Cyrodil PvP. The forgotten realm

ReggaeRanger

It was long ago that I started my journey in ESO. About 7 years. After doing hundreds if not thousands of.quest dungeons and trials all roads lead to the heart of Tamriel, Cyrodil. Feeling yet underprepared, I continued to level until I felt I had all the champion points needed to venture into cyrodil and not get slammed. Today I am a 5 star general after long hours in Cyrodil, more than in any zone in the game. Yet after all this time in the zone, it feels like this zone is the most neglected in the game. If this is suppose to be end game and where all veteran players that have spent so much time and money converge , why is it the least developed, featureless, and neglected zone in the game ?
All updates to the zone have to do with class and balance changes but nothing new to explore, do, or look forward to.

Whatever happen to siege towers? Npc keep bosses? Dragons? New weapons of destruction or defense? Even some variety in the architecture of the keeps? . They all look the same even though there are three factions with various ethnic architectures.

It is disappointing how forgotten this realm has become.

OBJnoob

Well, I kinda have a different perspective.

I agree that Cyrodiil is largely neglected, but I really don't care about changes to scenery or really the map in general. I don't really care about "new" content either, whatever that might mean. I just wish they would fix bugs and tinker with balance on like a monthly basis.

Brakkish

OP, you have valid questions for sure. And they have been asked in a variety of forms, for a number of years. The result is the unchanged state we've had for years.

Deductive reasoning leaves: We're likely to never see any changes to current state of PVP, Cyrodil, IC, or BGs. Maintenance mode/life support.

Also: "In before" this gets mod moved to the abyss of the very much less traffic'd / visited / viewed, out of sight, out of mind, PVP sections.

SaffronCitrusflower

ReggaeRanger wrote: »

It was long ago that I started my journey in ESO. About 7 years. After doing hundreds if not thousands of.quest dungeons and trials all roads lead to the heart of Tamriel, Cyrodil. Feeling yet underprepared, I continued to level until I felt I had all the champion points needed to venture into cyrodil and not get slammed. Today I am a 5 star general after long hours in Cyrodil, more than in any zone in the game. Yet after all this time in the zone, it feels like this zone is the most neglected in the game. If this is suppose to be end game and where all veteran players that have spent so much time and money converge , why is it the least developed, featureless, and neglected zone in the game ?
All updates to the zone have to do with class and balance changes but nothing new to explore, do, or look forward to.

Whatever happen to siege towers? Npc keep bosses? Dragons? New weapons of destruction or defense? Even some variety in the architecture of the keeps? . They all look the same even though there are three factions with various ethnic architectures.

It is disappointing how forgotten this realm has become.

But they have made significant changes to Cyrodiil in the last few years. They've lowered the population cap to about 80/faction and cut the group size down to 12 from 24.

Obviously these are not the kinds of changes those of us who play ESO for the PvP experience were looking for, but these changes are a foreshadowing of what we should expect in the future.

ArchMikem

I don't view Cyrodiil PvP as the Endgame. Competitive Multiplayer has always been kept separate from Single/Coop Multiplayer. PvP is a separate gamemode to PvE, and PvE is ESO's main Gamemode, and I KNOW many of you would love to argue that, but it's just simply truth based on content saturation, which means ESO's true Endgame was meant to be 12 person Trials, and 1 to 4 person Arenas. PvP is just a separate thing players can take part in.

That said doesn't diminish the fact PvP has been neglected. They were on an okay track releasing new Battleground maps, but that didn't last long, and Cyrodiil hasn't been touched at all since I think they made the Towns into capturable objectives, and added a couple new Outposts. I will agree, the PvP player base could use a bone or several, but I don't call it ESO's true Endgame content.

SaffronCitrusflower

ArchMikem wrote: »

I don't view Cyrodiil PvP as the Endgame. Competitive Multiplayer has always been kept separate from Single/Coop Multiplayer. PvP is a separate gamemode to PvE, and PvE is ESO's main Gamemode, and I KNOW many of you would love to argue that, but it's just simply truth based on content saturation, which means ESO's true Endgame was meant to be 12 person Trials, and 1 to 4 person Arenas. PvP is just a separate thing players can take part in.

