Cyrodil is amazing in its concept, but everything is happening too fast. Its Tiring.

Surgee · December 1

I'm a veteran player and just recently came back to the game with some friends I convinced to give the game a shot. Some of them are PvP lovers, and some absolutely hate PvP in games.

Surprisingly, all of them love the idea of Cyrodil. My friends who hate PvP, said it's the only PvP they actually like in any game. Despite being bad at it, they felt like they were actually doing something and contributing to the higher cause.

The problem started when they saw how really castle sieges look like. It literally takes few minutes to take a giant castle. When we're in a group, before we are able to reach the castle the group leader wants us to take over (horses still need speed upgrade) the castle is already ours. (???) Then we have to teleport to the other side of the map, and again the same thing. We spent our entire PvP time trying to catch up rather than taking part in epic long sieges.

Then our small group decided to just stand and defend. We've seen a larger group approach and immediately notified the alliance. Before anyone was able to reach the castle, it was all over. They got through the gates in like 2 minutes and wiped everything inside.

Before you say "skill issue" it's not the point. Even if the castle is undefended but fortified, it shouldnt take a minute to completely wreck it. The whole Cyrodil gameplay is like a COD match on drugs, minus the fun.

What's the point of claiming a castle for your guild if it will fall as soon as you go to kitchen to get s coffee?

So what's stopping Zenimax to make castles stronger? After claiming a castle, allow completing tasks to heavily fortify a castle, turn simple guards into champions, and spawn a boss at higher fortification level? Give people something to work for and defend. People who like PvE more could focus on these tasks and get great rewards. Such castles could be strongholds that would require a larger, organized group and more time to siege, while smaller groups could still make a difference by focusing on secondary objectives.

I know Cyrodil was abandoned by Devs and it needs a makeover but for starters, they could at least give more HP to walls, doors, and guards.It can't be that hard, and could make a lot of difference.

Sluggy · December 1

To be honest, these fights take minutes because there isn't enough of a population to do anything about it. If you manage to find a well defended castle being besieged it could easily take half an hour or more. I've personally seen one or two fights in this last year that were longer than an hour. I've also been in fights that lasted over two hours but I don't even remember how long it's been since I have seen that. It used to be a regular occurrence but now it's pretty rare to the point that if that is the sort of action you're looking for... you're in the wrong game.

fred4 · December 1

Your ideas sound kind of cool, though I'm not sure how much a PvPvE aspect (bosses) would be appreciated by the majority of PvPers.

What tends to happen is that factions play at different times of day. For a long time the yellow faction on PC EU seemed to be dominated by Aussie / NZ players, for example. Not sure if that's still the case. At any rate, one faction might nightcap the whole map. Once they go to sleep and another faction wakes up, the former faction cannot hold the map. This is when you'll flip a lot of keeps quickly. There are subsequently times when everything hangs in the balance. It is then that you may have big battles for the keeps around Lake Rumare. Those are also the ones required to flip the emperor. Keeps at the edge of the map, on the other hand, are often quite abandoned and easy to take. Some RAID leaders deliberately focus on those, because it's efficient for making AP and campaign points. I agree that's not very exciting, but it may be due to your RAID leader playing that way. There's also a particular reason they might do that, namely the low population double AP bonus. If that's active, it is only broken ~1 hour after your alliance takes an emperor keep around lake. Smart leadership may, therefore, focus on other keeps first.

Surgee · December 2

Sluggy wrote: »

To be honest, these fights take minutes because there isn't enough of a population to do anything about it. If you manage to find a well defended castle being besieged it could easily take half an hour or more. I've personally seen one or two fights in this last year that were longer than an hour. I've also been in fights that lasted over two hours but I don't even remember how long it's been since I have seen that. It used to be a regular occurrence but now it's pretty rare to the point that if that is the sort of action you're looking for... you're in the wrong game.

I get your point, but as I've said before I don't think taking giant strongholds by 2 people should be possible. Even with a larger group it should take some effort. Taking a castle should mean something. Claiming it should mean even more. Even with a group defending, they can fall within 5 minutes and become nothing but a background. I believe you might be in the wrong mode, because arena is where pure PvP battles with no extra elements happen. Cyrodil is designed to be a PvPvE experience, where strategy and resources are the key. The problem is the imbalance between the environment and the players.

Surgee · December 2

fred4 wrote: »

Your ideas sound kind of cool, though I'm not sure how much a PvPvE aspect (bosses) would be appreciated by the majority of PvPers.

What tends to happen is that factions play at different times of day. For a long time the yellow faction on PC EU seemed to be dominated by Aussie / NZ players, for example. Not sure if that's still the case. At any rate, one faction might nightcap the whole map. Once they go to sleep and another faction wakes up, the former faction cannot hold the map. This is when you'll flip a lot of keeps quickly. There are subsequently times when everything hangs in the balance. It is then that you may have big battles for the keeps around Lake Rumare. Those are also the ones required to flip the emperor. Keeps at the edge of the map, on the other hand, are often quite abandoned and easy to take. Some RAID leaders deliberately focus on those, because it's efficient for making AP and campaign points. I agree that's not very exciting, but it may be due to your RAID leader playing that way. There's also a particular reason they might do that, namely the low population double AP bonus. If that's active, it is only broken ~1 hour after your alliance takes an emperor keep around lake. Smart leadership may, therefore, focus on other keeps first.

