Alliance Position is No More Important

MrGorv

Greetings,

One of the main problems in PvP now (alongside with proc sets, impossible-to-kill tanks e.t.c.) is that nobody really thinks about the good of their alliance and the map itself. I mean, if some action is better for the whole alliance, but is less profitable in terms of AP gain, only small part of players will do it. And this causes other things that make Cyrodiil PvP less and less interesting and engaging, because if nobody thinks about the good of their native alliance, then nobody cares about the map outside of the 'Emperor Ring', everyone stacks in places like Alessia Bridge, huge lag starts, zergs are all over the place...
And, you know, there's nobody to be blamed, because victory of the alliance really gives like nothing to the players. 10K gold? Oh, that's ridiculos.
So, here are some means to improve the whole situation the way I see it. If some of you, ZOS, will just read it, would be nice.

1. Make end of campaign rewards depend more on the alliance position in the ladder. Like first alliance gets 100% of the reward, second gets 50% and third only 25%. Let only winners of the campaign get the gold quality set pieces.
   [UPDATE] Probably, overdone this one. But the idea is clear, I think.
2. Improvement of end of campaign rewards. As I've already stated, 10K in the end of the month is ridiculos. Make it 5 times bigger! 50K for the winner!
3. AP restoring. 50K is still nothing to the people, who are playing for a long time. Implement rewards in AP, so people won't regret loosing 'greens' while fighting for the good of the alliance instead of zerging Bleakers. Give players AP boost bound to their alliance position, like 30% more for the winning alliance, 15% for the second place and none for looser.
   [UPDATE] This one can be done through increase of the Enemy Keep bonuses, which are already there.
4. Make towns more valuable. Not so long ago town owning was implemented. And nobody gives a heck about them. One man takes the town, buys what he want and leaves. That's not the way it should be. Give towns 3x more guard, make them give twice more points for the alliance, and if winning of campaign suddenly becomes important... it just works (c).

And a bonus part, couple words about IC.
Imperial City is dead and everybdy knows about it. Flags didn't help. Because people pretty much already bought all they need with Tel Vars. But, if value of alliance position is restored, IC can be just included into the system, like why would districts not give as much points for the faction as a keep resource or an outpost does? Triple the guard, restrict population of the city to like 100 people for the true 'small scale' and we're good to go.

Anyway, everything said is just suggestions, but, I hope, some will find them insightful. Let's make Cyrodiil great again!
Thanks and happy New Year everyone!

Taylor_MB

MrGorv wrote: »

1. Make end of campaign rewards depend more on the alliance position in the ladder. Like first alliance gets 100% of the reward, second gets 50% and third only 25%. Let only winners of the campaign get the gold quality set pieces.
2. .
3. AP restoring. 50K is still nothing to the people, who are playing for a long time. Implement rewards in AP, so people won't regret loosing 'greens' while fighting for the good of the alliance instead of zerging Bleakers. Give players AP boost bound to their alliance position, like 30% more for the winning alliance, 15% for the second place and none for looser.

No tank you. This will just see everyone flock to one faction per campaign to guarantee they get rewarded. Buff servers were ended, we don't want them back.

If anything there needs to be more incentive to play for the losing faction, not the winning one. The reason there isn't though is because any system of variable rewards ultimately will get exploited, that's why winning a campaign means very little (bit more gold and more purple items) but individual performance (AP, not an ideal measure but good enough) is everything.

Emothic

I really like this idea. This is some of the best suggestions I've seen at improving PvP in quite a long time, it even surpasses my ideas. I believe that implementing your suggestions can have a very large improvement into the course of PvP, though there will still be a few who will just go to the AP farming areas and still farm. The one issue is that of player population. It would be hard to win if your alliance is constently getting zerged on 24/7. What I mean is that EP only has 50 players on at 3 a.m. on the weekday while AD has 200 on taking everything back.

MrGorv

Taylor_MB wrote: »

No tank you. This will just see everyone flock to one faction per campaign to guarantee they get rewarded. Buff servers were ended, we don't want them back.

Rewards are scaled to a reward tier. If everyone gets to one side, there's no one to fight with => no AP => no reward tier => no reward.

Taylor_MB

MrGorv wrote: »

Taylor_MB wrote: »

No tank you. This will just see everyone flock to one faction per campaign to guarantee they get rewarded. Buff servers were ended, we don't want them back.

Rewards are scaled to a reward tier. If everyone gets to one side, there's no one to fight with => no AP => no reward tier => no reward.

You are going to have to expand on this, mate. You said make the alliance that comes first get the most gold and yellow items, why would anyone play for a underdog alliance when there is 0 chance of them being rewarded for their effort? You are actively punishing people for trying to balance a campaign.

