WARNING: WALL-O-TEXT

That being said, I put a lot of thought into these changes and hope you'll give it a read. I hope someone at Zos will give it a whirl too, like maybe @ZOS_BrianWheeler

So I'm a relative newblet to ESO having just started on consoles. I've played a ton of MMOs and PvP has always been what it's about for me. DAoC has perhaps given me the fondest gaming memories I have, and while I know this game is not DAoC I do hope it will give me just as many great memories, if not more. I'm hoping ESO becomes the game I play for years to come. I lost faith in MMOs around 2010 or so, and figured I would never find a good PvP mmo again. I had no idea ESO had PvP gameplay so similar to that mythical creation until I bought it and tried it. I may or may not have danced like a giddy school girl when I found this out. Now, after playing for a bit I thought I'd share some suggestions to make the gameplay much more enjoyable, epic and balanced (imo). Tell me if I'm full of ***, but more importantly, tell me why. I don't have the years of meta experience that you PC folks have, but I'd like to think I have some good suggestions based on what I've seen so far in the game and my years of mmo pvp experience. Here we go.

1. Increase the time to breach keep walls by upping their health in order to increase the time it takes to capture a keep.
Currently, very few people bother with rams because they are easily countered and require more effort in a long siege than just smashing open a brick wall. Makes sense that a keeps gate would be well defended, and should be hard to breach when both sides are mounting some serious numbers. However, currently this results in a small group putting up 20 catapolts/trebs/balistas all aiming at the same wall and dropping it in a matter of minutes while all this siege is being manned by only 7 or so people, and then repeating the process for the side wall to the inner keep. Ultimately they breach both walls very fast, flipping it before the defending side even has a chance to mount a serious defense (Cyrodiil is big, there is no warning a keep is under siege unless you just happen to look at a map and there is no zone chat on consoles.) The only time a defense can seriously react is if they were already at the keep expecting an attack (ie, falling back when one alliance makes a push against another, or you've just taken a keep and expect a counter attack.) By contrast you keep door health the same to allow smaller groups to still relatively quickly take over a castle (but this would also allow a smaller group of players to defend the castle, as gates are more easily defended) so that during off time/low pop servers capturing and defending would still be viable.. To counter ranged siege to gate spam, make ranged siege deal reduced damage to keep doors. As it stands right now keeps flip far to fast and have no sense of permanency. Taking a keep should be an achievement (and still should be able to be accomplished by a small group,) just not in under 10 minutes.

2. When a guild claims ownership of a keep allow it's members to spend AP to upgrade the keeps walls HP, the number of guards, and door strength.
This will be on top of the bonus that surrounding resources give over time and cannot be reduced by taking resources. This adds to the permeance of keeps, and also adds an AP sink and a real incentive to owning a keep.

3. Do not have the scroll gate open when the last keep drops. but require it to be sieged down and busted open instead.
This will allow for one more, last ditch effort at a "traditional" defense before the scrolls are taken. The scroll gate is an impressive defensive structure, but is not one that is held or even truly assaulted for any real length of time. Imagine pitched battles at that giant wall. Unlike keep gates in my proposed change, the wall gate could take full dmg from any source (so ranged siege could bring it down) but it should still be a beefy gate (much more powerful than a keep gate) and rams should still deal the most dmg to it. Allowing enemy forces to teleport directly to the gate keep via the transit system as long as the scroll gate stands will allow for a truly epic siege that is rarely encountered in the game currently right before the non traditional scroll siege. To balance this from a defensive point of view, have a one time limited time teleportation prompt pop up on screen (like the one you get when your que into Cyrodiil pops) for all defending alliance players when a gate keep falls that will allow them to teleport directly to the corresponding cyrodiil zone in area. This will increase the effort required to get the scrolls and require a larger number of players to do so, and ensure that the fight for scrolls will be large, epic and truly amazing. Capturing a scroll should be the result of large number of players working together. While keeps and outposts can be flipped by a small amount, scrolls should require a large, coordinated effort.

4. Introduce more outposts in between the outer keeps and possibly near PvE hotspots.
Not a whole lot, but 6 or so more outposts, at least 2 for each faction connecting their corresponding keeps around the outer 3 keeps that border the edge of the map, to encourage more players to go that way and introduce another way to cut off/bring in reinforcements to these isolated keeps. This would make sieges at those 3 keeps more interesting and tactical by allowing both sides to teleport closer, reducing travel time, unless they are cut off. Could also introduce them near any potential Cyrodiil PvE hotspts to draw PvPers to those areas. This way if someone does decide to PvE in a PvP campaign there will be nearby contestable structures increasing the danger of getting attacked and allow the owners of the outpost to potential have an easy teleport into the PvE areas. This will help fill the gap of quick, easily flip able areas that will be reduced with the changes to keep wall hp and keep ownership.

