Does Cyrodil need a refresh?

MincMincMinc · November 25

Below are some points of consideration to bring life back into cyrodil. Ideally the aim is to

break up the zerg v zerg PvDoor.
Reduce pop drops on losing factions.
Reduce server load by spreading out the playerbase.
Entice players to pvp instead of sitting on walls.
Have players of all skill levels solo and small man.

Here are some talking points for potential system changes.

Buffs should be flipped. When your faction loses a home keep, your faction gains a buff. Scrolls would act in a similar way. This prevents the losing factions from flopping like in tug of war. Instead they get stronger the more they are pushed. To go further, AP multipliers could be added for factions with less keeps.
Keep resources must play a larger part. To siege the walls you must control the mine. To siege the front door, you must hold the lumber. The farm would give the guards a buff equivalent to the difference of normal vs vet dungeons. This prevents faction stacks of 50 players simply just mounting and riding straight to the front door over and over again. Right now heal stacking and movement speed easily beats out counterseige.
Transit line functions should be reworked such that only frontline keeps with a contested transit line can be sieged. More transit lines should be added to connect the outposts to the inner keeps. Examples being Cropsford to BM, or Carm to Rayles. Transit lines should provide AP multiplier bonuses for fighting in certain areas that have lower population. (other trifaction games have implemented systems like this to keep the map busy and guide new players towards the fight.)
Mount speed is too high in cyrodil. When was the last time anyone got ganked or pulled off their mount? Death has next to no downside anymore, when mount speeds are so high a larger pop faction can just waterfall people into the fight without risk of losing when wiped. The benefit of being a defender back in the day was you could wipe a group and then repair.
PvP ap stores need updating and monetary benefit. Much like hakeijo or alk supplies in telvar, perhaps do something similar with AP. Jewelry mats? tempers? Purchasable transmute geodes?
Campaign rewards must be more lucrative. Bring back drops like the gold arena weapons or maybe random mythic lead drops. I think there should be no faction lock to play, but instead you can only receive rewards on one faction that you sign up for during that campaign.
Remove the hammer, or make it only drop once per campaign. Currently this just does the sole opposite of what pvp needs. It bunches people up in one location on the server leading to lag and faction stacking.
Servers must be condensed again since the lowbie server is not functional PCNA. At least condense down to the 30day, 7day, and 30day nocp+u50. I could also see arguments for there to only be 2 servers, under 1000cp and over 1000cp accounts.

Otherwise some other general cyrodil changes:

Add more buildings/terrain. An example would be outside of aleswell. Fighting in the town is really fun. Adding more buildings and streets could create a different combat dynamic similar to imperial city pvp. Maybe some keeps have forests outside. Literally they could just drop in some assets to change up the map a bit
Add "goat paths" between the primary bridge/gates and the secondary bridge/gates. Example being if the Ash gate gets blocked, there would be a mineshaft that goes to the ash mine. Also this would require that they make the walls break entirely such that nobody can cross either direction. (Currently players can jump their way through the broken gate both directions. Also on the AD side of allessia you can jump across the bridge and climb up the rocks.
Guard/npc skills could be reworked. Many players dont understand how guards work, simply because they use old versions of skills from launch.

What are your thoughts? Any other points to add? Rewards? Incentives? How to bring in new players?

acastanza_ESO · November 25

1000%. I'd basically support all of this (at least as experiments) except the "removing the hammer" part. The crazy tri-faction hammer fights are some of the most fun in Cyrodiil (abysmal performance they cause aside). I'd rather have bad performance and an exciting fight than not having that fight at all. That said, I might suggest dialing down it's power level slightly, and linking the spawn to the population level - preventing it from spawning when at least two of the factions aren't poplocked. Also adding other weapons (there are two other weapons that are known about but were never added) into the spawn rotation to increase diversity.

TankHealz2015 · November 25

If a faction leads by more than 10,000 points reduce number of guards at their keeps/resources - "NPC rebellion"

Do something to the caltrops morph that causes dismount - modify it. Make it useful somehow. Like does not damage players, but does big damage to siege. If cast near a scroll runner or hammer does something X

I like the hammer. Its exciting. How bout if a faction is leading by a certain number points than it will only spawn for the lower faction(s).

What if last place faction had option to purchase mercenary assistance in 24/48 hour increments. Like extra NPC guards or something. Super expensive AP cost.

One time option for players of winning faction to "rebel" and go to a different faction for remainder of campaign. Just once. Like after the first week or so.

MincMincMinc · November 25

TankHealz2015 wrote: »

If a faction leads by more than 10,000 points reduce number of guards at their keeps/resources - "NPC rebellion"

Do something to the caltrops morph that causes dismount - modify it. Make it useful somehow. Like does not damage players, but does big damage to siege. If cast near a scroll runner or hammer does something X

I like the hammer. Its exciting. How bout if a faction is leading by a certain number points than it will only spawn for the lower faction(s).

What if last place faction had option to purchase mercenary assistance in 24/48 hour increments. Like extra NPC guards or something. Super expensive AP cost.

One time option for players of winning faction to "rebel" and go to a different faction for remainder of campaign. Just once. Like after the first week or so.

