Alliance War future plans and update!

Mendoze

I don't really believe in penalizing a faction just because they have more players than other factions. I'd rather keep current system where lower pop factions get a small bonus for their AP gain, but nothing too big. Too big bonuses just makes it silly if guild farming groups start netting 1 million AP per evening. Small bonus should be enough to get more people for smaller population factions. Forcing high population faction members to guest in other campaigns is not going to help the campaign in the long run. If there's plenty of enemies and some extra AP, I'm sure guild groups will come....eventually. But having your home campaign bonuses in guest campaign really have go asap. That is just silly.

And to continue with that AP discussion, I think factions should get a lot more AP from getting back their own castles and resources. If even population, then like 1k per own castle, and for underdogs 2k. Half of that for resources. So if underdog factions gets back their own castle and all it's resources, that would net 5k AP. That should motivate people and would keep campaigns more even, and also give nightcappers something to think about.

My nightcapping solution would be tied to campaign population, where factions points would get diminishing returns when campaigns don't have enough population. More people online == more faction points. I don't know any exact numbers, but I'm sure devs can figure something balanced out.

Also if I could make the decision, emperors would only be crowned when there's at least moderate amount of players online. How about server prime time +-2h? I don't know the specifics, but for example if EU server prime time is 18:00 to 00:00 GMT, then new emperors could be crowned only between 16:00 and 02:00. That should be big enough window for everyone.

Keron

Mendoze wrote: »

I don't really believe in penalizing a faction just because they have more players than other factions. I'd rather keep current system where lower pop factions get a small bonus for their AP gain, but nothing too big. [...]
All quotes shortened for readability

The problem with the bonus is that it doesn't prevent "owning" a campaign by night capping. A bonus on zero faction point gain is still almost zero faction point gain.

I agree completely that penalizing the individual player for high pop (in regards to personal alliance point gains) is not right. Also take a peek here and the following posts, where this discussion has continued and evolved further, with more proposals to adjust points gains.

In essence, I would propose to penalize a faction (by limiting points gain towards faction ranking) but not penalize individual players (in regards to personal rank advance and AP) to make it useless to stay up all night coloring the map uniformely without punishing individuals.

Mendoze wrote: »

And to continue with that AP discussion, I think factions should get a lot more AP from getting back their own castles and resources. [...] That should motivate people and would keep campaigns more even, and also give nightcappers something to think about.

This is a good idea and would work well to "distract" from useless (from faction point of view) AP farming at enemy ressources.

Mendoze wrote: »

Also if I could make the decision, emperors would only be crowned when there's at least moderate amount of players online. [...]

That makes it difficult for NA servers with huge time zone differences. Oceanic players would not or only in a limited way be able to contribute to faction standing. In EU, this may work, but even here there are players spread across GMT (GB) to GMT+3 (Moscow time, during summer there's 4h difference due to lack of daylight saving in Russia) at least.

demonlkojipub19_ESO

Every time they don't do server maintenance, cyrodil bugs resurface and remain until a maintenance. Before the last maintenance Buffs from cyrodil wouldn't update, and now currently the north morrowind gate Scroll quest giver won't give any scroll quests seemingly if you are in your home campaign, or Chillrend if its just that.

Please at least do daily restarts to the cyrodil servers so we don't have to deal with that stuff.

Keron

demonlkojipub19_ESO wrote: »

Please at least do daily restarts to the cyrodil servers so we don't have to deal with that stuff.

Heh. Do this between 2am and 6am server time. Could also resolve the night capping issue

Note: Just meant it as a humorous quip, not with intent to belittle your comment, @demonlkojipub19_ESO

Xallus

Keron wrote: »

Mendoze wrote: »

I don't really believe in penalizing a faction just because they have more players than other factions. I'd rather keep current system where lower pop factions get a small bonus for their AP gain, but nothing too big. [...]
All quotes shortened for readability

The problem with the bonus is that it doesn't prevent "owning" a campaign by night capping. A bonus on zero faction point gain is still almost zero faction point gain.

This-

I'm truly lost as to how ZOS thinks this will fix Cyrodil. They are putting actual money into a "solution" that anyone with a shred of intelligence should be able to see at a mere glance will do absolutely nothing. No matter what you multiply zero by, it's still zero.

