Extremely Low Midyear Mayhem Turnout, Why?

driosketch · July 29

Two things: Perception and rewards.

Is multi-classing an issue? I don't know, maybe. It doesn't matter. People perceive it, and other issues in PvP, make it unplayable. I'm guilty of exploiting these perceptions, firing a green Arcanist beam into a choke point to keep attackers back. It's certainly a showy skill, just like some of the set procs out there. You have a lot of players who don't have experience with those, and others with a string of bad experiences. The latter shapes the former's perception. As someone who usually only PvPs when there are extra rewards to be made, PvP really is about the same as it has been for years, a few new fireworks aside.

Speaking of, the rewards just aren't enough to pull people in. Older players are going to burn out, that's unavoidable. You need to ramp up the rewards to pull in new players each year. Like I almost submitted a bug report because I wasn't sure if the AP bonus was working. These events should offer the chance to catch up, boosts AP stash, unlock skills, ect. Tangent, the daily gladiator proofs quests need to be reduced back to a third. Used to be I could run multiple characters through MYM and stockpile completions to use following the event. PvP is time consuming gameplay, you should balance out the rewards accordingly.

fizzybeef · July 29

@Zos these reviews are destroying. Can you please finally react and do something?

Never had such a boring and empty MYM in 10y of playing

aetherix8 · July 29

There is no such house, mount or style that would make me log into the multiclassed laggy proc-hell that is the nowadays Cyro. MYM is pretty much over for me since no-proc RW got deleted.
I don’t even log into the game anymore, I find there is too much uncertainty and, although I would like to help test solutions to the awful performance, I just can’t convince myself. I even installed PTS, but the “don’t waste your time, just sit and wait” part of me wins every time.

Performance wise Cyrodiil is totally broken. Now that devs are running these serious performance tests, it is obvious that current Cyrodiil will undergo changes depending on the results of Vengeance. And there are far too many unknowns concerning the future direction of ESO PvP.

There is some serious lack of communication from ZOS.

How many more iterations of Vengeance are you going to run?
Is this number fixed or are you adding iterations depending on results already obtained?
Will there be 2 modes, Cyro with PvE-balanced sets and Vengeance with simplified sets?
Are any sources of character speed going to be available?
And last but not least: is Vengeance really just a performance test or is it a thing?!

This uncertainty is demotivating. It would be nice if anyone at ZOS could take some time to share with us their vision of what the future PvP might look like. The player base is seriously divided on Vengeance, some enjoy it a lot, others consider it a slap to their face after thousands of hours invested into theory crafting and farming sets. It is certainly awesome to see ZOS finally engaging with PvP and putting effort into improving it, thank you! But it is necessary to provide us players with more clarity as well.

Veinblood1965 · July 29

Gigglez wrote: »

Subclassing I can't level up no skill points.
12 or so toons, played 10yrs.
Have all sub class levelled but in order to actually use on most of my toons I don't have enough skill points to subclass.
The double point cost is stopping me from adjusting them.
If you don't adjust you can't compete.
I have 2 that I can use and have been a bit but really pisses me off I can't use the other ten until I replay them for many hours to get skill points. That is really bad desicion.

I agree, I haven't actually played my toon but leveled up two skill lines and it is just not well thought out. It feels like ZoS added that to keep players busy grinding but it has had the opposite effect. Seriously why go to the trouble of adding all this but making it such a grind. Does anyone at any meetings just ask if this is going to make the game actually enjoyable or fun for the players.

Veinblood1965 · July 29

Liukke wrote: »

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

It's funny, I came here to post about this exact same thing. I'm in the top guild on Gray Host and usually there are tons of people online and having fun. This last weekend I logged in on Saturday and FOUR, I repeat FOUR people from my guild were in Cyrodill. There was also only a five minute wait to access GH. Usually there is an hour wait on weekend during the same timeframe.

I participated a little but I have not subclassed my NB and I noticed two things. My resource drain was noticeably worse and I was unable to do much damage to most people while at the same time I was taking significant damage more than normal. I have not subclassed yet due to what I am sure are going to be continual nerfs/changes.

