IC User Experience - Needs drastic changes

Zski

Key takeaways after IC the past few days -

The Tel'Var punishment on death makes it literally unuseable. There is no reason most people would head into this area in anything less than a 12-24 stack when two hours of work can be undone in 10 minutes. From a user end experience, this doesn't fill with me any sort of drastic tension, but rather alienates me from wanting to ever attempt it at all - especially when known issues in the game (sluggish CC breaks, potions not firing) prevent me from exacting the kind of gameplay necessary to do some of the boss mechanics without death. Half of your tel'var is totally unconscionable. If I can feel like I've wasted my time after only 45m of chugging through every boss in a wing and the simulacrum with only a single death, how much worse can this be for newer users? Terrible punishment system, and it's no wonder this place is a ghost town except when one guild charges through.

Exiting is arcane and almost disturbingly frustrating - which makes it all the more weird when there ARE easy options: one never particularly disclosed to the player (and probably unknown to most new blood in the area), and the other a strange systems abuse whereby queueing for a campaign offers an instant way out. That this queue system exists, is known by players and devs alike, and at least tacitly condoned (by way of its continued existence), I'm unsure why there isn't just an option to leave or port away. If the argument is that the tension of returning is the desired result, then why do these other escape options exist? If these other options exist, why are they arcane systems exploits or unadvertised purchaseable items instead of...yknow. A Leave Button.

Risk reward is far too high and low respectively to make a validating or engaging user experience. A scale-back of the on-death tax and easier options (or a more consistent approach, minimum) for leaving would both drastically decrease frustration. I understand that some of the parts of this argument can't be addressed directly (namely that the game's spaghetti code will at times cost you your life and there's nothing you can do about it), but overall IC would greatly benefit by being far less punishing in any case.

TL;DR -

Leaving is frustrating for no reason and losing so much Tel'Var feels so god awful that it's no wonder no one ever comes here outside of the event. This whole place could be a Game Design lesson in "stuff not to do unless you want your players to have a bad time".

Taleof2Cities

Zski wrote: »

TL;DR -

Leaving is frustrating for no reason and losing so much Tel'Var feels so god awful that it's no wonder no one ever comes here outside of the event. This whole place could be a Game Design lesson in "stuff not to do unless you want your players to have a bad time".

Did you know the Tel Var penalty for player kills used to be 80%, @Zski?

50% is easy street compared to what it was ...

Players can purchase the Sigils of Imperial Retreat (if they don't want to queue to a PvP campaign) to port back to their Alliance base. They're pretty cheap at 10k Alliance Points.

IC isn't for everyone, sure. But the rewards are worth the risk in my opinion.

Zski

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Zski wrote: »

TL;DR -

Leaving is frustrating for no reason and losing so much Tel'Var feels so god awful that it's no wonder no one ever comes here outside of the event. This whole place could be a Game Design lesson in "stuff not to do unless you want your players to have a bad time".

Did you know the Tel Var penalty for player kills used to be 80%, @Zski?

50% is easy street compared to what it was ...

Players can purchase the Sigils of Imperial Retreat (if they don't want to queue to a PvP campaign) to port back to their Alliance base. They're pretty cheap at 10k Alliance Points.

IC isn't for everyone, sure. But the rewards are worth the risk in my opinion.

"It used to be worse" isn't a good argument that it isn't still bad and/or couldn't be much better.

I mentioned the sigils. They're unadvertised anywhere. If I didn't even know they existed until someone told me and I've been here like 4 or 5 years, I'm unsure your average new player journeying into IC will.

RE: Your last post, I just had 45m worth of work wiped out by -

A - CC break glitching overtaxing stam and leaving me vulnerable to a boss attack
B - a snipe desync on the fourth game by some random AD.

10k Telvar gone because the game doesn't offer me functional basic mechanics one time, and because the game doesn't even register that I'm being attacked until it's too late another. I watched my health drop to 10% from a snipe sound effect, jammed my heal button, stood upright in "you're still alive" game color for 3 seconds as my character spammed Coag for 0 healing, and then dropped dead. Less than 5m total erased almost an hour of work, and in both events due to something that won't happen in a majority of functional titles.

