Cyrodiil Needs More Outposts

EdmundTowers

Would it be possible to edit the map to put an outpost between every single keep? AND I MEAN EVERY SINGLE KEEP. All campaigns will be pop locked 24/7 after that. Seriously. Can ZOS just copy paste nik/sej/bleakers all over the map plz. Thanks. All the deaths due to bugs, lag, getting zerged down, whatever; wouldn't be so bad if we could just jump right back into the action without having to deal with horse riding simulator all the time.

generalmyrick

more objectives! yes! like objectives that give vital resources!!! docks, forts, mountain fortresses, naval warfare, lots and lots!!!

ANYTHING TO SPREAD US OUT AND GIVE US MORE ACTION! and kill the 60 man zergs.

LegendaryMage

Arguably one more outpost could be placed between alessia and roe, but a whole map filled with outposts? Not happening.

The rest of the towns need a capturing system and the whole town thing needs additional flavoring to make it more worthwhile to spend time there and defend it.

Apart from providing gear shopping opportunities, they need to provide other benefits like keeps and/or imperial districts do. And even those could use a bit of improvements.

You know what actually. Cyrodiil, Imperial City and PVP in general could use a LOT of improvements. Perhaps a whole update focused solely on PVP.

VaranisArano

If rezzing up and getting back to the action is a problem, try putting down a Alliance War Camp. Otherwise, try increasing the speed on your mount so that you actually can get back to the fight. Or, fight with a group that can rez you. If you die a lot, please use the 5 minute rez camp penalty or the time it takes to ride back to your objective to consider what you could do differently or pick a different target. Seriously, this is exactly the situation that Alliance War Camps were designed for. If you want constant rezzing with a small time penalty before you get back in the fight, go to the Imperial City or Battlegrounds where that mechanism exists to benefit small group/individual pvp.

Giving more objectives is not actually going to spread out the fights unless you make them worthwhile to the fight. Currently, outposts are useful in terms of maintaining your own factions' transit and cutting the enemies' transit around the emperor ring keeps.

Or for another way to think about it, outposts sit in between the home keeps of two different factions. Bleakers is between the home keeps of EP and DC. Sejanus is between the home keeps of AD and EP. Nickel is between the home keeps of AD and DC. The outpost serves as a buffer zone for alliances to fight in and defend neutral ground before the enemy pushes into their home keeps.

Why would an alliance need an outpost in between its own home keeps? Its faster to ride in from the tri-keep of Arrius, Glademist, or Faregyl. Putting an outpost in the middle of your home keeps also makes it much harder to drive out an invading force and spreads out your available defense. It will not increase the number of players, nor does it really spread out the available players. It just gives another location for the large groups to defend/attack.

If you want to focus on objectives and find fights in places that aren't the normal zerg routes, go get a small to large group yourself and play the map. Make the enemy fight on your terms.

geonsocal

for the love of rngeezus - please out one between aleswell and ash...that's a legit 3 minute trip...

Serjustin19

I do like the idea of bringing more Outposts. But unfortunately there will be still 3, out post standing. To me each Outpost, represents each alliance.

The outpost in a way is like an ouroboros, in itself. One alliance eating the other, I mean fighting each other.... (Please no more bananas, blueberry and strawberries references..)

Since 1 outpost for 1 alliance and ouroboros, we won't have anymore new Outposts soon. However it don't make sense, due to fact DC and AD mostly attack EP. But my campaign I'd getting better though. Sadly no new Outposts soon

Anazasi

should add more towns to spread out the population from the center ring.

idk

EdmundTowers wrote: »

Would it be possible to edit the map to put an outpost between every single keep? AND I MEAN EVERY SINGLE KEEP. All campaigns will be pop locked 24/7 after that. Seriously. Can ZOS just copy paste nik/sej/bleakers all over the map plz. Thanks. All the deaths due to bugs, lag, getting zerged down, whatever; wouldn't be so bad if we could just jump right back into the action without having to deal with horse riding simulator all the time.

Zos would have to edit the map. spread things out some to make room for the outposts. It would have little, if any effect, on the game except give a few more objectives to conquer. In the end, we would still have a distance to travel if we had to respawn. Really not worth it to clutter up the map and spread the keeps out some to make room.

Anazasi

One of the issues I have with PVP is the scoring process. Zos has tried many times to make the low pop bonus work but players have been able to work around this in the past. We have all felt that the 3 towns in the game provide nothing other than spawn points and honestly having 2 of them so close to AD home Tri Keeps has been a nightmare since they were introduced. We all can accept that the large groups tend fight along the center most of the time or push whichever faction is getting hit by the other faction the hardest. This all leads to an hourly mad dash for resource pts. It's a stagnant cycle that needs to be broken mechanically.

