Is it time to finalise Vengeance tweaks and move onto Grey Host testing?

ZOS_Icy · July 24

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The Elder Scrolls Online Team

Gabriel_H · July 24

No

BigPlays420 wrote: »

After everything that’s happened this week, the backlash and the low participation in Cyrodiil are consequences entirely of ZOS’s own decisions. They ignored months of feedback, forced these tests through anyway, and are now seeing exactly the response many players warned them they would

I'm guessing NA server? Because on PC EU Vengeance has been 3 bars (600 - 900) players every night.

Gabriel_H · July 24

No

LadyGP wrote: »

Look at it from a high level - GH PvP vs Vengence is night and day different and the vast majority of players don't want it.

Your premise is still based on Vengeance as is being the finished product. It isn't. It's a test environment that they are adding back to slowly. The more data they get, the quicker the process.

BigPlays420 · July 24

Yes

Gabriel_H wrote: »

BigPlays420 wrote: »

After everything that’s happened this week, the backlash and the low participation in Cyrodiil are consequences entirely of ZOS’s own decisions. They ignored months of feedback, forced these tests through anyway, and are now seeing exactly the response many players warned them they would

I'm guessing NA server? Because on PC EU Vengeance has been 3 bars (600 - 900) players every night.

PC NA and all console megaservers haven’t even consistently reached 3 bars. If PC EU managed it with every possible incentive stacked in its favor, good for them—but that only reinforces the point. The campaign is attracting PvE players chasing double AP and a braind*** “PvP” experience, not the core open-world PvP community.

Once those incentives disappear, so will much of that population. Gray Host, meanwhile, filled itself every night without needing any of them. That’s the difference between a campaign people genuinely want to play and one people are temporarily bribed into testing.

Lucasl402 · July 24

Yes

Gabriel_H wrote: »

BigPlays420 wrote: »

After everything that’s happened this week, the backlash and the low participation in Cyrodiil are consequences entirely of ZOS’s own decisions. They ignored months of feedback, forced these tests through anyway, and are now seeing exactly the response many players warned them they would

I'm guessing NA server? Because on PC EU Vengeance has been 3 bars (600 - 900) players every night.

Then why haven't you posted proof of your apparently false assertions? Show us the pop locked vengeance with a time/date stamp.

Stamicka · July 24

Maybe (Comment)

LadyGP wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Lucasl402 wrote: »

SilverIce58 wrote: »

What would be the testing done for Grey Host? Vengeance is supposed to be the testing done to figure out why theres so many problems in pvp no? Youd rather them strip Grey Host to next to nothing like Vengeance and let you only use your skills or whatever rule set they give you? At least with Vengeance being around (this stress test not withstanding) Grey Host has still been open.

Oh, I don't know, they could always try limiting heal and shield stacking just as the PvP community has been begging for going on 8 years now.

When the PvE players try to enter this discussion it's always obvious.

You mean how heal and shield stacking are limited in Vengeance? Almost like they stripped back the ruleset to give a base performance without desync and lag, and then slowly add things back in?

This keeps coming back to the same point: You want Cyrodiil fixed with a magic wand. It's not possible. They need to test, they need to change the ruleset. That is what Vengeance is. It's not a finished product, it's an ongoing and evolving mode that is trying to get as close to GH as possible without tanking performance.

And as for the elitism ... Less than 10% of players are PvP only. Around 35% are PvE only. The other 55% do both.

Look.. it's truly this simple.

The reason people keep coming back after trying MMO after MMO is that the overall combat (speed, movement, TTK, builds, ruleset, etc) is special - pretty much no other MMO i've tried can match it.

Yes, the ball groups, balance issues, etc suck and are a massive friction point but overall Combat in Cyrodiil is unique and some of the best out there.

If you take almost everything away that make it unique/special, for the sake of performance, you're left with a shell that no one wants to play.

I agree with this. It's the reason I still play despite the many complaints I have. It also may be why the performance is so hard to fix though. ESO combat is fast and there's a lot of buffs with various uptimes, etc. I can absolutely see why it's difficult to fix the performance and have the game remain cheat free at the same time.

I can have some grace for performance issues given the circumstances. I don't see any other games pulling PvP like this off at scale. So if there's some real technical hurdles that are difficult to overcome, I understand.

Where I have no grace is with the neglect of balance. That is 100% something that could have been addressed, yet we've been in a very bad place for quite a few years now. The bad balance of Grey Host also makes ESO PvP a shell of a game that hardly anyone wants to play. They've gotta get both balance and performance figured out. People just have different ideas how to do so.

LittleLionLeone · July 24

No

Vengeance was brought on as a regular campaign because players liked it enough, but it's purpose is and will always be for testing. That's the point of the current item set test, to see how much stress proc effects put on the servers.

