DocFrost72 wrote: »

I LOVE, LOOOOVE siege fights. Something so gratifying about a siege defense, particularly. My gods, a fire Ballista? A cold fire Ballista? I'm happy for hours on end.

exeeter702 wrote: »

Sorry but im going with the small scale competitive crowd.

Small scale pvp environments that afford or allow players the opportunity to effectively outplay the opposition. Environments where each individual player has a substantial percent chance to change the outcome.
The more players you have in pvp the less impact each player potentially has to make a difference. This isnt an opinion mind you.

This is why 8v8 or 10v10 (no more then that) with clear win conditions as well as very small arena based pvp like 3v3 or 4v4 where compostions and communication are king, both provide the most engaging and genuinely rewarding pvp experience to me. Experiences where i can clearly and understandably confirm why it was i (we) lost a match or am able to see just precicely how i was able to outplay an opposing player.

These scenarios exisit in cyrodil and IC to some extent but they are incredibly rare and incredibly fleeting. Everything in cydroil will eventually boil down to a numbers (player count) game given enough time. Its a law of mmo open world pvp.

Alot of people will get upste when i say this, as has been the case before but.....

Large scale open world pvp usually attracts players that are easily swooned by the spectacle of it. The notion that you are a part of something climactic, something larger than the sum of its parts tends to hit players with said mindsets directly in the feels. So many times you see people on here championing the "warfare tactics" of it all... Like a soft healer standing in back while the front line presses on or supporting a siege line while they take down a keep.

Are you a part of the spectacle? Are you helping the cause? The answer to both of those is yes absolutely. But are you truly being challenged as a player? Are you being pushed out of your comfort zone testing how good of a player you really are? Is the game at that point demonstrating scenarios that clearly show how you won or lost an exchange? The answer is a resounding no.

Exciting scenarios can occur on keep walls and bridges of course. Things like smar los and breakneck skirmishes between 4 or 5 players ranging around the 3 levels of any given rampart but again... Having to fish for such satisfaction is grueling and it does not last.

None of that matters because at the end of the day those players that bask in the glory of it can set up a seige engine line, rotating between them all and saying that they are pvping and call it a day. Large scale objective based pvp is just that, a spectacle that enriches a players experience but giving them the illusion that they are a part of something grandiose where things are on the line. When in reality players that exclusively enjoy that type of pvp environment rarely ever improve on an intricate level as they are simply not challeneged in a way that they would be in structured small scall pvp where their performance actually carries a very real, very measurable weight.