I thought the hammer was a good idea aswell, just that the novelty of the hammer shouldn't outweigh the overall performance of the server. Even after the hammer is gone the result is that the faction stack remains together. Where before there would be waves of separate people.

Funny enough there were purchasable npc guards long ago. Now adays I doubt they would compete much without restructuring.

I never understood the faction swapper spy mentality. You can just buy another account for 5$ and hop on to the enemy faction..... nobody is spying now adays anyways. Especially when the campaign rewards are so bad. I'd prefer the QOL to be able to change factions easily once per campaign. In my experience it is usually only the 1vX or smallman players that will faction swap to play with friends and have a good time. People that could care less about the campaign. If I could i would not align with any faction if that was possible. Bring on the imperial faction.

Thumbless_Bot · November 26

I can't find the thread but there is a thread where someone from zos says they are working on more pvp updates. Sorry I can't be more specific and I have no idea if they are cyro related but it's something to be on the lookout for.

The thread is only a few days old if I am not mistaken.

MincMincMinc · November 26

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

I can't find the thread but there is a thread where someone from zos says they are working on more pvp updates. Sorry I can't be more specific and I have no idea if they are cyro related but it's something to be on the lookout for.

The thread is only a few days old if I am not mistaken.

Yeah kevin had said there was more to come, but judging how the bg update went and the past 10 years I can't hold my breath.

Last "big" cyro update was destoyable bridges that did nothing but upset people, and a hammer that induces lag for hours. Not trying to sound toxic or depressing, but I gave out all the hope I could years ago.

kiwi_tea · November 26

I really hope they will break up the focus around the keeps by situating little buff stations at sites around the map. Let's say a 20 minute 10% HP buff pops up at a little non-descript semi-random spot in the snow a short ride from Winter's Peak. No walls, no defensive structures. You just have to brawl for it. The buff applies to which ever team holds it, and teams can PVP to switch it to their faction. Or a 5% AP buff out on a edge of the map nobody goes to. It could encourage some open brawling that also contributes to a more dynamic feeling campaign. Link it to some achievements with tangible rewards, so players feel a bit more motivation to participate in the system. Maybe if you kill 2000 players on these stations you get a really nice mount? Something challenging and motivating.

You could expand it in really interesting ways that demand some strategy from players. What if, for 20 minutes - if players can PVP to hold a site - a faction's tri-keeps have a particularly nasty boss guard on their porches. It could force players to choose and prioritise targets a lot more, splitting factions from a single-coloured zerg into teams with specific goals and responsibilities. And, again, achievements for actually taking keeps with active boss guards.

Brawlers could potentially have constant opportunities to bait fights at sites like this, fights that are quite different from the ones they currently bait by tower-humping. It would encourage players to use a lot more of the map, and all that empty space suddenly has a much wider range of routes where groups might encounter each other, and fights might happen.

There are so many options for buffs too.
- Your faction takes X% less damage from siege for X minutes.
- Your faction's siege fires X% faster for X minutes.
- Your faction's AP purchases are X% cheaper for X minutes.
- Your faction does X% more damage to guards for X minutes.

They could be really strong, so long as you have to PVP to get them, and you have to PVP to maintain them/prevent opponents from accessing them.

Turtle_Bot · November 26

kiwi_tea wrote: »

I really hope they will break up the focus around the keeps by situating little buff stations at sites around the map. Let's say a 20 minute 10% HP buff pops up at a little non-descript semi-random spot in the snow a short ride from Winter's Peak. No walls, no defensive structures. You just have to brawl for it. The buff applies to which ever team holds it, and teams can PVP to switch it to their faction. Or a 5% AP buff out on a edge of the map nobody goes to. It could encourage some open brawling that also contributes to a more dynamic feeling campaign. Link it to some achievements with tangible rewards, so players feel a bit more motivation to participate in the system. Maybe if you kill 2000 players on these stations you get a really nice mount? Something challenging and motivating.

You could expand it in really interesting ways that demand some strategy from players. What if, for 20 minutes - if players can PVP to hold a site - a faction's tri-keeps have a particularly nasty boss guard on their porches. It could force players to choose and prioritise targets a lot more, splitting factions from a single-coloured zerg into teams with specific goals and responsibilities. And, again, achievements for actually taking keeps with active boss guards.

Brawlers could potentially have constant opportunities to bait fights at sites like this, fights that are quite different from the ones they currently bait by tower-humping. It would encourage players to use a lot more of the map, and all that empty space suddenly has a much wider range of routes where groups might encounter each other, and fights might happen.

There are so many options for buffs too.
- Your faction takes X% less damage from siege for X minutes.
- Your faction's siege fires X% faster for X minutes.
- Your faction's AP purchases are X% cheaper for X minutes.
- Your faction does X% more damage to guards for X minutes.

They could be really strong, so long as you have to PVP to get them, and you have to PVP to maintain them/prevent opponents from accessing them.

I like a lot of these ideas, but the one (big) issue with all of them is the current miniscule population caps.

For these to work, the pop caps would need to be reverted back to like 250 per faction to allow the faction stack to split up and still feel strong enough to accomplish something (especially if a ball group shows up), otherwise it's just going to exacerbate the current issues (ball groups and faction stacks) in cyro.

