Battlegrounds: Cycle of Self-Destruction

DaniimalsSF · January 12

The more I read the comments the more I think an underlying problem is that ZOS is trying to have BGs be the place for both casual and competitive players.

Competitive players seem to want fair and balanced competition. They seem to want people who understand class and builds to face off and let skill alone be the deciding factor. This is why you hear the arguments against 4v4v4, complaints about people avoiding fighting to play objectives, and continued requests for transparent MMR based off of KDA and not medal score. These people probably play BGs all day and either duel or theory craft between matches.

Casual player seem to want the daily reward or quick and varied matches. They don’t have the time to search for action in Cyrodill. They will generally play the objective, but also get sidetracked. Some of them prefer playing the strategy of objectives, even if they never fight another player. They don’t care so much about winning or being the best, but they don’t want to get camped or stomped into oblivion. They just want to get more kills than deaths or top half of medal score. They are probably doing daily writs while they queue and then log off to feed their kids when their 1 hour of free time is done for the day.

BGs struggle because they are trying to put these two groups together and make them play the same game. In my experience it seems about 50% of the time I get a relatively balanced match in 8v8, 25% I’m stomping people, and 25% I’m being stomped. I rarely queue 4v4 as it feels boring and not dynamic at all, but that’s just me.

Moonspawn · January 12

Decimus wrote: »

Maybe you need to reread what I wrote since there seems to be some kind of a communication error. You can polish a ****, but it'll still be a **** - you cannot fix fundamental problems.

Unless you don't consider it a problem that two teams are focusing one team and causing an unfair situation to occur for the team being 8v4'd - if someone wants this kind of an experience they can go to Cyrodiil where everyone is free to form a ball group and run after outnumbered players.

Well, it depends which 8v4 you're talking about. If you're talking about 8v4 in Chaosball, thats just how the mode is supposed to be played, and I loved it. It was so much better than this 3 chaosballs, transformations nonsense. Remember those close matches where every single player used to gun for the ball, and it kept switching hands, and ultimates kept going off, and no one knew who was going to win? Those were WILD. I assume you're referring to the extreme, horrible situation of 8 people not fighting each other at all, and spawncamping the softest team, yes? My revamping suggestions were all made thinking about the worst case scenarios for every mode. You could help me refine them further.

Decimus wrote: »

...and this here is more copium. You don't get "increased" rewards in 4v4, it is the only way to get those rewards - and 4v4 queue is significantly longer than the 8v8 queue despite only requiring 8 people per match rather than 16, so I don't know what you're going on about "vast majority".

The chances of a victory for a newcomer also aren't at all higher in 4v4 than they are in 8v8 - they're literally 50/50. Saying this as someone who farmed the whole Galeskirmish Gladiator style playing 7 different characters.

The problem is, the chances for a top PvPer are also too close to a 50/50 in 4v4 - if you get into the team with people who don't know what they're doing and you have people who know how to push half their buttons in the opponent team, you are going to lose that battleground - period.

Every single time I have said ''increased rewards'' I was referring to the rewards we have now for BGs in general, compared to what they were in the old BGs, which were essentially non-existent.
If your question is: ''If they are only after the rewards, as you say, then why not queue into the 4v4 instead of the 8v8? The 4v4 has that additional Galersomething Gladiator style reward after all.''
As bad as 8v8 is, I did find it strange that 4v4 didn't immediately die. Now it makes sense. Some people are farming something that can only be obtained in there. Anyway, to answer the question: newcomers know that 8v8 is the way to go by now. Their individual contribution is more diluted than in the 4v4. More people. More chaos. Shorter queues. Still a horribly lopsided torture, but less cartoonishly terrible than the 4v4 in every way.

Haki_7 · January 13

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 22: Waiting 31 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-Yccpr5qbI

Decimus · January 14

Fun Battlegrounds Chapter 3: Dear diary, here we go again... waited 20 seconds for a fun match (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/XGejhJCGxD0?si=qiBdUNMV7RUoVwmF

VoxAdActa · January 14

As a PvE player who has often flirted with the idea of putting a toe into PvP, doing a battleground every so often or dragging a pack full of siege weapons out to Cyrodiil when the curiosity strikes me, I find this discussion fascinating.

