Create a 30 day CP "Small Group" campaign (New Ruleset)

Takuto

I am a former PC/NA Haderus player and guild leader of a small group PvP guild. With the close of Haderus my guild and I were forced to overcrowded zerg campaign Vivec. The experience since then has been awful. Our goal as a guild in PvP has always been to find relatively evenly matched fights against other groups/guilds of experienced PvPers. On Haderus we managed to find multiple such fights every night, since then – in more than a month on Vivec we’ve had only 2 fights of this type.

I understand that many players enjoy the type of PvP found on Vivec. The zerg play on Vivec offers relatively low downtime between fights. And in a way I can see how some players might find this sort of combat interesting. For this reason I am not suggesting any change to the normal campaign ruleset.

Instead my suggestion is to create another campaign (preferably 30 day CP) which segregates players along this divide of desired PvP combat style and rewards them for PvPing in that manner on the given campaign.

Specifically what I am talking about is the creation of a campaign where groups of 12 or less are encouraged and rewarded, and larger groups are far less effective than they would be on other campaigns.

I believe that this can be done by setting up per-campaign rules on splitting AP, siege damage/effect/caps, and limits on group size.

For Example:
1) Group Size limited to 12 players instead of 24.
Reasoning: To officially and clearly endorse smaller groups on the campaign.
2) Marginally higher base AP
3) AP is reduced/taxed when split among many players, this reduction increases as split grows larger
Example: /4 split grants 400 AP, /12 split grants 100 AP, /24 grants 10 AP
Reasoning: Discourage large groups and follower-zergs.
4) Max number of siege at a keep reduced from 20 to 10.
Reasoning: To limit the effectiveness of large groups when sieging.
5) Siege damage increased by some margin to compensate.
Reasoning: Slightly speed up keep sieges to compensate for the reduced siege numbers, and to discourage balling.
6) All coldharbor siege given vicious death effect, fire siege does increased damage based on number hit, meat-bags disease spreads to nearby targets when effect is removed, lighting-siege destroys siege shields
Reasoning: To discourage balling.
7) AP reward around objectives are increased if a group is roughly an appropriate size of group for that objective.
Completely arbitrary example: 12 players for keeps, 6 for outposts, 4 for resources…
Reasoning: To reward for running “appropriately” sized groups for the objective
8) Emperorship lock-out for the first day(s) of the campaign.
Reasoning: To prevent low-ap first-day emperors being made emperor from guesting zerg guilds.

Afterward add clear descriptions of Vivec and the new campaign making clear the differences so that players can go where they'll find the most entertaining experience for their own preferences.

Note: When making this suggestion I'm trying to limit ruleset changes as to not include class, equipment, or abilities as I feel that it would likely not be possible to have differences in those based on campaign selection.

Fyaal

Not half bad ideas.

I'd say eliminate player siege entirely. Leave oils and wall siege only. The shenanigans with siege comes from being a good 8-12 man group fighting more than 24, but being constantly sieged inside a keep while players are being ressed behind you.

Also for the AP reduction this is already calculated based on damage done and KB of a player, as well as split for DTicks. Are you suggesting to split it further based on tags and for OTicks?

Minno

In this small man server, there should only be three keeps with an Outpost halfway to each adjacent keep.

Doors will be turned off, and seige turned off. Max group size at 4.

Quick cyro action. Who cares if you die if you don't need a horse since the distances should be reduced drastically as well. And pop-lock? Sure it might happen, but why not have battles all over the place instead of pretending pvd'ing Dragonclaw is PvP.

Cogo

So,
you want a mini-cyro, without large battles, vastly scaled down sieging and with a constant low pop, as a battleground. With a bunch of rules to stop players from....fighting. Where smaller groups gets rewarded only based on how few they are.

....and you want more AP for it?

Apart from it sounding extremely boring, why Cyro at all? Sounds like you want guild vs guild events in Imp city, or battlegrounds.

Crispen_Longbow

Wasn't HAD CP a dead campaign that was turned into an Emp flipping campaign? Wasn't it only active for a few hours during primtime and on the weekends?

I do believe we need a spill over campaign but rulesets won't be enough. You can't have a map like Cyro that is designed for hundreds and hundreds of players to play at the same time 24/7. Then just change a few rules on the same map with the same time schedule. This has been the plague of all Buff campaigns, Emp Flipping, Night Capping, all around inactive campaigns, since ESO began.


To address some of your points.

