Cyrodill – Strategies, Tactics and the Need for Alliances (N/A – Grey Host)

Kamchuk

ZOS – a suggestion for your consideration:

First – let me state that this suggestion applies to the 30 Day, CP locked campaign. In this campaign, most of the players of all factions are playing for the “Win” after this 30 day grind. That isn’t 100% of the players, but most of the faction players playing this campaign. These are the players that are already millionaires, and have lots of the elite gear, so the end of campaign rewards are not that important. Also most of these same players are already at or near the top of the alliance points system. AP is nice but not as important. The fun for these players, and myself, is in the awesome fights, and the strategy and the tactics used in order to get that “W”. Even after the campaign has ended, some of the smack talk between factions in both zone chat and in this forum is hilarious. It all adds to the absolute enjoyment of this game.

There are so many threads complaining about the mismatches due to populations imbalances, “night capping”, ball groups, PVDooring, ZERGs, Proc sets, Hammer, and Low Pop Bonus, (which is my own pet peeve). I know I missed quite a few more. In my opinion though – ALL of these are legitimate strategies and tactics in a warfare type game such that we have in this campaign. This is a global game. I have Guild Mates in Europe and Oceana. So, there will always be population imbalances and “night capping” based on the time of day. PVDooring, and Zergs are all part of “The Art of War”, (Sun Tzu). Ball groups and the hammer are all part of the “Special Forces” operations with their own unique talents that are part of tactics. DC has shown their expertise in this area. (Even trolls and traitors are part of a warfare type game.)

I think that the secret of obtaining close scores, spectacular fights, and competitive campaigns and to counter the population imbalances, is by creating Alliances. There are a lot of threads complaining about “Green Team”, “Purple Team”, and “Orange Team”, but I think these are necessary strategies. The 2nd and 3rd place factions should play against the 1st place faction to cut their lead. The 1st place faction should play against the 2nd place faction to increase their distance in points. If my faction (EP) is in the lead and has Full POP (i.e. 4 Bars), DC has 3 Bars while AD has 2, then “Team Green“ has 5 bars to 4. If DC and AD can take advantage of combining Ball Groups, Zergs and PVDoor tactics, while maintaining “Team Green”, then there is no way EP will stay in 1st. (This applies to whichever faction is in 1st place).

The real problem is creating such an Alliance, which is the point of this suggestion. Mostly it is informal. You look at the map, see that all the fighting is on the 1st place faction’s side of the map, and just go with it. What there needs to be is a way to COMMUNICATE with the other factions, either through an announcement type message or Special chat message. It could only be done by a 2nd or 3rd place faction member. If the invitation is accepted by the other faction then it stays in effect until either it is broken by flagging one of the Alliance faction’s RSS or Keeps, or by the 1st place faction dropping to 2nd. I would also suggest to ZOS that the Faction color for each player in the Alliance change to the combined Alliance colors for the duration of that alliance, (i.e. my Red EP indicator would change to an Orange Indicator for an alliance with AD). New players logging in would instantly know they are in an Alliance. But I think that would be too hard for ZOS. It would also be great if there was an Alliance zone chat for all the Faction members of the Alliance in order to communicate for coordination of activities. But that too would probably be too hard for ZOS.

All ZOS really has to do is to open up a means of communication. That would be extraordinarily easy.

If (Faction == SECOND_PLACE) OR (Faction == THIRD_PLACE) then
ANNOUNCMENT_ABILITY = TRUE;
If (ANNOUNCMENT_ABILITY == TRUE) AND (RESPONSE == YES) then
ALLIANCE = TRUE;

Bam: Team Green, Team Orange or (if hell freezes over) Team Purple is formed.

This will NOT solve the performance issues that irritate the S#!t out of us. (That could be resolved by eliminating all groups and AOE in Cyrodill). But I think this guarantees all future campaigns are close enough that the in last 24 hours will see a massive sprint to the finish line. For the WIN.

