ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey folks, as a reminder, this thread is meant for general feedback about your experience for the ongoing Vengeance test. It makes it easier for our teams to review the feedback when we stick to the thread topic. If you are having on-going discussions outside of the scope of feedback, (i.e. what is the point of the test or discussion if vengeance should be the future of Cyrodiil), please start a new thread and continue the conversation there.

And again, this is only a test. We are looking to see how everything is running without a ton of calculations happening. And based on our finds and your feedback, will go from there.

My b.

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?

Yes. I was constantly in battles with over 200 players whether it was between 2 alliances or primarily only my alliance. At one point, I was in a battle with over 400 players. This player count is show by Miats PvP Alerts.

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?

On average, battles with 200 players are absolutely fine latency wise, and combat is responsive. Battles that start reaching 300-400 players I begin to experience issues, but not anything too major. In battles with 300-400 players, I start dropping fps from 80-120 down to 40 which of course starts making the game look choppy, but the game is still pretty responsive here, far more than normal cyrodiil with 60 players spamming heals, buffs, ground dots, etc. I do experience brief hitches, no more than half a second and are infrequent. Skill casts and bar swapping have some noticeable delay, but this delay is comparable to the delay you experience in normal pvp, even battlegrounds. Fun is subjective, but I did enjoy my time in large battles.

What you think of the simplified abilities?

They work. It's hard to get in when there's a 20 minute queue (not a complaint on that end), so I only had the chance to play NB and Warden. NB feels really good to play. Very well rounded in terms of survivability, damage, killing potential, healing, and maneuverability. Warden had good survivability, healing, and maneuverability. Warden has decent damage, but it lacks any real killing potential. This is due to every damage skill being delayed in some way allowing an opponent to heal. Shalks takes 3 seconds to go off, and Bird and Bear take 1 second to do its damage. If you're not at max sustain, you're most likely going to run out of resources before you can kill the other player. The warden CC is also useless because it spawns at your feet and is small. It should spawn on the target.

If there is any real intent to make separate skills for PvP somewhere down the line, or for just future vengeance tests with more enabled, the way you should look at this feed back is to not nerf nightblade to make it worse to play, but to bring up a class like warden to a similar level but still have it specialized in a certain area to not remove its identity.

Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc?

No, not that I'm aware of. I haven't gotten booted due to lag or any other reason.

What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)?

I like it to a degree. Cyrodiil is fun when there are always large battles and small skirmishes happening instead of everyone waiting around for something to happen. It's fun knowing that a battle isn't going to be ruined by an immortal group intentionally desyncing players and causing lag, killing everyone with broken set combos. Individual players are actually dying now that they have to rely on core skills rather than abusing procs or meta setups. The only problem I have with it is that it gets stale after an hour since it's mostly a numbers game, and you need 20+ players flanking a zerg to make a noticeable difference in the tide of battle. Maybe that's intentional, but individuality, even if it's a 2-4 man group, is lacking. I'm not saying players should easily be allowed to solo 15+ players, but individuals should be able to make a real difference. Hopefully if more options start getting added with future tests, this issue can be alleviated.

Do you have any general feedback?

More siege options would be nice. Right now the only defensive siege is oils since nothing else deals real damage. Oils are also only viable in choke points or near walls, so players intentionally avoid those spots which makes battles a waiting game for walls to be destroyed and then trying to hit a zerg with another. Flame ballistas or a catapult that does something similar to oils would make defending keeps less of a numbers game.

A road map for this test, as in if you plan on doing another test with more things enabled and when, will be also nice.

An increase to the population should also be done, one to find a real fail point, and two so it's easier to get in. According to Miats, it looks like the limit is 250 per alliance. If increasing is not viable for future tests, maybe an extra campaign.

The combat bug being fixed is great. I love being able to mount in the middle of a zerg, or being able to change skills when a keep/outpost is under attack. What ever you did to fix it, please expedite it to everywhere.

Targeted heals is great. No one is going to randomly steal your heals if they're near you, and if the 3 player heal limit is increase, it would certainly help against regen spam.

Hello,

Last night around 11 PM, on the night of March 25th to 26th, on the EU server, I experienced a lot of loading times as the major battles approached. I have a good PC.

