CYRODIIL SCORE, AP AND REWARD SYSTEM NEED AN OVERHAUL

callen4492

CYRODIIL MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO DIE!!!

I love the the PvP found in Cyrodiil more than any other game I have ever played. It's my build vs your build, my skill vs your skill, my group vs your group and my alliance vs your alliance. The thrill of overcoming your enemies to have a dance/teabag party over their dead bodies is amazing. I'm sure that many of you love Cyrodiil just as much as I do and desperately want it to thrive into the future.

That being said, I believe there's a consensus among the player base that something needs to change in Cyrodiil to bring back its edge. Most people suggest changes to the mechanics of certain abilities but what I think will bring the most effective and lasting improvement is a change to the Campaign Scoring, AP and End of Campaign Reward System. I have a series of (mostly) simple ideas that, if implemented, I believe will REDUCE THE AMOUNT AND EFFECTIVENESS OF MASSIVE ZERGS AND INCENTIVIZE HIGHLY-SKILLED, SMALL-GROUP PLAY. If you love Cyrodiil, please read on and comment.

1) The more allies in your immediate area, the less AP you get for combat and captures.
For example:
10+ allies nearby = 25% reduction in AP earned
20+ allies nearby = 50% reduction
30+ allies nearby = 75% reduction
40+ allies nearby = 90% reduction

It even makes sense to get more AP when not part of a zerg because it is harder to get kills and captures with the help of fewer allies.


2) Keeps/resources reward exponentially higher "campaign points" to your alliance (with a specific ceiling) the longer they are held without being captured by another alliance AND campaign points tick more often (every 10 minutes instead of every hour)
For example:
At the tick, keeps reward:
Held for less than 10 min- 0 pts
Held for 10 to 20 min - 1 pt
Held for 20 to 30 min - 2 pts
and so on...
Held for 60+ min - 6 pts


3) The longer it has been since a resource/keep was captured, the more AP you get from capturing it
For example:
Keep held for less than 10 min = 3,000 AP reward
Keep held for more than 10 min but less than 30 min = 6,000 AP reward
Keep held for more than 30 min but less than an hour = 12,000 AP reward
Keep held for more than an hour = 18,000 AP reward
- The reward for capturing resources could be similar, just scaled down


4) Scrolls reward more Campaign Score than keeps and keeps reward more Campaign Score than resources.
-This almost seems like common sense and I know the community has asked for this. Not sure why this hasn't changed already.


5) While defending a keep/resource you earn 100% more AP than at other times (from combat and from the "successful defense" tick) to help prevent it from becoming like Domination in Battlegrounds where the most successful teams avoid contact with the enemy and just capture unguarded flags
- If needed, there could be a better system for alerting everyone when a keep is under attack to prevent too many keeps/resources from falling with no defense.


6) All-Star Royale:
Every hour, the top 45 AP earners during the past hour (top 15 from each alliance) are transported to a 5 minute battleground style fight and the winners get:
- Campaign Score for their Alliance
- A large combat bonus for the next 20 minutes
- A large AP tick (which doesn't count toward the next hours All-Star Royale)

- This would make it so that the best and most committed players can affect their alliance's score more than your average joe and most importantly, it balances the scale toward the alliance with a lower population because only the top 15 players from each alliance can contribute.

I even have an idea for what the arena could look like - Imagine PUBG where the alliance with the last man standing wins...

While I realize proposition #6 would be a large effort for the developers, it doesn't seem like the previous changes would be too cumbersome of a task. Maybe you're wondering how some of these changes would affect Cyrodiil. Well, before I continue with my final proposed change, I would like to explain how the previous changes would affect Cyrodiil.

Reasons why this would change Cyrodiil:

1) Players (especially the "most committed players"; read: zerg ball leaders) would have incentive to fight in smaller groups. When fighting with a zerg, you would still have the benefit of being a more effective combat unit and getting kills/captures faster, but you would have the drawback of less AP earned per kill/capture. This means BALANCE!

2) The areas where most of the action is occurring would constantly be shifting around the map. Right now, the bulk of the action in Cyrodiil occurs in the same 3 corridors with massive zerg balls going back and forth. With my changes, players would be less likely to attack the same keep after it was just captured because it offers fewer AP reward and is accumulating less Campaign Score. Combat would shift elsewhere until the keep offered greater incentive, at which time, players would be more likely to attack there.

To better explain I'm going to list the advantages of attacking a keep deep behind enemy lines which hasn't been captured in a while versus the advantages of attacking a keep in the center of the map which was recently captured:

Center keep, recently captured:
- It's close and won't take very long to get there or get reinforcements/more allies
- You'll gain a spawn point to strike deeper in enemy territory while removing an enemy spawn point
- They're important for emperorship reasons

Enemy home keep, last captured over an hour ago:
- More AP gained upon capture
- Taking an enemy keep which was allocating a high amount of points.
- Cutting off enemy travel routes

There are good reasons to attack both types of keeps instead of the same one over and over, which again, means BALANCE!

3) A small group would actually make a difference in taking a keep deep behind enemy lines because you would reset the points gained from that keep/resource. It would also be important to defend those keeps/resources instead of just letting a zerg gobble them back up later on. On top of that, if you gave greater AP combat rewards to defenders, it would encourage some players to defend rather than just go take a keep deep behind enemy lines at the same time yours is being taken. Again, this means BALANCE!

If this Campaign Scoring/AP plan already exists to some degree, it should be significantly increased to have a greater influence. To my final proposed change to Cyrodiil.