I am thinking that is why my guild was absent.. I am wondering if others are absent due to subclassing also. I am thinking ZoS is seeing huge numbers of population decline in PVE and PVP. I know my vendor sales have been almost non-existant since subclassings release.

Actually the nerfs have all happened on pure classes.
With subclass you actually have the chance to switch to more useful skill trees...DK is a paperweight now, has lost all the sustain :'D

Probably true, my NB is set up pre-subclassing, it does explain the sustain issue. It was seriously noticeable. It's not like you HAVE to subclass but if you don't your hamstrung.

peacenote · July 29

Hi,

I can only speak for myself but MYM is my favorite event and I haven't participated at all for three reasons:

I honestly did not know it was occurring
I happen to have a lot going on IRL such that I'm not logging in between group commitments (raid, dungeon team)
Even if I had time, and I had known, I would have done only the barest minimum to get my tickets because subclassing was so massively disruptive to how I play that I am nowhere near ready to start exploring PvP setups. I haven't even unlocked all the skill lines yet. I set up my DPS that I raid with, and I have one healing build, but I still have a long way to go to shore up my healing setups for dungeons and raids. Then, on top of that, so many people were saying that U47 was also going to be massively disruptive which meant it felt pointless to try and start researching PvP builds until that was released. I have a fair amount of transmute crystals but not so many that I can just throw them away on builds that won't be valid in a few weeks.

My character slots are maxed out and almost all of my characters are "real" (a couple are mules) and each one has its own PvP setup. It's going to be a long while before I can feel that I have decent setups on even a few of them.

On top of that, these Vengeance tests are the exact opposite of subclassing (so few options and very limiting) which has me concerned that at some point subclassing will be pulled from PvP and I'll have to re-do everything AGAIN.

It's just... a lot. It is the first time in the history of ESO for me that it feels impossible to "keep up." I don't need to be meta, but subclassing blew up pure classes such that pretty much every single character needs to be updated to be set up for success. This is just a hobby!

Ingenon · July 29

Gigglez wrote: »

Subclassing I can't level up no skill points.
12 or so toons, played 10yrs.
Have all sub class levelled but in order to actually use on most of my toons I don't have enough skill points to subclass.
The double point cost is stopping me from adjusting them.
If you don't adjust you can't compete.
I have 2 that I can use and have been a bit but really pisses me off I can't use the other ten until I replay them for many hours to get skill points. That is really bad desicion.

I agree with what you are saying. I have many toons, and most of them have not been subclassed yet. I'm on PS/NA, and the Murf's Skyshards addon has helped me get skill points. Before addons, on console it was more time consuming to find skyshards. Now I just full speed gallop to them. But the leveling (again) of skill lines to 50 so I can use them in a subclass build is still painfully time consuming.

Rohamad_Ali · July 29

They should remove the dead campaigns to shore up the numbers in live ones.

Desiato · July 29

Better rewards aren't the answer. Better gameplay is.

But of course ESO players want better rewards because 99.99% of ESO is a rewards hamster wheel that constantly gives out rewards for trivial activities that require essentially no effort.

In these forums, you will find regular posts criticizing daily login rewards and requests to streamline survey harvesting because players have so many surveys from going crafting station to crafting station pressing E while an addon does all the actual work. So now they want an assistant to do the rest and think this is perfectly reasonable.

In general, a quest in ESO is just a story segmented by trivial busy work. Follow the arrow and press E or effortlessly kill opponents that are basically impossible to die to. I can't imagine why I would do it instead of reading a book or watching a movie because there is no actual gameplay anymore.

I'm not trying to insult anyone, I'm just stating things how I see them.

What every successful PVP game needs is QUALITY GAMEPLAY. In successful PVP games, rewards are just a thin icing on the cake, not the cake itself.

For decades, PVP gamers hosted their own servers and played without rewards or progression of any kind just for the pure enjoyment of the games until Valve tweaked the formula. But even then, the foundational aspect of gameplay remained most important.

In the other game I play, the slate is wiped clean every month. All of our loot, everything we built is gone. Everything we do in the game is for the moment. For the experience itself. It is a successful PVP game.

Luring in PVE players who enjoy the things I described at the beginning of this post with rewards isn't the answer. It is actually a major part of the problem.

