Upcoming Campaign Changes

Sheneria · June 2014

its pretty stupid really. even more so if you are EU player.

the 14 day campaign in EU is dead, so the best solution is to split it up into 2 7 day ones? what idiot came up with this idea.

also just 1 standard campaign ? on EU primetime you can pretty much fill 4 normal servers to full if you would merge the low pop ones with the rest.

no one from those crazy RVR players on EU will pay a sub if they have to que for 1 normal pvp server. not even a F2P mmorpg does this (cause then they wouldn't make money if people can't log into their game).

Sasky · June 2014

I guess you could go ahead and close out some of the heavily lopsided campaigns, where there's not much PvP and no mathematical possibility of another side winning.

For those that are competitive, leave them until the above is true or the campaign ends. For NA, there are 2 campaigns where the leader could change before the end: Volendrung has AD and DC in a dead heat. In Wabbajack, DC is only down 10.5k points and has been closing 1k per day the past week.

We're down to under 20 days. If you wipe and start all new 30-day campaigns (which seems will be the main option), you throw people back another period.

For guesting, the 72hr lockout is a good step, but not enough.
If anything, the way it's currently setup is actually detrimental to people who stay in their home campaign.

In NA you see lots of people set their home campaign as one of the lopsided campaigns for their faction so they get all the passive bonuses. They then bring those bonuses to their guest campaign (which ends up being the one they play on more).

1) Remove all other campaign buffs when guesting.
2) Add a debuff to guest campaigners (something like -25% AP gain in guest campaign)
3) Give at least queue priority to home campaign

One final thought/suggestion:
Currently, all the bonuses go to the side with the most map control, which makes it harder to make headroom. There need to be some bonuses that favor a side down to their last couple keeps.

One that would work well would be if you could scale NPC strength (numbers or strength) based on the number of keeps a faction holds. The fewer keeps you have, the stronger your NPC support. The more keeps you have, the more vulnerable you are to a quick counterattack. It'd also encourage ganging up on the single dominant faction instead of ganging up on the weakest faction.

TL;DR
- Finish out campaigns where score is close (at a minimum)
- Remove buffs and debuff guesters
- Make NPCs stronger on sides with no keeps and weaker on sides with more keeps.

Omyz · June 2014

I am not keen on so few long term campaigns, 45 to sixty days for me would be fine. 30 days or less? UGH Especially the 7 day ones, that is like a raid reset, not a faction war.

Laura · June 2014

these actually look pretty cool

rich_nicholsonb16_ESO · June 2014

Ok it seems the ppl who want this to happen are mainly from the US where it seems that the pvp servers are in a mess while the ppl who are mainly against this are from Europe where the servers are in an ok state ( the top 4 are normally locked in the evenings ).

Why don't you change the US servers to test this out?

If the EU are forced in this change it might be a huge mistake as like I said our servers are not in a bad shape ( apart from the lag ).

I wouldn't mind if the lower populated servers got axed and to give us a choice between long and short duration servers but just don't axe the ones that are ok.

Turelus · June 2014

One thing I am wondering, considering the EU server has Auriel's Bow, Bloodthorn and Dawnbreaker locked most weekends at peak times. What are you expecting for the single 30day campaign that most players will want to play in?

Wont that forever be locked because of the massive populations on that one campaign?

Sheneria · June 2014

what do you think we can do other than playing the queue game for hours or unsub from this management trainwreck.

Fine · June 2014

For me this seems like a really desperate move, I'm playing AD on Wabbajack EU and I'm having ALOT of fun with my guilds mates. Even tho the score means we'll lose for sure. The fact that we are always heavily outnumbered by EP is what's actually fun for us, not all of us wants to be a part of a giant zerg. Actually alot of players in this game dosen't-

I know I'm not the only player that playing DAoC back in the days of Shrouded Isles and before that, what we liked about the pvp was that a small group of good players could easily take out a zerg of bad ones. Wich is what we've be able to do in this game aswell.

But having as few campaigns and you say here, will mean we are forced to play with a zerg on our side. Wich for me will ruin the expirence completely, so don't do anything drastic.