7) HUGE rewards for winning your campaign. The reward for winning really needs to increase. On top of that, if the alliance with a smaller population wins, they should get an even greater reward.
I even have a formula for this:
End of Campaign Reward = (Standard campaign reward for winning)* (1/(1 - Avg pct. of full population during campaign for your alliance below average of other two campaigns))*(Multiplier for added difficulty of having less people in alliance; Ex. 1.3)
For example:
If AD had an average population of 50% full throughout the campaign, while EP and DC were and average of 60% full combined, AD would get 144% the standard campaign reward for winning while DC or EP would only get 91% of the standard campaign reward. With a large enough reward, this would entice players to balance between alliances over time.

Note: I am an EP player and have only ever been an EP player.

- This would give players incentive to fight for the alliance with the least players in it (Aldmeri)
- Only receive campaign reward for highest AP earning character per account
- If your character isn't in the top 25% of AP earners, you only get 50% of the reward
- For this to be feasible, the End of Campaign Reward would have to be given in either AP, gold or valuable raw mats.

If you read all, or even a fraction of that, you have my admiration and thanks. Let me know what you think of them and hope you enjoyed. Maybe someone from ZoS uses ideas on the forums to make their game better.

Gt: ThePhatLard
Xbox NA server
Ebonheart Pact
Moderately talented "try-hard randy" PvP'er

VaranisArano

Once an hour, I shall lead an organized raid to assault the enemy tri-keeps. Profit.

Goshua

Quite like your ideas though I admit to a skim read. Do people pvp for the AP still?
Some players have literally millions.

Personally I find AP and Rewards for the worthy pretty meh and not a motivating incentive to get out there among it.
Even the chance for a gold temper from end of campaign rewards if you and your faction do well a bit of boo hoo after 30 days of tolerating the place.

I'm not sure what, short of a personality transplant I can do about my attitude to PvP, but I and obviously you a wanting something balanced, perhaps proactive (and that actually feels like a reward for service).

NirnStorm

Long read. Totally worth it.
This is gold.


There are some points I don't completely agree with, some concepts that I think should be thought through to see their possible effects, but overall, you managed to express the average mindset of many veteran PvPers really really well.

Thank you for taking the time to think this through and explain every point. I admire the effort you put in it.

+1 from me.

callen4492

@VaranisArano
Exactly. This would encourage people to attack the enemy at more places than just chalman and allessia and wherever DC and AD usually fight each other. If an alliance spent too many resources attacking an enemy home keep, they might lose their emperor keeps, thus giving it to the enemy. Or, if they failed to re-capture an enemy emperor keep for long enough, it would now be just as valuable of a target AP-wise and Score-wise, as any other keep, making it a prime target.

callen4492

@Goshua
That's a good point. I'm not sure how great of a motivator AP is. There are sure to be players with near lifetime supplies of AP but that's not my experience. I never seem to get above 1m AP because I am always buying siege weapons or some new armor. There's also always the option of selling jewelry and armor bought with AP. It would be really nice if there were better options for use of your AP. What if you could buy high-end crafting mats, specifically alchemy and provisioning mats. No matter how perfect of a build you have you will always need more potions, poisons and food/drinks. Our main point is though, WE NEED BIGGER REWARDS FROM PvP. I remember reading one poster who said something along the lines of, "we need to be able to eat our meal without the hassle of doing the dishes afterward." Many of us PvP'ers, especially the ones who aren't that big into the lore aspect of the game, hate having to spend to much time grinding just for a little fun. PvP needs some love.

Also, I think people care about AP more than you might suspect and for more reasons than just to bank it. Why else would there be so many AP farmers? I think people also care about AP just to find themselves on the leaderboard or see their alliance rank. Maybe it'd help if you could see the entire list of people ranked with their AP score instead of just top 10 from each alliance? Also, the "All-Star Royale" idea I proposed in the OP would certainly be a good motivator to work hard for AP every hour but I admit, that idea is only a figment of my dreams. The other changes I mentioned are much simpler and hopefully something their thinking about.

Thanks for your input!

Slick_007

1. No. because sometimes you need to take things fast and you would penalize people for it. Or, oh no, we cant go here, theres a bunch of our team already here and we just gimped each others gains. No.
2. No.Will lead to unbalancing of teams, moreso than current. Everyone will join the team with keeps.
3. I like this one. I cant see a downside to it.
4. sounds ok but id need to compare with the current system
5. No. this would be abused big time.
6. I dont see this working very well
7. Interesting. Has possibilities

callen4492 wrote: »

- Only receive campaign reward for highest AP earning character per account
- If your character isn't in the top 25% of AP earners, you only get 50% of the reward

no. i like to pvp on various toons. Why should i be penalized given that the campaign is 30 days long. you're saying any other toon used during this time is wasted. No.
also, why should everyone who doesnt permanently live in cyrodil be penalized. NO.
Also, learn to not put thread subjects all in caps.

callen4492

@NirnStorm
Thanks for reading it and giving input! I had a couple hours that I'd planned on gaming but my internet went down so I instead poured some of my thoughts about PvP into the forums. I, like I'm sure a lot of other Cyrodiilians, think about how Cyrodiil could be tweaked while I'm driving and falling asleep sometimes and had a lot of ideas. I only hope that somebody from the team at ZoS loves this game just as much and sees it for the gold it is. Most likely though, it's just a job to them and don't understand the intricacies of Cyrodiil like some of the veterans do.