They said they were monitoring populations, but its just so hard to believe that this is the case when they introduce this as a solution when one faction for 1/3 of every day has 2-300% more people than the other two factions combined.

I think its fair to say the vast majority of ESO players log on specifically for pvp as its about the only interesting thing to do at end game. So this isn't a "we'll monitor and work on it over several months" issue, its a "you should have put together an emergency team to fix this by the new campaign" issue. Boredom is setting in, people will only chase the hot-dog dangling in front of them for so long.

Raising the vet level to 14 isn't going to help that boredom very much either. Perhaps they're going with the glass is half full, that this isn't a slow game-killer. I mean developmental oversights other games have had didn't kill the game, just look at Aion and SWTOR, you can still play them to this very day!

Joy_Division

As I am sure you are aware, jump to player does NOT work when a campaign is full. Please put us in the que. Otherwise the system is pointless.

Thank You

Davadin

So, what's with people waiting for hours to join a campaign?
I'm in the 30-days one the past week or so and never had to wait for more than 30 sec.

Is it restricted to certain alliance? Since i'm on EP and we're ALWAYS under pop....

ArconSeptim

Well to be honest with you your Alliance War is one Huge Pile of Crap.

dcincali

dsoegiartob16_ESO wrote: »

So, what's with people waiting for hours to join a campaign?
I'm in the 30-days one the past week or so and never had to wait for more than 30 sec.

Is it restricted to certain alliance? Since i'm on EP and we're ALWAYS under pop....

If you are AD you could be 130+ in queue.

Drachenmutter

Why is this not coming trough the german server?
Are you Game master not involved in more than "1" Language!?
Ich gehe also davon aus, dass mich Masters bannen, obwohl siekein Wort Deutsch verstehen, liege ich da richtig!?
Die Bannung kam auch von einem englischen Master,der wohl nur ein paar Schlagzeilen von mir sah und per Googleübersetzer etwas sich zusammenreimte, best gratulation to them, the google banner to me!
I guess i must fin out the email of this google man-master.

Comet201

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Home Campaign Buffs – Originally, home campaign buffs were intended as a means to attach ownership to your Campaign, however it’s been observed (at great length) that Alliances have chosen various home campaigns and guest into other campaigns to earn as many buffs as possible. In the future, we plan on having home buffs travel with you into PVE, but while in Cyrodiil, you only get buffs from your local campaign (the campaign you’re physically located in at that time).

-Wheeler

Hey, I like how you are observing this trend, however I think its a terrible idea for 2 major reasons.

1. This will create division within each faction, players who mostly PvE will want a "Buff Server" which their faction controls exclusively, PvPers will find such a server boring and may help initially capture it but will most likely move on and never return to it. This gives the pvp'ers 0 incentive to defend a buff server, and stay on their competitive server. The organized PvP guilds are essential to any defense/assault against any other organized guild, otherwise you'll have alot of inexperienced players pvping to defend their buff server and ultimately being oil farmed until they give up.

2. This makes night capping/day capping a larger issue and assaulting new campaigns even more difficult than it is now. One of the issues stated from Beta by many veteran players is that in PvP each resource they touch they immediately met by an emperor and 30 players who crush any resistance. Right now, attempting to do so, you can at least have your home set on a buff campaign and play on equal terms with the 30 extra players (obviously you cannot compete on equal terms with the emperor). Buffs from local campaign only, will only further discourage underdogs from participating in pvp, especially with the massive amount of Late night early AM capping that goes on, but otherwise has balanced pvp during the day.

Recommend you increase incentives for players to pvp, something that makes the individual players of losing factions want to continue pvping, may also want to consider either eliminating PvP buffs from PvE as right now PvE'ers have a valid complaint that PvE is not balanced for all factions (We're short 1 extra dead buff server for EP as I type this post) or add an addition server or two to make sure there's a dead one so that everyone has a home buff server they can claim. I can say with certainty that the week DC took over a buff server was the same one my pve guild got hard modes on farm.

Vizier

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Hey gang!

Alliance War Future – After Imperial City launches, we are looking to add more content into Cyrodiil in some of the emptier locations. We will, of course, continue adding to the Keep system, too. We’re also looking to add more Alliance-specific gear to give more options for individual identity to the Aldmeri, Ebonheart and Daggerfall communities.

