[Long] Five realistic changes to amp up PvP...that would actually work.

KenaPKK

I am an economist. Incentives are what I do. Following is a collection of changes to PvP that I brainstormed this week, designed to work together to shift player incentives in such a way that the following happen naturally and without constraint on player liberties:

Primary goals -- the big three:

• Reduce server lag
• Reduce magazergs
• Keep people excited to play PvP / bring past players back to the game

Methods to achieve these goals:

• Even out population distribution between campaigns
• Introduce tactical, objective-focused gameplay not aimed at player kills as a viable means of contributing to campaigns (in addition to the usual mass murder, of course )
• Establish the Imperial City as a strongly motivating campaign point objective while keeping it technically unnecessary to winning the campaign

Change 1: Make your home campaign the only one where you receive emperor and scroll buffs, and do away with guest campaigns entirely. Allow players to move between campaigns freely.

The best players want to play with each other. Casual players want to play alongside the best. We will all try to play with each other as much as possible, period. Restricting campaign access to only a few campaigns will result in packed populations in those and nearly empty campaigns elsewhere.

Change 2: Rework campaign victory rewards to actually motivate behavior.

These rewards must be strongly motivating to work toward, but must not break the game when 1/3 of the PvP playerbase obtains them each week. EVERYONE uses tripots and crafting materials, so they are my choice choice.

Not the AP leaderboard rewards. Those are fine the way they are...

I lied. They suck. I've been on 3 Azura top 10s and one Haderus one, and I've deconned everything. But that's not what we're talking about here.

...I'm talking about the rewards for winning campaigns. By reworking these, we will give players an incentive to take action toward winning the campaign, not just getting kills. This will motivate players to move away from one main battle from time to time and reward attempts to take objectives elsewhere on the map.

Have campaign victory rewards give a MINIMUM of 100 character leveled tripots, 50 character leveled crafting mats, and a small chance to obtain rare drops like gold upgrade mats, Hakeijo, Malachite Shards, etc...maybe even a small chance to drop Undaunted set pieces or dungeon set pieces.

Change 3: Players receive campaign victory reward mails for all victorious campaigns in which they gained at least 15% of their AP during the campaign's duration.

Rewards evenly participating between campaigns. Flat AP gains are not required, so rewards are independent of participation in combat. Instead, players are motivated to shift between campaigns evenly with no pressure to participate in a big fight that may be occurring. Combined with receiving goodies for winning campaigns, this motivates players to in fact move away from big fights and seek objectives elsewhere, dissipating large, disorganized zerging.

Change 4: AP leaderboard rewards awarded for game-wide AP gains across all campaigns.

This is necessary so that AP leaderboard rewards do not conflict with campaign victory reward incentives. Each campaign's emperor would still be the homed player with the highest AP, but AP leaderboard reward mails would be for game-wide AP gains independent of campaign.

Also, we wouldn't have players with 50,000 AP on Chillrend receiving the same leaderboard rewards as those with 4 million AP on Azura anymore...

Change 5: Allow each IC district and the sewers to be "captured" or "conquered" upon the defeat of each roaming district boss or the Simulacrum of Molag Bal, granting a percentage increase to campaign point gain from Cyrodiil objectives until the boss respawns.

This way, capturing a district or the sewers amplifies the objectives that you already own up in Cyrodiil, creating an interesting dynamic. You still need keeps, resources, etc above ground to win, but IC suddenly becomes a strong objective once you establish a foothold in Cyro. Factions with fewer objectives could assault IC as a catch up mechanism, and factions with a lead in objectives can use IC to cement their lead. Emperors can assault IC at the cost of leaving their emp keeps vulnerable. Factions could forego pushing for emperor in return for assaulting IC objectives, creating interesting decision making and unpredictability.

However, IC would rely on flat campaign point objectives secured out in Cyrodiil, so it's not pay to win.



Persisting problems left to solve (input please):

• How do we motivate people to not zerg the districts? I prefer positive reinforcement to fight in smaller groups there or for larger groups to go elsewhere over solutions like population caps in the districts...
• Should we have players who die in the districts spawn in the sewer base, like those who die in the sewers?
• Load screens!! Have the districts load independently, and have the big sewer load screen load when entering the sewers from base, NOT when entering the base from Cyrodiil.
• Tracking percentage AP gains per campaign.
• When a faction pulls ahead in one campaign, how do we motivate other factions to keep fighting in that campaign as opposed to abandoning it as lost and fighting more to secure victory in other campaigns?
• Do we perhaps have too many campaigns right now? Would evenly distributing the population result in thinly populated campaigns?
• How do we make sure the population doesn't just roll through each campaign one by one each week? (Or do we even need to worry about this?)

