How to Kill a community

Eriboss5 · September 29

Hey everyone,

I wanted to open up a discussion (or maybe just vent a little) about how the new "Vengeance" PvP server has really hurt the classic Greyhost PvP experience. I know ZOS introduced Vengeance to address some long-standing issues—queue times, performance, population balance, etc.—but in the process, it feels like they’ve gutted what made Greyhost such a unique and vibrant part of Cyrodiil.

1. Population Drain

Since Vengeance launched, Greyhost feels like a ghost town. During prime time, we used to have full queues and intense battles around every corner—Keeps constantly flipping, massive coordinated fights, and real strategy. Now? It's barely active. Half the alliances don’t even bother showing up. The competitive edge is gone.

2. Split Community

Instead of fixing the underlying issues with Cyrodiil, they just created a separate instance and split the community. The PvP community in ESO is already niche, and now we had servers cannibalizing the same player base. It’s harder than ever to find organized groups unless you’re already deep into a guild and even then as a GM it is hard to run.

3. Sweaty Meta vs. Casual Fights

Greyhost always had a nice balance of hardcore and casual players. You could run solo, do small-scale fights, or jump into massive zergs. Now, Vengeance has turned into a sweaty, no skill casual zerg PvP fest with all the low-end players flocking there. Meanwhile, Greyhost is left with randoms, disorganized pugs, and barely enough activity to sustain a siege.

4. Loss of Identity

Greyhost had its own identity. The guild rivalries, the politics, the alliances—those took years to build. Vengeance reset all of that. Now it's just another PvP instance, without the history, without the community culture. It doesn’t feel like Cyrodiil anymore—it feels like an eSports lobby.

I’m not saying Vengeance shouldn't exist, but it shouldn't have ever been a question to have its existence in the first place. had to be a better way to integrate it without killing off what made Greyhost special. Thank you ZOS for damaging the hard work and effort ALL FACTIONS have put into creating such a fun, competitive environment just to do "testing" on issues that never seem to be solved. 10+ years and still having trouble with the mail system and why do I have to reload UI to open mail or port to another area? crazy. Maybe we should host a Vengece for PvE and make it so PvErs get NO DROPS. No Gold. No Craftable gear to have a chance to figure that bug out. Sounds like a great idea.

Curious to hear your thoughts—have you stuck with Greyhost? Switched to Vengeance? Is there still hope for the old server, or is it time to come to terms that whoever is creating these "ideas" wants to kill the PvP community.

MISTFORMBZZZ · September 29

My pvp guild (30 people) has not set a foot into a vengeance after the first one and we dont plan to.
Unfortunatily they even keep vengeance up for two days longer on Consoles wich means the bars stay like this and nobody is playing.

I have recieved messages in my guild of people who said they deleted the game, they canceled eso plus sub or are at least upset of how we are getting threated as players, with either NONE or WRONG communication regarding vengeance.

And as someone who only plays pvp with his guild, i can say - if zos with their politic makes my guild fall apart, im gone aswell.

fizzybeef · September 29

About wrong communication.

And we have the lowest population anyway, now pvp will become a 6v6v6 mode with the population after vengeance

tomofhyrule · September 29

I’m just tired at this point.

Vengeance 3 really didn’t have many changes from Vengeance 2 (meatbags that don’t leave a ground DoT and a few skill lines that don’t see much use in PvP), but now there’s no Pursuit/AP bonus pushing people in. It’s understandable that the population wasn’t capped this week.

But Vengeance 4 is going to be revealing.

We know from PTS that Vengeance 4 will feature ‘loadouts’ and ‘perks,’ each with a new UI and set of icons. They would not have made a whole series of assets if this was still “only a test.” It’s patently obvious Vengeance, in some form, will be a permanent fixture in the near future.

Now from the U48 non-reveal stream, we know that they’ll do the Vengeance 4 test in December and they did suggest it would also have Grey Host open as well that round, so I assume the eventual plan is to have Grey Host and Vengeance as the final version (I totally expect Icereach to go, and very likely Ravenwatch will get the axe as well. Blackreach is a maybe). They even said U49 would bring a Vengeance 5 test to play with balance of abilities and healing output as well.
(Now if only they said that there would be balance in the rest of the game, but I guess it’s more important to make Vengeance a thing instead of trying to do any balance after Subclassing. That’s actually one of the biggest frustrations with U48 on PTS is the fact that basically no combat changes were done outside of Vengeance… and U47 also was incredibly light on balance as well)

Honestly, from everything that’s happened this year: Subclassing, Vengeance, the streams and the Reddit AMA… I really get the feeling that ZOS’s main ideology right now is “ESO is only for solo players who don’t want to group with or against other people!” It feels like they’ve spent this whole year trying as hard as possible to shove vet players (particularly endgame PvE and PvP) out to make room for new players who have a very “ew other people” outlook.
And all I can say is… good luck with that.

Sarannah · September 29

Eriboss5 wrote: »

1. Population Drain

Since Vengeance launched, Greyhost feels like a ghost town. During prime time, we used to have full queues and intense battles around every corner—Keeps constantly flipping, massive coordinated fights, and real strategy. Now? It's barely active. Half the alliances don’t even bother showing up. The competitive edge is gone.

Well, to be fair there was even a PvE event(undaunted) AND vengeance campaign active at the same time. But if vengeance was more popular, doesn't that mean that the original PvP itself is the problem with PvP? And that choosing to go forward with vengeance is the way to go?

Eriboss5 wrote: »

2. Split Community

Instead of fixing the underlying issues with Cyrodiil, they just created a separate instance and split the community. The PvP community in ESO is already niche, and now we had servers cannibalizing the same player base. It’s harder than ever to find organized groups unless you’re already deep into a guild and even then as a GM it is hard to run.

