Took a little stroll around the forums today to see how people like the new BGs. Also asked my groupmates whilst in BGs on a few occasions, and talked to friends. And it seems there is no unanimous dislike of the changes, so they must be serving someone, and that's great! They do, however, not serve me in the slightest, so let me indulge in a little rant and wishful thinking before bedtime.

1. Queue per gamemode, please?
"Every gamemode is deathmatch", I am sure you have heard many times! I loved all the 4v4v4 modes, except deathmatch. Before the BG update, I wasn't hopelessly bad at DM either, sometimes it was even fun if we had a good group, but often I still wished I could avoid it entirely. I simply find the other modes with actual objectives to be much more interesting.

Now, DM is so painful I will not play it at all, and just leave as soon as I see what mode the queue bestowed on me (leaving immediately, I hope I'm not unduly burdening my groupmates as another player will hopefully take my spot before the game starts!).

On the other hand, I know a lot of people who enjoy deathmatch especially, and may detest some other. So, why not allow us to queue for those modes we really want to play? (One big part of the answer is surely "because there's not enough population as it is, and this would make matchmaking even more difficult", yes (*). But I am sure some concessions in this department could be made without hurting the system too badly.)

I realise that the tendency of some players to treat every PvP instance as an opportunity to kill at will is hardly specific to ESO. As such, there probably isn't so much that can be done to decentivise this behaviour, and even if someone like me could skip DM in the queue, I would still run into players like this. But, if players like this could queue for DM only, or at least get more DM matches, maybe it would be less of an issue to the objective-playing population, then.

2. I wish the battles were still three-sided.
It was a world of fun! I liked the spacious maps and the strategic element that the asymmetry allowed for. Now it's a simple two-sided face-off in close quarters that, oddly enough, seems to turn into "every gamemode is deathmatch" even more often than it did before the update. I found this somewhat alleviated in the 4v4 matches simply because they were a bit less crowded, but even those were pretty brutal, particularly with the added "competitive" stamp on them.

3. I thought one of the goals was to make BGs more casual/noob friendly...
...but what has seemed to happen instead is that there are more besserwissers around than usual, sniffing at teammates' buffood and telling them to gitgud. This is happening in the 8v8's, which are supposed to be... not-competitive, ergo, casual? I found the old BGs to be reasonably casual-friendly; after all, I'm hardly a PvPer, yet I did well and had fun in them. The learning curve was not too steep, and I indeed learned and improved and really enjoyed that. BGs have previously been the only PvP I will willingly set foot in, and my only reliable source of AP. Now, I find myself looking for alternatives, not being more enamoured with Battlegrounds.

4. The 8v8 team size is too much
I tried the 4v4's as well and frankly enjoyed the smaller playercount there significantly more than running around as one of an 8-person mob, but as someone who likes to just play for fun and do my best rather than being told my non-meta doesn't cut it, I don't feel comfortable playing the 4v4's. Couldn't we run leaderboards for both team sizes, and allow casuals to play in the smaller teams as well, somehow?

On a parting note, I will quote my favourite guild's slogan: "Play your way, be nice, bring sweetrolls". I'm sure what I've written above is not a reflection of how everyone wants to play BGs but it sure would make them better for me.


(*) P.S. I've never entirely understood the low population complaints myself. Queueing in the European evening/night, I've rarely had to wait too long for matches.