xylena wrote: »

Ysbriel wrote: »

I wish there were more feedback from people who are actually winning in Cyrodiil, how is Vengeance performance. How does it feel figuring out how to win in the Campain with the new changes, does it feel fun? Gameplay wise, not the winning part itself but how it felt while you were claiming your victory with the available skills on your tool kit. Now that you won in PvP tell me about your gameplay feeling and the performance in Cyrodiil and from your winning standpoint should it be the standard moving forward?

Winning duels is satisfying, you can gain the upper hand in throughput to where victory is deterministic, unlike the endless resets into do-or-die weighted coin flips on Live. I know that I brought a superior build strat complemented by superior piloting skill and fighting prowess. Dueling does get boring fast with most tryhards all on a simlar dotblade setup.

1vX isn't much different than Live, you're stalling out good players, and dunking on bad ones with the usual turn-and-burn. You've got nigh infinite resources (assuming you're on NB) and can cut down unprepared opponents in 4-5 gcds. On average I'm winning open field 1v2 against mid players and 1v4 against weaker ones. Nobody is winning 1vX vs good players on any format.

Sieges are satisfying, this latest rebalance is creating lots off big epic sieges with multiple walls torn down and lots of kills. My smallscale groups can definitely make a difference in large scale fights pushing through breaches to lead the zerg, and taking out key defense targets to break a stalemate. Even one player with a key siege drop or key siege operator kill can move the front line. My survival strat of HoTs + roll canceling feels as good as it ever did on Live.

Yes, this should be the standard. It's much closer to old school ESO than the ball group proc set trash fire on Live right now. Anyone doubting whether Vengeance demands "skill" is welcome to come find me on the battlefield and try to prove me wrong.

It's a bit too simplified now, though. The formula for winning a 1v1 is simply "play NB with multiple dots + fear and stall endlessly until someone over extends". There is no point in block weaving, bash weaving, or doing anything to that effect really because of how limited your resources actually are, and thus there is a reduction in APM and therefore the skill ceiling compared to the live environment. You could argue there is more skill involved in regards to managing your resources compared to live, but I'm not sure that compares to what is being lost (and that goes right out the window in the case of nightblade, as well as with certain combinations of perks and loadouts).

It is not satisfying or fun to win by rotating dots on somebody until they die. It is not fun to be the victim of fighting one of these dot builds, and feeling like you're just going to lose to attrition with no real counterplay - because there isn't much counterplay to "my dots deal more damage than you can heal and you can't avoid them". It feels terrible to fight against dots when they outnumber you. If you're on anything other than a nightblade, you really don't stand a chance fighting one of these builds at all.

That isn't to say dots don't have a place, but I think the environment is leaning a bit too heavily into the "fire and forget" style for it's damage, while still allowing for problematic levels of cross healing. People like to dunk on the crit damage meta in the live environment, but a damage meta which favors high burst damage with adequate counterplay is the healthiest thing you can ask for. Not saying the subclassing environment is anywhere near healthy, but I would certainly prefer dying and knowing I could have played better to avoid that death as opposed to receiving more damage than I can possibly counterplay via dots.

There could be better skill balancing, and some of the weapons need innate passives. Like how sword and shield should have better defense but less damage than dual wield. Right now it's just resto staves and destro staves backbar because they have ranged light attacks to maintain damage by weaving even while playing defensive.

I died to those meta builds so I tried to examine the damage taken.

It turns out that slotting another dot is a better DPS increase than applying Major Breach. Of course, the dots are 5-6 seconds long so you need double the finger presses, but hey DPS gain when time is of the essence.

There's quite a bit of desync. Decent keyboard+mouse players will wiggle and move to maintain an optimal distance from an opponent. Normally this is fine, but right now people slot Wall of Elements so they slow down opponents and still get a sticky dot on the target that deals similar damage to a standard single target dot. Ults like Lacerate and Dawnbreaker miss quite often. This seems to be a problem. Either they need to be instant cast, single target, or their aoe made bigger.

I think, instead of having blanket perk bonuses to crit damage and crit healing, those two stats need to be separated, and there should be more perks that buff direct damage, AoE, or DoT. So taking a perk that buffs only direct damage, single target skills, reduces the values of your AoE, DoT, and heals.

Otherwise, I do like how in Vengeance, most builds are easier to reason around and predict. There are tradeoffs for everything, and no more invincible builds. It would be nice to try dueling, but it's a little laggy to have good duels when zergs are running around. Nightblade class is still overloaded. They have minor force and major expedition in their class kit, siphoning is too cheap to be considered a sacrifice, and still a small heal on cloak. Because this game allows you to block and cast instant skills at the same time (going offensive and defensive at the same time is unheard of except in ESO) any build that uses long channels is disadvantaged.

Faster TTK is the middle ground.

Right now DoTs are the name of the game, because you need your opponent around 50% health to get a kill with perfect timing, where on Live you can consistently 100-0 people if built properly.

If Vengeance health was reduced by around 25%, or if Perks were doubled or tripled in efficiency, burst builds would feel more viable without taking away from DoT builds.

