Radiate77 wrote: »

The most population I have seen from 3-sided Battlegrounds within the last few years it was available, was when Deathmatch Only became the only option present.

My feedback would be to consider making this version available more than one day a week.

This is just a test to make sure all modes work.

They're not going to bring it live with a different mode each day.

3-sided BGs with the old bigger strategic maps with different game modes man. Good stuff! Just need a Vengeance one without subclassing and whatnot, and the BGs are saved!

My feedback: Make a hardcore ranked Deathmatch queue for the sweeties with leaderbords, rankings, K/D trackers and whatnot if that is what they want, and let the casuals enjoy old BGs, they were perfect! Nothing better than stealing relics!

Did you guys even play Vengeance? Subclassing wouldn’t break it because the skills do 1 thing each.

will 3-sided be coming back permanently?

Radiate77 wrote: »

The most population I have seen from 3-sided Battlegrounds within the last few years it was available, was when Deathmatch Only became the only option present.

My feedback would be to consider making this version available more than one day a week.

Yeah I'm in a guild in game that has 500 members, it is a deathmatch focused guild.

@ZOS_Kevin there is a solid amount of interest from long term vets who quit the game over the last couple years, if 3 team bgs (deathmatch) were brought back.

Please bring back 4v4v4 deathmatch as a permanent mode. It was by far the most popular mode, historically. People who like to pvp but care about objectives enjoy the 8v8 objective modes. People who think avoiding enemies is the height of tactical pvp will tell you 4v4v4 objectives were good, but they are a small, and not pvp focused minority, so catering to them will not amount to anything.

Splitting the queues further would be a bad idea. You can maintain 4 modes, or even just do 3, and manage to cater to the majority of players.

3 queues:
4v4v4 solo deathmatch (a place for the sweaty players, the majority of whom are deathmatch focused)
8v8 solo unranked objective (no deathmatch, a place for the casual to sweaty players who are interested in a variety of gameplay)
4v4v4 group deathmatch (a place for the bg guilds and sweaty groups to play their events)

Potentially a 4th queue:
4v4 solo ranked objective (a place for any sweaty objective type players, but I think this demographic isn't very large in comparison to the above 3 types of players).

Just a polite reminder that pets don't appear damage wise on the scoreboard, shielding doesn't show up either, healers should get assist medals, burst healing medals are overweighted in comparison to other ones, the "leaderboard" doesn't reflect anything except for who has the most time and/or a critical heal medal build, and adding unique rewards via a well designed (ie mmr) leaderboard would actually interest people.

If you wish to grow the bg community (who were historically eso+ subscribers and crown store cosmetic purchasers) back to what it was in years gone by, having the above 3 queue modes would be the first step. The 2nd would be to address the scoreboard+leaderboard issues.

I've advocated for these things and many others at the behest of the bg community (which has been massively reduced over the years). My hopes that the game might turn around have risen slightly during this pts cycle, but at the same time my desire to continue advocating for slam dunk changes for the betterment of players and your company is diminishing. Please @ZOS_Kevin, read what I've written here. Ideally, I'd ask for some acknowledgment, despite knowing you are busy.

gariondavey wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

The most population I have seen from 3-sided Battlegrounds within the last few years it was available, was when Deathmatch Only became the only option present.

My feedback would be to consider making this version available more than one day a week.

Yeah I'm in a guild in game that has 500 members, it is a deathmatch focused guild.

@ZOS_Kevin there is a solid amount of interest from long term vets who quit the game over the last couple years, if 3 team bgs (deathmatch) were brought back.

Please bring back 4v4v4 deathmatch as a permanent mode. It was by far the most popular mode, historically. People who like to pvp but care about objectives enjoy the 8v8 objective modes. People who think avoiding enemies is the height of tactical pvp will tell you 4v4v4 objectives were good, but they are a small, and not pvp focused minority, so catering to them will not amount to anything.

