Chrisilis wrote: »

.

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.

Best response possible! You have been annointed message board emperor.

jle30303 wrote: »

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.)

and what happens if I WANT to play deathmatch? if the entire reason I queue BGs is because I want to play death match?

I want pvp in my pvp game.

ZOS_Volpe wrote: »

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.

@ZOS_Volpe The posts you deleted were all different instances of queue times, showing that due to the broken critical healing medals, some players are now facing unrealistically long queue times. Good sorc healers are severely affected. These are not spamming, but accurate reporting of an ongoing problem you need to look into. Bring back those posts please!

Solantris wrote: »

jle30303 wrote: »

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.)

and what happens if I WANT to play deathmatch? if the entire reason I queue BGs is because I want to play death match?

I want pvp in my pvp game.

Realistically, these new Bg's aren't going anywhere. There's no way that content they spent years designing and developing and advertising are going to get shelved just because a lot of people don't like them. Many people do like them, or at least feel like they have the potential to be good once the bugs are worked out. And I bet Bg participation IS up, driven by the new rewards/ curiosity re: the changes. And if engagement IS up then new Bg's will be seen by ZoS as successful ON PAPER. Whether or not its enough to revitalise the community, to build a new community of regular Bg PvPers remains to be seen.

The thing is, the cat is out of the bag. New Bg's are here to stay. We aren't asking them to get rid of them and bring back 3 team. We are asking them to reinstate classic 4v4v4 IN ADDITION to new Bg's. We want the OPTION. We feel like they never should have been turned off. Adding content is fine, great, admirable even, keep that sht up, but removing content, especially content some of us have been dedicated to for years is completely unacceptable and feels like a slap in the face.

Hopefully they plan to use the data they're collecting to streamline the Bg experience. Hopefully they'll pay attention to the forum feedback and not just the numbers on the page. Hopefully they'll get the message that while the new content is appreciated SO WAS THE OLD CONTENT.

You should get to play the way you want and so should we.

P.s., I'm not all capsing at you, I'm hoping if they actually read this they will pay attention to our concerns.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno

Chrisilis wrote: »

Solantris wrote: »

jle30303 wrote: »

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.)

and what happens if I WANT to play deathmatch? if the entire reason I queue BGs is because I want to play death match?

I want pvp in my pvp game.

Realistically, these new Bg's aren't going anywhere. There's no way that content they spent years designing and developing and advertising are going to get shelved just because a lot of people don't like them. Many people do like them, or at least feel like they have the potential to be good once the bugs are worked out. And I bet Bg participation IS up, driven by the new rewards/ curiosity re: the changes. And if engagement IS up then new Bg's will be seen by ZoS as successful ON PAPER. Whether or not its enough to revitalise the community, to build a new community of regular Bg PvPers remains to be seen.

The thing is, the cat is out of the bag. New Bg's are here to stay. We aren't asking them to get rid of them and bring back 3 team. We are asking them to reinstate classic 4v4v4 IN ADDITION to new Bg's. We want the OPTION. We feel like they never should have been turned off. Adding content is fine, great, admirable even, keep that sht up, but removing content, especially content some of us have been dedicated to for years is completely unacceptable and feels like a slap in the face.

Hopefully they plan to use the data they're collecting to streamline the Bg experience. Hopefully they'll pay attention to the forum feedback and not just the numbers on the page. Hopefully they'll get the message that while the new content is appreciated SO WAS THE OLD CONTENT.

You should get to play the way you want and so should we.

P.s., I'm not all capsing at you, I'm hoping if they actually read this they will pay attention to our concerns.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno

This is a self fulfilling prophecy. It's the same with putting p2w items in new zones. Of course people will go to them out of either curiosity, Boredom or because there are broken sets in the zone. Oaken soul comes to mind.

We have to wait six to twelve months to see the true impact to bg population.

Chrisilis wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Chrisilis wrote: »

Solantris wrote: »

jle30303 wrote: »

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.)

and what happens if I WANT to play deathmatch? if the entire reason I queue BGs is because I want to play death match?

I want pvp in my pvp game.

Realistically, these new Bg's aren't going anywhere. There's no way that content they spent years designing and developing and advertising are going to get shelved just because a lot of people don't like them. Many people do like them, or at least feel like they have the potential to be good once the bugs are worked out. And I bet Bg participation IS up, driven by the new rewards/ curiosity re: the changes. And if engagement IS up then new Bg's will be seen by ZoS as successful ON PAPER. Whether or not its enough to revitalise the community, to build a new community of regular Bg PvPers remains to be seen.

