Please don't shut down Blackreach

Hugie · April 13

Removing Blackreach from the game is a bad idea. I can't imagine any good reason to do it.

First, let's touch on Vengeance. The Vengeance test-turned-feature has been a thinly-veiled deception from the get-go. "It's a performance test, guys! Actually, we are going to add some more features... for performance testing, don't worry. Just a test. Only temporary. Here are some icons for perks! Hmmmmmm, actually, it's not really about performance anymore; we really want to make a game mode to ease more casual players into PvP. Vengeance affords equal footing for people to hop in and enjoy large-scale battles without knowing anything about PvP. Isn't that great?! Vengeance is ready for prime-time!!!"

Stop it. You never fooled any of us. Vengeance has always been the best ZoS could do to treat the symptom (Cyro performance is bad) rather than the disease (properly investing in hardware and software improvements to deliver the experience players expect in Cyrodiil). Since it's been "popular" with casual players (i.e. you put golden pursuits and bonus rewards in there, shut down other campaigns, and then were delighted to find players showed up!

wow!), it's now positioned as the future of PvP in ESO. That's a terrible mistake, not because Vengeance can't occupy a valuable place in ESO's PvP ecosystem, but because it's being forced on an existing community of PvPers who DO NOT WANT IT.

And yes, I mean "forced." Gray Host is not a functional alternative; it's alliance-locked, meaning that any Vengeance-haters who play multiple alliances are out of luck. Who overlooked this, or decided it's OK?!

Listen, we get it: you've invested in Vengeance to the point that you can't throw it out. Casual players like it; that's good for the game. Fine. Let them have Vengeance. In fact, let them CHOOSE Vengeance. I personally doubt it will retain non-PvPers' attention for long and will become a ghost campaign in the absence of special incentives to play there, but that's beside the point of this post.

The point of this post is: leave Blackreach alone. The many players who enjoy ESO PvP, play characters spanning multiple alliances, swap alliances to help friends, and prefer to avoid the long queues and undesirables who plague Gray Host will thank you. And if Vengeance is truly worthy of existing, it will be plenty populated regardless of other campaigns continuing to exist.

CameraBeardThePirate · April 13

Agreed. Grey Host should be changed to non-alliance locked. They're effectively removing the ability to play with friends for those that don't enjoy Vengeance.

L_Nici · April 13

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Agreed. Grey Host should be changed to non-alliance locked. They're effectively removing the ability to play with friends for those that don't enjoy Vengeance.

Of course they do, just like the first 30 ranks of veterancy are Vengeance only. They want to force us into Vengeance, knowing full well, we do not want it.

Athometodd · April 13

As a more casual pvp'r, who still likes to delve into the diversity of sets and skills, I agree that Blackreach occupies an important space that has been overlooked and it should remain open as a third choice.

xylena · April 13

Can I have my own personal Cyrodiil server? /s

Condensing the queue makes sense. Those 8 guys on Blackreach are like 10% of the whole GH server, it needs all the help it can get to reach a critical mass where it's active 24/7.

Hugie · April 13

xylena wrote: »

Can I have my own personal Cyrodiil server? /s

Condensing the queue makes sense. Those 8 guys on Blackreach are like 10% of the whole GH server, it needs all the help it can get to reach a critical mass where it's active 24/7.

DOZENS!!!

CameraBeardThePirate · April 13

xylena wrote: »

Can I have my own personal Cyrodiil server? /s

Condensing the queue makes sense. Those 8 guys on Blackreach are like 10% of the whole GH server, it needs all the help it can get to reach a critical mass where it's active 24/7.

The problem is they're removing the campaign with fewer restrictions.

It's fine if there's only one non-Vengeance campaign, but they need to do away with Faction Lock if they're getting rid of Blackreach since now if you have multiple toons on different alliances, you either play Vengeance or you're relegated to 1 or 2 characters.

Fruity_Ninja · April 14

They should leave Grey Host as alliance locked, and keep Blackreach as non-alliance locked

Vengeance can be the 3rd option

That will make sure all bases are covered for players who prefer standard PVP vs the toned down Vengeance campaign

It’s clear this change was made to force people in Vengeance, because they know it will be a dead campaign most of the time

ArctosCethlenn · April 14

L_Nici wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Agreed. Grey Host should be changed to non-alliance locked. They're effectively removing the ability to play with friends for those that don't enjoy Vengeance.

Of course they do, just like the first 30 ranks of veterancy are Vengeance only. They want to force us into Vengeance, knowing full well, we do not want it.

just to clarify, do you mean the first 30 ranks can only be EARNED in vengeance, or give rewards that only WORK in vengeance?

tomofhyrule · April 14

ArctosCethlenn wrote: »

L_Nici wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Agreed. Grey Host should be changed to non-alliance locked. They're effectively removing the ability to play with friends for those that don't enjoy Vengeance.

