Regarding Brian Wheeler's statements on changes to AP in the next patch

Crown

From ESO Live, we learned that:
1. Currently, each additional person in group increases AP gains by 10% up to a maximum of 230% for a group of 24.
2. In future, the amount of base AP will be doubled, though the increase for people in group will be capped at 50%.

Here's the link to the spread sheet showing AP (base without modifiers or buffs) gain per person based on group size now and after patch: https://goo.gl/iQ3AwS

My initial response / thought on seeing the math is that this is another attempt to get people to spread out and not run large numbers (that the server / game can't handle without lag). My second thought is that AP farmers are going to dominate the leader boards, regardless of the numbers they run.

I've always thought that solo/duo players SHOULD be able to make the same amount of AP as group players, and have posted numbers in previous threads showing that it's currently close. I believe that this will change things grossly in favour of solo players.

----

@ZOS_BrianWheeler PLEASE let me know if I've made a mistake in the sheet / math!

I based the starting 864 value from the 281 AP for a group of 4 that you stated in the ESO Live cast.

We would also GREATLY appreciate knowing:

1. The percentage modifiers for other things that are applicable such as Alliance Rank (higher = more AP?).

2. How are calculations made when multiple groups do damage to the same target - so for example if two groups of 4 each do half of the damage to kill a target, is the AP that they all receive equivalent to what each person in a group of 8 would have gotten?

3. Expanding on #2 above, how is AP awarded if a solo player does a percentage of the damage to a target that a group of 20 also damages / kills? The math behind who gets how much AP would be amazing to go through (I was a statistics major in the long, long, long ago - so love this type of info).

4. Expanding on the above, if a solo healer heals damage that a person in one of those two groups from #2 took in combat, how is that person's AP gain calculated? Is the overall AP for everyone involved now based on a 9 person group, or does the solo healer get the same as any given member of the 4 person group (post-answering #2 above)?

@ZOS_GinaBruno Please walk over to Brian's desk and poke him until he responds ;-) The above is of GREAT interest to a lot of us and we need to feel the love! I'm going to have a teddy bear custom made with #CrownLove on his belly mailed to your offices ;-)

Ffastyl

My understanding of it was the AP boost per person is to be doubled (to 20%) while the cap halved - capped at twelve people in group (for 240% AP). Then each person beyond twelve only detracts from the AP made.

SkylarkAU

I think the doubling of AP is happening simply to accommodate the increased cost of v15/v16 pvp vendor gear..
Based on v13 gear now which costs 128k(?) AP and v14 which costs 248k AP i'd say it's safe to assume that v15 would cost ~500k and v16 ~1 million. If you think about it, under this scenario the top level pvp vendor gear is quadrupling in price while the AP return from player kills is only doubling - the grind for gear would effectively be doubled.
Following on with a bit of logic, undaunted set pieces would probably cost more than a v16 set piece so I would predict them to cost anywhere from 2 million AP and upwards (equating to about 500k gold based on the old 4:1 rule).

Anyway food for thought. Thanks for posting the spreadsheet Crown!

Forestd16b14_ESO

Here's what I know. More people in your group less AP. Less people in your group more AP. Get ready fro micro zergs people. 20 groups of 4 players trying siege the same place.

davey1107

Awesome work w the spreadsheet.

Have to admit...I hate, hate, HATE the AP system. It just encourages zerg and stupidity. The game board is soooooo cool, yet all the reward system motivates is a big idiot cloud of forty players.

I'm not sure this announcement will fix anything. A real fix would be a comprehensive overhaul of the system, crating real rewards for spraying out and populating the keeps. Last week a buddy and I spent an hour on "the bridge" (you PVPers all know the one). Eventually reds did come to invade, and we did push them back with siege and a strong hold on the bridge. It was super fun, totally makes sense in the context of the story...but what was our AP reward? 1000? 2000? We would have gotten ten times that running in a stupid yellow swarm.

Overhaul, ZOS, overhaul.

Crown

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

Minno

davey1107 wrote: »

Awesome work w the spreadsheet.

Have to admit...I hate, hate, HATE the AP system. It just encourages zerg and stupidity. The game board is soooooo cool, yet all the reward system motivates is a big idiot cloud of forty players.