I'm not that mad it's semi-nonfunctional: we all know it is, we're here anyway. I'm just of the opinion that the punishments this game metes out for being less than perfect when it is UNWILLING or UNABLE to offer perfection itself are poor user end experience, and may heavily contribute to why some zones or play areas are relative ghost towns. Wiping out an hour of your players' work in less than 5m isn't a good experience for anyway, and no amount of Dark Souls-esque cutthroat play mentality is going to fix that.

Telvar losses need to be minimized or this place is going to remain a frustration factory. You want to reward your players for doing things, not punish them for having the gall to attempt to engage with your content.

redspecter23

You're right about a few things. The method to leave is messed up and you hit the key point. There is an easy way to get out by just queueing for Cyrodiil. If that is not considered an exploit, they might as well add a "return to base" function that is easy to find and use. There is no point in not having it while the Cyrodiil queue exists as an option anyway.

Whatever ZOS is doing to keep IC populated is not working. I'm not sure if anyone has all the answers, but I know that the current IC is dead outside of events. I never bother going for the purpose of farming Tel Var as it could all be wiped out in a heartbeat. Not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely not something I'm interested in. If I'm in IC, it's to grab skyshards, farm leads or get some guildies the Molag Bal achievement dye.

If they want people to go there to farm Tel Var in greater numbers, they need to take a different approach or just accept that it will be lifeless unless there is an event.

Zski

redspecter23 wrote: »

I never bother going for the purpose of farming Tel Var as it could all be wiped out in a heartbeat.

I think this is actually the crux of IC's issue (outside of just...well...being older). There's more or less three kinds of players that currently engage with IC content:

1 - The farm groups.
like 8-12-24-30 whatever people stomp through it like a stampede, accrue minor telvar, and are relatively noninteractive in terms of satisfying PvP experience. Usually there's enough of them that maybe you can kite around and pick off 2 or 3, but then the other 30 catch up and either you run off or die. Mostly a goldfishing scenario.

2 - The newfriends
People that don't know any better, probably after leads or telvar for something they need. Maybe a cool polymorph or a storage box or something, who knows. Maybe just grinding out 117 CP. Probably not equipped for PvP in any meaningful fashion, and probably going to struggle with the bigger pve encounters. Will likely not return after their first venture ends in tragedy as they lose all of their telvar to:

3 - The griefer
Maybe should be named Ganker, except the actual AP returns are usually exceedingly low, as is any chance of effectively grinding telvar from it. With the current population being what it is, most of these players are in here to either fight each other, or to pick off Type 2 players. More commonly the latter. With no real material gain on the table (since telvar and AP are both typically low unless you're bombing Type 1s when theyre on flags), its the killing thats the goal. Since most of the killing is going to be de facto aimed at Type 2s, its more of a grief orientation than a gank one.

So we have a ball that minimizes PvP availability and PvE rewards, a PvEr with low return rate because their PvE adventure will almost exclusively end in frustration and tragedy, and PvPers that aren't...actually...here to PvP (unless they meant to load Cyro but misclicked).

Who is the current iteration of IC for? Who actual profits? The only thing you can actually meaningfully farm from any prolonged exposure to IC is grief (your own or someone else's).

Proposed solution: update IC rewards (both purchased and in chests), maybe make more relevant IC sets (or IC relevant sets? Major Expo in IC? Increased regen in IC? who knows. Imperial Physique is a pretty open design space), drastically lower Telvar penalties for death, drastically increase TelVar rewards for kills. Make engaging with the content rewarding, not frustrating. If I spend 5 hours in Cyrodiil and die 27 times, I still profit as long as I'm doing relevant things.

If I spend 5 hours in IC and die twice, I've totally wasted my time. Plenty of people in Cyrodiil, basically nobody in IC. This seems related.