So basically, players choose vengeance over the current PvP. To me that is quite telling for how to move forward for ZOS. Either keep catering PvP to the handful of players who want this current PvP, or go with the popular and more accessible vengeance PvP.

But this could all be player perception, as only ZOS has the exact player numbers for each PvP style/campaign. Would love to see these myself!

Eriboss5 wrote: »

3. Sweaty Meta vs. Casual Fights

Greyhost always had a nice balance of hardcore and casual players. You could run solo, do small-scale fights, or jump into massive zergs. Now, Vengeance has turned into a sweaty, no skill casual zerg PvP fest with all the low-end players flocking there. Meanwhile, Greyhost is left with randoms, disorganized pugs, and barely enough activity to sustain a siege.

So basically, many players did not like being victims to others and choose real equal/fair PvP(vengeance) over being an easy target in a slaughterfest. If the population for the current PvP is really as low as you yourself state it is/was, is/was it really worth all that effort to try and fix all the issues with that PvP for all these years?!? Or could ZOS simply switch over to vengeance and be rid of the all the issues plagueing current PvP AND gain a larger PvP population at the same time?!?

You are stating it yourself, people opt out of the current PvP if they have the choice. Maybe ZOS could show us some numbers with vengeance vs current PvP, from this week(note: There was a PvE event going on at the same time).

Eriboss5 wrote: »

4. Loss of Identity

Greyhost had its own identity. The guild rivalries, the politics, the alliances—those took years to build. Vengeance reset all of that. Now it's just another PvP instance, without the history, without the community culture. It doesn’t feel like Cyrodiil anymore—it feels like an eSports lobby.

In e-sports everyone is on a level playingfield. Seems like that is a good thing for PvP, and for making PvP grow. If PvP requires too much of an investment, as current PvP does, it is not worth getting into for many players. They would pick another game where they can simply jump into the action at any time, something which the popular vengeance allows as well.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

I’m not saying Vengeance shouldn't exist, but it shouldn't have ever been a question to have its existence in the first place. had to be a better way to integrate it without killing off what made Greyhost special. Thank you ZOS for damaging the hard work and effort ALL FACTIONS have put into creating such a fun, competitive environment just to do "testing" on issues that never seem to be solved. 10+ years and still having trouble with the mail system and why do I have to reload UI to open mail or port to another area? crazy. Maybe we should host a Vengece for PvE and make it so PvErs get NO DROPS. No Gold. No Craftable gear to have a chance to figure that bug out. Sounds like a great idea.

It seems you are panicking about players choosing vengeance over current PvP. But if you have read all the posts over the years about PvP, you could have seen this coming. For the record, I doubt that even if ZOS were to ever make vengeance the main PvP, that they wouldn't leave a campaign with the current PvP active.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

Curious to hear your thoughts—have you stuck with Greyhost? Switched to Vengeance? Is there still hope for the old server, or is it time to come to terms that whoever is creating these "ideas" wants to kill the PvP community.

Would never want to enter the current PvP, even if they would 100 fold the rewards I would avoid it at all costs. I am not a PvPer, but vengeance would atleast entice me to hop in every now and then, as it was quite fun!
Yes, there is still hope for the old server, as I doubt even if the new main PvP were to become vengeace, the current PvP would not get atleast one server dedicated to it.
Noone is killing the PvP community. You even state it yourself, there is barely anyone in the current PvP when offered the choice between vengeance/current PvP. So is there even a community worthwhile for current PvP? Or should vengeance become the main ESO PvP style? Again, you yourself are stating the PvP community for the current PvP style is too low, and that most current style PvP players even choose vengeance over the current PvP style. As they, according to your post, did.

PS: Did not play vengeance test 3 this week, as I was busy with the undaunted event and RL stuff. Also, I already think the vengeance test 2 went too far with added abilities, and thought vengeance test 1 with only class abilities was perfect! Both balance and gameplay-wise, also loved seeing classes being actual classes.

CalamityCat · September 29

I don't think it's entirely fair to blame this all on Vengeance, given that it overlaps with subclassing. That's rather a large elephant in the room to ignore. I know in PvP circles Vengeance is the cause of all evils, but it's not the only culprit IMHO.

Lord_Hev · September 29

Eriboss5 wrote: »

Hey everyone,

Greyhost always had a nice balance of hardcore and casual players. You could run solo, do small-scale fights, or jump into massive zergs. Now, Vengeance has turned into a sweaty, no skill casual zerg PvP fest with all the low-end players flocking there. Meanwhile, Greyhost is left with randoms, disorganized pugs, and barely enough activity to sustain a siege.

Vengeance did nothing to do this. This decline happened steadily over a period starting 6 years ago. Influx of proc-sets, reconstruction system, stickerbook, and a disregard for balance turned a pvp zone that had a very healthy and vibrant population that supported all types of players of varying skill-levels into the soulless zone it is today. And because of the initial decline, the population shrinkage and lowered population caps & faction locks have only driven the nail deeper into the wound. And that timeframe is being generous, the great pvp dieing off started even further in the past, around the 1.7 era.

Can't really consider Greyhost a "community" if it's literally the only active campaign, and at that only capable of holding the same faces every single day. "Primetime" lagfest is just one keep fight, sometimes two. And the rest of the map is a barren ghost-town.

That said, the overall sentiment is sound. The problems are far more deep then just blaming it on Vengeance server. The population influx and casual zerging was a natural phenomenon back in the day. Sure, there were lag issues but people still flocked to multiple booming campaigns. Wasn't until all these influxes of different sets were created along with other dubious widespread balancing that the overall "balance" became increasingly binary and punishing. Combine that with the lag and lowered population caps, and there's the real recipe for killing a community and destroying interest.

