Future Potential Thornblade Campaign scoring change

Gilvoth

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Hey gang!

thoughts?

i think it's a wonderfull ideas and i hope this works out great but if it doesnt then im sure you will find a way
ALSO,
I think it's become obvious you are trying to fix the lagg and make our pvp in cryodiil a better experiance and i want to thank you personaly for that hard work
i hope you have a wonderfull day, and thank you again for your efforts and hard work in cryodiil.

ToRelax

Scrolls should count at least as much as keeps imo.

I am not sure about the resources. They should at least not give as much as keeps. But I also would like if a faction that successfully holds a good part of the map or scrolls is rewarded for it. WIth this change they would loos because they can not defend every resource against 2 factions and certainly not spare the players to capture enemy objectives.
What I do like of this change is that it would make small groups more viable for their faction's scoring. Then again, I do not like the idea that I would help my faction more if I'd just order everyone to go and solo as many resources as possible. That's not much fun.

Like was said already, capturing resources should immediately lower the defensive capabilities of a keep. For example make it so the keep's buffs are decreased to level 3 everytime you take the connected resource (as long as the keep was above level 3, of course).

Roechacca

I'm all for these changes . Mix it up and spread people out

Xsorus

Manoekin wrote: »

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

What if you couldn't capture a keep unless you controller all 3 resource points. This would force you to keep people there holding those objectives and not just all packed on a flag. This would spread the pvp out in a general area.

You'd end up with groups just holding resources then imo.

And that would be bad how? It'd force people to hold those resources and to defend them and would spread the combat out. Another idea would be to tie it to the scoring system, number 1 scoring team would need all 3, 2nd place would need 2 and third place would just need 1 resource

Snit

End the current campaign and give it a try.

I'm skeptical that it will work, as I don't think the point system is driving the zerg mentality. All three factions play with the same rules, but they have different grouping styles.

NadiusMaximus

Get rid of emp and emp bonus = no reason to farm ap, no zerg, problem solved.

Rust_in_Peace

NadiusMaximus wrote: »

Get rid of emp and emp bonus = no reason to farm ap, no zerg, problem solved.

Get rid of the Emp bonus and get rid of the bonuses carrying over to PVE. Emp itself is an interesting game mechanic and I wouldn't want to see it go away.

NadiusMaximus

Rhaenir wrote: »

NadiusMaximus wrote: »

Get rid of emp and emp bonus = no reason to farm ap, no zerg, problem solved.

Get rid of the Emp bonus and get rid of the bonuses carrying over to PVE. Emp itself is an interesting game mechanic and I wouldn't want to see it go away.

I'll agree with that being better.

deleted221205-002626

WoW.. We must have a ZOS informant in guild cuz I was just saying this EXACT thing might help split people more into smaller groups to reduce some lag.. I also mentioned reducing the max raid size to 12 or something.. Were you considering that as well?

The_Death_Princess

It wont work. The reason everyone travels together is no one likes the gank game. Thus travel in zergs or be susceptible to the ganks. There are whole guilds on all the time that DO NOT move unless it is together.

These proposed changes will do nothing.

Why hasn't a dev answered my other post? You say its because too many are in one small area. Well, we all know you can have two full raid groups meet with no lag, then at other times 10 people will lag you out.

Please stop barking up the wrong tree and solve the issue that didnt exist prior to 1.6.

Oh further note. I dont PvP 24/7 so I have clarity when it comes to score. Your rank and scoring system is bogus anyway. It means nothing since the ones at the top are the ones that play 8+ hours a day. It also is pretty much irrelevant because the first few days decide the campaign, with 1 pulling ahead and then doing whats necessary to maintain the lead. The other factor is population imbalance. It was shown that EP has more pop when the rest of the US sleeps (yup Europeans) so they get ~ 8 free hours of bonus points from controlling the wee small hours.

Need anymore evidence to show why these changes wont solve a thing?

deleted221205-002626

The_Death_Princess wrote: »

It wont work. The reason everyone travels together is no one likes the gank game. Thus travel in zergs or be susceptible to the ganks. There are whole guilds on all the time that DO NOT move unless it is together.

