Changes coming to PVP buffs. Get it right, ZOS, and remove the buffs from PVE now!

Aeratus

ZOS will be removing PVP buffs from guest campaigns, which is a good thing. However, they are still considering whether the buffs should be PVP only. This second part is surprising to me, because it is not even a close question in my opinion. The only solution that would benefit PVP play is to remove the buffs from PVE.

My comments on this issue:

1. If the buffs are not removed from PVE, there will always be empty buff campaigns. This is because a faction has every (perverse) incentive to maintain a buff campaign. There are guilds that do both PVP and PVE, and if they need the advantage for the PVE leaderboards, they will work to maintain a buff campaign. The current design is a failure since 3 out of 4 are just buff campaigns (and somehow, EP still doesn't have a buff campaign in the NA server, but that's another issue), while the sole competitive campaign is a barely playable lagfest since players have nowhere else to play.

2. It is irrelevant whether the PVP buffs are "necessary" or "unnecessary" for PVE or for your individual solo experience. The only thing that is relevant is ensuring that the right incentives (or lack of perverse incentives) are driving the player population at a macroscopic level in a way that would promote a competitive PVP experience across all campaigns. As we have seen in the past, players have engaged in anti-competitive behavior to chase even the most minor and unnecessary buffs (I'm referring to emperor farming, of course). The game's design must be built around player incentives and how such incentives influence player actions; a failure to understand what would result from an incentive structure results in a failed game design.

3. If buffs are not removed from PVE, the PVEers who are homed to a buff campaign will be discouraged from playing as guest in another campaign. This will hurt PVP even more.

4. The PVP buffs are not a legitimate "rewards for success." A legitimate reward must be earned, but PVP buffs are earned merely by setting your home campaign. In fact, you don't even need to step foot in cyrodiil to get PVP buffs.

5. Nobody cares about this grandiose idea that a faction's success in the alliance war affects its heroes' journeys elsewhere. Any possibility for this concept to be successfully implemented is destroyed when you realize the absurd result that the guy next to you in the same PVE area or even the same dungeon group is tied to an alternate parallel universe for purposes of the alliance war.

6. In regards to the above point, the general concept of having faction-wide PVE be influenced by faction-wide PVP is simply bad design. It makes the factions imbalanced and ruins the competitive PVE environment. So I would also disagree with an alternate proposal of having the buffs be based on all campaigns rather than a single campaign.

7. The quicker the buffs are removed, the better. At the moment, players are still perfecting out the strategies for DSA vet and Sanctum Ophidia. Take too long to remove the buffs, and players will demand a reset in leaderboard.

8. If it is necessary to completely remove the buffs altogether (from both PVP and PVE) to promote competitive campaigns, especially if this would work better for the imperial city, then I would support such a move.

Mondrely

At the very least, maybe they could add in an alliance point requirement to receive the buffs in PvE. Someone would need to gain a minimum number of points in their home campaign in order to receive the buffs outside of Cyrodiil. Not sure how difficult that would be to implement though.

rophez_ESO

First off, I agree with you. With the current system, PVE buffs need to go. I will, however, point out that this wasn't a problem in DAOC; the PVP buffs were nice bonuses during PVE time and there weren't any "buff servers." Why? Well because you couldn't server hop in DAOC. I really think they need give everyone a free campaign transfer with a hard lock of 6 months. And NO guesting. If someone desperately needs to change campaigns before 6 months is up, charge them 20 bucks. Bingo, no more buff servers.

Nox_Aeterna

Oh well , personally i find these buffs all but irrelevant most of the time , but i guess those that really care for the best possible min/max will look at them for a little extra.

With that said i would say the opposite of what you said about PvE players , if any PvE player had any interest of joining cyro even if just get the buffs , this will begone the moment it stops giving the buff.

rophez_ESO wrote: »

First off, I agree with you. With the current system, PVE buffs need to go. I will, however, point out that this wasn't a problem in DAOC; the PVP buffs were nice bonuses during PVE time and there weren't any "buff servers." Why? Well because you couldn't server hop in DAOC. I really think they need give everyone a free campaign transfer with a hard lock of 6 months. And NO guesting. If someone desperately needs to change campaigns before 6 months is up, charge them 20 bucks. Bingo, no more buff servers.