The loudest, most insistent voices in this thread are overtly characterizing new PvPers (like me) or casual PvPers as either problems or targets. As are the PvPers who are silly enough to believe that the objectives presented by the description of the game mode were actually the real objectives.

(I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't really supposed to be trying to capture the flag in Capture the Flag.)

The discussion isn't so much "how to make the PvP community bigger," it's "how do we get rid of the problem of all these casuals and newbs messing up our games?"

Decimus · January 14

VoxAdActa wrote: »

As a PvE player who has often flirted with the idea of putting a toe into PvP, doing a battleground every so often or dragging a pack full of siege weapons out to Cyrodiil when the curiosity strikes me, I find this discussion fascinating.

The loudest, most insistent voices in this thread are overtly characterizing new PvPers (like me) or casual PvPers as either problems or targets. As are the PvPers who are silly enough to believe that the objectives presented by the description of the game mode were actually the real objectives.

(I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't really supposed to be trying to capture the flag in Capture the Flag.)

The discussion isn't so much "how to make the PvP community bigger," it's "how do we get rid of the problem of all these casuals and newbs messing up our games?"

Quite the opposite for me - I've focused a lot of my time talking about how the experience could be made fun for the more casual player.

If people are sitting in base not jumping down in 4v4 as a result of bad matchmaking, the gameplay simply can't be fun.

Shuffling the teams is a proven and functional solution to this, meaning the casual players instead of getting farmed by sweats get to play with the sweats in the next round and so on.

8v8 is in a place where I believe people can have fun most of the time regardless of their skill level... unless (ironically) it happens to be a deathmatch, as that's where the "spawn camping" happens a lot.

There's solutions to this however, such as having a sigil spawn in the base of the team that's trailing by X points (there should be some sort of a tutorial for new players when it comes to picking up sigils as well, I see a lot of players just run past them).

Alternatively they could have multiple (shorter) rounds where people are rotated around instead of one long 500-0 farming session.

It's extremely important to recognize that there is no game without the casual player base - if you build a game for sweats, you'll have only sweats in the end and that's not a lot of players.

Thumbless_Bot · January 14

DaniimalsSF wrote: »

BGs suffer from trying to make all of the different PvP

VoxAdActa wrote: »

As a PvE player who has often flirted with the idea of putting a toe into PvP, doing a battleground every so often or dragging a pack full of siege weapons out to Cyrodiil when the curiosity strikes me, I find this discussion fascinating.

The loudest, most insistent voices in this thread are overtly characterizing new PvPers (like me) or casual PvPers as either problems or targets. As are the PvPers who are silly enough to believe that the objectives presented by the description of the game mode were actually the real objectives.

(I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't really supposed to be trying to capture the flag in Capture the Flag.)

The discussion isn't so much "how to make the PvP community bigger," it's "how do we get rid of the problem of all these casuals and newbs messing up our games?"

Keep playing. Don't let people on a forum or in game intimidate you. I would recommend you stick to 8v8 for now. It's more forgiving than 4v4 and the best thing the game has to bring in and retain new players since they removed the three team format, which was even more forgiving, but is gone now. Two thirds of players could get rewards and sometimes all three teams did. Also, individual lack of skill was less obvious. Three teams made it so folks vould ease into bgs without being overwhelmed. 8v8 is supposed to do that now. I think.

As for the complaints on the forums. I dont know you, but I imagine you do not like dying 20-30-40 or more times and respawning... maybe you do. But probably not. That's not fun for most. Neither is killing the same inexperienced player over and over and over... Again, for most players. Some enjoy this for whatever reason.

What most of us would like, i think, is balanced competitve bgs and an mmr system that doesn't put you, a pve player, in a 4v4 with 6 or 7 extremely skilled veteran players, just because you queue for 4v4 over and over and over chasing some leaderboard and or reward. Your mmr should go up because of skill. Not volume. The current mmr system appears to be based on volume, which introduces imbalance into competitve bgs and that isn't fun for anyone, imho.

