We need incentives to bring regular players back into Cyrodiil, and to attract non-PvPers to try PvP

Derra

zyk wrote: »

Our competitive culture here is an anomaly because the rewards have always made experienced/organized/hardcore vs inexperienced/disorganized/casual the default engagement. Farming less capable players has always been most profitable which is just bad design.

I've spent my afternoon fighting good groups running resource farms. Sure, those groups are outnumbered, but they have every other advantage. The one or two decent players who show up don't make it a good fight.

I would actually like to run in some small groups, but the small group culture in this game is just dumb. I would rather get farmed with incapable teammates than look for incapable opponents. At least I'm fighting good opponents when I do.

@zyk i´ve only ever played mmos and i think lotro is about the only one i missed. Well and WOW which basically killed classic mmos so i´m still convinced i didn´t miss out.

The issues you talk about have their root mainly in this games design. The community in this game never had a common ground to play against one another.
What´s the "scene" pvp players setup in most mmos and what most battlegrounds/arenas got designed around?
Group versus group.

Eso does not differentiate between groups and large groups on a gamemechanical level. So technically a group is 24 persons.
We never ever had 24 persons in our competetive pvp guild online at the same time - since we´re playing games together for the past 13 years. The maximum we managed in eso was 12 shortly after launch.

What groupsize do you want a "competetive" scene to form around. The game does not offer a relistic frame for such a development to happen.
It´s one of the reasons why i talk about groupsize so much.
For a subcommunity to form you need a common base that realisticly everyone can start from. Getting 12 people to even begin playing against other groups never was such a base and will never be.
It´s too hard to get that many people to play together for the majority of players.

As for farming randomgs or just fighting everything that comes along.
I rather have a hard fight being outnumbered and either loosing or winning than outnumbering another small group because most of the time a single good damagedealer can end them in about 5s. One kill is enough to tip the scale.
Same goes for group v group. If you have even one player more and a comparable skilllevel you will annihilate the opposition. 4v5 isn´t a desireable competetive matchup. It´s a stompfest.
So what are you going to do with smallscalers running between 1 and 8 persons together?

Durham

PVP pop is tiny compared to pve... there is almost no attention being directed to it... Look how long the campaigns added from the last event have been left in game...

Rohamad_Ali

There are a lot of good ideas here and would be good to encourage Cyrodiil PVP but the biggest encouragement would be to fix that dang PVP server instances . Laggy and unresponsive gameplay drives away more people then any other reason . Nothing they are doing seems to work . It is not a graphics issue on the client or server end at least I can't believe that it is after all the graphics they've removed from the game anymore ... I just can't . Their is something up and it can't always be a DDoS attack every weekend .

I think once they make a effort to address what ever the real cause of this is and we can go back to playing with big populations like at launch without endless loading screens and disconnects , the players that PVP would return in masses .

Drakkdjinn

SanTii.92 wrote: »

Removing the two extra campaigns would be a nice place to start.

But that would go against all the PvWhiners who said extra camps would revitalize PvP and PvE!

Kilandros

zyk wrote: »

Kilandros wrote: »

It's basically a lose-lose situation right now. Balance changes and sustain changing have made fighting outnumbered pretty painful. I used to love holding a tower with 5 people against 30. But ZOS has decided that numbers should always win no matter how bad the player. Fine, so be it. But then I try to do large scale PvP and the servers just can't handle it.

I don't think those were ever good fights. At least not by my definition. My background in competitive play was in first person shooters and no one cared about how good anyone else was on public servers. Nor would anyone in any developed competitive medium from sports to writing to games like chess.

Our competitive culture here is an anomaly because the rewards have always made experienced/organized/hardcore vs inexperienced/disorganized/casual the default engagement. Farming less capable players has always been most profitable which is just bad design.

I've spent my afternoon fighting good groups running resource farms. Sure, those groups are outnumbered, but they have every other advantage. The one or two decent players who show up don't make it a good fight.

I would actually like to run in some small groups, but the small group culture in this game is just dumb. I would rather get farmed with incapable teammates than look for incapable opponents. At least I'm fighting good opponents when I do.

We should drop this outnumbered absurdity and try to arrange actually good fights against comparable opponents. It's impossible to always achieve this in AvA, but we can do much better than we are doing. An added benefit to this is that the casuals who would be farmed have a greater opportunity to have a good time fighting each other. That makes them more likely to keep playing and grow into experienced players.

I wasn't trying to say one kind of play is superior to the other. I'm done judging people for how they want to play this game. My point was merely to illustrate that say your goal is to avoid the lag by avoiding the big fights by doing stuff with a smaller group, you tend to get swarmed by 30+ people and balance is currently such that it's far more difficult to fight outnumbered now than it was a year ago. I was also pointing out that say you dislike small fights and want to be a part of large-scale PvP, then you face the crippling lag / performance drops.

I'm definitely not advocating for one style or play over the other, and I'm not trying to opine on which is more difficult or more prestigious or whatever we've been telling ourselves for 3 years. I think both large- and small-scale PvP should be a thing in the game but I think current balance and performance issues basically prohibit both.

Joy_Division

I don't think incentives are enough. They may grab some people for a week or so but at the end of the day what @gibous @Derra @Kilandros et al say is right: Cryodiil is repetitive and can get old *real* quick if you're not a diehard (questionable balance/gear change, loading screens, performance issues notwithstanding).

