I want to give some feedback on the updated battlegrounds. Used to play a lot until like a year ago, lost interest and came back quite exited for what the new update had in store. By now I have played a fair bit, some whacky meme builds and some tryhard-meta stuff. And I got to say: that update completely missed the mark. So, let’s go through the list.

The Good

• Chaosball – The addition of two more balls is great. Finally, a single immortal tank with a pockethealer can’t decide a game singlehandedly. The morph-effects that two of three balls seem to give are also nice, switches things up. Sadly, I can’t say much more about it because somehow in two weeks of playing I only got a single chaosball match. I have no idea how that is possible when all game modes should presumably have the same weighting. Which they should, given that we don’t get to choose. Or maybe just bad luck. Who knows, right ZOS?

• Deathmatch format – the three shorter rounds are much more pleasant than just one single large round. Gives a chance to reset if the momentum swings against you. Lives are also good, so a single inexperienced player can’t ruin the game alone by going 0/20. Good stuff.

The Bad

• Spawn Rules – these just don’t make any sense. Why is it possible to:

1. Get killed in spawn
2. Attack from spawn
3. Stay in spawn indefinitely

All of these should not exist like they currently do. I get it, it’s not fun to be hard losing in a deathmatch and jump back down in the meatgrinder, but having to sit out 5 minutes as the winning team just because of one spiteful player sneaking in the spawn? That’s just asking for conflict among players. Also, one or more bow snipers sitting in spawn just fighting from complete safety. Creates a weird dynamic where you can’t move into the enemy’s half of the arena and they can’t go to yours because of the covering fire, resulting in a stalemate. Weirdest part of it is that better spawn management and rules already exist – in the Imperial City. Why that didn’t get transferred over is a mystery to me.

• Team sizes – The tiny 4v4 maps are a bag of issues in itself, so maybe the larger 8v8 maps are the saving grace? Sadly not. While 4v4 still retains the identity of a BG (which is decidedly being NOT Cyrodiil) 8v8 completely erases that aspect. In 8v8 it didn’t take long for the usual group tactics to pop up, that aren’t really worth it on 4 player teams, like plaguebreak, dark convergence necro colossus and so on… Dedicated healers are as overtuned as they are in cyro and if a team gets one and the other doesn’t the match is over before it started. If I wanted any of that stuff I could just hop in a no-cp cyro campaign and have far more agency without being confined in a tiny map. It’s not terrible, there is just no reason for this format to exis because it's just more of the same. Cyro does it better and it’s not what BG players come here for.

• Pre-game Timers – this is more of an annoyance than anything else but there are just too many timers at the start if the game. You start of with a 5 min countdown for players to connect. [And given how often the last player slots don’t get filled, I find it hard to believe that it is just a matter of disconnection issues. Feels more like the games get started at ¾ of players and the system just hopes to find the rest in a reasonable amount of time. All in an effort to keep the “que” time down. But that is just me speculating.] If all slots get filled the timer gets reduced to 20-30 (?) seconds. After that the final timer kicks in for 30 or 45 (?) seconds and then the game finally starts. WHY?

The Ugly

• 2 teams instead of 3 – this feels horrible. It makes almost every BG incredibly one-sided. Both teams meet in the middle and fight and that pretty much decides the entire rest of the game. There is no more teaming up against a stronger opponent or avoiding them (more on that in the next point). The momentum of that first fight is gigantic, because your teammates are never going to wait for all to assemble and will just charge back in on their disjointed death timers, while the enemy team can keep moving as a group. This turns especially lower MMR BGs into incredibly unfun, one-sided stomps. There is no more focusing on a weaker third team to secure rewards through 2nd place, or allying against a stronger team to have a fighting chance. BGs just lost a huge part of their strategic depth and fun dynamics in exchange for absolutely nothing.

• The tiny maps - Out of all the issues this has to be by far the worst. It is incredibly bad. It might make sense on the surface: “one less team? we need smaller maps now!” but it doesn’t play out like that at all. Objective based game modes might as well not exist anymore. Before you were able to avoid an enemy team if you were outmatched and could sneak objectives while they got caught up playing deathmatch with the other team. But now? Every map is a deathmatch and nothing else. The largest 4v4 maps have the flags round about 3 sorc-streaks apart. That’s not even enough time for a quarter of a capture bar. Annoyingly, there are two rather obvious solutions here: To fix this you would need to dramatically increased capture speed and death timers. Why deathtimers? Because if you manage to kill one strong player that is making your life hell, you have gained nothing. He will respawn in 5 seconds and be back on the flag in 8. No breathing room, no advantage gained on the map, nothing. You won’t even be done capturing a single flag in that brief moment you had to earn using all your resources and cooldowns.

• Map Quality – for some reason they decided to put form before function. Not all stairs are smooth and random outcrops of stone have hitboxes that cause you to get stuck. I can’t count the number of times I tried to break free only to find out some pebble had an L-shaped nook that caught my hitbox. There is no excusing this one, its just lazy and a lack of testing.

• The matchmaking - might be the worst I have ever encountered in a game. Either it’s suffering from an incredibly small population in the que and can’t do any better (which would be very telling in an entirely different way) or it’s just plain the worst, and that’s coming from a long time LoL player who is used to Riots clownshow. Subjectively there are two kinds of lobbies: Just-finished-the-tutorial or 10-times-emperor-5-star-supreme-overlord only lobbies. There seems to be no middle ground which is incredibly frustrating if you fall into neither of these categories. I managed to roll a single “good” lobby that contained half my friendlist and some names I recognized from cyro leaderboards as pvp veterans. Not a single inexperienced player. That was the only match I would describe as competitive and fair. Hard fought on a high level with no dead weight. And that happened once out of 40-50 games. Which should be all that needs to be said about the matchmaking.



That is about all I wanted to say on the matter.
Tldr. This ain’t it ZOS, this really ain’t it.