Siege Strength And The Quality of Open World PvP

Vapirko

For one brief week, Cyrodiil was fun and challenging again. Keep takes felt like an attractive risk/reward for the first time in years. You needed to play smart, to think about your positioning, your timing. No longer could you stand listlessly on ram in light armor, texting while waiting for the door to come down. For one brief week zerg guilds could not simply dog pile on the front door spamming heals and literally run over their objective within minutes. And conveniently, many of those guilds and groups disappeared for 7 days. But those of us who stayed had some of the most engaging and fun PvP in a very long time. The few finally stood a chance against the many, powerful siege was an equalizer that heavily punished thoughtless, dog pile tactics. And though I was at first apposed to it, by the time the server went down for maintenance, I was hoping ZOS would see the light.

Sadly, they did not.

Within mere hours of the server coming up, Cyrodiil made a drastic return to its previous state. Gone were the drawn out difficult keep takes that required a semblance of thought process. Gone was the ability for pugs to have a hope of holding a keep against the waves of sub assault, permafrost, spin to win spammers. There was no more push and pull across the map, and it was replaced with the all too familiar zergs smashing factions against their home gates with overwhelming numbers. And conveniently the familiar names and guilds that engage in this type of behavior started showing up again.

Edit: Oils should probably stay as they are to keep rams viable. Catapults could be adjusted as well. Meat bags don’t need to do a ton of damage in addition to defile. But obviously I think it would be perfectly viable to buff siege again and therefore I think things like fire, coldfire and lightning can do more damage to players. Keep takes lack risk for large groups because of how laughable siege is, especially in CP. And there’s no doubt that we saw a marked difference in which groups were online and how the map was played during the week of strong siege.

SirAndy

Make Siege A Force To Be Reckoned With Once More

Vapirko wrote: »

For one brief week, Cyrodiil was fun and challenging again. Keep takes felt like an attractive risk/reward for the first time in years. You needed to play smart, to think about your positioning, your timing. No longer could you stand listlessly on ram in light armor, texting while waiting for the door to come down. For one brief week zerg guilds could not simply dog pile on the front door spamming heals and literally run over their objective within minutes. And conveniently, many of those guilds and groups disappeared for 7 days. But those of us who stayed had some of the most engaging and fun PvP in a very long time. The few finally stood a chance against the many, powerful siege was an equalizer that heavily punished thoughtless, dog pile tactics.

Zevrro

Other

If you really want siege to be as strong as it was last week then other aspects of it need to be adjusted since last week sieges were basically a guaranteed kill against players with no counter to dots. I don't really agree that it made anyone player smarter in keeps fights, it just meant that 99% of players were just firing siege at each other instead of actually fighting. Keeps were defended using only siege rather than siege being strategically used to debuff, pressure enemies and control areas.

If siege is strong enough to completely replace actual combat then whats the point in trying to PvP?

Vapirko

Zevrro wrote: »

If you really want siege to be as strong as it was last week then other aspects of it need to be adjusted since last week sieges were basically a guaranteed kill against players with no counter to dots. I don't really agree that it made anyone player smarter in keeps fights, it just meant that 99% of players were just firing siege at each other instead of actually fighting. Keeps were defended using only siege rather than siege being strategically used to debuff, pressure enemies and control areas.

If siege is strong enough to completely replace actual combat then whats the point in trying to PvP?

Really? Because I had just as much if not more actual PvP last week than ever before. In fact, since players were spreading out more instead of clumping on FD, there was more opportunity for small fights within larger battles. As soon as that change was reverted, it was back to 24 person raids standing on each other spamming sub assault and wiping everything in their path on a split second of lag induced abilty explosions. I very much disagree that the OP siege was providing less opportunity for actual PvP.

Theignson

Yeah, it was fun and challenging. And the 80+ ad blobs were back on Vivec NA tonight steamrolling the smaller groups. On the other hand, it was over powered, and made it hard to take keeps. Not sure how to balance these issues.

Zevrro

Other

Vapirko wrote: »

Zevrro wrote: »

If you really want siege to be as strong as it was last week then other aspects of it need to be adjusted since last week sieges were basically a guaranteed kill against players with no counter to dots. I don't really agree that it made anyone player smarter in keeps fights, it just meant that 99% of players were just firing siege at each other instead of actually fighting. Keeps were defended using only siege rather than siege being strategically used to debuff, pressure enemies and control areas.