-Wheeler

I really hope this doesn't mean your going to have wolves, trolls or bandits behind every tree and over every hill.

More PvE content is not going to enhance Cyrodiil.

Tying the less populated and used areas of Cyrodiil into PvP by creating strategic value to them as part of the overall campaign would be far more desirable to the PvP community IMO. Make holding the areas between keeps necessary to successfully wage war and PvP becomes far more epic with more grand strategy, instead of this blood porting, zerg crap.

I swear to god If I have to Zig Zag through hoards of mobs to get around Cyrodiil I will lose all love for the place. It's sparse population sets it apart from the rest of the PVE ESO. It is absolutely beautiful and very enjoyable traveling across the map, especially when there are good troop numbers moving around. Spontaneous battles in remote location are awesome and they don't happen often enough. Blood porting pretty much negates the need for most to hoof it from place to place.

Can you elaborate on what type of "Content" you are going to be adding?

Ilven

the biggest problem of Cyrodiil are the continuous use of impulse, the addition of friendly fire may limit the use of tactics based simply on being grouped and spam AoE

DaisyK

friendly fire would be a disaster

Oldtimer209

DaisyK wrote: »

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

you can level to VR12 through PVE in less than a week.

I have been playing since the beginning and i still have no clue how people level up so fast in pve


About the population issue.. wouldn't it be possible to have a handicap system, if you're outnumbered by one or two bars, a temporary buff could be given to the entire underdog faction to level the field.. and as soon as you reach the same population that buff would disapear.

I agree, with you DaisyK, unless players actually play 24 hours straight for 7 days or are using some XP exploit I don't see how its possible.
Someone please post the method.....

Vizier

Comet201 wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Home Campaign Buffs – Originally, home campaign buffs were intended as a means to attach ownership to your Campaign, however it’s been observed (at great length) that Alliances have chosen various home campaigns and guest into other campaigns to earn as many buffs as possible. In the future, we plan on having home buffs travel with you into PVE, but while in Cyrodiil, you only get buffs from your local campaign (the campaign you’re physically located in at that time).

-Wheeler

Hey, I like how you are observing this trend, however I think its a terrible idea for 2 major reasons.

1. This will create division within each faction, players who mostly PvE will want a "Buff Server" which their faction controls exclusively, PvPers will find such a server boring and may help initially capture it but will most likely move on and never return to it. This gives the pvp'ers 0 incentive to defend a buff server, and stay on their competitive server. The organized PvP guilds are essential to any defense/assault against any other organized guild, otherwise you'll have alot of inexperienced players pvping to defend their buff server and ultimately being oil farmed until they give up.

2. This makes night capping/day capping a larger issue and assaulting new campaigns even more difficult than it is now. One of the issues stated from Beta by many veteran players is that in PvP each resource they touch they immediately met by an emperor and 30 players who crush any resistance. Right now, attempting to do so, you can at least have your home set on a buff campaign and play on equal terms with the 30 extra players (obviously you cannot compete on equal terms with the emperor). Buffs from local campaign only, will only further discourage underdogs from participating in pvp, especially with the massive amount of Late night early AM capping that goes on, but otherwise has balanced pvp during the day.

Recommend you increase incentives for players to pvp, something that makes the individual players of losing factions want to continue pvping, may also want to consider either eliminating PvP buffs from PvE as right now PvE'ers have a valid complaint that PvE is not balanced for all factions (We're short 1 extra dead buff server for EP as I type this post) or add an addition server or two to make sure there's a dead one so that everyone has a home buff server they can claim. I can say with certainty that the week DC took over a buff server was the same one my pve guild got hard modes on farm.

The whole idea of "Buff" servers is lame. Buffs for PVE and Buffs for PvP. They are supposed to be campaigns where people are actually fighting. What competitive sense does it make? Get the buff from your home campaign while your actually logged into your home campaign and nothing else. If you want the buff make sure your faction keeps control. If you want it and don't have it...fight harder. Shrug.

Giving a buff for PvE is crazy IMO. Allowing for "Buff" servers is extremely shortsighted.