I find that to be a bad idea , you join a new guild and wants to PvP with them? Sorry , not for the next 5 months unless you want to pay 20$.

Even worse if you try to PvP with multiple guilds which might want to do so on different cyros and so on.

I could list a long list of other examples where locking people would create problems , but i guess so can others without me saying.

Aeratus

With that said i would say the opposite of what you said about PvE players , if any PvE player had any interest of joining cyro even if just get the buffs , this will begone the moment it stops giving the buff.

If buff-server defense is all that these PVE players do, that's a pretty weak level of involvement since the presence of a buff server already assumes that the campaign is effectively dead. I would rather ensure the removal of buff servers in the first place, so that genuine PVP players have more options to play in different campaigns. Right now, you have PVP players who are unable to play the game to their enjoyment due to the lack of options for campaign selection, and the long queues to thornblade.

Oh well , personally i find these buffs all but irrelevant most of the time , but i guess those that really care for the best possible min/max will look at them for a little extra.

Unfortunately, as long as there are some people who consider them to be relevant, we will run into this problem of buff servers wasting valuable server room due to the collective actions of all of those who consider them to be relevant.

PBpsy

The removal of PVP buffs in PVE one of the only good news recently. Unfortunately with the addition of imperial city I only see the buff campaigns becoming Imperial city pve campaigns.


They should really add some sort of cool PVE only buff system though. For example undaunted buffs. For example you do some sort of challenge dungeon run ad you get a small buff for a week.Do a COH speed run and get 3% spell/weapon crit for 5 days.Do a trial run and get 5% life for 2 weeks. It would really encourage doing more of the content.

Aeratus

From what I've read, they have not yet decided to remove the PVP buffs from PVE. They have only decided to remove the buffs from the guest campaigns. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

Dirty_Digs

I think the PVP buffs do nothing but discourage players away from the game entirely. I know several players who quit because they thought it was absurd and pointless.

Why do players get more loot, experience, player boost, etc just because the are part of a completely dead campaign? All ESO is doing is providing pointless servers for server buffs, which don;t even need to be in the game. Just give them to all the PVE players or do away with them altoghether.

I'm all for the pvp buffs, I home on chillrend and make them look terrible with the buffs they have, but the PVE buffs need to go before the results of that poor game mechanic cut down on player population and therefore profits.

The most irritating part is how bad the actual pvp is on those PVP servers. Everyone you face is much more powerful than you and they always have more numbers. If you take anything they send a zerg to wipe your 5 man party. Just the other day, the empress and about 20 of her lackey's came to wipe 3 of us after we took one little mine. There was no action for hours, it's like the were sitting around waiting for it. It was disgusting, I can't even believe people play this game to do that.

It's unbelievable how many players will show up to clean out A PVP SERVER FOR HAVING ACTIVE PVP ON IT!!!! Players who never pvp will magically appear with entire guilds to ruin our pvp time so they can enjoy server buffs. I can't stand it much longer myself, it gets redundant to the point of pure stupidity. It;s the same thing every time, first we kill 5, then its ten, then 20, then more than small group could ever possibly handle against buffs. If we bring 20, they bring 50. If we bring more, they call the entire DC horde.

I cannot stress this one point enough: THERE SHOULD NOT BE ANY INCENTIVE TO RID A PVP SERVER OF PVP ACTION. And why are these players trying so hard to rid a pvp server of action? So they can use the buffs in PVE of course, something totally unrelated. Why would they need them on a PVP server that they already own.

As a side note, why does ESO spend money to provide buff servers at all? They are giant dead zones that do nothing but cost money so players who don't like competition can enjoy a nice buff that could be free or omitted entirely.

AssaultLemming

I think that having the pvp buffs work in pve is good because it brings pvers into PvP. That being said they need to do something to make those people actually be active.
My suggestion is two fold.

1) make the pvp buffs drain AP.
2) add a pvp stone or stones in cyro similar to a mundus that toggles buffs on and off.

That way pvers need to come and PvP in order to maintain their buffs.

Just a thought and probably needs some details...

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

No.