If siege is strong enough to completely replace actual combat then whats the point in trying to PvP?

Really? Because I had just as much if not more actual PvP last week than ever before. In fact, since players were spreading out more instead of clumping on FD, there was more opportunity for small fights within larger battles. As soon as that change was reverted, it was back to 24 person raids standing on each other spamming sub assault and wiping everything in their path on a split second of lag induced abilty explosions. I very much disagree that the OP siege was providing less opportunity for actual PvP.

Most of the small fights I saw were ruined by players setting up a ballista 10ft away and clearing them all. Siege making players spread out and fight is fine but when players are choosing to just set up a siege and fire it at a single player because they know its the best way to kill them there's a problem.

Minno

Make Siege A Force To Be Reckoned With Once More

Zevrro wrote: »

If you really want siege to be as strong as it was last week then other aspects of it need to be adjusted since last week sieges were basically a guaranteed kill against players with no counter to dots. I don't really agree that it made anyone player smarter in keeps fights, it just meant that 99% of players were just firing siege at each other instead of actually fighting. Keeps were defended using only siege rather than siege being strategically used to debuff, pressure enemies and control areas.

If siege is strong enough to completely replace actual combat then whats the point in trying to PvP?

Normally I agree but whena simple change literally stopped how zergs/lag impact our daily PvP, it was easy to support strong siege. And not just effects (because they tried that already and people didn't care lol). Ground based mechanics that really cause harm, that kill you without needing server calculations clogging the servers.

Now i wanted to vote for "other" but for a fix strong siege proceeded to give cyro the urgency it needed. Honestly they needto revamp siege/pbaoe/ground based AOE:
- ground based spells; should be practically instant kill on initial hit. They should beso strong, all the server has to check is who is in it and what health. No fancy debuffs, no buffs, no defiles just raw sexy power. " But minno, what about counterplay?!". Here it is; these spells kill/DMG allies.
- siege; how come trebuchets don't severely DMG walls? How come oils don't leave a strong dot that could kill your target in afew seconds? Where are the ladders and the scalable rolling towers? Siege needs such an overhaul that keep fights should be dynamic and fast paced to match the game.
- pbaoe; nerf them. Have them grant strong debuffs/buffs to counter. Single target should be the way to make your kills and if you needa reason as to why, just think of the calculations that could be saved and the tactical requirement. If you needto AOE kill something fast, you'll need to use the strong/deadly ground based



But that's my opinion and it doesn't match others opinions. But I'm tired of watching a Zerg bash their head into a keep, take it after the otherside lahs out or over heals the incoming DMG.

Joy_Division

Biased poll is biased.

Keep siege week, huh? Let's just ignore the numerous times ZOs already buffed it - The meatbag which infect large areas with overlapping Major Defile fields, the Scattershots while put down overlapping fields of with a +20% damage, oil catapults that drain stamina, lightning cats that drain magicka, the buff to make it so CP siege acts like no CP seige - all of these buffs were recent, all of them were asked for and all of them were applauded. Seige as it is destroys roof defenders on an inner keep, it destroys attackers trying to use a single breech in a well defended keep, it is already been buffed numerous times putting all sorts of debuffs on players as well as damage and people are still complaining and just flat out lying by calling it weak.

All those buffs prove siege fanatics wont be satisfied unless a piece of inventory can destroy players without them being able to do anything about it. Only when it does oblivion damage that ignores everything including shields do you finally deem it useful. Yet someone you all complain about a little oblivion damage dot from Sloads. Because left clicking from 50 meters away on a tower wall is skillful gameplay, but actually getting out there and fighting someone with a proc set is a "crutch."