That said doesn't diminish the fact PvP has been neglected. They were on an okay track releasing new Battleground maps, but that didn't last long, and Cyrodiil hasn't been touched at all since I think they made the Towns into capturable objectives, and added a couple new Outposts. I will agree, the PvP player base could use a bone or several, but I don't call it ESO's true Endgame content.

According to the back of the box Cyrodiil is the end game activity.

OBJnoob

Dolmens could be the end-game activity and it still wouldn't change the fact that PvP is neglected.

It's kinda weird trying to ask for the game to evolve and upgrade while holding it to the standards of a 10 year old box, isn't it?

It isn't the crux of the issue. PvP is neglected. It doesn't need to be the #1 priority it just needs some love.

chessalavakia_ESO

My guess is it's a mix of lack of population, engine limitations, optimization of players, combined with the PvP populations dislike of change.

For example, I'm unsure if ESO's engine can actually handle having a bunch of people inside a moving object in a potentially laggy situation which would put a damper on the capabilities of a siege tower.

If it couldn't do that, you'd basically need to push it in like a ram (or just deploy at the base of the wall) while outside it then hit a key to get moved up to the top of the wall and hope that the wall location you get sent to isn't overloaded with siege that immediately kills you.

Then, you'd either take the fort from the inside via said tower or they'd need to add an area you could interact with that would open the doors if you interacted for long enough.

Outside of locations where you wanted to breech before actually flagging I'm not sure that would be very useful and those situations would likely produce complaints.

darvaria

Trials and PVP are NOT priorities. They say only 5% of the ESO player base participate in either one of these.

I just wish we could get a 12x12 or 20x20 battle ground. I am sick of always playing 2v1 or 1v2 teams.

Housing takes priority over both Trials and PVP. I would say that is probably the end game here.

TaSheen

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

I don't view Cyrodiil PvP as the Endgame. Competitive Multiplayer has always been kept separate from Single/Coop Multiplayer. PvP is a separate gamemode to PvE, and PvE is ESO's main Gamemode, and I KNOW many of you would love to argue that, but it's just simply truth based on content saturation, which means ESO's true Endgame was meant to be 12 person Trials, and 1 to 4 person Arenas. PvP is just a separate thing players can take part in.

That said doesn't diminish the fact PvP has been neglected. They were on an okay track releasing new Battleground maps, but that didn't last long, and Cyrodiil hasn't been touched at all since I think they made the Towns into capturable objectives, and added a couple new Outposts. I will agree, the PvP player base could use a bone or several, but I don't call it ESO's true Endgame content.

According to the back of the box Cyrodiil is the end game activity.

That was then. This is now. The moment is never the same twice.

Whatevver the devs had in mind in the beginning, the playerbase they wound up with obviated the initial situation. It seems they are not willing to resurrect the early intent.

I have always held out hope that pvp would get updates. Doesn't seem like anything the devs are willing to consider. Sad. But to be fully honest, personally I have no interest in pvp at all. I do still wish those who are focused on pvp would get something....

Tyrant_Tim

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

This is the game we need.

Back in vanilla you would see hundreds of players per fight, ballgroups killed that, and instead of fixing it, it keeps getting encouraged.

Although this is an MMO, most people like to play in small groups and actually visually see their contribution rather than rolling around in groups of 12.

Syiccal

What people forget is the game at launch was marketed as mass pvp set in elders scrolls world, its what they bigged up and yet slowly over time the game we all bought for that reason has became a pve game with pvp mostly forgotten about

Turtle_Bot

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

My guess is it's a mix of lack of population, engine limitations, optimization of players, combined with the PvP populations dislike of change.

For example, I'm unsure if ESO's engine can actually handle having a bunch of people inside a moving object in a potentially laggy situation which would put a damper on the capabilities of a siege tower.

