO was originally designed to have PvP as the endgame. But if the last 9 years has shown us anything, the game shifted away from that to "Skyrim with friends," and that was a successful pivot in terms of bringing a lot of new players in. The devs seem to put a much higher value on bringing in new players, and their desired players are the kinds that think that even engaging in PvP is the height of toxicity (see point 2)
7. PvP (and endgame PvE, but not casual PvE) is very sensitive to connection health. 90% of the complaints on the forum are about how PvP is 'literally the worst' because of ping issues, lag, disconnects, etc. The problem is that this is very personal - I very rarely get lag when I'm in PvP zones unless we're talking about something like a 50v50 siege. But even those rare times I sense a hiccup or get kicked, it's frustrating. Because it's personal (yes, there's a bit of server-side delay, but I think it exacerbates problems rather than causes problems since there are people who don't have major issues), it's harder to tamp down and fix.

But there are a few things that the game has done that are not specifically designed to harm the PvP community but that the PvP community has taken the worst possible way and run with it.

• This event was delayed for server upgrades. If we had gotten it, this thread would be pages and pages of "omg too much lag! Unplayable!"
• PvP does get new content every other patch, but in the form of Rewards for the Worthy sets. That's what they can do without splitting the playerbase too much, but PvPers want new ways to kill people without losing the old content... and that's not entirely possible.
• The more obnoxious members of the PvP community are what got things like PvP banned on streams. They will spam complaints constantly and get their friends to drown out any legitimate conversation. Of course no developer wants to have chat filled with nagging pestering complaints during a reveal where they're trying to get new players in. And that leads to...
• The whole "dev stream" debacle was also a lot longer story than most PvPers know. In the full video, the conversation was about accessibility for disabled players. The trigger was someone coming in claiming that 'their disability was that Cyrodiil had lag and demanded to know how they would be accommodated.' Anyone can tell that trying to wedge more complaints about PvP into a conversation about disabilities is pretty rude. But the background got cut from the clip that was shared, only the reaction. Yes, it was not handled appropriately. But the result is that some of the PvE players now also lost their insight into the development process, which they valued.
• The removal of the IC-specific event is not designed to be a dig at PvP players. There are now so many DLCs, that it's impossible to have events for single zones anymore (besides the Chapter zone sales pitch event). The last non-IC single zone event we got was Murkmire back in 2020. New events are merging old zones, so it stands to reason that IC would eventually get merged with something else. And since most zones don't get a celebration event every year and IC was celebrated in 2021, they didn't give it one in 2022. Now true, it should get added in to MYM as a PVP event. But most PvPers consider the IC event to be less of a 'celebrate the DLC, including the PvE side' and more a 'farm Tel Var' event.

Now I do think that there are some things that ZOS could do.

I think that making ranked duels would be great since it gives PvP a new thing AND since it only removes two players at a time, it wouldn't affect the current PvP playerbase much AND it'd also get rid of effect spam from people duelling near wayshrines instead of the arenas they specifically designed for duels (which are unfortunately not near wayshrines).

They also could reset BG MMR every patch or month or so along with the leaderboards to make it easier to find queues or play in groups (I spammed 60+ BGs during the last CTR weekend, but I could only go solo since the group queue never popped). I'd also like to see more BG maps added. We got maps last with Murkmire back in 2018. The one added during the Dragon Bones DLC pretty much just used dungeon assets, and we've had some gorgeous dungeon assets lately, so it'd be really nice if they could have just used some of those assets to whip together a BG map every dungeon DLC.

It's untenable to keep the IC event going as it has been. I'd add the double Tel Var to MYM, but I think it'd be great for "double Tel Var" weekends like the BG ones - that's what people liked about the IC event anyway; I'm sure the PvPers weren't celebrating double drops from Lord Warden.

But what I don't see them doing is adding a full DLC specifically and exclusively for PvP. They know that it would split the existing playerbase instead of bringing new players in, which would do more harm than good. They're even reducing the number of exclusively PvE DLCs this year (which again have added new PvP-oriented sets in the free update).

So I'll wait. It's easier to handle MYM during some of the holidays anyway (during the summer or winder holiday season), so I liked the June/January timeframe much better than the July/February we got. I would hope that the postponement is going to give us something like July/November. I also notice that only two events were tested on PTS (Jester and Anniversary), so it's implying that we will only get those two events until Necrom releases in June, which is also very light on the PvE side as well.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it possible to get the event tickets by doing a scouting mission and one of the IC dailies? You can potentially see nobody at all doing the scouting mission and IC daily can be cheesed from the platforms.

That lets you get both dailies done with no PvP in the PvP zones.