Splitting the queues further would be a bad idea. You can maintain 4 modes, or even just do 3, and manage to cater to the majority of players.

3 queues:
4v4v4 solo deathmatch (a place for the sweaty players, the majority of whom are deathmatch focused)
8v8 solo unranked objective (no deathmatch, a place for the casual to sweaty players who are interested in a variety of gameplay)
4v4v4 group deathmatch (a place for the bg guilds and sweaty groups to play their events)

Potentially a 4th queue:
4v4 solo ranked objective (a place for any sweaty objective type players, but I think this demographic isn't very large in comparison to the above 3 types of players).

Just a polite reminder that pets don't appear damage wise on the scoreboard, shielding doesn't show up either, healers should get assist medals, burst healing medals are overweighted in comparison to other ones, the "leaderboard" doesn't reflect anything except for who has the most time and/or a critical heal medal build, and adding unique rewards via a well designed (ie mmr) leaderboard would actually interest people.

If you wish to grow the bg community (who were historically eso+ subscribers and crown store cosmetic purchasers) back to what it was in years gone by, having the above 3 queue modes would be the first step. The 2nd would be to address the scoreboard+leaderboard issues.

I've advocated for these things and many others at the behest of the bg community (which has been massively reduced over the years). My hopes that the game might turn around have risen slightly during this pts cycle, but at the same time my desire to continue advocating for slam dunk changes for the betterment of players and your company is diminishing. Please @ZOS_Kevin, read what I've written here. Ideally, I'd ask for some acknowledgment, despite knowing you are busy.

I'd also say they could just ditch the separate group and solo queues for 4v4v4 and go back to a single dm queue like it used to be. Group queue is dead most of the time now so it's pretty much impossible to play BGs with friends outside of organized matches. The queues were fine back in the day and most of the complaints came from people whining about premades just because they lost, even when the winning team were actually all solo queuers.

It's extremely challenging to have a sustainable BG guild/community when people either can't play together or are essentially disincentivized to do so.

I'll log in to try it out whenever i can since 3-sided battlegrounds were more interesting and technical on both a tactical and strategic level.

Here is a situation i experienced in high-MMR Relic Capture, Deeping drone map
The scores were something like this:
A: 300 pts
B: 400 pts
C: 100 or 200 pts

So, if team (A) scored one more relic they would be tied with team (B).

One side (A) was trying to hold the relic they had captured for as long as possible to prevent it from respawning during the final minute and a half left. If they held it, the relic couldn't respawn, and therefore (B) couldn't score points, since (A)'s relic was well defended by the whole team and the relic from (C) was also being held at (A).
At the same time, (A) had to defend both their own relic AND the relic carrier, because they wouldn't be able to score an opponent's relic without theirs.
This forced them to switch between offense and defense in order to deal with both teams almost simultaneously.

The other side (B) was more aggressive: there was a constant back-and-forth between pushing forward and falling back to defend their base from side (C). (B) was deliberately waiting for (C)'s relic to respawn, aiming to capture it immediately on spawn, before they realized how (A) was playing them by holding it.. a bit too late (yes, that was my team!).

Meanwhile, (C) was mostly trying to survive, being the main target pressured by both factions, yet they still managed to capture the relic from (B) while most of (B) was busy attacking (A).

Losing that layer of strategy was really disappointing.

I will say that the objectives do work a lot better in 3-way fights than 2-way.

Granted, I'm not a huge PvPer, but I did enjoy BGs a while back before their decline. But I'm one of the casuals who find objective matches way more fun that straight deathmatch. And in each of the objectives, 3-way is more strategic than 2-way, while DM is the one that really doesn't have a major gameplay difference between them.