Everytime siege gets buffed, the people who suffer by far the most are inexperienced players or those poor souls who try to contribute to their alliance by setting up the plain old ballista to hit a castle wall. They lose control of their character while shooting that ballista, so they cant just get out of the mutliple and overlapping red circles on them, and have to with standing in a major defile, a 20% amp to all damage, and getting destroyed by a cold harbor ballista that kills them in 2 seconds tops. People who run in ball groups have pocket purgers and healers who are inconvenienced, not destroyed, by it. Anytime something is overpowered, the people you are so desperate to destroy is effected the least by the changes because they have the most experience and pocket support to deal with it.

technohic

Make Siege A Force To Be Reckoned With Once More

It favored numbers a little less last week because bunches of pugs would be easy targets. It doesn't surprise me the people who want to bunch up more dislike it. Pretty tiresome to see players face tank siege and just run over you in a mass of 1200 damage attacks while you're in medium armor because they stack armor and health but 20 of them together maybe with a sub 2k incap becomes enough. Probably the same inflated egos who has to flip to the bigger factions need their easy wins.

VaranisArano

To add to what Joy_Division said, I suspect a good deal of this comes down to tunnel vision.

When you're standing on the wall watching groups heal through siege, it feels like siege is weak because you don't see the effort that goes into healing through it.

On the ground, the healers know exactly how much effort they put into getting their raid through heavy siege fire.

For my part, the catapult buffs of Summerset were the first time our raid healers were seriously challenged by incoming siege damage over and above the normal healing routine as we kept our team alive to open multiple breaches and push inside keeps.. And of course, that siege buff was reverted because if it challenged the healers in organized raids? It slaughtered everyone less organized.

As a raid healer, it was an interesting challenge that we tackled as a team. However, I certainly understand why ZOS reverted the buff.

I really struggle with these latest requests to buff siege because if ZOS reverted the comparatively smaller catapult buffs, why would they buff siege as the current requests desire? Its going to have the same impact or worse - why do the same thing twice?

Vapirko

Joy_Division wrote: »

Biased poll is biased.

Keep siege week, huh? Let's just ignore the numerous times ZOs already buffed it - The meatbag which infect large areas with overlapping Major Defile fields, the Scattershots while put down overlapping fields of with a +20% damage, oil catapults that drain stamina, lightning cats that drain magicka, the buff to make it so CP siege acts like no CP seige - all of these buffs were recent, all of them were asked for and all of them were applauded. Seige as it is destroys roof defenders on an inner keep, it destroys attackers trying to use a single breech in a well defended keep, it is already been buffed numerous times putting all sorts of debuffs on players as well as damage and people are still complaining and just flat out lying by calling it weak.

All those buffs prove siege fanatics wont be satisfied unless a piece of inventory can destroy players without them being able to do anything about it. Only when it does oblivion damage that ignores everything including shields do you finally deem it useful. Yet someone you all complain about a little oblivion damage dot from Sloads. Because left clicking from 50 meters away on a tower wall is skillful gameplay, but actually getting out there and fighting someone with a proc set is a "crutch."

Everytime siege gets buffed, the people who suffer by far the most are inexperienced players or those poor souls who try to contribute to their alliance by setting up the plain old ballista to hit a castle wall. They lose control of their character while shooting that ballista, so they cant just get out of the mutliple and overlapping red circles on them, and have to with standing in a major defile, a 20% amp to all damage, and getting destroyed by a cold harbor ballista that kills them in 2 seconds tops. People who run in ball groups have pocket purgers and healers who are inconvenienced, not destroyed, by it. Anytime something is overpowered, the people you are so desperate to destroy is effected the least by the changes because they have the most experience and pocket support to deal with it.

While of course I respect your opinion. My experience this past week solo, grouped and in large pug takes/defenses as magicka and stamina based characters was that PvP was far more fun than it’s been in a long time and was entirely different than what you describe. Siege is weak. Without a healer I can waltz through it no issue in medium or light armor. Basically my attitude towards people sieging me is one giant lol, and I can’t wait to rush you when I get in and burn everyone down while they’re still on oils. I don’t think the poll is biased at all, siege is barely useful in no CP. In CP it’s a downright joke. It does punish disorganized and inexperienced players, but it also gives those players a defense against the guild zergs that run them over constantly. We don’t have to go full on OP, but PvP was a lot more fun this week and the instant that servers went back up after patch it was back to the same trash fest of zerg guilds running through keeps without even a pause.