Lord_Hev · September 29

CalamityCat wrote: »

I don't think it's entirely fair to blame this all on Vengeance, given that it overlaps with subclassing. That's rather a large elephant in the room to ignore. I know in PvP circles Vengeance is the cause of all evils, but it's not the only culprit IMHO.

The biggest elephant of all lol. Everyone is arcanist beaming in PvE. And everyone is using hurricane and firing off merciless resolve in PvP. Everyone looks the same and acts the same. Cyrodiil was a place all kinds of different builds and various levels of players would congregate and cause all kinds of mayhem, even with the lag. More hammering of the nail into the proverbial wound.

Stamicka · September 29

Eriboss5 wrote: »

I’m not saying Vengeance shouldn't exist, but it shouldn't have ever been a question to have its existence in the first place. had to be a better way to integrate it without killing off what made Greyhost special. Thank you ZOS for damaging the hard work and effort ALL FACTIONS have put into creating such a fun, competitive environment just to do "testing" on issues that never seem to be solved. 10+ years and still having trouble with the mail system and why do I have to reload UI to open mail or port to another area? crazy. Maybe we should host a Vengece for PvE and make it so PvErs get NO DROPS. No Gold. No Craftable gear to have a chance to figure that bug out. Sounds like a great idea.

Curious to hear your thoughts—have you stuck with Greyhost? Switched to Vengeance? Is there still hope for the old server, or is it time to come to terms that whoever is creating these "ideas" wants to kill the PvP community.

So first, is this an AI post? It does not feel like a human wrote it. In the case that this somehow is human written, I don't know of anyone who has this experience in Grey Host. Grey Host is either too laggy to play when pop capped or way too empty to have any fun in it.

Second, I'm not sure how you've concluded that Vengeance costed Grey Host it's identity and it's the reason it's dead. How did it do that?

PvP has had a shrinking population for 10 years now, it's just gotten critically low lately. This has nothing to do with Vengeance. There's years and years of issues that have never been addressed and that's before subclassing. Everyone has a point where they decide to quit ESO until something changes. The performance, balance, lack of community, broken sets, and now subclassing have all piled up. I think that subclassing and the lack of change was the final straw for the most dedicated of PvPers who have stuck around through everything. Don't try to pin this all on Vengeance.

Radiate77 · September 29

I’m gonna just quote myself here...

People have a habit of accrediting their personal problems with the reason why other people aren’t happy.

Let’s not ignore the fact that this is the lightest content year we’ve had so far, and we’ve had no new systems introduced; as Subclassing is just a remix of pre-existing content. Even the assets for Solstice are primarily reused Summerset and Murkmire structures.

I would be more inclined to believe the population is lower than ever, is more to do with the lack of an ESO Direct like the years prior, and that we’re following up “Spellcrafting” last year with nothing…

Eriboss5 · September 30

My favorite part about this post is how many opinions the PvE community has on the PvP community. I don’t believe many here would allow someone in a vet trial run with green gear and 160 CP with no trial gear. So does this mean that PvE shouldn’t have sets and amor and I should be able to just jump right into a trial and get God Slayer achievement just because math is hard and figuring out a good parse takes time?

I mean be forced to be a ZOS tester without consent and to be forced to test vengeance on the game that I’ve enjoyed for 10 years+ is how to kill a community. Maybe all events should be the same force all the PvE community to come to a halt and force its users to do a specific trial with preset damage dealing, healing, and tanking gear. Then there might be empathy toward pvp communities. Crazy how opinions are formed to say “vengeance is great” from people who have not even partaken in a group in PvP and believe they should be able to 1vX but have no skill to do so because they watched a skilled player online who took the time to figure out their build.

Want legitimate feedback about how amazing vengeance was. Hop into any PvP discord and look at the comments made toward it. Let’s just say they are very negative toward vengeance. People were cheering the minute greyhost came back up.

Eriboss5 · September 30

MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »

My pvp guild (30 people) has not set a foot into a vengeance after the first one and we dont plan to.
Unfortunatily they even keep vengeance up for two days longer on Consoles wich means the bars stay like this and nobody is playing.

I have recieved messages in my guild of people who said they deleted the game, they canceled eso plus sub or are at least upset of how we are getting threated as players, with either NONE or WRONG communication regarding vengeance.

And as someone who only plays pvp with his guild, i can say - if zos with their politic makes my guild fall apart, im gone aswell.

This is exactly my worry. I run a vampire pvp ball group guild with 192 members 60 which are active.
I am co GM for another guild that has been around for 10 years and is a PvP guild with over 400 members with 100 active. Thank goodness that there are other options for me to take my community and money elsewhere if push comes to shove. I don’t even want to know how much I’ve spent on eso but I know for sure that other devs might enjoy it more.

MincMincMinc · September 30

Stamicka wrote: »

Eriboss5 wrote: »

I’m not saying Vengeance shouldn't exist, but it shouldn't have ever been a question to have its existence in the first place. had to be a better way to integrate it without killing off what made Greyhost special. Thank you ZOS for damaging the hard work and effort ALL FACTIONS have put into creating such a fun, competitive environment just to do "testing" on issues that never seem to be solved. 10+ years and still having trouble with the mail system and why do I have to reload UI to open mail or port to another area? crazy. Maybe we should host a Vengece for PvE and make it so PvErs get NO DROPS. No Gold. No Craftable gear to have a chance to figure that bug out. Sounds like a great idea.

Curious to hear your thoughts—have you stuck with Greyhost? Switched to Vengeance? Is there still hope for the old server, or is it time to come to terms that whoever is creating these "ideas" wants to kill the PvP community.

So first, is this an AI post? It does not feel like a human wrote it. In the case that this somehow is human written, I don't know of anyone who has this experience in Grey Host. Grey Host is either too laggy to play when pop capped or way too empty to have any fun in it.

Second, I'm not sure how you've concluded that Vengeance costed Grey Host it's identity and it's the reason it's dead. How did it do that?

