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

NightbladeMechanics

Joy_Division wrote: »

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.

Six out of my nine bullets are "actually tangible gameplay improvements" based on your own definition. Call them reforms or whatever semantics you want -- they remain incentives to play, targeting the core reasons why long time players like Red, Kil, and myself are quitting/taking breaks/getting bored.

anitajoneb17_ESO

Beardimus wrote: »

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.

I guess you've been desensitized to a certain extent. And probably, as a different person (than me) you have different levels of sensitivity.

I'm not a gamer either and ESO is also my first MMO ever (and most certainly my last, unless... ), but I doubt things are that much different from one platform to another.

But frankly, looking at things in PvP with external eyes, you can't honestly say it's a "friendly gaming environment".

As to PvE, I know some high-end gamers (and wannabes) can be very toxic too, and it has its share of drama too. The difference is, in PvE you can easily choose your mates (via groups, circles, friends guilds, normal socializing). In PvP, you don't choose whom you fight and get insulted, hate-whispered, etc. whether you like it or not...

mook-eb16_ESO

To limit zergs you have to restrict player movement somehow. I made some suggestions like gating, mile gates and bridges to restrict movement in the inner portions of the map and make the gates only passable in one direction so all factions can attack 1 faction and defend against 1 faction. plus have a mechanism in main keeps for opening gates completely on the side your faction controls and another mechanism (maybe if you own emp, or some other objective) for changing the pass direction if gate is down i.e ep>dc>ad to ep>ad>dc.
Anyway creating other objectives in the campaign that have real effects on any factions ability to move or restrict another factions ability to move round the map and that create their own mini battles, will create healthier gameplay and help cyro retain its player base and hopefully attract more people just because its fun and not because they need stuff. However if you need stuff give away ap or different rewards for completing these objectives. maybe someone else can think of better ideas

Aelakhaii_De_Mythos

i say this with a heavy heart but pvp is completely dead in 1 year - nothing can save eso pvp.

the people responsible for eso pvp are scandalously incompetent.

If i were this incompetent at my job i would be fired immediately.

Aelakhaii_De_Mythos

In all this time the developers couldnt even increase campaign rewards. It's pathetic.

anitajoneb17_ESO

Aelakhaii_De_Mythos wrote: »

i say this with a heavy heart but pvp is completely dead in 1 year - nothing can save eso pvp.
the people responsible for eso pvp are scandalously incompetent.
If i were this incompetent at my job i would be fired immediately.

Maybe they just have a different vision and objectives from yours.

NightbladeMechanics

mook-eb16_ESO wrote: »

To limit zergs you have to restrict player movement somehow. I made some suggestions like gating, mile gates and bridges to restrict movement in the inner portions of the map and make the gates only passable in one direction so all factions can attack 1 faction and defend against 1 faction. plus have a mechanism in main keeps for opening gates completely on the side your faction controls and another mechanism (maybe if you own emp, or some other objective) for changing the pass direction if gate is down i.e ep>dc>ad to ep>ad>dc.
Anyway creating other objectives in the campaign that have real effects on any factions ability to move or restrict another factions ability to move round the map and that create their own mini battles, will create healthier gameplay and help cyro retain its player base and hopefully attract more people just because its fun and not because they need stuff. However if you need stuff give away ap or different rewards for completing these objectives. maybe someone else can think of better ideas

I'm personally not a fan of restricting player movement. If you implemented this today, and (for example) the northernmost Alessia bridge were closed or broken, AD and EP would immediately stop attacking each other across it and just attack DC. People cannot be expected to run aaaaall the way to the next bridge to cross, and then aaaaall the way back up to Sej/Alessia.

What sorts of new objectives farther out on the map could ZOS create that you would want to go fight over, and what rewards would you expect for running out to them?

Would you need ZOS to rework travel in Cyrodiil, or respawning? In my opinion, I'd prefer positive reinforcement for spreading out, not negative reinforcement for using the common travel lanes.

Aelakhaii_De_Mythos

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Aelakhaii_De_Mythos wrote: »

i say this with a heavy heart but pvp is completely dead in 1 year - nothing can save eso pvp.
the people responsible for eso pvp are scandalously incompetent.
If i were this incompetent at my job i would be fired immediately.

Maybe they just have a different vision and objectives from yours.

Yeah ofc they do, they want their investors to make maximum amount of money.

I also know that pretty much every experienced player in eso believes this game is dead and beyond revival.
And i'm talking about people who LOVE eso, including myself.

But wtf is the point...? Each patch pretty much everything becomes worse - they dont even fix the prior problems.

Xsorus

Derra wrote: »

@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.

Yeap, DAOC ended up with 8v8 groups because 8 was the base group, and you didn't have a UI frame for zergs in that game...You had zergs yes..but you had 8v8 being one of the main competitions in that game...It co existed in RVR with zergs and you didn't have a need for instance based Battlegrounds.

Warhammer Online had 6v6 but what helped it maintain smaller group action was the fact that AOE's in that game could wipe the hell out of zergs, It worked same way in DAOC...Zergs in that game were slower as well so again...Fast Moving strike teams could hit run on zergs and wipe them...you had smaller scale pvp because of these things.

Swtor is a different beast, the reason you had 8v8/4v4 was simply because open world didn't exist...They tried it on Illum, People zerged the hell out of it and the lag made the game unplayable on anything past 10 players...So that's the only reason it existed in that game in my opinion.

