[Suggestion] Making PvP more meaningful

PS4_ZeColmeia

So with Mayhem behind us, I would like to suggest an idea for a type of PvP game play/server. My suggestion comes from my experience playing Shadowbane, which is still the pinnacle of my MMO gaming experience since the first days of UO.

Brief overview of Shadowbane:

In Shadowbane you had PvP only, there was no segregation of a PvP and PvE instance. You had guilds to build cities, at game defined locations, that then set up where you could build vendors, crafters, researchers, etc. Locations were strategic from easier to defend, to proximity to resources, to proximity to runes (think set components in ESO world), and/or proximity to best mob farming locations. This set up the conflict: there are a limited number of locations to build, limited resources to build with, limited places to farm, and limited number of times a day that runes would drop. This set up the reason for war and trade and no single server was the same.

You'd basically destroy or capture a city and, in effect, destroy a group of people's weeks/months/years worth of work within 24-72 hours (depending on when the war was scheduled)

My thought is what if we made building, capturing and maintaining keeps more profitable and strategic? Examples: there are "dungeon" resource nodes where ownership would allow construction of monster helms. To keep it fair to PvE, you would spend AP (I think you would need a server specific currency so you don't have server switching) at the guild location and RNG would do it's work on giving you the helm in a possible trait. Ownership of the node takes time to build up enough resources of the type to start supplying helms. This is same idea for drop sets and jewelry.

The server would not have a leaderboard or a reset. The idea is that the rewards are solely through capture and ownership of keeps. This would then change the dynamics of how hard it is to capture/destroy keeps. Keeps have to be harder to take down. The resource nodes, delves, towns, set nodes however can change easily. If we wanted to get really fun, you could have caravans that people have to guard to the keep that owns it in order to keep it from getting raided. Keeps therefore form the location strategy to support safely getting extractions from nodes.

Since ESO has premade factions, the gated cities would remain as a unconquerable location. Although raiding the gated cities could reward some of the resources that faction has captured. I could flesh out a bunch of other details, but I think you all should get the general idea.

ArchMikem

I really don't like PvP so I'll just dabble when an event comes

You'd basically destroy or capture a city and, in effect, destroy a group of people's weeks/months/years worth of work within 24-72 hours

No. No. No. And, hmm....NO.

Why do people insist on taking the entertainment out of video gaming? Id be furious over people destroying my hard work and equally uncomfortable destroying theirs. If people take pleasure in razing livelyhoods to the ground, just go enlist. You'll be sent halfway round the world to destroy peoples real stuff and get paid for it.

Ghost-Shot

I would live in PvP if Cyrodiil gave me an escape from ever playing PvE

You are essentially describing Camelot Unchained, hopefully it gets released sometime in the next decade.

lbishopl

Other/I hate polls

I voted other because no wasn't an option. You're talking about an entirely different game. I doubt that is something that could just be patched in as another type of pvp. Also, there is a game coming out soon built off your entire premise.

PS4_ZeColmeia

I would live in PvP if Cyrodiil gave me an escape from ever playing PvE

ArchMikem wrote: »

You'd basically destroy or capture a city and, in effect, destroy a group of people's weeks/months/years worth of work within 24-72 hours

No. No. No. And, hmm....NO.

Why do people insist on taking the entertainment out of video gaming? Id be furious over people destroying my hard work and equally uncomfortable destroying theirs. If people take pleasure in razing livelyhoods to the ground, just go enlist. You'll be sent halfway round the world to destroy peoples real stuff and get paid for it.

Here is the reason, it makes things matter. If you play in Cyrodiil today what happens when you lose a keep? Nothing, you just recapture for AP, rinse and repeat.

When keeps are strategic, and the keeps are much harder to take, you get epic battles. Have you ever experienced a 3 hour battle to save your city? Have you ever felt the glory of winning, or the feel of defeat when you lose it? Not in ESO because in the end, none of it matters except for your leaderboard score which is all individual.

The point of making it matter is to make it matter to everyone in your faction. I don't care if BRK is getting raided if I'm in a delve getting my 20% increase to AP. Now if BRK is going to get burned and that is the location closest to the Molag Kena resource node and that is the helm I've been dreaming of, guess how quickly I am running to BRK?

You only get a feeling of something mattering if there is actually something on the line. I enjoy ESO pvp, but at the end of the day nothing matters, especially if I'm not getting on the leaderboards. Everybody can contribute to capture, save, or destroy a city and therefore everyone matters and PvP'ing does too.

PS4_ZeColmeia

I would live in PvP if Cyrodiil gave me an escape from ever playing PvE

lbishopl wrote: »

I voted other because no wasn't an option. You're talking about an entirely different game. I doubt that is something that could just be patched in as another type of pvp. Also, there is a game coming out soon built off your entire premise.

But I can dream right?

lbishopl

Other/I hate polls

PS4_ZeColmeia wrote: »

lbishopl wrote: »

I voted other because no wasn't an option. You're talking about an entirely different game. I doubt that is something that could just be patched in as another type of pvp. Also, there is a game coming out soon built off your entire premise.

But I can dream right?

Yes you can. To clarify, I really like the idea. That game that I didn't name has me very interested due partially to this.

Tasear

Other/I hate polls

I don't but keeps should mean something a bit more...maybe increase in number of resources acquired from nodes depending on level of keep. Or make it so nodes appear inside or around the keep for only guild members. Or how about passive 1 ap per min or something while keep is under guilds control?

idk

I have experienced a 3 hour battle defending a keep in Cyrodiil to prevent the alliance from losing Emperorship to another alliance. It was great, but also took a focused and constant attack from another alliance. If the keep was lost so would have been the Emperorship.

We ended the siege when a group of us went to another keep and took it relieving the pleasure on the keep that had been our last remaining keep.

So, changes as suggested are not needed. Players either have the desire to PvP or they do not. It also could lead to an issue that had persisted earlier in the game where each alliance had a campaign used to maintain their buffs that remained when we were in PvE. That system was not healthy for the game and I would expect the suggestion from the OP would lead to the same issues.

In other words, the OPs suggestions for changes to Cyrodiil could easily be bad for PvP.

If it is a specific campaign then it could easily ruin the other campaigns. Also, if one faction ends up controlling things most of the time player would just roll characters for that faction to craft what they needed so it ends up not really being PvP anymore.

Heck, I am sure shadowbane was great, but it was a PvP focused game so it was designed differently from the ground up. To bad it only lasted 6 years, though it does appear someone is running it with an emulator. I will say there is a game in development that you may like and has at least one of their developers. I do not mention other games in these forums, but I expect with some time with Google you will figure it out.