I haven't played any other MMO, but do other games have a policy of doing next to nothing for 3+ years for their PvP?

You would think someone at ZoS would realize that having 85% of the map not used is bad, funneling the entire population around the emperor ring undermines performance, and that the height of guild Vs. guild "strategy" is destro bomb or run away promotes mindless gameplay, but for whatever reason, but ZoS has opted to do nothing to change any of this or the many other issues with PvP.

All ZoS does is nerf stuff that just annoys the PvE population, which makes them even less likely to have a favorable view of PvP, let alone try it.

Even when the 3 factions are pop locked, there are times when nothing is going on, no swords, just a whole bunch of people sitting at keeps looking at their map just waiting for something to happen. Waiting because there is nothing to do in Cyrodiil except take Keeps.

The moment 2 DC try to take Aleswell Mine, 25 EP come rushing out to the keep and mow them down. And why shouldn't they? It's a free 1.5K AP for doing nothing.

Xsorus

Derra wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Our competitive culture here is an anomaly because the rewards have always made experienced/organized/hardcore vs inexperienced/disorganized/casual the default engagement. Farming less capable players has always been most profitable which is just bad design.

I've spent my afternoon fighting good groups running resource farms. Sure, those groups are outnumbered, but they have every other advantage. The one or two decent players who show up don't make it a good fight.

I would actually like to run in some small groups, but the small group culture in this game is just dumb. I would rather get farmed with incapable teammates than look for incapable opponents. At least I'm fighting good opponents when I do.

@zyk i´ve only ever played mmos and i think lotro is about the only one i missed. Well and WOW which basically killed classic mmos so i´m still convinced i didn´t miss out.

The issues you talk about have their root mainly in this games design. The community in this game never had a common ground to play against one another.
What´s the "scene" pvp players setup in most mmos and what most battlegrounds/arenas got designed around?
Group versus group.

Eso does not differentiate between groups and large groups on a gamemechanical level. So technically a group is 24 persons.
We never ever had 24 persons in our competetive pvp guild online at the same time - since we´re playing games together for the past 13 years. The maximum we managed in eso was 12 shortly after launch.

What groupsize do you want a "competetive" scene to form around. The game does not offer a relistic frame for such a development to happen.
It´s one of the reasons why i talk about groupsize so much.
For a subcommunity to form you need a common base that realisticly everyone can start from. Getting 12 people to even begin playing against other groups never was such a base and will never be.
It´s too hard to get that many people to play together for the majority of players.

As for farming randomgs or just fighting everything that comes along.
I rather have a hard fight being outnumbered and either loosing or winning than outnumbering another small group because most of the time a single good damagedealer can end them in about 5s. One kill is enough to tip the scale.
Same goes for group v group. If you have even one player more and a comparable skilllevel you will annihilate the opposition. 4v5 isn´t a desireable competetive matchup. It´s a stompfest.
So what are you going to do with smallscalers running between 1 and 8 persons together?

It was a *** half the time to get 8 people in DAOC on at the same time.

getting 12 is even more annoying.

Frankly the best number so far has been 6 in my opinion.

I don't think people realize how much having Battlegroups in the game with zerg balls screwed over the PvP in this game in the long run.

NightbladeMechanics

Joy_Division wrote: »

I don't think incentives are enough. They may grab some people for a week or so but at the end of the day what @gibous @Derra @Kilandros et al say is right: Cryodiil is repetitive and can get old *real* quick if you're not a diehard (questionable balance/gear change, loading screens, performance issues notwithstanding).

I haven't played any other MMO, but do other games have a policy of doing next to nothing for 3+ years for their PvP?

You would think someone at ZoS would realize that having 85% of the map not used is bad, funneling the entire population around the emperor ring undermines performance, and that the height of guild Vs. guild "strategy" is destro bomb or run away promotes mindless gameplay, but for whatever reason, but ZoS has opted to do nothing to change any of this or the many other issues with PvP.

All ZoS does is nerf stuff that just annoys the PvE population, which makes them even less likely to have a favorable view of PvP, let alone try it.

Even when the 3 factions are pop locked, there are times when nothing is going on, no swords, just a whole bunch of people sitting at keeps looking at their map just waiting for something to happen. Waiting because there is nothing to do in Cyrodiil except take Keeps.

The moment 2 DC try to take Aleswell Mine, 25 EP come rushing out to the keep and mow them down. And why shouldn't they? It's a free 1.5K AP for doing nothing.

Anything which increases your interest or enjoyment in PvP is an incentive to play it, and all of the incentives which you list except for improving skill balance are mentioned in my OP.

Mureel

I quit PVPing in this game to be honest, because PVPers are too salty, complain too much and are _never_ happy.

Generally speaking, everyone wants to one shot everyone, whilst not being one shot themselves, whilst salting everywhere when they can't 1-2 shot others but other people can them! Well, that math will never work.

Your complaining ruined skills for the PVE side in the past as well (back too briefly in game to know what's up right now and why, but the complaining and salt sure haven't changed!). That was annoying and unfair.

Breath of Life utterly destroyed, yet we get a healy flappy bird that does more heals! WAT?

So yeah. See ya in imperial city. You can try and come get my telvar.

