[PODCAST] Dracast - Episode 6: The Bashening - How to adapt to change.

Vilestride

Nah nah hold up, so the idea is a 7 day campaign that is only open once every few weeks. for arguments sake we said 6 but this number is relatively arbitrary. To enter this campaign costs you AP. Again the number is relatively arbitrary but let's say a million to enter (it has to be somewhat substantial). This is the only 'selection' requirement @MLRPZ. I was just using my CoD experience as an example, I don't mean people would be actually selected for this by hand

The idea of an entry fee however would mean at least the people partaking are somewhat committed for the seven days and at the least not entirely fresh of the block. For example it is not likely this campaign would see much participation from pick up groups though obviously they are free to do so if they wish.

The rewards for playing in this campaign would be higher (more AP earned / better rewards for the worthy ect). This is to give it an element of high risk high reward. The high rewarded would naturally attract all the best players who feel confident that they can compete against the other presumable good players participating.

The idea of it only being open once every X period of time is to make it less mundane and more of a finals series to an otherwise open season. In this the hope is that it would generate more hype and lend towards community discussion. it would give guilds time to prepare to participate and get people generally excited about what is to come.

Though it wouldn't be officially labelled a 'competitive' campaign, all of the previously mentioned rationale would, I imagine, lead to the general feeling that this was the 'prestigious' campaign to be winning and playing in.

@IxSTALKERxI It would have the same population cap restrictions as any other campaign

Hope that made the intention a little more clear. I will leave it to you guys to pick apart and 'refine' but yeah bottom line is the sentiment is to generate a 'high risk high reward' style of play that will attract confident players meaning they will in turn be met by other confident players.

-EDITED FOR SPELLING.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

@IxSTALKERxI @Etaniel @MLRPZ

The reward from this campaign would be a new teir of pvp specific weapons too. "Battlemaster weapons" with unique buffs to ava skills - still to be discussed and decided upon

IxSTALKERxI

I like the changes to scoring regarding resources and O'ticks. I like the evaluation timers to. I'm just not sure if the player base is large enough to support this other campaign though. Why not just encourage people to try and win in vivec?

Etaniel

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

@IxSTALKERxI @Etaniel @MLRPZ

The reward from this campaign would be a new teir of pvp specific weapons too. "Battlemaster weapons" with unique buffs to ava skills - still to be discussed and decided upon

Ok, this is already a better incentive than more AP etc.. I still see a flaw with that, as it's a permanent reward. What's to keep motivating someone to play that campaign once he's got his reward?


What about consumable rewards that you can't get anywhere else? Like special boosted foods or drinks that give a bit extra stats over regular purple/golden food? That way you still get an interesting reward that motivates you to fight for it, and at the same time you have to keep fighting for it because if you don't you'll run out of it.

MLRPZ

I Like the idea !

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

We didn't really go into that area as deeply. The basic goal was to say take a week off the normal campaign to fight to win this high end prize every 6 weeks or so not to abandon it full time.

Perhaps if they could be sold it might add incentive to repeat the content although I would prefer bound items.

The general aim was that the reward from the campaign would effectively be 2-3x as good as the normal campaign but with a fee to enter and less reward the worse you do (as a faction).

Seeing the numbers when they award double AP and telvar event etc we hoped that with all the changes the base pop could increase and support an event like this every few weeks.

HaroniNDeorum

Derra wrote: »

show previous quotes

Biro123 wrote: »

For me, ESO is the only game I know of where I can play without a group - having nobody rely on me (and my sudden AFK's) - yet still be able to take part in large-scale combat and help my team with heals/buffs etc.. Maybe that makes it casual friendly - but its a unique (afaik) feature that I really, really like. Yes - I'm the averaqe 'Random' - but there are quite a lot of us.
Don't be a-trying to break my game!

To be honest - i think smaller groups and less possible organisation would greatly improve the game for players like you (or me when i play solo).

Organisation of many is the enemy of the few. Removing the tools to organize many gives more points of attack for someone soloing/duoing.

... What? Do people really want less organisation? Ok. We clearly disagree in life itself.

kyle.wilson

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Image Regarding Scoring Evaluation Timer:

When and what campaign did this come from?
Dc pop locked while AD and EP at 1 and 2 bars.
Not even once in this graph is DC's pop lower than EP or AD's.