1) Your assertion is wrong.
While the buffs are indeed an incentive to maintain a buff campaign it isn't the only one and isn't the issue.
The problem is that there is no counter weight, no reasons to fight back or self balance the campaigns.

The PvE buffs could be much stronger without causing buff campaigns if they had strong enough counterweights.

Please, read the alternatives

2) Agreed. You seem to have a grasp of how players behaves, which makes it weird that you can want the removal of the PvE buffs.

3) I don't see the correlation here.
Guesting doesn't make you lose your buff in PvE, and with most buff campaigns is the only way to get any PvP.
A PvE player wanting to do some occasional PvP should actually guest as he certainly won't find any if he's homed on a buff campaign.

4) Agreed, this is an issue.
But it doesn't make PvE buffs an issue, just the way they are obtained.
Other commenters have provided suggestions showing that it is an easy problem to fix.
Here's another solution.

5) Wrong.
You're ignoring the past and games like daoc where realm pride was a thing. Or simply ignoring all the sandboxes out there where PvE dictates PvP and PvP dictates PvE in very strong ways, to the point of locking/unlocking content.
The most proheminent example being Eve online.

ESO, at its core is a game designed around immersion, and while I agree with you that phasing/instancing is a bane, it is just a technical limitation.
Other than that, having mechanics in game geared towards caring about how the world fares are core design elements.
The PvE buffs serve this purpose.

6) I agree on one point. Basing them on all campaigns would be gamy and idiotic. Counter productive to creating a "campaign pride".
Some alternatives that have been suggested were that for timed trials, or anything with a leaderboard, the buffs wouldn't apply.
Though, it wouldn't be a smart choice either.

PvE has a deep impact on PvP.
Either crafting consumables and gear or running dungeons for sets/passives are crucial to PvP competitiveness.
Why should we compartimentalize in only one way?

The purpose of MMOs is to provide virtual worlds where every element interact with each other in a cohesive whole.
PvE, PvP and crafting should all feed off of each other and be valuable to every type of players in the game.

7) Or never remove them and just accept that they are part of the natural process of the game. No need to reset.
If the buff campaign issue gets fixed, then the average buff a character would get would be the same no matter which faction or campaign chosen.

It will actually create a balancing mechanic if players had to contribute to PvP to earn their buff. You could have "good evenings" where the faction is doing strong, and where you would run the timers for highscores rather than for practice.
But you could have "bad evenings", where you either practice your strategies, or more interestingly, go help out in PvP to improve your percentage of buff earned and be a weight countering the "bad evening" to turn it into a good one.

Again, this is like the waterflow between two recipient. As the wining faction will lose members to PvE, the losing faction will gain members to reclaim buffs, helping balancing the campaigns while providing content variety for guilds.

And variety, however people may believe they dislike it, is an amazing source of long term appeal.

8) It will never be necessary. There is a need for a carrot and a stick.
Fight well, and earn buffs, fight badly and lose them.

Win the day, and go profit of your plunder (use your buffs in PvE), run out of money and go back to raiding away from home (help your campaign)

You mentionned the Imperial City which is in itself a prime example of every principle I explained in this post.
High end PvE content that gets unlocked through PvP. heck, it could also be arenas that get unlocked for PvPers to enjoy smaller scale controlable environments.

The end goal being giving purpose and meaningfulnes.
This keep isn't just a fight for the sake of fighting or famring AP, it is a tool to assert control over the world and your experience within it.

decado0024_ESO

I think PVP buffs being used for PVE content is ***. Furthermore I think that if u even want to get into the imperial city once all the pre-reqs are met you should also be rank ten in alliance war. Give the ppl who pvp their butts off something that the PVE nubs cant just come leach.

MiyaTheUnbroken

Aeratus wrote: »

1. If the buffs are not removed from PVE, there will always be empty buff campaigns. This is because a faction has every (perverse) incentive to maintain a buff campaign. There are guilds that do both PVP and PVE, and if they need the advantage for the PVE leaderboards, they will work to maintain a buff campaign. The current design is a failure since 3 out of 4 are just buff campaigns (and somehow, EP still doesn't have a buff campaign in the NA server, but that's another issue), while the sole competitive campaign is a barely playable lagfest since players have nowhere else to play.

That is so blindingly incorrect I can't even read anything else you've written. Have you not been to Azura's Star?

