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blktauna wrote: »

React doesn't work for ZOS

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

React wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

I don't get why you have to put down Vengence. The people that want to go there will go there and the people who want GH will go there. Mutually exclusive groups, mostly.

If you have a problem with GH not being big enough, Yell at ZOS. If you want a blackreach type of overflow, yell at ZOS. That will get you what you need.

The folks in Vengence are doing their thing and it's got nothing to do with GH.

I did give vengeance a chance, but I was always cautious about it for this very reason.

The big issue for me is how much time and development resources have gone into vengeance. PVP doesn't get much to begin with, so to have all these months dedicated to developing a pvp system that I as a pvp player have no intention of interacting with just feels bad. If that time had instead been spent on this new smaller scale zone they've been teasing, for example - we'd probably have that piece of content already.

Disregarding the fact that vengeance was originally just supposed to be a data gathering tool and later became something we'd be permanently saddled with, it really never made much sense. Stripping away the entire combat system to it's bare minimum to allow for a large population was always doomed to fail - because the vast majority of that large population does not want to participate in this kind of stripped down environment to begin with. So now we've got this environment that seems largely dead, meaning it never will even achieve it's purpose of a "900 pop cap campaign" since it will likely never reach those numbers outside a PVP event.

Meanwhile the PVP experience has gotten EVEN WORSE for GH players with the removal of BR/RW since they're now sitting in 50-100 queues every single night - and we haven't even gotten to the weekend yet. My queue on monday took me 1 hour 45 minutes, last night it took me 1 hour 15 minutes. That is a brutal amount of time merely to be able to enter cyrodiil, and for many people who are coming home after work - this is just going to mean they don't play anymore.

The time and development resources gone into vengeance as a campaign cant have been that big if it was originally supposed to be a data gathering tool.

You ask me thats a major big If and its not one I give them the benefit of the doubt on.

React said himself it was supposed to be a data gathering tool, so it cant have been a major big if to him.

React isnt a zos employee, I don't know what his personal beliefs are or if because he does youtube stuff he doesnt wanna say etc, I wouldnt speculate on it or accuse him etc, but either way I wouldn't blame him if he chose not to say certain things.

For me though, I will call a spade a spade certainly, but Im careful because the forums have a no "conspiracy" policy.

That said, again, I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and no one's opinion here will change mine on that.

He contradicted himself by critizising the time spend for adding Vengeance as campaign when he himself sees it as data gathering tool.

Haters all the time contradict each other and themself when looking for reasons to remove Vengeance. They use both a statement and its opposite as 2 reasons to remove Vengeance and dont want to see it when others critizise it while searching for the tiniest contradiction in their opponents comments.

Iriidius wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

React wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

I don't get why you have to put down Vengence. The people that want to go there will go there and the people who want GH will go there. Mutually exclusive groups, mostly.

If you have a problem with GH not being big enough, Yell at ZOS. If you want a blackreach type of overflow, yell at ZOS. That will get you what you need.

The folks in Vengence are doing their thing and it's got nothing to do with GH.

I did give vengeance a chance, but I was always cautious about it for this very reason.

The big issue for me is how much time and development resources have gone into vengeance. PVP doesn't get much to begin with, so to have all these months dedicated to developing a pvp system that I as a pvp player have no intention of interacting with just feels bad. If that time had instead been spent on this new smaller scale zone they've been teasing, for example - we'd probably have that piece of content already.

Disregarding the fact that vengeance was originally just supposed to be a data gathering tool and later became something we'd be permanently saddled with, it really never made much sense. Stripping away the entire combat system to it's bare minimum to allow for a large population was always doomed to fail - because the vast majority of that large population does not want to participate in this kind of stripped down environment to begin with. So now we've got this environment that seems largely dead, meaning it never will even achieve it's purpose of a "900 pop cap campaign" since it will likely never reach those numbers outside a PVP event.

Meanwhile the PVP experience has gotten EVEN WORSE for GH players with the removal of BR/RW since they're now sitting in 50-100 queues every single night - and we haven't even gotten to the weekend yet. My queue on monday took me 1 hour 45 minutes, last night it took me 1 hour 15 minutes. That is a brutal amount of time merely to be able to enter cyrodiil, and for many people who are coming home after work - this is just going to mean they don't play anymore.

The time and development resources gone into vengeance as a campaign cant have been that big if it was originally supposed to be a data gathering tool.

You ask me thats a major big If and its not one I give them the benefit of the doubt on.

React said himself it was supposed to be a data gathering tool, so it cant have been a major big if to him.

ZOS said vengeance was just a data gathering tool. That's how it was sold to us as why we should tolerate it and participate.

We know now ZOS was lying from the beginning about their intentions for vengeance. And that they were, judging by the results, also lying about making any significant efforts at improving Grey Host performance.

Dude Prime time PCEU was over by then. I was in from 8-10pm London time and AD was on 2 bars and EP on 2 bars till then then it emptied out.