But doomsayers have somehow managed to change the narrative on here that they're planning to make Vengeance (as is) the new pvp model. The only thing that is true is that GH will be replaced, but only because they're making a medium scale version of it.

Grega · July 24

No

The patch notes that were written when vengeance finally went live, literally stated that they were not ever considering replacing vengeance with everything, one other would remain. In our situation was GH, but they also added blackreach back after feedback.

But - in those same patch notes they stated GH is what it is, and won’t be improved. They stated, it cannot be improved, and that their focus is where it can be improved - vengeance.

So why ask to improve something that they said it simply cannot be?

NovelliESO · July 24

Yes

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Lucasl402 wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

It's time to cut our losses and take the risk that Vengeance will repair the damage the GH community has brought upon all of us. And still is. They would rather see people quit PvP or leave the game than not have their way. The longer it goes on, the more new players turn away. The more Vets become jaded and quit. The returning players take one look at it and say no.

The game will move on without them. It's the only thing Zos hasn't tried yet. And probably the only thing that will work which is why GH is so against fair PvP. Ive said it before, Zos needs to take control of combat, establish, maintain and enforce the rules. It wont work any other way and its not fair to everyone if that is not what is going on. Especially when the same people know they can get any character or build nerfed just by threatening to harm the PvP population by boycotting an attempt to correct it like they are doing with Vengeance. Or attempting to silence people who speak out for fair PvP. Or trying to dissuade people who are sick of their characters and builds being ruined to cater to the smallest minority.

Please show us on the doll where the evil PvP player touched you. Good grief.

YOU ARE NOT A VICTIM BECAUSE THE PvP PLAYERS HAVE PUT IN MORE TIME AND EFFORT TO BE PROFICIENT AT PvP.

Switching to the latest overpowered unbalanced meta is not effort.

Learn to adapt.

BigPlays420 · July 24

Yes

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

But doomsayers have somehow managed to change the narrative on here that they're planning to make Vengeance (as is) the new pvp model. The only thing that is true is that GH will be replaced, but only because they're making a medium scale version of it.

Fascinating. You dismiss the concern, then immediately admit Gray Host is being replaced. Whether it’s Vengeance as it exists today or a successor built from the same philosophy is a distinction without much difference to those of us who simply want to keep playing traditional Cyrodiil. The concern hasn’t changed, you’ve just reworded it.

tomofhyrule · July 24

Gabriel_H wrote: »

NovelliESO wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

"Vengeance was originally touted by the ZOS team as testing but somewhere along the way became it's own thing"

Flawed premise. Players have deemed it its own thing. ZOS never have. It was, and remains, a test environment. The only reason they moved it to Live was to get more data. The only reason they shut down the other campaigns was to get the player numbers to test. Sections of the PvP community boycotting Vengeance are just dragging out the process and making it take longer.

"which moved it away from the original intent of a PvP mode for casual and new players that didn't need to grind gear for hours to play"

That was never the intent. The intent was to strip back the Cyrodiil ruleset then add things back in to get as close to GH as possible without tanking performance. The progress is slow because a chunk of players refused to engage.

Edit: Typos

[snip]

Edit: Or you could simply go into Vengeance and see the myriad of mismatches with the underlying Cyrodiil and the imposed ruleset and come to the common sense conclusion it is a test environment.
[edited to remove quote]

I find it interesting that you took a response from Kevin to me where he misread my question to prove your point.

To reiterate my question, ALL Vengenace tests were run on PTS before they went Live. The point of the PTS version was to test functionality, i.e. "does going into Vengeance break the game." After it was on PTS, then the Live test was run specifically to do a stress test.

I know that the Live test is for population. It's specifically to get everyone on there.
BUT WHY DID THEY SKIP THE FUNCTIONALITY TEST?!?!?!!?

That's the problem. That was my question. Why was the PTS version of that test skipped? And the answer was "we need to stress test it." Yes, I know that. But why was it not first tested for functionalitym like every other one was.

Stamicka · July 24

Maybe (Comment)

BigPlays420 wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

This makes me think that there’s something about how those tests were implemented that contributes to the lag, but I don’t know for sure.

Passives. Whenever you fire a skill the game has to calculate everything from base each time to calculate bonuses. There is then additional calculations depending on whether you crit or not all through the passives.

Wouldn’t this be true of almost any major buff though? Like if you have major sorcery/brutality up, that’s still a bonus that the game has to calculate for most of the skills you cast.

I don’t know how the game works behind the scenes. No one really does except the developers. So there could always be reasons that they do things that we don’t know about.

So I’d like to think that there’s a reason that testing has unfolded the way that it did.