PvP has had a shrinking population for 10 years now, it's just gotten critically low lately. This has nothing to do with Vengeance. There's years and years of issues that have never been addressed and that's before subclassing. Everyone has a point where they decide to quit ESO until something changes. The performance, balance, lack of community, broken sets, and now subclassing have all piled up. I think that subclassing and the lack of change was the final straw for the most dedicated of PvPers who have stuck around through everything. Don't try to pin this all on Vengeance.

People have been around for a decade in a hardly functioning shell of a game that once was. Obviously a one week vacation test was the cause of nobody leaving. Lol

GH will be fine pvp players have been ignored for a decade now contributing to the game while making our own content. At the very least Wheeler in the last stream said u49 is the post subclassing adjustments which has pve and pvp balance in mind. GH isn't magically just going poof for another year or two. Plenty of time to keep pushing them to do more rule change tests and integrate item sets and other build elements in. Or push them to just split live pve and pvp so we can escape the pve power creep demand.

Should really be demanding another data stream considering they are late on the veng2 data stream by now. Waiting to see how they respond to the stuttering we saw in veng2 with the addition of aoe group over time skills. On the PTS stream they talked about being able to look at high lag or "server frame" logs of the server and see what skills are going off the most.

Veinblood1965 · September 30

I could make a long winded post but the title really hit home with me.

It's why I have barely played and once the other half of solstice hits I'm out when done with that. The community has been just totally devastated. Players who enjoy vendoring, PvP, tweaking builds have all just been so disheartened by unwanted changes that hardly anyone I have played with is left.

The sense of community has been killed in many areas.

Four_Fingers · September 30

Everybody is equal unless you play an Arcanist.

xMauiWaui · September 30

I dont get it. The Population was bad before the Test too. What dit i miss? I Play PC EU, Primetime was 2-3 Year ago from 17:00 - 24:00 with pop locked all allaince, during Week and on Weekend even on Midday 12:00 - 17:00 you got like half Bar to play with.

Now during Week in Primetime il see maybee half Bar at Prime, and Half Bar at Weekend Prime. Queue? Never was in a Queue since 1+ Year.

If i log into PVP theres everytime the same Player in the ranking list. Theres everytime the same Players i facing with. And if i see a new Player or even a Group, they disappear 1-2 Day ago into nirvana.

Cant get the Point. PVP is death anyway, if we go back 3+ Years, its a disaster.

yoyo420232 · September 30

It honestly feels the same in pve. U46 was the best update and ZOS killed it. I am in multiple trials discords and when U46 was live and people could actually do damage and complete content. The community was healthy and thriving now it’s a ghost town again. The vengeance test is happening now trials are buggy and even harder. People are tired of getting the shiny new new then getting it completely taken away. I’m honestly thinking of leaving eso myself. I enjoy playing with others but it’s hard when I log on and can’t even get into a dungeon as a healer during the undaunted event. It can take up to 5 minutes per run and that’s not that fun waiting around for a que to pop.

Eriboss5 · September 30

It seems you are panicking about players choosing vengeance over current PvP. But if you have read all the posts over the years about PvP, you could have seen this coming. For the record, I doubt that even if ZOS were to ever make vengeance the main PvP, that they wouldn't leave a campaign with the current PvP active.

I wouldn’t say I’m panicking about PvP players choosing vengeance over the current PvP. I’m more panicked about the PvE community having such an extreme irrational disconnect toward a PvP community that has been around for 10+ years and creating a false narrative on how great vengeance is. If the tables were turned and the people who achieved the highest levels of PvE were forced to lower their play style and forced to halt their community for a week they would be upset. Imagine if a trading guild could not trade. Imagine a questing guild only able to do 1 quest. Imagine a nodes farmer only able to fish. These are all examples of what being FORCED to test for a dev is. It’s terrible. It’s wrong. I didn’t pay money to be forced to help fix their problems.

Eriboss5 · September 30

yoyo420232 wrote: »

It honestly feels the same in pve. U46 was the best update and ZOS killed it. I am in multiple trials discords and when U46 was live and people could actually do damage and complete content. The community was healthy and thriving now it’s a ghost town again. The vengeance test is happening now trials are buggy and even harder. People are tired of getting the shiny new new then getting it completely taken away. I’m honestly thinking of leaving eso myself. I enjoy playing with others but it’s hard when I log on and can’t even get into a dungeon as a healer during the undaunted event. It can take up to 5 minutes per run and that’s not that fun waiting around for a que to pop.

This is not including the bugs involved with trying to Q and re Q and re Q to fix.

aetherix8 · September 30

In all honesty, this is hilarious.

Stamicka wrote: »

So first, is this an AI post? It does not feel like a human wrote it. In the case that this somehow is human written, I don't know of anyone who has this experience in Grey Host. Grey Host is either too laggy to play when pop capped or way too empty to have any fun in it.

Yeah I wondered too because it feels fairly passionless for venting, but I concluded that nah, AI argumentation can be way more coherent and convincing.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

Hey everyone,

I wanted to open up a discussion (or maybe just vent a little) about how the new "Vengeance" PvP server has really hurt the classic Greyhost PvP experience. I know ZOS introduced Vengeance to address some long-standing issues—queue times, performance, population balance, etc.—but in the process, it feels like they’ve gutted what made Greyhost such a unique and vibrant part of Cyrodiil.

Where do devs say Vengeance test is suppoused to fix population balance? Can anyone point me to such a claim from ZOS? (AI is known for inventing "facts", so who knows).

Eriboss5 wrote: »

1. Population Drain

Since Vengeance launched, Greyhost feels like a ghost town. During prime time, we used to have full queues and intense battles around every corner—Keeps constantly flipping, massive coordinated fights, and real strategy. Now? It's barely active. Half the alliances don’t even bother showing up. The competitive edge is gone.