If it couldn't do that, you'd basically need to push it in like a ram (or just deploy at the base of the wall) while outside it then hit a key to get moved up to the top of the wall and hope that the wall location you get sent to isn't overloaded with siege that immediately kills you.

Then, you'd either take the fort from the inside via said tower or they'd need to add an area you could interact with that would open the doors if you interacted for long enough.

Outside of locations where you wanted to breech before actually flagging I'm not sure that would be very useful and those situations would likely produce complaints.

A siege tower would be an interesting addition for sure, it would require some specific balancing implementing but would be interesting to see what they could come up with for something like this.

Maybe make it so that it can only be used when a wall/door is already open but it can be used on a full health wall to allow another way in (but only for the outer walls) and it could have a counter siege like escape tunnel or something. (These are just ideas, but could be interesting to see what could be done).

SaffronCitrusflower

OBJnoob wrote: »

Dolmens could be the end-game activity and it still wouldn't change the fact that PvP is neglected.

It's kinda weird trying to ask for the game to evolve and upgrade while holding it to the standards of a 10 year old box, isn't it?

It isn't the crux of the issue. PvP is neglected. It doesn't need to be the #1 priority it just needs some love.

It's totally reasonable to expect ZOS to uphold their commitments they made to the player base when the game was released; totally reasonable in every respect and regard. It's totally reasonable to expect everyone to fulfill the commitments they make, especially when money is involved. Companies are obligated to uphold their commitments to their customers. Always.

TaSheen wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

I don't view Cyrodiil PvP as the Endgame. Competitive Multiplayer has always been kept separate from Single/Coop Multiplayer. PvP is a separate gamemode to PvE, and PvE is ESO's main Gamemode, and I KNOW many of you would love to argue that, but it's just simply truth based on content saturation, which means ESO's true Endgame was meant to be 12 person Trials, and 1 to 4 person Arenas. PvP is just a separate thing players can take part in.

That said doesn't diminish the fact PvP has been neglected. They were on an okay track releasing new Battleground maps, but that didn't last long, and Cyrodiil hasn't been touched at all since I think they made the Towns into capturable objectives, and added a couple new Outposts. I will agree, the PvP player base could use a bone or several, but I don't call it ESO's true Endgame content.

According to the back of the box Cyrodiil is the end game activity.

That was then. This is now. The moment is never the same twice.

Whatevver the devs had in mind in the beginning, the playerbase they wound up with obviated the initial situation. It seems they are not willing to resurrect the early intent.

I have always held out hope that pvp would get updates. Doesn't seem like anything the devs are willing to consider. Sad. But to be fully honest, personally I have no interest in pvp at all. I do still wish those who are focused on pvp would get something....

Jaraal

Wandering world bosses or dragons with good loot (including AP) that drop down in in front of keeps. Temporary powerups that give Emp type buffs that are random ground spawns, similar to the glowing green books. New artifact weapons. New siege types. Add 3 new outposts, either in the center of the tri-keep triangle, or along the shore between the ring keeps. More Ayleid wells with variations that give different buff types. Big ticket AP items, such as mounts and houses.

Lots of cool stuff they could add.

Rohamad_Ali

PvP is so messed up I do not know how they could mess it up further so why not maybe who knows and stuff.

Starlight_Knight

When you think about it they actually took a lot out of Cyro as well.. Remember when you could siege the top of a keep tower off and all the centre stairs out, - remember destructible resource towers.
Remember when they said we were getting Auriels bow as well as Volendrung..
I would say "forgoton" is a kind way of putting it,

PVP in general is so very neglected. we haven't even had a battle ground map in years, i mean they cant be hard to do can they ?
Mind you saying that have you been in a bg recently - so many vatershran dw builds its daft, dont even see any class skills in death recaps anymore

SeaGtGruff

I seriously doubt that ZOS has given up on PvP. I'm sure that if they could wave a wand and magically fix every issue plaguing Cyrodiil, they would do so in a heartbeat.

