Emperorship achievement change ideas

davey1107

This thread is to brainstorm changes to parameters on how empership is rewarded to a specific player when the faction rings the keeps. For the purpose of this discussion, I'm sticking with the principle that emperorship should be an extremely rare achievement, and require a lot of work in the campaign in question.

The problem with the current system is that it simply goes to the top AP earner in the faction. In my campaign (PS4 NA Scourge) in all three factions these are AP farmers. 21 days into the campaign, they're all sitting on ~13 million AP, and second place in each faction is ~7 million. As a result, since day 3 these players have permanently locked in emperorship. I'm not opposed to AP farming, and I'm not criticizing these players. They're all three very good. However, the play to get these numbers often requires boring repetitive grinds, semi-exploitative techniques, account sharing, etc. And often the AP farming isn't helpful to the Alliance War game at all...they're off AP farming while others are doing the work to earn campaign points.

The system penalizes anyone who wants emperor and is willing to work for it, but can't spend 18 hours per day grinding AP. Second tier AP earners...who are very good...leave campaigns where we need them to go farm emperor in an empty farm campaign (which is a stupid aspect of this issue in itself). Note...I earn about 200k AP per day, and feel this is below the threshold where emperorship should be rewarded. That's about 4 million AP this campaign. I don't have a definitive line where it should open up as a possibility, but I know players who are on every day fighting the Alliance War part of the game, who currently have 6-7 million AP. These are the sort of players who I feel should have a shot at it.

I'm therefore proposing that we change how the system awards emperorship upon a keep capture. However, it's not obvious how the mechanic should work so that it opens the achievement up to more players, without making it too common, and still rewarding top campaign performers. This is my initial proposal, but the purpose of this thread is to discuss other alternatives and ideas:

New system idea #1: emperorship remains AP-driven, but is assigned by RNG to the top tier of players versus the very top player. This could be set to the top three players in the faction, or even the top ten players. In other words, when the final keep flips and a faction wins the crown, you don't automatically know who is going to be crowned. The system picks at random from the top players.

Pros: opens emperorship up to more players, but only dedicated players; creates a system of "war generals" where one is going to grab power but you don't know who...which seems kind of fun.

Cons: expanding emperor achievement makes it slightly less special; could encourage emperorship flipping exploits; there would be players that are constantly bypassed for lower AP earners, which might cause some saltiness.

Wreuntzylla

Term limits.

GreenSoup2HoT

Here is what we need. This is a complete overhaul.

-Emperor-ship: AP earned during Emperor-ship does not contribute to the AP leader-boards.
-Top Ten: While being in the top ten, each position looses a specific amount of AP from their overall score per scoring interval or per day(first place being the most, 10th being the least).

Now what does this achieve? Well anyone who spends 24/7 on this game is theoretically punished and everyday has there threshold of AP score reduced (if they remain in top 10). This lessens the gap between "nolife ap farmers" and say the top 50 players. However these players may still remain in the top ten due to consistent ap gains and dedication on a daily basis.

Anytime an emperor is dethroned, its safe to say that someone in the top ten has a strong chance to pass them. All the players in the top 50 for example will be a lot closer in ap score due to the mechanic of loosing ap score per scoring interval / per day while being in the top ten. This means that there is always a race for emperor even if your not on the top ten because technically you should still be in close proximity of the top 1 spot. If you stop playing and get in 11th position, its possible even if you do not play that you could get top 10 spot because of this overall ap decay system and begin to loose ap score again.

Now there is a never ending emperor race. AP is always decaying when your in the top ten. Theres always new players in the top ten and always a threshold just under the top ten that you want to try and achieve. Nolifers and casual players will be a lot closer in ap score due to this mechanic.

Now casual players who spend a couple hours every day can technically grind ap up until position 10 and then make a push for emperor to try and get top 1 spot without having to overcome an emperor who farmed ap and is miles ahead of anyone else.

Theoretically, if nobody on your faction played and took a break in a 30 day campaign, the top ten players will continue to decay ap and the overall threshold to obtain emperor consistently lowered, making the players who do play throughout an entire campaign, even for a couple hours a day.. eligible for emperor or top ten.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

NBrookus

So... someone works really hard to get emp and you want to RNG it away to someone else? That sounds dreadful. It also just moves the ball farther downhill -- someone is always going to be denied that doesn't want to be. It's why the achievement is relatively rare.