Looking at each mode specifically:

• 2-way Deathmatch: go kill the other team, while they try to kill you
• 3-way Deathmatch: you may be able to sit back and let the other two teams weaken each other, before sweeping in to clean up.
• 2-way Domination: mostly like a deathmatch, but on the flags. As more spawn, the fights spread out.
• 3-way Domination: more teams mean more fights going on on the flags, or more of a chance to capture undefended flags
• 2-way Crazy King: as above, but with more movement
• 3-way Crazy King: as above again, but now more chance to get undefended flags
• 2-way Chaosball: one team gets the ball and camps at base for the rest of the match while the rest of the team protects them
• 3-way Chaosball: more action since you have more people coming in to attack than you have defending, so camping isn't really possible
• 2-way Capture the Relic: completely broken. Either doesn't go at all, or one team gets one up and then they're practically a guaranteed win.
• 3-way Capture the Relic: actually requires playing the whole way through.

The objective modes were most hurt by the switch to 2-teams, and especially the Flag Games ones (CTR and Chaosball) have the strategy completely ruined by it... not to mention the fact that the swap to two-way also completely broke some achievements (Tactician can't be done since you don't have two enemy relics to get within 10 seconds).

I also think that the team/solo split is really hurting things. I get the "I don't want to play with premades!" complaint, but the population can't really support that. If they go down to one queue, then maybe they can actually use a proper MMR system to fix it, and that will be a lot better than hoping that the team people don't just all sit in Discord and queue solo together.

tldr: objective is way better with 3-team, but of course objective is not as popular of a mode as deathmatch.

xylena wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

objective is way better with 3-team

It's better if all 12 players do the objective, incoherent waste of time if you have half the lobby doing objectives but the other half is comparing their KDA stats. This is another problem that could begin to be addressed by splitting DM/OBJ queues.

also the fact that DM and objective do benefit from different builds.

I do think that the split should be DM/Objective instead of solo/group

I haven't been able to test Chaos Ball yet, but do the 3-team maps now support the updated Chaos Ball mechanics introduced with 2-team, such as there being three spawn points with some of the Chaos Balls transforming you when you pick them up?

I hope we get to have both 3-team and 2-team Battlegrounds as options.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I will say that the objectives do work a lot better in 3-way fights than 2-way.

Granted, I'm not a huge PvPer, but I did enjoy BGs a while back before their decline. But I'm one of the casuals who find objective matches way more fun that straight deathmatch. And in each of the objectives, 3-way is more strategic than 2-way, while DM is the one that really doesn't have a major gameplay difference between them.

Looking at each mode specifically:

• 2-way Deathmatch: go kill the other team, while they try to kill you
• 3-way Deathmatch: you may be able to sit back and let the other two teams weaken each other, before sweeping in to clean up.
• 2-way Domination: mostly like a deathmatch, but on the flags. As more spawn, the fights spread out.
• 3-way Domination: more teams mean more fights going on on the flags, or more of a chance to capture undefended flags
• 2-way Crazy King: as above, but with more movement
• 3-way Crazy King: as above again, but now more chance to get undefended flags
• 2-way Chaosball: one team gets the ball and camps at base for the rest of the match while the rest of the team protects them
• 3-way Chaosball: more action since you have more people coming in to attack than you have defending, so camping isn't really possible
• 2-way Capture the Relic: completely broken. Either doesn't go at all, or one team gets one up and then they're practically a guaranteed win.
• 3-way Capture the Relic: actually requires playing the whole way through.

The objective modes were most hurt by the switch to 2-teams, and especially the Flag Games ones (CTR and Chaosball) have the strategy completely ruined by it... not to mention the fact that the swap to two-way also completely broke some achievements (Tactician can't be done since you don't have two enemy relics to get within 10 seconds).

I also think that the team/solo split is really hurting things. I get the "I don't want to play with premades!" complaint, but the population can't really support that. If they go down to one queue, then maybe they can actually use a proper MMR system to fix it, and that will be a lot better than hoping that the team people don't just all sit in Discord and queue solo together.

tldr: objective is way better with 3-team, but of course objective is not as popular of a mode as deathmatch.

