PVP Update, June 2015

Paradox

Woman wrote: »

I agree with every part of this except the removal of former emp passives. They are minor passives but are a fantastic reward and reminder. For those of us who worked hard for our emperor and got it for real, we didn't sleep, and dedicated everything we could to fighting hard for our alliance and campaign and once we got emperor proceeded to turn the map our color. Getting emperor was this adrenaline Rush because you knew you would permanently change your toon.

Yes, people farmed it in the first 6 months of the game, and that sucked. But plenty of people earned their millions from the duping bug in the first week of the game- does that mean that anyone who has a lot of gold should have it removed ? Punishing your loyal players for the exploits of others is just not right. The former emp bonuses were not hurting anyone the way buff servers were. Please reconsider this change.

Also I don't see how any of this will affect the issues with ap farming.

Freaking spot-on with the former emperor bonuses. This is simply a knee-jerk reaction because they refuse to invest actual effort into PvP. Every effort to alleviate some of the issues plaguing PvP have been just the same. These are issues that have plagued PvP for OVER A YEAR. Let that sink in... MORE THAN A FULL YEAR. I believe that buff servers need to be fixed, but this IS NOT the right way to do it.

Not only is this a temporary fix, it's one that will greatly reduce the interest from primarily PvE players (THE ONLY ONES YOU SEEM TO CARE ABOUT) to PvP. If you want to actually make a difference, add ACTUAL, TANGIBLE bonuses to players in the disadvantaged faction(s). There is not a damned reason for you (ZoS) to destroy the only aspect of PvP that draws in PvErs.

But, you guys do what you will. I fully expect PvP to be broken, basically dead, and drooling by the end of the year if you guys don't take an actual interest in it. There are so many issues that need to be addressed with actual effort, not just these repeated knee-jerk reactions to the issues that have plagued us for over a year.

c0rp

OtakuAime14 wrote: »

I cannot believe what I'm reading.
You are basically removing all incentive to PVP in your game all while punishing the people who have spent countless hours, resources and energy trying to be successful in your game.

This whole battleleveling this is such BS. As a vet rank 14, who took a whole year to get there, you SHOULD be more powerful than your low level counterparts. You put the leg work in!

And seriously removing emperor passives?!?! I spent hours, DAYS, thousands of Ap to get my emperorship and the passives that came with it. I went nights without sleep trying my hardest for that and now you're taking it away??!?!! How about you refund me the hours of my life I devoted to this game for that??? Again, punishing people for success and accomplishing something.

This is like socialists ESO where everyone gets a trophy and everyone is equal.

No kids, who just created a character, don't bother leveling up.... We'll just buff you up to the people who just spent over a year playing AND we'll punish them for their accomplishments by needing them. Gotta make it fair.

This is so ridiculous and I really hope these changes don't go through. I literally see no point in trying in Cyrodiil anymore... Especially since those bonuses don't apply outside of Cyrodiil anymore anyway.

No point at all.

Thanks Zenimax. Thank you for taking my years worth of play time, my sleepless nights, my resources and energy and the passion I put behind this game... And throwing them all back into my face.

Awesome.

Do you even Cyrodiil bro?

timidobserver

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We're still looking into a way to do a "hard reset" when campaigns end that wouldn't involve booting people out of Cyrodiil.

I don't think anyone would have an issue with a planned booting. The issue is when it isn't planned.

Enodoc

tinythinker wrote: »

GorraShatan wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We're still looking into a way to do a "hard reset" when campaigns end that wouldn't involve booting people out of Cyrodiil.

I'd prefer if this didn't happen personally. Otherwise the last bit of a campaign has no meaning.

Some want it because the imbalance has been so bad, with all red, or yellow, and occasionally even all blue maps. If that were to happen less, far fewer people would want a reset. I agree that such a change might demotivate some players from fighting as hard toward the end of a campaign cycle because they will just loose all of their gains anyway, but it's also disheartening to start a campaign the same way the last one ended, with another alliance owning most or all of the map and with few people trying to take it back (and being crushed at their gates for their efforts).

