Vengeance Test Pros & Cons Initial Thoughts

Emperor_ManBearPig · March 24

Here are my initial thoughts from the Vengeance test:

Pros:

Performance appeared to run a lot smoother than I normally experience when playing in the PCNA Gray Host CP Campaign.
Lots of players were allowed to be in the area at one time. I have never seen that many players on my screen all at once, with smooth gameplay. This was a cool experience.

Cons:

Something about movement felt off. I think the overall player speed was the issue. I felt like my character was moving like molasses.
Although having the better performance with lots of players in one area fighting was great to experience, it didn't adequate to fun gameplay. There were extremely large zergs at each fight and whoever had more players would win.
The lack of build and skill diversity made the game feel too watered down and simplified, creating no player skill gaps. Whoever has more players will win due to more players to kill and skills being used than the other team.

Conclusion:

From a performance perspective, the test achieves the goal of improved performance and increased player population with lots of people fighting in one area. From a gameplay perspective, it's not as fun as normal game play, where builds and skills can create diversity and game knowledge/skill gaps, so there is a potential for the less populated team to potentially win.
A Vengeance campaign might have a place for newer players to be able to learn the game and core mechanics, without being overwhelmed with all of the skills and builds available to players.
I hope that ZoS can gain some insights from the tests and come up with some solutions to be implemented into the core game that improves gameplay performance.

ZOS_Kevin · March 24

Emperor_ManBearPig wrote: »

Here are my initial thoughts from the Vengeance test:

Pros:
Performance appeared to run a lot smoother than I normally experience when playing in the PCNA Gray Host CP Campaign.

Lots of players were allowed to be in the area at one time. I have never seen that many players on my screen all at once, with smooth gameplay. This was a cool experience.

Cons:
Something about movement felt off. I think the overall player speed was the issue. I felt like my character was moving like molasses.

Although having the better performance with lots of players in one area fighting was great to experience, it didn't adequate to fun gameplay. There were extremely large zergs at each fight and whoever had more players would win.

The lack of build and skill diversity made the game feel too watered down and simplified, creating no player skill gaps. Whoever has more players will win due to more players to kill and skills being used than the other team.

Conclusion:
From a performance perspective, the test achieves the goal of improved performance and increased player population with lots of people fighting in one area. From a gameplay perspective, it's not as fun as normal game play, where builds and skills can create diversity and game knowledge/skill gaps, so there is a potential for the less populated team to potentially win.

A Vengeance campaign might have a place for newer players to be able to learn the game and core mechanics, without being overwhelmed with all of the skills and builds available to players.

I hope that ZoS can gain some insights from the tests and come up with some solutions to be implemented into the core game that improves gameplay performance.

Thanks for the feedback list here. Much appreciated. Glad the performance was a lot better, as that is the main goal of the test to evaluate. The feedback on gameplay is great to have as well.

danko355 · March 24

One major con for me is that AP earned are not counted towards your Alliance rank progression. As a veteran player, I don’t care about AP, I have millions of them banked. I do care about finally getting Grand Overlord though, and I would have to participate in IC or Battlegrounds this week if I want to progress the rank further.
Update: it seems it progresses in the background but you can’t see it until you leave the campaign.

joe_schmo · March 24

Honestly this is the most fun I've had in PvP since launch. The large scale battles, the absence of ball groups, the frantic fighting, it's just so awesome. I think you might have really done it ZOS.

xylena_lazarow · March 24

Pro: some of the redesigned skills like the fast Warden birds are pretty cool

Con: slow mounts, you miss the fight because the bigger zerg rolls everyone pretty quickly

Major con: no powerful anti-personnel siege like Meatbags for the smaller zerg to even the odds

MincMincMinc · March 24

Emperor_ManBearPig wrote: »

Here are my initial thoughts from the Vengeance test:

Pros:
Performance appeared to run a lot smoother than I normally experience when playing in the PCNA Gray Host CP Campaign.

Lots of players were allowed to be in the area at one time. I have never seen that many players on my screen all at once, with smooth gameplay. This was a cool experience.

Cons:
Something about movement felt off. I think the overall player speed was the issue. I felt like my character was moving like molasses.

Although having the better performance with lots of players in one area fighting was great to experience, it didn't adequate to fun gameplay. There were extremely large zergs at each fight and whoever had more players would win.

The lack of build and skill diversity made the game feel too watered down and simplified, creating no player skill gaps. Whoever has more players will win due to more players to kill and skills being used than the other team.

Conclusion:
From a performance perspective, the test achieves the goal of improved performance and increased player population with lots of people fighting in one area. From a gameplay perspective, it's not as fun as normal game play, where builds and skills can create diversity and game knowledge/skill gaps, so there is a potential for the less populated team to potentially win.

A Vengeance campaign might have a place for newer players to be able to learn the game and core mechanics, without being overwhelmed with all of the skills and builds available to players.

I hope that ZoS can gain some insights from the tests and come up with some solutions to be implemented into the core game that improves gameplay performance.

Performance seems outstanding so far
Speed being "slow" is likely due to no 40-100% movement buffs and snare immunities at all times. There are pros and cons to this. Obviously in vengeance we have no buffs..... on live there is the other extreme of stop and go lightspeed gameplay. Hopefully a balanced middleground could be achieved. >> Rework speed and snare/root immunities
Win by numbers is mainly due to no gear choices. You can't build into tankiness or 1vX tools like in the old days at this time. It almost makes me want old school style utility skills like reflect wings or sun shield or sap essence+siphoning strikes. The current live game is missing the skills that scale in usefulness vs outnumbered players.