Last night one of my young nephews saw ESO on my MacBook Air and wanted to check it out. After verifying that it's rated M, looking up the reasons the ESRB gave for their decision, and determining that I shouldn't have trouble keeping him away from any "problematic" content, I let him watch me do a few things, then he fought some mobs and a world boss. But what he was most interested in was whether ESO has PvP in it, can players PvP in towns or do they have to go to special areas to PvP, etc. He seemed pretty savvy about MMOs in general.

My point being that the younger generations of gamers appear to be very keen on PvP, and I'm sure ZOS and other game devs are well aware of that fact. For a game to grow and survive, it needs to be able to attract new players to replace the ones who leave for whatever reason-- dying (knock on wood), moving on to other games, etc. And PvP has always been a major selling point with ESO.

Veinblood1965

Hey we got Lancers a while back, that's something!

I've asked this very question a long time ago in the forums. Maybe a few "strategic" actual towns not Bruma etc but large towns in the actual zone not IC. And I mean strategic not the tiny ones dotted here and there.

licenturion

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I seriously doubt that ZOS has given up on PvP. I'm sure that if they could wave a wand and magically fix every issue plaguing Cyrodiil, they would do so in a heartbeat.

Last night one of my young nephews saw ESO on my MacBook Air and wanted to check it out. After verifying that it's rated M, looking up the reasons the ESRB gave for their decision, and determining that I shouldn't have trouble keeping him away from any "problematic" content, I let him watch me do a few things, then he fought some mobs and a world boss. But what he was most interested in was whether ESO has PvP in it, can players PvP in towns or do they have to go to special areas to PvP, etc. He seemed pretty savvy about MMOs in general.

My point being that the younger generations of gamers appear to be very keen on PvP, and I'm sure ZOS and other game devs are well aware of that fact. For a game to grow and survive, it needs to be able to attract new players to replace the ones who leave for whatever reason-- dying (knock on wood), moving on to other games, etc. And PvP has always been a major selling point with ESO.

This not always true

Sea Of Thieves, a PVPVE game, gets PVE servers next month. Reason is that people could introduce friends and family to the game without getting butchered. Other people are looking forward to it so they can do the storylines without getting bothered all the time.

There are other games that do this as well. I think flagging or toggling PVP on is the best option to have both world. Although in games like New World in the end 98 percent of the people don't turn PVP on unless they go do arena maps.

If PVP would be such an insane number of people, ESO or other games would have done something already. They probably grab way more new PVE oriented people with every sale than they drive off PVP players with the lack of content.

ReggaeRanger

Siege towers are an easy addition.
You just build them at the base of the wall over time depending how many players are at the base building it. Sorta like a siege ram where you need 3 to 5 players to start moving it. The siege tower build time should take as long or similar to what it takes to take a door down with a ram and go faster depending how many players are at the base building it.. This is not hard.

World bosses we already have them in imperial city. So this is also not new or hard. The game could spawn an allied world boss when a keep reaches level 3 to patrol inside the courtyard and guard against other alliances , adding an additional twist and challenge to the game. The keeps.alredy have dozens of npc guards. This would just be one more big guard.

In regards to weapons, we already have the Volendrung hammer so adding other artifacts of power is also not new or hard.

There are hundreds of ideas and ways to make things progress in Cyrodil and not affect gameplay performance. Unfortunately, not much gets done. 😞

AllegedParadigm

I got into the game late but wasn't there supposed to be other artifacts besides volendrung? I still play Cyrodiil alot with friends and guildies. More about the friends I play with than the content itself, but I'm always wishing for something new.

CameraBeardThePirate

AllegedParadigm wrote: »

I got into the game late but wasn't there supposed to be other artifacts besides volendrung? I still play Cyrodiil alot with friends and guildies. More about the friends I play with than the content itself, but I'm always wishing for something new.

They were going to add more but quickly realized that funneling everyone on the server to a single fight was a bad idea.