What I think would be interesting and provide a real incentive for smaller groups is to make the town's count towards the scoring. But instead of their points being added to the hourly eval make them instant. Each time a town flips 1 point is added to the actual faction score. In order to control this potentially exploitable instant point mechanic a 15 min cool down should be used. ZOS talked about the resources 5 min flip rule but never implemented it so it should be possible. I believe this would add a new way for each faction to gain 12 additional points outside of scoring eval. This also would be a way to spread out the populations a little better and add another mechanism for campaign depth. It would also be interesting to see a few more towns incorporated into the play. Basically each town could flip multiple times in a hour but only count to scoring 4 times an hour. I don't think we would want more than 6 towns which would be a max of 24 pts potential gain per hour.
Needless to say I think the towns should play a more crucial role in the scoring of a campaign.

VaranisArano

Anazasi wrote: »

should add more towns to spread out the population from the center ring.

The whole reason the population is around the center ring is because that's how you maintain or capture the emperorship. The tri-keeps are how you capture scrolls. Towns are good for respawn points for strategic movement, but not particularly useful otherwise.

IcyDeadPeople

So many empty dungeons that serve no purpose other than PVE players collecting skyshards. Might be interesting to add small alliance-wide buffs you get from controlling certain caves, maybe even spawning there.

Also would like to see some more interesting missions, for example, disguise yourself as enemy player, sneak inside their keep to assassinate grand overlord or emperor etc. Maybe some sort of craftable traps and barricades you can use at the towns.

And why not add claimable guild store dialogue menu to every quartermaster in the game, including all the resources and towns. That would serve to make rss battles a little more interesting, help pvp players get needed supplies without having to leave Cyrodiil, and help smaller guilds make more sales.

Soris

More outposts plus all these locations marked in map with white icons(aka quest zones/dolmens/skyshards/little towns/mundus stones/delves/even imperial camps etc) all should have flags and give daily repeatable pvp related quests similar to pledges that can provide various random buffs, gold, ap, gear, tokens whatever. Keeps outside of inner circle should provide more benefit to holders.
All these with additionally Crown's outlaws faction idea would sure bring some fresh air to Cyro.

Hopping the zergtrain around inner circle keeps is boring as ***. It was fun in the first year but we are getting closer to 4th year and yet we haven't get any major pvp patch for cyrodiil wtf.

VaranisArano

Delves: if you kill a delve boss, you get a 20% AP buff that lasts for an hour. This is useful for all sorts of players and especially for players that are pushing for emperor. So, yes, delves have a greater purpose than holding skyshards.

Guild stores: guilds can claim keeps and resources, check out the Siege Merchants! If a guild that has a guild store claims a keep, everyone has access to their guild store. Now, there's also a fair amount of claiming keeps as a form of bragging rights, or troll names, or just plain bugged keeps that won't let anyone claim them...but saying this needs to be an option in the game is silly when it already is a part of the game. If you want to claim a siege merchant at a keep or resource, have the rank to do it, get there first, and hope it isn't bugged.

Missions: Yes...let's let players sneak into enemy keeps. Like there aren't enough issues with gap closers or ambushing someone going into a door already. If you want to do PVE in Cyrodiil, there's already plenty of PVE objectives in the towns for you to sneak around and complete to your heart's content. If you want to do Dark Brotherhood style missions, there's the whole DLC for that. Of course, its also possible for you to create your own mission to remain hidden in an enemy occupied keep and then kill a high ranking enemy player. If that's how you want to play, then play that way! Given that Emperors and Grand Overlords already have an achievement and dye for killing them, you already get rewarded for your prowess.

You have good suggestions! Turns out that ZOS agreed with you are already implemented them in the game!

IcyDeadPeople

VaranisArano wrote: »

Delves: if you kill a delve boss, you get a 20% AP buff that lasts for an hour. This is useful for all sorts of players and especially for players that are pushing for emperor. So, yes, delves have a greater purpose than holding skyshards.

We have this one already , but unfortunately not enough to incentivize people to play in the dungeons and engage in small scale battles inside. Sometimes I get this buff, but it takes less than a minute to enter, find a boss, kill it and then immediately suicide, spawn back at base. Can't even recall the last time I found an enemy player in a delve in Vivec.

If the delves could be captured with some sort small but attractive alliance wide buff, it would result in a lot more battles in there. Cracked Wood Cave used to be so much fun back in the day when a lot of people used it for grinding. Same goes for the towns back at launch when you could repeat those quests ad infinitum. Currently we have this massive Cyrodiil map with all these locations but usually nothing interesting going on inside.