Certainly, some of my ideas should be tweaked and perhaps not implemented for some reason I haven't considered. And the examples I gave were just that- examples. They would need to be thought through well and the numbers would need adjusting. I'm curious what ideas you liked of mine and what other ideas you have or you've seen from others that you think would work well. Don't feel the need though if you don't have time. This is just a game and we have no power to actually change anything.

callen4492

@Slick_007

Thanks for your input!

Responses to your response:

1) You're not being penalized for playing alongside a lot of allies. You would simply get less AP reward because you are doing a proportionally smaller amount of the work. You would still get the bonus of being more combat effective by being in a large group and at the end of the day, may get more AP reward for it. What's more? 1 kill for 100% AP reward or 5 kills for 50% reward? Also, if people chose to attack the enemy elsewhere because they already have allies there fighting, then MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! We busted up the zerg balls without tweaking any skills! Combat would be spread out across the map. The only thing I could say is that you probably shouldn't have your AP earning reduced for defending a keep amidst allies. You should only be rewarded for defending. I forgot to mention that in the OP.

2 & 3) How would this lead to the unbalancing of teams? If one team had all the keeps they would be attacked by both other alliances all over the place. They'd be spread too thin because they would have to defend the entire map against two alliances. On the contrary, you might think that all players would join the alliances that have NONE of the keeps because of the potential AP rewards for capturing is so much higher. Also, if you could only join one alliance per campaign per account this wouldn't be an issue. I hate that they changed that a while back. Dumb dumb.

4) The current system is such that scrolls, keeps and resources all give the same amount of points - 1 point every hour. How does that make any sense given that it's harder to take a keep than a resource and harder to take a scroll than a keep. It's like rewarding the same amount of points for both a layup and a 3-point shot. Maybe they do it so the score never swings too far in favor of one alliance but in that case, the score could swing back more quickly. It's like Cyrodiil was made by a bunch of nerds who don't understand competition. Just like J.K. Rowling. Quidditch makes no F***ng sense. The team who catches the snitch always wins. Sorry if that offends you nerds but that's the one thing about Harry Potter that ticks me off.

5) How would this be abused? The only thing I can think of is giant zergs who sit inside a resource tower farming AP would get extra AP now. However, if all of these ideas were implemented, it would make no sense to do that anymore, nor would it make any sense to attack that AP farming, camping, fiery ball of death. It seems all good here. Like I said before, only thing that you shouldn't have your AP reduced for proximity to allies as long as you're defending.

6) I think it'd be AWESOME to the max but I don't see this happening either.

7) You got me here. I revise my earlier suggestion to this. You should be rewarded based on the accumulation of all AP earned from all of your characters during the campaign. I still think you should only be rewarded by one alliance though. Maybe the alliance you earned the most AP for would reward you. That would discourage people from alliance hopping although I would suspect a lot of people would complain because they already have toons on varying alliances and aren't loyal to one alliance regardless of consequence. It'd be fine if it was just your total AP earned regardless of character/alliance.

Lastly, why do you consider it a penalty to PvE'ers to give big rewards for PvP?? Why should you get a bigger reward for PvE? As a primarily PvP player, am I "penalized" when there is a bonus event going on for some trial or other PvE event? NO! All I want is for PvP to be more sustainable.


Thanks for the tip on thread subjects. Have a good day!

VaranisArano

callen4492 wrote: »

@VaranisArano
Exactly. This would encourage people to attack the enemy at more places than just chalman and allessia and wherever DC and AD usually fight each other. If an alliance spent too many resources attacking an enemy home keep, they might lose their emperor keeps, thus giving it to the enemy. Or, if they failed to re-capture an enemy emperor keep for long enough, it would now be just as valuable of a target AP-wise and Score-wise, as any other keep, making it a prime target.

Look. I play on PC/NA Vivec. A generally competitive server.

This already happens. Every couple hours or so, DC or AD makes an attack on the EP home keeps, usually PVPdooring them. EP either rushes back to defend them, or more likely, continues attacking wherever we were then sweeps back to recapture the home keeps. So you're just incentivizing the PvDoor that already happens because I can use the same strategy already in place but now if I wait a certain amount of time to do it, I'll get more AP.

callen4492

@VaranisArano
Well, maybe, there needs to be a better warning sustem to alert you when a keep is under attack. Loke if the keep is flagged at 40%, say at 75% a warning is sent out saying it's under attack. That way there wouldn't be so much PVDoor.

callen4492

@VaranisArano
Also, it's the combination of the ideas that makes it work:
1) Encourage small group play in all areas of map instead of a few zergs PRIMARILY in two or three corridors.
2) Reward defense so there's less PvDoor.
3) Give incentive to attack various different areas.

VaranisArano

callen4492 wrote: »

@VaranisArano
Well, maybe, there needs to be a better warning sustem to alert you when a keep is under attack. Loke if the keep is flagged at 40%, say at 75% a warning is sent out saying it's under attack. That way there wouldn't be so much PVDoor.

On PC, there's this addon called CyroHUD that sits on the side of my screen that lets me know as soon as siege weapons are placed on the grounds of a keep. If an enemy raid sets down siege on the door or wall of Farragut Keep, I know about it. However, if that enemy raid set down 15/20 siege like they normally do, I'm not going to get there in time to do much of anything because they'll flag the keep at 50% very quickly.

You know what does help with warning players about incoming attacks? Zone chat callouts. But those require people to be willing to sit in the back keeps and wait and wait for the enemy to show up. Its the rare player who wants to spend their limited time in PVP gargoyling in a back keep watching and waiting for the enemy to show up. So what usually happens is that enemy raid shows up, maybe there's a zone chat callout, maybe we just see the siege go up on CyroHUD. Most of the time willing defenders can't make it in time and the home keep falls. The enemy raid moves on and we clean the home keep behind them.

