Permanent Vengeance will mean the end of Cyrodiil PvP

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · July 6

When the first Vengeance tests started, I wasn’t too worried about them becoming permanent. The developers made it clear these were just tests to gather performance data. But by the time the second round rolled out, the tone really started to change. They began sharing satisfaction polls from players who supposedly enjoyed Vengeance, but I don’t think that feedback represents the actual endgame PvP community at all. Ball groups, solo players, small scalers, even map players weren’t really being heard. That shift in messaging is why I’m writing this. I want to lay out the concerns that I, and probably many other dedicated PvPers, have about these changes and why I think making them permanent would finish off what little population Cyrodiil has left.

First off, I get why players who don’t usually PvP might find these tests fun at first. The gameplay is slower and more accessible with barely any counterplay. It turns into just spamming abilities and seeing what happens. But these players aren’t the ones who will stick with PvP long-term. Most come in for the rewards, leave positive feedback because they had a bit of short-term fun, and then don’t come back. Meanwhile, for those of us who actually play PvP multiple times a week, Vengeance gets stale incredibly fast. We’re the ones keeping Greyhost alive, and even that only really happens during prime time. ZOS needs to listen to the people who consistently show up and keep open-world PvP going, not the casual crowd who logs in for Vengeance rewards or the odd daily. If they don’t, the remaining PvP population will just leave, and Cyrodiil really will become dead content.

Second, removing over 80% of the game’s abilities and systems is just not the answer. One of ESO’s biggest strengths is that you can actually play how you want. Build diversity and theorycrafting are huge reasons PvP is fun in the first place. Making your own unique setups using all the content added over the years—from subclassing and scribing to Psijic skills—keeps the endgame community invested. Stripping all of that away is absurd. Why even bother buying DLCs if none of it works in Cyrodiil? Being able to create flexible, personal builds, whether solo or for groups, is the entire reason many of us still bother with open-world PvP at all. Even with some performance trade-offs, that complexity is worth it. Taking it away will just drive out the dedicated players who actually play multiple times a week.

Lastly, these tests completely miss the real reason Cyrodiil struggles with performance. Instead of actually fixing things with server upgrades, better infrastructure, or code optimization, they’re just stripping out content as a shortcut. And we’ve seen before that server upgrades can actually improve performance, even if just for a while. Real solutions are possible when resources are put in the right place. Vengeance feels like a cheap band-aid fix that trades away depth and fun instead of solving the real issues that cause lag and instability. It’s less about genuinely improving the game and more about avoiding spending money on real, lasting solutions.

In the end, I get the need for performance tests. But making Vengeance permanent would be a disaster for Cyrodiil. It would alienate the core PvP community by making combat dull and unengaging, destroy build diversity, and invalidate years of paid content without fixing the actual problems. If this goes live permanently, it will drive away the last players keeping Cyrodiil alive. For the good of ESO’s open-world PvP, Vengeance needs to stay exactly what it was supposed to be: a test for gathering data, nothing more.

Blackrim · July 6

I would like to really contribute by saying that the Vengeance campaign had A LOT of low level players who were automatically maxed out. Their time in ESO could range from a week, a month, to permanently forever. But most of the time people drop.

You may see a small spike as it is right now but a lot of retained PvPers enjoy the current Cyrodiil without Vengeance. Cyrodiil with Vengeance is likely to last three months then really crap out.

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · July 7

Blackrim wrote: »

I would like to really contribute by saying that the Vengeance campaign had A LOT of low level players who were automatically maxed out. Their time in ESO could range from a week, a month, to permanently forever. But most of the time people drop.

You may see a small spike as it is right now but a lot of retained PvPers enjoy the current Cyrodiil without Vengeance. Cyrodiil with Vengeance is likely to last three months then really crap out.

Honestly, I don’t even think it would last a month. At the time of this post, around 9 PM EST on a Sunday night (which should be peak prime time), Vengeance NA—the only playable campaign—is sitting at 3-bar yellow, pop-locked red, and 2-bar blue. That’s absurd when you consider that Sunday, Friday, and Saturday nights are always pop-locked across the board with solid queues every single week when these tests aren’t running.

It’s clear that what I mentioned earlier about new players saying it’s a “positive experience” on the satisfaction poll has already played out—they’ve left, and the actual core PvP audience just isn’t interested in logging in. Even if Vengeance has higher pop caps, these are still outrageously low numbers for prime time.

Theignson · July 7

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

Blackrim wrote: »

I would like to really contribute by saying that the Vengeance campaign had A LOT of low level players who were automatically maxed out. Their time in ESO could range from a week, a month, to permanently forever. But most of the time people drop.

You may see a small spike as it is right now but a lot of retained PvPers enjoy the current Cyrodiil without Vengeance. Cyrodiil with Vengeance is likely to last three months then really crap out.

Honestly, I don’t even think it would last a month. At the time of this post, around 9 PM EST on a Sunday night (which should be peak prime time), Vengeance NA—the only playable campaign—is sitting at 3-bar yellow, pop-locked red, and 2-bar blue. That’s absurd when you consider that Sunday, Friday, and Saturday nights are always pop-locked across the board with solid queues every single week when these tests aren’t running.

It’s clear that what I mentioned earlier about new players saying it’s a “positive experience” on the satisfaction poll has already played out—they’ve left, and the actual core PvP audience just isn’t interested in logging in. Even if Vengeance has higher pop caps, these are still outrageously low numbers for prime time.

The flaw in the argument is that population caps were raised substantially for Vengeance. Thus 2 bars now can still mean 100 players. I am very familiar with what 2 bars on a Sunday night at 10 PST is like-- usually that means you can find 10-15 players. Now two bars means many more players.

Thats not to say your bigger argument, that everyone would get sick of this, isn't right. Of course the number sare so bad in live cyrodil now (except for prime time) that something needs to be done. It is pretty dead most of the time.

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · July 7

Theignson wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

Blackrim wrote: »

I would like to really contribute by saying that the Vengeance campaign had A LOT of low level players who were automatically maxed out. Their time in ESO could range from a week, a month, to permanently forever. But most of the time people drop.