The stuff about testing Grey Host just makes no sense to me. For one, they’ve tried different tests already and it didn’t work. There’s also the fact that people seem to be mad at testing in general, so I don’t think that this would go over well with the community. Lastly, if testing involved simplifying Grey Host, that would make Grey Host more like Vengeance. It seems like most of the PvP community is scared of Vengeance replacing Grey Host. So if they start stripping down Grey Host, how is that not making your fears come to fruition?

It’s wild to me that this is even being suggested by the same people who hate Vengeance so much. Like eventually you’re just creating a circle where you’ve ended up at Vengeance.

I’m not particularly a fan of either approach.

What I am a fan of is respecting the customer. ZOS is backed by a multi-billion-dollar company. Instead of repeatedly using paying customers as test subjects, they could hire dedicated QA testers—an actual profession—to conduct these kinds of experiments before pushing them onto the live playerbase.

Instead, they expect the people who paid for Gray Host to simply accept losing access to it while they rebuild Cyrodiil from the ground up. If that process takes another five or seven years before it reaches a state that the existing PvP community actually enjoys, that’s an unreasonable expectation to place on your customers.

If they insist on simplifying Cyrodiil to isolate variables, then stripping systems away from the top down is at least less disruptive than removing the product entirely. Players would retain most of the gameplay they paid for while still allowing the developers to gather data.

I don't think simplifying from the top down would go well with the community at all. I also don't think it would work well as a performance test either. People would just say that ZOS is trying to bring Vengeance to Grey Host and you'd see the same freakout as we've been seeing.

So for example, they did the no proc test a few years back and said it had no results. So would the next step be to remove even more or would it be to put procs back in, but remove something else? Both options have a lot of issues. If lag comes from the interactions of the many elements of ESO's combat, they would never get anywhere with their testing. If they decide to remove MORE on top of what they've already removed the previous test, then like I said, they're just creating a version of Vengeance.

Where did this top down idea I've been seeing lately even come from? It just makes no sense coming from people who completely oppose Vengeance. It also doesn't make sense to test things that way.

I think you're right that this should be the job of internal testers. Or it would probably go over better if done on a test server environment rather than on live, I just don't think that would get much participation though.

LittleLionLeone · July 24

No

BigPlays420 wrote: »

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

But doomsayers have somehow managed to change the narrative on here that they're planning to make Vengeance (as is) the new pvp model. The only thing that is true is that GH will be replaced, but only because they're making a medium scale version of it.

Fascinating. You dismiss the concern, then immediately admit Gray Host is being replaced. Whether it’s Vengeance as it exists today or a successor built from the same philosophy is a distinction without much difference to those of us who simply want to keep playing traditional Cyrodiil. The concern hasn’t changed, you’ve just reworded it.

GH is not in a healthy state, and cannot be improved. It's already been said. It's the result of years upon years of changes and additions of new calculations due to sets and skills. It's all spaghetti coded. That's why they're rebuilding it from the ground up and separating skills from their pve counter parts.

It's the only way cyro pvp improves, unless you want to play the laggy ballgroup fest as it is now. The same thing I always see pvp players complain about everyday on here.

NovelliESO · July 24

Yes

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

BigPlays420 wrote: »

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

But doomsayers have somehow managed to change the narrative on here that they're planning to make Vengeance (as is) the new pvp model. The only thing that is true is that GH will be replaced, but only because they're making a medium scale version of it.

Fascinating. You dismiss the concern, then immediately admit Gray Host is being replaced. Whether it’s Vengeance as it exists today or a successor built from the same philosophy is a distinction without much difference to those of us who simply want to keep playing traditional Cyrodiil. The concern hasn’t changed, you’ve just reworded it.

GH is not in a healthy state, and cannot be improved. It's already been said. It's the result of years upon years of changes and additions of new calculations due to sets and skills. It's all spaghetti coded. That's why they're rebuilding it from the ground up and separating skills from their pve counter parts.

It's the only way cyro pvp improves, unless you want to play the laggy ballgroup fest as it is now. The same thing I always see pvp players complain about everyday on here.

Greyhost has more population than Vengeance. The community prefers it to vengeance even if the performance is bad. When you try to make a point by saying "unless you want to play the laggy ballgroup fest " you don't even realize this applies to the majority of PvP players. Yes, we prefer a laggy GH to a perfectly fine vengeance. Are you not aware of this, and if so why are you commenting?

BigPlays420 · July 24

Yes

Stamicka wrote: »

BigPlays420 wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

This makes me think that there’s something about how those tests were implemented that contributes to the lag, but I don’t know for sure.

Passives. Whenever you fire a skill the game has to calculate everything from base each time to calculate bonuses. There is then additional calculations depending on whether you crit or not all through the passives.

Wouldn’t this be true of almost any major buff though? Like if you have major sorcery/brutality up, that’s still a bonus that the game has to calculate for most of the skills you cast.