VaranisArano wrote: »

Guild stores: guilds can claim keeps and resources, check out the Siege Merchants! If a guild that has a guild store claims a keep, everyone has access to their guild store. Now, there's also a fair amount of claiming keeps as a form of bragging rights, or troll names, or just plain bugged keeps that won't let anyone claim them...but saying this needs to be an option in the game is silly when it already is a part of the game. If you want to claim a siege merchant at a keep or resource, have the rank to do it, get there first, and hope it isn't bugged.

There is currently no guild store at resources, towns or outposts, only the keeps, which are usually claimed by trolls. Adding guild store menu to the quartermasters at resources, outposts and the towns might make battles there a bit more interesting, also help players in PVP get supplies and help smaller guilds make sales.

VaranisArano wrote: »

Missions: Yes...let's let players sneak into enemy keeps. Like there aren't enough issues with gap closers or ambushing someone going into a door already. If you want to do PVE in Cyrodiil, there's already plenty of PVE objectives in the towns for you to sneak around and complete to your heart's content. If you want to do Dark Brotherhood style missions, there's the whole DLC for that.

Certainly didn't claim this would be simple to implement, but if there is a way to do it, I think it would be a lot of fun with a new layer of alliance war gameplay to be able to disguise yourself as enemy faction.

Soris

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Same goes for the towns back at launch when you could repeat those quests ad infinitum

Oh man for first couple months after launch the pvp in those towns was neat. It was almost like vanilla WoW open world pvp.
People were travelling all across the map, going to those places for exploring or for whatever reasons. Every single point of interest in map had traffic and thus Cyro was feeling alive in those days. Now it's a *** wasteland.

EdmundTowers

VaranisArano wrote: »

If rezzing up and getting back to the action is a problem, try putting down a Alliance War Camp. Otherwise, try increasing the speed on your mount so that you actually can get back to the fight. Or, fight with a group that can rez you. If you die a lot, please use the 5 minute rez camp penalty or the time it takes to ride back to your objective to consider what you could do differently or pick a different target. Seriously, this is exactly the situation that Alliance War Camps were designed for. If you want constant rezzing with a small time penalty before you get back in the fight, go to the Imperial City or Battlegrounds where that mechanism exists to benefit small group/individual pvp.

Giving more objectives is not actually going to spread out the fights unless you make them worthwhile to the fight. Currently, outposts are useful in terms of maintaining your own factions' transit and cutting the enemies' transit around the emperor ring keeps.

Or for another way to think about it, outposts sit in between the home keeps of two different factions. Bleakers is between the home keeps of EP and DC. Sejanus is between the home keeps of AD and EP. Nickel is between the home keeps of AD and DC. The outpost serves as a buffer zone for alliances to fight in and defend neutral ground before the enemy pushes into their home keeps.

Why would an alliance need an outpost in between its own home keeps? Its faster to ride in from the tri-keep of Arrius, Glademist, or Faregyl. Putting an outpost in the middle of your home keeps also makes it much harder to drive out an invading force and spreads out your available defense. It will not increase the number of players, nor does it really spread out the available players. It just gives another location for the large groups to defend/attack.

If you want to focus on objectives and find fights in places that aren't the normal zerg routes, go get a small to large group yourself and play the map. Make the enemy fight on your terms.

Reading this is like reading the death recap tips. I know all this advice your trying to give me. I've lead groups, I know all this. This isn't the point. What I'm trying to get at is the fun factor.

A lot of players just want to jump in and fight. They're not interested in sieging or riding around and playing the map. These players flock to the outpost fights. This is the reason for the bridge wars and the nik/bleakers gate fights. Once one side wins it, and the losing side loses easy access to the outpost, most of the factions players just go to the other side of the map to fight over the other outpost. Then when they lose the other outpost too, a lot of players just log off until an organized guild eventually takes the map back. This happens a lot in the low pop servers and explains why they're dead when its all one color.

Outposts provide easy access to allies/enemies and familiar routes where you can find other players fighting and you can just jump in, which is why I think an easy fix to Cyrodiil would be to add more of them. Another bonus would be, if you put them on the right places around the map it would spread the players out.

EdmundTowers

I googled a map and opened up ms paint and came up with this:


Those solid color squares is where I suggest an outpost be added. There are 9 in total.
Zoomed in view: https://i.imgur.com/yxGVDD9.jpg

First off from a lore perspective, cyrodiil belonged to the Imperials. The three factions are invading it because the Imperials are distracted with the whole molagbal in IC issue. These outposts spread across the map would make sense as the Imperials built them to guard their empire. OK?

