Vengeance – An Unsustainable False Positive

aetherix8 · August 26

LadyGP wrote: »

The overal setiment OP has on this thread is starting to play out. The title of the thread is perfect; and I'm willing to bet the data ZoS is getting will reflect that.

(Although they put "fun" as an option for like 4 of the 6 choices so I'm sure they will say something like "85% of people said veng was fun we need to push forward exactly how it is" *sigh*)

Everyone loves the performance gains.
Everyone (except for those few who are dug in the trenches - we/you know who you are) hate the template style no skill forever long TTK gameplay loop.

Someone please help me understand why so many player's skies are already falling.

Vengeance is a performance test.

That said, ZOS questions about "fun" suggest they might be also testing the concept as a potential new PvP mode.

"New" does not necessarily mean "replacing the old". Maybe both will be supported. Or maybe there won't be any need for both.

Performance tests are still ongoing, there is going to be soon the 3rd run.

More systems will be added and I totally expect to see sets eventually.

What we saw so far isn't even a proper mode yet, it's just a sketch.

Start voting once you've seen the entire picture.

MincMincMinc · August 26

reazea wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

The overal setiment OP has on this thread is starting to play out. The title of the thread is perfect; and I'm willing to bet the data ZoS is getting will reflect that.

(Although they put "fun" as an option for like 4 of the 6 choices so I'm sure they will say something like "85% of people said veng was fun we need to push forward exactly how it is" *sigh*)

Everyone loves the performance gains.
Everyone (except for those few who are dug in the trenches - we/you know who you are) hate the template style no skill forever long TTK gameplay loop.

I also greatly fear a bait and switch with the vengeance mode, at some point, becoming the only option. I think vengeance as the only option would be a huge mistake.

These takes are hard assuming that 0 development is going to take place between now and the release. At worst it is released as is. At best they add every system back into the game reworking them as they go. It is a test and there will likely be many more until they get data on the various systems in the game. At the same time everyone seems to agree that every system in the game has been power crept beyond belief. Skills primarily, sets second, random passive systems like food follow. Or simply the shear amount of choices have expanded, but the old values were never reduced to compensate.

Keep asking the question when is vengeance acceptable?

After they add stat based tooltips?
After they add passives?
After they add morphs?
After they add racials, mundus, food?
After they add basic armor?
After they add armor and jewlery enchants?
After they add nonproc set bonuses?
Stat proc set bonuses?
Effect proc set bonuses?

Right here you are talking 9 more vengeance tests probably in this order and you are back at live building. At the current rate every 3 or so months we are talking 2 years of development. Maybe more if they do rule tests like disabling crosshealing or buff/hot stacking. By the time these get added, we are essentially back at live combat with better coded less bloated skills. If anything maybe zos just brings back in the other elements after they finish doing the skill system pass to separate pve and pvp.....effectively jumping past a ton of tests. For instance we did tests a long time ago with procs and noprocs, they had some benefit, people enjoyed the combat more since it was cleaner, but it was no silver bullet. Zos also didnt pick up on the fact that when people say "proc set" they really mean effect sets like sloads or vipers .......not banning stat procs like clever alch.

LarsS · August 26

One issue I havent seen considered here, is the population decrease of the present Cyro format, at least on PC/EU. We are already at the point that it's hard to find any pvp on GH, which is the most populated campaign, outside of the few prime time hours. This decline is a slow process but if it contiues Cyro pvp will almost certainly be dead in 1 or 2 years.

There are a number of possible reasons for that, lag, high learning curve for new players and and a big power gap between casual players and top players and perhaps others too.

So I think it's necessary for ZOS to change Cyro, along these lines, reduce the lag, making it more friendly to new players and reduce the power gap. I their present testing can lead to a new format that can attract new players and also keep some of the old, I would be happy.

MincMincMinc · August 26

LarsS wrote: »

One issue I havent seen considered here, is the population decrease of the present Cyro format, at least on PC/EU. We are already at the point that it's hard to find any pvp on GH, which is the most populated campaign, outside of the few prime time hours. This decline is a slow process but if it contiues Cyro pvp will almost certainly be dead in 1 or 2 years.

There are a number of possible reasons for that, lag, high learning curve for new players and and a big power gap between casual players and top players and perhaps others too.

So I think it's necessary for ZOS to change Cyro, along these lines, reduce the lag, making it more friendly to new players and reduce the power gap. I their present testing can lead to a new format that can attract new players and also keep some of the old, I would be happy.

On PCNA the problem has been that the lower tier campaigns(the learning environments) have been killed off. As the game became more horizontal and less vertical players started jumping straight to vet instead of PvPing in the 10-50 campaign. Eventually as the u50 campaign lost pop, cyrodil boiled down to only guild groups. Once a guild left the map became unbalanced each day. Once flipped one color, everyone logs off.

Players and guilds would then roll to the nocp server.....rinse and repeat until nocp implodes and gets abandoned. Remember that no new players are in u50 learning to be able to jump to nocp aswell.

