Emperor Change suggestion

xAPxZeez

My pvp guild and I were discussing a change we thought would benefit pvp greatly.
Once someone gains emperor they can not regain it until next campaign.
Once they lose emperorship their name goes from #1 to a new section of the rankings called Former Emperors.
Former emperors are ranked based on how long they kept emperorship.

This would encourage people to pvp more, allow more emperors and hopefully discourage AP farming. We have had emperors with millions of AP above our #2 and they kept getting it back over and over when they lost it.

This system would also encourage people to try to maintain emperor longer due to their emperor leaderboard.
The emperor leaderboard should include ALL factions emperors from that campaign cycle and whoever ends up in first place on the emperor leaderboard gets the unique title "Like A Boss" or "Reign Of Terror" or a unique costume or weapon.

If someone has some constructive feedback or suggestions to improve this idea please post them.

Didgerion

You see - some players might not be after the former emperor title......maybe a person wants to be an emperor for the whole campaign...

No former emperor will want to be an emperor again just for such short period of time....it is not worth the time.

xAPxZeez

I understand what you're saying but if he's a good emperor he won't be so quick to lose it.

Also it's lame that people use craptastic AP farming techniques to gain massive amounts of AP in a short time instead of just doing pvp the way it was intended.

Didgerion

A better Idea is to have the following mechanism:

Any of the top 10 players should be able to challenge the 1st player in a duel.

If the top1 player looses the duel then he looses 100k AP and the winner get's 50k AP.
If the top1 player wins the fight then he gets 25K AP and the looser looses 50k AP.
There should be some time-outs involved....like if the 1st place player received a challenge request then he has to start the fight in the next 1h otherwise it is considered a loss but I'm sure ZOS can do something more creative here.

This way if a player is good then he has a great chance to catch up the emperor.
The lower ranked players has a great chance to catch up the top 10 players while top10s are dueling each other.

Zheg

Or, ZOS could just abandon their failed emperor system that at this point serves to only foster drama and animosity between players while at the same time encouraging obscene stacking of numbers to defend/assault the few (and sometimes single) objective/s they're funneled to.

Didgerion

Zheg wrote: »

Or, ZOS could just abandon their failed emperor system that at this point serves to only foster drama and animosity between players while at the same time encouraging obscene stacking of numbers to defend/assault the few (and sometimes single) objective they're funneled to.

No it is not better....the system still works and those players involved are helping to fuel up the pvp.....without that system you would have just less sources of fuel....not a good idea...unless you replace it with a better system

caeliusstarbreaker

Honestly... Don't change anything. Emp is pretty fun. If you stay ahead of your competition, more power to you.

Crown

As someone who has been Emperor 40 something times, I'll give you my biassed responses to this:

xAPxZeez wrote: »

Once someone gains emperor they can not regain it until next campaign.

I see your reasoning here, though all that does is ruin the fun of the person who works so hard to get up in the rankings.

What happens if the person is crowned overnight while asleep and doesn't get to play as emperor?

Up until a few months ago, every night DC would flip emp on Azuras. After the person was dethroned, they would drop campaign and the next person would get it the following night. That took no skill and very little effort on the part of the people getting emperor other than being in the top 30 AP earners (which is easy enough to do if you play 6 hours per night).

What happens if some group/guild makes an agreement to flip the map repeatedly to get people out of the way so that each only reigns for an hour? This is one of the reasons that they removed the former emperor passives.

The first time anyone is emperor, they're not very good - or rather, they're nowhere near as good as emperor as they will be after a few rounds / hours of play working out how to change their build for emperor. I actually have a set of gear I only use when emperor, and change my character / attribute points and champion points for the duration of being emperor.

This Azura's campaign AD crowned five times. Once for Parody who had never had it before on that toon. She stopped playing that toon after being dethroned. Once for Lowpolicy who had it once on another campaign, and I've had it three times. Each of those emperor runs lasted between 5 and 15 hours.

xAPxZeez wrote: »

Once they lose emperorship their name goes from #1 to a new section of the rankings called Former Emperors.