~~ TL;DR ~~

Changes:

• Free movement between campaigns
• Winning campaigns rewards players regardless of AP gains (AP leaderboard rewards unchanged)
• Players receive rewards for any victorious campaign in which they participate, incentivizing participating in all campaigns evenly
• Defeating Imperial City district bosses or the Simulacrum of Molag Bal temporarily amplifies your faction's campaign point gains in that campaign.

Expectations:

Expect people to spread out on the map more, fighting over many objectives at the same time.

Also expect groups to specialize in what they enjoy doing. Some will raid keeps. Some will assault districts and fight other players over the bosses -- while the bosses pummel them! Some will sewer dive and fight their way to Molag Bal...while he and the flag bosses pummel them... Heck, some may just run around taking resources, screwing up transit and generally annoying the F*CK out of everyone. It's a tactical maneuver effective in wartime that we don't see people doing right now!



I still consider this post a work in progress. Constructive input is appreciated, but please take time to digest how each of these changes works together to affect player incentives before judging the whole.

KenaPKK

Oh, I will add that I don't think these are the best possible changes to PvP, nor do I think this is an exhaustive list of necessary changes to achieve my goals.

For instance, I believe there will need to be combat changes in addition to system changes. However, these are intended to be a good start. These require little development time to implement and make a move toward a better tomorrow in PvP.

Valindor Magnus

I'm all for improvements and changes to revitalize pvp. And I guess I just have a jaded POV but I don't think Zos is actually gonna change anything. With that aside I think you have some interesting ideas, I don't particularly agree with how you think we could achieve the goals you outlined with the suggested changes but I do agree with the goals you would like to achieve. Spreading out players, having more objectives, better incentives. I think zos should realize there are players in cyrodiil that don't give a F*** about winning the campaign though and give them other things to do in cyrodiil. Since players complain about them not helping with the campaign but still taking up space in cyrodiil. I personally would love for them to add some sort of staked fighting in either cyrodiil or the imperial city, I mean they have a freaking arena in IC but it's used for pve... Missed opportunity in my eyes. Something like you can send a fight request to another player or group and everyone puts up gold or TV stones and last team or player in a ffa gets rewards. Of course this doesn't align with what the dev team wants for cyrodiil so it's just wishful thinking. I agree with your points brought up with campaign rewards I still don't think they are good enough. And as far as I knew they were gonna have campaign objectives in IC but they took them out for whatever reasons they had. Same with the gated acces I think removing that was a mistake on their part. They were gonna have haderus open all the time so it's not like they were making it impossible for players to get in if it wasn't open on a particular campaign.

Ishammael

Agree with the core premise, totally
1. Spread out players
2. Add more objectives
3. Add better rewards

These should be achieved by a whole range of things to do in cyrodiil, some of which you have described. More is almost always better in my opinion.

KenaPKK

Valindor Magnus wrote: »

[Snip!]

Omg yes, where is the 1v1 / small group team PvP arena already??? I agree.

I will say, though, that if any IC is gated, people will just avoid that campaign and follow the path of least resistance. Either gate them all or gate none imo.

Ishammael wrote: »

Agree with the core premise, totally
1. Spread out players
2. Add more objectives
3. Add better rewards

These should be achieved by a whole range of things to do in cyrodiil, some of which you have described. More is almost always better in my opinion.

I agree that there should be more. I am simply working with what we have to get some good changes in place in the short term. Additional content and more complex changes take time. Definitely with you on this one, though.

Valindor Magnus

KenaPKK wrote: »

Valindor Magnus wrote: »

[Snip!]

Omg yes, where is the 1v1 / small group team PvP arena already??? I agree.

I will say, though, that if any IC is gated, people will just avoid that campaign and follow the path of least resistance. Either gate them all or gate none imo.

Ishammael wrote: »

Agree with the core premise, totally
1. Spread out players
2. Add more objectives
3. Add better rewards

These should be achieved by a whole range of things to do in cyrodiil, some of which you have described. More is almost always better in my opinion.

I agree that there should be more. I am simply working with what we have to get some good changes in place in the short term. Additional content and more complex changes take time. Definitely with you on this one, though.

True but those are also the players that probably don't care about winning the campaign and just want small scale pvp anyways so that would give them all a place to go and find that while the zergs and guild raids are focused on their campaign. That's just how I see it though so the effects of gated acces could be mor pe than what I see since we never got it to begiwith so we will never know.

KenaPKK

Valindor Magnus wrote: »

KenaPKK wrote: »

Valindor Magnus wrote: »

[Snip!]

Omg yes, where is the 1v1 / small group team PvP arena already??? I agree.

