Greyhost and Vengeance

MincMincMinc · December 18

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Nebbles wrote: »

Lucasl402 wrote: »

The side by side "test" showed that if people have an option they won't play vengeance.

Based on what? Number of bars isn't a good indicator due to population cap differences so where are you getting the data from that proves that?

Vengeance is literally empty, every day.

See this comment.

Problem is the data is too broad. UI differences and addons dont help with people getting mixed up. Zos also not explaining what brackets dictate how the bars work only adds to it.

Seeing how that ui goes 0, 1, 2 ,3 bars and then lock you could break the brackets down linearly. Which we can only base on how kevin said if the bar shows 50% that means the server is at 450/900.

So 1 bar means the server is at 25%.......So 25% of 300 faction cap is still 75 players or more. Which is pretty close to pop locking in greyhost depending where zos does the bracket swap over.

Again zos never clarified so its pointless because the data is not useful. You are better off using the Cyro addon that tracks unique user IDs and having two people play each campaign at the same time for an actual comparison.

maybe 1 bar means from 25% to 50%.
maybe 1 bar means around 33% so 16.5% to 49.5%
maybe zos just rounds down
maybe it shows locked above 90% pop so we should be using 0-90% to scale the other bars.
maybe it shows no bars when under 10% pop......maybe 25%

There are too many questions and it will never be answered to how the bars work. Someone at zos would have to come out and say at what %s correspond to what bar conditions on what UI.

MincMincMinc · December 18

RaidingTraiding wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Let the free market of players decide where they want to play. Let them vote with their feet. It is up to Vengeance itself to make itself attractive to players. Only Vengeance can save itself. Coercing players into gameplay that they do not enjoy by deleting the content that they do enjoy is both bad business as well as extraordinarily fraught karma.

Don't yuck someone else's yum. Respect your fellow players and let them enjoy what they enjoy.

Agree with this point here, but it goes both ways.

The die-hard anti-vengeance crowd are using all the same disinformation comments of "We see that some people prefer Vengeance, but because the (laughably bad for data gathering) population bars confirms our anti-vengeance bias, we definitely need to cancel Vengeance to force those players into Grey Host".

Like literally 2 comments above yours and the most recent comment that was responding to a take that was similar to your own (that being, let both campaigns run and let players decide where they want to play) did this.

Both sides need to take a massive chill pill, let both campaigns be their own thing and let players decide which one they want to play.

Like it or not (and this is more of a general statement, not directed at anyone in particular), PvP in ESO NEEDS some form of simplified PvP, alongside the end-game of PvP in ESO, to help new players get into this part of the game. Personally I would like to see some more work done on Vengeance to enable it to be a solid on-boarding campaign for Grey Host (something that the U50 and no-proc campaigns failed at doing).
Teaching new players about important stat thresholds, mechanics, flow of combat, etc. in a simplified way that's easy to learn, so that players feel like they have some base knowledge/skills to join Grey Host and don't just feel gatekept out of Grey Host by the sheer learning cliff that it has.

ZOS has implemented sets in the past that could have helped with this learning curve (intentionally or not) with mythics such as Oakensoul and Torc of Ayleid king (oakensoul with the buffs, torc with baseline stats), but on release they either overperformed (oakensoul) and required massive nerfs or underperformed (Torc) and were completely forgotten about, so much so that they really didn't work well (oaken just became the defacto everyone runs this, so nothing changed, torc just didn't do enough to compete with how oppressively overpowered all the procs have become and how stat dense all the builds have gotten).

To me, ESO's PvP has the same issues as Yu-Gi-Oh and the fighting game genre. Amazing to play/has unmatched potential once you've invested the time to get good at it, but it simply takes too long to see even the most basic of results that keep that drive going, especially in the very time-poor reality that we currently live in.
Easy to learn, hard to master is the core essence of a good game/mode, but ESO PvP (like the others I mentioned above) suffers more from easy to learn, impossible to master and that just drives the majority of new players away (or just flat out prevents them from even trying in the first place).

PvE simply cannot function in this role because of a few factors:
- PvE is a repetitive task, once the mechanic is learned, there's no variation to practice it under differing scenarios.
- PvE uses completely different stats/utility to PvP.
- PvE has set roles that it's been split into, while PvP is a mix of every role all at once with minimal definition (so the build knowledge required for PvE does not fit for PvP making it a very different skill-set even at this level).
I'm sure there's more, but it's easy to see how PvE will always fail to help players prepare for PvP. They are just 2 completely different modes and the skill-sets required for 1 does not directly/easily translate to the other, especially at an end-game level.

Simplified pvp is exactly the campaign ravenwatch was, especially when no proc and no hammer was in effect, and that's what killed that campaign. Zos finally realized this and reverted it back, but it was too late at that point. Why do people always forget about this? Maybe there's just too many new players who missed that whole episode? There's also below 50 for new players. Dont need this many dead camps for new players / those who want a simplified experience.

Just getting thrown into regular pvp with no hand holding is the best way to learn imo, but what drives people away is the overtly overtuned sets and mechanics that has defined the meta for years. i would hate being a new player trying to learn in a zone dominated by no counter pull sets like rush of agony and unkillable groups that have 50k perma shields on every member with who knows how much healing per second. not to mention the performance issues. don't get me wrong, you should be rewarded for grouping up and playing with friends in an mmo, but this current power level is absurd. Greyhost would be way more fun and more engaging for newer players if they fixed those 2 things at the very least. (at least for rush of agony by fix i mean removing entirely from pvp)

Well that is not the entire story with raven watch.