As a suggestion for what you might do is that you have a long time campaign where less players can join at a time. So instead of the currect 600 players cap on 1 side. Set it to 150.

Borondir · June 2014

When you enter the guest campaign you should definitly get only the boni from the guest campaign and not the home campaign as long you are inside it. And i would prefer it to get campaigns for specific languages. I am tired to play with the whole world when the game itself is in my own language.

Enesse · June 2014

Shut down our current campaigns? No no no, I've grown too fond of my long-term home campaign. Even the enemies

Shiv · June 2014

1. Prevent Emporer farming by doubling Ap point cost for switching campaings each time Emporer farmers will have mass amounts of AP anyways.
2. 2 30 day non vet campaigns should be more then enough as long as pop on them is increased (DAOC servers had roughly 1.2k cap in RVR).
3. No Former Emporer buff at all making emporer farming even more disagreeable.
4. Fix the piggy backing Guests into different campaigns.

As a former DAOC player i never RVR'd for rewards other then to increase my realmpoints for Realm Rank. Personally i think the cross realm guilds caused a lack of realm pride that was so abundant In DAOC it also makes the Above mentioned emporer farming that much easier.

Braidas · June 2014

Personally would like to see at least one more long term campaign, a 5-7 day leaderboard is unappealing to me.

demonlkojipub19_ESO · June 2014

Sheneria wrote: »

its pretty stupid really. even more so if you are EU player.

the 14 day campaign in EU is dead, so the best solution is to split it up into 2 7 day ones? what idiot came up with this idea.

also just 1 standard campaign ? on EU primetime you can pretty much fill 4 normal servers to full if you would merge the low pop ones with the rest.

no one from those crazy RVR players on EU will pay a sub if they have to que for 1 normal pvp server. not even a F2P mmorpg does this (cause then they wouldn't make money if people can't log into their game).

How did you get that they are only splitting a 14 day campaign out of that. They are removing all 10 campaigns, the 9 90 days and the 1 14 day. they are adding two 5 day (1 vet only, 1 non-vet), two 7 day, and 1 30 day.

This also means that instead of spreading out across 10 campaigns, unevenly, people will now have to choose out of 5. Most vets that want a good fight will go for the vet only campaign, leaving 4 for "the rest" to choose from. This will get more people in the same place and have a greatly reduced number of dead campaigns if all goes according to plan.

Some_Jerk · June 2014

The number of campaigns is better. Adjusting the guest passes to have a 72 hour lockout and increasing the cost to change your home is better yet.
However,
Haderus and/or Chillrend should be 30 day campaigns, you've already given us two shorter ones and I think it would be best to have more options for the longer campaigns.
Looks better than the current situation regardless

What do I REALLY think ?

Remove aoe caps and above all else remove mercenaries entirely. I come to cyrodiil primarily for pvp, and mercenaries get in the way of me fighting other players. Guards I understand, but I don't want to fight more NPCs than necessary. I want to fight players!

Lithion · June 2014

Alright, Zenimax, I was actually one of the players who was suggesting that there should be a separate campaign for non-vets because of the frustration of being ganked by VRs.

But I've done some serious PvP since then (as a lvl 34-37), and I actually enjoyed it. I found out that if I stick with a large group of players (using Teamspeak), I actually only die about as often as the VRs. I'm not getting repeatedly ganked, and I'm having a lot of fun. I feel like I can contribute substantially with siege weapons (that fire ballista hits harder than I probably would as a VR10), and I no longer feel like a non-vet campaign is necessary.

That said, I do realize that not every low-level player is having as much fun as me. Therefore, a non-VR campaign could work, but only if you make it MUCH less rewarding. You also need to get rid of the VR-ONLY campaign. Why exclude players based on levels? That will only serve to separate players unnecessarily.

And ideally a non-VR campaign should only be for "fun". If it is too rewarding, then there is absolutely no reason for me as a non-VR to go into the mixed campaign. The non-VRs who do go into the mixed campaigns should be REWARDED for it, otherwise the mixed campaign will pretty much be like a VR-only map. The non-VRs who are willingly fighting higher level enemies should not feel like they are being punished. It should be a personal choice.

