Vengeance Campaign: Not much testing when one faction has overwhelming numbers

licenturion · July 7

TheMajority wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

TheMajority wrote: »

thats not even a sustainable games model if you do something then get rewarded otherwise a total waste of time
...

Not sustainable? Waste of time? That's the definition of games!

What's the reward for years of playing Chess? Mario Brothers? DnD? Am I wasting my time while playing them? Was the enjoyment I got from the simple act of playing them completely invalid?

If the game itself isn't reward and incentive enough then either the game is not well made or the player playing it isn't the target audience of what it offers.

DnD is rewarded with items discovered during play and character development

Mario Brothers rewards the player by winning levels and beating the game

Chess players have professional reward systems too

PVP system needs a reward system or people are not going to be drawn to it. It needs a way to show you "won" plain and simple, as all these other games do.

U get sets that you can sell, collect or make materials with. You get AP points, there are 2 or 3 pursuits for PvP each year, titles, XP gain which unlocks more CP, etc. If all those is not enough 'incentive', then you really don't like playing

I don't understand this reward culture either. I play Overwatch since launch. I am very good and have lots of fun daily solo and with my partner. That got me and keeps me playing.

My other friends drop out after 3 weeks when they completed their seasonal battle pass 'because there is nothing to do anymore'. Don't people play for fun anymore if all you care about is digital rewards or 'number go up'...

katanagirl1 · July 7

PvP should be a system that works well and is enjoyable to play, not requiring bribing players with rewards to fill it. I play it because when it is good, it is a lot of fun.

That being said, it would be nice to get some more rewards for playing and reaching AP rank, like a special mount or something. I did enjoy the furnishing items you could buy but not everyone is into housing.

LadyGP · July 7

Minnesinger wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

This is what happens when you put everyone on the same playing field and make it even.

Everyone shouts from the roof tops "no ball groups no pulls" but then complains because the game is a zerg fest.

You literally can only win a fight if you're a zerg. It's just a front line wins PVP MMO - not sustainable or fun.

They need diversity in play styles......

This type of a message is mistakenly often citated when the map turns into a color of red, blue or yellow. The type of ball groups I have seen playing in GH/ NA run at the head of general zerg and do contribute more to the imbalanced game rather than balance. Why! Because they have fixed times when they play and the campaign is locked for the duration. What is needed to balance is the equal populations and as little ball groups as possible or that they actually seek to play other ball groups rather that just farm pugs.

Do you know the amount of times ball groups GvG and the general pop has ZERO idea. Almost every raid we get whispers asking to GvG for a bit.

The hatred for ball groups is unreal. I promise you - they will get rid of ball groups and people will still complain about stuff. The ball groups aren't your problem with PvP - they are just an easy excuse to blame all the performance/balance/skill problems on.

LadyGP · July 7

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Everyone shouts from the roof tops "no ball groups no pulls" but then complains because the game is a zerg fest.

Uh no all we asked for is Meatbags which would solve most of the problem, not broken unfun crap that only a handful of sweatlords with a love for hours and hours of outside-game logistics are ever going to ever access.

"we".

TheMajority · July 7

licenturion wrote: »

TheMajority wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

TheMajority wrote: »

thats not even a sustainable games model if you do something then get rewarded otherwise a total waste of time
...

Not sustainable? Waste of time? That's the definition of games!

What's the reward for years of playing Chess? Mario Brothers? DnD? Am I wasting my time while playing them? Was the enjoyment I got from the simple act of playing them completely invalid?

If the game itself isn't reward and incentive enough then either the game is not well made or the player playing it isn't the target audience of what it offers.

DnD is rewarded with items discovered during play and character development

Mario Brothers rewards the player by winning levels and beating the game

Chess players have professional reward systems too

PVP system needs a reward system or people are not going to be drawn to it. It needs a way to show you "won" plain and simple, as all these other games do.

U get sets that you can sell, collect or make materials with. You get AP points, there are 2 or 3 pursuits for PvP each year, titles, XP gain which unlocks more CP, etc. If all those is not enough 'incentive', then you really don't like playing

I don't understand this reward culture either. I play Overwatch since launch. I am very good and have lots of fun daily solo and with my partner. That got me and keeps me playing.