Around that same time pretty much all of the Under 50 guilds on ep/dc either disbanded or moved into ravenwatch leaving u50 campaign to die out. This was because AD had an Australian guild form (not to their fault being australian) but this lead to them flipping the map unopposed each night leading to other factions to quit over time when their new players didnt want to fight an uphill battle while learning.
Inevitably without U50 running new players never stuck in cyrodil because it was dead and boring. Where Bgs were more popular and easy to get into. So we saw huge declines in new players getting involved in cyrodil guilds across all the campaigns.
Then ravenwatch got the combined 3-4 AD guilds where ep/dc had 1-2 guilds. Which lead to the map being constantly flipped yellow for months on end.
Eventually the same trend that happened in u50 happened in raven where the map stayed one color and the other factions disbanded or moved on to greyhost.

Cyrodil was never meant to be played with a dying population. The concept of two losing factions teaming up only works if all factions have relatively the same populations. The game rules a decade ago should have been adjusted such that the losing factions get the combat bonuses to fight back while the winning faction gets the ap bonuses for their reward.

RaidingTraiding · December 18

MincMincMinc wrote: »

RaidingTraiding wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Let the free market of players decide where they want to play. Let them vote with their feet. It is up to Vengeance itself to make itself attractive to players. Only Vengeance can save itself. Coercing players into gameplay that they do not enjoy by deleting the content that they do enjoy is both bad business as well as extraordinarily fraught karma.

Don't yuck someone else's yum. Respect your fellow players and let them enjoy what they enjoy.

Agree with this point here, but it goes both ways.

The die-hard anti-vengeance crowd are using all the same disinformation comments of "We see that some people prefer Vengeance, but because the (laughably bad for data gathering) population bars confirms our anti-vengeance bias, we definitely need to cancel Vengeance to force those players into Grey Host".

Like literally 2 comments above yours and the most recent comment that was responding to a take that was similar to your own (that being, let both campaigns run and let players decide where they want to play) did this.

Both sides need to take a massive chill pill, let both campaigns be their own thing and let players decide which one they want to play.

Like it or not (and this is more of a general statement, not directed at anyone in particular), PvP in ESO NEEDS some form of simplified PvP, alongside the end-game of PvP in ESO, to help new players get into this part of the game. Personally I would like to see some more work done on Vengeance to enable it to be a solid on-boarding campaign for Grey Host (something that the U50 and no-proc campaigns failed at doing).
Teaching new players about important stat thresholds, mechanics, flow of combat, etc. in a simplified way that's easy to learn, so that players feel like they have some base knowledge/skills to join Grey Host and don't just feel gatekept out of Grey Host by the sheer learning cliff that it has.

ZOS has implemented sets in the past that could have helped with this learning curve (intentionally or not) with mythics such as Oakensoul and Torc of Ayleid king (oakensoul with the buffs, torc with baseline stats), but on release they either overperformed (oakensoul) and required massive nerfs or underperformed (Torc) and were completely forgotten about, so much so that they really didn't work well (oaken just became the defacto everyone runs this, so nothing changed, torc just didn't do enough to compete with how oppressively overpowered all the procs have become and how stat dense all the builds have gotten).

To me, ESO's PvP has the same issues as Yu-Gi-Oh and the fighting game genre. Amazing to play/has unmatched potential once you've invested the time to get good at it, but it simply takes too long to see even the most basic of results that keep that drive going, especially in the very time-poor reality that we currently live in.
Easy to learn, hard to master is the core essence of a good game/mode, but ESO PvP (like the others I mentioned above) suffers more from easy to learn, impossible to master and that just drives the majority of new players away (or just flat out prevents them from even trying in the first place).

PvE simply cannot function in this role because of a few factors:
- PvE is a repetitive task, once the mechanic is learned, there's no variation to practice it under differing scenarios.
- PvE uses completely different stats/utility to PvP.
- PvE has set roles that it's been split into, while PvP is a mix of every role all at once with minimal definition (so the build knowledge required for PvE does not fit for PvP making it a very different skill-set even at this level).
I'm sure there's more, but it's easy to see how PvE will always fail to help players prepare for PvP. They are just 2 completely different modes and the skill-sets required for 1 does not directly/easily translate to the other, especially at an end-game level.

Simplified pvp is exactly the campaign ravenwatch was, especially when no proc and no hammer was in effect, and that's what killed that campaign. Zos finally realized this and reverted it back, but it was too late at that point. Why do people always forget about this? Maybe there's just too many new players who missed that whole episode? There's also below 50 for new players. Dont need this many dead camps for new players / those who want a simplified experience.

Just getting thrown into regular pvp with no hand holding is the best way to learn imo, but what drives people away is the overtly overtuned sets and mechanics that has defined the meta for years. i would hate being a new player trying to learn in a zone dominated by no counter pull sets like rush of agony and unkillable groups that have 50k perma shields on every member with who knows how much healing per second. not to mention the performance issues. don't get me wrong, you should be rewarded for grouping up and playing with friends in an mmo, but this current power level is absurd. Greyhost would be way more fun and more engaging for newer players if they fixed those 2 things at the very least. (at least for rush of agony by fix i mean removing entirely from pvp)

Well that is not the entire story with raven watch.
Around that same time pretty much all of the Under 50 guilds on ep/dc either disbanded or moved into ravenwatch leaving u50 campaign to die out. This was because AD had an Australian guild form (not to their fault being australian) but this lead to them flipping the map unopposed each night leading to other factions to quit over time when their new players didnt want to fight an uphill battle while learning.

Inevitably without U50 running new players never stuck in cyrodil because it was dead and boring. Where Bgs were more popular and easy to get into. So we saw huge declines in new players getting involved in cyrodil guilds across all the campaigns.

Then ravenwatch got the combined 3-4 AD guilds where ep/dc had 1-2 guilds. Which lead to the map being constantly flipped yellow for months on end.