I was reading posts here on forums complaining about PvP population drain way before Vengeance was even announced. Main reasons: lag, broken sets, general impression that players are screaming into the void when they point out issues with balance. Now also: subclassing.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

2. Split Community

Instead of fixing the underlying issues with Cyrodiil, they just created a separate instance and split the community. The PvP community in ESO is already niche, and now we had servers cannibalizing the same player base. It’s harder than ever to find organized groups unless you’re already deep into a guild and even then as a GM it is hard to run.

The community was already split earlier than Vengeance, over proc and no-proc, more precisely.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

3. Sweaty Meta vs. Casual Fights

Greyhost always had a nice balance of hardcore and casual players. You could run solo, do small-scale fights, or jump into massive zergs. Now, Vengeance has turned into a sweaty, no skill casual zerg PvP fest with all the low-end players flocking there. Meanwhile, Greyhost is left with randoms, disorganized pugs, and barely enough activity to sustain a siege.

What? That doesn't make any sense at all. So Vengeance sucks in all the no skill casual zerglings and the only ones left in GH are the no skill casual zerglings? (that's what disorganized pugs really are). Where are all the real main PvPers since beta? Where are all the true PvPers who rally tirelessly against Vengeance on this very forum? They said in the PvP subsection that they were going to take a week-long break till Vengeance is over. They praised GH countless of times. What happened to them!? I start to worry.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

4. Loss of Identity

Greyhost had its own identity. The guild rivalries, the politics, the alliances—those took years to build. Vengeance reset all of that. Now it's just another PvP instance, without the history, without the community culture. It doesn’t feel like Cyrodiil anymore—it feels like an eSports lobby.

I don't know about that, I never played GH and probably never will. I prefered no-proc RW.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

I’m not saying Vengeance shouldn't exist, but it shouldn't have ever been a question to have its existence in the first place. had to be a better way to integrate it without killing off what made Greyhost special. Thank you ZOS for damaging the hard work and effort ALL FACTIONS have put into creating such a fun, competitive environment just to do "testing" on issues that never seem to be solved. 10+ years and still having trouble with the mail system and why do I have to reload UI to open mail or port to another area? crazy. Maybe we should host a Vengece for PvE and make it so PvErs get NO DROPS. No Gold. No Craftable gear to have a chance to figure that bug out. Sounds like a great idea.

Curious to hear your thoughts—have you stuck with Greyhost? Switched to Vengeance? Is there still hope for the old server, or is it time to come to terms that whoever is creating these "ideas" wants to kill the PvP community.

Tests aren't concluded yet. There will be another in December. Perhaps we will see fixes once devs have tested everything they consider necessary?

Eriboss5 wrote: »

I mean be forced to be a ZOS tester without consent and to be forced to test vengeance on the game that I’ve enjoyed for 10 years+ is how to kill a community. Maybe all events should be the same force all the PvE community to come to a halt and force its users to do a specific trial with preset damage dealing, healing, and tanking gear. Then there might be empathy toward pvp communities. Crazy how opinions are formed to say “vengeance is great” from people who have not even partaken in a group in PvP and believe they should be able to 1vX but have no skill to do so because they watched a skilled player online who took the time to figure out their build.

I mean, it's not like devs have any of us at gunpoint while Vengeance is on. You're free to boycott it like many PvPers said they intend to do and they surely followed through. And if you really feel this way, a week of a break from this game could do you some good. Perhaps even more than a week.

Stamicka · September 30

aetherix8 wrote: »

In all honesty, this is hilarious.

Stamicka wrote: »

So first, is this an AI post? It does not feel like a human wrote it. In the case that this somehow is human written, I don't know of anyone who has this experience in Grey Host. Grey Host is either too laggy to play when pop capped or way too empty to have any fun in it.

Yeah I wondered too because it feels fairly passionless for venting, but I concluded that nah, AI argumentation can be way more coherent and convincing.

It has the "—" symbol a lot. I mainly see that with AI. Not many actual people use it like it's being used here.

The lack of coherence is exactly why I think it's an AI post. It's arguing from the perspective of a future event. ZOS announced that Vengeance would exist alongside Grey Host later this year. I think that whatever AI tool was used took this into account and that's why we see references to "splitting the community". It's trying to argue as if Vengeance and Grey Host are both campaigns that exist side by side with each other. This will happen in the future, but I'm guessing that the AI missed something around the way and thought it was happening now.

AI still isn't very good at writing from the perspective of an actual ESO player because it doesn't have lived experience.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

During prime time, we used to have full queues and intense battles around every corner—Keeps constantly flipping, massive coordinated fights, and real strategy. Now? It's barely active. Half the alliances don’t even bother showing up. The competitive edge is gone.

Real players know that for years there's actually very few fights on the map because the population caps are so low. It's a major complaint. Also "strategy" is referenced, but the players know how much nightcapping impacts scoring.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

Now, Vengeance has turned into a sweaty, no skill casual zerg PvP fest with all the low-end players flocking there.

This feels like AI nonsense to me. It's saying that Vengeance is sweaty, but also no skill somehow? It's just spitting out buzzwords that are seen in other PvP related rant posts and synthesizing them.

I'm not sure why we don't just post what we truly think?

JustLovely · September 30

At least they named the vengeance treatment accurately. ...vengeance against the PvP community.

aetherix8 · September 30

Stamicka wrote: »

aetherix8 wrote: »

In all honesty, this is hilarious.

Stamicka wrote: »

So first, is this an AI post? It does not feel like a human wrote it. In the case that this somehow is human written, I don't know of anyone who has this experience in Grey Host. Grey Host is either too laggy to play when pop capped or way too empty to have any fun in it.