HaroniNDeorum

Going back to Iza and Drac ideas, i like and agree with 90% of the ideas, but i will suggest a change on resources job for their keeps, for example that LM limiting the number of defensive siege can really hurt a faction if its being double team. The 7 days campaign is a brilliant idea, i think it should be every 3 months like a seasonal (spring, winter, etc) to make a real hype when it comes and also a good competition

HaroniNDeorum

@Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO @Vilestride do you guys have some ideas for emperorship? On regular campaigns and potentially 7 days?

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

kyle.wilson wrote: »

show previous quotes

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Image Regarding Scoring Evaluation Timer:

When and what campaign did this come from?
Dc pop locked while AD and EP at 1 and 2 bars.
Not even once in this graph is DC's pop lower than EP or AD's.

@kyle.wilson
This is an image designed to show different combinations of campaign populations and their respective scoring evaluation timers as an illustration of the suggested change.

Its not indicative of a campaign population on any server and doesn't show all potential combinations. You can swap the colours around to any order.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

HaroniNDeorum wrote: »

Going back to Iza and Drac ideas, i like and agree with 90% of the ideas, but i will suggest a change on resources job for their keeps, for example that LM limiting the number of defensive siege can really hurt a faction if its being double team. The 7 days campaign is a brilliant idea, i think it should be every 3 months like a seasonal (spring, winter, etc) to make a real hype when it comes and also a good competition

It could potentially hurt the faction that is double teamed but equally there will normally be a reason for this team up and its a reason for people to go flip the resource back and spread fights around the keeps being pushed as well as give a reason for attackers to go capture it.

For the 7 day it could be less frequent but the rewards would have to be more impactful, this way if its every 6 weeks then players can work towards something longer term and be fairly likely to achieve it rather than "oh i didn't win this seasons... that sucks" kinda feeling.

HaroniNDeorum wrote: »

@Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO @Vilestride do you guys have some ideas for emperorship? On regular campaigns and potentially 7 days?

So the only change we mentioned re. emp was to make it faction-account bound. so if you got emp your account got it (for the faction you are signed up on) that way you can play whatever characters you want on the road to emp as well as when you become it.

We discussed quicker dethrone mechanics, having to hold more than one keep and there were a load of suggestions that other players made too which we considered adding to the notes as well. At the end of the day we felt like although the emp keep fights can get quite laggy its normally more due to the tick behaviour then anything else and emp is a nice achievement to make and if it was very easy to lose it might feel a little harsh for some who perhaps dont get time to really enjoy it. Also the current mechanics makes players choose between their campaign score and emp in some cases. Although currently this choice is normally an instant "emp" decision in the future with the other changes it might not be and it gives some room for strategy.

Vilestride

Also with the scoring value changes to objectives we felt that factions committing everything to emp defences would be far more punished than they are now. Particularly now that scrolls will be a lot more valuable. So trading the last emp keep for your scrolls is going to be a much harder decision for a faction to make now.

If the concern is emp flipping I do concede it's an issue but honestly the best way to really solve that rather than band aid it is create a better PVP game all round and re-populate the player base. Emp flipping is really only viable in non populated campaigns as it stands. Also as mentioned the change of the 7 day campaigns to 30 days is another way of managing this issue.

LarsS

The problem with emperor on PC/EU is that most are crowned when the servers are empty not much of an achivement! I would like to conect the crowning to the population level. Emperor would be an achivement if one can only crown an emp when all alliances are locked. On loosing emp, may be one could loose emp when pop is under a specified lever.

IV_Deity

I wish all this was real. Very small bits could use change but nothing drastic. I would definitely love PvP again. It is feeling lack luster at the moment.

Wycks

Meanwhile in B. Wheeler's basement,

RDMyers65b14_ESO

reads the notes and sighs If only.

