Saving PvP - Part 1, Discuss

StihlReign

I've often seen the suggestion - Populations should be limited or logins should be limited as a way of balancing.

I believe this is the wrong approach.

The system should have a way to keep track of population strength (based on level), and numbers, and provide a defensive or offensive buff to the Alliance in need.

The variance should be large enough to feel natural, and the buff should go to the NPC's first, keeps second.

Only in extreme cases should the players receive a buff.

Example.

Population - 500AD, 300EP, 100DC

500AD avg VR4 on server - NPC will remain normal VR5, keep walls, doors and resources maintain base HP's.

300EP avg VR6 on server - NPC will remain normal VR5, keep walls, doors and resources maintain base HP's.

100DC avg VR12 on server - NPC will remain normal VR5, keep walls, doors and resources maintain base HP's.

Example.

500AD avg VR8 on server - NPC will bump to VR10, keep walls, doors and resources increase +10-20% base HP's.

300EP avg VR2 on server - NPC will remain normal VR5, keep walls, doors and resources reduce base HP's -5-10%.

100DC avg VR12 on server - NPC will remain normal VR5, keep walls, doors and resources maintain base HP's.

Perhaps server population polling happens every 30 minutes and switches to hourly or every 2-3 hours during high activity....

Mykah

To save PvP:

1. Remove Mercenaries from the game.

2. Make Burning Oil only deployed above keep doors, limit of 2 oils per door.

3. Fix Caltrops.

4. Make Siege weapons deal fixed % of HP so they are effective against vr12s.

5. Make it so a player can only carry 1 piece of siege equipment at a time, this includes forward camps. Allow siege equipment to be traded, but not mailed.

7. Make it so abandoned siege equipment can only be used by players in the owner's group, this does not apply to burning oil.

8. Increase Keep wall health and decrease Keep door health.

9. Increase the VR boost to vr10 stats.

10. Decrease Pvp quest cooldowns to 2 hours.

11. Make Emperor bonuses only apply in the campaign they were earned.

12. Reduce the number of campaigns to 5.

13. Reduce campaign time to 1 month.

/profit

HorsePhysics

Mykah wrote: »

To save PvP:
1. Remove Mercenaries from the game.
/profit

While I agree with 99% of the things you say, maybe we can change this to...

Fix invincible mercenary bug.

Change maximum keep NPCs to 10

Add cool down after placement of NPCs

Sidereal

Mykah wrote: »

To save PvP:

1. Remove Mercenaries from the game.

2. Make Burning Oil only deployed above keep doors, limit of 2 oils per door.

3. Fix Caltrops.

4. Make Siege weapons deal fixed % of HP so they are effective against vr12s.

5. Make it so a player can only carry 1 piece of siege equipment at a time, this includes forward camps. Allow siege equipment to be traded, but not mailed.

7. Make it so abandoned siege equipment can only be used by players in the owner's group, this does not apply to burning oil.

8. Increase Keep wall health and decrease Keep door health.

9. Increase the VR boost to vr10 stats.

10. Decrease Pvp quest cooldowns to 2 hours.

11. Make Emperor bonuses only apply in the campaign they were earned.

12. Reduce the number of campaigns to 5.

13. Reduce campaign time to 1 month.

/profit

Crossed out what I personally disagree with, but for the most part Mykah has the right idea.

To be honest, however, I don't see the necessity for PvP bonuses at all. They're a sweet incentive on paper but, when applied practically, they just encourage players to hide away on low population servers. I'm sure a good deal of our vanity-driven players will roll out with arguments for steam rolling almost empty servers, but mostly it's for the buffs.

HorsePhysics

Sidereal wrote: »

Stuff

OMG HAI SIDEREAL

Sidereal

HorsePhysics wrote: »

Sidereal wrote: »

Stuff

OMG HAI SIDEREAL

Yo yo!

HorsePhysics

Sidereal wrote: »

HorsePhysics wrote: »

Sidereal wrote: »

Stuff

OMG HAI SIDEREAL

Yo yo!

Awkward place to find you . Whatevs.

arnaldomoraleseb17_ESO

Mykah wrote: »

To save PvP:

1. Remove Mercenaries from the game.

2. Make Burning Oil only deployed above keep doors, limit of 2 oils per door.

3. Fix Caltrops.

4. Make Siege weapons deal fixed % of HP so they are effective against vr12s.

5. Make it so a player can only carry 1 piece of siege equipment at a time, this includes forward camps. Allow siege equipment to be traded, but not mailed.

7. Make it so abandoned siege equipment can only be used by players in the owner's group, this does not apply to burning oil.

8. Increase Keep wall health and decrease Keep door health.

9. Increase the VR boost to vr10 stats.

10. Decrease Pvp quest cooldowns to 2 hours.

11. Make Emperor bonuses only apply in the campaign they were earned.

12. Reduce the number of campaigns to 5.

13. Reduce campaign time to 1 month.

/profit

OMG this is the game I want to play.

driosketch

Mykah wrote: »

To save PvP:

1. Remove Mercenaries from the game.

2. Make Burning Oil only deployed above keep doors, limit of 2 oils per door.

3. Fix Caltrops.

4. Make Siege weapons deal fixed % of HP so they are effective against vr12s.

5. Make it so a player can only carry 1 piece of siege equipment at a time, this includes forward camps. Allow siege equipment to be traded, but not mailed.

