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https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/668861
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – November 18
• ESO Store and Account System for maintenance – November 19, 9:00AM EST (14:00 UTC) - 6:00PM EST (23:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®: EU megaserver for maintenance – November 19, 23:00 UTC (6:00PM EST) - November 20, 17:00 UTC (12:00PM EST)
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/668861
PvP Campaign Tweaks and Suggestions
WARNING: WALL-O-TEXT
That being said, I put a lot of thought into these changes and hope you'll give it a read. I hope someone at Zos will give it a whirl too, like maybe @ZOS_BrianWheeler
So I'm a relative newblet to ESO having just started on consoles. I've played a ton of MMOs and PvP has always been what it's about for me. DAoC has perhaps given me the fondest gaming memories I have, and while I know this game is not DAoC I do hope it will give me just as many great memories, if not more. I'm hoping ESO becomes the game I play for years to come. I lost faith in MMOs around 2010 or so, and figured I would never find a good PvP mmo again. I had no idea ESO had PvP gameplay so similar to that mythical creation until I bought it and tried it. I may or may not have danced like a giddy school girl when I found this out. Now, after playing for a bit I thought I'd share some suggestions to make the gameplay much more enjoyable, epic and balanced (imo). Tell me if I'm full of ***, but more importantly, tell me why. I don't have the years of meta experience that you PC folks have, but I'd like to think I have some good suggestions based on what I've seen so far in the game and my years of mmo pvp experience. Here we go.
1. Increase the time to breach keep walls by upping their health in order to increase the time it takes to capture a keep.
Currently, very few people bother with rams because they are easily countered and require more effort in a long siege than just smashing open a brick wall. Makes sense that a keeps gate would be well defended, and should be hard to breach when both sides are mounting some serious numbers. However, currently this results in a small group putting up 20 catapolts/trebs/balistas all aiming at the same wall and dropping it in a matter of minutes while all this siege is being manned by only 7 or so people, and then repeating the process for the side wall to the inner keep. Ultimately they breach both walls very fast, flipping it before the defending side even has a chance to mount a serious defense (Cyrodiil is big, there is no warning a keep is under siege unless you just happen to look at a map and there is no zone chat on consoles.) The only time a defense can seriously react is if they were already at the keep expecting an attack (ie, falling back when one alliance makes a push against another, or you've just taken a keep and expect a counter attack.) By contrast you keep door health the same to allow smaller groups to still relatively quickly take over a castle (but this would also allow a smaller group of players to defend the castle, as gates are more easily defended) so that during off time/low pop servers capturing and defending would still be viable.. To counter ranged siege to gate spam, make ranged siege deal reduced damage to keep doors. As it stands right now keeps flip far to fast and have no sense of permanency. Taking a keep should be an achievement (and still should be able to be accomplished by a small group,) just not in under 10 minutes.
2. When a guild claims ownership of a keep allow it's members to spend AP to upgrade the keeps walls HP, the number of guards, and door strength.
This will be on top of the bonus that surrounding resources give over time and cannot be reduced by taking resources. This adds to the permeance of keeps, and also adds an AP sink and a real incentive to owning a keep.
3. Do not have the scroll gate open when the last keep drops. but require it to be sieged down and busted open instead.
This will allow for one more, last ditch effort at a "traditional" defense before the scrolls are taken. The scroll gate is an impressive defensive structure, but is not one that is held or even truly assaulted for any real length of time. Imagine pitched battles at that giant wall. Unlike keep gates in my proposed change, the wall gate could take full dmg from any source (so ranged siege could bring it down) but it should still be a beefy gate (much more powerful than a keep gate) and rams should still deal the most dmg to it. Allowing enemy forces to teleport directly to the gate keep via the transit system as long as the scroll gate stands will allow for a truly epic siege that is rarely encountered in the game currently right before the non traditional scroll siege. To balance this from a defensive point of view, have a one time limited time teleportation prompt pop up on screen (like the one you get when your que into Cyrodiil pops) for all defending alliance players when a gate keep falls that will allow them to teleport directly to the corresponding cyrodiil zone in area. This will increase the effort required to get the scrolls and require a larger number of players to do so, and ensure that the fight for scrolls will be large, epic and truly amazing. Capturing a scroll should be the result of large number of players working together. While keeps and outposts can be flipped by a small amount, scrolls should require a large, coordinated effort.
4. Introduce more outposts in between the outer keeps and possibly near PvE hotspots.
Not a whole lot, but 6 or so more outposts, at least 2 for each faction connecting their corresponding keeps around the outer 3 keeps that border the edge of the map, to encourage more players to go that way and introduce another way to cut off/bring in reinforcements to these isolated keeps. This would make sieges at those 3 keeps more interesting and tactical by allowing both sides to teleport closer, reducing travel time, unless they are cut off. Could also introduce them near any potential Cyrodiil PvE hotspts to draw PvPers to those areas. This way if someone does decide to PvE in a PvP campaign there will be nearby contestable structures increasing the danger of getting attacked and allow the owners of the outpost to potential have an easy teleport into the PvE areas. This will help fill the gap of quick, easily flip able areas that will be reduced with the changes to keep wall hp and keep ownership.