Ranger209

As pertains to the campaign duration faction lock, I think an interesting concept would be something as follows.
In ,or along side of, the undaunted daily hubs for each faction they could place a recruitment officer who would allow you to bind your account for the remainder of a campaign to a specific faction for a specific server. In this way all of your characters regardless of their individual factions would swear loyalty to a specific faction for the duration of the campaign allowing you to play all of your characters for that faction. I know some people are concerned about not being able to play some of their characters during a campaign if they are not of the appropriate faction. This would seem a fairly easy way to allow the playability of all characters, while still allowing a way to lock an account to a specific faction for a particular campaign.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

We feel that there are definately genuine reasons for wanting to play on other factions. Friends, map activity during time of play, RP etc.. This shouldn't be fully locked off by making all of your characters be locked but instead just have the rewards and focus be on a faction. AP being just a currency is still perfectly valid to earn which is why we left that as the incentive.

Sanct16

Ranger209 wrote: »

As pertains to the campaign duration faction lock, I think an interesting concept would be something as follows.
In ,or along side of, the undaunted daily hubs for each faction they could place a recruitment officer who would allow you to bind your account for the remainder of a campaign to a specific faction for a specific server. In this way all of your characters regardless of their individual factions would swear loyalty to a specific faction for the duration of the campaign allowing you to play all of your characters for that faction. I know some people are concerned about not being able to play some of their characters during a campaign if they are not of the appropriate faction. This would seem a fairly easy way to allow the playability of all characters, while still allowing a way to lock an account to a specific faction for a particular campaign.

Our suggestion was not to prevent people playing other factions characters on the same campaign. However they won't earn any rewards for doing so.

Ranger209

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

We feel that there are definately genuine reasons for wanting to play on other factions. Friends, map activity during time of play, RP etc.. This shouldn't be fully locked off by making all of your characters be locked but instead just have the rewards and focus be on a faction. AP being just a currency is still perfectly valid to earn which is why we left that as the incentive.

There are genuine reasons for wanting to play on other factions during a single campaign. There are also nefarious reasons for wanting to do so as well. I won't try and break down what percentage sits on each side of that fence as no one really knows, but there are definitely people on both sides.

On the other hand, locking an account to one faction for a particular campaign also allows people to play on other factions, but it does not allow them to do so within a single campaign cycle. It does allow, however, for some other interesting things.

1. It allows a person who has all of their characters on one faction to play all of them on a different faction.
2. It allows PvE'ers to switch factions every 30 days and more conveniently collect gated skyshards, and do quests more
local to a given faction home base with all of their characters regardless of those characters actual chosen alliance
affiliation.
3. It allows those people who made a character and developed it before realizing that some friend or relative that they enjoy
playing with made a character on another faction, and that they can't play together with those two particular characters.
Now they would be able to play with each other on those two characters.
4. It allows a person who gets tired of the lip-jacking of the faction they are playing with, to up and switch to another faction
on all of their characters regardless of each of their characters chosen alliance affiliation.
5. No longer is a totally fleshed out character that was made as a DC alliance bound to only be able to play on the DC
alliance. Your main can switch alliances every 30 days.

There are pros and cons to both perspectives. One allows more freedom for a single campaign cycle, while the other allows more freedom over the life cycle of the game as a whole. To each their own I guess, but I prefer the latter. With a little planning anyone should easily be able to play with their friends on any of the 3 alliances with any of their characters regardless of their respective chosen alliance.

Vilestride

Ranger209 wrote: »

show previous quotes

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

We feel that there are definately genuine reasons for wanting to play on other factions. Friends, map activity during time of play, RP etc.. This shouldn't be fully locked off by making all of your characters be locked but instead just have the rewards and focus be on a faction. AP being just a currency is still perfectly valid to earn which is why we left that as the incentive.

There are genuine reasons for wanting to play on other factions during a single campaign. There are also nefarious reasons for wanting to do so as well. I won't try and break down what percentage sits on each side of that fence as no one really knows, but there are definitely people on both sides.

On the other hand, locking an account to one faction for a particular campaign also allows people to play on other factions, but it does not allow them to do so within a single campaign cycle. It does allow, however, for some other interesting things.