Instead. If you find you enjoy bgs, you should be able to queue for 4v4 and be matched with similarly skilled players in 4v4 and slowly work your way up the mmr ladder. You might still get your face melted off from time to time, but it would likely be far less discouraging and a much more fun adventure. And. In the end, you might become a die hard bg fan like the rest of us. That's far less likely to happen with this new format as it is implemented today and why alot ofnus are expressing concerns. We love the game. I hope, for the sake of all of us who do love this game, zos sees the light and makes changes.

Again. Keep playing.

Chrisilis · January 14

VoxAdActa wrote: »

As a PvE player who has often flirted with the idea of putting a toe into PvP, doing a battleground every so often or dragging a pack full of siege weapons out to Cyrodiil when the curiosity strikes me, I find this discussion fascinating.

The loudest, most insistent voices in this thread are overtly characterizing new PvPers (like me) or casual PvPers as either problems or targets. As are the PvPers who are silly enough to believe that the objectives presented by the description of the game mode were actually the real objectives.

(I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't really supposed to be trying to capture the flag in Capture the Flag.)

The discussion isn't so much "how to make the PvP community bigger," it's "how do we get rid of the problem of all these casuals and newbs messing up our games?"

Don't listen to them, the people most vocal re: new PvP'ers or PvE'ers dipping a toe into PvP come off as elitist snobs and do not speak for everybody. New players are the lifeblood of the game and I for one am always pleased to see a new face. Honestly, I kind of applaud a player who starts battlegrounding the minute they hit 160cp, or level 10 or whatever, it takes curiosity and courage to go into a PvP situation for the first time. The battleground gatekeepers forget what it was like to be new and inexperienced but many of us remember and sympathize

I don't care if your level 25 and haven't a clue in the world, if you end up on my team I'm glad to see you there. I hope to see you there at level 50 and level 500 and level 2000.

And you are supposed to capture those flags. Its how you win the game. The objective is the point of objective mode f f s. If these DM or die types cant get their sht together long enough to, I dunno, stand around a flag for 10 seconds before they go back to plugging people that's on them. I don't know why everybody always seems to be like pro objective or pro DM, you can literally do both at the same time, its not that hard.

So don't give up on PvP Vox, a lot of us are glad to have you here.

xylena_lazarow · January 14

VoxAdActa wrote: »

The loudest, most insistent voices in this thread are overtly characterizing new PvPers (like me) or casual PvPers as either problems or targets.

I'm another 10+ year tryhard that's trying to advocate for getting more casuals into PvP. I've posted in a lot of these BGs threads that the 8v8 solo is the best way to do that. The teams are big enough to carry weaker players, zerg down healbots, and still leave room for skill expression, making it a great place for casuals to learn alongside tryhards.

The 3-sided enjoyers are vastly underestimating how bad it feels to get third-partied by troll players, especially for a casual player just trying to do their objective and get their rewards. You need significantly more field awareness in 3-sided, and even then, you can't account for players that shoot their own team in the foot just to troll.

If they can implement a mercy rule for lopsided matches and move the 8v8 solo to the top of the list, I think casual BGs would be in a great place. Most of the pain comes from casuals getting wrongly funneled into 4v4 competitive, which is an absolutely brutal environment, even for tryhard players.

Dragonnord · January 14

Moonspawn wrote: »

3)Two-Teams Custom Lobbies (4v4, 8v8, 3v3, 2v2, XvX)

Custom lobbies never please. People will obviously exploit them (meaning completing the lobbies only with friends or people they agreed with) for points, achievements, xp gaining, ap gaining, etc., etc., etc.

Custom lobbies never, unless achievements, xp, ap, etc., nothing in fact, counts there and they are just for fun.

Moonspawn · January 14

Dragonnord wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

3)Two-Teams Custom Lobbies (4v4, 8v8, 3v3, 2v2, XvX)

Custom lobbies never please. People will obviously exploit them (meaning completing the lobbies only with friends or people they agreed with) for points, achievements, xp gaining, ap gaining, etc., etc., etc.

Custom lobbies never, unless achievements, xp, ap, etc., nothing in fact, counts there and they are just for fun.

''The community has always asked for custom lobbies. The rewards here would probably need to be restricted to bragging rights, perhaps a separate leaderboard with wins and losses''

Perhaps there could be a gold betting system in place, in addition to the bragging rights.

