Cowardice in the face of the enemy?

apostate9

So fellow PVPers...talk me down. I am seeing a phenomenon lately that I don't feel like I saw so much over the course of 1.4,1.5,1.6 et al, and I wonder... is it the campaign my guild has chosen, is it a new thing, is it just me? I refer to this phenomenon as PvN, or "Player vs. Nothing".

I have noticed that soloers, several large pug groups, and even certain guild raids in my campaign seem to go out of their way to be where the fighting isn't. I don't neccesarily mean they are doing delves or quests, I mean they express an interest in the campaign, and then appear to do whatever it takes to avoid enemy contact in favor of PVDoor, or even PVGrass in the middle of nowhere.

As an example, last night on Trueflame, Blue was out in force and making an Emp push. Red held only BRK on the inner ring when my team logged in. The blue army was inbound, the EP was concerned, and people in zone were wondering.. what to do?

All the experienced voices in zone seemed to concur. Don't lose BRK. Seems like a no-brainer. AD was quiet, and several skilled DC guilds were pushing hard on BRK, there wsn't really any strategic question of what priorities should be. Guild leaders in zone agreed. Nobody argued. We hold BRK like warriors!

Aaaaaannnddd.... basically nobody showed up. My guild was there, I saw Haxus there, and that's all. Where were the other 40 some-odd EP I know were running, who had nowhere else to be? Attacking robots at Brindle farm or something. For all I know they were doing /dancedrunk at the Southern Gate.

WTF?

This has been going on for like a week. Or maybe I just started noticing it this week, I dunno. Is there a rumour going around thaat dying in PVP will make you actually die IRL or something? Cuz it won't.

C'mon people. These forums are inundated with complaints about the lack of good fights in Cyrodiil, and as soon as a couple enemy guilds show up ready to fight, everyone disappears. EP was Pop-locked, and I kept seeing the same 35 people everywhere I went, and 20 of them where with me!

Help me out. What's going on? Was DC giving away free beer at Dragonclaw while our home keeps burned?

GRxKnight

Population doesn't really mean anything anymore since imperial city population counts for the campaign...i know you've probably heard that about a million times but that's why it seems to be hard to find fights and a good server is because of that fact...other than that I'm not really sure what to tell ya since i play on azura's and I'm not in Trueflame on a regular basis

tinythinker

apostate9 wrote: »

I have noticed that soloers, several large pug groups, and even certain guild raids in my campaign seem to go out of their way to be where the fighting isn't.

As an example, last night on Trueflame, Blue was out in force and making an Emp push. Red held only BRK on the inner ring when my team logged in. The blue army was inbound, the EP was concerned, and people in zone were wondering.. what to do?

All the experienced voices in zone seemed to concur. Don't lose BRK. Seems like a no-brainer. AD was quiet, and several skilled DC guilds were pushing hard on BRK, there wsn't really any strategic question of what priorities should be. Guild leaders in zone agreed. Nobody argued. We hold BRK like warriors!

Aaaaaannnddd.... basically nobody showed up. My guild was there, I saw Haxus there, and that's all. Where were the other 40 some-odd EP I know were running, who had nowhere else to be? Attacking robots at Brindle farm or something. For all I know they were doing /dancedrunk at the Southern Gate.

Help me out. What's going on?

As GRxKnight mentioned many might actually be in IC. Others may simply be avoiding the lag. If 2-4 raids are expected to be fighting at a keep, some folks may not want to be there.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

Hahaha! I made a similar post about XBox Haderus an hour ago. I feel like the mindset the "errmahgerd peeveepee is impossible" has turned some players into straight up cowards. I had 45 other EP run away from an equally sized DC Zerg because the majority thought the only way to survive AN EVEN FIGHT was to hide or run. Shameful.

On a side note I'm a VR10 with 90 champion points. Nothing is impossible. I kill VR16s like I kill French fries. You just need to actually be willing to try.

apostate9

danielpatrickkeaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Hahaha! I made a similar post about XBox Haderus an hour ago. I feel like the mindset the "errmahgerd peeveepee is impossible" has turned some players into straight up cowards. I had 45 other EP run away from an equally sized DC Zerg because the majority thought the only way to survive AN EVEN FIGHT was to hide or run. Shameful.

On a side note I'm a VR10 with 90 champion points. Nothing is impossible. I kill VR16s like I kill French fries. You just need to actually be willing to try.

And I don't even get their perspective. If this big zerg collapses and runs, they live...but so what? What will they do now? The death penalty is slight in most scenarios, so you may as well commit. If you die, ride back! If you buckle and survive....what will you do now? Dead heroes got kills, live cowards kill nobody.

Don't get me wrong, it is important to try and engage in favorble circumstances, and you don't want to throw away your raid's lives for nothing But OTOH, death in ESO is a learning experience and if it happens in friendly terriitory it isn't as big an obstacle to success as a mental unwillingness to engage is.