I'm not sure this announcement will fix anything. A real fix would be a comprehensive overhaul of the system, crating real rewards for spraying out and populating the keeps. Last week a buddy and I spent an hour on "the bridge" (you PVPers all know the one). Eventually reds did come to invade, and we did push them back with siege and a strong hold on the bridge. It was super fun, totally makes sense in the context of the story...but what was our AP reward? 1000? 2000? We would have gotten ten times that running in a stupid yellow swarm.

Overhaul, ZOS, overhaul.

Another person starting to come into my camp of thought.

Still not convinced the current objectives will offer anything other than 24 group+ pvp. Till they look at how the AP gains are in relation to the map objectives, the current system will always be about large raid pvp.

This change helps slightly,because with emp being the only change/AP centered objective that effects the map, it solidifies large raid play.

Tankqull

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

nope they won´t. simply as you have a by far lower KDr and Kills/timeframe, so its true you are geting more ap per kill in the next patch but you will still get more aps in any form of group as you are killing far more players in a shorter timeframe than being solo.

Hydrocodone

So will this stop the stupid tower farms? I hope so. I guess your idea of fun is watching AP scroll by while you spam 1 button. The more AP you get the more fun you have? Never understood that. These people that zerg ruin the game for large majority of players. Not against groups or large scale battles just hate mindless zergers with inflated egos cause they got a bunch of scrubs to slot and spam whatever it is that is the "meta". Stupid Zerg Is Stupid! L2P.

WRX

12-16 man groups or bust.

Jsmalls

Myself and 3 friends got about 140k AP in 5 hours just taking on a couple zergs throughout the day. Would receive massive 4000 AP defense ticks and still be getting 600 AP per kill each. Adding more people drops the amount per tick and kill and had we had 10 people I know we would have seen at least a 50k decrease. I don't know I still feel like the system even now does lean towards the smaller groups.

Had the patch been active that would have been an easy 300k in 5 hours... Assualt 10 here I come Haha.

Derra

Crown wrote: »

I've always thought that solo/duo players SHOULD be able to make the same amount of AP as group players, and have posted numbers in previous threads showing that it's currently close. I believe that this will change things grossly in favour of solo players.

Yeah you made a topic about that about as biased as it gets. You went solo duo hunting with gankblades which are unarguably the best class to farm APs in smallscale pvp. Your samplesize was "a couple of hours" of pvp which is in no way representative for anything (you´d need atleast a week or two with /played in pvp and then have to average out the ap gains).

And even if your prediction holds true (which i think is debateable at best) - why do you care? Because it will be harder for your large grp to also get emp for one players alongside all the other benefits the game provides you with?


You´ve said yourself once enough ppl are online the only determining factor for aps in large grps are the numbers of enemies available. It does not work that way solo / duo. Your large grp still get to keep their primetime advantage.

Psilent

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

I don't think this will be an issue. If AP per kill is doubled, then I am assuming defense/offensive ticks will be doubled. So those 3 to 4k ticks I was getting yesterday would have been 6 to 8k.

Large groups can also give someone a Moon Die Tick. 40k solo tick today would be 80k next patch and that'll make it very hard for a solo player to keep up.

Minno

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

Same for large groups with Kill farms; not many videos show anything besides 16vx in emp style defense/offense.

With Emp as only means for meaningful map stimulation and fluid AP tied to kills instead of revamped objective, you'll have the same old pvp; only consisting of 1vx against noobs or 16vx against noobs.

AP tied to meaningful objective based gains only way to promote intellectual pvp play/tactics. Otherwise what we currently have is "noclip basketball".

reften

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

This is the fatal flaw in the game. The end goal is AP, not map control.

Need incentives for map control. Currently, there are zero. And to me, that ruins the game.

BuggeX

reften wrote: »

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

This is the fatal flaw in the game. The end goal is AP, not map control.

Need incentives for map control. Currently, there are zero. And to me, that ruins the game.

agree, whole cyro Needs a overhaul.

its just stupid to buff the dominating ally even more.

make a camp as following.

just scrolls give Points. starting with 1/hour ending with 48/hour

additional scrolls will not buff you ally any more, it will nerf them

any Keep will increes AP receipt by 5%, ressources 1%

for reward to the camp add the following.