Joy_Division

Aeratus wrote: »

1. If the buffs are not removed from PVE, there will always be empty buff campaigns.

Not true, although under the current conditions ESO uses, it is likely (4 campaigns so each faction gets a buff, no AP requirements to be eligible for PvE buffs, etc.).

2. I do agree people in buff campaigns are fanatical about keeping the map their color. I don't agree that removing PvE incentives will still motivate PvErs in the proper numbers to have wonderfully balanced populations in campaigns they won't log into.

3. This is a problem with the guest mechanic in general and not related to PvE buffs. Guest campaigns, IMHO, are an unnecessary restriction that hinders potentially vibrant campaigns.

4. The PVP buffs are not a legitimate "rewards for success." A legitimate reward must be earned, but PVP buffs are earned merely by setting your home campaign. In fact, you don't even need to step foot in cyrodiil to get PVP buffs.

Agreed. Somewhere there is a fair balance so that PvE players have to do SOMETHING in Cyrodiil to get their buffs but can still spend most of their time PvEing.

5. Nobody cares about this grandiose idea that a faction's success in the alliance war affects its heroes' journeys elsewhere.

Not true. Faction pride is real even if you don't care for it. I do agree the phasing/multi-campaign technical limitation makes this inconsistent from group to group. However, it is a good thing that there is a relationship between PvE and PvP.

6. In regards to the above point, the general concept of having faction-wide PVE be influenced by faction-wide PVP is simply bad design. It makes the factions imbalanced and ruins the competitive PVE environment.

I disagree. I think it would be worse design to have PvP and PvE completely compartmentalized without having influence over each other. There is a certain logic that Daggerfall players who have many Elder Scrolls in their possession and have captured the Imperial City would perform better than their Aldmeri counterparts. If there was no relationship, why is there this war to begin with and what incentive would a PvErs have to go to Cyrodiil? Likewise, I think it is healthy for PvPers to have incentives to PvE to get specialized gear so they can PvP better. There should be a healthy and reciprocal relationship and interaction between PvP and PvE.

You seem convinced the only solution to creating competitive PvP campaigns is to remove PvE buffs. To me, that is overly narrow thinking that does little aside from removing incentives for PvE-oriented players to participate and remove a healthy and immersion interaction between PvP and PvE.

In my opinion, the real problem is that there are too many campaigns and too few players. I think PvP was at its healthiest when there were 2 campaigns that had consistent action (Wabbajack and Dawnbreaker after the first campaign reset and Thornblade and Chillrend - yes it was not always a blue buff server - after the new campaign system was introduced). I think if Haderus and Azura's Star were removed, you would see two competitive campaigns emerge.

Sublime

So I've had an idea concerning this problem:

Make the buffs scale off the enemy population in the respective campaign.

Some examples to clarify it:

Let's take an emperor buff of 500 HP, and I'm and AD

Let's take a maximum population per faction of 400:

The basic formula:
(Current enemy population/Maximum enemy population)*500

DC in campaign: 300, EP in campaign: 200

(300+200)/800*500 = 312.5 => 312.5 HP from emperor buff for AD

DC: 400, EP: 400

(400+400)/800*500 = 500 HP for AD

DC: 2, EP: 3

(2+3)/800*500 = 3.125 HP for AD

...

This formula basically emphasizes the effort it takes to maintain those buffs:
no effort => low buff
much effort => high buff

Unfortunately it only solves the problem for the PvP side (it should remove buff campaigns), but there will still be unequal conditions for the PvE groups, it should however be less than it is now.

So what do you think?

ToRelax

Sublime wrote: »

So what do you think?

The PvP buffs shouldn't work for other campaigns anymore?

They are, however, still active in PvE, wich makes no sense at all and is a motive to maintain buff campaigns.

So remove them from PvE. If the buffs are increased be more enemies in the buff campaign who would go there anyway?

Sublime

ToRelax wrote: »

Sublime wrote: »

So what do you think?

The PvP buffs shouldn't work for other campaigns anymore?

They are, however, still active in PvE, wich makes no sense at all and is a motive to maintain buff campaigns.

So remove them from PvE. If the buffs are increased be more enemies in the buff campaign who would go there anyway?

