Vulkunne wrote: »

Please tell me more about how this excludes PvP

Look at the server pop. There's your answer. It's simply not a desirable PvP experience for the vast majority of players. Optimal farming means locking down the entire zone with your tri faction cartel so that nobody outside the cartel can access telvars, and the experience inside the cartel is mostly just zerging down solos and PvE.

They still haven’t even done something as basic as moving the daily quest givers down into the sewers. If I want to grab the dailies I have to go through about a dozen (!!!) load screens just so I can pick up the lot.

And yes, the overall gameplay there is toxic and no fun.

tincanman wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

tincanman wrote: »

Obligatory "can't gain more tv from players than carried so that risk v's reward applies to all" statement.

I don't understand this request. I've seen people suggest it, but I don't think they've thought it through. If a player who's very good at farming TV from the mobs and bosses as well as very good at killing other players has more TV than you when they kill you, you would end up losing 100% of your TV.

Nah, I doubt very much anyone who's suggested this has thought about it in the way you describe. More of a check added after the existing system to ensure any attacking player has the tv to gain tv.

For example, if you have 10k tv and you get killed by anything you always lose half. Always. No change. BUT if it's a player that kills your character they can only gain a PROPORTION of your lost tv up to a MAXIMUM of the 5k you lost, depending on how much tv THEY carried at the kill-point. So, if they have 5k+ on them they get the lot but, if they have 200, then that's all they get. Which seems perfectly fair to me.

A player that's good at farming tv now from both players/npcs is unlikely to change their play style other than, maybe, not banking all/most of their tv when they return to base.

The suggestion brings parity to the 'reward v's risk' equation' for obvious reasons: a player can only gain from another player what they(the attacker/killer/winner player) carry. Currently, if I have zero tv there is zero risk for me wandering by, even questing during some event, to randomly attack anyone because I have NOTHING to lose and everything to gain if I get lucky and catch someone, for example, on low health post-boss solo.

Okay, if they mean you still lose no more than half (rounded up) of what you had, but the other player can only take as much from you as they already had (up to half of what you had), that still isn't going to have the outcome people think, because any player who can successfully farm other players-- not to mention the patroling bosses-- is quickly going to have far more TV than you, hence you're still going to lose half of your TV and be upset about it. Result = No difference.

I like to wonder around IC, it's a good zone from a visual standpoint. As a big fan of TES 4 Oblivion, I like just being there. Makes me nostalgic.

From a design standpoint, I agree it could be better. From my experience the zone is either in two states:

1. Either it's totally packed full of players for an event. So much that it's lagging and loading screens take forever (yay).
2. Absolutely dead quiet, you *might* bump into like a handful of other players.

There are pros and cons with both.

It also is the source of several issues, with the combination of PvE and PvP elements. Say you're busy taking down a boss, health is reduced, and some enemy player decides to kill you.

As for Tel var stones, seems like they are overdoing it with how much Tel Var one can loose upon death. Is it necessary to take that amount when we die?

There are opportunities for improvement, definitely.

IC is really fun zone with much potential but really, really bad gameplay design choices.

Whenever I have more than 1k telvars on me, I feel stressed, because there are so many ways for stupid death - you can be almost one-shoted by ganker with broken proc sets, you can be killed by your own skill not firing in crucial moments because of lag, you can be smashed by zergs or even some duo/trios with special builds where one immortal tank keeps you away from another player with high burst damage(from distance), you can be one-shoted by bossess (or killed by other player when boss drains you) or killed by glitches (pulling on platforms).

Whole design promote ganking, griefing, unhealthy advantages - dirtier you play, more telvars you get. It encourages people to smash PvE players (they have some telvars from mobs and there is very little chance that you will loose anything, because they don't know how to fight back) and generally attack weakest players. Normally you should have "noob rewards for noob kills", but this in not a rule in IC.

When I play Cyrodiil, being killed usually don't bring any emotions to me. It can break my plans for whatever I was doing, but at least it not erase my AP points, so it's not so frustrating. In IC I can grind mobs for 10 minutes and than some player can take some advantage of me and steal half of it in matter of seconds. Emotionally you feel robbed from your work and this is feeling which keep MANY players away from IC. Before event I was even fishing for achievement in full fishing costume and than some players appeared near me, looked at me for couple seconds and then kill anyway, knowing I had no chance to defend because of long animations (I was dead before I was able to unsheath my sword). He probably killed me, because there was a chance I have some telvars and it only shows how this design encourage people to be griefers.

IC need complete rework of this system. Bare minimum is at least limiting 50% telvar gain from killing to something like 10-20%, because loosing half of it every freaking time is just too painfull and annoying.

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

tincanman wrote: »

Obligatory "can't gain more tv from players than carried so that risk v's reward applies to all" statement.

