JohnRingo wrote: »

This outcome was massively debated. So, what have we accomplished here for the PvP community long term?

All that's been achieved is the removal of non alliance locked cyrodiil for those who wish to play non-vengeance on characters they have on other factions this will no longer be possible.

Whats happening has happened several times already.

1. Zos balloons the game code wise, or set wise or skill wise. This is the yugioh effect where much like the card game, as they release new content effects get crazier and crazier. Cards go from a simple no description, to a one sentence effect, to a one paragraph effect, to multiple paragraph effects, to multiple card effects, to full deck effects. ESO is no different if you compare early on skills and newer skills that have multiple paragraph explanations proccing several passives and proc sets at a time. Now we have multiple skill effects like crux and corpse system intertwining >>>>>> Inevitably this induces performance problems as we saw in veng1&2 which was successful at showing how even simple skill design got us back to 900pop and then in veng2 having more complicated aoe group smartheals and effects could induce lag stutters.
2. Cyrodil due to the increased performance demand lags worse and worse
3. Zos fixes it by reducing the cyrodil population cap instead of un-bloating the game. It was 900 at first, then it became 600, now its at 300 on live. At a certain point the mapsize is FAR too large for the player cap and the gamemode of cyrodil keep seiging stops working. Which brings us to today

So zos has the following choices

• Leave cyrodil as is and it will collapse due to lowered population much like how the u50, nocp, and 7day campaigns did.
• Rework current cyrodil gamemode like how Planetside2 dealt with lower game populations. You would do things like grey out parts of the map and create a rotation. Things like after taking a keep it couldnt be flipped back for 30mins. Only frontline keeps could be seiged on a contested transitus of your faction. Keeps couldnt be flipped during off hours to prevent night capping the map. etc.
• Hold off on class/skill changes until vengeance testing is flushed out to redesign the game in a smart way.
• Give up on cyrodil as we know it and make a new smaller map campaign while continuing to balloon the game's design into nonsense. GH pvp would transition to this new map. Vengeance will probably be the only cyrodil experience in the future. Maybe zos would keep a live cyrodil campaign, but I highly doubt they would leave a competitor to their new concept mini seige campaign.

I dont think you will have to worry about waiting in the queue of GH campaign once Vengeance is there xD I dont see the reason why bigger groups, casual PvP guilds, random PvE players or just more casual players would choose GH over Vengeance. And the actual PvP community is actually quite small in ESO.

albertberku wrote: »

What achieved will be that Grey Host will be a ghost town in the long term and the campaign will be closed and all sweaties will have to shift to the new planned middle sized Cyrodiil Map, since there wont be enough population for a bigger map. There they will just grind their absurd builds/sets against each other while their dropping sweat ruining their gaming screen 1 inch away. And then eventually they will realise how much they actually got carried by their builds and sudden meta changes throughout the years and suddenly wont enjoy ESO PvP that much anymore since all players they are competing will be similar sweaties and there wont be any easy wins.

In the meantime we will enjoy a more controlled, structured, slow-paced and fair large-scale PvP experience in Vengeance together with normal people. And hopefully this time devs wont make the same mistakes they made throughout the years and wont butcher PvP every patch and instead just make slower and balanced iterative changes keeping concepts and systems faithful to originals and not trying to mix everything with everything.

This is unfortunately just outright wrong. If the recent tests on PCNA and both console servers, together with the absurd queue times we have already been seeing on PCNA, have demonstrated anything, it is that the overwhelming majority of the PvP playerbase still wants to play in Gray Host, not Vengeance. That much seems fairly obvious at this point.

I would be very surprised if Vengeance ends up being anything other than a graveyard within a month of release. The current player behavior does not suggest a broad appetite for that ruleset at all. What it suggests instead is that people want access to the campaign they are already actively trying to get into, and the queue situation on PCNA has made that painfully clear.

I'm all for it. Ball groups will stick to GH and will eventually be stuck either fighting each other or just taking empty keeps as I'm sure most solos and casual players will go to Vengeance which is pretty much what happened the last time they rolled out a Vengeance test. I think having the two campaigns and letting the players choose is needed.

Fact of the matter is that GH is stale, it's been stale and numbers are dwindling most nights. Sure, you get a few big fights here and there during prime time but until then, map is boring. Everyone just stands at the gate or keeps until a large fight pops off then it's back to being AFK. I remember the early days of Cyrodiil when it was large scale battles nonstop, made it exciting. Vengeance isn't perfect but it brings back that old school days of Cyro which I appreciate

Yudo wrote: »

The queue to GH as the only campaign (besides Vengeance) will be just extreme I think. I don't think it would die, I would imagine it is in even higher demand without alternative campaigns.

