Feedback on Cyrodiil O'tick changes.

IxSTALKERxI

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

General

• Keeps, Outposts and Resources now have a 5 minute cooldown for granting Alliance Points for capturing; you won’t receive AP for capturing it again until 5 minutes has passed.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

Whilst this change prevents players from flipping one objective back and forth, the new O'ticks still encourage bad gameplay.

There are groups of players who do nothing but capture undefended objectives with large groups to get AP. They actually make decent AP/hr compared to if they attempted to kill something. This leaves the faction with less numbers on the front lines or on defense where people are actually needed. The same happens for all 3 factions so you end up with zergs on all 3 factions avoiding each other and taking keeps from 5-10 defenders who just get run over and wonder where their faction is. Their faction is off getting O ticks because it is a faster way to earn AP for them then killing enemies or defending for a D Tick.

Whilst it is nice that players are getting awarded for playing the objective, I think the values should be slightly reduced so they don't avoid fighting enemies all together. Killing other enemies should be a part of earning AP. Zergs should collide with each other, not avoid each other and run over 5 people for o'ticks instead.

Vizeroh

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

General

• Keeps, Outposts and Resources now have a 5 minute cooldown for granting Alliance Points for capturing; you won’t receive AP for capturing it again until 5 minutes has passed.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

Whilst this change prevents players from flipping one objective back and forth, the new O'ticks still encourage bad gameplay.

There are groups of players who do nothing but capture undefended objectives with large groups to get AP. They actually make decent AP/hr compared to if they attempted to kill something. This leaves the faction with less numbers on the front lines or on defense where people are actually needed. The same happens for all 3 factions so you end up with zergs on all 3 factions avoiding each other and taking keeps from 5-10 defenders who just get run over and wonder where their faction is. Their faction is off getting O ticks because it is a faster way to earn AP for them then killing enemies or defending for a D Tick.

Whilst it is nice that players are getting awarded for playing the objective, I think the values should be slightly reduced so they don't avoid fighting enemies all together. Killing other enemies should be a part of earning AP. Zergs should collide with each other, not avoid each other and run over 5 people for o'ticks instead.

Agreed.

IxSTALKERxI

The values should be halved imo.

Atm it's 6k per keep and 1500 for resource. It should be 3k per keep and 750 per resource. This is a nice little incentive to go out of your way to capture something, but it doesn't give more AP than helping defend roebeck against 60 DC. Plus with AP buffs or double AP events the O'ticks just get out of hand.

Darlgon

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

The values should be halved imo.

Atm it's 6k per keep and 1500 for resource. It should be 3k per keep and 750 per resource. This is a nice little incentive to go out of your way to capture something, but it doesn't give more AP than helping defend roebeck against 60 DC. Plus with AP buffs or double AP events the O'ticks just get out of hand.

Or, increase the DTick value by 1/3 while decreasing the OTick value by 25%?

Or, make DTicks more desirable than OTicks. After all, DTicks can only happen when a place is under attack. The player standing guarding a place not under attack gets nothing.

Valencer

It should just be divided among everyone, instead of giving everyone a flat value....

IxSTALKERxI

Defence ticks are based off the AP from how many people that die in the area there's not a flat value that can be increased as far as I am aware.

Offence ticks used to be the same, plus like 75 AP or something negligible. O ticks now are currently how many people die in the area plus a bonus 6k AP.

Also there are open field fights which are important. Eg. Milegates, Alessia bridge etc. It's just a lot easier if O'ticks are brought more in line with AP earned from killing enemy players.

NBrookus

Valencer wrote: »

It should just be divided among everyone, instead of giving everyone a flat value....

This. Don't reward zergballing resources.

Additionally, I do like the AP cooldown, but feel it should be per player. So a player can't get o-ticks more often than every 5 minutes, regardless of what towns/resources/keeps they are taking.

Pepper8Jack

Don't forget the original intent of the first pass at changing the AP ticks. The whole point was to make objectives all over the map more desirable rather than to have everyone fighting at the bridges. Sounds like they succeeded in that goal.

Whether or not you agree with the idea is another point entirely, but to me it seems they accomplished (at least partially) what they set out to do. So I don't think it;s likely that they'll decide to swing these changes the other way now.

IxSTALKERxI

Pepper8Jack wrote: »

Don't forget the original intent of the first pass at changing the AP ticks. The whole point was to make objectives all over the map more desirable rather than to have everyone fighting at the bridges. Sounds like they succeeded in that goal.