@VaranisArano if healers are struggling to heal through siege then i really don’t know what to say. I can heal through it on my own easy. It’s also really easy to not just stand in siege. So this sounds like maybe healers could have trouble if their team is used to just not even thinking about what they’re doing at all lol. And that’s exactly the type of gameplay that powerful siege destroys. Imo it’s a good thing. Also not all siege has to be crazy OP. Oils for example are probably good where they are for the sake of rams. But if I fight my way out onto the wall of a keep defense and 1v1 multiple people on the way so that I can load up a ballista and hit the ram team, and I take that risk, it should count.

olsborg

Meh. Ppl resorted to sieging other ppl over actually engaging in combat. It became quite ridiculous.

Qbiken

Keep Siege Weak

Was it fun to wipe an entire faction zerg with 3 coordinated coldfires? Yes, I had a few good laughs due to how absurd it was. Was it anywhere near balanced? No. Had several encounters out in the open (not even close to keeps) where the first thing an enemy group would do when facing our group (basically a 3v3) was to start sieging with coldfire. The damage was overkill. And I don't share the same view that performance was better during last week due to the siege bug. Was mediocre as always.

kpittsniperb14_ESO

Siege damage in non CP is "barely useful"? Either you are embellishing to prove a point or you really have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to non CP....either way, just stop.

Vapirko

olsborg wrote: »

Meh. Ppl resorted to sieging other ppl over actually engaging in combat. It became quite ridiculous.

In some cases yes, but you can move in on a sieger pretty easily. And how is that necessarily worse than now when people choose to simply clump and spam abilties and run over keeps. Arguably that’s not really “engaging” in combat either.

Vapirko

kpittsniperb14_ESO wrote: »

Siege damage in non CP is "barely useful"? Either you are embellishing to prove a point or you really have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to non CP....either way, just stop.

You’re more than welcome to disagree with my point but I’m am neither embellishing nor lack skill and experience with PvP in both CP and non CP campaigns. In no CP the enemy can cover the FD with whatever they want. A well timed roll dodge and I’m through. With a healer it’s a cakewalk. I understand that’s just my opinion and yours may differ. But idk any players who are half decent at PvP who worry about siege weapons unless maybe it’s cold fire. There’s absolutely room to make them stronger even if we don’t return to the fully OP state they were in this last week.

LoreToo

Keep Siege Weak

This sige bug made ppl hold in their balistas for so long, that i can zerg them with my group from behind this was fun.
Pvp is all about movement, and sige bug stuck ppl at one position. If u think this ok - think again pls

Vapirko

LoreToo wrote: »

This sige bug made ppl hold in their balistas for so long, that i can zerg them with my group from behind this was fun.
Pvp is all about movement, and sige bug stuck ppl at one position. If u think this ok - think again pls

Its a matter of perspective. It also made big groups split up and move around. Now they just dog pile at the door. There was movement in battles last week than there has been in a long time.

Trancestor

Lag was the same lag for me, zergs were the same zergs for me, only difference was zerglings and bad players could set up a siege and kill the small scale groups that would usually farm them before. This was the case for me at least on Vivec PC EU, so this talk of "amazing lagless strategic pvp" isnt something ive noticed at all.

Vapirko

Trancestor wrote: »

Lag was the same lag for me, zergs were the same zergs for me, only difference was zerglings and bad players could set up a siege and kill the small scale groups that would usually farm them before. This was the case for me at least on Vivec PC EU, so this talk of "amazing lagless strategic pvp" isnt something ive noticed at all.

I said nothing about lag. For me performance was generally the same. I can’t speak for EU. Sure less skilled players can use siege to great effect but it’s goes both ways. All I can say is that certain groups that are used to zerging to scrolls and overwhelming the map with large raids were conveniently absent this week on PC NA. A couple of hours after the change these groups were back. It was like night and day. And as far as I saw both in game and on streams and YT, the farming groups loved the OP siege.

zyk

Make Siege A Force To Be Reckoned With Once More

I have always preferred strong siege in ESO. Though the numbers were all completely different before the CP system was implemented, siege at launch was very strong and produced many of the same results we saw last week.

However, strong siege alone is not going to permanently mitigate the affected parts of the game we don't like. The multi-raid zerg guilds, the hyper-competitive ball groups, the troll tanks, etc, will all adapt.