Of course they do, just like the first 30 ranks of veterancy are Vengeance only. They want to force us into Vengeance, knowing full well, we do not want it.

just to clarify, do you mean the first 30 ranks can only be EARNED in vengeance, or give rewards that only WORK in vengeance?

The rewards from the first 30 or so ranks include Vengeance-specific things (build perks), in addition to a handful of cosmetics or consumables. Veterancy can be earned in any PvP mode by earning AP (or significantly slower with XP in PvP zones)

The stream also said that those first 30 ranks would level very quickly, and then it would slow down.

ItsNotLiving · April 14

Why do people even want an alliance locked campaign?

Vulkunne · April 14

Blackreach is already dead. It's been dead. Nothing has seriously been done to bring it back and that also has not and it will not happen organically either. It gets passed around and people are constantly in and out of factions. I'm not sure whets left there worth saving tbh. At first, I wasn't in favor of sunsetting the place but its either that or watch it continue to die a slow death, neglected with 1 dominant faction at a time and over half the best players going there for whatever reason.

Techwolf_Lupindo · April 14

Hahahah, look all the faction swappers crying in this thread. They are one of the reason folks leave PvP for good.

BardokRedSnow · April 14

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Agreed. Grey Host should be changed to non-alliance locked. They're effectively removing the ability to play with friends for those that don't enjoy Vengeance.

You do this, you'll kill Greyhost, the alliance locked aspect of it is why its not almost always empty like blackreach/ravenwatch.

Whether people agree with it or not, like it or not etc, there's a looot of roleplayers in pvp despite what people have been lead to believe lol and they're obsessed with alliance drama. It is a huge motivator for them, and there's a whole culture behind it both in how the factions play and behave. Its hilarious and makes things interesting, you don't get that in other campaigns, its just people swapping to the next high pop faction with their toons and rotating taking the map again and again.

At least with Greyhost this is only once a campaign and it makes things fresh every time you see the new players move and how thats gonna affect pvp in the time period. Change this and all you'll see daily, hourly is cyrodiil painted a new color all the way through and very little actual pvp.

BardokRedSnow · April 14

I dont care what they do to Blackreach but I agree with everything said about Vengeance. Its a waste of time and resources, and it will be empty before the year's out except for when incentives are given to the pvers that it appeals to.

CameraBeardThePirate · April 14

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Agreed. Grey Host should be changed to non-alliance locked. They're effectively removing the ability to play with friends for those that don't enjoy Vengeance.

You do this, you'll kill Greyhost, the alliance locked aspect of it is why its not almost always empty like blackreach/ravenwatch.

The only reason Grey Host is most popular is because it's the first campaign in the list. This is always how Cyrodiil has been; the first one on the list is the most popular, the rest are dead campaigns. The rule set has literally never mattered. The first one has always been the most popular regardless of rule set.

Jsmalls · April 14

Sorry if this is hi-jacking a bit but as a previous Blackreach regular want to give my opinions on the campaign as well as all campaigns as a whole.

I havent played regularly (or really at all) in over a year, so I'm not 100% of the current state of Blackreach but when I did play I chose that as my main campaign because Grey Host was... Poorly performing. It also attracted the most attention of organized ball groups (adding to poor performance and killing the fun factor).

So Blackreach was generally a "smaller" scale (not that 360 total players isn't already "small scale" comparing to release cyrodiil). And it performance wise it worked very well. And the population got close to caps during primetime still (is this still the case?).

As someone who will likely be coming back for Update 50 (pure class buffs are a major reason why) definitely would greatly miss Blackreach.

Looking to the future I imagine they would have no choice but to increase the campaigns again once crossplay is effective.

I'd definitely keep blackreach in until at least the mid sized PvP zone that has been teased makes is way into the game. Because honestly that kind of feels like the role it has held.

Also to someone else's point. Maybe alternate the order of servers? If it's truly ppl clicking on the first server listed might help...

YandereGirlfriend · April 14

Folk are sleeping on the influence of queue add-ons and outside-of-game mouse-moving scripts that enable players to AFK for hours at a time while their GH queue processes.

This is one of the huge reasons why Blackreach is dead despite 2-hour queues for GH on all factions. Since folk do not need to be at their computer at accept their queue when it pops, they just leave the room or browse while waiting for their queue to pop and auto-accept. Mouse-movers keep them logged-in to Cyro while they wait for friends, creating dead-weight for their factions in the meantime.

Start cracking-down on that and Blackreach regains some of its old function as the "waiting room" for players queued for GH, with players actually... playing... rather than AFK'ing.

decairn · April 14

Grey Host being faction locked provides an identity and long-term allegiance for some, and in theory a commitment at least for a month to competition on one side. It also provides a crown-sink for ZOS from players that regularly swap factions.