1) Group Size limited to 12 players instead of 24.
Reasoning: To officially and clearly endorse smaller groups on the campaign.

Sounds like a good thing.

2) Marginally higher base AP
3) AP is reduced/taxed when split among many players, this reduction increases as split grows larger
Example: /4 split grants 400 AP, /12 split grants 100 AP, /24 grants 10 AP
Reasoning: Discourage large groups and follower-zergs.

Already a thing.
Capturing Objectives should be split among people not base for everyone. So if 24 people pvdoor a keep they shouldn't get 6K AP a piece it should be split among the 24 to only be 250 AP a piece.

4) Max number of siege at a keep reduced from 20 to 10.
Reasoning: To limit the effectiveness of large groups when sieging.
5) Siege damage increased by some margin to compensate.
Reasoning: Slightly speed up keep sieges to compensate for the reduced siege numbers, and to discourage balling.
6) All coldharbor siege given vicious death effect, fire siege does increased damage based on number hit, meat-bags disease spreads to nearby targets when effect is removed, lighting-siege destroys siege shields
Reasoning: To discourage balling.

Really not a fan of moving away from Player VS Player to be Player Vs Siege.

7) AP reward around objectives are increased if a group is roughly an appropriate size of group for that objective.
Completely arbitrary example: 12 players for keeps, 6 for outposts, 4 for resources…
Reasoning: To reward for running “appropriately” sized groups for the objective

Well it only takes 1 person to take a resource. It only takes 1 person to take an outpost. It only takes 2 people to take a larger home keep and 1 can still do it if they are fast enough.

Appropriate size for objective is completely based on how many defenders and the skill level of those defenders. A good group of 8 can easily defend a keep and hold off 20-30 pugs.

8) Emperorship lock-out for the first day(s) of the campaign.
Reasoning: To prevent low-ap first-day emperors being made emperor from guesting zerg guilds.

Emps on dead campaigns should just be removed.


To make any of this work I think we need a redesigned map for this to be successful. I have posted this before but I still believe the map needs to be changed for the smaller campaigns to thrive.


This pertains to NA PC.

• 1 CP Campaign (Large Scale) uses existing map no change.
• 1 NO CP Campaign (Large Scale) uses existing map No Change.
• 1 NO CP campaign “Beginner” (Medium Scale) uses new Map (Emp disabled)
• 1 (CP) Campaign (Medium Scale) uses new Map (Emp disabled)

To combat this Emp flipping trend let’s remove all the inner ring of keeps and replace it with a 3 bridge system that replicates what you find at the bridge between Alesia and Sejanus. At the Center of the 3 bridge system is a single oupost that can be captured.

For this campaign I would cap the group size to a max of 12 as it's designed to be medium scale.
Large Scale Max Group size is 24
Medium Scale Max Group size is 12
Battlegrounds Max Group size is 4.

Terrible mock of what it could look like.

Takuto

Minno wrote: »

In this small man server, there should only be three keeps with an Outpost halfway to each adjacent keep.

Doors will be turned off, and seige turned off. Max group size at 4.

Quick cyro action. Who cares if you die if you don't need a horse since the distances should be reduced drastically as well. And pop-lock? Sure it might happen, but why not have battles all over the place instead of pretending pvd'ing Dragonclaw is PvP.

Sadly, I expect that you are far over-estimating the amount of effort ZOS would be willing to put toward anything related to PvP. I likely am too, so I can't really criticize.

Fyaal wrote: »

Not half bad ideas.

I'd say eliminate player siege entirely. Leave oils and wall siege only. The shenanigans with siege comes from being a good 8-12 man group fighting more than 24, but being constantly sieged inside a keep while players are being ressed behind you.

Also for the AP reduction this is already calculated based on damage done and KB of a player, as well as split for DTicks. Are you suggesting to split it further based on tags and for OTicks?

I'm suggesting that all AP gain from d-tick, o-tick, kill, and heal would be reduced if it was split over a certain threshold. That threshold for o-tick and d-tick could differ based on objective. While I chose 12 for that threshold, but i'm not married to the number. The point is that large groups should be encouraged to see the campaign as not viable for AP farming. Likewise when it comes to emperor farmers, they wouldn't be able to leverage a large guild an advantage on leaderboard rankings as some have done in the past.

As for siege, I concentrated on that because it is the only viable anti-balling method I can think of that wouldn't involve some sort of ability change which might also flow over into PVE which is something I suspect is a deal-breaker for ZOS.

