minnowfaun wrote: »

Sarannah 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.

LPapirius wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

LPapirius wrote: »

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.

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.

Amongst the players, there seems to be practically noone who wants grey host taken away. Even those who do not like grey host.

LPapirius wrote: »

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.

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.

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.

SneaK wrote: »

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……

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.

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.

Xarc wrote: »

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.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Sidewaves89 wrote: »

So basically you gave up on trying to improve performance in current campaigns. If Scenario 2 come true what's the point for pvp players in buying new DLCs if sets won't work there?

Scenario 1 is what we are working toward, in which case Grey Host would remain as it is now. Like noted in the original message, through the Vengeance tests we've done so far, we learned that in order to support our goals - a large-scale PvP zone with mass-scale battles and a much higher population - the abilities, procs, passives, etc. must be lighter versions of the ones that exist in the rest of the game. So we will be applying that to Vengeance, and giving those who prefer the current Grey Host ruleset that option.

Freez6661 wrote: »

Me and every single of my friends left the game coz there is nothing to do as PVP player, the state current PVP is right now is simply awful

2-sided BGs are bad and boring, 80% players are using PVE builds and doing daily quests, map design so bad, no idea how you can regress like that, old maps are like miracle compare to new ones
Vengeance - non of us asked for it, nothing good comes out of this idea, me and my friends never gonna play it
Imperial city - dead, there is nothing to add

- Bring back old 3-sided BGs and old maps
- Fix cross-heals, sick of PVE players came to BGs so they can do 3mil heals
- Balance is basics, try to work in it, switch meta more frequently, stop killing sets, balance them in a way people still can use it
- Bring back different play styles like: ganker, brawler, shields and others. It's like 3 builds in the game now and they all do the same. We used to have such a good game where builds were different. There are 99% of sets that are useless, work on some them, same with myphics, bring them back to life for pvp.

[snip]

[Edit for Bashing]

SneaK wrote: »

Lucasl402 wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

Freez6661 wrote: »

Me and every single of my friends left the game coz there is nothing to do as PVP player, the state current PVP is right now is simply awful

2-sided BGs are bad and boring, 80% players are using PVE builds and doing daily quests, map design so bad, no idea how you can regress like that, old maps are like miracle compare to new ones
Vengeance - non of us asked for it, nothing good comes out of this idea, me and my friends never gonna play it
Imperial city - dead, there is nothing to add

- Bring back old 3-sided BGs and old maps
- Fix cross-heals, sick of PVE players came to BGs so they can do 3mil heals
- Balance is basics, try to work in it, switch meta more frequently, stop killing sets, balance them in a way people still can use it
- Bring back different play styles like: ganker, brawler, shields and others. It's like 3 builds in the game now and they all do the same. We used to have such a good game where builds were different. There are 99% of sets that are useless, work on some them, same with myphics, bring them back to life for pvp.

[snip]

[Edit for Bashing]

Ganking is so far gone, it’s still somewhat viable but it’s like end end endgame PvP which is wild to say. The gear required, skill lines, all the specifics that go into it, it really sucks. Ganking is also one of the most attractive ways to get new players in Cyro, sounds like a weird comment but it’s fact. I can’t tell you how many newbies back in the day would come in and gank with me. It’s always been risky but now it’s just flat out insanity cause of the amount of HP and tankyness people can get away with.

Sorry mate, don't think you're going to get much sympathy for ganking being harder. Just sayn'.

Not looking for sympathy, just pointing out that it’s a play style that has been pushed to pure endgame, one of which was very much liked by new PvPers and now they cannot do it.

*they even took our goblin uniform away*

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone! Thank you for all the great questions throughout this discussion thread. We’ve gathered some of your questions from the first few pages of this thread and answered them below. We’ll answer more as we’re able!

Sarannah wrote: »

As you stated it seemed like the first test was the most positive amongst players, is this also the vengeance campaign you are leaning towards opening (in the path forward options)?

No, the very first version of Vengeance is not what we plan to eventually launch with. This is and has been an evolving process, where we slowly add things in and make adjustments to the Vengeance campaign while watching game performance and getting your feedback. Now that we know we can achieve a performant Cyrodiil and the population we’d like with Vengeance, we intend to continue adding in as much as we can – we have more options now that we can better control the game performance in Vengeance. Whatever we add to Vengeance, though, we will likely also add to the Gray Host campaign.

Sarannah wrote: »

Could Vengeance potentially support even more than 900 total players? (Maybe worth a test, to see how high the numbers can go before the server starts having issues.)

We did tinker with population caps during our very first Vengeance test earlier this year by bumping the cap up beyond 900 on the PC EU server during prime time. There was a noticeable negative performance impact, so 900 is what we intend to stick to. In the image below, you can see the negative FPS spike that occurred when we increased population beyond 900 during that test.

