Maintenance for the week of December 1:
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – December 1
• NA megaservers for patch maintenance – December 3, 3:00AM EST (8:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)
• EU megaservers for patch maintenance – December 3, 8:00 UTC (3:00AM EST) - 17:00 UTC (12:00PM EST)
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – December 1
• NA megaservers for patch maintenance – December 3, 3:00AM EST (8:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)
• EU megaservers for patch maintenance – December 3, 8:00 UTC (3:00AM EST) - 17:00 UTC (12:00PM EST)
Community Update – Vengeance Testing & Cyrodiil
-
Arrow312✭✭✭✭✭Sooner or later, they will close one campaign and only run one. It will be too much effort for them. They say they don't want to do that, etc., but Vengeance was just a test “lol.” I think they will push players into this template PvP, which is easier to manage.PC EU X'ing, Small Scale PvP
Arr0w3120 -
Sarannah✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭
Doubt this happened as you think, especially after everything that went wrong during the writhing wall event. You can't on one hand think they can't do anything right, and on the other hand claim there was some kind of masterplan which they executed perfectly. I think the answer is much simpler: ZOS did actually intend vengeance as a test adding more and more into Cyrodiil to find the cause of the performance issues, but after seeing the overwhelmingly positive feedback for vengeance decided it could actually be a way forward. Especially in combination with the fact that they state the grey host PvP style as is can't be fixed, which is only stated now after years of trying to fix it.minnowfaun wrote: »ZOS is leaning towards option one. Which is to keep grey host and have a vengeance campaign running at the same time. And that they can't fix the performance issues in grey host without massive buildcompromises. But grey host does not seem to be going anywhere.- ZoS told us it was a test when it wasn't. Gaslit us for months.
- ZoS is trying to sell us rigged and skewed data to show how many people loved the Golden Pursuits Vengeance Campaign.
- ZoS cooked adjusted the numbers on the Writhing Wall at least three separate times.
Why TF would I ever believe, now after all this, that they're actually talkin' truth? That the really, really, do wanna keep GH.
The last year has been 97% lies and disappointment. Trust is broken. It's too late.
Who knows what will happen when vengeance and grey host run side-by-side longterm. Vengeance could not be sustainable population-wise, grey host may lose players to vengeance and not be sustainable, both modes could end up with too low playernumbers, or both modes could each have their own separate target populations and thrive independently. The last one is what I suspect may happen, and is most likely to happen. I think grey host may lose a handful of players to vengeance, but I also think vengeance attracts an audience different enough to not really harm grey host and can become it's own PvP thing.
Most often the simpler explanation is the correct one.
PS: The way grey host is now, low population and still dropping players, is not sustainable. Something has to be done, or ESO may end up without any large scale PvP at all.
Actually no, they are stating they can't fix the performance issues without buildcompromises. No longer trying to fix the performance issues does not mean the mode won't be supported. It is just that this one thing, fixing the performance, is an impossible task. I'm assuming they will still fix future bugs or issues or server problems in grey host, just not the already known performance issues.
Correction: The OP/ZOS post states two possible options, and that ZOS is leaning towards option one. Which is to keep grey host and have a vengeance campaign running at the same time. And that they can't fix the performance issues in grey host without massive buildcompromises. But grey host does not seem to be going anywhere.No, they're not going to keep Grey Host. They said very clearly they're aren't even going to try to fix it. Read the OP.
Amongst the players, there seems to be practically noone who wants grey host taken away. Even those who do not like grey host.
Maybe, maybe not. The difference in audiences may actually lead to a new population for a healthy vengeance campaign. As also stated in the OP, vengeance was received quite positive based on the survey. If the survey for vengeance was positive but grey host PvPers are overwhelmingly against vengeance, that means there is a new population that differs from the current PvP population that actually likes vengeance.No, everyone who's going to PvP is already doing so. Vengeance will not bring in 10% of of the players it will drive out of the game.
Not only that, but having vengeance running will allow ZOS to advertise massive scale PvP with hundreds of players without any performance issues again. Which ups the entire marketing for the game, which now often seems negative due to the performance issues on grey host. Changing the outside marketing view of the game towards a more positive one, including in PvP.