Cute idea, though nobody would really care - as there are rarely more than a handful of crownings each campaign.

xAPxZeez wrote: »

Former emperors are ranked based on how long they kept emperorship. This system would also encourage people to try to maintain emperor longer due to their emperor leaderboard. The emperor leaderboard should include ALL factions emperors from that campaign cycle and whoever ends up in first place on the emperor leaderboard gets the unique title "Like A Boss" or "Reign Of Terror" or a unique costume or weapon.

What happens if the person is crowned overnight while asleep and doesn't get to play as emperor?

The shortest reign I've had was during prime time about six months ago when as soon as I was crowned the full population of the two other factions went keep by keep to dethrone me over about 40 minutes. When 100 people slam into a keep, it will be lag-flipped regardless of how good you are. How would a situation like this be fair to some of the emperors? The longest reign I've had was when I was crowned in my sleep by the Australians / Oceanics at about 3am, and I held until about that time the next day. How long you hold emperor is largely based on your faction - not what you as emperor do.

xAPxZeez wrote: »

This would encourage people to pvp more, allow more emperors and hopefully discourage AP farming.

I disagree completely. The people who make AP tend to be the people who play the most, the people who are most skilled in fighting, or the people who are part of the best groups (who get the most kills). Very few groups go out with the explicit goal of AP farming, though most will make decisions on where to go / what objectives to take based on how much AP is to be made. The PvP ranking system is based on AP made, so emperor or not, that won't affect most peoples' play.

xAPxZeez wrote: »

if he's a good emperor he won't be so quick to lose it.

Being a good emperor has nothing to do with how long you hold it. I've held at times until I fell asleep, others until the other factions brought so many people that it seemed the server would crash, and even once there was a crash due to 100+ people form each faction in the same place, and a rollback as if I had never lost it. The shortest reign I've had was during prime time about six months ago when as soon as I was crowned the full population of the two other factions went keep by keep to dethrone me over about 40 minutes. When 100 people slam into a keep, it will be lag-flipped regardless of how good you are.

xAPxZeez wrote: »

Also it's lame that people use craptastic AP farming techniques to gain massive amounts of AP in a short time instead of just doing pvp the way it was intended.

AP farming can take a lot of skill done right, though there are cheezier methods such as what is commonly referred to as "The Moon DiE Tick". That's where after a fight, everyone from one faction moves out of tick range so that one person who remains gets all of the AP. That one person can make tens of thousands of AP in one tick - though it takes the cooperation of that person's entire group. If anything, the mechanism for ticks should be changed.

xAPxZeez wrote: »

We have had emperors with millions of AP above our #2 and they kept getting it back over and over when they lost it.

It's also very likely that those emperors put in the time and effort necessary to maintain their #1 spot - or their guilds / groups gave them a lot of ticks. Emperor should not go to people just because they show up - it should require effort and skill.

Consider that there are some emperor groups who are avoided, and dethroning happens because nobody will have fun fighting until the emperor no longer has his powers. There are other emperor groups that are completely irrelevant (due to the emperor not being skilled or not having a good emperor build), and dethroning only happens because it's the best next objective - not because anyone is afraid of the emperor.

MountainHound

Leave the emperor how it is. My only suggestion might be to nerf ap gained whilst emp as you can basically wipe groups on your own. I've always thought about gaining ap but ap that doesn't contribute to the leader board standings or something.

Crown

Didgerion wrote: »

A better Idea is to have the following mechanism: Any of the top 10 players should be able to challenge the 1st player in a duel. If the top1 player looses the duel then he looses 100k AP and the winner get's 50k AP.
If the top1 player wins the fight then he gets 25K AP and the looser looses 50k AP. There should be some time-outs involved....like if the 1st place player received a challenge request then he has to start the fight in the next 1h otherwise it is considered a loss but I'm sure ZOS can do something more creative here. This way if a player is good then he has a great chance to catch up the emperor. The lower ranked players has a great chance to catch up the top 10 players while top10s are dueling each other.