Fighting tougher enemies = better rewards
Fighting equally powerful enemies = little reward

As someone suggested earlier, this can be accomplished by making the non-VR campaign "guest" only. With no emperors, little AP rewards, and very little other rewards. This will give non-VR some great options.

They can have an easier experience, with lower rewards by guesting in a non-VR campaign.

OR

They can have a challenging experience, with higher rewards by fighting on mixed campaigns.

This will actually give us a reason to continue PvPing against VRs as low-level players.

Again, VR-ONLY campaigns DO NOT need to exist (why should they?), and the Non-VR campaign should be GUEST only with minimal rewards.

Sheneria · June 2014

demonlkojipub19_ESO wrote: »

Sheneria wrote: »

its pretty stupid really. even more so if you are EU player.

the 14 day campaign in EU is dead, so the best solution is to split it up into 2 7 day ones? what idiot came up with this idea.

also just 1 standard campaign ? on EU primetime you can pretty much fill 4 normal servers to full if you would merge the low pop ones with the rest.

no one from those crazy RVR players on EU will pay a sub if they have to que for 1 normal pvp server. not even a F2P mmorpg does this (cause then they wouldn't make money if people can't log into their game).

How did you get that they are only splitting a 14 day campaign out of that. They are removing all 10 campaigns, the 9 90 days and the 1 14 day. they are adding two 5 day (1 vet only, 1 non-vet), two 7 day, and 1 30 day.

This also means that instead of spreading out across 10 campaigns, unevenly, people will now have to choose out of 5. Most vets that want a good fight will go for the vet only campaign, leaving 4 for "the rest" to choose from. This will get more people in the same place and have a greatly reduced number of dead campaigns if all goes according to plan.

what are you talking about? They remove ALL SERVERS, even those that work and have a community, with stuff like open ts and groups for everyone (yes even sub veteran levels) on EU.

yesterday we had 3 full normal 90 day servers with 1 being medium on all sides (all low pop servers could also easily fill one server to medium/high), while the 14 day campaign was empty as usual.
That means we need at least 4 normal servers for EU with a standard 30/60 day campaign duration without having to endure queues on primetime.

What we will get is 1 normal Server that will have several hours long queue, and 2 7 day campaign no one on EU wants and will be empty.

No one will pay a Sub if they can't join the campaign they want to play and with ESO being in a bad state like this they can't afford to lose Subs from EU.

Again no one is interested in short campaigns on EU (as the dead empty 14 day campaign has proven) but we will get them anyway because ZOS is too lazy to figure out how to make separate EU and US Server (they love to mirror servers).

demonlkojipub19_ESO · June 2014

Doesnt matter if the 3 out of 10 campaigns you have are fun and "work", they all suck. They are having shorter campaigns for faster scoreboard resets. 90 days has always been way too long. Once the new campaigns open up they will all fill up just like the current constantly filled 3 you have. Except maybe you will have 3/5 filled all the time instead of 3/10.

KaizerXul · June 2014

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

So.very.glad. Sick of being steamrolled because I am not an 'uber' player in PvP nor PvE -- I am a casual player that doesn't fret about levels and gear and whatnot, because I am playing the way I want and I just come here to have fun and sometimes just screw around. Casual players shouldn't get punished in a PvP massacre. I have had to basically stop going into PvP because I got sick of being ganked by small VR groups that could take down (even larger groups) of non-VR characters. They are just way-too-powerful despite any battle-level boost you throw at me. I pretty much just roll over and die, because I have zero chance.

I don't care if the rewards are less (and they probably should be), but so very glad that there will be a non-VR land so I at least have a fighting chance and am not constantly being destroyed in 1-2 hits.

I think the VR-only campaign isn't necessary, but the non-VR absolutely is.

I'd suggest you also do some 30-60 day campaigns or even maintain one 90 day for people that want to see it through.

