PVP Update, June 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler

Here’s a general update on what we are doing to alleviate some of the pain points in Cyrodiil. This includes systems/mechanics that promote poor sportsmanship, and undesirable reliances, and Cyrodiil-related performance problems that many of you are seeing, especially in Veteran campaigns. Please note that this summarizes our current thinking, but we may change this plan as events warrant.

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, there are far fewer performance problems in non-Veteran campaigns. We have been investigating why non-Veteran campaigns perform better than their Veteran counterparts, and are starting to make some changes based on what we have found. As some of you already know, what we’re seeing is this: there is a point where if too many players are too close together and perform too many AoE and other instant-cast types of spells that server performance starts to degrade. As lower level characters don’t have many of these types of spells, non-Veteran campaigns generally don’t run into this trouble.

As such, the combat team is currently making adjustments to line-of-sight checks for area-of-effect abilities that have been causing the majority of server congestion in Cyrodiil. This has resulted in us taking a close look at higher level abilities/items to root out line-of-sight checks and other potential client-to-server message overflow issues.

There are also many other issues that will be addressed in the near future, some of which are related to players exploiting PvP buffs, social systems, and the Emperor system. Many of these issues came to use via direct feedback from players – thank you so much for your help, everyone who has taken the time to give us well documented feedback. It makes our jobs far easier.

With all this in mind, a multi-pronged change is coming to campaigns, the Emperor system, and campaign assignment that will be a major adjustment. The goal of this change is to address population imbalance issues, the reliance on “buff servers,” and Emperor farming. Read below for an explanation of the changes you can expect to see coming to Cyrodiil in our next major update.

• Jump-to-Friend: Social jumping into Cyrodiil or any PVP space is being disabled. This has long been the way to get around the Guest/Home campaign assignment. With this change, we’re closing that loophole as it's detrimental to the overall PVP experience and integrity of the campaign system.
• PVP Bonuses: Keep, Elder Scroll, and the Emperorship bonuses (passive buffs) will apply only in PVP spaces. This change will effectively do away with the concept of “buff servers.” Originally, we wanted these bonuses to provide a game-wide benefit, but we’ve seen this design become detrimental to the PVP experience due to alliances having "buff servers."
• Emperor Buffs/Skill Line: The "Former Emperor" buffs are being removed from the game. With this new system, you will only get Emperor buffs while your character is actively Emperor. Also, you will be granted the Emperor skill line and abilities upon earning Emperorship, without the need to spend ability points. All players that have spent points in the Emperor skill line will be refunded those skill points.
• Low Population Campaigns/Underscoring Alliances: Players participating in a low-population campaign or as part of an underscoring alliance will now gain 20% more AP within the campaign they're earning that bonus for, instead of 10%. Population polling has also been sped up to apply the underdog/low-population bonuses more often; however, this also means they have the opportunity to expire faster.
• Guest Campaign Reassignment: The cooldown on Guest Campaign reassignment will be increased to 4 days from 3.
• Home Campaign Reassignment: The cooldown on Home Campaign reassignment has been changed to 12 hours from 3 days, but the cost to switch will be 150,000 AP instead of 15,000. Also, switching home campaigns at the end of a campaign period will now cost 100 AP instead of 5,000 AP.
• Battle Leveling: The Battle Leveling system has been updated to include Veteran Ranks. Players that opt into Battle Leveling will be roughly equivalent in power to a VR14 player in moderate-quality gear.
• Elder Scrolls & Gates: A fix is in the works that will prevent enemy player characters from getting through the Elder Scroll Gates while the gates are closed. (Gate jumpers beware. Your days are numbered.) Also, a new protective barrier will now surround the Elder Scrolls while in their temples, if the Elder Scroll Gates are closed. This barrier will drop if the gate opens.

That’s not all—the combat team has been hard at work tweaking numbers on abilities and items, too. Expect to see more details about those changes in future patch notes…considering these aren’t patch notes.