What about players who are not great duelists? I've 1v1'ed and won vs quite a few opposing emperors (who had their emperor powers) - not because I'm a better overall player, just because that emperor was a group oriented player and/or not a duellist. I happen to LOVE having a templar healer as emperor, though in that particular build, the templar healer will not have the setup (gear / skills / champion points) to win duels.

I'll point out something that @Sypher said last month - the key to winning a duel is having a build that counters your opponent. It doesn't matter if you're a better player, 9 times out of 10 the player with the counter will win.

--Example: I am not very good on my DK yet. I have 14 days /played most of which was spent leveling, getting skyshards, getting lorebooks, getting undaunted up to 9, and running dungeons for skill points. I'm running stamina with shieldbreaker. Just to see what would happen I duelled a magicka sorc who is possibly one of the better duellists in the game. I won. Not because of skill, but because I had a bow that spammed light attacks, wings to reflect every time he cast a frags, and vigor to heal myself. If it was a game of skill, he would have ROFLStomped me.

Once again we have someone who wants the game to conform to their 1v1 desires. ESO PvP is a group game. If you want to duel, go find a duelling group, but to take the map, to flip emperor keeps, and to defeat all the opposing faction groups out there, you need a group. Once the next patch hits and solo players will be making DOUBLE the AP per kill, it's very possible that we'll see more of them on top of the leader boards. We'll see if their factions decide to push to crown them - I'm honestly not sure what the opinions of the masses will be on that.

Also, when will these duels take place if there's fighting on the map? Group players will prioritize map objectives over duelling - so why would they take time away from what's important to them and to the success / win of the campaign to duel you?

Elong

Zheg wrote: »

Or, ZOS could just abandon their failed emperor system that at this point serves to only foster drama and animosity between players while at the same time encouraging obscene stacking of numbers to defend/assault the few (and sometimes single) objective/s they're funneled to.

The Emperor system is a fantastic ploy by ZOS. The problem, like everything else, is simply that the game doesn't work anymore, it's broken with large numbers.

Fix the lag, and Emp stacking won't be an issue.

AbraXuSeXile

The emp system is why most the campaigns are ghost towns and one colour.

Needs abolishing or altering.

NBrookus

Didgerion wrote: »

A better Idea is to have the following mechanism:

Any of the top 10 players should be able to challenge the 1st player in a duel.

Stendarr's mercy, no. This would utterly punish players who are good organizers, leaders and tacticians but aren't playing a character that is the current meta when ZOS changes skills or bugs something. Or just aren't good at dueling. Or hey, are the toons that are healing and purging your butt while that keep is being taken.

KillKapps

Just get rid of emperor and make every #1 player on the faction a "General" if you own all of your home keeps (Just a base example for sake of the argument. I am sure there is something more fitting). Then campaigns won't go dead the exact moment 1 person gets emperor. Problem solved.

KillKapps

Didgerion wrote: »

A better Idea is to have the following mechanism:

Any of the top 10 players should be able to challenge the 1st player in a duel.

If the top1 player looses the duel then he looses 100k AP and the winner get's 50k AP.
If the top1 player wins the fight then he gets 25K AP and the looser looses 50k AP.
There should be some time-outs involved....like if the 1st place player received a challenge request then he has to start the fight in the next 1h otherwise it is considered a loss but I'm sure ZOS can do something more creative here.

This way if a player is good then he has a great chance to catch up the emperor.
The lower ranked players has a great chance to catch up the top 10 players while top10s are dueling each other.

This would make sense in any other game than ESO. This game was never meant for dueling and still isn't.

Efaritay

Each Faction should have an Emp and which ever faction has the most points in the campaign should get extra Benefits?

Just an brief Idea!

Crown

KillKapps wrote: »

Just get rid of emperor and make every #1 player on the faction a "General"

I was "General" a long time ago. I then became a "Warlord", then a "Grand Warlord", an "Overlord", and finally a "Grand Overlord. If you need a term, you could follow the lore of WGT and use "Regent" though that implies that the real Emperor is absent. A lot of interesting ideas were presented in other threads - such as when the emperor isn't online the person in second place becomes regent with a 50% increase in stats (instead of the Emperor's 75%).