I don’t know how the game works behind the scenes. No one really does except the developers. So there could always be reasons that they do things that we don’t know about.

So I’d like to think that there’s a reason that testing has unfolded the way that it did.

The stuff about testing Grey Host just makes no sense to me. For one, they’ve tried different tests already and it didn’t work. There’s also the fact that people seem to be mad at testing in general, so I don’t think that this would go over well with the community. Lastly, if testing involved simplifying Grey Host, that would make Grey Host more like Vengeance. It seems like most of the PvP community is scared of Vengeance replacing Grey Host. So if they start stripping down Grey Host, how is that not making your fears come to fruition?

It’s wild to me that this is even being suggested by the same people who hate Vengeance so much. Like eventually you’re just creating a circle where you’ve ended up at Vengeance.

I’m not particularly a fan of either approach.

What I am a fan of is respecting the customer. ZOS is backed by a multi-billion-dollar company. Instead of repeatedly using paying customers as test subjects, they could hire dedicated QA testers—an actual profession—to conduct these kinds of experiments before pushing them onto the live playerbase.

Instead, they expect the people who paid for Gray Host to simply accept losing access to it while they rebuild Cyrodiil from the ground up. If that process takes another five or seven years before it reaches a state that the existing PvP community actually enjoys, that’s an unreasonable expectation to place on your customers.

If they insist on simplifying Cyrodiil to isolate variables, then stripping systems away from the top down is at least less disruptive than removing the product entirely. Players would retain most of the gameplay they paid for while still allowing the developers to gather data.

I don't think simplifying from the top down would go well with the community at all. I also don't think it would work well as a performance test either. People would just say that ZOS is trying to bring Vengeance to Grey Host and you'd see the same freakout as we've been seeing.

So for example, they did the no proc test a few years back and said it had no results. So would the next step be to remove even more or would it be to put procs back in, but remove something else? Both options have a lot of issues. If lag comes from the interactions of the many elements of ESO's combat, they would never get anywhere with their testing. If they decide to remove MORE on top of what they've already removed the previous test, then like I said, they're just creating a version of Vengeance.

Where did this top down idea I've been seeing lately even come from? It just makes no sense coming from people who completely oppose Vengeance. It also doesn't make sense to test things that way.

I think you're right that this should be the job of internal testers. Or it would probably go over better if done on a test server environment rather than on live, I just don't think that would get much participation though.

I agree that neither option is ideal. But there’s a difference between your mechanic temporarily disabling your car’s cruise control to diagnose an issue and taking your entire car away, handing you a scooter, and saying, “Drive this for the next week while we figure it out.”

Both are frustrating. One preserves most of the product you bought. The other replaces it entirely. That’s why I think the backlash would be significantly smaller with the former approach.

BigPlays420 · July 24

Yes

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

BigPlays420 wrote: »

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

But doomsayers have somehow managed to change the narrative on here that they're planning to make Vengeance (as is) the new pvp model. The only thing that is true is that GH will be replaced, but only because they're making a medium scale version of it.

Fascinating. You dismiss the concern, then immediately admit Gray Host is being replaced. Whether it’s Vengeance as it exists today or a successor built from the same philosophy is a distinction without much difference to those of us who simply want to keep playing traditional Cyrodiil. The concern hasn’t changed, you’ve just reworded it.

GH is not in a healthy state, and cannot be improved. It's already been said. It's the result of years upon years of changes and additions of new calculations due to sets and skills. It's all spaghetti coded. That's why they're rebuilding it from the ground up and separating skills from their pve counter parts.

It's the only way cyro pvp improves, unless you want to play the laggy ballgroup fest as it is now. The same thing I always see pvp players complain about everyday on here.

I want to play the product I payed for, simple as.

LittleLionLeone · July 24

No

NovelliESO wrote: »

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

BigPlays420 wrote: »

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

But doomsayers have somehow managed to change the narrative on here that they're planning to make Vengeance (as is) the new pvp model. The only thing that is true is that GH will be replaced, but only because they're making a medium scale version of it.

Fascinating. You dismiss the concern, then immediately admit Gray Host is being replaced. Whether it’s Vengeance as it exists today or a successor built from the same philosophy is a distinction without much difference to those of us who simply want to keep playing traditional Cyrodiil. The concern hasn’t changed, you’ve just reworded it.

GH is not in a healthy state, and cannot be improved. It's already been said. It's the result of years upon years of changes and additions of new calculations due to sets and skills. It's all spaghetti coded. That's why they're rebuilding it from the ground up and separating skills from their pve counter parts.

It's the only way cyro pvp improves, unless you want to play the laggy ballgroup fest as it is now. The same thing I always see pvp players complain about everyday on here.