You may see a small spike as it is right now but a lot of retained PvPers enjoy the current Cyrodiil without Vengeance. Cyrodiil with Vengeance is likely to last three months then really crap out.

Honestly, I don’t even think it would last a month. At the time of this post, around 9 PM EST on a Sunday night (which should be peak prime time), Vengeance NA—the only playable campaign—is sitting at 3-bar yellow, pop-locked red, and 2-bar blue. That’s absurd when you consider that Sunday, Friday, and Saturday nights are always pop-locked across the board with solid queues every single week when these tests aren’t running.

It’s clear that what I mentioned earlier about new players saying it’s a “positive experience” on the satisfaction poll has already played out—they’ve left, and the actual core PvP audience just isn’t interested in logging in. Even if Vengeance has higher pop caps, these are still outrageously low numbers for prime time.

The flaw in the argument is that population caps were raised substantially for Vengeance. Thus 2 bars now can still mean 100 players. I am very familiar with what 2 bars on a Sunday night at 10 PST is like-- usually that means you can find 10-15 players. Now two bars means many more players.

Thats not to say your bigger argument, that everyone would get sick of this, isn't right. Of course the number sare so bad in live cyrodil now (except for prime time) that something needs to be done. It is pretty dead most of the time.

If you actually read my post, you’ll see I did address that. From my experience, the pop caps haven’t been doubled at all. At most they’re allowing maybe 1.5 times the normal population. And even if that’s true, for a test that only runs for a week and is supposed to attract both new and active Cyrodiil players, it’s clearly failing to do so.

Oblivion_Protocol · July 7

Even if Vengeance became permanent, it wouldn’t be the only option. It would, at best, be another server you can play on. ZoS can’t make all PvP Vengeance for one reason and one reason only.

Content creators.

YouTubers, Twitch Streamers, and other creators make the majority of their content in Cyro because that’s the most dynamic gameplay. BGs, in their current state, are abhorrent, and IC is stone cold, graveyard dead at the best of times.

On top of that, at least 50% of the unique build videos out there are PvP builds that creators can easily change and update while theorycrafting.

If Vengeance becomes the only option, a LOT of content goes down the drain. From a business standpoint, that means fewer eyes on the product, which is bad for the bottom line.

Also, for better or worse, the hardcore PvP community is one of the loudest and, most importantly, listened-to faction of players in this game. If they rail against Vengeance hard enough, ZoS will pump the brakes on it as anything other than an occasional performance test.

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · July 7

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

Even if Vengeance became permanent, it wouldn’t be the only option. It would, at best, be another server you can play on. ZoS can’t make all PvP Vengeance for one reason and one reason only.

Content creators.

YouTubers, Twitch Streamers, and other creators make the majority of their content in Cyro because that’s the most dynamic gameplay. BGs, in their current state, are abhorrent, and IC is stone cold, graveyard dead at the best of times.

On top of that, at least 50% of the unique build videos out there are PvP builds that creators can easily change and update while theorycrafting.

If Vengeance becomes the only option, a LOT of content goes down the drain. From a business standpoint, that means fewer eyes on the product, which is bad for the bottom line.

Also, for better or worse, the hardcore PvP community is one of the loudest and, most importantly, listened-to faction of players in this game. If they rail against Vengeance hard enough, ZoS will pump the brakes on it as anything other than an occasional performance test.

I hope you’re right about them pumping the brakes, but even making it an “off campaign” would still split the community and the populations.

Say they kept just Grey Host and Vengeance and got rid of Blackreach and Ravenwatch. I see two possible outcomes, and neither is good.

First, the hardcore PvPers will go to Grey Host while the more casual audience will go to Vengeance at first. But that runs into a huge problem: Vengeance will never deliver on its promise of massive-scale battles because it simply won't have enough consistent players—the endgame PvP community just won't log in there regularly. Meanwhile, Grey Host will struggle with pop because the casual crowd might choose Vengeance instead.

The other scenario is that Vengeance turns into a dead campaign within a couple of months or even less. The dedicated PvP community will just stick to Grey Host all the time, and eventually the casual players will get bored of low-pop Vengeance or the vengeance mechanics and move over too. Then Grey Host will end up oversaturated with no alternative campaign.

Honestly, I just can’t see any way a permanent implementation of Vengeance would work well, whether it’s the only option or just an alternative, given the current playerbase.

MincMincMinc · July 7

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

When the first Vengeance tests started, I wasn’t too worried about them becoming permanent.

You already said it right here. Vengeance tests. We are only on test 2 of many from what zos said so panicking and asking to completely stop is silly. The only known is that ZOS REQUIRES MONEY. Current vengeance is not profitable in any way unless they have a paid subscription separate to only pvp. Otherwise yes, you will see your DLC BIS meta procs and gear come back in one shape or another. Like what was mentioned in the vods, they plan on plugging in and out systems to see how they interact with the server performance. So likely future tests will have generic gear vs proc gear again. First you should expect them to do more basic tests like aoe, cross healing, dot/hot/effect stacking. They are boring topics, but they cannot be ignored.

Its a complicated engineering problem. You have a "functional" live system that has an issue. Either you take away one piece at a time or go the other way and go from the ground up. For 10 years sporadically zos has tried different metas and methods peeling layers or changing metas for layers with no results. Vengeance is just them finally going back to a baseline and tackling from another angle.

Assuming its only casual non pvpers enjoying vengeance is just putting the blinders on in your own echochamber. There are two main pvp crowds as far as we can see. Those that enjoy the skill and combat system and those that prefer the gear system. Live pvp has swayed heavily towards requiring the gear/proc system due to powercreep, so no surprise old returning pvp players are happy seeing vengeance bring pvp back to its core fundamental combat. I had 2014-2017 guildies come back to the game just for the test because it disabled procs and combat was clear again. To players like this gear and proc sets do not mean you are a skilled player.