Otherwise, the experience was very pleasant.

(These responses are coming from someone who normally despises and avoids PVP, but was curious after seeing all the glowing praise. I threw myself willingly into battle after battle and completed almost the entire Golden Pursuit within two hours of entering Cyrodiil, without even trying.)

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?

Yes, and again, without even trying! I've never seen Cyrodiil so active.


Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?

Mostly, the game felt very stable for me, even in battles in tight spaces where I'm sure we had players numbering in the triple digits. There were a few times where abilities didn't fire off or things just didn't work like they should, but the number was far lower than the times I've done "normal" empty Cyrodiil; we're talking single digits of bugs in over two hours of almost nonstop action and joining huge zergs riding from one location to the next.

That said...while my trip into Cyrodiil went overall smoothly, with very few bugouts, at about the two-hour mark I was in a large-scale battle for an outpost (Sejanus, I think?) We were all inside fighting over flags when my game suddenly froze so hard I had to go into the task manager and force-quit it. That hasn't happened to me in so long that I think it might even be the first time since I got this new computer in October 2023. I couldn't log back in for a while (server errors at the main screen, even after it realized my account was no longer logged in) and missed my chance to knock out the final Golden Pursuit task on the keep we were going to take after that. By the time I was able to get back in, my faction was starting to log off and be less organized, and it took me way too long to get my final keep after that. A very irritating end to what was overall not an irritating gaming session.


What you think of the simplified abilities?

I LOVE this. I wouldn't have minded a little more variety (JUST a bit, not much), but I understand this is a test, and the full range of "PVE skills, but in PVP" has always been more irritating to me than useful. I'm not that fond of combat and strategizing, period, so I loved being able to just slip right into the action without spending an hour going through gear and skills and Champion Points and and and etc. etc. etc. I'm someone who's been gaming since the early 80s, and I am legit turned off by how overly complicated most modern gaming combat is. I shouldn't need a spreadsheet and a calculator to go out there and effectively kill things.

I come from a background of games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, where the enemy fight "challenge" is more figuring out the puzzle of the boss fight and timing your response; or Secret of Mana, where you CAN use better gear or spells to optimize the fight if you want, but the effect is minimal enough that it's really optional—just running up with a 100% attack meter and whacking the enemy over the head with the Mana Sword is usually a perfectly acceptable strategy if you want. (I confess to being the person who stunlocks the bosses with a triple whammy of spells till they die in the original SNES version. )

Being able to just rush into the battle and start whacking people over the head like in my SNES days was refreshing. I was strategic with my defense skills, and that's about it. For offense, I was merrily engaging in pure chaos the way I prefer, rapidly casting light attacks and my one ranged skill. (Something I noticed is that melee offense skills were all but useless to me in battle because everyone moves around too much, but I didn't have a lot of great ranged skills available to me as a Dragonknight. So I was mostly spamming "The Fist." Thankfully, I use staves as my weapons, so I was ranged for regular attacks.)


Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.

Not after my single foray into Cyrodiil last night.


What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)?

This is the closest thing to fun I've ever had in PVP! In normal PVP, I feel absolutely useless. I go into a battle, do no damage worth talking about before getting stunlock-ganked almost immediately, then die in 0.5 seconds, and it happens over and over again, until I'm so irritated I don't just want to leave PVPland—I don't want to play ESO at all. In Vengeance, I was actually useful for once. Staying alive AND dealing damage to opponents. I'm pretty sure that was the first time my name ever showed up in the kill feed as having killed someone, and it happened multiple times. I was staying alive long to get to join in on the huge fights that PVP'ers love so much. And when I died, it always felt like an "honest" death because it didn't happen in the blink of an eye; I wasn't getting constantly stunlocked and ganked. I could watch my health bar go down gradually rather than instantly, and attempt to counteract. A permanent Vengeance-style campaign still wouldn't have me going into Cyrodiil any more than I absolutely "have to." I'm just not a PVP'er. But if I did feel the need to go in and do something, I wouldn't be so irritated with instadying and not being able to find any battles going on, and I might even stay in Cyrodiil a little past the point where I'd accomplished what I came to do.

