Battlegrounds: Cycle of Self-Destruction

Haki_7 · December 2024

Solantris wrote: »

The world will never be the same when Haki leaves us, and neither will my heart. But the way things are, I don't blame him.

people see sorc jumping in the background spamming endless fury
and assume I'm there to try and steal all the kills
but we both know the truth, don't we?
from the start
it was really you
that I have come to steal

fizzylu · December 2024

@Thumbless_Bot
Ah okay, haha.

gariondavey · December 2024

Solantris wrote: »

I came back from a year hiatus after hearing about the BG changes and my head hurts. I don't have the solution but I can't deny there's an unsustainable problem.

20-60 minute queues for a lopsided experience is honestly just horrible for everyone involved, whether you're the slamm-ee or the slam-er. Duoing with my friend and dropping 70, 50, 40, 30 kill games is boring and uncompetitive. I know some will disagree, but I am personally not a fan of shooting fish in a barrel nor being the fish in a barrel. ESO's combat is its fun point for me, where is the combat in any of this? Said friend and I group queued for over 3 hours on the weekend, only for it to pop when I went to the bathroom. These days we have to que solo and just hope we share a game if we want to play together at all, and when the queue finally pops, we're ruining pvp for other people and our own experience is...lacking, to say the least.

We met some brand new transfer players from WOW in the queue last weekend. They were awesome people, reached out to us, didn't mind that we clapped some cheeks. We were able to pass on some mechanical information and generally had a good time teaching them things. But I can't help but wonder, why the hell are players like us being pitched against players who frankly don't stand a chance? We have over a decade of ESO experience between us. I don't mean to be an elitist ***, but the complete and utter, inherent, mechanical, undeniable unsustainability in this has to be pointed out. They're nice people and I'm glad we met, I'm glad they are the kind of players to recognize an experience differential and ask us, and we are the kind of players to take that kindly and happily share our knowledge. But how many times is this exact scenario playing out with nothing but negativity felt on all sides?

Why did we meet them? Why are they expected to fight us? Why are we expected to fight them?

The below are from the past week or so, and they're just the ones I randomly thought to screengrab. Frankly, games like this should be outliers. Matchmaking should stop this, but it doesn't. Why?

From Shrimpoh: "The balancing of things is done in a way that makes it hard to appreciate the reason we PvP in the first place. It’s all well and good fighting and getting a bunch of kills but when the experience is either diminished by excessive queues (not even including broken ones) and one sided balancing, individual value in those games feels negligible."

The world will never be the same when Haki leaves us, and neither will my heart. But the way things are, I don't blame him.

Edit to add, no Garion. I'm not getting better scoreboard. I know you're here somewhere. I know you want to say it. I'm not doing it. It's been 4 years.

SOLANTRISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Haki_7 · December 2024

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 4: Waiting 23 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4GT60qzKbI

Solantris · December 2024

Haki_7 wrote: »

Solantris wrote: »

The world will never be the same when Haki leaves us, and neither will my heart. But the way things are, I don't blame him.

people see sorc jumping in the background spamming endless fury
and assume I'm there to try and steal all the kills
but we both know the truth, don't we?
that
it was really you
that I have come to steal

When these halls are finally empty of light and laughter
Your voice will still linger in the quiet corners of my mind.
The endless furies have forever scarred my forehead,
like a wizard we shall not name.

You’ve already stolen my heart,
You, quiet thief in the night of my soul.

Even if you do reuse your poetry.

Haki_7 · December 2024

Solantris wrote: »

Even if you do reuse your poetry.

our love goes beyond poetry

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 5: Waiting another 23 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Kl6QBrDmA

licenturion · December 2024

Aldoss wrote: »

This behavior is why I suspect many people want the 4v4v4 back because it increased the number of targets for these sweat lords to target. It helped a baby seal blend in and go unnoticed, but it didn't solve the problem which was baby seals getting placed against sweat lords in the first place.

I think you are overthinking this whole thing.

The players what you call 'baby seals' are usually people who want that daily XP boost (possibly with even an XP scroll activated) and just queue up without much experience, coordination or special sets and see how it goes.

The old battlegrounds had a 66 percent chance of getting your daily in one match. If there was a massive power imbalance between the teams you could actually still have fun and make it exciting by battle with the team in second place and still 'win' your reward.