Right now you only get the buffs of the campaign you are currently in, if you are in Cyrodiil. If you are outside however you get the one of your home campaign.

The point of this formula is that it will no longer be possible to maintain a buff campaign, because it would require enemies to be active in the campaign. With "active in the campaign" I mean they need to be logged on and count towards the population lock. I.e. if everbody leaves (logs out of Cyrodiil to somewhere else of Nirn) the campaign because it is uninteresting to play the buff will be reduced to zero, which makes it uninteresting to maintain a buff campaign.

The amount of players having set the campaign as home campaign does not matter, because the values used to calculate are the same which also calculate the population locks. I.e. If both enemy factions are locked the faction will get the full bonus, If nobody is online in Cyrodiil it will gain nothing.

Aeratus

MiyaTheUnbroken wrote: »

Aeratus wrote: »

1. If the buffs are not removed from PVE, there will always be empty buff campaigns. This is because a faction has every (perverse) incentive to maintain a buff campaign. There are guilds that do both PVP and PVE, and if they need the advantage for the PVE leaderboards, they will work to maintain a buff campaign. The current design is a failure since 3 out of 4 are just buff campaigns (and somehow, EP still doesn't have a buff campaign in the NA server, but that's another issue), while the sole competitive campaign is a barely playable lagfest since players have nowhere else to play.

That is so blindingly incorrect I can't even read anything else you've written. Have you not been to Azura's Star?

And have you not read the date on the original post? (October 3, 2014)

You're ignoring the past and games like daoc where realm pride was a thing. Or simply ignoring all the sandboxes out there where PvE dictates PvP and PvP dictates PvE in very strong ways, to the point of locking/unlocking content.
The most proheminent example being Eve online.

Realm pride can work in some lore settings. The problem with ESO is that the factions don't even make any sense (Dunmer and Argonians in the same alliance? lol). Everyone knows that the 3-factions system was force-fitted into Elder scrolls lore, and because of this, it did not work well. In any case, realm pride never really took off in this game.

Some pvpers have a realm pride developed from the basic "us vs. them" mentality from playing pvp a lot. But the vast majority PVEers don't think highly of real pride, especially the fans of single player Elder Scrolls games.

Juraigr

Sublime wrote: »

So I've had an idea concerning this problem:

Make the buffs scale off the enemy population in the respective campaign.

Some examples to clarify it:

Let's take an emperor buff of 500 HP, and I'm and AD

Let's take a maximum population per faction of 400:

The basic formula:
(Current enemy population/Maximum enemy population)*500

DC in campaign: 300, EP in campaign: 200

(300+200)/800*500 = 312.5 => 312.5 HP from emperor buff for AD

DC: 400, EP: 400

(400+400)/800*500 = 500 HP for AD

DC: 2, EP: 3

(2+3)/800*500 = 3.125 HP for AD

...

This formula basically emphasizes the effort it takes to maintain those buffs:
no effort => low buff
much effort => high buff

Unfortunately it only solves the problem for the PvP side (it should remove buff campaigns), but there will still be unequal conditions for the PvE groups, it should however be less than it is now.

So what do you think?

This is brilliant unfortunatly zos can't code and so will give you negative fps just for attempting to implement this formula

Sublime

I just realized, while reviewing my formula, that it would be a huge disadvantage for players who do not get to play during prime time, because they are never playing against good populated factions, simply because they play at the "wrong" time of the day. But this is obviously not their fault, so i tried to fix this:

-> Instead of taking the current enemy Population, it uses the average enemy population for the last 24 hours.
-> So now everybody plays more or less with the same numbers, but since no campaign will ever be locked for 24 hours straight, nobody will ever get the full bonus.
-> Unfortunately it is not possible to find a wultiplier, which remains constant, that would equalize the discrepancy, so I suggest to simply increase the values gained from the AvA buffs.

New formula:

A: average enemy population over the last 24h (both factions)
B: maximum enemy population (both factions)
C: base buff value
new buff value

(A/B)*C=D

Now the problem of the different time zones is solved, but what if somebody likes to play in a campaign which is constantly empty, for all factions? He could put in all the effort he wants and would never be able to get something out of it, simply because he has no opponents.