Would it work if, for example, only campaigns where an Underdog Bonus is active get a hard reset? That way, maps which have completely turned one colour would be more likely to reset, but maps where the fighting is good and the scores are mostly balanced wouldn't be.

pema

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We have discussed the ability to remove your home and guest assignment entirely, but won't make it in for this update. It has been a highly requested feature and we will work to get it in the future.

Can there be an reset of your chars from the campains, so you can make a coise who to put were?

Takllin

Crown wrote: »

Takllin wrote: »

Snit wrote: »

Perhaps give a different title to those who earned Emperor before this patch hits? Something grander than "Former Emperor."

That would just be rewarding those who gained it via emp trading, why would you do that? I don't particularly care if they take the former emp buffs out or not, but I don't think they should reward those who gained it via system abuse.

There is a big difference between Emperor farming and Emperor trading.

My opinion is that Emperor farming is when a group goes into Cyrodiil with the express intent of getting Emperor for one of their number (specific or just any one who gets to the top). There is nothing wrong with this. Groups do it all the time.

Emperor trading is when an agreement is made with another faction such that Emperor is uncontested, then it's taken by the other faction uncontested, and back and forth repeatedly until every person in both groups has had it. There is a problem with this, though there is no way to realistically determine who has done so.

If Former Emperor buffs are removed outside of Cyrodiil negating the desire of all the hard core PvE people getting a bit more powerful for their trials times, then there should be no issue leaving it active within Cyrodiil.

Semantics, but IMO what your describing is an Emp push, not a farm.

Farming implies that you are doing it over and over again, not just a single push to crown an Emp. IMO farming is stacking a lot of people at the top of a leaderboard, crowning one, letting the dethrone happen, then abandoning campaign for the next man/woman, crown them, rinse repeat. That's a farm. Trading is as you've said, is having an implicit agreement with another faction to help crown each other.

Like I said though, I could care less what happens to the former emp buffs, it's trivial. I just don't think that you should reward people for abusing the system.

Emp farming is a grey area, trading is just bad though.

Leandor

Guys, as far as I understand it, you will still be able to switch campaigns when it ends free of charge. @ZOS_BrianWheeler , could you confirm?

Jekkyl

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

[*] Emperor Buffs/Skill Line: The "Former Emperor" buffs are being removed from the game. With this new system, you will only get Emperor buffs while your character is actively Emperor. Also, you will be granted the Emperor skill line and abilities upon earning Emperorship, without the need to spend ability points. All players that have spent points in the Emperor skill line will be refunded those skill points.

Individual Players should only be able to get Emperor ONCE per campaign duration. Once dethroned that's that should be it.
This would mean players will need good teamwork and communication and actually have to work together to actually keep the emperor status rather than just the person who plays alot and has the most points keeps getting the buff over and over and over....

Takllin

Leandor wrote: »

Guys, as far as I understand it, you will still be able to switch campaigns when it ends free of charge. @ZOS_BrianWheeler , could you confirm?

It's 100 AP.

sagitter

I think, many are good changes, but i don't agree with the former emperor buff removed, even if i'm not a former emperor, and prob never be cause of play time.It is an incentive for pvp. I think pvp need more incentives, like new ava levels and skills.

Cinnamon_Spider

c0rp wrote: »

Cinnamon_Spider wrote: »

As others have said, most of us with former emp buffs put a lot of time and effort into getting emp. I wonder how many of the farmers/traders even still play.

Removing the buffs only hurts the players that put real effort into getting them.

It hurts nothing. You retain, the title, the dye and the achievement. The removal goes a long way towards improving the environment in Cyrodiil. Everyone wins.

There is a reason why the removal of these buffs have been called for..ohh, I dont know...for 10-12 months now?