I don't understand this request. I've seen people suggest it, but I don't think they've thought it through. If a player who's very good at farming TV from the mobs and bosses as well as very good at killing other players has more TV than you when they kill you, you would end up losing 100% of your TV.

I think you misunderstand. The proposal is surely that for killing a player you get up to 50% of their TV, capped at however many you already hold. So you can still never take all of someone's telvar, but if you keep depositing all your telvar in the bank and run around with say 100 on you, then you can only take 100 from someone even if they're carrying a million.

I'm still not quite sure it works because the complainers are generally new, unconfident or PVEers during events and they're probably in many cases only holding a few thousand, and for someone efficient at farming TV by killing players they're probably comfortable running around with that many on them anyway, so the would still take 50% in many cases.

I remember good sewer fights years ago too, but the sewers are pretty much dead now. I think overall IC needs vastly better rewards to encourage people into it. Signfiicant amounts of AP for capturing districts - this is IC after all, it should be valuable to hold; updated gear drops. Most important, reduce the relative appeal of tel var: it's seen as the only reason to go to IC, and so players who don't have much hope of keeping their tel var don't go there. If the primary reason was really valuable stuff that couldn't be taken away, far more people would go. Have the simulacrum of Molag Bal drop a guaranteed 5 luminous inks, or have key fragments unlock new chests with very enticing amounts of mats, for example. Mostly just keep the rewards updated - everyone has a molag bal scamp now, so the reward from the centrepiece of IC - the Barathrum Centrata - is pitiful when you consider it involves crossing the entire sewer network, fighting a number of already elite boss NPCs and then fighting the simulacrum itself, all the while avoiding dying to PVP, and then getting out alive.

Also, and I'm saying this even though I use it myself sometimes, they should fix the way you can get safely back to base by porting to a Cyro campaign and back to IC. It completely undermines the value of sigils of Imperial Retreat and it takes away almost all the risk of finding yourself with a large number of telvar that you need to get back safely.

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

And a great example of bad game design.

1. Killing other players doesn't make any sense at all. It's easy for them to respawn in the sewers and just go out, find you and try again. Yes, you can change the area, but IC is still pretty small and finding you is not difficult.

2. I've heard stories many times about players farming bosses. Then a random player joins them, and he has to call his friends so that they would enter another alliance toon and drive away the annoying thief Telvar. Or they would enter a character of another alliance and just kill him. That is, the AvA principle does not work in IC.

3. Considering the previous points, it turns out that the fewer players play IC, the better. Why share with a large number of other players? It is simply not profitable to play IC if there are at least 2 sticks of your alliance.

4. As a result, we have a large, but completely empty piece of
quite valuable content, where only about 20 super-elite people on each server can farm telvars, and in some completely crazy quantities.
Reminds me of the story with the guild trading system, where the prefix "guild" is completely false and in fact these are private shops where a few players have tens of billions of gold. (But I still think this is better than a single auction where it is fashionable to buy everything and resell it at an exorbitant price)

1. Ideally, you are not killing Players. Focusing on killing their Characters is probably the best move.

2. This isn't real life. It's a game, and games have mechanics. Even without using cheats and cheat codes, mechanics can always be used to assist the character. I've played single player games where the 'top tier' treasure chest was easily identifiable. So, its save game, open chest, if you don't like the item, reload. It's just the mechanics of the specific game. Because its a Game and not real life. We all have to accept there are going to be mechanics that can be manipulated.

3 Depends on your specific goals. If you want to just do Dailies you Want to be the dominant faction on the map. Not everyone is looking for a fight as the main reason to go in. Sometimes, yes it is. Other times, not so much.

4 But that is the way EVERY game is. Why are they super-elite? Because they put in the Work and the Effort and especially the Time required to achieve that level. In short... They Earned it. It's not fair to criticize people who Earned everything they have. Now, if this was a different game, like the old Archeage, it would be a different story. All you need to hit top tier would be unlimited real cash. But in ESO, you gotta work for it. So IMHO I have no problem with their tactics.

IMHO.

kringled_1 wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

tincanman wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

tincanman wrote: »

Obligatory "can't gain more tv from players than carried so that risk v's reward applies to all" statement.

I don't understand this request. I've seen people suggest it, but I don't think they've thought it through. If a player who's very good at farming TV from the mobs and bosses as well as very good at killing other players has more TV than you when they kill you, you would end up losing 100% of your TV.

Nah, I doubt very much anyone who's suggested this has thought about it in the way you describe. More of a check added after the existing system to ensure any attacking player has the tv to gain tv.