The new battlegrounds have a 50 percent chance of getting your daily and you usually know after the first minute how it will end which leads to people leaving, stand in spawn or just spam some AOE in a brawling group. Just to get it over quickly and to try the spin the wheel again.

Thanks to the solo queue now it is a bit of a lottery of getting a good team. But if you mix this queue with groups the chance for solo players to get their daily will drop even below 50 percent, which will in turn make people just skip it altogether making queue times even longer.

Aldoss · December 2024

licenturion wrote: »

Aldoss wrote: »

This behavior is why I suspect many people want the 4v4v4 back because it increased the number of targets for these sweat lords to target. It helped a baby seal blend in and go unnoticed, but it didn't solve the problem which was baby seals getting placed against sweat lords in the first place.

I think you are overthinking this whole thing.

The players what you call 'baby seals' are usually people who want that daily XP boost (possibly with even an XP scroll activated) and just queue up without much experience, coordination or special sets and see how it goes.

The old battlegrounds had a 66 percent chance of getting your daily in one match. If there was a massive power imbalance between the teams you could actually still have fun and make it exciting by battle with the team in second place and still 'win' your reward.

The new battlegrounds have a 50 percent chance of getting your daily and you usually know after the first minute how it will end which leads to people leaving, stand in spawn or just spam some AOE in a brawling group. Just to get it over quickly and to try the spin the wheel again.

Thanks to the solo queue now it is a bit of a lottery of getting a good team. But if you mix this queue with groups the chance for solo players to get their daily will drop even below 50 percent, which will in turn make people just skip it altogether making queue times even longer.

1. BG queues should never be standardized around players who want nothing to do with it, if not for the chance at some digital trinkets.

2. That's not how math works.

You're correct in saying that ZOS gave two teams the daily bonus in the 4v4v4 BGs, thus giving someone only queuing for the daily bonus a 66% chance. You're correct in saying that it's now only a 50% chance, but to then claim that by combining the 8v8 to be solo and duo it would "drop even below 50 percent" is not mathematically possible.

My suggestion is completely centered around the idea of increasing the volume of players that can be matched to give the match maker the best possible shot at matching up players of similar skill. Currently, if the match maker only has so many baby seals and questers, it must fill the lobby with the available sweat lords, and as I stated earlier, there are more sweat lords in the solo queue than there are in the group queue at any given time.

This makes the 50/50 chance drop considerably.

However, if you combine the 8v8 to become the true casual option and allow solos and duos, you increase the total volume of available baby seals and questers that can be matched together, forcing out the sweat lords from their lobbies, and evening out the playing field back to that 50% chance of getting the daily in one match.

Bad players are bad players, regardless of if they're grouped or not. Give them a better shot at getting matched with other bad players and they'll all have a much more enjoyable time trying to get their daily.

3. No one is forcing players to do the daily BG. It's been years since I've participated in a daily dungeon. PvE is awful and boring to me. Are there benefits that I'm missing out on by not doing PvE? Yes, but that's on me. If players don't like playing BGs, then why are they complaining about it in the first place?

Moonspawn · December 2024

I wonder if reducing the critical healing badge points would impact @Haki_7 's queue times.

Haki_7 · December 2024

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 6: Waiting 20 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swiR5hwJmZc

Solantris · December 2024

In the spirit of the thing.

BG log

Q1. 18th Dec, 8 man duo queue. Spent 56 minutes waiting in Cyrodiil. Had a couple small 2vx fights, duo partner consistently freezing in place. End up fighting a man visibly doing the same. Asked him, he was also freezing. Decided eso not worth, played something else.
Q2. 19th Dec. 129m 8 man duo queue, went to cyrodiil. No smallscale population, only EP during JP primetime. Only one big group whose bash man descyncs me like crazy because 300 ping. No queue, no other pop to fight... decided ESO not worth, played something else.
Q3, later that day. Solo 8 man queue, popped after 28 minutes! Woo! Was a deathmatch with two named players* including myself. Notably, Tuudy. on my team clearly doing DK bombs, he needs room. I am sorc support, I give it to him. I negate his bombs, we throw hands. Later, I am accused of being in comms.
Q4, immediately afterwards, 17 minutes. Approximately 4 named players. Tuudy on enemy team, KDMS and Tamerlin on mine. Our collective pugs enjoyed relic hunting. I negated Tuudy's bombs. He did not get any room.
Q5, 20th dec. Solo 8 man queue, POPPED IN 2 MINUTES AND 48 SECONDs! Relic game where nobody cared about relic, my favourite! Big brawl. Up and coming pvpers on both teams, sweaty back and forth fights. Enemy dot DK man held a lot of fight presence. Probably would have run the game if I didn't exist. Teammate mans wasn't quite as large and didn't understand why I gave him star**. He went 29 and 4 in total. He now understands why I gave him the star.
Q6, 20th Dec. solo man 8 queue, 5 minute pop. sweaty relic. 4 named players enemy team, only me on friendly team. Went about as well as you'd expect. My pugs yolo into 8 man sitting on relic on repeat. I... strik where I can. I can only drag a man through hell so many times. 20k HP sorc relic running? I'll do my best