Eventually the same trend that happened in u50 happened in raven where the map stayed one color and the other factions disbanded or moved on to greyhost.

Cyrodil was never meant to be played with a dying population. The concept of two losing factions teaming up only works if all factions have relatively the same populations. The game rules a decade ago should have been adjusted such that the losing factions get the combat bonuses to fight back while the winning faction gets the ap bonuses for their reward.

Ive hardly ever set foot in u50, but just from my experience with the other camps, namely br, when one side zergs the map while the other 2 factions have a smaller presence, its usually 1 or 2 big guilds that are the culprit. the other factions just leave in response if they constantly keep getting rolled and if the zerg guild plays often enough to always have control of the map (prime time at least). the zerg guild eventually leaves (im guessing because pvdooring eventually gets too boring for them) and the pop always recovers. If balance and performance are good or at least acceptable, people will come back or new people will make a home there. i played in br roughly from 2018 to 2024 with some breaks, but this was always the case in that campaign. what really drives people out for good is when something at the core of the game makes it not worth playing or coming back to. sort of a death spiral there, the game is unfun so less people play, the less people the more boring and dead it is, which further solidifies peoples decision to not come back or for new people to stay. This was my observation anyways. probably should mention this was pc na.

MincMincMinc · December 18

RaidingTraiding wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

RaidingTraiding wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Let the free market of players decide where they want to play. Let them vote with their feet. It is up to Vengeance itself to make itself attractive to players. Only Vengeance can save itself. Coercing players into gameplay that they do not enjoy by deleting the content that they do enjoy is both bad business as well as extraordinarily fraught karma.

Don't yuck someone else's yum. Respect your fellow players and let them enjoy what they enjoy.

Agree with this point here, but it goes both ways.

The die-hard anti-vengeance crowd are using all the same disinformation comments of "We see that some people prefer Vengeance, but because the (laughably bad for data gathering) population bars confirms our anti-vengeance bias, we definitely need to cancel Vengeance to force those players into Grey Host".

Like literally 2 comments above yours and the most recent comment that was responding to a take that was similar to your own (that being, let both campaigns run and let players decide where they want to play) did this.

Both sides need to take a massive chill pill, let both campaigns be their own thing and let players decide which one they want to play.

Like it or not (and this is more of a general statement, not directed at anyone in particular), PvP in ESO NEEDS some form of simplified PvP, alongside the end-game of PvP in ESO, to help new players get into this part of the game. Personally I would like to see some more work done on Vengeance to enable it to be a solid on-boarding campaign for Grey Host (something that the U50 and no-proc campaigns failed at doing).
Teaching new players about important stat thresholds, mechanics, flow of combat, etc. in a simplified way that's easy to learn, so that players feel like they have some base knowledge/skills to join Grey Host and don't just feel gatekept out of Grey Host by the sheer learning cliff that it has.

ZOS has implemented sets in the past that could have helped with this learning curve (intentionally or not) with mythics such as Oakensoul and Torc of Ayleid king (oakensoul with the buffs, torc with baseline stats), but on release they either overperformed (oakensoul) and required massive nerfs or underperformed (Torc) and were completely forgotten about, so much so that they really didn't work well (oaken just became the defacto everyone runs this, so nothing changed, torc just didn't do enough to compete with how oppressively overpowered all the procs have become and how stat dense all the builds have gotten).

To me, ESO's PvP has the same issues as Yu-Gi-Oh and the fighting game genre. Amazing to play/has unmatched potential once you've invested the time to get good at it, but it simply takes too long to see even the most basic of results that keep that drive going, especially in the very time-poor reality that we currently live in.
Easy to learn, hard to master is the core essence of a good game/mode, but ESO PvP (like the others I mentioned above) suffers more from easy to learn, impossible to master and that just drives the majority of new players away (or just flat out prevents them from even trying in the first place).

PvE simply cannot function in this role because of a few factors:
- PvE is a repetitive task, once the mechanic is learned, there's no variation to practice it under differing scenarios.
- PvE uses completely different stats/utility to PvP.
- PvE has set roles that it's been split into, while PvP is a mix of every role all at once with minimal definition (so the build knowledge required for PvE does not fit for PvP making it a very different skill-set even at this level).
I'm sure there's more, but it's easy to see how PvE will always fail to help players prepare for PvP. They are just 2 completely different modes and the skill-sets required for 1 does not directly/easily translate to the other, especially at an end-game level.

Simplified pvp is exactly the campaign ravenwatch was, especially when no proc and no hammer was in effect, and that's what killed that campaign. Zos finally realized this and reverted it back, but it was too late at that point. Why do people always forget about this? Maybe there's just too many new players who missed that whole episode? There's also below 50 for new players. Dont need this many dead camps for new players / those who want a simplified experience.

Just getting thrown into regular pvp with no hand holding is the best way to learn imo, but what drives people away is the overtly overtuned sets and mechanics that has defined the meta for years. i would hate being a new player trying to learn in a zone dominated by no counter pull sets like rush of agony and unkillable groups that have 50k perma shields on every member with who knows how much healing per second. not to mention the performance issues. don't get me wrong, you should be rewarded for grouping up and playing with friends in an mmo, but this current power level is absurd. Greyhost would be way more fun and more engaging for newer players if they fixed those 2 things at the very least. (at least for rush of agony by fix i mean removing entirely from pvp)

Well that is not the entire story with raven watch.
Around that same time pretty much all of the Under 50 guilds on ep/dc either disbanded or moved into ravenwatch leaving u50 campaign to die out. This was because AD had an Australian guild form (not to their fault being australian) but this lead to them flipping the map unopposed each night leading to other factions to quit over time when their new players didnt want to fight an uphill battle while learning.