I didn't do it for the dye and achievements mean diddly. And what is stopping people that want that dye to trade for it anyway?

Taking that buff away is removing 2% of my magic and stam regen. That may not seem like much, but add in drinks and CP on top of that and it makes a difference.

Enodoc

Leandor wrote: »

Guys, as far as I understand it, you will still be able to switch campaigns when it ends free of charge. @ZOS_BrianWheeler , could you confirm?

That's a funny thing, because I though it was free currently as well, and yet Brian says:

Also, switching home campaigns at the end of a campaign period will now cost 100 AP instead of 5,000 AP.

xANTIxMATTERx

Nice

cjthibs

OtakuAime14 wrote: »

I cannot believe what I'm reading.
You are basically removing all incentive to PVP in your game all while punishing the people who have spent countless hours, resources and energy trying to be successful in your game.

If you only did it for the skills, we don't want you.
If you didn't have fun while doing it, you wasted your time and likely used cheap tactics to get there.

I'm not entirely opposed personally for there being some benefit for being a former Emperor, but at the same time this doesn't make the game more competitive or fun. It encourages those who can exploit the fact that they have more time to spend to do so. And makes this unachievable for those of us who can't devote 16 hours a day to ESO PvP.

If this was your only incentive to PvP, then you probably should seek help because 1% here and 5% here isn't worth the insane amount of time you probably put into it.

themizario

Just remove former Emp buff. If you don't remove it the PvE people will come out in hordes to get the buff since there will be no Buff Servers. It will just further imbalance PvP alliances

Takllin

Enodoc wrote: »

Leandor wrote: »

Guys, as far as I understand it, you will still be able to switch campaigns when it ends free of charge. @ZOS_BrianWheeler , could you confirm?

That's a funny thing, because I though it was free currently as well, and yet Brian says:

Also, switching home campaigns at the end of a campaign period will now cost 100 AP instead of 5,000 AP.

I just checked and it is currently free if you wait until the end of the campaign...

k2blader

These are all welcome considerations but please also FIX NIRN, hoping that is coming in the next update. Thx

OtakuAime14

cjthibs wrote: »

OtakuAime14 wrote: »

I cannot believe what I'm reading.
You are basically removing all incentive to PVP in your game all while punishing the people who have spent countless hours, resources and energy trying to be successful in your game.

If you only did it for the skills, we don't want you.
If you didn't have fun while doing it, you wasted your time and likely used cheap tactics to get there.

I'm not entirely opposed personally for there being some benefit for being a former Emperor, but at the same time this doesn't make the game more competitive or fun. It encourages those who can exploit the fact that they have more time to spend to do so. And makes this unachievable for those of us who can't devote 16 hours a day to ESO PvP.

If this was your only incentive to PvP, then you probably should seek help because 1% here and 5% here isn't worth the insane amount of time you probably put into it.

People go for emperor for the skills and achievments. They don't just do it for *** and giggles.
No cheap tactics here just time and hard work. But apparently I did waste my time.
I don't have 16 hours to spend at all. I work 45 hours a week. I have nights and weekends and I did it.

A lot of players won't even go into Cyrodiil anymore because of them taking away the buffs, not me personally, but a lot of PVEers won't even bother.

I just feel like this is punishing people for success and babying people who either can't or won't put the same effort in.

OtakuAime14

c0rp wrote: »

OtakuAime14 wrote: »

I cannot believe what I'm reading.
You are basically removing all incentive to PVP in your game all while punishing the people who have spent countless hours, resources and energy trying to be successful in your game.

This whole battleleveling this is such BS. As a vet rank 14, who took a whole year to get there, you SHOULD be more powerful than your low level counterparts. You put the leg work in!

And seriously removing emperor passives?!?! I spent hours, DAYS, thousands of Ap to get my emperorship and the passives that came with it. I went nights without sleep trying my hardest for that and now you're taking it away??!?!! How about you refund me the hours of my life I devoted to this game for that??? Again, punishing people for success and accomplishing something.