5. Introduce a purely PvE Cyrodiil campaign.
Space in Cyrodiil is limited. Taking up a spot to PvE in a campaign that is pop locked not only prevents those that want to PvP, but hurts your alliance. Give PvErs there own campaign, close off the keeps completely, remove the scrolls, disable pvp, disable scroll/keep buffs and disallow the dropping of cold harbor siege at dolmens and for added flavor allow every alliance to be in the zone at the same time (with a pop lock, cause pve'rs have to suffer too! Jk, I'm assuming a pop lock will be needed to prevent the campaign server from getting too crowded, as usual). Limit the campaign to vet levels. There is nothing more frustrating than wanting to see your alliance field some impressive numbers to counter the impressive numbers of your enemies but they would all rather pve or harvest instead of defend a keep. Add in PvE imperial city too with 75% reduced tel var stones drops The elimination of the buffs and reduction of tel var drops from the PvE campaign is meant to add some reward to the risk of PvEing in your home PvP campaign when the campaigns are dead and nothing is going on. Cause if something was going on you'd be PvPing right? Right.
6. Introduce the Zerg Busters.
No, not an ability, not a skill... I don't think such an ability or skill would work in ESO. As we've seen with magicka detonation, any anti zerg skill will just be abused by the zerg itself. ESO is not like DAoC on one major combat difference. CC is not all powerful, and breaking CC is not a careful calculated decision that you can only do once, maybe twice a fight. CC allowed small skilled groups to control the zerg in DAoC, but that is not CCs place in ESO because they instead used CC to add another tactical layer to combat (and I do enjoy that) however this means we still need something that will combat the zerg. Does anyone remember the Green Knight from DAoC? Or The Sleeper in EQ? We need one of those, or more preciously 3 of those, in the campaigns. Three giant, nigh unkillable aoe spewing Godzilla sized Deadroth perhaps? Yeah, that's exactly what Nirn needs. They wander the countryside between keeps, looking for the enemies of Molag Bal as they engage in their petty war that, and they are attracted to large concentrations of players, chasing their prey while moving faster than a maxed horse with rapid manauever. What does such a creature care about the lone horseman, or the small band? It does not, it would have reduced agro for small groups. But when they catch scent of large hordes of enemies a warning flashes across the screen "Something has been attracted by the sounds of battle..." and it starts hunting the Zerg. If the zerg doesn't break up, they get a nice dinner date with Daedrothzilla (name not final). Imagine trying to defend a keep from the zerg only to watch as a giant firespewing spawn of hell appears on the horizon and rampages through the enemies siege line, leaving not a single person alive. Or maybe, the zerg grows some balls. Maybe the zerg gets jumped by Daedrothzilla in the field and decides to fight back (I hope they have a lot of soul gems...) Maybe Molag Bal will be short a minion until it respawns. The only battles it would not be attracted to are any one within distance of the scroll gates, as those walls were meant to hold even them back, and any battle around an elder scroll itself as they are being captured. But hey, if you accidentally run the scroll into his foot.... well, he might just stomp on you. Oooooh, secondary mechanic? If he kills a scroll carrier because the fool decided to run right into this massive monster he proceeds to eat the scroll making it unavailable to any faction unless he is killed for one week, where upon the scroll is summoned out of his gut and returned to it's home base if none have retrieved it. Could even have them slaughter players with their footsteps as they hunt down zergs! Also enable em in the PvE campaign as 3 incredibly difficult, maybe no one will ever beat, world raid boss. In both PvP and PvE have them guarantee drop some truly unique, as in one of a kind nothing like it costumes that will never be obtainable any other way. If you down it on a PvP campaign have it also provide an achievement and a title. Ahh, getting a bit off topic. Either way, these three monsters sole purpose is to utterly annihilate any zerg that forms and does not break apart fast enough.
7. Reduce the current amount of campaigns.
With IC coming and the fact that 3 of the 5 campaigns are currently buffer servers on PS4 that rarely see more than 2 bars of pop on a single faction, we do not need this many campaigns. Reduce the number of campaigns, merge these buff servers and let's get some real action going aaaaaaand.....