KillKapps wrote: »

if you own all of your home keeps (Just a base example for sake of the argument. I am sure there is something more fitting).

basscraft wrote: »

Each Faction should have an Emp and which ever faction has the most points in the campaign should get extra Benefits?!

Owning your home keeps is not an accomplishment.

Makes me think of the issues in schools where, "lets make everyone a winner" isn't preparing kids for the real world. Granted that this is a game and not school - but the same idea applies. Emperor is something to achieve, not something that should be handed out because other people have hurt feelings and can't get it. ESO is not a safe space.

KillKapps wrote: »

. Then campaigns won't go dead the exact moment 1 person gets emperor. Problem solved.

Campaigns don't go dead the moment anyone gets emperor. I should know - I've probably had emperor more than anyone still playing this game on PC/NA except probably Methuselah. When either of us are crowned the heat starts immediately and the lag from the last emp keep fights usually comes close to crashing the servers.

I have yet to see a well reasoned argument why the Emperor system is bad. Most arguments are based on the fact that many people never get it and believe that they should.

LazyLewis

I agree and have described a system like this before. This would hugely encourage other guilds to get emp rather than the same people getting it over and over again.

xAPxZeez

What happens when that player is offline for the night? Does he auto lose? Can he challenged by anyone else? Seems like your idea can have too many problems. Plus arm you can't even fight or duel your own faction. But mine could be implemented as pvp currently stands.

xAPxZeez

Crown I appreciate your feedback on this topic because it shows your perspective with examples from someone else who does a lot of pvp. That being said on our campaign the AP farmers and people who make arrangements with other factions are the ones being crowned emp for 30 day campaigns. Lots of us live in pvp but I've heard so many of my guildees get discouraged and complain about how they will never get emp because of the current system. Sure we could go to another campaign but we enjoy the 30 day ones. I also have lots of friends that hate this current system that helped me come up with this idea. They do pvp now to just get the rank 3 rewards on all their characters due to the emp system.

I agree fixing the AP farming would help but come on we both know that people will just figure out a new method to do it.

Getting emp while asleep is a good point as well.

That could be fixed by freezing your emp position while offline. If your the current emp and log then you can be dethroned. If your #3 when you log for the night you might be next for emp when you log that character in.

You are right you can't keep emp forever. That is exactly why I suggest this change because the same person shouldn't be.

Also you mentioned new emperors not being as skilled as emp. I agree maybe they should go learn or practice on a weekly campaign instead of a 30 day one.

You mentioned cycling emp. I remember that and cycling emp would be ok because their former emp leaderboard position would be very low and if they were good and had friends they would stay emp for longer.

I probably should have quoted you but I wanted to keep my posts shorter.

CatchMeTrolling

Hell no. I would never run for emp again, you're suppose to compete for emp not have it handed to you. That's like another form of emp swapping basically..and also would make it even easier to get.

Not to mention the shenanigans guilds would do with a system like that. Emperor is fine as it is.....

Crown

@xAPxZeez

xAPxZeez wrote: »

on our campaign the AP farmers and people who make arrangements with other factions are the ones being crowned emp for 30 day campaigns.

On Azuras PC/NA it's a mix. With the exception of the first few days of campaign, there is no real AP farming. DC tends to give Moon DiE ticks to their top player. AD has me on top - as I spent the first few days going hard to read alliance rank 50 - and nobody has caught up. EP has had a few people cycle through it, though they're all from the same group and have let each other pass (as far as I'm aware of).

xAPxZeez wrote: »

Lots of us live in pvp but I've heard so many of my guildees get discouraged and complain about how they will never get emp

If their goal is simply to get emp, then have them go to another campaign on reset day. Swap campaigns every reset and with a good group behind you anyone can get it. With the next patch, even solo players / small groups can top the charts. If you know someone is getting Moon DiE ticks - I consider it ethically questionable, though per ZOS that's not against the rules so - you can do it too.

