I don't think scoring should favor defense over offense or offense over defense. Perhaps defensive ticks will need adjustment as well. It should, however, favor higher death counts. If someone takes or defends an objective and no one, or very few die, there should be little AP to be gained from this. If the death count is high there should be large AP gains, both offensively and defensively as the case may be. For instance at a keep if 1 person dies the tick whether offensive or defensive would be worth 480 AP, if 10 people die it would be worth 1200 AP, if 50 people die it would be worth 4400 AP, if 100 people die it would be worth 8400 AP, if 500 people die it would be worth 40400 AP. This is using 400 as a base amount and 80 per death with just a flat value escalation. Again this could be done many different ways linear, non linear, stepped, etc. to arrive at desired values for certain death thresholds during any particular fight over an objective.

The system you're describing is more or less how it used to be--and the result was that generally all the large groups/pugzergs stayed strictly on the main ring and smashed into each other, with farm groups going to the backkeeps and whatnot.

Now, those groups tend to at least occasionally head to "undefended" locations, which can lead to fun opportunities to actually fight a 24 man pug group without....3 others being there, too.

It does incentivize off-hours PvDoor, but honestly "caring about the score" really stopped working about 2 years ago, when the population in PvP got less serious and there stopped being concerted round-the-clock efforts to play for the scoreboard.

DeadlyRecluse wrote: »

The system you're describing is more or less how it used to be--and the result was that generally all the large groups/pugzergs stayed strictly on the main ring and smashed into each other, with farm groups going to the backkeeps and whatnot.

Now, those groups tend to at least occasionally head to "undefended" locations, which can lead to fun opportunities to actually fight a 24 man pug group without....3 others being there, too.

It does incentivize off-hours PvDoor, but honestly "caring about the score" really stopped working about 2 years ago, when the population in PvP got less serious and there stopped being concerted round-the-clock efforts to play for the scoreboard.

It is no secret that I am a big backer of Cyrodiil being first and foremost a large scale AvAvA competitive environment with objective based siege warfare. I believe that was the original intent and should still be the intent. My hope is that faction locks is the first step in bringing "caring about the score" back. Without faction locks the score is meaningless. When people are playing for all 3 alliances the score is pointless. Reinstituting faction locks is the first step in making the score meaningful. Actually having 3 unique teams that span all time zones and fight for a single faction is the first step in making that happen. It is the first step toward giving the score relevance and meaning.

What needs to be done next is to make the score accurately reflect the effort of all of its participants over time and to compensate for population imbalance during that time. At some point, if it really is to matter and people really are to care about it, the scoring system will need to be adjusted and weighted based on population at any given time. But it goes deeper than that, because the things that people do during those low population hours carries over into the time frames when a weighted scoring system would be at its maximum threshold. When people paint the map and take all 6 scrolls there are some days that those scrolls don't ever make it back home. Sometimes it takes 2 days to get a scroll back, thus the impact that a small percentage of people have upon the score is dramatically disproportionate to the effort they imparted. This is another one of those things that make people not care about the score, or more importantly lead the score itself into irrelevance.

I would wager to say that during the last 12 months there are some people that have won every campaign because the campaign they fight for is the campaign that wins. The effect that they have on the score when they run virtually unopposed is so far askew that it just doesn't matter what anyone else does. Matter of fact it doesn't matter what everyone else does. I have seen 1200 point swings in a 24 hour period because of what has been done in a 4 hour time frame which cannot be overcome in the next 20 hours when more balanced fighting among the factions is taking place.

A population based weighted scoring system which compensates for peaks and valleys will definitely be needed, but before working on that I would try to address the issues that cause people to pile on one faction when population is low, and try to find ways to organically get them to even out among all 3 factions. While AP farming may not be the only reason that people tend to do this, it is definitely a major player. If there are other reasons that people do this then those should be brought up as well, and discussed, and thought through, to find ways to address them. The weight of these actions, I feel, goes beyond what a population based weighted scoring system can correct on its own.

Once the score more accurately reflects the efforts of all of those contributing to it, ideas can be discussed about bringing in rewards that are more meaningful as well. Until that happens it would be completely unfair to have decent, relevant, desired rewards, because it would be totally unfair on how and to whom they would be rewarded. In the end this is where I would like to see Cyrodiil end up. It should be a competitive large scale team base environment, team being alliance, not group or guild, where everyone's actions contribute as equally to the score as possible. Doing something at 6 am, or noon, or 6 pm, or midnight should have the same value and weight reflected in the score. The time of day that you do said thing should not increase nor decrease its value or weight. It should be a place where the rewards make you say that was worth it, I'm glad I was a part of that, I want to do it again, but things need to be staged in the correct order to make the end result of all of it as viable and as long lasting as possible. There are no easy answers, there are a lot of moving parts, but this is the next area I believe needs to be addressed to make Cyrodiil what it was intended to be.

Mr_Walker wrote: »

Population (or the lack thereof) is what needs to be addressed.

Its definently a multi faceted problem, but the the servers cant handle the population we have now. A good start to fixing a lack of population would be making the game actually playable.

I think it might be better if the 6k for taking keeps were split evenly among the attackers rather than rewarded to each, with the amount to be split increased significantly based on the number of defenders that were present.

Mr_Walker wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

I think it might be better if the 6k for taking keeps were split evenly among the attackers rather than rewarded to each, with the amount to be split increased significantly based on the number of defenders that were present.

That's a great idea, and it would ensure that people who don't play "primetime" are less incentivised to play, leading to positive outcomes!

Ideally a large group capturing a well-defended keep would get the same o-tick per person as a small group taking a lightly defended keep -- less people to split up a smaller tick balances that out. What it does not support is pvdooring.