When Vengeance finally goes live and the seasoned PvP players that have been sitting it out return, I wonder how long it will be till posts show up whining that they are still getting killed.

Maximus_Mordred wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

During its last appearance on PCNA, Vengeance suffered the same issue that plagued and ultimately defeated no proc PVP: As soon as the populations reach a certain level of imbalance, it becomes impossible to play against massive numbers as an underdog.

Yeah during my playtests the limited build options forces the entire camp into a numbers game. Whoever has the higher pop in one area wins - which isn't fun.

A zerg fest just stinks.

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

.

Maximus_Mordred wrote: »

ToddIngram wrote: »

No amount of hyping by the vocal minority will change that.

Pot, meet kettle.

The only people who will stay in vengeance long term are the same ones who occupy the now dead ravenwatch, BR and below 50 campaigns. Jaded bitter pvpers that just wanna zerg, and pvers that just want their tier 3 rewards.

Perhaps there's been confusion about the marketing of the end product. Cyrodiil is built for zerging, not for having duels/1v1s, not for having smallscale fights, and certainly not for ballgroups or bombers.

It is built for zerging and siege warfare. If you don't like that, then that's fine, but the product is fundamentally not for you.

This may come as a surprise to some, but a lot of people, in fact a massive proportion of largescale PvPers play in Cyrodiil for the large-scale objective fights which rely around zerg v. zerg combat as a foundation. If you want personalised strictly skill-based fighting, there are other avenues in BGs, duels and IC.

Trying to change the behaviour of Cyrodiil and by extension how others can play the game, because it doesn't pander to your own personal style of play, especially when those styles of play already exist is not only selfish but reveals a critical lack of perspective. Play Cyrodiil in smallscale or solo of course, but you have no right to complain when the zerg runs you over.

You are mistaking what I mean by zerg fest.

I love massive battles, 1-2 hour keep battles at chal are amazing. I do not like the spin off tower humpers 1vxer fights... those are annoying to me.

In Cyrodiil (Gray Host) your groups build can turn the tide in a fight. If you've got a good setup you can make a difference.

In Veng... it's simply a numbers game. Whoever brings the most people to a keep wins. That isn't always the case in GH but it is 100% the case in a veng camp.

Thats what I mean by zerg fest.

LadyGP wrote: »

Maximus_Mordred wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

During its last appearance on PCNA, Vengeance suffered the same issue that plagued and ultimately defeated no proc PVP: As soon as the populations reach a certain level of imbalance, it becomes impossible to play against massive numbers as an underdog.

Yeah during my playtests the limited build options forces the entire camp into a numbers game. Whoever has the higher pop in one area wins - which isn't fun.

A zerg fest just stinks.

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

.

Maximus_Mordred wrote: »

ToddIngram wrote: »

No amount of hyping by the vocal minority will change that.

Pot, meet kettle.

The only people who will stay in vengeance long term are the same ones who occupy the now dead ravenwatch, BR and below 50 campaigns. Jaded bitter pvpers that just wanna zerg, and pvers that just want their tier 3 rewards.

Perhaps there's been confusion about the marketing of the end product. Cyrodiil is built for zerging, not for having duels/1v1s, not for having smallscale fights, and certainly not for ballgroups or bombers.

It is built for zerging and siege warfare. If you don't like that, then that's fine, but the product is fundamentally not for you.

This may come as a surprise to some, but a lot of people, in fact a massive proportion of largescale PvPers play in Cyrodiil for the large-scale objective fights which rely around zerg v. zerg combat as a foundation. If you want personalised strictly skill-based fighting, there are other avenues in BGs, duels and IC.

Trying to change the behaviour of Cyrodiil and by extension how others can play the game, because it doesn't pander to your own personal style of play, especially when those styles of play already exist is not only selfish but reveals a critical lack of perspective. Play Cyrodiil in smallscale or solo of course, but you have no right to complain when the zerg runs you over.

You are mistaking what I mean by zerg fest.