There seems to be no negatives to having both vengeance and grey host running at the same time.
Not balance, but the massive hurdle of months or training/gearing to even be able to start to PvPing in this game(balance would only come in play after this). Balance and hurdle are two very different things. Balance only comes into play when both sides are on equal footing to begin with, which is another thing vengeance provided.albertberku wrote: »They are going to keep both Vengeance and Grey Host up and people will just choose wherever they want to play. Should they just leave broken Grey Host up forever so that ESO PvP rapidly dies? What do you exactly want? People dont want to bother with Grey Host and its broken PvP. The population is so low there is almost never 3 bars anymore except maybe 1 hour a day and there are no queues anymore. Just let the ESO PvP be more like similar to how a modern MMO should be and how it is out there for every other sane game. 0.25 sec reaction times, and 6 different skills hitting at the same time isnt it, not for a MMO. ESO PvP with its current state is a chaotic mess, it is not a design choice. Vengeance is a try to fix it. Doesnt really matter if 100 ESO PvP veterans that are so used to abusing broken gameplay mechanics will quit or not, Vengeance could possibly attract 1000s of new players.
You will quit ESO and which game you will play then? There are no other mainstream PvP game on the market that has that many broken combat gameplay mechanics ESO PvP currently has. At some point you will have to learn to play on an equal field if you want to continue doing PvP in online gaming and not just stacking every OP proc set that the newest patch introduced and every OP damage skill line, then just press a single button whole fight and call it "build diversity".
Seems like you’re saying balance is what has driven people away……
The OP did type the sentence you highlighted. But that's not what they said. Reading comprehension skills are paramount here. The statement that they aren't going to even try to fix normal live Cyrodiil going forward is the action statement in their post. That means scenario 2 is the target their aiming for.
Not fixing the performance is not scrapping the entire mode. You seem to be reading more into that statement than there is. Maybe this is something ZOS could clarify, especially if I am mistaken. But unless they specifically state they won't support the entire grey host mode anymore, there is no reason to suspect they won't.
And it will probably depend on the grey host population itself, on if they will decide to keep that mode available.Edited by Sarannah on December 2, 2025 10:54AM3 -
Renato90085✭✭✭✭✭minnowfaun wrote: »ZOS is leaning towards option one. Which is to keep grey host and have a vengeance campaign running at the same time. And that they can't fix the performance issues in grey host without massive buildcompromises. But grey host does not seem to be going anywhere.- ZoS told us it was a test when it wasn't. Gaslit us for months.
- ZoS is trying to sell us rigged and skewed data to show how many people loved the Golden Pursuits Vengeance Campaign.
- ZoS cooked adjusted the numbers on the Writhing Wall at least three separate times.
Why TF would I ever believe, now after all this, that they're actually talkin' truth? That the really, really, do wanna keep GH.
The last year has been 97% lies and disappointment. Trust is broken. It's too late.
what is other 3%2 -
aetherix8✭✭✭✭ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »
Scenario 1: We would open a Vengeance Cyrodiil campaign sometime next year with a special ruleset based on the previous and upcoming tests, and leave Grey Host open as it is now.
Scenario 2: We would close all existing Cyrodiil campaigns and open one or two Vengeance ruleset campaigns sometime next year.
how about scenario 3 ?
Vengeance as we knew it (in test 3) is only fun for a week, if that. War is a long-term endeavor; otherwise, it's just a battleground...
Grayhost as we knew it is unplayable (EU) during prime time due to the lag inherent in the arrival of ballgroups. And we can't prevent players from playing together in groups.
I think scenario 3 would be: we do a mix of the two.
That being said, I think scenario 1 is still the most likely outcome, as many players are starting to complain about Vengeance and the closure of grayhost, even if Vengeance still attracts people, periodically opening campaigns can satisfy everyone in a way.
I also think there are more than two scenarios, and I would like to mention Scenario 4:
GH becomes a dead campaign because it’s laggy, unbalanced and ignored, and gets removed.
Vengeance becomes a dead campaign because of “no-skill-zergfest”, and gets removed.