These proposed changes will do nothing.

Why hasn't a dev answered my other post? You say its because too many are in one small area. Well, we all know you can have two full raid groups meet with no lag, then at other times 10 people will lag you out.

Please stop barking up the wrong tree and solve the issue that didnt exist prior to 1.6.

I think its a data issue.. you can have 100v100 and be fine and than last 10v10 is laggin out cuz elsewhere theres a 100v100 etc and the server must be going mental pumping out 2mb+/sec to each player

deleted221205-002626

im thinking having 100v100 anywhere is a root cause of a higher latency for everyone. the way the data size multiples per person on screen makes it go up majorly fast.. 100v100 is NOT simply 10x the date incoming to you than 10v10.. its more like 90x90 more data lol

NadiusMaximus

Your not going to stop the zerg mentality.
It's part of human nature.
Genghis Khan did it, Alexander did it, Caesar did it, Napoleon did it, Washington did it, Hitt7er did it, Schwartzkoff did it, it's how wars are fought. To quote Forrest .. "Get there the first with the most men.

The only way to stop it is to reward us not to do it. Diminishing return on the amount of damage dealt depending on the number of friendly players around you. Sort of a friendly fire block. All those friends of yours clustering in one spot, their spell resist is stopping your spells from being full power. If your not within a certain distance it's full power, within a certain distance less power. Giant huge 20 man balls would do as much damage as five guys only, something like that would spread us out on a smaller scale.

Large scale, make npc sieges possible to force players to keeps in out of the way places. Npc Raiders to raid resources behind your lines forcing us to be everywhere, not just the key keep and turtle.

Also, any open dolman in your area has a negative effect on your score.

Or a bigger server, one for each campaign.

Suhxtob-yu

There will always be a draw towards the center circle of keeps and to scrolls. The majority will always go for those. But, you can break it up by a ton if you award AP for ALL activities in Cyrodiil. PvE quests, dolmens and dungeons should grant significant AP. Possibly even grant a 4hour buff to AP gain if you complete every daily quest in Cyrodiil.

Suntzu1414

Like the idea of

--Battle Towns (there are a few NPCs i would be happy to kill)

outside of that...there should be more AP for defending resources.
Many times, we just let these go..in lue of keep defense.

Your revised system, would address ONE part of the equation.
The other part, should be AP payout.


Resource battles are fun, and challenging...
and (from my perspective) make pvp great.


Kill Well
ST

prose08b14a_ESO

How about a Mage Tower resource that controls incoming and outgoing portals, a graveyard/temple resource that controls resurrections, and a Mine/Mill that controls wall repairs and siege vulnerability? These types of things would drastically increase the viability of targetting resources over just stealth-bursting a keep and then watching your whole faction zerg towards it for a lag-filled event with no AP to show for it.

maryriv

You need to quadruple the quest rewards for Cyrodiil quests to make them worth doing. (at least that much)

Rylana

Pros of this proposition:

1. It will make objective play more important. More things will happen in more places
2. Individual and small group contribution will have more impact in the overall score.

Cons of the proposition (and yes I am very aware there are many more than Pros)