DHale

No, zerging a campaign down should never be rewarded.... ever.

MrGorv

Taylor_MB wrote: »

You are going to have to expand on this, mate. You said make the alliance that comes first get the most gold and yellow items, why would anyone play for a underdog alliance when there is 0 chance of them being rewarded for their effort? You are actively punishing people for trying to balance a campaign.

Zero chances to be rewarded if you're farming AP at bridges and milegates, while your alliance is loosing. Yep, that's right. You know, I see it every day now. Each alliance 75% of time has an oportunity to flip the situation. Nobody just does it, because there's no reward for it.

And yes, I think I went too hard on the gold items, huh.

DHale wrote: »

No, zerging a campaign down should never be rewarded.... ever.

Zerging is all that we have now. Because there are only 2-3 places where the fight goes. But to win the campaign, players of one alliance have to act in multiple directions which means zergs will split. And, come on, EU Trueflame is zerged by red and yellow every day, but blues are still winning.

NBrookus

Why on Nirn would you want to penalize players that choose to play a faction that are the underdog on campaigns? On PC NA we have 3 vet campaigns, and I guarantee you there'd be one red, one blue and one yellow and everyone would be bored because there's be no one to fight.

If anything the opposite is true. The underdog factions and players should get more AP and more power, which would encourage players to spread out and help keep the campaigns in balance.

loki547

MrGorv wrote: »

Greetings,

One of the main problems in PvP now (alongside with proc sets, impossible-to-kill tanks e.t.c.) is that nobody really thinks about the good of their alliance and the map itself. I mean, if some action is better for the whole alliance, but is less profitable in terms of AP gain, only small part of players will do it. And this causes other things that make Cyrodiil PvP less and less interesting and engaging, because if nobody thinks about the good of their native alliance, then nobody cares about the map outside of the 'Emperor Ring', everyone stacks in places like Alessia Bridge, huge lag starts, zergs are all over the place...
And, you know, there's nobody to be blamed, because victory of the alliance really gives like nothing to the players. 10K gold? Oh, that's ridiculos.
So, here are some means to improve the whole situation the way I see it. If some of you, ZOS, will just read it, would be nice.

1. Make end of campaign rewards depend more on the alliance position in the ladder. Like first alliance gets 100% of the reward, second gets 50% and third only 25%. Let only winners of the campaign get the gold quality set pieces.
2. Improvement of end of campaign rewards. As I've already stated, 10K in the end of the month is ridiculos. Make it 5 times bigger! 50K for the winner!
3. AP restoring. 50K is still nothing to the people, who are playing for a long time. Implement rewards in AP, so people won't regret loosing 'greens' while fighting for the good of the alliance instead of zerging Bleakers. Give players AP boost bound to their alliance position, like 30% more for the winning alliance, 15% for the second place and none for looser.
4. Make towns more valuable. Not so long ago town owning was implemented. And nobody gives a heck about them. One man takes the town, buys what he want and leaves. That's not the way it should be. Give towns 3x more guard, make them give twice more points for the alliance, and if winning of campaign suddenly becomes important... it just works (c).

And a bonus part, couple words about IC.
Imperial City is dead and everybdy knows about it. Flags didn't help. Because people pretty much already bought all they need with Tel Vars. But, if value of alliance position is restored, IC can be just included into the system, like why would districts not give as much points for the faction as a keep resource or an outpost does? Triple the guard, restrict population of the city to like 100 people for the true 'small scale' and we're good to go.

Anyway, everything said is just suggestions, but, I hope, some will find them insightful. Let's make Cyrodiil great again!
Thanks and happy New Year everyone!

Hi.

KisoValley

People still try to argue with me that campaigns still matter lol. They don't. Give some incentive to play the map please ZOS.

CatchMeTrolling

This encourages zerging and buff campaigns not winning.

Delimber

For playing the map or to use all parts of Cyrodiil, would having epic and legendary gear drop in the delves throughout Cyrodiil help?

Maybe count some of the delves towards points for the campaign? Kind of like a hideout. Or perhaps have more outposts in the remote areas of Cyrodiil.

Telel

Telel will point out that the reason the farmers and mules are failing on purpose is because 'they make good AP'. Basically by being losers they gain the thing that puts them on the leaderboards, and can be used to buy rewards from vendors.

MEanwhile the people who try to play the map even as it means making up to 1/10th the AP of the Bridge trolls are left out in the cold.

SO any system that provides rewards tiered to leaderboard ranking and or AP won't really make the elfish sorts stop their crusade of willfull failure. If anything it will encourage them to just fail even harder.