A rotating objective like above, but one that vanishes (or goes on cooldown) once captured (or if no-one shows up for 10 minutes) might help better since they would be spaced far enough that the zerg could go to a different one if a ball group tries to farm a particular one, but constantly rotates so there's always a new one in a different location to try for, then once captured, it removes the incentive for a ball group to hang around that objective, drawing in the faction stack and just shifting the lag issue from keeps/scrolls to these new objective points.

It would need to be designed very carefully though to not further enable the current spawn camping style AP farming that has become more common among ball groups over the past few years, something that I just don't see being possible.

Elendir2am · November 26

Several of OP suggestion are targeting AvA players in negative way. As AvA is only reason to visit Cyro for me, I disagree with them.

MincMincMinc · November 26

@Turtle_Bot agreed, it feels like they finally got lag under control PCNA greyhost. However it feels hollow since at most you only see 50 man zergs compared to the old days where youd see hundreds. Sadly I think they know many of the changes/additions of the game caused increased lag, but they have no way of gutting half the content people paid for. However that is my intent where they add systems to cyrodil to break up the playerbase. Then they could up the player cap again, and likely remove the other dead servers that they waste money on.

Elendir2am wrote: »

Several of OP suggestion are targeting AvA players in negative way. As AvA is only reason to visit Cyro for me, I disagree with them.

Can you provide any substantial details how this targets AvA players? I am calling for AvA players to have actual rewards and reasons for contributing to the campaign?

SaffronCitrusflower · November 26

Cyro needs cross healing limited to one instance of each HoT at any given time on a player. That's all that needs to happen to balance out this crazy tank/heal meta. This is exactly what sypherPK pointed out after the PvP live stream as well.

acastanza_ESO · November 26

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Cyro needs cross healing limited to one instance of each HoT at any given time on a player. That's all that needs to happen to balance out this crazy tank/heal meta. This is exactly what sypherPK pointed out after the PvP live stream as well.

Limiting HOTs is absolutely not sufficient, yes it would make an impact sure, but the strength of shields also needs to be addressed. One possibility would be to reduce shields proportionately with the number of people they affect (specifically while under the effect of battle spirit), essentially turning the tooltip into a total value rather than the per player value. This would significantly reduce the ability for groups to be running around with 40k shields on top of 40k health pools.
Scaling shielding off max health is also a pants-on-head idea that has caused significant problems.

MincMincMinc · November 26

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Cyro needs cross healing limited to one instance of each HoT at any given time on a player. That's all that needs to happen to balance out this crazy tank/heal meta. This is exactly what sypherPK pointed out after the PvP live stream as well.

You should also include dots and proc cooldowns too. Example being tarnished, the cooldown should be on the receiving player. Meaning I shouldn't be hit by the same generic proc set 5x in one second. This would prevent all future DLC meta proc set ruining the game from patch to patch.

argonian37 · November 26

Good ideas.

I think that there is a problem that potential players are scared to come to Cyro because the learning curve for combat is very high.

I would recommend to add activities in the campaign for people that is not good at fighting. The outcome of this activities should have real impact in the result of battles and stuff.

Examples:

Rework the scouting quest so instead of being an out of context quest to go to a random resource and take notes, go to a resource near a contested area and if that resource was scouted, give a temporary 10% dps buff to that alliance for 10 minutes when fighting for that resource or keep.

Create a courier quest so a player can take ammo, supplies or a note to alliance high ranks npcs in different parts of the map. In that area the defending alliance should win a temporary healing buff or an extra siege dps buff for battles.

Rework the reward system: we need more exclusive styles, rewards, mounts, skins and stuff that are meaningful for every player in the game.

These kind of quests, activities and rewards should attract much more players to come to Cyro and have fun contributing for their alliance instead of them coming to repair walls for the crystals. I ve read recently in a thread that it should be a temporary buff for PVE earned in the alliance war, so every player of the alliance that wins get a buff in every zone of Tamriel. That is a good idea, but dont know how could it be implemented

Another issue that cyro has is the ball groups and cross healing like everyone knows. That can be solved with a rework of the siege dps system. Sieges should be much more fearsome than they are. Like I said in a recent thread, is a joke that a player spamming heals can survive siege.

Examples: rework lancers dps with a proximity exponential multiplier like plaguebreak that punishes concentration of players and give them extremely high dps against ball groups

Enable the destruction of every building and structure by siege weapons to avoid endless carrousel tower fighting. Siege weapons should be complete game changers in every battle and they should be much more expensive to buy and get.

And last but not least: add to battle spirit a code with substractive thresholds like: if you tank, you cant dps, if you dps you cant be a tank. Is ok to be a godmode tank, its a legit role and Im not against it but is crazy that is so easy to be godmode and have insanely amounts of dps too, that shouldnt happen at all.