I love massive battles, 1-2 hour keep battles at chal are amazing. I do not like the spin off tower humpers 1vxer fights... those are annoying to me.

In Cyrodiil (Gray Host) your groups build can turn the tide in a fight. If you've got a good setup you can make a difference.

In Veng... it's simply a numbers game. Whoever brings the most people to a keep wins. That isn't always the case in GH but it is 100% the case in a veng camp.

Thats what I mean by zerg fest.

Fair, I misunderstood what you were trying to say on that last post then. I agree that it has heavily shifted towards numbers over skill, but that's just a natural consequence of dramatically reducing the diversity of sets and playstyles - a necessary step to actually make those zerg battles viable in the first place. Given one or the other, I'd personally take the latter (although of course both would be optimal, but ZOS can't or won't make that a possibility).

However, what I said still stands in regards to the subset of players who actually do misunderstand Cyrodiil's intended purpose.

They have said (very clearly, and several times) that it is not possible to have both large population caps and decent performance in Cyrodiil owing to the drastically higher number of events the server has to process in a single thread (every hit of damage, every splash of healing, every movement etc.)

The PVP community has for a long time complained about decreasing population caps.

So the choices are either something that works a lot more like Vengeance and can support high population caps, or the status quo where each campaign has a small population cap and the popular one has a long queue.

I wonder if there is another option where each campaign is actually multi-instance, with population balancing. If you queue with a group you get to go in the same campaign otherwise you go in a random instance. All the scoring gets aggregated so whatever your instance of the campaign looks like you're still contributing to the overall month-end score. It would mean the system could keep legacy PVP behaviour and eliminate queueing for GH, but it would mean that the score didn't necessarily represent the battlefield and might be challenging for deciding how Emperorship should work, and it would mean just joining campaign and lfging in your PVP guild wouldn't be the same experience. But nobody else has suggested it to my knowledge, so I thought I would.

Bear in mind that there are also a ton of other persistent gripes that "stick with the current system" doesn't address - ball groups, troll tanks, edge builds with high damage, infinite resources and high armour at the same time.... Vengeance does effectively neuter them but the tests so far have probably been too far the other way in terms of neutering build diversity. And finally the issue of sets remains problematic for all game modes - there are far, far too many completely useless sets in the game, that see literally zero use in any form of gameplay except for by noobs that don't have a clue and are probably wearing completely mismatched gear in any case. Each new zone or dungeon adds to the problem.

xFocused wrote: »

Four_Fingers wrote: »

When Vengeance finally goes live and the seasoned PvP players that have been sitting it out return, I wonder how long it will be till posts show up whining that they are still getting killed.

Did this actually happen? Lol. I'm genuinely asking because I like to play both GH and the Vengeance test but the only ones that were whining were the GH sweats that didn't have their crutches available in Vengeance, lol

This is not so, a lot of us have played for a long time and cut our ESO PvP teeth back in the day so we know how to play without builds as we know them, it is just boring.
Our whole guild has been sitting it out not because we won't still kick butt, but in protest.
In hindsight it would have been better if we had played and quashed statements like that.
We shall see...

Logged on today to a surprise vengeance only. Bleaks was lit, 20 EP inside, 3 DC defending. Logged off.

Maximus_Mordred wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Maximus_Mordred wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

During its last appearance on PCNA, Vengeance suffered the same issue that plagued and ultimately defeated no proc PVP: As soon as the populations reach a certain level of imbalance, it becomes impossible to play against massive numbers as an underdog.

Yeah during my playtests the limited build options forces the entire camp into a numbers game. Whoever has the higher pop in one area wins - which isn't fun.

A zerg fest just stinks.

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

.

Maximus_Mordred wrote: »

ToddIngram wrote: »

No amount of hyping by the vocal minority will change that.

Pot, meet kettle.

The only people who will stay in vengeance long term are the same ones who occupy the now dead ravenwatch, BR and below 50 campaigns. Jaded bitter pvpers that just wanna zerg, and pvers that just want their tier 3 rewards.