Telel thinks that it would be much better to implement a rewards system based around taking and defending points. Preferably with as few people as possible so as to discourage blob farms such as the one the griffs love to start in Alessia whenever the bridge elves refuse to defend their own spawn point.

MrGorv

NBrookus wrote: »

If anything the opposite is true. The underdog factions and players should get more AP and more power, which would encourage players to spread out and help keep the campaigns in balance.

And will encourage people to make as little as they can for the alliance? Like no one will defend keeps? No one will attack them? Because it will be unprofitable. Are you serious?

CatchMeTrolling wrote: »

This encourages zerging

Zerging is encouraged by zerging itself. As I've already mentioned, zergs are all that is out there now. At least, with that system, people will zerg with purpose.

Look, guys. I don't pretend to be a wise man or anything. Maybe those solutions of mine are bad, unbalanced, unfair and so on. But anyone would admit, that Cyrodiil is extremely boring from this PoV. And something needs to be done.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

I spend most of my time soloing resources to help my alliance and get 25 AP for it.

Should be 1000. Divide it in half for 2 people etc.

mvffins

MrGorv wrote: »

Greetings,

[*]Let only winners of the campaign get the gold quality set pieces.
[*] Make it 5 times bigger! 50K for the winner!
[*] AP restoring. 50K is still nothing to the people

-I think gold items are a necessary incentive for the 30 day campaigns
-50k gold is not enough of an incentive for me, make it 100k gold (atleast for 30day campaigns, maybe 50k is enough for others, and probably just 25k for non-50)
- AP gain should definitely come faster, especially when soloing on a dead map


Also to prevent everyone just switching to the winning alliance, to recieve the rewards (at least the 100k and gold items) you should be in the top 10% on the AP leaderboards of your faction.

AbraXuSeXile

Go play donination on CoD because thats how pointless cyrodiil is for the past 2 year. It should be a map to fight for instead of endlessly fraggin scrubs.

Chuga_Rei

Your heart is in the right place, but this is a terrible, terrible idea.

MrGorv

Chuga_Rei wrote: »

Your heart is in the right place, but this is a terrible, terrible idea.

I've already said, it's not a surprise to me
But, as long as it got attention of Grand Overlords, maybe you guys have some better solutions, as you've been playing this mess for quite some time, eh?

Sharee

How about this:

If an alliance does not own all of it's home assets(except scrolls ofc), all of it's members get a 20% damage debuff that is applied to them everywhere except in home areas (for DC, that would be north of ash milegate and west of chalman milegate).

Derra

With alliances not being restricted on account level that proposal would effectively result in anyone interested in the rewards sticking to the dominant faction to ensure they get maximum rewards.

Things that could help quickly in my opinion:

Make resources more valuable: A keep needs atleast two resources to be portable and atleast 1 resources to res at.

Make enemy scrolls only storeable in outer keeps and emperor keeps: Drakelowe, Brindle, Dragonclaw + 6 inner keeps.

Make scroll gates open when their respective keep is taken. Disconnect Arrius, Glademist and Faregyl from scrolls. In return make those keeps harder to take (buff the walls and guards on those).


In the long run:

Work on connecting upper imperial city to cyrodiil mainland - use those destroyed bridges (make this part of the DLC free for everyone) and tie the emp system to owning all districts NOT keeps.

Work on a faction lock system or campaign lock system that´s not too rigid.

Soul_Demon

MrGorv wrote: »

Greetings,

One of the main problems in PvP now (alongside with proc sets, impossible-to-kill tanks e.t.c.) is that nobody really thinks about the good of their alliance and the map itself. I mean, if some action is better for the whole alliance, but is less profitable in terms of AP gain, only small part of players will do it. And this causes other things that make Cyrodiil PvP less and less interesting and engaging, because if nobody thinks about the good of their native alliance, then nobody cares about the map outside of the 'Emperor Ring', everyone stacks in places like Alessia Bridge, huge lag starts, zergs are all over the place...
And, you know, there's nobody to be blamed, because victory of the alliance really gives like nothing to the players. 10K gold? Oh, that's ridiculos.
So, here are some means to improve the whole situation the way I see it. If some of you, ZOS, will just read it, would be nice.