We had some great sieges and lots of fights.

I must admit that I do not have any information as to why Blackreach was reintroduced (perhaps someone can clarify officially) however, the reopening of Blackreach with a traditional Cyrodil ruleset (I believe) appears like a deliberate population management decision. Grey Host clearly remains the flagship campaign while Vengeance serves a specialized ruleset that does not appeal to every PvPer. By restoring Blackreach with a Grey Host rule set, ZOS may be creating a pressure release valve for Grey Host queues (many complaints on this). If so, the move could be interpreted as a bearish signal for Vengeance's growth prospects as it suggests ZOS sees ongoing demand for traditional grey host campaign gameplay that Vengeance cannot capture. All speculation however.

React wrote: »

Feel like you're misrepresenting what I wrote. When vengeance was first proposed to us, it was proposed as a data gathering tool. The context was that it would help them figure out exactly what was causing the performance issues, and the implication at the time was that theyd use that information to then improve Grey Host. They reiterated time and time again that vengeance was not intended as a permanent addition to the game back during the initial tests.

I'm not engaging with the accusations towards you from the previous posters.

But I wanted to say that I think they were successful with their initial goal. They basically set out to prove whether or not the game's complexity and the large amounts of calculations in Cyrodiil were the cause of the lag. I really don't think ZOS knew for sure what the cause of the lag was. So proving the cause was their first step towards fixing the problem.

While it might seem obvious that more calculations and complexity = more lag, I don't actually think it was obvious. The previous no proc tests, AOE tests, and no CP tests didn't seem to improve performance at all, which kind of contradicted their working theory that the complexity/calculations were the issue. So Vengeance took things to the extreme to finally either put that theory to rest, or to see that it was correct.

I can't quote this one directly, but this is from the Vengeance Q&A from March 2025, link here

Then another quote from later on from Jessica:
In my opinion they were pretty honest about what they were testing. I also think it was worthwhile for them to figure out with certainty what caused Cyrodiil lag.

Now that they have their answer though, I don't think players will like where that leads and what it implies for Grey Host. So if they came to the conclusion "the game's current complexity is the cause of Cyrodiil's lag" how do you think they should go about solving that? Cause it seems to me like most routes will lead to passives, sets, mechanics, CP, etc. being removed or simplified to solve the issue. Judging from the fact that the no proc tests, AOE tests, and CP tests didn't help with lag much, they would likely have to remove/simplify A LOT. This basically leads to Vengeance lite, if not simply Vengeance.

Maybe you just reject their conclusion that they can't offer both complexity and performance at scale at the same time. However, I really don't know of any other games on the market that are as complex as ESO, as large of scale as Cyrodiil, and that perform well without significant compromises. If someone does know of a game like this, let me know and I'll look into it, cause I'm truly curious to see how they overcame this issue.

I genuinely think that this is a hard technical problem to solve, especially if there's not really any other games they can look to for help solving it because they couldn't pull it off either.

Anyway, ZOS seems to know of one potential path to improve performance in Grey Host, but that path is to make it more like Vengeance which would make the people here very unhappy. From the beginning they were honest about what exactly they were testing with Vengeance IMO, but I don't think there's a way positive results from the Vengeance test would result in a Grey Host fix without reducing the complexity there as well.

What I do know is that the game was less complex (in terms of sets, CP, etc.) in its earlier days than it is now, especially the pre One Tamriel patches. However, the PvP was not worse, in fact I think it was better back then. So I do not think less complexity has to mean worse PvP, which is how I came to the conclusion that I came to.

React wrote: »

At some point though, they shifted their position and told us that vengeance would eventually be added to the game as its own standalone feature. So for people like me who had participated in every test and provided feedback, this felt like a bait and switch. They in fact would not be using the data they gathered to improve (my) preferred mode of PVP, and instead would simply be adding something that did not actually feel fun to play.

I don't think Vengeance was handled much differently than No-Proc/Ravenwatch was handled. It started with a No-Proc test, ZOS got positive feedback regarding the no proc environment, then they made the No-Proc environment permanent. Likewise the post Vengeance surveys seemed to make ZOS think that people liked Vengeance.

However, in both cases whoever provided that feedback didn't seem to show up en masse oncee these features were made permanent. Even though Ravenwatch was dead most of the time (which is why I wasn't a regular), I really appreciated the fact that it existed when Double AP came around. It at least got some population during that event, and it gave me an environment where I didn't totally hate the game.

I see Vengeance in a similar light. I don't personally like it as it is right now and don't engage with it. However, others do and it might be a place where some players can have fun during double AP... even if it's dead outside of that. I think having players engage in some form of PvP and enjoy it is a big win. I don't know how many people decide to try other PvP modes after Vengeance, but it may at least open their mind a bit. If not, at least they're having fun.

I think Stamicka his take on this is a good one.