Greyhost has more population than Vengeance. The community prefers it to vengeance even if the performance is bad. When you try to make a point by saying "unless you want to play the laggy ballgroup fest " you don't even realize this applies to the majority of PvP players. Yes, we prefer a laggy GH to a perfectly fine vengeance. Are you not aware of this, and if so why are you commenting?

Good thing we're not talking about a popularity contest.

If the vast majority want GH to stay and ZOS stops working on pvp things, then I expect to see less complaints. Because ZOS for once is trying to do stress tests, and the pvp community is blowing it back in their faces because they're mad GH isn't fixed overnight.

They can't do anything if they can't do controlled tests like Ven without everyone going ballistic. You can argue all you want.

NovelliESO · July 24

Yes

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

NovelliESO wrote: »

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

BigPlays420 wrote: »

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

But doomsayers have somehow managed to change the narrative on here that they're planning to make Vengeance (as is) the new pvp model. The only thing that is true is that GH will be replaced, but only because they're making a medium scale version of it.

Fascinating. You dismiss the concern, then immediately admit Gray Host is being replaced. Whether it’s Vengeance as it exists today or a successor built from the same philosophy is a distinction without much difference to those of us who simply want to keep playing traditional Cyrodiil. The concern hasn’t changed, you’ve just reworded it.

GH is not in a healthy state, and cannot be improved. It's already been said. It's the result of years upon years of changes and additions of new calculations due to sets and skills. It's all spaghetti coded. That's why they're rebuilding it from the ground up and separating skills from their pve counter parts.

It's the only way cyro pvp improves, unless you want to play the laggy ballgroup fest as it is now. The same thing I always see pvp players complain about everyday on here.

Greyhost has more population than Vengeance. The community prefers it to vengeance even if the performance is bad. When you try to make a point by saying "unless you want to play the laggy ballgroup fest " you don't even realize this applies to the majority of PvP players. Yes, we prefer a laggy GH to a perfectly fine vengeance. Are you not aware of this, and if so why are you commenting?

Good thing we're not talking about a popularity contest.

If the vast majority want GH to stay and ZOS stops working on pvp things, then I expect to see less complaints. Because ZOS for once is trying to do stress tests, and the pvp community is blowing it back in their faces because they're mad GH isn't fixed overnight.

They can't do anything if they can't do controlled tests like Ven without everyone going ballistic. You can argue all you want.

I love when people come on the forums, try to make a point, it falls flat, and then they try to make a new one. The PvP community prefers GH. If ZOS has any idea how to run a game they will work to appease the greater population that has already picked GH over vengeance even when there are performance problems. When you come for one person and try to point out that they can play the game in a laggy environment as if there is something wrong with them for doing it, but in reality that's what the majority picks, what are you trying to convey? Waiting for your answer !!

BigPlays420 · July 24

Yes

Grega wrote: »

The patch notes that were written when vengeance finally went live, literally stated that they were not ever considering replacing vengeance with everything, one other would remain. In our situation was GH, but they also added blackreach back after feedback.

But - in those same patch notes they stated GH is what it is, and won’t be improved. They stated, it cannot be improved, and that their focus is where it can be improved - vengeance.

So why ask to improve something that they said it simply cannot be?

Fair enough. If Gray Host truly cannot be improved from a performance standpoint, then stop trying to improve its performance. Continue developing Vengeance if you believe that’s the future of low-latency PvP.

What I object to is taking Gray Host away every few months to facilitate that development. If Vengeance is the platform you want to iterate on, iterate on Vengeance—but let those of us who enjoy traditional Cyrodiil keep playing it.

Give Gray Host the occasional balance update to address obvious gameplay issues, leave it alone otherwise, and let players decide which experience they prefer. If Vengeance is genuinely the better product, it will earn its population naturally. It shouldn’t need Gray Host to be shut down to get people through the door.

Above all, stop taking away the product many of us have been paying for and logging into every day for years just to test a different one.

Stamicka · July 24

Maybe (Comment)

BigPlays420 wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

BigPlays420 wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

This makes me think that there’s something about how those tests were implemented that contributes to the lag, but I don’t know for sure.

Passives. Whenever you fire a skill the game has to calculate everything from base each time to calculate bonuses. There is then additional calculations depending on whether you crit or not all through the passives.

Wouldn’t this be true of almost any major buff though? Like if you have major sorcery/brutality up, that’s still a bonus that the game has to calculate for most of the skills you cast.

I don’t know how the game works behind the scenes. No one really does except the developers. So there could always be reasons that they do things that we don’t know about.

So I’d like to think that there’s a reason that testing has unfolded the way that it did.

The stuff about testing Grey Host just makes no sense to me. For one, they’ve tried different tests already and it didn’t work. There’s also the fact that people seem to be mad at testing in general, so I don’t think that this would go over well with the community. Lastly, if testing involved simplifying Grey Host, that would make Grey Host more like Vengeance. It seems like most of the PvP community is scared of Vengeance replacing Grey Host. So if they start stripping down Grey Host, how is that not making your fears come to fruition?