Perhaps there's been confusion about the marketing of the end product. Cyrodiil is built for zerging, not for having duels/1v1s, not for having smallscale fights, and certainly not for ballgroups or bombers.

It is built for zerging and siege warfare. If you don't like that, then that's fine, but the product is fundamentally not for you.

This may come as a surprise to some, but a lot of people, in fact a massive proportion of largescale PvPers play in Cyrodiil for the large-scale objective fights which rely around zerg v. zerg combat as a foundation. If you want personalised strictly skill-based fighting, there are other avenues in BGs, duels and IC.

Trying to change the behaviour of Cyrodiil and by extension how others can play the game, because it doesn't pander to your own personal style of play, especially when those styles of play already exist is not only selfish but reveals a critical lack of perspective. Play Cyrodiil in smallscale or solo of course, but you have no right to complain when the zerg runs you over.

You are mistaking what I mean by zerg fest.

I love massive battles, 1-2 hour keep battles at chal are amazing. I do not like the spin off tower humpers 1vxer fights... those are annoying to me.

In Cyrodiil (Gray Host) your groups build can turn the tide in a fight. If you've got a good setup you can make a difference.

In Veng... it's simply a numbers game. Whoever brings the most people to a keep wins. That isn't always the case in GH but it is 100% the case in a veng camp.

Thats what I mean by zerg fest.

Fair, I misunderstood what you were trying to say on that last post then. I agree that it has heavily shifted towards numbers over skill, but that's just a natural consequence of dramatically reducing the diversity of sets and playstyles - a necessary step to actually make those zerg battles viable in the first place. Given one or the other, I'd personally take the latter (although of course both would be optimal, but ZOS can't or won't make that a possibility).

However, what I said still stands in regards to the subset of players who actually do misunderstand Cyrodiil's intended purpose.

So first you were saying that on GH people get carried by their sets while skills matter in Vengeance and now you are saying the exact opposite and you agree that vengeance is more about numbers than skills? Did I get something wrong?

I am going to argue those "veteran PvPers" would stop playing ESO PvP alltogether if there would be ever any kind of balance between classes and builds in ESO PvP. Yeah, of course they like GH more because you can get carried by your god builds there. Vengeance is not boring it is balanced. Talk about build freedom of GH and then use exact same one build together with all sweaties throughout whole patch and then change to the next god build next patch. And enjoy clearing the more casual folk or players that dont go meta easier. Doesnt look like build freedom to me.

All those hardcore ESO PvP streamers and Youtubers with K/D counters on their screen suddenly stop streaming and posting videos. Yeah yeah, they dont like Vengeance. That should be the reason

Is it that or are you missing your stupid OP Maarselok builds, or DK one shot combos or Damage Skill Line stack subclass meta? Your proc sets to carry your damage for you? Medium armor high sustain, high healing, high dmg, high crit, high mobility, speed cap streak, high hp builds to carry you? Is that what you miss?

The next one who talks about skill in vengeance 🤣

albertberku wrote: »

I am going to argue those "veteran PvPers" would stop playing ESO PvP alltogether if there would be ever any kind of balance between classes and builds in ESO PvP. Yeah, of course they like GH more because you can get carried by your god builds there. Vengeance is not boring it is balanced. Talk about build freedom of GH and then use exact same one build together with all sweaties throughout whole patch and then change to the next god build next patch. And enjoy clearing the more casual folk or players that dont go meta easier. Doesnt look like build freedom to me.

All those hardcore ESO PvP streamers and Youtubers with K/D counters on their screen suddenly stop streaming and posting videos. Yeah yeah, they dont like Vengeance. That should be the reason

Is it that or are you missing your stupid OP Maarselok builds, or DK one shot combos or Damage Skill Line stack subclass meta? Your proc sets to carry your damage for you? Medium armor high sustain, high healing, high dmg, high crit, high mobility, speed cap streak, high hp builds to carry you? Is that what you miss?

