Q&A with Brian Wheeler on ESO Live

ZOS_GinaBruno

This Friday, our Lead PvP Designer Brian Wheeler will be on ESO Live answering your questions! If you aren’t able to join us live, you’re welcome to post your questions below. We’ll answer as many questions as we can. Please keep in mind that Brian is in charge of the Alliance War, which includes PvP mechanics, keeps, objectives, siege weapons, and all things Cyrodiil. His team does not touch combat or general gameplay mechanics.

AriBoh

Whens Imperial city out?

Minno

What was the inspiration for the way current keeps, objectives, NPCs are setup?
A question involving either/or gameplay precedence and esthetic design precedence.

Sentinel

Will the low-pop bonus be adjusted and looked at so as not to become bugged, and in addition, apply to the population that averages lowest population percentages (possibly with a scale of intensity), that will provide adequate, but not superior points? It's a relatively overlooked (and albeit small at this point) issue, but one that I would like to see checked, and ultimately embraced as a mechanic.

derpsticks

Are there any plans to make the ayleid ruins into anything?

Perhaps something like a capture the welkynd stone game? I've noticed a few of the holders without the stones around cyrodiil. Like this without the stone:

images.uesp.net/thumb/c/cf/OB-item-Welkynd_Stone.jpg/180px-OB-item-Welkynd_Stone.jpg

Scotia

Can we have it so PVP bonuses only apply to PVP not PVE, why do players that do not PVP get to assign themselves to a buff server and benefit?

Ezareth

Are we going to see a greater shift in the differences between your character in Cyrodiil and your character outside of Cyrodiil as the new design philosphy for balance changes or are these temporary measures that were put in place until more permanent changes could be enacted?

Why was the Guild Store option removed from the Bank vendor in Cyrodiil and will it ever return?

When can we expect some form of Forward Camps back in the game?

With the increased importance of experience points and the Champion system have you and your team look at giving experience bonuses to low population campaigns as a "Carrot" approach to get more players fighting on the less populated campaigns and help reduce the lag overall? I'm not talking about low scoring bonuses awarded to a single side but a campaign wide bonus.

What other points of interest are you guys looking at promoting in Cyrodiil to promote less centralized PvP battlegrounds? Some of the best fights occur far from keeps between small groups and any design changes put in place that could promote that would be greatly appreciated.

WebBull

Moved from another thread........

How about some real numbers on the pop locks. They clearly are not accurate and it is far more than a 10% differential. There are times when EP has over double the people than AD or EP and yet all alliances show pop locked. The pop locks are either broken or unbalanced.

Sentinel

Other questions:

1. Will the keep location and environments be adjusted so as to be more strategic locations? A wide range of keeps have environments that do not defensively support the keeps location.
2. Will the landscape of Cyrodiil be given more curve and depth to resemble more of a bowl, as well as providing more chasms? This is a personal question, but I feel with a harsh landscape and sound travel routes, PvP can be organized into more open world fights that use the environment to surpass opposing factions. While of course there are such areas now, it would be interesting if more of the physical landscape of Oblivion's Cyrodiil could be embraced (Though not quite as sloping as that Cyrodiil).
3. In addition to the above, will more keeps, outposts, and other locations be created and made to be scattered across Cyrodiil in which players can fight over and win points? Such areas might include towns, towers, and etc.
4. Will the AP gain for large groups (aka. Zergs) be adjusted so that it becomes much less that of any other PvP playstyle, possibly removing any AP gain at all for groups above 50 within a certain radius?
5. Do you have any plans to help support Small scale battling, and if so, what do you have in mind already?

Thank you for creating this Q&A, I hope many questions, fears, and curiosities to be sated!

david.kinnaneb14_ESO

What does it take to get a bug report noticed by the devs? Furthermore, why are you more worried about inconsequential items like crown store potions instead of broken features, lag, and game crashes?

Muizer

There's not much of a limit to human creativity, so I'm guessing players managed to surprise the devs on more than one occasion. In PvP, what were some of your biggest "WTF are they doing!" realisations either during beta or after?

LunaRae

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

I know Arena's don't directly fall into anyone's lap over there as they don't formally exist yet, but I'm hoping you can share your opinion and thoughts with the PvP community.