1. Objectives that are inherently far more difficult to take (scrolls behind two three-tier keeps and a major choke full of guards at the gate) now score the same as a simple resource node with four guards. People will take the path of least resistance and the scrolls and home keeps will no longer be in play
2. Because of the nature of how keeps and resources level up and level down, the valuation of farms, mines, and mills degrades further. Currently you have to hold a resource for one hour for max buffs (which are not much when you really consider the difference between 200k and 260k wall strength vs 20 ballistas firing 2k a shot, its literally adding one salvo of fire and that is all).
3. Large group style play will suffer dramatically. Perhaps this is the point, but with such low valuations on defending objectives, most people wont even bother attacking a keep that is guarded, no one will defend a keep that is uncontested, and the like. Essentially the map becomes a roaming PvDoor fest of "enemy avoidance" to try to keep the score up as nodes are flipped back and forth.
4. As stated in 3, PvP in and of itself suffers a hit, as actually fighting people is now no longer desirable in the scoring. You want to take anything empty you can as fast as you can, and move on to the next, for maximum efficiency. Mass production vs holding something truly strategic that will affect scoring over the next couple of hours (such as taking Glademist from blue in primetime causing their whole faction to respond and shutting down all of their offense usually).
5. Overall map strategy becomes moot. No longer will groups be trying to manipulate the enemy into making mistakes or sacrificing *** for tat. As in above example, they would just let glade go because its worth so little in the grand scheme, and just speed flipping three resources at say Roebeck would counter it effectively.
6. It makes the whole zonal feel of home/enemy home territory feel clunky. The map will look very rainbowesque as the cycle progresses, move very quickly, and would make no logical sense. Youd have blue resources all over the place, red keeps, a yellow outpost over there, a red resource next to it, no fights happening but just a multicolored mess with no "lines" drawn.


I know I ramble, but I am trying to be coherent. The scoring system has never been the problem, and I dont think changing it is the solution.

Domander

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Increasing the AP you get for capturing undefended keeps/resources would, as people have pointed out, generate a mentality of "flipping for AP" or "Tower Trading" since they get AP more readily/easier than player killing.

As a clarification as well, the keep and scroll bonuses will remain active as well as the transit lines.

We have proposed internally putting murderball, CTF and "battleground style games" in the towns since some are tailored for it (Cheydinhal is perfect for a CTF), but for the time being this requires more code/UI time than we currently can spare.

as for the AP increase on capture, I was thinking something like the same as a player kill is worth split among whomever is there, would be a slow way to flip for AP that way. If nothing else, it would be nice if it was worth more than a wall repair, lol.


Option 1 is the one I prefer, just to add my opinion.

deleted221205-002626

Actually max group of 12, more score value for resources etc and more base AP for capturing resources/keeps like way above the current 25ap would probably be enough to entice people to actually take stuff instead of sit around defending... id actually like to completle remove dticks if were upto me... make keeps high score value so you want to not lose them and make much better oticks on even the smallest of things like resources.. everyone will be spread everywhere taking everything like mad!! im sure of it

Wahee

A large portion of the pvp playerbase could care less about the score. Scores are determined mainly by total population and off hours coverage. Most players care about XP and AP rewards. Changing score mechanics will do very little to change player behavior, you have to change the things players care about (the rewards).

As others have said, if you incentivize activities outside the emperor keeps players will spread out. Making PvE quest hubs and towns worth fighting over is a great place to start.

NadiusMaximus

I don't get why max group size matters?
Max 5 would just turn into 5 groups running together =25 players
Max 12 would be the same...
The only way that would break up a zerg is if the entire campaign was locked at 40 or so players.
That's not what I bought the game for, I want 100s vs 100s vs 100s.

Each campaign needs it's own mega server. No way around it. No matter what they do its not going to break up the strength in numbers formula.



Edit..

Remove all npc guards from Cyrodil. Boost the tick that happens at owned keeps and resources making it viable to stand guard duty. Make each unguarded keep, resource, town, turn gray if not guarded and said places will not count towards your score. Make the minimum needed to guard the keeps the same as the number of guards now.

What about pop imbalance ? Eliminate campaigns, and just have a que for pvp servers. If you want to join pvp, enter que by yourself, or join a group and enter, or be invited to a group already in and enter a que to join them, before you or your group are put into pvp the other factions must have the same number of people waiting in que, or you enter one by one. Like every other mmo ever made. ( but is horrible because if one faction doesn't pvp, the other two are locked in an endless que - a LA SWTOR 3 hour que once)

Rune_Relic

4 Man Groups + Friendly group indicators on map.

The problem as stated at the moment is everyone logs in LFGs.. joins invited group.
9/10 there is just the one large PUG group.
All follow the leader.
So you get zerg on zerg.

Now if groups were limited to MAX 4.
You need lots more leaders and people willing to start new groups.
There is no instant zerg creation process anymore.
You cant see the other group crown.
So you have to rely on team speak or zone chat or such to coordinate.