ScardyFox · July 29

Subclassing is the game’s greatest joke, rolling in like a clown car full of bad decisions. Its influence is spreading like a plague, tearing through everything—events included.

redlink1979 · July 29

1. Real life comes first.
2. Multiclassing

So I just grab tickets and get out.

Sluggy · July 29

LadyGP wrote: »

Thessirae wrote: »

I've pvped quite abit so far and I honestly think subclassing is the problem.

It puts such high requirements on having a decent time; because just using your main class is too weak.

Also the 30-45 min que on Grey Host + combination of lag.

I do not think we're ''short on players'' cause the turnout on peak times isn't that bad

I think they need to return vengeance campaign and do it without subclassing.

Back to the basics

Good point.

I'll say this as someone who has been in Cyro 5 times a week (min) for like... 7 years straight... I took a solid 10 months off and came back post subclassing.

My typical dk build that slapped in Cyro just 10 months ago has me getting absolutley dumpstered. It's night and day how far the power curve is. My first day or two were not fun AT ALL. I'm still not having fun but... it's not as bad as it was lol.

I was about the same. I was away since the last MyM and came back for Vengeance and this MyM. The couple of weeks I had to warm up before this week's event I went out on my old DK. It was a typical churn n' burn brawler and for the most part it was okay. A lot of people just coulen't hurt me at all. But I also couldn't hurt them now that my sustain and dot damage had taken such a hit. The few people that really knew how to make a subclass build were in a completely different league though and I was actually hard countered in ever way possible. It was very un-fun. I started leveling some skill lines for later and it was almost comical how little damage both myself and others could do while I just tank-healed my way through everything.

Finally, I threw together a quick build just for this event. All-in on damage. Aedric, Animals, Assassin. Something like 149% crit damage and nearly 70% crit chance when the passives kicked in (if the fight even lasted that long). Plenty of damage and pen. Max speed. Infinite sustain. The only real weakness that I had to wear five pieces of light armor and only had one HoT and a burst heal on. It was night and day for me. If I came across someone unprepared I would just blow them out of the water. If they were running something similar then it was just down to who could pull off their combo in the lag first. Occasionally I'd come across someone properly tanked - likely using a build pre-subclassing and they just posed zero threat to me. In some cases I could eventually wear them down. In other cases it was a total stalemate. Overall, it still just wasn't fun because it felt like the build was doing all of the work for me. There really wasn't much to think about or consider. Do combo. Rinse repeat. Maybe it works first time. Maybe it doesn't and I just walk (very very fast walk lol) away.

katanagirl1 · July 30

I’m six pages behind so excuse me if someone has posted this already.

Last year the PvP event was lower participation for us than previous years, the year before might have been too.

This year on PS NA, EP seems to have pop lock constantly, this morning DC and AD only one bar. There’s no point in logging in so you can be outnumbered 30 to 1 everywhere you go.

Vulkunne · July 30

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.

Consistent bombings. You can't take 5 to 10 steps outside without getting dragged and insta-killed along with 2 or 3 other people.

I love PvP and I love Vengeance. Didn't have time for it last time, but glad I made time. But this here is just foolishness. Its silly, its one thing by itself but people are taking the bombings to ridiculous lengths, meta subclasses everywhere, obscene amounts of damage being dished out with no counter-play, so on so forth.

It's a hot mess and I don't have the time or inclination anymore to sort out a bunch of people more or less reacting to and grief bombing one another. That is not PvP, and I just can only imagine what fresh hell the new folks and casuals must be dealing with. I saw a bunch of PvE folks doing quests and so forth the other day, didn't bother them.

No reason to when you can't even PvP without getting constantly instant-killed, so that just leaves other non-PvP activities. It's real sad but also not my fault.

*Also, the rubber banding was awful. It was so bad. Rush of Agony everywhere, I'm not trying to be a diva when I say this, but the game just wasn't playable. Too much Rush of Agony. It's not playable and even if you're in a group it's just standing around while one or two people do the kills. If I attack anyone I get singled out and pulled. Not playable or worth playing.

LadyGP · July 30

Vulkunne 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.

Consistent bombings. You can't take 5 to 10 steps outside without getting dragged and insta-killed along with 2 or 3 other people.