Sandman929

I don't know why they didn't just add a REAL battlegrounds with custom matchmaking...couldn't be bothered to do anything aside from hack something together with group finder.

Sandman929

Then we could set up a a 2v4...a 1v4...a 12v12 or 12v12v12....CP on or off...pick a map, move to the side you want to play on....you know...all those things that devs do when they care about PvP.

Yngol

Would not be a bad idea

Takuto

Crispen_Longbow wrote: »

Wasn't HAD CP a dead campaign that was turned into an Emp flipping campaign? Wasn't it only active for a few hours during primtime and on the weekends?

There was a large emperor farming guild which ran off many of the small and medium size guilds on the server, even in their own alliance...

They are the main reason i'm not simply asking for a campaign with a different ruleset.

NBrookus

Takuto wrote: »

1) Group Size limited to 12 players instead of 24.
Reasoning: To officially and clearly endorse smaller groups on the campaign.

Since Zeni doesn't control voice comms, stacking groups is no impediment.

2) Marginally higher base AP
3) AP is reduced/taxed when split among many players, this reduction increases as split grows larger
Example: /4 split grants 400 AP, /12 split grants 100 AP, /24 grants 10 AP
Reasoning: Discourage large groups and follower-zergs.

The camp doesn't need higher AP, and AP is already split up. I really think the base for being near a keep when it gets taken should be nowhere near 6k; it encourages PvDooring by large groups and tons of tag-alongs to get the tick.

4) Max number of siege at a keep reduced from 20 to 10.
Reasoning: To limit the effectiveness of large groups when sieging.

Hmm. 5 players can easily run 20 trebs so I don't think it would have the intended effect. And with how fast battering rams take down doors now, 3 people can open a door in less than 2 minutes by operating nearby ballistas while standing on the ram. I'm not sure the change would be effective but I agree with the goal.

5) Siege damage increased by some margin to compensate.
Reasoning: Slightly speed up keep sieges to compensate for the reduced siege numbers, and to discourage balling.
6) All coldharbor siege given vicious death effect, fire siege does increased damage based on number hit, meat-bags disease spreads to nearby targets when effect is removed, lighting-siege destroys siege shields
Reasoning: To discourage balling.

I really dislike the idea of player versus siege being buffed.

8) Emperorship lock-out for the first day(s) of the campaign.
Reasoning: To prevent low-ap first-day emperors being made emperor from guesting zerg guilds.

Just disable emp entirely. That was the only change needed that could have fixed Haderus' problems. The zerg guilds would have stopped barging into the campaign to farm their achieves and stayed in Azuras and Trueflame instead.

When it comes right down to it, the devs aren't going to change the Cyrodiil map or create a new ruleset or how siege works. Turning off the Emperorship achieve and bonuses, on the other hand, is doable.

Crispen_Longbow wrote: »

Wasn't HAD CP a dead campaign that was turned into an Emp flipping campaign? Wasn't it only active for a few hours during primtime and on the weekends?

Haderus had very little oceanic presence, yes, but it was a solid campaign in peak hours. With queues now of 150+ during peak hours, you have an idea how many people were playing in Haderus and got evicted.

When they released the Ruby Throne housing item it destroyed the campaign. After the first few trade/pve guilds zerged the server to get the furniture, it got a reputation and the problem festered. But even with the emp achieve farming at the end, it was a rose garden compared to the current state of Almalexia.

Takuto

NBrookus wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

2) Marginally higher base AP
3) AP is reduced/taxed when split among many players, this reduction increases as split grows larger
Example: /4 split grants 400 AP, /12 split grants 100 AP, /24 grants 10 AP
Reasoning: Discourage large groups and follower-zergs.

The camp doesn't need higher AP, and AP is already split up. I really think the base for being near a keep when it gets taken should be nowhere near 6k; it encourages PvDooring by large groups and tons of tag-alongs to get the tick.

Wasn't referring to the base d/o-tick amount when i used the word "base". Was referring to the amount of AP you get from a player 1v1.

I agree that 6k is a bit much for a PvDoor when compared to actual PvP.

Durham

I like the suggestions of the OP .... I like the way he is trying to minimize the changes because he knows that ZOS does things slow and probably has resources in other places than PVP.... So the changes he is mentioning are meant to be small changes ...

BIG CHANGES hmm what do you think the actually chances of that ?