8. Increase the pop cap on the handful of remaining servers.
This is a war, not a school field trip. I understand lag is an issue, and I don't have a solution to the increased lag it would cause, though I'm hoping that with a few zerg busters roaming around zerg induced lag would be reduced (except at scroll wall fights...). Thankfully, even at full pop cap and with some truly massive sieges I have yet to see any really bad lag on the PS4 servers. Our zergs probably wouldn't even qualify as zergs to pc players lol. If you gotta make all our shiny armor look like burlap sacks when there are too many people on the screen, do it. I don't care if my gold glitters when I'm dodging arrows and trying not to get stabbed. I do care when all my opponents are dead and there is no one else left to stab and I can only ask the gods "Is this all the players I get to kill?" (Or conversely, I'd like to get teabagged by 40 enemies, not just 5, when I die. Is that a thing on the pc? Teabagging the people you kill? Cause it is on the consoles. I've had people that weren't even involved in the fight run over and teabag me! I must have looked enticing.) The increased pop also means more risk for those that do try and PvE in the PvP campaigns, more gankers will be on the lookout.
9. Force players to make a choice upon entering PvP the first time to pick what faction they will represent.
This is a separate decision to your PvE faction choice that you choose at character creation. It is the only faction all characters on your account will represent in PvP. From a PvE standpoint limiting your characters to one faction ala DAoC isn't the best move you can make, so I understand why ESO didn't do it. However, none can deny that the choice of allowing you to play all factions on one account is detrimental to 3 faction AvA PvP. Even this isn't a perfect solution, you can always buy a second account, but this is the best we can probably do. Allow the player to change their declared PvP faction for either 1 million AP or for free at the end of the current campaign cycle. You can only change your represented faction once per month. Introduce loyalty rewards. A small bonus to AP for sticking with a faction, 1% per month to a total of 12% bonus AP for sticking with a faction for a whole year. Add in a monthly mailed reward that scales to your level and increases based on time. 1-3 months is a green item, 4-6 is blue, 6-9 is purple, 10+ is legendary. Hell, you could even tie in PvP loyality bonus to ESO plus, I think that would be fair.
10. Underdog bonus
Introduce meaningful bonuses to underdog alliances on the campaigns. Siege equipment deals 10% more damage and costs 25% less ap, and keep repair items cost 50% less ap. Keep walls owned by the underdog alliance have 10% more HP, upgrading keeps via new guild upgrades costs 20% less. Switching to an underdog alliance costs 1/2 as much AP (still held to the once a month limit though) and gives an equivalent loyalty bonus to how long the alliance has been the underdog to a maximum of 6 months based on how many weeks that alliance has been declared underdog. 1 week = 1 month of loyalty. So if an alliance has been an underdog for 6 weeks in a row, switching to them will cost 500,000 ap and immediately start you at 6 months of loyalty bonus. Underdog is tallied on a weekly basis separate from and in addition to the current AP bonus system. I'm envisioning a system that takes into account keeps loss/gained as well as owners of home keeps, and if they are in possession of their own scrolls. (IE, a superior alliance couldn't game the system by letting you constantly retake your 2 gate keeps if they still own the majority of their own home keeps, you haven't gained any new territory since last tally and they still have your scrolls, so on and so forth)
11. (The future!) Introduce a lockout mechanism to IC
I know it's being discussed, 6+1 is good, but whatever the mechanism is 2 alliances should always have a chance of being in their at the same time. If you introduce a PvE Cyrodiil campaign PvE players cannot complain about being locked out of their precious content. PvP players have to do what they love to get into their wonderful close quarters slaughterfest (seriously, loving the sounds of IC, loving what I'm seeing on the streams, can't wait. Very Darkness Falls-ish, and that is a good thing.)
The proportional TL:DR
So, those are my ideas. Overall it's meant to increase the time it takes large groups to capture a keep so that more defenders can arrive while still allowing smaller groups to accomplish both attacks and defenses, as well as introduce more feelings of ownership and permeance to keeps and an urge to defend via spending resources to upgrade while adding in easily flip-able smaller outposts to compensate. This will allow for more long term pushes into enemy territory that will require guilds to claim and upgrade keeps in order to prevent them from losing progress and make massive alarm clock map flips and scroll grabs harder to accomplish as fewer defenders can last longer giving more time for reinforcements to arrive. Meanwhile, the three roaming zerg busters will force smaller groups to spread out and attack multiple objectives at once, spreading the war front out and making it more tactical, and should theoretically help with lag. With the reduction in campaigns, increase in pop size, under dog and loyalty bonus as well as the ability to change which alliance you represent populations should stabilize naturally over time, and if they do not the bonus' can be tweaked to make the underpopulated alliance even stronger/more rewarding. Player alliance choice will also help eliminate spying and problems with having multiple faction characters on the same account by tying all your characters together in one PvP alliance. The introduction of the siege of the scroll gate is THE siege battle of a campaign, it's the most difficult, requiring the most amount of people and will essentially be zerg vs zerg, the one giant ball o death smashing into the epic wall that the zerg busters will not interfere in. A gate lock mechanism on IC will add another incentive to people to capture keeps on top of the scrolls and keep buff bonus, and ensuring that the gate mechanism allows two factions to potentially be in IC at the same time means that it will never be a PvE safe haven in the middle of the PvP campaigns. Meanwhile, a PvE campaign will reduce the amount of PvE'rs taking up slots in the limited campaigns, and provide a safe haven where they can interact with the other alliances (under Meridias blessing!) while experience all Cyrodiil has to offer, and taking on the toughest challenges they may ever face.