Inevitably without U50 running new players never stuck in cyrodil because it was dead and boring. Where Bgs were more popular and easy to get into. So we saw huge declines in new players getting involved in cyrodil guilds across all the campaigns.

Then ravenwatch got the combined 3-4 AD guilds where ep/dc had 1-2 guilds. Which lead to the map being constantly flipped yellow for months on end.

Eventually the same trend that happened in u50 happened in raven where the map stayed one color and the other factions disbanded or moved on to greyhost.

Cyrodil was never meant to be played with a dying population. The concept of two losing factions teaming up only works if all factions have relatively the same populations. The game rules a decade ago should have been adjusted such that the losing factions get the combat bonuses to fight back while the winning faction gets the ap bonuses for their reward.

Ive hardly ever set foot in u50, but just from my experience with the other camps, namely br, when one side zergs the map while the other 2 factions have a smaller presence, its usually 1 or 2 big guilds that are the culprit. the other factions just leave in response if they constantly keep getting rolled and if the zerg guild plays often enough to always have control of the map (prime time at least). the zerg guild eventually leaves (im guessing because pvdooring eventually gets too boring for them) and the pop always recovers. If balance and performance are good or at least acceptable, people will come back or new people will make a home there. i played in br roughly from 2018 to 2024 with some breaks, but this was always the case in that campaign. what really drives people out for good is when something at the core of the game makes it not worth playing or coming back to. sort of a death spiral there, the game is unfun so less people play, the less people the more boring and dead it is, which further solidifies peoples decision to not come back or for new people to stay. This was my observation anyways. probably should mention this was pc na.

Yeah exactly. In GH we see that if one faction flips the map or even gets emp the others will still team up and fight back......but this was because GH stays even and pop locked most of the time.

On all the other non full campaigns all it takes is a good month or two for a campaign to lose players because one guild logs in and religiously flips the map. Then for months it takes forever for new players to join and learn pvp once it has reached a more faction balanced "fun" state.

The key concept here is that new players are able to take the steps up. However in today's game are there steps to take? Or do you think most people have to cannonball into the deep end? The old game was setup so much smoother to bring players into content

lvl1-10 pve players would come across mobs that did slower more telegraphed versions of skills. Youd see mobs doing really long dizzy knockup skills and learn how CC's work and how to dodge/block
lvl10-50 you were put into the u50 campaign
then stepped up to the nocp campaign
then got into the cp campaign.

Now we will have what?

lvl 1+ random pve dlc bloated content with one tamriel
lvl10+ you go into vengeance or u50 bgs both of which wont prepare you for GH cp pvp or fighting endgame bg deathmatch players.
lvl50 you go immediately into cp pvp or bgs with a dysfunctional MMR system

YandereGirlfriend · December 18

Not to go full "back in my day" but when I joined the game back in Summerset I got completely giga-clapped as soon as I started doing BGs and going into Cyrodiil. Like so many others, I came in on my PvE DPS build and chased tower trolls and ballgroups and got deleted.

It's honestly a mentality thing. Some players react to that by getting tilted and quitting. Others accept that they got outskilled/outplayed/outsmarted/outbuilt, etc. and set about trying to learn and improve their skills so that they can overcome it. Many players find that process satisfying, as they climb the ladder and feel themselves getting better and better.

People were complaining about "unkillable" tower trolls, troll-tanks, ballgroups, literally everything currently found in the forums back then as well. I know that because I was one of those people! You either graduate from the complaining stage to the self-improvement stage or you stay stuck in the complaining stage forever, which is, sadly, what I often see both here on the forums as well as in-game. People are out there doing the same old things and hoping for different results, not understanding that the way that they play other games or the way that the game was played back in 2016 no longer cuts it.

JohnRingo · December 18

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Not to go full "back in my day" but when I joined the game back in Summerset I got completely giga-clapped as soon as I started doing BGs and going into Cyrodiil. Like so many others, I came in on my PvE DPS build and chased tower trolls and ballgroups and got deleted.

It's honestly a mentality thing. Some players react to that by getting tilted and quitting. Others accept that they got outskilled/outplayed/outsmarted/outbuilt, etc. and set about trying to learn and improve their skills so that they can overcome it. Many players find that process satisfying, as they climb the ladder and feel themselves getting better and better.

People were complaining about "unkillable" tower trolls, troll-tanks, ballgroups, literally everything currently found in the forums back then as well. I know that because I was one of those people! You either graduate from the complaining stage to the self-improvement stage or you stay stuck in the complaining stage forever, which is, sadly, what I often see both here on the forums as well as in-game. People are out there doing the same old things and hoping for different results, not understanding that the way that they play other games or the way that the game was played back in 2016 no longer cuts it.

This is perfectly stated and exactly my own experience. We all got body bagged when we arrived in Cyrodil. At that point it becomes a question of perseverance and mentality.

Turtle_Bot · December 19

It feels like my previous post was misinterpreted. My comment about having simplified PvP was more about providing tools/ways to learn PvP in steps rather than to hold peoples hands. More like giving them floaties and a few basic swimming lessons before tossing them into the deep end of a pool rather than the current tossing them into the stormy ocean with weights around their ankles that we see now. I did try to note this by saying that vengeance needs more improvements/changes to bring it closer to Grey Host so that the leap is not massive when trying to jump from "simplified" into "end-game", but it seems that was missed.