ChandraNalaar

Takuto wrote: »

Crispen_Longbow wrote: »

Wasn't HAD CP a dead campaign that was turned into an Emp flipping campaign? Wasn't it only active for a few hours during primtime and on the weekends?

There was a large emperor farming guild which ran off many of the small and medium size guilds on the server, even in their own alliance...

They are the main reason i'm not simply asking for a campaign with a different ruleset.

At this point, with as crappy as the Emp flipping deal is ZoS needs to completely redo the emp system entirely so it's not just one big "Who can stay logged into Cyrodiil the longest and farm a resource". There have been quite a number of emps who either boosted or crowned in a buff campaign. I think the emp system should be a bit more dynamic instead of being all about farming the most ap the fastest.

JDC1985

Nah zos cant do all this that would mean they would have to make a smart decision.

incite

I like how this thread is going, hope any of the devs can work with this

Grimlok_S

Anything would be an improvement over almalexia..

I'm an ex Haderus player that was booted into Vivec. Went back to check Almalexia out a few weekends ago.

I port in with 3 other DC players and find that we're the only DC on the server. The whole thing is red.

We started taking our home keep resources and the reigning EP emp and 2 cronies came to meet us. We had a bit of a struggle, but wipe them consistently and take back our first home keep.
Following that the emp and his two friends just wanted to hide behind the OP NPCs in fort Warden and siege.

We got bored and left after half an hour of that.

Haderus had it's problems, but I can say with certainty that there were more than 4 DC and 3 EP online on a Saturday night. Didn't see any action out of AD the entire time.

#makealmalexiahaderusagain

Vapirko

I'd play this is a no cp

IxSTALKERxI

Idk, I'd make the other campaign (Almalexia) the same as vivec, but only open during NA primetime as sort of an overflow. So people who play during those hours can play on Almalexia instead of sitting in a queue of 100, and it won't turn into an emp flipping campaign because all the oceanic players will play on vivec instead. Then have vivec the same as how it is atm as a 24hr campaign.

GeorgeBlack

at OP I love the ideas. I would like them implemented at the Main 30 Day Standard Vivec Campaign.

I think that they can help without the need to create a small Cyro. They can help the game.

svartorn

No matter how many sub-campaigns ZOS makes, all the good guilds and groups who are actually competitive will be in Vivec. Sure, some will play on Sotha or Alma in off hours, but they'll be mained on Vivec.

If you want small man groups, do battlegrounds. They are really fun.

Durham

svartorn wrote: »

No matter how many sub-campaigns ZOS makes, all the good guilds and groups who are actually competitive will be in Vivec. Sure, some will play on Sotha or Alma in off hours, but they'll be mained on Vivec.

If you want small man groups, do battlegrounds. They are really fun.

Competitive ??? what do you mean ??? I have been a member of some of these guilds in the past 75% have no idea what in hell they are doing nor talking about ... Im sorry I do not like being in chat with 24 people talking ... I do no think its competitive for a group of 48 rolling a group of 12 that is also organized and call that competition.... Replace good with BIG and competitive with (Competitve Zergs)...

I run in a group of 5 to 8 on most night we end with a ton of AP ... We run into the randoms of large competitive guilds during their off times when they are (6 to 10) of them and they are some of the worst in fights .I could list names of these guilds but I'm not going to do that.....Please do not act as if these guilds that run massive numbers are actually all competitive players ... what makes them competitive is #s ... Some of them are good players I know a few but the vast majority are sheep .....

I like what the OP said about group size of 12 that is what he meant by smaller groups not 4 ....

I play 2 bars on my toon ..... I want to play in a lag free environment ...I like to know who I have killed ... I like to see great fights and actually see how other groups plays... The best group fighting that I have been apart of has been in 8-12 v 8-12 .... Low pop campaigns are not sub campaigns for me ....They are where I can fully play all my toons abilities.....

disintegr8

Some great ideas there OP.

Just curious about the emp lockout for the first day and how it negatively affects people. I admit to not understanding some of the complaints people have about PVP but what does it really matter if someone else got emp on t he first day?

Are you saying that anyone who gets emp on the first day dies not really deserve it?

It would be nice to see some changes to Kyne (non vet). I have been runnng some newer characters through Kyne and notice that the same people seem to do nothing but roll new characters over and over so that can stay in the non vet campaign and are continually on the leader board.

Maybe an idea on this campaign could be a restriction for any account with a character that made emp this campaign (or even finished in the top 10), preventing them from joining the next run of that campaign on a different character. It is only a 7 day campaign anyway.