1. It allows a person who has all of their characters on one faction to play all of them on a different faction.
2. It allows PvE'ers to switch factions every 30 days and more conveniently collect gated skyshards, and do quests more
local to a given faction home base with all of their characters regardless of those characters actual chosen alliance
affiliation.
3. It allows those people who made a character and developed it before realizing that some friend or relative that they enjoy
playing with made a character on another faction, and that they can't play together with those two particular characters.
Now they would be able to play with each other on those two characters.
4. It allows a person who gets tired of the lip-jacking of the faction they are playing with, to up and switch to another faction
on all of their characters regardless of each of their characters chosen alliance affiliation.
5. No longer is a totally fleshed out character that was made as a DC alliance bound to only be able to play on the DC
alliance. Your main can switch alliances every 30 days.

There are pros and cons to both perspectives. One allows more freedom for a single campaign cycle, while the other allows more freedom over the life cycle of the game as a whole. To each their own I guess, but I prefer the latter. With a little planning anyone should easily be able to play with their friends on any of the 3 alliances with any of their characters regardless of their respective chosen alliance.

I personally agree with you. I would like it to be this way and I really think it would align better with what they did in one tamriel. However, if I am being pragmatic I think the proposed alternative is simply a better compromise between the 2 sides of the argument being total faction freedom and total faction restriction. And hence I still believe if zos were to push a change of this nature through, the most rational way to do it would be similar to the pledge system as above.

IV_Deity

Bookmarked this thread and I feel it needs more attention. lol

Vilestride

What do people think of the idea to change resource scoring to deduct from keep values rather than add to faction score?

Ranger209

Vilestride wrote: »

What do people think of the idea to change resource scoring to deduct from keep values rather than add to faction score?

I've read through this thing half a dozen times or so and can't find anything that I don't like about it. It is comprehensive and well thought out through and through. The resource thing I like on many levels. The dynamic nature of it, the way it ties into how strong a keep and it's npc occupant force can be, the siege thing, all of that. I like that it becomes more than just a POI, it is now a POI with a more far reaching impact. The keeps should be reliant on their resources and suffer consequences when not occupied by allies while gaining benefits while they are.

The offensive and defensive tick thing I could see modified a little. On the one hand right now you can fight at a keep for an hour and if you leave before the tick, voluntarily or otherwise (crash, respawn from death too far away, and can't make it back before the tick), you get zilch. On the other hand I wouldn't want people who pass through and are there for 60 seconds, maybe kill a guy, and then leave to get full reward for it either. If I am understanding, this is how it would work. I would like to see a way implemented that reflects a person direct participation in acquiring or defending a keep, and when the tick drops update their AP regardless of where they are on the map at that time. Maybe something that clocks an individuals time in combat and divides it by the overall time of the engagement. So if a keep is under duress for 60 minutes someone who was in combat for 2 minutes would get a different portion of the tick than someone who was in combat for 10 or 30 or 50 minutes. Not sure if this is the best way to figure it or if there is a better alternative, but I think you get the point.

I believe your scoring system is a step in the right direction with the 5 to 30 minute updates based on population. Again, as with the faction swapping, I am probably a little more hardcore than what you are suggesting. I have offered up a strictly population based adjustment that goes about accomplishing the same thing through different means and has 10 break points rather than the the 5 you guys suggest. It increases 1000% from lowest level to highest vs 600% in your suggestion. I like what you guys suggest as well though. If attaining a keep becomes more time consuming than it currently is, to allow for more of a response from the defenders, your time frames may need a little tweaking.

All in all, again, really a lot of good, well though out ideas here.

RinaldoGandolphi

Derra wrote: »

show previous quotes

Biro123 wrote: »

For me, ESO is the only game I know of where I can play without a group - having nobody rely on me (and my sudden AFK's) - yet still be able to take part in large-scale combat and help my team with heals/buffs etc.. Maybe that makes it casual friendly - but its a unique (afaik) feature that I really, really like. Yes - I'm the averaqe 'Random' - but there are quite a lot of us.
Don't be a-trying to break my game!

To be honest - i think smaller groups and less possible organisation would greatly improve the game for players like you (or me when i play solo).

Organisation of many is the enemy of the few. Removing the tools to organize many gives more points of attack for someone soloing/duoing.

@Derra

This statement is so true it should be the post of the year.