I love PvP and I love Vengeance. Didn't have time for it last time, but glad I made time. But this here is just foolishness. Its silly, its one thing by itself but people are taking the bombings to ridiculous lengths, meta subclasses everywhere, obscene amounts of damage being dished out with no counter-play, so on so forth.

It's a hot mess and I don't have the time or inclination anymore to sort out a bunch of people more or less reacting and griefing one another. That is not PvP, and I just can only imagine what fresh hell the new folks and casuals much be dealing with. I saw a bunch of PvE folks doing quests and so forth the other day, didn't bother them.

No reason to when you can't even PvP without getting constantly instant-killed. It's real sad but not my fault.

Yeah... I'm getting this vibe too after playing for a few days in a row. The bombings, the subclassing meta.. it's just... to be blunt it sucks and it needs a massive change in cyro. And sooner not later.

LittlePinkDot · July 30

I'm on PS5. But so far I like multiclassing in PvP. Of course underperforming skill lines still need to be buffed to be comparable to the Assassination/Animal companions/Aedric Spear/Storm calling/restoring light combinations, but it's at least possible to kill people now. The invincible tank/healing problem is finally cracking.

As for people complaining about groups, it's basically what Cyrodiil is for. You're not supposed to win 1 person against 10 people.
Try dueling if you want 1 on 1.

Vulkunne · July 30

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

I'm on PS5. But so far I like multiclassing in PvP. Of course underperforming skill lines still need to be buffed to be comparable to the Assassination/Animal companions/Aedric Spear/Storm calling/restoring light combinations, but it's at least possible to kill people now. The invincible tank/healing problem is finally cracking.

As for people complaining about groups, it's basically what Cyrodiil is for. You're not supposed to win 1 person against 10 people.
Try dueling if you want 1 on 1.

You know what I also like subclass; Not a fan of ball-groups though.

But anyways, yeah, I don't hate subclass and really wish that some of my characters could have benefited from various specific things years ago instead of just being forced into a brick wall sometimes.

I think part of the problem is everyone is not really trying different things as much as focusing on and all of us getting smashed by the metas. Perhaps that was just inevitable but then it's like what do you use if you don't want that. You know? It's like ZOS trying to blast their way out of the class balance issue with dynamite, which partially worked but also partially blew up the town as well.

End of the day, I think what we're going to find out is they took smaller fires and just combined them into one BIG problem that cannot be solved and is slowly sucking in everything around it as the foundation starts to collapse around the class system.

Koshka · July 30

Gigglez wrote: »

Subclassing I can't level up no skill points.
12 or so toons, played 10yrs.
Have all sub class levelled but in order to actually use on most of my toons I don't have enough skill points to subclass.
The double point cost is stopping me from adjusting them.
If you don't adjust you can't compete.
I have 2 that I can use and have been a bit but really pisses me off I can't use the other ten until I replay them for many hours to get skill points. That is really bad desicion.

As a fellow altoholic... If you need skill points quick, check your public dungeon achieves and do the missing group challenges (these achieves are character-specific). Each gives you a skill point+there are skyshards in every public dungeon.
Might seem obvious, but when I was respeccing my alts, I noticed that many of them were missing a bunch of these group challenges.

LalMirchi · July 30

Extremely Low Midyear Mayhem Turnout, Why?

Perhaps because the Event concept is now very old and quite monotonous for anyone who has done teh events before?

In this particular event I do the bare minimum, there is no real incentive to doing any more.

Cooperharley · July 30

Most PvP players have left - that would be my guess. It’s not vengeance style, so we’re also back to really low pop caps and a super long queue with it as a result. Not worth it for the same old same old stuff.

moderatelyfatman · July 30

Cooperharley wrote: »

Most PvP players have left - that would be my guess. It’s not vengeance style, so we’re also back to really low pop caps and a super long queue with it as a result. Not worth it for the same old same old stuff.

People keep coming back and playing chess even though the game is the same year after year. No added incentives, gimmicks or changes for the sake of changes are needed.
The difference they stopped changing the rules when it was in a good place so the 'the same old same old stuff' was actually engaging. If Cyrodiil actually had good performance and real class balance then the player population would be there even in the absence of shiny new toys.

shadyjane62 · July 30

It's not Vengeance. Just the same old, same old.