Now we are down to greyhost. Where the only entry level pvp is bgs and vengeance. You are asking a brand new player with 160cp to fight against 10 year veterans 3600cp golded out every gear, dlc mythics, efficient stat choices and knowledge, etc. Its just not possible.

So we come back to Vengeance being rarely available, and BGs dont have a functional MMR system leading to Pugstomping, spawncamping, and people giving up. Even if new players manage to learn through the horrible conditions, then they get into greyhost. Where you will mostly run into large guild groups and ball groups. For some reason zos has removed all solo play build mechanics to help level the playing field, while also making it easier for groups by giving them 5 piece bonuses worth up to 12x the stats of solo players.

I could see zos removing u50 and nocp to replace with a vengeance campaign. At least you would have a learning environment again to work on your core gameplay mechanic skills. During Test weeks though, they should probably still only run vengeance because we need the GH regulars to cause their normal lag. A bunch of new players light attacking doesn't even come close to coordinated groups stacking and spamming aoe stacking over time effects.

reazea · August 26

MincMincMinc wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

The overal setiment OP has on this thread is starting to play out. The title of the thread is perfect; and I'm willing to bet the data ZoS is getting will reflect that.

(Although they put "fun" as an option for like 4 of the 6 choices so I'm sure they will say something like "85% of people said veng was fun we need to push forward exactly how it is" *sigh*)

Everyone loves the performance gains.
Everyone (except for those few who are dug in the trenches - we/you know who you are) hate the template style no skill forever long TTK gameplay loop.

I also greatly fear a bait and switch with the vengeance mode, at some point, becoming the only option. I think vengeance as the only option would be a huge mistake.

These takes are hard assuming that 0 development is going to take place between now and the release. At worst it is released as is. At best they add every system back into the game reworking them as they go. It is a test and there will likely be many more until they get data on the various systems in the game. At the same time everyone seems to agree that every system in the game has been power crept beyond belief. Skills primarily, sets second, random passive systems like food follow. Or simply the shear amount of choices have expanded, but the old values were never reduced to compensate.

Keep asking the question when is vengeance acceptable?
After they add stat based tooltips?

After they add passives?

After they add morphs?

After they add racials, mundus, food?

After they add basic armor?

After they add armor and jewlery enchants?

After they add nonproc set bonuses?

Stat proc set bonuses?

Effect proc set bonuses?

Right here you are talking 9 more vengeance tests probably in this order and you are back at live building. At the current rate every 3 or so months we are talking 2 years of development. Maybe more if they do rule tests like disabling crosshealing or buff/hot stacking. By the time these get added, we are essentially back at live combat with better coded less bloated skills. If anything maybe zos just brings back in the other elements after they finish doing the skill system pass to separate pve and pvp.....effectively jumping past a ton of tests. For instance we did tests a long time ago with procs and noprocs, they had some benefit, people enjoyed the combat more since it was cleaner, but it was no silver bullet. Zos also didnt pick up on the fact that when people say "proc set" they really mean effect sets like sloads or vipers .......not banning stat procs like clever alch.

For me there will never be a version of vengeance that will be acceptable. Tests are fine, but this does not feel or look like it's just a test.

I will always believe that ZOS knows exactly what's causing the performance issues. If they don't already know they're not the AAA studio most of us consider them to be. So they just need to make the investment to bring back the performance ZOS has already delivered in the past.

In my view, vengeance is a cop out, a distraction, and an end around to avoid doing the hard work and financial investments needed to restore cyrodiil performance to 2018-2019 levels and with the higher population caps.

Sluggy · August 26

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right here you are talking 9 more vengeance tests probably in this order and you are back at live building. At the current rate every 3 or so months we are talking 2 years of development. Maybe more if they do rule tests like disabling crosshealing or buff/hot stacking. By the time these get added, we are essentially back at live combat with better coded less bloated skills. If anything maybe zos just brings back in the other elements after they finish doing the skill system pass to separate pve and pvp.....effectively jumping past a ton of tests. For instance we did tests a long time ago with procs and noprocs, they had some benefit, people enjoyed the combat more since it was cleaner, but it was no silver bullet. Zos also didnt pick up on the fact that when people say "proc set" they really mean effect sets like sloads or vipers .......not banning stat procs like clever alch.

This is exactly what I've been worried about and constantly banging on about since the first test ended. Thank you for being the first person ever to actually acknowledge this issue.