(All that said, I DID encounter a few "immortal" players who were somehow staying alive and not dropping health, even with an entire organized group [plus my disorganized tail] focused on them. That was annoying, but it didn't happen nearly as often as it does in standard PVP.)


Do you have any general feedback?

This was a refreshing change from the Cyrodiil I've come to know and dislike since game launch. It was so easy for a non-PVP'er or an amateur PVP'er to just jump in and GO, no special training or knowledge required. I really liked the sinister skies; for once, Cyrodiil actually felt like it was being torn apart by Molag Bal's forces at its core, and not just the mortal factions. I did feel like I would've benefited from a slightly greater range of skills since a number of mine weren't useful to my ranged playstyle in battle, but overall, I very much appreciated how uncomplicated everything was.


(I am not proofreading all that until I've had my afternoon tea lol)

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?

Yes, several.

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
Same as usual (No latency, I never had latency issues in my 11 years of playing outside of a few chapter/dlc launches)

What you think of the simplified abilities?
LOVE them. Makes Cyrodiil feel like it requires more of a group effort instead of one over powered god being able to oneshot 40 people.

What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)?
I wish this was how Cyrodiil always worked, it reminds me of what it was like in beta, everyone kinda scrambling about like ordinary soldiers, a focus on siege gameplay over hero builds.

Do you have any general feedback?
What put me off PvP the most was how I'd spend hours putting together a build, getting the right equipment, enchants, set bonuses, potions, food, abilities etc and feeling fairly viable for however long I'd play. But then I'd leave and come back a couple months later and my build was suddenly dogwater and it was all about the new oneshot meme build after some nerfs or buffs. I love that there's no need to 'build'. No need to grind champion points or spend millions of gold or dozens of hours on the right set of 'gear'. This year I even swore off Midyear Mayhem, an event I've never liked, because I was sick of having to farm a new build just to do it viably. This test has given me a lot of hope for the future of ESO's PvP and I hope Vengeance is the starting point you use to build it out. Definitely keep gear banned or at least give everyone the sets they'll need upon entering.

I spent about an hour in Cyrodiil this afternoon. It was mostly fun, but there were a couple of things that could have been better.

I still spent too much of my time chasing around on horseback. Reaching the scene of some action is a big investment of game time.

With multiple zergs per alliance I found it a bit difficult to read the map and identify which zergs were bigger than others, and so which were likely to either make progress, get into a stalemate or get wiped. I was in a couple of zergs, quite big judging from my past experience, which got wiped out very quickly. If we're eventually headed for this kind of enlarged population in Cyrodiil it would be useful to have some indication on the map of concentrations of our own alliance's troops and roughly how many, perhaps using coloured circles of different sizes or colour intensity. All I was seeing on the map today was 3 or 4 contested forts at a time, each with maxed out siege in use, and that was just not enough information to make an informed choice.

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
Yes. I participated in several large-scale battles at keeps, outposts, and resources.

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
This changed throughout my play time. On Monday afternoon (eastern time), large battles had minimal frame drops and latency. However, Tuesday evening, large fights saw larger drops in framerate than i experience in Gray Host at peak hours in large fights, latency was quite bad and the distance at which enemy players rendered in was very very short, meaning you could not tell if you were running into an empty corner or a group of 50 enemies. Skills felt a bit slow to activate at times and it felt like there was a good bit of positional desync.

What you think of the simplified abilities?
I do not enjoy the simplified abilities at all. The lack of build options was a major draw back and I got bored with the classes i tried quite quickly.

Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc?
No. No issues when leaving cyrodiil. Did not experience disconnects or crashes, although some friends I was playing with did crash.

What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)?
I thought that the gameplay in this campaign was uninspiring. Zerg on zerg on zerg fighting was exciting for about the first 5 or 6 battles. But as soon as the novelty wore off, it was clear that the combat was reduced to mindless button mashing and was entirely a numbers game. Individual contribution and effectiveness was practically zero, so it did not feel very rewarding at all. The "stuck in combat" bug seemed to be fixed, so that was nice, but performance otherwise was the same, if not worse for me than Gray Host is at prime time and even during Whitestrakes Mayhem, save for a few Volendrung battles.