I will say, though, that if any IC is gated, people will just avoid that campaign and follow the path of least resistance. Either gate them all or gate none imo.

Ishammael wrote: »

Agree with the core premise, totally
1. Spread out players
2. Add more objectives
3. Add better rewards

These should be achieved by a whole range of things to do in cyrodiil, some of which you have described. More is almost always better in my opinion.

I agree that there should be more. I am simply working with what we have to get some good changes in place in the short term. Additional content and more complex changes take time. Definitely with you on this one, though.

True but those are also the players that probably don't care about winning the campaign and just want small scale pvp anyways so that would give them all a place to go and find that while the zergs and guild raids are focused on their campaign. That's just how I see it though so the effects of gated acces could be mor pe than what I see since we never got it to begiwith so we will never know.

Perhaps people don't care about winning the campaign because they don't have a worthy incentive to push for it? Hmmm?

Jules

KenaPKK wrote: »

I am an economist. Incentives are what I do. Following is a collection of changes to PvP that I brainstormed this week, designed to work together to shift player incentives in such a way that the following happen naturally and without constraint on player liberties:

Primary goals -- the big three:

• Reduce server lag
• Reduce magazergs
• Keep people excited to play PvP / bring past players back to the game

Methods to achieve these goals:

• Even out population distribution between campaigns
• Introduce tactical, objective-focused gameplay not aimed at player kills as a viable means of contributing to campaigns (in addition to the usual mass murder, of course )
• Establish the Imperial City as a strongly motivating campaign point objective while keeping it technically unnecessary to winning the campaign

Change 1: Make your home campaign the only one where you receive emperor and scroll buffs, and do away with guest campaigns entirely. Allow players to move between campaigns freely.

The best players want to play with each other. Casual players want to play alongside the best. We will all try to play with each other as much as possible, period. Restricting campaign access to only a few campaigns will result in packed populations in those and nearly empty campaigns elsewhere.

Change 2: Rework campaign victory rewards to actually motivate behavior.

These rewards must be strongly motivating to work toward, but must not break the game when 1/3 of the PvP playerbase obtains them each week. EVERYONE uses tripots and crafting materials, so they are my choice choice.

Not the AP leaderboard rewards. Those are fine the way they are...

I lied. They suck. I've been on 3 Azura top 10s and one Haderus one, and I've deconned everything. But that's not what we're talking about here.

...I'm talking about the rewards for winning campaigns. By reworking these, we will give players an incentive to take action toward winning the campaign, not just getting kills. This will motivate players to move away from one main battle from time to time and reward attempts to take objectives elsewhere on the map.

Have campaign victory rewards give a MINIMUM of 100 character leveled tripots, 50 character leveled crafting mats, and a small chance to obtain rare drops like gold upgrade mats, Hakeijo, Malachite Shards, etc...maybe even a small chance to drop Undaunted set pieces or dungeon set pieces.

Change 3: Players receive campaign victory reward mails for all victorious campaigns in which they gained at least 15% of their AP during the campaign's duration.

Rewards evenly participating between campaigns. Flat AP gains are not required, so rewards are independent of participation in combat. Instead, players are motivated to shift between campaigns evenly with no pressure to participate in a big fight that may be occurring. Combined with receiving goodies for winning campaigns, this motivates players to in fact move away from big fights and seek objectives elsewhere, dissipating large, disorganized zerging.

Change 4: AP leaderboard rewards awarded for game-wide AP gains across all campaigns.

This is necessary so that AP leaderboard rewards do not conflict with campaign victory reward incentives. Each campaign's emperor would still be the homed player with the highest AP, but AP leaderboard reward mails would be for game-wide AP gains independent of campaign.

Also, we wouldn't have players with 50,000 AP on Chillrend receiving the same leaderboard rewards as those with 4 million AP on Azura anymore...

Change 5: Allow each IC district and the sewers to be "captured" or "conquered" upon the defeat of each roaming district boss or the Simulacrum of Molag Bal, granting a percentage increase to campaign point gain from Cyrodiil objectives until the boss respawns.

This way, capturing a district or the sewers amplifies the objectives that you already own up in Cyrodiil, creating an interesting dynamic. You still need keeps, resources, etc above ground to win, but IC suddenly becomes a strong objective once you establish a foothold in Cyro. Factions with fewer objectives could assault IC as a catch up mechanism, and factions with a lead in objectives can use IC to cement their lead. Emperors can assault IC at the cost of leaving their emp keeps vulnerable. Factions could forego pushing for emperor in return for assaulting IC objectives, creating interesting decision making and unpredictability.

However, IC would rely on flat campaign point objectives secured out in Cyrodiil, so it's not pay to win.