* "Named player" - BG or cyrodiil regular. Player someone I recognize as having reasonable fingies.
** Star - marks either biggest friendly player or frontline melee player. Person for me to orbit, functionally. Like crown in cyrodill but for bg

OsUfi · December 2024

[deleted]

Haki_7 · December 2024

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 7: Waiting 22 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LPaUlyzFCg

Haki_7 · December 2024

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 8: Waiting 24 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WllWMx4WJGk

johnJrant · December 2024

Not a very good offer. In competitive mode, there should not be more than 9 fighters on the map. The old BG suffered because of this. And the new 4x4s are good because there are few people in combat. In DM, I don't see any point in a third command at all. Why is it there if it's a fight to the death. If they died like that, what difference does it make from one or the other team? You're all discussing BG's problems, but it's worth paying a little attention to the players' problems. Now on BG, even with all the problems, there are no insurmountable mechanics, they are not difficult and the battles there rarely lean to one side if you play at a high mmr. So the problem is for players who are "difficult" or who see insurmountable difficulties in the players themselves. 90% of the lost or "one-way fights" occur due to the fact that the players are doing the wrong thing on BG.

Haki_7 · December 2024

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 9: Waiting 26 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIjZDhYb9Gk

Haki_7 · December 2024

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 10: Waiting 20 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXZ2FeHigas

Avran_Sylt · December 2024

Haki_7 wrote: »

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 10: Waiting 20 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXZ2FeHigas

So, in what way are the matches lopsided? What results are you having?

I think I’ve played, and been curb stomped, by you before.

Are you saying I need to be curb stomped more often by you so you at least don’t need to wait as long?

Haki_7 · December 2024

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

So, in what way are the matches lopsided? What results are you having?

I remember all kinds of situations happening when there were three teams. Now it's just one team farming the other.

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

I think I’ve played, and been curb stomped, by you before.

Impossible. I am a healer.

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Are you saying I need to be curb stomped more often by you so you at least don’t need to wait as long?

As a healer, my contribution is being misrepresented by the Critical Heal badge. I suspect it is inflating my MMR to the point of keeping me out of matches entirely. Reducing the badge's points from the current 100 to somewhere in the 25-50 range might solve my problem. This change would also allow DPS players to compete against healers in the leaderboards.

Avran_Sylt · December 2024

Haki_7 wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

So, in what way are the matches lopsided? What results are you having?

I remember all kinds of situations happening when there were three teams. Now it's just one team farming the other.

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

I think I’ve played, and been curb stomped, by you before.

Impossible. I am a healer.

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Are you saying I need to be curb stomped more often by you so you at least don’t need to wait as long?

As a healer, my contribution is being misrepresented by the Critical Heal badge. I suspect it is inflating my MMR to the point of keeping me out of matches entirely. Reducing the badge's points from the current 100 to somewhere in the 25-50 range might solve my problem. This change would also allow DPS players to compete against healers in the leaderboards.

I mean it’s still possible I got curb-stomped by you.

I’m a Bow DPS, all Divines with Crit chance and Crit %, all points into Magicka and Light Armor.

I am squish. Given the hybrid scaling of damage and heals it’s entirely possible to get killed by healers myself (unless they’re heal tanks).

I just faintly recall associating your name to an unkillable blob of opponents that would rush me down/be able to hold strong in our spawn.

How often do you die?

I’m frequently top of the leaderboard since I can moonlight as a healer with Malevolent Offering myself, but I still get killed a bit. I’ve been having fairly short queue times.

