Enemy NPCs in Cyrodiil - What did you do, Zenimax, what did you do?

WraithAzraiel · May 2014

Yesterday, prior to the 9PM EDT nonsense about hotfixing and reverting - the V5 NPC guards, mages and archers were manageable and even fun with an appropriately sized group.

Was great fun, was having a blast, so we're plenty of people in Cyrodiil.

TODAY, is a vastly different story.

They've somehow magically become able to hit 3x as hard as they did yesterday making combat against ONLY NPCs tedious to say the least. But if there are ANY amount enemy players to bolster the ranks of the NPCs guarding keeps, it becomes impossible - even for a group with superior numbers.

What the hell did you do Zenimax?

WraithAzraiel · May 2014

Oh also - the invincible enemy mage mercs - those are fun too.

Bloodvax · May 2014

Good. Stops the PVE guys that JUST take keeps at time when their undefended.

Izatar · May 2014

Bloodvax wrote: »

Good. Stops the PVE guys that JUST take keeps at time when their undefended.

This may very well be what the devs were thinking, however, the exact opposite is actually true. This is because although the difficulty in taking an undefended keep went up, the difficulty in taking a defended one has gone up even more! Not only are the guards stronger, and the mercenaries stronger an often invincible, but the guards respawn so quickly that there is no way to clear the pcs for long enough to actually pvp.

So what this will lead to is less pvp and more PVE keep taking.

Kevaliji · May 2014

I see no problem with this. Making keeps harder to take will mean they wont switch hands as fast as they were... Maybe people will actually defend keeps now in fear of losing them because they are hard to get back. A little challenge never hurt anybody.

This mentality of "if i cant roflstomp it its too hard" really has to go.

WraithAzraiel · May 2014

Right, I'd make the argument it'd even stop the PvP guys. Go give it a try.

WraithAzraiel · May 2014

That's not the case at all - making the NPCs V5 was a great change - it made things more difficult and more worthwhile.

This problem didn't occur until they instituted the hotfix at 9PM EDT on the 23rd. Prior to that the difficulty of taking a keep had, indeed, increased to an acceptable and fun level.

The point it's at now is just unnecessary. It's going to drive more people away from PvP if it's allowed to persist than it's going to bring "die-hard uber leet PvPer's".

The challenge was there yesterday after the patch - but now after the "hotfix" * it's just frustratingly and unnecessarily improbable.

* = I use the term "hotfix" loosely, on account of it being more of a hotmess.

Cheapshot · May 2014

bs small campaign pops are completely screwed atmn

WraithAzraiel · May 2014

Enemy players do less damage than the NPCs = ridiculous

JeffKnight · May 2014

WraithAzraiel wrote: »

That's not the case at all - making the NPCs V5 was a great change - it made things more difficult and more worthwhile.

This problem didn't occur until they instituted the hotfix at 9PM EDT on the 23rd. Prior to that the difficulty of taking a keep had, indeed, increased to an acceptable and fun level.

The point it's at now is just unnecessary. It's going to drive more people away from PvP if it's allowed to persist than it's going to bring "die-hard uber leet PvPer's".

The challenge was there yesterday after the patch - but now after the "hotfix" * it's just frustratingly and unnecessarily improbable.

* = I use the term "hotfix" loosely, on account of it being more of a hotmess.

Umm, it could also be scaling low-pop and low score boosts...

Godless_Heathen · May 2014

Sad to see the change reverted. Score another one for the whining ***, yah!

Braidas · May 2014

Really not as difficult as you guys are making it sound. You just need like 10+ VR's or 20+ lower levels/VR's (for undefended keeps) and good coordination; less if everyone really knows what they're doing. Before, 2-3 VR 10's were able to take an undefended keep. Ridiculous. A couple guys shouldn't be able to change the map. You should need a group to overrun a castle. Low pop campaigns benefit greatly from this cause you don't have to worry about a few people nightcapping everything. NPC's do respawn quicker, but you'd think a castle might have some reinforcements. Of course, some low pop campaigns can't maintain these numbers (or more), and then PvP is effectively dead.