MincMincMinc · November 26

@argonian37

To touch on your points of

Get new players into pvp PvE quests in the zones dont work. This is already evident with the town quests during events. PvE players come in without gear giving 0 effort into learning and get slaughtered before leaving forever because there is no ongoing incentive. Instead new players have a much easier time getting into pvp by participating in large group battles. Where they are relatively safe and can learn the push and pull that happens in combat. My OP covered this by making it more streamlined for new players to ONLY go to the front lines where this environment will be more present. The incentives I covered are the reason they would initially try and participate in pvp.
Cross healing This has been an issue since they made dots and hots stack for pve. Itd be nice if they could make players unable to have multiple buffs/debuffs/hots/dots/procs on them at the same time but mob entities can have dots stack. Gamedesign wise I think that should be possible to do, but I can't see their back end if that is possible. Preventing stacking wouldnt affect solo and small man players much, but would prevent ball groups from stacking 12x of the best heals in the game on each person.
Seige irrelevancy Agreed, seige now is practically useless. Seige used to be as dangerous as coldfire is now. What has belittled seige is how movement speed has 2x in combat due to more and more buffs being added. On top of that players are just tankier with power creep compared to seige.
Tank vs dps vs heal Hard disagree, these are just L2P issues. The trinity is pretty clear, pvp builds that you are talking about are just well balanced builders who are sitting in the middle of the trinity build wise. A pure dps pvp build will 1 shot if you want. A pure tank can 1v60. A pure healer could keep a group alive through practically anything. Some classes are absurdly better when sitting in the middle of the trinity. Example being stamden vs stamsorc. Stamsorc really has no heals so it is kind of only is able to sit between tank and dps with no healer capability. Stamwarden can still utilize extremely strong group heals equivalent to having off heals in your group.

Laddey · November 26

Any future PvP updates needs to be centered around Cyrodil.

Stop the tank meta.
Allow for weekend events, such as keeps with no doors or whatever.

@ZOS_Kevin I must reiterate my point - Any updates must be centered around Cyrodil.

The majority of PvP orientated players don't particularly care for events, they would rather performance issues fixed, proper balancing, and the population cap increased.

Just check out that fellas stream who was on the BG event. Healers should be squishy, tanks should be tanky etc.

Thumbless_Bot · November 26

The most concern9ng th

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

I can't find the thread but there is a thread where someone from zos says they are working on more pvp updates. Sorry I can't be more specific and I have no idea if they are cyro related but it's something to be on the lookout for.

The thread is only a few days old if I am not mistaken.

Yeah kevin had said there was more to come, but judging how the bg update went and the past 10 years I can't hold my breath.

Last "big" cyro update was destoyable bridges that did nothing but upset people, and a hammer that induces lag for hours. Not trying to sound toxic or depressing, but I gave out all the hope I could years ago.

Tldr: where is the community engagement BEFORE they put things on pts and deliver us all another really bad pvp update. I mean this with every bit of respect possible. I've played at least 200 rounds of this new format and they are just not good content and way worse than previous bgs.

---

I was really hoping that zos would have done some soul searching after the battleground debacle. I am not trying to be negative when I call it that, but it was, and not because of the rollout, but because the content is just, well, bad. Again, it's not the queueing issues, it's just simply horrendous content and way worse than old bgs.

I was, and still am a bit, hoping they would engage their user base before they invested too much time and money into anything. Maybe they have... and maybe the people they are engaging are the same people that gave them feedback that the new bgs were a-okay, no one knows. This, right here, should never ever ever happen. Roadmaps should be very clear.

I fear, however, that this is not the case, given that they are working on it and it's too early to show us... I fear they do not learn from their mistakes. As a developer myself, this really hits home and bothers me.

If they don't engage the people that play the game consistently right now, people who can comment on what will and will not work and or be broken, i fear another huge let down.

To be completely honest i would rather they left cyro and ic alone if the people working on this new content had anything at all to do with battlegrounds. This way, the new content can fizzle out like a bad firework and then we can all go back to what we were enjoying before. Wish this were true for bgs...

argonian37 · November 26

@MincMincMinc

Thanks for your detailed answers and taking your time to read my ideas. I love discussing Cyro and imagining how it should be

I agree with you that PvE quests just don’t work in Cyro. But in the way that they are implemented: “take the quest in a Cyro city - kill the bandits in a north location - return and take 300 gold and a decon fodder piece of armor”.
What I propose is a rework of the scouting quest in a kind of hybrid PVE - PVP quest that the outcome of that quest should have at least a little impact of what happens in the battlefield, not an isolated PvE quest implanted in the middle of Cyro without any consequence for anyone more than the quester.
I remember a comment in a thread just some weeks before the release of this patch, in a long discussion about cloak rework, that a player said something like “for me cloak is mandatory… I play as a scout, just burning enemies camps and protecting ours”. In the same comment, this player said that doesn’t have optimal movement in his/her hands, so played this way. The was very insightful for me, in a way that I can imagine that there are lots of potential players that dont care about optimal setups, investigate about builds and stuff but they could love Cyro and could contribute, but not in a direct fighting way. Cyro should have a place for them, and make them feel that they are contributing to the alliance collective effort.

It all goes for a very deep and meaningful discussion about what kind of Cyro would we prefer. I personally have an answer for that. One that has lots but lots of more people, spread around all the map. I know that they are caps and is impossible to have lots of players, but by design, because the way that cyro works, it concentrates all atention and focus in very few areas at the same time. That is mandatory, because there are very few players, but maybe is a kind of egg and the chicken dilemma like… game lags because people is focused in an area, but people focus in an area because there are not people and activities outside that area and so on. With my ping (+300) and lag that I usually have I would go around other parts of the map and would avoid massive battles around ball groups if there would be more small scale around other areas of the map without a doubt.

