Defensive ticks can be prolonged indefinitely by offense killing themselves

AnteCoyote

Me and my guild have been defending an outpost on Thornblade for around 9 hours now. Over those 9 hours, there have been lots of breeches and lots of pushes. However, for a lot of that time, the defense tick has been denied by another alliance simply suiciding on the NPCs in the front of the outpost every 2 minutes. This has been going on for 9 hours. The past 2 hours have seen no wall breaches, simply people suiciding to prolong the tick. While I hate to use the E-word, this is, quite frankly, exploiting of game mechanics. Because the timer that ends the defense resets when somebody in the area dies, users are able to keep the tick from ever happening as long as they continue to die in the area.

Now, knowing about this mechanic and using it to your advantage is one thing, but these guys have simply given up on attacking and actually hope to outlast the defenders and claim the offense tick by waiting us out. They have no hope in taking the outpost, but they can deny us our reward for defending it. Once word got out that this never ending fight got out, partially due to alts of the attackers advertising it in zone, AD crammed itself in the outpost and let the other alliances take the map.

Now, this whole waiting for the tick thing can mean the difference between pushing an enemy alliance away from a keep or not. That probably won't change as long as this is how defense rewards work. You really can't blame the players for waiting back for their reward or rushing in to keep the "attack" going for their alliance. I think it's up to Zenimax at this point to take a good hard look at the behavior this mechanic is causing and figure out a fix for it. An easy fix would be to up the requirement for resetting the timer so a single person cannot keep a defense tick from happening. A fix for people camping around waiting for ticks to happen, which may or may not be too tough on the servers, would be to reward players for their time on defense no matter where they are. It would also be nice if players are rewarded for their time even if they are offline. I'm sure we've all lost a tick or to to a crash (let's assume those aren't going away any time soon).

TLDR: The defense tick timer is heavily exploitable and it's on Zenimax to fix it.

DezIsDead

But it is the most epic battle of all time. Poor NM. Their persistent I'll give them that.

AnteCoyote

45k defense tick with that many of us there. Yikes!

JonzzLonewolf

NA Sejanus?

DezIsDead

JonzzLonewolf wrote: »

NA Sejanus?

Yeah

Gumpnstein

I was in this B.S. fight for around 5 of that 9-11 hours that it went on and it was one of the worst experiences I have ever had in any video game of any genre ever.

Every single thing wrong with PvP was on full display and it literally brought pvp to a halt last night for an entire faction.

And noone dare try to say that the people should have left that tick...some were caught up in that for almost 12 hours and there is no way I would do that and not get anything for it. If this was my game I would ban every one of the DC players that pulled that stunt for nearly half a day.

And for the leading AP player of a faction to be leading groups into such tactics is a disgrace to the entire community. No wonder we are down to essentially one server of people playing pvp. After that mess, it may not even be that. I for one will be taking a break from PvP for a damn good minute, as it's at the mercy of anyone deciding they want to troll the entire community by exploiting game mechanics.

Itoq

45k tick and qq. Really? Even without the huge tick if you just damaged attackers or healed you should have got quite a bit of AP along the way.

I think the OP really misunderstands the situation. I was there for an hour or so and if DC wasn't fighting orange I think we, DC, had a shot. As it was we still managed to flip both flags simultaneously at least once - although if wasn't for very long at all. Problem for us was were were nearly always engaged on all sides.

I miss ticks all the time due to moving out of range to capture a resource or to fight or whatever so I do agree that ticks are kinda wack. Maybe soon we won't need so much AP for forward camps though.

Gumpnstein

Itoq wrote: »

45k tick and qq. Really? Even without the huge tick if you just damaged attackers or healed you should have got quite a bit of AP along the way.

I think the OP really misunderstands the situation. I was there for an hour or so and if DC wasn't fighting orange I think we, DC, had a shot. As it was we still managed to flip both flags simultaneously at least once - although if wasn't for very long at all. Problem for us was were were nearly always engaged on all sides.

I miss ticks all the time due to moving out of range to capture a resource or to fight or whatever so I do agree that ticks are kinda wack. Maybe soon we won't need so much AP for forward camps though.

