SeaGtGruff wrote: »

allochthons wrote: »

Q. What do you think about the ability to leave a battle that is unfavorable for you with impunity by simply moving to the Imperial Sewers and back during the battle? Is it fair? - Noreno
A. We can confirm we’re looking at adjusting this, but we don’t have any specifics to share today. We will keep you updated as we have more info.

Please be very careful with this. I use that trick when doing my IC quests, and when in Cyrodiil doing solo things like questing. I don't think I've ever used it in a PvP battle.

If I have to spend my AP to buy the travel tokens, or lose 50% of my tel var to death porting (much less run back through the sewers to be able to leave IC), I'll stop doing what little I do right now in PvP.

I'm not saying it doesn't get abused or that it doesn't need updating. Please just consider all the ways it is used.

Can we actually use this to get out of a battle? I mean, if we're actively in combat. If we can't join a queue while in combat, how can we queue to IC as a way of getting out of a fight that's unfavorable to us-- unless we aren't actually involved in said fight in the first place?

Besides, blood porting is a lot faster than queuing back and forth between IC and Cyrodiil. Plus, blood porting lets us respawn at any friendly keep or outpost that isn't under attack, so it can be a very quick and convenient way to get to a keep that's just been cut and is about to be attacked, or to reach a distant friendly keep or outpost that isn't connected by Transitus Network when we want to get to an enemy keep, resource, outpost, or town that's on the far side of the map.

So I'm inclined to think that this "queuing to IC to escape an unfavorable fight" scenario is probably a lot less common than some people feel it is. I think it's more likely to be used as a convenient way to get out of Cyrodiil entirely when we want to go do other things in the game, or used by players during Mayhems as a way to quickly grab their event tickets or reward coffers in Cyrodiil and IC without having to get involved in PvP situations that they don't enjoy (and then leave Cyrodiil and IC entirely once they've got their tickets and reward coffers). I've read that there's an addon which helps make queuing this way a lot faster and more convenient, and seen claims that some players use that addon to escape "unfavorable fights," but I don't see how that could be as big of a problem as claimed.

In my opinion, queuing out of IC or Cyrodiil should not be something that can be interrupted by enemies once the queue has popped and been accepted. I would personally be okay with there being some sort of brief "wait time" of, say, a few seconds between requesting a queue and actually getting placed into said queue, so players can't abuse that addon by "insta-queuing" out of an impending attack by simply pressing a key in the brief moments before an incoming enemy player can attack them, but removing the ability entirely would be a mistake in my opinion.

To be clear - yes, you can START AND ACCEPT a queue while in combat. There are addons where you can keybind the start queue function to a single key on your keyboard, and then another addon will automatically accept the queue as soon as it "pops". So the problematic scenario is in imperial city, people abuse this to farm telvar risk free. They run a build with 40-50k HP that cannot be killed easily/at all by one person, hold their ult while farming bosses, and the moment they see or get hit by an enemy player, they pop their defensive ult, hit the hotkey for the queue, and 10 seconds later they're pulled out of imperial city with no consequences whatsoever.

This IS an exploit of how the system is supposed to work, and we know this for a fact based on how the "get me unstuck" feature works in imperial city, and the existence of imperial retreat sigils. If you use "get me unstuck" while in imperial city, you are notified you will lose half of your carried telvar - because the developers did not intend for you to be able to poof away at will consequence free with your telvar. The retreat sigil exists for this very reason as well - to provide a way to return to base without having to run all the way back, that doesn't take your telvar the way that "get me unstuck" does. This wasn't an issue when imperial city first came out because imperial city was not it's own "instance" and you didn't queue in to access it. It was originally part of each individual cyrodiil campaign, and was accessed physically via the sewer entrances within the campaign itself, thus there was no cyrodiil queue that could be activated to escape IC.

The solution is simple. You should not be able to start a queue while you or anyone in your group is in combat in imperial city, and the "safe zones" on the doors in IC should remove you from combat automatically. This way people cannot abuse the queue to escape being attacked, but if they're not directly in combat and able to go through a door, they'll be able to start a queue.

Even imposing the "half your telvar" penalty on the queue won't stop these people from abusing it - they'd rather lose their telvar to the void than get killed by you for it.

Thanks for this.

A. We are actively working on ways to combat identified strategies, like heal stacking, among others. You will see the first steps to address this in Update 49, next year. As noted in some of the answers here, we are leaning into solutions that utilize Battle Spirit.

Looking forward to hearing more about this. It is an issue that we've been begging to be addressed going on several years now, basically since the introduction of plaguebreak, which has only been exacerbated by hybridization, scribing, and subclassing.

Q. What do you think about the ability to leave a battle that is unfavorable for you with impunity by simply moving to the Imperial Sewers and back during the battle? Is it fair? - Noreno
A. We can confirm we’re looking at adjusting this, but we don’t have any specifics to share today. We will keep you updated as we have more info.

I know the commenter posted this question in regards to a player leaving a fight in cyrodiil, but I want to point out the much more frustrating version is a player leaving imperial city to escape tel var loss. Currently, every single person who farms tel var on PC NA utilizes the queue to escape every single time they get attacked. They will farm tel var on something that cannot be killed without a long fight, as soon as you hit them they pop a defensive ult and activate the queue, and in under 10 seconds they disappear from the campaign. This completely circumvents the risk/reward nature of imperial city and makes farming telvar effectively completely safe. Many people complain that only gankers play in IC these days - but when you cannot kill these farmers without doing 40k damage to them from stealth because they'll just queue out, it definitely makes sense why people don't bother attacking them on anything other than gankers.