Persisting problems left to solve (input please):

• How do we motivate people to not zerg the districts? I prefer positive reinforcement to fight in smaller groups there or for larger groups to go elsewhere over solutions like population caps in the districts...
• Should we have players who die in the districts spawn in the sewer base, like those who die in the sewers?
• Load screens!! Have the districts load independently, and have the big sewer load screen load when entering the sewers from base, NOT when entering the base from Cyrodiil.
• Tracking percentage AP gains per campaign.
• When a faction pulls ahead in one campaign, how do we motivate other factions to keep fighting in that campaign as opposed to abandoning it as lost and fighting more to secure victory in other campaigns?
• Do we perhaps have too many campaigns right now? Would evenly distributing the population result in thinly populated campaigns?
• How do we make sure the population doesn't just roll through each campaign one by one each week? (Or do we even need to worry about this?)

~~ TL;DR ~~

Changes:

• Free movement between campaigns
• Winning campaigns rewards players regardless of AP gains (AP leaderboard rewards unchanged)
• Players receive rewards for any victorious campaign in which they participate, incentivizing participating in all campaigns evenly
• Defeating Imperial City district bosses or the Simulacrum of Molag Bal temporarily amplifies your faction's campaign point gains in that campaign.

I agree with the motivations here. Not necessarily the execution in how you'd do everything, but you've definitely got some interesting ideas.

For one, I think I understand your want for people to spread out. Lag, fps drops, zergballing, all things that make gameplay pretty heinous.

However I think it's important that we remember that with drops in population and interest in the game, spreading out will make it even harder to find fights sometimes, which I hate. I would much rather find lots of quality fights all around a map. Also, I think what's more important than people spreading out across a map is people spreading out while grouped in one location. I think the game mechanics concerning large group play needs to be seriously reevaluated.

Anyway, moving on. I really really like the idea of increasing campaign rewards and mails to things people actually want/will use. I like the idea of getting v15 tripots- that would be so useful. Receiving the v16 mats would be fantastic! Also undaunted sets would be actually quite fair rather than forcing PVPers to complete PVE content to stay competitive.

I think you're on the right track w claiming districts, but I'd go about it differently. I think IC is already so PVE centric, I'd rather not see districts claimed with a boss conqueror, but instead something more PVP related. Like something to physically claim or opposing faction members to slay. Maybe capture the flag or something of that nature. The sewers and districts desperately need an objective or purpose. Without this, they are incredibly boring.

All in all great post Kena!
Thanks for sharing your ideas and hopefully ZOS gives it some thought

kevlarto_ESO

I am all for changes that will breath more life into pvp, but with such a huge population imbalance that it almost negates any changes with out addressing it, and that is something I have no clue how ZOS could fix, and I see it more of a player created issue. But along with the population imbalance, the lag issue has to be resolved as well, if it can be, spreading players out around Cryodiil with different pvp activities might at least be a fix for the short term, I dunno..

KenaPKK

kevlarto_ESO wrote: »

I am all for changes that will breath more life into pvp, but with such a huge population imbalance that it almost negates any changes with out addressing it, and that is something I have no clue how ZOS could fix, and I see it more of a player created issue. But along with the population imbalance, the lag issue has to be resolved as well, if it can be, spreading players out around Cryodiil with different pvp activities might at least be a fix for the short term, I dunno..

Population imbalance isn't such a huge deal. DC is supposedly the underdog with the lowest population, yet we won the last 3 Azura campaigns before IC came out.

Takllin

KenaPKK wrote: »

kevlarto_ESO wrote: »

I am all for changes that will breath more life into pvp, but with such a huge population imbalance that it almost negates any changes with out addressing it, and that is something I have no clue how ZOS could fix, and I see it more of a player created issue. But along with the population imbalance, the lag issue has to be resolved as well, if it can be, spreading players out around Cryodiil with different pvp activities might at least be a fix for the short term, I dunno..

Population imbalance isn't such a huge deal. DC is supposedly the underdog with the lowest population, yet we won the last 3 Azura campaigns before IC came out.

That's because of nightcapping and is one specific server, doesn't tell the whole story.

JDar

KenaPKK wrote: »

I am an economist. Incentives are what I do. Following is a collection of changes to PvP that I brainstormed this week, designed to work together to shift player incentives in such a way that the following happen naturally and without constraint on player liberties:

Primary goals -- the big three:

• Reduce server lag
• Reduce magazergs
• Keep people excited to play PvP / bring past players back to the game

Methods to achieve these goals:

• Even out population distribution between campaigns
• Introduce tactical, objective-focused gameplay not aimed at player kills as a viable means of contributing to campaigns (in addition to the usual mass murder, of course )
• Establish the Imperial City as a strongly motivating campaign point objective while keeping it technically unnecessary to winning the campaign

Change 1: Make your home campaign the only one where you receive emperor and scroll buffs, and do away with guest campaigns entirely. Allow players to move between campaigns freely.

