Dueling in ESO: The Violent Nature of Tamriel and The Unintended and Unresolved Consequences

In concept, I understand the need for dueling. Dueling is the only way to truly test one's build for PVP before taking it into combat. Sure the DPS test dummies are nice for posting DPS numbers, but the fact remains, those numbers only represent PVE/DPS values. And, since dummies don't fight back, you can test a tank or healer builds.

So from that point of view, the introduction of dueling to The Elder Scrolls Online allowed the broader test of all classes and PVP builds; but, it came at a price; a price that everyone in Tamriel has been paying since the One Tamriel patch dropped. Essentially, what dueling did was bring PVP out of Cyrodiil and into all Tamriel. 

When dueling was released as a part of the One Tamriel patch back in the fall of 2016 it introduced some major issues to the play-ability of the game. The first major issue is that anyone could duel anybody else, anywhere, at anytime and multiple duels could be happening simultaneously at the exact same location. For whatever reason, probably ease of access to easy targets, people chose to duel at way shrines, in major towns, inside and around the Undaunted Enclaves and other locations that required people to travel to for turning in quests, sell/deconstruct their hard earned gear or just pop over to town to rest from their exhausting adventuring.

By allowing dueling in and around major hubs of activity non-dueling players get hit with "Unusually Long Load Times", which is actually not so unusual these days. Quest and pledge givers can take a literal minute or two to load in and not be a black silhouette. Game crashes and locks are still rampant and some major cities, <cough> Elden Root <cough>, and these same cities are so laggy and crash-prone, that they are not the hub they were before One Tamriel.

Dueling also opened the game to bullies. High level characters played by small penis'd people who need to make others feel small to feel good about themselves, picking on new characters (who don't know any better) using the dueling feature as their weapon of choice for their bullying tactics. This is such a problem that Zenimax had to include an auto-decline all duels option for players just trying to quest.

The problems introduced with Dueling are so easy to fix, but Zenimax has not listened to our cries to make it stop. Instead they push forward like they can't hear our tears of frustration falling like Niagara. But let me put on my "Mr. Fix It Hat" and offer some viable suggestions to solve our never-ending saga of dueling woes.

First and foremost, make Dueling an illegal activity, like it is and was (for the most part) in the real world. If a any NPC witnesses a duel, each party responsible will get 2000g bounty and an invincible guard will appear and attack the duelers. This would definitely push dueling outside of towns and into remote locations which would limit the impact on the rest of the players in the game.

Second, see that image above, of what looks like a dueling arena? Yeah, build one of those in each of the lands of Tamriel; a place, an arena if you will, specifically for dueling to take place, legally. Make it open for everyone to go watch if they want to. Make it so the "Invite Duel" option is only available in these locations. Just keep it away from major cities. Zenimax gave us a similar feature in Summerset with the "Colosseum of the Old Ways", and even gave us an achievement for dueling there. Give us these types of locations across all of Tamriel and the unintended consequences of dueling, mentioned above, will go away.

Third, with the introduction of Battlegrounds, why is dueling still needed? Why can't there be 1v1 Battleground Map, that looks like the arena mentioned above, and that when two people agree to duel, are they are loaded into?

Again, I see the value of dueling, but I think it can be done in a way that it minimizes the impact on the rest of us denizens of Tamriel. That's my two cents, which when inflation is factored in, isn't worth a whole lot, but I feel better getting it out.