We pushed out at one point to try and dent the DC seige line, and this chick up on the walls with her 4 friends and 4 fire siege was bellowing at us to come back and huddle inside the walls with them. Huh? What happens when VE and 20 of their battlepugs breach the walls in 20 seconds and aren't mounted on siege machines anymore? Would she rather fight them then? Cuz fight you must if you plan to hold a castle.

I just dunno, man.

Levo18

Maybe they are worried about their K/D haha .....

apostate9

Levo18 wrote: »

Maybe they are worried about their K/D haha .....

I guess...

LOL

hammayolettuce

Hmm. It seems we shall have to find another distraction now that you've discovered our Beer at Dclaw strategy. Plan B is now in effect; we are sending AoE Barbecue to the Gate of Ghartok in daisy dukes. There will also be puppy adoptions! Mother effing puppy adoptions bro.

Galalin

This is the result of PvE in PvP.... the good news is as the PvEers get more involved and learn about PvP more than likely the issue will resovle itself. On the other hand they may just leave all together making for dead campaigns. The one thing i noticed about these PvE guilds is if things are a challenge they just give up and quit almost instantly.

DK SCRUB OUT

Huckdabuck

apostate9 wrote: »

We pushed out at one point to try and dent the DC seige line, and this chick up on the walls with her 4 friends and 4 fire siege was bellowing at us to come back and huddle inside the walls with them. Huh? What happens when VE and 20 of their battlepugs breach the walls in 20 seconds and aren't mounted on siege machines anymore? Would she rather fight them then? Cuz fight you must if you plan to hold a castle.

Wouldn't matter....you'd be AP piñatas once they showed up and started to siege unless Haxus showed up. Battlepugs? Hmmmmm.......Is that what BP stood for before the name change?

Manoekin

Should designate a pvp campaign and then have everyone go into the sewers and camp the *** out of it for a few days to clear it out :P

catalyst10e

I'd say you're not alone, NA/DC/PS4 here, and I've had to regularly leave certain groups (and to some extent certain regular group leaders) because their decision was always "run away" "avoid the fight" or "no, everyone is going that way, we'll head south and take Roebeck" I'll avoid a fight if its to get to a bigger fight, or a more important fight, or hell even if its to defend a specific point that may or may not have enemies there. But not straight up "go around this fight" I dunno what causes it, I just know the only real solution is to make sure to limit the number of people they "command"

_Chaos

Huckdabuck wrote: »

Battlepugs? Hmmmmm.......Is that what BP stood for before the name change?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD9WiTTE6FU

Ghost-Shot

hammayolettuce wrote: »

Hmm. It seems we shall have to find another distraction now that you've discovered our Beer at Dclaw strategy. Plan B is now in effect; we are sending AoE Barbecue to the Gate of Ghartok in daisy dukes. There will also be puppy adoptions! Mother effing puppy adoptions bro.

Can confirm.

apostate9

hammayolettuce wrote: »

Hmm. It seems we shall have to find another distraction now that you've discovered our Beer at Dclaw strategy. Plan B is now in effect; we are sending AoE Barbecue to the Gate of Ghartok in daisy dukes. There will also be puppy adoptions! Mother effing puppy adoptions bro.

NOO! Not puppies! Snuggly, floppy eared puppies...

Now we're screwed.

Dyride

I think there needs to be a Mirror Image skill that creates an illusionary double. That way people feel like they have more support.

Manoekin

Dyride wrote: »

I think there needs to be a Mirror Image skill that creates an illusionary double. That way people feel like they have more support.

I'm still waiting on the 24man pet sorc group.

catalyst10e

Manoekin wrote: »

Dyride wrote: »

I think there needs to be a Mirror Image skill that creates an illusionary double. That way people feel like they have more support.

I'm still waiting on the 24man pet sorc group.

YES PLEASE!

apostate9

Huckdabuck wrote: »

apostate9 wrote: »

We pushed out at one point to try and dent the DC seige line, and this chick up on the walls with her 4 friends and 4 fire siege was bellowing at us to come back and huddle inside the walls with them. Huh? What happens when VE and 20 of their battlepugs breach the walls in 20 seconds and aren't mounted on siege machines anymore? Would she rather fight them then? Cuz fight you must if you plan to hold a castle.

Wouldn't matter....you'd be AP piñatas once they showed up and started to siege unless Haxus showed up. Battlepugs? Hmmmmm.......Is that what BP stood for before the name change?

1. Haxus was there
2. VE was there
3. You weren't

Valindor Magnus

@apostate9

Huckdabuck is in VE so... Yeah...

apostate9

Valindor Magnus wrote: »

@apostate9

Huckdabuck is in VE so... Yeah...

And? Am I wrong? Was he there? Cuz he doesn't seem to know what's going on. If he played ESO as well as he played the forums he'd be Grand Overlord by now. I'm done with his trolling.