[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Names in Thread Titles]
Edited by ZOS_Alex on 3 August 2015 17:40 That being said, I put a lot of thought into these changes and hope you'll give it a read. I hope someone at Zos will give it a whirl too, like maybe @ZOS_BrianWheeler
So I'm a relative newblet to ESO having just started on consoles. I've played a ton of MMOs and PvP has always been what it's about for me. DAoC has perhaps given me the fondest gaming memories I have, and while I know this game is not DAoC I do hope it will give me just as many great memories, if not more. I'm hoping ESO becomes the game I play for years to come. I lost faith in MMOs around 2010 or so, and figured I would never find a good PvP mmo again. I had no idea ESO had PvP gameplay so similar to that mythical creation until I bought it and tried it. I may or may not have danced like a giddy school girl when I found this out. Now, after playing for a bit I thought I'd share some suggestions to make the gameplay much more enjoyable, epic and balanced (imo). Tell me if I'm full of ***, but more importantly, tell me why. I don't have the years of meta experience that you PC folks have, but I'd like to think I have some good suggestions based on what I've seen so far in the game and my years of mmo pvp experience. Here we go.
1. Increase the time to breach keep walls by upping their health in order to increase the time it takes to capture a keep.
Currently, very few people bother with rams because they are easily countered and require more effort in a long siege than just smashing open a brick wall. Makes sense that a keeps gate would be well defended, and should be hard to breach when both sides are mounting some serious numbers. However, currently this results in a small group putting up 20 catapolts/trebs/balistas all aiming at the same wall and dropping it in a matter of minutes while all this siege is being manned by only 7 or so people, and then repeating the process for the side wall to the inner keep. Ultimately they breach both walls very fast, flipping it before the defending side even has a chance to mount a serious defense (Cyrodiil is big, there is no warning a keep is under siege unless you just happen to look at a map and there is no zone chat on consoles.) The only time a defense can seriously react is if they were already at the keep expecting an attack (ie, falling back when one alliance makes a push against another, or you've just taken a keep and expect a counter attack.) By contrast you keep door health the same to allow smaller groups to still relatively quickly take over a castle (but this would also allow a smaller group of players to defend the castle, as gates are more easily defended) so that during off time/low pop servers capturing and defending would still be viable.. To counter ranged siege to gate spam, make ranged siege deal reduced damage to keep doors. As it stands right now keeps flip far to fast and have no sense of permanency. Taking a keep should be an achievement (and still should be able to be accomplished by a small group,) just not in under 10 minutes.
2. When a guild claims ownership of a keep allow it's members to spend AP to upgrade the keeps walls HP, the number of guards, and door strength.
This will be on top of the bonus that surrounding resources give over time and cannot be reduced by taking resources. This adds to the permeance of keeps, and also adds an AP sink and a real incentive to owning a keep.
3. Do not have the scroll gate open when the last keep drops. but require it to be sieged down and busted open instead.
This will allow for one more, last ditch effort at a "traditional" defense before the scrolls are taken. The scroll gate is an impressive defensive structure, but is not one that is held or even truly assaulted for any real length of time. Imagine pitched battles at that giant wall. Unlike keep gates in my proposed change, the wall gate could take full dmg from any source (so ranged siege could bring it down) but it should still be a beefy gate (much more powerful than a keep gate) and rams should still deal the most dmg to it. Allowing enemy forces to teleport directly to the gate keep via the transit system as long as the scroll gate stands will allow for a truly epic siege that is rarely encountered in the game currently right before the non traditional scroll siege. To balance this from a defensive point of view, have a one time limited time teleportation prompt pop up on screen (like the one you get when your que into Cyrodiil pops) for all defending alliance players when a gate keep falls that will allow them to teleport directly to the corresponding cyrodiil zone in area. This will increase the effort required to get the scrolls and require a larger number of players to do so, and ensure that the fight for scrolls will be large, epic and truly amazing. Capturing a scroll should be the result of large number of players working together. While keeps and outposts can be flipped by a small amount, scrolls should require a large, coordinated effort.
4. Introduce more outposts in between the outer keeps and possibly near PvE hotspots.
Not a whole lot, but 6 or so more outposts, at least 2 for each faction connecting their corresponding keeps around the outer 3 keeps that border the edge of the map, to encourage more players to go that way and introduce another way to cut off/bring in reinforcements to these isolated keeps. This would make sieges at those 3 keeps more interesting and tactical by allowing both sides to teleport closer, reducing travel time, unless they are cut off. Could also introduce them near any potential Cyrodiil PvE hotspts to draw PvPers to those areas. This way if someone does decide to PvE in a PvP campaign there will be nearby contestable structures increasing the danger of getting attacked and allow the owners of the outpost to potential have an easy teleport into the PvE areas. This will help fill the gap of quick, easily flip able areas that will be reduced with the changes to keep wall hp and keep ownership.
