HAMMER is game-breaking and needs to be REMOVED until balanced

Enkil

Hammer is spawning for factions when they have all scrolls, and one keep away from Emp. It is making the zerging and overwhelming odds of faction stacking exponentially worse and ruining all game play for long periods of time.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler, Please remove it from the game totally as it has only made every aspect of PvP worse for the vast majority of players.

If ZOS insists on keeping it in, please do not reintroduce it until it is more balanced.

My suggestions would be:

• Emperor Faction players can not pick it up
• Ensure hammer only spawns within the territory of faction gaining lowest raw potential points/time
• Hammer-wielder blocked from using both way shrines and keep recall stones
• If Emperor is gained by faction wielding, hammer immediately returns to Oblivion
• Hammer has an additional timer of max duration (i.e 30 mins - 1 hour from initial pick up)
• Remove Low-Pop bonus from game as hammer would serve this function when implemented in a balanced way

More drastic balancing might be to only let the faction it spawns for pick it up and have it automatically return to Oblivion after 30 mins.

If anyone else has comments/suggestions please discuss.

josh.lackey_ESO

It just needs to be removed. It was a cool idea, but it's just not good.

I wonder how many developer hours went into the hammer that could have been spent on something productive. Like fixing stuck in combat.

Sacredx

Enkil wrote: »

Hammer is spawning for factions when they have all scrolls, and one keep away from Emp. It is making the zerging and overwhelming odds of faction stacking exponentially worse and ruining all game play for long periods of time.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler, Please remove it from the game totally as it has only made every aspect of PvP worse for the vast majority of players.

If ZOS insists on keeping it in, please do not reintroduce it until it is more balanced.

My suggestions would be:

• Emperor Faction players can not pick it up
• Ensure hammer only spawns within the territory of faction gaining lowest raw potential points/time
• Hammer-wielder blocked from using both way shrines and keep recall stones
• If Emperor is gained by faction wielding, hammer immediately returns to Oblivion
• Hammer has an additional timer of max duration (i.e 30 mins - 1 hour from initial pick up)
• Remove Low-Pop bonus from game as hammer would serve this function when implemented in a balanced way

More drastic balancing might be to only let the faction it spawns for pick it up and have it automatically return to Oblivion after 30 mins.

If anyone else has comments/suggestions please discuss.

Let me play devil's advocate.

• Emperor Faction players can not pick it up. This will kill the hammer concept or make it a one chance only event. As in emp faction kills the wielder and it despawns because there is no one who can pick it up.
• Ensure hammer only spawns within the territory of faction gaining lowest raw potential points/time. Then everyone would know where it spawned making the other factions pile up on the weak faction even more. And it doesn't matter if the weak faction gets it, they will likely hand it over anyway (ie. they are weak!).
• Hammer-wielder blocked from using both way shrines and keep recall stones. So you want the whole faction to stack on hammer? This is what happens with scrolls and will be exactly the same for hammer if it can't fast travel and break the pug bond.
• If Emperor is gained by faction wielding, hammer immediately returns to Oblivion. Easy, the wielding side will take the map, then emp. Pretty easy to bypass.
• Hammer has an additional timer of max duration (i.e 30 mins - 1 hour from initial pick up). It kind of has this already, ie minimum of 30 mins.
• Remove Low-Pop bonus from game as hammer would serve this function when implemented in a balanced way. Big assumption is that the underdog faction can succeed with the hammer, which is not likely. Bonus: "implemented in a balanced way", there is no such thing. You ask what balance means and everyone will have their own opinion.

It's not easy!

My suggestion is to make three artefacts, kinds of in a rock-paper-scissors style. One per faction max. They all do different things and counter one another and when all three get together something happens! Maybe a dragon appears and starts to mow down the zerg balls. Maybe call the dragon Lagless the Merciful. #NAprime !

WuffyCerulei

Hammer imo needs a timer outside of the AP one. It’d be out for 30 minutes and then despawn. Cuz the strong faction will abuse the hammer by stacking 20 healers on the wielder.

master_vanargand

Hammer is very stupid idea.
ZOS! clean this *** now.

Dreyloch

First off OP, The Emp cannot pick it up. He can be in the group that does? But eh, not much can be done about that.