Vizirith

Quite honestly pvp in general can be very frustrating for newer players and I understand where you are coming from. Cyro would be very different if you lost 1/2 the AP you had when you died and only gained it at the rate of tel var. But to be honest none of the rewards are worth it in my opinion and I don't set foot in there outside of the event. And that is coming from somebody who really only plays this game for the pvp. Which of course only exacerbates the problem when you really only have the 3 types of people you mentioned. Of which the griefer targets the new player because the alliance rank is low meaning its pretty safe that they don't know much about pvp= easy kill.

They need to increase the tel var gain significantly meaning more groups for newer people and more actual pvpers (some of which will defend newer players and be less likely to attack new players not doing anything).

Vizirith

X

idk

Zski wrote: »

Key takeaways after IC the past few days -

The Tel'Var punishment on death makes it literally unuseable.

Bank your Tel var. No one can touch the Tel var you have banked.

Without a risk for carrying Tel var, especially in light of the bonus for carrying more, the entire system is to simplistic to be worth having. Also, don't die.

Zski

idk wrote: »

Bank your Tel var. No one can touch the Tel var you have banked.

Without a risk for carrying Tel var, especially in light of the bonus for carrying more, the entire system is to simplistic to be worth having.

You can't bank mid-run.

Less risk =/= no risk. 10-20% Tel Var loss is still something to be avoided without only taking 1-2 deaths to totally invalidate any length of time spent in IC. 2 Deaths you're down to 25% of whatever you have hauled. This doesn't promote some sort of high risk, tense, nerve-wracking adventure - it supports squirreling away every single telvar and never attempting anything dangerous whatsoever, ever leaving the first few rooms, or ever (re?)attempting it at all. Not sure that's the play pattern you want to reinforce.

idk wrote: »

Also, don't die.

Unhelpful nonanswer that manages to totally miss the point.

edges_endgame

Zski wrote: »

Unhelpful nonanswer that manages to totally miss the point.

The point of IC is a PvP environment with Pve elements. There is really not much else to say.

GeneraLandon

What would really be helpful is a way for players to neutralize stealth.

Luckylancer

IC's system is terrible. Current system helps ganker and there are no gankers when there are no farmers. Because of this IC stays mostly empty.
People should fight for farm spots not for telvar on you. Other than that if there is no risk of losing telvar(ganker) there should not be oportunity to earn telvar.

edges_endgame wrote: »

Zski wrote: »

Unhelpful nonanswer that manages to totally miss the point.

The point of IC is a PvP environment with Pve elements. There is really not much else to say.

The point of IC is a PvP environment with Pve elements but when a ganker kills you half of your time invesment is gone. When you kill the ganker you win nothing™

VaranisArano

Tel Var without the risk-reward mechanic is just another form of gold. It would be worthless as a distinct currency.

VaranisArano

GeneraLandon wrote: »

What would really be helpful is a way for players to neutralize stealth.

Can't tell if serious or not...

SgtNuttzmeg

I have spent hundreds of hours grinding Tel Var in IC. The 50% loss is fine. The problem in my opinion is two fold. Whenever you have a pvp sphere that lacks people it is really easy to find yourself in fights that you are absolutely outgunned in and have no hope of winning. Meaning there is coordinated group 5 sweaty players and you are there by yourself. Further these boss fights are designed for groups to fight. They can be soloed and there are certain tactics you can take that make them a lot easier to fight but they are designed to be a group encounter.

I will say this from my experience people are drawn to IC whenever they see population there. If there were regular groups or zergs running around it all the time people would be all over it. Part of the problem comes down to having that initial population that draws people in. IC is a really fun zone to fight in. There are a lot of really cool places to fight that you just don't get in other environments.

I am not sure what would draw that initial group of people there but better rewards for pvp in general is long overdue.

Zski

SgtNuttzmeg wrote: »

The 50% loss is fine.

SgtNuttzmeg wrote: »

Part of the problem comes down to having that initial population that draws people in.

The 50% loss is why no one is here. Spend 45m clearing a branch, go 3/4 on gates, die once because game straight up desyncs your health. Rez, get ganked by 4 AD when I'm on the last 10% of gate 4 before simulacrum. I've now wasted 100% of my time in less than 10m. Again.