We agree with siege and cross healing, and about the trinity, I have to say that yes, you are right that are middleground setups, but IMHO that shouldnt be rewarded, never, by design. I mean, a pure DPS glass cannon build should be capable of having hugely more dps and burst than a middleground one and the difference should be abysmal.

I agree with all your proposals specially about the reworking of the reward system, and the condensation of campaigns. Thanks again

MincMincMinc · November 26

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

The most concern9ng th

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

I can't find the thread but there is a thread where someone from zos says they are working on more pvp updates. Sorry I can't be more specific and I have no idea if they are cyro related but it's something to be on the lookout for.

The thread is only a few days old if I am not mistaken.

Yeah kevin had said there was more to come, but judging how the bg update went and the past 10 years I can't hold my breath.

Last "big" cyro update was destoyable bridges that did nothing but upset people, and a hammer that induces lag for hours. Not trying to sound toxic or depressing, but I gave out all the hope I could years ago.

Tldr: where is the community engagement BEFORE they put things on pts and deliver us all another really bad pvp update. I mean this with every bit of respect possible. I've played at least 200 rounds of this new format and they are just not good content and way worse than previous bgs.

---

I was really hoping that zos would have done some soul searching after the battleground debacle. I am not trying to be negative when I call it that, but it was, and not because of the rollout, but because the content is just, well, bad. Again, it's not the queueing issues, it's just simply horrendous content and way worse than old bgs.

I was, and still am a bit, hoping they would engage their user base before they invested too much time and money into anything. Maybe they have... and maybe the people they are engaging are the same people that gave them feedback that the new bgs were a-okay, no one knows. This, right here, should never ever ever happen. Roadmaps should be very clear.

I fear, however, that this is not the case, given that they are working on it and it's too early to show us... I fear they do not learn from their mistakes. As a developer myself, this really hits home and bothers me.

If they don't engage the people that play the game consistently right now, people who can comment on what will and will not work and or be broken, i fear another huge let down.

To be completely honest i would rather they left cyro and ic alone if the people working on this new content had anything at all to do with battlegrounds. This way, the new content can fizzle out like a bad firework and then we can all go back to what we were enjoying before. Wish this were true for bgs...

To be fair 90% of what people say on the pts forums has nothing to do with actual testing. Its mostly just "I wish...." threads. Can zos moderate or move threads out, sure, but youd need an army of moderators. This pts go around they messed up by baking in a nightblade change where you had 50 copy threads of people who never logged into pts to complain about how they dont understand how the toggle works and its bad because they didnt try it. So the BG discussion was completely glossed over by most people.

As far as listening to the community. I dont think their roadmaps or development cycles have enough time to properly engage with their community. The quarterly releases are not a long enough time, which is probably set in stone by upper management or the board of directors. Bringing back to the above point, who do they listen to? Who do you trust to make a good judgement on PvP? Problem is you need someone to bring ideas in GOOD FAITH for all pvp players, most people blatantly argue in bad faith on the forums to no end. If you can't listen to the forums do you listen to the streamers? At least the 1vX streamers are somewhat vetted by viewer base.

1vX smallman PvP streamers? (zos sees alot of these players as toxic and wont include them for outreach, mostly because they complain about zos not fixing pvp.... sort of a catch22)
Average forum pugs (in reality a popularity contest == zerg players)
Ball group guilds?
PvE Streamers?
Another sort of class rep system of random people voted in by big guilds?

Inevitably being a good player or streamer doesn't make you a good designer for a system that has to accomodate all. However I would argue to be a good dev, you should atleast have an above average level of knowledge in the game. If possible I would like to see devs like Brian do a stream where they learn to duel in pvp against one of the pvp streamers like Pain. You cant tell me that they dont have time to fit a 2 hour meeting into a 9-5 schedule that would drastically improve the dev understanding of the game.

Elendir2am · November 26

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Can you provide any substantial details how this targets AvA players? I am calling for AvA players to have actual rewards and reasons for contributing to the campaign?

You did not address any problem average AvA player has suffer most, when they want to play a map. Your post has many points and Some of them look nice. But most of them would punish AvA players most of all.

One example. Slowing mount speed. Tower nihilist and BGs can use mount as well. You kill tower nihilist and 2 min later they are back from near keep. It is that they are spending most of their time running around tower, or in case of BG running around keep.

Slower mount would mean that it would take 3 min for tower nihilist to return and PvDoor BG would take 7 instead 5 min to get at other part of map. But its AvA players who use mount most (if they are not in combat bug).

MincMincMinc · November 27

Elendir2am wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Can you provide any substantial details how this targets AvA players? I am calling for AvA players to have actual rewards and reasons for contributing to the campaign?

You did not address any problem average AvA player has suffer most, when they want to play a map. Your post has many points and Some of them look nice. But most of them would punish AvA players most of all.