It'd be nice to be able to even turn off all XP rewards if I chose. I think the key to making people happy here, ZOS, is choice. If you allow a lot of choice in customizing how/where/when people play, you will have a lot more happy players and less annoyed ones. It goes the same for all options really. Toggles are wonderful. Nameplates, chat bubbles, etc.. not everyone wants them, but if you let them switch off/on, then everyone wins.

Glad you're asking and recognizing the needs of not just the few. Looking forward to trying PvP again.

-That's my three cents

Sheneria · June 2014

demonlkojipub19_ESO wrote: »

Doesnt matter if the 3 out of 10 campaigns you have are fun and "work", they all suck. They are having shorter campaigns for faster scoreboard resets. 90 days has always been way too long. Once the new campaigns open up they will all fill up just like the current constantly filled 3 you have. Except maybe you will have 3/5 filled all the time instead of 3/10.

you make no sense at all, the servers cannot suck if they are fun and work.

and no one in EU plays on the short campaign. we will be stuck to join 1 long campaign while the 2 short ones will be empty, just as it is now.

EU atm can easy fill 5 standard campaign (filled means that they would be full) if you would axe the low pop ones. but ZOS is just to stupid to make separate EU PVP Servers.

Pad · June 2014

They shut down all server by monday (09/06/2014) ?

demonlkojipub19_ESO · June 2014

Sheneria wrote: »

demonlkojipub19_ESO wrote: »

Doesnt matter if the 3 out of 10 campaigns you have are fun and "work", they all suck. They are having shorter campaigns for faster scoreboard resets. 90 days has always been way too long. Once the new campaigns open up they will all fill up just like the current constantly filled 3 you have. Except maybe you will have 3/5 filled all the time instead of 3/10.

you make no sense at all, the servers cannot suck if they are fun and work.

and no one in EU plays on the short campaign. we will be stuck to join 1 long campaign while the 2 short ones will be empty, just as it is now.

EU atm can easy fill 5 standard campaign (filled means that they would be full) if you would axe the low pop ones. but ZOS is just to stupid to make separate EU PVP Servers.

No one plays short campaign on NA either, so what. Its not because of its duration, Its because it came way too late and switching to it forced you to give up on end-of campaign reward, something some people have played in current campaigns way too long to forfeit so easily.

But now they are going to give that reward early and shut them down in favor of shorter duration campaigns. Too short maybe, but certainly not too long.

jeradlub17_ESO · June 2014

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Hi, everyone! Like Matt mentioned in his Road Ahead post, we’re looking closely at PvP in Cyrodiil right now. We’re actively working on reducing performance issues by optimizing Cyrodiil, and we’re also undergoing efforts to improve the feel of combat, but that’s not all we’re thinking about. As the Campaigns progress, we’ve been gathering lots of data and reading your comments here, on social media, and on other sites. We have some ideas for changes we’d like to make, but we want to get your direct feedback. Here’s a look at what we’re thinking about.

First and foremost, we want to assure you that any Campaigns we close before their natural shutdown time will properly reward players based on their tier reward, alliance placement, and leaderboard status.

We want to make significant changes to the types and durations of Campaigns. To do this, we’d shut down the currently-existing Campaigns and introduce five new ones per megaserver. Here are the Campaign types and durations we’re thinking about adding:

• Bow of Shadows: Veteran Rank only Campaign (five-day campaign)
• Blackwater Blade: Non-Veteran only Campaign (five-day campaign)
• Haderus: seven-day standard Campaign that anyone can join.
• Chillrend: seven-day standard Campaign that anyone can join.
• Thornblade: 30-day standard Campaign that anyone can join.

To go along with these new Campaigns, we’d like to adjust guest passes to have a 72-hour lockout, and to make changing your home Campaign cost 100,000 AP (also with a 72-hour lockout).

Let us know what you think of these changes!