Moonspawn · January 14

VoxAdActa wrote: »

As a PvE player who has often flirted with the idea of putting a toe into PvP, doing a battleground every so often or dragging a pack full of siege weapons out to Cyrodiil when the curiosity strikes me, I find this discussion fascinating.

The loudest, most insistent voices in this thread are overtly characterizing new PvPers (like me) or casual PvPers as either problems or targets. As are the PvPers who are silly enough to believe that the objectives presented by the description of the game mode were actually the real objectives.

(I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't really supposed to be trying to capture the flag in Capture the Flag.)

The discussion isn't so much "how to make the PvP community bigger," it's "how do we get rid of the problem of all these casuals and newbs messing up our games?"

If you were guaranteed the bone-deep, stone-cold certainty that you'd always find balanced matches in Battlegrounds you'd have a hard time going back to PVE. People just disagree on how to do it. And on what ''balance'' means, apparently. But don't worry, the first option (4v4v4 all objectives solo queue, including DM) would always be extremely popular. Even if other options eventually took off, this one would remain the gateway to everything. A separate DM queue really is a necessity though. There are those who want to do the objective. And there are others who will never do them no matter what, not ever. Surprising no one, time has proven that forcing these different groups into the same match is the recipe for disaster.

Dragonnord · January 14

Moonspawn wrote: »

Perhaps there could be a gold betting system in place, in addition to the bragging rights.

Games will still be fixed if gold is involved.

Moonspawn · January 14

DaniimalsSF wrote: »

BGs struggle because they are trying to put these two groups together and make them play the same game. In my experience it seems about 50% of the time I get a relatively balanced match in 8v8, 25% I’m stomping people, and 25% I’m being stomped. I rarely queue 4v4 as it feels boring and not dynamic at all, but that’s just me.

A relatively balanced match is still a slightly lopsided one, and there is a reason for that. Considering how ESO's combat is, a perfectly balanced two-teams BGs would be a stalemate, which I'm sure we can all agree is the very pinnacle of boredom. I know that the 3-teams BGs could be balanced, but I don't see any way to accomplish it in these new BGs. Not in solo queue. It's why I suggested they be converted into Custom Lobbies.
This is not a FPS game. When your team wipes the other, be it with some difficulty or not, the defeated team is not going to suddenly rise from the spawn as a coherent unit and come back with new builds and new strategies to turn the game around. Unless there are premades involved, you'll just be going through the motions for the rest of the match. If you try really hard you might be able to bribe someone to eat food, or persuade another to stop parsing the tank, but that's about it. These small victories used to matter a lot more (4v4v4). Unfortunately, the changes you can realistically make now are personal in nature. You can change your own strategy. You can change your own build ( if you're lucky enough to not get stuck in combat). But in the end you are one player. Out of eight. Just as a newcomer's individual contribution is diluted because there are now 8 people instead of 4, yours is too. And to further seal the deal, there is no longer a third team to change things up anymore.
Two-teams BGs are great for premade vs premade. As they were originally designed for. But they just don't work in solo queue.

HatchetHaro · January 14

Moonspawn wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

I have also seen it, for 7 years - and for 7 years I've been saying BGs in this game could actually be a popular form of PvP in this game as well, rather than an activity only enjoyed by a small minority.

The facts are that BGs did not have enough player base and this is why you saw ZOS make changes necessary to revitalize it.

It's now enjoyed by an even smaller minority, and the rest is after transmutation geodes.

I made a new healer build to grind medal score (I normally play a bruiser) to get on the weekly leaderboards only for the Galeskirmish Gladiator style pages. I only need to do this for three more weeks, then I'm dropping BGs for good, since the two-team format is absolutely exhausting and awful to play with the current state of PvP balancing.

Moonspawn · January 14

Dragonnord wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

Perhaps there could be a gold betting system in place, in addition to the bragging rights.

Games will still be fixed if gold is involved.

Sounds like just trading the gold with extra steps.

Major_Mangle · January 14

Dragonnord wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

3)Two-Teams Custom Lobbies (4v4, 8v8, 3v3, 2v2, XvX)

Custom lobbies never please. People will obviously exploit them (meaning completing the lobbies only with friends or people they agreed with) for points, achievements, xp gaining, ap gaining, etc., etc., etc.