I think ZOS needs to examine the kind of fights most players actually enjoy and try to better facilitate them. I don't think anyone ever enjoys fighting the multi-raid guilds or the hyper-competitive ball groups except other groups like those.

I thought ball groups were better balanced from 2.3 through 3.0 compared to everyone else. Since then, it's simply not at all fun to fight a top ball group outside of one. I would rather not play than do what it takes to adapt to that. And truly, that's a big reason why I take long breaks. The hyper-competitive ball groups are a kind of dinosaur in the game. There aren't many left, but when they do play, they tend to completely dominate wherever they go.

I apologize to ball group players for writing that. I know many groups like this work extremely hard for their factions and are very good citizens. I know your guilds are often like families. I know your success comes from preparation, practice and skill. I recognize that it would be unfair for this play style to be completely eliminated. However, I truly believe for the health of the game, something has to change.

I think true AvA enthusiasts who mainly want to enjoy combat all dislike the players who come to Cyrodiill just to grind AP through uncontested objective captures otherwise known as pvdoors. A lot of these are just PVE players going through all of their characters for geodes and jewelry. Cyrodiil has become part of their repulsive (to me) PVE grind cycle. Their Pvdooring is especially annoying because the keeps they flip are usually won back with another uncontested pvdoor.

And ugh, the tank meta.

Of course, this is all my POV and reflective of what I like and dislike. I say we in some cases because I know many others feel the same, but I am not trying to speak for anyone else.

mayasunrising

Make Siege A Force To Be Reckoned With Once More

I agree, the high powered siege made AvA fun and challenging, and after experiencing the "Age of Siege" then getting into Cyro tonight post-fix, I came to realize how absolutely boring and mindless AvA has become. Ball zergs doing their dumb ball zerg things, tower farmers doing their ring round the tower farming thing, zergs pvdooring, l33+ Kewl D00Dz trolling for pug and newbie trash, > 2 minute keep takes; YAAAAWWWWWWWN!

The only reason I stayed on tonight was to put some AP towards remaining in the top 10. If it weren't for that I probably would have logged for boredom.

Please ZOS, bring back bugged siege and make a feature.

Cathexis

Make Siege A Force To Be Reckoned With Once More

I would like to see more than strong seige, I would like to see seige builds.

I would like to see short range seige that hits hard and adjusts quickly, that stays down for long durations, has higher health and perhaps has secondary defensive abilities, and that moves slowly with a single player.

Show me seige knights.

Vapirko

zyk wrote: »

I have always preferred strong siege in ESO. Though the numbers were all completely different before the CP system was implemented, siege at launch was very strong and produced many of the same results we saw last week.

However, strong siege alone is not going to permanently mitigate the affected parts of the game we don't like. The multi-raid zerg guilds, the hyper-competitive ball groups, the troll tanks, etc, will all adapt.

I think ZOS needs to examine the kind of fights most players actually enjoy and try to better facilitate them. I don't think anyone ever enjoys fighting the multi-raid guilds or the hyper-competitive ball groups except other groups like those.

I thought ball groups were better balanced from 2.3 through 3.0 compared to everyone else. Since then, it's simply not at all fun to fight a top ball group outside of one. I would rather not play than do what it takes to adapt to that. And truly, that's a big reason why I take long breaks. The hyper-competitive ball groups are a kind of dinosaur in the game. There aren't many left, but when they do play, they tend to completely dominate wherever they go.

I apologize to ball group players for writing that. I know many groups like this work extremely hard for their factions and are very good citizens. I know your guilds are often like families. I know your success comes from preparation, practice and skill. I recognize that it would be unfair for this play style to be completely eliminated. However, I truly believe for the health of the game, something has to change.

I think true AvA enthusiasts who mainly want to enjoy combat all dislike the players who come to Cyrodiill just to grind AP through uncontested objective captures otherwise known as pvdoors. A lot of these are just PVE players going through all of their characters for geodes and jewelry. Cyrodiil has become part of their repulsive (to me) PVE grind cycle. Their Pvdooring is especially annoying because the keeps they flip are usually won back with another uncontested pvdoor.

And ugh, the tank meta.