1. Make end of campaign rewards depend more on the alliance position in the ladder. Like first alliance gets 100% of the reward, second gets 50% and third only 25%. Let only winners of the campaign get the gold quality set pieces.
   [UPDATE] Probably, overdone this one. But the idea is clear, I think.
2. Improvement of end of campaign rewards. As I've already stated, 10K in the end of the month is ridiculos. Make it 5 times bigger! 50K for the winner!
3. AP restoring. 50K is still nothing to the people, who are playing for a long time. Implement rewards in AP, so people won't regret loosing 'greens' while fighting for the good of the alliance instead of zerging Bleakers. Give players AP boost bound to their alliance position, like 30% more for the winning alliance, 15% for the second place and none for looser.
   [UPDATE] This one can be done through increase of the Enemy Keep bonuses, which are already there.
4. Make towns more valuable. Not so long ago town owning was implemented. And nobody gives a heck about them. One man takes the town, buys what he want and leaves. That's not the way it should be. Give towns 3x more guard, make them give twice more points for the alliance, and if winning of campaign suddenly becomes important... it just works (c).

And a bonus part, couple words about IC.
Imperial City is dead and everybdy knows about it. Flags didn't help. Because people pretty much already bought all they need with Tel Vars. But, if value of alliance position is restored, IC can be just included into the system, like why would districts not give as much points for the faction as a keep resource or an outpost does? Triple the guard, restrict population of the city to like 100 people for the true 'small scale' and we're good to go.

Anyway, everything said is just suggestions, but, I hope, some will find them insightful. Let's make Cyrodiil great again!
Thanks and happy New Year everyone!

I agree with a lot of your post, but we already have alliance rewards scaled on position. The game actually rewards faction swapping players more than those who would work hard for the alliance war effort. Tier 1 of first place faction (25k-49k AP) gets 10,500 gold.....but working hard and tier 3 of third place faction (over 100k AP) gets only 6,250 gold. Why would anyone NOT jump to whoever leads campaign when rewarded by the game for doing so.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/esohelpportal/ESO/AVA_TIERS_REWARDS.png

But I do think that with alliance shifting and the refusal to release actual, real time numbers of faction members we are at a place where there really isn't a fix that doesn't include restricting alliance and servers as we had in the past.

If you can have multiple chars shifting alliances and homed on the same server- it just wont work at all no matter what you implement. Not releasing the total numbers of active players in PvP alliances does further damage by simply masking the factions 'power' so those who would take matters into their own hands and play the underdog to balance it out have no way to know what faction is truly outnumbered. Probably hiding the actual numbers to keep shareholders as in the dark as we are about actual populations. Multiple factions homed on same server is destroying any semblance of faction loyalty as well as swapping campaigns being so easy and cheap. Take this away and you have a chance to improve the PvP portion of the game.

The other issue is players actively campaigning to turn cyro into 'two or three man' solo content. It was designed for groups with group objectives, having multiple opportunities for small man gank squads and solo players on the map while supporting large scale combat simultaneously. The group finder menu helps new players showing them recommended number of players for best results in dungeons by telling them recommended group size...cyro tells you 8-12 and with that in mind, that is how the map plays well and what its designed for. Taking the design and trying to make it so two man and solo players can exist pushing objectives that were designed for 8-12 players wont work. Why? Because those players don't want to take things- they want to be able to kill large groups of players who are taking things and pushing the map, and they want to do it easily for max ap gains.


Great post, hopefully there can be some attention to it by the powers that be....

s_jscorpiorwb17_ESO

The fact that every keep/fort/castle is so similar in layout an same tactics that is boring as hell. Make the first 2 inner keeps of each alliance alot harder/ change layouts more natural defences etc, not have them all exactly the same.

iseko

For obvious reasons I am not a fan of what I am about to say but still throwing it out there:

Remove AP gain from killing enemy players. Increase AP gain for flipping/defending keeps/resources. Increase AP gain even more if the keep (and resource of said keep) is not directly adjacent to a friendly keep.

Basically, the base AP gain for taking something would be higher. It would be increased based on enemies killed in the vicinity. This would still promote tower farming and open area fights would not result in AP gain. This would screw over gankers something fierce I know.

A way around that (somewhat *** but still) would be to have pvp dailies be based on KB's. Then increase AP gain from dailies drastically. Which would screw over healers (and tanks).

There are probably plenty of things I have not thought of but yeah...

/flameshield ultimate

dotme

MrGorv wrote: »

One of the main problems in PvP now (alongside with proc sets, impossible-to-kill tanks e.t.c.) is that nobody really thinks about the good of their alliance and the map itself. I mean, if some action is better for the whole alliance, but is less profitable in terms of AP gain, only small part of players will do it.

Yep - You nailed it very well. Love some of the remedies proposed as well. I believe some sanity can be restored by changing the math (multipliers) on AP earned when killing enemy players. Here's one thought to put focus back on "taking the map"...