OK – time for your critique…

Joy_Division

Well, the biggest issue I can think is that you are taking something that tons of people complain about and actually implementing it in the game to be a feature.

Just because a faction is in first place does not mean in every situation it is advantageous to fight against them or ally with the other faction.

Plus, I don;t have any interest in having some alliance war general or know it all make an alliance that effects the entire map and everyone playing in it because they think they have the strategic brilliance of Napoleon reincarnated or something. No thanks, I'll make my own decision of where to go, who to attack, and when.

Although I do think the number of times a supposed "team green" or "purple alliance" happens is about 5% of what is claimed, it's extremely frustrating when it indeed happens. The first place faction does not get any additional players or bonuses to hold off a formalized double team in which the other alliances don't even amount to a threat to take any of their stuff or even gank. It's extremely punishing for what, having slightly less terrible PuGs.

The very fact that all of a sudden rules and mechanical changes are being proposed to either incentivize or force players to act in ways the tri faction format was intended is strong evidence that your initial assumption is not correct: many players just don;t care about who finishes 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. If players aren;t voluntarily acting in ways they "should" insofar as AvAvA would ostensibly dictate, there's going to be a lot of complaints that rules or mechanics out of their control are either punishing them for what they think is the right choice or all of a sudden having their color turn green because someone else made the call. This does not eve consider the potential abuse of this mechanic considering the so called legion of "spais," "trolls," "faction hoppers," and people who have multiple accounts who apparently have nothing else better to do than abuse and exploit PvP mechanics.

I don't mean to throw so much proverbial cold water because you're just trying to fix something that ZOs has gone years without even trying to address. But these issues are deeply rooted in a flawed map and archaic rewards system that need a PvP full time PvP developer, which ZOs has not had going on more than two years now, to even begin to reform. If the devs don;t care about AvAvA, it's hard for me to take it seriously. That's why I pay them money; it's hard not to get jaded or feel that my personal investment in this aspect of the game means absolutely nothing to ZOs.

biminirwb17_ESO

EP could help by taking Chalman occasionally

Armethius

oh yes delightful when two coordinated AD and DC mini groups camp a keep and don’t engage eachother. sportsmanship at its best.

Theignson

Zerodil is broken, AvA doesn't work, and the performance is lousy.

What they need is a complete revamp

CooloutAC

Kamchuk wrote: »

ZOS – a suggestion for your consideration:

First – let me state that this suggestion applies to the 30 Day, CP locked campaign. In this campaign, most of the players of all factions are playing for the “Win” after this 30 day grind. That isn’t 100% of the players, but most of the faction players playing this campaign. These are the players that are already millionaires, and have lots of the elite gear, so the end of campaign rewards are not that important. Also most of these same players are already at or near the top of the alliance points system. AP is nice but not as important. The fun for these players, and myself, is in the awesome fights, and the strategy and the tactics used in order to get that “W”. Even after the campaign has ended, some of the smack talk between factions in both zone chat and in this forum is hilarious. It all adds to the absolute enjoyment of this game.

There are so many threads complaining about the mismatches due to populations imbalances, “night capping”, ball groups, PVDooring, ZERGs, Proc sets, Hammer, and Low Pop Bonus, (which is my own pet peeve). I know I missed quite a few more. In my opinion though – ALL of these are legitimate strategies and tactics in a warfare type game such that we have in this campaign. This is a global game. I have Guild Mates in Europe and Oceana. So, there will always be population imbalances and “night capping” based on the time of day. PVDooring, and Zergs are all part of “The Art of War”, (Sun Tzu). Ball groups and the hammer are all part of the “Special Forces” operations with their own unique talents that are part of tactics. DC has shown their expertise in this area. (Even trolls and traitors are part of a warfare type game.)