Sarannah wrote: »

Is Scenario 2 only considered due to expecting a massive population drop from Gray Host and those players going to the Vengeance campaign instead if these run alongside each other?

Over the years, we have closed Cyrodiil campaigns that were severely underpopulated. If population in Gray Host is resulting in a detrimental gameplay experience for everyone in that campaign, we would consider closing the campaign. If we start seeing any problematic population decline trends in Gray Host, though, that’s something we would communicate early. We don’t intend to abruptly pull the plug. Like we mentioned earlier, we want Gray Host to remain an option for those who prefer it over Vengeance.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Which campaign would be the default in Scenario 1? Does this mean Blackreach, No Proc, and the Under 50 campaigns would go away?

In Scenario 1, Gray Host would be the default (“Standard”), non-Vengeance campaign. For your second question, it’s going to depend on the population on each server. In the past, we’ve had more campaigns open on one server or platform versus others, based on server population and what that server’s community is playing. We will be monitoring population trends, feedback, and what folks are participating in.

JumboWheat01 wrote: »

Question: If Scenario 2 comes to be, what will happen with the PvE parts of Cyrodiil? As is, the Vengeance rules completely prevent PvE stuff, of which there is plenty. Will a PvE only version of Cyrodiil be released, minus any potential AP gains?

Starting with the test that goes live this week, PvE elements are turned back on in Vengeance. So PvE parts of Cyrodiil being turned off in Vengeance will no longer be the case; you will be able to complete your quests in Vengeance from this point on. Also, as mentioned in our original message, Scenario 2 is not what we’re working toward.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Does the Combat Team intend to attempt balancing the rest of the game? Or is “Vengeance” going to be the answer to anyone who wants a balanced system, and other players can stick with their single overpowered hodgepodge or their mimetically useless pure-class builds?

Combat and class balance work will continue, and the team plans to address outliers as needed. Vengeance will not stop that work, and you can read a bit about the team’s vision and plans in this recent post. We do intend to lean on Battle Spirit a bit more in the future, and that is something we’re currently exploring.

Celas_Dranacea wrote: »

Can you please add Werewolves to Vengeance?

At some point, we would like to add both Werewolves and Vampires to Vengeance as resources are available.

Radiate77 wrote: »

Is that new “mid-size PvP space” going to be matchmade, or is it going to be drop in/drop out, similar to Cyrodiil and Imperial City? One of my biggest grievances with Cyrodiil has been, that when your alliance starts losing, everyone either leaves because there is no penalty, or switches alliances, how would this new experience prevent that?

While this is very early in the development process, the intent is that you can drop in and drop out versus something like a Battlegrounds queue. It’s meant to be a persistent space, much like Cyrodiil, just smaller scale.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

I understand that the team has stated that Gray Host can never be performant with higher player numbers in their eyes. However as players we have seen a massive increase to performance around the time that the servers first got upgraded on both NA and EU. This performance slowly over time degraded but was seen on both servers directly after the upgrades. To us players it feels like directly after the upgrade the servers were on a higher performance mode or package and they have been downgraded. It could also be as a result of more and more sets being added like Mara's balm etc. but this wouldn't really explain why things got better on EU after their upgrades considering the upgrades were quite far apart and NA performance was already degrading by the time EU got their upgrade. Why does the team think this performance downgrade happened after the upgrades to the servers were initially so rewarding performance wise?

(The following answer was provided by our Engineering team.)

This is hard to answer without a more holistic view of Cyrodiil's upbringing and natural cyclical behavior, so bear with me. Cyrodiil was introduced at a time when the game as a whole was much simpler (in regards to player systems and general complexity, item set complexity, class complexity, etc.), so the main factor that controlled performance degradation was population. We accounted for this and planned for a time when populations would need to shrink as player complexity grew. We made it a priority to adjust populations sparingly and eventually decided on populations that felt close to the intended 'massive group player experience' with a reasonable expectation of increased latency at higher populations.

Over time, pre hardware upgrade, we recognized that the combination of new systems, ability complexity scope creep, uncapping of area effects, etc, was drastically pushing the limit of what we and players considered 'a reasonable expectation of increased latency at higher populations', and we either needed to adjust populations further, or investigate the issue at its core. In attempt to avoid hindering player experience too much, we opted for the latter. Two efforts immediately began to account for this - a general pass on gameplay systems focused on optimization in mass PvP environments, and the hardware upgrade. While the former would inevitably become a long-term effort, evolving into today's Vengeance campaign, the hardware upgrade provided an immediate measurable result that was easily noticeable and overwhelmingly positive.