5. Introduce a purely PvE Cyrodiil campaign.
Space in Cyrodiil is limited. Taking up a spot to PvE in a campaign that is pop locked not only prevents those that want to PvP, but hurts your alliance. Give PvErs there own campaign, close off the keeps completely, remove the scrolls, disable pvp, disable scroll/keep buffs and disallow the dropping of cold harbor siege at dolmens and for added flavor allow every alliance to be in the zone at the same time (with a pop lock, cause pve'rs have to suffer too! Jk, I'm assuming a pop lock will be needed to prevent the campaign server from getting too crowded, as usual). Limit the campaign to vet levels. There is nothing more frustrating than wanting to see your alliance field some impressive numbers to counter the impressive numbers of your enemies but they would all rather pve or harvest instead of defend a keep. Add in PvE imperial city too with 75% reduced tel var stones drops The elimination of the buffs and reduction of tel var drops from the PvE campaign is meant to add some reward to the risk of PvEing in your home PvP campaign when the campaigns are dead and nothing is going on. Cause if something was going on you'd be PvPing right? Right.

6. Introduce the Zerg Busters.
No, not an ability, not a skill... I don't think such an ability or skill would work in ESO. As we've seen with magicka detonation, any anti zerg skill will just be abused by the zerg itself. ESO is not like DAoC on one major combat difference. CC is not all powerful, and breaking CC is not a careful calculated decision that you can only do once, maybe twice a fight. CC allowed small skilled groups to control the zerg in DAoC, but that is not CCs place in ESO because they instead used CC to add another tactical layer to combat (and I do enjoy that) however this means we still need something that will combat the zerg. Does anyone remember the Green Knight from DAoC? Or The Sleeper in EQ? We need one of those, or more preciously 3 of those, in the campaigns. Three giant, nigh unkillable aoe spewing Godzilla sized Deadroth perhaps? Yeah, that's exactly what Nirn needs. They wander the countryside between keeps, looking for the enemies of Molag Bal as they engage in their petty war that, and they are attracted to large concentrations of players, chasing their prey while moving faster than a maxed horse with rapid manauever. What does such a creature care about the lone horseman, or the small band? It does not, it would have reduced agro for small groups. But when they catch scent of large hordes of enemies a warning flashes across the screen "Something has been attracted by the sounds of battle..." and it starts hunting the Zerg. If the zerg doesn't break up, they get a nice dinner date with Daedrothzilla (name not final). Imagine trying to defend a keep from the zerg only to watch as a giant firespewing spawn of hell appears on the horizon and rampages through the enemies siege line, leaving not a single person alive. Or maybe, the zerg grows some balls. Maybe the zerg gets jumped by Daedrothzilla in the field and decides to fight back (I hope they have a lot of soul gems...) Maybe Molag Bal will be short a minion until it respawns. The only battles it would not be attracted to are any one within distance of the scroll gates, as those walls were meant to hold even them back, and any battle around an elder scroll itself as they are being captured. But hey, if you accidentally run the scroll into his foot.... well, he might just stomp on you. Oooooh, secondary mechanic? If he kills a scroll carrier because the fool decided to run right into this massive monster he proceeds to eat the scroll making it unavailable to any faction unless he is killed for one week, where upon the scroll is summoned out of his gut and returned to it's home base if none have retrieved it. Could even have them slaughter players with their footsteps as they hunt down zergs! Also enable em in the PvE campaign as 3 incredibly difficult, maybe no one will ever beat, world raid boss. In both PvP and PvE have them guarantee drop some truly unique, as in one of a kind nothing like it costumes that will never be obtainable any other way. If you down it on a PvP campaign have it also provide an achievement and a title. Ahh, getting a bit off topic. Either way, these three monsters sole purpose is to utterly annihilate any zerg that forms and does not break apart fast enough.

7. Reduce the current amount of campaigns.
With IC coming and the fact that 3 of the 5 campaigns are currently buffer servers on PS4 that rarely see more than 2 bars of pop on a single faction, we do not need this many campaigns. Reduce the number of campaigns, merge these buff servers and let's get some real action going aaaaaaand.....

8. Increase the pop cap on the handful of remaining servers.
This is a war, not a school field trip. I understand lag is an issue, and I don't have a solution to the increased lag it would cause, though I'm hoping that with a few zerg busters roaming around zerg induced lag would be reduced (except at scroll wall fights...). Thankfully, even at full pop cap and with some truly massive sieges I have yet to see any really bad lag on the PS4 servers. Our zergs probably wouldn't even qualify as zergs to pc players lol. If you gotta make all our shiny armor look like burlap sacks when there are too many people on the screen, do it. I don't care if my gold glitters when I'm dodging arrows and trying not to get stabbed. I do care when all my opponents are dead and there is no one else left to stab and I can only ask the gods "Is this all the players I get to kill?" (Or conversely, I'd like to get teabagged by 40 enemies, not just 5, when I die. Is that a thing on the pc? Teabagging the people you kill? Cause it is on the consoles. I've had people that weren't even involved in the fight run over and teabag me! I must have looked enticing.) The increased pop also means more risk for those that do try and PvE in the PvP campaigns, more gankers will be on the lookout.