The 50% sucks and is probably the biggest reason this content is a graveyard. Nobody wants to have their work erased in 1% of the time it took to do it. It's a bad play pattern. 10-20 would still encourage battling while not discouraging "Being here at all".

Current system doesn't even encourage battling, it encourages gankers that can't hack it in cyrodiil. Can't battle because battling risks losing the entirety of your stash in 2 seconds and then you've wasted your whole day. Again.

renne

SgtNuttzmeg wrote: »

IC is a really fun zone to fight in. There are a lot of really cool places to fight that you just don't get in other environments.

I am not sure what would draw that initial group of people there but better rewards for pvp in general is long overdue.

Absolutely this. IC is a neat as hell zone and it's really disappointing how vacant it is. I do wonder how much of that really is because the pull of what you can buy with tel var just... aren't that great. It makes me wonder what people go into Cyro for vs like... what they would ACTUALLY go into IC for.

Grimlok_S

I'm not really sure I understand your problem with IC. I play there often and enjoy the smaller scale pvp and the TelVar sustains my potion addiction.

The entire zone is risk-reward based. There are diminishing Tel-Var gains for every member you bring with you. To that end, you'll stand a better chance in combat with more friends, but make less TV.

Want to solo bosses and make great gains? Go for it.
Want to bring 23 friends so 12 of them can earn TelVar per boss? Alright I guess.

If you enter a PvP zone you need to prepare yourself to face PvP, whatever that looks like.

Your argument against Schrodinger's ganker is kind of awkward. If you are dying to sub-par gankers, who is at fault?

There are a number of ways to counter gankers. More health? More resistance? Stealth counters? Reflect abilities?

Consider your build and kit choices.

Kwoung

Cyrodiil is a huge amount of fun and even though I pretty much suck at PVP, I can have a great time there, can earn rewards via numerous activities and do so almost daily. Dying in Cyrodiil has almost no downside, the most notable being time to return to your group if you died in a bad spot and have to release.

IC on the other hand, is an exercise in frustration and I have yet to go there, regardless of group size/skill, and leave feeling like I had fun. The whole design of IC is to leave on a bad note.

Yay, I am having fun, I collected 2k Telvar in an hour+ of running around killing bosses in a small group. Basically a worthless use of my time from a profit point of view, as almost every other activity in the game rewards 2-10x as much when you convert to gold. Then I die to a bug, glitch, or lack of skill, now my 1/2 reward is 1/4 reward, opps I fell off the platform trying to return to base due to another glitch and got ganked, now its 1/8 the reward... whoa, I am really having fun now, can't wait to come back if I can just figure out how to leave this god forsaken place first!
\
Heck, even the door in the base isn't highlighted on the map as a friggin exit, how much frustration has that simple oversight caused players?

Kwoung

Just to make the risk/reward a bit clearer...

In 1 hour I can harvest about 100,000 gold worth of crafting mats with little effort and zero risk.

Lets say through normal IC play you are farming Telvar, it would take about 2-4 hours maybe to earn 5k Telvar, feel free to correct me, which is enough to purchase a single Hakeijo, which you can now sell for 15,000 gold.

So basically, what you took hours to earn, I can spend 3-4 minutes of harvesting craft mats to make enough gold to be able to buy it from you. That seems a bit off too me and totally invalidates any risk/reward arguments for going to IC.

If you could earn 3,000 gold/min in IC, then the risk "might" be worth the reward and people would flock there. Until then, they will continue to make builds and spend gold to speed run Craglorn for craft mats and the bonus Nirncrux.

jaws343

Zski wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Bank your Tel var. No one can touch the Tel var you have banked.

Without a risk for carrying Tel var, especially in light of the bonus for carrying more, the entire system is to simplistic to be worth having.

You can't bank mid-run.

Less risk =/= no risk. 10-20% Tel Var loss is still something to be avoided without only taking 1-2 deaths to totally invalidate any length of time spent in IC. 2 Deaths you're down to 25% of whatever you have hauled. This doesn't promote some sort of high risk, tense, nerve-wracking adventure - it supports squirreling away every single telvar and never attempting anything dangerous whatsoever, ever leaving the first few rooms, or ever (re?)attempting it at all. Not sure that's the play pattern you want to reinforce.

idk wrote: »

Also, don't die.