You must have missed the 3 hours we were sitting in chairs watching 4 guys kill themselves into npc's if you think something was missing from the OP's comments. If so I can glady post the video of this entire event and let people judge for themselves.

Ezareth

The reverse is also exploitable.

I've seen groups all pull back from a long yet inevitably losing defense and ensure that no one dies for a couple minutes to get a "defense" tick despite the fact that they have lost the battle. The attack tick a couple minutes later ends up being a few hundred instead of thousands.

The should make it so that the tick is awarded upon the unflagging of a keep/outpost automatically and deny it when the keep is flagged, otherwise the existing rules can exist.

Distillateur

I imagine for many of those involved, the situation may have been frustrating. But I, personally, had quite the opportunity in the open-field to battle with many of the friends I've grown to respect from the other factions; so, I count the night as a win for PvP. Sure the action ebbed and flowed, but the sum total of everyone's effort was that three factions clashed for an extremely long duration and the de facto war of attrition that resulted was daunting. Most importantly, I didn't have to run around Cyrodiil looking for a fight for the whole 9-or-so hours. Your results may vary, but cheers to you no matter your outlook.

Vez

Let me get this straight. You guys take and hold a tactically useless outpost for the sole purpose of endless large defense tick farming and then come in here and admonish your own faction for wanting to get in on a little bit of that gamey AP one time "and let[ting] the other alliances take the map" (written without a hint of irony) while simultaneously complaining that the other faction didn't give up when they should have so you could get your defense tick for defending something that no one needed defended - which itself isn't exploiting but is certainly gaming the system.

I'm overflowing with sympathy.

Weberda

Vez wrote: »

Let me get this straight. You guys take and hold a tactically useless outpost for the sole purpose of endless large defense tick farming and then come in here and admonish your own faction for wanting to get in on a little bit of that gamey AP one time "and let[ting] the other alliances take the map" (written without a hint of irony) while simultaneously complaining that the other faction didn't give up when they should have so you could get your defense tick for defending something that no one needed defended - which itself isn't exploiting but is certainly gaming the system.

I'm overflowing with sympathy.

You have it correct. That is precisely what happened while many of us gamely tried to defend the other keeps against odds 5-1 or worse. I question the statement the many AD went down to Sej for the tick. To their credit, many did not.

jkirchner71ub17_ESO2

To be honest Sej was proof that without the major PvP guilds running organized groups on Thornblade for AD the map gets steamrolled by DC and EP. AD can pop lock a campaign and yet without the guilds running groups we can't hold a thing? You can point fingers all you want at those who were at Sej but it points to a much bigger issues for AD and it has been going on for some time now in Thornblade. I can tell you the organized guilds who ran last night in TB only made up for a small portion of the massive AD population that locked TB. Might be time for some others to start stepping up and forming organized groups, forming organized visible PvP guilds and use voice communications while PvP'ing.

Sallington

Doesn't matter. Got AP.

Roselle

All the cool fights happen when I need to catch up on my sleeps!

Agrippa_Invisus

jkirchner71ub17_ESO2 wrote: »

To be honest Sej was proof that without the major PvP guilds running organized groups on Thornblade for AD the map gets steamrolled by DC and EP. AD can pop lock a campaign and yet without the guilds running groups we can't hold a thing? You can point fingers all you want at those who were at Sej but it points to a much bigger issues for AD and it has been going on for some time now in Thornblade. I can tell you the organized guilds who ran last night in TB only made up for a small portion of the massive AD population that locked TB. Might be time for some others to start stepping up and forming organized groups who use voice.

I was leveling an alt all evening, but keeping tabs on what was going on periodically by checking the map with my main and listening to guild chat.

That EP crowned an emperor while they were 3 bars vs a locked AD population (as I believe Alessia was the last redoubt) and a 3 bars population of DC is no mean feat. That takes hard work, good play, and dedication to do.

Hearing more and more about what transpired around Sejanus makes it all the more apparent about why it happened, too.

AD crutches heavily on its organized teams -- and it's organized teams are very, very good -- but when only relying on their numbers advantage they have difficulty capitalizing on it, because without the organization they become plodding and predictable. There is an extreme gap in the level of threat that the AD PuGs present (even in their numbers) versus teams like DiE and Venatus.