Do you have any general feedback?
Build choice is one of the core principles behind this game and any game mode without meaningful choice will not be popular with players. I have seen many people say that they are enjoying PvP for this first time in this test, and I am glad for them. I suspect this is in part because they did not need to spend hours researching a build and skills in order to jump in. In some discussions with guild-mates, the idea came up of having optional pre-made builds be available in some kind of armory station. These builds don't need to be min-maxed, or the best builds in the world, just something to get new PvPers somewhere to start and be moderately effective. That way new players have a starting point, and experienced players can still have the custom builds that they love.

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
-Yes, multiple times 100v100v100? I dont know man, there was ALOT of people.

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
-Yes, overall.

What you think of the simplified abilities?
-At first, I was very weary of them. They didn't perform as anticipated. After a few hours of playing, stepping back for a day and coming at it with fresh eyes, it was "fine". And by that, I mean the ground placements or AOE versions of some of the abilities where hard to not only see, but tell if they hit there intended target.

Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.
-No

What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)?
-More forgivable in combat.
-Gets new players into PvP instantly without a 3 month learning curve.
-Movement over the map can be tenuous. Traveling from Keep to Keep is fine... Riding for 5 to 10 mins just to die and do the run again, makes me want to find something else to do.
-Zone chat can be toxic and really really REALLY unhelpful. Turned it off, problem fixed. For this, I can follow the Zerg around to win (sometimes).
-No resources lost. This is huge for me. Spending a week farming, grinding making or whatever just to walk into PvP and die over and over again because Im not up on what the new Meta is.
-I like having a mix of classes to fill in the gaps. Not everyone can do everything.

Do you have any general feedback?
*Im going to start off with my experience over the last 3 days.
-At first, it was good... Better then good, it was great! There where so many players on that it reminded me of PvP from 7 years ago.
-Smother then it had been in years. Until the 2 hour mark (more or less for me) my computer to this day can not handle TESO Trials or PvP. I have to reload the game after a certain time to clear the memory, otherwise I get a load screen while traversing the world or joining fights or, I dont know... walking my horse. UNTILL Last night.
Like I said, Im use to having to reload after afew hours of play in Trials and PvP. Its just a thing... Last night, a ball team showed up some 10 mins into my gameplay. 2 Ball teams for sure. You can tell by the way they move and the tactics they used. I instantly lagged out.
-UNABLE to click on keep doors with the introduction of these teams.
-Textures stopped loading and I found myself running in place.
-character draw was reduced to less then 30m?
-Load Screens every time I turned a corner.
-Skills not firing, having to hit they keys multiple MULTILE times as my skill no longer would Que.
-Total time online between 5:30pm PST to 7pm, was hellish before I had to reload the game.

*I quickly found that it was a Zerg fest... Which was fine. I didn't have to yell in group to stop stacking, load heals, buy siege, buy kits to repair. Someone for the love of gosh put siege shield on their bar! MAKE POTIONS! sigh, but thats just me trying to be helpful.
*Turn on number for player. They can turn it off it it ruins the immersion (Health bars and damage done)
*Turn off ALL ADD ONS. Every single one. I have no doubt that this will fix a lot of lag issues for those not running certain add ons.
*Add rally points that can be ported to in areas that are considered "save zones". Where there is no fighting atm, and for group members only. At the cost of AP or items.
*Keep protection once it flips for a very limited time (10-15min) Everyone inside with an apposing faction get a stacking debuff. Walls are immune to damage. Rally points are removed. After 5 mins, apposing factions still in the keep become perma stunned or ported out... whatever. Having a ball group wander in after you flip the flags, kill everyone and walk off with the AP, sucks... For everyone that's not in the ball group. There is defeat, and then there is humiliation.
*Scroll abusers... Just do something about them. I have nothing positive to say about them or the gameplay element they add.

Forgot to mention: about 80% of the time, forward camps are invisible. They also don't show up on the map or minimap.

Additional feedback after a second night (with the higher population cap):

Big fights were even easier to find. However, unlike the first night, performance definitely was taking a dive in response to the extra players. I was in a group and several members were disconnected multiple times and/or crashed and many complained of skill lag, rubber-banding, FPS dips, etc. My personal performance was pretty decent considering the giant numbers of players but it was clear that the game server was approaching its maximum capacity.