I´d argue the opposite, 2 team was a good thing for objectives because it made it so you actually had to interact with the other team instead of avoiding fights as the best course of action to win the match.

But for an objective match, is the goal to "interact with others" or "do the objective?"

I realize that in a PvP arena, people expect a modicum of PvP. But it goes back to the same argument of Cyro rewarding the alliance that is best at PvD.

In the objective matches, the games can be completely stalled - like you often have 15-minute CTR matches in 2-team that go to time without either team getting to 500 points since they were essentially DMing the whole time next to one of the relics. Chaosball can often be finished in a few minutes by one team monoploizing the ball and then just DMing.

This is why it's best for a DM queue and an objective queue - because people who enjoy objective modes are not there fore the DM, and the 2-team system just rewards "DM and more DM."

People can also enjoy objective modes when playing objective involves actually fighting for the flags, relics and chaosballs, not strategically running from Point A to Point B, standing still and dying when someone attacks you and just running to Point C because that's the most optimal way to victory in 3-way format.

This is also why 3-way battlegrounds almost completely died out and were down to one lobby with the same players in it each time before team vs team was introduced.


It's also an issue ZOS should try to solve, not actively encourage.

While it's challenging to actually find a 3-way BG on the PTS, here's my feedback on them based on 7 years of playing them:
Chaosball mode was probably the least problematic because the action would usually center around the one Chaosball, doesn't really need huge changes...

For Relic mode to work with 3 teams it'd be better to have one Relic spawn in the middle that you need to snatch and bring back to your team's base - this is the only way to prevent "run from Point A to Point B while other teams fight".

Crazy King should have only one or two flags at most - at the start playing objectives involves playing PvP, but once there's multiple flags this quickly turns into above mentioned behaviour.

Domination should have less flags or it should take significantly longer to flip the flags so that people have a chance to arrive before flags are flipped and people have moved on to the next flag, leaving you to fight the third team.


Ultimately for a balanced and competitive experience 3-way format will never be viable compared to the team vs team format used by almost every competitive PvP game out there... but it can probably still be improved atleast, if this is worth the development time and doesn't take away from fixing the problems with team vs team BGs on Live.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I will say that the objectives do work a lot better in 3-way fights than 2-way.

Granted, I'm not a huge PvPer, but I did enjoy BGs a while back before their decline. But I'm one of the casuals who find objective matches way more fun that straight deathmatch. And in each of the objectives, 3-way is more strategic than 2-way, while DM is the one that really doesn't have a major gameplay difference between them.

Looking at each mode specifically:

• 2-way Deathmatch: go kill the other team, while they try to kill you
• 3-way Deathmatch: you may be able to sit back and let the other two teams weaken each other, before sweeping in to clean up.
• 2-way Domination: mostly like a deathmatch, but on the flags. As more spawn, the fights spread out.
• 3-way Domination: more teams mean more fights going on on the flags, or more of a chance to capture undefended flags
• 2-way Crazy King: as above, but with more movement
• 3-way Crazy King: as above again, but now more chance to get undefended flags
• 2-way Chaosball: one team gets the ball and camps at base for the rest of the match while the rest of the team protects them
• 3-way Chaosball: more action since you have more people coming in to attack than you have defending, so camping isn't really possible
• 2-way Capture the Relic: completely broken. Either doesn't go at all, or one team gets one up and then they're practically a guaranteed win.
• 3-way Capture the Relic: actually requires playing the whole way through.

The objective modes were most hurt by the switch to 2-teams, and especially the Flag Games ones (CTR and Chaosball) have the strategy completely ruined by it... not to mention the fact that the swap to two-way also completely broke some achievements (Tactician can't be done since you don't have two enemy relics to get within 10 seconds).

I also think that the team/solo split is really hurting things. I get the "I don't want to play with premades!" complaint, but the population can't really support that. If they go down to one queue, then maybe they can actually use a proper MMR system to fix it, and that will be a lot better than hoping that the team people don't just all sit in Discord and queue solo together.

tldr: objective is way better with 3-team, but of course objective is not as popular of a mode as deathmatch.