DeadlyRecluse

On point 1: "combat" AP is essentially already diminished the more people are involved. Agreed that capture ticks need to be toned down. A 24man shouldn't get 36k AP for flipping an empty resource.

Point 2: This has been suggested before. It was a good idea then, too, though I think exact numbers need a lot of nuance.

Point 3: Same response as 2.

Point 4: Bizarrely obvious suggestion that has never really been implemented. It kinda/sorta was back when campaigns had different scoring mechanisms, but that's a thing of the past.

Point 5: If Oticks were turned down, you'd see more organized defenses. Defending resources used to be like, THE thing to do.

Point 6: I greatly dislike this idea. If I'm rolling with a small group of friends, I don't want one or more group members yoinked from group to do a minifight. The layout of the fight is fine, but should be a separate mode imo.

VaranisArano

callen4492 wrote: »

@VaranisArano
Also, it's the combination of the ideas that makes it work:
1) Encourage small group play in all areas of map instead of a few zergs PRIMARILY in two or three corridors.
2) Reward defense so there's less PvDoor.
3) Give incentive to attack various different areas.

I run with an organized raid that often strikes at all areas of the map. If the main faction zergs are duking it out at Bleakers, we'll hit the enemy back keeps or Bruma. If the main faction is stacked on Alessia Bridge, we'll go hit someplace else.

Problem is, with the main faction duking it out elsewhere, our good deed of "spreading out the fight" and "getting away from the zergs" tend to be PVDoor more often than not if we move fast enough on our siege and don't give defenders time to arrive. And that's exactly what that "more AP for keeps that are held longer" encourages. If DC is fighting at Aleswell, a smart group wanting to gain AP will go and strike at their probably undefended back keeps, and an organized raid will have that keep flagged and probably taken before more than one or two defenders ride in if they aren't spotted early.

I mean, you are right that improving the reward for defense encourages people to defend, but that doesn't help when a raid rolls up to a pretty much empty keep, drops 15/20 siege, and is on the flags while a few fast responders are just starting to ride in. An organized raid that practices fast siege is going to make bank on AP by PVDooring places that its hard to get to in order to defend - and I don't think that's what you meant to encourage, but that's exactly what this system encourages. Sure, you could counter that by having a home faction raid sit and defend the home keeps, but - I'm not going to lie - sitting and watching a home keep for more than a couple minutes against an attack that may or may not happen seems like a pretty boring way to PVP to me. Its different if you know or can predict that the enemy is coming, but that's not normally the case unless you got lucky and a PUG spotted them and called the enemy raid's movements out.

The short of it is that when we go "attack various different areas" its almost always PvDoor because the enemy is usually on the main corridors. And if you have a raid that knows how to siege effectively, you can have a keep flagged, transit cut, and forcing the defenders to ride and thus probably have the keep taken before more than a couple defenders arrive (as I said in an earlier comment, early warnings on the keep don't really help add to the defense, prior knowledge of enemy movements does) thus negating the entire benefit to defending a keep. Perhaps the risk to PvDoor goes up a little bit, on the off-chance that a enemy raid is sitting there wanting a D-tick, but the reward of pulling off a PvDoor on an enemy keep also went up by quite a bit.

callen4492

@VaranisArano
Thanks for all the insight. I really appreciate it.

I also typically fight in relatively small groups and often attack "backdoor" keeps which often ends up being PvDoor.

I also would not be willing to guard backdoor keeps just to call out the attack. Much too boring.

Maybe what's really needed is for ZoS to make it easier for defenders to get to keeps that are under attack. Or give them more time. Like, maybe once a keep is flagged, allow defenders to fast travel there for say 3 minutes. Or they could travel until a wall is totally broken. That way the defense isn't hopeless. This might discourage players from trying to sneak-attack keeps. However, if it's a juicier target due to exponentially increasing AP reward/Campaign score, it might be worth the risk/time/effort. That makes it an interesting choice- Attack the nearest keep or attack a keep behind enemy lines?. Do we feign an attack here but actually attack over there? Choices, choices. Choices lead to balance I think.

I think you're right about how raids just attack a keep in the enemies rear, no defenders even try to help or can help because it's not possible and not worth it. SO THEY NEED TO MAKE IT BOTH POSSIBLE AND WORTH IT TO DEFEND YOUR HOME KEEPS WHEN THE ENEMY SNEAK ATTACKS. Maybe not too easy to defend, but I think the odds need to turn a little in favor of the defenders when it comes to sneak attacks on home keeps. Maybe they could make a spawn point available to defenders thay sits right in the middle of your three primary home keeps that's available to the home faction as long as they hold one of the three home keeps. Ideas, Ideas.

VaranisArano

DeadlyRecluse wrote: »

On point 1: "combat" AP is essentially already diminished the more people are involved. Agreed that capture ticks need to be toned down. A 24man shouldn't get 36k AP for flipping an empty resource.

On which campaign can I get 36k AP for flipping an empty resource? I wanna go there! My campaigns only give me a lousy 1.6K.

More seriously, I appreciate the increased resource ticks because I can solo resources. I taught myself to solo resources back when they were worth 200-300 AP, so the increased tick that's actually worth the effort is nice. And no, I don't really think that I should get more AP for soloing a resource than I should when I take a resource with a raid. If we want to spread out the fights, rewarding capturing stuff helps spread out the fights as opposed to just rewarding sitting and defending.

callen4492

@DeadlyRecluse
Point 1 - I think if it is already a thing for you to get less AP for having more allies around, maybe that effect needs to get increased significantly. Maybe I just need to look more into how it is now though.