The thing is, the cat is out of the bag. New Bg's are here to stay. We aren't asking them to get rid of them and bring back 3 team. We are asking them to reinstate classic 4v4v4 IN ADDITION to new Bg's. We want the OPTION. We feel like they never should have been turned off. Adding content is fine, great, admirable even, keep that sht up, but removing content, especially content some of us have been dedicated to for years is completely unacceptable and feels like a slap in the face.

Hopefully they plan to use the data they're collecting to streamline the Bg experience. Hopefully they'll pay attention to the forum feedback and not just the numbers on the page. Hopefully they'll get the message that while the new content is appreciated SO WAS THE OLD CONTENT.

You should get to play the way you want and so should we.

P.s., I'm not all capsing at you, I'm hoping if they actually read this they will pay attention to our concerns.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno

This is a self fulfilling prophecy. It's the same with putting p2w items in new zones. Of course people will go to them out of either curiosity, Boredom or because there are broken sets in the zone. Oaken soul comes to mind.

We have to wait six to twelve months to see the true impact to bg population.

I really really want you to be wrong (but I know your not). If they wait that long I believe they really will have alienated a not insignificant percentage of the long term Bg community. On another recent thread I was reading about U35 and how its perceived to have been a disaster. The thread went on to claim that U35 was the beginning of a steep decline among endgame players and is regarded as the reason for a subsequent overall population decline in general. I started playing about 6 months after U35 so this...version...is all I've know. I cant help but wonder if U44 will be looked back on in the same negative light and be cited down the road as the reason Bg's died, as the reason more long term loyal daily players quit.

Maybe I'm just being dramatic. But I'd love to see the numbers on NEW bg player participation uptake & retention (i.e. new people who begin regularly playIng for fun regardless of reward because they enjoy bg's). vs. retention or decline in the community that existed b4 this update.

for me, u31 was the begin of the degradation in PVP when they started breaking their own rules with DC and ROA, but that's neither here nor there.

I hope these BGs are very popular after a year. I am not here to be negative towards ZOS or the community. I am here because I love this game and I want it to be the best it can be, and I believe community involvement, input is key to that. I really think they listen, as long as we are polite, and not just complaining. I always try to provide solutions when I bring things up, not just problems. I've done this with the new bg format, trying to suggest ways to improve them since, as you pointed out, they don't look like they are going anywhere.

Solantris wrote: »

Me personally, I prefer the two teams. I like to swet.

Since the introduction of the new BGs, I have yet to see a single sweaty match in solo queue. I remember what sweating was when there were 3 teams, and BGs were about situational awareness, avoiding getting sandwiched, creating and seizing opportunities. But now... considering how ESO's combat is, could you describe these sweaty two-teams matches you've been playing?

I do hope you're not talking about a stalemate.

I am not a fan of the new battleground system and the 8v8 ones should be converted to 4v4v4 versions in my opinion.

I am in favor of bringing back 4v4v4 in general. We can leave 4v4 in as is.

I stopped playing for a bit some years before the change to 8v8 stuff - I returned just a week or so ago and have been digging into 8v8 solo queue stuff. I can't speak for group queues, but it's been a mix of good and bad. In 8v8, I've almost always had a healer of some sort, sometimes more than one, or at least a few players whose builds put out more off healing than a dedicated solo killer. It has sometimes made the game more pleasant, since there are more people to help absorb damage, peel, etc. May games may also be because I tend to play a dedicated healer, though, but there's almost always someone who's outhealing me. I'm getting into the 500k range and routinely see folks in the 700-1m+ range too.

On the other hand, I've also been in games where a single dark convergence user keeps wiping everyone, nobody adjusts, and there's someone with super low health who's a walking vicious death bomb. in 4v4v4, I think I felt the lower quality of allies more than I do in 8v8, though there is definitely potentially more damage incoming. I'm still fiddling with builds and stuff (and googling to see what new nonsensical proc sets are added so I can know what's hitting me, some things never change unfortunately...), but I'm hoping to figure out a support-y build that provides enough shielding and damage reduction that I can keep my team from being wiped if I press my buttons correctly. Some sort of AoE shielding DR buff, perhaps.