My other friends drop out after 3 weeks when they completed their seasonal battle pass 'because there is nothing to do anymore'. Don't people play for fun anymore if all you care about is digital rewards or 'number go up'...

I didn't say we weren't getting rewarded it's that the reward system should continue. I like playing PVP, but I don't do anything in life unless rewarded for it and most humans are the same. If they are saying that there is nothing to do then the game has not been made fun enough for "fun" to be the reward. The game is the problem not the player if "fun" isn't there

Sluggy · July 7

TheMajority wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

TheMajority wrote: »

thats not even a sustainable games model if you do something then get rewarded otherwise a total waste of time
...

Not sustainable? Waste of time? That's the definition of games!

What's the reward for years of playing Chess? Mario Brothers? DnD? Am I wasting my time while playing them? Was the enjoyment I got from the simple act of playing them completely invalid?

If the game itself isn't reward and incentive enough then either the game is not well made or the player playing it isn't the target audience of what it offers.

DnD is rewarded with items discovered during play and character development

Mario Brothers rewards the player by winning levels and beating the game

Chess players have professional reward systems too

PVP system needs a reward system or people are not going to be drawn to it. It needs a way to show you "won" plain and simple, as all these other games do.

1) Fair nuff, but I play for the role play. And many games in the paper n pencil RPG genre that I play don't have items, levels, or character development beyond progressing a story as a group of friends.

2) I've beat that game more times than I can count yet no new levels have appeared in the 4o years since.

3) I don't play chess professionally nor do I know what my rank would be (probably not very good if I'm being honest).

BXR_Lonestar · July 8

ForumBully wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

This is what happens when you put everyone on the same playing field and make it even.

Everyone shouts from the roof tops "no ball groups no pulls" but then complains because the game is a zerg fest.

You literally can only win a fight if you're a zerg. It's just a front line wins PVP MMO - not sustainable or fun.

They need diversity in play styles......

This isn't true per se....

So in MOST instances, in Vengeance, the group with bigger numbers is going to win. The exception to that general rule though, is keep defenses, where smaller numbers of players, if played right, can hold a keep against larger numbers. I've seen several fights in Vengeance now where a smaller force held the inner keep because the players holding it knew what they were doing. They knew how to run siege, use crowd control to maximize the effect of the seige, etc. But this is just in ONE situation only - playing defense.

In all other situations, the only thing that will dictate wins and losses is numbers

I played a healer at several points during Vengeance and found that dedicated healers were often able to able to turn the tide in outnumbered fights.

I'm a healer main too. Healers DEFINITELY help, but they don't have as big of an impact as they would have in ordinary Cyrodil because your limited in the number of targets you can heal and your sustain is poor so you need to really pick your points when you burst and fill in the gaps with light and heavy attacks.

ajkb78 · July 8

Here's my feedback on Vengeance. I played on PS4, having previously used my PC account to join the Cyrodiil Champions test earlier in the year:

1. Performance was very good. Even on the PS4's limited hardware (albeit I replaced the HDD with a SATA SSD a while ago) performance was completely fine even in large battles. It was certainly an order of magnitude better than the regular campaign, where mass fights could slow down to 1fps (I've previously submitted videos of this as requested elsewhere).

2. Gameplay wasn't perfect but it was much, much better than the live campaign:

a. I disagree on the point others have raised about it being a no-skill zerg zone. Of course if you rode with the zergs then you will have seen zerg-on-zerg action, which was really the point of the test, but I spent quite a lot of time going solo and hanging around smaller fights in the margins or fighting over towns away from the main fights. There were plenty of good 1v1s to be had and a lot of decent small group fights, and actually I think skill showed more than usual. Certainly it became obvious when recognised players were much worse in Vengeance than on live - you could tell who is normally being carried by their builds! I did witness good players 1vXing but X was more like 3 than 30. Ultimately, numbers tell and this is a good thing. There is nothing, nothing more frustrating in the live campaign than having to spend 20 minutes clearing a stupid ultratank duo out of a captured keep. Yes, it takes some skill, but it completely spoils the fluidity of the gameplay.