So keep Gray Host. I couldn't care less about the others, including Vengeance. Keep Blackreach? It's a ghost town usually but I understand people like having the option of switching toons around so let it idle by.

The problem I suspect will come along is there's already a big queue for Grey Host, maybe we'll lose a few to Vengeance, gain a few from Blackreach, and eventually gain even more with cross-platform play. Meanwhile, no material performance improvements for Greyhost. The least-risky way to improve its performance is buy newer hardware dedicated to it, the software options are far from simple.

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · April 14

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Folk are sleeping on the influence of queue add-ons and outside-of-game mouse-moving scripts that enable players to AFK for hours at a time while their GH queue processes.

This is one of the huge reasons why Blackreach is dead despite 2-hour queues for GH on all factions. Since folk do not need to be at their computer at accept their queue when it pops, they just leave the room or browse while waiting for their queue to pop and auto-accept. Mouse-movers keep them logged-in to Cyro while they wait for friends, creating dead-weight for their factions in the meantime.

Start cracking-down on that and Blackreach regains some of its old function as the "waiting room" for players queued for GH, with players actually... playing... rather than AFK'ing.

I think that is part of the problem, and it is worth addressing, but I do not think it fixes the main issue.

Even if ZOS cracks down on the few players we see AFKing at the gate, whether through third-party tools or otherwise, people will just find other ways around it as long as the incentive is there. A separate gate AFK timer or stricter kick system might help a little, but it would not solve the bigger problem.

To me, the real issue is that Gray Host no longer has a real alternative. Blackreach needs to coexist with Gray Host and Vengeance, and more importantly, it needs to actually be worth playing. In my opinion, Blackreach has not been a genuinely fun PvP experience for years, mostly because of the population and the generally lower level of play there.

People respond to incentives. Make Blackreach good again, and Gray Host queues become much less of a problem on their own, assuming Blackreach stays. So I definitely get your point, I just think the AFK issue is more of a symptom than the root cause.

Soarora · April 14

PvE main here, why not just replace no-proc no-cp with Vengeance instead of proc/cp/no lock? I mean, Vengence feels like an evolution of no-proc/no-cp…

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · April 14

Soarora wrote: »

PvE main here, why not just replace no-proc no-cp with Vengeance instead of proc/cp/no lock? I mean, Vengence feels like an evolution of no-proc/no-cp…

From what they have said, the plan is basically to remove every current Cyrodiil alternative besides Gray Host, including cp, no-cp and low level, and leave Vengeance as the only real replacement. That is why people are worried.

That is very likely to backfire. Gray Host queues will get even worse, more people will sit AFK at the gate waiting on friends, and the overall experience will suffer. If anything, the current primetime queues show that people are coming back and actively want to play Gray Host, so removing more options and expecting Vengeance alone to absorb that demand seems like a bad idea.

Estin · April 14

GH queues can reach up to 2 hours sometimes these past few weekends on PCNA. As class mastery gets fine tuned, more and more people will want to come back to the game to play their pure classes. This is going to make the GH queue times even worse. BR was always the hold over campaign for GH while you waited for your queue to pop. On busy days, it does have a significant amount of players for it to be worth playing. Without BR, those players only have IC or BGs as a hold over. I'm certain not everyone likes IC, and BGs are a too much of a one sided mess. This is going to cause quite a bit of backlash in the otherwise good comeback ESO is currently in.

I really do suggest that one of the following should be done. The easiest solution would be to just keep BR. GH queue times already prove that there is a demand for regular Cyrodiil and that BR is the hold over. There doesn't need to be a 1-3 month data collection to see if another campaign needs to be added as mentioned on the recent stream. The second and least likely solution is to delay Vengeance along with the Veterancy Track until the new mid sized campaign is completed. Whichever route is chosen doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is GH needs a hold over campaign where players can have a regular open world experience.

CalamityCat · April 14

I'm not an alliance hopper, all but 1 of my girls are AD. But I hate thinking Blackreach is going to close because it feels much friendlier and relaxed without all the ballgroups, lag and the less pleasant types that I tend to meet playing GH. It's a nice place if you want to use your usual build/gear but without the worst of GH. Or in my case, you just want a break from GH shenanigans.

I don't have any problem with having Vengeance as an option, I plan on playing in there for some variety and I'm sure it'll feel more suited to my casual PvPing. But it doesn't let me use my normal build(s) with my CP active, and get some practice in a friendlier environment.. Blackreach does.

I think Blackreach is much nicer for players who aren't super experienced or just need a bit of time away from the ballgroups, lag and super OP meta builds. I think GH, Vengeance and Blackreach would have offered a better and genuine choice. If I want to relax and have some open world PvP, I'll either have to go to Vengeance where none of my guild mates will venture, or I get lagged and nuked in GH.

