Extremely Low Midyear Mayhem Turnout, Why?

Stamicka · July 27

I'm curious to hear why so many players avoided this most recent Midyear Mayhem event. Each event the turnout gets lower, but this time it's shockingly low. The added campaigns were not needed at all. Personally speaking, I only played a little for the first 2 days and lost interest after that. I have a long list of reasons, but it would probably be useful for ZOS to see other perspectives.

Feel free to share your reasons.

Vonnegut2506 · July 27

Because I can't be tasked to do activities I don't enjoy just for some item in a video game, and I would guess many people feel the same way about PvP.

valenwood_vegan · July 27

There are a lot of reasons and I'm definitely not a serious enough pvp'er to get into it all. I'll leave that to more knowledgeable folks.

But at at least from my own perspective and a lot of players I know; for those of us who don't live and breathe pvp, I think vengenace gave us a glimpse of how it might actually be fun and brought even more attention to the problems in current live pvp. And then subclassing came at the same time and kinda doubled down on the things that make pvp awful. And it sorta becomes this self-reinforcing problem where fewer non-regular pvp'ers are interested in mayhem, and then others see the population is low and either don't bother, or maybe try mayhem out and see that it's just the regulars and the bigger battles they might remember from past mayhems, which generally included a fair number of newer / casual / inexperienced pvp'ers, aren't happening, and they have little chance of finding any enjoyment, so they log out and the cycle repeats.

Stamicka · July 27

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

Because I can't be tasked to do activities I don't enjoy just for some item in a video game, and I would guess many people feel the same way about PvP.

I understand. There’s a significant amount of players who participated in Midyear Mayhem in the past, but didn’t participate this time though.

I’m not sure if they quit or what, but it’s a very noticeable drop off. It’s pretty interesting to see from a game design perspective. I’m wondering what’s led to such a dramatic change this time.

Evil_Rurouni · July 27

One word:

Multiclassing.

Many dedicated PvP players won't have finished leveling up their new Multiclass PvP builds yet so aren't taking part as much or at all.
A great many more people who usually don't play PvP outside of events won't have even thought about designing a Multiclass PvP build and were caught completly unprepared.
Others will have decided that its just not worth the effort of leveling a Multiclass PvP build just for events.
Other players are playing ESO itself less or not at all for a few patch cycles while waiting for the Multiclass Meta's to stabilise, so there's less players around to start with.

There'll also be plenty of people who expect PvP to be an absolute train wreck of busted OP Multiclass PvP build like how PvE's DPS is and just gone "lolNOPE!".

valenwood_vegan · July 27

Evil_Rurouni wrote: »

One word:

Multiclassing.

Yeah I think if I had to condense what I said, this would be it. A lot of my regular social group and people I know in my guilds (myself, included) are already pretty inactive since u46, and even among the more active ones... few have finished grinding out / wrapping our heads around multiclassing on the pve side of things. A lot are in "wait and see" mode about what the next nerfs and changes will be.

Definitely even fewer have put any effort into new multiclassed pvp builds. Or they just wanna sit it out because all balance has been thrown out the window.

Desiato · July 27

In recent years, I had a decent enough general dk build that I could jump into cyro/ic/bgs with it and have fun for a few hours.

This year, I don't want to adapt to subclassing for what will just be a few hours of PVP before I get completely sick of the same problems that drove me away from PVP years ago, in addition to the new problems caused by subclassing.

I don't want to sound anti-subclassing because I'm not. I've adapted to it in PVE and wouldn't want to go back to pure classes there.

But like scribing and countless other changes over the years -- like the buff to hardened ward last year -- there was little care for what the impact to PVP would be.

Also, what could be called the end game community seems extremely quiet this weekend. The trial scene seems dead. One open trial community that was EXTREMELY active this time last year is completely dead.

The more casual playerbase seems to be thriving. Random dungeons seem full of inexperienced players and the overland zones seem to be highly active with questers.

The forums are obviously dead!

DenverRalphy · July 27

The last MYM event had a Golden Pursuit that had everyone piling into PvP. This tiime around, unless you're regularly into PvP, there's not much incentive to entice anyone else to do much more than get the event tickets and get out.

Myself personally I'm just in no mood to burn resources to outfit any new PvP builds until after U47, simply because I have no desire to waste those resources on a build that will likely last all of a couple months.

spartaxoxo · July 27

I forgot it even started

Freelancer_ESO · July 27

We had a Golden Pursuit for PvP earlier this month with the Vengeance Campaign which might be a bit of a factor.

