GH Queue was so long last night I was in it for multiple hours and still didn't get in, and you're posting this at 9:42am EST....

The dropoff in participation has been getting worse every year, to be honest. AWA caused a major decline once achievements went account wide, so pve who used to come to try for the pvp achievements aren't playing as much any more. With the arrival of periodic Vengeance campaigns giving AP Bonuses, that decline became even steeper because I don't think enough people are tempted by the AP Bonuses when they know a Vengeance campaign will give them something similar. (Last year it seemed like people were burned out/just didn't care. This year seems very similar)

tomofhyrule wrote: »

The last few MYMs also had low turnout as well. A lot of it is that the "I only PvP when it's MYM" crowd have massively reduced or stopped playing because of the games direction over the past few years.

I do think a specific elephant in the room in regard to this is subclassing - a lot of the non-regular pvp'ers haven't bothered keeping up with the meta just for a kind of old, getting-stale event a couple times a year. And our older builds that used to be fine, are terribly outcalassed now. Throwing that on top of older problems of things like rush of agony spam, and ballgroups, and reduced group size, was I think the straw that broke the camel's back for many.

And then as fewer of the non-regular pvp'ers show up for mayhem, it becomes a more hostile environment for the fewer who do show up - they have more trouble finding groups and more trouble finding any fights that aren't a slaughterfest. So even fewer show up the next time, and the problem builds on itself, and pretty soon what's the point - you're just running into the exact same names and groups that you stand no chance against, every single time. Or you can try one of the entirely dead servers and run around questing and pvdooring.

Bottom line is, it needs to be fun and I think pvp has gotten into a state where it doesn't deliver that experience at all for players who aren't regulars and/or who aren't ready to invest a significant amount of time with no certain outcome.

It's the same in IC. I've gone into IC every day to earn my 1 event ticket, and I haven't run into any other players except the first day, when I saw a single player from each opposing faction. We all ignored each other and went about our questing.

Apart from that, I haven't come across anyone. And I'm not cheesing it by saving civilians. I'm in the districts running around doing stuff.

Soarora wrote: »

I used to be a “I only PvP when it’s MYM” player and for me its event fatigue and that the PTS is currently active.

This is also a good point.

PTS won't pull too many people away, but this cycle has been phenomenal with the amount of communication, so a lot more people than normal (PvPers included) are probably also hanging out over there to give feedback on the DK rework. That does have implications for the balance of the game, after all.

Last night on PC NA the queue for me was 119.

If the population is lower it's because PvP in general is struggling in ESO. Many have left already just because ZOS has put far too much time and effort into vengeance instead of what they always, until recently, have claimed to be doing, and that specifically is to improve performance in the main Cyrodiil campaign.

I don't think ZOS has realized just how harmful to their reputation it's been to present vengeance at all instead of doing what they've always said they were doing with Cyrodiil PvP.

DenverRalphy wrote: »

MYM doesn't really appeal to anybody. It doesn't give much to PvP'ers, at least nothing they really care about. The most excitement I've seen it drum up was 2 (maybe 3?) MYMs when they had a Golden Pursuit attached to it. And even then it was mostly PvE players vocally demonstrating their displeasure over having to go into PvP zones to get the rewards.

I love MYM/Whitestrakes. It was a lot more fun when pop caps were reasonably high, but still good now too.

I always hated the ticket system that would result in me having a bunch of fragments left over from this and that event, and the occasional lost ticket because i forgot to check my inventory again... etc. Now we know it's going away, and we'll hopefully get a better model with the bars. At the moment, if I didn't have enough free time, I would just not bother with the event as is.

Generally most events that boil down to "do 3 dailies for 3 tickets" are boring tedium. Unless rewards blow you away, they're not particularly fun to participate in. And really, at some point you can only have so many glowy pets, what am I even supposed to do with all of them. It's event after event, back to back, more and more fragments of X and Y and Z, used to be a bunch more morphs on top of it, here's a hundred style pages, what about another glowy pet? Or... another?

Add PvP to the mix, and you push away a few more people who refuse to set foot into PvP zones (even though they could calmly walk in at this point, there's around 0 pvp happening most of the time, everyone just walking past to do a quest). And frankly this isn't very appealing to hardcore PvPers either. Balancing and state of pvp aside. As well as general game population. Because it's hard to argue that we clearly have less players online on average.

I agree there seem to be fewer people. Usually I can’t get into the normal campaigns and end up rampaging around a temp campaign to avoid the queues. But not only am I able to get into the big normal campaigns the fights don’t seem very large and not much is going on.

eso has very bad, extremely unpopular pvp. before noting gh has a prime time queue, consider that it is a 360 payer server.

nothing they have done the past 10 years makes me think they have any clue about how to improve it.

I love pvp. I used to love eso pvp. I've played pvp games for decades. I won't touch eso pvp with ten foot stick.

Dunno, it is rather had to get into faction locked campaigns on PC-NA, usually a hour or two wait unless you're playing really early or really late.

Not being a pvp'er I usually avoid bg like the plague, but I dice in and played about six rounds and was pleasantly surprised that about half were against equally inexperienced teams. One of them ended up being incredibly close and was the most fun I've ever had in bg. The rest, my team barely scored at all while four gods on the other side made a clean sweep.
Still, got a pile of rewards, style pages, that Alessia statue lead...

Desiato wrote: »

prof-dracko wrote: »

Not being a pvp'er I usually avoid bg like the plague, but I dice in and played about six rounds and was pleasantly surprised that about half were against equally inexperienced teams. One of them ended up being incredibly close and was the most fun I've ever had in bg. The rest, my team barely scored at all while four gods on the other side made a clean sweep.

This is a normal pvp experience and why almost every popular match based pvp game has ranked matchmaking to segment players based on performance. And it's easy to understand why considering this is how real life sports and recreational activities tend to be structured competitively. Normally there are too few players in battlegrounds for mmr to function.

Your average baseball enthusiast who enjoys pitching would quickly grow tired of it if everyone they pitched against had major league baseball talent.

As I type this, it is likely there are multiple groups in Cyrodiil akin to the LA Dodgers is roaming the map looking for beer league softball players to fight. It's so broken.

There is matchmaking rank, but it's by character and reset monthly. This makes it completely ineffective .

DenverRalphy wrote: »

MYM doesn't really appeal to anybody. It doesn't give much to PvP'ers, at least nothing they really care about. The most excitement I've seen it drum up was 2 (maybe 3?) MYMs when they had a Golden Pursuit attached to it. And even then it was mostly PvE players vocally demonstrating their displeasure over having to go into PvP zones to get the rewards.

We get double AP, right? That appeals to me.

It seems as busy on PS NA GH as it was last year. I had a short wait in the queue this morning. Just as busy in IC too, maybe one bar for one alliance in the morning.

I've got on a regular cadence people smacking me for 9 to 14k hits against my 40k armor. Same opponents have hyper speed, teleports, a knocback that ignores block, and don't take meaningful damage.

This is how the designers want PvP