It’s wild to me that this is even being suggested by the same people who hate Vengeance so much. Like eventually you’re just creating a circle where you’ve ended up at Vengeance.

I’m not particularly a fan of either approach.

What I am a fan of is respecting the customer. ZOS is backed by a multi-billion-dollar company. Instead of repeatedly using paying customers as test subjects, they could hire dedicated QA testers—an actual profession—to conduct these kinds of experiments before pushing them onto the live playerbase.

Instead, they expect the people who paid for Gray Host to simply accept losing access to it while they rebuild Cyrodiil from the ground up. If that process takes another five or seven years before it reaches a state that the existing PvP community actually enjoys, that’s an unreasonable expectation to place on your customers.

If they insist on simplifying Cyrodiil to isolate variables, then stripping systems away from the top down is at least less disruptive than removing the product entirely. Players would retain most of the gameplay they paid for while still allowing the developers to gather data.

I don't think simplifying from the top down would go well with the community at all. I also don't think it would work well as a performance test either. People would just say that ZOS is trying to bring Vengeance to Grey Host and you'd see the same freakout as we've been seeing.

So for example, they did the no proc test a few years back and said it had no results. So would the next step be to remove even more or would it be to put procs back in, but remove something else? Both options have a lot of issues. If lag comes from the interactions of the many elements of ESO's combat, they would never get anywhere with their testing. If they decide to remove MORE on top of what they've already removed the previous test, then like I said, they're just creating a version of Vengeance.

Where did this top down idea I've been seeing lately even come from? It just makes no sense coming from people who completely oppose Vengeance. It also doesn't make sense to test things that way.

I think you're right that this should be the job of internal testers. Or it would probably go over better if done on a test server environment rather than on live, I just don't think that would get much participation though.

I agree that neither option is ideal. But there’s a difference between your mechanic temporarily disabling your car’s cruise control to diagnose an issue and taking your entire car away, handing you a scooter, and saying, “Drive this for the next week while we figure it out.”

Both are frustrating. One preserves most of the product you bought. The other replaces it entirely. That’s why I think the backlash would be significantly smaller with the former approach.

Hmm I don't like interacting with metaphors cause eventually it just becomes a mess where we are removed from the original conversation. But in your example, if the car has one big issue that results from many small issues/components all interacting, that's just a very unproductive way to do things. If you disable one thing, add it back, disable another, it's possible that the issue never gets diagnosed or solved because the issue multifaceted. From a testing perspective, that's really not ideal. It may go over better with the community, but over time people would just start saying that they're sick of all the tests and not seeing the impacts of them. They're already saying that honestly. I just think this method draws things out, needs more tests, and accomplishes nothing at the same time.

I think Vengeance is a far better way to test things, but I can 100% agree with you that they should stop executing the tests by taking away Grey Host and expecting the community to happily step foot into an environment that isn't fun. If greed wasn't a thing they would be running these Vengeance tests with internal paid testers. Or maybe if the community was bigger they could offer a separate test environment that didn't cause Grey Host to be temporarily closed.

This most recent test was a mess on so many levels. I really have an issue with how ZOS handled it. It was such a bad experience dealing with all the bugs and not knowing what sets would work. So players shouldn't be subjected to that, it's a bad look. Basically, I get the testing methodology of ZOS, I disagree with how they make it the community's responsibility to test and they remove the usual environment to do so. That part needs to stop.

Gabriel_H · July 24

No

BigPlays420 wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

BigPlays420 wrote: »

After everything that’s happened this week, the backlash and the low participation in Cyrodiil are consequences entirely of ZOS’s own decisions. They ignored months of feedback, forced these tests through anyway, and are now seeing exactly the response many players warned them they would

I'm guessing NA server? Because on PC EU Vengeance has been 3 bars (600 - 900) players every night.

PC NA and all console megaservers haven’t even consistently reached 3 bars. If PC EU managed it with every possible incentive stacked in its favor, good for them—but that only reinforces the point. The campaign is attracting PvE players chasing double AP and a braind*** “PvP” experience, not the core open-world PvP community.

Once those incentives disappear, so will much of that population. Gray Host, meanwhile, filled itself every night without needing any of them. That’s the difference between a campaign people genuinely want to play and one people are temporarily bribed into testing.

Your premise is still flawed. This distinction between PvP and PvE is rooted in fiction. Most people who PvP also PvE.

Gabriel_H · July 24

No

tomofhyrule wrote: »

That's the problem. That was my question. Why was the PTS version of that test skipped? And the answer was "we need to stress test it." Yes, I know that. But why was it not first tested for functionalitym like every other one was.