The best players want to play with each other. Casual players want to play alongside the best. We will all try to play with each other as much as possible, period. Restricting campaign access to only a few campaigns will result in packed populations in those and nearly empty campaigns elsewhere.

Change 2: Rework campaign victory rewards to actually motivate behavior.

These rewards must be strongly motivating to work toward, but must not break the game when 1/3 of the PvP playerbase obtains them each week. EVERYONE uses tripots and crafting materials, so they are my choice choice.

Not the AP leaderboard rewards. Those are fine the way they are...

I lied. They suck. I've been on 3 Azura top 10s and one Haderus one, and I've deconned everything. But that's not what we're talking about here.

...I'm talking about the rewards for winning campaigns. By reworking these, we will give players an incentive to take action toward winning the campaign, not just getting kills. This will motivate players to move away from one main battle from time to time and reward attempts to take objectives elsewhere on the map.

Have campaign victory rewards give a MINIMUM of 100 character leveled tripots, 50 character leveled crafting mats, and a small chance to obtain rare drops like gold upgrade mats, Hakeijo, Malachite Shards, etc...maybe even a small chance to drop Undaunted set pieces or dungeon set pieces.

Change 3: Players receive campaign victory reward mails for all victorious campaigns in which they gained at least 15% of their AP during the campaign's duration.

Rewards evenly participating between campaigns. Flat AP gains are not required, so rewards are independent of participation in combat. Instead, players are motivated to shift between campaigns evenly with no pressure to participate in a big fight that may be occurring. Combined with receiving goodies for winning campaigns, this motivates players to in fact move away from big fights and seek objectives elsewhere, dissipating large, disorganized zerging.

Change 4: AP leaderboard rewards awarded for game-wide AP gains across all campaigns.

This is necessary so that AP leaderboard rewards do not conflict with campaign victory reward incentives. Each campaign's emperor would still be the homed player with the highest AP, but AP leaderboard reward mails would be for game-wide AP gains independent of campaign.

Also, we wouldn't have players with 50,000 AP on Chillrend receiving the same leaderboard rewards as those with 4 million AP on Azura anymore...

Change 5: Allow each IC district and the sewers to be "captured" or "conquered" upon the defeat of each roaming district boss or the Simulacrum of Molag Bal, granting a percentage increase to campaign point gain from Cyrodiil objectives until the boss respawns.

This way, capturing a district or the sewers amplifies the objectives that you already own up in Cyrodiil, creating an interesting dynamic. You still need keeps, resources, etc above ground to win, but IC suddenly becomes a strong objective once you establish a foothold in Cyro. Factions with fewer objectives could assault IC as a catch up mechanism, and factions with a lead in objectives can use IC to cement their lead. Emperors can assault IC at the cost of leaving their emp keeps vulnerable. Factions could forego pushing for emperor in return for assaulting IC objectives, creating interesting decision making and unpredictability.

However, IC would rely on flat campaign point objectives secured out in Cyrodiil, so it's not pay to win.



Persisting problems left to solve (input please):

• How do we motivate people to not zerg the districts? I prefer positive reinforcement to fight in smaller groups there or for larger groups to go elsewhere over solutions like population caps in the districts...
• Should we have players who die in the districts spawn in the sewer base, like those who die in the sewers?
• Load screens!! Have the districts load independently, and have the big sewer load screen load when entering the sewers from base, NOT when entering the base from Cyrodiil.
• Tracking percentage AP gains per campaign.
• When a faction pulls ahead in one campaign, how do we motivate other factions to keep fighting in that campaign as opposed to abandoning it as lost and fighting more to secure victory in other campaigns?
• Do we perhaps have too many campaigns right now? Would evenly distributing the population result in thinly populated campaigns?
• How do we make sure the population doesn't just roll through each campaign one by one each week? (Or do we even need to worry about this?)

~~ TL;DR ~~

Changes:

• Free movement between campaigns
• Winning campaigns rewards players regardless of AP gains (AP leaderboard rewards unchanged)
• Players receive rewards for any victorious campaign in which they participate, incentivizing participating in all campaigns evenly
• Defeating Imperial City district bosses or the Simulacrum of Molag Bal temporarily amplifies your faction's campaign point gains in that campaign.

Expectations:

Expect people to spread out on the map more, fighting over many objectives at the same time.