That said, I like the Hammer, and agree it does spawn to the strongest force on the map at times. What I would rather see done is spawn one for each faction. They plan to introduce more of them, so let's get 3 on the board and REALLY have some chaos eh!?!?? Then each faction will have to decide what needs to be done and where. They could go head to head (maybe not till after the performance improvements being finished in Q2 2020) but we would really need a very reduced lag situation for that to even be possible. However....it would make for some truly epic battles imo. Yeah, everyone will think I'm crazy. I just like huge fights.

ZoS could add more dynamic to when/where it spawns. I think currently it's like every 6 hours. On some campaigns (CP-PC NA) the current mechanic reduces the sometimes stalemate of the map. This gets very boring VERY fast. I've even gone to the non-cp camp recently just to try and find better battles. The hammer shakes things up a bit. As it's intended to do.

mursie

PLEASE REMOVE FACTION LOCK

jaws343

Sacredx wrote: »

Enkil wrote: »

Hammer is spawning for factions when they have all scrolls, and one keep away from Emp. It is making the zerging and overwhelming odds of faction stacking exponentially worse and ruining all game play for long periods of time.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler, Please remove it from the game totally as it has only made every aspect of PvP worse for the vast majority of players.

If ZOS insists on keeping it in, please do not reintroduce it until it is more balanced.

My suggestions would be:

• Emperor Faction players can not pick it up
• Ensure hammer only spawns within the territory of faction gaining lowest raw potential points/time
• Hammer-wielder blocked from using both way shrines and keep recall stones
• If Emperor is gained by faction wielding, hammer immediately returns to Oblivion
• Hammer has an additional timer of max duration (i.e 30 mins - 1 hour from initial pick up)
• Remove Low-Pop bonus from game as hammer would serve this function when implemented in a balanced way

More drastic balancing might be to only let the faction it spawns for pick it up and have it automatically return to Oblivion after 30 mins.

If anyone else has comments/suggestions please discuss.

Let me play devil's advocate.

• Emperor Faction players can not pick it up. This will kill the hammer concept or make it a one chance only event. As in emp faction kills the wielder and it despawns because there is no one who can pick it up.
• Ensure hammer only spawns within the territory of faction gaining lowest raw potential points/time. Then everyone would know where it spawned making the other factions pile up on the weak faction even more. And it doesn't matter if the weak faction gets it, they will likely hand it over anyway (ie. they are weak!).
• Hammer-wielder blocked from using both way shrines and keep recall stones. So you want the whole faction to stack on hammer? This is what happens with scrolls and will be exactly the same for hammer if it can't fast travel and break the pug bond.
• If Emperor is gained by faction wielding, hammer immediately returns to Oblivion. Easy, the wielding side will take the map, then emp. Pretty easy to bypass.
• Hammer has an additional timer of max duration (i.e 30 mins - 1 hour from initial pick up). It kind of has this already, ie minimum of 30 mins.
• Remove Low-Pop bonus from game as hammer would serve this function when implemented in a balanced way. Big assumption is that the underdog faction can succeed with the hammer, which is not likely. Bonus: "implemented in a balanced way", there is no such thing. You ask what balance means and everyone will have their own opinion.

It's not easy!

My suggestion is to make three artefacts, kinds of in a rock-paper-scissors style. One per faction max. They all do different things and counter one another and when all three get together something happens! Maybe a dragon appears and starts to mow down the zerg balls. Maybe call the dragon Lagless the Merciful. #NAprime !

The ability to use wayshrines with the hammer does need to be removed. It doesn't break the faction stack, people will still follow the icon on the map and use the same wayshrine. If you want to take the hammer across the map, you should be forced to run it there like a scroll.

Marcus684

mursie wrote: »

PLEASE REMOVE FACTION LOCK

So you and everyone else can “swap to the underdog faction”, right? Cuz we know that’s what everyone does, according to them.

Sacredx

jaws343 wrote: »

Sacredx wrote: »

Enkil wrote: »

Hammer is spawning for factions when they have all scrolls, and one keep away from Emp. It is making the zerging and overwhelming odds of faction stacking exponentially worse and ruining all game play for long periods of time.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler, Please remove it from the game totally as it has only made every aspect of PvP worse for the vast majority of players.

If ZOS insists on keeping it in, please do not reintroduce it until it is more balanced.