Yeah I wondered too because it feels fairly passionless for venting, but I concluded that nah, AI argumentation can be way more coherent and convincing.

It has the "—" symbol a lot. I mainly see that with AI. Not many actual people use it like it's being used here.

The lack of coherence is exactly why I think it's an AI post. It's arguing from the perspective of a future event. ZOS announced that Vengeance would exist alongside Grey Host later this year. I think that whatever AI tool was used took this into account and that's why we see references to "splitting the community". It's trying to argue as if Vengeance and Grey Host are both campaigns that exist side by side with each other. This will happen in the future, but I'm guessing that the AI missed something around the way and thought it was happening now.

AI still isn't very good at writing from the perspective of an actual ESO player because it doesn't have lived experience.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

During prime time, we used to have full queues and intense battles around every corner—Keeps constantly flipping, massive coordinated fights, and real strategy. Now? It's barely active. Half the alliances don’t even bother showing up. The competitive edge is gone.

Real players know that for years there's actually very few fights on the map because the population caps are so low. It's a major complaint. Also "strategy" is referenced, but the players know how much nightcapping impacts scoring.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

Now, Vengeance has turned into a sweaty, no skill casual zerg PvP fest with all the low-end players flocking there.

This feels like AI nonsense to me. It's saying that Vengeance is sweaty, but also no skill somehow? It's just spitting out buzzwords that are seen in other PvP related rant posts and synthesizing them.

I'm not sure why we don't just post what we truly think?

You might be right.

I'm not sure about the "—" symbol, as it only appears 3 times in the OP, and only once I really can't justify it: the first time Vengeance is mentioned by name. Other two are "testing" (a lot of players don't believe anymore Vengeance is just a test, but rather a mode in development), and "ideas" (to dismiss and belittle actual ideas as some kind of delirium on the part of devs). So in these two cases, I see the use of this symbol as a means to transmit the author's feelings implicitly.

Otherwise, I totally agree. It was a pretty weird experience to read it for the first time, like GH and Vengeance are both permanent modes already enabled at the same time. It reads so delusional that it makes it hilarious.

It might well be that OP helped themselves with an AI tool to generate a "nice" opening post, then edited it to make it look authentic (like the penultimate paragraph where Vengeance is misspelled as Vengece). Or, the list part that is a summary of all that was said against Vengeance in those far too many threads is fully AI generated and only the two last paragraphs are actually written by a human.

manukartofanu · September 30

yoyo420232 wrote: »

It honestly feels the same in pve. U46 was the best update and ZOS killed it. I am in multiple trials discords and when U46 was live and people could actually do damage and complete content. The community was healthy and thriving now it’s a ghost town again. The vengeance test is happening now trials are buggy and even harder. People are tired of getting the shiny new new then getting it completely taken away. I’m honestly thinking of leaving eso myself. I enjoy playing with others but it’s hard when I log on and can’t even get into a dungeon as a healer during the undaunted event. It can take up to 5 minutes per run and that’s not that fun waiting around for a que to pop.

U46 was another nail in the coffin. The only thing keeping people in the game was the unfinished content. In 3 months they cleared everything they wanted and left. And it all started with the Arcanist — left un-nerfed for too long, enabling players to rush from early game to late game too quickly, clear difficult content, and move on. People finish everything faster than they have time to actually enjoy the game, and that’s the core problem.

And with updates like these there’s always the same problem. They give a short-term boost in player numbers, and that can always be used to justify their 'success.' But in reality, it’s exactly those updates that destroy the long-term player base — and they do it irreversibly.

Varana · October 1

Eriboss5 wrote: »

During prime time, we used to have full queues and intense battles around every corner—Keeps constantly flipping, massive coordinated fights, and real strategy. ... You could ... jump into massive zergs.

Sorry but what?

Describing anything in PvP during the last years as "massive" * is weirdly out of touch. It's wishful thinking at best and has nothing to do with reality.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

Instead of fixing the underlying issues with Cyrodiil

But they are trying to fix the underlying issues. The fix is called "Vengeance".

Over the years, they've tried quite a lot of things, and most of them involved scaling down the game substantially to make Cyrodiil halfway playable. Slashing population caps, halving group sizes, removing almost all set effects... And none of those have made a noticeable difference. Assuming Cyrodiil is "fixable" by conventional means is just closing your eyes and pretending the world isn't there.

Instead, this time, they're rebuilding abilities and many parts of combat from the ground up (as much as possible without making a new game), specifically for Cyrodiil. Which had much better results than anything they've tried so far, but admittedly also sacrificed a lot. Where the final line will be drawn, remains to be seen.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

a sweaty, no skill casual

As Stamicka said, this is like saying "wet fire".

Eriboss5 wrote: »

I don’t believe many here would allow someone in a vet trial run with green gear and 160 CP with no trial gear.

The difference is that this option does exist. There are trials that you can run that way, and still clear. I've led quite a few runs in which we cleared a vet trial with players who had no trial gear, mismatched or severely outdated gear, and who had never set foot in a trial before. Not every trial is suitable for that, but the option is there.
There is no such option for PvP. You can't go into it like that, green, and be successful. The first iterations of Vengeance came somewhat close to that, and therefore were massively popular. (This time, the word is justified.) These days, even Vengeance suffers from the general problem of a declining player base (plus a dungeon event going on in parallel).

---
*

Except yo' mum, hehehe.
(Sorry.)

AngryPenguin · October 1

Varana wrote: »

Eriboss5 wrote: »

During prime time, we used to have full queues and intense battles around every corner—Keeps constantly flipping, massive coordinated fights, and real strategy. ... You could ... jump into massive zergs.

Sorry but what?

Describing anything in PvP during the last years as "massive" * is weirdly out of touch. It's wishful thinking at best and has nothing to do with reality.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

Instead of fixing the underlying issues with Cyrodiil

But they are trying to fix the underlying issues. The fix is called "Vengeance".