Let's take a moment to assess the reality of the situation from a business standpoint. The player base for PvP in this game is minuscule. Games like Concord were absolute failures, garnering such a small playerbase that it would have taken decades to earn back on investment assuming it was completely free to operate the servers and process the transactions (and had whales spending upwards of a thousand dollars a day each!). As a result they shutdown within days of startup. Yet that game had likely similar numbers of players compared to ESO's PvP. Considering those prospects, what's the likelihood that ZoS will be willing to invest anything substantial into this long term? Short term even? Obviously we're talking different companies with different plans and infrastructure. But at the end of the day they are all competing for the same market that has the same 24 hours in a day to spend on any given live service. ESO has the advantage of being what appears to be a sustainable and well-established product at this point. But again, major investment into something with likely no real return doesn't look realistic. My takeaway from that is that they probably have, like, five people working on this when nothing else serious is happening. And unless they can make their changes with basically no impact on the rest of the teams then it just won't be approved.

aetherix8 · August 26

reazea wrote: »

In my view, vengeance is a cop out, a distraction, and an end around to avoid doing the hard work and financial investments needed to restore cyrodiil performance to 2018-2019 levels and with the higher population caps.

I hope you're wrong and that it is also meant to test some concept for an alternative Cyro mode. Some players would welcome such an alternative, also something more new player friendly to replace the empty campaigns.

GloatingSwine · August 26

LarsS wrote: »

There are a number of possible reasons for that, lag, high learning curve for new players and and a big power gap between casual players and top players and perhaps others too.

Map's too big and too empty. Weaksauce PvE content that people do for completeness probably doesn't help either. Dilutes the focus without actually making a PvPvE experience like Imperial City sort-of is.

The game loop of Cyrodiil with its current pop cap would probably work on a map about half the size, reduce the distance between forts a bit to make responses to attacks more practical and put in some sort of focal point for big 3 way battles..

xylena_lazarow · August 26

reazea wrote: »

an end around to avoid doing the hard work and financial investments needed to restore cyrodiil performance to 2018-2019

Performance sucked during those years. I was zerglording 60+ on EP side a lot during that time before quitting the game for a while mid 2019. Nowhere near the level of the 1.X days, excluding the infamous 1.3 Lighting Patch. There was maybe one good performance patch 2.5 after I returned from a year break, then they wrecked it again.

They're not going to invest in redoing the same unprofitable failed product, sorry.

MincMincMinc · August 26

reazea wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

The overal setiment OP has on this thread is starting to play out. The title of the thread is perfect; and I'm willing to bet the data ZoS is getting will reflect that.

(Although they put "fun" as an option for like 4 of the 6 choices so I'm sure they will say something like "85% of people said veng was fun we need to push forward exactly how it is" *sigh*)

Everyone loves the performance gains.
Everyone (except for those few who are dug in the trenches - we/you know who you are) hate the template style no skill forever long TTK gameplay loop.

I also greatly fear a bait and switch with the vengeance mode, at some point, becoming the only option. I think vengeance as the only option would be a huge mistake.

These takes are hard assuming that 0 development is going to take place between now and the release. At worst it is released as is. At best they add every system back into the game reworking them as they go. It is a test and there will likely be many more until they get data on the various systems in the game. At the same time everyone seems to agree that every system in the game has been power crept beyond belief. Skills primarily, sets second, random passive systems like food follow. Or simply the shear amount of choices have expanded, but the old values were never reduced to compensate.

Keep asking the question when is vengeance acceptable?
After they add stat based tooltips?

After they add passives?

After they add morphs?

After they add racials, mundus, food?

After they add basic armor?

After they add armor and jewlery enchants?

After they add nonproc set bonuses?

Stat proc set bonuses?

Effect proc set bonuses?

Right here you are talking 9 more vengeance tests probably in this order and you are back at live building. At the current rate every 3 or so months we are talking 2 years of development. Maybe more if they do rule tests like disabling crosshealing or buff/hot stacking. By the time these get added, we are essentially back at live combat with better coded less bloated skills. If anything maybe zos just brings back in the other elements after they finish doing the skill system pass to separate pve and pvp.....effectively jumping past a ton of tests. For instance we did tests a long time ago with procs and noprocs, they had some benefit, people enjoyed the combat more since it was cleaner, but it was no silver bullet. Zos also didnt pick up on the fact that when people say "proc set" they really mean effect sets like sloads or vipers .......not banning stat procs like clever alch.

For me there will never be a version of vengeance that will be acceptable. Tests are fine, but this does not feel or look like it's just a test.

I will always believe that ZOS knows exactly what's causing the performance issues. If they don't already know they're not the AAA studio most of us consider them to be. So they just need to make the investment to bring back the performance ZOS has already delivered in the past.

In my view, vengeance is a cop out, a distraction, and an end around to avoid doing the hard work and financial investments needed to restore cyrodiil performance to 2018-2019 levels and with the higher population caps.

Did you read my post? All vengeance is testing is unmorphed skills, by the time everything else gets added back into the game there is no difference compared to live How else is a test supposed to feel or look like? Do they need different graphics? Should it be made in roblox? They said its a test. It plays like any other beta would. Its temporary. It has new features in it. It makes no financial sense to do or change to longterm.

The performance issues are clearly code based and only got worse over time as zos introduced more systems ontop of more systems while butchering and changing the original systems of the game away from their original design intent. Do you remember doing multi variable equations in math class? There is no simple ONE answer like turning off proc sets or crosshealing. There are systemwide performance issues across the board that can play into each other.