Same with WoW, if ya go to any of the bigger Bg's just a big blob fest because AoE Caps. I've been in fights in AV in that game with both sides just clumped in a big ball an no one dying because the caps don't allow ya to kill people unless you assist.

you can examine other games like this as well; Rift for example had small scale PvP. It had BG's of course, and it had zerging but you ended up with actual small scale groups running around because again..in Rift, you could instant kill zergs...Dominator could run up on a Zerg out farming Rifts and instant kill have the zerg with 2 spells.

Now look at another game with AOE caps at the start, Guild Wars 2; by all accounts it should of developed small scale PvP..but it didn't, because the aoe caps resulted in guilds running in zerg balls spamming nothing but aoe's and other ***. You have the instanced SPvP but you never developed actual small scale roaming pvp because the game simply didn't cater to it, and now PvP in that game is nothing but a *** mess of people swapping keeps and zerging...Roaming is a joke and has died off on everything but the small population servers.

now look at ESO; before AOE caps were placed on a few skills you had actual small groups running around, soon as they were put in the game zerg balls started to develop and small scale started decreasing; now pvp is pretty much moving closer and closer to what GW2 was.

They waited to long to phase AOE caps out, and they promoted Zerg balls more and more each patch; the only time the game was started develop actual small scale pvp again was when Vicious death first came in. People were spreading out and pvp was started to get better.

Soon as Prox det and VD ate a nerf only larger groups could run the bombs and we're back to square one.

Hopefully CU doesn't repeat the same mistakes ESO and GW2 did

Lore_lai

@zyk - no, you have no idea what I do because we choose not to stack with the rest of the AD, and we go out of our way to find our own fights. For various reasons.
And to stay on topic - one of the reasons why I do not enjoy larger scale fights is because performance is extremely bad.
Framerate and ping are horrible the second I go near a keep that is strongly sieged and has a large concentration of people.
Which is why I think priority no 1 should be for them to fix whatever is wrong with the server/game optimization.

I'm happy that you like playing with 10 frames for most of your PvP session - I do not.

Also - you keep saying that all small groups fight is disorganized masses of casuals that just melt. And once again, I tell you (since you said you don't know what we fight) - is it's not always like that.
Yes, of course there are going to be low CP nubies that are part of those groups, but believe it or not we constantly see people with tabards from top tier guilds, or people who you literally cannot consider "disorganized casuals" (however you decide to use the term "casual").

In any case, I do not want to be off topic any longer. Have a nice day!

Derra

Xsorus wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

@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.

Yeap, DAOC ended up with 8v8 groups because 8 was the base group, and you didn't have a UI frame for zergs in that game...You had zergs yes..but you had 8v8 being one of the main competitions in that game...It co existed in RVR with zergs and you didn't have a need for instance based Battlegrounds.

Warhammer Online had 6v6 but what helped it maintain smaller group action was the fact that AOE's in that game could wipe the hell out of zergs, It worked same way in DAOC...Zergs in that game were slower as well so again...Fast Moving strike teams could hit run on zergs and wipe them...you had smaller scale pvp because of these things.

Swtor is a different beast, the reason you had 8v8/4v4 was simply because open world didn't exist...They tried it on Illum, People zerged the hell out of it and the lag made the game unplayable on anything past 10 players...So that's the only reason it existed in that game in my opinion.

Same with WoW, if ya go to any of the bigger Bg's just a big blob fest because AoE Caps. I've been in fights in AV in that game with both sides just clumped in a big ball an no one dying because the caps don't allow ya to kill people unless you assist.

you can examine other games like this as well; Rift for example had small scale PvP. It had BG's of course, and it had zerging but you ended up with actual small scale groups running around because again..in Rift, you could instant kill zergs...Dominator could run up on a Zerg out farming Rifts and instant kill have the zerg with 2 spells.

Now look at another game with AOE caps at the start, Guild Wars 2; by all accounts it should of developed small scale PvP..but it didn't, because the aoe caps resulted in guilds running in zerg balls spamming nothing but aoe's and other ***. You have the instanced SPvP but you never developed actual small scale roaming pvp because the game simply didn't cater to it, and now PvP in that game is nothing but a *** mess of people swapping keeps and zerging...Roaming is a joke and has died off on everything but the small population servers.

now look at ESO; before AOE caps were placed on a few skills you had actual small groups running around, soon as they were put in the game zerg balls started to develop and small scale started decreasing; now pvp is pretty much moving closer and closer to what GW2 was.

They waited to long to phase AOE caps out, and they promoted Zerg balls more and more each patch; the only time the game was started develop actual small scale pvp again was when Vicious death first came in. People were spreading out and pvp was started to get better.

Soon as Prox det and VD ate a nerf only larger groups could run the bombs and we're back to square one.

Hopefully CU doesn't repeat the same mistakes ESO and GW2 did

I could have fleshed out the thought process of mine a bit more here yeah

Basically my point was:
Open world pvp resulted in player driven competetive structures that focused around the games group size.
MMOs with other forms of pvp had the structure built in (BGs, Arenas).
Idk about wow large bgs - i only ever heared from my guildmates who played it of arenas being somewhat competetive in 2v2 3v3 and 4v4?
Eso had none of these for 3 years.

SHADOW2KK

I agree, more players for myself and my pvp guild to slaughter, ah the rain of ap and hate whispers.

Vilestride

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Kilandros wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

One of the most important things is imo:

Reduce groupsize.
Large groups put up a huge barrier people have to overcome to participate. The smaller the amount of people needed - the easier it is to get people to try to participate.
It´s easier to grab 5 friends out of a guild and form a semi functional group than it is to grab 15.
It also places more focus on guilds (multiple groups organised within the guild) and less one large group.
It´s a disincentive to run purgebots/rapidbots in group that put you at a huge advantage over "normal" players/builds.

