Mercenaries turned PvP into PvE

SteveRuimy

Hi,

You guys made it impossible for group to siege a keep without an entire ZERG, whenever I die the damage I took are 100% from the mercenaries not a single player touched me, is it your definition of PvP? Sounds more like doing PvE to me.

I think you need to rethink your decisions because an exploit has been going around for already 4-5 days where you can spam mercs in combat and they become invincible (can't target them).

There are numerous options that you could chose:

1) Change the cost of 1K AP to 10K or 100K points so people don't just spam it, I just entered a fort 10mins ago and fought against 20 mercs and only 1 SINGLE REAL PLAYER

2) Just take them out of the game, where's the point of having mercs?

3) Cap the limit of mercs at 5-10 mercs MAX

I hope you'll take this constructive information into consideration and try to come up with a plan to get people back into PVP.

On the good side: Good job about fixing caltrops.

Gisgo

Bleh they sounded like a good idea especially for underpopulated factions, in reality they are getting out of hand.
I would limit them to one merc per player deployable every X minutes.

Nitratas

Yup it's just ***, a swarm of npcs running out for you when you finish sieging. at least give some AP for killing them if you intend to keep them

Gisgo

Nitratas wrote: »

at least give some AP for killing them if you intend to keep them

No by all means this is just another open door for exploiters.
If anything, just remove them from the game, guards are enough.

Mephos

easy solution .. do it like in titanfall .. everyone gets mercs and they just fight each other mainly.

mercs prio other mercs over players. so a player can counter a merc with another merc that he spawns himself.

and make them cost more

limbaughb14_ESO

There should be no 'bots' in multiplayer. Remove the mercs from vendors.

true2moon_ESO

moved

Veakoth

Versed a team today that had a rotation of players spawning an endless wave of merc's in a keep defense. By the end they had used approx 200-250 merc's on top of having the emperor, it's a pathetic tactic.

(edit)
The mage merc also uses the sorc ultimate anti magic zone which can single handedly wipe teams, as well as 2 types of lightning aoe, unstable core (the templar reflect spell), crystal shards and they can teleport.

Censorious

These things really have no place in PvP. They are far too many and too powerful. They give the defenders an undeserved advantage and prevent tactical play.

If an Alliance is able to bring a larger army to the field, this gives a small garrison time to hold off even a large attacking force. The zerg then has plenty of time travel to the besieged keep and wipe the attack even if the attackers have a force of similar size.
(The attack will fail because you can't fight an equal force AND the mercs.)

It becomes simply a matter of the larger army dominating the entire field. No clever plan or sequence of raids will make any difference.
The only time keeps can change hands is when one army vastly outnumbers the other for an extended period.

TLDR - it's boring as hell.

Starshadw

Censorious wrote: »

These things really have no place in PvP. They are far too many and too powerful. They give the defenders an undeserved advantage and prevent tactical play.

If an Alliance is able to bring a larger army to the field, this gives a small garrison time to hold off even a large attacking force. The zerg then has plenty of time travel to the besieged keep and wipe the attack even if the attackers have a force of similar size.
(The attack will fail because you can't fight an equal force AND the mercs.)

It becomes simply a matter of the larger army dominating the entire field. No clever plan or sequence of raids will make any difference.
The only time keeps can change hands is when one army vastly outnumbers the other for an extended period.

TLDR - it's boring as hell.

I'm not sure I entirely agree - after all, the point of the mercs' existence was tactical - it was so a smaller force had a chance at defending against greater numbers. Without that, a smaller force has zero chance at holding out over a zerg - and let's face it, that's pretty much what we're seeing these days. Big zergs, often with entire guilds guesting into a campaign. When the defending side has 20, and the attacking side has 60-80, it's pretty much over before it even starts. Because of the physical limitations in terms of where siege engines can be placed on any given wall, a smaller force simply cannot keep a larger force from breaking through the wall - especially since the newest tactic involves the larger force attacking two walls/wall and keep door simultaneously.

However, I do agree that their use has gotten out of hand - but until the invincible bug is fixed, we can't honestly determine whether the overuse is solely due to that exploit, or whether people would still be spending thousands of AP on mercs.