My suggestions would be:

• Emperor Faction players can not pick it up
• Ensure hammer only spawns within the territory of faction gaining lowest raw potential points/time
• Hammer-wielder blocked from using both way shrines and keep recall stones
• If Emperor is gained by faction wielding, hammer immediately returns to Oblivion
• Hammer has an additional timer of max duration (i.e 30 mins - 1 hour from initial pick up)
• Remove Low-Pop bonus from game as hammer would serve this function when implemented in a balanced way

More drastic balancing might be to only let the faction it spawns for pick it up and have it automatically return to Oblivion after 30 mins.

If anyone else has comments/suggestions please discuss.

Let me play devil's advocate.

• Emperor Faction players can not pick it up. This will kill the hammer concept or make it a one chance only event. As in emp faction kills the wielder and it despawns because there is no one who can pick it up.
• Ensure hammer only spawns within the territory of faction gaining lowest raw potential points/time. Then everyone would know where it spawned making the other factions pile up on the weak faction even more. And it doesn't matter if the weak faction gets it, they will likely hand it over anyway (ie. they are weak!).
• Hammer-wielder blocked from using both way shrines and keep recall stones. So you want the whole faction to stack on hammer? This is what happens with scrolls and will be exactly the same for hammer if it can't fast travel and break the pug bond.
• If Emperor is gained by faction wielding, hammer immediately returns to Oblivion. Easy, the wielding side will take the map, then emp. Pretty easy to bypass.
• Hammer has an additional timer of max duration (i.e 30 mins - 1 hour from initial pick up). It kind of has this already, ie minimum of 30 mins.
• Remove Low-Pop bonus from game as hammer would serve this function when implemented in a balanced way. Big assumption is that the underdog faction can succeed with the hammer, which is not likely. Bonus: "implemented in a balanced way", there is no such thing. You ask what balance means and everyone will have their own opinion.

It's not easy!

My suggestion is to make three artefacts, kinds of in a rock-paper-scissors style. One per faction max. They all do different things and counter one another and when all three get together something happens! Maybe a dragon appears and starts to mow down the zerg balls. Maybe call the dragon Lagless the Merciful. #NAprime !

The ability to use wayshrines with the hammer does need to be removed. It doesn't break the faction stack, people will still follow the icon on the map and use the same wayshrine. If you want to take the hammer across the map, you should be forced to run it there like a scroll.

Have you run the hammer? Have you tried to port with it or use a stone to port? I doubt it. I speak from actual experience. Porting does break the bond and break up the zerg ball. Sure some very determined pugs will work it out and rejoin but most will go their own way or fall behind enough to spread out the playerbase. And that's the point.

Scritchel

"actual experience". LMAO. I dont mean to non-constructive but when are you ever not in a zerg esp when you have the hammer? What "experience"?

JamilaRaj

Marcus684 wrote: »

mursie wrote: »

PLEASE REMOVE FACTION LOCK

So you and everyone else can “swap to the underdog faction”, right? Cuz we know that’s what everyone does, according to them.

Of course. They just sometimes overdo it and all swap to the underdog faction(s), leaving no players in the dominant faction, therefore imbalanced campaigns are the ultimate proof that players do swap to the underdog factions to balance campaigns out.

Dreyloch

jaws343 wrote: »

Sacredx wrote: »

Enkil wrote: »

Hammer is spawning for factions when they have all scrolls, and one keep away from Emp. It is making the zerging and overwhelming odds of faction stacking exponentially worse and ruining all game play for long periods of time.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler, Please remove it from the game totally as it has only made every aspect of PvP worse for the vast majority of players.

If ZOS insists on keeping it in, please do not reintroduce it until it is more balanced.

My suggestions would be:

• Emperor Faction players can not pick it up
• Ensure hammer only spawns within the territory of faction gaining lowest raw potential points/time
• Hammer-wielder blocked from using both way shrines and keep recall stones
• If Emperor is gained by faction wielding, hammer immediately returns to Oblivion
• Hammer has an additional timer of max duration (i.e 30 mins - 1 hour from initial pick up)
• Remove Low-Pop bonus from game as hammer would serve this function when implemented in a balanced way

More drastic balancing might be to only let the faction it spawns for pick it up and have it automatically return to Oblivion after 30 mins.

If anyone else has comments/suggestions please discuss.

Let me play devil's advocate.