Over the years, they've tried quite a lot of things, and most of them involved scaling down the game substantially to make Cyrodiil halfway playable. Slashing population caps, halving group sizes, removing almost all set effects... And none of those have made a noticeable difference. Assuming Cyrodiil is "fixable" by conventional means is just closing your eyes and pretending the world isn't there.

Instead, this time, they're rebuilding abilities and many parts of combat from the ground up (as much as possible without making a new game), specifically for Cyrodiil. Which had much better results than anything they've tried so far, but admittedly also sacrificed a lot. Where the final line will be drawn, remains to be seen.

Eriboss5 wrote: »

a sweaty, no skill casual

As Stamicka said, this is like saying "wet fire".

Eriboss5 wrote: »

I don’t believe many here would allow someone in a vet trial run with green gear and 160 CP with no trial gear.

The difference is that this option does exist. There are trials that you can run that way, and still clear. I've led quite a few runs in which we cleared a vet trial with players who had no trial gear, mismatched or severely outdated gear, and who had never set foot in a trial before. Not every trial is suitable for that, but the option is there.
There is no such option for PvP. You can't go into it like that, green, and be successful. The first iterations of Vengeance came somewhat close to that, and therefore were massively popular. (This time, the word is justified.) These days, even Vengeance suffers from the general problem of a declining player base (plus a dungeon event going on in parallel).

---
*
Except yo' mum, hehehe.
(Sorry.)

Vengeance is not an effort to make improvements to live Cyrodiil. Vengeance is a totally separate effort to develop and become an independent system.

Joy_Division · October 1

Eriboss5 wrote: »

Hey everyone,

I wanted to open up a discussion (or maybe just vent a little) about how the new "Vengeance" PvP server has really hurt the classic Greyhost PvP experience. I know ZOS introduced Vengeance to address some long-standing issues—queue times, performance, population balance, etc.—but in the process, it feels like they’ve gutted what made Greyhost such a unique and vibrant part of Cyrodiil.

1. Population Drain

Since Vengeance launched, Greyhost feels like a ghost town. During prime time, we used to have full queues and intense battles around every corner—Keeps constantly flipping, massive coordinated fights, and real strategy. Now? It's barely active. Half the alliances don’t even bother showing up. The competitive edge is gone.

2. Split Community

Instead of fixing the underlying issues with Cyrodiil, they just created a separate instance and split the community. The PvP community in ESO is already niche, and now we had servers cannibalizing the same player base. It’s harder than ever to find organized groups unless you’re already deep into a guild and even then as a GM it is hard to run.

3. Sweaty Meta vs. Casual Fights

Greyhost always had a nice balance of hardcore and casual players. You could run solo, do small-scale fights, or jump into massive zergs. Now, Vengeance has turned into a sweaty, no skill casual zerg PvP fest with all the low-end players flocking there. Meanwhile, Greyhost is left with randoms, disorganized pugs, and barely enough activity to sustain a siege.

4. Loss of Identity

Greyhost had its own identity. The guild rivalries, the politics, the alliances—those took years to build. Vengeance reset all of that. Now it's just another PvP instance, without the history, without the community culture. It doesn’t feel like Cyrodiil anymore—it feels like an eSports lobby.

I’m not saying Vengeance shouldn't exist, but it shouldn't have ever been a question to have its existence in the first place. had to be a better way to integrate it without killing off what made Greyhost special. Thank you ZOS for damaging the hard work and effort ALL FACTIONS have put into creating such a fun, competitive environment just to do "testing" on issues that never seem to be solved. 10+ years and still having trouble with the mail system and why do I have to reload UI to open mail or port to another area? crazy. Maybe we should host a Vengece for PvE and make it so PvErs get NO DROPS. No Gold. No Craftable gear to have a chance to figure that bug out. Sounds like a great idea.

Curious to hear your thoughts—have you stuck with Greyhost? Switched to Vengeance? Is there still hope for the old server, or is it time to come to terms that whoever is creating these "ideas" wants to kill the PvP community.

You are describing Cyrodiil circa 2016.

All of the problems you are attributing to Vengeance have been the consequence of ZOS's increasingly reliance of broken proc sets, heavy favoritism of defense/healing mechanics, hybridization that allowed players to have builds with no weaknesses, and a terrible decision to combine the roles of lead PvP and lead combat under the same team (which led to the neglect of both).

Cyrodiil has been a ghost town for years now. Even ball groups and guilds cannibalize each other because the population is so low. The guilds have left because the balance is terrible and people just got bored literally doing the same thing over and over and over for years: "3-2-1 Deep Fissure, wait for my Rush of Agony proc." Keeps have not consistently flipped ever since ZOS lowered the population caps, making it impossible for the sort of action you are describing.

The sentiment is not wrong; Cyrodiil was once an interesting and more lively place. But those who once enjoyed it left long before Vengeance was ever even an idea. It's not because of Vengeance

JustLovely · 1:57AM

Joy_Division wrote: »

Eriboss5 wrote: »

Hey everyone,

I wanted to open up a discussion (or maybe just vent a little) about how the new "Vengeance" PvP server has really hurt the classic Greyhost PvP experience. I know ZOS introduced Vengeance to address some long-standing issues—queue times, performance, population balance, etc.—but in the process, it feels like they’ve gutted what made Greyhost such a unique and vibrant part of Cyrodiil.

1. Population Drain

Since Vengeance launched, Greyhost feels like a ghost town. During prime time, we used to have full queues and intense battles around every corner—Keeps constantly flipping, massive coordinated fights, and real strategy. Now? It's barely active. Half the alliances don’t even bother showing up. The competitive edge is gone.