Unhelpful nonanswer that manages to totally miss the point.

Instead of 50% loss, treat it as reduced gain. You gain 50% of the tel var you pick up. Every time you die, bank it. If zos removed the penalty of loss on death and reduced the amount you could gain by 50% you would literally have the same amount of tel var. The difference is the current set up rewards you for surviving back to your base with double tel var.

Imperial City is fine. Just because you can't cake walk your way through it doesn't mean it needs to be changed.

Kwoung

jaws343 wrote: »

The difference is the current set up rewards you for surviving back to your base with double tel var.

Imperial City is fine. Just because you can't cake walk your way through it doesn't mean it needs to be changed.

IC is probably the least rewarding activity in the game for time spent doing it, even if you make it back to the base and bank everything you earned. It isn't "fine" by a long shot.

VaranisArano

Kwoung wrote: »

Just to make the risk/reward a bit clearer...

In 1 hour I can harvest about 100,000 gold worth of crafting mats with little effort and zero risk.

Lets say through normal IC play you are farming Telvar, it would take about 2-4 hours maybe to earn 5k Telvar, feel free to correct me, which is enough to purchase a single Hakeijo, which you can now sell for 15,000 gold.

So basically, what you took hours to earn, I can spend 3-4 minutes of harvesting craft mats to make enough gold to be able to buy it from you. That seems a bit off too me and totally invalidates any risk/reward arguments for going to IC.

If you could earn 3,000 gold/min in IC, then the risk "might" be worth the reward and people would flock there. Until then, they will continue to make builds and spend gold to speed run Craglorn for craft mats and the bonus Nirncrux.

You know what rewards get people flocking to Imperial City?

Event Tickets
Event rewards
Leads
Double Tel Var

You know what none of those do?
Make people who don't like PVP enjoy being in a PvPvE zone.

We already know what happens when you add better rewards to IC. Every year PVEers head into IC for the Imperial City Celebration, complaining bitterly about it the whole time.

Kwoung

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Just to make the risk/reward a bit clearer...

In 1 hour I can harvest about 100,000 gold worth of crafting mats with little effort and zero risk.

Lets say through normal IC play you are farming Telvar, it would take about 2-4 hours maybe to earn 5k Telvar, feel free to correct me, which is enough to purchase a single Hakeijo, which you can now sell for 15,000 gold.

So basically, what you took hours to earn, I can spend 3-4 minutes of harvesting craft mats to make enough gold to be able to buy it from you. That seems a bit off too me and totally invalidates any risk/reward arguments for going to IC.

If you could earn 3,000 gold/min in IC, then the risk "might" be worth the reward and people would flock there. Until then, they will continue to make builds and spend gold to speed run Craglorn for craft mats and the bonus Nirncrux.

You know what rewards get people flocking to Imperial City?

Event Tickets
Event rewards
Leads
Double Tel Var

You know what none of those do?
Make people who don't like PVP enjoy being in a PvPvE zone.

We already know what happens when you add better rewards to IC. Every year PVEers head into IC for the Imperial City Celebration, complaining bitterly about it the whole time.

You are correct, the events bring a slew of untrained and unprepared players to IC to be farmed. But to my point, if IC was actually rewarding all the time, players would take the time to figure out how to get those rewards in the most expedient method possible, as they have done in so many other parts of the game. A great number of players would learn to get in, survive and get out with their rewards, IF there were rewards worth getting. Which is why I said it would basically need to be double the rewards you could earn from the many no to low risk activities in the game.

If I could make 200K/hr in IC, but risk losing half of it, that would equate to me going farming for mats. BUT, if I could manage to escape without losing half of it, I come out way ahead! That is the type of risk/reward that would drive people to IC.

Grimlok_S

Kwoung wrote: »

Just to make the risk/reward a bit clearer...

In 1 hour I can harvest about 100,000 gold worth of crafting mats with little effort and zero risk.