My personal performance was fairly decent, with the worst features being some rubber-banding upon arriving at existing fights, some slight skill delay, and modest dips in FPS (for anyone reading: the increased numbers of players hits your CPU more than your GPU and FPS dips in big fights are typically due to that), from like 120 to 80 or so. To me, FPS dips are far less pernicious than skill delay and lag, so the reintroduction of those latter scourges was disappointing (though inevitable, as the population cap continued to increase; still though, I would love to see the servers updated in tandem with any code refactoring to produce optimum results).

Qualitative observations remained fairly consistent, which is that this is not a viable form of PvP for existing PvP players but it would make a fine alternative campaign for the PvE and new players who enjoy its comparative lack of rigor and ease of entry. Such a solution would likely make most players happy. But for any existing PvP player... this combat is suffocating, and, what's worse, plain boring. I'm doing my duty to honor the test and whatnot but this is not combat that I would stick around for if it, or anything remotely like it, was implemented as a long-term solution. And that is a sentiment that is repeated in basically every PvP-oriented guild and Discord that I'm a part of.

Final comment: please consider disabling add-ons as part of the test! Add-ons consume individual user as well as game server resources to function and it would be enlightening to know how large or small their impact on performance is.

Yes, I was able to get into large scale battles. Easily.

Latency-wise, they were very good in general, until there were about 500 players in the same keep, then skill delays were happening. And a few people in my group crashed multiple times. When they got back in, they were out of Cyro and had to re-queue for 20 minutes.

Now, for my feedback:

I did not like the simplified abilities. I much prefer the normal game, even with its bugs and lower population.

The combat is basically just a huge faction zerg wherever you go. Then it's just a numbers game. Extremely boring. The keep farms are way too drawn out. Had one last night with 220 DC trying to take Chal. We were there for an hour. Yellow showed up toward the end, and then red defended the keep. A total waste of time for very very very little AP. (I don't care. I don't play for AP anymore. But still.)

My favorite thing about this campaign: How the world and sky looks. The colors are pleasing.

In general, I will just say that I would much prefer to just keep PvPing in the existing Cyrodiil, as is. With no changes. It's fun. If the campaign turns into something even remotely resembling this test, I will lose interest in ESO within a month and that would be that.

Hi there. As this is only a week long test, I am going to write up my feedback based on one play session so far. I have a busy week going and I may not get to try again. If I get more time with other classes and characters, I'll edit the post.

First I want to share a few pieces of information that may help correlate my feedback, in case it is helpful. I am PC/NA. I played on Tuesday, 3/25, between ~5pm - 7pm EST. I was on my templar character, I x e n, which is my main and is only used now for PvP (and some casual questing) due to the state of templars. Except for two turncoats :P who exist for achievement purposes, I almost always play EP on Gray Host. I typically play weekend mornings (EST time, between 7am and 1pm) which may be relevant for context as I rarely play during what is considered "prime time" for the server.

Please try out the new campaign and let us know what you think! Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles? Yes; had absolutely no problems. However, I would like to note that this has not historically been a problem for me outside of the test.
  
• Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
  During the test, I experienced small, mid, and large scale battles. Small scale felt the same. Mid scale was better, latency-wise, than what I experience in Gray Host. I could clearly tell that my abilities "worked" better in a mid scale fight than they do in normal PvP. Large scale honestly was about the same. While I am sure there were things about large scale which were better (especially, I suspect, the amount of people clearly rendered in the battles... there were way more people present than I often see for large battles - also, never saw a load screen), ultimately the experience was equivalent to what I experience outside of the test. I had rubber banding. I had the issue where doors wouldn't open or you had to click them a bunch of times. Abilities were slow to fire and I could not tell at all if I was making a difference due to delays between when I'd take an action and when I could see its effect. I still had deaths that felt instant, but based on the kill summary, were not.
  
  The largest scale battle I experienced was at 6:04pm (and ofc likely a little before and after that) at Sej. I saw drops to 22 and even 10 fps. I do have faith that these changes introduced a "better" experience than a fight of this size in Gray Host, but there was not real, skilled PvP going on there. It essentially was the same old, same old.
  