Brrrofski

Actual population balance would be a start.

On Xbox EU we have 1 camping. Yellows often hit lock, reds usually at two and blues at 1/2 bars.

Some days it utterly pointless to even bother. You'll just get zerged no matter what you do or where you go.

Vilestride

The 2 core foundations ZoS needs to check of before moving forward are Performance and game-play. Prepare for essay

Performance is something I know nothing about. So I won't talk about it.

As far as game-play I don't want to see solo, small scale or large scale PVP disappear. The harmony of all three is what was intended from the start and all of them will benefit if ZOS succeed in that intention.

Among the many issues regarding this imbalance, one is the lack of distinction when it comes to the roles of these different game play styles. Someone mentioned before about getting zerged down by a 24 man at a resource. While I agree completely that this shouldn't be happening, why wouldn't it when a resource is worth as much as a keep?

The game mode that is score based campaigns needs to be more intelligently designed. This open world PVP is a fantastic game mode. It's why some of us have been doing it for 3 years. But the back and forth on how it should/can be played is why more of us have left. Make a decision on the game play you intend to provide, and stick to it.

Focus on making playing the map and getting good fights one in the same for any sized group and we will have a 10X more dynamic PVP experience. A few changes that in my opinion will help achaive this are:

- Re-think the scoring system. I am not saying go back to what it was, but making everything worth the same eliminates the versatility in what you are contributing with your group. Small scale players will default to taking smaller objectives. They will in turn be met with other small scale players. If they are met by large groups at the least its going to have a detrimental effect to the factions score for a 24 man group to waste their time at these kinds of objectives.

- Add a variety of objectives Clearly when you made this game it was intended for large groups to take keeps and scrolls while smaller ones cut supply lines (resources/gates/paths) and harassing the outskirts of a battle. Take that philosophy and commit to it. Add more ways for small scale to contribute to their faction while larger groups siege and fight. There are some 50+ ideas for this in the thread so far. Cyrodil is beautiful, give us a reason to head into the hills and forests.

- Back to the basic: Taking keeps. When the game launched taking keeps meant hour long sieges, epic back and forth battles. Now it means setting up your 20/20 on a door (which is easy to do with as little as 8 people), getting in and flipping flags before anyone gets there. This should not be possible. Lengthen the time taken to siege down walls and doors. Make taking a keep a real challenge that is almost impossible unless your faction actually implements tactics that involve all sized groups, again, bringing back the need for variety of group sizes. Honestly me and my 16 man raid shouldn't be able to take ales from DC unless we have small scale groups cutting its transit, optimally glademist transit to and then stalling incoming DC from any other transit routes as well as harassing counter-siege where they can.

- Make it worth while......I can't stress this enough. At the least, make it self sustaining. PVPers don't want to grind. Again, refer to the plethora of good ideas mentioned in this thread.

Derra

In the end pvp in its current state is generating very low interest amongst the playerbase.
Low interest means from a buisness pov pvp does not warrant spending money on improving things.
No improvement means no increased interest by the playerbase.

What you gonna do?

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Satiar wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Kilandros wrote: »

It's basically a lose-lose situation right now. Balance changes and sustain changing have made fighting outnumbered pretty painful. I used to love holding a tower with 5 people against 30. But ZOS has decided that numbers should always win no matter how bad the player. Fine, so be it. But then I try to do large scale PvP and the servers just can't handle it.

I don't think those were ever good fights. At least not by my definition. My background in competitive play was in first person shooters and no one cared about how good anyone else was on public servers. Nor would anyone in any developed competitive medium from sports to writing to games like chess.

Our competitive culture here is an anomaly because the rewards have always made experienced/organized/hardcore vs inexperienced/disorganized/casual the default engagement. Farming less capable players has always been most profitable which is just bad design.

I've spent my afternoon fighting good groups running resource farms. Sure, those groups are outnumbered, but they have every other advantage. The one or two decent players who show up don't make it a good fight.

I would actually like to run in some small groups, but the small group culture in this game is just dumb. I would rather get farmed with incapable teammates than look for incapable opponents. At least I'm fighting good opponents when I do.

We should drop this outnumbered absurdity and try to arrange actually good fights against comparable opponents. It's impossible to always achieve this in AvA, but we can do much better than we are doing. An added benefit to this is that the casuals who would be farmed have a greater opportunity to have a good time fighting each other. That makes them more likely to keep playing and grow into experienced players.

It's a side effect of top end guilds capping their numbers for years. Over time it's created a mentality that it's more about how few people you have and how many you're fighting. It's a dumb mentality and it's always been dumb.

All these people running 24m+ raids are definately just looking for equal numbered skilled fights for sure

Don't confuse AP farming with running smaller groups. If someone wants to AP farm it's best done as a 2-3 man half zerg surfing.
The purpose of running smaller groups is to find challenge. Fighting 60 players with 14 is a challenge. It doesn't matter if they are the best or worst players. How the fight goes the siege the single target focus etc makes it challenging equally fighting an organised group outnumbered or equal can also be a challenge just a DIFFERENT one.

Lowering numbers when a fight becomes too easy is something fun for a lot of players regardless of if you personally disagree it doesn't make it "dumb".