One example. Slowing mount speed. Tower nihilist and BGs can use mount as well. You kill tower nihilist and 2 min later they are back from near keep. It is that they are spending most of their time running around tower, or in case of BG running around keep.

Slower mount would mean that it would take 3 min for tower nihilist to return and PvDoor BG would take 7 instead 5 min to get at other part of map. But its AvA players who use mount most (if they are not in combat bug).

I dont understand what you are trying to convey. Are you saying slower mount speed favors people that run around towers? Everyone's mount speed would be reduced, even ball groups. That's the whole point, to have an actual consequence for dying.

I understand losing speed is painful for people with no patience, but at a certain point we have to stop/reverse the power creep..............this is coming from a max speed stamsorc player of nearly 10 years now. If I can come to terms with it, so can you.

moosegod · November 27

One thing they could do for PvP would be to add big rewards to work towards to attract more players. What if there was a house to buy with AP? Or a mount? That would get 'em going lol. I know there are currently costumes earned through PvP but we need more achievement incentives.

I would also close the other CP campaign. Maybe close no-CP as well...in theory its a good place for low CP players but its a deadzone just like the 7-day campaign. 7-day campaign just serves as a cheap way to get emperor achievement now.

Joy_Division · November 27

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Elendir2am wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Can you provide any substantial details how this targets AvA players? I am calling for AvA players to have actual rewards and reasons for contributing to the campaign?

You did not address any problem average AvA player has suffer most, when they want to play a map. Your post has many points and Some of them look nice. But most of them would punish AvA players most of all.

One example. Slowing mount speed. Tower nihilist and BGs can use mount as well. You kill tower nihilist and 2 min later they are back from near keep. It is that they are spending most of their time running around tower, or in case of BG running around keep.

Slower mount would mean that it would take 3 min for tower nihilist to return and PvDoor BG would take 7 instead 5 min to get at other part of map. But its AvA players who use mount most (if they are not in combat bug).

I dont understand what you are trying to convey. Are you saying slower mount speed favors people that run around towers? Everyone's mount speed would be reduced, even ball groups. That's the whole point, to have an actual consequence for dying.

I understand losing speed is painful for people with no patience, but at a certain point we have to stop/reverse the power creep..............this is coming from a max speed stamsorc player of nearly 10 years now. If I can come to terms with it, so can you.

They are basically saying that these reforms will punish people who are trying to play "the map." If my alliance is successful in taking a keep, why is the enemy team awarded with a buff? If my alliance wants to use strategy hitting undefended keeps, why can;t we do that instead of having to hit a front line keep with a transitus node.

While I think some of the ideas in the OP are worth trying, the mount speed decrease is absolutely a bad idea. In the ten years I've been in Cyrodiil, "horse riding simulator" has been in the top three of complaints. As it is now, even with permanent major gallop, it is not easy to respond in time to an attack with 20 siege on the front door.

It's not the mount speed that is the issue, it is player speed like your stam sorc, which is a huge component of the "tank" meta (a misleading term. The excessive survivability players have now is not just because they damage they take gets reduced so much, it's because the damage often never reaches them in the first place because they move out of range or LOS attacks).

darvaria · November 27

Disagree with OP.

We need a SMALLER map not larger. Reduce sie 25%

Remove towers from resources. Half of EP's in game time is flipping/uncutting resources.

Get rid of out posts and towns.

Combine factions. Make it a 60v60.

CyroDEAD is so boring I can't stand playing enough to get the dailies done now. It's either AD ball groups running around EP keeps camping players at spawn. OR a zerg PVDooring the map. Population on EP is really going down. I've sold 3 faction transfers for next campaign. I can barely stand playing 15 minutes there now.

I don't want to play for an entire month. Make GH campaigns 7 days.

One thing that would help would be rotating bases. Just go in a clockwise formation. That would be really interesting to play different sides of the map w/o changing factions.

CrazyKitty · November 27

Cyrodiil doesn't need much in terms of updates IMO. It just needs to work and have at bare minimum a pop cap of 150/faction. That and they need to limit HoT stacking. These two things and the population would return very quickly.

MincMincMinc · November 27

Joy_Division wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Elendir2am wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Can you provide any substantial details how this targets AvA players? I am calling for AvA players to have actual rewards and reasons for contributing to the campaign?

You did not address any problem average AvA player has suffer most, when they want to play a map. Your post has many points and Some of them look nice. But most of them would punish AvA players most of all.

One example. Slowing mount speed. Tower nihilist and BGs can use mount as well. You kill tower nihilist and 2 min later they are back from near keep. It is that they are spending most of their time running around tower, or in case of BG running around keep.

Slower mount would mean that it would take 3 min for tower nihilist to return and PvDoor BG would take 7 instead 5 min to get at other part of map. But its AvA players who use mount most (if they are not in combat bug).

I dont understand what you are trying to convey. Are you saying slower mount speed favors people that run around towers? Everyone's mount speed would be reduced, even ball groups. That's the whole point, to have an actual consequence for dying.

I understand losing speed is painful for people with no patience, but at a certain point we have to stop/reverse the power creep..............this is coming from a max speed stamsorc player of nearly 10 years now. If I can come to terms with it, so can you.