What are your thoughts on Arena's? I understand ZOS is against the idea of breaking apart the PvP community between Cyrodiil and other PvP zones, but has ZOS looked into how to break apart the exciting elements of Arena's and how they could be implemented in Cyrodiil? Imperial City is exciting in this regard (for me), it looks like a new element to Cyrodiil - I'm hoping it's one step closer to seeing something closer to Arena's for PvP'ers in TESO.

Gyudan

A previous interview for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84gnG2GEvGU

Are you planning to reopen more campaigns with the influx of new players?

Gravord

Can we get playable pvp instead siege spam online?

Junipus

1. Has the PvP team tried removing all particle effects from Cyrodiil to test its effect on lag?
2. Given that PvP is heading into areas that are traditionally PvE with the Justice System, how do you plan on avoiding the issues seen in Cyrodiil and ensuring that PvP does not interfere with PvE?
3. Following the above question, will city guards get their damage and HP reduced once players are able to play the role of guards?
4. How often do the PvP team get to play within Live Cyrodiil on the servers?

Wakkoo

Any plans on improving the PvP quests or improving systems for exp rewards? For example; better system to avoid turning in the quests all the time, or better system for being rewarded for contributing capturing objectives/keeps

Wakkoo

Any plans for upgrades in PvP? Guilds being able to upgrade the keeps? Quests to summon minibosses to help fight? Upgrade to give you stronger guards/archers on the walls?

Wakkoo

Any plans to make leveling through pvp a more valid option for PvP lovers? Maybe even from level 3?

Cody

what about new siege engines? ladders and the like?

KriHavok

Has the PvP team considered experimenting with new campaigns that have different rules to the others? (Similar to how the Blackwater Blade campaign has the rule of being non-Veteran only.)

Jaxsun

My issues with lag and fps in Cyrodiil started after 1.2. When you all went on a 2 week 4th of July vacation. Leaving the game severely broken for that 2 weeks. A "botting" fix was implemented with that patch and still appears to be the culprit for the lag and fps issues. Will you please get rid of that "botting" fix and see what happens to the fps and lag? You don't even have to tell us that it was the issue. Just remove it and say you tweaked the kanibbler arm on the thingamajigger. If it works you'll look like heroes if it doesn't you won't look any worse and you can cross it off the list as the cause.

Bogdan_Kobzar

Question:
1) When will we have the option to completely unassign a character from a campaign?
2) When will points/level restrictions be implemented in PvP,? (the rank 30 killing a rank 5 player should get almost no points like the rest of tamriel, there is only a specific range of levels above and below player level that have xp points)
3) Most importantly, when will the PvP buffs ONLY apply to PvP in Cyrodiil?
I am so sick and tired of the cliche of guilds that are ruling and dominating the PvP campaigns just so they have the advantage of the PvP buffs in the trials to have a high leaderboard standing. Not to mention all the emperor title trading going on.

aco5712

Do you plan to revert your change to knocking people off high places doing no damage? It really takes alot away from keep/bridge battles. You shouldnt reward the players who aren't aware of their environment. This shouldnt be your fix for the fall damage bug. FIx it properly.

Eldarth

Can you tell us any specifics about lag investigations?

• Is it a network bottleneck?
• Is it a CPU/software bottleneck?

I suspect animation canceling is contributing to a networking bottleneck.

HeroOfNone

As was previously aluded to and hinted at in various cons and data mining, how far along are we toward getting some small scaled, structured PVP matches, aka Arenas/Battlegrounds?

What are your plans for Arenas/Battlegrounds matches long term? will we only see a few or will we see possibly a Large scale System of Arenas/Battlegrounds as an end goal?

With Arenas/Battlegrounds, what are the main concerns and balancing factors that your team are considering?

Finally, what would ZOS like to hear from the community regarding Arenas/Battlegrounds? a level or interest? a price we're willing to pay? Mechanics we want to see? etc.

xDOVAHKIINx

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Siege Damage Intended or not? If so, how do you plan to balance damage and mitigation? because at the moment it seems to be a one way street in favor of the aggressor.

Suntzu1414

The new meta for pvp.

Invite 10 friends. Setup 20 Fire Balista.
KILL EVERYTHING.

Win.


Kill Well (without fire ballista)
ST

Dazin93

Brian,

My question is as follows:

Are there any long terms plans in place (or a vision) to address the growing disparity in power between veteran players and new players, as a result of the champion system, thereby encouraging more player participation in Cyrodiil and PvP overall?

LonePirate

Are there any plans to mix up the design of keeps such as putting the flags on different levels, changing the layout of keeps, or replacing the flags with powerful NPCs?