Purpose of each outposts:
1) 3 Outposts between Alessia-Roe, Aleswell-Ash, and Chalman-BRK. If a faction loses their home keep, they have a nearby outpost they can use to attack the keep they just lost. No 3 minute rides. Also, enemy groups can take these outposts and use them to attack a factions home keeps as they already do with the current outposts Nik, Sej, Bleaks. Side note, notice how these outposts are right next to the broken bridges leading to IC. Why wouldn't the imperials have built outposts near the entrances to their city?

2) 3 Outposts between Roe-Brindle, BRK-Drakelowe, Aleswell-Dragonclaw. The keeps on the corners are usually ignored and just get pvdoored most of the time. They're boring. Add an outpost nearby so players don't have to ride long distances to defend them. Also, enemy groups can take these outposts to attack the keeps mentioned.

3) 3 Outposts in the mid gates around the map. The middle bridge between Fare and Drakelowe, the middle gate between Glademist and Brindle, the middle gate between Arrius and Dragonclaw. They provide jump off points for bypassing the emp ring and going deep into enemy territory. Which is why they need to be defended/taken.

Also since we're talking about spreading players out. I would suggest to remove the requirement of taking 2 enemy tri keeps in order to open up a scroll gate. Just let us take the gate keep and and open up access to the scrolls. All these outposts I have on this map, combined with the towns would make great respawn points to allow players to fight in the unused areas of the map to get the scrolls. Which would provide a reason to leave the emp ring I think.

Edit: Another point, some of the outposts are right next to a town. Can you imagine the fights that would happen when one faction owns the town and the other the outpost? They might as well finish up adding flags to the other two remaining towns up north as well (I don't know their names, but you all know what I mean right?).

Edit2: Another balance change. Remove the ability for enemy factions to port in/port out of Fare, Arrius, and Glademist. Similar to how gate keeps are now. This is to address gate camping. There should be cons to gate camping, and that is: if you're gate camping, you can't just port to the other side of the map to gate camp the other faction and port back to gate camp another. Having the ability to port in and out of these keeps makes it easy to gate camp. If you want to screw over one faction, you should be stuck on that side of the map leaving you open to getting attacked elsewhere on the map until you die or leave.

idk

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

So many empty dungeons that serve no purpose other than PVE players collecting skyshards. Might be interesting to add small alliance-wide buffs you get from controlling certain caves, maybe even spawning there.

Also would like to see some more interesting missions, for example, disguise yourself as enemy player, sneak inside their keep to assassinate grand overlord or emperor etc. Maybe some sort of craftable traps and barricades you can use at the towns.

And why not add claimable guild store dialogue menu to every quartermaster in the game, including all the resources and towns. That would serve to make rss battles a little more interesting, help pvp players get needed supplies without having to leave Cyrodiil, and help smaller guilds make more sales.

Those dungeons serve great for PvP. lol. catching someone in there, try to be nice to let them pass and yet they try to attack. Good if their deaths help fill a kill enemy players quest.

But seriously, dungeons help give an AP bonus which is not bad and dolmens offer good weapons for AvA.

I agree that Zos may be able to come up with new quests that could add some interest. Not sure about the grand overlord quest suggested. It could cause issues with players that play in multiple alliances and have no ill intent with that since avid AvA players know regular players.

geonsocal

between aleswell and ash...make it so por favor...

Anazasi

VaranisArano wrote: »

Anazasi wrote: »

should add more towns to spread out the population from the center ring.

The whole reason the population is around the center ring is because that's how you maintain or capture the emperorship. The tri-keeps are how you capture scrolls. Towns are good for respawn points for strategic movement, but not particularly useful otherwise.

And if you could gain 24 pts per hour by controlling them the faction who can't fight the middle blobs or has lost all there center ring home keeps would have another option to remaining competitive in the score. Would also force the blobs to split up more to defend or other point objectives instead of resource farming. I think it's a win win mechanic for spreading out the fights.

Zbigb4life

generalmyrick wrote: »

more objectives! yes! like objectives that give vital resources!!! docks, forts, mountain fortresses, naval warfare, lots and lots!!!

ANYTHING TO SPREAD US OUT AND GIVE US MORE ACTION! and kill the 60 man zergs.

60 man zergs? What platform are you on, I encounter only 20-30 man zergs :'(

VaranisArano

Anazasi wrote: »

And if you could gain 24 pts per hour by controlling them the faction who can't fight the middle blobs or has lost all there center ring home keeps would have another option to remaining competitive in the score. Would also force the blobs to split up more to defend or other point objectives instead of resource farming. I think it's a win win mechanic for spreading out the fights.

Its just another form of resource farming, except that its even more of a pain for defenders to go out and take them back. Instead of hitting resources, groups could hit the outposts. This is more of a difference in degree, rather than in kind.