If a group can easily win a fight being X size against equal numbers. Why not lower numbers to try and make it more of a challenge and increase the difficulty. It's the same mentality (only reversed) of guilds which increase their numbers to make fights easier. Both are valid ways of playing the game.

Lore_lai

@zyk - honestly, no offense but when are you ever going to look at a small group at a resource as not being the Evil incarnate and/or tower farming etc. etc.?
Does it occur to you that sometimes we go there because there are not a lot of places for us to go to with how the game has been?

And honestly I am getting tired of this whole culture of "oh noes, poor nubies, poor pugs getting farmed" - most of the time when getting attacked at resources etc. - we get attacked by people who have been playing the game for *FAR* longer than I have.
At one point you have to sit with yourself and think - how longer am I going to fit in the "nubie" category?...There is only so far you can go with the "I'm just a poor nubie getting farmed" excuse.

Joy_Division

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I don't think incentives are enough. They may grab some people for a week or so but at the end of the day what @gibous @Derra @Kilandros et al say is right: Cryodiil is repetitive and can get old *real* quick if you're not a diehard (questionable balance/gear change, loading screens, performance issues notwithstanding).

I haven't played any other MMO, but do other games have a policy of doing next to nothing for 3+ years for their PvP?

You would think someone at ZoS would realize that having 85% of the map not used is bad, funneling the entire population around the emperor ring undermines performance, and that the height of guild Vs. guild "strategy" is destro bomb or run away promotes mindless gameplay, but for whatever reason, but ZoS has opted to do nothing to change any of this or the many other issues with PvP.

All ZoS does is nerf stuff that just annoys the PvE population, which makes them even less likely to have a favorable view of PvP, let alone try it.

Even when the 3 factions are pop locked, there are times when nothing is going on, no swords, just a whole bunch of people sitting at keeps looking at their map just waiting for something to happen. Waiting because there is nothing to do in Cyrodiil except take Keeps.

The moment 2 DC try to take Aleswell Mine, 25 EP come rushing out to the keep and mow them down. And why shouldn't they? It's a free 1.5K AP for doing nothing.

Anything which increases your interest or enjoyment in PvP is an incentive to play it, and all of the incentives which you list except for improving skill balance are mentioned in my OP.

True. However incentives that do not reform and improve cyrodiil's stale gameplay and make it more fun and compelling to play are not likely to have a lasting effect. Stuff like cosmetics, double AP, or PvP oriented consumables are some things people have suggested aren't going to make us use the whole map, stop the mindless merry-go-round Emperor ring routine, or make guild Vs. guild fights compelling.

We could and should improve rewards for the worthy as you suggest in your original post. But doing so does nothing to address the reasons why @gibous says he logs in less and less.

So I thought the distinction between abstract incentives (which can just mean proverbial carrots to make people do things they do not find fun or normally wouldn't do otherwise) and actually tangible gameplay improvements, which are better characterized as reforms.

AhPook_Is_Here

In my opinion, the game-play itself is old and stale, the combat system has been pretty bad forever, where the core tactic from 2 years ago, (A: stack up and CC and drop angry circles on the ground always unless another large ball group comes at you, then spread out when they blow their wad and then contract on them and repeat A). They've had a lot of time to change this and they could have gone a lot of ways with it, everything from collision to de-buffs from stacking too close, but they have decided that's the combat system they want. Small scale has been the same since Guild Wars 1, gather, spike, retreat, regen, repeat. Rewards won't really matter because the game itself isn't that good or entertaining after a week or two. People who played the event hard weren't there to fall in love with PVP but to get to rank 6 or so to unlock alliance skills and punch out for good.

The thing that keeps people playing this game isn't really the game, it's the social activity with friends on voice chat, like BINGO. So really if you want to get more people to play, it's on the community, not really the developers at this point. They've shown you how much effort they are willing to spend on this for years now it's time to accept that if you want to grow the population you will have to go out there and solicit and seduce yourselves. Get people into your groups and guilds and get people involved in the social aspect of the game and you'll get a working community. This is something that has to be boot-strapped Horatio Alger style, years of crying and fist banging have got you nothing, it's up to you to fix it yourself at this point with the tools you have. I have known a lot of team leaders in my time and I have never understood how they can do all the hard work of managing people, work that I detest, and would ruin any game for me, so take good care of those people when you find them!

zyk

Lore_lai wrote: »

@zyk - honestly, no offense but when are you ever going to look at a small group at a resource as not being the Evil incarnate and/or tower farming etc. etc.?
Does it occur to you that sometimes we go there because there are not a lot of places for us to go to with how the game has been?

@Lore_lai

I have no idea what *you* do, so I can't comment. I only know the AD POV and how our opponent small groups play when I encounter them.

I can say that competitive players in other games, for decades, have found each other for good competition without a framework provided by the game. For years, players have setup there own leagues, ladders, etc and played for meaningful titles they've created. From what I understand, this has happened to some degree in EU. That's normal in a healthy competitive environment. Quake leagues in the 90s had tiers of competition and it was considered *extremely* lame for hardcore top tier players to play for newbie clans in newbie leagues.

What I see from some highly coordinated small groups I encounter is hours spent every day fighting unorganized mobs of mostly casual players. I fight along these players and they tend to melt. They don't know the tactics -- which is why the fall for the same old tricks.

