I LOVE VENGEANCE

aru · March 2025

Untill this day I was using a troll tank build, Crest of Cyrodiil and Battalion Defender because I was not able to deal damage with damage sets anyway. Everyone was too tanky and has too much damage I was only able to die, so I decided to be an unkillable zero damage tank. In Vengeance, I am finally allowed to have fun by killing people in PvP.

Today was peak. We got an enemy that runs around a rock to dodge skills and waste our time, you know the type. But in Vengeance, you don't do that. We killed him with only 3 people in less than 10 seconds. I felt joyful after that. In the old PvP system, there were hunters and preys. Now every one of us is a hunter.

This is one of the best things that ZoS has done. I hope they can maintain this system.

Northwold · March 2025

I do wonder, if ZOS decide to make something of this, if the way to run with this isn't to introduce items you can pick up / earn along the way that do certain things for the player (and not spread their benefits to everyone around the player) and are lost the moment that player dies or leaves Cyro. So you can still *progress*, you just can't *keep* the progress for all time.

Lags · March 2025

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

Erickson9610 · March 2025

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

Competitive environments should remain competitive.

aru · March 2025

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

They wouldn't do that for financial reasons so I will not think about it. Also, PvE is not unbalanced as PvP anyway. I don't think Vengeance is about being basic, it resembles me the shorts/reels thing in social media. You don't have to think about anything, you just go in, play for some time, then leave with minimal rewards. It's the perfect system for nowadays.

Xzysts · March 2025

I think ZOS should do this to PVE also since everyone loves it so much... Right? If you love it in PvP and want to ruin that why not do it to PvE also?

ragnarok6644b14_ESO · March 2025

I am torn in vengeance.

On one hand, it was nice to actually be able to participate in the game, instead of being a PVP target dummy.

On the other hand, having skills and whatnot is super cool, and I genuinely like my sets that I run as well as the skills I had set up.

Joy_Division · March 2025

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

Not necessary. PvE, Battlegrounds , IC do not lag so much that ZOS cut their original intended player count by 90%.

SpiritKitten · March 2025

Vengeance is fun and is like casual pvp, just for lols, but also can be pretty frustrating for regular and more hardcore pvpers.

Stamicka · March 2025

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

So I had a really good time during this Vengeance test. It didn’t have much to do with the simplified skills, in fact, I thought skills were too simple and I wasn’t a big fan of them. I certainly would never want ESO as simplified as the Vengeance campaign.

My enjoyment came from the fact that I did not have to put together a build, I could just hop in on any character. I wasn’t getting melted by status effects, procs, and other free damage sources. I didn’t have to play mount simulator which gets extremely boring very quickly, and I love being on equal footing with everyone else.

At this point I’ve been around for almost a decade coming up and I’m just done grinding ESO. I’ve been in the same 100% craftable PvP build for over 3 years now and I use that build on every character. I only have two PvP mythics and those are very outdated at this point. Scribing is a grind I’m not willing to do and the same goes for getting leads for the new BiS mythics. Additionally I think Khajiit is the best race for most of my classes, but I just don’t like cats and since it’s hard to find crown sellers these days, I wouldn’t buy a race change anyway. I’m certainly not spending any actual money on the game in it’s current state.

So as you can imagine, there’s a lot of people in PvP who have way more damage than me, more tankiness, more sustain and there’s little to no trade off compared to my build. Now that’s 100% on me for not doing the necessary grinds to keep my PvP build BiS, but honestly I don’t care at all if I die or lose in PvP in it’s current state. It’s just not worth it to me to spend hours to get a new build to participate in a laggy and poorly balanced environment,

I’ve always hated the extent to which you can outbuild and cheese others in ESO. It definitely lessens the enjoyment of PvP when you have worse gear than others.

All this to say, being able to log into the game, go into Cyrodiil, find a fight almost anywhere on the map where the opposing alliance has a keep and not having to worry about mount speed, gear/mythics, or proc sets/pulls is great.