While the improvement was drastic, we did notice inconsistent changes over time - during non-peak hours, things remained consistently stable, but at peak hours, performance could shift drastically and frequently, just as it did before the upgrade (albeit in lower magnitude). This was somewhat expected with limited changes to gameplay, and after some investigation the result simply led us back to the secondary efforts noted above, and is in part why we've made such a drastic shift towards something like Vengeance more recently. Even before exploring Vengeance, we made many changes that aimed to reduce some of the load that comes with hundreds of players engaging in combat - some of these changes were very visible and announced (early changes to core mechanics like sprint and block, area effect improvements, etc.), while others were made silently in the background with no expected changes to gameplay experience. These changes resulted in noticeable improvements in specific scenarios, but had no impact on others, and it can be difficult to identify problem areas and make improvements while not drastically changing player experience across the game as a whole. An isolated change that improves a specific spike in 'lag' often results in no overall improvement if immediately replaced by a different behavior, or if surrounding spikes continue to exist.

In the time between identifying that we needed to focus on these efforts and the hardware upgrade, player behavior as a whole had changed generally in Cyrodiil to account for the noticeable performance degradation, and this behavior varied by day, hour, and realm. This pattern, or in some ways lack of pattern, was identified pre hardware upgrade at a high level, but had naturally declined in severity as degradation led to unplayable circumstances. Given the scale of the issue at the time, it was hard to identify behaviors that could use a focused effort. Post hardware upgrade, that general behavior and load remained as it was in a time of increased latency. Over time, behaviors changed to fill the gaps that arose as a result of the upgrade. While it is true that some realms don't share the same experiences most of the time, we often see variations of the same behaviors that lead to a degradation in performance or increased latency at peak hours across all realms, and non-peak hours remain consistently stable.

All of this is to say that the hardware upgrade dramatically improved the general experience on all live realms, and that remains true to this date - but adding something as simple as a new item set can shift behaviors in a way that leads to inconsistencies that we need to account for and address. Our efforts noted above continue to this date as well, alongside new systems and general additions to combat and the game as a whole. These changes aim to reduce natural debt that comes with an ever-evolving game like ESO. Vengeance is on one hand a big attempt to reset the scales, providing a new sandbox for us to experiment with, keeping these limitations in mind from the beginning. On the other hand, it has also proven a valuable tool for verifying some of these changes in isolation. While the results of Vengeance are overwhelmingly positive from a performance standpoint, we've already identified degradation at the same levels as Greyhost, albeit at much lower frequencies.

The isolation of these incidents has already led to a slew of changes that we can make in the background, benefitting the game as a whole with no perceived changes in gameplay. We've already started to trickle these changes in with U48, but plan to continue these efforts until degradation is reduced in Cyrodiil, and the game as a whole. It's important to note that all of the above is in the context of Cyrodiil simply because that is where the core issues are easier to identify, but all improvements are shared across the game where applicable.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

From the community’s mind PVP combat balance is a core reason why performance suffers during primetime. As more and more players log in and group up 'group sets' and 'sticky' HoTs and shields increase and also cause groups to be unbalanced in comparison to the overall population - This leads to much prolonged fights as well as discontent within the community. Has the team considered that adjusting balance might also show performance gains if done correctly?

We are aware of this, as well as related challenges with heal/shield stacking and ball groups, and are working on exploring how we can tackle it with Battle Spirit. This work is early in development, and we’ll share more details as we have them.

To expand a bit, the abilities players use in Gray Host are shared across the rest of the game. We want to avoid future situations where adjusting abilities to address issues with one type of gameplay has a negative impact on another. This is why we are trying to tackle this issue at the Battle Spirit level. It’s also why there is no Battle Spirit active in Vengeance, because the abilities are separate from the rest of the game. In Vengeance, if heal/shield stacking are an issue, we will first try to address it on an ability-by-ability basis. If we need to explore introducing Battle Spirit as an extra step, we will.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

From the community’s mind PVP combat balance is a core reason why performance suffers during primetime. As more and more players log in and group up 'group sets' and 'sticky' HoTs and shields increase and also cause groups to be unbalanced in comparison to the overall population - This leads to much prolonged fights as well as discontent within the community. Has the team considered that adjusting balance might also show performance gains if done correctly?

We are aware of this, as well as related challenges with heal/shield stacking and ball groups, and are working on exploring how we can tackle it with Battle Spirit. This work is early in development, and we’ll share more details as we have them.

To expand a bit, the abilities players use in Gray Host are shared across the rest of the game. We want to avoid future situations where adjusting abilities to address issues with one type of gameplay has a negative impact on another. This is why we are trying to tackle this issue at the Battle Spirit level. It’s also why there is no Battle Spirit active in Vengeance, because the abilities are separate from the rest of the game. In Vengeance, if heal/shield stacking are an issue, we will first try to address it on an ability-by-ability basis. If we need to explore introducing Battle Spirit as an extra step, we will.