Large organization and how it’s done is responsible for most of Cyrodiil performance issues. They could fix Cyrodiil performance issues by addressing these issues, but I doubt they will at this point. Better off playing BG at this point if you don’t want to lag

Vilestride

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

show previous quotes

Derra wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

For me, ESO is the only game I know of where I can play without a group - having nobody rely on me (and my sudden AFK's) - yet still be able to take part in large-scale combat and help my team with heals/buffs etc.. Maybe that makes it casual friendly - but its a unique (afaik) feature that I really, really like. Yes - I'm the averaqe 'Random' - but there are quite a lot of us.
Don't be a-trying to break my game!

To be honest - i think smaller groups and less possible organisation would greatly improve the game for players like you (or me when i play solo).

Organisation of many is the enemy of the few. Removing the tools to organize many gives more points of attack for someone soloing/duoing.

@Derra

This statement is so true it should be the post of the year.

Large organization and how it’s done is responsible for most of Cyrodiil performance issues. They could fix Cyrodiil performance issues by addressing these issues, but I doubt they will at this point. Better off playing BG at this point if you don’t want to lag

Well OK let's not be arbitrary about it. If you guys think lowering group size is the answer have a think about it and let's discuss exactly what group size you think is perfect and what will the gameplay look like after the hypothetical implementation?

Derra

Vilestride wrote: »

show previous quotes

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

For me, ESO is the only game I know of where I can play without a group - having nobody rely on me (and my sudden AFK's) - yet still be able to take part in large-scale combat and help my team with heals/buffs etc.. Maybe that makes it casual friendly - but its a unique (afaik) feature that I really, really like. Yes - I'm the averaqe 'Random' - but there are quite a lot of us.
Don't be a-trying to break my game!

To be honest - i think smaller groups and less possible organisation would greatly improve the game for players like you (or me when i play solo).

Organisation of many is the enemy of the few. Removing the tools to organize many gives more points of attack for someone soloing/duoing.

@Derra

This statement is so true it should be the post of the year.

Large organization and how it’s done is responsible for most of Cyrodiil performance issues. They could fix Cyrodiil performance issues by addressing these issues, but I doubt they will at this point. Better off playing BG at this point if you don’t want to lag

Well OK let's not be arbitrary about it. If you guys think lowering group size is the answer have a think about it and let's discuss exactly what group size you think is perfect and what will the gameplay look like after the hypothetical implementation?

Ideally in my opinion the maximum groupsize would be somewhere around 5 to an absolute maxium of 10% of one factions population and a good organized group can expect to fight 2 to 3 times their numbers of average players (i think 10% is too high but at the same time i think current pop caps are too low for 5).

Personally i think 12 is too big for an organized group but might be just right for pug groups - if you understand where i´m coming from.

I think twelve is too big for most social pvp guilds to have a reliable playerpool aswell (thus would do little to help alleviating issues with low number of guilds/groups due to high playercount requirement).

From a grp vs grp pov i´d go with 6 to 8 - from a pug pov i´d go with 12.

The problem i see with 12 currently would be that it do relatively little to larger organiszed group performance while it would definetly reduce the performance of factionzergs + pugs (exactly the scenario i personally would like to avoid).

So the large organized group players tell me - what groupsize do you think would begin to severely impact the ability of one group binding 50% of a faction to one fight location?

From a metagame pov on grp vs grp - one group would be of a size that required singletarget + aoe dps instead of just dedicated bombing + support. Currently i don´t see any singletarget ranged/melee DPS in grp rosters which im dumbs everything down a bit in terms of roles. As soon as this becomes vaible you also create room for counterplay with guard.

LarsS

Well we have had these smallscaler arguments before. I understand that some want to get rid of zergsquad and other larger guildgroups, but please focus on the proposals in this thread.

Derra

LarsS wrote: »

Well we have had these smallscaler arguments before. I understand that some want to get rid of zergsquad and other larger guildgroups, but please focus on the proposals in this thread.

Go read what i wrote earlier or if you want a TL:DR:

The proposals would directly contribute in focussing everything objective based even more around the large groups who coincidentally presented them.
It reads like a bad joke or a shallow disguise of these groups wanting to reinforce their grip on absolute unrivaled power in cyrodiil and i disagree vehemently with everything suggested should grp dynamics stay the same as they are.