Vengeance isn’t fun due to the fact that it’s so bare bones and simple, it’s fun because it’s free of all of the hassle and cheese that normal Cyrodiil has. It also has very smooth server performance with so many people which is something we haven’t seen in like 8-9 years.

colossalvoids · March 2025

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

People enjoy more break from the usual, from the lag and ball groups or toxic builds. I don't really think it's about actually having freedom from choice and being extremely limited. It's also about a fighting chance and lack of fear (yes, people are afraid of dying in games also) as everyone is on the same footing more or less, more than ever at least. So ones who disliked being herded and kited around the stone / tree are definitely having way more fun actually doing some impact if not outright deleting those folks and going back to things they enjoyed like sieges.

Other parts of the game don't have such disruptive issues that make people quit the mode they like, so not sure why anyone would project it further Cyro alone.

Treeshka · March 2025

There are AOE caps for damaging skills in the campaign. It does not sound right that my Soul Tether will only hit 4 people, while 10 people charges on top of me.

AOE caps for damage skills should go, whether they harm the server or not. It does not feel good and adds RNG to the fights.

Northwold · March 2025

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

I don't really follow the logic here. They're completely different games. They may take place in the same world, but they are not remotely the same.

In PvE enemies are designed to increase in skill depending on the difficulty of the zone / activity. PvP, by contrast, is by design an unstructured, total free for all, but a free for all in which players who have been playing a long time / play in a very committed manner have a significant advantage because over time they accumulate gear.

Some people like that about PvP, some people don't. But the obvious problem with the way PvP currently works (apart from performance) is that it is not easy to dip in and out of it. If you want to PvP and do well, you must be A PvP Player, with all your gear (and potentially a clique of other players to group with). Is that good for overall participation in PvP? I tend to think that, as it currently plays out, the answer is no.

Would the solution be to go all the way to Vengeance ? Again, probably no.

Might there be something in having a dedicated server that is sort of like Vengeance but with ways to progress within your PvP session that are not based on accumulating gear over weeks or months? I think yes. I think you'd see a surge of players who previously wouldn't touch PvP with a bargepole coming in and out whenever they fancied some PvP action.

The problem with PvP in ESO at the moment really is that everyone is bunched in together regardless of gear and skill level. It makes it a miserable experience if you don't want PvP to be your ESO day job. When, without that vast gulf in power that results in insta death for dabblers, and with not that much tweaking, PvP in ESO could be seriously fun for a whole lot more players than it currently caters to.

ImmortalCX · March 2025

Xzysts wrote: »

I think ZOS should do this to PVE also since everyone loves it so much... Right? If you love it in PvP and want to ruin that why not do it to PvE also?

If a patient has tonsilitis, you don't give them chemotherapy.

katanagirl1 · March 2025

Northwold wrote: »

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

I don't really follow the logic here. They're completely different games. They may take place in the same world, but they are not remotely the same.

In PvE enemies are designed to increase in skill depending on the difficulty of the zone / activity. PvP, by contrast, is by design an unstructured, total free for all, but a free for all in which players who have been playing a long time / play in a very committed manner have a significant advantage because over time they accumulate gear.

Some people like that about PvP, some people don't. But the obvious problem with the way PvP currently works (apart from performance) is that it is not easy to dip in and out of it. If you want to PvP and do well, you must be A PvP Player, with all your gear (and potentially a clique of other players to group with). Is that good for overall participation in PvP? I tend to think that, as it currently plays out, the answer is no.

Would the solution be to go all the way to Vengeance ? Again, probably no.

Might there be something in having a dedicated server that is sort of like Vengeance but with ways to progress within your PvP session that are not based on accumulating gear over weeks or months? I think yes. I think you'd see a surge of players who previously wouldn't touch PvP with a bargepole coming in and out whenever they fancied some PvP action.