JTorus

Everyone here has touched on all the pressing points from lag and performance to future content, all of which should be the priority of the conversation. My questions are pretty simple.

How can we help you improve things? There are many of us out there that witness glitches, lag, exploits and so on. What is the best method to put information in your hands to ensure you can address the issue rapidly? For example, we have addons offering map coordinates. Many of us can take video and screenshots. What is the best way for us to feed information back to you that helps improve your product?

Can we help you test proposed repairs? You have a PTS that we all have access too. Without going through the burden of copying characters, would creating templates aimed at PvP and scheduling weekly events help you work out some kinks? I think it's already been proven that this PvP community is willing and able to troubleshoot problems, would this be something ZOS is willing to do?

Can we get some sort of weekly report? Even if it only a couple of items you're working on. We're information starved over here, and it lends to the assumption that ZOS doesn't care about the PvP community. I personally don't believe this is true, I'm pretty sure some of you guys 'PvP in Disguise' in your free time. Is there any way we can hear more from you and your team, and more often?

TheBonesXXX

Agree with above, we all know lag is an issue; no need to beat a hopefully dying horse.

1) My biggest gripe with Campaigns at the moment is the orchestration of Emperor trading, which diminishes the mystique of having Emperor to begin with, it might make some people mad, but can you revamp how it is obtained, currently the system rewards time played; not player skill, battle strategy, use of tactics, and the more important aspects of PvP. All it rewards is zerging and one trick pony builds.

Emperor should not be a midnight push when there is little resistance to obtain it, I rather see the whole thing revamped and just give current Emperor a new title, such as a Faction Champion.

2) Terrain exaggeration to make the terrain more rich with more choke-points, greater ability to use siege, and tactics. Mindless zerging should be crippling to a faction and it would really bring out stellar Field Commanders and co-operation between guilds who want to actually win a battle with tactics, strategy, and ability rather than meaningless button mashing.

3) More micro scale encounters, in way of collecting "rarer" resources and to boost the three surrounding resource nodes at the keep with a fair point value. Example) Lurks-In-Dark goes and collects X resource through out Cyrodill, he has to fight other players on a micro scale for the resources because they take a while to gather, he brings resource back to a Mine, Lumbermill, or Farm to boost the productivity of the said resource, thus bolstering a keeps defenses.

4) In the Promo Trailer, each faction gets to Cyrodill in a very specific way, through tunnels, ropes, and what have you, Cyrodill currently is very impersonal; it sits more like a laggy battleground than another zone, reminds me of a three prong Alterac Valley from WoW rather than an Elder Scrolls Cyrodill. I would love to see Imperial City delayed, the map of Cyrodill expanded, and the map be treated like old-school open world PvP thats objective based with the capability free-roam rather than the atrocious two button hero mindlessly banding together to lag-spike a map to win.

There simply should never be an advantage to zerging, spread objectives should make zerging inefficient and with a great terrain zergs should be crushed under a coordinated volley of siege, thats the fact. Sun Tzu beat more with less, gameplay should award the skilled, coordinated, dedicated, and prepared. (know that I define dedication as not time spent running around in a ball, its time spent learning terrain, developing and executing tactics, knowing their classes).

The caps are ridiculous and battlegrounds are boring, double-triple its map size even, maintain micro and macro levels of PvP and make strategy a huge part of the game. Punishing zerging, expanding the map, and advocating for a constant use of tactics through a more-delicate point system.

There is so much the team can do with one map, adding layers to the map, such as tunnel fights, huge tower fights, fighting over other tactical position, enriching the whole PvP environment.

I am from the old school era though, I believe in being better than your opponent, not using cheesy means to win the game such as knowing a skill like Impulse takes a lot away from everyones ping so running around in a Impulse-Batswarm spam to me is just a show of a persons character.

5) It's been said, it needs to be said again. Can we keep scroll buffs within Cyrodill and no where else, or change the mechanic of scrolls so there are no advantages to them until we can get into the PvPvE dungeon of the Imperial City. Yes, I feel that Scroll business should remain within Cyrodill; but like point 4) I think Cyrodill should be the cross-faction zone with an open world feel.

I am not going to apologize for advocating PvP in a PvP zone and have less PvE elements to it. But the whole premise of ESO starts with the strife of factions; Cyrodill to me should be the focus and heart of ESO.