Whether or not you agree with the idea is another point entirely, but to me it seems they accomplished (at least partially) what they set out to do. So I don't think it;s likely that they'll decide to swing these changes the other way now.

It's fine to make objectives more desirable. But I feel it's currently over tuned to the point where the average player is rewarded higher AP/hr rates for capturing undefended objectives than they are defending ones they already own or ones that are defended by the enemy.

The average player was making 25k AP an hour which is now the same as capturing 3 undefended keeps and the 9 surrounding resources. So now the average player (who make up the majority of the population) are better off avoiding enemies and capturing things that are undefended if they want to gain lots of AP.

Adenoma

The current state of ticks are hilarious. A few days ago when I was playing in BwB there was a group of about 10 DC (and at one bar pop that's most of the DC population) that was just running from keep to keep only flipping resources. If they even looked at the keep they'd wipe and they nearly wiped to me when I ran a ballista on the flag and tried to solo them. It's abundantly clear that the current AP system caters to offensive action and enables groups of players that want to earn AP without actually fighting something other than an NPC enemy.

Either defensive ticks need a multiplier to the aggregate calculation or the value of offensive ticks need to be halved. I don't like the current proposed cooldown change because it deincentivizes some really cool scenarios. Say DC flips Bleakers, but doesn't manage to get the doors back up, then my group kills the enemy group on NPCs and flips flags within 5 minutes - that's an awesome, epic fight that should be rewarded. But instead, we get nothing besides a free respawn point? That doesn't seem to reward good play and it certainly doesn't resolve the huge ticks that can be gained by just PvDoor.

Vrenk

I seriously think offensive ticks need a rework.
Take Azura star PC EU for example - EP spend from morning to well into peaktime taking warden+rayles, then bloodmayne+blackboot, with only about 1/5th of DC/AD defending, and then DC would of taken warden+rayles back and the vicious circle continues.
This has devastated not only the AD/DC population during non peaktime in Azura even more, but its rewarding little tyros with a good amount of AP/HR for light attacking afew NPCs whilst PvDooring keeps.




These images aren't an exaggeration, the map every day of the week, all day long, apart from the few hours of peaktime.

To rebalance this issue and make AP be something you work for, ZOS just needs to make offensive ticks work similarly to defensive ticks in which the AP in the keep range is totalled and then divided by the alliance that flips the flags, therefore more effort = more reward and will give 0 incentive to PvD.
This would also cancel out the concern ZOS had a few months ago about no one bothering to offensively siege because the AP off tick wasn't worth it - now offensively sieging and defensively sieging is both worth while.

Elsterchen

Valencer wrote: »

It should just be divided among everyone, instead of giving everyone a flat value....

@Valencer : This was the case in the very early days of ESO, I am not sure if it was changed when ESO went live or shortly after that. But, I can tell you its not fun for lower level players (those flies on the wall) to go into battle (and learn!) if they do not get rewarded for it. The division of AP in the earlier days left me with very little or no reward after taking part in a 1 or 2 hour keep defense or capture, evenso I did contribute the best I could by providing siege and playersupport (templar speaking here ).

I do understand, that those that actively go out and into face-to-face combat might feel discurraged by even values for everyone... but imagine cyrodiils fighting without supporters or for that matter without new players willing to put up with the task of learning PVP?

I know your idea just sounds fair, but even now as a battle-forged PVPler (with little time to play I might add) I am happy that those "flies on the wall" keep coming and strife to do there best. I feel they deserve a good reward for it.

edit:

@IxSTALKERxI: I totally agree that the current devense reward is too low compared to offence rewards. Currently its the worsed option to put up a long defense, if you could just wait 15-30 mins and recapture the keep/ressource. AP rewards for the later will give you more, plus you needed less time and take less effort to get them.

Last but not least there is one more reason to object the coming changes... obviously the easiest way to get AP if the patch goes live as it is, is to stand in home base and port to a newly captured keep. No fighting required and well rewarded. (not that i would ever do something like that... but to me its obviously the lowest cost action with the highest reward)

... and no making the keeps accessible after the ticks only will not solve the problem, but impact gameplay: After all recapturing a keep should not be significantly easier then defending a newly captured keep.

Tavore1138

Can't really agree with the OP here, the goal of the campaigns is to score the most points over the duration of the campaign and it is often a better strategy to avoid a well prepared and populated keep who are planning a farming session to bypass and attack somewhere else both to gain additional objectives and to force your opponents to react to you rather than running into their massed fire ballistas.