Also guess what, at one point you were not a pvper either. Isolating and preventing new people from pvping isn't going to help the population crisis. That is like saying the earth's population is collapsing but we shouldn't have babies because the average IQ scores may decrease. Not much to worry about even with vengeance being the most extreme environment to help casual players, anyone with real skill wins without much effort.

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · July 7

MincMincMinc wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

When the first Vengeance tests started, I wasn’t too worried about them becoming permanent.

You already said it right here. Vengeance tests. We are only on test 2 of many from what zos said so panicking and asking to completely stop is silly. The only known is that ZOS REQUIRES MONEY. Current vengeance is not profitable in any way unless they have a paid subscription separate to only pvp. Otherwise yes, you will see your DLC BIS meta procs and gear come back in one shape or another. Like what was mentioned in the vods, they plan on plugging in and out systems to see how they interact with the server performance. So likely future tests will have generic gear vs proc gear again. First you should expect them to do more basic tests like aoe, cross healing, dot/hot/effect stacking. They are boring topics, but they cannot be ignored.

Its a complicated engineering problem. You have a "functional" live system that has an issue. Either you take away one piece at a time or go the other way and go from the ground up. For 10 years sporadically zos has tried different metas and methods peeling layers or changing metas for layers with no results. Vengeance is just them finally going back to a baseline and tackling from another angle.

Assuming its only casual non pvpers enjoying vengeance is just putting the blinders on in your own echochamber. There are two main pvp crowds as far as we can see. Those that enjoy the skill and combat system and those that prefer the gear system. Live pvp has swayed heavily towards requiring the gear/proc system due to powercreep, so no surprise old returning pvp players are happy seeing vengeance bring pvp back to its core fundamental combat. I had 2014-2017 guildies come back to the game just for the test because it disabled procs and combat was clear again. To players like this gear and proc sets do not mean you are a skilled player.

Also guess what, at one point you were not a pvper either. Isolating and preventing new people from pvping isn't going to help the population crisis. That is like saying the earth's population is collapsing but we shouldn't have babies because the average IQ scores may decrease. Not much to worry about even with vengeance being the most extreme environment to help casual players, anyone with real skill wins without much effort.

I get what you’re saying, but I strongly disagree.

First off, I’m not “panicking” about the idea of testing itself. I’ve said multiple times I understand the need for these tests to gather data. Performance is obviously terrible, especially with subclassing in the mix. What I’m pushing back against is the way they’re testing right now and the direction the dev communication seems to be hinting at—that this stripped-down model could become a permanent option.

Yes, it’s only the second test. But even if it’s a test, feedback matters now while they’re shaping where this goes. Waiting until they announce something permanent before voicing any concern would be far too late.

As for the idea that “old PvPers” are happy just to see procs gone and combat clean—I’m not denying there are some. I know players who liked the return-to-baseline feel. But in my experience talking with the broader endgame community, that’s a small minority. Most small scalers, solo players, and ball groups I know have zero interest in playing these tests. They don’t want a sterile baseline with most of the game’s content ripped away. Theorycrafting, set choices, subclassing, scribing, all of that is PvP for them. Removing 80–90% of those options isn’t a fun, skill-testing environment, it’s just boring.

On the “new player” point, I’m not saying they shouldn’t be included or encouraged. We need new players. But the idea that Vengeance in its current form is going to actually retain them is where I disagree completely. It’s too stripped-down to hold anyone’s interest long term. Casual players might jump in for a few sessions, but they’ll quickly see there’s no depth, no progression, no real build diversity. Then they’ll leave. Meanwhile, the endgame crowd that used to keep Cyrodiil alive won’t want to play there at all. That’s how you kill both your core base and fail to keep new blood.

If ZOS actually wants Vengeance to succeed as anything more than a short-term test, they need to strike a balance. Yes, get performance data. But also design for actual gameplay people want to log into long term. Because right now, almost nobody I know who PvPs seriously sees Vengeance as something they’d play regularly if it went live in anything close to its current form. I mean just take a look at Saturday and Sunday night’s populations this past weekend.

MincMincMinc · July 7

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

When the first Vengeance tests started, I wasn’t too worried about them becoming permanent.

You already said it right here. Vengeance tests. We are only on test 2 of many from what zos said so panicking and asking to completely stop is silly. The only known is that ZOS REQUIRES MONEY. Current vengeance is not profitable in any way unless they have a paid subscription separate to only pvp. Otherwise yes, you will see your DLC BIS meta procs and gear come back in one shape or another. Like what was mentioned in the vods, they plan on plugging in and out systems to see how they interact with the server performance. So likely future tests will have generic gear vs proc gear again. First you should expect them to do more basic tests like aoe, cross healing, dot/hot/effect stacking. They are boring topics, but they cannot be ignored.

Its a complicated engineering problem. You have a "functional" live system that has an issue. Either you take away one piece at a time or go the other way and go from the ground up. For 10 years sporadically zos has tried different metas and methods peeling layers or changing metas for layers with no results. Vengeance is just them finally going back to a baseline and tackling from another angle.

Assuming its only casual non pvpers enjoying vengeance is just putting the blinders on in your own echochamber. There are two main pvp crowds as far as we can see. Those that enjoy the skill and combat system and those that prefer the gear system. Live pvp has swayed heavily towards requiring the gear/proc system due to powercreep, so no surprise old returning pvp players are happy seeing vengeance bring pvp back to its core fundamental combat. I had 2014-2017 guildies come back to the game just for the test because it disabled procs and combat was clear again. To players like this gear and proc sets do not mean you are a skilled player.

Also guess what, at one point you were not a pvper either. Isolating and preventing new people from pvping isn't going to help the population crisis. That is like saying the earth's population is collapsing but we shouldn't have babies because the average IQ scores may decrease. Not much to worry about even with vengeance being the most extreme environment to help casual players, anyone with real skill wins without much effort.

I get what you’re saying, but I strongly disagree.

First off, I’m not “panicking” about the idea of testing itself. I’ve said multiple times I understand the need for these tests to gather data. Performance is obviously terrible, especially with subclassing in the mix. What I’m pushing back against is the way they’re testing right now and the direction the dev communication seems to be hinting at—that this stripped-down model could become a permanent option.