AoEs hit 10 people
The skill has 3-4 effects
The skill heals 10 people
The heal is over 30 seconds and ticks 30 times
The skill damages 10 people
The damage is over 30 seconds and ticks 30 times.
Each of those 20 people can proc effects off sets
Each of those people has up to 4 proc bonuses on their gear
The effects stack infinitely vs the number of players available so lets throw 30 players casting
etc.......

so 10x 4x 10x 30x 10x 30x 4x 30x......... All from one button press. Somehow people think its not this bloated code and instead is a magical switch in the zos server room that they can flip and improve or ruin performance.

MincMincMinc · August 26

Sluggy wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right here you are talking 9 more vengeance tests probably in this order and you are back at live building. At the current rate every 3 or so months we are talking 2 years of development. Maybe more if they do rule tests like disabling crosshealing or buff/hot stacking. By the time these get added, we are essentially back at live combat with better coded less bloated skills. If anything maybe zos just brings back in the other elements after they finish doing the skill system pass to separate pve and pvp.....effectively jumping past a ton of tests. For instance we did tests a long time ago with procs and noprocs, they had some benefit, people enjoyed the combat more since it was cleaner, but it was no silver bullet. Zos also didnt pick up on the fact that when people say "proc set" they really mean effect sets like sloads or vipers .......not banning stat procs like clever alch.

This is exactly what I've been worried about and constantly banging on about since the first test ended. Thank you for being the first person ever to actually acknowledge this issue.

Let's take a moment to assess the reality of the situation from a business standpoint. The player base for PvP in this game is minuscule. Games like Concord were absolute failures, garnering such a small playerbase that it would have taken decades to earn back on investment assuming it was completely free to operate the servers and process the transactions (and had whales spending upwards of a thousand dollars a day each!). As a result they shutdown within days of startup. Yet that game had likely similar numbers of players compared to ESO's PvP. Considering those prospects, what's the likelihood that ZoS will be willing to invest anything substantial into this long term? Short term even? Obviously we're talking different companies with different plans and infrastructure. But at the end of the day they are all competing for the same market that has the same 24 hours in a day to spend on any given live service. ESO has the advantage of being what appears to be a sustainable and well-established product at this point. But again, major investment into something with likely no real return doesn't look realistic. My takeaway from that is that they probably have, like, five people working on this when nothing else serious is happening. And unless they can make their changes with basically no impact on the rest of the teams then it just won't be approved.

Remember the goal of a company is to make money and ensure that in the future they continue making money. Where is the money in vengeance? Zos clearly sees a market for pvp as that was the main draw to the game originally. How do vengeance pvpers make them money long term? You will inevitably need dlc and purchasable unlocks from dungeons and content. Meaning the game basically has to have gear, so no point in worrying about that aspect. They would be shooting themselves in the foot if they didnt allow dlc unlocks to be used in pvp.

Pop wise steamcharts is around 12k maybe 14k if we want to include older TESO players like me, but I think a vast majority are on steam now. So split that up to 7k players PCNA. Vengeance supposedly reached the original cyrodil values of 1800 players. Meanwhile BGs still probably had around 1k players. So people interested in pvp probably comes out to around 2.5k to 3k out of 7k.........which is significant considering probably half of the remaining 4k players are likely just daily logins to boost corporate meeting numbers and make the bean counters happy.

Early on in eso pvp was a core part, it basically was the endgame until trials and quarterly dlc quotas started coming out. Which took all resources away from maintaining PvP's functionality. Which is funny, because PvP literally sells itself with next to no design effort compared to PvE. You can watch the PvE number grabbing on the steamcharts, where after every PvE dlc release there is an influx for about a week. However PvP players and content tends to just keep making people login daily to play. Their business becomes much more stable and less nail bitting if players are consistently PLAYING the game.

licenturion · August 26

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Which is funny, because PvP literally sells itself with next to no design effort compared to PvE. You can watch the PvE number grabbing on the steamcharts, where after every PvE dlc release there is an influx for about a week. However PvP players and content tends to just keep making people login daily to play. Their business becomes much more stable and less nail bitting if players are consistently PLAYING the game.

Pretty sure the numbers and telemetry is not aligned with your way of reasoning. Otherwise ZOS wouldn’t go all in on PvE with zones, loads of dungeons, trials, furnishing, infinite archive and even stuff like swimming mounts for the past 8 years.

It is not about daily logins or concurrent players. It is about how much people are spending on DLC, cosmetics, housing, mounts etc. And according to the past 8 years you can conclude that that makes significant more money than a few loyal PvP players who don’t spend much. If business analytics would have shown that the PvP centric approach was better, they would have gone that way.

MincMincMinc · August 26

licenturion wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Which is funny, because PvP literally sells itself with next to no design effort compared to PvE. You can watch the PvE number grabbing on the steamcharts, where after every PvE dlc release there is an influx for about a week. However PvP players and content tends to just keep making people login daily to play. Their business becomes much more stable and less nail bitting if players are consistently PLAYING the game.

