Stamicka wrote: »

LPapirius wrote: »

Wait. There are some issues with this assessment.

First, the original pop cap in Cyro was 600/faction. The pop cap in Cyro during vengeance was not increased by comparison to the original pop caps. The cap was increased by 3x of the population just prior to the test, which was a cap of literally 10% the original cap plus or minus about 10 players/faction.

Yea they are basically saying that the current population cap is greater than or equal to 204 (I’m guessing it goes by multiples of 12) per alliance and increasing it by 3 times would get us 612v612v612 to break the previous record. So 204 is basically the minimum that current population caps could be.

That just doesn’t feel possible to me and current population caps feel below even 108, maybe like 72. I’ve seen Volendrung faction stacks that have completely killed the rest of the map and there was less than 60 people per alliance there. It’s not adding up.

I'm fairly sure they are comparing against the current pop cap at time of testing i.e. around 64, so moving it back up to the previous values of 200 players per faction

tomofhyrule wrote: »

KiltMaster wrote: »

There should be a learning curve to everything. I don't expect to walk into a trifecta trial core and do decently without experience and prep work.

A lot of people make the “I can’t just bring anything to a trial trifecta! PvP should have a learning curve!” argument, which is completely valid. Yes, a player who has spent more time in PvP should do better.

But…
PvE also doesn’t just start with trifectas. There’s actually a pretty clear buildup from overland -> delves -> public dungeons -> basegame group dungeons -> vet basegame group dungeons -> DLC normal dungeons -> DLC vet dungeons -> DLC HM dungeons -> DLC trifectas. (And for trials, you can also take a similar route).

In PvP though, the progression is just PvE against computer mobs -> PvP against pros.

If we want to compare PvP to a vet trifecta, then there really isn’t an equivalent of everything leading up to it. Sure you shouldn’t walk into a trifecta without prep. But where do you get that prep for the PvP world? Where do you practice? We cant queue for duels to test builds, so that’s just waiting at wayshrines and hoping someone accepts a duel request and can PvP and is in PvP gear. We can’t expect that the U50 campaigns are all newbies instead of pros who cycle gold Lv 40 gear between a series of alts.

That was in my opinion one of the benefits of Vengeance in that it could serve as that much-needed step between overland PvE and PvP. Obviously I would never want to get rid of Grey Host, but a templated and no-CP and no sets and no stats and no Voldendrung foolishness arena could really help bring new people into PvP, where they may be able to find guilds and then make the jump into “real” Cyrodiil.

The prep to PvP happened in beginner groups in Ravenwatch. I led many groups for a couple of years, once a week, every week. Taught beginners how to take keeps, use siege, acceptable behavior, take resources, fight, heal, flip flags safely, what the overall strategy was for gaining points for the faction, gaining AP, running scrolls, etc.... Absolute beginners in a campaign that was very friendly to learning the mechanics without proc sets or CP would eventually progress up to Blackreach then Grayhost. That's gone now. Ravenwatch is proc-enabled. No one wants to start out pvping experiencing RoA, DC, and VD. I don't lead groups there anymore.

Vengeance could be that if we bring it back.

I've been reading thru most of these comments, and my general main takeaway from people was,

"I loved that my enemies didn't have the choice in customizing their unstoppable builds, but I hated that I didn't have the choice in customizing my unstoppable builds."

Even though it was only made to be a test, Vengeance has a lot of potential as a separate game mode, but right now that's all that it has. I had fun with it, but only for about an hour or so because nothing really goes differently due to it being a numbers game and no individuality. Of course that is only due to it being in its most basic form possible to get a baseline.

I think Vengeance can be successful if it takes everything gathered from the tests over the years and puts it all into a single campaign, maybe replacing ravenwatch or icereach. I'm thinking

• Basic PvP versions of skills for Class, Weapon, World, and Guild.
• Basic PvP versions of passives for the same areas including Race
• No CP
• No Volendrung (Maybe? It's not so much an issue if the wielder isn't invincible)
• No proc sets. Only stat based sets, this time with a clearly defined list with no "technically not a proc, but actually is one" leaking its way into list. Could go as far as to make them PvP specific only like with skills.
• No Mythics
• Targeted heals
• Cap on heal/damage aoes (3 is too low for damage tbh. At least 6 would make them feel more effective)
• Unlimited Siege, Potions, etc
• Base template stats that can be added onto with attribute, armor, and potentially enchant selection
• No battlespirit
• Static mount speed (though it should be a bit more faster than it currently was)
• No Score or Emperor (Maybe? Unsure for this because if these aren't enabled, then there's no real goal for the campaign other than AP farming large sieges)
• No quests, skyshards, gathering, or any PvE related activity (Bulletin quests can still be enabled, though)