1# 500.000 AP
2# 250.000 AP
3# 100.000 AP

if you are under the Top 100 (or 25% for azura cause there are ~1000 Player / ally)

and lower the Overall AP for killing or capturing.

Emperor Buff should be nerfed 100% reg and 75% res is by far to strong, +100% ulti, well for me its OK.

in this case you have to acctually fight for keeps or ress for a AP buff.
If you want to win the camp, you will Need to deal with a debuff instead of a buff.

eliisra

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Here's what I know. More people in your group less AP. Less people in your group more AP. Get ready fro micro zergs people. 20 groups of 4 players trying siege the same place.

Doubt it's going to work that way. Amount of people tagging a kill should still affect AP rewards. The game never cared if a dozen Mutagen leechers where in your raid or not.

If you have 20 groups of 4 players lagging out the server, AP should still be lower because all kills are tagged by 20 different groups and therefore shared between 80 players.

Otherwise you could just bypass the new AP penalty and run around with some 80-man solo zerg and make max AP. That seems way to *** and not very helpful when it comes to reducing server load.

Minno

BuggeX wrote: »

reften wrote: »

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

This is the fatal flaw in the game. The end goal is AP, not map control.

Need incentives for map control. Currently, there are zero. And to me, that ruins the game.

agree, whole cyro Needs a overhaul.

its just stupid to buff the dominating ally even more.

make a camp as following.

just scrolls give Points. starting with 1/hour ending with 48/hour

additional scrolls will not buff you ally any more, it will nerf them

any Keep will increes AP receipt by 5%, ressources 1%

for reward to the camp add the following.

1# 500.000 AP
2# 250.000 AP
3# 100.000 AP

if you are under the Top 100 (or 25% for azura cause there are ~1000 Player / ally)

and lower the Overall AP for killing or capturing.

Emperor Buff should be nerfed 100% reg and 75% res is by far to strong, +100% ulti, well for me its OK.

in this case you have to acctually fight for keeps or ress for a AP buff.
If you want to win the camp, you will Need to deal with a debuff instead of a buff.

Should be overhauled to map based objectives.
(I.e. take alessia - 30,000 AP)

Added dailies that make sense (report quest is useless, replace with I.e. "control Bruma for 30 min.")

Use of additional objectives outside the keep's boundary (must be included with forward camps for increased viability. Can offer scripted events that add to overall point system I.e." pact supply train spotted, intercept/defend till they escape/die. Winning side receives AP and faction camp points")

Let's get creative!

BuggeX

Minno wrote: »

BuggeX wrote: »

reften wrote: »

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

This is the fatal flaw in the game. The end goal is AP, not map control.

Need incentives for map control. Currently, there are zero. And to me, that ruins the game.

agree, whole cyro Needs a overhaul.

its just stupid to buff the dominating ally even more.

make a camp as following.

just scrolls give Points. starting with 1/hour ending with 48/hour

additional scrolls will not buff you ally any more, it will nerf them

any Keep will increes AP receipt by 5%, ressources 1%

for reward to the camp add the following.

1# 500.000 AP
2# 250.000 AP
3# 100.000 AP

if you are under the Top 100 (or 25% for azura cause there are ~1000 Player / ally)

and lower the Overall AP for killing or capturing.

Emperor Buff should be nerfed 100% reg and 75% res is by far to strong, +100% ulti, well for me its OK.

in this case you have to acctually fight for keeps or ress for a AP buff.
If you want to win the camp, you will Need to deal with a debuff instead of a buff.

Should be overhauled to map based objectives.
(I.e. take alessia - 30,000 AP)

Added dailies that make sense (report quest is useless, replace with I.e. "control Bruma for 30 min.")

Use of additional objectives outside the keep's boundary (must be included with forward camps for increased viability. Can offer scripted events that add to overall point system I.e." pact supply train spotted, intercept/defend till they escape/die. Winning side receives AP and faction camp points")

Let's get creative!

and lets go deeper, if the supply Train get killed, the owner fraction cant siege for 1 hour

Minno

BuggeX wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

BuggeX wrote: »

reften wrote: »

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

This is the fatal flaw in the game. The end goal is AP, not map control.