Thumbless_Bot · December 2024

I logged in to my plar today for the first time in about two weeks. Not sure how this has impacted my mmr because zos, but I've been in about 3 4v4 and two 8v8 trying to get filled up on wins so I can cash in tomorrow (because you only get one token per day). The 4v4s have timed out two times and the three that did start took almost the entire five minutes to start. In other words, queues are still broken at lower mmr, I think. Might not have been two weeks, but it's been a while.

Pepegrillos · December 2024

You know there is an absolute mess when Haki has to leave the bgs and come into the forums to show the evidence. Someone call Wheeler...

gariondavey · December 2024

Pepegrillos wrote: »

You know there is an absolute mess when Haki has to leave the bgs and come into the forums to show the evidence. Someone call Wheeler...

To be fair look how long the queues are. Plenty of time to come on the forums to shed light on this fiasco

ZOS_Volpe · January 1

Greetings,

We've removed some comments due to spamming, please keep the threads constructive and on topic. To review our community rules, you may find them here.

Thanks for your understanding.

Haki_7 · January 1

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 19: Waiting 28 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfafI-lheLs

Chrisilis · January 2

So here I am, waiting in the queue for my 2nd bg match of the day... as one does these days, and you know what I miss? Matches that last 15 minutes. I miss them a lot. These 4, 5, 6 minute matches are a real bummer, like, wait 10-20 minutes, play 5.. There's not even enough time to really get into it and its over. The only Bg that seems to last the entire match time is Relic and its the worst one! I disliked Relic b4, its just a boring stalemated nightmare now imo... Anyway.

The dev letter said " We acknowledge that some of our players have expressed enjoying the previous 3-sided format more and are continuing to monitor feedback paired with in-game data. We are not planning any other major changes to ESO’s PVP Battlegrounds in the near future; rather, we’ll be focusing on addressing some of the main pain points outside of general personal preferences between the 3-sided versus 2-sided formats."

In the near future... Or at all? I would hope they would come out with a definitive yes or no on the issue of three team bg's SOON and NOT keep us all in suspense. Very frustrating. Anyway. Ready check came and went while writing this. Figures.

Edit ~ Since posting this I played 5 matches which took 3 hours and 20 minutes. For 5 games. And I caught 189 fish while waiting in the queue. 0_0

Thumbless_Bot · January 3

Chrisilis wrote: »

So here I am, waiting in the queue for my 2nd bg match of the day... as one does these days, and you know what I miss? Matches that last 15 minutes. I miss them a lot. These 4, 5, 6 minute matches are a real bummer, like, wait 10-20 minutes, play 5.. There's not even enough time to really get into it and its over. The only Bg that seems to last the entire match time is Relic and its the worst one! I disliked Relic b4, its just a boring stalemated nightmare now imo... Anyway.

The dev letter said " We acknowledge that some of our players have expressed enjoying the previous 3-sided format more and are continuing to monitor feedback paired with in-game data. We are not planning any other major changes to ESO’s PVP Battlegrounds in the near future; rather, we’ll be focusing on addressing some of the main pain points outside of general personal preferences between the 3-sided versus 2-sided formats."

In the near future... Or at all? I would hope they would come out with a definitive yes or no on the issue of three team bg's SOON and NOT keep us all in suspense. Very frustrating. Anyway. Ready check came and went while writing this. Figures.

Edit ~ Since posting this I played 5 matches which took 3 hours and 20 minutes. For 5 games. And I caught 189 fish while waiting in the queue. 0_0

And you didn't even touch on the degraded combat in these shortened bgs. At least that's been my experience.

Chrisilis · January 3

.

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Chrisilis wrote: »

So here I am, waiting in the queue for my 2nd bg match of the day... as one does these days, and you know what I miss? Matches that last 15 minutes. I miss them a lot. These 4, 5, 6 minute matches are a real bummer, like, wait 10-20 minutes, play 5.. There's not even enough time to really get into it and its over. The only Bg that seems to last the entire match time is Relic and its the worst one! I disliked Relic b4, its just a boring stalemated nightmare now imo... Anyway.

The dev letter said " We acknowledge that some of our players have expressed enjoying the previous 3-sided format more and are continuing to monitor feedback paired with in-game data. We are not planning any other major changes to ESO’s PVP Battlegrounds in the near future; rather, we’ll be focusing on addressing some of the main pain points outside of general personal preferences between the 3-sided versus 2-sided formats."

