I had a lot of fun. That is the biggest accomplishment of the test. Since 2021, I have taken numerous months long extended breaks from the game precisely because I usually find Cyrodiil not fun for numerous reasons that have been laid out on these forums many times. When Monday comes around and the test ends, I will most likely not be logging in because I got spoiled and was reminded of a game I used to play 4-5 weeks a night with no Rush of Agony, no insane levels of defense/healing, no “ball groups” farming an entire faction on the third floor, no dead boring maps, etc.

When people say that Vengeance is just a numbers game, that’s correct. To make the game fun, we at least need to have the feeling, even if it is more an illusion, that in a difficult situation where the odds are stacked against us, it is still possible to win. I feel this can be corrected easily enough with better balanced abilities and removing the AoE cap of three. Also definitely more mount speed.

To expand on the AoE cap of three I don’t know how many of the developers have been hired after 2016. Those that did missed the much-debated (de)merit of AoE caps as ESO in its first two years had an AoE cap of 6. I feel we are not learning from our history here. I can write here that the vast majority of players hated AoE caps as they encouraged the very sort of zerging and numbers decided everything gameplay we see on Vengeance (in addition to being highly favorable to “ball groups”), and I would be correct. But why take my word for it? ZOS admitted on ESO Live that AoE caps negative effect performance and AvAvA gamplay. Here it is, from the horse’s mouth:



53:00 minute mark.

I have mixed feelings about the templates/simplified abilities. I value customization and build diversity. I think the game would get boring without it. ESO’s problem is the powercreep has gotten so out of hand that if we are given that customization, we will have those do-everything insane builds that are the root cause of many problems in Cyrodiil. If that very customization is why we have low-pop caps, a too often dead map, and oppressive “ball groups,” then in my humble opinion I do not think the price of customization is worth the cost.

If the data says that all these complicated skills and sets are what is causing the latency that is preventing these large-scale battles that are so much fun, that is, we can’t have our cake and eat it, then this is what I would suggest.

Keep regular Cyrodiil and provide a Vengeance campaign option that we can hop into when the “ball groups,” broken builds, dead map, OP sorcs, terrible Necros, and unwelcoming high-skill entry regular Cyrodiil gets on our nerves and would otherwise cause us to log out and do something else. This way, those folks who enjoy theorycrafting builds that can do everything and are immortal to even a half a dozen average players can still go do their thing and fight each other on a campaign that caters to what they want.

So now that we have this Vengeance option, it should replace the under 50 campaign as it is perfect to serve as an entry level environment for newer players to get comfortable with PvP and perhaps become inspired enough to eventually dive into the proverbial deep end of the pool in the no restrictions campaign.

I know this might sound like just a repeat of the failed Ravenwatch experiment. I don’t think it is. Ravenwatch just removed procs sets (and not even really what we wanted since 85% of the sets in the game are technically procs). It did not remove everything else I dislike about ESO’s current PvP: small pop caps, boring map, poor balance across classes, unfriendly to new players, etc.
Vengeance on the other hand, gives me what I valued most in Cyrodiil: constant fights, health bars that do not immediately bounce to full, enthusiasm about playing that I can see in Zone chat, a setting in which a mere 12 players in a group does not dominate play patterns, and most of all, epic fights. That is, unlike Ravenwatch, an attractive system for the Elder Scrolls Online. People and even “casual” guilds can readily dip their toes into Vengeance and actually accomplish something. They could not do this in Ravenwatch.

If Vengeance is going to be sustainable, we do need some options/customization
At the least, morph choices, non-class options, stamina/magicka based, and different template bases with varying health/damage/resistances. We can still have passives. Just bake these into our stats/abilities so there is no calculation. More class distinction/identity would also be needed I think because the templates are very much in the mode of ZOS’s balance-by-spreadsheet philosophy that means my Templar X skill does pretty much exactly the same as your Dragonknight skill Y just with a different color/animation. Especially as we have the exact same stats.

Some of the simplified abilities seemed a little too simple. Simple does not have to mean plain, ordinary, banal, uninteresting. It just means not to stress the server with calculations, no? In particular, many of the ultimates seemed very underwhelming.

Concluding thoughts I’m not sure splitting the PvP population is a good idea as I suspect we will bandwagon to one or the other because at its core, PvP is only fun if there are other people to fight. But I think we really do need the option here because as a 11 year paying customer, I would be pretty resentful if the choice was arbitrarily made for me without the community at least voting for it by playing what they believe is the superior version of Cyrodiil.

As someone who has been highly critical of ZOS and its current version of PvP, I will admit that this test was genuinely fun. The last time I looked forward to logging into Cyrodill and not being frustrated by out-of-control powercreep, broken mechanics, and a boring map was probably 2017. So that’s no small accomplishment. I want to thank the developers for investing their time into this test, which they did not have to do, and reminding me why I fell in love with ESO way back when.

If I had to say why I, an experienced player who has spent quite a bit of time running in the dreaded “ball groups” since 2014, would be willing to give Vengeance on honest chance, it’s the epic fights, the mammoth castle defenses (by far what I enjoy most in Cyrodiil), the constant action (I don’t think I ever went more than 3 minutes without a fight), and, oddly, I was pleasantly surprised that after all these years of failed updates trying to fix my Templar, Vengeance somehow managed to do just that. I was shocked how effective the old school Templar jab-jab-jab-jab was on Vengeance (please just give us Vengeance version of Backlash, TY). Maybe it’s just because some of the balance was pretty questionable (looking at Sorcerer). Regardless of the cause, just being able to recreate the Cyrodiil I remember tells me many of the updates to ESO over the years has resulted in diminishing the product. I think it would be easy to build upon and reform a Vengeance that is already fun to play. With good communication, I think there is a lot of potential here.

Because it will be months before we see Vengeance again and I can rekindle my old enthusiasm for cyrodiil, I think this Vengeance test also told us a lot about Live Cyrodiil, specifically what needs immediate attention/reform/changing.

1. The Rush of Agony set needs the "against monsters" phase added into its 5 piece set bonus. This should be done during the next maintenance and not a second after.
2. For the next update, there should no longer be a debate about how busted the same Heal over Time (HoT) stacking is.
3. There is far too much powercreep in the game. It was crystal clear just how much that added power we have accumulated over the years has had terrible consequences with regard to lag (to say nothing with frustrating gameplay), with ZOS have to drastically reduce the player population to accommodate our broken builds.