Yes, it’s only the second test. But even if it’s a test, feedback matters now while they’re shaping where this goes. Waiting until they announce something permanent before voicing any concern would be far too late.

Well testing wise what do you think could be better direction wise? Bring everything back an try taking out one system at a time? They were unsuccessful in that methodology a handful of times already. Its like solving one equation with 50 unknown variables. Its a crapshoot whether you find the right combination of them. Even then its possible they dont even understand the correct reason why the problem suddenly fixed. On the other hand going to a baseline is far more guaranteed as they add in a select group of variables at a time. Its not much different than when your addons break. Ok well either its clear what the error is, but when its not clear you either guess with a 1 out of XX chance or you disable all of them and slowly add back in a group to narrow in. Except they are faced with addons that are affecting other addons which affect addons.

Dev communication is abysmal and could be better. It'd be better if Wheeler just did his own stream as the one source of truth. The rest of the team adding in tidbits to sound like they are on the same page with the combat team just confuses people unnecessarily. People view any dev as a 100% source of truth regardless of which team they say they are on.

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

When the first Vengeance tests started, I wasn’t too worried about them becoming permanent.

You already said it right here. Vengeance tests. We are only on test 2 of many from what zos said so panicking and asking to completely stop is silly. The only known is that ZOS REQUIRES MONEY. Current vengeance is not profitable in any way unless they have a paid subscription separate to only pvp. Otherwise yes, you will see your DLC BIS meta procs and gear come back in one shape or another. Like what was mentioned in the vods, they plan on plugging in and out systems to see how they interact with the server performance. So likely future tests will have generic gear vs proc gear again. First you should expect them to do more basic tests like aoe, cross healing, dot/hot/effect stacking. They are boring topics, but they cannot be ignored.

Its a complicated engineering problem. You have a "functional" live system that has an issue. Either you take away one piece at a time or go the other way and go from the ground up. For 10 years sporadically zos has tried different metas and methods peeling layers or changing metas for layers with no results. Vengeance is just them finally going back to a baseline and tackling from another angle.

Assuming its only casual non pvpers enjoying vengeance is just putting the blinders on in your own echochamber. There are two main pvp crowds as far as we can see. Those that enjoy the skill and combat system and those that prefer the gear system. Live pvp has swayed heavily towards requiring the gear/proc system due to powercreep, so no surprise old returning pvp players are happy seeing vengeance bring pvp back to its core fundamental combat. I had 2014-2017 guildies come back to the game just for the test because it disabled procs and combat was clear again. To players like this gear and proc sets do not mean you are a skilled player.

Also guess what, at one point you were not a pvper either. Isolating and preventing new people from pvping isn't going to help the population crisis. That is like saying the earth's population is collapsing but we shouldn't have babies because the average IQ scores may decrease. Not much to worry about even with vengeance being the most extreme environment to help casual players, anyone with real skill wins without much effort.

As for the idea that “old PvPers” are happy just to see procs gone and combat clean—I’m not denying there are some. I know players who liked the return-to-baseline feel. But in my experience talking with the broader endgame community, that’s a small minority. Most small scalers, solo players, and ball groups I know have zero interest in playing these tests. They don’t want a sterile baseline with most of the game’s content ripped away. Theorycrafting, set choices, subclassing, scribing, all of that is PvP for them. Removing 80–90% of those options isn’t a fun, skill-testing environment, it’s just boring.

On the “new player” point, I’m not saying they shouldn’t be included or encouraged. We need new players. But the idea that Vengeance in its current form is going to actually retain them is where I disagree completely. It’s too stripped-down to hold anyone’s interest long term. Casual players might jump in for a few sessions, but they’ll quickly see there’s no depth, no progression, no real build diversity. Then they’ll leave. Meanwhile, the endgame crowd that used to keep Cyrodiil alive won’t want to play there at all. That’s how you kill both your core base and fail to keep new blood.

If ZOS actually wants Vengeance to succeed as anything more than a short-term test, they need to strike a balance. Yes, get performance data. But also design for actual gameplay people want to log into long term. Because right now, almost nobody I know who PvPs seriously sees Vengeance as something they’d play regularly if it went live in anything close to its current form. I mean just take a look at Saturday and Sunday night’s populations this past weekend.

Again blinders or echochamber. I come from guilds and groups of smallman 2014 players some of which have played throughout the years some have left. The vast majority of the 4 guilds I came from are all in favor of more skill based combat without procs (they want stat sets and choices back). The current PCNA BG guild is pretty split 50/50 down the middle. BOTH sides in MY echochamber seem to agree that BUILDING must be a part of the game. Which I believe it will have to be monetarily anyways for zos to stay employed selling dlc.

Player retention is a whole other slew of discussion. To your points I agree, building, again must still be a core fundamental of pvp. I will say in short from my wisdom one of the main issues with retention is that eso has been too focused on daily chores instead of actual gameplay. In the early years PvP was the endgame "daily" content. For zos it was free and infinite content with stories that essentially wrote themselves. PvP is a stability factor in mmos, where PvE releases are just bursts of logins and a slow decline of the playerbase doing chores until next release.

Doing vengeance on the 4th of july weekend just wasn't smart planning if they wanted the full test populated. They had more than enough results earlier in the week though. Going off their last data it only took the team the first two nights to iron out what the new test's performance was and the player limit it can handle. The second night's PCNA arrius fight was already a clear difference by comparison to the first test's chalman fight.

JustLovely · July 7

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

When the first Vengeance tests started, I wasn’t too worried about them becoming permanent. The developers made it clear these were just tests to gather performance data. But by the time the second round rolled out, the tone really started to change. They began sharing satisfaction polls from players who supposedly enjoyed Vengeance, but I don’t think that feedback represents the actual endgame PvP community at all. Ball groups, solo players, small scalers, even map players weren’t really being heard. That shift in messaging is why I’m writing this. I want to lay out the concerns that I, and probably many other dedicated PvPers, have about these changes and why I think making them permanent would finish off what little population Cyrodiil has left.