OTOH, DC is able to weld its PuGs into a giant zergball that becomes a threat on its own.

Azarul

I was not on for this, but I do not see anything wrong with what they did. If your faction wasn't willing to push all the way out and squash them then you have nothing to complain about.

Huntler

Complains and brags in same thread.... do you even think before you speak OP?

DarkAedin

hi guys! i was one of the attackers on DC side, im sure you remember me as one of the guys who kept the D tick alive

oh, i also have pictures of AD sitting on top of Sejanus naked doing pushups and screwing around while i was pvping not 20ft below you.

anyway, just wanted to thank you guys for sitting there for 9+ hours, i got 500k AP!!!

Rooty

I wanted to thank the AD for hanging out at Sej, you guys fed us a lot of AP!

Cheers.

Zintair

And gave up the map and emp double cheers! But sorry about your defense tick.. oh wait no I'm not.

AnteCoyote

Azarul wrote: »

I was not on for this, but I do not see anything wrong with what they did. If your faction wasn't willing to push all the way out and squash them then you have nothing to complain about.

I was pushing out in every direction all night. They had people surrounding the outpost in every direction in stealth to make sure they always had a camp up. Most of AD was too afraid to leave the inside of the outpost and risk missing the tick as well.

driosketch

This here is a great example of the sunk cost effect on human behavior. No rational person would wait around 9+ hours for a point tick. But after you've been there 1..., 2..., 3 hours, damnit you want your reward. You can't just walk away from that time invested, right?

Kudos to the side that managed tie up the first group by masterfully playing their defense tick addiction against them. I'm not even upset, that's amazing.

ghengis_dhan

Seems there should be another timer. If the defensive and offensive tick keeps getting reset for, say, an hour, everyone on defense and offense get AP for that last hour. If you take part in only one hour of a two hour siege, shouldn't you be rewarded for the hour you were there?

Even if the attackers failed to take the keep, they still kept enemy players tied up on defense and hampered their transit line(s). Shouldn't that be rewarded?

AnteCoyote

driosketch wrote: »

This here is a great example of the sunk cost effect on human behavior. No rational person would wait around 9+ hours for a point tick. But after you've been there 1..., 2..., 3 hours, damnit you want your reward. You can't just walk away from that time invested, right?

Kudos to the side that managed tie up the first group by masterfully playing their defense tick addiction against them. I'm not even upset, that's amazing.

And a rational player would spend 9+ hours killing themselves to screw with other players? To be honest, they put us in a lose-lose situation. Even if we outlasted their nonsense, they still kept too many of us sitting in an outpost while the campaign flipped. I was in and out of the outpost all night up until the end. I tried to help save Alessia before EP was crowned, as well. After nobody else left the outpost to prevent a crowning, it was pretty apparent that we were stuck there until it was over, so I waited it out. They can play the "we won because we kept you busy" card all they want, but we know how badly they wanted the offense tick, and they didn't get it even after a final, massive push with coordinated troll camps. Troll camp goes up, impulse ball goes in. Don't think we didn't notice.

Azarul

AnteCoyote wrote: »

driosketch wrote: »

This here is a great example of the sunk cost effect on human behavior. No rational person would wait around 9+ hours for a point tick. But after you've been there 1..., 2..., 3 hours, damnit you want your reward. You can't just walk away from that time invested, right?

Kudos to the side that managed tie up the first group by masterfully playing their defense tick addiction against them. I'm not even upset, that's amazing.

And a rational player would spend 9+ hours killing themselves to screw with other players? To be honest, they put us in a lose-lose situation. Even if we outlasted their nonsense, they still kept too many of us sitting in an outpost while the campaign flipped. I was in and out of the outpost all night up until the end. I tried to help save Alessia before EP was crowned, as well. After nobody else left the outpost to prevent a crowning, it was pretty apparent that we were stuck there until it was over, so I waited it out. They can play the "we won because we kept you busy" card all they want, but we know how badly they wanted the offense tick, and they didn't get it even after a final, massive push with coordinated troll camps. Troll camp goes up, impulse ball goes in. Don't think we didn't notice.