-> This is where the actual problem of AvA buffs in PvE kicks in, a PvE Progression guild could just as well be seen as a group of players as described above.
-> Let's recall the origial idea of AvA buffs: They are designed as a reward for your faction for achieving a feat in PvP.
-> So the initial assault which caps the whole campaign is obviously an achievement and should also be rewarded as such. The rest of the campaign however, where nobody is interested in playing and therefore does not require any significant effort to maintain these buffs should not be rewarded, since it is no feat to do nothing.
-> Therefore I suggest to make the buff diminish as time passes without action.

Diminisung Buffs

Here is an idea how to let AvA buffs diminish over time.

At first we determine the "front keeps", i.e. keeps which are subject to combat. If AD would have all keeps, Rayles, Warden, Kingscrest and Farragut would be the fron keeps. Generally the front keeps are any keeps, which are boarding to an enemy keep (the High Rock and Morrwind gates in the example above).

The second thing I'll introduce is the Status "diminishing" for keeps:
- Only front keeps can get the status diminishing.
- A keep becomes diminishing as soon as not been under attack for 30min or longer (under attack= wall HP below 50%)
- A diminishing keep looses 10% of it's bonus per 10min (makes it easier to implement than 1%/min)
- Once the bonus of a keep is at 0%, the next row of keeps starts to diminish
- If a keep holds a scrolls, then the bonus from the scroll will diminish at the same rate as the keep it's located in, same holds true for emperor buff (I.e. if all imperial keeps are at 0% bonus, the emperor buff will be lost)
- A faction's boni stop diminishing as soon as it captures a keep

Now the question is how: do I restore buffs?

For every 10 minutes a faction is attacking/defeding a keep, which is under attack (=wall HP under 50%) 20% of the first row of keep buffs get restored (basically the same pattern as with the diminishing system but not "from front keep to home keep" but "from home keep to front keep" and twice as fast)
________________________________________________________________________

I am sorry for the wall of text, but this is a rather complicated issue and this is the only way a managed to come up with, that would solve the buff problme without having to remove them.

This is of course all very dependent on the numbers and can be iterated from perfect to complete trash, but I think the basic idea should work.

lolo_01b16_ESO

The idea might work if you couldn't create chars in other fractions or communicate with players in other fractions.
But without changing the whole game it might be the easiest to just remove the PvP buffs outside cyrodiil.

Sublime

Probably yes, but as far as I know ZOS does not want to remove them, because they want to create an incentive for PvEers to go PvPing. Once the IC gets implemented along with the public dungeon inside it, these feature might draw enough people into Cyrodiil that the buffs are no longer needed.

Additionally, I doubt that a guild wants to send somebody every 30mins to attack a keep, or even take it. But it is about the base idea and not the numbers, i.e. it can be made far more punishing to go out of a campaign, the tricky part is to find a good balance.

Gyudan

Sublime wrote: »

Probably yes, but as far as I know ZOS does not want to remove them, because they want to create an incentive for PvEers to go PvPing. Once the IC gets implemented along with the public dungeon inside it, these feature might draw enough people into Cyrodiil that the buffs are no longer needed.

Additionally, I doubt that a guild wants to send somebody every 30mins to attack a keep, or even take it. But it is about the base idea and not the numbers, i.e. it can be made far more punishing to go out of a campaign, the tricky part is to find a good balance.

Incentive? Speaking for my own situation in PVE DC EU, the few times we didn't have the full PVP buffs around raid prime time, nobody I know ever went to Cyrodiil to take back the keeps. People just whined a bit and make do without the buffs for a few hours.

I think players only want to keep this situation with empty buff campaigns because they're the easiest way to become emperor for a few hours and get the skill line.
1. Find a campaign won by another alliance.
2. Get on top of the leaderboards for your side.
3. Wait for the other alliance's emperor to get bored.
4. Discuss with him to plan a reroll so one of his friends can re-take emperor when you're done
5. Group at night and take back all the keeps.
6. Be crowned emperor.
7. Let the first occupying alliance take back the keeps.
8. A friend of the first emperor takes the ruby throne.
9. Both players display their very meaningful "Emperor" title and enjoy the buffs.

Wow, this sounds like a lot of fun! ><