StienDeath

B.O.H.I.C.A. is how a lot of us feel with the current PVP issues

Mojomonkeyman

@ZOS_BrianWheeler‌

With the recent update that Imperial City won`t hit anytime soon, we PvPers are, again, left in the dark about new content added. It`s nice and all to make announcements of announcements but after all that PvE Group/Raid content added, don`t you think we deserve a content & bugfix patch for PvP as well?

Months ago you announced we would get changes to forward camps and that AE is looked at again. What happened to that?

When I purchased the game I was under the assumption PvE & PvP would receive similar attention. You promoted this with several pages on this site where PvP & PvE Group/Raid content were sold as the two pillars of ESO endgame. Nonetheless, we have had the introduction of Craglorn, multiple additions to Craglorn, but nothing for PvP.

Was all the praise of ESO PvP just marketing fluff? How long do you expect us to wait, with Imerial city being postponed and all other stuff to be introduced after Imperial city according to your post.

What are you guys in the PvP department doing?

If you, as the head of the PvP department, can`t be bothered to keep in touch with us, how about you delegate that task to some of the other members of the PvP team (I assume there are some, at least one?)!

Enodoc

Personally, I'm thinking (hoping?) that Imperial City will be the main feature in Update 6 in December, ready for Christmas. By that time, everything in the "soon" list from the last Road Ahead will hopefully be implemented or well underway, meaning Imperial City is next in the schedule in terms of "Content".
Some of the assets for Imperial City are in the data files already; loading screens, icons, and such, and the sewer entrances can already be found in Cyrodiil.

Warraxx

I really don't mind waiting for new PvP content as long as its not some crazy bug fest.

ZOS_BrianWheeler

The team is working hard on Imperial City and making sure it's as enjoyable as a PVP and PVE zone. In the meantime, we do keep an eye on Cyrodiil and the issues with the Alliance war as a whole and make adjustments as soon as we can get them in there. Recently the postern doors and server roll-back/save issues were resolved and now the team has a few other things we're adding that I can finally mention

Oil Pots will be getting a deadzone added to them so the oil has to travel atleast 6 meters before arming. This should help with the PBAE use of Oil pots. I can't promise exactly when this is going in as we need more testing on it, but that's the initial update for Oil pots.

As far as the AE cap damage is concerned, the Combat team has been looking at options for handling it and will post something when they are comfortable with doing so.

Forward Camps are going to get an Alliance Rank requirement to purchase added to them for helping limit the amount of self alliance "trolling". Short of increasing the price to a very high amount, we've read many other suggestions on the boards here and are taking this as a first step.

A teleport border around Cyrodiil play-space is being put into the game to also help with putting forward camps in "out of bounds" areas.

We continue to monitor population in both the EU and the US for Campaigns and will adjust them as necessary.

Merlight

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Forward Camps are going to get an Alliance Rank requirement to purchase added to them for helping limit the amount of self alliance "trolling". Short of increasing the price to a very high amount, we've read many other suggestions on the boards here and are taking this as a first step.

How will that limit trolling? You can buy FCs with another character, or have them sent to you.

Why don't you split the cost - 4k for purchase, 4k for deployment. If you don't have 4k AP, you can't deploy an FC. And if people actually use your FC, you could get a some AP back, say 100 per body.

Braidas

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

The team is working hard on Imperial City and making sure it's as enjoyable as a PVP and PVE zone.

really, the ONLY PvP content added so far is going to have PvE as well? come on.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Oil Pots will be getting a deadzone added to them so the oil has to travel atleast 6 meters before arming. This should help with the PBAE use of Oil pots. I can't promise exactly when this is going in as we need more testing on it, but that's the initial update for Oil pots.

are you serious? make it even harder to stop zergs why not...ffs

Crowzer

Good news !
Keep finguers crossed for the 180° blocking.

Davadin

Merlight wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Forward Camps are going to get an Alliance Rank requirement to purchase added to them for helping limit the amount of self alliance "trolling". Short of increasing the price to a very high amount, we've read many other suggestions on the boards here and are taking this as a first step.

How will that limit trolling? You can buy FCs with another character, or have them sent to you.

Why don't you split the cost - 4k for purchase, 4k for deployment. If you don't have 4k AP, you can't deploy an FC. And if people actually use your FC, you could get a some AP back, say 100 per body.