b. Ball groups weren't a thing during Vengeance. This is also a good thing and I hope you manage to preserve the features of this approach to PVP so that ball groups aren't so much of a thing going forward. They fall into the same momentum-breaking category as troll tanks.

c. The skills available don't support bombing (at all, as far as I could see: the Vengeance Detonation skill seemed mostly useless). In contrast to my views on tanks and ball groups I was actually a bit sad at this despite not being a bomber myself. Some of the keep fights would have been greatly enlivened by a good bomb or two, especially with all the numbers there were packed around the flags.

d. I know the purpose of the campaign was not too concerned with balance, but siege was significantly unbalanced: there was plenty of options for offensive siege (basically everything - ballistas, stone trebs, rams) but defensively there was only oils and (sort of) trebs, which are so slow and with long reload times that they are almost useless. For balance it will be important to see the return of meatbags at least, and probably fire ballistas as well.

e. Already it felt like a big step forward from the previous test: the introduction of weapon and alliance skills was great to see and resulted in significantly more diversity and meaningful fighting. I hope this means you've found a healthy way to reintroduce more features without risking server overload.

3. Bugs: not once did I get stuck in combat or was I unable to mount. This was excellent. The only issue I had was a single instance of a hard lock-up of the entire game in a big battle outside Roebeck: I waited a minute to see if it would eventually go back to the login screen with the "you were disconnected" message but it never did, and I had to restart the game. But as I say, it was a one-off; I know there must be a lot of relatively immature code utilized in these tests and I don't think a single crash in over a week is actually any worse than the live campaign.

4. You picked just about the worst time to run this test. I mean, come on?! Clashing with a PVE event with actual rewards, a few weeks before the "crown jewels" PVP event, again with actual rewards, just after the drop of a new chapter when everyone is madly grinding to subclass their characters. I know the per-bar population in Vengeance is 3x higher than on live but I don't think I ever saw 3/3/3 bars during the test, whereas I did in the previous Cyrodiil Champions test earlier in the year. I hope you got enough data but it was a really poorly thought-out time to do a stress test requiring as many players as possible.

Overall this was a really encouraging test and has me really encouraged that we are heading to an end-state where PVP can always be really performant, strategically fluid and also engaging at the build, individual fight and tactical levels as well.

Sluggy · July 8

ajkb78 wrote: »

4. You picked just about the worst time to run this test. I mean, come on?! Clashing with a PVE event with actual rewards, a few weeks before the "crown jewels" PVP event, again with actual rewards, just after the drop of a new chapter when everyone is madly grinding to subclass their characters. I know the per-bar population in Vengeance is 3x higher than on live but I don't think I ever saw 3/3/3 bars during the test, whereas I did in the previous Cyrodiil Champions test earlier in the year. I hope you got enough data but it was a really poorly thought-out time to do a stress test requiring as many players as possible.

It was also a major U.S. holiday where most people are going to spend their evenings outdoors partying.

Sluggy · July 9

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

I'm a healer main too. Healers DEFINITELY help, but they don't have as big of an impact as they would have in ordinary Cyrodil because your limited in the number of targets you can heal and your sustain is poor so you need to really pick your points when you burst and fill in the gaps with light and heavy attacks.

That sounds like a good thing to me. It means that skill was involved instead of just mindlessly spamming HoTs nonstop. Despite that though I had absolutely zero problem sustaining indefinitely while keeping all of my heals rolling when it counted. I'd say it was a little too easy but that could change as things get added back in, I suppose.

It was also my experience that healing in certain situations was too strong this time around. 1v1 was impossible because there was no way anyone could kill anyone else and even in some 1v2 and 1v3 cases if you had some cover and moved fast you could basically stall a fight forever. With small scale groups, whomever had more HoT sharing usually came out on top. As for keep fights, I actually found healing to be the most balanced there. Mostly just due to the sheer number of targets to heal vs the number of enemies attacking. It still helped a ton and allowed small groups to hold out surprisingly well against larger ones as long as they took up good defensive positions and used siege well.