I think you'd also find that for some people Vengeance offers a better PvP experience than Mayhem and as such would rather wait for it to come back again rather than spending a bunch of time playing in Mayhem.

Punches_Below_Belt · July 27

I’ve spent plenty of time in Cyrodil and have no qualms about doing PVP but repeating a stale event twice a year was already a bad idea.

To have the stale event after a weeks long fresher version with better rewards the previous month shows just how badly ZOS understands their players and their own game.

Maybe they really just didn’t care if this event flopped. No reason to give PVP’ers one more thing to be unhappy about if they did something PVE instead.

I hope this gets through to ZOS though. All these repeated events need to be refreshed. “Been there done that” is a sure death knell for any game.

React · July 27

It's definitely the lowest turnout yet on PC NA by a wide margin. So much so that if they had added just one additional CP campaign and nothing else, I don't think there would be any overcrowding issues whatsoever. Really unfortunate.

YstradClud · July 27

I don't pvp much at all but when I was going to check out the event on my console character, I seen a 30+ min queue in Grey Host and didn't bother?

Nemesis7884 · July 27

Might also be because in a lot of areas there is a heatwave going on and many people just dont enjoy playing games when its very hot or rather want to engage in other activities....

SeaGtGruff · July 27

I know that Gray Host has been pop-locked quite often for the first few days of the event. Right now I'm sitting at position 29 (after starting out at 47) with an expected queue time of over 30 minutes. There have been certain times of the day or night, varying by server (EU or NA), when my faction isn't pop-locked, but that's normal when people are spread out among different time zones and tend to play at certain hours of their day or night.

I'm not using sub-classing at all-- haven't even tried it out yet-- but my experience has been pretty much what it's always been, which is to say, I'm getting killed a lot, but I'm also helping take out some of the enemy. My observation is that players like to blame their defeats on whatever the new thingie happens to be. If it weren't sub-classing, it would be something else to blame. I'm okay with getting killed a lot in PvP, because I just PvP casually for fun, and I know that most of the players who kill me are a lot more dedicated at creating builds and practicing skill rotations and timed combos than I'll ever care to be. More power to them. I got over my fear of getting killed a long time ago.

Edit: Two typos.

LadyLethalla · July 27

There wasn't a queue when I logged in - usually there would have been for Grey Host, going by past MYM - there was a bit of activity in Blackreach but not enough to keep me invested. I didn't even make it to tier 1 rewards before I logged out.

Islyn · July 27

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

Because I can't be tasked to do activities I don't enjoy just for some item in a video game, and I would guess many people feel the same way about PvP.

That and the zone chat is toxic af. Can't do anything right, pvpers in zone NEVER happy.

licenturion · July 27

Stamicka wrote: »

I'm curious to hear why so many players avoided this most recent Midyear Mayhem event. Each event the turnout gets lower, but this time it's shockingly low. The added campaigns were not needed at all. Personally speaking, I only played a little for the first 2 days and lost interest after that. I have a long list of reasons, but it would probably be useful for ZOS to see other perspectives.

Feel free to share your reasons.

Personally I will only come back for PvP when a new Vengeance campaign is on.

I do login for my tickets for 5 minutes for a scout and IC rescue mission. Haven’t been contested once so far.

This traditional event doing worse numbers than Vengeance is good for telemetry and increasing our chances to have an extra dedicated Vengeance playlist in the future

Islyn · July 27

licenturion wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

I'm curious to hear why so many players avoided this most recent Midyear Mayhem event. Each event the turnout gets lower, but this time it's shockingly low. The added campaigns were not needed at all. Personally speaking, I only played a little for the first 2 days and lost interest after that. I have a long list of reasons, but it would probably be useful for ZOS to see other perspectives.

Feel free to share your reasons.

Personally I will only come back for PvP when a new Vengeance campaign is on.

I do login for my tickets for 5 minutes for a scout and IC rescue mission. Haven’t been contested once so far.

I been doing town quests - kill a few players here and there but i can't 1vX and not gonna just be content.

Hapexamendios · July 27

I'm just in it for the transmute crystals. Soon as I reach tier 1, that character is done.

colossalvoids · July 27

My uneducated guess would be too many people aren't willing to do any PvP til new Vengeance test, no matter event or not.

aleksandr_ESO · July 27

just look at the steam charts and you'll understand why the event hasn't attracted much attention for several years.
The fat times of covid are over, and the game is heading towards oblivion.