9. Force players to make a choice upon entering PvP the first time to pick what faction they will represent.
This is a separate decision to your PvE faction choice that you choose at character creation. It is the only faction all characters on your account will represent in PvP. From a PvE standpoint limiting your characters to one faction ala DAoC isn't the best move you can make, so I understand why ESO didn't do it. However, none can deny that the choice of allowing you to play all factions on one account is detrimental to 3 faction AvA PvP. Even this isn't a perfect solution, you can always buy a second account, but this is the best we can probably do. Allow the player to change their declared PvP faction for either 1 million AP or for free at the end of the current campaign cycle. You can only change your represented faction once per month. Introduce loyalty rewards. A small bonus to AP for sticking with a faction, 1% per month to a total of 12% bonus AP for sticking with a faction for a whole year. Add in a monthly mailed reward that scales to your level and increases based on time. 1-3 months is a green item, 4-6 is blue, 6-9 is purple, 10+ is legendary. Hell, you could even tie in PvP loyality bonus to ESO plus, I think that would be fair.

10. Underdog bonus
Introduce meaningful bonuses to underdog alliances on the campaigns. Siege equipment deals 10% more damage and costs 25% less ap, and keep repair items cost 50% less ap. Keep walls owned by the underdog alliance have 10% more HP, upgrading keeps via new guild upgrades costs 20% less. Switching to an underdog alliance costs 1/2 as much AP (still held to the once a month limit though) and gives an equivalent loyalty bonus to how long the alliance has been the underdog to a maximum of 6 months based on how many weeks that alliance has been declared underdog. 1 week = 1 month of loyalty. So if an alliance has been an underdog for 6 weeks in a row, switching to them will cost 500,000 ap and immediately start you at 6 months of loyalty bonus. Underdog is tallied on a weekly basis separate from and in addition to the current AP bonus system. I'm envisioning a system that takes into account keeps loss/gained as well as owners of home keeps, and if they are in possession of their own scrolls. (IE, a superior alliance couldn't game the system by letting you constantly retake your 2 gate keeps if they still own the majority of their own home keeps, you haven't gained any new territory since last tally and they still have your scrolls, so on and so forth)

11. (The future!) Introduce a lockout mechanism to IC
I know it's being discussed, 6+1 is good, but whatever the mechanism is 2 alliances should always have a chance of being in their at the same time. If you introduce a PvE Cyrodiil campaign PvE players cannot complain about being locked out of their precious content. PvP players have to do what they love to get into their wonderful close quarters slaughterfest (seriously, loving the sounds of IC, loving what I'm seeing on the streams, can't wait. Very Darkness Falls-ish, and that is a good thing.)

The proportional TL:DR
So, those are my ideas. Overall it's meant to increase the time it takes large groups to capture a keep so that more defenders can arrive while still allowing smaller groups to accomplish both attacks and defenses, as well as introduce more feelings of ownership and permeance to keeps and an urge to defend via spending resources to upgrade while adding in easily flip-able smaller outposts to compensate. This will allow for more long term pushes into enemy territory that will require guilds to claim and upgrade keeps in order to prevent them from losing progress and make massive alarm clock map flips and scroll grabs harder to accomplish as fewer defenders can last longer giving more time for reinforcements to arrive. Meanwhile, the three roaming zerg busters will force smaller groups to spread out and attack multiple objectives at once, spreading the war front out and making it more tactical, and should theoretically help with lag. With the reduction in campaigns, increase in pop size, under dog and loyalty bonus as well as the ability to change which alliance you represent populations should stabilize naturally over time, and if they do not the bonus' can be tweaked to make the underpopulated alliance even stronger/more rewarding. Player alliance choice will also help eliminate spying and problems with having multiple faction characters on the same account by tying all your characters together in one PvP alliance. The introduction of the siege of the scroll gate is THE siege battle of a campaign, it's the most difficult, requiring the most amount of people and will essentially be zerg vs zerg, the one giant ball o death smashing into the epic wall that the zerg busters will not interfere in. A gate lock mechanism on IC will add another incentive to people to capture keeps on top of the scrolls and keep buff bonus, and ensuring that the gate mechanism allows two factions to potentially be in IC at the same time means that it will never be a PvE safe haven in the middle of the PvP campaigns. Meanwhile, a PvE campaign will reduce the amount of PvE'rs taking up slots in the limited campaigns, and provide a safe haven where they can interact with the other alliances (under Meridias blessing!) while experience all Cyrodiil has to offer, and taking on the toughest challenges they may ever face.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Names in Thread Titles]