Rather than wanting scores changed you should be coordinating better, staying mobile, scouting your keeps and making your own forays behind enemy lines - just being static and waiting for people to come and be farmed is not a strategy the devs should necessarily be rewarding IMO.

vulcuran2

they are trying to make it so the ap farmers arent going crazy and I am all for change

Druid40

Change defensive ticks instead. Every 2 minutes an uninterruptable tick occurs with the AP of all accrued deaths to whichever alliance owns the property. People would be more inclined to stay and defend keeps/castles/forts/outposts if there was a near guarantee for a reward during extra long battles. This also benefits solo and outnumbered defenders dealing with worst case scenario larger front dooring groups.

DisgracefulMind

Druid40 wrote: »

Change defensive ticks instead. Every 2 minutes an uninterruptable tick occurs with the AP of all accrued deaths to whichever alliance owns the property. People would be more inclined to stay and defend keeps/castles/forts/outposts if there was a near guarantee for a reward during extra long battles. This also benefits solo and outnumbered defenders dealing with worst case scenario larger front dooring groups.

I'd love if this were the case, honestly. It would encourage people to eventually move on to.

I don't think this is a perfect idea, in theory, but something with a similar system would be really nice.

IxSTALKERxI

Tavore1138 wrote: »

Can't really agree with the OP here, the goal of the campaigns is to score the most points over the duration of the campaign and it is often a better strategy to avoid a well prepared and populated keep who are planning a farming session to bypass and attack somewhere else both to gain additional objectives and to force your opponents to react to you rather than running into their massed fire ballistas.

Rather than wanting scores changed you should be coordinating better, staying mobile, scouting your keeps and making your own forays behind enemy lines - just being static and waiting for people to come and be farmed is not a strategy the devs should necessarily be rewarding IMO.

You earn more points for your faction for owning home keeps. Atm people are incentivised not to defend their home keeps or even kill any of the attackers. Just leave them undefended because they can make more AP if they just flip it back later on.

People did the strategy you are suggesting for 3 years just fine. The base O tick changes were only implemented 3 months ago. I'm not saying we should get rid of them completely, just reduce them to bring them more in line with AP gains for killing enemy players.

It's not just offense ticks being more rewarding then defence ticks, it's also the fact that getting O ticks from objectives can be faster than the AP earn trying to kill enemies.

Ok so here is an example: a group of 24 players can kill 100 enemies and each party member will earn 9425 AP each. Since the changes 3 months ago they no longer have to put in all the hard work to accumulate 100 kills with their 24 man and die a few times in the process, they just simply need to capture 1 undefended keep and it's surrounding resources for 10,500 AP. That's how over tuned the base O tick values are in comparison to earning AP from kills in a large group.

TequilaFire

Do a quest earn XP.
Kill a mob earn XP.
Take a keep earn AP.
Kill a player earn AP.
What's the difference?
Maybe keeps should be defended more.
And why should a zerg earn more AP than a single player or small group?

Valencer

Elsterchen wrote: »

Valencer wrote: »

It should just be divided among everyone, instead of giving everyone a flat value....

@Valencer : This was the case in the very early days of ESO, I am not sure if it was changed when ESO went live or shortly after that. But, I can tell you its not fun for lower level players (those flies on the wall) to go into battle (and learn!) if they do not get rewarded for it. The division of AP in the earlier days left me with very little or no reward after taking part in a 1 or 2 hour keep defense or capture, evenso I did contribute the best I could by providing siege and playersupport (templar speaking here ).

I do understand, that those that actively go out and into face-to-face combat might feel discurraged by even values for everyone... but imagine cyrodiils fighting without supporters or for that matter without new players willing to put up with the task of learning PVP?

I know your idea just sounds fair, but even now as a battle-forged PVPler (with little time to play I might add) I am happy that those "flies on the wall" keep coming and strife to do there best. I feel they deserve a good reward for it.

As far as I know, ticks consist of a flat value that depends on the type of objective and a dynamic value that is drawn from the tick pool, which is fed by people dying within tick range and is divided among all the participants (of the winning alliance) in tick range. The flat value for o-ticks got buffed from an insignificant value to a ridiculously big value (about 75 AP to 6k AP). This happened with Homestead and is a fairly recent change.

I get what youre saying, but I cant help but disagree because it simply rewards really horrible behaviour. Cyrodiil is getting dumbed down to the point where people are actively rewarded for stacking as many people as possible to roll over an outnumbered defense as much as possible. This is pretty much a fact and what's been happening more and more on Live for months.