Cazador · July 27

Even if it's not very full I know that I'm still going to be waiting at least 20 minutes for something I'm not guaranteed to actually enjoy. Also I might just crash and have to que all over again .

Arthtur · July 27

Because of subclassing and awful balancing from ZOS.
One of my problems with PvP was always how unbalanced were the fights between coordinated players and bunch of solo or duo players running in zerg.
Zergs always had only the power they build for. No stacking sets, heals, shields. Some ultimates dont work on players who arent on your group.
Coordinated players on the other hand... If the only benefit they had was communication, it would be already pretty big advantage.
But that's not all.
Each player brings up 2 sets or 3 if we count monster sets. So if you have a good group of 10 players who build for PvP... You have a group full of players with power of 20 - 30 sets.
On top of that they can stack heals, shields and coordinate ults.
How players who have the power of 2 - 3 sets fight aganist players with power of over 20? It was already bad enough but now we add subclassing so all those group players pick the best skill trees possible making the diffrence even bigger.

Why should i play when i feel like im only here so group of players have somebody to farm?
And im not only talking about ball groups. With the power creep even small coordinated groups have a big advantage over other players.
And not all players want to min max and play in groups. Some just want to jump in for an hour or two, siege some keeps and then go do something else.

The last time i was in Cyro i have seen 3 ball groups in a single keep. Why would i ever want to return to that? So yeah, im not touching PvP anymore.

Zodiarkslayer · July 27

I bet a Midyears Mayham Vengeance style would have been a much greater success. 😎

Grega · July 27

Stamicka wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

Because I can't be tasked to do activities I don't enjoy just for some item in a video game, and I would guess many people feel the same way about PvP.

I understand. There’s a significant amount of players who participated in Midyear Mayhem in the past, but didn’t participate this time though.

I’m not sure if they quit or what, but it’s a very noticeable drop off. It’s pretty interesting to see from a game design perspective. I’m wondering what’s led to such a dramatic change this time.

Prob vengeance for reasons below.

Some people really hated it and out of principle don’t play now even though old caps are back.

Some people really loved it and have no interest in participating in non-vengeance PvP anymore now, that they got a taste of vengeance.

Another reason is same every year: Summer midyear always has less players than winter midyear. It’s just less players in the game in the summer tho, not just PvP.

wolfie1.0. · July 27

it was too close to veangeance.

event ticket mount isn't appealing.

Other ticket items are not appealing.

PVP fatigue

Just general event fatigue

ESO fatigue, i need a break in general.

Lumenn · July 27

/shrug Xbox na Gray Host I've been starting in the que in the 70's and last night at 89 taking me 40+ minutes to get in(admittedly last night I didn't feel like waiting the estimated 56 minutes and logged off).

Katheriah · July 27

I think it's a combination. Many regular players have moved on from ESO already, people need to change their builds every couple of months, lack of balance was already a thing, with subclassing it's even more of a thing, server performance, Vengeance was very recent, rewards are not amazing, event fatigue, toxicity in chat...

fizzybeef · July 27

Stamicka wrote: »

I'm curious to hear why so many players avoided this most recent Midyear Mayhem event. Each event the turnout gets lower, but this time it's shockingly low. The added campaigns were not needed at all. Personally speaking, I only played a little for the first 2 days and lost interest after that. I have a long list of reasons, but it would probably be useful for ZOS to see other perspectives.

Feel free to share your reasons.

Games population being in downfall

Estin · July 27

Same reason why other areas of the game are feeling dead. It's because Multiclassing, and most likely poor reception to the new content model. I stopped playing as soon as U46 dropped because I knew Multiclassing would damage the game too much. You don't need to multiclass in PvP, but Animal Companion, Assassination, and Storm Calling is definitely the meta setup, and I bet players would rather deal with pre U46 magsorcs than this new setup a lot of people want to use and are just skipping out. A lot of PvEers who do like PvP aren't playing either because subclassing has made everything except 1 setup useless. No point in playing the class you like anymore in PvE because you're going to be at the very least 20% less effective than the worst player using the meta setup.

It's not event fatigue, unappealing event rewards, or some external force of nature. Last year, even with the server issues, had a lot more activity despite also having unappealing event rewards and the same amount of events next to each other.