I've used this analogy before. If a good CS clan were to fight with each other on a public server against randoms, they'd *easily* win every time and be considered jerks for it. Very quickly, they would find their opponents leave and their server empty.

It is inherently toxic for organized gamers to look for "juicy" opponents they outclass. It impedes growth. The same goes for all games. Without a reasonable opportunity for even competition, the game dies. This is why all other competitive mediums are segmented based on aptitude. No one would get into competitive sports if this segmentation did not exist.

Again, I don't know how you play. But I can tell you for certain that opposition small groups certainly spend a lot of time looking for easy wins. Many admit it that it's all about AP to them. Others, of course, are looking for impressive looking video clips because they're aspiring or already professional entertainers. It is normal for many of these groups to completely ignore each other while fighting in the same area.

Don't pretend that there's no other way and that the groups I'm referring to can't find each other for organized vs organized competition. This is a choice these groups make.

At one point you have to sit with yourself and think - how longer am I going to fit in the "nubie" category?...There is only so far you can go with the "I'm just a poor nubie getting farmed" excuse.

Oh spare me. I'd say the noob is the hardcore, coordinated gamer who still goes casual hunting. There are FPS guys like this too. They're good enough to play in clans but prefer to dominate pubs. I call those guys noobs because they haven't progressed. They are developmentally stunted gamers.

Do you not understand my POV on this issue is about the health of the game and not my own personal enjoyment? I've played in very good groups of all sizes that do the same things I'm talking about. I know how challenging it is. And without question, it is more challenging playing with AD randoms than with the groups I'm referring to, even if the randoms outnumber them. Those groups can out-heal, out-damage, out-migigate and out-coordinate the opponents they are out outnumbered by to a high degree. Until enough decent players show up or the numbers become overwhelming.

I enjoy how I play. I play the map and help my factionmates. It's much more gratifying to wipe good groups with randoms than it is to wipe randoms with good groups. But for me, it's mostly about map play. Fighting without context is boring to me. That's why I only play team games with objective play. I wish there was a greater will among enthusiasts to create a new tier of competitive gaming in ESO because it would be fun to be involved in that. Unfortunately, it does not yet exist.

LordSlif

Zos is killing the pvp. inertia is a slow killer

Beardimus

Perhaps its a region thing or a platform thing as I personally haven't experienced all this aggressive negativity you are talking about @anitajoneb17_ESO

I've seen it in PvE zone chat, sure, I've seen it in larger group events - trials (I've seen people abused for having their merchant out), I've seen it in PUG vet dungeons with people wanting to kick people who are lower level or struggling, but honestly I haven't seen it in PvP, where I would expect it. And I assume as that's because you communicate with your alliance only, all helping each other.

But region by region I can see that could be different, or I'm oblivious to it as I dont live in game.

I'm not a gamer, ESO is the first I've gotten into, and I am aware there is an immature / aggressive gamer culture in many FPS but the words you use seem pretty extreme for anything I've experienced.

In terms of improvements however What I can see is that a true 'newbie' campaign would be brilliant. The fact that many pros re-roll toons to stay in L1-49 is stupid, it means people testing the water get thumped and that's not fun.

CyrusArya

@zyk

You make it out as if small scale groups go out of their way and forcibly coerce players to chase them. This is not the case. People chase small scalers down and go out of their way to engage when they perceive a numerical advantage. Because they think they will win. And you know what? Some of those times they are right. Some of those time they are wrong. It's a two way relationship, so spare me the lecture.

Furthermore, it is not nearly as easy as you make it out to be. Players don't have to be fodder to be a threat in large enough numbers, and groups in general (pug or otherwise) are not nearly as incompetent as you like to believe.

A final aspect of this is cyrodiil is a open world sandbox. It's not designed for the kind of competitive play you describe. Too many variables too little structure. I bring 4 and wipe your group of 4, you come back with 5. I refuse to go bigger and I die cus you have a numeric advantage. Do you see my point? Your analogies just do not hold up in context of cyrodiil. BGs and duels are probably the closest you'll get to a competetive environment in this game.

I agree that fights between evenly matched opponents are fun and exciting...but that does not diminish the challenge, excitement, or purpose of fighting outnumbered. Something you clearly do not understand, as someone who is self admittedly a conneiseur of Xv1 and zerging down small scalers.

zyk

Actually, I did the whole solo/duo/trio resource farm/trolling/kiting thing for a bit in 2.2. We were successful, but it became very boring very quickly. I have experience since then, but I'm not going to bring my guildmates and friends into this conversation. Besides, I'm probably offending many of them as I may be you.

Not that it's about me, but I fight outnumbered every play session. Numbers are irrelevant to me because I play with an objective mentality. I'm not going to throw myself at a group of players I can't defeat on my own for no reason, but if I feel I have a reasonable chance to win or buy time or make any other kind of beneficial difference, I will engage any number of players. When there are 40 DC outside of Roe with AD randoms on the wall, I am usually among the first to jump down and fight vastly, hopelessly outnumbered to try to encourage my teammates. The same goes when it's a very good small man group in a tower meat grinding AD bow builds.

But again, please don't make this personal. I haven't called anyone out. I've called out a common behaviour and explained why it's toxic to growth in ESO which is relevant to this conversation. I don't agree that AvA has to be this way or that ESO PVP as it currently exists has to be this way.