I think that the secret of obtaining close scores, spectacular fights, and competitive campaigns and to counter the population imbalances, is by creating Alliances. There are a lot of threads complaining about “Green Team”, “Purple Team”, and “Orange Team”, but I think these are necessary strategies. The 2nd and 3rd place factions should play against the 1st place faction to cut their lead. The 1st place faction should play against the 2nd place faction to increase their distance in points. If my faction (EP) is in the lead and has Full POP (i.e. 4 Bars), DC has 3 Bars while AD has 2, then “Team Green“ has 5 bars to 4. If DC and AD can take advantage of combining Ball Groups, Zergs and PVDoor tactics, while maintaining “Team Green”, then there is no way EP will stay in 1st. (This applies to whichever faction is in 1st place).

The real problem is creating such an Alliance, which is the point of this suggestion. Mostly it is informal. You look at the map, see that all the fighting is on the 1st place faction’s side of the map, and just go with it. What there needs to be is a way to COMMUNICATE with the other factions, either through an announcement type message or Special chat message. It could only be done by a 2nd or 3rd place faction member. If the invitation is accepted by the other faction then it stays in effect until either it is broken by flagging one of the Alliance faction’s RSS or Keeps, or by the 1st place faction dropping to 2nd. I would also suggest to ZOS that the Faction color for each player in the Alliance change to the combined Alliance colors for the duration of that alliance, (i.e. my Red EP indicator would change to an Orange Indicator for an alliance with AD). New players logging in would instantly know they are in an Alliance. But I think that would be too hard for ZOS. It would also be great if there was an Alliance zone chat for all the Faction members of the Alliance in order to communicate for coordination of activities. But that too would probably be too hard for ZOS.

All ZOS really has to do is to open up a means of communication. That would be extraordinarily easy.

If (Faction == SECOND_PLACE) OR (Faction == THIRD_PLACE) then
ANNOUNCMENT_ABILITY = TRUE;
If (ANNOUNCMENT_ABILITY == TRUE) AND (RESPONSE == YES) then
ALLIANCE = TRUE;

Bam: Team Green, Team Orange or (if hell freezes over) Team Purple is formed.

This will NOT solve the performance issues that irritate the S#!t out of us. (That could be resolved by eliminating all groups and AOE in Cyrodill). But I think this guarantees all future campaigns are close enough that the in last 24 hours will see a massive sprint to the finish line. For the WIN.

OK – time for your critique…

I whole heartedly disagree. Because as many threads have pointed out. 2 out of 3 times it ends up with the top 2 teams just pwning and ragequitting the 3rd place team. What happens is the exact opposite of what you are implying and expect to happen. This is because you are not accounting for human nature.

CooloutAC

Armethius wrote: »

oh yes delightful when two coordinated AD and DC mini groups camp a keep and don’t engage eachother. sportsmanship at its best.

^ this lol. i love the /sarcasm

I'm constantly quitting guilds and groups who do this. IMO it undermines the whole game and ruins it for people who want to play as intended. But like I said regarding human nature in my above pervious comment. I like the fact some of th campaigns are unlocked so I can always join the lowest pop at the time to try and make things more fair. But because of human nature, it ends up being a detriment to the game and people most of the time exploit that option to undermine the teams and most will join the winning side cause it will be easier to gain points and kills.

I personally don't think there is anything zos can do about this, it really boils down the community. But making what i consider cheating an actual feature of the game is not the answer imo.

xDeusEJRx

Let's just assume for a second that this did happen. Two factions at the bottom of the board decide to work together and you get "Team orange", etc. What happens when you have the people in your alliance who DON'T care about winning the campaign and all they care for is fighting. What if they take a small scale group of 5 people or maybe 8 people and flag their keeps while they're completely exposed because they formed this "trust" with that faction. This does not take into account that there's a big enough community of PVPers who instead of caring about the campaign score, care more about fighting. While sure you acknowledged that 100% of players don't play to win, but that doesn't change the fact that AP farmers can just group up and go troll. There are some people on ps4 na who will just repeatedly go flag the same keep but don't try capturing it to farm kills on people who show up, what about people who do that?