Need incentives for map control. Currently, there are zero. And to me, that ruins the game.

agree, whole cyro Needs a overhaul.

its just stupid to buff the dominating ally even more.

make a camp as following.

just scrolls give Points. starting with 1/hour ending with 48/hour

additional scrolls will not buff you ally any more, it will nerf them

any Keep will increes AP receipt by 5%, ressources 1%

for reward to the camp add the following.

1# 500.000 AP
2# 250.000 AP
3# 100.000 AP

if you are under the Top 100 (or 25% for azura cause there are ~1000 Player / ally)

and lower the Overall AP for killing or capturing.

Emperor Buff should be nerfed 100% reg and 75% res is by far to strong, +100% ulti, well for me its OK.

in this case you have to acctually fight for keeps or ress for a AP buff.
If you want to win the camp, you will Need to deal with a debuff instead of a buff.

Should be overhauled to map based objectives.
(I.e. take alessia - 30,000 AP)

Added dailies that make sense (report quest is useless, replace with I.e. "control Bruma for 30 min.")

Use of additional objectives outside the keep's boundary (must be included with forward camps for increased viability. Can offer scripted events that add to overall point system I.e." pact supply train spotted, intercept/defend till they escape/die. Winning side receives AP and faction camp points")

Let's get creative!

and lets go deeper, if the supply Train get killed, the owner fraction cant siege for 1 hour

Lol keep it simple. Though I like the suggestion (aka die EP! Lol)

Jura23

In Sypher's thread couple of weeks back many large group players were saying that AP doesn't really matter to them and the changes in gain wouldn't change the way they play.

If it doesn't matter to group players and will make solo players more happy, everybody wins.

Jura23

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

So what? Even if things happen the way you predict, there is no problem because it will be same for all factions.

Darnathian

Jura23 wrote: »

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

So what? Even if things happen the way you predict, there is no problem because it will be same for all factions.

Jura23 wrote: »

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

So what? Even if things happen the way you predict, there is no problem because it will be same for all factions.

Because the reward of emperorship comes from having map control which takes everyone to do. The emperor should behelping his faction win.

not trying to make 1v15 videos to oncrease followers. i called this in Syphers initial AP post after they all agreed on thier podcast they could careless a out the campaign and taking objectives. Sypher called me ignorant or something.

i hope i am. i dont want to see a emp off at Brindle farming bads. cough. cough.

Jura23

Darnathian wrote: »

Jura23 wrote: »

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

So what? Even if things happen the way you predict, there is no problem because it will be same for all factions.

Jura23 wrote: »

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

So what? Even if things happen the way you predict, there is no problem because it will be same for all factions.

Because the reward of emperorship comes from having map control which takes everyone to do. The emperor should behelping his faction win.

not trying to make 1v15 videos to oncrease followers. i called this in Syphers initial AP post after they all agreed on thier podcast they could careless a out the campaign and taking objectives. Sypher called me ignorant or something.

i hope i am. i dont want to see a emp off at Brindle farming bads. cough. cough.

Help win what?

The only real reason why it's good to control some keeps is being able to travel faster to fights. I didn't notice any other meaning behind it.

RAGUNAnoOne

Jura23 wrote: »

In Sypher's thread couple of weeks back many large group players were saying that AP doesn't really matter to them and the changes in gain wouldn't change the way they play.

If it doesn't matter to group players and will make solo players more happy, everybody wins.

But it does matter to those that are only doing PvP to unlock skills for PvE the grind is bad enough if they do this without adjusting the AP required for top tier skills it may take months. also all it takes for a legit small group to loose out on the AP they deserve is to have a zerg decide it would be beneficial (or funny) to tag along hence unintentional (or not) loss of AP for the small group. @ZOS_BrianWheeler can you please look into these scenarios while you implement this?

Reif

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

I think the problem with map control is not about an amount of AP advantage that solo players will gain from kills, but about the siege system itself. At the moment it's too boring and not enjoyable for a solo player to participate in that action for a considerable time. They do not like to do it now, they will not like to do it later. As a group player you may see this from another perspective, because of the necessity of positioning, coordination etc., and have fun of that, but most of the solo players like to intercept reinforcements, fighting in a field, stuff like that, more than taking a keep or a resource. It's not about gaining less AP, it's about enjoyability for a solo player to do map control.