5. Introduce a purely PvE Cyrodiil campaign.
Space in Cyrodiil is limited. Taking up a spot to PvE in a campaign that is pop locked not only prevents those that want to PvP, but hurts your alliance. Give PvErs there own campaign, close off the keeps completely, remove the scrolls, disable pvp, disable scroll/keep buffs and disallow the dropping of cold harbor siege at dolmens and for added flavor allow every alliance to be in the zone at the same time (with a pop lock, cause pve'rs have to suffer too! Jk, I'm assuming a pop lock will be needed to prevent the campaign server from getting too crowded, as usual). Limit the campaign to vet levels. There is nothing more frustrating than wanting to see your alliance field some impressive numbers to counter the impressive numbers of your enemies but they would all rather pve or harvest instead of defend a keep. Add in PvE imperial city too with 75% reduced tel var stones drops The elimination of the buffs and reduction of tel var drops from the PvE campaign is meant to add some reward to the risk of PvEing in your home PvP campaign when the campaigns are dead and nothing is going on. Cause if something was going on you'd be PvPing right? Right.
6. Introduce the Zerg Busters.
No, not an ability, not a skill... I don't think such an ability or skill would work in ESO. As we've seen with magicka detonation, any anti zerg skill will just be abused by the zerg itself. ESO is not like DAoC on one major combat difference. CC is not all powerful, and breaking CC is not a careful calculated decision that you can only do once, maybe twice a fight. CC allowed small skilled groups to control the zerg in DAoC, but that is not CCs place in ESO because they instead used CC to add another tactical layer to combat (and I do enjoy that) however this means we still need something that will combat the zerg. Does anyone remember the Green Knight from DAoC? Or The Sleeper in EQ? We need one of those, or more preciously 3 of those, in the campaigns. Three giant, nigh unkillable aoe spewing Godzilla sized Deadroth perhaps? Yeah, that's exactly what Nirn needs. They wander the countryside between keeps, looking for the enemies of Molag Bal as they engage in their petty war that, and they are attracted to large concentrations of players, chasing their prey while moving faster than a maxed horse with rapid manauever. What does such a creature care about the lone horseman, or the small band? It does not, it would have reduced agro for small groups. But when they catch scent of large hordes of enemies a warning flashes across the screen "Something has been attracted by the sounds of battle..." and it starts hunting the Zerg. If the zerg doesn't break up, they get a nice dinner date with Daedrothzilla (name not final). Imagine trying to defend a keep from the zerg only to watch as a giant firespewing spawn of hell appears on the horizon and rampages through the enemies siege line, leaving not a single person alive. Or maybe, the zerg grows some balls. Maybe the zerg gets jumped by Daedrothzilla in the field and decides to fight back (I hope they have a lot of soul gems...) Maybe Molag Bal will be short a minion until it respawns. The only battles it would not be attracted to are any one within distance of the scroll gates, as those walls were meant to hold even them back, and any battle around an elder scroll itself as they are being captured. But hey, if you accidentally run the scroll into his foot.... well, he might just stomp on you. Oooooh, secondary mechanic? If he kills a scroll carrier because the fool decided to run right into this massive monster he proceeds to eat the scroll making it unavailable to any faction unless he is killed for one week, where upon the scroll is summoned out of his gut and returned to it's home base if none have retrieved it. Could even have them slaughter players with their footsteps as they hunt down zergs! Also enable em in the PvE campaign as 3 incredibly difficult, maybe no one will ever beat, world raid boss. In both PvP and PvE have them guarantee drop some truly unique, as in one of a kind nothing like it costumes that will never be obtainable any other way. If you down it on a PvP campaign have it also provide an achievement and a title. Ahh, getting a bit off topic. Either way, these three monsters sole purpose is to utterly annihilate any zerg that forms and does not break apart fast enough.
7. Reduce the current amount of campaigns.
With IC coming and the fact that 3 of the 5 campaigns are currently buffer servers on PS4 that rarely see more than 2 bars of pop on a single faction, we do not need this many campaigns. Reduce the number of campaigns, merge these buff servers and let's get some real action going aaaaaaand.....
8. Increase the pop cap on the handful of remaining servers.
This is a war, not a school field trip. I understand lag is an issue, and I don't have a solution to the increased lag it would cause, though I'm hoping that with a few zerg busters roaming around zerg induced lag would be reduced (except at scroll wall fights...). Thankfully, even at full pop cap and with some truly massive sieges I have yet to see any really bad lag on the PS4 servers. Our zergs probably wouldn't even qualify as zergs to pc players lol. If you gotta make all our shiny armor look like burlap sacks when there are too many people on the screen, do it. I don't care if my gold glitters when I'm dodging arrows and trying not to get stabbed. I do care when all my opponents are dead and there is no one else left to stab and I can only ask the gods "Is this all the players I get to kill?" (Or conversely, I'd like to get teabagged by 40 enemies, not just 5, when I die. Is that a thing on the pc? Teabagging the people you kill? Cause it is on the consoles. I've had people that weren't even involved in the fight run over and teabag me! I must have looked enticing.) The increased pop also means more risk for those that do try and PvE in the PvP campaigns, more gankers will be on the lookout.