Last but certainly not least, we have some changes coming for each of the campaigns. We will be making some scoring adjustments to the campaigns in order to provide 4 different campaign styles, each with with different scoring parameters. In all cases the keep transit system, keep bonuses, scroll bonuses, emperorship crowning/deposing, and leaderboards will remain the same except for the scoring and duration changes noted below:

• Azura: Ownership of keeps, resources, Elder Scrolls, and outposts will generate 1 point each per scoring cycle and last 30 days.
• Blackwater Blade: Ownership of keeps, resources, Elder Scrolls, and outposts will generate 1 point each per scoring cycle and last 5 days. (Non-Veterans only.)
• Chillrend: Keeps, outposts, and resources will generate zero points. Ownership of Elder Scrolls will generate 1 point per scoring cycle and last 7 days.
• Haderus: Keeps, outposts, and Elder Scrolls will generate zero points. Ownership of resources will generate 1 point per scoring cycle and last 7 days.
• Thornblade: Resources, outposts, and Elder Scrolls will generate zero points. Ownership of keeps will generate 1 point per scoring cycle and last 7 days.
• Versidue-Shae (Console Only): Ownership of keeps, resources, Elder Scrolls, and outposts will generate 1 point each per scoring cycle and last 5 days. (Non-Veterans only.)

All campaigns noted above will be ended when the patch with these changes is live, and start at a score of 0. We have not yet determined if we will reset all objectives to their starting alliances. We will communicate this in the associated patch notes.

As always, these changes are subject to change based on feedback and testing, but this is the direction we’re going with PVP and Cyrodiil. Hopefully this post shows we are dedicated to delivering a solid PVP experience, and we thank you again for your loyalty to the war in Cyrodiil and your feedback!

We’ll see you on the battlefield!

Vis

I will hold my celebrations until I see the actual patch notes.

Weberda

Ummm...like wow, I mean like really really wow. No buff servers...different campaigns will require different strategies. There is going to be a ton of conversation about all of this but as a dedicated PvP'r all I can say right now is "Thank You".

Iyas

holy ***! something new. im so

Enodoc

Wow, a lot of interesting changes there. @ZOS_BrianWheeler have you discussed allowing players to "unassign" their campaigns (for the same AP cost and with the same cooldowns), essentially assigning the Home or Guest campaign back to None like it is at Level 10?

This would help players with characters in all factions to be able to reassign their characters a bit more easily, without running into the "Character in another alliance already in this Campaign" issue. (As they could then be "unassigned" to free up a space.)

Yuke

im kinda hyped

first the sony E3 pk and then this O_O

vortexman11

Thank you.

ZOS_BrianWheeler

We have discussed the ability to remove your home and guest assignment entirely, but won't make it in for this update. It has been a highly requested feature and we will work to get it in the future.

TBois

Thanks Zos team

Sublime

Really nice to see something regarding PvP, especially the removal of AvA buffs and former emperor perks. I also think that the removal of travel to player will have a good impact on the Overall PvP experience.

The only fear I have, is that until the lag issue is resolved, players are forced to play on unfavourable campaigns without having a way to get to other campaigns.

Enodoc

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We have discussed the ability to remove your home and guest assignment entirely, but won't make it in for this update. It has been a highly requested feature and we will work to get it in the future.

That's great, thanks for the feedback!

blabafat

Most of these changes are good..however I have one concern.

So I have characters on every alliance. All my characters have assigned guest/home campaigns, so my DC character is LOCKED in haderus. I can't switch it up. So when this patch goes live, and let's say haderus is not very populated, and kinda dead, I can't pvp? I can't switch my campaigns cause of other alliance characters. I can't port to another player according to the information that is given above.

So since I'm sure others will have this issue..

I think everyone's guest/home campaign should be un-selected. So you can choose new guest/home campaigns, and all your characters previous selections are cleared.

timidobserver

Good stuff though I expect to see fewer people's in PvP now that pvers have no reason to participate. Pvers defending their buffs accounts for at least 50% of the activity on some servers.

ZOS_BrianWheeler

When we fire up the campaign changes, we will wipe your current home\guest assignments.

Swannkyy

Awesome stuff!

Agrippa_Invisus

Ok, this is going to take some time to process.

Holy sheep!

Celas_Dranacea

Good job guys - I especially like the increased battle leveling - this will help a lot of low be characters have a better time.

tinythinker

Interesting. Looks like an experiment to see how players respond to differences in scoring. Hopefully the data will be used to make more interesting changes in the future. The only issue I have with increasing guest campaign cooldown is that when I swap home campaigns (which is rare) and then try to switch my guest campaign I get a message that I recently switched guest campaigns, too. All in all, though, it's good to see efforts being made to improve PvP. Thanks for sharing the current focus of the work being done. Fights-With-Bucket approves...