If their goal is to get emp on the 30 day campaign through the campaign, then they'll have to work a lot harder for it. If you consider that there are probably about 2000 players homed in the campaign (and another thousand or two who come visit often enough), and there will be only 4 or 5 emperors (often the same one) crowned per faction, then that's not a very high likelihood for anyone. It will go to the person(s) who play the most and make the most. That's the way it was designed.

xAPxZeez wrote: »

I agree fixing the AP farming would help but come on we both know that people will just figure out a new method to do it.

There's nothing wrong with AP farming. The game rewards AP farmers with higher alliance ranks. There are a few mechanisms for AP (such as the D-tick) that SHOULD get an overhaul to make it harder for people to take advantage of leader boards, though people play to reach goals, and alliance ranks are the goals in PvP.

xAPxZeez wrote: »

That could be fixed by freezing your emp position while offline. If your the current emp and log then you can be dethroned. If your #3 when you log for the night you might be next for emp when you log that character in.

That would take too much change to how the system works. Keep in mind that there needs to be a simple and logical way for it to manage, and leader boards purely based on AP is the least complex system. With all the things they want to do in the game, suggestions have to be reasonable and feasible. Reducing the d-tick times is an easy one so that people can't run out of range as easily. Reducing the d-tick values could be another if there are less people to get it (maybe a theoretical maximum d-tick size per person so that 50k ticks don't work any more).

xAPxZeez wrote: »

You are right you can't keep emp forever. That is exactly why I suggest this change because the same person shouldn't be.

Nobody has yet to make a good argument why the same person shouldn't be emperor again. The team captain on a sports team is always the same. The general of the army making strategic decisions is always the same. The shot caller for a group is always the same. The emperor is whoever makes the most AP, and if that's the same person then that's the same person.

Again, it comes back to AP. If they fix D-ticks (which is how people take advantage of it) then those people will have to earn their AP and not have it handed to them.

If the first time they're crowned has high population who are coordinated, then they can be dethroned in 30 minutes. If not, it could take 12 hours. The average of all my emperor times is about 8 hours, though there are extremes at both ends. How is that fair to people?

xAPxZeez wrote: »

Also you mentioned new emperors not being as skilled as emp. I agree maybe they should go learn or practice on a weekly campaign instead of a 30 day one.

Nobody is realistically going to go to another campaign, work hard to get emp, and practice in preparation for being emp on a longer campaign. I see it often with new emps - it takes them a couple hours to really get the feel for what they can and can't do / get away with. They then figure out that they need to change their character points, skills, morphs, and often gear. Most don't change gear as it's expensive for a few hours of play - though those of us who are regular emperors have done so.

You're also lowering the value of the 7-day campaigns. Some people like them a lot more as the boards reset quickly and there are more opportunities for emperor.

xAPxZeez wrote: »

You mentioned cycling emp. I remember that and cycling emp would be ok because their former emp leader board position would be very low and if they were good and had friends they would stay emp for longer.

Again staying emp has nothing to do with how good your are, and why should someone be handed emp just because they stuck around long enough? The former emperor passives were removed to make getting emperor less desirable (big failure on the part of ZOS there - it didn't change anything other than PvE players quit whining about PvP passives). They could / should have just removed the former emperor passives from PvE land - but that's another debate all together.

If I play well, work hard to stay top of the board, and when I'm emperor do my best for the faction to win the campaign, then why should I be penalized?

The last few times I've been crowned, the response (even on the forums) was, "there's no way we're going to let Crown stay emperor for long". It's the same thing that happens when Methuselah gets emperor. As soon as there are enough people online, both opposing factions stop fighting each other, and zerg down to a crazy lag battle in the last emperor keep.

If the opposing factions know that I'm *that* dangerous as emp, and another person as emp won't do anything for the faction as they're completely ineffective - so the other factions won't care to dethrone (or they'll farm him/her for the Emperor Slayer achievement) then there's definitely something wrong with your idea.

xAPxZeez

You still have to earn enough AP to become emp it's not "handed to you" . TBH people aren't earning it now. Earning implies working for it. Instead people are using tricks to get 10,000+AP in a very short time over and over using alt accounts or allying with other factions.