The problem with PvP in ESO at the moment really is that everyone is bunched in together regardless of gear and skill level. It makes it a miserable experience if you don't want PvP to be your ESO day job. When, without that vast gulf in power that results in insta death for dabblers, and with not that much tweaking, PvP in ESO could be seriously fun for a whole lot more players than it currently caters to.

I actually think that having to learn how to build and get the gear and skills is a necessary part of PvP, so I probably would not want Vengeance campaign all the time. You can go in with any gear and participate in any other campaign, but your performance will be limited. As I have said before it is just like trials. You start out with whatever gear you have and work your way through various trials to get the gear you need. Why should it be different in PvP?

However, a skill progression would be a nice thing to have, since it doesn’t matter if you are a Volunteer or Grand Overlord, your character’s fighting skill is the same level. It would be great to get some kind of fighting bonuses as you level up your Alliance Rank, though other players would probably balk at the idea. Every time a new player got killed by a Grand Overlord they would come to the forums to complain at the “unfairness” of it.

The suggestion for combining the under 50 and no cp campaign into a Vengeance type campaign is probably the best suggestion so far to ease people into PvP. Hopefully the Vengeance campaign test will keep adding things to stress the servers until they find what is causing the performance problems, and then a more surgical tweak to Gray Host can be done to improve its performance without such drastic changes.

Minnesinger · March 2025

I am not sure it has been mentioned but what makes Vengeance a big difference is its easy access. For someone with lots of toons I could just try all of them and play whichever I liked. To think of this, I usually play 1 or 2 toons. Vengeance let me play my toons that I had not been pvping for years.

Artim_X · March 2025

There are no heroes or villains in the vengeance campaign, only numbers, which is something I personally find boring.

However, it would be interesting to have a vengeance option for those who do not want to create a build to be effective in a competitive environment, but it should not be the only version of Cyrodiil that exists.

reazea · March 2025

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

Yep. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. End game trials suffer from the same performance issues as Cyrodiil has, so it makes just as much sense to mandate vengeance mode for the entire game as it does to mandate it for Cyrodiil.

reazea · March 2025

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

Competitive environments should remain competitive.

So you'd agree that fair is fair and vengeance mode for PvE makes just as much sense as it makes in Cyrodiil, right?

licenturion · March 2025

Seems this is well liked, so they could add this to the campaign in the future (or some variation).

That way everybody is happy. Maybe if enough people stay on Vengeance, the performance of Cyro improves by itself.

Lags · March 2025

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

Competitive environments should remain competitive.

aru wrote: »

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

They wouldn't do that for financial reasons so I will not think about it. Also, PvE is not unbalanced as PvP anyway. I don't think Vengeance is about being basic, it resembles me the shorts/reels thing in social media. You don't have to think about anything, you just go in, play for some time, then leave with minimal rewards. It's the perfect system for nowadays.

Joy_Division wrote: »

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

Not necessary. PvE, Battlegrounds , IC do not lag so much that ZOS cut their original intended player count by 90%.

None of these responses, among others, answer my very simple question. But ill go ahead and answer the question for all of you. The answer is obviously no. This is just a test, and even though i have very little faith left in zos i truly believe that they would never do something as crazy as replacing cyrodiil with something similar to this test. That being said they are looking at everyones feedback and i think a lot of the simple feedback is very short sighted, and from people who dont normally spend a lot of time in cyrodiil. Or people who dont enjoy cyrodiil. Whether thats because they never did, or they dont anymore. And yes, of course, thats not everyone.

But the point here is, you wouldnt want something like this in pve even though you say you are enjoying it in pvp. The reason is different for everyone. Maybe you dont like ball groups, maybe you dont like bad performance, maybe you dont like having to deal with more people with more experience than you. Well guess what, there are people out there that would be fine if they made the entire game like this, extremely simple. They have things in pve they dont like and wish were more simple. For example, there are plenty of people who i have seen asking zos to make things like vet dlc dungeons and trial hardmodes
extremely simple. Many times over the years. That doesnt mean its a good idea.

