There are many problems at cyrodiil. Both players and developers contribute to this problems. I think
some of the problems can be solved by successfully shepherding players with some game mechanics.
Problems: players that zerg up, players that PvX then complain after they die to zerg, endless horse rides, lag caused by many players on one location, AP grinding, alliance war lost its purpose.
Tool to solve these: An AI for every alliance to organize players(dynamic group sizes), currently useless PvP party finder, quests to give direction to players, AP rewarding (carrot on a stick
)
Solution: If game force players to go places they need to go and limit their numbers, game can prevent locational lag, prevent unequal zerg fights and revive the purpose of alliance war. Players have to fight for the alliance to gain AP. Players will be rewarded by less horse riding, more AP and fun.
**** There will be 2
Armies (%75 population max) for each faction and Army quests will focus on open field battles, sieges and E scrool protecting. Max size of the army is based on enemy faction and your population. If EP and DC have more population, both of their armies against each other will be higher than their armies against AD to prevent overwhelming numbers. Their squad will have more missions against each other too. Armies are formed by battalions. Every group (16 max at peak hours) is a battalion. You can share pvp set bonuses and aoe support skills to group members but you can NOT share these bonuses (except warhorn and barrier) with other battalions. Healing to non-group member is reduced. This will reduce strength of big zerg groups. Army camps are cheaper and only work on your battalion and any squads around. This will reduce tedious horse riding.
There will be 3 permanent
Battlefield Circles on the map. EPvsAD, EPvsDC, DCvsAD circles will be the quest of armies. If an army enters a circle's radius, circle will move towards enemy keep in a lane then stay on enemy keep until you cap it. If enemy army wants to stop this, they must rush to circle to stop it. When armies stay in circle, circle stops moving passively. Every kill moves it a bit, distance is based on combatants' number and time spent without keep siege in lane(time is tiebreaker for allesian bridge
). This circles will give Ap as you fight and stay in IF you are assigned to army, otherwise you get no exp nor AP. Players gain major gallop on their army lane. This will make horse riding less tedious. If an army caps enemy scrool and all keeps on a lane, they go for emperor push.
As army sizes are determined by AI, "army" mechanic force players to: spread equally to prevent zerging, prevent some lag, fight for the alliance, go where the fun is! You know where they combat and you join asap. "Battalion" mechanic will prevent zerging of players on a battlefield by spreading them. They still can move together but they need to rely on their skill than their number.
**** There will be
Squads (up to 8 men each at max population of a server) for small scale pvp. Their numbers will depend on the size of armies. Squads will focus on villages, resources, elder scrolls, 3 keeps at outer sides of maps, stopping other squads, villages, attacking dark anchors if one spawn near them etc. They can aid armies. While army siege the keep, squats will destroy army camps, cap resources. Squads are more independent than armies. They will have several mission options. If they try to attack armies, they get no exp nor Ap. They don't have to turn in quests in base, that's boring. Squads lost their exp and Ap bonus completely if they got away from each other.
"Squad" mechanic's purpose is spreading players even more, giving small-scale PvPers place to have fun. They can have their own keep battles at edges of the map, capture enemy resources then defend them against small groups like themselves.
You can form a non-military group, then que for battalion/squad group to stay together. This part may need more improvements.
**** Solo players won't get exp they fight against any army and squads. They will gain AP and exp by quests, delves and other PvE stuff. Killing all bosses of a delve should give first ROTW reward so PvE crystal grinders will go to delves and don't cause much lag.
Lane example: DC scrool-warden-glade-aleswell-chalman-arrius-king-EP scrool
Group finder will have a que option and "request to join" option for squads and battalions. You can see other groups and their descriptions. Some examples: "only bomblades", "only stamblades", "
Pug bros guild", "resource farm" etc.
I want to talk about gangblades. Their gangs are annoying, especially when they prey on traveling players. With the changes I suggest, they still can gang isolated army members, siege users in keeps. "Solo" side of PvP will be useless but this doesn't mean gangblades gonna be useless.
I tried to make changes to reduce number advantage and spread player, allow combat to start faster to prevent search for combat in huge map. I have 0 hopes for any rework for cyrodiil but discussing this kind of stuff is fun
The idea needs more improvement and I have few more ideas but post is already long.