I know for a fact that many groups of all sizes primarily look for juicy AP because they've told me as much. I'm friends and guildmates with some of these players and others send me a variety of msgs as I play against them so frequently. Generally, they're civil chats.

I think ultimately this is on ZOS for incentivizing the conditions I describe. Players compete for points and to progress their characters, so there is an inherent motivation to earn as much AP as possible. Yet, I've seen first hand what a motivated playerbase can accomplish to create a playing field that is both more even and gratifying for all involved. I know a lot of good ESO PVPers who haven't PVP'd in other games so truly don't know what it's like to have an established competitive scene. They don't know how much better it can be. None of us really do because ESO hasn't evolved much in this direction.

The bottom line is that new/casual players need a better opportunity to fight against each other more often. No game will attract new players when they are targeted so frequently by experienced players. When the game was more popular, a high risk/high reward campaign may have been an option, but we need more nuanced solutions now. We can't count on ZOS to do anything to improve this situation, so we need the leaders in this community to step up if we want change.

Lucky28

Satiar wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Kilandros wrote: »

It's basically a lose-lose situation right now. Balance changes and sustain changing have made fighting outnumbered pretty painful. I used to love holding a tower with 5 people against 30. But ZOS has decided that numbers should always win no matter how bad the player. Fine, so be it. But then I try to do large scale PvP and the servers just can't handle it.

I don't think those were ever good fights. At least not by my definition. My background in competitive play was in first person shooters and no one cared about how good anyone else was on public servers. Nor would anyone in any developed competitive medium from sports to writing to games like chess.

Our competitive culture here is an anomaly because the rewards have always made experienced/organized/hardcore vs inexperienced/disorganized/casual the default engagement. Farming less capable players has always been most profitable which is just bad design.

I've spent my afternoon fighting good groups running resource farms. Sure, those groups are outnumbered, but they have every other advantage. The one or two decent players who show up don't make it a good fight.

I would actually like to run in some small groups, but the small group culture in this game is just dumb. I would rather get farmed with incapable teammates than look for incapable opponents. At least I'm fighting good opponents when I do.

We should drop this outnumbered absurdity and try to arrange actually good fights against comparable opponents. It's impossible to always achieve this in AvA, but we can do much better than we are doing. An added benefit to this is that the casuals who would be farmed have a greater opportunity to have a good time fighting each other. That makes them more likely to keep playing and grow into experienced players.

It's a side effect of top end guilds capping their numbers for years. Over time it's created a mentality that it's more about how few people you have and how many you're fighting. It's a dumb mentality and it's always been dumb.

No, guilds capping their numbers is about how they're fighting. in a group of 10-16 each player has to be at the top of their game and play their class/role to the utmost whereas in a group of 24 players don't have to play to the utmost they're free to make all the mistakes they like and the numbers will compensate. most guilds have found that they don't like that play and want more of a challenge, pure and simple.

Satiar

Lucky28 wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Kilandros wrote: »

It's basically a lose-lose situation right now. Balance changes and sustain changing have made fighting outnumbered pretty painful. I used to love holding a tower with 5 people against 30. But ZOS has decided that numbers should always win no matter how bad the player. Fine, so be it. But then I try to do large scale PvP and the servers just can't handle it.

I don't think those were ever good fights. At least not by my definition. My background in competitive play was in first person shooters and no one cared about how good anyone else was on public servers. Nor would anyone in any developed competitive medium from sports to writing to games like chess.

Our competitive culture here is an anomaly because the rewards have always made experienced/organized/hardcore vs inexperienced/disorganized/casual the default engagement. Farming less capable players has always been most profitable which is just bad design.

I've spent my afternoon fighting good groups running resource farms. Sure, those groups are outnumbered, but they have every other advantage. The one or two decent players who show up don't make it a good fight.

I would actually like to run in some small groups, but the small group culture in this game is just dumb. I would rather get farmed with incapable teammates than look for incapable opponents. At least I'm fighting good opponents when I do.

We should drop this outnumbered absurdity and try to arrange actually good fights against comparable opponents. It's impossible to always achieve this in AvA, but we can do much better than we are doing. An added benefit to this is that the casuals who would be farmed have a greater opportunity to have a good time fighting each other. That makes them more likely to keep playing and grow into experienced players.

It's a side effect of top end guilds capping their numbers for years. Over time it's created a mentality that it's more about how few people you have and how many you're fighting. It's a dumb mentality and it's always been dumb.

No, guilds capping their numbers is about how they're fighting. in a group of 10-16 each player has to be at the top of their game and play their class/role to the utmost whereas in a group of 24 players don't have to play to the utmost they're free to make all the mistakes they like and the numbers will compensate. most guilds have found that they don't like that play pure and simple.

It's a rabbit hole. People who run 8 ppl say 12-16 is too much and too much mistake covering, and then 4 man groups say 8 is etc. etc.

At a certain point people started using numbers as a metric of success.

Lucky28

Satiar wrote: »

Lucky28 wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Kilandros wrote: »

It's basically a lose-lose situation right now. Balance changes and sustain changing have made fighting outnumbered pretty painful. I used to love holding a tower with 5 people against 30. But ZOS has decided that numbers should always win no matter how bad the player. Fine, so be it. But then I try to do large scale PvP and the servers just can't handle it.