Pre-homestead, those 'flies on the wall' got rewarded for participating in big back-and-forth sieges that involved a lot of PvP (people dying) which their alliance ended up winning.
Post-homestead those same guys are getting massive ticks for borderline PvDooring a keep with 60 people. Surely you dont think that's a healthy change?

If they want to encourage people playing the map, they could just buff up the end of campaign rewards. That's a way healthier way to go about it imo. What youre indirectly saying is that PvP isnt fun for newbies so there has to be a carrot to chase. Why don't they just make the actual PvP more fun then?

Druid40

On PC NA Most long distance keep takes are strategic or are for farming the alliance looking to take it back. The AP cooldown will mostly just affect resource flipping (small change in strategy needed) and those EU (and other) groups standing inside keeps flipping it back and forth with very little effort involved.

t3hdubzy

I honestly feel like we are asking for changes to manage the top 10% of AP earners if not less.

I would be in favor however of more dynamic AP gains with modifiers, and achievements. On the flipside AP is hardly worth a thing because there arent any significant things you can do with it outside of buying the same rehashed gold jewlery the golden brings.


Just dont feel like this needs too much priority....

NBrookus

Druid40 wrote: »

Change defensive ticks instead. Every 2 minutes an uninterruptable tick occurs with the AP of all accrued deaths to whichever alliance owns the property. People would be more inclined to stay and defend keeps/castles/forts/outposts if there was a near guarantee for a reward during extra long battles. This also benefits solo and outnumbered defenders dealing with worst case scenario larger front dooring groups.

Would love to see this happen.

Elsterchen

Valencer wrote: »

Elsterchen wrote: »

Valencer wrote: »

It should just be divided among everyone, instead of giving everyone a flat value....

@Valencer : This was the case in the very early days of ESO, I am not sure if it was changed when ESO went live or shortly after that. But, I can tell you its not fun for lower level players (those flies on the wall) to go into battle (and learn!) if they do not get rewarded for it. The division of AP in the earlier days left me with very little or no reward after taking part in a 1 or 2 hour keep defense or capture, evenso I did contribute the best I could by providing siege and playersupport (templar speaking here ).

I do understand, that those that actively go out and into face-to-face combat might feel discurraged by even values for everyone... but imagine cyrodiils fighting without supporters or for that matter without new players willing to put up with the task of learning PVP?

I know your idea just sounds fair, but even now as a battle-forged PVPler (with little time to play I might add) I am happy that those "flies on the wall" keep coming and strife to do there best. I feel they deserve a good reward for it.

As far as I know, ticks consist of a flat value that depends on the type of objective and a dynamic value that is drawn from the tick pool, which is fed by people dying within tick range and is divided among all the participants (of the winning alliance) in tick range. The flat value for o-ticks got buffed from an insignificant value to a ridiculously big value (about 75 AP to 6k AP). This happened with Homestead and is a fairly recent change.

I get what youre saying, but I cant help but disagree because it simply rewards really horrible behaviour. Cyrodiil is getting dumbed down to the point where people are actively rewarded for stacking as many people as possible to roll over an outnumbered defense as much as possible. This is pretty much a fact and what's been happening more and more on Live for months.

Pre-homestead, those 'flies on the wall' got rewarded for participating in big back-and-forth sieges that involved a lot of PvP (people dying) which their alliance ended up winning.
Post-homestead those same guys are getting massive ticks for borderline PvDooring a keep with 60 people. Surely you dont think that's a healthy change?

If they want to encourage people playing the map, they could just buff up the end of campaign rewards. That's a way healthier way to go about it imo. What youre indirectly saying is that PvP isnt fun for newbies so there has to be a carrot to chase. Why don't they just make the actual PvP more fun then?

I do get your point, and I agree the behaviour IS horrible and discouraging, but even before homestead the AP reward was not given according to fights input... it was calculated just the way it is calculated now. The only difference was, just as @IxSTALKERxI explained, the amount of AP rewarded for kills in Off-tick damage. The result was exactly what you observed: newer players profited most from long defence-fights. Adding to it player kills really did make a difference in capturing mechanics for those able to do kills.

The system got changed as it rewarded defenses much better then captures, encouraging a rather static and siege orientated play. This is the point where the OPs suggestions not want to go back to, rather he (as well as I) points out that defence and offence should be equally rewarding - just to encourage dynamic play.