Also expect groups to specialize in what they enjoy doing. Some will raid keeps. Some will assault districts and fight other players over the bosses -- while the bosses pummel them! Some will sewer dive and fight their way to Molag Bal...while he and the flag bosses pummel them... Heck, some may just run around taking resources, screwing up transit and generally annoying the F*CK out of everyone. It's a tactical maneuver effective in wartime that we don't see people doing right now!



I still consider this post a work in progress. Constructive input is appreciated, but please take time to digest how each of these changes works together to affect player incentives before judging the whole.

I agree with you completely except how you teabagged me after I made every effort to be friendly to you

JDar

Get a clean kill on me solo and then you can taunt me, I am in Azura's Star

Mojomonkeyman

Playing NB - Check
Flooding forums with pro NB posts - Check
Flooding forums with threads desperately trying to convince the world his class is the weakest all around and doesn `t need the treatment other classes got in similar situations - Check
Teabagging - Check
Smiles with sunglasses - Check
"hey, guys I know the solution to all your problems" - Check

How old are you again, OP?

KenaPKK

This thread has nothing to do with NBs.

My NB threads were calm and rational, as opposed to your raging comment spam..

And the points in this thread do, in fact, work toward improving PvP in many of the ways that the community has asked for.

Mojomonkeyman

Sounds like I was right about my assessment regarding your level of maturity...

_Chaos

Mojomonkeyman wrote: »

Sounds like I was right about my assessment regarding your level of maturity...

KenaPKK

Let us not allow this thread to derail. Thanks.

Mojomonkeyman

Good intentions, but since you aren`t even able to grasp the concept of class balance how do you expect to be ontrack approaching the by far bigger beast of population imbalance (as shown in many other games before)...

My 2 cents.

KenaPKK

Jules wrote: »

KenaPKK wrote: »

I am an economist. Incentives are what I do. Following is a collection of changes to PvP that I brainstormed this week, designed to work together to shift player incentives in such a way that the following happen naturally and without constraint on player liberties:

Primary goals -- the big three:

• Reduce server lag
• Reduce magazergs
• Keep people excited to play PvP / bring past players back to the game

Methods to achieve these goals:

• Even out population distribution between campaigns
• Introduce tactical, objective-focused gameplay not aimed at player kills as a viable means of contributing to campaigns (in addition to the usual mass murder, of course )
• Establish the Imperial City as a strongly motivating campaign point objective while keeping it technically unnecessary to winning the campaign

Change 1: Make your home campaign the only one where you receive emperor and scroll buffs, and do away with guest campaigns entirely. Allow players to move between campaigns freely.

The best players want to play with each other. Casual players want to play alongside the best. We will all try to play with each other as much as possible, period. Restricting campaign access to only a few campaigns will result in packed populations in those and nearly empty campaigns elsewhere.

Change 2: Rework campaign victory rewards to actually motivate behavior.

These rewards must be strongly motivating to work toward, but must not break the game when 1/3 of the PvP playerbase obtains them each week. EVERYONE uses tripots and crafting materials, so they are my choice choice.

Not the AP leaderboard rewards. Those are fine the way they are...

I lied. They suck. I've been on 3 Azura top 10s and one Haderus one, and I've deconned everything. But that's not what we're talking about here.

...I'm talking about the rewards for winning campaigns. By reworking these, we will give players an incentive to take action toward winning the campaign, not just getting kills. This will motivate players to move away from one main battle from time to time and reward attempts to take objectives elsewhere on the map.

Have campaign victory rewards give a MINIMUM of 100 character leveled tripots, 50 character leveled crafting mats, and a small chance to obtain rare drops like gold upgrade mats, Hakeijo, Malachite Shards, etc...maybe even a small chance to drop Undaunted set pieces or dungeon set pieces.

Change 3: Players receive campaign victory reward mails for all victorious campaigns in which they gained at least 15% of their AP during the campaign's duration.

Rewards evenly participating between campaigns. Flat AP gains are not required, so rewards are independent of participation in combat. Instead, players are motivated to shift between campaigns evenly with no pressure to participate in a big fight that may be occurring. Combined with receiving goodies for winning campaigns, this motivates players to in fact move away from big fights and seek objectives elsewhere, dissipating large, disorganized zerging.

Change 4: AP leaderboard rewards awarded for game-wide AP gains across all campaigns.

This is necessary so that AP leaderboard rewards do not conflict with campaign victory reward incentives. Each campaign's emperor would still be the homed player with the highest AP, but AP leaderboard reward mails would be for game-wide AP gains independent of campaign.

Also, we wouldn't have players with 50,000 AP on Chillrend receiving the same leaderboard rewards as those with 4 million AP on Azura anymore...