They are basically saying that these reforms will punish people who are trying to play "the map." If my alliance is successful in taking a keep, why is the enemy team awarded with a buff? If my alliance wants to use strategy hitting undefended keeps, why can;t we do that instead of having to hit a front line keep with a transitus node.

While I think some of the ideas in the OP are worth trying, the mount speed decrease is absolutely a bad idea. In the ten years I've been in Cyrodiil, "horse riding simulator" has been in the top three of complaints. As it is now, even with permanent major gallop, it is not easy to respond in time to an attack with 20 siege on the front door.

It's not the mount speed that is the issue, it is player speed like your stam sorc, which is a huge component of the "tank" meta (a misleading term. The excessive survivability players have now is not just because they damage they take gets reduced so much, it's because the damage often never reaches them in the first place because they move out of range or LOS attacks).

Well no they were trying to say something about how lower mount speed disproportionally affects AvA zerg players. I've been playing for 10 years aswell, playing in vet 1vX and also running a guild in the u50 campaign teaching new players. It isnt like seige destroys keeps faster now adays, but mounts are like 3x the speed due to power creep (gallop, cp added, mountspeeds maxed). u50 and even nocp function fine, arguably better since players cant "rez and ride" back to a keep they died at repeatedly. Why is lower mount speed a bad idea? Is it because you think players will complain about reverse power creep and not wanting to feel slower? I will never agree with people who accept power creep and argue in bad faith for it

There may still be undefended keeps to attack. The OP points out adding new transit lines to open up other avenues where combat can spread out. This acts as a soft limit to keep PvDoor abuse in check. For instance if AD is attacking ash, but there is resistance, leaders may want to attack another keep. So they could go from the new carmala transit to glade/rayles to seige a back keep. When keep fights arent streamlined the new player population gets confused and may give up on combat. Remember 5 years ago the playerbase was high enough that factions were balanced and cyrodil was functional. With such a low population, the map feels empty and new players cant quickly understand where the frontline zerg is(the best place for new players to learn)

The intent of the losing faction gaining buffs is to prevent the loss of players when a faction is gated. On low pop campaigns(anything that isnt greyhost) what happens is the maps flip all one color and nobody logs in cuz it frankly sucks to have to seige back 5-6 keeps every day just so players will log in. What is worth more, a few players getting useless campaign score that achieves nothing, or people actually logging into the game to play? I understand the thought process of my faction won, so we should be rewarded. This would still be true, you won and you would get ap rewards and perhaps ap buffs. However the losing faction needs help pushing back, so they should get combat buffs.

I also agree that playerspeed is a major issue as I pointed out in my movement speed and Immobilize immunity thread. Link In short average players walking movement speed was between 90-130% and now the average build sits between 130% and 200% walking speed. Immobilizes have terrible counterplay options and transparency, creating a redlight/greenlight type of gameplay. I will counter that stamsorc isnt the speed class anymore besides streak, considering warden has a built in buff of 6s major and immob immunity. Generally my warden sits at a higher speed in combat.... which hurts my soul. I would also add other reasons along with speed creep to the tank meta, but that discussion would derail this thread too far off cyrodil topics. Feel free to read that speed thread and comment there though.

MincMincMinc · November 27

darvaria wrote: »

Disagree with OP.

We need a SMALLER map not larger. Reduce sie 25%

Remove towers from resources. Half of EP's in game time is flipping/uncutting resources.

Get rid of out posts and towns.

Combine factions. Make it a 60v60.

CyroDEAD is so boring I can't stand playing enough to get the dailies done now. It's either AD ball groups running around EP keeps camping players at spawn. OR a zerg PVDooring the map. Population on EP is really going down. I've sold 3 faction transfers for next campaign. I can barely stand playing 15 minutes there now.

I don't want to play for an entire month. Make GH campaigns 7 days.

One thing that would help would be rotating bases. Just go in a clockwise formation. That would be really interesting to play different sides of the map w/o changing factions.

Smaller map, Effectively that is what my OP is doing. You would limit gameplay to a few contested transit shrines. With the declining playerbase this would follow a similar system to the planetside game series where during low pop they made frontline contested areas the only playable areas. Planetside also had a similar rotation implemented to shake things up. My OP also included pvdoor restrictions requiring resource capture/hold which further promotes solo and small man groups to contribute to the campaign.

I also wouldn't be entirely opposed to them overhauling and making a new map that has less dead area in it. Don't need delves and such anymore. Granted with such high mount speeds with a smaller map will even further add to the issue of dying and running back too quickly. It has been 10 years, maybe more since they first made cyrodil. Surely the map can be optimized better for performance.

Bammlschwamml · November 27

They could have made at least 10 times more money, and could have made millions of players happy, if they had just invested a little more into fixing performance issues and bugs.

We don't need bandaid fixes, we need the game to work properly.

Veinblood1965 · November 27

MincMincMinc wrote: »

darvaria wrote: »

Disagree with OP.

I also wouldn't be entirely opposed to them overhauling and making a new map that has less dead area in it. Don't need delves and such anymore. Granted with such high mount speeds with a smaller map will even further add to the issue of dying and running back too quickly. It has been 10 years, maybe more since they first made cyrodil. Surely the map can be optimized better for performance.