I am a year 1 player, having played since 2015 (not quite beta monkey, but close enough), I know exactly what it's like to cut ones teeth in PvP with being thrown into the deep end of main campaign PvP (I was there in nothing but random overland gear, so not even a proper PvE build and I had/have the added bonus of playing in Cyrodiil with 300+ ping (regularly 500+ back then) too on top of my non-build), so I do also agree with @YandereGirlfriend 's point about mentality being a part of it. The difference between now and back then though is massive, not just mentality (of both new players and "veterans"), but the game's PvP environment itself was massively different back then too.
Back then, there was:
- The population to support 4+ locked campaigns at once
- Many more vet players/guilds willing to take new players under their wing and help them grow and get better, especially in the "learning" campaigns such as U50
- The power gap was just that, a gap, not an entire ocean to try and overcome
- With the skill gap being much closer and much less clutter/bloat in the game/visuals it was also possible to see how you got out-skilled and learn from it.

As for the other campaigns dying, it had way more to do with the things @MincMincMinc mentioned (night capping and player mentality of just wanting to win the mode by joining the winning faction rather than play the mode) than it ever had to do with the rulesets of those campaigns.
As for the U50 campaign specifically, it was even more than guilds controlling the map (at least on PC EU). There was a small sub-section of "players" who made the U50 campaign their home, farming all the best gear they could get so they essentially had full power Grey Host Vet Rank builds, but in the below 50 campaign, just so they could completely stomp anyone who set foot into the "learning" campaign (think ball group levels of unbalanced power, but single players had access to this level of power imbalance and were abusing it against new players who had no builds at all, or at most basic overland builds). This not only completely killed what was left of the U50 campaign after the guilds left it, but also completely ruined it's reputation as somewhere to go to learn how to PvP because it was now exclusively the playground of bullies and trolls whos sole purpose was to grief/farm new players trying to learn how to PvP.

ec250 · December 19

I can relate my experience and what I'm hearing from other vet players when it comes to Grey Host. The current state is just not fun. I am all for player freedom in designing builds and tactics to gain an advantage - but current state mechanics turn advantage into domination. Immortal builds and ball grp pull/bomb proc sets are ruining the Grey Host experience, and I believe everyone that has played the game for a while sees the problems (several earlier posters have described them in detail). Add in the pay to win faction hopping capability where people can choose to be part of the winning faction for a few dollars and issues balloon tenfold.

Less and less EP play GH, and few of the vet players are willing to faction hop, so they are moving on to other games. I'm also seeing other vet players from AD and DC moving on as well as "good fights" are on a severe decline. Yes, subclassing has had an impact on peoples gaming experience as there is no class cohesion - which is why so many EP liked Vengeance. Not saying Vengeance is the be all, end all answer - but something better be done soon or a good portion of the player base will move on.

RaidingTraiding · December 19

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

As for the other campaigns dying, it had way more to do with the things @MincMincMinc mentioned (night capping and player mentality of just wanting to win the mode by joining the winning faction rather than play the mode) than it ever had to do with the rulesets of those campaigns.

Again, this doesn't make sense. If night capping can do that, both blackreach and ravenwatch would have died many years ago. When I first started pvping back in 2017 - 18 i joined a guild that would zerg, nightcap, and control the map in br (shor back then). this did not kill the campaign by any means. the guild eventually dissolved and another zerg / nightcap guild emerged and did the same. it was not fun to play against especially after the guild i was in died. the pugs that would group with us also left. the campaign survived and that guild eventually split up or left and the campaign recovered.

Point is nightcapping and having one dominant faction does not kill a campaign. If the game is fun people will play or come back. I would go into no cp often and when it changed its ruleset i left because it was unfun, same as a lot of other people. Same thing with vengeance, the last few tests have showed low pop because people don't like it so they don't show up. This is also why Grayhost is dying now too, the meta is unfun and hasn't changed in years (rush of agony and shield/heal stacking). add on top of that performance issues.

MincMincMinc · December 19

RaidingTraiding wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

As for the other campaigns dying, it had way more to do with the things @MincMincMinc mentioned (night capping and player mentality of just wanting to win the mode by joining the winning faction rather than play the mode) than it ever had to do with the rulesets of those campaigns.

Again, this doesn't make sense. If night capping can do that, both blackreach and ravenwatch would have died many years ago. When I first started pvping back in 2017 - 18 i joined a guild that would zerg, nightcap, and control the map in br (shor back then). this did not kill the campaign by any means. the guild eventually dissolved and another zerg / nightcap guild emerged and did the same. it was not fun to play against especially after the guild i was in died. the pugs that would group with us also left. the campaign survived and that guild eventually split up or left and the campaign recovered.

Point is nightcapping and having one dominant faction does not kill a campaign. If the game is fun people will play or come back. I would go into no cp often and when it changed its ruleset i left because it was unfun, same as a lot of other people. Same thing with vengeance, the last few tests have showed low pop because people don't like it so they don't show up. This is also why Grayhost is dying now too, the meta is unfun and hasn't changed in years (rush of agony and shield/heal stacking). add on top of that performance issues.

Black reach was only ever sustained because it was the Greyhost overflow which is why it was so inconsistent. The Under50 and NOCP campaigns always had way more dedicated guilds propping them up. Which died like I said due losing new players, then guild issues, then a faction disbanding, then nightcapping causing mass quitting. Up to clockwork I ran an U50 guild and a NOCP guild up until summerset always popped back in to hang out with the old guilds on different factions. In the last year of U50 dying we used to have to farm up characters on all factions so we could flip back and forth preventing emp flips because people would log out for the night afterwards. The campaigns were literally on a hair whether or not people quit, because they knew anytime an imbalance happened the losing factions would just get gated and log out..........Honestly simple cyrodil rule changes could have fixed these issues like giving stat bonuses to losing factions while the winning faction only got AP bonuses.