Artificially trying to promote smaller group play by capping group size won't change anything. The only way to get small scale action to make a return is by reining back the balance changes that have made numbers the dominant meta.

Parties of 5 can still stack together to steamroll a single Party of 5

Oh i don´t want that to promote smallscale action.
I want it to promote zerg action where people feel compelled to participate.
I´m actually a huge fan of zerging and largescale pvp - eso is just delivering a pretty trash experience in that regard.

Currently the ability of a large group to change the tide of battle (or just mindlessly farm pugs for hours) is far to influencial on general pvp. You can not fight a large group unless you´re running one yourself (or you can fight but you can not kill them).
This is a huge hurdle to overcome for new players.

Changing groupsize changes the dynamic of zerging because it becomes harder to organize (and optimizing at the same level we´re seeing at the moment won´t be possible anymore because sth like rapid or purgebots will simply vanish).
Getting 4 parties of 5 to stick together is way harder than getting 19 people to follow crown AND it´s less effective if you restrict certain effects to group only.

The core argument is: Finding 5 people to play with is easier than finding 15.
Pvp needs to be accessible. Largescale pvp is the main goal for cyrodiil - yet it´s the most inaccessible form of pvp there is.
It´s not about changing how people play. It´s about getting them to play in the first place and having it as accessible as possible.

To promote smallscale you´d have to bring mobility back. That´s an entirely different page.

This is.....a very interesting and compelling argument.

I too love unorganized large scale PvP -- "unorganized" meaning no ball groups present, just a big siege with mostly small groups and pugs and maybe a few large groups who don't ball up on each other and roll over everyone else, with several skirmishes happening at the same time all over and around the keep.

I wonder how such a change would affect the game in the long term for the current large scale players. @Satiar @Vincelex and @Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO if ZOS were to implement a group cap of 5, how would you and your guildies react?

I don't think this would be a positive change. The people it will affect the most are casual pick up group players who want to come into cyro, hit LFG and be in a group and they are currently the only meat on the otherwise skin and bone PVP population.

But wouldn't this just mean more, smaller PUG groups opposed to fewer large ones Vile? No, I highly doubt it, the rarest kind of player (even rarer than the honourable kind of player who is 1v1ing you then a random from his faction shows up so he stops fighting you to let you kill said random and then continues the 1v1) is leaders. As it is, at least you can have a 1:23 ratio of people willing to lead:not. Drop group to 5 and say goodbye to the casual PvPer who just wants to zerg surf a while. While it may sound like a welcome goodbye it's counter-intuitive to attempting to re-populate cyrodil. While I know '5' is an arbitrary value in this and subject to debate/change lets just go with it for arguments sake.

As for 'Zergballs', I am going to assume you mean organised raids. IMO it will make them stronger than ever before. The skills that distinguish these organised groups and top tier guilds compared to more casual ones are Teamwork, Co-operation and Communication. They are going to be the only ones capable of sticking together despite not being in the same group with a crown. Believe me, I and my guild mates don't need a crown to follow our leader. The only threat to an organised guild is other organised guilds. If you make it inherently harder to organise groups, the gap between top tier and mid/lower tier guilds will widen, not close. This is all speculative, and as Iz posted before, this is if said 'zergballs' would choose to still run in larger groups if they no longer needed to to participate in the game play they want to be involved with.

As far as eliminating the roles of purge/rapid bots, for one, I think the existence of not only having, but requiring dedicated support roles in organised group play is hugely positive for the game and not the other way around as derra is proposing. Its a good thing that not everyone is building to be the same well rounded 1VX machine. Maybe we see it differently but my view is this:

- While in a 4 man each person has their 7 armour pieces, 3 jewellery and then weapons, 12 skill slots each to get the job done. They all build to be self sustaining, self reliant individuals. Great. cool, this is the nature of small scale, nothing wrong with it and I would hate to see it die out. BUT I also don't think there is anything wrong with having a proper group composition in large scale game play either. Don't think of it as 12 people. Think of it as 1 person, with 84 armour slots, 36 jewllery slots and 144 skill slots optimizing those the same way an individual does. This creates and allows for a diversity of roles, why would you want to take that away?

Whether or not you share my philosophy about this being positive or negative is irrelevant in this context anyway. Regarding lowering group sizes, again, It won't hinder these organised groups. They already compose their groups intelligently and will manage to achieve the same support/heals/damage balance they already do. Hypothetically I would just compose groups in sets of 4(5 or whatever) at a ratio of 2 damage, 1 healer, 1 support, and build up to your total group number following that formula. Have each of those sets run together with a sub leader of sorts, all following the existing raid leader. That structured group composition isn't even that different from how its already done.

TL:DR: Overall I think its an interesting idea, and I would actually be keen to try running say, 3 groups of 4 together as one to see how it affects our organisation. But my prediction is that it wouldn't break up organised guilds, it wouldn't remove the general zergs who are mostly just 1's and 2's heading in the same direction anyway but it would however destroy the PUG population, which I think is fundamental to the health of Cyrodil and its longevity. I don't think group size is a priority reform and the other points touched on in this thread take precedent.

Just my 2 bits.

Xsorus

Derra wrote: »

Xsorus wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

@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.

Yeap, DAOC ended up with 8v8 groups because 8 was the base group, and you didn't have a UI frame for zergs in that game...You had zergs yes..but you had 8v8 being one of the main competitions in that game...It co existed in RVR with zergs and you didn't have a need for instance based Battlegrounds.