A stress test and functionality test are not mutually exclusive. You keep digging for nefarious causes and skip over common sense answers.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I find it interesting that you took a response from Kevin to me where he misread my question to prove your point.

I find it wholly irrelevant that he misread anything. He gave a reason for why they shut the other campaigns.

AdonisJorge · July 24

No

First thing, if you can please stop the "pve players have not so say about it" arguments, it justs makes some people think that part of PVP community is toxic and elitist, "PVE players" are customers as much you are, it does not help and i ask that, if you are not that part of PVP community speak with your colleages about how it is not a good communication. I play like 70/30% PVE PVP and if i see anyone bashing that "PVP players have not to say in maters of PVE" i would not condone with that (like when some people bashed on PVP community about shattered paths nerf).

Second, veng as a test enviroment is not perfect and being treated as unpaid testers is not fair, i can agree with that. At the same time if this really helps with making PVP better i just try to help just i am trying right now. One thing that i find to be helpful is after the *** we ask what the game development team found with it, what was the results, if we participated the procces we have the right to access the results.

Third, imo ZOS communication have a lot to improve, idk if why things are like that but even ingame we do not know how some sets or buffs interact with each other, my impression is that is a general problem.

I have seen a comment on another thread that people may like GH as it is: aka broken with a lot lag and dsync, i really do not know how truthful is that, but, if it is true we must see if is worth the investment to "fix things" on GH or of ZOS just leave as it as like a "crazy power fantasy" enviroment and change their focus on other PVP gameplay types

Sorry about any typo, i am not a native english speaker

BigPlays420 · July 24

Yes

AdonisJorge wrote: »

First thing, if you can please stop the "pve players have not so say about it" arguments, it justs makes some people think that part of PVP community is toxic and elitist, "PVE players" are customers as much you are, it does not help and i ask that, if you are not that part of PVP community speak with your colleages about how it is not a good communication. I play like 70/30% PVE PVP and if i see anyone bashing that "PVP players have not to say in maters of PVE" i would not condone with that (like when some people bashed on PVP community about shattered paths nerf).

Second, veng as a test enviroment is not perfect and being treated as unpaid testers is not fair, i can agree with that. At the same time if this really helps with making PVP better i just try to help just i am trying right now. One thing that i find to be helpful is after the *** we ask what the game development team found with it, what was the results, if we participated the procces we have the right to access the results.

Third, imo ZOS communication have a lot to improve, idk if why things are like that but even ingame we do not know how some sets or buffs interact with each other, my impression is that is a general problem.

I have seen a comment on another thread that people may like GH as it is: aka broken with a lot lag and dsync, i really do not know how truthful is that, but, if it is true we must see if is worth the investment to "fix things" on GH or of ZOS just leave as it as like a "crazy power fantasy" enviroment and change their focus on other PVP gameplay types

Sorry about any typo, i am not a native english speaker

Of course PvE players are customers, and of course they're entitled to an opinion. But the people who actively engage with a piece of content should naturally carry more weight when discussing its future.

If ZOS were redesigning veteran trials, I wouldn't expect players who never step foot in PvE to dictate the direction of that content. Their feedback would still be welcome, but it shouldn't override the experience of the people who actually play it every day.

The same principle applies here. The concern isn't that PvE players should be silenced; it's that decisions about open-world PvP are increasingly being influenced by players who have no intention of sticking around once the incentives disappear. Meanwhile, the players who log into Gray Host every night are overwhelmingly saying they don't want these tests or this direction.

And it's only reinforced by how many people seem completely indifferent to the fact that our preferred PvP game mode is repeatedly being taken away. If veteran trial players had their trials removed for weeks at a time to test a new PvE mode, I doubt we'd see nearly as many people saying, "Just deal with it." Yet that's exactly what's expected of the Gray Host community.

Every customer has a voice. Not every voice carries the same level of expertise or investment in a particular part of the game.

AdonisJorge · July 24

No

BigPlays420 wrote: »

AdonisJorge wrote: »

First thing, if you can please stop the "pve players have not so say about it" arguments, it justs makes some people think that part of PVP community is toxic and elitist, "PVE players" are customers as much you are, it does not help and i ask that, if you are not that part of PVP community speak with your colleages about how it is not a good communication. I play like 70/30% PVE PVP and if i see anyone bashing that "PVP players have not to say in maters of PVE" i would not condone with that (like when some people bashed on PVP community about shattered paths nerf).

Second, veng as a test enviroment is not perfect and being treated as unpaid testers is not fair, i can agree with that. At the same time if this really helps with making PVP better i just try to help just i am trying right now. One thing that i find to be helpful is after the *** we ask what the game development team found with it, what was the results, if we participated the procces we have the right to access the results.