I see what you mean. Groups flipping the castles overnight is hard to balance. Some game introduce cooldowns, while other have ways to upgrade your stronghold so a larger force will be absolutely necessary to try to take it over, even if undefended , such as fortifications, paying for strong mercenary npcs that can operate siege weapons, bringing crafting materials to lumber mill/farm/mines to heavily upgrade guards. They could even make it so it's possible to steal resources from enemy settlements and bring them to your own.

There's plenty of ways to make it interesting and surely revived Cyrodil would bring PvP crowds back to ESO. Players are longing for a proper large scale battles where holding a castle as a guild means something. Where players can work together, or contribute even as solo's by doing small quests. Every time some mmo attempts that, people are flocking to it (like TaL, which focuses on large scale PvP).

ESO has amazing foundation. It just need some work.

Turtle_Bot · December 2

The main issue is that for such upgraded keeps to work, that would also require much larger populations to make taking a keep possible in the first place. Otherwise we will just see a map flipped at the start of a campaign and remain as is until the next campaign. It is unfortunate, but the populations (and server resources) have just dwindled so much that for what you're describing, it would require the (current) entire faction to take each keep and the current (non-event) servers already struggle to maintain those numbers, even for only a brief period of time.

I think an upgrade is needed for at least the home triangle keeps when owned by the home alliance, but the 6 emp ring keeps should definitely be a fast paced and ever shifting rotation of combat to not allow one alliance to just hold them indefinitely.

I do agree that Cyrodiil has the best foundations for PvP of any MMO I have seen, but unfortunately due to years of being ignored/neglected, it's going to take a huge amount of work to fix it (something I just don't see happening due to the scale/cost of work needed).

I will say that having mount speed & stamina both maxed out definitely helps a lot with reaching the battles in time. This is also a fairly simple QoL improvement ZOS could easily implement where for Cyrodiil instances specifically, all mounts are treated as though they are completely maxed for mount speed/stamina regardless of their current level of speed/stamina training.

moosegod · December 2

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

I will say that having mount speed & stamina both maxed out definitely helps a lot with reaching the battles in time. This is also a fairly simple QoL improvement ZOS could easily implement where for Cyrodiil instances specifically, all mounts are treated as though they are completely maxed for mount speed/stamina regardless of their current level of speed/stamina training.

This would be an amazing QoL change but I don't think it will happen because of a predatory crown store.

Surgee · December 2

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

The main issue is that for such upgraded keeps to work, that would also require much larger populations to make taking a keep possible in the first place. Otherwise we will just see a map flipped at the start of a campaign and remain as is until the next campaign. It is unfortunate, but the populations (and server resources) have just dwindled so much that for what you're describing, it would require the (current) entire faction to take each keep and the current (non-event) servers already struggle to maintain those numbers, even for only a brief period of time.

I think an upgrade is needed for at least the home triangle keeps when owned by the home alliance, but the 6 emp ring keeps should definitely be a fast paced and ever shifting rotation of combat to not allow one alliance to just hold them indefinitely.

I do agree that Cyrodiil has the best foundations for PvP of any MMO I have seen, but unfortunately due to years of being ignored/neglected, it's going to take a huge amount of work to fix it (something I just don't see happening due to the scale/cost of work needed).

I will say that having mount speed & stamina both maxed out definitely helps a lot with reaching the battles in time. This is also a fairly simple QoL improvement ZOS could easily implement where for Cyrodiil instances specifically, all mounts are treated as though they are completely maxed for mount speed/stamina regardless of their current level of speed/stamina training.

Some good points here. I like the idea of having some keeps less defendable than others to keep fast paced gameplay in certain areas. Another solution would be what some other MMOs have (I believe GW2?) that if your alliance doesn't have enough people online, the game allows you to summon alliance champions to help you with a siege, just to have a fighting chance.

Does it all require some work? Definitely! I do think Zenimax has way more to gain with such update than another story zone, which brings zero new players and struggles to keep the current ones. A good a a big Cyrodil update could shake up the MMO market.

Sluggy · December 3

Surgee wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

To be honest, these fights take minutes because there isn't enough of a population to do anything about it. If you manage to find a well defended castle being besieged it could easily take half an hour or more. I've personally seen one or two fights in this last year that were longer than an hour. I've also been in fights that lasted over two hours but I don't even remember how long it's been since I have seen that. It used to be a regular occurrence but now it's pretty rare to the point that if that is the sort of action you're looking for... you're in the wrong game.

I get your point, but as I've said before I don't think taking giant strongholds by 2 people should be possible. Even with a larger group it should take some effort. Taking a castle should mean something. Claiming it should mean even more. Even with a group defending, they can fall within 5 minutes and become nothing but a background. I believe you might be in the wrong mode, because arena is where pure PvP battles with no extra elements happen. Cyrodil is designed to be a PvPvE experience, where strategy and resources are the key. The problem is the imbalance between the environment and the players.

No. Cyrodiil's campaign is a pure PvP gameplay mode. Yeah, there are some NPCs here and there but that's honestly just window dressing meant to at least buy a *little* time so that actual humans can react to an event on the map. It was made from the ground up to support hundreds of players at once. I really can't remember the last time I saw even one-hundred players at once much less multiples of that. Simply put, it doesn't work because it was design specifically with player-vs-player interactions in mind. When there are no players, there's no player-vs-player and the whole thing falls apart.

To make the point clear, a full raid that knows what they are doing and is uncontested by people can start sieging and claim a keep just over two minutes. Stick twenty or thirty experienced players in that same keep and they probably won't take it at all but it could take twenty minutes to resolve either way. Make it a real faction stack on both (or even all three sides) and that same fight can easily last a couple hours.