Warhammer Online had 6v6 but what helped it maintain smaller group action was the fact that AOE's in that game could wipe the hell out of zergs, It worked same way in DAOC...Zergs in that game were slower as well so again...Fast Moving strike teams could hit run on zergs and wipe them...you had smaller scale pvp because of these things.

Swtor is a different beast, the reason you had 8v8/4v4 was simply because open world didn't exist...They tried it on Illum, People zerged the hell out of it and the lag made the game unplayable on anything past 10 players...So that's the only reason it existed in that game in my opinion.

Same with WoW, if ya go to any of the bigger Bg's just a big blob fest because AoE Caps. I've been in fights in AV in that game with both sides just clumped in a big ball an no one dying because the caps don't allow ya to kill people unless you assist.

you can examine other games like this as well; Rift for example had small scale PvP. It had BG's of course, and it had zerging but you ended up with actual small scale groups running around because again..in Rift, you could instant kill zergs...Dominator could run up on a Zerg out farming Rifts and instant kill have the zerg with 2 spells.

Now look at another game with AOE caps at the start, Guild Wars 2; by all accounts it should of developed small scale PvP..but it didn't, because the aoe caps resulted in guilds running in zerg balls spamming nothing but aoe's and other ***. You have the instanced SPvP but you never developed actual small scale roaming pvp because the game simply didn't cater to it, and now PvP in that game is nothing but a *** mess of people swapping keeps and zerging...Roaming is a joke and has died off on everything but the small population servers.

now look at ESO; before AOE caps were placed on a few skills you had actual small groups running around, soon as they were put in the game zerg balls started to develop and small scale started decreasing; now pvp is pretty much moving closer and closer to what GW2 was.

They waited to long to phase AOE caps out, and they promoted Zerg balls more and more each patch; the only time the game was started develop actual small scale pvp again was when Vicious death first came in. People were spreading out and pvp was started to get better.

Soon as Prox det and VD ate a nerf only larger groups could run the bombs and we're back to square one.

Hopefully CU doesn't repeat the same mistakes ESO and GW2 did

I could have fleshed out the thought process of mine a bit more here yeah

Basically my point was:
Open world pvp resulted in player driven competetive structures that focused around the games group size.
MMOs with other forms of pvp had the structure built in (BGs, Arenas).
Idk about wow large bgs - i only ever heared from my guildmates who played it of arenas being somewhat competetive in 2v2 3v3 and 4v4?
Eso had none of these for 3 years.

Pretty much

At this point to change player mindset and such they'd have to force it in game.

That means capping group size in AVA at something like 8. I don't see them doing that though as you'd have a lot of guilds cry about it.

You'd still have zerg guilds but you'd have more smaller 8v8 fights forming up. I'm sure some would try going above the 8 cap and running extra's and such but you'd be surprised how quickly the community would turn on people doing that.

for example in DAOC the 1v1 meta was so ingrained in the community that interrupting a fight would get you called out big time and was considered flat out insulting....Most people would pull off and let you fight the person who jumped in.

That doesn't happen in this game, I tried it at the start but pretty much I was the only one doing it and would get zerged down two seconds later by the person i didn't jump in on.

So a mind set has to set in, and they'll have to force it at this point.

zyk

@Lore_lai Uhm, you obviously don't know how I play either. I fight in pretty much every scenario except with an objective mentality. So when I'm fighting small groups like you seem to suggest yours might be like, we're fighting in the same kind of environment, no? Though I've clearly touched a nerve, I haven't actually accused you of anything.

You may disagree, but my argument is on topic. As I said, I believe the types of engagements I'm talking about impede growth. Further, I believe the culture of noob hunting that exists in ESO encourages less apt players to stack. I think that if casuals and new players had more opportunities to fight other players of a similar skill set, they'd be more inclined to spread out, reducing lag.

@Derra The examples I use from other environments relate purely to competition. Like I've said, ultimately I blame ZOS for poor design and not designing mechanisms to better right-size fights for better competitive parity. I think there are a lot of ways to do this in AvA. But ZOS has no solutions at the moment. ZOS has no solutions for any issues in AvA.

Players, on the other hand, do have other options if we choose to take them. I think if coordinated small groups fought each other more often -- not all the time -- it would provide an opportunity for a better experience everyone.

Just because there is no structure for 100% even fights doesn't mean the best players shouldn't regularly fight each other.

It's not just my opinion. In NA, there have been small group players vocal about more GvG and there have been attempts to make that happen more. They just don't gain traction. I've been told by players in the NA scene that there is a lack of will. From what I've seen, there's been better success with that on the EU side.

I think that we all suffer from survivorship bias to some degree. ESO AvA is a failed game. The vast majority of players left years ago. It might be that we, collectively, are fringe players and not representative of what a healthy ESO AvA -- Not CS, DOAC or any other game -- might look like.

It's very hard for me to imagine a successful game with the competitive dynamics we have today. I think it is ungratifying to most hardcore gamers and frustrating for casuals.

Edit: I think I'm conveying my message in harsher terms than is needed. It's not intended to be personal at all. I have much respect for small group players -- especially those who have posted in this thread. It is not my intent to shame anyone or suggest the way I play is beyond reproach.