Change 5: Allow each IC district and the sewers to be "captured" or "conquered" upon the defeat of each roaming district boss or the Simulacrum of Molag Bal, granting a percentage increase to campaign point gain from Cyrodiil objectives until the boss respawns.

This way, capturing a district or the sewers amplifies the objectives that you already own up in Cyrodiil, creating an interesting dynamic. You still need keeps, resources, etc above ground to win, but IC suddenly becomes a strong objective once you establish a foothold in Cyro. Factions with fewer objectives could assault IC as a catch up mechanism, and factions with a lead in objectives can use IC to cement their lead. Emperors can assault IC at the cost of leaving their emp keeps vulnerable. Factions could forego pushing for emperor in return for assaulting IC objectives, creating interesting decision making and unpredictability.

However, IC would rely on flat campaign point objectives secured out in Cyrodiil, so it's not pay to win.



Persisting problems left to solve (input please):

• How do we motivate people to not zerg the districts? I prefer positive reinforcement to fight in smaller groups there or for larger groups to go elsewhere over solutions like population caps in the districts...
• Should we have players who die in the districts spawn in the sewer base, like those who die in the sewers?
• Load screens!! Have the districts load independently, and have the big sewer load screen load when entering the sewers from base, NOT when entering the base from Cyrodiil.
• Tracking percentage AP gains per campaign.
• When a faction pulls ahead in one campaign, how do we motivate other factions to keep fighting in that campaign as opposed to abandoning it as lost and fighting more to secure victory in other campaigns?
• Do we perhaps have too many campaigns right now? Would evenly distributing the population result in thinly populated campaigns?
• How do we make sure the population doesn't just roll through each campaign one by one each week? (Or do we even need to worry about this?)

~~ TL;DR ~~

Changes:

• Free movement between campaigns
• Winning campaigns rewards players regardless of AP gains (AP leaderboard rewards unchanged)
• Players receive rewards for any victorious campaign in which they participate, incentivizing participating in all campaigns evenly
• Defeating Imperial City district bosses or the Simulacrum of Molag Bal temporarily amplifies your faction's campaign point gains in that campaign.

I agree with the motivations here. Not necessarily the execution in how you'd do everything, but you've definitely got some interesting ideas.

For one, I think I understand your want for people to spread out. Lag, fps drops, zergballing, all things that make gameplay pretty heinous.

However I think it's important that we remember that with drops in population and interest in the game, spreading out will make it even harder to find fights sometimes, which I hate. I would much rather find lots of quality fights all around a map. Also, I think what's more important than people spreading out across a map is people spreading out while grouped in one location. I think the game mechanics concerning large group play needs to be seriously reevaluated.

Anyway, moving on. I really really like the idea of increasing campaign rewards and mails to things people actually want/will use. I like the idea of getting v15 tripots- that would be so useful. Receiving the v16 mats would be fantastic! Also undaunted sets would be actually quite fair rather than forcing PVPers to complete PVE content to stay competitive.

I think you're on the right track w claiming districts, but I'd go about it differently. I think IC is already so PVE centric, I'd rather not see districts claimed with a boss conqueror, but instead something more PVP related. Like something to physically claim or opposing faction members to slay. Maybe capture the flag or something of that nature. The sewers and districts desperately need an objective or purpose. Without this, they are incredibly boring.

All in all great post Kena!
Thanks for sharing your ideas and hopefully ZOS gives it some thought

Thanks, Jules.

I agree that in an ideal world, district captures might not be via boss kills, but I am attempting to work with what we have and make suggestions that require minimal development time/money to implement. The bosses are already there, so I used them as convenient objectives. It also plays into the defeating-the-enemy-invasion theme. Besides, IC is meant to be a blended PvP/PvE zone. Mixing them is kind of the point in some ways.

As for people spreading out into campaigns, that's a very good point. ZoS would likely have to consider closing some campaigns down. I think I mentioned that in the post. If not, then I left it out because it's a decision that may be best made after some observation of the changes -- not immediately.

I hadn't thought of including Undaunted sets in reward mail as being a way of balancing PvP activity and PvE activity to obtain them. That's a good point. I wonder how it could be implemented.

KenaPKK

Mojomonkeyman wrote: »

Good intentions, but since you aren`t even able to grasp the concept of class balance how do you expect to be ontrack approaching the by far bigger beast of population imbalance (as shown in many other games before)...

My 2 cents.

As I mentioned in some other thread, population imbalance isn't as big of a deal as some make it seem. DC has the lowest population and is considered the underdog, yet we won the last 3 Azura campaigns before IC came out...