First off, I get why players who don’t usually PvP might find these tests fun at first. The gameplay is slower and more accessible with barely any counterplay. It turns into just spamming abilities and seeing what happens. But these players aren’t the ones who will stick with PvP long-term. Most come in for the rewards, leave positive feedback because they had a bit of short-term fun, and then don’t come back. Meanwhile, for those of us who actually play PvP multiple times a week, Vengeance gets stale incredibly fast. We’re the ones keeping Greyhost alive, and even that only really happens during prime time. ZOS needs to listen to the people who consistently show up and keep open-world PvP going, not the casual crowd who logs in for Vengeance rewards or the odd daily. If they don’t, the remaining PvP population will just leave, and Cyrodiil really will become dead content.

Second, removing over 80% of the game’s abilities and systems is just not the answer. One of ESO’s biggest strengths is that you can actually play how you want. Build diversity and theorycrafting are huge reasons PvP is fun in the first place. Making your own unique setups using all the content added over the years—from subclassing and scribing to Psijic skills—keeps the endgame community invested. Stripping all of that away is absurd. Why even bother buying DLCs if none of it works in Cyrodiil? Being able to create flexible, personal builds, whether solo or for groups, is the entire reason many of us still bother with open-world PvP at all. Even with some performance trade-offs, that complexity is worth it. Taking it away will just drive out the dedicated players who actually play multiple times a week.

Lastly, these tests completely miss the real reason Cyrodiil struggles with performance. Instead of actually fixing things with server upgrades, better infrastructure, or code optimization, they’re just stripping out content as a shortcut. And we’ve seen before that server upgrades can actually improve performance, even if just for a while. Real solutions are possible when resources are put in the right place. Vengeance feels like a cheap band-aid fix that trades away depth and fun instead of solving the real issues that cause lag and instability. It’s less about genuinely improving the game and more about avoiding spending money on real, lasting solutions.

In the end, I get the need for performance tests. But making Vengeance permanent would be a disaster for Cyrodiil. It would alienate the core PvP community by making combat dull and unengaging, destroy build diversity, and invalidate years of paid content without fixing the actual problems. If this goes live permanently, it will drive away the last players keeping Cyrodiil alive. For the good of ESO’s open-world PvP, Vengeance needs to stay exactly what it was supposed to be: a test for gathering data, nothing more.

100%

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · July 7

MincMincMinc wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

When the first Vengeance tests started, I wasn’t too worried about them becoming permanent.

You already said it right here. Vengeance tests. We are only on test 2 of many from what zos said so panicking and asking to completely stop is silly. The only known is that ZOS REQUIRES MONEY. Current vengeance is not profitable in any way unless they have a paid subscription separate to only pvp. Otherwise yes, you will see your DLC BIS meta procs and gear come back in one shape or another. Like what was mentioned in the vods, they plan on plugging in and out systems to see how they interact with the server performance. So likely future tests will have generic gear vs proc gear again. First you should expect them to do more basic tests like aoe, cross healing, dot/hot/effect stacking. They are boring topics, but they cannot be ignored.

Its a complicated engineering problem. You have a "functional" live system that has an issue. Either you take away one piece at a time or go the other way and go from the ground up. For 10 years sporadically zos has tried different metas and methods peeling layers or changing metas for layers with no results. Vengeance is just them finally going back to a baseline and tackling from another angle.

Assuming its only casual non pvpers enjoying vengeance is just putting the blinders on in your own echochamber. There are two main pvp crowds as far as we can see. Those that enjoy the skill and combat system and those that prefer the gear system. Live pvp has swayed heavily towards requiring the gear/proc system due to powercreep, so no surprise old returning pvp players are happy seeing vengeance bring pvp back to its core fundamental combat. I had 2014-2017 guildies come back to the game just for the test because it disabled procs and combat was clear again. To players like this gear and proc sets do not mean you are a skilled player.

Also guess what, at one point you were not a pvper either. Isolating and preventing new people from pvping isn't going to help the population crisis. That is like saying the earth's population is collapsing but we shouldn't have babies because the average IQ scores may decrease. Not much to worry about even with vengeance being the most extreme environment to help casual players, anyone with real skill wins without much effort.

I get what you’re saying, but I strongly disagree.

First off, I’m not “panicking” about the idea of testing itself. I’ve said multiple times I understand the need for these tests to gather data. Performance is obviously terrible, especially with subclassing in the mix. What I’m pushing back against is the way they’re testing right now and the direction the dev communication seems to be hinting at—that this stripped-down model could become a permanent option.

Yes, it’s only the second test. But even if it’s a test, feedback matters now while they’re shaping where this goes. Waiting until they announce something permanent before voicing any concern would be far too late.

Well testing wise what do you think could be better direction wise? Bring everything back an try taking out one system at a time? They were unsuccessful in that methodology a handful of times already. Its like solving one equation with 50 unknown variables. Its a crapshoot whether you find the right combination of them. Even then its possible they dont even understand the correct reason why the problem suddenly fixed. On the other hand going to a baseline is far more guaranteed as they add in a select group of variables at a time. Its not much different than when your addons break. Ok well either its clear what the error is, but when its not clear you either guess with a 1 out of XX chance or you disable all of them and slowly add back in a group to narrow in. Except they are faced with addons that are affecting other addons which affect addons.

Dev communication is abysmal and could be better. It'd be better if Wheeler just did his own stream as the one source of truth. The rest of the team adding in tidbits to sound like they are on the same page with the combat team just confuses people unnecessarily. People view any dev as a 100% source of truth regardless of which team they say they are on.

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

When the first Vengeance tests started, I wasn’t too worried about them becoming permanent.

You already said it right here. Vengeance tests. We are only on test 2 of many from what zos said so panicking and asking to completely stop is silly. The only known is that ZOS REQUIRES MONEY. Current vengeance is not profitable in any way unless they have a paid subscription separate to only pvp. Otherwise yes, you will see your DLC BIS meta procs and gear come back in one shape or another. Like what was mentioned in the vods, they plan on plugging in and out systems to see how they interact with the server performance. So likely future tests will have generic gear vs proc gear again. First you should expect them to do more basic tests like aoe, cross healing, dot/hot/effect stacking. They are boring topics, but they cannot be ignored.