No, like I said earlier our guild doesn't care if you use meta sets or not. Still, we like GH better than Vengeance and we're a casual guild.

We like the diversity of GH and you must admit, zerging in Vengeance gets boring really fast. Now, if it had the same population cap as GH, which one would you prefer?

xFocused wrote: »

Four_Fingers wrote: »

When Vengeance finally goes live and the seasoned PvP players that have been sitting it out return, I wonder how long it will be till posts show up whining that they are still getting killed.

Did this actually happen? Lol. I'm genuinely asking because I like to play both GH and the Vengeance test but the only ones that were whining were the GH sweats that didn't have their crutches available in Vengeance, lol

Yeah I noticed alot of people complaining that veng was only for zergs and how it was impossible to solo. Then I and a few others had no issues 1vXing and doing all the same things I normally would. I could still pull people into towers or chokeholds to 1vX. I could make a group and kite enemies into seige spots like trapping enemies in holes then oiling them.

Maybe its just because Im an old PvPer who remembers smallman pvping without all of the handholding most "elite" coordinated groups have with their group stacking sets that give them 10x a normal player's stats while fully immune to all CC. IDK it feels like the 2014-2015 era pvp where you needed map knowledge and actual kiting skills.

Jaavaa wrote: »

The next one who talks about skill in vengeance 🤣

Do you think skill equates spending 900 hours grinding the most op set in the game, and everyone using the same 3 sets? Sets that do 99 percent of the work for you? That is absolutely not skill.

SneaK wrote: »

albertberku wrote: »

Is it that or are you missing your stupid OP Maarselok builds, or DK one shot combos or Damage Skill Line stack subclass meta? Your proc sets to carry your damage for you? Medium armor high sustain, high healing, high dmg, high crit, high mobility, speed cap streak, high hp builds to carry you? Is that what you miss?

Call me crazy but looks like you listed 11 different ways to play…

Jokes aside, anybody who has PvP’d in ESO over the decade remembers when things were not so unbalanced, and likely would jump at the chance to restore balance, however not for the sake of killing build variety (like you listed above).

Everyone always argues about balance when the topic of Vengeance comes up, guess what, Vengeance was not sold on balance it was sold on Performance. ZOS won’t balance Vengeance properly either. It’ll be a watered down mode with a worse meta than what GH will have after U50 drops class masteries. Vengeance will literally wind up being flavor of the month more than any camp we’ve ever seen, just like the tests were with NB. It’s 10 times worse though cause the game is moving forward with all kinds of updates and Vengeance won’t let you access them.

DOA

It is much easier to balance a small set of skills with an equal playing field, than 100+ sets and an insane amount of variables. Its not dead, I see mostly positive feedback in game, and a few loud whiners that cannot play without their broken builds.

albertberku wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

Call me crazy but looks like you listed 11 different ways to play…

Well i listed 3 builds actually. 1: DoT with Maarselok (10% usage). 2: DK (60%), 3: Damage/Burst lines subclass (15%). You can use Shalks instead of Heart of Flame or Blastbones in another damage/burst line. You can use another glyph and one other trait than your friend. Does it really change your build or playstyle meaningfully? And everything else i listed are just used by all three of these. From medium armor to weapon dmg stack to speed cap unlimited sprint to high hp to unlimited sustain to godly dmg to crits/ block healing, extreme burst/proc sets. Just the same OP playstyle and build.

I am going to give you an example about what i mean. Before hybridization patch and all the chaos afterwards, there used to be 12 playstyles. Each class with stam and magicka versions. Magsorc played differently than stamsorc, stamblade was deadly but squishy, had hat shade gameplay. And then there was magblade with cloak and resto shield for healing when in cloak. There was Templar that could block and heal better than everyone else staying alive in dense areas. Magsorc could run away with Streak. And then there was DK which was master of DoTs and could burn you if you get close. These are the different playstyles. Today you just slot medium armor and damage lines, stack weapon dmg and crits and just sprint at your opponent at speed cap to hit them with 5 different abilities at once without any gameplay whatsoever. You get hit by stupid unrealted combos like Snipe + Overload + Crushing + Pulse + Crystal Weapon + Winterborn in a single GCD. Why?