Before they are eliminated entirely, it might be better to look at ways of tweaking their use. One thing I can think of is to make them so they can only be placed inside a keep's territory, and code them so that they will reset if they cross the boundary of a keep's outer walls. This would prevent at least some of the current exploiting, which has people dropping mercs way outside a keep's walls. It's not a perfect solution, but at least allows them to continue to be used for defense.

To be honest, the giant zergs are a primary cause of a loss of strategy and tactics in Cyrodiil, because they can simply run through whatever defenses the other side might be using (including flaming oil, mercs, meatbags, etc.). I honestly am not sure how to fix that. It's really gotten to the point where attempting to hold a keep is nigh-pointless much of the time. There is, quite simply, nothing a smaller force can do against them.

I'm not sure how the "outnumbered buff" is currently slated to work, but what I'm hearing (which may not be accurate) has me worried. If it looks at a campaign's current home population, and determines that Alliance A is outnumbered and gives them a buff - that's not going to work. There's simply too much guesting going on. So if this is accurate, what's going to happen is that a faction that isn't really outnumbered (because of guesting guilds) is going to get more bonuses, often on top of an Emperor bonus. It's not going to be pretty. When I heard about the buff, my hope was that it would be dynamically applied - meaning it would look at the current situation at any given campaign, and note who had greater/lesser numbers, and apply a buff/remove a buff accordingly.

Evil_Argonian

There could simply be a merc limit similarly to the siege limit. Or even possibly including them in the siege limit, though that seems less intuitive.

Lowbei

whats sad is that we voted and half the people voted that yes they wanted summoned npcs.

humans are dumb.

get rid of the mercs

Gilvoth

yeah, last night i was in a group taking a castle and the aldmeridominion summoned over 100 of the mercernaries and was a constant flood of NPC mercernaries attacking our group for over an hour. how is that even pvp? it's not!

Lowbei

remove mercs and ae caps and rvr will improve

FENGRUSH

Lowbei wrote: »

remove mercs and ae caps and rvr will improve

So simple, so true. But they wont do it.

SwampRaider

You are all wrong. I jsut saw 2 Dk's kill 15 of my mercenaries using talons+ standard.

maxilaub17_ESO

SteveRuimy wrote: »

Hi,

You guys made it impossible for group to siege a keep without an entire ZERG, whenever I die the damage I took are 100% from the mercenaries not a single player touched me, is it your definition of PvP? Sounds more like doing PvE to me.

I think you need to rethink your decisions because an exploit has been going around for already 4-5 days where you can spam mercs in combat and they become invincible (can't target them).

There are numerous options that you could chose:

1) Change the cost of 1K AP to 10K or 100K points so people don't just spam it, I just entered a fort 10mins ago and fought against 20 mercs and only 1 SINGLE REAL PLAYER

2) Just take them out of the game, where's the point of having mercs?

3) Cap the limit of mercs at 5-10 mercs MAX

I hope you'll take this constructive information into consideration and try to come up with a plan to get people back into PVP.

On the good side: Good job about fixing caltrops.

I came here to make the same post, the number of mercs laid down is freaking stupid. Their at Keeps, and resources and.... because people keep putting them down as soon as they die I've often seen 100 mercs killed before an oibjective is taken.


I'll add one more possible solution for this stupidity:

Drastically increase the distance they can be placed together AND.... a timer starts as soon as one is placed from that moment for the next 15 or 20 minutes only 19 more can be placed, until the 20 minute timer ends.

SteveRuimy

They took the vendors down, THANK YOU!

the.dzeneralb16_ESO

I was actually thinking that they should change nothing from mercs, except take the mages out. Possibly replace them with, oh lets say, rogue-type mercs and have those 2 types instead.

Mendoze

I totally agree with the idea that mercenaries should be completely removed from PVP. There's guards and defenders can use oils that give them advantage already.

Some_Jerk

Please please please
Remove mercenaries.

ThyIronFist

A dozen oil pots + Mage mercs = untakeable keep.

Schallen

No, everyone leaving the game turned PVP into PVE.

Helspyre

Adding PvE mobs for the supposed "underdog" realm is a cop-out mechanic. If anything is needed then maybe siege needs to be reworked (maybe add an "upgrade" or something for underdogs). At least if I get hit by siege I know an actual player actively attacked me, and I'm fine with that.