9. Force players to make a choice upon entering PvP the first time to pick what faction they will represent.
This is a separate decision to your PvE faction choice that you choose at character creation. It is the only faction all characters on your account will represent in PvP. From a PvE standpoint limiting your characters to one faction ala DAoC isn't the best move you can make, so I understand why ESO didn't do it. However, none can deny that the choice of allowing you to play all factions on one account is detrimental to 3 faction AvA PvP. Even this isn't a perfect solution, you can always buy a second account, but this is the best we can probably do. Allow the player to change their declared PvP faction for either 1 million AP or for free at the end of the current campaign cycle. You can only change your represented faction once per month. Introduce loyalty rewards. A small bonus to AP for sticking with a faction, 1% per month to a total of 12% bonus AP for sticking with a faction for a whole year. Add in a monthly mailed reward that scales to your level and increases based on time. 1-3 months is a green item, 4-6 is blue, 6-9 is purple, 10+ is legendary. Hell, you could even tie in PvP loyality bonus to ESO plus, I think that would be fair.
10. Underdog bonus
Introduce meaningful bonuses to underdog alliances on the campaigns. Siege equipment deals 10% more damage and costs 25% less ap, and keep repair items cost 50% less ap. Keep walls owned by the underdog alliance have 10% more HP, upgrading keeps via new guild upgrades costs 20% less. Switching to an underdog alliance costs 1/2 as much AP (still held to the once a month limit though) and gives an equivalent loyalty bonus to how long the alliance has been the underdog to a maximum of 6 months based on how many weeks that alliance has been declared underdog. 1 week = 1 month of loyalty. So if an alliance has been an underdog for 6 weeks in a row, switching to them will cost 500,000 ap and immediately start you at 6 months of loyalty bonus. Underdog is tallied on a weekly basis separate from and in addition to the current AP bonus system. I'm envisioning a system that takes into account keeps loss/gained as well as owners of home keeps, and if they are in possession of their own scrolls. (IE, a superior alliance couldn't game the system by letting you constantly retake your 2 gate keeps if they still own the majority of their own home keeps, you haven't gained any new territory since last tally and they still have your scrolls, so on and so forth)
11. (The future!) Introduce a lockout mechanism to IC
I know it's being discussed, 6+1 is good, but whatever the mechanism is 2 alliances should always have a chance of being in their at the same time. If you introduce a PvE Cyrodiil campaign PvE players cannot complain about being locked out of their precious content. PvP players have to do what they love to get into their wonderful close quarters slaughterfest (seriously, loving the sounds of IC, loving what I'm seeing on the streams, can't wait. Very Darkness Falls-ish, and that is a good thing.)
The proportional TL:DR
So, those are my ideas. Overall it's meant to increase the time it takes large groups to capture a keep so that more defenders can arrive while still allowing smaller groups to accomplish both attacks and defenses, as well as introduce more feelings of ownership and permeance to keeps and an urge to defend via spending resources to upgrade while adding in easily flip-able smaller outposts to compensate. This will allow for more long term pushes into enemy territory that will require guilds to claim and upgrade keeps in order to prevent them from losing progress and make massive alarm clock map flips and scroll grabs harder to accomplish as fewer defenders can last longer giving more time for reinforcements to arrive. Meanwhile, the three roaming zerg busters will force smaller groups to spread out and attack multiple objectives at once, spreading the war front out and making it more tactical, and should theoretically help with lag. With the reduction in campaigns, increase in pop size, under dog and loyalty bonus as well as the ability to change which alliance you represent populations should stabilize naturally over time, and if they do not the bonus' can be tweaked to make the underpopulated alliance even stronger/more rewarding. Player alliance choice will also help eliminate spying and problems with having multiple faction characters on the same account by tying all your characters together in one PvP alliance. The introduction of the siege of the scroll gate is THE siege battle of a campaign, it's the most difficult, requiring the most amount of people and will essentially be zerg vs zerg, the one giant ball o death smashing into the epic wall that the zerg busters will not interfere in. A gate lock mechanism on IC will add another incentive to people to capture keeps on top of the scrolls and keep buff bonus, and ensuring that the gate mechanism allows two factions to potentially be in IC at the same time means that it will never be a PvE safe haven in the middle of the PvP campaigns. Meanwhile, a PvE campaign will reduce the amount of PvE'rs taking up slots in the limited campaigns, and provide a safe haven where they can interact with the other alliances (under Meridias blessing!) while experience all Cyrodiil has to offer, and taking on the toughest challenges they may ever face.