Custom lobbies never, unless achievements, xp, ap, etc., nothing in fact, counts there and they are just for fun.

Custom lobbies would obviously come with 0 rewards attached to them. People who's been asking for it want it because it would be convenient as a tool to organise PvP tournaments or similar events.

Dragonnord · January 14

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Custom lobbies would obviously come with 0 rewards attached to them...

You'd be surprised with what is obvious and not.

Tell that to New World (the game) players where lobby matches count for leaderboards, rewards and so, and are constantly exploited.

What may be obvious for you, it's clearly not obvious for all game devs.

Moonspawn · January 14

@Decimus
It's a shame you don't want to help refine my suggestions for the revamped 3-teams BG, but we can discuss the problems with the new BGs instead. And your suggestions for how to fix them. Before that though, I'd like to know this:
I can understand not wanting to accept that the newcomers are simply after the new rewards. But you must have a different motive for their increased participation then.
You don't really believe people suddenly find these lopsided BGs so star-spangled awesome that they just can't stay away. Do you?

ceruulean · January 14

As long as queue times remain as short, the new XvX format, by that metric, would be considered more successful than the 3-way teams. I do hope ZoS improves the experience by discouraging spawn sniping and providing spawn immunity, and let games start a player short (7v8) or allow 6v8 to be rebalanced to 7v7. For the larger BGs, it's more important to get a game started and the momentum going than perfect balance.

I feel like 4v4v4 is a funny gimmick, it's entertaining in short bursts, but I don't know if players stick with it for long. Group queues were abysmal. You could have a 4some of PvE players queue for BG because they wanted the alliance rank and daily reward, wait forever to enter a match, then get slaughtered by a premade. I am not sure if those players ever want to step in BGs ever again. Meanwhile you have 4 sweaty players queue together, then wait over 30 minutes because it's too difficult to find 2 other parties queueing in the same MMR bracket to fill a 4v4v4. In that case I'd rather have 4v4 and get started. My gut feeling is that MMR based matchmaking is easier with the 2-team format.

Not to mention, 4v4v4 was twice as "stressful" as XvX. Because you need your head on a swivel, you are surrounded by enemies, and your achievements and kills can get stolen. You need to be able to fight outnumbered, and you need to be coordinated enough that you don't get caught in the middle of the sandwich. That kind of experience really sucks. Why did newbies run away from fighting, or DM folks grow bored of playing for objectives? If you want the outnumbered underdog experience, you can queue for IC or Cyro. It's nice that BGs offer a slightly more fair format, and you can play for objectives to impact your chance of winning, without getting steamrolled by a 3rd party.

Doing well in 4v4v4 is draw of the luck. Remember the one map where the chaosball holder could jump to a ledge near their spawn, and enemy players who engaged would die to environmental damage? Yeah, at that point might as well play deathmatch because it's devolved into an XvX. I remember another match where 2 sweaty teams were going at it, and the 3rd team was so weak as to be irrelevant because they died in crossfire. I would wager that most people prefer a format that's not utterly luck-based.

Necrotech_Master · January 14

Moonspawn wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

Maybe you need to reread what I wrote since there seems to be some kind of a communication error. You can polish a ****, but it'll still be a **** - you cannot fix fundamental problems.

Unless you don't consider it a problem that two teams are focusing one team and causing an unfair situation to occur for the team being 8v4'd - if someone wants this kind of an experience they can go to Cyrodiil where everyone is free to form a ball group and run after outnumbered players.

Well, it depends which 8v4 you're talking about. If you're talking about 8v4 in Chaosball, thats just how the mode is supposed to be played, and I loved it. It was so much better than this 3 chaosballs, transformations nonsense. Remember those close matches where every single player used to gun for the ball, and it kept switching hands, and ultimates kept going off, and no one knew who was going to win? Those were WILD. I assume you're referring to the extreme, horrible situation of 8 people not fighting each other at all, and spawncamping the softest team, yes? My revamping suggestions were all made thinking about the worst case scenarios for every mode. You could help me refine them further.

Decimus wrote: »

...and this here is more copium. You don't get "increased" rewards in 4v4, it is the only way to get those rewards - and 4v4 queue is significantly longer than the 8v8 queue despite only requiring 8 people per match rather than 16, so I don't know what you're going on about "vast majority".