The goal would be to create a simplified skill based cyrodiil that would put everyone on an even playing field but still allows for individual build variety, multiple metas, and for a single to small group of players to be considered dangerous but not an invincible 1 man army who can take on 15-30 people at once while also supporting a population cap of 250v250v250 (Estimated. With Miat's, I was at a keep with it reporting 200 players of my alliance and then ported to base with it reporting 20 players. It may be 300.). As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, if PvP is considered to be vet trials, there's no real stepping stone for a new player to get into PvP. Under 50 is filled with smurfs, Ravenwatch is dead, and BGs is a horribly unbalanced nightmare. A vengeance campaign with the described features will be a great place for someone to learn fundamental PvP skills before jumping into a place like Grayhost or Blackreach where everything is enabled. That's not to say that regular PvP needs its own balancing too, but a Vengeance campaign will be a good place to get started.

It was extremely boring. Even the large zerg fights going back and forth between keeps as nice as it was to see again after 10 years got boring after the 5th push. Perhaps with weapon skill lines back in game it would feel different. AOE caps made killing anyone clumped up nearly impossible.

No smart healing was another issue. Why was this removed? I am not a computer/tech person so please let me know if I am wrong. But when testing things should you not test 1 thing at a time and not just make a bunch of changes at once. Is smart healing adding more stress to the server? Overall when I played healer half my heals "missed" even when i was targeting a person directly in my line of sight and mousing over them with them highlighted. This game has had horrible positional tracking issues. This made healing at times very frustrating. Even healing myself I could aim at the ground and the heal would just get eaten by the server.

I agree that there is an issue with the pvp pop bleeding and coming close to losing all its players in maybe the next 2-3 years. I also agree that crazy gear sets and power creeping have been an issue. But fixes were attempted years ago different tests with no proc, no cross healing ext, it did very little. This begs the question how stripped of the original core gameplay that is ESO needs to be removed to get "mass pvp" to work. I also have to question how often the people who visited cyro for the event would come back. Would the server even reach those pop caps at any point?

I am sure I am going to be called a dirty ball grouper whose arguments should be invalidated. I agree ball grouping is hurting the game (but how else do you fight the 40+ people who refuse to actually fight but rather sit in a zerg and siege) It should be lowered. But there is an issue where people see any sort of cross healing by people and shout ball group.

I would also say the statement that we never had better performance before is wrong. If memory serves me right during Beta and in the first year of pvp the lag was not really an issue. But 10 years ago was a long long time.

The only lag I had was hardware lag (FPS turning into SPF, hoping to get an upgrade by the time Win10's support ends) in large-scale battles, but small-scale battles felt enjoyable for me.

It also felt good as someone who casually participates in PvP, as I didn't get instakilled by the insanely OP builds in 1v1.

I liked that there was no kicks to login screen when approaching big battles, and no "stuck in combat" status even after I healed my allies (on live, if I heal some ally, I'm guaranteed to be forever stuck in combat). But I didn't enjoy gameplay in Vengeance and I would not play PvP if it was always like this

The sky was cool I went with the mount who matched those colors:

redlink1979 wrote: »

It was awesome! PvP like in the old days!

There seems to be a ton of people who have no memory of the old days. This was nothing like PvP from back in the day.

@acastanza_ESO
wow interesting ! thanks for theses statistics

@ZOS_BrianWheeler
Thanks to you & all zos staff for this brief, intense and precious moment of fun with Vengeance1

Are you planning to offer us a future test with Vengeance 2 and some changes?

I did not like vengeance mode at all. The only thing that made any difference was the size of the group we ran with. No individual could make a difference and was fun for maybe an hour and was just run here, put up one or two siege, steamroll the enemy or get steamrolled because their zerg was bigger, rinse and repeat. It was not good.