A newer player with no PVP experience, joining this campaign on their first character does not have much hope against the player who has rolled 30 characters through it in the last 12 months.

akray21

The problem of finding small scale/medium scale fights is not the way they design the campaign, it's the Cyrodiil map in general. The map is too large, keeps are spread out too far, and there are simply not enough objectives to encourage the player base to spread out. I would love for them to add twice as many keeps.

Durham

akray21 wrote: »

The problem of finding small scale/medium scale fights is not the way they design the campaign, it's the Cyrodiil map in general. The map is too large, keeps are spread out too far, and there are simply not enough objectives to encourage the player base to spread out. I would love for them to add twice as many keeps.

good point

NeillMcAttack

Group size should definitely be lower. Currently on Vivec a 24 v 24 stacked players is enough to cause major performance issues.

Anyway, while i like your ideas i can't help but think that you could probably find better quality fights in Vivec if the performance wasn't so poor with so many players stacked together. People can just watch zone chat and build a 24 man within 20 mins of entering that campaign. And if they don't, it just takes one keep getting flagged to have an entire alliance at its doors in 1 minute flat. I believe a lot of the performance issues could be remedied by simply restricting low-level, non-CP players from entering that Campaign. Why are they even there and not playing somewhere they can actually compete?

Takuto

disintegr8 wrote: »

Some great ideas there OP.

Just curious about the emp lockout for the first day and how it negatively affects people. I admit to not understanding some of the complaints people have about PVP but what does it really matter if someone else got emp on t he first day?

Are you saying that anyone who gets emp on the first day dies not really deserve it?

It would be nice to see some changes to Kyne (non vet). I have been runnng some newer characters through Kyne and notice that the same people seem to do nothing but roll new characters over and over so that can stay in the non vet campaign and are continually on the leader board.

Maybe an idea on this campaign could be a restriction for any account with a character that made emp this campaign (or even finished in the top 10), preventing them from joining the next run of that campaign on a different character. It is only a 7 day campaign anyway.

A newer player with no PVP experience, joining this campaign on their first character does not have much hope against the player who has rolled 30 characters through it in the last 12 months.

The emperor lockout suggestion has nothing to do with someone deserving to be emperor. Nor does it have anything to do with a personal distaste for the comparative ease of making emperor on the first day of the campaign compared to the last day.

Instead it is meant to be a discouragement for guilds who make their purpose farming/selling emperor achievement.

Boosting into first place is comparatively easy on the first day before prime-time, even for players with no experience in PvP, so long as they have a large (multi-faction) guild to 'support' them through the process. However, when prime-time hits holding on to that lead becomes much more challenging. As such the longer the campaign goes on the harder it is for a farming guild to guarantee that a customer or member will get emperorship and the more time consuming it would be to try. This means that farming guilds would need to dedicate more of their own time, as well as the time of their customer. In short, a lockout is my attempt at harming the value proposition of emperor farming.

Honestly, I feel like the whole emperorship process needs to be re-designed from the ground up. I just didn't want to include such major changes in my post. As I suspect that ZOS is not willing to dedicate very significant resources to PvP.

Durham

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

Group size should definitely be lower. Currently on Vivec a 24 v 24 stacked players is enough to cause major performance issues.

Anyway, while i like your ideas i can't help but think that you could probably find better quality fights in Vivec if the performance wasn't so poor with so many players stacked together. People can just watch zone chat and build a 24 man within 20 mins of entering that campaign. And if they don't, it just takes one keep getting flagged to have an entire alliance at its doors in 1 minute flat. I believe a lot of the performance issues could be remedied by simply restricting low-level, non-CP players from entering that Campaign. Why are they even there and not playing somewhere they can actually compete?

Agree there is no reason to run 24 ... 12 is all that is needed for any objective in pvp...

Durham

akray21 wrote: »

The problem of finding small scale/medium scale fights is not the way they design the campaign, it's the Cyrodiil map in general. The map is too large, keeps are spread out too far, and there are simply not enough objectives to encourage the player base to spread out. I would love for them to add twice as many keeps.

Keep in mind the original poster ... he did not want to make drastic changes because ZOS will probably not put much time or resources in pvp...

Soulac

Fun Fact: They added this feature "Ruleset" and used it only to change the number of days a campaign lasts and whether CP is turned on or off.
So many possibilities with that feature and they simply don´t care.