The chances of a victory for a newcomer also aren't at all higher in 4v4 than they are in 8v8 - they're literally 50/50. Saying this as someone who farmed the whole Galeskirmish Gladiator style playing 7 different characters.

The problem is, the chances for a top PvPer are also too close to a 50/50 in 4v4 - if you get into the team with people who don't know what they're doing and you have people who know how to push half their buttons in the opponent team, you are going to lose that battleground - period.

Every single time I have said ''increased rewards'' I was referring to the rewards we have now for BGs in general, compared to what they were in the old BGs, which were essentially non-existent.
If your question is: ''If they are only after the rewards, as you say, then why not queue into the 4v4 instead of the 8v8? The 4v4 has that additional Galersomething Gladiator style reward after all.''
As bad as 8v8 is, I did find it strange that 4v4 didn't immediately die. Now it makes sense. Some people are farming something that can only be obtained in there. Anyway, to answer the question: newcomers know that 8v8 is the way to go by now. Their individual contribution is more diluted than in the 4v4. More people. More chaos. Shorter queues. Still a horribly lopsided torture, but less cartoonishly terrible than the 4v4 in every way.

i dont think i ever remember having those kind of fights with the 4v4v4 chaosball matches outside of when BGs were released in 2017

before the change to 2 teams, majority of chaosball matches devolved into cheese factories of super tanks holding the ball in the most obtuse to fight at locations using the geometry of the map to get into nearly unreachable locations (this was like 80% of my chaosball matches in the past year before the change to 2 teams)

the new chaosball matches are much more fun, theres 3 balls so 1 player running off and trying to cheese 1 ball wont make that team win, and the transformation balls require teamwork to keep the ball holders alive because they lose access to their normal skills

i havent actually tried 4v4 yet, but ive been playing on avg 3-6 8v8 matches for the past 4 weeks roughly and its been the most fun ive had in BGs in years even though yes sometimes the team im on gets curbstomped, ive seen a wide variety of matches (some lopsided, some very close and in 1 case an actual tie where both teams had the same objective score)

Moonspawn · January 15

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i dont think i ever remember having those kind of fights with the 4v4v4 chaosball matches outside of when BGs were released in 2017

before the change to 2 teams, majority of chaosball matches devolved into cheese factories of super tanks holding the ball in the most obtuse to fight at locations using the geometry of the map to get into nearly unreachable locations (this was like 80% of my chaosball matches in the past year before the change to 2 teams)

Three-teams Chaosball was amazing when it worked, but terrible when it didn't. Most times it didn't.
It did work when every single one of the 12 players went after the ball, and when no one decided to cheese it. This was possible by taking it to cheesy places, but could also be accomplished by carrying it around the map with a speed build.
This was the mode with the most straightforward solutions:

Separate DM queue, so no one ignored the objective.
30% speed debuff on ball carrier.
Fix cheese places.

No more cheese, no more exploiting. The fight would always concentrate on the ball, and no tank would ever survive being parsed by 8 people. Not in a NO-CP environment while being affected by the chaosball damage and debuff.

Grega · January 15

DaniimalsSF wrote: »

In my experience it seems about 50% of the time I get a relatively balanced match in 8v8, 25% I’m stomping people, and 25% I’m being stomped. I rarely queue 4v4 as it feels boring and not dynamic at all, but that’s just me.

My experience on Xbox Na is somewhat different on that. Less than 10% is balanced match, the rest is either being stomped or stomping. And with my RNG in the Ireland; it’s more often being stomped.

It’s gotten so bad actually that when we land in a BG - one just needs to quickly glance at the names of players on both teams. It is quickly apparent; before any of the fighting even starts, who will win and who will loose. I actually made few new friends and we “evaluate” now before we start and we have not been wrong yet.

I think you also hit nail on the head with casual/competitive clientele.

I don’t think there’s a good solve. There is no “tech”, that could exclude competitive/sweat/OP people out of matches intended for casuals. Only solve I can think of is a 8v8 queue that is nocp and no proc, and enabling a setting like battle spirit but for bgs where it leveled everyone out to same damage cap.

fizzylu · January 15

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The 3-sided enjoyers are vastly underestimating how bad it feels to get third-partied by troll players, especially for a casual player just trying to do their objective and get their rewards. You need significantly more field awareness in 3-sided, and even then, you can't account for players that shoot their own team in the foot just to troll.