Pretty sure the numbers and telemetry is not aligned with your way of reasoning. Otherwise ZOS wouldn’t go all in on PvE with zones, loads of dungeons, trials, furnishing, infinite archive and even stuff like swimming mounts for the past 8 years.

It is not about daily logins or concurrent players. It is about how much people are spending on DLC, cosmetics, housing, mounts etc. And according to the past 8 years you can conclude that that makes significant more money than a few loyal PvP players who don’t spend much. If business analytics would have shown that the PvP centric approach was better, they would have gone that way.

PvP players want to buy mounts as much as PvE players.....its a cosmetic. Try to explain LoL, Dota, fortnite or Counterstrike skins and tell me pvp players never spend money.

Its just that there is practically no return on pvp updates. The population is a bandwagon that keeps itself stable and entertained. You only have to do work if the population is rapidly dying. They basically just have to throw wood on the fire and wait a couple of years. Considering they are moving to more seasonal simple releases it probably makes sense to reinforce the pvp to maintain this stable portion of the playerbase.

Risk wise they 10 years later still dont have an answer to cyrodil performance. Business wise that is a brick wall when all of your design team just holds their hands up and shrugs anytime PvP is mentioned. Once they build up a cusion of extra cash, they can attempt at opening up that market again by spending money on testing for a fix.

If you look at PvE releases there is typically a short inconsistent surge in playercount, however if you look over time this surge has become less and less and less. So much so that you can hardly tell a dlc released. Good chance this is the reason they are going away from bigger releases and are looking for other forms of content consistency like the writhing wall event to spread out PvE content to be more consistent.

licenturion · August 26

MincMincMinc wrote: »

PvP players want to buy mounts as much as PvE players.....its a cosmetic. Try to explain LoL, Dota, fortnite or Counterstrike skins and tell me pvp players never spend money.

This is a very good point.

But the reason why people buy expensive skins is because these PvP only games get loads of content to keep people entertained on a monthly basis and the developers put as much work in this than ZOS does in PvE.

Fortnite has a new giant map each season, concerts, cross overs, special modes. Call Of Duty gets like 5 maps every 3 months with a handfull new weapons and weekly events with free stuff. Overwatch and Rivals get new heroes, perks, teamup abilities and extra gameplay modes every 3 months.

Trying to appease both PvP and PvE crowds requires an insane amount of investment and most games fail doing both. Overwatch tried PvE but failed miserable, Diablo 4 PvP zones are dead, Division 2 deadzones are being camped by the same five Discord sweats and PvP in Destiny 2 is an afterthought...

So usually publishers are forced to pick a lane to focus on. And for ESO they choose to focus most development efforts in PvE. And seeing the game is still alive after 11 years, it seems like they made some good calls along the way.

If ZOS want to increase the population of PvP they need to come up with a barrage of cool entertaining stuff. Look how popular Vengeance was. They need special events, change the cyrodil map, introduce new weapons and classes, etc. One change every 7 years like they did with battlegrounds is not enough in this day and age.

GloatingSwine · August 26

MincMincMinc wrote: »

so 10x 4x 10x 30x 10x 30x 4x 30x......... All from one button press. Somehow people think its not this bloated code and instead is a magical switch in the zos server room that they can flip and improve or ruin performance.

Clearly they just need to put more coffee beans in the hamster feed and performance goes up. Right?

Sluggy · August 26

@MincMincMinc Well, we can argue about what the player counts and buisness directions are until the cows come home. Most of that will reveal itself over time either way. The main point you made and I 100% agree with is that this process is glacial. I'd be feeling nervous if I was conducting tests like this only once a month.

MincMincMinc · August 26

licenturion wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

PvP players want to buy mounts as much as PvE players.....its a cosmetic. Try to explain LoL, Dota, fortnite or Counterstrike skins and tell me pvp players never spend money.

This is a very good point.

But the reason why people buy expensive skins is because these PvP only games get loads of content to keep people entertained on a monthly basis and the developers put as much work in this than ZOS does in PvE.

So usually publishers are forced to pick a lane to focus on. And for ESO they choose to focus most development efforts in PvE. And seeing the game is still alive after 11 years, it seems like they made some good calls along the way.

IDK, hard for me to agree with after playing since 2014 and meeting thousands of players over the years who all pay into cosmetics, mounts, race changes for stats, eso+ and chapters for p2w meta like monomyth or warden or scribing. Whether it was for the fashion souls, or clout, or p2w meta humping.

Just because most pvpers dont do trials or vet hardmodes, doesnt mean they dont buy dlc to farm the necessary items. I quite literally bought the last chapter just for monomyth alone. 50$ is 50$ whether i play the dungeons or trials doesnt matter.