Third, imo ZOS communication have a lot to improve, idk if why things are like that but even ingame we do not know how some sets or buffs interact with each other, my impression is that is a general problem.

I have seen a comment on another thread that people may like GH as it is: aka broken with a lot lag and dsync, i really do not know how truthful is that, but, if it is true we must see if is worth the investment to "fix things" on GH or of ZOS just leave as it as like a "crazy power fantasy" enviroment and change their focus on other PVP gameplay types

Sorry about any typo, i am not a native english speaker

Of course PvE players are customers, and of course they're entitled to an opinion. But the people who actively engage with a piece of content should naturally carry more weight when discussing its future.

If ZOS were redesigning veteran trials, I wouldn't expect players who never step foot in PvE to dictate the direction of that content. Their feedback would still be welcome, but it shouldn't override the experience of the people who actually play it every day.

The same principle applies here. The concern isn't that PvE players should be silenced; it's that decisions about open-world PvP are increasingly being influenced by players who have no intention of sticking around once the incentives disappear. Meanwhile, the players who log into Gray Host every night are overwhelmingly saying they don't want these tests or this direction.

And it's only reinforced by how many people seem completely indifferent to the fact that our preferred PvP game mode is repeatedly being taken away. If veteran trial players had their trials removed for weeks at a time to test a new PvE mode, I doubt we'd see nearly as many people saying, "Just deal with it." Yet that's exactly what's expected of the Gray Host community.

Every customer has a voice. Not every voice carries the same level of expertise or investment in a particular part of the game.

Who said that players will not stick around when the incentives go away? Maybe the changes that they propose is one of the thinks that make them stay on the PVP. I completely disagree with your position and do not find it part of constructing a healthy discussion enviroment, PVP player can and i find it very produtive that they give their opinions about any PVE content, and i can simply disagree with them IF i find them wrong imo about some aspect of the game, but i will never attack their "origin" insted their arguments. No experience must override, ZOS must imo have the wisdom to filter and apply what can be applied on the best way possible

Marto · July 24

No

I don't know about you, OP. But I played ESO during 2019-2023, when ZOS did countless tests on Grey Host, trying to see what to remove or change to improve performance.

None of it worked.

Vengeance has made more progress in 1 year than the old Grey Host tests did in 4

tsaescishoeshiner · July 24

If they learn from the item set tests, yes, but there's a bit more they can test.

The last thing to test would likely be skill complexity: target caps, heal targeting, complex effects and debuffs and buffs, and other things that Vengeance doesn't have.

For example, what if PvP heals were changed to be targeted like in Vengeance? What if certain kinds of buffs and debuffs are more server-intensive and were reworked? That would be difficult, but it's the kind of combat changes that could impact performance.

Vengeance with sets works so, so, so much better server-wise than Gray Host. They've added a lot to Vengeance, so something must be making a difference.

BardokRedSnow · July 24

Yes

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Vengeance is GH with a stripped back ruleset.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

It's literally the same Cyrodiil copied and pasted.

Do you read your own posts. This is clearly not the case or these discussions wouldnt be never ending.

Anyway, its been time to start putting focus on greyhost, originally they claimed thats what vengeance was for but it was obvious this wouldnt be the case after the first test. We've always been overall pretty open to helping Zos with their tests IN GREYHOST, and FOR Greyhost, even though there's always been upset fans. Their problem is they pay too much attention to these forums and reddit, two very narrow echochambers with a minority of the overall population of players, the rest being a younger audience overall and who play things other than eso. Meaning the bulk of the eso player base vs the forum goers and redditors on average are younger, and that matters more than people here want to admit.

Even with their example of the aoe tests in cyrodiil, the backlash they mentioned they faced here wasnt reflective of opinions IN GAME, and I dunno how they dont see this except that it seems everyone from Zos to Bethesda, even Todd Howard himself primarily uses their forums and reddit to minor player opinion and thats it.

That needs to change asap, the surveys are not enough. Its a cultural problem they have across the board in their companies respectively that makes them so out of touch.

Soarora · July 24

Isn’t the end goal of vengeance to be grey host but less laggy by rebuilding things in a more performant way? What do you want them to test by going backwards from grey host?

BardokRedSnow · July 24

Yes

Gabriel_H wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Look at it from a high level - GH PvP vs Vengence is night and day different and the vast majority of players don't want it.

Your premise is still based on Vengeance as is being the finished product. It isn't. It's a test environment that they are adding back to slowly. The more data they get, the quicker the process.

"Your premise" Bro stop. A game being in beta for years doesn't excuse it from being bad, and it doesn't change that Vengeance isnt as popular as Greyhost, wasn't requested by fans, and is a ghost town when Greyhost is available next to it. The people don't want these tests, no amount of coping or reframing is gonna change the obvious that everyone can see, test environment or not.