Its funny how you use the "troll camp, impulse ball" when clearly AD invented both.

Komma

We were all ready to leave after the very first defense against ep and dc. After it was apparent the the dc folks were exploiting the system I was gonna do my part to not let them succeed. I logged off about 230 central and am just glad to hear that ad held it. Were some great fights and some great pushes by dc. Nice to not defend/attack all over the map for one night.

AnteCoyote

Azarul wrote: »

AnteCoyote wrote: »

driosketch wrote: »

This here is a great example of the sunk cost effect on human behavior. No rational person would wait around 9+ hours for a point tick. But after you've been there 1..., 2..., 3 hours, damnit you want your reward. You can't just walk away from that time invested, right?

Kudos to the side that managed tie up the first group by masterfully playing their defense tick addiction against them. I'm not even upset, that's amazing.

And a rational player would spend 9+ hours killing themselves to screw with other players? To be honest, they put us in a lose-lose situation. Even if we outlasted their nonsense, they still kept too many of us sitting in an outpost while the campaign flipped. I was in and out of the outpost all night up until the end. I tried to help save Alessia before EP was crowned, as well. After nobody else left the outpost to prevent a crowning, it was pretty apparent that we were stuck there until it was over, so I waited it out. They can play the "we won because we kept you busy" card all they want, but we know how badly they wanted the offense tick, and they didn't get it even after a final, massive push with coordinated troll camps. Troll camp goes up, impulse ball goes in. Don't think we didn't notice.

Its funny how you use the "troll camp, impulse ball" when clearly AD invented both.

Trying to deflect blame doesn't change the fact that an organized DC guild resorted to a tactical troll camp drop and immediate push to attempt to take the outpost. I can't see AD's troll camps, so I don't know how bad the problem is, but I know none of the guilds I talk to use them.

Lfehova

AnteCoyote wrote: »

driosketch wrote: »

This here is a great example of the sunk cost effect on human behavior. No rational person would wait around 9+ hours for a point tick. But after you've been there 1..., 2..., 3 hours, damnit you want your reward. You can't just walk away from that time invested, right?

Kudos to the side that managed tie up the first group by masterfully playing their defense tick addiction against them. I'm not even upset, that's amazing.

And a rational player would spend 9+ hours killing themselves to screw with other players? To be honest, they put us in a lose-lose situation. Even if we outlasted their nonsense, they still kept too many of us sitting in an outpost while the campaign flipped. I was in and out of the outpost all night up until the end. I tried to help save Alessia before EP was crowned, as well. After nobody else left the outpost to prevent a crowning, it was pretty apparent that we were stuck there until it was over, so I waited it out. They can play the "we won because we kept you busy" card all they want, but we know how badly they wanted the offense tick, and they didn't get it even after a final, massive push with coordinated troll camps. Troll camp goes up, impulse ball goes in. Don't think we didn't notice.

Maybe you should take a look at your own faction for the troll camps.

A lot of AD players were really pissed at DiE and Venatus for sitting at sejanus for 12 hours. You guys gave up every single keep, both scrolls, for 50k ap?

Would it be so wild to theorize, that maybe people of your own faction wanted you guys to lose that outpost so you guys could begin reclaiming all the keeps in that pvdoor fashion you do every night?

Everyone, by now, knows how to PM people in another faction

Also, claiming all the guilds other than DiE and Venatus are useless, is a little rude. I don't think those two guilds would do so well without all the AD population support.

AnteCoyote

Lfehova wrote: »

AnteCoyote wrote: »

driosketch wrote: »

This here is a great example of the sunk cost effect on human behavior. No rational person would wait around 9+ hours for a point tick. But after you've been there 1..., 2..., 3 hours, damnit you want your reward. You can't just walk away from that time invested, right?

Kudos to the side that managed tie up the first group by masterfully playing their defense tick addiction against them. I'm not even upset, that's amazing.