This is better in some ways from what I remember, and worse in others. It's still really sad to see ZOS continues to beat everyone over the head with new wild proc sets, but on the flip side I've been playing my necromancer healer and I think I've actually had more good games than not. I'm still miffed that necromancer seems to have to follow certain rules and isn't allowed to have things that are lavished on proc sets, even if I can appreciate the existence of group-busting sets like dark convergence and their place in Cyrodiil.

It's possible things will get worse as my MMR goes up (or down, whatever the case may be). The honeymoon phase of having scribing to place with and scripts to farm and test is tiding me over for now, though.

Also, clearly some work needs to be done in some instances/maps like that one relic one that has two stairs leading to it in that sewer like map...I got the relic game mode what felt like 3-4 times in a row over the weekend and most of those games felt like a painful, grueling grind to try and get through. I've also got beef with the way groups form, where it apparently yoinks players into the BG instance and THEN starts trying to fill in the other players? Why? That's more than a few minutes for each BG that I'm never getting back. I could be doing literally anything else during that time. Why not just make the group ready and then port people in....grumblegrumble.

Fun Battlegrounds Chapter 1: Waited 2 minutes 50 seconds for a fun match and now I can self promote my youtube channel on the forums (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/U8YJyemwPbM?si=l4NcfzNp5lWjQyr2

Haki_7 wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

Fun Battlegrounds Chapter 1: Waited 2 minutes 50 seconds for a fun match and now I can self promote my youtube channel on the forums (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/U8YJyemwPbM?si=l4NcfzNp5lWjQyr2

Do you honestly consider lopsided matches to be fun?

No, I don't - I think 4v4 (and perhaps even 8v8, although "lopsided matches" happen a lot less there) could benefit from more (shorter) rounds and team shuffling to ensure a better experience. WoW does this with arenas and it has been very popular and well received there.

That said, I don't see what's lopsided about the battleground I linked... I have of course had closer ones, but 501-324 isn't exactly "lopsided" - my team was actually trailing until half way through the battleground. The vast majority of battlegrounds (not all) have actually been fun like that.

Chrisilis wrote: »

Shorter? Shorter?!? Surely you jest. Matches aren't long enough now unless one has the attention span of a squirrel. Team shuffling? Like randomized randos randoing? Please. Be serious. People dont want to wait 15 minutes for short matches now, what makes you think they'll wait 15 minutes for matches shorter than that? With rounds? More rounds? Rounds suck, I dont want to play rounds, I want a 15 minute deathmatch with my team against other teams. Plural.

Speaking of rounds, I played my first 4v4 deathmatch yesterday that went to a 3rd round since the update. Months. Playing for months and every deathmatch was two rounds. Two rounds of either decimating the other team or getting decimated. Lopsided. I will say I ended the day yesterday having played two 3 round dm's. Maybe progress has been made bringing MMR into line.

Relic goes the whole time sometimes, but that's specific to 8v8 and the scoring for relic is, well, imbalanced, to say the least. The only other format the goes beyond a couple of minutes is crazy king when one team abandons flags to farm/bully the other team.

Neither of these things are healthy for population growth of bgs imho, and aren't the most fun. Going 20-0 in relic by guarding my relic for 15 minutes and getting 0, zero, zip, zippity do dah points for it is broken.

Moonspawn wrote: »

Two-Teams BG enjoyers on their way to have ''fun'' spawncamping newcomers 58 times

Yes because that is totally new to the 2 team BGs and never happened in 3 way BGs.

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Jierdanit wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

Two-Teams BG enjoyers on their way to have ''fun'' spawncamping newcomers 58 times

Yes because that is totally new to the 2 team BGs and never happened in 3 way BGs.

Has your experience been that this happened at the same rate in 3 team modes as it does in this 2 team mode?

My experience is that this happened in both, but happens probably 10 times as frequently now, but that's just me.

One player having a significantly higher K/D than the rest of the BG? Probably actually happens less often now.

One Team being very dominant (which wasnt really even the case in that BG). Happened a lot in both. Probably a bit more in the new BGs.

Jierdanit wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

Two-Teams BG enjoyers on their way to have ''fun'' spawncamping newcomers 58 times

Yes because that is totally new to the 2 team BGs and never happened in 3 way BGs.

It didn't happen for practical reasons. The objective would just get done uncontested by the third team. Even the most deranged seal clubber wouldn't want the BG to end in two and a half minutes.