My conclusion is that this already looks like it proves we have a coding issue and not a hardware issue. Likely years of no design standards let multiple devs "spaghettify" the code which lead to optimization issues and strange bugs. A vengeance campaign is NOT the answer as it will just be ignored while people still only play greyhost much like the noproc. Instead I would rather see only two 7 day campaigns with faction lock that flip on friday night US primetime to drive engagement.

Having a fresh slate with the skills with a solid performative foundation is a good step. Take these basic skills and add on one modifying aspect for flavor. ONE AND ONLY ONE for flavor. Example you have a streak ability move you X meters. One morph does X+Y meters. The other morph does X meters with no cost ramp.........The current live game has abilities with 5+ AND statements. Streak does this AND this AND this AND this AND this. Designs are out of control these days.

rey2576 · March 25

Pros: There are none.

Cons: It exists.
It replaced all other campaigns.
It took away all abilities beyond a few watered down class ones, all sets, all cp, and all mundus stones.

blktauna · March 26

Well skill wins out on this campaign. Its been a joy to have no pull sets, troll tanks and ball groups, just mano a mano

Kikazaru · March 26

Every player regardless of skill level will dish out the exact same amount of damage. Anything outside a 1 v 1 becomes very unmanageable... Zerging is the only option during the test. Performance is a bit better though, like not being stuck in combat.

SolarRune · March 26

I've really, really enjoyed the new campaign.

Pros

Performance is great - massive battles, >150vs>150vs>150 level battles and very little performance drop (once I turned off the usual suspect addons)
Responsive skills
Coordinated groups are still running, but can be defeated by superior numbers
Some of the battles for a single keep are epic and long
If your alliance is coordinated you can counter push/reinforce effectively
If your alliance can coordinate at an alliance level then actual tactics with splinter groups etc can become useful
Everyone I have run with (guilds and pugs) have really enjoyed the experience
Map can completely change in 30m if an alliance can coordinate better than the others - decisions on who/what to support in battle means a lot more

Cons

I've been in many stalemates where no side can get the upper hand, it tends to resolve by one side giving up - probably a balance issue
Although I've enjoyed the battles - so far it seems a simple numbers game - this leads to one way to play the game if you want to have an impact
Groups too small - in this type of campaign, coordination is key, and to do that effectively, you need to be able to have much bigger groups
Movement speed between keeps is too slow - difficult to respond to attacks

Conclusion, I and the many people I have played with have really enjoyed this style of campaign, and if it were a choice between the old style campaign where there are very limited numbers and the lag I would choose this type of campaign. ZoS have proved they can do something that has been asked for years - they can separately balance for PvP. I would hope that future tests would look at including more skill lines and potentially some armor that has the same treatment.

MincMincMinc · March 26

SolarRune wrote: »

I've really, really enjoyed the new campaign.

Cons
I've been in many stalemates where no side can get the upper hand, it tends to resolve by one side giving up - probably a balance issue

Although I've enjoyed the battles - so far it seems a simple numbers game - this leads to one way to play the game if you want to have an impact

Groups too small - in this type of campaign, coordination is key, and to do that effectively, you need to be able to have much bigger groups

Movement speed between keeps is too slow - difficult to respond to attacks

Conclusion, I and the many people I have played with have really enjoyed this style of campaign, and if it were a choice between the old style campaign where there are very limited numbers and the lag I would choose this type of campaign. ZoS have proved they can do something that has been asked for years - they can separately balance for PvP. I would hope that future tests would look at including more skill lines and potentially some armor that has the same treatment.

For your first bullet if you are talking about dueling basically each class does have a burst you can line up. Doing so ends all duels fairly quickly.
Even on live the game has been moving towards more of a numbers game. Zos has been removing any set or ability that scales vs the number of enemies you are fighting. Think of 7th Legion, Fury, Sunshield or critsurge or sap+siphon or old batswarm or Harness. Sure if we remove those tools we can stop the one evil 1vX player........ but at the same time they make it impossible for hundreds of new or mid tier players from ever trying solo or small man gameplay.
Agreed group size for this test should have been bumped back to 24 players.
Movement speed is not too slow. The whole point is for fights to end and not be forever. Just like in the early days of cyrodil group leads and guilds would have to coordinate defenses and strikes. Not being able to teleport around or have a 400% speed horse actually gave weight to your decisions. If people moved infinitely fast, than why not just let enemies respawn right outside of your keeps and skip the hassle? Go and ride between Bleaks and aleswell or ash and nik it hardly takes that much time. When mounts are too fast it also caters to one faction holding the map which contributes to the night capping issue.

katorga · March 26

Performance is OK until you get to faction v faction v faction battles, maybe 300-400 players. Then it tanks, skills unresponsive or appearing to be unresponsive. Disabling 95% of the game functionality improves performance. Now the need to add back functionality week by week to see where it tanks again. My guess is as soon as ballgroup sets are re-enabled.

The problem is the game is zero skill. It is a giant PvDoor with numbers the only deciding factor.

It is so boring, I've already lost interest.

ZOS_Hadeostry · March 31

Greetings,

Because there is a thread already open on this topic, we're going to close this one down so that all feedback can be consolidated in one place.

You may continue the discussion here.