These changes are horrible. Skip the 5 and 7 day campaign junk. Do away with home and guest campaigns. Just have 3-5 30d servers that fill as people log in and pvp entry needs to be capped not just by total pop allowed but also within a certain percentage of the lowest population's numbers. Say 10%, that's fair enough. In this way the populations will be kept balanced and when one hits a limit on a server, either max or pop % difference, it just rolls to the next server. Then you won't have the problem of AD is full everyone else has one bar and gets rolled. Because when that happens people that have no backbone make it worse by all going to roll the winning side or they flip to a server where the tables are reversed and it is no better. The more it stays like this the worse it will get or people quit altogether. Entry to campaign should be capped within 10% of whoever has the lowest number at the moment and let it fill evenly to the total cap at which point it gets a lock. Everyone will get to play and will be encouraged to pick any of the three factions and still feel they have the chance to win.

bruceb14_ESO5 · June 2014

Short 7 Day Campaign is an abuse waiting to happen. AP Farm not real PVP. Yes there is activity on Celarus, of course, new Emperor every couple of hours, plenty of points to be had, yet what does it take away from? How can ZOS balance the game when there are guilds and groups exploiting the system for Emperorship, for Alliance Points, for Vet Points. It is a farce.

Sheneria · June 2014

demonlkojipub19_ESO wrote: »

Sheneria wrote: »

demonlkojipub19_ESO wrote: »

Doesnt matter if the 3 out of 10 campaigns you have are fun and "work", they all suck. They are having shorter campaigns for faster scoreboard resets. 90 days has always been way too long. Once the new campaigns open up they will all fill up just like the current constantly filled 3 you have. Except maybe you will have 3/5 filled all the time instead of 3/10.

you make no sense at all, the servers cannot suck if they are fun and work.

and no one in EU plays on the short campaign. we will be stuck to join 1 long campaign while the 2 short ones will be empty, just as it is now.

EU atm can easy fill 5 standard campaign (filled means that they would be full) if you would axe the low pop ones. but ZOS is just to stupid to make separate EU PVP Servers.

No one plays short campaign on NA either, so what. Its not because of its duration, Its because it came way too late and switching to it forced you to give up on end-of campaign reward, something some people have played in current campaigns way too long to forfeit so easily.

But now they are going to give that reward early and shut them down in favor of shorter duration campaigns. Too short maybe, but certainly not too long.

ah so people love 7 days campaigns now eh? just read this thread, no one likes them really, why have 2 of those while only have 1 really good 30 day campaign?

Also i like the fact that you totally forget that we on EU have queues for 3 servers at primetime ATM, with another server on med/high, while the rest is basically pve /smallscale which can also fill another server.

thats 4 30day server we need on EU minimum. and then we can talk about the special ones like sub veteran and maybe a 14 day if someone even wants them(my guess would be no one).

YrthWyndAndFyre · June 2014

Apparently you have completely missed the biggest problems. The towers at resources and at outposts like Bleaker's. They seem to be immune to siege damage, and you can set up base camps on the roof. This means that a small force can deny them to an overwhelmingly large opposing force simply by stacking inside that tiny building. If the flag is taken, as soon as the enemy force leaves, they've got a siege tower literally on the premises - they can wipe out the defending NPCs and retake the flag with impunity. Or in the case of outposts, they can set up an impregnable reinforcement point behind your front lines without ever having to go through them and put your army in an unbreakable pincer.

Once they're buttoned up in there, you can't put people through the door fast enough to get an effective force inside. You can only put 2-3 people through the door at a time and they get killed instantly. If you get lucky and are able to kill one or two defenders, they can revive anywhere and be back inside in a second - evading the blockade outside completely. Since you cannot destroy the base camp, you cannot cut off reinforcements, and voila, an impregnable fortress the size of a large house!

This bug is already being exploited to hideous effectiveness all over Cyrodiil. Alliances are setting up 'farm points' inside those towers making them effectively impossible to take. Why is it not possible to lay siege to those towers and reduce them to rubble, killing everybody inside? At least then those towers, which are supposed to be a minor defensive point against an assault, can be taken. In any case, it should be IMPOSSIBLE to set up base camps on or in ANY STRUCTURE. The fact that it can be done at all has got to be a bug, and if it is a bug, then it is being rabidly exploited.

But even if you remove the base camp problem, there is still the issue that you can't open a foray point in the tower, which makes it a brutally effective choke-point against a besieging army. The only way to take a defended keep in the first place is to be able to put a force through the wall bigger than the one inside, which is why you can knock the door out. In those resource and outpost towers, there is no such strategy available - you have to literally open the door and get shot coming through. Even a small force can hold off a thousand attacking troops indefinitely.