There are different ways to approach this: nerf AP reward from current Offticks to be onpar with those on current Defticks... logic beeing: make capturing keeps and ressources less desirable.

but since no-one likes nerfs I rather go for: buff current Defticks to be on par with current Off ticks ... logic beeing: make defending keeps more desirable then now.

Last but not least: timing mechanic is stupidly easy exploitable ... so pls do not go there ZOS.

Kaimar1995

I could imagine an increase for ticks in % instead of a flat value. So you only get like 0.5k for taking a res and 1.5k for a keep, but a 20% increased tick around res and 50% increased tick on a keep for the actual fight.

So turning empty ressources or keeps will give you some AP, but nothing thats really worth farming it, while big fights around keeps will reward players even more.

I don't exactly know, how it works right now, but I don't think, there's more AP around stategic points? This could solve the problem or cause a new one, I don't know.

Rohamad_Ali

Why are the keeps undefended ? Playing the map is what Cyrodiil is designed around , not sitting at one outpost and farming AP while losing castles and home keeps . It's good they added incentive to play the campaign . When you rewards players for sitting in one spot more then the people trying to win the campaign objective , you just create a community of AP farmers that fight for top spot until a desirable gets highs enough AP to push for Emp . That is so old .

Elsterchen

Kaimar1995 wrote: »

I could imagine an increase for ticks in % instead of a flat value. So you only get like 0.5k for taking a res and 1.5k for a keep, but a 20% increased tick around res and 50% increased tick on a keep for the actual fight.

So turning empty ressources or keeps will give you some AP, but nothing thats really worth farming it, while big fights around keeps will reward players even more.

I don't exactly know, how it works right now, but I don't think, there's more AP around stategic points? This could solve the problem or cause a new one, I don't know.

Nice suggestion... but it will discourage small-scale fights.

Hence the tactic of sending a small group to turn ressources on a neighboring keep to prevent enemie players that die during capturing the target keep returning very fast, will not take place anymore. -> ... think this further down the line and we are at massive battles only without tactics or inter-group play (apart from forming massive zergs).

I don't want that.

Kaimar1995

I see...

So the best thing would be, to reward tactical gameplay without making it exploitable.
Thats actually a hard one...

Zvorgin

NBrookus wrote: »

Valencer wrote: »

It should just be divided among everyone, instead of giving everyone a flat value....

This. Don't reward zergballing resources.

Additionally, I do like the AP cooldown, but feel it should be per player. So a player can't get o-ticks more often than every 5 minutes, regardless of what towns/resources/keeps they are taking.

I disagree, I solo resources at enemy home keeps a lot because it's a good way to get small scale fights, but if no one shows up at the first resource and I take a second or third, i shouldn't be punished and get no AP when I'm helping my alliance by cutting off enemy fast travel through that keep.

Zvorgin

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Why are the keeps undefended ? Playing the map is what Cyrodiil is designed around , not sitting at one outpost and farming AP while losing castles and home keeps . It's good they added incentive to play the campaign . When you rewards players for sitting in one spot more then the people trying to win the campaign objective , you just create a community of AP farmers that fight for top spot until a desirable gets highs enough AP to push for Emp . That is so old .

Guilds should have incentives to take and defend their keeps and then these keeps wouldn't be sitting empty all the time. There is no incentive for a guild to even claim a keep and so no one does. Zos should learn something from older games like Dark Age of Camelot that successfully pulled off RvR combat.

Keeps should be meaningful.

Psilent

Zvorgin wrote: »

NBrookus wrote: »

Valencer wrote: »

It should just be divided among everyone, instead of giving everyone a flat value....

This. Don't reward zergballing resources.

Additionally, I do like the AP cooldown, but feel it should be per player. So a player can't get o-ticks more often than every 5 minutes, regardless of what towns/resources/keeps they are taking.

I disagree, I solo resources at enemy home keeps a lot because it's a good way to get small scale fights, but if no one shows up at the first resource and I take a second or third, i shouldn't be punished and get no AP when I'm helping my alliance by cutting off enemy fast travel through that keep.

You will not be penalized.

I took two different resources in under 5 minutes and got AP for each capture. I then hopped on my AD and took a resource; had my girlfriend, on EP, flipped it back and I retook it in under 5 minutes; the same resource. I got AP for the first capture, but zero for the 2nd.

It seems the 5 minute timer is strictly for the same objective.

Waffennacht

A defense should be worth far more than a capture