[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Names in Thread Titles]
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ZOS_Alex✭✭✭Hi @AlaskeyLandshark,
Please refrain from placing the names of ZeniMax Online Studios employees or ESO community members in your thread titles. Directing a thread at a specific individual, or otherwise using a thread to call someone out, is not considered constructive. If you need to get a hold of a specific community member, please send them a private message.
Thank you for understanding!0 -
Understood Alex!
But back to the topic, anyone have any views on the proposed changes? I understand it's a pretty big wall of text and that turns a lot of peeps off, but the TL:DR is only a paragraph and recaps all the changes. Also, most of it has been proposed in one form or another. Come on peeps! Hoping to get a discussion started on the validity of these ideas.0 -
Wycks✭✭✭✭Decent points, I feel the keeps are very under designed and do not offer much strategy. Some extra points (also ex DAOC player).
1. Keep doors are always avoided because they are much easier to defend.
This is immersive because rocks>wood. The solution is simple, make walls MUCH stronger, so the incentive is to always go for the doors giving the defenders ample time to defend. It should be very very difficult to breaks the walls.
2. Upper level inner keep defense is really a poor design
Difficult to LOS, not enough space, defending the inner keep from a wall breach is an example of how to NOT design a keep.
3. Resources are generally useless.
It should be practically impossible to break a keep wall if you have the mine under control, this adds to the meta of the game. Guards are easymode and should instead be feared if at max level and the resources are owned. A max level /resourced keep takes approximately 1 extra minute to break with most siege fights, this is ludicrous.
4. Flag capture at the bottom of the keep is bad design
Who would design a keep where the capture point is on the bottom floor next to the door? As everyone knows the enemy runs upstairs , clears top and rains down on the defenders. This is beyond stupid, the capture point should be easier to defend and no one would design a keep like this......
5. Defensive siege is useless vs Purge/heal and Barrier Zergs.
Enough said, something needs to be done here, it's impossible to defend vs stacked spammy zergs. There should be a way that in the inner keep zergs cannot use barrier/purge.
6. Keep should look different
It would be nice if DC, EP and AD all had distinct looking keep in their "Territory". The sameness is boring.
I wish they would spend some time and make some new keep layouts which would solve a lot of problems and at the very least make the inner keep walls 1000% stronger.
Edited by Wycks on 4 August 2015 17:25The numbers thing is always going to be there, but it’s more down to player skill and there are ways through ability choice to configure a group to be stronger vs. large groups of people. - BRAIN WHEELER - 2012 - LOL2 -
bob.ellisonb16_ESO wrote: »Decent points, I feel the keeps are very under designed and do not offer much strategy. Some extra points (also ex DAOC player).
1. Keep doors are always avoided because they are much easier to defend.
This is immersive because rocks>wood. The solution is simple, make walls MUCH stronger, so the incentive is to always go for the doors giving the defenders ample time to defend. It should be very very difficult to breaks the walls.
2. Upper level inner keep defense is really a poor design
Difficult to LOS, not enough space, defending the inner keep from a wall breach is an example of how to NOT design a keep.
3. Resources are generally useless.
It should be practically impossible to break a keep wall if you have the mine under control, this adds to the meta of the game. Guards are easymode and should instead be feared if at max level and the resources are owned. A max level /resourced keep takes approximately 1 extra minute to break with most siege fights, this is ludicrous.
4. Flag capture at the bottom of the keep is bad design
Who would design a keep where the capture point is on the bottom floor next to the door? As everyone knows the enemy runs upstairs , clears top and rains down on the defenders. This is beyond stupid, the capture point should be easier to defend and no one would design a keep like this......
5. Defensive siege is useless vs Purge/heal and Barrier Zergs.
Enough said, something needs to be done here, it's impossible to defend vs stacked spammy zergs. There should be a way that in the inner keep zergs cannot use barrier/purge.
6. Keep should look different
It would be nice if DC, EP and AD all had distinct looking keep in their "Territory". The sameness is boring.
I wish they would spend some time and make some new keep layouts which would solve a lot of problems and at the very least make the inner keep walls 1000% stronger.
It seems Zos understands there are some issues with keeps as the IC patch is making a few changes, including•The Keep Wall upgrade now gives 25% more hit points to walls and towers per upgrade level.
•Increased the amount of stone, food, and ore gathered at resources based on the “Gathered Amount” upgrade by 25%.
•Increased the amount of stone, food, and ore generated at resources based on the “Base Resources Increased” upgrade by 40%.
So it seems the resources will be providing more faster while upgrading wall/tower strength more. This will mean taking them is more important, and may help with keep longevity. We'll see I suppose.