• Emperor Faction players can not pick it up. This will kill the hammer concept or make it a one chance only event. As in emp faction kills the wielder and it despawns because there is no one who can pick it up.
• Ensure hammer only spawns within the territory of faction gaining lowest raw potential points/time. Then everyone would know where it spawned making the other factions pile up on the weak faction even more. And it doesn't matter if the weak faction gets it, they will likely hand it over anyway (ie. they are weak!).
• Hammer-wielder blocked from using both way shrines and keep recall stones. So you want the whole faction to stack on hammer? This is what happens with scrolls and will be exactly the same for hammer if it can't fast travel and break the pug bond.
• If Emperor is gained by faction wielding, hammer immediately returns to Oblivion. Easy, the wielding side will take the map, then emp. Pretty easy to bypass.
• Hammer has an additional timer of max duration (i.e 30 mins - 1 hour from initial pick up). It kind of has this already, ie minimum of 30 mins.
• Remove Low-Pop bonus from game as hammer would serve this function when implemented in a balanced way. Big assumption is that the underdog faction can succeed with the hammer, which is not likely. Bonus: "implemented in a balanced way", there is no such thing. You ask what balance means and everyone will have their own opinion.

It's not easy!

My suggestion is to make three artefacts, kinds of in a rock-paper-scissors style. One per faction max. They all do different things and counter one another and when all three get together something happens! Maybe a dragon appears and starts to mow down the zerg balls. Maybe call the dragon Lagless the Merciful. #NAprime !

The ability to use wayshrines with the hammer does need to be removed. It doesn't break the faction stack, people will still follow the icon on the map and use the same wayshrine. If you want to take the hammer across the map, you should be forced to run it there like a scroll.

It already spawns behind tri-keep gates most of the time I've seen. Anyone who finds it already loses time just running back to the gate to port somewhere. I'm sorry, but have to disagree on the running thing. Sometimes objectives are all the way across the map. They could increase duration, or spawn it out closer to enemy objectives...Idk why this doesn't happen already. There are many spots on the map that it's supposed to spawn at but never does? /shrug

ZOS_RogerJ

Remember it’s okay to disagree and debate on the official ESO forums, but we do ask that you keep all disagreements civil, constructive, and on-topic. If a discussion gets heated and turns into a debate, remember that you should stick to debating the post and/or thread topic. It is never appropriate to resort to personal comments or jabs about those participating in the thread discussion.

Dojohoda

The hammer might need some tweaks, such as why could someone keep it for hours a few days ago. I suspect it was a bugged out hammer because after a while it turned white and stayed white for hours.

Dropping it in slaughter fish is a potential strategy for the low pop faction.

Rake

just delete the stupid thing already.

Gariele

It’s a neat concept but yeah when you can take every keep on the map with the uptime it has then it’s to much. If it was suppose to be an Emp killing weapon it should only work on Emp keeps.

When a player has it and is crowned Emp it defeats the whole purpose of what it’s suppose to do.

InvictusApollo

Hammer is just another reason for people to stack in one place. Those who have it stack there to farm AP. And those *** don't have it stack to get it. More stacking and more lag. Not a very thought through idea/solution to lag. And that is what develeopers intended it to be: a reason to spread people out.

whiskidou

The only thing that the hammer is doing is making faction stacks even harder, putting more strains on the servers lol

max_only

In my experience the hammer spawns in the underdog faction’s home area and they either leave it there until it despawns or purposefully drop it in slaughter fish because they lose it too easily to the winning faction.

Hammer is unnecessary. It’s a single player feature in a game that isn’t made for it.

Better to introduce dragons to Cyrodiil, maybe even let pver do repeatable quests to influence it. (Anti dragon siege)

Mr_Walker

Was alive and working for 9 hours the other day. I like the mechanic, it breaks up a stale map and gets it moving, but it needs a hard timer - 30 minutes would be fine. After that, bye bye.

SipofMaim

Sacredx wrote: »

My suggestion is to make three artefacts, kinds of in a rock-paper-scissors style. One per faction max. They all do different things and counter one another and when all three get together something happens! Maybe a dragon appears and starts to mow down the zerg balls. Maybe call the dragon Lagless the Merciful. #NAprime !

I've been hoping they'd do this for quite a while (although I was just thinking two artifacts, the hammer and maybe a staff or bow or shield as its opposite).