Fix the base camps so that they can no longer be used on or in any structure. You should only be able to deploy a base camp if you're deploying it on the GROUND - as in the good earth - the dirt.

For the towers, did you honestly think that if you left impregnable fortresses in the game, sooner or later they wouldn't be exploited? If you're looking for a short-term solution, how about this one? Player-characters CAN'T enter those towers at all - just lock the door until you get a better fix in place. The NPC mages on them will stand at the edge and be shot down like good soldiers, or be replaced when the flag is taken. However, if players can get inside and defend them, then they have to be siegable targets, subject to the same rules as other siegable targets - those being that you can blow a hole in the wall, and the only way to reinforce them is to march the reinforcements in on foot.

But for my money, with a minor defensive point like that, the best solution (and the one any rational army would take) is to simply level it and rebuild it. That way if the people inside aren't actively defending the resource, once it's captured they're just rats in a trap and they have to either escape or die where they stand. For the outposts, same deal. If the tower is defended, just level it and move on. There's a reason why most of the watch-towers in Skyrim are abandoned rubble, you know. In time of war they're the first things to go.

YrthWyndAndFyre · June 2014

"To go along with these new Campaigns, we’d like to adjust guest passes to have a 72-hour lockout, and to make changing your home Campaign cost 100,000 AP (also with a 72-hour lockout)."

You have to something with the guest passes first. Specifically, if you switch to a campaign on a guest pass, unless you've actually *LEFT* the gate area at the beginning, the lockout doesn't take effect at all. I went into a guild campaign last night. I guested to the designated campaign and once I got there, found out that the guild had switched at the last minute to a different one because of queue issues. Even though I never left the South Morrowind Gate staging area, I was still locked out of changing to the new guest campaign for 12 hours, which means I missed the festivities and spent the evening fighting solo.

Now granted, that was poor communication - they should have put a notice somewhere that the campaign had switched (because I did check the guild web-site just before entering), but still, from chatter I picked up from the guild, they lost a lot of people who had intended to spend some PvP time simply because they wound up guesting to the wrong campaign and then couldn't switch, even though the army they went to join wasn't there when they arrived at the designated staging area.

The purpose of that lockout is to prevent people from switching willy-nilly, and I get that, but it shouldn't apply if you haven't actually entered the campaign yet, as demonstrated by merely leaving the gate areas.

Ysne58 · June 2014

@ZOS_BrianWheeler‌ If you want suggestions.
3 1 month campaigns -- this will accomplish two things.
a. Players that have characters on each alliance will be able take them all to cyrodill
b. Multi-guilds like greatarchitect can have a campaign for each of their alliance guilds as it does now.

2 other campagns 1 vet only, 1 non vet (I'm not sure duration matters.)

tylarthb16_ESO · June 2014

These short campaigns will be more emperor farms

Inzababa · June 2014

so when is this happening?

SidKain · June 2014

lol, the people getting ganked in Cyro arent just getting ganked by v12's. I love non pvpers haha! you are just not willing to learn how to pvp in this environment. Try these changes, go on, and watch the non vet campaigns become empty, because "waaawaaa some lvl 40-50's in fully farmed gear ganked me!". I gank players with my daughter, she is lvl 15 rarely dies and kicks ass at pvp helping my v12, no complaints. I never saw myself as useless whilst defending keep walls with ballistas from lvl 20, healing allies, marking and dotting enemies, scouting and ganking, and stalking higher lvl players with openers/better pvp/better finishers.

30 days is the shortest if not too short for a campaign. 7 days will result in twink groups burning the first day for domination then no opposing alliances bothering even trying pvp, vet only groups will become over populated and turn into tail chasing event.

Add a nicer entry grouping tool, for people that are not used to pvp or just dont want to pug their own group! thats all they need. lvl is nothing in Cyro! a lvl 40 can have a more buffed fighter then a V12 depending on food/emporership/scroll buffs/enchants/skill.