I´d argue the opposite, 2 team was a good thing for objectives because it made it so you actually had to interact with the other team instead of avoiding fights as the best course of action to win the match.

But for an objective match, is the goal to "interact with others" or "do the objective?"

I realize that in a PvP arena, people expect a modicum of PvP. But it goes back to the same argument of Cyro rewarding the alliance that is best at PvD.

In the objective matches, the games can be completely stalled - like you often have 15-minute CTR matches in 2-team that go to time without either team getting to 500 points since they were essentially DMing the whole time next to one of the relics. Chaosball can often be finished in a few minutes by one team monoploizing the ball and then just DMing.

This is why it's best for a DM queue and an objective queue - because people who enjoy objective modes are not there fore the DM, and the 2-team system just rewards "DM and more DM."

People can also enjoy objective modes when playing objective involves actually fighting for the flags, relics and chaosballs, not strategically running from Point A to Point B, standing still and dying when someone attacks you and just running to Point C because that's the most optimal way to victory in 3-way format.

This is also why 3-way battlegrounds almost completely died out and were down to one lobby with the same players in it each time before team vs team was introduced.


It's also an issue ZOS should try to solve, not actively encourage.

While it's challenging to actually find a 3-way BG on the PTS, here's my feedback on them based on 7 years of playing them:
Chaosball mode was probably the least problematic because the action would usually center around the one Chaosball, doesn't really need huge changes...

For Relic mode to work with 3 teams it'd be better to have one Relic spawn in the middle that you need to snatch and bring back to your team's base - this is the only way to prevent "run from Point A to Point B while other teams fight".

Crazy King should have only one or two flags at most - at the start playing objectives involves playing PvP, but once there's multiple flags this quickly turns into above mentioned behaviour.

Domination should have less flags or it should take significantly longer to flip the flags so that people have a chance to arrive before flags are flipped and people have moved on to the next flag, leaving you to fight the third team.


Ultimately for a balanced and competitive experience 3-way format will never be viable compared to the team vs team format used by almost every competitive PvP game out there... but it can probably still be improved atleast, if this is worth the development time and doesn't take away from fixing the problems with team vs team BGs on Live.

Let's also not pretend that the current 2-way BGs are in a healthy state either.

IIRC the real decline of the BGs started way before any of this. But I think the first decision to 'fix' the BGs just accelerated the decline, and every decision since then has only made things worse - after the honeymoon period wears off, you find even fewer people sticking around, since the people who did like the old way are now also gone.

The first thing they did was when they made it so you couldn't queue for specific modes. And since then, it's essentially been objective and DM modes, i.e. people would go DM in objective modes because that's what the goal was. Of course DM is the most popular mode by far, but that's also keeping people out of BGs who dislike DM since they preferred the strategy of objective, where 'don't get in a fight' is a legitimate strategy. Sure, to a PvPer who's all about DM, that looks like someone avoiding PvP. But in a game that heavily skews to an anti-PvP base with players who do like to work cooperatively to accomplish a goal, that could work for that group.

Point is, the DM players don't tend to like objectives, because they see doing the objective as "not doing the point of the game, i.e. PvP." But Objective players do consider avoiding fights to do an objective as following the game mode as designed, and they see those "I only DM" players as trolls who are literally griefing by refusing to do what needs to be done.

The 2-way objectives promote fighting other players. The 3-way objectives promote strategy and sneaking around to do the objective. So... one way appeals better to DM players and the other will appeal to the players who do not favor DM. That's why a DM vs. 3-way Objective split would at least give both groups what they want.

Of course, the problem is that the Objective queue then would not be popular at all. But could that be because so many people are avoiding BGs because they want to avoid the possibility of DM?

Why should they design PvP content for players who are, as you describe, anti-PvP?