Of course, this is all my POV and reflective of what I like and dislike. I say we in some cases because I know many others feel the same, but I am not trying to speak for anyone else.

Im not really even talking about dedicated, organized ball groups. Those players will be fine. They have the ability to adapt to anything more than pug zergs, solo players or small scalers. They have the skill and the numbers to slot the abilities that need to be slotted, use the sets that need to be used and coordinate it all. What Im referring to are the lower tier zerg guilds that really just rely on numbers to do their work. One on one or in an even numbered fight these groups usually fall very quickly. But they frequently appear when populations are out of balance or they know they have the advantage simply because they have 20 people and are semi coordinated.

Thraben

Other

People have mentionned friendly fire multiple times as an "option". What they forget is, though, that people don´t care whether they shoot into their own troops or the enemies´. Plus, it´s often better to get rid of your own Pugs that shouldn´t really be in the middle of the fight yourself before they unintentionally bomb you with VD out of lack of proper equipment and experience.

I can understand, though, that a PUG´s life is quite miserable when organized groups arrive, so sieges could become stronger IF they aren´t used in a small scale context. Thus, the solution is obvious:

Increase the Scattershot siege buff to 50%. This way, it STILL requires some skill and coordination to kill solo players with it, and it gives PUGs a chance when they use it hand in hand with other sieges.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Other

I'd be ok with reverting the changes back to the bugged versions provided they increase the placement radius of ballistas again to match catapults and siege cannot be placed outside of keep and resource tick regions

Mayrael

Make Siege A Force To Be Reckoned With Once More

Vapirko wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Biased poll is biased.

Keep siege week, huh? Let's just ignore the numerous times ZOs already buffed it - The meatbag which infect large areas with overlapping Major Defile fields, the Scattershots while put down overlapping fields of with a +20% damage, oil catapults that drain stamina, lightning cats that drain magicka, the buff to make it so CP siege acts like no CP seige - all of these buffs were recent, all of them were asked for and all of them were applauded. Seige as it is destroys roof defenders on an inner keep, it destroys attackers trying to use a single breech in a well defended keep, it is already been buffed numerous times putting all sorts of debuffs on players as well as damage and people are still complaining and just flat out lying by calling it weak.

All those buffs prove siege fanatics wont be satisfied unless a piece of inventory can destroy players without them being able to do anything about it. Only when it does oblivion damage that ignores everything including shields do you finally deem it useful. Yet someone you all complain about a little oblivion damage dot from Sloads. Because left clicking from 50 meters away on a tower wall is skillful gameplay, but actually getting out there and fighting someone with a proc set is a "crutch."

Everytime siege gets buffed, the people who suffer by far the most are inexperienced players or those poor souls who try to contribute to their alliance by setting up the plain old ballista to hit a castle wall. They lose control of their character while shooting that ballista, so they cant just get out of the mutliple and overlapping red circles on them, and have to with standing in a major defile, a 20% amp to all damage, and getting destroyed by a cold harbor ballista that kills them in 2 seconds tops. People who run in ball groups have pocket purgers and healers who are inconvenienced, not destroyed, by it. Anytime something is overpowered, the people you are so desperate to destroy is effected the least by the changes because they have the most experience and pocket support to deal with it.

While of course I respect your opinion. My experience this past week solo, grouped and in large pug takes/defenses as magicka and stamina based characters was that PvP was far more fun than it’s been in a long time and was entirely different than what you describe. Siege is weak. Without a healer I can waltz through it no issue in medium or light armor. Basically my attitude towards people sieging me is one giant lol, and I can’t wait to rush you when I get in and burn everyone down while they’re still on oils. I don’t think the poll is biased at all, siege is barely useful in no CP. In CP it’s a downright joke. It does punish disorganized and inexperienced players, but it also gives those players a defense against the guild zergs that run them over constantly. We don’t have to go full on OP, but PvP was a lot more fun this week and the instant that servers went back up after patch it was back to the same trash fest of zerg guilds running through keeps without even a pause.