Point 6 - Yeah I know but it'd be so awesome to be part of that fight!! And when I thought of the idea, I imagined everybody in the server trying really hard to be one their Alliance's all-stars who gets to participate in this awesome fight and win Campaign points, a combat bonus and a big tick of AP. It could flash the winners names on the screen and everything. Also, your group-mates (given the small chance that one of them is selected) would be back in just a few minutes (Max of 5, min of however long it takes them to die) so I don't think it'd be that big of a deal.
Anyway, I think it would have the potential to be on of the most beloved aspects of Cyrodiil if ZoS put in the leg work.

Thanks for your input!

Qbiken

VaranisArano wrote: »

DeadlyRecluse wrote: »

On point 1: "combat" AP is essentially already diminished the more people are involved. Agreed that capture ticks need to be toned down. A 24man shouldn't get 36k AP for flipping an empty resource.

On which campaign can I get 36k AP for flipping an empty resource? I wanna go there! My campaigns only give me a lousy 1.6K.

More seriously, I appreciate the increased resource ticks because I can solo resources. I taught myself to solo resources back when they were worth 200-300 AP, so the increased tick that's actually worth the effort is nice. And no, I don't really think that I should get more AP for soloing a resource than I should when I take a resource with a raid. If we want to spread out the fights, rewarding capturing stuff helps spread out the fights as opposed to just rewarding sitting and defending.

If you come to PC/EU on Shor when the campaign resets you can often see someone who paid for emperor getting fed AP and sometimes you´ll witness some keep-flipping as well...........have some footage that I for "name/shame" policy can´t post.... How some people can earn 800k+ AP within 4-5 hours on an empty campaign (shor is more or less empty aside from the weekends)is beyond my understanding....(unless being fed AP)

On topic:
I like most suggestions because they actually address one of the main issues with campaigns where people buy emperorship by being fed AP and keep-flipping.

However, suggestion #6 is the one I don´t really like (since it would favour the once getting fed AP even more).

callen4492

@Qbiken
Yeah, I understand where you're coming from about being fed AP. It stinks that people do things like that.

However, if you severely reduce the amount of AP you get with lots of allies around, I think it'd be much harder to manipulate the system in such a way. Thanks for the input.

Soul_Demon

callen4492 wrote: »

@Qbiken
Yeah, I understand where you're coming from about being fed AP. It stinks that people do things like that.

However, if you severely reduce the amount of AP you get with lots of allies around, I think it'd be much harder to manipulate the system in such a way. Thanks for the input.

Here is the thing though.....really most of the problems are from trying to take a game that was designed from the ground up for massive battles and reduce or limit it for players who prefer to play with small groups to work for that play style better than it already does. Since the game came out we have had massive reductions and cost increases for any skill deemed 'too powerful' that was being used primarily by groups. That isn't balance, its trying to change the way the game works without a full redesign of the game itself from the ground up. Thing is our populations and servers were massive when the game started and since that time we have steadily moved over to smaller and smaller scale play with the servers dying off one at a time till now we are left with just three...and they are not fully played or pop locked any longer except at specific times. That tells you the direction we have moved is not one MOST of the players want. Some of the player loss can be attributed to simply how a new game develops, but the rest is the direction we have moved with ever increasing amount of 'couldn't care less' engagement from the PvP team at ZOS.

Battlegrounds were created for small scale and the resources for that were already used to accomplish a place for that playstyle. From what I see here most if not all the issues we as players have could be easily addressed if we had in game GM's on all the time and faction locks reinstated.......No one would be better at pointing out broken skills to those in a position to change it- no one would be better equipped to stop exploits before they were abused, yet here we are without a player with a "Z" appearing for ages in the game.

As players we are already charged with doing the job of the staff- We report each other, bugs, exploits and offer up input to the game to help them- keep it going and make a profit. We should NEVER have been put into that situation in the first place. Put simply PvP team has to be involved in the game they are supposed to be managing.....otherwise we can have any amount of really productive discussions and some really good ideas for improving the gameplay and our playerbase- but they will go nowhere.

TLDR: Don't try to make a large scale game work for small scale by calling for massive reworks of skills or design, it wont work and that is how we got where we are now. Focus on getting PvP team involved in their own game.

VaranisArano

callen4492 wrote: »

@Qbiken
Yeah, I understand where you're coming from about being fed AP. It stinks that people do things like that.

However, if you severely reduce the amount of AP you get with lots of allies around, I think it'd be much harder to manipulate the system in such a way. Thanks for the input.

I'm not sure that being fed AP always works that way though. Some methods would benefit enormously from increased D-ticks.

For example, if a group captures a resource, they'll get the same AP whether one or 24 people are standing on it. For a D-tick, however, that tick will be divided by the number of people present so a group can "feed" a player AP by leaving only that playr on the resource to get a D-tick. Keeps are the same way - a flat O-tick + AP for enemies killed. Keep D-ticks have the AP split among defenders, so its harder for a group to manipulate this thanks to most defenses having more players than just one group, but they could still give more AP to a single player by leaving the keep grounds so there are less players, thus the remaining player gets a larger cut (shared with all the other people present on the grounds when the tick goes, of course.)

Now, that's a form of slightly shady group play that isn't actually exploiting as much as it is using the way D-ticks work to give more AP to one player. Its not against the rules to refuse to get the AP you earned, after all.