Mini GH will be the successor eventually, but we don't know exactly how or what it will solve going from GH --> mini GH.
Will there be alternatives again? Less lag and higher pop? New features and content along side Vengeance?
Everyone that did not ask for Vengeance is potentially in for a period of painful transition. Hopefully there will be clear communication along the way.

Thoughts? For now, as long as I can get in to GH with reasonable queue times I'm fine.
Not a fan of how we are funnelled into Vengeance as the "I am waiting for my GH queue" campaign, but it is what it is.

mini GH is going to be a one keep map as they showed in the livestream. They are fixing the performance server issues in GH by simply cutting the population in half or in thirds again. Basically distribute the lag to different servers.

Veng showed that streamlined skills and effects COULD reduce lag to the point where we could go from a 300 player cap to 900 player cap. Sadly zos is going ahead with the class reworks without streamlining the skills. Likely because it would feel like a step backwards for everyone and players prefer power creep to power reductions.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

"PvP Veterancy: This new system rewards players who participate in Cyrodiil, Imperial City, and Battlegrounds with unique cosmetics, titles, consumables, perks for Vengeance and more!"

The way this is worded it could imply that Veterancy is Vengeance only since it says it gives Vengeance Perks. My concern is that this also implies that as you unlock Veterancy you also grow more powerful in Vengeance since you unlock "perks" which if I remember referred to the bonus passives in Vengeance last test. So level Veterancy to be more powerful in Vengeance?? See: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/683180/all-vengeance-perks

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

MoonlightShadow wrote: »

"PvP Veterancy: This new system rewards players who participate in Cyrodiil, Imperial City, and Battlegrounds with unique cosmetics, titles, consumables, perks for Vengeance and more!"

The way this is worded it could imply that Veterancy is Vengeance only since it says it gives Vengeance Perks. My concern is that this also implies that as you unlock Veterancy you also grow more powerful in Vengeance since you unlock "perks" which if I remember referred to the bonus passives in Vengeance last test. So level Veterancy to be more powerful in Vengeance?? See: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/683180/all-vengeance-perks

Ahh thank you. I wonder if some are reading that and interpreting it as all the listed rewards are Vengeance only? I'll mention it to a few folks on my end.

The Veterancy rewards, first and foremost, are things you can earn by participating in any PvP mode, like the quote mentions. The only Veterancy reward that is Vengeance-specific is the passive perks. We added those to Vengeance only because the available builds there are so paired down compared to the full builds players can use in Gray Host.

Why do Vengeance perks have to be locked behind Veterancy at all? That's like saying we need to grind XP/AP to unlock Item Set slots or skill line passives in Gray Host, every 6 months.

albertberku wrote: »

What achieved will be that Grey Host will be a ghost town in the long term and the campaign will be closed and all sweaties will have to shift to the new planned middle sized Cyrodiil Map, since there wont be enough population for a bigger map. There they will just grind their absurd builds/sets against each other while their dropping sweat ruining their gaming screen 1 inch away. And then eventually they will realise how much they actually got carried by their builds and sudden meta changes throughout the years and suddenly wont enjoy ESO PvP that much anymore since all players they are competing will be similar sweaties and there wont be any easy wins.

In the meantime we will enjoy a more controlled, structured, slow-paced and fair large-scale PvP experience in Vengeance together with normal people. And hopefully this time devs wont make the same mistakes they made throughout the years and wont butcher PvP every patch and instead just make slower and balanced iterative changes keeping concepts and systems faithful to originals and not trying to mix everything with everything.

Most accurate response...ever. 90% of a 168 hour week, GH is a ghost town. The only time it has Q's is when and because most of it's players are lifers and have 2 or 3 of those $6 base accounts and they log into multiple alliances artificially bloating the population. Combined with people trying to fish the zone, visit Goldie, or do the into quest to acquire Major Gallop skill (or Vigor). While this game has the account population to support the appearance of life in the game, it does not have the actual HUMAN population manning the characters to support GH and Veng.