@VaranisArano if healers are struggling to heal through siege then i really don’t know what to say. I can heal through it on my own easy. It’s also really easy to not just stand in siege. So this sounds like maybe healers could have trouble if their team is used to just not even thinking about what they’re doing at all lol. And that’s exactly the type of gameplay that powerful siege destroys. Imo it’s a good thing. Also not all siege has to be crazy OP. Oils for example are probably good where they are for the sake of rams. But if I fight my way out onto the wall of a keep defense and 1v1 multiple people on the way so that I can load up a ballista and hit the ram team, and I take that risk, it should count.

Beautiful summary. Powerful sieges gave a tool for pugs to fight ball groups, yes they were on recieving end to, but it doesn't matter for them will they die because of siege or because of being overrun by a zerg ball - at least they had a chance to fight back.

And say whatever you want but performance difference is like night and day. From literally no kicks and maybe 2 bigger lag spikes during week of sieges, to (only yesterday) like 6 lag spikes for over 5k ms where 4 of them ended with kicks. This simply can't be coincidence.

SodanTok

Other

Last weak siege was ridiculous. I am all up for sieges actually being dangerous, but there should be some 'warning' about it. That open door being shot at by attackers/defenders? Probably very bad spot to stand in. Those sieges there should do well enough damage than any amount of people or purge/shield/healing spamming and stacking groups should think twice about going there and actually go for second hole. For example during Summerset patch the new catapults made well sure opening just gate and rushing thru was not an option against defense.

But last week? Just standing on your trebuchet and getting hit by circle or accidentally walking into one should not one shot you. Walking into seemingly empty keep and getting one shot by some ballista in corner out of nowhere should not one shot you. Fighting person that in middle of fight quickly jumps to his ballista to shoot below his legs to try to one shot you... should not one shot you

I would like if they returned scattershot catapult to most of its original power, gave fire ballistas and trebuchets stronger dots that getting hit by multiple feels as bad as getting hit by one felt last week. And buff or rework support sieges (lightning, ice, oil, ...) to make their effect noticeable and dangerous.

Ranger209

olsborg wrote: »

Meh. Ppl resorted to sieging other ppl over actually engaging in combat. It became quite ridiculous.

This really is quite counterable in most instances with movement. If siege had been left as it was on live longer more people would have adapted and understood how to counter it. I healed through siege when I did get caught in it using dark deal on my skirt wearing mag sorc. Yeah the 1 second cast time dark deal. But if you are aware and now how much it is gonna hurt you start learning to just flat out avoid it. The oblivion damage was really the only thing that took it over the top in my opinion.

VaranisArano

Vapirko wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Biased poll is biased.

Keep siege week, huh? Let's just ignore the numerous times ZOs already buffed it - The meatbag which infect large areas with overlapping Major Defile fields, the Scattershots while put down overlapping fields of with a +20% damage, oil catapults that drain stamina, lightning cats that drain magicka, the buff to make it so CP siege acts like no CP seige - all of these buffs were recent, all of them were asked for and all of them were applauded. Seige as it is destroys roof defenders on an inner keep, it destroys attackers trying to use a single breech in a well defended keep, it is already been buffed numerous times putting all sorts of debuffs on players as well as damage and people are still complaining and just flat out lying by calling it weak.

All those buffs prove siege fanatics wont be satisfied unless a piece of inventory can destroy players without them being able to do anything about it. Only when it does oblivion damage that ignores everything including shields do you finally deem it useful. Yet someone you all complain about a little oblivion damage dot from Sloads. Because left clicking from 50 meters away on a tower wall is skillful gameplay, but actually getting out there and fighting someone with a proc set is a "crutch."

Everytime siege gets buffed, the people who suffer by far the most are inexperienced players or those poor souls who try to contribute to their alliance by setting up the plain old ballista to hit a castle wall. They lose control of their character while shooting that ballista, so they cant just get out of the mutliple and overlapping red circles on them, and have to with standing in a major defile, a 20% amp to all damage, and getting destroyed by a cold harbor ballista that kills them in 2 seconds tops. People who run in ball groups have pocket purgers and healers who are inconvenienced, not destroyed, by it. Anytime something is overpowered, the people you are so desperate to destroy is effected the least by the changes because they have the most experience and pocket support to deal with it.