I don't think those were ever good fights. At least not by my definition. My background in competitive play was in first person shooters and no one cared about how good anyone else was on public servers. Nor would anyone in any developed competitive medium from sports to writing to games like chess.

Our competitive culture here is an anomaly because the rewards have always made experienced/organized/hardcore vs inexperienced/disorganized/casual the default engagement. Farming less capable players has always been most profitable which is just bad design.

I've spent my afternoon fighting good groups running resource farms. Sure, those groups are outnumbered, but they have every other advantage. The one or two decent players who show up don't make it a good fight.

I would actually like to run in some small groups, but the small group culture in this game is just dumb. I would rather get farmed with incapable teammates than look for incapable opponents. At least I'm fighting good opponents when I do.

We should drop this outnumbered absurdity and try to arrange actually good fights against comparable opponents. It's impossible to always achieve this in AvA, but we can do much better than we are doing. An added benefit to this is that the casuals who would be farmed have a greater opportunity to have a good time fighting each other. That makes them more likely to keep playing and grow into experienced players.

It's a side effect of top end guilds capping their numbers for years. Over time it's created a mentality that it's more about how few people you have and how many you're fighting. It's a dumb mentality and it's always been dumb.

No, guilds capping their numbers is about how they're fighting. in a group of 10-16 each player has to be at the top of their game and play their class/role to the utmost whereas in a group of 24 players don't have to play to the utmost they're free to make all the mistakes they like and the numbers will compensate. most guilds have found that they don't like that play pure and simple.

It's a rabbit hole. People who run 8 ppl say 12-16 is too much and too much mistake covering, and then 4 man groups say 8 is etc. etc.

At a certain point people started using numbers as a metric of success.

and i'm not saying anyone is wrong. they're all playing the way they want and way they find most enjoyable.

Satiar

Lucky28 wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Lucky28 wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Kilandros wrote: »

It's basically a lose-lose situation right now. Balance changes and sustain changing have made fighting outnumbered pretty painful. I used to love holding a tower with 5 people against 30. But ZOS has decided that numbers should always win no matter how bad the player. Fine, so be it. But then I try to do large scale PvP and the servers just can't handle it.

I don't think those were ever good fights. At least not by my definition. My background in competitive play was in first person shooters and no one cared about how good anyone else was on public servers. Nor would anyone in any developed competitive medium from sports to writing to games like chess.

Our competitive culture here is an anomaly because the rewards have always made experienced/organized/hardcore vs inexperienced/disorganized/casual the default engagement. Farming less capable players has always been most profitable which is just bad design.

I've spent my afternoon fighting good groups running resource farms. Sure, those groups are outnumbered, but they have every other advantage. The one or two decent players who show up don't make it a good fight.

I would actually like to run in some small groups, but the small group culture in this game is just dumb. I would rather get farmed with incapable teammates than look for incapable opponents. At least I'm fighting good opponents when I do.

We should drop this outnumbered absurdity and try to arrange actually good fights against comparable opponents. It's impossible to always achieve this in AvA, but we can do much better than we are doing. An added benefit to this is that the casuals who would be farmed have a greater opportunity to have a good time fighting each other. That makes them more likely to keep playing and grow into experienced players.

It's a side effect of top end guilds capping their numbers for years. Over time it's created a mentality that it's more about how few people you have and how many you're fighting. It's a dumb mentality and it's always been dumb.

No, guilds capping their numbers is about how they're fighting. in a group of 10-16 each player has to be at the top of their game and play their class/role to the utmost whereas in a group of 24 players don't have to play to the utmost they're free to make all the mistakes they like and the numbers will compensate. most guilds have found that they don't like that play pure and simple.

It's a rabbit hole. People who run 8 ppl say 12-16 is too much and too much mistake covering, and then 4 man groups say 8 is etc. etc.

At a certain point people started using numbers as a metric of success.

and i'm not saying anyone is wrong. they're all playing the way they want and way the find most enjoyable.

Yes it's just bad for the competitive aspect of the game. There's no unified concept.

Joy_Division

Well it didn't take long for "your way of PvPing is toxic for Cyrodiil" implications to show up.

I'd love to blame Wheeler and ZoS for the current boring and stale state that is PvP, but I don't blame him or ZoS for ignoring us.

I think cyrodiil as open world should be a place where people should be able to play the way they want, whether that be objectives, good fights, or whatever, and these threads should promote ways and encourage Zos into making it as such rather than arguing among ourselves.

Kilandros

CyrusArya wrote: »

@zyk

You make it out as if small scale groups go out of their way and forcibly coerce players to chase them. This is not the case. People chase small scalers down and go out of their way to engage when they perceive a numerical advantage. Because they think they will win. And you know what? Some of those times they are right. Some of those time they are wrong. It's a two way relationship, so spare me the lecture.

Furthermore, it is not nearly as easy as you make it out to be. Players don't have to be fodder to be a threat in large enough numbers, and groups in general (pug or otherwise) are not nearly as incompetent as you like to believe.

A final aspect of this is cyrodiil is a open world sandbox. It's not designed for the kind of competitive play you describe. Too many variables too little structure. I bring 4 and wipe your group of 4, you come back with 5. I refuse to go bigger and I die cus you have a numeric advantage. Do you see my point? Your analogies just do not hold up in context of cyrodiil. BGs and duels are probably the closest you'll get to a competetive environment in this game.