2. Split Community

Instead of fixing the underlying issues with Cyrodiil, they just created a separate instance and split the community. The PvP community in ESO is already niche, and now we had servers cannibalizing the same player base. It’s harder than ever to find organized groups unless you’re already deep into a guild and even then as a GM it is hard to run.

3. Sweaty Meta vs. Casual Fights

Greyhost always had a nice balance of hardcore and casual players. You could run solo, do small-scale fights, or jump into massive zergs. Now, Vengeance has turned into a sweaty, no skill casual zerg PvP fest with all the low-end players flocking there. Meanwhile, Greyhost is left with randoms, disorganized pugs, and barely enough activity to sustain a siege.

4. Loss of Identity

Greyhost had its own identity. The guild rivalries, the politics, the alliances—those took years to build. Vengeance reset all of that. Now it's just another PvP instance, without the history, without the community culture. It doesn’t feel like Cyrodiil anymore—it feels like an eSports lobby.

I’m not saying Vengeance shouldn't exist, but it shouldn't have ever been a question to have its existence in the first place. had to be a better way to integrate it without killing off what made Greyhost special. Thank you ZOS for damaging the hard work and effort ALL FACTIONS have put into creating such a fun, competitive environment just to do "testing" on issues that never seem to be solved. 10+ years and still having trouble with the mail system and why do I have to reload UI to open mail or port to another area? crazy. Maybe we should host a Vengece for PvE and make it so PvErs get NO DROPS. No Gold. No Craftable gear to have a chance to figure that bug out. Sounds like a great idea.

Curious to hear your thoughts—have you stuck with Greyhost? Switched to Vengeance? Is there still hope for the old server, or is it time to come to terms that whoever is creating these "ideas" wants to kill the PvP community.

You are describing Cyrodiil circa 2016.

All of the problems you are attributing to Vengeance have been the consequence of ZOS's increasingly reliance of broken proc sets, heavy favoritism of defense/healing mechanics, hybridization that allowed players to have builds with no weaknesses, and a terrible decision to combine the roles of lead PvP and lead combat under the same team (which led to the neglect of both).

Cyrodiil has been a ghost town for years now. Even ball groups and guilds cannibalize each other because the population is so low. The guilds have left because the balance is terrible and people just got bored literally doing the same thing over and over and over for years: "3-2-1 Deep Fissure, wait for my Rush of Agony proc." Keeps have not consistently flipped ever since ZOS lowered the population caps, making it impossible for the sort of action you are describing.

The sentiment is not wrong; Cyrodiil was once an interesting and more lively place. But those who once enjoyed it left long before Vengeance was ever even an idea. It's not because of Vengeance

I haven't seen you in Cyrodiil in 5 years except the one time we talked during vengeance 2 test. You stopped PvP'ing regularly a LONG time ago. So why all of a sudden you want to see the game the rest of us enjoy taken away? Why aren't you pushing ZOS to bring back the Cyrodiil you just claimed to love?

Gabriel_H · 12:07PM

JustLovely wrote: »

I haven't seen you in Cyrodiil in 5 years except the one time we talked during vengeance 2 test. You stopped PvP'ing regularly a LONG time ago. So why all of a sudden you want to see the game the rest of us enjoy taken away? Why aren't you pushing ZOS to bring back the Cyrodiil you just claimed to love?

That Cyrodiil was before hybridization, increased DoT and HoT stacking, proc sets, sub-classing, scribed skills etc - adding those things killed the performance.

So if you want that Cyro back you'll need to give up a lot of those new shiny toys, like you have to in Vengeance. You can rail against the implementation by all means, but ZOS need to address the performance, so it's either Vengeance or something similar.

Hopefully in this little experiment of theirs they will realise the flaw in the path they have taken the last decade or so, which is to introduce sets to counter already existing sets.

reazea · 6:18PM

Gabriel_H wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

I haven't seen you in Cyrodiil in 5 years except the one time we talked during vengeance 2 test. You stopped PvP'ing regularly a LONG time ago. So why all of a sudden you want to see the game the rest of us enjoy taken away? Why aren't you pushing ZOS to bring back the Cyrodiil you just claimed to love?

That Cyrodiil was before hybridization, increased DoT and HoT stacking, proc sets, sub-classing, scribed skills etc - adding those things killed the performance.

So if you want that Cyro back you'll need to give up a lot of those new shiny toys, like you have to in Vengeance. You can rail against the implementation by all means, but ZOS need to address the performance, so it's either Vengeance or something similar.

Hopefully in this little experiment of theirs they will realise the flaw in the path they have taken the last decade or so, which is to introduce sets to counter already existing sets.

Vengeance or something similar most certainly are not the only two options.

ZOS still has the option of actually fixing the issues with live cyrodiil. They basically haven't even tried that yet. Vengeance is ZOS' attempt to say their fixing something when they're really just making something totally different.

YandereGirlfriend · 8:05PM

Gabriel_H wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

I haven't seen you in Cyrodiil in 5 years except the one time we talked during vengeance 2 test. You stopped PvP'ing regularly a LONG time ago. So why all of a sudden you want to see the game the rest of us enjoy taken away? Why aren't you pushing ZOS to bring back the Cyrodiil you just claimed to love?

That Cyrodiil was before hybridization, increased DoT and HoT stacking, proc sets, sub-classing, scribed skills etc - adding those things killed the performance.

So if you want that Cyro back you'll need to give up a lot of those new shiny toys, like you have to in Vengeance. You can rail against the implementation by all means, but ZOS need to address the performance, so it's either Vengeance or something similar.

Hopefully in this little experiment of theirs they will realise the flaw in the path they have taken the last decade or so, which is to introduce sets to counter already existing sets.

Bold of you to assume that you know what causes the game's performance issues.

You name proc sets but we literally lived that life and they were found to not have any noteworthy effect on anything performance-related (apart from driving players out of No-Proc campaigns).