There are much shadier ways that are actual exploits to feed someone AP using a D-tick. We all know about ZOS cracking down on O-tick resource trading after some fiascos, but how about people collaborating with the enemy to generate false D-ticks at resources or scroll gates (where the AP gain is tripled)? That happens, its absolutely not how AP is intended to be gained, and increasing D-ticks for fewer players is definitely going to benefit those exploiters.

My point is that most AP farmers run solo, whether that's to avoid getting called out for cheating or they are solo at the moment of the D-tick because that's how they get the most AP. Messing with the amount of AP you get for the number of allies around you doesn't actually affect AP farmers because:
A. On an O-tick, the value is flat no matter how many or few allies you have - so you can't "feed" anyone AP this way.
B. On a D-tick, the AP farmer is alone with no allies, because that's how you "feed" someone AP if you're a group doing it or because the AP farmer is collaborating with the enemy to get "fed" AP and doesn't want any witnesses, nor do they need allies.

Instead, increasing the D-ticks for fewer players even more than it is actually benefits those forms of AP farming.

callen4492

@Soul_Demon

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

Actively, we are looking at changing the behavior of the players to remove incentives for large groups to stay in the same area. We want to do this by providing larger incentives for Alliances to split up and take on multiple-challenges in Cyrodiil. We’ll continue to work on this.

Here is a forum post by a ZOS staff member from March 2015. They want to make incentives for players to fight evenly across the entire map. 50 vs 50 person fights will never go away as long as the servers are populated. They will still exist. But hopefully ZOS can still alter Cyrodiil to make combat spread across the map more instead of a few huge zerg balls going at it while the rest of the map is mostly empty except for a few very small groups or people manipulating the game for AP farming.

I only post this because it seems a large portion of the player base is frustrated with the current status of zerg balls fighting over a small amount of territory. ZOS said way back in March 2015 that they want to incentivize fighting across the whole map. They're just not there yet.

Also, the game is not dead or even close to that. They're releasing content way too fast for the game to be dead. And we PvP'ers have gotten some love. Battlegrounds was a big step. I love Battlegrounds but Cyrodiil is the most unique and exciting form of PvP I've ever seen and I would love for it to get some work.

Thanks for your input Soul Demon!

Soul_Demon

callen4492 wrote: »

@Soul_Demon

ZOS_PaulSage wrote: »

Actively, we are looking at changing the behavior of the players to remove incentives for large groups to stay in the same area. We want to do this by providing larger incentives for Alliances to split up and take on multiple-challenges in Cyrodiil. We’ll continue to work on this.

Here is a forum post by a ZOS staff member from March 2015. They want to make incentives for players to fight evenly across the entire map. 50 vs 50 person fights will never go away as long as the servers are populated. They will still exist. But hopefully ZOS can still alter Cyrodiil to make combat spread across the map more instead of a few huge zerg balls going at it while the rest of the map is mostly empty except for a few very small groups or people manipulating the game for AP farming.

I only post this because it seems a large portion of the player base is frustrated with the current status of zerg balls fighting over a small amount of territory. ZOS said way back in March 2015 that they want to incentivize fighting across the whole map. They're just not there yet.

Also, the game is not dead or even close to that. They're releasing content way too fast for the game to be dead. And we PvP'ers have gotten some love. Battlegrounds was a big step. I love Battlegrounds but Cyrodiil is the most unique and exciting form of PvP I've ever seen and I would love for it to get some work.

Thanks for your input Soul Demon!

Nah- the game is dying at an ever faster pace for PvP. Of course the PvE side of the game will continuously be fed new content for as long as new players pick the game up and level, but that in no way is a reflection of PvP's health or population.

I would also submit that with your comment on the "way back in 2015" ZOS was incentivizing splitting up groups you helped prove my point.......changes we have been making of the last few years were geared at reducing the effectiveness of the group play the game was designed and sold around. Not only that, but 2015 is quite some time after official release not to mention the playtime in testing phases populations the game enjoyed.Our current state shows how poorly that approach worked and the direction it has been taking the community as a whole. Population for PvP continues to hemorrhage to this current point, and if you were unaware we played with many more than three servers in the past all pop locked nearly day and night.

Again, I would offer the problem will never be solved asking players to buy a game and then changing the way the design of the game is to accommodate a few vocal posters in the forums who don't like that playstyle- the solution lies in playing the game the way it was designed and NOT pushing them to continue to "nerf" xxx or xxx so that can be better accomplished. Get the people responsible for this end point IN the game to do something about exploits and problematic skills and you will have better results.


'The Elder Scrolls Online' will let you play in 100-player groups'
https://polygon.com/gaming/2012/6/6/3067008/elder-scrolls-online-preview

Lead Combat Designer
""Philosophically it's about scale. It's about, 'Holy crap, there are 500 people in this battle! This entire warfront isn't just my squad versus your squad, which is sort of what a lot of PvP is in MMOs up to this point, but we are part of an entire war effort that you can break that down into squads if you want, or raid and play that way."

callen4492

@Soul_Demon

No way! The game has a healthy PvP population and will for a long time to come. Just because it has much fewer people than when it first started doesn't mean it's dying. There are still new players just starting the game all the time. To say it's dying is like saying a healthy 40 year old man is dying. Sure, he's getting older, but not dying.

Also, if you read the PvP forums, you will know that people want a change in Cyrodiil. They want the zerg surfing to be cut back. It's not just "vocal forum posters". It's SO MANY PLAYERS commenting about it. There may be a few who think the zerg surfing is a great thing but the overall consensus says otherwise.