• What you think of the simplified abilities?
  Really, really do not like them (sorry). Someone posted that you would never revamp 100+ abilities for a single week-long test, and boy does that logic sadden and worry me. The simplified abilities make ESO more complicated and too boring at the same time.
  
  First, it's confusing and annoying to have abilities that map to our "real" abilities but do different stuff. Some of us pay attention to tool tips, try to learn what everything does, and to have things be "the same but different" is just extremely aggravating. IF you're going to make new abilities for PvP, don't make them third morphs that aren't actually third morphs. It's just awful. Make NEW abilities. Call them something different and don't connect them to existing class abilities at all. Experienced players know what the "base" abilities should do. Instinctively. Just as a very simple example, I know that Piercing Javelin should do some damage. It can knock back but also damages, even un-morphed. I will always use it in situations assuming it will do some damage, but now it doesn't. Because it's been "simplified." So it doesn't match with base.
  
  Second, one of the things I love dearly about ESO is that its complexity and variety allows it to stay fresh. It is what has kept me engaged with this game since beta. It is why my character slots are full. If I get bored, I can make a new build. Usually I'll take inspiration from a content creator, and then tweak and make it my own. Most of my characters have tons of builds, for all kinds of scenarios across PvE and PvP. In Vengeance, there are not nearly enough choices for abilities to keep my interest. Limited, simple abilities are going to get old very, very, very fast for me. And, I suspect, for most players still in game who stayed after AwA who don't play just a single character. And for most advanced players. And probably others. Yes, I get that there's this "narrative" out there that "everyone plays the meta" so there are a million sets and a million abilities and yet no variety. It's a semi-false narrative and frustratingly divisive. PvP players have bomber builds. Scroll runner builds. In-your-face builds. Ranged/sniper builds. Sneaky builds. Yes, the masses will follow BiS meta but the wonderfulness of ESO is that you don't have to do this. You can specialize, you can try out niche stuff, you can start with meta and tweak. The possibilities are endless.
  
  Except, now they aren't. There are so few skills to choose from. And (while this may be temporary), the fact that scribing skills were effective in PvP made both scribing and PvP more fun to me. The fact that this wasn't a thing in the test both concerns and saddens me.
  
• Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game. No. Although, I have never experienced this outside the test, either.
  
• What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)?
  OK, I have a lot of feedback, even from just a few hours.
  
  First, the good.
  
  1. Yes, it was truly AMAZING to not experience the stuck in combat bug. I hate that bug so very, very much. Obviously one of the things (or a combination of the things) you removed for the test was causing it. Now please narrow it down so we don't need to lose soooo much to get this lovely awesomeness.
  2. It was fun to see such epic battles. I definitely temporarily lost any criticisms I had of the test environment for a period of time as I just basked in the pure fun of seeing such large armies clash.
  3. I was happy to see that heals worked outside of group in this test. I slotted Rushed Ceremony and enjoyed running around and healing random strangers. I'd like more options but I was happy to see this was still something I could do. This could easily swap to the not-so-good category because there definitely were not enough options to be a full healing character (don't get me started on the absence of healing staff abilities, or a healing staff) and if I focused on that specifically it honestly would be a quadruple-BOO... but I'm trying to be balanced so the fact that it can be done at all stays in the good category. Barely.
  4. One of the few things that drives me bonkers in current Cyro is the micromanagement of items - siege, repair kits, etc - especially with no dedicated action wheel for PvP, since most of my characters do both PvE and PvP. Therefore, I can't heap enough praise on the experience (although I realize it might always be fully temporary) of unlimited repair kits that work on everything, and unlimited siege such that I didn't feel obligated to pack up my siege when I was done using it. I get that siege and repair stuff uses AP for purchase and rewards therefore this may never see the light of day, but boy did it up my fun factor to just be able to drop siege or repair whenever. Also, the little tiny ray of hope that this could be a thing makes my inventory do a full happy dance. I am so ready to sacrifice realism for this scenario/feature.
  