SugaComa

I personally feel that a 4 hour campaign would be great ... You can set up a game time and challenge a faction or even an internal guild event ... It would be easier to arrange time to meet and plus after the four hours the zone would rest to a neutral position forcing actual PvP combat, none of this oh it's all blue I'll come back and when I've got a group and night cap

It would stop emperors and factions dominating maps for hours or days

Also if you got emp in the last 72 hours you can't be re crowned emp .. this would reduce the amount of account sharing going on too

Grim13

-remove the empty campaigns that are now almost strictly being used for emp farming.

Irylia

zyk wrote: »

Here's a way to stop discouraging new players from playing PVP:

Stop forming OP groups and farming randoms. Instead, why not look for other OP groups for actually good fights?

It's really surprising to me that this is still *such* a thing.

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.

We would like to but there are people who would rather not fight us.

We have a few GVG fights on my channel. Most of them are rare occurrences in open world so not a mock set up.
We offered to fight legion again since we didn't notice their 6th was a pug at the time. They refuse but still remain confident that they would 100% win.

Animosity just wants fun and challenging fights against other "organized/top level" groups of an equal size or near equal.
Like you said, most people would rather farm pugs.

clocksstoppe

Not having to walk half an hour to get to the action would be a good start..

NightbladeMechanics

Irylia wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Here's a way to stop discouraging new players from playing PVP:

Stop forming OP groups and farming randoms. Instead, why not look for other OP groups for actually good fights?

It's really surprising to me that this is still *such* a thing.

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.

We would like to but there are people who would rather not fight us.

We have a few GVG fights on my channel. Most of them are rare occurrences in open world so not a mock set up.
We offered to fight legion again since we didn't notice their 6th was a pug at the time. They refuse but still remain confident that they would 100% win.

Animosity just wants fun and challenging fights against other "organized/top level" groups of an equal size or near equal.
Like you said, most people would rather farm pugs.

You've not contacted me for a "rematch," just as you've never contacted me for an actual match to begin with. We haven't talked, so please don't put words in my mouth.

You're also late to the competitive small group party. Guilds like mine, Adamant, Full Metal Carebears, the cores of all the large group guilds, and a few nonguild small groups tryharded all last year, ending in late One Tamriel. Now we're tired and burned out and want nothing to do with your YouTube drama.

Not one of those guilds has led a serious small group in over three patches, and most of their players don't even play regularly. I myself didn't play for half of Homestead, again for half of Morrowind, and I spent the first few weeks of HotR logging in twice a week. 4/5 of my old core members have quit permanently or performed nefarious transactions with their accounts since Homestead began, and the overwhelming response from my new and remaining members when asked if they want to work on small group compositions, builds, tactics, or anything more than wearing glass cannon 1vX builds in a 3 man group and running around for an hour or two a couple times a week is "meh, I don't have the energy for that."

If you'd really wanted to compete, you'd have been running groups and coming to our GvG events from Thieves Guild through 1T instead of talking trash in duels and posting exposed videos on YouTube. You also wouldn't have lost your cool and kicked everyone from the Inner Fire battlegrounds guild. Now, this game is boring and played out, and literally no one cares anymore. So don't come here trying to derail my thread with your passive aggressive nonsense. We have a good conversation going, discussing ways ZOS can get more people to care again, and that's what's really important. If you really cared about revitalizing the competitive small group scene, you'd be building bridges and organizing instead of...this...