Mid-size new PvP mode would be the only option left, alongside the IC and BGs.PC EU - V4hn10 -
JustLovely✭✭✭✭✭
✭Erickson9610 wrote: »With a permanent Vengeance campaign, we need sets, and we need Subclassing + Scribing.
Save the sets for Gray Host. Vengeance doesn't need them.
Subclassing can be implemented in Vengeance easily, but the Vengeance equivalent of Scribing will take some time to develop. The whole point of Vengeance is that abilities are optimized for performance, and Scribing abilities are not optimized for that at all.
What are you talking about?…This is the trajectory of Option 2. Give us a reason to play all content, other than titles of which we have countless.
Let’s not pretend Option 2 isn’t entirely likely.
If/when we get Option 2, we need sets, otherwise players like me are not going to participate in PvE at the level we all currently do.
We need to prepare for the worst.
Let's not pretend scenario 2 isn't their end goal.1 -
JustLovely✭✭✭✭✭
✭
Correction: The OP/ZOS post states two possible options, and that ZOS is leaning towards option one. Which is to keep grey host and have a vengeance campaign running at the same time. And that they can't fix the performance issues in grey host without massive buildcompromises. But grey host does not seem to be going anywhere.No, they're not going to keep Grey Host. They said very clearly they're aren't even going to try to fix it. Read the OP.
Amongst the players, there seems to be practically noone who wants grey host taken away. Even those who do not like grey host.
Maybe, maybe not. The difference in audiences may actually lead to a new population for a healthy vengeance campaign. As also stated in the OP, vengeance was received quite positive based on the survey. If the survey for vengeance was positive but grey host PvPers are overwhelmingly against vengeance, that means there is a new population that differs from the current PvP population that actually likes vengeance.No, everyone who's going to PvP is already doing so. Vengeance will not bring in 10% of of the players it will drive out of the game.
Not only that, but having vengeance running will allow ZOS to advertise massive scale PvP with hundreds of players without any performance issues again. Which ups the entire marketing for the game, which now often seems negative due to the performance issues on grey host. Changing the outside marketing view of the game towards a more positive one, including in PvP.
There seems to be no negatives to having both vengeance and grey host running at the same time.
Not balance, but the massive hurdle of months or training/gearing to even be able to start to PvPing in this game(balance would only come in play after this). Balance and hurdle are two very different things. Balance only comes into play when both sides are on equal footing to begin with, which is another thing vengeance provided.albertberku wrote: »They are going to keep both Vengeance and Grey Host up and people will just choose wherever they want to play. Should they just leave broken Grey Host up forever so that ESO PvP rapidly dies? What do you exactly want? People dont want to bother with Grey Host and its broken PvP. The population is so low there is almost never 3 bars anymore except maybe 1 hour a day and there are no queues anymore. Just let the ESO PvP be more like similar to how a modern MMO should be and how it is out there for every other sane game. 0.25 sec reaction times, and 6 different skills hitting at the same time isnt it, not for a MMO. ESO PvP with its current state is a chaotic mess, it is not a design choice. Vengeance is a try to fix it. Doesnt really matter if 100 ESO PvP veterans that are so used to abusing broken gameplay mechanics will quit or not, Vengeance could possibly attract 1000s of new players.
You will quit ESO and which game you will play then? There are no other mainstream PvP game on the market that has that many broken combat gameplay mechanics ESO PvP currently has. At some point you will have to learn to play on an equal field if you want to continue doing PvP in online gaming and not just stacking every OP proc set that the newest patch introduced and every OP damage skill line, then just press a single button whole fight and call it "build diversity".
Seems like you’re saying balance is what has driven people away……
The OP did type the sentence you highlighted. But that's not what they said. Reading comprehension skills are paramount here. The statement that they aren't going to even try to fix normal live Cyrodiil going forward is the action statement in their post. That means scenario 2 is the target their aiming for.
ZOS saying they're not even going to try to fix live Cyrodiil PvP is ZOS refusing to do their jobs.
I refused to do my job once. I was fired on the spot. Why should it be any different for anyone else?