I don't think they're underestimating anything, I think what those who were so bothered by the third-partying don't understand that some people genuinely found that aspect fun and thought of it as one of the things that made BGs engaging.
I enjoyed needing to be aware of both enemy teams, having to play strategically to take advantage of openings or even playing defensively if my team did happen to be in the middle of the sandwich. And trolling happens in PvP no matter what, it's just the way some humans are so not sure why that's even a point here.

And while 8v8 may be more casual friendly with the bigger team size for some.... pretending like having an entire match where you're getting completely stomped, spawn camped, and have no chance to win even objectively doesn't feel just as bad as getting third-partied occasionally is wild (I'd even say it's worse, but).

Also, I haven't seen anyone in favor of 4v4v4 BGs actually adamantly saying they want 8v8 or even 4v4 removed.... they simply want an aspect they enjoyed about the game back. Like @Thumbless_Bot would say, let people play what they want. I know I have stopped actively playing ESO since the BG change and I'm never going to actively play again with the new BG formats being the only options.... and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

You can have your 8v8, just let the people who did like 4v4v4 also have what they want instead of advocating against it. After all, if the 4v4v4 enjoyers are such a minority like you and some others like to imply.... it shouldn't affect your queue times, right?

Haki_7 · January 15

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 23: Waiting 25 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/NA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hwlHnzuByA

Thumbless_Bot · January 16

I just queued into 4v4 solo for the first time today and got 3/4 of the same people on the other team three times in a row, along with me and three randos on my team.

Can there really only be 8-10 people queueing for 4v4 solo now? It's 7pm on the east coast...

This situation just keeps gett9ng worse. Not better.

Decimus · January 16

Fun Battlegrounds Chapter 4: Waited 1 minute 7 seconds for a fun match (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

https://youtu.be/g2QIOk0qcl8

Chrisilis · January 16

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

I just queued into 4v4 solo for the first time today and got 3/4 of the same people on the other team three times in a row, along with me and three randos on my team.

Can there really only be 8-10 people queueing for 4v4 solo now? It's 7pm on the east coast...

This situation just keeps gett9ng worse. Not better.

Wild speculation incoming! So, is MMR functioning? Is ones MMR broadly or narrowly defined? Do we fall into broad MMR categories or narrow ones? How many categories of MMR are there? Is it a sliding scale? What I'm getting at here is, is it possible those players were MMR ranked the same as you and is that why you keep seeing each other? That would imply a few things such as narrowly defined MMR and/or a player count so low its the best the ranking system could manage. Neither of those are good things.

Next topic!

Everyone talks about Bg participation/population being small and references queue times as proof of this, in other words "My queue time is long because there aren't enough people queueing to play"... but is this true? It would only take 48 people to fill the available spots on every team in every Bg format at the same time. Forty Eight. That's it. To have two instances of each Bg type running at the same time is only 96 people. And nobody is playing 8v8 group, in all of this discussion I've yet to see a single person reference 8v8 group and tend to think that's a dead queue. So now spread your 48 players across three Bg queues instead of four. There is no way the PvP population is that low. No way. Between the "community" and the people getting their daily/endeavor in, the casuals, there is no way there are not enough players to pop Bg's one right after the other. Unless--- its the system itself that's the issue? Unless MMR is preventing matches from filling and starting because its trying so hard to "match" you up with like players? Unless the queueing program itself is at fault and its just molasses-in-winter slow? I dont think its the population, I think its the system, the new system implemented with the new battlegrounds with the new queue time problems. 4v4v4 never behaved this way.

So to those of you saying we don't have the population to support multiple queue types I disagree. The queue was just fine, and populated, and fast before update 44. I think its the system, not the players. And so, as has been said before and will be said again, I'd like to see 4v4v4 (at the very least the solo queue) brought back in addition to the 8v8 solo and two 4v4 queues. There are absolutely enough people to support them all.

P.S., the word "queue" was used 12 times in this post

Thumbless_Bot · January 16

Chrisilis wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

I just queued into 4v4 solo for the first time today and got 3/4 of the same people on the other team three times in a row, along with me and three randos on my team.