The problem is, ZOS made these changes seemingly not realizing how few people PvP, forgetting that players don't because of numerous other problems. Once (well, if) these bugs/exploits/whatever other issues are fixed, people will hopefully come back to PvP, and this guard buff won't be an issue. To the contrary, I'm sure you'll all (those of you in low pop campaigns at least) see this change for the improvement it is.

And for the love of god, FIX CALTROPS

iluvataris · May 2014

I would be fine with it but its just too much with the low populations.
merge server's, caltrops need to be fixed as well as invincible merc's .
Maybe lower number of mer's to like 8 idk 12.

SBR_QuorTek · May 2014

Keep it hard as hell... more fun... don't want an easy game on either front.... sucks to be level10 though, but PvP was never really meant for leveling anyway which is a good thing... yes you can get some XP, but nothing compared to any other content out there that would actually even help you to understand your skills better.

Why should I suffer to easy content because I spent my time getting 200+ skill points for use and anyone else for that matter.... it is not like you need a degree in rocket science to get more skills/level and to get better.

SwampRaider · May 2014

I'm fine with the NPC difficulty. The NPC respawn rate is MADDD especially for low pop servers

Samadhi · May 2014

I'm just not clear on why there is so much effort to foist PvE onto PvPers.

As though it wasn't enough to require players to play PvE in order to be competitive, now they pack PvE NPCs in for people to "PvP" against (or NPCS for people to hire to "PvP" for them), instead of doing things that promote player presence and actual Player versus Player PvP.

Meanwhile, when players were actually rewarded for fighting other players (the Kill 20 enemy players quest) it was nerfed down within days.

Grim13 · May 2014

..Place 20 Mercenaries (at least 1/10 bug and become invincible)... then set Caltrops on yourself... DONE! Keep defended.

I don't mind the increased difficulty... but until they fix the fundamentals of PvP... there's several more months of as yet undiscovered exploits ahead of us.

Yusuf · June 2014

SBR_QuorTek wrote: »

Keep it hard as hell... more fun... don't want an easy game on either front.... sucks to be level10 though, but PvP was never really meant for leveling anyway which is a good thing... yes you can get some XP, but nothing compared to any other content out there that would actually even help you to understand your skills better.

Why should I suffer to easy content because I spent my time getting 200+ skill points for use and anyone else for that matter.... it is not like you need a degree in rocket science to get more skills/level and to get better.

Maybe different campaigns for vr5-npcs and lvl50-npcs!
They already said that they want to introduce new campaigns with distinct rules and that way everyone will be happy.

Except the few ppl who actually like the vr5 ones and are now alone on their server, but it's the challenge they asked for, no? : )

Tintinabula · June 2014

The ONLY thing they definitely need to fix are the NPCs that bug out..They're a nuisance.

demonlkojipub19_ESO · June 2014

I don't think there is a big problem with there being NPC guards (not the summoned ones) at keeps. But the problem I see is that they are available when there are actual players there to defend the keep.

They are good for when there are not many actual players defending the keep, but as players that own the keep show up inside of the keeps walls, the internal NPC's need to just despawn and hand over protection to the players. This needs to happen incremental so that a small number of players won't despawn all the keeps guards. like for every 5 players after 20, one internal guard despawns. This way smaller number of players can still defend a keep against many. This way it doesn't matter if NPC guards are super strong, there won't be many of them if there are actual PC defenders around.

If they do this then they should Increase the number of NPC keep defenders and make them stronger to make it hard for those who like to attack undefended keeps while people are offline. Make it more difficult to get a free cap. Or, Stronger guards to make a real "underdog bonus".

They really need to reduce the Mercenary NPC cap either way, or also make that dependant on how many you have defending. after 20 players present (since the cap is 20) every 5 players players who own the keep inside the walls, the cap drops by 1 and despawns the ones that go past the cap. Decrease the damage of Mage mercs too..

Not perfection but something more along these lines to balance the presence of NPC and Player at Keeps. Something to allow actually PvP and less Operation NPC shield. Its a good and more realistic Underdog Bonus as well as Overdog penalty.