This is like socialists ESO where everyone gets a trophy and everyone is equal.

No kids, who just created a character, don't bother leveling up.... We'll just buff you up to the people who just spent over a year playing AND we'll punish them for their accomplishments by needing them. Gotta make it fair.

This is so ridiculous and I really hope these changes don't go through. I literally see no point in trying in Cyrodiil anymore... Especially since those bonuses don't apply outside of Cyrodiil anymore anyway.

No point at all.

Thanks Zenimax. Thank you for taking my years worth of play time, my sleepless nights, my resources and energy and the passion I put behind this game... And throwing them all back into my face.

Awesome.

Do you even Cyrodiil bro?

You must never have put effort into becoming emperor... Bro.

Alomar

Well definitely not all positive changes in there.

Removing emp buffs was never the problem, creating a system that made it harder to become emp such as requiring a lot more ap than the current 50k would of made a hell of a lot more sense. Yet, this is easier so typical.

Removing the "travel to player" options while STILL not adding an option to remove home/guest campaigns is ridiculous. Many of us have characters on all 3 factions and with your ridiculous system it takes us 14-20+ days to move all our characters around in order to move our "main" to a different server.

All of this "there is more lag in vet campaign so let's make vet campaigns more like non-vet" is garbage. We had more people in small areas using just as many if not more skills earlier in this game (launch+) with little to no lag. Yet, patch after patch has created/made this lag worse without any recognition or accepting of the blame by ZOS (lighting patch anyone?). Should I reset my router again?

The buff campaigns were recommended to be removed from giving buffs in pve locations in Beta through up until now loudly/repeatedly, so better late than never doesn't apply in this situation. Just poor development.

cjthibs

OtakuAime14 wrote: »

People go for emperor for the skills and achievments. They don't just do it for *** and giggles.
No cheap tactics here just time and hard work. But apparently I did waste my time.
I don't have 16 hours to spend at all. I work 45 hours a week. I have nights and weekends and I did it.

A lot of players won't even go into Cyrodiil anymore because of them taking away the buffs, not me personally, but a lot of PVEers won't even bother.

I just feel like this is punishing people for success and babying people who either can't or won't put the same effort in.

In my opinion people should get Emperor by being team-players, not who can rack up insane amount of AP.
I've never attempted it because it doesn't bother me that much, I play objectives, not AP farm.

OtakuAime14

cjthibs wrote: »

OtakuAime14 wrote: »

People go for emperor for the skills and achievments. They don't just do it for *** and giggles.
No cheap tactics here just time and hard work. But apparently I did waste my time.
I don't have 16 hours to spend at all. I work 45 hours a week. I have nights and weekends and I did it.

A lot of players won't even go into Cyrodiil anymore because of them taking away the buffs, not me personally, but a lot of PVEers won't even bother.

I just feel like this is punishing people for success and babying people who either can't or won't put the same effort in.

In my opinion people should get Emperor by being team-players, not who can rack up insane amount of AP.
I've never attempted it because it doesn't bother me that much, I play objectives, not AP farm.

Becoming emperor is an objective and it takes a team. I can't take keeps and resources by myself. I got emperor by rallying my friends and guild mates and all of us working together to take Cyrodiil.

WebBull

I like the changes, a breath of fresh air however I would prefer that we still be allowed to travel to friends in another campaign or have the number of campaigns reduced.

I don't' understand players concerns about rezzing at a keep that doesn't have transit connected. Even in enemy territory they still own the keep they are rezzing in. You people must just love riding your horses around. Same group that enjoy PvDoor in the middle of the night or early morning. The point of rezzing in a keep that you own regardless of transitus status is to create battles, action, fun. Seems to me it is the PvE'rs that want this change.

If you don't want enemy players in a keep that they control in your territory , then burst it.