Its a complicated engineering problem. You have a "functional" live system that has an issue. Either you take away one piece at a time or go the other way and go from the ground up. For 10 years sporadically zos has tried different metas and methods peeling layers or changing metas for layers with no results. Vengeance is just them finally going back to a baseline and tackling from another angle.

Assuming its only casual non pvpers enjoying vengeance is just putting the blinders on in your own echochamber. There are two main pvp crowds as far as we can see. Those that enjoy the skill and combat system and those that prefer the gear system. Live pvp has swayed heavily towards requiring the gear/proc system due to powercreep, so no surprise old returning pvp players are happy seeing vengeance bring pvp back to its core fundamental combat. I had 2014-2017 guildies come back to the game just for the test because it disabled procs and combat was clear again. To players like this gear and proc sets do not mean you are a skilled player.

Also guess what, at one point you were not a pvper either. Isolating and preventing new people from pvping isn't going to help the population crisis. That is like saying the earth's population is collapsing but we shouldn't have babies because the average IQ scores may decrease. Not much to worry about even with vengeance being the most extreme environment to help casual players, anyone with real skill wins without much effort.

As for the idea that “old PvPers” are happy just to see procs gone and combat clean—I’m not denying there are some. I know players who liked the return-to-baseline feel. But in my experience talking with the broader endgame community, that’s a small minority. Most small scalers, solo players, and ball groups I know have zero interest in playing these tests. They don’t want a sterile baseline with most of the game’s content ripped away. Theorycrafting, set choices, subclassing, scribing, all of that is PvP for them. Removing 80–90% of those options isn’t a fun, skill-testing environment, it’s just boring.

On the “new player” point, I’m not saying they shouldn’t be included or encouraged. We need new players. But the idea that Vengeance in its current form is going to actually retain them is where I disagree completely. It’s too stripped-down to hold anyone’s interest long term. Casual players might jump in for a few sessions, but they’ll quickly see there’s no depth, no progression, no real build diversity. Then they’ll leave. Meanwhile, the endgame crowd that used to keep Cyrodiil alive won’t want to play there at all. That’s how you kill both your core base and fail to keep new blood.

If ZOS actually wants Vengeance to succeed as anything more than a short-term test, they need to strike a balance. Yes, get performance data. But also design for actual gameplay people want to log into long term. Because right now, almost nobody I know who PvPs seriously sees Vengeance as something they’d play regularly if it went live in anything close to its current form. I mean just take a look at Saturday and Sunday night’s populations this past weekend.

Again blinders or echochamber. I come from guilds and groups of smallman 2014 players some of which have played throughout the years some have left. The vast majority of the 4 guilds I came from are all in favor of more skill based combat without procs (they want stat sets and choices back). The current PCNA BG guild is pretty split 50/50 down the middle. BOTH sides in MY echochamber seem to agree that BUILDING must be a part of the game. Which I believe it will have to be monetarily anyways for zos to stay employed selling dlc.

Player retention is a whole other slew of discussion. To your points I agree, building, again must still be a core fundamental of pvp. I will say in short from my wisdom one of the main issues with retention is that eso has been too focused on daily chores instead of actual gameplay. In the early years PvP was the endgame "daily" content. For zos it was free and infinite content with stories that essentially wrote themselves. PvP is a stability factor in mmos, where PvE releases are just bursts of logins and a slow decline of the playerbase doing chores until next release.

Doing vengeance on the 4th of july weekend just wasn't smart planning if they wanted the full test populated. They had more than enough results earlier in the week though. Going off their last data it only took the team the first two nights to iron out what the new test's performance was and the player limit it can handle. The second night's PCNA arrius fight was already a clear difference by comparison to the first test's chalman fight.

I appreciate your detailed reply. Just to be clear—I don’t think bringing everything back and removing one system at a time is the right approach either. But like I said before, these tests really need to be far more aggressive. At this pace, it’s going to take years to get anywhere close to something most of us would want to see implemented. I never suggested testing taking out one system at a time, but they could have at least added simplified versions of multiple (if not all) skill lines and allowed a limited number of sets. You’d still have fixed attributes, battle spirit, and simplified skills, but you’d make a much bigger leap forward from the last test. If we’re only getting a couple of these a year and they’re barely adding anything back each time, that’s just not going to work.

Honestly, I think I represent a pretty fair slice of the modern PvP player base. Sure, there’s always going to be players I don’t know personally, but from my experience most of us don’t enjoy these tests at all. For us, Vengeance weeks are basically when “PvP gets turned off.” We give it a fair shot each time, but most of the community drops out after the first couple of days. The sentiment is pretty clear, especially when you look at weekend pops, 4th of July or not.

I also get your point about blinders and echo chambers, and I’ll admit there’s always some of that. But as an active NA Cyrodiil player, from what I see in-game, on the forums, and even among the biggest streamers, it’s clear most people aren’t sticking with the new campaign past those first few days. It just isn’t an enjoyable experience for many—not all, as you said, but a lot.

Maybe a better solution, if they want to keep testing Vengeance in small steps, would be dedicating a single weekend each month to it. That way they can add content back in stages and gather meaningful data without taking away normal PvP for over a week straight. With solid enough rewards, plenty of players would log in to test it. That would speed up the process so it doesn’t take years to land on something most players can actually get behind. But right now, taking away a form of PvP that a lot of us genuinely enjoy for 8 days straight is really hard to support, especially given how sharply the population declines during these tests.

MincMincMinc · July 7

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

When the first Vengeance tests started, I wasn’t too worried about them becoming permanent.

You already said it right here. Vengeance tests. We are only on test 2 of many from what zos said so panicking and asking to completely stop is silly. The only known is that ZOS REQUIRES MONEY. Current vengeance is not profitable in any way unless they have a paid subscription separate to only pvp. Otherwise yes, you will see your DLC BIS meta procs and gear come back in one shape or another. Like what was mentioned in the vods, they plan on plugging in and out systems to see how they interact with the server performance. So likely future tests will have generic gear vs proc gear again. First you should expect them to do more basic tests like aoe, cross healing, dot/hot/effect stacking. They are boring topics, but they cannot be ignored.