1) The amount of AP you earn for killing a player is reduced by 10% for each home keep your alliance does not own. If you're busy tower farming across the map and meanwhile your alliance only has 2 of the 6 home keeps, you're earning 40% less AP-per-kill.

2) The amount of AP you earn for killing an enemy player is increased based on the enemy player's alliance population at time of the kill. For example, if AD population is 120% of the DC population and a DC player kills an AD player, DC player gets 120% of the normal AP awarded (Instant Population adjustment)

3) The AP earned for killing a single player is divided by the number of YOUR players that got a hit on that player before they died. 12 people tower farming 6 enemies with destro ults might not be very profitable any more.

4) Each home resource taken grants 300 AP, each enemy resource taken grants 600 AP. Home keeps would be worth 1200 AP, while taking an enemy keep is worth 2400 AP (Plus any offensive/defensive ticks of course)

5) Restore the ban on alliance-swapping mid-campaign. Please and Thank You.

I'm sure there are flaws in this too and I'm over-simplifying, but the state of Cyrodiil these days seems very "agricultural" and I totally agree with the OP's assessment of the current situation.The above possibilities would be simple math calculations made on-the-fly - Not much increased load on the server and it makes home keeps owned, population online, XvY fights and keep/resource captures all factor into how much AP is earned.

Anazasi

I play the map every night with the sole purpose of helping my faction win.

MrGorv

dotme wrote: »

2) The amount of AP you earn for killing an enemy player is increased based on the enemy player's alliance population at time of the kill. For example, if AD population is 120% of the DC population and a DC player kills an AD player, DC player gets 120% of the normal AP awarded (Instant Population adjustment)

This one is very nice. I guess, it can solve problems with people playing only for the winning alliance stated above.

dotme

OP in December:

MrGorv wrote: »

4. Make towns more valuable. Not so long ago town owning was implemented. And nobody gives a heck about them. One man takes the town, buys what he want and leaves. That's not the way it should be.

Me on January 11th:

dotme wrote: »

4) Each home resource taken grants 300 AP, each enemy resource taken grants 600 AP. Home keeps would be worth 1200 AP, while taking an enemy keep is worth 2400 AP (Plus any offensive/defensive ticks of course)

ZOS on January 16th:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

FIXES & IMPROVEMENTS, BASE GAME PATCH

Alliance War
General

• Increased the base amount of AP for capturing resources to 1,500 AP.
• Increased the base amount of AP for capturing a keep to 6,000 AP.
• Increased the base amount of AP for capturing a town to 1,500 AP.
• Increased the base amount of AP for capturing an Imperial City District to 1,500 AP.

Holy cow! Nice! I'm quite sure this must have been in the works long before these posts, but I like it! Someone at ZOS is on the same page as the OP and wants to return some focus to the main objectives. That's awesome news...

MrGorv

@dotme yeah, that is a really cool change in terms of purposeful PvP, but I'm worried this can be too much, as it will encourage even harder nightcaps and AP trading by flipping a resource with buddy.

dotme

@MrGorv I agree - They did go high on the rewards and some concerns were raised in the PTS patch notes thread too. I suggested tying the rewards to keep/resource level (So a level 1 keep or resource is worth less AP than a level 5)

I don't know how that would work for towns and IC flags because I don't think those have levels (I could be wrong)

But if they do end up tying the rewards to levels, it would take up to 30 minutes for a flipped keep, farm, mine or lumber mill to become worth the max AP which would - at least on a busy campaign - prevent farming AP through 30-second "buddy-flips".

To get max AP, they'd have to travel around.

Making a keep worth more AP the longer it's held by one faction would introduce an interesting dynamic since "deep keeps" would be worth more than those nearer the front lines that change hands frequently. This would encourage raids behind enemy lines and factions would have to be more vigilant about their gate keeps and resources.

FWIW I think even at level 1, a keep or resource should still be worth a few hundred AP though. I do believe It's time to make taking keeps/resources at least as profitable as squatting in a tower farming players all night long

Zvorgin

I like where the OP was going, just not about mass rewarding the winners and taking away incentive to play the losing side.

To give players incentive to play least populated factions, multiply their reward at campaign end by a factor of the average populations. Your alliance average population is 1/4 of the winning faction, your reward is given a x4 multiple so your 10k is now 40k for battling on the losing side that was always outnumbered. If factions are close to 1:1:1 there is no bonus bump.

If an account has a character playing 2 or 3 alliances in the same server, no multiple of rewards are given. Makes people commit to a faction.

Keeps could also be worth AP the further they are from your factions territory, this would get people out of the inner circle as well.