Becoming emp now just means you're exploiting a flaw in the system more than anyone else and ensuring people who pvp the way it was intended never will become emp.

xAPxZeez

If the system is fine as is, why are people "selling their emperorship"? Do you think that sounds like a working system?

Crown

xAPxZeez wrote: »

Becoming emp now just means you're exploiting a flaw in the system more than anyone else and ensuring people who pvp the way it was intended never will become emp.

What platform / location / faction are you? Can you post a screen shot of your leader board?

xAPxZeez wrote: »

If the system is fine as is, why are people "selling their emperorship"? Do you think that sounds like a working system?

What does "selling their emperorship" mean?

xAPxZeez

I'm not going to go into details about selling emperorship or shaming people who do it because it's against forum policy. Nor do I want to spread its practice by discussing it.

The emperor system as it stands needs reform. If you have a better idea please post below, if you like my idea or have a way to improve it please feel free to be constructive.

Crown

I'm trying to understand what exactly you're complaining about that is different from all the other people complaining that they'll never get emp and wanting what is supposed to be a difficult achievement handed to them. The point about AP farming is valid, and the D-Tick discussion earlier addresses that as a viable change.

Selling emperor implies that a group or guild who farms AP well will accept gold to let someone run with them, make a lot of AP, then they'll flip the map. Or perhaps someone accepting gold to drop campaign letting the person behind them take the #1 spot. ZOS has clearly stated that giving / receiving Moon DiE ticks is NOT against the TOS / rules, so there is nothing officially wrong with that (even though as players most of us think it's a crappy way to do it).

As the player (PC / NA / whatever campaign I'm in) who has been consistently on top of the boards, I've gotten a LOT of hate about not letting other people be emperor. I've actually dropped campaign a dozen times in the past six months and played other toons to let #2 pass me if the person has never been emperor before, though I've not done so for people who have had it. As I stated in my first response, I am biassed as anything that changes how emperor works affects me directly, though I'm trying to be objective in calling out issues with the ideas.

Incidentally having achieved alliance rank 50, and with the bug where there are no more rewards for the worthy mails, I'm playing my DK - who is nowhere near as capable of making AP solo - so I probably won't top the boards next reset.

Ghostbane

Crown wrote: »

playing my DK - who is nowhere near as capable of making AP solo

The night is young, wait till you spread your wings.

Crown

Ghostbane wrote: »

Crown wrote: »

playing my DK - who is nowhere near as capable of making AP solo

The night is young, wait till you spread your wings.

There's a reason I call him my Fail-DK, though I do win fights vs shield stacking sorcs now - which is nice.

Didgerion

NBrookus wrote: »

Didgerion wrote: »

A better Idea is to have the following mechanism:

Any of the top 10 players should be able to challenge the 1st player in a duel.

Stendarr's mercy, no. This would utterly punish players who are good organizers, leaders and tacticians but aren't playing a character that is the current meta when ZOS changes skills or bugs something. Or just aren't good at dueling. Or hey, are the toons that are healing and purging your butt while that keep is being taken.

You see - you don't get AP by being a good organizer or a good leader or a good tactician....you need to be a good AP farmer in order to qualify for emperor ship.

Cody

Didgerion wrote: »

A better Idea is to have the following mechanism:

Any of the top 10 players should be able to challenge the 1st player in a duel.

Not everyone builds their characters for 1v1 duels. I myself am built to sneak around, and is how I have played since the game launched. If by some miracle I were to become emp and be challenged to a duel, I would likely be screwed regardless of my skill because my character is built to hit and run, not fight a long sustaining battle that duels entail. I would have to figure out my enemies build and completely switch builds to beat them, it would be very expensive and ultimately a waste of time, because that duel would prove nothing. A player can be an excellent duelist but a terrible group player, and vise versa.