Edited by JustLovely on December 2, 2025 4:55PM1 -
JustLovely✭✭✭✭✭
✭
I think people are just disappointed that option 1 sounds very much like: "Dear tenants, we won't repair the building's plumbing after all, because it's too difficult. Instead, we suggest you move to this apartment that's half the size, one hour away by car, and in a worse neighborhood. But if you're fine living without running water, you can of course stay here."Correction: The OP/ZOS post states two possible options, and that ZOS is leaning towards option one. Which is to keep grey host and have a vengeance campaign running at the same time. And that they can't fix the performance issues in grey host without massive buildcompromises. But grey host does not seem to be going anywhere.
Personally, I'm kind of neutral on this, but I get that even if Grey Host remains, it's not really great news for those who were hoping for any kind of improvement of the existing gameplay.
OP states that the first two tests received positive feedback, although the only actual number given is that 80% of participants rated the skill lines in test #2 favorably. Honestly, if the player feedback was so positive, I would have expected ZOS to throw around a lot more numbers to make a point, but perhaps I'm reading too much into what's (not) been said.Maybe, maybe not. The difference in audiences may actually lead to a new population for a healthy vengeance campaign. As also stated in the OP, vengeance was received quite positive based on the survey. If the survey for vengeance was positive but grey host PvPers are overwhelmingly against vengeance, that means there is a new population that differs from the current PvP population that actually likes vengeance.
But more importantly, the enthusiasm for Vengeance does not seem to stick. They explicitly say that for the third test, the feedback results "were more mixed than the results following the first two and we saw less positivity overall. More survey participants noted fatigue with the tests and a desire to be able to play their own unique characters and builds in Cyrodiil, and frustration that the test ran during another in-game event." And they still have 2-3 more tests planned...
ZOS ran that PvP related Golden Pursuit for the first test for a reason. Now we know that reason was so they could present the graphs in the OP and present artificially inflated participation numbers. Not because they think vengeance will ever be popular. In fact, the action shows they know already that nobody wants to play vengeance. That's why they didn't give the PvE players a carrot to encourage participation, they gave them a five star full four course steak dinner, and now ZOS is trying to say "look how many people liked their free steak dinner!". Sadly the end result is to pit the PvE and PvP communities against each other over this issue.
This situation was very obviously planned, just as you say.1 -
JustLovely✭✭✭✭✭
✭
Doubt this happened as you think, especially after everything that went wrong during the writhing wall event. You can't on one hand think they can't do anything right, and on the other hand claim there was some kind of masterplan which they executed perfectly. I think the answer is much simpler: ZOS did actually intend vengeance as a test adding more and more into Cyrodiil to find the cause of the performance issues, but after seeing the overwhelmingly positive feedback for vengeance decided it could actually be a way forward. Especially in combination with the fact that they state the grey host PvP style as is can't be fixed, which is only stated now after years of trying to fix it.minnowfaun wrote: »ZOS is leaning towards option one. Which is to keep grey host and have a vengeance campaign running at the same time. And that they can't fix the performance issues in grey host without massive buildcompromises. But grey host does not seem to be going anywhere.- ZoS told us it was a test when it wasn't. Gaslit us for months.
- ZoS is trying to sell us rigged and skewed data to show how many people loved the Golden Pursuits Vengeance Campaign.
- ZoS cooked adjusted the numbers on the Writhing Wall at least three separate times.
Why TF would I ever believe, now after all this, that they're actually talkin' truth? That the really, really, do wanna keep GH.
The last year has been 97% lies and disappointment. Trust is broken. It's too late.
Who knows what will happen when vengeance and grey host run side-by-side longterm. Vengeance could not be sustainable population-wise, grey host may lose players to vengeance and not be sustainable, both modes could end up with too low playernumbers, or both modes could each have their own separate target populations and thrive independently. The last one is what I suspect may happen, and is most likely to happen. I think grey host may lose a handful of players to vengeance, but I also think vengeance attracts an audience different enough to not really harm grey host and can become it's own PvP thing.
Most often the simpler explanation is the correct one.
PS: The way grey host is now, low population and still dropping players, is not sustainable. Something has to be done, or ESO may end up without any large scale PvP at all.