FENGRUSH

Plenty of discussions of zerg/lag/performance from mulitiple people and other issues like emp buffs or Erlex's personal question about respawning at keeps is getting full replies.


Good luck embracing all these changes while the server tanks with 60 people spamming purge and springs on flags.


ZOS continues to polish the same turd over and over.


The reality is, we had a big post about these exact campaign changes being made from the same person(copied below). Ultimately, nothing has moved and worst of all, the performance issues are still not being addressed as the highest priority issue. Promise players the moon, tell them all the great things youre either thinking about or working on, but none of it means anything when youre pushing it through an environment that CANNOT SUPPORT IT. Make positive changes that detract from the constant blobs in cyrodiil. Youve lost so many players due to performance and you just forward your problems to the engineering folks when you have the ability to change how the game functions to avoid/minimize issues causing lag in the first place.


If youre not the person that should answer why the sieges cannot function when we have a fraction of the players we used to on screen, then who will @ZOS_BrianWheeler ?? We all know its the blobs mashing purge and heals. Do you not? Do you need evidence of this? Do you care? Did you really need to see the performance differences in non-vet vs. vet campaigns?

What will it take for you to wake up to performance issues and address them head on rather than deflect the issue? Your ideas of limiting guesting/moving campaigns will not work as long as you push performance issues off to another team to fix. Take the initiative and do make positive meaningful change in cyrodiil. Everyones waited long enough.





March 19th (3 months ago):

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Hey gang!

In the continued efforts to help Cyrodiil performance, we are considering some changes to the Thornblade Campaign scoring rules. Currently the scoring is setup to have the most importance on Scrolls, then Keeps, outposts and resources last. We are considering changing that one of the following options:

• Keeps, Scrolls, Outposts and Resources all contribute just 1 point each.
Or
• Scrolls, Outposts and Resources are worth 1 point, and Keeps are worth 3.


The first option puts everything on an even playing field in terms of contribution to the overall score, however being that 54 resources exist in Cyrodiil vs 18 keeps and resources take less people to capture, you have a greater opportunity of point earning via resources. We’re well aware of the requests to make keeps more important with various new additions and reasons to claim for your guild, but that will have to wait for a later patch as that takes some code time we are currently focusing on finding the bugs chewing on wires causing performance issues.

The secondary option has 3 resources equaling the value of a single keep. This would mean you get 54 points from keeps, and 54 points from resources. Catching up in scoring would be similar to what is now, and the emphasis on keeps would still be there. Note, however, these changes are in response to the request to make objectives more meaningful besides the keeps where the knee buckling performance issues occur the most.

We’re using Thornblade as the grounds for this change as that’s the campaign with the most performance issues at the moment, and potentially with the most to gain from these changes. We could fire up a new campaign, or assign these rules to Haderus, however we wouldn’t know if the behavior of encouraging players to take these resources has the effect we want or not simply because it doesn’t have the population and performance issues as Thornblade.

Currently the score in Thornblade with 13 days to go is:

Ebonheart 56864
Daggerfall 56449
Aldmeri 40300

If we make this change, it can be done in two ways:

• The current score stays as is, but the new calculations take place when the patch goes out.
OR
• We end the campaign when the patch comes out, and Thornblade starts fresh.


This change wouldn’t come until later this month when there is roughly 24-48 hours left in the campaign. We will be looking at feedback here over the course of the next week to see what you all think of this change, and if this scoring change goes in and we have to forcefully end the campaign, you will be rewarded appropriately based on the score when the campaign is restarted.

So....thoughts?

Rylana

Removing former emperor passives is the only part of this I do not agree with.

cjthibs

OtakuAime14 wrote: »

Becoming emperor is an objective and it takes a team. I can't take keeps and resources by myself. I got emperor by rallying my friends and guild mates and all of us working together to take Cyrodiil.