FC should be Bind on Equip. Non-transferrable. Super simple fix.
EDIT: Yes, i know it won't completely stop higher level traitors to do it, but at least it'll reduce it by making it inaccessible to most people who just level up a mule to lv10...

Davadin

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

The team is working hard on Imperial City and making sure it's as enjoyable as a PVP and PVE zone. In the meantime, we do keep an eye on Cyrodiil and the issues with the Alliance war as a whole and make adjustments as soon as we can get them in there. Recently the postern doors and server roll-back/save issues were resolved and now the team has a few other things we're adding that I can finally mention

Oil Pots will be getting a deadzone added to them so the oil has to travel atleast 6 meters before arming. This should help with the PBAE use of Oil pots. I can't promise exactly when this is going in as we need more testing on it, but that's the initial update for Oil pots.

As far as the AE cap damage is concerned, the Combat team has been looking at options for handling it and will post something when they are comfortable with doing so.

Forward Camps are going to get an Alliance Rank requirement to purchase added to them for helping limit the amount of self alliance "trolling". Short of increasing the price to a very high amount, we've read many other suggestions on the boards here and are taking this as a first step.

A teleport border around Cyrodiil play-space is being put into the game to also help with putting forward camps in "out of bounds" areas.

We continue to monitor population in both the EU and the US for Campaigns and will adjust them as necessary.

You missed the elephant in the room. Impulse-spamming zerg balls.

Or is that part of the AE cap damage subject?

Elsonso

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Oil Pots will be getting a deadzone added to them so the oil has to travel atleast 6 meters before arming. This should help with the PBAE use of Oil pots. I can't promise exactly when this is going in as we need more testing on it, but that's the initial update for Oil pots.

This makes no sense to me, so hopefully the "why" is explained during the video today. Flaming oil does not generally have a "dead zone", at least not in the sense where no damage is done.

Edit: @ZOS_BrianWheeler‌ explained this during ESO Live and I understand what this means now.

DDuke

lordrichter wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Oil Pots will be getting a deadzone added to them so the oil has to travel atleast 6 meters before arming. This should help with the PBAE use of Oil pots. I can't promise exactly when this is going in as we need more testing on it, but that's the initial update for Oil pots.

This makes no sense to me, so hopefully the "why" is explained during the video today. Flaming oil does not generally have a "dead zone", at least not in the sense where no damage is done.

You generally don't pour flaming oil on your feet either...

Davadin

Wouldn't be fun that flaming oil damage both sides? Ie. it hits ANYONE regardless of faction AND it needs like 6 ft to get activated. n people would want to wait until it's deactivated again before turning it on?

Vizier

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Oil Pots will be getting a deadzone added to them so the oil has to travel atleast 6 meters before arming. This should help with the PBAE use of Oil pots. I can't promise exactly when this is going in as we need more testing on it, but that's the initial update for Oil pots.

Oil pots right now are about the only way folks are countering the Impulse, Batswarm, Former Emperor - Pain trains. While I think it pretty dumb folks can poor flaming oil all over the floor they too are standing on folks are doing it out of necessity.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

As far as the AE cap damage is concerned, the Combat team has been looking at options for handling it and will post something when they are comfortable with doing so.

At a cast time to impulse and it's morphs with a feature that requires caster to be stationary to cast or casting causes pause in movement for .5 to 1 second would probably help alot. Would allow it to be used more defensively and less offensively. Break up the pain train man.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Forward Camps are going to get an Alliance Rank requirement to purchase added to them for helping limit the amount of self alliance "trolling". Short of increasing the price to a very high amount, we've read many other suggestions on the boards here and are taking this as a first step.

Not certain how this is going to keep people from purchasing them and passing them out from their guild banks.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

A teleport border around Cyrodiil play-space is being put into the game to also help with putting forward camps in "out of bounds" areas.

Reduce the FC area of effect to limit effectiveness of troll camps crowding out or shutting down an area. Require death to occur within the area of effect to use, allow for multiple FC's in an area available only to group that placed it. IMO most of your probs with FC blood porting and troll camps would be handled.

I'm really hoping for a better, less cheesy PvP experience. I do believe ESO PvP will be better someday. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Thanks for what you and your team are doing. I know it can't be as easy as we tend to think it is.