Can there really only be 8-10 people queueing for 4v4 solo now? It's 7pm on the east coast...

This situation just keeps gett9ng worse. Not better.

Wild speculation incoming! So, is MMR functioning? Is ones MMR broadly or narrowly defined? Do we fall into broad MMR categories or narrow ones? How many categories of MMR are there? Is it a sliding scale? What I'm getting at here is, is it possible those players were MMR ranked the same as you and is that why you keep seeing each other? That would imply a few things such as narrowly defined MMR and/or a player count so low its the best the ranking system could manage. Neither of those are good things.

Next topic!

Everyone talks about Bg participation/population being small and references queue times as proof of this, in other words "My queue time is long because there aren't enough people queueing to play"... but is this true? It would only take 48 people to fill the available spots on every team in every Bg format at the same time. Forty Eight. That's it. To have two instances of each Bg type running at the same time is only 96 people. And nobody is playing 8v8 group, in all of this discussion I've yet to see a single person reference 8v8 group and tend to think that's a dead queue. So now spread your 48 players across three Bg queues instead of four. There is no way the PvP population is that low. No way. Between the "community" and the people getting their daily/endeavor in, the casuals, there is no way there are not enough players to pop Bg's one right after the other. Unless--- its the system itself that's the issue? Unless MMR is preventing matches from filling and starting because its trying so hard to "match" you up with like players? Unless the queueing program itself is at fault and its just molasses-in-winter slow? I dont think its the population, I think its the system, the new system implemented with the new battlegrounds with the new queue time problems. 4v4v4 never behaved this way.

So to those of you saying we don't have the population to support multiple queue types I disagree. The queue was just fine, and populated, and fast before update 44. I think its the system, not the players. And so, as has been said before and will be said again, I'd like to see 4v4v4 (at the very least the solo queue) brought back in addition to the 8v8 solo and two 4v4 queues. There are absolutely enough people to support them all.

P.S., the word "queue" was used 12 times in this post

Great post and very thoughtful. I can't imagine mmr working in a narrow sense because the players in my bgs are all over the place in terms of skill. Either that or it is working but it's flawed because it looks at participation as a factor in determining mmr. You aren't good just because you join a lot of bgs. You also aren't bad because you don't.

I think it is either not working at all, the population has dwindled so much that it doesn't matter, or the mmr logic is seriously, seriously flawed.

BXR_Lonestar · January 16

There are two things that I find problematic with BG's, and there are easy solutions to these issues:

1. Support characters like tanks and healers are very useful in objectives-based BG's, but are far less useful in death matches. Tanks in particular are less useful in death matches, especially when your group composition is mostly tanks and healers. I recently had a BG match where we were basically Healer-Tank, DD, DD and we got matched with a group that was all tanks and healers. We got matched against a group that was mostly tanks and healers too, so it made for a miserable match. Basically only 10 ppl died all match (in total), and the match was just not very fun to play at all.

2. The second issue I have is toxic players using BG's as an opportunity to farm. When teams are mismatched or lopsided, teams don't just go get the easy win early. This team that I was against just grabbed our relic, camped our side, and constantly killed us as we could just not get organized well enough to put up any resistance - and our group composition was probably not the greatest either.

There are easy solutions to both these issues:

First, separate the que's for different kinds of matches so that you KNOW what you are going to get into beforehand, and so you are not stuck in a match with mostly tanks and healers vs. other tanks and healers. If there isn't enough players to do this, then I think that then becomes an issue where you are pushing content that does not have broad enough appeal to the playerbase to garner much interest, and perhaps it needs to go back to the drawing board.

Secondly, for all matches that aren't death matches (and really, I'm just aiming at capture the relic right now) when you pick up the relic, it should start a 30 second countdown where if you don't get it home, it should start to slowly do damage to you, and each tick of damage increases, so the longer you hold it, the more damage you take. This will serve as a disincentive for just holding onto the relic to farm.

Then get rid of the mechanic that forces you out of the spawn area. You should not be a forced participant in someone elses farming escapades. If they want to be toxic about playing the game, then you should also have the right to sit back, take the loss, and not participate.