While of course I respect your opinion. My experience this past week solo, grouped and in large pug takes/defenses as magicka and stamina based characters was that PvP was far more fun than it’s been in a long time and was entirely different than what you describe. Siege is weak. Without a healer I can waltz through it no issue in medium or light armor. Basically my attitude towards people sieging me is one giant lol, and I can’t wait to rush you when I get in and burn everyone down while they’re still on oils. I don’t think the poll is biased at all, siege is barely useful in no CP. In CP it’s a downright joke. It does punish disorganized and inexperienced players, but it also gives those players a defense against the guild zergs that run them over constantly. We don’t have to go full on OP, but PvP was a lot more fun this week and the instant that servers went back up after patch it was back to the same trash fest of zerg guilds running through keeps without even a pause.

@VaranisArano if healers are struggling to heal through siege then i really don’t know what to say. I can heal through it on my own easy. It’s also really easy to not just stand in siege. So this sounds like maybe healers could have trouble if their team is used to just not even thinking about what they’re doing at all lol. And that’s exactly the type of gameplay that powerful siege destroys. Imo it’s a good thing. Also not all siege has to be crazy OP. Oils for example are probably good where they are for the sake of rams. But if I fight my way out onto the wall of a keep defense and 1v1 multiple people on the way so that I can load up a ballista and hit the ram team, and I take that risk, it should count.

To be entirely clear, our healers were struggling in a particular context.

1. The Summerset catapult buffs.

2. In an organized raid that specifically tries to capture important objectives which were often heavily defended.

By attacking strategically important, defended keeps, we were deliberately putting ourselves in a situation where we would be under heavy siege fire from buffed siege as we opened the reaches for you to run in, and yes, we struggled - certainly more than any patch before or since barring this bug. Stacked debuffs and lots more incoming damage will do that. But where we struggled more than we ever had and still succeeded pretty often thanks to teamwork? Less organized groups died, lots.

You talk about not thinking? As Joy_Division pointed out, someone's got to siege the wall down in the first place and those are the people most vulnerable to siege. That's also the type of gameplay that buffed siege makes quite hard. There's thinking that goes into protecting yourself on siege, but that's quickly rendered moot when the defenders can rain powerful siege on your whole raid - and its certainly more efficient for players to take their own steps in conjunction with the healers. We certainly thought about the problems we,were having and made adjustments as healers and individual players so we could better work as a team to get us through siege as a raid. And if we had to adjust, rethink, and be better as a team...its no surpriae that everyone less organized struggled even more.

I suspect, though correct me if I'm wrong, that our difference in opinion stems from different tactics in a keep battle. I am on the team thats laying down siege to break open the wall or the door, either healing or laying down siege myself. I have no choice but to stand in siege fire while I do this if there are good defenders, and as a raid, I'm going to take siege fire the while tine we're in a defended keep. You seem to favor a more mobile method, taking advantage of the openings others made to open a way for others. Both are good and necessary tactics for taking a defended keep!

But please, do not be so quick to discard what the players who have no choice but to stand in siege fire in order to siege down or defend keeps are telling you. When even organized raids struggle to deal with incoming siege fire at objectives, everyone less organized gets slaughtered.

Now, you might regard that as a positive thing? I look at it like this: we tried that once, and ZOS reverted that buff. What exactly has changed that we should do the same thing twice?

Vapirko

@VaranisArano I think what didn’t work about the catapults was the fact that they remain on the ground. If we were to buff siege I think ballista would be the ones to look at and I’ve exited my original post to reflect some thoughts on that.

Yes you’re right I am typically alone or in a duo, moving around where ever needs help, but I’m frequently on rams and siege and set them up or initiate siege often. I shouldn’t talk about group heals because ive no idea what it’s like, never done it. For me alone, rally and vigor suffice. If enough people stack siege it can get to be too much, but that seems rare and if a healer is present and putting up shields it’s pretty hard to care if someone is dumping oils on me or seiging. From my perspective as someone who tries to help pugs who are struggling against big organized groups whenever I can, I see siege doing almost nothing and having one week where 5 or 10 of us can make a 15 person group think twice before running over was pretty great. And it doesn’t necessarily work against us becuse that group relies on numbers and being close to one another and making one rush. Without that they crumble. Those of us working together as self reliant individuals don’t fall prey to that particular pitfall.