Minno

It would be cool to see back keeps keeps being taken back by NPCs. Here's why:

- in order to stop Frontline fights, a zerg must combat a Zerg. Guild groups prey on the zerg fights, but there are no incentives for smaller groups to fight.
- the NPC crews taking back keeps probably won't bring the zerg to fight them, but smaller teams would have to be sent to dispatch the NPCs. Pve players can feel apart of the war effort this way; upkeep keeps and defend against NPCs events. In turn smaller groups can engage the casual players at these keeps since it will be highly unlikely that a zerg will rush to defend the keep from NPCs. Also in turn, more vet PvP players can prey on the pug stompers already at the keep.
- npc keep takers can help underdog factions by giving them the ability to seige keeps with low pop. This will help keep empty camps dynamic, since the outnumbered faction will be punished by stacking their groups in one area for too long (ideally 2-3 keeps should be "burst" at once in order for this to work).
- keeps will need active quest participation in order to maintain control. But ultimately there should be a timer that goes off anyway forcing the keep to be "seiged". Active quests can prolong it, but it will need an active defense to maintain it.
- towns+other areas can have transit lines to support entire map movement outside of EMP keeps. Keep it flowing!

That's my idea. We can also maybe structure quests around this, and a mini justice system (i.e. "Kodi has killed 20 of our brothers and sisters in arms; take him out! "). This way it keeps the whole map dynamic and interesting.

Slick_007

callen4492 wrote: »

@Slick_007

Thanks for your input!

Responses to your response:

1) You're not being penalized for playing alongside a lot of allies. You would simply get less AP reward because you are doing a proportionally smaller amount of the work. You would still get the bonus of being more combat effective by being in a large group and at the end of the day, may get more AP reward for it. What's more? 1 kill for 100% AP reward or 5 kills for 50% reward? Also, if people chose to attack the enemy elsewhere because they already have allies there fighting, then MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! We busted up the zerg balls without tweaking any skills! Combat would be spread out across the map. The only thing I could say is that you probably shouldn't have your AP earning reduced for defending a keep amidst allies. You should only be rewarded for defending. I forgot to mention that in the OP.

but you dont know this. 10 people rock up and form a dance party while the other 1 does the work. that 1 now gets diminished returns because of the 10 people doing nothing.

2 & 3) How would this lead to the unbalancing of teams? If one team had all the keeps they would be attacked by both other alliances all over the place. They'd be spread too thin because they would have to defend the entire map against two alliances. On the contrary, you might think that all players would join the alliances that have NONE of the keeps because of the potential AP rewards for capturing is so much higher. Also, if you could only join one alliance per campaign per account this wouldn't be an issue. I hate that they changed that a while back. Dumb dumb.

Players in eso are the laziest iv seen in any game. willing to pay for everything instead of earning it. They will gravitate towards the winning side, leaving only the minority to play the other teams. They kind of do it now, but this would incentivize them to do it more.

4) The current system is such that scrolls, keeps and resources all give the same amount of points - 1 point every hour. How does that make any sense given that it's harder to take a keep than a resource and harder to take a scroll than a keep. It's like rewarding the same amount of points for both a layup and a 3-point shot. Maybe they do it so the score never swings too far in favor of one alliance but in that case, the score could swing back more quickly. It's like Cyrodiil was made by a bunch of nerds who don't understand competition. Just like J.K. Rowling. Quidditch makes no F***ng sense. The team who catches the snitch always wins. Sorry if that offends you nerds but that's the one thing about Harry Potter that ticks me off.

yeh maybe they could look at revamping this a little

5) How would this be abused? The only thing I can think of is giant zergs who sit inside a resource tower farming AP would get extra AP now. However, if all of these ideas were implemented, it would make no sense to do that anymore, nor would it make any sense to attack that AP farming, camping, fiery ball of death. It seems all good here. Like I said before, only thing that you shouldn't have your AP reduced for proximity to allies as long as you're defending.

People will just sit there doing nothing. or setting up attack/def in order to score the hell out of the defending team while not actually trying to take the target. 2 friends, dif alliance. hey i'll attack, you def for the next hour then we swap. theres little incentive to do that currently.

Lastly, why do you consider it a penalty to PvE'ers to give big rewards for PvP?? Why should you get a bigger reward for PvE? As a primarily PvP player, am I "penalized" when there is a bonus event going on for some trial or other PvE event? NO! All I want is for PvP to be more sustainable.

Thanks for the tip on thread subjects. Have a good day!

im not sure you understood what i meant or i wasnt clear. its not about a bigger reward for pve. its that only 25 people get good rewards for a match. Just because you got the most AP doesnt mean you actually did anything worthwhile. Just means you spent the most time in there and if everything was implemented, they could be abusing #5 and doing nothing for the team at all. I think creating this kind of reward would lead to situations like that.

Ranger209

See a lot of interesting ideas here which I will get around to commenting on, but just wanted to throw this out there regarding an early warning system, or maybe just a slightly different way that siege could work. First off as far as keeps go the damage that the outer walls and doors take could be modified so that for instance the outer walls could mitigate 75% of the damage that siege lays on them for the first 10% of their health bar. From the 90% down to 70% they could mitigate 50% of the damage. From the 70% to the 30% they could take full damage. From 30% to 10% remaining health they could take double damage, and the last 10% take 4 times the damage that current siege inflicts. This way the more you beat them down the faster they start falling down, but the front loaded mitigation would allow more time to respond. The map alert should go out as soon as the first siege fire hits a keep. May also have to reduce siege allowed from 20 to 15 or 10 or something, and allow a person to only lay down one siege at a time.