FYI three of your guys have been talking *** on the forums and in game to multiple groups. No one believes you guys are just in this for "fun and challenging fights" based on the actions of you and yours. Cheers.

~~~

@zyk the best tool the game ever had for teaching up randoms into actually good players was Legend. Up until Dark Brotherhood patch, randoms who had interest in improving could join the two big dueling guilds, Legend and later Mighty, and instantly gain access to every top tier player in the game in one guild. They'd be able to watch the top players fight, observe their conversations in guild chat, ask questions, potato into them if they wanted, and work with players of comparable skill levels to themselves as they learned. Skill tiers in this game are like terraced plateaus stacked high, where you cannot see all the higher ones beyond the next one looming over you. Legend elevated players, and currently we have no system for doing that because now that dueling is an in game feature, the good players don't need a guild slot for it.

Also the good small groups used to fight each other all the time, and they were all fun and lighthearted events. Now, all of them have been burned out for quite some time.

But fighting pugs is still plenty difficult if they are numerous enough. It's actually technically harder than any even numbered fight because of how ZOS has balanced the game and the way numbers can stack up to match and exceed any amount of skill or preparation or builds or compositions. Once the pugs pile up to the point where you can't heal-tank their damage, you have to start using mobility and terrain to fight them, line of sighting parts of their groups, and looking to burst their squishy back liners and then keep moving while not giving up resses. Mobility and terrain and ressing don't weigh into evenly numbered small group fights much at all.

I could go on forever about the mechanics of small group fights and compositions, but meh. I think you get the picture.

NightbladeMechanics

Vilestride wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Kilandros wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

One of the most important things is imo:

Reduce groupsize.
Large groups put up a huge barrier people have to overcome to participate. The smaller the amount of people needed - the easier it is to get people to try to participate.
It´s easier to grab 5 friends out of a guild and form a semi functional group than it is to grab 15.
It also places more focus on guilds (multiple groups organised within the guild) and less one large group.
It´s a disincentive to run purgebots/rapidbots in group that put you at a huge advantage over "normal" players/builds.

Artificially trying to promote smaller group play by capping group size won't change anything. The only way to get small scale action to make a return is by reining back the balance changes that have made numbers the dominant meta.

Parties of 5 can still stack together to steamroll a single Party of 5

Oh i don´t want that to promote smallscale action.
I want it to promote zerg action where people feel compelled to participate.
I´m actually a huge fan of zerging and largescale pvp - eso is just delivering a pretty trash experience in that regard.

Currently the ability of a large group to change the tide of battle (or just mindlessly farm pugs for hours) is far to influencial on general pvp. You can not fight a large group unless you´re running one yourself (or you can fight but you can not kill them).
This is a huge hurdle to overcome for new players.

Changing groupsize changes the dynamic of zerging because it becomes harder to organize (and optimizing at the same level we´re seeing at the moment won´t be possible anymore because sth like rapid or purgebots will simply vanish).
Getting 4 parties of 5 to stick together is way harder than getting 19 people to follow crown AND it´s less effective if you restrict certain effects to group only.

The core argument is: Finding 5 people to play with is easier than finding 15.
Pvp needs to be accessible. Largescale pvp is the main goal for cyrodiil - yet it´s the most inaccessible form of pvp there is.
It´s not about changing how people play. It´s about getting them to play in the first place and having it as accessible as possible.

To promote smallscale you´d have to bring mobility back. That´s an entirely different page.

This is.....a very interesting and compelling argument.

I too love unorganized large scale PvP -- "unorganized" meaning no ball groups present, just a big siege with mostly small groups and pugs and maybe a few large groups who don't ball up on each other and roll over everyone else, with several skirmishes happening at the same time all over and around the keep.

I wonder how such a change would affect the game in the long term for the current large scale players. @Satiar @Vincelex and @Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO if ZOS were to implement a group cap of 5, how would you and your guildies react?

I don't think this would be a positive change. The people it will affect the most are casual pick up group players who want to come into cyro, hit LFG and be in a group and they are currently the only meat on the otherwise skin and bone PVP population.

But wouldn't this just mean more, smaller PUG groups opposed to fewer large ones Vile? No, I highly doubt it, the rarest kind of player (even rarer than the honourable kind of player who is 1v1ing you then a random from his faction shows up so he stops fighting you to let you kill said random and then continues the 1v1) is leaders. As it is, at least you can have a 1:23 ratio of people willing to lead:not. Drop group to 5 and say goodbye to the casual PvPer who just wants to zerg surf a while. While it may sound like a welcome goodbye it's counter-intuitive to attempting to re-populate cyrodil. While I know '5' is an arbitrary value in this and subject to debate/change lets just go with it for arguments sake.

As for 'Zergballs', I am going to assume you mean organised raids. IMO it will make them stronger than ever before. The skills that distinguish these organised groups and top tier guilds compared to more casual ones are Teamwork, Co-operation and Communication. They are going to be the only ones capable of sticking together despite not being in the same group with a crown. Believe me, I and my guild mates don't need a crown to follow our leader. The only threat to an organised guild is other organised guilds. If you make it inherently harder to organise groups, the gap between top tier and mid/lower tier guilds will widen, not close. This is all speculative, and as Iz posted before, this is if said 'zergballs' would choose to still run in larger groups if they no longer needed to to participate in the game play they want to be involved with.

As far as eliminating the roles of purge/rapid bots, for one, I think the existence of not only having, but requiring dedicated support roles in organised group play is hugely positive for the game and not the other way around as derra is proposing. Its a good thing that not everyone is building to be the same well rounded 1VX machine. Maybe we see it differently but my view is this:

- While in a 4 man each person has their 7 armour pieces, 3 jewellery and then weapons, 12 skill slots each to get the job done. They all build to be self sustaining, self reliant individuals. Great. cool, this is the nature of small scale, nothing wrong with it and I would hate to see it die out. BUT I also don't think there is anything wrong with having a proper group composition in large scale game play either. Don't think of it as 12 people. Think of it as 1 person, with 84 armour slots, 36 jewllery slots and 144 skill slots optimizing those the same way an individual does. This creates and allows for a diversity of roles, why would you want to take that away?