Exactly this.

Four_Fingers wrote: »

When Vengeance finally goes live and the seasoned PvP players that have been sitting it out return, I wonder how long it will be till posts show up whining that they are still getting killed.

Only a very tiny portion of the PvP mains will play vengeance. They will just leave the game when GH is removed or becomes too dysfunctional. And PvP mains don't complain when they die unless it's due to lag or a bug.

SneaK wrote: »

albertberku wrote: »

Is it that or are you missing your stupid OP Maarselok builds, or DK one shot combos or Damage Skill Line stack subclass meta? Your proc sets to carry your damage for you? Medium armor high sustain, high healing, high dmg, high crit, high mobility, speed cap streak, high hp builds to carry you? Is that what you miss?

Call me crazy but looks like you listed 11 different ways to play…

Jokes aside, anybody who has PvP’d in ESO over the decade remembers when things were not so unbalanced, and likely would jump at the chance to restore balance, however not for the sake of killing build variety (like you listed above).

Everyone always argues about balance when the topic of Vengeance comes up, guess what, Vengeance was not sold on balance it was sold on Performance. ZOS won’t balance Vengeance properly either. It’ll be a watered down mode with a worse meta than what GH will have after U50 drops class masteries. Vengeance will literally wind up being flavor of the month more than any camp we’ve ever seen, just like the tests were with NB. It’s 10 times worse though cause the game is moving forward with all kinds of updates and Vengeance won’t let you access them.

DOA

To be specific, vengeance was sold as a "test" so ZOS could figure out how to improve performance in live Cyrodiil. Now ZOS is saying they're not even going to try to fix ANYTHING in live Cyrodiil and vengeance is becoming permanent. Pretty tough to be OK with this level of deception.

ajkb78 wrote: »

They have said (very clearly, and several times) that it is not possible to have both large population caps and decent performance in Cyrodiil owing to the drastically higher number of events the server has to process in a single thread (every hit of damage, every splash of healing, every movement etc.)

The PVP community has for a long time complained about decreasing population caps.

So the choices are either something that works a lot more like Vengeance and can support high population caps, or the status quo where each campaign has a small population cap and the popular one has a long queue.

I wonder if there is another option where each campaign is actually multi-instance, with population balancing. If you queue with a group you get to go in the same campaign otherwise you go in a random instance. All the scoring gets aggregated so whatever your instance of the campaign looks like you're still contributing to the overall month-end score. It would mean the system could keep legacy PVP behaviour and eliminate queueing for GH, but it would mean that the score didn't necessarily represent the battlefield and might be challenging for deciding how Emperorship should work, and it would mean just joining campaign and lfging in your PVP guild wouldn't be the same experience. But nobody else has suggested it to my knowledge, so I thought I would.

Bear in mind that there are also a ton of other persistent gripes that "stick with the current system" doesn't address - ball groups, troll tanks, edge builds with high damage, infinite resources and high armour at the same time.... Vengeance does effectively neuter them but the tests so far have probably been too far the other way in terms of neutering build diversity. And finally the issue of sets remains problematic for all game modes - there are far, far too many completely useless sets in the game, that see literally zero use in any form of gameplay except for by noobs that don't have a clue and are probably wearing completely mismatched gear in any case. Each new zone or dungeon adds to the problem.

For the 11 years prior to 2026 ZOS has firmly stated, dozens of times, that they are working on improving live Cyrodiil. Many people who complained about performance on this forum were banned for "bashing" and other made up reasons beause "they're working on it".

Vengeance was promoted as a test to figure out what ZOS needed to do to improve live Cyrodiil.

ZOS absolutely could fix issues with live Cyrodiil if they tried. They created it, they can fix it.