You can crit on everything and still not kill someone from 60% and I’d imagine that’s not very fun for them.

Vengeance should welcome all playstyles.

My daughter and I entered vengeance for the first time yesterday. My daughter only lasted 10 minutes, she hated it so much, I think she would have quit ESO last night, had I not been on voice with her, telling her this was only another trial and Greyhost would be back soon. I myself lasted for about 20 minutes, then I left, utterly bored and disheartened as well.

We both agreed on the words mindless, soulless, boring. Yes you still have your cosmetics, but might as well remove those too, because for us, our skill set-ups and the work we put into gearing, are just as much part of the identity of our characters, as the cosmetics are.

On the long run, should vengeance come to replace Greyhost, I just do not see any reason to sub anymore. No reason to grind for gear, no reason to craft, no reason to advance anything, really. It has made me aware how truly, all roads lead to Cyrodiil for my and my daughter's gameplay. Yes we pve, but everything we do, in the end we do to bring our characters into Cyrodiil.
Vengeance removes all feelings of achievement, all anticipation.

Additionally, unless vengeance will be locked like Greyhost, it will also destroy the tribal feeling of belonging, which is incredibly important for a lot of players. Not all, but many.

I run a 4 year old niche bowplar as my current main, and while it can not hold its ground against current meta players, and couldn't 4 years ago either.. that is my choice, and choice matters to me. I love that build and it challenges me to the max. When I, a grandmother of 2, win on that build, I feel good, because I have worked for it.

My pvp guild last night went into the Imperial City instead. Maybe to add some new features to the city? Could add some smaller scale siege options there, for vaults and so forth, and offer a locked version.

Transparency is much appreciated, but the very mention of it being a possibility that vengeance could replace Greyhost altogether, has us extremely wary now. My daughter and I are not sure whether we want to invest into crowns anymore, or into grinding for our characters. My daughter last night, before I calmed her down some, asked for us to get back to the other game we have played. It has large open world pvp too, but my daughter fell in love with Cyro, and so we remained at ESO, even abandoning the EU server for US as it fits my daughter's work hours better, both of us starting out new, leaving years of crown purchases behind, while having started to make new purchases.

It's a serious consideration now whether to quit, and while 2 players do not matter, I can't help but believe we would not be the only ones, which will also thin pve participation in ESO, as even if players stay to play vengeance, they don't have much need for pve without gear requirements. I feel it is a dangerous game the devs are playing with this, as the knockon effects could be wide and beyond anticipated.

Spent over two hours there last night. NB is stupid broken. Infinite resources, invisible on demand. It doesnt fit into a vengeance style pvp system as implemented. If vengeance goes live as is every meta short sniffer will be running this if they arent already. Also, fall damage is broken. Yellow tree is just dumb.

Radiate77 wrote: »

on Live you can consistently 100-0 people if built properly

That's also a big reason why it's a dead game. Being on the wrong end of instant death is a miserable experience for most gamers across genres. Instant rage quit. Burst builds should absolutely need to inflict chip damage before their burst becomes lethal. Feels balanced to me that Vengeance dotblade needs to chip half the opponent's health before Tether Bow combo is lethal.

So you are saying that in Scenario 1 Blackreach will remain? (I'm in favor of this) Because in the second and third quotes it looks like you are implying that Vengeance and GH would be the only two campaigns available?

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

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.

---

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

L_Nici wrote: »

I am a bit shocked, that scenario 2 is even communicated, that means its an actual possibility, that you consider to drop all usual campaigns...I am not sure how I feel about that

I'd like to clarify this, then, if that's the concern. With this message, we wanted to be transparent and define what the only options are. It's those two. There are no others - that also does not mean we're considering both. Scenario 2 is not our end goal or what we want for everyone.

---

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

So where does this put us, and where do we as a dev team realistically think we’re headed for the future of Cyrodiil? With the caveat that the December test still needs to happen, we see two realistic paths forward:

• 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.

As a dev team, Scenario 1 is the one we strongly prefer and is the most likely. We want you to have a choice between playing in Vengeance or Gray Host, and would closely monitor both campaign populations to help inform any additional actions we should take moving forward.

My concern with Vengeance is that the performance improvements may be short lived. I have read multiple players posting online about how Cyrodiil PvP was so much better when the game was released versus how Cyrodiil PvP is on Gray Host now. And then I think about what changed between then and now. ZOS developers added and modified skills and sets, and we got to where we are now on Gray Host. I worry that Vengeance PvP in a few years will be like Gray Host PvP is now if ZOS developers continue to add and modify Vengeance skills and sets.

Ingenon wrote: »

My concern with Vengeance is that the performance improvements may be short lived. I have read

aetherix8 wrote: »

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.

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.

In the end IC is more rewarding than Cyrodiil for good players, tel var adds risk reward in, Cyrodiil you just farm alliance points. Battlegrounds is more competitive. Maybe is not a bad idea for the best, competitive players that focus on dueling and smal group play to move to IC and BGs, And Cyrodiil is left for those who want to slugfest and siege.
BGs has so much potential, ZOS can develop more stages based on anywhere on Tamriel, or any plane of Oblivion and newer modes for it.