What we need is some sort of Honor Guard/War Generals, so if the emp isn't online and in Cyrodiil, someone in the top 10 (or the top AP earner online?) who is gets half emp powers to help defend. It gives other people a chance to get a taste of the fun of being OP as emperor, and helps defend against an off-hours ("nightcapping") dethrone push.

LegendaryMage

Or, if the current no.1 player is offline, emperorship goes to the 2nd highest ranking one, provided he's online at the time. So if your top 3 players are offline but the 4th one is online, that one gets it. And so on. Not perfect but probably more interesting than the current system.

Of course, the problem with emperorship is not only that you need the most AP, but you need to be the biggest (for the lack of a better word) no-lifer on the server since those are usually the ones at number one, especially if they're sticking up there for weeks at a time.

The whole system definitely needs a rework. One player getting crowned because he's online 24/7 is just meh.

davey1107

@nbrookus - I love the idea of an honor guard. Now we're getting creative!

I can see a lot of cool options with a system like that. Like maybe the generals get assigned a specific keep...then they get a buff everywhere in Cyrodiil, but a massive buff on their assigned keep's Grounds. So if I'm 5th on the leaderboard (never going to happen, lol) and we get emperorship, I become "Defender of the Crown, Protector of Roebuck." Maybe this gives me 10% resource boosts and regen anywhere in Cyrodiil, then 50% on Roebuck grounds...slightly under the emperor's buffs.

That idea has its drawbacks, but I'm a stamblade and I'd totally work my butt off to be able to roam a specific keep as a mega-powerful general, lol.

KingYogi415

Put the qq away. Being emp of a 30 day camp is not for casuals.

There are 4 other camps. And your only chance is if you start the seccond the camp starts.

If you are a better player and willing to put in the hours you can get it.

Cheers!

GreenSoup2HoT

KingYogi415 wrote: »

Put the qq away. Being emp of a 30 day camp is not for casuals.

There are 4 other camps. And your only chance is if you start the seccond the camp starts.

If you are a better player and willing to put in the hours you can get it.

Cheers!

What a terrible comment. This isnt about qq but rather exploring ideas and different ways to approach Emperor.... but instead you come in here saying l2p, its fine, we are qq'ing.... how about you learn2forum and express some ideas.

WhiteMage

I do think the Emperor system could use a little rework... I actually like some of the suggestions here. I really would like to be the Emperor at least once, and I mean while I'm actually online, not be crowned and dethroned all when I'm sleeping. It's no fun when you've no-lifed for 4 days just for that.

But I think even more importantly some people should NOT stay in the position to be emped for so long.

Sandman929

The system is fine. The people suck. People will account share, friend-farm and basically cut every single corner they can to give the appearance of "earning" a fictional title in a video game.
The Emp achievement is a hard title to get, as it should be, if you get it playing the game as intended; playing the map and fighting for map objectives while maintaining faction loyalty.
It's a good system, and a good game if everyone played it straight. But right now it's like playing Monopoly with people who will just grab all the money in the bank, kick over the board and declare themselves the winner.

CTSCold

Make campaign points actually matter. Capping a keep gives a certain number of points, outpost some less, towns even less. Make capping a scroll award points. Make defending a map point give some points. These points all add up and when combined with AP they grant emp upon capping the ring. Make a new leader board for EMP that is separate from the AP board which places a weight on AP and Weight on campaign points. These are added up based on the scoring weight of each and the one at the top gets emp.

Wreuntzylla

Sandman929 wrote: »

The system is fine. The people suck. People will account share, friend-farm and basically cut every single corner they can to give the appearance of "earning" a fictional title in a video game.
The Emp achievement is a hard title to get, as it should be, if you get it playing the game as intended; playing the map and fighting for map objectives while maintaining faction loyalty.
It's a good system, and a good game if everyone played it straight. But right now it's like playing Monopoly with people who will just grab all the money in the bank, kick over the board and declare themselves the winner.

I ran into a bunch of people from one faction being repeatedly killed by one person from another. When I asked what was up, I was told duels.

In every duel I have been in I at least unsheath my weapons...