  Now, the not-so-good.
  1. I will briefly mention that the lack of gear, CP, food, etc. just compounds my complaint about simplified abilities. If I wanted a simple, templated PvP game, I'd go play one of those. The lack of variety was a complete snooze-fest. My friend, who doesn't really engage on the forums, described Vengeance as "annoying and boring." When pressed, he described the simplified abilities and builds as the primary reason.
  2. The SLOWNESS. I have posted multiple times on this forum about how my first experience in PvP was horrific, and it's amazing I ever went back. I spent all my time running between battles with my incredibly slow horse. Now, Vengeance was not that bad. But generally speaking, I felt like I was playing ESO at half speed. I want to get between battles as fast as possible, whether I'm mounted or on foot. Getting from one place to the other in this Vengeance test severely tested my patience (and interest/engagement). I haven't read enough details to know if the mounts were actually slower or if there is just something "off" with the feel, but this slower pace took away a lot of the fun urgency that PvP should have (imo). It felt longer to get to battles, and while fighting felt smoother, it felt slower. Just an overall lack of speed that made it feel to me as if the battles (or anything I did) didn't actually matter. If the pace of the game is different in PvP vs. PvE, I think I'll always feel this. Two thumbs down.
  3. Related to my second point, I had this feeling, the whole time, that the game was not as responsive. While I had less rubber-banding, no load screens, and I was never kicked... it also felt like there was this micro delay between ALL my abilities. I have seen forum posts about people saying that they are seeing this since U45 in general, not just in the Vengeance test, so possibly this wasn't Vengeance related. But, this was the first time I "felt" this and I have played other content in the current update. Regardless, it added to my overall feeling that I was less fighting an epic, important war and more playing a non urgent video game.
  4. Ball groups were swapped for THE ZERG. I post a lot about how much of the fun of Cyro for me is coming in as a solo or duo and being able to accomplish things in that configuration. I felt none of that in Vengeance. It was virtually impossible to solo or duo resources (a common fun way to disrupt the map as a smaller group). NPCs were too powerful, my character was too weak. And I had so few ways to adjust so I could be less weak! Successful resource flips had about a million people, making one feel unnecessary to the experience. (So overall capturing resources in general was just not fun. A million people at a large keep battle feels ok; at an uncontested resource, not so much) There were so many people playing but your choices were basically join the zerg, or fail on your own. Balancing might help, but I also feel that this is a side effect of upping the campaign numbers combined with other changes.
  5. The Queue. I have a love/hate relationship with Midyear Mayhem. I love it, because I love PvP and extra PvP rewards, but I hate it because I live that alt lifestyle, and swapping between characters sticks me back in the queue. I veered from my normal weekend-mornings-only play time to ensure I could participate in the test, and experienced the same frustrating experience of not being able to switch characters, from a practical, how-much-time-I-have standpoint. I mention this specifically in case part of the strategy being considered is consolidating campaigns. I don't have patience for long queues.
  6. Class/Build Identity (a variation on my first point). There is just so much that I missed. I missed my templar fast rez. I missed my hard won immobilize in Blazing Spear. I missed healing multiple people with Breath of Life. I missed so many little things that I enjoyed about my class.
  The "it's a wash" observations.
  
  1. The environment stuff. I noticed it, I kinda liked it... but no way would it entice me to participate long term should the environment stay as simplified as it is. A nice value add, but wouldn't impact how I chose to spend my time in Tamriel (or if I choose Tamriel over other games or real life).
  2. Kills. Ok, I'm a decent player but not a superstar. I've been around a long time and I am always trying to improve. However, I know for a fact there are others who will always be better than me because they spend more time in game than I will ever be able to do until I hit retirement age. I respect those folks who have more skill and know when I am bested. But I am enough of an experienced ESO player to be able to jump into a Vengeance environment and adapt. I got a good amount of kills. I held my own in 1v1's - won some, lost some. I knew how to read the battles and jump in to finish people off. This was... not that much different than outside of the test. For me at least. I did not feel that the environment allowed my skill (or lack of skill) to shine more or less than it did before. It's situational outside of the test, and situational inside of the test. Possibly for different reasons, but overall the same outcome and experience.
• Do you have any general feedback?
  First, a tiny thing... based on general chatter, I assumed that this would be a full, templated experience. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize that I still needed to slot abilities from the limited choices available to me. No pop-ups, no instructions, nothing. Depending on where you go with this, please consider this feedback.
  
