What is the status of AvA ?

Shadanwolf

I left the game some time ago. I bought the game for the promise of outstanding AvA. As we all know the game had issues at launch(and during the first year). Those on the PVE side seemed to get attention,while the AVA side did not(during the time I was there).
My question is...what is the state of AvA today. When I played lag was terrible,you would get dropped,bugs ,etc etc.
My love is faction vs faction conflict. Can someone bring me up to speed with detailed AvA status ?

If there are other key pieces of information any would like to share...like overall health of the game.....or status of crafting(yes I love crafting) I would appreciate any insights . Thanks in advance.

Alomar

Well if your question is about PC NA ESO AvA I'm uniquely suited to answer that for you. If you meant EU PC or Console I can only slightly. Due to being a hardcore NA PC pvper whose played on and off since one of the first beta tests, mostly on.

ESO currently is a great came for casual pve'ers and rp'ers, not so much for pvp'ers of any sort especially hardcore ones. The best period for pvp'ers was patch 1.4-1.6 a period of a year or so, butfor the past year plus it's been a steady decline in every category, including population. Here is why:


1. Lag; If you played ESO at launch you may be wondering what lag? At launch there was 600v600v600 campaigns relatively lag free. Well, as time went on and more and more patches lag started to build up until a critical mass occurred after what many players referred to as the "lighting patch", which was 1.3 or something I don't remember exactly. Ever since this period ESO's "largescale" pvp has become lag ridden with even in battles with 1/100 of the size at launch. In 2016 they did get over a hump and make lag playable, where before it used just prevent skills from working, now lag occurs in a different manor but it is ever present in every day of Cyrodiil.


2. Campaign population; After launch ESO's campaign population caps were severely reduced to a purposefully unknown number believed to only be in the low hundreds. As I mentioned above, in 2016 when they finally made some improvements in lag (not removed though) they increased the population cap per Alliance by several dozen.

3. Content, or lack thereof; It can be argued that post-launch there has been very little meaningful content for pvpers. The Imperial City dlc was meant to be pvp oriented, but ZOS went back on their word and allowed free access to it without requiring the ownership of emp (the outer circle of keeps) keeps. Therefore, it became more of a pve dlc and within less than 6 months it became nothing more than a temporary farm location that pvp'ers only enjoyed until the next update occurred taking pve players with it towards the next level of gear progression. To this day it's mostly a ghost town with occasional farmers for xp or a few unique item sets.

Besides that there was recently 3 conquerable towns added, and as exciting as that may sound they don't count towards your alliance's point tally's and offer nothing meaningful besides a vendor with mostly outdated and unused non-fotm sets. The one positive addition was coldfire siege weapons, these are random drops from chests and dolmens in Cyrodiil that do bonus damage over their regular siege counterparts. Spawn camps were removed for a period of 1.5 years, and even though they had the idea of how to change them 3 months after removing them, was a player idea told to them right away, it took that long to actually implement it.

4. Balance; Initially around and post launch ZOS attempted to balance classes very frequently. Yet, over time this radically changed. Where the game is now is very much filled with cookie cutter fotm classes, builds, sets, and skills that rotate from one or several Overpowered playstyles to another. This occurs because ZOS openly states they only take on serious class balancing on a yearly basis, this started in 2015 as the Dragonknight class was severally nerfed and had several skills not working as intended. This started during a several month push for console launch were there was a period where very little patching or effort went into the ESO PC versions as all dev's crunched to meet the console launch date. Yet, following the console launch things never returned to normal, and class balancing issues resulted in ZOS responses along the lines "We will not be looking into class balancing until the Q1 2016".

5. Community/Population Quality and Size; I've seen first hand the 10+ 1800 cap NA PC campaigns dwindle down to 4, with only one having a significant presence. Bear in mind this "significant presence" is with that drastically reduced population size post-launch. This occurred as the pvp population of ESO gave up and moved on to other games. As of November 2016, when I finally threw in the towel on ESO's pvp, I could count the remaining "hardcore" pvp guilds per faction on one hand each. You would struggle to find action unless you played in US primetime, even on the most populous campaign. Yet, playing in primetime meant the unavoidable presence of lag. My friends list is full of hundreds of pvpers who never looked back at ESO, because ZOS saw the rot and decided, wisely btw, to focus on areas of the game that appealed most to their largest consumer base.

Tldr: If you're a hardcore pvper it's not worth your time for anything other than nostalgia of the "good ol days". If your a casual pvper you may have fun for a bit, but it won't be your new "main game" for years to come. If you're a hardcore pve'er you'll enjoy the game for a bit, but eventually leave to play other games in between the large gaps of time for endgame content. If you're a casual pve'r or rp'er who just wants to pvp on the side occasionally this is the game for you!

Shadanwolf

ALOMAR........I'm an   x DAOC player(played for over 12 years) and am looking for something to hold me till Camelot Unchained. Any suggestions ?
(I too loved WITCHER 3)
Thanks for your help with the above

SaunZ

Alomar said:

Besides that there was recently 3 conquerable towns added, and as exciting as that may sound they don't count towards your alliance's point tally's and offer nothing meaningful besides a vendor with mostly outdated and unused non-fotm sets.

Be careful Shadanwolf... Alomar may be a fraud... not sure... still investigating.   I mined this data nugget out of what he said and it sounds VERY suspicious.  How could an ESO hardcore PvP'er not understand the massive value of the captured towns?  That is simply not possible.

Also, the PvP Cryodiil zones are packed with peepz, yes there are small issues, but no gigantic lag all the time, and the Cryodiil open pvp is awesome!  Every time I go there in the under level 50 campaign, Blackwater Blade, I easily find large groups... you just watch for the auto invite word they post in /zone.

On my 50 I go to the Trueflame campaign and the sucko part about that is that there is ALWAYS a small queue to get in because it is so freak'n full... and tons of hardcore pvp'ers and hardcore pvp'er guilds there.

Alomar seems to be one of those examples of False News everybody is talking about... but I don't know for sure?  I'm not saying he is... but there is something VERY suspicious about not knowing the value of the capture towns... maybe he thought he was hardcore and really wasn't?

How does one know they are not hardcore when they tell themselves they are hardcore?  Some guilds get you to join by telling you that you are hardcore... I truly believed I was hardcore until somebody asked me why I keep dying to the wolves and bears between the towns and keeps?   I was like, 'WTF'?

PvP in ESO is alive and well and it is a blast to be in the large groups, sieging and defending keeps... it is like being in the movies!!

ESO ROCKz!

Sz