Its a complicated engineering problem. You have a "functional" live system that has an issue. Either you take away one piece at a time or go the other way and go from the ground up. For 10 years sporadically zos has tried different metas and methods peeling layers or changing metas for layers with no results. Vengeance is just them finally going back to a baseline and tackling from another angle.

Assuming its only casual non pvpers enjoying vengeance is just putting the blinders on in your own echochamber. There are two main pvp crowds as far as we can see. Those that enjoy the skill and combat system and those that prefer the gear system. Live pvp has swayed heavily towards requiring the gear/proc system due to powercreep, so no surprise old returning pvp players are happy seeing vengeance bring pvp back to its core fundamental combat. I had 2014-2017 guildies come back to the game just for the test because it disabled procs and combat was clear again. To players like this gear and proc sets do not mean you are a skilled player.

Also guess what, at one point you were not a pvper either. Isolating and preventing new people from pvping isn't going to help the population crisis. That is like saying the earth's population is collapsing but we shouldn't have babies because the average IQ scores may decrease. Not much to worry about even with vengeance being the most extreme environment to help casual players, anyone with real skill wins without much effort.

I get what you’re saying, but I strongly disagree.

First off, I’m not “panicking” about the idea of testing itself. I’ve said multiple times I understand the need for these tests to gather data. Performance is obviously terrible, especially with subclassing in the mix. What I’m pushing back against is the way they’re testing right now and the direction the dev communication seems to be hinting at—that this stripped-down model could become a permanent option.

Yes, it’s only the second test. But even if it’s a test, feedback matters now while they’re shaping where this goes. Waiting until they announce something permanent before voicing any concern would be far too late.

Well testing wise what do you think could be better direction wise? Bring everything back an try taking out one system at a time? They were unsuccessful in that methodology a handful of times already. Its like solving one equation with 50 unknown variables. Its a crapshoot whether you find the right combination of them. Even then its possible they dont even understand the correct reason why the problem suddenly fixed. On the other hand going to a baseline is far more guaranteed as they add in a select group of variables at a time. Its not much different than when your addons break. Ok well either its clear what the error is, but when its not clear you either guess with a 1 out of XX chance or you disable all of them and slowly add back in a group to narrow in. Except they are faced with addons that are affecting other addons which affect addons.

Dev communication is abysmal and could be better. It'd be better if Wheeler just did his own stream as the one source of truth. The rest of the team adding in tidbits to sound like they are on the same page with the combat team just confuses people unnecessarily. People view any dev as a 100% source of truth regardless of which team they say they are on.

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

When the first Vengeance tests started, I wasn’t too worried about them becoming permanent.

You already said it right here. Vengeance tests. We are only on test 2 of many from what zos said so panicking and asking to completely stop is silly. The only known is that ZOS REQUIRES MONEY. Current vengeance is not profitable in any way unless they have a paid subscription separate to only pvp. Otherwise yes, you will see your DLC BIS meta procs and gear come back in one shape or another. Like what was mentioned in the vods, they plan on plugging in and out systems to see how they interact with the server performance. So likely future tests will have generic gear vs proc gear again. First you should expect them to do more basic tests like aoe, cross healing, dot/hot/effect stacking. They are boring topics, but they cannot be ignored.

Its a complicated engineering problem. You have a "functional" live system that has an issue. Either you take away one piece at a time or go the other way and go from the ground up. For 10 years sporadically zos has tried different metas and methods peeling layers or changing metas for layers with no results. Vengeance is just them finally going back to a baseline and tackling from another angle.

Assuming its only casual non pvpers enjoying vengeance is just putting the blinders on in your own echochamber. There are two main pvp crowds as far as we can see. Those that enjoy the skill and combat system and those that prefer the gear system. Live pvp has swayed heavily towards requiring the gear/proc system due to powercreep, so no surprise old returning pvp players are happy seeing vengeance bring pvp back to its core fundamental combat. I had 2014-2017 guildies come back to the game just for the test because it disabled procs and combat was clear again. To players like this gear and proc sets do not mean you are a skilled player.

Also guess what, at one point you were not a pvper either. Isolating and preventing new people from pvping isn't going to help the population crisis. That is like saying the earth's population is collapsing but we shouldn't have babies because the average IQ scores may decrease. Not much to worry about even with vengeance being the most extreme environment to help casual players, anyone with real skill wins without much effort.

As for the idea that “old PvPers” are happy just to see procs gone and combat clean—I’m not denying there are some. I know players who liked the return-to-baseline feel. But in my experience talking with the broader endgame community, that’s a small minority. Most small scalers, solo players, and ball groups I know have zero interest in playing these tests. They don’t want a sterile baseline with most of the game’s content ripped away. Theorycrafting, set choices, subclassing, scribing, all of that is PvP for them. Removing 80–90% of those options isn’t a fun, skill-testing environment, it’s just boring.

On the “new player” point, I’m not saying they shouldn’t be included or encouraged. We need new players. But the idea that Vengeance in its current form is going to actually retain them is where I disagree completely. It’s too stripped-down to hold anyone’s interest long term. Casual players might jump in for a few sessions, but they’ll quickly see there’s no depth, no progression, no real build diversity. Then they’ll leave. Meanwhile, the endgame crowd that used to keep Cyrodiil alive won’t want to play there at all. That’s how you kill both your core base and fail to keep new blood.

If ZOS actually wants Vengeance to succeed as anything more than a short-term test, they need to strike a balance. Yes, get performance data. But also design for actual gameplay people want to log into long term. Because right now, almost nobody I know who PvPs seriously sees Vengeance as something they’d play regularly if it went live in anything close to its current form. I mean just take a look at Saturday and Sunday night’s populations this past weekend.