Lets say through normal IC play you are farming Telvar, it would take about 2-4 hours maybe to earn 5k Telvar, feel free to correct me, which is enough to purchase a single Hakeijo, which you can now sell for 15,000 gold.

So basically, what you took hours to earn, I can spend 3-4 minutes of harvesting craft mats to make enough gold to be able to buy it from you. That seems a bit off too me and totally invalidates any risk/reward arguments for going to IC.

If you could earn 3,000 gold/min in IC, then the risk "might" be worth the reward and people would flock there. Until then, they will continue to make builds and spend gold to speed run Craglorn for craft mats and the bonus Nirncrux.

The reward scales the more you risk.

If you are solo farming bosses with 10000 or more telvar, you receive 4x the rewards per boss and even more if you hold all the districts. Each boss can be killed once every 15 minutes.

If I'm remembering correctly, the reward for a solo kill in optimal conditions is in the range of 12000 TV. ~36Kgold by your Hakeijo pricing.

6 bosses, 4 laps an hour, max earning potential of ~850Kgold/hr if your preferred method is Hakeijos @ 15Kgold

This quickly drops of course when allies are present, or you have to reclaim flags/contest districts, making Craglorn flower picking a consistent alternative.

Personally, I enjoy PvPing my way to the farm more than the farm itself.

YMMV.

Kwoung

But how likely is it to hit that max potential and what is the entry fee? By entry fee, I mean how good do you have to be at PVP to avoid being ganked and basically losing it, as if you have to start with a 10K Telvar pot on you and are taking a big risk right out of the gate.

Not to be argumentative, but it seems like hitting that theoretical income, which is in fact quite impressive, is near impossible unless IC is completely empty except for you, or you are the best 1vXer in the world. If IC was actually filled with players, the flags and districts would be in constant flux, you wouldn't make it to most of the bosses in time or have competition when you did, which would affect those numbers considerably.

There would need to be a formula based on a full instance of a mixed group of players of various levels and what could actually be accomplished. If the noob saw that he/she could reasonably achieve the level required to make it worthwhile, then it would happen. Most people don't expect to be "the best", but do expect if they take the time to learn, get geared properly, they have a shot at it.

VaranisArano

Kwoung wrote: »

But how likely is it to hit that max potential and what is the entry fee? By entry fee, I mean how good do you have to be at PVP to avoid being ganked and basically losing it, as if you have to start with a 10K Telvar pot on you and are taking a big risk right out of the gate.

Not to be argumentative, but it seems like hitting that theoretical income, which is in fact quite impressive, is near impossible unless IC is completely empty except for you, or you are the best 1vXer in the world. If IC was actually filled with players, the flags and districts would be in constant flux, you wouldn't make it to most of the bosses in time or have competition when you did, which would affect those numbers considerably.

There would need to be a formula based on a full instance of a mixed group of players of various levels and what could actually be accomplished. If the noob saw that he/she could reasonably achieve the level required to make it worthwhile, then it would happen. Most people don't expect to be "the best", but do expect if they take the time to learn, get geared properly, they have a shot at it.

You seem to want to make Imperial City equal to Craglorn farming, which at its most profitable only requires max ranks in 4 crafts, farming and speed champion points, a speed build, nobody on your farming route, and a whole lot of luck.

Its been a while since I actually tracked the monetary value of what I made in an hour of Craglorn farming, but when I did, I was closer to 50-60k an hour. I'd have to get very lucky with the potent nirncrux drops to make 100k an hour. Obviously that was a while back, so maybe mat price variations or our different farming routes account for the difference.


In any case, I don't think there's any point to debating the profit-per-hour of Imperial City vs Craglorn. Craglorn is always going to be the easier farm for new players to get into because you can get nirncrux as a level 3 straight out of the tutorial and you don't have to do anything more than dodge mobs for a no-risk run. (I know, I made my fortune on nirncrux as a Vet 4 player back when Craglorn was a Vet 11 adventure zone and the wasps would straight up murder you.)

Craglorn farming is a little ridiculous in that regard. The buy-in is very low, and the rewards scale very well as you level/rank up crafting. All you have to do is running around picking up resources - that's something new players learn to do quickly.