They probably would have done more pvp releases if they didnt hit a brick wall performance wise. Their biggest fault was probably trying to keep eso PvP and PvE on the same rules and stat thresholds. Where the changes tugged in opposite directions. Like how PvE early on demanded that they made over time effects stack, but in PvP performance wise the server can't handle hundreds of players in small areas stacking effects.

MincMincMinc · August 26

Sluggy wrote: »

@MincMincMinc Well, we can argue about what the player counts and buisness directions are until the cows come home. Most of that will reveal itself over time either way. The main point you made and I 100% agree with is that this process is glacial. I'd be feeling nervous if I was conducting tests like this only once a month.

The timing is the other thing I dont get why people are complaining. So far we have had 2 tests about 12 weeks apart. They probably came up with a list of test ideas in order and adjust it after every test.

Even here is a basic timeline of the development. This is practically 10 weeks of work with an extra 2 weeks for filler.

Vengeance 1 test data collection, Combat team begins working on test 2
Engineering goes over data, internal meeting
Engineering meeting presentation
Top level meeting maybe changing combat team direction for the 3rd test depending on results
PTS starts
Combat team introduces vengeance changes on pts
PTS fixes
PTS fixes
Combat team preps for background testing
Vengeance Test 2

Sluggy · August 26

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

@MincMincMinc Well, we can argue about what the player counts and buisness directions are until the cows come home. Most of that will reveal itself over time either way. The main point you made and I 100% agree with is that this process is glacial. I'd be feeling nervous if I was conducting tests like this only once a month.

The timing is the other thing I dont get why people are complaining. So far we have had 2 tests about 12 weeks apart. They probably came up with a list of test ideas in order and adjust it after every test.

Even here is a basic timeline of the development. This is practically 10 weeks of work with an extra 2 weeks for filler.
Vengeance 1 test data collection, Combat team begins working on test 2

Engineering goes over data, internal meeting

Engineering meeting presentation

Top level meeting maybe changing combat team direction for the 3rd test depending on results

PTS starts

Combat team introduces vengeance changes on pts

PTS fixes

PTS fixes

Combat team preps for background testing

Vengeance Test 2

Ten weeks of 'work' because it sat on the PTS for six weeks, maybe. Unless they were migrating everything from their scripting tools to hardcoding directly in the engine (which actually would then make much more sense for the timeline) I don't see how anyone spends three months banging out a couple dozen skills. I'm willing to bet I could learn the scripting language and editing tools, familiarize myself with the API, and scratch it out inside of a week. Give management another two weeks to debate and suggest last minute changes. Still within a month.

MincMincMinc · August 26

Sluggy wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

@MincMincMinc Well, we can argue about what the player counts and buisness directions are until the cows come home. Most of that will reveal itself over time either way. The main point you made and I 100% agree with is that this process is glacial. I'd be feeling nervous if I was conducting tests like this only once a month.

The timing is the other thing I dont get why people are complaining. So far we have had 2 tests about 12 weeks apart. They probably came up with a list of test ideas in order and adjust it after every test.

Even here is a basic timeline of the development. This is practically 10 weeks of work with an extra 2 weeks for filler.
Vengeance 1 test data collection, Combat team begins working on test 2

Engineering goes over data, internal meeting

Engineering meeting presentation

Top level meeting maybe changing combat team direction for the 3rd test depending on results

PTS starts

Combat team introduces vengeance changes on pts

PTS fixes

PTS fixes

Combat team preps for background testing

Vengeance Test 2

Ten weeks of 'work' because it sat on the PTS for six weeks, maybe. Unless they were migrating everything from their scripting tools to hardcoding directly in the engine (which actually would then make much more sense for the timeline) I don't see how anyone spends three months banging out a couple dozen skills. I'm willing to bet I could learn the scripting language and editing tools, familiarize myself with the API, and scratch it out inside of a week. Give management another two weeks to debate and suggest last minute changes. Still within a month.

Go download unreal engine, granted its probably so much more user friendly. It only took me about a month without any prior knowledge to recreate all of ESO's movement mechanics, blocking, light/heavy attacking. Basic skill system, item pickups, resource system

But yeah, the actual work is probably a fraction of the time, meetings and briefing higher ups probably take up half of the time. Granted I think right now half of the vengeance test they arent even telling us the back end things they are playing with. Its not like we expect armor skills or the guild skills to be the most taxing thing on the server.

YandereGirlfriend · August 26

licenturion wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Which is funny, because PvP literally sells itself with next to no design effort compared to PvE. You can watch the PvE number grabbing on the steamcharts, where after every PvE dlc release there is an influx for about a week. However PvP players and content tends to just keep making people login daily to play. Their business becomes much more stable and less nail bitting if players are consistently PLAYING the game.

Pretty sure the numbers and telemetry is not aligned with your way of reasoning. Otherwise ZOS wouldn’t go all in on PvE with zones, loads of dungeons, trials, furnishing, infinite archive and even stuff like swimming mounts for the past 8 years.