The hammer was a great idea that's had a lot of crap side effects, but I'd rather see them double down than delete. They could at least make some adjustments to when and where it spawns so it doesn't wind up with the already dominant faction nearly so often. Or ever.

Mayrael

Right now hammer just ruins PvP even more. It condradicts its purpose. When everyone except of emperor can pick it up it ends that most populated faction usualy with emp takes it over and finish of low poped factions. It needs to be removed or completly be forbiden to use by the most populated faction at a time, otherwise we will have things like this all the time:

Poplocked EP vs 2 bars AD and DC. Hammer doing amazing job... Total BS.

Iki

Mayrael wrote: »

Right now hammer just ruins PvP even more. It condradicts its purpose. When everyone except of emperor can pick it up it ends that most populated faction usualy with emp takes it over and finish of low poped factions. It needs to be removed or completly be forbiden to use by the most populated faction at a time, otherwise we will have things like this all the time:

Poplocked EP vs 2 bars AD and DC. Hammer doing amazing job... Total BS.

I also believe that adding hammer to game was a big mistake, but I doubt they will ever remove it, that damned thing is here to stay.
But I`d also like to point out that the map we see on your screenshot is result of ridiculous population imbalance, hammer merely speeds up the inevitable. Or do you think ep could paint map red even with hammer, if they had similar amount of players than opponents?
Uneven amount of players between factions is far bigger problem than hammer and that`s what really destroys quality of pvp outside prime time, hammer just creates some very laggy zerg-fests around it and speeds up some keep flips once in a while.

Delsskia

Several of us have been asking for dynamic population balance for years. It's ridiculous for 1 faction to be pop locked while another only has 1 or 2 bars. But, I guess, like damn near anything else they can find, some folks would game that system too.

Mayrael

Iki wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

Right now hammer just ruins PvP even more. It condradicts its purpose. When everyone except of emperor can pick it up it ends that most populated faction usualy with emp takes it over and finish of low poped factions. It needs to be removed or completly be forbiden to use by the most populated faction at a time, otherwise we will have things like this all the time:

Poplocked EP vs 2 bars AD and DC. Hammer doing amazing job... Total BS.

I also believe that adding hammer to game was a big mistake, but I doubt they will ever remove it, that damned thing is here to stay.
But I`d also like to point out that the map we see on your screenshot is result of ridiculous population imbalance, hammer merely speeds up the inevitable. Or do you think ep could paint map red even with hammer, if they had similar amount of players than opponents?
Uneven amount of players between factions is far bigger problem than hammer and that`s what really destroys quality of pvp outside prime time, hammer just creates some very laggy zerg-fests around it and speeds up some keep flips once in a while.

TBH they would probably still get those scrolls, but there is a difference when your enemy take it after 15-20 minutes of siege or when it takes like 1 minute to flip the keep. When hammer is on and you are underpopulated its pointless to defend, better solution is just wait till it's gone.

And about uneven numbers. Yeah I completely agree that we should have some sort of mechanism that doesn't allow for so massive disparity. Like (LowerFactionNumbersA + LowerFactionNumbersB) * 0.75 = CapForLockedFactionC

E.g. FactionA Has 50 players, FactionB has also 50 players so cap for FactionC would be 75 players.

If the numbers on factions A and B are dropping, nobody from FactionC isn't locked, just new players can't join. If somebody logs off and on again, gets disconnected or something similar, he needs to wait in queue.

Simple and would do the trick.

Psychopote

Don't remove hammer and faction lock. We finally have some fun in PvP.

Qbiken

Psychopote wrote: »

Don't remove hammer and faction lock. We finally have some fun in PvP.

Nothing fun about either of those. Hammer is a PvDoor weapon, and anything promoting PvDoor should be removed.

And faction lock is trash.

Psychopote

The easy solution could be to add a 30 days campaign without hammer and faction lock (an "old fashion" campaign).
So people could choose what fit their desire best ;-)

kpittsniperb14_ESO

Psychopote wrote: »

The easy solution could be to add a 30 days campaign without hammer and faction lock (an "old fashion" campaign).
So people could choose what fit their desire best ;-)

Where are the bodies coming from to fill all of these campaigns that people want to add instead of adjusting the broken crap in the existing ones?

ESTyll13

mursie wrote: »

PLEASE REMOVE FACTION LOCK

8-12 hours lock would be better