Actually no, they are stating they can't fix the performance issues without buildcompromises. No longer trying to fix the performance issues does not mean the mode won't be supported. It is just that this one thing, fixing the performance, is an impossible task. I'm assuming they will still fix future bugs or issues or server problems in grey host, just not the already known performance issues.
Correction: The OP/ZOS post states two possible options, and that ZOS is leaning towards option one. Which is to keep grey host and have a vengeance campaign running at the same time. And that they can't fix the performance issues in grey host without massive buildcompromises. But grey host does not seem to be going anywhere.No, they're not going to keep Grey Host. They said very clearly they're aren't even going to try to fix it. Read the OP.
Amongst the players, there seems to be practically noone who wants grey host taken away. Even those who do not like grey host.
Maybe, maybe not. The difference in audiences may actually lead to a new population for a healthy vengeance campaign. As also stated in the OP, vengeance was received quite positive based on the survey. If the survey for vengeance was positive but grey host PvPers are overwhelmingly against vengeance, that means there is a new population that differs from the current PvP population that actually likes vengeance.No, everyone who's going to PvP is already doing so. Vengeance will not bring in 10% of of the players it will drive out of the game.
Not only that, but having vengeance running will allow ZOS to advertise massive scale PvP with hundreds of players without any performance issues again. Which ups the entire marketing for the game, which now often seems negative due to the performance issues on grey host. Changing the outside marketing view of the game towards a more positive one, including in PvP.
There seems to be no negatives to having both vengeance and grey host running at the same time.
Not balance, but the massive hurdle of months or training/gearing to even be able to start to PvPing in this game(balance would only come in play after this). Balance and hurdle are two very different things. Balance only comes into play when both sides are on equal footing to begin with, which is another thing vengeance provided.albertberku wrote: »They are going to keep both Vengeance and Grey Host up and people will just choose wherever they want to play. Should they just leave broken Grey Host up forever so that ESO PvP rapidly dies? What do you exactly want? People dont want to bother with Grey Host and its broken PvP. The population is so low there is almost never 3 bars anymore except maybe 1 hour a day and there are no queues anymore. Just let the ESO PvP be more like similar to how a modern MMO should be and how it is out there for every other sane game. 0.25 sec reaction times, and 6 different skills hitting at the same time isnt it, not for a MMO. ESO PvP with its current state is a chaotic mess, it is not a design choice. Vengeance is a try to fix it. Doesnt really matter if 100 ESO PvP veterans that are so used to abusing broken gameplay mechanics will quit or not, Vengeance could possibly attract 1000s of new players.
You will quit ESO and which game you will play then? There are no other mainstream PvP game on the market that has that many broken combat gameplay mechanics ESO PvP currently has. At some point you will have to learn to play on an equal field if you want to continue doing PvP in online gaming and not just stacking every OP proc set that the newest patch introduced and every OP damage skill line, then just press a single button whole fight and call it "build diversity".
Seems like you’re saying balance is what has driven people away……
The OP did type the sentence you highlighted. But that's not what they said. Reading comprehension skills are paramount here. The statement that they aren't going to even try to fix normal live Cyrodiil going forward is the action statement in their post. That means scenario 2 is the target their aiming for.
Not fixing the performance is not scrapping the entire mode. You seem to be reading more into that statement than there is. Maybe this is something ZOS could clarify, especially if I am mistaken. But unless they specifically state they won't support the entire grey host mode anymore, there is no reason to suspect they won't.
And it will probably depend on the grey host population itself, on if they will decide to keep that mode available.
ZOS absolutely can fix performance in Cyrodiil without vengeance. They're choosing not to.4 -
SugaComa✭✭✭✭✭I did a dedicated post on this topic here
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/685533/cyrodiil-overhaul-concept-making-armor-weights-campaign-play-actually-matter-again#latest
But cyrodil doesn't just need the combat to be adjusted the whole scoring system needs an overhaul, too many points are accumulated by capping everything on the map knowing you will have hours of inactivity until they're reclaimed
While combat is greatly important it's only part of the problem.0