Weberda

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Ok, this is going to take some time to process.

Holy sheep!

Yeah, with the different types of campaigns the variables are really something to ponder. Personally I would prefer fewer campaigns in order to channel players into filling up the remaining campaigns but we've asked for much of what is listed so this really makes my day (finally).

xMovingTarget

I am soo looking forward to the PvP Buff removal in PvE Areas! THank you mucho mundo!

Alcast

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

Will the PvE Leaderboards be reseted? Otherwise it is impossible to reach PvP Buffed Scores that are up on top there atm.

I am very happy now, thank you

Draxys

blabafat wrote: »

Most of these changes are good..however I have one concern.

So I have characters on every alliance. All my characters have assigned guest/home campaigns, so my DC character is LOCKED in haderus. I can't switch it up. So when this patch goes live, and let's say haderus is not very populated, and kinda dead, I can't pvp? I can't switch my campaigns cause of other alliance characters. I can't port to another player according to the information that is given above.

So since I'm sure others will have this issue..

I think everyone's guest/home campaign should be un-selected. So you can choose new guest/home campaigns, and all your characters previous selections are cleared.

My 2 cents: the new campaign switch for 150k ap could be a de-select option so you have no campaign affiliation, which would then allow you to either drop a campaign so an alt can home it, or select another one on that character.

Ashanne

I read about gate jumping great news..
but what about entering unflagged outposts thru the guards on the postern doors..sorcs flying into keeps? Is this accepted mechanic of the game or is going to be fixed?

Thank you..really hope most of what is written above makes it to live.

EdTerra

Jump-to-Friend: it was the better way to find some actions when u'r campaigns were dead
Home Campaign Reassignment: Now, jump-to-friend will be disabled and reassignment will not help us to switch campaigns when our campaign are dead.

thank you for constrain us to play in a lag campaign only for having some action between midnight and before 5pm.

"Emperor Buffs/Skill Line: The "Former Emperor" buffs are being removed from the game"
OH THANKS, I've farmed it like a tard, I'm so stupid, keep help us like this
now people will just don't care about emp...

Other changes, seems nice.

Eucken

The "Former Emperor" buffs are being removed from the game.....

I don't like that change. Yes I am a former emperor and I like my buffs but the emperor Trading was mainly a thing of the past, when there were a lot of empty campaigns and it was relatively easy to do that.

Now there are just to many random factors involved and to many players who want to become emperor.

This was a real big incentive for many players to at least become emperor once and you are now removeing that incentive. My guess will be that we will have a handfull of the same players who will now allways become emperor, because they are the only onces who can be bothered to play that much whinin a single campaign.

The Bonuses granted were in my opinion not that strong. They are nice no questions asked but not that game changeing.

In my opinion this is a really bad change.

Gilliamtherogue

Please tell me you plan on wiping the PvE leaderboards if this is the case. All of the top scores at the moment have only been obtained with the full advantages that PvP buffs provide between massive crit chance amps, base damage amps, and former emp buffs. If you do not wipe the leaderboards, many of those scores will remain unbeatable until players have an absurd amount of champion points to outscale the differences.

ThatNeonZebraAgain

timidobserver wrote: »

Good stuff though I expect to see fewer people's in PvP now that pvers have no reason to participate. Pvers defending their buffs accounts for at least 50% of the activity on some servers.

The Alliance War skill line abilities are still very useful in PvE though.

teabelly

you listened... you sat over there all these months not saying much.. but you listened.


THANK YOU

AllPlayAndNoWork

Scoring system is a bit off as you could end up with everyone going to the same server if they don't like a certain set of rules.
It would be more beneficial to change the map style / layout to suit the rule-set of that particular server.

If servers have no points for keeps / outposts and resources then each faction will only go for the keeps needed to open the scroll gates. So whats the point of the rest of the map ?






Everything else is spot on though....

Kobaal

This is some really welcome news. It should at least stop the campaign hopping. Thanks!

Quantine

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

As such, the combat team is currently making adjustments to line-of-sight checks for area-of-effect abilities that have been causing the majority of server congestion in Cyrodiil. This has resulted in us taking a close look at higher level abilities/items to root out line-of-sight checks and other potential client-to-server message overflow issues.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

So, are you going to remove LoS checks for AoEs or just improve them/make them more efficient? Just want to be sure I don't misunderstand what you wrote ;-)