I agree that fights between evenly matched opponents are fun and exciting...but that does not diminish the challenge, excitement, or purpose of fighting outnumbered. Something you clearly do not understand, as someone who is self admittedly a conneiseur of Xv1 and zerging down small scalers.

I think this really hits the nail on the head. Cyrodiil is a sandbox. There's no point comparing PvP in Cyrodiil to highly structured games like CS where you have two evenly matched teams starting on opposite sides of a map and nothing but terrain between them. There are no "fair" fights in open-world Cyrodiil: Someone has more players (whether they're pugs or not), or guards, or close respawn, or keep bonuses, or whatever. Cyrodiil wasn't designed for Guild v. Guild so I don't understand why people continue to lament the lack of structured GvG after 3 years of AvA. Go ahead, organize a GvG--it's been done in the past with great success.

But any "GvG" that happens naturally at a keep take/defense or whatever isn't really a GvG with all of the external factors that can influence the fight. It's just a big fight. And an opportunity to farm salt / forum drama. But that's it.

So instead of calling out PvPers for not going out of their way to find structured fights in an inherently unstructured environment, let's get this thread back on track:

1: Players need better rewards for PvPing; a symbol is not enough of a reward.
2: The servers need to be able to better handle the big AvAvA fights that we were promised and that they map was designed to create.
3: ZOS needs to provide more incentives for players who want to avoid big AvAvA to break off and contribute to the map beyond just flagging empty back keeps / flipping resources.
4: ZOS should rein back balance changes which have made sheer numbers the single greatest advantage any side can have; groups will feel less compelled to stack with other groups in a non-numbers meta.

olsborg

What they need to do is fix lagg, so the hardcore pvpers dont leave the game for greener pastures elsewhere, thats what im very, very close to doing myself.

Lucky28

Satiar wrote: »

Lucky28 wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Lucky28 wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Kilandros wrote: »

It's basically a lose-lose situation right now. Balance changes and sustain changing have made fighting outnumbered pretty painful. I used to love holding a tower with 5 people against 30. But ZOS has decided that numbers should always win no matter how bad the player. Fine, so be it. But then I try to do large scale PvP and the servers just can't handle it.

I don't think those were ever good fights. At least not by my definition. My background in competitive play was in first person shooters and no one cared about how good anyone else was on public servers. Nor would anyone in any developed competitive medium from sports to writing to games like chess.

Our competitive culture here is an anomaly because the rewards have always made experienced/organized/hardcore vs inexperienced/disorganized/casual the default engagement. Farming less capable players has always been most profitable which is just bad design.

I've spent my afternoon fighting good groups running resource farms. Sure, those groups are outnumbered, but they have every other advantage. The one or two decent players who show up don't make it a good fight.

I would actually like to run in some small groups, but the small group culture in this game is just dumb. I would rather get farmed with incapable teammates than look for incapable opponents. At least I'm fighting good opponents when I do.

We should drop this outnumbered absurdity and try to arrange actually good fights against comparable opponents. It's impossible to always achieve this in AvA, but we can do much better than we are doing. An added benefit to this is that the casuals who would be farmed have a greater opportunity to have a good time fighting each other. That makes them more likely to keep playing and grow into experienced players.

It's a side effect of top end guilds capping their numbers for years. Over time it's created a mentality that it's more about how few people you have and how many you're fighting. It's a dumb mentality and it's always been dumb.

No, guilds capping their numbers is about how they're fighting. in a group of 10-16 each player has to be at the top of their game and play their class/role to the utmost whereas in a group of 24 players don't have to play to the utmost they're free to make all the mistakes they like and the numbers will compensate. most guilds have found that they don't like that play pure and simple.

It's a rabbit hole. People who run 8 ppl say 12-16 is too much and too much mistake covering, and then 4 man groups say 8 is etc. etc.

At a certain point people started using numbers as a metric of success.

and i'm not saying anyone is wrong. they're all playing the way they want and way the find most enjoyable.

Yes it's just bad for the competitive aspect of the game. There's no unified concept.

most competitive guilds have decided to cap their numbers at 16 which means that that is pretty much the competitive standard. how true this remains i'm unsure as quite a few of those guilds have left the game.

that's something that players generally decide. for example: in the souls series players decided that the competitive standard was to cap their character at level 120-130. it's always been a player decision in most games.

Derra

@zyk

you´re comparing an mmo and to other games where people fought each other.
CS
quake
starcraft
whatever
and all the likes of games that got played competetively in the past offered the framework for competition in their very core gamemechanics.
They were teambased or had very limited servercaps (leading to equal teams filling the server).

This is the structure eso is missing. There is no starting point for competetive play - which is exactly why it didn´t happen in eso but in almost every other mmo i´ve played.
You´re comparing apples to oranges.
I´ve played other mmos that did have better preconditions for competetive scenes to form and - wonder o wonder - they did have those.
DAoC had 8v8 open world group v group
Warhammer online had 6? v 6?
Swtor had 8v8 and 4v4
WoW had arenas (framework again)

Edit: Had eso launched with rated BGs - i´m pretty sure we would have had a vibrant BG scene and possibly even 4v4 open world groups running about.