In my opinion, it's too easy to take a keep in terms of the mechanics at the moment. It's all just looks like an endless circle run around the Imperial City. And it changes colors faster than Fengrush saying f-word when he gets well-fitted Cuirass of Permafrost from the maelstrom chest. It must be much more challenging to take a keep, not in a way of increasing wall's HP, but in a way of smart and entertaining mechanics. Because right now I don't even have a desire to fight for my alliance and take keeps knowing that in 20 minutes it will be taken back just as easily. I will want it, but only if I could see some visible longer time results and not just the score change.

So, what am I trying to say is that most of the solo players are not interested in map control already and tweaks of the AP gaining will not affect it. It's an overall problem with Cyrodiil which needs some big changes concerning the map and it's objectives.

Forestd16b14_ESO

eliisra wrote: »

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Here's what I know. More people in your group less AP. Less people in your group more AP. Get ready fro micro zergs people. 20 groups of 4 players trying siege the same place.

Doubt it's going to work that way. Amount of people tagging a kill should still affect AP rewards. The game never cared if a dozen Mutagen leechers where in your raid or not.

If you have 20 groups of 4 players lagging out the server, AP should still be lower because all kills are tagged by 20 different groups and therefore shared between 80 players.

Otherwise you could just bypass the new AP penalty and run around with some 80-man solo zerg and make max AP. That seems way to *** and not very helpful when it comes to reducing server load.

Hey that's from what I under stand IDK how it's gonna work with multiple groups attacking the same stuff is gonna be like. But what I do know is zergs if they continue to be zergs will now be less rewarded with AP.

WRX

Jura23 wrote: »

In Sypher's thread couple of weeks back many large group players were saying that AP doesn't really matter to them and the changes in gain wouldn't change the way they play.

If it doesn't matter to group players and will make solo players more happy, everybody wins.

This was essentially one guild.

Nearly every good to great guild of present and past has AP as a major motivating factor.

Not because its really worth a lot, but because it is a barometer of how well a group is preforming.

If you aren't making good AP, its likely because there are no fights (unlikely), you outnumber your opponents in every fight, or you aren't winning the fights you should be/picking bad fights.

EDIT: This is really only involving competitive group play.

Sanct16

@Crown

One thing you should add to your spreadsheet is the %-ual difference rather than the absolute difference.

I made some calculations regarding AP gains of different sized groups. In detail, how much AP/h you need to get currently in order to gain 50k AP/h after the change.

Group Size -> Current AP/h
24 -> 55k
20 -> 48,3k
16 -> 41,6k
12 -> 35k
8 -> 28,3k
<6 -> 25k

I have to say I really like those numbers. I have no illusions that people will still run easy-mode 50 man zergs because "more people = more fun" but it will still encourage playing in smaller groups. Even if many people here insist that they don't care about AP I still think that many people in those 24 man raids will reconsider their group size when they see how much more AP they (can) get in smaller groups. I am quite sure that people will start to get jealous once they see other groups get 100k+/h while their full raid sits at 50k.
One thing that always bothered me was that the easiest way to play is also the most rewarding. With a full raid its enough to just run forward spamming 1 button most of the time but you still got the most Ap by far. If the changes work out as I hope they will, easy won't be equal to most rewarding.

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

It would be interesting if a solo player like @Sypher could tell us his current ap/h average over the course of several hour long session but I am quite sure that for ap farming groups will still be at an advantage simply because it is easier to find good fights. The most effective group size will depend on the map situation and such but I guess that it will be 12-16 people in prime time and 6-10 people for the rest. Basically whatever minimum group size you need to win the fight which is a nice change imo.

Poxheart

Crown wrote: »

One concern that I've heard from many people is that when solo players top the boards (as they certainly will with this change), they have no real incentive to do map control - they'll just continue making 1vX videos as emperor. For all you 1vX video makers (lookin' at you @Sypher ;-) what do you have to say about this?

As a solo/small man player: without map control there is little/no opportunity to 1vX. When your faction owns nothing the ride back to find fights is long and tedious.

Crown

@Sanct16 Awesome idea! I've updated the table - please take a look and sanity check my numbers / make sure that's what you meant..