Whether or not you share my philosophy about this being positive or negative is irrelevant in this context anyway. Regarding lowering group sizes, again, It won't hinder these organised groups. They already compose their groups intelligently and will manage to achieve the same support/heals/damage balance they already do. Hypothetically I would just compose groups in sets of 4(5 or whatever) at a ratio of 2 damage, 1 healer, 1 support, and build up to your total group number following that formula. Have each of those sets run together with a sub leader of sorts, all following the existing raid leader. That structured group composition isn't even that different from how its already done.

TL:DR: Overall I think its an interesting idea, and I would actually be keen to try running say, 3 groups of 4 together as one to see how it affects our organisation. But my prediction is that it wouldn't break up organised guilds, it wouldn't remove the general zergs who are mostly just 1's and 2's heading in the same direction anyway but it would however destroy the PUG population, which I think is fundamental to the health of Cyrodil and its longevity. I don't think group size is a priority reform and the other points touched on in this thread take precedent.

Just my 2 bits.

I definitely do think that cutting the group cap would result in groupless pugs just hording together even worse than they already do, and leaving organized, skilled players more helpless to deal with them. As much lag as organized large groups create, they do keep the pug tides in check. If ZOS were to reduce the group cap, they'd have to create some very strong positive incentives to spread people out, such as new objectives around the edges of the map that actually contribute to the campaign and reward the players who travel to and fight for them with meaningful and desirable rewards.

That might be a good step toward creating more pug group leaders, too, without having to change the group cap. Right now what does leading a pug group entail? Getting your group together, running down one of the main lanes, sieging the next keep or outpost...and you're fighting against 40 other people to take it, so you'd better get as many players in group plus others around you to do so. Or, you can venture off the emp ring and PvDoor something. Neither of those sound very fun to me.

@zyk that line of conversation might interest you, too. Imagine a Cyrodiil with lots of significant little objectives scattered all around the map. People would split up and fight all over the place to control them, with small groups actually having new content to spark their reinterest, and objectives to encounter one another over outside of zerg lanes and resources. How exciting!

Satiar

I'm nearing the end of my time raiding in ESO and doing a lot of looking back on what went right and what went wrong. I think the biggest mistake made is separating PvE from PvP. For PvP to be lasting and meaningful it can't be opt in.

The death of open world PvP was the quest to find Good Fights. At a certain point you're basically trying to recreate the arena experience in an open world environment. And that leads to nowhere good. There needed to be a goal behind it. You pvp for gear, for weapons, for resources, for territory. The point system was ineffective and didn't give enough for everyone to care.

Remember farming coldharbour for flowers? That shoulda been in Cyrodiil! There should have been great farming areas, places combatants and non-combatants went to farm, attack and protect. All the crazy fights I've been in and led these 3 years, one of the most memorable was defending a duelling event from griefers and getting paid for it. *** awesome! We needed more stuff like that. Cyrodiil devolved into some kind of gentleman's war where nothing was worth fighting over so the only benefit was the fight itself. The pride. But that fades as guilds fade and old players leave.

Objectives is the wrong way of looking at it. It need(ed?) to be something of value. There needed to be things of value in the corners and valleys that weren't easily available elsewhere. anything else avd we eventually get where we are now.

It's been fun but it has a clear ending point and expirey date and seeing it is depressing.

Ishammael

Shout-out to @NightbladeMechanics for making this thread. For ZOS: take it as a last cry for help. If Kena is taking a break, you should know that the game is in bad shape. Many of the ideas we've had over the years have made it into the game... but not enough. The playerbase is probably dead until you can come back with a set of plans to upgrade or improve PvP. Otherwise, I think you're stuck milking crowns from PvE players.

Irylia wrote: »

We would like to but there are people who would rather not fight us.

We have a few GVG fights on my channel. Most of them are rare occurrences in open world so not a mock set up.
We offered to fight legion again since we didn't notice their 6th was a pug at the time. They refuse but still remain confident that they would 100% win.

Animosity just wants fun and challenging fights against other "organized/top level" groups of an equal size or near equal.
Like you said, most people would rather farm pugs.

Two things:
1. You're like two years too late for "top level" action. Nobody really cares anymore (ergo, this thread). Peak competitiveness was like 1.5/1.6... maybe some of 1.7. The last "tryhard" PvP was probably a year ago (Fall 16).
2. Your YouTube channel is absolutely and utterly toxic, which is why nobody wants to "GvG" you.

NightbladeMechanics

Satiar wrote: »

I'm nearing the end of my time raiding in ESO and doing a lot of looking back on what went right and what went wrong. I think the biggest mistake made is separating PvE from PvP. For PvP to be lasting and meaningful it can't be opt in.

The death of open world PvP was the quest to find Good Fights. At a certain point you're basically trying to recreate the arena experience in an open world environment. And that leads to nowhere good. There needed to be a goal behind it. You pvp for gear, for weapons, for resources, for territory. The point system was ineffective and didn't give enough for everyone to care.

Remember farming coldharbour for flowers? That shoulda been in Cyrodiil! There should have been great farming areas, places combatants and non-combatants went to farm, attack and protect. All the crazy fights I've been in and led these 3 years, one of the most memorable was defending a duelling event from griefers and getting paid for it. *** awesome! We needed more stuff like that. Cyrodiil devolved into some kind of gentleman's war where nothing was worth fighting over so the only benefit was the fight itself. The pride. But that fades as guilds fade and old players leave.

Objectives is the wrong way of looking at it. It need(ed?) to be something of value. There needed to be things of value in the corners and valleys that weren't easily available elsewhere. anything else avd we eventually get where we are now.

It's been fun but it has a clear ending point and expirey date and seeing it is depressing.

I use the term "objectives" loosely. Flowers and other farmables are perfectly good incentives and one idea that I think would gain a lot of traction with the community. I think @Ishammael incorporated that into his big rework of Cyrodiil a while back, but he's among the afk players these days.

Sad to hear that you may quit playing soon.

Ishammael

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

I'm nearing the end of my time raiding in ESO and doing a lot of looking back on what went right and what went wrong. I think the biggest mistake made is separating PvE from PvP. For PvP to be lasting and meaningful it can't be opt in.