Also, I am deathly afraid that ZOS will not support two different game modes going forward. ZOS will almost certainly only support one or the other mode at some point. It seems far fetched, given how little attention the original game format got from the dev team that ZOS would expand to supporting two different PvP formats. I think the budget department will force the company to choose one or the other formats to go with and drop the other. In other words, I think ZOS will eventually give up on the PvP format we already have at some point, and that would be really sad.

This is why I'm opposed to any further investment into any version of the vengeance format.

kind_hero wrote: »

I was excited to take part in this, especially because I haven't seen such battles since the early days of the game.
Unfortunately, I didn't have time to play enough, the AP bonus and the gains were amazing.

My only downside is that my main, and the char I wanted to increase rank/AP, is nightblade, and as a nightblade I didn't have access to some support skills. I would have liked to be able to have the resto line or some campaign specific healing skill. There should be some guild/weapons skill available, even if it's limited or campaign specific.

To me, it was almost perfect, very enjoyable. I would like something in the lines of this campaign each time there is a pvp event.

P.S. What I would improve though: to me riding from keep to keep is the most boring thing in Cyrodiil. There should be some teleport system that each faction should fight for, like a mage tower near each keep, or resource (AP/runes etc) based, similar to the teleport stone.
I would also put random AP chests or powerups that would spawn in certain choke points to make factions fight for.

You mean like keep recall stones?

Einar_Hrafnarsson wrote: »

I hope this Campaign comes Back ASAP. I started playing again just because of this. Now that it's gone, i stopped again.

I don't know if the campaign would remain popular long term. At the start of the test there was a long queue to get into the campaign. I play the same time each night and the last two nights of the test there was no queue. The diversity offered in the current version of PvP means having to change up tactics and strategies depending on what type of opponent you were seeing. That keeps the campaign interesting. PvP can't rely on new content to keep up interest so a continuing flow of adjusting to other players takes place of that.
With Vengeance it will begin to feel real cookie cutter like in not much time. No variety takes away from what keeps most the PvP crowd going. I liked the fights but by the end of the event was looking for something else. I don't know if the PvP population can handle being divided into more types of campaigns. So for me I'm hoping they can take something from the Vengeance test and apply it to what we have now. I like that from time to time I need to adjust my build.

KiltMaster wrote: »

It was alright. I was glad that performance was decent, tho I did crash 5x when I don't typically crash during PVP. Though, Performance is of course going to be better since everything was turned off. That sort of seems like a no-brainer.

It felt boring after a while since everything was 'whoever has the biggest zerg wins', and not just one player could have an affect on the battles. Grinned and beared it for the AP and to say I tried it, but wasn't fun IMO.

Final Thoughts:
Why does Cyrodill have to have everyone on a level playing field? Why should I be able to walk in there with zero experience and be able to be competitive against folks that put real effort into their gear and builds? There should be a learning curve to everything. I don't expect to walk into a trifecta trial core and do decently without experience and prep work.

All of that regarding the experience - Cyrodiil - like other pve aspects of the game - should not be a level playing field: someone who’s just started with the game should not be able to be able to do everything someone that’s been in since Beta can. There 100% should be a learning curve and the joyless following the Zerg during the test required nothing at all, apart from the ability to point your mount in the correct direction.

blktauna wrote: »

I would love a Vengance variant to be permanent. I enjoyed the ruleset hugely and I got some folks who refused to ever PVP to really have a good time. I loved the nonstop fights, both large and small. I was a part of all sized of fights from faction zerg to 1v4 and everything in between. Siege worked. strategy worked, cooperation was plain. Camps went up all over because they didn't cost a fortune, the endless pot was great and people used siege because they didn't have to save up to buy it. Huge fun.

I like the restricted ruleset. I know my classes and I use mostly class skills as it is so, there wasn't any real adjustment there. I didn't care for the weird range adjustment and the intermittent non functioning of heavy attacks. The slow movement was also annoying but doable.

I think with some adjustment it would be a great alternate zone.

I can't do GH anymore, my machine chokes on it with the bloat and as soon as I'm near a ballgroup I get stalled to death. I had no such issues with Vengance.

I hope we see more of it.

Agreed. No shot I play grey host ever after experiencing vengeance. Why would I volunteer for ganks, immortal DKs and wardens, and ball groups with smaller fights? Nah im good.

Vengeance was sick.