Hence the need for map group indicators.
Problem is the travel to player would break this as would multifactioned players.
Spies would know exactly what where and when enemies were going to strike.
Pretty much like spies infiltrate groups and even lead them for AP farming now

It only takes one powerful multifactioned guild to lead the players on all 3 factions and farm AP at leisure.
You need to fix that loophole/exploit.
Many a time I have said to myself...why is crown killing us over and over again in a fight we cant win instead of taking resources elsewhere ?

Sublime

If I had to chose one of the two it would be the first suggestion, here's why:

To start, let's see what we get for each objective, scoreboard points excluded:

Keeps:

• Respawn Point
• Fast travel (supply line)
• easily defendable stronghold
• possible emperor bonus
• passive AvA buff

Scrolls:

• passive AvA buff

Outpost:

• Fast travel (supply line, toward Outpost only!)
• defendable stronghold

Ressources:

• secures fast travel (supply line)
• hardly defendable objective
• bonuses to keeps

The respawn possibility, the defensive streanght and the possible emperor bonus make keeps so by far the most rewarding objectives, meaning they are already worth taking if they don't yield many points.

Outpost go into this direction because they also provide a supply line as long as they are not under attack, they are however much easier to take, because of the lack of the second wall.

While Ressources allow players to cut of the supply line, dead players can still respawn at the keep, making it really easy to take them back after 3-5 mins. Meaning if the attack doesn't happen within that timeframe, taking a ressource is not worth anything from a strategic point of view. Yes they give a bonus to the keeps defensive values, but it just takes too long to have an effect in order to efficiently use it for planning.

Scrolls on the other hand have basically zero bonuses the the holding faction except for the slight buff and the , currently, huge scoreboard bouns.

Since we're trying to encourage people to spread out over the map, each objective has to have a comparable value. I.e. if a faction commits a lot of players to taking an objective and don't manage to get it in a short amount of time, the other alliances need means to punish them for their commitment. For example AD sends 40 players to get an EP scroll but looses a lot of time at the temple and the gate because 10 EP managed to stall them out. The 30 other EP's need targets that force some of the AD players back to defend, because otherwise the overall AD Operation would be a deficit.

So how much is an objective worth?

• Keeps already give huge bonuses to the alliance through they overall strategic importance, so I'd give them 4 points.
• Outposts are not as valuable as keeps but they are also required for the large fast travel networks, so they're basically mini-keeps, to make them a comparable objective I'd give them 6 Points.
  
• Ressources have almost no value right now, at first I'd, once all three are captured, not only disable the transitus Network but also the respawn mechanism. Now in the Scenario that they don't disable the respawn mechanism I'd give them 2 points. This puts them just over the keep itself, making the ressource capturing a serious threat for the opposing faction. In the Scenario that the respawn is disabled I'd give them 1 point, simply because would make it possible to shut down a lot of respawn points for a faction in a very short amount of time.
• While Scrolls are really hard to take, they give basically zero reward, it however should not drag the entire server to the same spot, so I'd give them 8 points.
  
  Apart from that I know a lot of people who care about the AvA scoreboard. First because of the reward at the end of the campaign and second because ist the main goal of my guild.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

@ZOS_BrianWheeler‌ ..

Reading through the suggestion I dint think this would have any impact other than to make players change their home to Azuras.

If anything changes you should wait till the campaign ends before adjusting it or end the campaign early and give everyone full rewards (for winning).

Imo the following scoring method would improve pvp more than the suggested one.

Scores should be dynamic based on population of the other factions. So for example.
The keeps scrolls and resources would award points to the enemy faction that captures them based on the 'original (home) owners population'
If AD is on low pop and EP captures alessia. EP would only get 3 points for alessia per hour. When AD go to medium alessia would be worth 6 points and when AD are high alessia is worth 10 points (locked could be 15 points).

The keep would always give maximum points to the home faction.

Same would be true for resources and scrolls but not outposts because they should be natural and always give full points regardless of population.