You can get more deathmatch oriented players more interested in objectives as soon as there's something to gain/lose from winning or losing a match. Currently there is nothing... there should be MMR points to gain/lose based on match win/loss. Better yet, with proper matchmaking people who enjoy winning the matches would never even have to queue against the "everything is a deathmatch" mentality.


While not the topic of this thread, Team vs Team BGs do have plenty of problems. Here's a list of what'd need to change:

Decimus wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I will say that the objectives do work a lot better in 3-way fights than 2-way.

Granted, I'm not a huge PvPer, but I did enjoy BGs a while back before their decline. But I'm one of the casuals who find objective matches way more fun that straight deathmatch. And in each of the objectives, 3-way is more strategic than 2-way, while DM is the one that really doesn't have a major gameplay difference between them.

Looking at each mode specifically:

• 2-way Deathmatch: go kill the other team, while they try to kill you
• 3-way Deathmatch: you may be able to sit back and let the other two teams weaken each other, before sweeping in to clean up.
• 2-way Domination: mostly like a deathmatch, but on the flags. As more spawn, the fights spread out.
• 3-way Domination: more teams mean more fights going on on the flags, or more of a chance to capture undefended flags
• 2-way Crazy King: as above, but with more movement
• 3-way Crazy King: as above again, but now more chance to get undefended flags
• 2-way Chaosball: one team gets the ball and camps at base for the rest of the match while the rest of the team protects them
• 3-way Chaosball: more action since you have more people coming in to attack than you have defending, so camping isn't really possible
• 2-way Capture the Relic: completely broken. Either doesn't go at all, or one team gets one up and then they're practically a guaranteed win.
• 3-way Capture the Relic: actually requires playing the whole way through.

The objective modes were most hurt by the switch to 2-teams, and especially the Flag Games ones (CTR and Chaosball) have the strategy completely ruined by it... not to mention the fact that the swap to two-way also completely broke some achievements (Tactician can't be done since you don't have two enemy relics to get within 10 seconds).

I also think that the team/solo split is really hurting things. I get the "I don't want to play with premades!" complaint, but the population can't really support that. If they go down to one queue, then maybe they can actually use a proper MMR system to fix it, and that will be a lot better than hoping that the team people don't just all sit in Discord and queue solo together.

tldr: objective is way better with 3-team, but of course objective is not as popular of a mode as deathmatch.

I´d argue the opposite, 2 team was a good thing for objectives because it made it so you actually had to interact with the other team instead of avoiding fights as the best course of action to win the match.

But for an objective match, is the goal to "interact with others" or "do the objective?"

I realize that in a PvP arena, people expect a modicum of PvP. But it goes back to the same argument of Cyro rewarding the alliance that is best at PvD.

In the objective matches, the games can be completely stalled - like you often have 15-minute CTR matches in 2-team that go to time without either team getting to 500 points since they were essentially DMing the whole time next to one of the relics. Chaosball can often be finished in a few minutes by one team monoploizing the ball and then just DMing.

This is why it's best for a DM queue and an objective queue - because people who enjoy objective modes are not there fore the DM, and the 2-team system just rewards "DM and more DM."

People can also enjoy objective modes when playing objective involves actually fighting for the flags, relics and chaosballs, not strategically running from Point A to Point B, standing still and dying when someone attacks you and just running to Point C because that's the most optimal way to victory in 3-way format.

This is also why 3-way battlegrounds almost completely died out and were down to one lobby with the same players in it each time before team vs team was introduced.


It's also an issue ZOS should try to solve, not actively encourage.

While it's challenging to actually find a 3-way BG on the PTS, here's my feedback on them based on 7 years of playing them:
Chaosball mode was probably the least problematic because the action would usually center around the one Chaosball, doesn't really need huge changes...

For Relic mode to work with 3 teams it'd be better to have one Relic spawn in the middle that you need to snatch and bring back to your team's base - this is the only way to prevent "run from Point A to Point B while other teams fight".