I also don’t believe in the ‘ZOS lied to us’ conspiracies. I think they wanted to test stuff to see if GH could be improved in good faith. After a few tests they probably saw their goal could not be reached due to the complexity of systems.

They probably saw in their metrics that Vengeance was popular and attracted maybe new players or people who never did PvP much, so they stuck with it and improved it as an additional mode.

I also think the Vengeance hate is way overblown. If you check socials, reddit, comment sections etc their isn’t much ‘Vengeance hate’ at all. People moved on and play the mode they enjoy the most and ignore the rest. The anti-vengeance mob is mostly contained on the forum here are literally a handful of people.

Vengeance will probably go the way like subclassing. Most people who like it use it, others don’t use it and a handful makes a new topic like ‘delete subclassing!’ We see every few weeks. I expect the same for Vengeance going forward. XD

React wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

[

blktauna wrote: »

React doesn't work for ZOS

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

React wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

I don't get why you have to put down Vengence. The people that want to go there will go there and the people who want GH will go there. Mutually exclusive groups, mostly.

If you have a problem with GH not being big enough, Yell at ZOS. If you want a blackreach type of overflow, yell at ZOS. That will get you what you need.

The folks in Vengence are doing their thing and it's got nothing to do with GH.

I did give vengeance a chance, but I was always cautious about it for this very reason.

The big issue for me is how much time and development resources have gone into vengeance. PVP doesn't get much to begin with, so to have all these months dedicated to developing a pvp system that I as a pvp player have no intention of interacting with just feels bad. If that time had instead been spent on this new smaller scale zone they've been teasing, for example - we'd probably have that piece of content already.

Disregarding the fact that vengeance was originally just supposed to be a data gathering tool and later became something we'd be permanently saddled with, it really never made much sense. Stripping away the entire combat system to it's bare minimum to allow for a large population was always doomed to fail - because the vast majority of that large population does not want to participate in this kind of stripped down environment to begin with. So now we've got this environment that seems largely dead, meaning it never will even achieve it's purpose of a "900 pop cap campaign" since it will likely never reach those numbers outside a PVP event.

Meanwhile the PVP experience has gotten EVEN WORSE for GH players with the removal of BR/RW since they're now sitting in 50-100 queues every single night - and we haven't even gotten to the weekend yet. My queue on monday took me 1 hour 45 minutes, last night it took me 1 hour 15 minutes. That is a brutal amount of time merely to be able to enter cyrodiil, and for many people who are coming home after work - this is just going to mean they don't play anymore.

The time and development resources gone into vengeance as a campaign cant have been that big if it was originally supposed to be a data gathering tool.

You ask me thats a major big If and its not one I give them the benefit of the doubt on.

React said himself it was supposed to be a data gathering tool, so it cant have been a major big if to him.

React isnt a zos employee, I don't know what his personal beliefs are or if because he does youtube stuff he doesnt wanna say etc, I wouldnt speculate on it or accuse him etc, but either way I wouldn't blame him if he chose not to say certain things.

For me though, I will call a spade a spade certainly, but Im careful because the forums have a no "conspiracy" policy.

That said, again, I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and no one's opinion here will change mine on that.

He contradicted himself by critizising the time spend for adding Vengeance as campaign when he himself sees it as data gathering tool.

Haters all the time contradict each other and themself when looking for reasons to remove Vengeance. They use both a statement and its opposite as 2 reasons to remove Vengeance and dont want to see it when others critizise it while searching for the tiniest contradiction in their opponents comments.

Feel like you're misrepresenting what I wrote. When vengeance was first proposed to us, it was proposed as a data gathering tool. The context was that it would help them figure out exactly what was causing the performance issues, and the implication at the time was that theyd use that information to then improve Grey Host. They reiterated time and time again that vengeance was not intended as a permanent addition to the game back during the initial tests.

At some point though, they shifted their position and told us that vengeance would eventually be added to the game as its own standalone feature. So for people like me who had participated in every test and provided feedback, this felt like a bait and switch. They in fact would not be using the data they gathered to improve (my) preferred mode of PVP, and instead would simply be adding something that did not actually feel fun to play.

To be clear, I participated in every vengeance test. I wrote detailed feedback posts intended to improve the finished vengeance product after the most recent tests. I provided my thoughts during the pts cycle about the U50 vengeance additions and the direction of the campaign. I do not like the vengeance environment, but I still put in an effort to give them feedback that might improve it.

Despite all that, do I still feel like it was a waste of resources overall? Yes, I do. Zero improvement to GH performance came as a result of the vengeance testing. The mid size zone which has been teased going on a year now has yet to be showcased. The progress on the class reworks is moving at a snails pace and while I do think the game is headed in the right direction, I can't help but see the vengeance population each day and think that whatever time went into that probably would have been better spent on any of the above.

You can call me a hater if you like, I think I've been pretty fair and reasonable with everything I've written in regards to vengeance, though.

I agree on everything you wrote here, couldnt of said it better and more constructive