Valindor Magnus

@apostate9 if he was online and VE was running then yes he was in group... And I'm not entirely sure what he was trolling about. If a raid is sieging a keep the window of being able to push them back while retaining your spawn at the keep is fairly small. So the risk isn't always worth pushing them, the person asking y'all to come back and get inside was probably doing so in order to get all the defenders at the keep on the same page, you aren't gonna defend a keep against an organized guild and pugs unless your all working together. Well I say you won't but i guess it's possible to I'm just saying it greatly increases your chances of defending if y'all don't split up and die off before the attackers push the flags.

Force-Siphon

All those other EP fell down the K Hole at alessia bridge prolly...

apostate9

Valindor Magnus wrote: »

@apostate9 if he was online and VE was running then yes he was in group... And I'm not entirely sure what he was trolling about. If a raid is sieging a keep the window of being able to push them back while retaining your spawn at the keep is fairly small. So the risk isn't always worth pushing them, the person asking y'all to come back and get inside was probably doing so in order to get all the defenders at the keep on the same page, you aren't gonna defend a keep against an organized guild and pugs unless your all working together. Well I say you won't but i guess it's possible to I'm just saying it greatly increases your chances of defending if y'all don't split up and die off before the attackers push the flags.

I can't say I disagree per se, but there wasn't a lot to coordinate. We were outnumbered per my OP, and our chances weren't going to get better once the attacking raids were done breaching and ready to fight. A few crappy fire counter-seiges more or less wasn't going to make a big impact, but giving the seigers a haircut might. We use that tactic to defend successfully all the time, and I bet you do too. It was certainly worth a try to engage in front of our walls and our seige from stealth, rather than wait till the DC were on the inner postern and hope that purge got magically removed from the game.

In this exact case, did we make enough difference to tilt the outcome? Don't know. Ultimately not. I only brought up that little story becuase chilling in the keep waiting to die in the name of "coordinating" is starting to become the rule it feels like. It takes 70 seconds to sprint from Arrius. But once the walls are down, a 30vs40 with many of the defenders being pugs....the odds don't then get BETTER. In this sort of defense, if you don't have as many guys, you have one other tangible advantage to try and leverage; fixed fortifications. When you no longer have them, you don't have anything up your sleeve but an uphill fight. You prolly lose. When we made our push, the outer was at like 50%. So...we weren't gonna wipe that blue zerg with half a dozen fire ballistae, and we weren't gonna invent gunpowder in the 20 seconds it was gonna take for the wall to go down. Hence our decision (good or bad) to attack while the wall was still up, and slow down the siege. At least we took some DC to Hell with us.

Of course, Blue did eventually take the keep. We got our dead back in time to counter-attack the flags but it was not a victory for us, and I didn't think it was going to be at that point. Turns out, EP had more guys that may have evened the numbers out...they just weren't there.

xaraan

We see a lot of this as well. Certain groups like to PvDoor and fail as soon as any, no matter how meager, defense is mounted. Now, trying to snatch backline keeps when you are down to one keep can be a good strategy, but I think any group trying that needs to be a solid group. If you have a full raid or more of guys and can only get up 10 siege, immediately remove yourself from consideration as a solid group. At this point you are going to fail and just put bodies where they aren't needed, i.e. not in the fight.

apostate9

xaraan wrote: »

We see a lot of this as well. Certain groups like to PvDoor and fail as soon as any, no matter how meager, defense is mounted. Now, trying to snatch backline keeps when you are down to one keep can be a good strategy, but I think any group trying that needs to be a solid group. If you have a full raid or more of guys and can only get up 10 siege, immediately remove yourself from consideration as a solid group. At this point you are going to fail and just put bodies where they aren't needed, i.e. not in the fight.

^ This. Well put.

Warraxx

i was there, all I saw was nomnomnom

Valindor Magnus

@apostate9 while I can empathize with your frustration of people not defending the objectives in cyrodiil while being in the campaign there just isn't much to be done about it. Chances are the people who don't participate in those keep defenses aren't even on the forums to see your post. And I mean at the end of the day if someone doesn't want to rush to a keep defense where there is horrible frames rates or just simply because they don't want to I'm not gonna blame them for playing the way they want to. Trying to muster up support from fellow EP is a good thing, and I can see your intentions so I'm not saying your post was useless or bad in anyway I just think is was a little off the mark.

Valindor Magnus

I remember like 2 days ago being in raid and we were wondering where the enemy factions were at and what they were doing, DC had most of the inner keeps and neither ad or EP were really pushing they were just defending and being reactive not proactive so even from the enemy POV we can get frustrated from this as well. We would rather fight for a keep than pvdoor it as well.

Edit: this was on True Flame

Forestd16b14_ESO

COD effect there more worried about there K/D count than the actual game.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

COD effect there more worried about there K/D count than the actual game.

Re: COD

I think there are a lot of CoD issues at play

1)This game is a CoD camper's best friend.
2) I always thought the CoD players who thought a 22-19 k/d was better than 9-2 k/d would hate ESO. In CoD you just respawn. In Cyrodiil death can mean a 10 minute horse ride.
3) While I don't know if you can find your death number you can find your career kill total by comparing your gamer card on XBox to a friends. I just went over 2000 last week. Not bad for my 5-10 hours a week.