After one tamriel the U50 and NOCP campaigns were bound to fail though due to new players leveling so much faster and getting to the point they would only ever look at trying greyhost first. Lots of times even the streamteam members brought it up that allowing u50 and lowCP players into greyhost was an issue with player retention. These players should have be guided into better learning environments. Now adays its so fubar that I see barely year old accounts that are cp2000+ and their only pvp options are dysfunctionaly MMR bg matches and GH ballgroup chasing, not exactly conducive to learning.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Not to go full "back in my day" but when I joined the game back in Summerset I got completely giga-clapped as soon as I started doing BGs and going into Cyrodiil. Like so many others, I came in on my PvE DPS build and chased tower trolls and ballgroups and got deleted.

Damn I feel bad for people that missed the IC-summerset era. Jewelry crafting was nice, but caused alot of issues. If I had to go back I would probably do pre summerset before they started hard power creeping stats out of the game. It was also nice before the game transitioned from more of a fighting game to a trading card game.

Durham · December 22

RaidingTraiding wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Let the free market of players decide where they want to play. Let them vote with their feet. It is up to Vengeance itself to make itself attractive to players. Only Vengeance can save itself. Coercing players into gameplay that they do not enjoy by deleting the content that they do enjoy is both bad business as well as extraordinarily fraught karma.

Don't yuck someone else's yum. Respect your fellow players and let them enjoy what they enjoy.

Agree with this point here, but it goes both ways.

The die-hard anti-vengeance crowd are using all the same disinformation comments of "We see that some people prefer Vengeance, but because the (laughably bad for data gathering) population bars confirms our anti-vengeance bias, we definitely need to cancel Vengeance to force those players into Grey Host".

Like literally 2 comments above yours and the most recent comment that was responding to a take that was similar to your own (that being, let both campaigns run and let players decide where they want to play) did this.

Both sides need to take a massive chill pill, let both campaigns be their own thing and let players decide which one they want to play.

Like it or not (and this is more of a general statement, not directed at anyone in particular), PvP in ESO NEEDS some form of simplified PvP, alongside the end-game of PvP in ESO, to help new players get into this part of the game. Personally I would like to see some more work done on Vengeance to enable it to be a solid on-boarding campaign for Grey Host (something that the U50 and no-proc campaigns failed at doing).
Teaching new players about important stat thresholds, mechanics, flow of combat, etc. in a simplified way that's easy to learn, so that players feel like they have some base knowledge/skills to join Grey Host and don't just feel gatekept out of Grey Host by the sheer learning cliff that it has.

ZOS has implemented sets in the past that could have helped with this learning curve (intentionally or not) with mythics such as Oakensoul and Torc of Ayleid king (oakensoul with the buffs, torc with baseline stats), but on release they either overperformed (oakensoul) and required massive nerfs or underperformed (Torc) and were completely forgotten about, so much so that they really didn't work well (oaken just became the defacto everyone runs this, so nothing changed, torc just didn't do enough to compete with how oppressively overpowered all the procs have become and how stat dense all the builds have gotten).

To me, ESO's PvP has the same issues as Yu-Gi-Oh and the fighting game genre. Amazing to play/has unmatched potential once you've invested the time to get good at it, but it simply takes too long to see even the most basic of results that keep that drive going, especially in the very time-poor reality that we currently live in.
Easy to learn, hard to master is the core essence of a good game/mode, but ESO PvP (like the others I mentioned above) suffers more from easy to learn, impossible to master and that just drives the majority of new players away (or just flat out prevents them from even trying in the first place).

PvE simply cannot function in this role because of a few factors:
- PvE is a repetitive task, once the mechanic is learned, there's no variation to practice it under differing scenarios.
- PvE uses completely different stats/utility to PvP.
- PvE has set roles that it's been split into, while PvP is a mix of every role all at once with minimal definition (so the build knowledge required for PvE does not fit for PvP making it a very different skill-set even at this level).
I'm sure there's more, but it's easy to see how PvE will always fail to help players prepare for PvP. They are just 2 completely different modes and the skill-sets required for 1 does not directly/easily translate to the other, especially at an end-game level.

Simplified pvp is exactly the campaign ravenwatch was, especially when no proc and no hammer was in effect, and that's what killed that campaign. Zos finally realized this and reverted it back, but it was too late at that point. Why do people always forget about this? Maybe there's just too many new players who missed that whole episode? There's also below 50 for new players. Dont need this many dead camps for new players / those who want a simplified experience.

Just getting thrown into regular pvp with no hand holding is the best way to learn imo, but what drives people away is the overtly overtuned sets and mechanics that has defined the meta for years. i would hate being a new player trying to learn in a zone dominated by no counter pull sets like rush of agony and unkillable groups that have 50k perma shields on every member with who knows how much healing per second. not to mention the performance issues. don't get me wrong, you should be rewarded for grouping up and playing with friends in an mmo, but this current power level is absurd. Greyhost would be way more fun and more engaging for newer players if they fixed those 2 things at the very least. (at least for rush of agony by fix i mean removing entirely from pvp)

What actually drives people away from ESO PvP isn’t losing—it’s performance issues combined with instant deletion by ball groups. Players see this happen a few times and quickly learn there is nothing they can realistically do about it.

If they get too close, they’re pulled straight into the ball group and deleted. There’s no counterplay—just punishment.

Some try to adapt:

Stay back

Hide inside structures

Fire siege weapons

But even that fails. Ball groups can shield and heal through siege damage, ignore pressure, and move at high speeds that make them very difficult to hit.

Very quickly, players realize:

They can’t escape ball groups

They can’t meaningfully damage them

They aren’t contributing to the battle in any meaningful way

The result? Log out.