In the near future... Or at all? I would hope they would come out with a definitive yes or no on the issue of three team bg's SOON and NOT keep us all in suspense. Very frustrating. Anyway. Ready check came and went while writing this. Figures.

Edit ~ Since posting this I played 5 matches which took 3 hours and 20 minutes. For 5 games. And I caught 189 fish while waiting in the queue. 0_0

And you didn't even touch on the degraded combat in these shortened bgs. At least that's been my experience.

I know how combat has been "behaving" from my own perspective. Why is it that some days/matches I can just lay waste to everything around me, no deaths, clean sweep win after win after win and other days are a total sht show, double digit deaths, skills don't hit, as in I'm throwing frags but they don't seem to land or do any damage?

Or or we back to balance? I think we've established that's not a thing in new Bg's, stomp or be stomped, no in between.

Or are you referring to Relic, how it was kinda meh before but was at least competitive? And how now, if a team can even get their hands on your relic once they'll just defend their own the rest of the game cus scoring one time = victory so why do anything but defend?

Or how Chaosball (the least ruined bg imo) matches all follow the same basic pattern, one team gets two balls, ball bearers stand there until they die while six other people deathmatch? Or the monster balls with no real heal where you pick em up just to die immediately? Rinse, repeat?

Or do you mean Domination where the nonexistent balance comes into play and one team wipes the floor with the other and you know whose going to win in the first two minutes but can't ditch because the deserter penalty is so long you might as well go fold the laundry? Or Crazy King which is no longer Crazy King but Domination with moving flags?

Deathmatch. 4v4 kill caps and that stupid 3 deaths your out rule and the new unspoken rule where the one guy with a life left is supposed to let himself get killed to just get it over with already but sometimes he doesn't and stays in the spawn and forces you to lie there dead till the time runs out? 8v8 where one teams got two bombers and the game takes 4 minutes?

The word "combat" implies competition and its hard to have a 5 minute competition in an unbalanced stomp or be stomped situation, imo.

Degraded combat? I'm really not sure what you mean Bot, its fiiine, everything's fiiine.

jle30303 · January 4

My thoughts:

There are some modes that lend themselves better to 3 sides than 2 sides.

Capture the Relic, in particular. When one team can simply camp the other one at spawn, in a two-team battle, there's no nuance to the play: it just becomes like a deathmatch, which is NOT supposed to be deathmatch. Especially when the attacking team repeatedly refuses to, erm, actually do the objective and capture said relic, while the defending team has no chance to actually get past the attackers and reach the enemy base.

In a 3-team CtR, Team 1 could not camp Team 2 at base, for fear that Team 3 would actually sneak in - to *either* base, yours or theirs.

(Besides, there's the Achievement for getting "both enemy Relics within 10 seconds of each other", which is now no longer obtainable when there are not two enemy teams to provide two enemy relics).

Meanwhile, with the Flag games - Domination and Crazy King - I believe that the new Battlegrounds are just too *small*. The flags need to be a bit further apart. Because, once again, *this game mode is NOT deathmatch, it is a flag game*, and if you're losing to "a team that avoids everyone else and runs to unattended flags", you're deserving to lose because you're not playing the rules of the flag game, you're trying to play Deathmatch in a game which isn't Deathmatch. If the rules are "chase the flags" and you're not chasing the flags, you SHOULD lose.

And again, with 2-team flag games, there is still the problem of a stronger team simply camping the enemy team at base to prevent them reaching the flags: which in a 3-team game would allow Team 3 to be the one to take the flags, and force Team 1 to switch their attention to the *flags*, which is where they should be anyway, rather than to camping at enemy base.

Chaosball has adapted better to the 2-team format. Although the version with 3 balls... including 1 vampire ball, 1 werewolf ball and 1 regular chaos ball... is, not to put too fine a point on it, weird. The principle's still the same, you have to hold something that actually hurts you to hold onto, which means there's a chance of dying in possession and giving the enemy a way back in...

To be honest I even preferred 3 team Deathmatch, precisely because even if there's one stronger team, there would be a chance of nicking second place against third place, and if you *were* in third place, you could still try to take on second place. (Of course, if there were TWO good teams approximately equal, and a third team consisting of baby seals, then you're stuffed.)

radiostar · January 4

The big problem so far for me is players leaving when they think their team is losing. It usually turns out the team could win if only they had stayed and fought. Your team CAN come from behind and win, if you stay and help. But if 3 players leave, ya, then it's over.