PvPvE zones like Imperial City will never, ever have that level of rewards for that low of risk. The buy-in to hit the level where the rewards really start to scale with experience and skill, is quite high. Then add in that most players don't like PVP enough to learn to be even competent at it. So you'd have to vastly increase the rewards...which would then mostly benefit the players who actually know how to PVP, not the players who merely want the rewards, but don't want the risk of PVP.


"Oh, but if we add better rewards, more players will learn so they can get them!"

That's why, when ZOS put leads in Imperial City, everyone prepared for PvPvE before farming the bosses, right?

Haha, haha, no they did not. They complained bitterly that PVP happened in a PvPvE zone when all they wanted was the lead. They begged for PVE-only versions of Imperial City so they could farm in peace and quiet.

And that's why this and other threads are complaining that the risk of losing their Tel Var is just too punishing. They don't want greater rewards for the current level of risk (as you seem to be suggesting). They want the current rewards for none of the risk. Better rewards might get players into PVP kicking and screaming all the way, but it doesn't make them like it.

And personally, I'd rather look at solutions that appeal to players who actually like Imperial City, as opposed to bribing PVEers who hate it.

renne

VaranisArano wrote: »

And personally, I'd rather look at solutions that appeal to players who actually like Imperial City, as opposed to bribing PVEers who hate it.

This, but for me "players who actually like PvP" not 'Imperial City'. Get more people in there, not just the handful of people who like IC but don't go there for whatever reason.

VaranisArano

renne wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

And personally, I'd rather look at solutions that appeal to players who actually like Imperial City, as opposed to bribing PVEers who hate it.

This, but for me "players who actually like PvP" not 'Imperial City'. Get more people in there, not just the handful of people who like IC but don't go there for whatever reason.

Sure, that's a good edit. There's plenty of people who like PVP in Battlegrounds and Cyrodiil who then don't go to Imperial City.

Personally, I figure that's because the rewards for actually PVPing in IC are obtained easiest via ganking, so the regular play there rewards a comparatively limited segment of players. Everyone else gets their PVP itch scratched elsewhere except during events.

I have read some requests for adding campaign rewards back to Imperial City. I wonder if an IC-themed campaign with its own rewards would do anything for PVPers?

Tommy_The_Gun

Tbh. If mixed PvP & PvE was good idea and If player's reception was good - we would have more of it by now.

But we didn't - which leads me to believe that in fact it was terrible idea... Cyro is kinda different story as in itself, Cyrodiil is a huge zone and that leaves room for both PvP & PvE to work to some degree.

Also, seeing how IC was turned into "free" DLC, to attract more potential players - it kinda indicates that even players who bought it initially kinda left it (either because they done it all, or it really is the most toxic zone in the game, even for people who used to PvP).

Edit:
The only good thing that IC did was to introduce the "vaults" mechanics with key fragments imho.
It is kinda cool that you can do different content to farm group dungeon sets (in a case you don't like PvE dungeons). We should really have more of this kind of mechanics in other dungeons.

Sephyr

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Tbh. If mixed PvP & PvE was good idea and If player's reception was good - we would have more of it by now.

But we didn't - which leads me to believe that in fact it was terrible idea... Cyro is kinda different story as in itself, Cyrodiil is a huge zone and that leaves room for both PvP & PvE to work to some degree.

Also, seeing how IC was turned into "free" DLC, to attract more potential players - it kinda indicates that even players who bought it initially kinda left it (either because they done it all, or it really is the most toxic zone in the game, even for people who used to PvP).

Edit:
The only good thing that IC did was to introduce the "vaults" mechanics with key fragments imho.
It is kinda cool that you can do different content to farm group dungeon sets (in a case you don't like PvE dungeons). We should really have more of this kind of mechanics in other dungeons.

There was a time when I really loved it. But after the implementation of districts, it's really just went downhill where most of us stayed in the sewers because we didn't want to deal with the zerg trains. Tbh, I only go there for events and it's always for the tickets. Nothing more.