ToddIngram · December 22

Durham wrote: »

RaidingTraiding wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Let the free market of players decide where they want to play. Let them vote with their feet. It is up to Vengeance itself to make itself attractive to players. Only Vengeance can save itself. Coercing players into gameplay that they do not enjoy by deleting the content that they do enjoy is both bad business as well as extraordinarily fraught karma.

Don't yuck someone else's yum. Respect your fellow players and let them enjoy what they enjoy.

Agree with this point here, but it goes both ways.

The die-hard anti-vengeance crowd are using all the same disinformation comments of "We see that some people prefer Vengeance, but because the (laughably bad for data gathering) population bars confirms our anti-vengeance bias, we definitely need to cancel Vengeance to force those players into Grey Host".

Like literally 2 comments above yours and the most recent comment that was responding to a take that was similar to your own (that being, let both campaigns run and let players decide where they want to play) did this.

Both sides need to take a massive chill pill, let both campaigns be their own thing and let players decide which one they want to play.

Like it or not (and this is more of a general statement, not directed at anyone in particular), PvP in ESO NEEDS some form of simplified PvP, alongside the end-game of PvP in ESO, to help new players get into this part of the game. Personally I would like to see some more work done on Vengeance to enable it to be a solid on-boarding campaign for Grey Host (something that the U50 and no-proc campaigns failed at doing).
Teaching new players about important stat thresholds, mechanics, flow of combat, etc. in a simplified way that's easy to learn, so that players feel like they have some base knowledge/skills to join Grey Host and don't just feel gatekept out of Grey Host by the sheer learning cliff that it has.

ZOS has implemented sets in the past that could have helped with this learning curve (intentionally or not) with mythics such as Oakensoul and Torc of Ayleid king (oakensoul with the buffs, torc with baseline stats), but on release they either overperformed (oakensoul) and required massive nerfs or underperformed (Torc) and were completely forgotten about, so much so that they really didn't work well (oaken just became the defacto everyone runs this, so nothing changed, torc just didn't do enough to compete with how oppressively overpowered all the procs have become and how stat dense all the builds have gotten).

To me, ESO's PvP has the same issues as Yu-Gi-Oh and the fighting game genre. Amazing to play/has unmatched potential once you've invested the time to get good at it, but it simply takes too long to see even the most basic of results that keep that drive going, especially in the very time-poor reality that we currently live in.
Easy to learn, hard to master is the core essence of a good game/mode, but ESO PvP (like the others I mentioned above) suffers more from easy to learn, impossible to master and that just drives the majority of new players away (or just flat out prevents them from even trying in the first place).

PvE simply cannot function in this role because of a few factors:
- PvE is a repetitive task, once the mechanic is learned, there's no variation to practice it under differing scenarios.
- PvE uses completely different stats/utility to PvP.
- PvE has set roles that it's been split into, while PvP is a mix of every role all at once with minimal definition (so the build knowledge required for PvE does not fit for PvP making it a very different skill-set even at this level).
I'm sure there's more, but it's easy to see how PvE will always fail to help players prepare for PvP. They are just 2 completely different modes and the skill-sets required for 1 does not directly/easily translate to the other, especially at an end-game level.

Simplified pvp is exactly the campaign ravenwatch was, especially when no proc and no hammer was in effect, and that's what killed that campaign. Zos finally realized this and reverted it back, but it was too late at that point. Why do people always forget about this? Maybe there's just too many new players who missed that whole episode? There's also below 50 for new players. Dont need this many dead camps for new players / those who want a simplified experience.

Just getting thrown into regular pvp with no hand holding is the best way to learn imo, but what drives people away is the overtly overtuned sets and mechanics that has defined the meta for years. i would hate being a new player trying to learn in a zone dominated by no counter pull sets like rush of agony and unkillable groups that have 50k perma shields on every member with who knows how much healing per second. not to mention the performance issues. don't get me wrong, you should be rewarded for grouping up and playing with friends in an mmo, but this current power level is absurd. Greyhost would be way more fun and more engaging for newer players if they fixed those 2 things at the very least. (at least for rush of agony by fix i mean removing entirely from pvp)

What actually drives people away from ESO PvP isn’t losing—it’s performance issues combined with instant deletion by ball groups. Players see this happen a few times and quickly learn there is nothing they can realistically do about it.

If they get too close, they’re pulled straight into the ball group and deleted. There’s no counterplay—just punishment.

Some try to adapt:

Stay back

Hide inside structures

Fire siege weapons

But even that fails. Ball groups can shield and heal through siege damage, ignore pressure, and move at high speeds that make them very difficult to hit.

Very quickly, players realize:

They can’t escape ball groups

They can’t meaningfully damage them

They aren’t contributing to the battle in any meaningful way

The result? Log out.

so the solution is to reduce ball group invincibility by limiting heal stacking and adjusting a few abused sets. No logical reason to create vengeance in the first place.

xylena · December 22

ToddIngram wrote: »

so the solution is to reduce ball group invincibility by limiting heal stacking and adjusting a few abused sets.

Yeah why haven't the devs thought of that? Are they stupid?

/s

ToddIngram · December 22

xylena wrote: »

ToddIngram wrote: »

so the solution is to reduce ball group invincibility by limiting heal stacking and adjusting a few abused sets.

Yeah why haven't the devs thought of that? Are they stupid?

/s

ZOS could make fixes to GH that would improve performance and player satisfaction. Why they're choosing not to only they can say.

Turtle_Bot · December 23

ToddIngram wrote: »

so the solution is to reduce ball group invincibility by limiting heal stacking and adjusting a few abused sets. No logical reason to create vengeance in the first place.

The reason a real solution to this issue never happens is impossible to talk about in-depth without potentially going into conspiracy theories unfortunately.

To sum it up in 1 word though: Favorites.

xylena · December 23

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

The reason a real solution to this issue never happens is impossible to talk about in-depth...