These are just numbers to illustrate a point, not necessarily the correct numbers. The point is to slow down the initial phase of siege long enough to allow for a response, but then speed it up in the end so that the attacking team does not have to siege for as long once a defense has arrived on the scene. The numbers could also change for ring keeps vs. back keeps depending on the average anticipated response time for a particular keep.

I think outposts could work as they do, but numbers like this could be looked at.

Resources, I wouldn't mind seeing the NPC's be tougher, more along the lines of vet dungeon trash mobs to slow the process down a bit as well as require more people to take them.

Ranger209

callen4492 wrote: »

1) The more allies in your immediate area, the less AP you get for combat and captures.
For example:
10+ allies nearby = 25% reduction in AP earned
20+ allies nearby = 50% reduction
30+ allies nearby = 75% reduction
40+ allies nearby = 90% reduction

This part is imperative to everything else you have listed, but I would suggest the following modifications. On each end of the spectrum we are trying to avoid two polar opposite outcomes, Zerg vs Zerg and PvDoor. What I believe most of us would like to see is evenly matched fights. So to this end we also should account for enemy forces. I believe also that depending on the type of point of interest these numbers should fluctuate. A sweet spot needs to be determined for resources, outposts, towns, and keeps. So for instance let's assume that for resources and towns ideally we would like to see 8 vs 8 battles for outposts 16 vs 16 and for keeps 24 vs 24, purely hypothetical. So the reductions would lay out something like below.

Resource/Town
+10 allies -15%____-6 enemies -15%
+12 allies -30%____-4 enemies -30%
+14 allies -45%____-2 enemies -45%

Outpost
+20 allies -15%____-12 enemies -15%
+24 allies -30%____-8 enemies -30%
+28 allies -45%____-4 enemies -45%

Keeps
+30 allies -15%____-18 enemies -15%
+36 allies -30%____-12 enemies -30%
+42 allies -45%____-6 enemies -45%


I think something like this would discourage PvDoor as well as zerg. I would think that maybe an announcement upon entering the point of interests radius should go to the player entering it saying something to the effect of "The area you are entering has a X% AP reduction for your alliance" upon entering and another announcement to the player when he/she leaves the area so that everyone is aware when they enter what the situation is.

Slick_007

Ranger209 wrote: »

I would think that maybe an announcement upon entering the point of interests radius should go to the player entering it saying something to the effect of "The area you are entering has a X% AP reduction for your alliance" upon entering and another announcement to the player when he/she leaves the area so that everyone is aware when they enter what the situation is.

thats not likely to help the lag everyone complains about.

Rianai

callen4492 wrote: »

1) The more allies in your immediate area, the less AP you get for combat and captures.

I don't think there needs to be artificial penalties for zerging like this and i don't even think it would have the desired result. You already gain less AP from kills and def-ticks and partly also for off-ticks the more allies are arround. So maybe just reduce base off-ticks a bit.

callen4492 wrote: »

2) Keeps/resources reward exponentially higher "campaign points" to your alliance (with a specific ceiling) the longer they are held without being captured by another alliance AND campaign points tick more often (every 10 minutes instead of every hour)

I agree that score ticks should happen more often.
But i disagree that longer held objectives should generate more points, because it would allow factions to rack up a huge amount of points with little to no effort at times with overall low population - when objectives naturally flip less frequent. Low population times - that are typically also the times with biggest population imbalance - shouldn't contribute more to the score than times of high activity.

callen4492 wrote: »

3) The longer it has been since a resource/keep was captured, the more AP you get from capturing it

I don't see a reason for this proposal. PvDooring gate keeps already happens, no need to encourage it.

callen4492 wrote: »

4) Scrolls reward more Campaign Score than keeps and keeps reward more Campaign Score than resources.
-This almost seems like common sense and I know the community has asked for this. Not sure why this hasn't changed already.

Makes sense.

callen4492 wrote: »

5) While defending a keep/resource you earn 100% more AP than at other times (from combat and from the "successful defense" tick) to help prevent it from becoming like Domination in Battlegrounds where the most successful teams avoid contact with the enemy and just capture unguarded flags
- If needed, there could be a better system for alerting everyone when a keep is under attack to prevent too many keeps/resources from falling with no defense.

Instead of just granting more AP, i would change how off- and def-ticks work. Instead of granting the whole tick from kills during a siege at the end, which only rewards 1 side and can be exploited, it ticks every few minutes. So even if lets say the defenders are outnumbered and will eventually lose the keep, they still get rewarded for holding it as long as possible. It would also prevent situations where the defenders manage to push away the enemy after a long siege and get nothing because they just left the keep area a moment before the tick happens, but someone who just came in gets everything without contributing at all.

callen4492 wrote: »

6) All-Star Royale:
Every hour, the top 45 AP earners during the past hour (top 15 from each alliance) are transported to a 5 minute battleground style fight and the winners get:
- Campaign Score for their Alliance
- A large combat bonus for the next 20 minutes
- A large AP tick (which doesn't count toward the next hours All-Star Royale)[/b]

No. Just no. I like fights against other players. But i definitely don't like to get interrupted at whatever i might be doing at this time to get ported somewhere and be forced into an artificially set up zerg fight with and against random players. If i want battleground like fights i would play battlegrounds.

My biggest issue with the scoring system is, that the best way to gain score is to flip undefended objectives = PvE. Fights against players doesn't matter. So maybe kills should also generate score? Cyrodiil is meant to be a PvP game mode after all.