The death of open world PvP was the quest to find Good Fights. At a certain point you're basically trying to recreate the arena experience in an open world environment. And that leads to nowhere good. There needed to be a goal behind it. You pvp for gear, for weapons, for resources, for territory. The point system was ineffective and didn't give enough for everyone to care.

Remember farming coldharbour for flowers? That shoulda been in Cyrodiil! There should have been great farming areas, places combatants and non-combatants went to farm, attack and protect. All the crazy fights I've been in and led these 3 years, one of the most memorable was defending a duelling event from griefers and getting paid for it. *** awesome! We needed more stuff like that. Cyrodiil devolved into some kind of gentleman's war where nothing was worth fighting over so the only benefit was the fight itself. The pride. But that fades as guilds fade and old players leave.

Objectives is the wrong way of looking at it. It need(ed?) to be something of value. There needed to be things of value in the corners and valleys that weren't easily available elsewhere. anything else avd we eventually get where we are now.

It's been fun but it has a clear ending point and expirey date and seeing it is depressing.

I use the term "objectives" loosely. Flowers and other farmables is a perfectly good incentive and one idea that I think would gain a lot of traction with the community. I think @Ishammael incorporated that into his big rework of Cyrodiil a while back, but he's among the afk players these days.

What is ESO?

NightbladeMechanics

Ishammael wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

I'm nearing the end of my time raiding in ESO and doing a lot of looking back on what went right and what went wrong. I think the biggest mistake made is separating PvE from PvP. For PvP to be lasting and meaningful it can't be opt in.

The death of open world PvP was the quest to find Good Fights. At a certain point you're basically trying to recreate the arena experience in an open world environment. And that leads to nowhere good. There needed to be a goal behind it. You pvp for gear, for weapons, for resources, for territory. The point system was ineffective and didn't give enough for everyone to care.

Remember farming coldharbour for flowers? That shoulda been in Cyrodiil! There should have been great farming areas, places combatants and non-combatants went to farm, attack and protect. All the crazy fights I've been in and led these 3 years, one of the most memorable was defending a duelling event from griefers and getting paid for it. *** awesome! We needed more stuff like that. Cyrodiil devolved into some kind of gentleman's war where nothing was worth fighting over so the only benefit was the fight itself. The pride. But that fades as guilds fade and old players leave.

Objectives is the wrong way of looking at it. It need(ed?) to be something of value. There needed to be things of value in the corners and valleys that weren't easily available elsewhere. anything else avd we eventually get where we are now.

It's been fun but it has a clear ending point and expirey date and seeing it is depressing.

I use the term "objectives" loosely. Flowers and other farmables is a perfectly good incentive and one idea that I think would gain a lot of traction with the community. I think @Ishammael incorporated that into his big rework of Cyrodiil a while back, but he's among the afk players these days.

What is ESO?

Autumnhart

Satiar wrote: »

Cyrodiil devolved into some kind of gentleman's war where nothing was worth fighting over so the only benefit was the fight itself. The pride. But that fades as guilds fade and old players leave.

Objectives is the wrong way of looking at it. It need(ed?) to be something of value. There needed to be things of value in the corners and valleys that weren't easily available elsewhere. anything else avd we eventually get where we are now.

I like our gentleman's war, but I can only agree with you. The motivation to fight needs to be strong enough to overcome the obstacles. Simple enjoyment of PVP is only going to get me through so many endless loading screens.

Ishammael

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Ishammael wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

I'm nearing the end of my time raiding in ESO and doing a lot of looking back on what went right and what went wrong. I think the biggest mistake made is separating PvE from PvP. For PvP to be lasting and meaningful it can't be opt in.

The death of open world PvP was the quest to find Good Fights. At a certain point you're basically trying to recreate the arena experience in an open world environment. And that leads to nowhere good. There needed to be a goal behind it. You pvp for gear, for weapons, for resources, for territory. The point system was ineffective and didn't give enough for everyone to care.

Remember farming coldharbour for flowers? That shoulda been in Cyrodiil! There should have been great farming areas, places combatants and non-combatants went to farm, attack and protect. All the crazy fights I've been in and led these 3 years, one of the most memorable was defending a duelling event from griefers and getting paid for it. *** awesome! We needed more stuff like that. Cyrodiil devolved into some kind of gentleman's war where nothing was worth fighting over so the only benefit was the fight itself. The pride. But that fades as guilds fade and old players leave.

Objectives is the wrong way of looking at it. It need(ed?) to be something of value. There needed to be things of value in the corners and valleys that weren't easily available elsewhere. anything else avd we eventually get where we are now.

It's been fun but it has a clear ending point and expirey date and seeing it is depressing.

I use the term "objectives" loosely. Flowers and other farmables is a perfectly good incentive and one idea that I think would gain a lot of traction with the community. I think @Ishammael incorporated that into his big rework of Cyrodiil a while back, but he's among the afk players these days.

What is ESO?

Pooh-bear!

waitwhat

Add gold mats to vendors for 100k AP each, perhaps purchasable after a certain alliance rank or after a given daily quest is completed.

Alternatively, Grand Warlord Sorcalin could sent us some--or have a chance to-- in the rewards for the worthy once we reach First Seargant G1.

You don't want to nuke the economy, but handing out useful rewards like that, tied to real, authentic participation would help.

waitwhat

Also make CP respecs and re-morphing zero-cost. 3k gold multiple times per-day (more if re-morphing) really cramps switching between the two, more so for those newer to the game without large cash-reserves/steady income.

It is extremely inconvenient to do both PvE and PvP on the same character, and that probably deters the new blood just at the point where they would be getting in to Cyrodiil.

This is sad, because Cyrodiil is so good for players starting off now.

Not enough gold to buy soul gems, potions, or good food? The siege merchant provides.
Need friends or an actually active guild? You'll be surprised what a PuG can lead to.
Need to work on your situational awareness? Set up siege walker!
Want to browse ultra-cheap traders your can't find anywhere else? Check who claimed those keeps.

As far as the toxicity goes, I find end-game trials players to be farm more uptight, condescending, and inflexible than end-game PvP try-hards. Most of those try-hards are stoned af too, at least on AD, and as a new player, the chances of you being whispered hate-mail are very, very small. Hate-mail is how you know you've made it in Cyrodiil.

Cyrodiil is an egalitarian land of opportunity filled with constantly-evolving challenges. It rewards creativity not only in build-construction, but positioning, timing, and foresight more than any other activity in ESO. Approach it genuinely, and you will receive genuine rewards.