I agree with 2, and on top of that capture points inside keeps? Really? I get resources, sort of, but I'd love a keep commander style raid boss that defensive players could buff/heal to help fight the enemies off (as well as the buffing/healing of the current keep guards). And he wouldn't be sitting right in front of the main gate to the keep waiting for the enemy zerg to rush in and slaughter him. They definitely need to make the keeps more... keep like.
I also agree completely with 5. The purge/vigor/barrier spam zergs really eliminate all skill and risk for an attacking party. Stack up, spam abilities, win. Your oil tickles, your cold harbor siege is laughable, and your spells and arrows are pathetic compared to these ability spams. ESO has shied away from timer based skills, but by giving such powerful skills with no target limit to everyone they can, are, and will be spammed. Target limits is probably the only way to combat this, perhaps coupled with diminishing returns over time if spammed repeatedly instead of used strategically.
As far as 6 goes I believe the reasoning is that it's all imperial designs as they are all imperial forts. Would be cool to see repaired sections take on the repairing sides architectural aesthetics though. EP sieges down some walls, captures a keep, when they repair that section it's now a dunmer esque wall (brickwork merging as seemless as possible with the existing structure) and stays that way till destroyed/repaired by another faction. Would give keeps this patchwork look to them after a while to reflect the constant change of ownership, would be a very cool touch.
I'd also like to touch on the big reason pop caps hurt pvp campaigns. In a game like DAoC where the three factions all pvped and could pve in emain and frontiers there was no limit. A PvE'er could go along his business without hurting the PvP side. With a pop cap though (especially one as low as ESO has atm in campaigns) every PvE'er in an active pvp campaign takes away a slot from a person who could be fighting in pvp, and this is really felt when one side fields a lot more enemies than you can purely because half your pop decided to pve instead. It also makes PvEing in campaigns less interesting because you are going to choose to do so in a buff campaign 9 times out of 10, eliminating the risks. If ESO isn't going to address the pop cap/to many empty servers issues, they might as well have a PvE campaign and let pvpers fill up their whole alliance with fighters to make for a more interesting experience. Ideally not what I want to see, I'd like to see 1 cyrodiil with no pop cap but something tells me ESO will never do this (even though it would make for a much more interesting and varied experience imo).Edited by AlaskeyLandshark on 8 August 2015 02:120 -
kadar✭✭✭✭✭
✭6. Keep should look different
It would be nice if DC, EP and AD all had distinct looking keep in their "Territory". The sameness is boring.
From a lore standpoint, perhaps are the keeps are generally the same because they are all Imperial in origin (not positive on this)? But from another point of view, you're absolutely right. Give us some diversity inside the keeps. Different paths, ramparts and fortifications. A keep with a moat! Even some cosmetic changes would be rad methinks.0 -
wafcatb14_ESO✭✭✭One thing this game needs is collision in pvp, In another game warhammer in pve there was no collision between players on the same faction, in order to prevent players blocking doorways quest givers etc.
However in pvp when enemy faction players were withing a few hundred feet of you there would be collision with your faction and with enemy players.
Having collision in pvp allowed tanks to be more effective as they could stack in a keeps breech and actually defend/prevent the enemy from just running through them into the keep.
How they created this game after copying Cryodill gameplay from DAOC and still didn`t add collision is silly.0 -
my 2c.
purge / barrier needs to be redesigned.
Its to easy for me and others to "purge" our way to victory...
its should be a useful tool.
But one person, shouldnt be able to purge/barrier an entire group.
kill well
STDC - NB VR15 - Khajit - DW / S+B / Bow
DC - NB VR 15 - Wood Elf - S+B / Resto
DC - TP VR 15 - Brenton - Resto / Dual Wield
DC - SC VR 12 - High Elf - Desto / Dual Wield
EP - TP VR 5 - Nord - 2hd / 2hd
EP - DK 20 - Imperial - S+B / Desto / Bow0 -
RoamingRiverElk✭✭✭✭✭The number of targets purge and barrier protects favors big groups. Why the number of targets still hasn't been reduced, I have no idea.Dalris Aalr - Magicka (Stamina) DK | Dalfish - Magicka Sorc | Dal Aalr - Magicka Warden | Dalrish - Mag/Stam NB | Irana Aalr - PvE Templar0 -
MisterJimothy✭✭✭wafcatb14_ESO wrote: »One thing this game needs is collision in pvp, In another game warhammer in pve there was no collision between players on the same faction, in order to prevent players blocking doorways quest givers etc.
However in pvp when enemy faction players were withing a few hundred feet of you there would be collision with your faction and with enemy players.
Having collision in pvp allowed tanks to be more effective as they could stack in a keeps breech and actually defend/prevent the enemy from just running through them into the keep.
How they created this game after copying Cryodill gameplay from DAOC and still didn`t add collision is silly.
Collision in PvP will likely never happen. As large as a zone as Cyrodill is, along with the amount and detail of players, turning on collision would absolutely melt the physics engine.1