Soarora · April 14

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

PvE main here, why not just replace no-proc no-cp with Vengeance instead of proc/cp/no lock? I mean, Vengence feels like an evolution of no-proc/no-cp…

From what they have said, the plan is basically to remove every current Cyrodiil alternative besides Gray Host, including cp, no-cp and low level, and leave Vengeance as the only real replacement. That is why people are worried.

That is very likely to backfire. Gray Host queues will get even worse, more people will sit AFK at the gate waiting on friends, and the overall experience will suffer. If anything, the current primetime queues show that people are coming back and actively want to play Gray Host, so removing more options and expecting Vengeance alone to absorb that demand seems like a bad idea.

Well that’s… bad. I know I heard it in the stream they were doing that but I wasn’t locked in, I thought it was just for a testing period. Certainly shouldn’t get rid of under level 50 or Blackreach (when I do play Cyrodiil, I play Blackreach. Often I swap alliances to get to skyshards or cities for achievements or to play with friends, even though I’m an AD main).

Attorneyatlawl · April 15

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Why do people even want an alliance locked campaign?

I don't get why people want an unlocked one. I made all of my toons the same faction at launch with pvp in mind. Why would you want to play multiple sides of the same war? Doing so used to be considered cheating in older mmorpgs and was heavily looked down upon.

That all said, greyhost queues are a good reason for there to he a second normal campaign that isn't vengeance.

tomofhyrule · April 15

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Why do people even want an alliance locked campaign?

I don't get why people want an unlocked one. I made all of my toons the same faction at launch with pvp in mind. Why would you want to play multiple sides of the same war?

Because some people have friends on other alliances and they want to play with their friends.

React · April 15

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Why do people even want an alliance locked campaign?

I don't get why people want an unlocked one. I made all of my toons the same faction at launch with pvp in mind. Why would you want to play multiple sides of the same war? Doing so used to be considered cheating in older mmorpgs and was heavily looked down upon.

That all said, greyhost queues are a good reason for there to he a second normal campaign that isn't vengeance.

For some people, PVP is about PVP combat. Not faction or alliance related roleplay.

The best way to find fights is to play the underdog faction, which tends to change a few times a year. Even further, it is very refreshing to swap to another faction and fight players from your previous faction who you'd never had an opportunity to fight before.

salander7 · April 15

I really can't understand how ZoS thought this was a good idea.
Denying people the possibility to play proper built PvP chars unless they're all in the same alliance sounds like a huge loss.
It's bad enough that we get Vengeance shoved down our throats, but that it means a player is forced to either alliance lock or play washed down version of pvp for casual players.

If alliance swapping was free (with some limit to it, once per month per char?), I'd understand, that month you commit to fight for a certain alliance. But if a char is not in the right alliance, it's spending 3k per char or play the boring version of PvP. There's a reason many players have pvp built chars on different alliances.

Builds are way duller, and the whole thing has only received significant engagement outside a few casuals when players were bribed with rewards to play it.

Not to mention how many players have no clue about the differences between alliances (and it's hard to know, to be fair), and you're sort of forced to buy Any Race, Any Alliance on top of all. The amount of times I've had to explain to a newer player they can't play non-bg pvp w their friend bc they're a nord and their friend is a khajiit.
Until now, it meant they needed another char.
Now it means they need to create another char and play the joke vengeance is, or simply spend more money.

Edit: after reading a post somewhere else, and while it's the most irrelevant complaint, I realised that only being able to buy rank unlocked furnishings from one faction per month seems like an unnecessary constraint. Put the Cyro furnishing vendors in overland (bg camps, IC?) if you're not going to let people get to them on 2 of the alliances.
While it's irrelevant for pvp, it seems pointless nonetheless; I did bother levelling to high ranks on one char for each alliance bc of that, and I occassionally buy furnishings when I need to. Being unable to do so feels stupid.

allochthons · April 15

I am not a PvPer.
But I go into Cyrodiil fairly frequently to dig up the treasure maps, buy gear or quest in Bruma or Vlastarus, capture 9 resources, or scout.

All that is much easier if I have characters on each alliance. I'm going to miss Ravenwatch and Blackreach for those reasons, and I really hope there is still a campaign that is not alliance locked after all this is over.

I am okay getting ganked while I do this. It is PvP. I don't want a solo Cyrodiil, but Cyrodiil should still be moderately useful for the non-serious PvPers.

(I want to keep Ravenwatch and Blackreach, but I know that battle is lost)

Kartalin · April 15

It'd be great to have GH be non alliance locked, especially if it becomes the only non-vengeance campaign. But we can still compromise if necessary and change the lock from 30 days to something like 20 hours. I think that alleviates many (not all) of the issues that lock fans are concerned with and helps out the multi-faction enjoyers.