My personal opinion but MicroZeniBeth has a TV Show (Fallout) that could have beautifully fallen in line with a Fallout 5 game to take advantage of the hype the show could put into such a game, instead of 76 or 4 which don't really fall in line with the exact timing or plots of the show. But MicroZeniBeth can't do a Fallout 5 because they are behind on Elder Scrolls 6 while they are trying to make it seem like they didn't just outright abandon Starfield. And I am not trying to slander Zenimax, I play all three of these games and like them. But, I don't see how Zenimax looks the stockholders of Microsoft (who owns Zenimax) in the face and tells them they are going to continue to pump time, money, and effort into a ten year failed pvp combat system in one game, while they are failing and falling so far behind in three others.

I'm perfectly fine with Grey Host and Vengeance being the two campaigns. The 3 current campaigns that aren't Grey Host are just dead. Vengeance gives a safe place for new players to experience and learn PVP without being completely obliterated by chronically online PVPers with hard-hitting builds and thus being discouraged from diving into PVP more. And Grey Host will still be there for the usual PVPers. I do feel if Grey Host is in much higher demand in the future, they'll open another campaign to ease the stress.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

People were mostly complaining about vengeance having no builds.

What I dont understand is why did zos even make this perk/bonus system function like this? The original intent was that because vengeance didnt have items enabled they wanted to make up for the lack of item sets and skill passives.......They could design the UI to look like ANYTHING. So why not design the UI for bonuses to look like slotting vengeance item sets? Instead they made a new system that people don't want to be bothered to learn.

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Seeing the class/skill reworks happening before zos even finishes the vengeance testing should tell you all you need to know of where we think things are gonna go. They are just going to reduce the pvp server pop down again to account for the new lag they added into the game with dlc releases over time. Original pop was 900, then 600, now 300 and we can guess its going to go down substantially for the new mini cyrodil one keep campaigns.

I'd hope they keep Vengeance at a 900 pop cap as that is much closer to what they advertise and also had at release. How much was it before they had serverside calculations? 1k Per side?

And yeah the interface does feel strange. Having vengeance only item sets would be super interesting, like a reverse transmog where your current armour is for looks, and you equip sets that you'd get from some vendor for AP? Though it's probably for performance reasons like everything else in Vengeance. 3 Simple bonuses from the menu rather than 12 bonuses + 12 enchants + procs from gear.

Honestly though? I loved Vengeance's earlier tests, so I'll gladly take it. And I'm glad they added some things for dedicated healers, that's my favorite playstyle in ESO PvP that other games never got right imo.

Melkorrian wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom or @ZOS_BrianWheeler

To avoid creating a separate thread for my minor question, I'll ask here. During the Vengeance tests, a specific color scheme was always enabled (similar to the green-and-scarlet style of Apocrypha). When Vengeance becomes a permanent campaign, will this color scheme be removed? And I apologize if this has been mentioned somewhere, in which case I missed this information. Many thanks for the answer!

P.S. I'd like it removed because it's literally the only thing I didn't like about Vengeance —it's so hard on the eyes to look at such a color combination for long.

This sky was to distinguish between live and test, and it was mentioned (I don’t remember anymore on what occasion, before the 4th iteration?) that permanent Vengeance will have a regular Cyro sky.

JohnRingo wrote: »

This outcome was massively debated. So, what have we accomplished here for the PvP community long term?

We created a space that is more accessible to players new to PvP. New players will be able to learn basics in Vengeance (like block, dodge, shield, heal, etc) without being deleted in a split second. Those players will eventually outgrow Vengeance and feel strong enough to compete in GH - the prestigious vet campaign. Therefore, long-term, we are on a trajectory to accomplish much healthier PvP population in ESO by bringing in new players and retaining them more effectively for both campaigns.

Darethran wrote: »

And, you know, Vengeance being a much better balanced playing field with triple the player count while having no lag. We finally have an option for warfare in Cyrodiil.

This is why I enjoyed it from the last test they rolled out. It had that large scale warfare feel again that you USED to experience in Cyrodiil. Sure, GH still has those types of fights but not as often as I've stated in a past comment. It was fun rolling up to a keep and just having massive fights (with very little lag too) everywhere and as you've said above, it was balanced. There were no comped/ball groups there to steamroll everyone and kill the fun, there were no meta builds running rampant one shotting folks, it just felt...balanced for a change.

Personally, as I've said before, I would love to see Vengeance become it's own permanent campaign and let the players choose which one they want to play in. Don't remove GH altogether since a lot of players have been vocal on how negative that would be (I agree with this) but maybe use Vengeance to replace Raven watch or even Blackreach...