For example, if you have 10k tv and you get killed by anything you always lose half. Always. No change. BUT if it's a player that kills your character they can only gain a PROPORTION of your lost tv up to a MAXIMUM of the 5k you lost, depending on how much tv THEY carried at the kill-point. So, if they have 5k+ on them they get the lot but, if they have 200, then that's all they get. Which seems perfectly fair to me.

A player that's good at farming tv now from both players/npcs is unlikely to change their play style other than, maybe, not banking all/most of their tv when they return to base.

The suggestion brings parity to the 'reward v's risk' equation' for obvious reasons: a player can only gain from another player what they(the attacker/killer/winner player) carry. Currently, if I have zero tv there is zero risk for me wandering by, even questing during some event, to randomly attack anyone because I have NOTHING to lose and everything to gain if I get lucky and catch someone, for example, on low health post-boss solo.

Okay, if they mean you still lose no more than half (rounded up) of what you had, but the other player can only take as much from you as they already had (up to half of what you had), that still isn't going to have the outcome people think, because any player who can successfully farm other players-- not to mention the patroling bosses-- is quickly going to have far more TV than you, hence you're still going to lose half of your TV and be upset about it. Result = No difference.

Years ago, this was more true. People who would kill me would then go on to kill the boss themselves.
Things have changed. Almost anyone who kills me while they're solo in IC, will not even attempt to fight the boss themselves.
The people asking for this are doing so from experience, where they survive a gank attempt, turn the tables and kill the would be ganker, only to find that they're carrying basically no tel var.

Absolutely this.

Elyu wrote: »

One suggestion I've seen which I think solves most of the problems (in addition to these 2 suggestions:)

Twohothardware wrote: »

They need to drastically decrease the amount of Telvar lost when dying and increase the Telvar for killing players who aren't holding Telvar. It's too punishing to random players trying to farm Telvar and too rewarding to groups that are just looking to kill players but aren't holding Telvar.

Add: lose NO Telvar if killed by a mob

kargen27 wrote: »

Imperial City had some really good fights before flags were added to the districts. Now with the flags one alliance if populations are close will gain an advantage. ZoS should do special weekends where not controlling the flag doesn't prevent players from spawning in that district after a death. Let the controlling faction have a bonus to telvar or something so it still is worth controlling the flag.
If all three factions could almost instantly spawn on their balcony in that district after death I think we would have so good large and sustained fights again.

The idea:
While in IC killing players / taking objectives rewards Tel var Stones instead of AP
(or alternatively, some of the rewards currently available solely through tel var could be made available for either tel var or AP (e.g. the IC PvP sets))

there actually used to be a difference in tel var loss between getting killed by an NPC and getting killed by a player

originally i think it was 80% loss if death to player and 20% loss death to NPC, so if someones fight was going bad they would intentionally die to an NPC if possible, i know there were definitely times when i tried to do that and i lost minimal tel var because the NPC got a killing blow

people would just go back to cheesing that if they dont just straight port out if the fight is not going there way now


for the OP my main issue with IC is respawn points should 100% not be determined by who controls the districts, this stifles the fighting on the surface, but other than that i really like IC and its definitely one of my favorite zones, both to participate in pvp and for pve farming

Twohothardware wrote: »

... and increase the Telvar for killing players who aren't holding Telvar.

Basic arithmetic would clarify why that's a bad idea.

I love ic. It could be better, though.
@React came up with an amazing write up on what to change to make it better.

In general I believe that:
-spawning in any zone regardless of who owns flags
-can only take tel Var from an enemy equal to what you are carrying
-limit group size to 6, with anyone out of your group as hostile

Would make for an amazing solo / small scale experience.

Ic doesn't have siege weapons, doesn't require riding vast distances for fights, and tel var is valuable meaning pvp isn't as expensive (good food, poisons and potions aren't cheap).

I would love for ic to get some love @ZOS_Kevin

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Limiting it maybe to a team free for all with smaller groups over faction might be able reduce the zerging the small map, but as long as factions are friendly, it would not change much.

Also; it is a mode that heavily favors stealth even more than Cyrodiil. I would say that hinders the random solo from spending much time down there without stealth themselves

One of the reasons stealth is so favored there is the Tel-Var loss. When risk is high, people will seek ways to mitigate that risk while keeping the same rewards. That's natural instinct. Stealth and groups are two easy ways to mitigate a lot of risk with minimal loss in reward.

The can only receive as much as you're carrying from other players is an interesting solution. I personally think they should also drop it down to 40-45% Tel-Var gained. If people can keep most of their Tel-Var, the psychology is going to feel different to "I lost half" or "I lost most." And that is not a big enough difference in gain to feel bad for the person receiving things.

Would the person saying they're pulling 400k tel var in a day, please explain HOW they are doing it? Like, what are they fighting, how are they killing, because they said they were doing it in a "dead campaign" so they're not getting it off players.