And a rational player would spend 9+ hours killing themselves to screw with other players? To be honest, they put us in a lose-lose situation. Even if we outlasted their nonsense, they still kept too many of us sitting in an outpost while the campaign flipped. I was in and out of the outpost all night up until the end. I tried to help save Alessia before EP was crowned, as well. After nobody else left the outpost to prevent a crowning, it was pretty apparent that we were stuck there until it was over, so I waited it out. They can play the "we won because we kept you busy" card all they want, but we know how badly they wanted the offense tick, and they didn't get it even after a final, massive push with coordinated troll camps. Troll camp goes up, impulse ball goes in. Don't think we didn't notice.

Maybe you should take a look at your own faction for the troll camps.

A lot of AD players were really pissed at DiE and Venatus for sitting at sejanus for 12 hours. You guys gave up every single keep, both scrolls, for 50k ap?

Would it be so wild to theorize, that maybe people of your own faction wanted you guys to lose that outpost so you guys could begin reclaiming all the keeps in that pvdoor fashion you do every night?

Everyone, by now, knows how to PM people in another faction

Also, claiming all the guilds other than DiE and Venatus are useless, is a little rude. I don't think those two guilds would do so well without all the AD population support.

I never called anyone useless. Anyway, the point of this topic was to discuss the exploitability of this mechanic and the bad tactical decisions that must be made in order to get rewarded for defense. The people who go out and push an enemy force from a keep are often the ones who miss out on the reward. The current systems reward people for waiting around for other people to push an enemy force from the area.

Now, I'm sure somebody is going to call me out for being defensive earlier in the discussion, but I'm done with the bickering about who won and who didn't. Let's not let a cross-faction pissing contest lock another thread. I consider this worthy of discussion. Defenders should be rewarded regardless of play style, whether they pushed to a keep's grounds or resources, or whether they crashed. With rankings becoming more and more important, nobody wants to pass up on AP rewards, and now that the mechanics are well-known, it is affecting how people play. These are things the players shouldn't have to keep in the back of their minds. When I run groups, I try to get people to push out and get back in time for defense ticks, but I don't run with disciplined groups, and sometimes it's tough to get people to leave the interior of a keep once walls are repaired. I can't entirely blame them because the game mechanics reinforce that kind of behavior and should really be reworked.

DezIsDead

Lfehova wrote: »

AnteCoyote wrote: »

driosketch wrote: »

This here is a great example of the sunk cost effect on human behavior. No rational person would wait around 9+ hours for a point tick. But after you've been there 1..., 2..., 3 hours, damnit you want your reward. You can't just walk away from that time invested, right?

Kudos to the side that managed tie up the first group by masterfully playing their defense tick addiction against them. I'm not even upset, that's amazing.

And a rational player would spend 9+ hours killing themselves to screw with other players? To be honest, they put us in a lose-lose situation. Even if we outlasted their nonsense, they still kept too many of us sitting in an outpost while the campaign flipped. I was in and out of the outpost all night up until the end. I tried to help save Alessia before EP was crowned, as well. After nobody else left the outpost to prevent a crowning, it was pretty apparent that we were stuck there until it was over, so I waited it out. They can play the "we won because we kept you busy" card all they want, but we know how badly they wanted the offense tick, and they didn't get it even after a final, massive push with coordinated troll camps. Troll camp goes up, impulse ball goes in. Don't think we didn't notice.

Maybe you should take a look at your own faction for the troll camps.

A lot of AD players were really pissed at DiE and Venatus for sitting at sejanus for 12 hours. You guys gave up every single keep, both scrolls, for 50k ap?

Would it be so wild to theorize, that maybe people of your own faction wanted you guys to lose that outpost so you guys could begin reclaiming all the keeps in that pvdoor fashion you do every night?

Everyone, by now, knows how to PM people in another faction

Also, claiming all the guilds other than DiE and Venatus are useless, is a little rude. I don't think those two guilds would do so well without all the AD population support.

Yes, alot of AD was really pissed, but in defense of Venatus, they left sej to defend fare, wiped blue, returned to sej, part of them then went to defend scroll. they didnt sith there all night just waiting around. As for DiE, i dont think most of them were even on while most of the map was being lost. Regardless i had a blast at sej, it was some helms deep stuff. thanks for the good times DC and EP. we need fights like that every now and then to change the "defend here, blood port to defend over there etc etc" all night long.