7. Make it so abandoned siege equipment can only be used by players in the owner's group, this does not apply to burning oil.

8. Increase Keep wall health and decrease Keep door health.

9. Increase the VR boost to vr10 stats.

10. Decrease Pvp quest cooldowns to 2 hours.

11. Make Emperor bonuses only apply in the campaign they were earned.

12. Reduce the number of campaigns to 5.

13. Reduce campaign time to 1 month.

/profit

1. They just need some tweaking
2. I think as long as they have to be above to dump it.
3. agree
4. Maybe, as long they are outside a siege shield, if a player gets hit they should be taking damage.
5. That might be too much of a restriction. Especially combined with #8, players would burn through their siege's health before getting through the inner keep wall.
6. What happened to 6?
7-13 I can agree with the rest of these. None seem like bad changes and a few of them seem like they would really help. You're on the right track I think.



My personal biggest gripe right now is the NPC buff. Yesterday I went into Cyrodiil again for the first time since the patch. My home campaign had gone from completely dominated by our faction (DC) to completely dominated by AD. I found a small band of mostly VRs trying to retake Fort Rayles, both walls were down. Either the group didn't know how to take an unguarded keep or the NPC changes had made it too hard to do like they normally would have. It was kind of funny watching these VR players standing behind my lvl 17 healer like I was expected to make the first push inside.

For what ever reason, they decided to retreat back outside the keep. Following them I saw a small band of AD arrive, including their emperor. It was clear this group I was with had no coordination as most of them died. Fight was a total mess. Throwing up my shield, I started backing out while weathering several player attacks, including a bat swarm, all while my health was debuffed to half. Basically I was able to somehow hold my own, that is until I backed into range of one of the corner wall mage NPCs and was one-shoted. The death recap showed it had hit me for triple what any of the players had done and through my block no less.

I left Cyrodiil after I spawned back at the gate. We didn't have the numbers to take a keep like this, and staying would have been a waste of time. Something tells me this might be a big factor for the most recent drop off of players in PvP right now.

joshisanonymous

The only thing I'd like to see is stronger limits on 1) campaign switching 2) porting to group members in other campaigns and 3) guesting. They're already going to greatly increase the cost to switch your home, so that's fine. Porting to groupmates in Cyrodiil just has to be removed all together. Pretty sure that's a bug.

They could maybe limit guesting by making it so you have to wait 2 hours after leaving a campaign to jump into your guest campaign. That way, you could still play with friends or guilds that are on different campaigns, but you're effectively limited to 1 campaign per play session. I think this would help a lot since players wouldn't just abandon campaigns the moment they start to lose (or the moment they've won). They could go back to PvE I guess, so it's not perfect, but this seems less likely than abandoning one campaign for another since the player is obviously looking to PvP in the first place.

There just needs to be something that makes people commit a bit so that there's actually time for the population to build up during any given session. Right now, you log into a low pop campaign, ask if anyone's there, get no response, and move to a high pop campaign. Then someone logs in 2 minutes later and does the same thing. If all these people were forced to stick around, they might find that a bunch of people actually want to play there, and that enemies actually exist because those in the other alliances are being forced to commit to the first campaign they enter for the play session as well.

rich_nicholsonb16_ESO

Mykah wrote: »

To save PvP:

1. Remove Mercenaries from the game.
just fix them

2. Make Burning Oil only deployed above keep doors, limit of 2 oils per door.
need to be above the pour zone

3. Fix Caltrops.
been fixed I think

4. Make Siege weapons deal fixed % of HP so they are effective against vr12s.
nope

5. Make it so a player can only carry 1 piece of siege equipment at a time, this includes forward camps. Allow siege equipment to be traded, but not mailed.
nope

7. Make it so abandoned siege equipment can only be used by players in the owner's group, this does not apply to burning oil.
nope

8. Increase Keep wall health and decrease Keep door health.
Nope

9.Increase the VR boost to vr10 stats.
agree

10. Decrease Pvp quest cooldowns to 2 hours.
agree to help leveling through pvp

11. Make Emperor bonuses only apply in the campaign they were earned.
agree

12. Reduce the number of campaigns to 5.
agree

13. Reduce campaign time to 1 month.
agree

/profit

I'll add:

14. Reduce group size (24 is far too big, it causes this turtle/Zerg tactic)

15. Keep healing within the group (again to help stop turtling/zerging)

PF1901

rich_nicholsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Mykah wrote: »

To ...save PvP:
15. Keep healing within the group (again to help stop turtling/zerging)

No. Would exclude a specific set of players from gameplay if not grouped.

joshisanonymous

rich_nicholsonb16_ESO wrote: »

14. Reduce group size (24 is far too big, it causes this turtle/Zerg tactic)

Just wanted to point out that this particular feature has nothing to do with whether people will zerg or do the turtling thing. It might make it a bit easier to follow the group, but it's still very easy to stick with a blob of players. I admit, I zerged occasionally in GW2, when I just needed some quick XP or something, and I literally never joined a group. I didn't even bother getting on my server's mumble. It was easy and it works pretty much the same way here.

Keeping heals/buffs group based, as you suggested, would change that a bit, but it would also radically change how the game works. You would literally have no way to heal/buff anyone outside of your group because we don't have targetted heals. Even DAoC let you do this.