That is exactly what I mean. Your objective wasn't to advance the Campaign it was to make yourself Emperor.
That's fine...but you got your reward. You got to run around near-invincible as long as you could hold it. Hopefully you didn't swap it to another faction before you had enough fun.

Domander

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Just to clarify, you will keep the Emperor Dye and "former emperor" titles.

I don't see it helping the game to remove the former emperor buffs.

G0ku

cjthibs wrote: »

That is exactly what I mean. Your objective wasn't to advance the Campaign it was to make yourself Emperor.
That's fine...but you got your reward. You got to run around near-invincible as long as you could hold it. Hopefully you didn't swap it to another faction before you had enough fun.

yessir

Removing all pvp buffs from pve is a good change and should include emperor buffs. Hopefully some of the abominations of pvp we see at the moment will stop. You will be emperor where it´s needed - in cyrodiil, nowhere else and only while you are emperor. You got an achievement, a dye and a title just as any other achievement in the game.

Only thing which worries me is the travel to friends thing. If they do the changes in steps I hope this will be the last one so they can watch if maybe they can skip this last step.

Manoekin

Atropos wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Removing the ability to spawn at disconnected keeps would also change another aspect of the Cyrodiil map.

The two gate keeps of each faction (Rayles, Warden, KC, Farragut, BB, BM) become near impossible to for any long term period of time. If enemies can only respawn at a captured Arrius, Glademist, of Faregyl, it becomes simply a matter of time before the native faction overwhelms the force camping their gates and then closes them.

Pushing for the scrolls would require a concerted organized effort most of the time, as you'd be unlikely to retain those gate keeps without babysitting them or keeping the enemy so busy (defending scroll temples for instance) that they're not attacking the gate keep.

It would also give the faction defending their scrolls much more time to rally and counter attack after any failed attempt to push the gates or take the temple.

@Agrippa_Invisus, The scenario you just described sounds exactly like how Cyrodiil dynamics should work. It should be extremely difficult to hold the gate keeps. This naturally balances the map, gives a natural equalizer to the losing faction, and prevents people from rage-quitting or skipping to a different campaign. Pushing for scrolls should require a concerted effort. Scroll caps are too frequent at the moment.

There needs to be more discussion on this. It's a good idea for certain situations. It should be harder to hold the other factions' inner 3 keeps. If I'm going for a scroll too though, I shouldn't have to kill JohnnyEP 10 times in 2 minutes because he can respawn and run back to the temple in 10 seconds while I can't even res at my nearest keep. If it's going to work like that I need a counter balance.

I'm not sure yet if I'd want that to work on emp keeps. It will help improve group play even for small groups. However, a south-ga mindset will come into place where you send your 5 raids to inner keeps and now the enemy faction cannot res at any of their keeps. In the current game (and future game if it doesn't make the patch notes) you cannot defend a keep fast enough if the enemy does the siege right. I'd be fine with being able to respawn at your 6 home keeps regardless of transitus, but not enemy home keeps if the transitus is cut. I like it to balance the map more for the defenders. The simple idea of "transitus = res" will be severely abused by the zerg.

OtakuAime14

cjthibs wrote: »

OtakuAime14 wrote: »

Becoming emperor is an objective and it takes a team. I can't take keeps and resources by myself. I got emperor by rallying my friends and guild mates and all of us working together to take Cyrodiil.

That is exactly what I mean. Your objective wasn't to advance the Campaign it was to make yourself Emperor.
That's fine...but you got your reward. You got to run around near-invincible as long as you could hold it. Hopefully you didn't swap it to another faction before you had enough fun.

It's both a personal goal and an alliance goal. The alliance gets a buff for it. They wouldn't have it as an achievment if they didn't want people to try and get it.... It one of the main points of PvPing. To try and make yourself emperor and for the buffs pvp accomplishments give you throughout the game.

By your logic, why even have levels or achievements at all? I mean if it's all just for fun... You shouldn't need levels and achievements as rewards. You got the fun of playing the game.