Just like butchering cyrodiil with something like this would be a terrible idea. And i also think its a terrible idea, and extremely short sighted, for people to make posts about how zos should keep cyrodiil like this. Especially when you only have roughly a week to try it. Of course ive been on the forums long enough to know this is how things are, and people will give their opinions even when they dont make sense to me. So this is just my own opinion. But really all i was looking for was a yes or no to my question.

And not only were all of these responses not an an answer to my question, they are all flawed arguments. Especially the one saying that zos wouldnt do that because of financial reasons. Its like you think pvpers dont buy every new dlc to do pve stuff to get sets to run in pvp.

Lags · March 2025

colossalvoids wrote: »

Lags wrote: »

i would love to know, to those of you that like the way this test is, would you be happy if the entire game was like this? Like if zos just decided to remove all of the sets from the game and just give us all some very basic skills for each class Just out of curiosity.

People enjoy more break from the usual, from the lag and ball groups or toxic builds. I don't really think it's about actually having freedom from choice and being extremely limited. It's also about a fighting chance and lack of fear (yes, people are afraid of dying in games also) as everyone is on the same footing more or less, more than ever at least. So ones who disliked being herded and kited around the stone / tree are definitely having way more fun actually doing some impact if not outright deleting those folks and going back to things they enjoyed like sieges.

Other parts of the game don't have such disruptive issues that make people quit the mode they like, so not sure why anyone would project it further Cyro alone.

Again, it was just a simple yest or no question. But regardless you're right and wrong. I do think people are happy to get a break from the same cyrdoiil we've had forever, and the issues that plague it. i just think its short sighted to think this is the right way for cyrodiil to go in the future. Instead of advocating for zos to make better choices when it comes to balancing things like ball groups.

As for the rest of your post, again im going to use the term short sighted. Most people just dont understand pvp in this game, or how cyrodiil normally is. Yes ball groups are an issue but no matter what zos does coordinated groups will always destroy uncoordinated groups. This is just how it is. Yes it will be harder. Yes people have to adapt when major changes happen. But a group of 12 people in a discord who are building their group to fight larger groups, will almost always beat a group double their size of random players who just met up at a keep.

And when it comes to being herded, or kited around a tree, the answer is simple. Stop chasing people. But they wont. Its just how players are. It has literally always been this way. The same way no matter how many people tell them not to pile up in a giant group on a door they still do it. Do you think im still not kiting 3 people around a tree in vengeance? And killing them? Of course i am. Ya its harder for me, which is nothing new. And ya its easier for them to kill me, but its their choice to chase me.

And its really pretentious of you, or the players you are referring too, to assume that your play style is more important than mine. Just because you like to siege a keep doesnt mean i shouldn't be able to fight you in between a keep. Again, no one makes people chase. Just siege your keep and the problem is solved.

Also if you are scared to die in a game then you really should just do something else. Dying is how you improve and learn, so you can actually have fun instead of running around scared all the time.

As for your last point, do you really believe that pve has never frustrated people into rage quitting what they were doing? Like Flawless conqueror back in the day, or any tri fectas, or farming a lead that never drops. Or whatever. The right answer is not always to make something easy and simple. But unfortunately thats what some people like.

Lags · March 2025

Artim_X wrote: »

There are no heroes or villains in the vengeance campaign, only numbers, which is something I personally find boring.

However, it would be interesting to have a vengeance option for those who do not want to create a build to be effective in a competitive environment, but it should not be the only version of Cyrodiil that exists.

This is how battlegrounds should be. Guild wars 2 does it like that and its good. Bgs should be the competitive space for pvp, open world pvp should never be restricted like that. Its random open world pvp, and thats why many of us love it. I would love to see zos make small changes to cyrodiil based on this test, and address some major issues like over healing and ball groups. And then do something like vengeance with BGs. simplified skills, simplified sets.

katanagirl1 · March 2025

I think it’s ironic that people are asking for easier PvP and harder overland. I hope ZOS realizes these can’t be the same people.

ZOS_Hadeostry · March 2025

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.