Again blinders or echochamber. I come from guilds and groups of smallman 2014 players some of which have played throughout the years some have left. The vast majority of the 4 guilds I came from are all in favor of more skill based combat without procs (they want stat sets and choices back). The current PCNA BG guild is pretty split 50/50 down the middle. BOTH sides in MY echochamber seem to agree that BUILDING must be a part of the game. Which I believe it will have to be monetarily anyways for zos to stay employed selling dlc.

Player retention is a whole other slew of discussion. To your points I agree, building, again must still be a core fundamental of pvp. I will say in short from my wisdom one of the main issues with retention is that eso has been too focused on daily chores instead of actual gameplay. In the early years PvP was the endgame "daily" content. For zos it was free and infinite content with stories that essentially wrote themselves. PvP is a stability factor in mmos, where PvE releases are just bursts of logins and a slow decline of the playerbase doing chores until next release.

Doing vengeance on the 4th of july weekend just wasn't smart planning if they wanted the full test populated. They had more than enough results earlier in the week though. Going off their last data it only took the team the first two nights to iron out what the new test's performance was and the player limit it can handle. The second night's PCNA arrius fight was already a clear difference by comparison to the first test's chalman fight.

I appreciate your detailed reply. Just to be clear—I don’t think bringing everything back and removing one system at a time is the right approach either. But like I said before, these tests really need to be far more aggressive. At this pace, it’s going to take years to get anywhere close to something most of us would want to see implemented. I never suggested testing taking out one system at a time, but they could have at least added simplified versions of multiple (if not all) skill lines and allowed a limited number of sets. You’d still have fixed attributes, battle spirit, and simplified skills, but you’d make a much bigger leap forward from the last test. If we’re only getting a couple of these a year and they’re barely adding anything back each time, that’s just not going to work.

Honestly, I think I represent a pretty fair slice of the modern PvP player base. Sure, there’s always going to be players I don’t know personally, but from my experience most of us don’t enjoy these tests at all. For us, Vengeance weeks are basically when “PvP gets turned off.” We give it a fair shot each time, but most of the community drops out after the first couple of days. The sentiment is pretty clear, especially when you look at weekend pops, 4th of July or not.

I also get your point about blinders and echo chambers, and I’ll admit there’s always some of that. But as an active NA Cyrodiil player, from what I see in-game, on the forums, and even among the biggest streamers, it’s clear most people aren’t sticking with the new campaign past those first few days. It just isn’t an enjoyable experience for many—not all, as you said, but a lot.

Maybe a better solution, if they want to keep testing Vengeance in small steps, would be dedicating a single weekend each month to it. That way they can add content back in stages and gather meaningful data without taking away normal PvP for over a week straight. With solid enough rewards, plenty of players would log in to test it. That would speed up the process so it doesn’t take years to land on something most players can actually get behind. But right now, taking away a form of PvP that a lot of us genuinely enjoy for 8 days straight is really hard to support, especially given how sharply the population declines during these tests.

Agreed, they could have conducted the tests differently to reduce the burden on the "unpaid.....paying testers". They chose to do it in a way where they can run the test one week. Then have the server engineers take a week to run the data. Then a week to run it through the combat team. Then a month for the combat team to essentially design a game from scratch using a 15-20 year old game engine. All while half the combat team is probably still bouncing between the Live game. They chose this method because it lets them change paths depending on what the team finds. Compared to spending a year making tests that launch just to find out you spent a year doing pointless work in the wrong direction.

I expect we will have a few tests where mechanics are changed like Aoe, crossheals, over time effect stacking. Especially based on the recent test having issues now that groups have access to spamming aoe over time heals that stack.

4th of july is a major game changer pop wise. Regardless if they do another stat stream we will see that. People last vengeance claimed the same thing, but the pop data was fine for those days. Hard to avoid anecdotal evidence since zos doesn't give us actual numbers. We can only see what we happen to run into ingame and the data they post.

A more regimented schedule would be ideal, especially from an expectations route. It would put constraints on the combat team and give more power to the higher ups in zos though, which as an end result does not favor players. Keeping it flexible but using the ingame login news popup advertise the test would be better for clarity sake. Just using twitch streams and zos forum posts obviously isn't working to avoid confusion.

L_Nici · July 8

Why is 4th of July a game changer? ESO is an international game, not just USA, the impact of the 4th of July was basically undetectable.

Anyway, I agree Vengeance can't be a long term solution. You spoke a lot of the NA servers I assume, so here is my experience from PC EU. The first three days the population was huge, all alliances poplocked and 100+ Queues even over the day. The 4th day it was only poplock during primetime, no queue, on the 5th it wasn't even poplock in primetime anymore and now the last playable day did not even manage 3 bars all across. On Console it was even worse, they didn't even have a single bar at times.

That clearly shows what most PvPers are saying. Vengeance won't last long term. Its way to watered down, no diversity, no Sets and newly added, no subclasses who did really, really help some classes. Stamsorc for example that never had a reliable spammable could take Surprise Attack for example, making it way more dynamic. There is no way to grow as everyone is flattened into one plain, you do not need to understand what you are doing and if you do, you gain nothing from it.

Also the environment was really toxic during Vengeance. PvE players spamming the ingame chat and even here on forums how great it is, not accepting any other opinion, calling PvP players "PvP-kids" and "no lifers" in their own zone, when you asked them then, if they would like the exact same rulesets for PvE (no sets, standarized abillities/Stats) they suddenly didn't like that idea that much anymore, because then anyone could get a trifecta for free. Listening to the overwhelming number of PvE players, who like this mode, but do somehow not want them in their own playing field, would be a huge mistake, as none of those will stay long term anyway.

Even in these short 7 days PC EU went from Poplock 100+ Queue to not even 3 bars at once, what will happen after 14 days? A month? If the number decreases that quickly Vengeance will be dead within 3 months and with it all Cyrodiil PvP. ZoS needs to listen to those who actually do play PvP, actually do know what they are talking about, actually do have the knowledge to compare Vengeance and Normal Campaigns to each other. Sure the normal campaign has issues, the lag, the ballgroups, which is kinda intertwined if you look at it, but the solution is not to take everything away what makes ESO PvP so unique.