It is not about daily logins or concurrent players. It is about how much people are spending on DLC, cosmetics, housing, mounts etc. And according to the past 8 years you can conclude that that makes significant more money than a few loyal PvP players who don’t spend much. If business analytics would have shown that the PvP centric approach was better, they would have gone that way.

Honestly, it is a massively blown opportunity to cash-in on PvP players, who are some of the most peacocking and vain players in the game. But the issue is that there is basically nothing to unlock or earn with your time or skill spent in the game mode.

Where are the PvP-only personalities, mounts, skins, and flashy weapons packs? Have a ladder season where the winner gets something insane that is gone forever after the season ends. Give players an actual reason to come to the game mode rather than letting it go to seed, which seems to have been the strategy over the last many years.

BXR_Lonestar · August 28

I've played PVP more than any other content the past year+ and I can tell you that vengeance was a breath of fresh air. Massive fights with 150+ participants without performance issues, no pulls and bombs constantly blowing you up (and yes, I know how to block, but if someone gets blown up next to you, you are going to die from VD), seige played a critical role in almost every large battle. It was a ton of fun. And this is coming from someone who thought I would hate it going into it.

With that said, I understand the concern about the population basically being event driven, but the same can be said even of MYM, where population always starts really high and then it tapers off. That is the hazard of catering to the casuals, which Vengeance arguably does because you're basically on the same playing field as everyone else in terms of builds, skills, etc. Casuals come and play when it benefits them and they leave to play something else as soon as something else catches their eye. That's just how it is. But even towards the end of Vengeance, I was able to get into some massive fights that were so much fun to play. I think it was the last day of Vengeance when my blues defended Ash against a massive host of reds AND yellows and we got a 250k+ D-Tick during that fight. It was just plain awesome!

One thing that I would like them to take a look at is how they calculate awarding alliance points though. Sometimes it IS disappointing to fight for a an objective for over a half hour just to see such a small tick pop. I don't know how it happens, you'll see LOTS of combatants, lots of kills on both sides, lots of siege damage, but barely any alliance points - how?! We should be getting rewards for burning seige, damage to walls/doors, they should stop curbing AP gain for repeatedly killing the same parties, etc. A big fight deserves a big tick.

MincMincMinc · August 28

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

I've played PVP more than any other content the past year+ and I can tell you that vengeance was a breath of fresh air. Massive fights with 150+ participants without performance issues, no pulls and bombs constantly blowing you up (and yes, I know how to block, but if someone gets blown up next to you, you are going to die from VD), seige played a critical role in almost every large battle. It was a ton of fun. And this is coming from someone who thought I would hate it going into it.

With that said, I understand the concern about the population basically being event driven, but the same can be said even of MYM, where population always starts really high and then it tapers off. That is the hazard of catering to the casuals, which Vengeance arguably does because you're basically on the same playing field as everyone else in terms of builds, skills, etc. Casuals come and play when it benefits them and they leave to play something else as soon as something else catches their eye. That's just how it is. But even towards the end of Vengeance, I was able to get into some massive fights that were so much fun to play. I think it was the last day of Vengeance when my blues defended Ash against a massive host of reds AND yellows and we got a 250k+ D-Tick during that fight. It was just plain awesome!

One thing that I would like them to take a look at is how they calculate awarding alliance points though. Sometimes it IS disappointing to fight for a an objective for over a half hour just to see such a small tick pop. I don't know how it happens, you'll see LOTS of combatants, lots of kills on both sides, lots of siege damage, but barely any alliance points - how?! We should be getting rewards for burning seige, damage to walls/doors, they should stop curbing AP gain for repeatedly killing the same parties, etc. A big fight deserves a big tick.

Well the problem with MyM is that we are NOT seeing those event population spikes. There is hardly a difference now during MyM player wise. Before the PvP population used to get diluted by the influx in pve players so much so that the lag actually would decrease from the lack of consolidated calculations. Now adays you can sit at the quester towns and there may be one or two people an hour instead of 40-50 player groups constantly at each town.

PvP endgame is just so far unobtainable for new players and pve players that you can't participate. The group set comp meta essentially requires you to either be in a dedicated ball group or a guild group. By comparison the solo and casual crowd using a 5 piece bonus will maybe get procs that do 450wd......where a group comp gets sets that do 300wd or more on 12 people. So basically just because they are grouped, their 5 piece bonus is now a 3600wd set. Effectively splitting the playerbase completely apart. (not to mention at the same time they are drastically adding ticks to the server)

Solo, smallman, new players................................................ Guild zerg groups vs ball groups

JustLovely · August 28

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

an end around to avoid doing the hard work and financial investments needed to restore cyrodiil performance to 2018-2019

Performance sucked during those years. I was zerglording 60+ on EP side a lot during that time before quitting the game for a while mid 2019. Nowhere near the level of the 1.X days, excluding the infamous 1.3 Lighting Patch. There was maybe one good performance patch 2.5 after I returned from a year break, then they wrecked it again.

They're not going to invest in redoing the same unprofitable failed product, sorry.