(The guilds didn't care about the one following IC's launch, as they were spending their time farming for v16 gear.)

I seem to understand much more than you give me credit for.

Mojomonkeyman

KenaPKK wrote: »

Mojomonkeyman wrote: »

Good intentions, but since you aren`t even able to grasp the concept of class balance how do you expect to be ontrack approaching the by far bigger beast of population imbalance (as shown in many other games before)...

My 2 cents.

As I mentioned in some other thread, population imbalance isn't as big of a deal as some make it seem. DC has the lowest population and is considered the underdog, yet we won the last 3 Azura campaigns before IC came out...

(The guilds didn't care about the one following IC's launch, as they were spending their time farming for v16 gear.)

I seem to understand much more than you give me credit for.

Your entire post could be picked apart with actual arguments on why yours are no arguments at all.

Some keywords for you:

- Different time zones
- 24h PvP
- Anectodes are not evidence

Do some research, I thought you were economist, that should be your most basic skillset. Do research how people more experienced, clever and probably better paid than you tried to approach the problem in actual scientific ways.

Aw, forget what I just said, gimme some more sunglasses... "Guys, guys, I have a solution!"

vamp_emily

I would like to see a better incentive for repairing. Maybe the more you repair the higher ap you get in return.

I personally don't have an issue with lag, but I think their ( ZOS) solution to lag is to nerf everything. The less times someone can execute a command, the less code is transferred from the client to the server and back.

KenaPKK

vamp_emily wrote: »

I would like to see a better incentive for repairing. Maybe the more you repair the higher ap you get in return.

I personally don't have an issue with lag, but I think their ( ZOS) solution to lag is to nerf everything. The less times someone can execute a command, the less code is transferred from the client to the server and back.

That is a very interesting idea.

CN_Daniel

As I watched videos of old historic pvp last night, I realized how much slower the motion was and how less flashy things looked...

If that's all it really takes to fix it all, just freaking do it already. One campaign for Vets, One for Non-Vet, and make everything move slower again with lesss flashy animation.

Fixed.

vamp_emily

NPK Daniel wrote: »

As I watched videos of old historic pvp last night, I realized how much slower the motion was and how less flashy things looked...

If that's all it really takes to fix it all, just freaking do it already. One campaign for Vets, One for Non-Vet, and make everything move slower again with lesss flashy animation.

Fixed.

I might be different than everyone else. I like speed, power, and animation effects. Slowing things down could be a temporary solution, but I'm ready for the next generation of gaming. Super high speed networks and virtuality devices to make it more interesting.

It was bad enough I had to lower my graphic setting so I wouldn't crash.

KenaPKK

NPK Daniel wrote: »

As I watched videos of old historic pvp last night, I realized how much slower the motion was and how less flashy things looked...

If that's all it really takes to fix it all, just freaking do it already. One campaign for Vets, One for Non-Vet, and make everything move slower again with lesss flashy animation.

Fixed.

I wouldn't want slower motion, but I don't need flashiness.

I'd be down for separate vet campaigns, one with the advanced visual settings (as on live) and one without, aiming to minimize lag. That'd be an interesting pair.

zZzleepyhead

I think the biggest problem is the players themselves and NOT Cyrodiil. Well.. Cyrodiil has created these players so I guess they're both responsible. Basically Cyrodiil caters to large groups and no features you add are going to fix this ***, ZOS. No incentives are going to teach players how to play. Everyone is too scared to go off and fight on there own for fear of a swift death. If you gave these players a chance to learn the game EVERYTHING would change.
It's tough to grind your way to becoming a skillful PvP player, especially in Cyrodiil. The repetition of failure is one part that steers players away from honing there skills. Run distance, fear of being outnumbered and actually finding an evenly matched foe all play a huge role in what hinders players from learning the game.

I didn't take chances and go off on my own until 1.6. There came a time where I became comfortable in my gear & abilities, confident as ever and realized that by staying in a group I'm only holding myself back. Sure I had fun taking keeps and wiping large groups, but none of it was as satisfying as killing a former emperor 1 on 1.
You can change Cyrodiil all you want, but in order to make it good you need to have competent players who don't feel that the only way they can play this game is by rolling with large groups.

Dammit ZOS.
GIVE US SMALL SCALE PVP.
How can you not realize the impact it will have on your game? It will bring back so many players. Bring in so many players. Let the struggling players get better!
You stubborn jackasses. Who?!? WHO IS PREVENTING THIS?
Can we get a name? Maybe we can get the Dark Brotherhood involved...

"Sweet Mother, sweet Mother, send your child unto me, for the sins of the unworthy must be baptized in righteous PvP"

zZzleepyhead

edit: duplicate post