SeaGtGruff

A couple of small changes I've thought about were (1) another town in the AD section of the map where dailies can be picked up-- such as, perhaps 10 dailies could be added at the Abbey of the Eight-- and (2) one more repeatable quest could be added at Vlastarus, because right now there are 10 quests but one of them isn't repeatable, so there are only 9 repeatable dailies in AD territory, as compared to 20 in DC territory and 20 in EP territory.

Those wouldn't be PvP-related changes, but it would probably help to draw more players to Cyrodiil, and some of them might stick around for the PvP. At the very least, it might help soothe AD players who currently feel like they've been given a bum deal in Cyrodiil as compared to DC and EP.

GuardianStriker

I believe the cynical SawmanUK said it best when he described the future of PvP.

"There is no future."

I personally like Cyrodill PvP more than I do BGs. But it sure is way harder to get into when there's a huge power creep, that's also locked behind a paywall with each new chapter release. Really ain't fun when you're getting stomped by players who have the latest OP gear sets that you can't get because you don't want to spend a few dollars buying ESO+ or the DLC itself.

Oh yeah, and the constant server lag issues ruining inputs. There's that too.

SandandStars

Great artwork and cool, complex concept for combat ran head first into a game engine that couldn’t do Cyrodiil, and a business decision to limit server capacity. Hence, the bug-riddled, intermittently unplayable, fading zone that is Cyrodiil.

It could have been really exceptionally good.

OtarTheMad

Maybe ZOS has insanely bad memory issues and each time they get to the office to fix it they forget. They sit down and it’s just like “Wait… what did I need to do?”

Jaraal

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

A couple of small changes I've thought about were (1) another town in the AD section of the map where dailies can be picked up-- such as, perhaps 10 dailies could be added at the Abbey of the Eight-- and (2) one more repeatable quest could be added at Vlastarus, because right now there are 10 quests but one of them isn't repeatable, so there are only 9 repeatable dailies in AD territory, as compared to 20 in DC territory and 20 in EP territory.

Yeah I always wondered about that... why AD has half the daily quests that EP and DC do. And Abbey of the Eight seems like it was populated with neutral NPCs for the purpose of dailies, just like Cheydenhal and Chorrol are. All they'd need to do is add a couple of wandering AD guards and 10 quests, and there would be balance. Or they could turn a few of the Hackdirt, Riverwatch, or Lunar Fang Docks inhabitants non-hostile and use those locations for the missing AD area dailies as well.

gariondavey

When I started playing eso in 2017 I was blown away by the massive scale pvp in cyro. Huge fights of hundreds vs hundreds.
Cyro is a shell of what it once was.
Bg population cut down by 80 percent or more compared to about 4-5 years ago.
Ic often quiet.

But pvp in this game could be turned around easily. With minimal effort. It would bring back tons of players. It would generate revenue. It could be great.

But there won't be additional resources allocated to pvp. They don't talk about ever doing that. They don't care. They don't respond to requests and threads. They don't communicate except for poor overworked Kevin. They are in maintenance mode and that won't change.

I'm a dedicated pvper and have been for the last 6+ years. I'm in multiple pvp guilds, many pvp discords, and I play all pvp content this game has, multiple times weekly if not daily.
The direction this game is going is clear. It's such a tragedy to see a game with the massive potential that eso has get squandered by poor decision making.

ReggaeRanger

All one needs to do is go to the Crown Store. That will tell you where all efforts are really focused on. It's the one thing that gets almost daily updates and new items. Lol. Sad 😢

mb10

All the competitive PvP gamers moved onto other games a long time ago and the forums are filled with insecure PVE players who despite having nothing but PVE updates for the last 7 years straight, still get very vocal and emotional about even the idea of a real update to Cyrodiil.

It’s hilarious to see, it happens every time.

Btw - if you want an update or new Elder Scrolls PVP experience, I think it’s 10+ years away IF they ever release a newer MMO for the elder scrolls series but ESO? Forget about it. If they haven’t for the last 7 years, they won’t now. ZOS and The gaming world has moved on from a PVP perspective, not to mention the game/servers simply can’t handle it and the combat balancing team hasn’t got a clue.