(Feel free to change the numbers to something better but the concept is the main thing)

Also it should be an average of the population over the scoring hour. So players can't log off 1m before scoring and force low pop increase.


You could make a more complex system with emp and outer keeps awarding more points to balance the benefit of going for scroll keeps only. So brindle dragon and drake would be more valuable than blackboot/kings/warden etc


Finally reset the map after every campaign ends.
Also drop players home campaign once it ends and make them have to re home there (would solve the problem of players being fully campaign locked)

Oktaine

I like #2. If nothing else it sets a whole new dynamic to cyrodiil.

Oughash

I must agree with Huntlar and Rylana about the scoring changes. I like neither. On both options:
1. For the people who pay attention to the campaign score the incentive is now to "take and run." i.e. the strategic importance of a keep is not in balance with the score provided by owning it. Therefore players who wish to win will take resources and keeps and then immediately move to the next, avoiding conflict if possible b/c it will be inefficient and not supporting the victory. That is, any individual keep or resource take doesn't matter. Therefore wiping an enemies force doesn't really matter because the outcome of the wipe, taking the objective, doesn't score proportionally to the difficulty in wiping the force. So players will simply run and take the easy objectives while avoiding fights to win.
2. For players who don't care about the score these changes are irrelevant.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Increasing the AP you get for capturing undefended keeps/resources would, as people have pointed out, generate a mentality of "flipping for AP" or "Tower Trading" since they get AP more readily/easier than player killing.

This is correct. Do not allow PvE to influence PvP gains.

As stated in this thread by several people, the real answer to fixing lag is to add meaningful objectives in addition to the current keeps and resources.

For example:

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We have proposed internally putting murderball, CTF and "battleground style games" in the towns since some are tailored for it (Cheydinhal is perfect for a CTF), but for the time being this requires more code/UI time than we currently can spare.

This would be AWESOME. I understand this takes time to code up. As an interim step, simply add a spawn point in the towns with a flag to capture. And connect them to certain points (e.g. the outer keeps Brindle, Drakelowe, Dragonclaw) of the transitus network so there is some strategic map play available.

technohic

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Increasing the AP you get for capturing undefended keeps/resources would, as people have pointed out, generate a mentality of "flipping for AP" or "Tower Trading" since they get AP more readily/easier than player killing.

As a clarification as well, the keep and scroll bonuses will remain active as well as the transit lines.

We have proposed internally putting murderball, CTF and "battleground style games" in the towns since some are tailored for it (Cheydinhal is perfect for a CTF), but for the time being this requires more code/UI time than we currently can spare.

If this is how you do small scale; I will be on board 100%. Love the idea of having this stuff in towns that are scattered across Cyrodiil.

Enodoc

Personally I believe keeps should be worth more than resources, but I also don't pay much attention to the overall score, and just look for where things are happening.

These suggestions:

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We have proposed internally putting murderball, CTF and "battleground style games" in the towns since some are tailored for it (Cheydinhal is perfect for a CTF), but for the time being this requires more code/UI time than we currently can spare.

sound like the best way to spread players around a bit and help alleviate the lag in the long run. Anything that makes PvP outside of the keeps appear more interesting.

revcasy

Just throwing out ideas.

One of the game design problems in Cyrodiil is that the fastest way to gain AP is to farm it, or run back and forth in ongoing skirmishes without actually capturing anything. So the best way for players to achieve a personal, selfish goal (gaining AP) is not the best way for players to achieve a team goal (winning the campaign).

We want the best way to gain AP to also be the best way to help your team win, and we also want to reduce the size of some very large fights.

Two part solution:

1. Have small group/solo enemy kills contribute to the campaign score somehow, and have small group captures of reasonable objectives (resources, not keeps) reward more AP, but only if there is some player opposition.

2. When a portion of the map becomes over-populated with players, reduce the rate at which players in that area gain AP. You could call this a "dead zone" or something similar. You set the threshold as high as you can, because we don't want to discourage large group fights completely.

So, you encourage small group play and spreading out in two different ways, and simultaneously address a game design issue.

Is this technically feasible? I'm not going to even pretend to know (though I am sure others will).