If live Cyrodiil is a fail now for you, why are you still posting about it multiple times daily? Time for you to move on. (yes, I know who you are and was in your guild briefly for a while on EP. But it really does seem like it's time for you to move on, judging by your posts.)

Performance didn't suck from 2015-2019 give or take. And population caps were triple or more what they are today. I'd understand reverting Cyrodiil to v1.6. That could almost make sense. Vengeance is just no skill trash zerging with the same poor performance that live has. So no point to vengeance at all.

Major_Mangle · August 28

My honest guess with Vengeance is that ZOS plan to prepare the game for potential future cross-play, and mixing console/PC with the current coding/system will most likely be quite the challenge, so from that PoV it makes sense to push/force people into whatever end product Vengeance will be. I support Vengeance as a test (and only as a test to collect data because I don´t want PvP to become more simplistic or anything close to Vengeance), but knowing ZOS they´ll most likely "force" people into it further down the road one way or another (yes I´m a bit skeptical but only because how ZOS did a 180 with no-proc many years ago, so I´ll remain doubtful/skeptical until ZOS come clean and are honest with their true intentions with Vengeance)

MincMincMinc · August 28

Major_Mangle wrote: »

My honest guess with Vengeance is that ZOS plan to prepare the game for potential future cross-play, and mixing console/PC with the current coding/system will most likely be quite the challenge, so from that PoV it makes sense to push/force people into whatever end product Vengeance will be. I support Vengeance as a test (and only as a test to collect data because I don´t want PvP to become more simplistic or anything close to Vengeance), but knowing ZOS they´ll most likely "force" people into it further down the road one way or another (yes I´m a bit skeptical but only because how ZOS did a 180 with no-proc many years ago, so I´ll remain doubtful/skeptical until ZOS come clean and are honest with their true intentions with Vengeance)

I still can't understand the doom sayers who make up their own conspiracy theory of zos implementing vengeance as is and that is their sole plan for the next 20 years of the game.....Even just financially it makes no sense as their whole PvP population would have no reason to ever buy dlc or eso+ again. Which is practically just deciding to chop off an arm and a leg.

At worst, nothing happens and they just continue with live as is until Greyhost collapses like the other campaigns did.

At best, zos splits pve and pvp making the streamlined purpose feeling skills and adding in and reworking other systems as we go. While they also make game rule changes like no cross healing, no group sets, no over time or effect stacking.

In reality I could see them just implementing the skills back into live after they bring passives and morphs back. The problem here is that the different systems in the game would be unbalanced. Like my player output right now has a certain balance between my active skills vs my item sets. What happens when we take a current live proc set which is standardized against live's 3x bloated skills, and compare it vs a streamlined vengeance skill? Suddenly combat becomes even more of a pokemon match.

fizzybeef · August 28

Vengeance is the nail in the coffin

xylena_lazarow · August 28

JustLovely wrote: »

If live Cyrodiil is a fail now for you, why are you still posting about it multiple times daily?

Better PvP here on the forums than in game... /s

I haven't played since June but I like keeping up with the game and staying connected to the community. I'll be back to check out Vengeance on the 22nd, fingers crossed the Meatbags are enough for large scale.

MincMincMinc · August 28

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

If live Cyrodiil is a fail now for you, why are you still posting about it multiple times daily?

Better PvP here on the forums than in game... /s

I haven't played since June but I like keeping up with the game and staying connected to the community. I'll be back to check out Vengeance on the 22nd, fingers crossed the Meatbags are enough for large scale.

Really gotta push zos to try some other game rule changes as they add more systems back into the game. Considering the biggest advantage to Vengeance is being split away from PvE. Key game rules can change like:

No crosshealing/buffing received or outgoing for large groups of 5+ players
Aoe caps on healing, not on damage
or AoE higher costs on morphs with higher caps
Effects not stacking
- Dots/hots would not stack with each other like they used to to prevent abuse
- aoe/allied Hots could cleanse themselves upon over healing.....maybe only certain solo and small group morphs like resolving vigor or other self hots can linger.
- Proc set effects would ideally have a cooldown that prevents the same player from receiving 6 sloads procs. This not only limits potential calcs, but soft limits game breaking meta proc sets. Likely any proc effect set like sloads or RoA or DC or Tarnished should have a cooldown on both the caster and the receiver side to prevent abuse.

xylena_lazarow · August 28

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Really gotta push zos to try some other game rule changes as they add more systems back into the game.

Is there something the entire player base wants? We got Meatbags by popular request. I'd avoid anything too complicated sounding or too overly specific. My own posts like this have focused on two things, the first being Resto heal stacking in large scale. Meatbags help, but with the damage AoE caps stuck the same as the healing AoE caps, it's already become too easy to stall fights by stacking healers, a very hated problem on Full Build PvP also.

Second is NB infinite sustain with Siphoning + Healy Cloak breaking the small scale meta. Now that you can round out your kit for whatever playstyle, there's little to no reason to play anything but NB in Vengeance small scale.