AtriaKhorist · July 30

lemlest wrote: »

PC EU has multiple campaigns in Cyro pop locked at peak times (and sometimes off-peak times), with multiple IC campaigns being 2+ bars. CP IC in particular has been really busy whenever I have been in. My PvP guilds are having to run multiple groups for raids and event runs because that many guildies are wanting to join. We are having to go to the more far out campaigns like Ashpit and Evergloam because the queues for Grey Host and Blackreach are too long.

Am I seeing a different event to everyone else?

The only thing I see in PCEU Imperial City, in any campaign, is a handful of questers and a handful of gankers.

No district boss hunts, no big groups, nada.

LadyGP · July 30

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

They should remove the dead campaigns to shore up the numbers in live ones.

There is something people keep leaving out... yes.. this is hands down the weakest turn out for MYM that I have ever seen..

But the queue is still 2 hours long.. why?!

They either A) lowered the pop cap (which they didn't) or

The afk macro people are a problem.

Last night was the 4th night in a row where I spent 1.5-2 hours in queue (I got in queue right after work) only to get into Cyro and... struggle to find fights. The fights you did find were just stupid... the 4 people running circles around trees and rocks, running in towers, etc.

The largest ap tick I've gotten so far was.. 20k? I'm used to 150k ticks in MYM.

There is something going on with this camp. I don't know if there are stale sessions that aren't being cleared @ZOS_Kevin or if the pop somehow got borked between veng and this MYM... it just feels.... way off.

I know priorities are hard to shift and get dev time to look into stuff... but is there any chance we could get a dev just to do a quick once over of the cap/sessions etc and make sure there is nothing going on, Kevin?

Divine1976 · July 30

Maps are dead even when pop locked(EU). When you do find a fight, its either an immortal ball group farming or constant bombs to the point its ridiculous or both

Plus, unless you are running meta subclassing setup, good luck lol. I had more fun in Vengeance tests

LPapirius · July 30

Gigglez wrote: »

Subclassing I can't level up no skill points.
12 or so toons, played 10yrs.
Have all sub class levelled but in order to actually use on most of my toons I don't have enough skill points to subclass.
The double point cost is stopping me from adjusting them.
If you don't adjust you can't compete.
I have 2 that I can use and have been a bit but really pisses me off I can't use the other ten until I replay them for many hours to get skill points. That is really bad desicion.

Isn't that the point though, to get people to have to rerun basic content more? Subclassing was also putting the balancing of things in the hands of the players instead of the devs. In other words, good players will be better with subclassing, and lower level players will have a steeper hill to climb to catch up.

Finedaible · July 30

I suspect because people are a slightly burned out with the Vengeance campaign/pursuits having been somewhat recent. There are also some new cracked builds out there now which have little counter-play. Imperial City feels especially empty compared to previous Mayhems though which is kinda sad, but there's not much in unique rewards to get there this year either. Maybe there's too many campaigns this time.

ESO feels like a full-time job honestly. For the person who already works a full-time job and has other responsibilities, it's kind of a pain to manage redoing builds every month or so, gilding out sets, making enough gold to fund those upgrade mats... even doing the daily crafting writs begins to become a chore when you just want to jump on and have fun after a long day. Idk, maybe I'm just getting too old for ESO, but I feel like some other games like Warframe respect your time better.

MincMincMinc · July 30

- Ap is worthless
- Event tickets are worthless
- Cyrodil player cap is too low and too laggy
- Keep takes are boring since most seige mechanics were removed involving resource nodes
- if 1vX 10 year veteran players have hard times finding fights, do we really expect a brand new lvl 10 pug to find one in greyhost?
- Pug groups disband after being wiped once by a no contest ball group abusing multiple layers of game mechanics designed in their favor
- Transitus lines aim to group up the already laggy server around the ring instead of incentivizing other routes.
- Campaign rules and keep bonuses favor the winning faction and not the underdog, allowing a snowball effect leading to players logging out.

IDK we can keep going

Dojohoda · July 30

Remove the pull sets.

Taylord900 · July 30

I'm another that dropped my sub and stopped playing PvP with u46's multiclassing.