Change Keep Recall Stones?

DTStormfox

In Cyrodiil, one can use Keep Recall Stones to transport oneself to a Keep one's Alliance owns and is not under attack. This cannot be used while near a Keep, Outpost, Resource or Town that can be captured. I will abbreviate Keep Recall Stones to KRS to make the post less wordy.

Although the KRS is very convenient, it completely circumvents the idea of Transition Shrines and Lines in Cyrodiil. You see, the whole goal of the game in Cyrodiil is to capture Keeps, Outposts, Resources, Towns, and Scrolls to increase the Alliance score rate at the scoreboard. Using the Transition system, you can teleport to these objectives (except for Scroll Temples).

Before introducing KRS, an alliance could tactically attack one objective to isolate another. For example, when Ebonheart Pact has control over Fort Aleswell, Sejanus Outpost and Chalman Keep, Daggerfall Covenant players could attack Chalman Keep to isolate Aleswell and Sejanus to either 'trap' Ebonheart Pact players between those objectives, disallowing them to teleport to their home keeps, or to make Aleswell and Sejanus an easier target because Ebonheart Pact players have to travel by mount to these objectives from their home keeps. This would make overextending in a 'chain-like' pattern on the map more vulnerable to counter attacks.

Similarly, one could attack all three resources of one keep and isolate it from the transition network. Meaning that when all resources are under attack, the alliance owning the keep, has to travel there by mount to defend it. In addition, this can be used to disrupt the enemy transition network and create chaos amongst the enemy alliance.

This is also the whole point of Outposts. Outposts are placed at critical locations in the 'Emperor circle' (between the Emperor keeps). They act as 'isolators' or 'connectors' (depending on the perspective) between the Emperor keeps. Taking them is easier than taking a keep, allowing the attackers (the alliances not having the Emperor) to isolate and retake Emperor keeps, and making it harder to defend them by the alliance owning Emperorship. In my personal experience, this 'weakness' in the Emperor circle makes the game more dynamic.

Furthermore, some transition lines in the network are locked. These are the lines that connect to your enemy's base and that connect a central keep to the last two keeps near the enemy's base.
This prevents players from teleporting straight into enemy territory, and makes it easier for the enemy alliances to regain a foothold to start retaking their home keeps again.

Keep Recall Stones, however, make all these transition network elements and the way this network is intended, (nearly) completely obsolete.
- It completely negates the idea of tactically attacking a critical position in a 'chain' of enemy keeps and outposts.
- It completely negates the idea of taking all resources to tactically isolate a keep or disrupt the transition network of your enemies.
- It completely negates the idea of locked transition lines in the network. Allowing enemies to jump straight to the keep nearest to your own alliance base; making retaking them much harder than intended.

Yes, you could use KRS tactically also. You could for example teleport to an enemy home keep using a KRS and attack your enemies from their own territory.
However, this is not how the developers designed the Cyrodiil map, did they? I find it crazy that a small group of players can take a keep in the back of their enemy territory and then the *entire* alliance can teleport to that keep!? Then I wonder: what is the whole point of the transition network if it can be circumvented completely anyway?

Although Keep Recall Stones are convenient because they can be used to quickly travel to an interesting location, either for questing or PvP action, and do serve some tactical use, it does make the intended tactical play using the transition network to your advantage (nearly) completely obsolete.

My suggestion would be to limit Keep Recall Stones to Home Keeps. This means that you can still use them to teleport across half the map and use them defensively for your homekeep.

I suppose you may have a different idea, so I added some options to the poll for discussion.