Artis

davey1107 wrote: »

The problem with the current system is that it simply goes to the top AP earner in the faction. In my campaign (PS4 NA Scourge) in all three factions these are AP farmers. 21 days into the campaign, they're all sitting on ~13 million AP, and second place in each faction is ~7 million. As a result, since day 3 these players have permanently locked in emperorship. I'm not opposed to AP farming, and I'm not criticizing these players. They're all three very good. However, the play to get these numbers often requires boring repetitive grinds, semi-exploitative techniques, account sharing, etc. And often the AP farming isn't helpful to the Alliance War game at all...they're off AP farming while others are doing the work to earn campaign points.

^ this is the main and very strong point. Some of these guys are like people fighting on the roads in the Arathi Basin in WoW. They get their frags and all, but the faction is losing. They will be participating in a fight for 1 keep for an hour, while others will take 5 keeps and get less AP for that.

I think a solution would be to add another counter which is campaign points earned. It would include points for taking and holding resources, keeps, scrolls. Basically, you take a resource and get a point and then whenever evaluation period ends, if your faction got a point for that resource - you get a point every evaluation as long as you control the resource. Pretty much, what needs to be done is to define a list of people who captured an objective for every objective. Now, in case these points are equal, whoever has more AP gets a higher spot on the leaderboard.

That being said, people who farm AP now do deserve their emperorhips. They are simply playing according to the rules. So of course, they should keep their achievements and all. Btw, fixing that permanent emperor bug is long overdue.

Rickter

Xbox Live provides a "percentage of players with this achievement" graph for every achievement - I would really like this feature built into the PC version.

with that said - im willing to bet a whopping 30% or more of the general ESO player base has the emperor title.

its not rare. it was made very obtainable via 7 day campaigns. this was known to zos and I believe they meant for it to be this way. seriously. its that whole "everyone should be allowed a shot at all content and all achievements in the game" mentality.

NBrookus

Rickter wrote: »

with that said - im willing to bet a whopping 30% or more of the general ESO player base has the emperor title.

I seriously doubt 30% of the player base has even set foot in Cyrodiil.

Rickter

NBrookus wrote: »

Rickter wrote: »

with that said - im willing to bet a whopping 30% or more of the general ESO player base has the emperor title.

I seriously doubt 30% of the player base has even set foot in Cyrodiil.

i'd honestly say 30-50% have. zergs arent made from gingerbread and sweetrolls.

and the rampant emp flipping on haderus? come on - you know so many people have the achievement

NBrookus

Yes, *I* know many people with the achieve. So do you I assume. I'd agree that a lot of regular PvP'ers have it. IIRC, the percentage of total players with the achieve on XBox is under 1%. (Any XBox players want to check for us?) Why do you think PC would be that much different?


But I also belong to a 500 member social guild with many active but mostly casual PvPers and only like 4 of us have it. And I farm in starter zones where an apparently endless treadmill of new players arrive, ask the same questions, play for a while, and move on to another game. And those guys are the grease that keeps the wheels on the bus going round and round.

Meanwhile in Cyrodiil I see mostly the same @ names every night.

The rampant emp flipping on Haderus was largely about 3 or 4 guilds getting emp for many of their members and people swapping over from Trueflame for a week. Holiday weeks and spring break was the worst.

Rickter

ah ok @NBrookus i see what youre saying. or i think you do. youre saying the achievement may seem more apparent to us because we're "in the know" so to speak. but in reality its much less common.

reiverx

I think the PS4 stats for the Emperor trophy is around 0.4%.

Maole1989

I agree that players could really benefit from the emperor system being reworked. I like the ideas mentioned above and believe they would go a long way to making the emperor system more dynamic and fun in addition to being more achievable to players who have a life outside of ESO.

I'm not saying the current system is necessarily bad or that players don't work hard to achieve emperor, but rather that it's only achieavable by those who are willing to spend the most time in Cyrodiil.

Inspired by some of your suggestions I have an idea. Allow the top scorer on the two alliances that don't have emperor to have a similar (but weaker) buff as emperor. We all know how hard it is coming up against the emp and his/her personal Zerg, so allowing these players or "heroes" to have a buff would help rally their alliances and even the odds when fighting against the emperor.

Shadow-Fighter

Emp could give his crown to other person

Edit: from top ten list to avoid/lock off other alliance