The delves are worthless except for skyshards. If you've already killed the delve boss once you have to wait literally ten hours for the boss to appear. If it's your first time the boss pops right up.

WuffyCerulei · November 27

Honestly? Yeah, I agree with everything cept the hammer. The hammer itself needs some fixing with its spawning. We have a whole dang map of spawn points, but exactly 8 are used (3 AD, 3 DC, 2 EP). It also tends to spawn in a faction’s area when said faction has Emperor and/or a good chunk of the map. Just a bit unfair there.

Joy_Division · November 27

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Elendir2am wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Can you provide any substantial details how this targets AvA players? I am calling for AvA players to have actual rewards and reasons for contributing to the campaign?

You did not address any problem average AvA player has suffer most, when they want to play a map. Your post has many points and Some of them look nice. But most of them would punish AvA players most of all.

One example. Slowing mount speed. Tower nihilist and BGs can use mount as well. You kill tower nihilist and 2 min later they are back from near keep. It is that they are spending most of their time running around tower, or in case of BG running around keep.

Slower mount would mean that it would take 3 min for tower nihilist to return and PvDoor BG would take 7 instead 5 min to get at other part of map. But its AvA players who use mount most (if they are not in combat bug).

I dont understand what you are trying to convey. Are you saying slower mount speed favors people that run around towers? Everyone's mount speed would be reduced, even ball groups. That's the whole point, to have an actual consequence for dying.

I understand losing speed is painful for people with no patience, but at a certain point we have to stop/reverse the power creep..............this is coming from a max speed stamsorc player of nearly 10 years now. If I can come to terms with it, so can you.

They are basically saying that these reforms will punish people who are trying to play "the map." If my alliance is successful in taking a keep, why is the enemy team awarded with a buff? If my alliance wants to use strategy hitting undefended keeps, why can;t we do that instead of having to hit a front line keep with a transitus node.

While I think some of the ideas in the OP are worth trying, the mount speed decrease is absolutely a bad idea. In the ten years I've been in Cyrodiil, "horse riding simulator" has been in the top three of complaints. As it is now, even with permanent major gallop, it is not easy to respond in time to an attack with 20 siege on the front door.

It's not the mount speed that is the issue, it is player speed like your stam sorc, which is a huge component of the "tank" meta (a misleading term. The excessive survivability players have now is not just because they damage they take gets reduced so much, it's because the damage often never reaches them in the first place because they move out of range or LOS attacks).

Well no they were trying to say something about how lower mount speed disproportionally affects AvA zerg players. I've been playing for 10 years aswell, playing in vet 1vX and also running a guild in the u50 campaign teaching new players. It isnt like seige destroys keeps faster now adays, but mounts are like 3x the speed due to power creep (gallop, cp added, mountspeeds maxed). u50 and even nocp function fine, arguably better since players cant "rez and ride" back to a keep they died at repeatedly. Why is lower mount speed a bad idea? Is it because you think players will complain about reverse power creep and not wanting to feel slower? I will never agree with people who accept power creep and argue in bad faith for it

There may still be undefended keeps to attack. The OP points out adding new transit lines to open up other avenues where combat can spread out. This acts as a soft limit to keep PvDoor abuse in check. For instance if AD is attacking ash, but there is resistance, leaders may want to attack another keep. So they could go from the new carmala transit to glade/rayles to seige a back keep. When keep fights arent streamlined the new player population gets confused and may give up on combat. Remember 5 years ago the playerbase was high enough that factions were balanced and cyrodil was functional. With such a low population, the map feels empty and new players cant quickly understand where the frontline zerg is(the best place for new players to learn)

The intent of the losing faction gaining buffs is to prevent the loss of players when a faction is gated. On low pop campaigns(anything that isnt greyhost) what happens is the maps flip all one color and nobody logs in cuz it frankly sucks to have to seige back 5-6 keeps every day just so players will log in. What is worth more, a few players getting useless campaign score that achieves nothing, or people actually logging into the game to play? I understand the thought process of my faction won, so we should be rewarded. This would still be true, you won and you would get ap rewards and perhaps ap buffs. However the losing faction needs help pushing back, so they should get combat buffs.

I also agree that playerspeed is a major issue as I pointed out in my movement speed and Immobilize immunity thread. Link In short average players walking movement speed was between 90-130% and now the average build sits between 130% and 200% walking speed. Immobilizes have terrible counterplay options and transparency, creating a redlight/greenlight type of gameplay. I will counter that stamsorc isnt the speed class anymore besides streak, considering warden has a built in buff of 6s major and immob immunity. Generally my warden sits at a higher speed in combat.... which hurts my soul. I would also add other reasons along with speed creep to the tank meta, but that discussion would derail this thread too far off cyrodil topics. Feel free to read that speed thread and comment there though.

Lower mount speed is bad because people have consistently complained it takes to long to get to fights and Cyrodiil being a "horse riding simulator." It's not a bad faith argument. People don;t like it. Especially now with the pop caps so low that there aren;t many fights to go to to begin with.

I don;t get the hate for PvDoor. Some people might call it effective strategy. If a group wants to ride all the way (re: horse riding simulator) to Arrius or what not to take it, I don;t see the problem.