Crazy King should have only one or two flags at most - at the start playing objectives involves playing PvP, but once there's multiple flags this quickly turns into above mentioned behaviour.

Domination should have less flags or it should take significantly longer to flip the flags so that people have a chance to arrive before flags are flipped and people have moved on to the next flag, leaving you to fight the third team.


Ultimately for a balanced and competitive experience 3-way format will never be viable compared to the team vs team format used by almost every competitive PvP game out there... but it can probably still be improved atleast, if this is worth the development time and doesn't take away from fixing the problems with team vs team BGs on Live.

Let's also not pretend that the current 2-way BGs are in a healthy state either.

IIRC the real decline of the BGs started way before any of this. But I think the first decision to 'fix' the BGs just accelerated the decline, and every decision since then has only made things worse - after the honeymoon period wears off, you find even fewer people sticking around, since the people who did like the old way are now also gone.

The first thing they did was when they made it so you couldn't queue for specific modes. And since then, it's essentially been objective and DM modes, i.e. people would go DM in objective modes because that's what the goal was. Of course DM is the most popular mode by far, but that's also keeping people out of BGs who dislike DM since they preferred the strategy of objective, where 'don't get in a fight' is a legitimate strategy. Sure, to a PvPer who's all about DM, that looks like someone avoiding PvP. But in a game that heavily skews to an anti-PvP base with players who do like to work cooperatively to accomplish a goal, that could work for that group.

Point is, the DM players don't tend to like objectives, because they see doing the objective as "not doing the point of the game, i.e. PvP." But Objective players do consider avoiding fights to do an objective as following the game mode as designed, and they see those "I only DM" players as trolls who are literally griefing by refusing to do what needs to be done.

The 2-way objectives promote fighting other players. The 3-way objectives promote strategy and sneaking around to do the objective. So... one way appeals better to DM players and the other will appeal to the players who do not favor DM. That's why a DM vs. 3-way Objective split would at least give both groups what they want.

Of course, the problem is that the Objective queue then would not be popular at all. But could that be because so many people are avoiding BGs because they want to avoid the possibility of DM?

Why should they design PvP content for players who are, as you describe, anti-PvP?

Yeah, I know right? It's almost like if they decided to do something like spending a lot of dev time to make group dungeons soloable for people who hate grouping, right?

Jokes aside, there is some benefit in trying to expand playerbases in certain ways, if the goal is to get people in. I know a lot of objective players who stopped playing BGs because it was "all DM all the time," even when DM is not the goal. It's a lot like people who have stopped playing in Cyrodiil because they got tired of the gameplay being ballgroup central or immortal sorcdenblades with charms and burst heals for days.

A proper functioning MMR system would be great for BGs, but one of the big problems is the low population in general. You can't reasonably split players into groups of 16 similar-level players if there are only 16 players in the queue in the first place. BGs has just been neglected for so long, and it seems everything they've done to try to fix it has only just driven people away while not bringing any new ones in.

All I'll say as feedback from my perspective: 2-sided BGs have driven me away completely and I go out of my way to not do them at all now that I got all the outfit style drops. The 2-sided objectives are too often blowouts one way or the other, and since you only get a reward for winning, it means that it tends to be decided in the first 45 seconds of the match and then we just either fight fruitlessly for 14 minutes more, or you drop and get a queue penalty... but either way you get nothing out of it. At least with the 3-sided matches, there could still be a fight for second place because you still could get your daily from that.

DM works fine two-sided, and is even less chaotic than the 3-way. Dominations can also be fine 2-way because the fights follow the flags. But CTR and Chaosball are awful 2-way because there is no counterplay beyond "camp at base," while both did have quite a bit of strategy in the 3-way (which admittedly, some call "avoiding PvP" when you're really being strategic about which target to strike). As such, I feel like those particularly will be much more popular with a 3-way system.

But yes, there are more problems with BGs than just "2-way vs. 3-way," and a lot of that comes down to the DM vs. objective issue.