Community Update – Vengeance Testing & Cyrodiil

BejaProphet · 4:18AM

This kind of transparency gives me so much more hope for the long term life of this game.

MISTFORMBZZZ · 7:54AM

So you wanna stop trying to fix GH Cyrodiil, because we cant archive 900 people? Why not just trying to adjust it to 600 for example and keep trying?

colossalvoids · 10:00AM

Hopefully Kevin would gather some questions here after the break so I'd share some:

1. What are the customisation options considered for the permanent "Vengeance" ruleset currently, meaning potential armour sets, mundus stones, traits, enchantments etc. it also includes subclassing and scribing?

2. This one applies only if we would have sets: what are the rules for those, is that whole new or simplified version of the sets we have, what's about over performing sets we have currently which are identified as a major issue for the balance and player's enjoyment engaging with said meta set comp?

A sub question there: How it considers grouping in a context of ball groups existing currently as is, is the same behaviour encouraged in a new environment or infinitely stacking heals and shields wouldn't be the case and there's a priority to not make it happen again and leave groups with a benefit of communication and high levels of coordination instead of infinite power scaling added to that?

3. This one applies if the subclassing is going to be available: how we can be ensured that it won't follow the same trajectory that's already on live server: stacking 3 best skill lines instead of working inside your own class kit? What about players who want to maintain their class fantasy and mechanics and not being under a huge disadvantage for doing so?
As someone who detests this feature it's really important to know as it would basically determine if I'm playing this new ruleset or not.

4. Is more of a follow up to:

We have another test or two planned for next year, for the sake of evaluating healing versus damage concerns. We’ll share more about those next year.

Is that includes heal, shield stacking and other buff/healing related issues or simply for adjusting player health/damage done values?

Thanks.

Muizer · 10:00AM

Erickson9610 wrote: »

We have 4 Cyrodiil campaigns, and only one of them is active. One of the unused campaigns can be replaced with Vengeance — and since levels don't matter in Vengeance, my vote goes to replacing the Under 50 campaign.

I'm talking about the cost of maintenance and development of code. Allotment of hardware resources is a trivial matter by comparison.

Erickson9610 wrote: »

We already know that we're not getting updates to every feature every year (no updates to Companions, Scribing, Tales of Tribute, Infinite Archive, etcetera this year) so we'll just have to wait until there is a new initiative to update PvP content. We know we're getting a new PvP map next year and a new PvP progression system, so we have content to look forward to. And who knows, maybe balancing Vengeance will give ZOS a better understanding of how the rest of the game can be balanced.

Balance issues will always surface in competitive gameplay. From a dev's perspective you can turn that observation around: having to balance for competitive gameplay puts a serious brake on the devs freedom to introduce new things into the combat system.

So the question is, knowing there will be a dedicated PvP combat model in Vengeance, will ZOS take their foot off that brake? If subclassing is anything to go by, the answer is a resounding 'yes'.

That makes current Cyrodiil a legacy feature. Something that even if it isn't actually shut down is living on borrowed time, as things get added for the sake of casual PvE that progressively erode PvP balance.

Now arguably this has been going on for some time already. But Vengeance could be the 'seal of approval' on that approach. So I am very skeptical about the prospects of keeping current PvP going.

Sotha_Sil · 10:07AM

Amazing! Great! Finally!

MsGurrl · 12:17PM

I have difficulty believing that scenario 1 is the true end goal. It reminds me of how vengeance was “just a test”. Yet, here we are with zos stating that they will no longer work on actually fixing cyrodiil. For whatever reason, they also refuse to listen to the active PvP player base. AOE sets, cross healing uncapped seem and feel like a real issue. They have the means to actually observe the data but refuse to apply it to GH. This “lighter” version in vengeance is essentially them saying AOE sets drain the system, but refuse to accept that changes that they have made have irrevocably led us to this point where they now refuse to work on GH.
I’ll give them that a smaller scale GH of sorts might solve the problem of population size but at the same time, having it open whilst vengeance, GH, black reach etc are all open is also going to dilute the population further to the point where they’ll probably throw us all back into one campaign: likely, vengeance. If you think about it, we have a mid scale PvP- imperial city; yet most players enjoy a larger map, open world, and the THREE ALLIANCE WAR. All the initial trailers for this game brought us to a cyrodiil fight. You advertise this game that way, but now you want to end the three banner war in a very unceremonious manner just telling us it can’t be fixed notwithstanding that we are telling you what to do. Could you respond to those demands and tell us whether you will at least listen to the player base or if you cannot, at least tell us why you won’t try.
Stop adding campaigns when you can’t even work on the main campaign and won’t even try. It feels traitorous.
Also, the data you’ve given us is highly skewed. You’ve ran three tests thus far and mention mostly the first test. Of course the first test will showcase high population. People are curious. How many did you see in your third test? Also, even in the information about the first test, why do you only show two days? I never saw any full bar for these vengeance tests. Are these results also mainly from PC.. I recall the first test was PC only..

HairyFairy · 12:30PM

I don't plan on coming back to ESO until PVP is in a better state. Reading this does make me feel like you are going in the right direction. I am fine with an entire overhaul and a new map that is larger then BG's sounds perfect.

I loved the vengeance tests. I think this is the best direction to move in because at the end of the day, all of us want to experience those mass scale battles and coordinated efforts to win fights. (just keep those ball group styles out of here)

I do want to say, from experiencing your campaigns over the years, I don't think your plan to keep two campaigns will work out.

Everyone flocks to Gray Host. Everyone will always go towards where the most action is leaving the other campaigns stale and dead..the leftovers of the main PVP community if you will.

The map is flipped yellow, blue, or red all night every night making the race to win a campaign useless.

Please reconsider this. It needs to be one campaign, the other will over time fall silent. The PVP community doesn't seem to be large enough to have both.

MsGurrl · 12:41PM

skinnycheeks wrote: »

Poss wrote: »

I’ve been playing Cyrodiil since 2015. We were all on old gen consoles and while performance wasn’t amazing it was definitely more playable than what we have today.

I’ll solve the dev’s performance headache for them. Remove aoe proc sets like vicious death, remove the 20 million vigor and regen ticks you can have active on you along with the thousand different shields you can stack and finally remove ballgroups and watch as Cyrodiil performance returns to normal

Problem solved. But alas, the devs won’t listen

Yeah this is along the lines with my thinking too. Having Vengeance is fine, but there are still solutions that could make Gray Host more performant. And even if it can never reach the 900 player count that Vengeance can, if it could still be worked on and get it to a spot with good performance with the current player cap, that could be nice too! Or if there could be small player cap increases over time as issues are resolved.

Basically, don't give up on making Gray Host better just because Vengeance has good performance.

Agreed. Thing is I believe vengeance had better performance bc in the second and especially the third test, far fewer people played it and instead wanted it done and over with so we could get back to our usual gaming. Notice they spoke very little about the second and third testing. And the surveys might not even be reflective of the population at large in that not all PvP players actually answered the surveys. I think many people were already feeling down because the idea had popped that they really wanted this vengeance campaign that the created.