...because we're laypeople, not professional devs for this game. Any post claiming that fixing GH would be "simple" is extremely ignorant and can safely be dismissed. The real professional devs for this game recognized that it would be far more effective and efficient to scrap the dead failed GH model and rebuild from the ground up.

You may disagree with how they are rebuilding PvP, but rebuilding it is correct.

SaffronCitrusflower · December 23

xylena wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

The reason a real solution to this issue never happens is impossible to talk about in-depth...

...because we're laypeople, not professional devs for this game. Any post claiming that fixing GH would be "simple" is extremely ignorant and can safely be dismissed. The real professional devs for this game recognized that it would be far more effective and efficient to scrap the dead failed GH model and rebuild from the ground up.

You may disagree with how they are rebuilding PvP, but rebuilding it is correct.

Except if ZOS can't fix GH, then they can't create a new system without the same problems as GH. Either they have the chops to keep their game alive or they don't. In my view vengeance is ZOS telling us they might not be up to the task they've been hired to perform.

xylena · December 23

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Except if ZOS can't fix GH, then they can't create a new system without the same problems as GH

If a building has a faulty foundation, it gets demolished and rebuilt.

If you build the foundation correctly, the new building will not have those problems.

GH players are living underneath rubble and calling it a house.

SaffronCitrusflower · December 23

xylena wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Except if ZOS can't fix GH, then they can't create a new system without the same problems as GH

If a building has a faulty foundation, it gets demolished and rebuilt.

If you build the foundation correctly, the new building will not have those problems.

GH players are living underneath rubble and calling it a house.

ZOS built the "foundation" of GH when they had a full staff of experts to work with.

Now, with a fraction of the staff and massive brain drain from losing the original game designer and many of the most proficient devs you're thinking ZOS can do better?

I don't think you've thought this through very well.

If ZOS can't fix GH now, they can't create something better from scratch now either. How is this not obvious to everyone? ZOS isn't suddenly going to be able to create a new mode that works better than GH when they don't have the manpower to do it.

You can't build a foundation without a construction crew experienced in building foundations. It's more likely ZOS can improve GH with a few tweaks than it is they can build a whole new game mode that works smoothly.

Expecting ZOS to do their jobs and make fixes to GH is a much smaller expectation than thinking they can build a whole new system from scratch. Plus, fixing GH is what ZOS has been telling us is their focus all along and the purpose of vengeance in the first place.

There are plenty of other games that don't have a steep learning curve people can jump right into with friends and family members without asking ZOS to take away the game mode many of us log in to play.

xylena · December 23

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

many of us

There are NOT many of you. Not even close. That's why they made Vengeance in the first place. The PvP population dropped so low they reworked the entire game mode, knowing full well that such a drastic rework would alienate some of those players.

SaffronCitrusflower · December 23

xylena wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

many of us

There are NOT many of you. Not even close. That's why they made Vengeance in the first place. The PvP population dropped so low they reworked the entire game mode, knowing full well that such a drastic rework would alienate some of those players.

The side by side test proved that even fewer people will play vengeance than GH. There are even fewer people pushing for vengeance than still playing GH.

We saw the side by side populations and it was vengeance that was far less popular than GH.

I can see you'll just continue to argue the point, but the side by side "test" proved that vengeance will not be played by enough people to keep it going even if it's the only option.

You don't even play ESO anymore. ZOS should prioritize those of us who do.

xylena · December 23

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

You don't even play ESO anymore. ZOS should prioritize those of us who do.

That's what they've been doing, catering to the players who love proc sets, ball groups, and instakills so much that they're willing to suffer horrid performance for it.

This strat failed so badly they had to scrap everything and start over.

This time they are prioritizing potential new and returning players. Devs already stated that Vengeance test pops dropped due to test fatigue, they have already accounted for players being sick of testing and waiting for Vengeance to go live.

SaffronCitrusflower · December 23

xylena wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

You don't even play ESO anymore. ZOS should prioritize those of us who do.

That's what they've been doing, catering to the players who love proc sets, ball groups, and instakills so much that they're willing to suffer horrid performance for it.

This strat failed so badly they had to scrap everything and start over.

This time they are prioritizing potential new and returning players. Devs already stated that Vengeance test pops dropped due to test fatigue, they have already accounted for players being sick of testing and waiting for Vengeance to go live.

ZOS still hasn't even tried limiting heal stacking. So nobody can reasonably claim they've catered to the feedback of GH players.

xylena · December 23

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

ZOS still hasn't even tried limiting heal stacking

Because there is nothing simple/easy/cheap about a massive rebalance or mechanical alteration like that. This is the sort of layperson ignorance I was referring to above.

JohnRingo · 12:57AM

xylena wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

ZOS still hasn't even tried limiting heal stacking

Because there is nothing simple/easy/cheap about a massive rebalance or mechanical alteration like that. This is the sort of layperson ignorance I was referring to above.

xylena, come back the dark side. Let’s team up and go hunt down those ball groups!

JustLovely · 4:13PM

xylena wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

ZOS still hasn't even tried limiting heal stacking

Because there is nothing simple/easy/cheap about a massive rebalance or mechanical alteration like that. This is the sort of layperson ignorance I was referring to above.

So your assertion is that it's easier to build a whole new system from scratch than it is to make a few minor adjustments to an already built system?

It's become pretty plain you aren't arguing in good faith on this issue. (as evidenced by your insulting closing you have nothing left to add to the discussion)

xylena · 4:33PM

JustLovely wrote: »

a few minor adjustments

There's nothing "minor" about reworking the entire healing system, but thanks for another perfect example of layperson ignorance. There is nothing here to meet with any faith, good or bad.