  Second: ZOS has been both very open and very vague about the end game plan for this test. So my general feedback is... for me, and my playstyle, and what I love about ESO... this test, overall, had a "but, at what cost?!?" theme to it. I accept a certain amount of lag, crashes, etc. as part of a large scale PvP game. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do. Ultimately, in the large battles my quality of experience was the same, as it was in small battles. So as things stand, based on the information and experiences I have had, I would simply say that the sacrifice of complexity and build options to improve my experience only in mid scale battles is not worth the trade off. So often, as I PvP, I find that I think... "oh, if I was on my [insert character with particular build here], I would have done better in this type of battle. I smile and laugh it off, and stick with PvP for those moments when the character and build I have epically line up with the most perfect battle (usually a come-from-behind victory). I don't see any of the changes in this test being worth the tradeoff. How often I end up in a mid scale battle where I'd experience the benefits of these changes is widely variable and unpredictable. But... I may be unique. Ball groups don't stress me out. Even some lag, load screens, and disconnects, don't stress me out (even more so since I still experienced them in the test). I don't play at prime time. While I certainly release my fair share of swear words when my character can't mount while running from one battle to another... I wouldn't choose a fix for that over the ability to have a wide variety of builds, with abilities that mesh with the rest of the game structure, tons of gear to choose from, and more. YMMV, and I get it. This is just my two cents, written out in the longest, most detailed way possible.

• Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
  Yes
• Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
  Overall, Yes - Even for my 12 year old PC, though taking potions was still a gamble (Potion sound but no potion consumed bug)
• What you think of the simplified abilities?
  Too Simplified, or rather - not enough of them. Some classes lack good weapon focused skill, which resulted in a lot of quick class specific metas (like sorc spear), there was not a good option for healing or using resto staff for example. Other abilities felt too nerfed, like Bone totem being unusable for necro due to there being no area effects.
• Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.
  For once, I didn't get booted, so I don't know.
  
• What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)?
  It's a neat idea and reminds me of my Halo 1-2 days, where PVP was what you could do with the resources available, not what sets you could cheese together to do work for you.
• Do you have any general feedback?
  I don't think this should replace Greyhost, at least not in its current form. I understand the technical aspects of this test and why it resulted in better performance, so I am not against it as a whole - However, as it is currently, it is lacking a lot of appeal for veteran players of pvp. A middle ground must be reached or this must be made a secondary campaign of its own for people who prefer this play style to the more complex PVP greyhost offered.
  I also think that the full range of siege should be brought back - Not having any decent counter siege combined with no AOE/CC skills made defending keeps next to impossible - it was just a war of numbers and taking a keep was basically a matter of time for the team on the offense.
  
  It was a nice change of pace that the skills we did have 'did what they said on the tin' rather than considering the 4D Chess moves of what that means in context to the other 600+ sets that might counter it. That said, some of the 'tins' were dented, or had no label and were next to useless. So for this game mode to be viable I feel some concessions may have to be made so that some classes don't feel like they had half their skill book thrown in a shredder. (bring back weapon and pvp skills with some AOEs)

1. Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
   Yes there are mostly large battles. It is easy to join the fight and catch up with the opponents.
2. Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
   The latency has reduced and stays stable.
3. What do you think of the simplified abilities?
   It is nice for a while, there is not much time needed to understand how to make a build. In the end everything is on auto pilot anyway and then it does not matter if it is simplified. The emphasis could now shift more to the campaign objectives (if activated) instead of gear preferences that not everybody understands.
4. Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they left Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, hit lag, etc?
   No
5. What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)?
   Finally something has started to change Cyrodiil. The ballgroups, bombers, tower runners and unkillables made it empty and now it is full again. Very nice job.
6. Do you have any general feedback?
   A compliment to those who realised Vengeance, it is nice to play in.
   The campaign score should have been activated now the factions are often ignoring defenses.

This entire test is a joke. PC only is the dumbest thing I've seen for something that will effect the netire community.