An Improved Reward System would be FAR better than hard locked factions

zyk

I normally don't like to propose specific ideas because I don't think player manifestos really help game devs. But because of the circumstances, I'm just throwing out this basic example of how ZOS can shape player behaviour through rewards instead of a hard lock.

Add:
- account-wide Alliance War reward system with greater depth than currently exists; reward system would have daily, weekly and 30 day rewards regardless of which campaign is played on
- 20 or more reward tiers to motivate the greatest range of players possible
- elite alliance war vendor
- elite alliance war vendor token
- elite vendor items would be highly coveted items like arena and trial items

Faction Lock players at a reward level. Players would select one Main faction. Make it possible to switch main factions at any time, but doing so resets reward tiers.

There should be some variety, but the main reward would be the Elite Alliance War Vendor Token (which would have a better name). With tokens, players would be able to buy a variety of highly valuable items, including geodes, arena weapons, monster sets, and so on. This would also enable AvA-focused players to dedicate their time to doing what they enjoy. The DLC items could be gated based on DLC ownership or ESO+.

There would be weekly and monthly leaderboards added for rewards. There could be daily bonuses for hitting killing blow, healing and mitigation targets.

The system could feature inducements to switch to the weaker team mid-campaign. It could even be intelligent enough to allow penalty-free moves to factions at severe disadvantages in extreme cases.

Combat AP rewards would need to be increased and objective capture (otick) rewards would need to be significantly reduced to encourage PVP.

End of campaign rewards would still exist separately and would also be enhanced with more tiers and the new reward currency.

There could also be bonuses to encourage faction/campaign loyalty, but they would completely vanish if a faction is too successful.

Though the new reward system would be faction locked, players would have some freedom to play on other factions.

In regards to griefing, ZOS needs to be responsive to this at a customer service level. This game also really needs better social bans for players who disrupt zone chat for 150ish other players. But regardless, it's naive to think a hard faction lock will prevent these things.

TL;DR: The idea here is to shape player behaviour through a more nuanced reward system instead of hard, inflexible locks.

Haashhtaag

They need to greatly increase gold payouts.

Winning: 250k/30day - 50k/7day
Second: 175k/30day - 25k/7day
Third: 100k/30day - 10k/7day

Gold improvement mats, alchemy mats, provision purple ingredients added to end of camp rewards instead of the keep repair stones and etc. the better your faction does the better chance at getting gold mats etc.

I don’t like adding back pve related items such as master weapons to the loot table.

zyk

Haashhtaag wrote: »

I don’t like adding back pve related items such as master weapons to the loot table.

What are the disadvantages?

Some of the advantage to using existing PVE rewards are:

- Ease of implementation; they already exist so add no overheard of any kind nor development dollars; and we simply need lots of much better rewards ZOS can't (won't) afford to develop from scratch.

- Encourage PVP players to stay engaged with ESO. A huge problem being focused on PVP in this game is the PVE overhead. Instanced PVE and Open World AvA are completely different. It's not hard to imagine someone who loves open world pvp won't necessarily like or may even hate instanced pve -- and vice versa. This is a factor in Cyrodiil's low popularity.

- Combat parity. All PVP players have to deal with fighting against these sets, so we should have a PVP acquisition path for them.

- This addresses a larger issue with what should be a low cost of implementation. If the cost is "zerglings" with master weapons, so be it. The PVE bar is extremely low as it is. Especially for trial gear available in Normal difficulty.

Haashhtaag

I just feel like you should earn master, maelstrom, and etc weapons by doing that content. I feel like some dude who sits in a zerg and spams bombard or snipe but gains massive AP by zergling shouldn’t have a chance at a weapon from content they likely can’t complete themselves.

TBois

Yes this would have been a better solution, and one that zos hasnt tried already. Bad rewards is also something the pvp population has complained about for a while.

casparian

So much better than proposed system. Shaping player behavior with thoughtful incentives is always better design than simply laying down rules.

InvictusApollo

Haashhtaag wrote: »

They need to greatly increase gold payouts.

Winning: 250k/30day - 50k/7day
Second: 175k/30day - 25k/7day
Third: 100k/30day - 10k/7day

Gold improvement mats, alchemy mats, provision purple ingredients added to end of camp rewards instead of the keep repair stones and etc. the better your faction does the better chance at getting gold mats etc.

I don’t like adding back pve related items such as master weapons to the loot table.

Wow if we had that then we would increase the pvp community size tenfold!

idk

I would suggest OP is taking faction lock a set to far.

It is one thing to force players to chose a faction for a campaign but to start making rewards based on choosing a faction for all campaigns and more is a step to far. Even more so in light that players cannot change the faction for their characters.

Yes, I realize the next answer is likely that Zos needs to allow faction change but anyone who has paid attention Zos earlier in this young year clearly stated they have no interest in adding faction change. It has also been noted in the forums recently that Zos has previously stated it would not be an easy chore on the db side. That pretty much makes this a no go.

Further, 20 or more tiers for rewards does not encourage more players. It encourages players that are active in Cyrodiil play one character longer. Essentially it forces many to ignore more of their characters if they want to get deeper into the rewards.

On this note OP does need to opportunity to make their case of how having more tier rewards brings in more player since logic seems to support what I just said in the last paragraph. Of course if OP is trying to say that all characters of an alliance count to that tiered reward (one reward per account) then the rewards better be damned good of which I really do not see anything Zos would give up to make this a good system.

To OP's TLDR, the only behavior the idea would seem to shape is to ignore alts due to the tiered rewards.

I am not knocking OP for putting themselves out there with an idea as this is good. Zos might get an idea from this. I just think the idea itself harms players interest more than it could enhance it. It is also very likely I missed something since idk.

Edit: for the sake of humor, I think this thread should be faction locked.

zyk

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Please fix the endless pvdoor cycle in Cyrodiil. AvA has been co-opted by dolmen grinders. It's really pitiful gameplay 90% of the time.

But I know in my heart this post won't do any good. This is a lost game for people who don't really like games.

WaltherCarraway

aye master weapon for leaderboard top 10.

Ranger209

InvictusApollo wrote: »

Haashhtaag wrote: »

They need to greatly increase gold payouts.

Winning: 250k/30day - 50k/7day
Second: 175k/30day - 25k/7day
Third: 100k/30day - 10k/7day

Gold improvement mats, alchemy mats, provision purple ingredients added to end of camp rewards instead of the keep repair stones and etc. the better your faction does the better chance at getting gold mats etc.

I don’t like adding back pve related items such as master weapons to the loot table.

Wow if we had that then we would increase the pvp community size tenfold!

Except first you need to make the AvAvA aspect of Cyrodiil legitimate by faction locking campaigns. Right now people can get 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Offering decent rewards is nonsense when you can get them all. It bastardizes the competitive atmosphere of AvAvA and turns it into a me+me+me environment. How close in time did master weapons go away compared to when faction locks went away?

I view reward improvement as a phase 3 item in rebuilding competitive faction wide AvAvA back into Cyrodiil. 1st you bring back faction lock, next you legitimize the dynamic aspect of the scoring system to account for population variance, coupled with AP adjustments both plus and minus in regards to population balance in real time. Then you give out rewards that make your time and effort worthwhile in Cyrodiil. I agree that rewards need a significant boost, but now is not yet the time.