100% AP bonus for attacking score board leaders

Ranger209

One of the bigger issues I see with the 3 banner war is that all too often there is a fight for second place between the 2 factions not in the lead rather than those 2 factions both focusing on the faction that is in the lead. This campaign is less than a week old and already this battle has begun for second place. The whole premise, to me, of a 3 faction system is that the 2 factions that are trailing have the opportunity to ally with one another and focus on the leading faction to make things a 3 horse race. For varying reasons this just doesn't happen organically. You see it from time to time, but in the end it never lasts long and one of the factions that is not in the lead starts attacking the other trailing faction, and it falls apart and becomes a you started it and I'm going to finish it affair with these two factions spending way to much time fighting petty battles with each other rather than focusing the leaders where they should be. Boredom, people who care nothing for the scoreboard, etc. these things derail what should be happening and distract from the larger overall goal of focusing on the leaders.

Therefore, I recommend giving a 50% 100% AP increase to the 2 factions not in first place whenever they kill an opponent of the leading faction or take resources, keeps, or scrolls from the leading faction. What I am looking for is an incentive that is enough to shorten these times of petty fighting between the trailing alliances and increasing the time these 2 alliances spend focusing on the leaders as is intended by the 3 faction system. Would this be incentive enough to do that? I don't know, but I think it is worth a try. If double AP can fill up all servers and create the need to add additional servers a 100% increase like this may be enough. It may also pull people out of pve land that are on the 2 trailing factions to take advantage of the bonus when their faction is not in the lead. Look at it this way, they are in the lead so they are the biggest threat, and are worth more to each factions cause than the faction in second or third place. Anything that can aid in making the scoreboard more competitive I feel warrants consideration, so please consider this.

Edit: Struck through has been amended from OP, but left in place as not to remove context from the first several responses before it was struck.

Mr_Walker

I like this. Elegant, and simple.

It won't stop "night-capping", but it does give an incentive for a little more balance maybe.

MajBludd

So, how would this work with no faction locks? 50% more AP is a pretty big incentive to jump to the other side.

Ranger209

Removed comment as it is no longer pertinent.

idk

Besides creating a more volatile scoring system it also seems open to exploit without a faction lock. As such the idea should not be considered.

Ranger209

Exploit how?

ArchMikem

I have wished I got a bigger reward for fighting and helping down Emp.

MajBludd

I'd say exploit by playing on one faction to get them in 1st place.
Then all jumping over to 2nd or 3rd place factions to reap the benefits of the 50% inc to ap bonus. Rinse and repeat.
I'm not sure if this is the exploit @idk meant but I can see this happening.

idk

MajBludd wrote: »

I'd say exploit by playing on one faction to get them in 1st place.
Then all jumping over to 2nd or 3rd place factions to reap the benefits of the 50% inc to ap bonus. Rinse and repeat.
I'm not sure if this is the exploit @idk meant but I can see this happening.

Of course it would be exploiting that design being suggested. It is a no brainer that players would merely swap sides based on that multiplier which is why it is such a bad idea. I would suggest the low interest in this thread is people see it as such.

Alienoutlaw

Firstly i'll start by saying NO

why punish a dedicated player and put a target on their heads so the lazy players can benefit from their hard work?
Secondly, it will only encourage the bad practises that faction lock was re-introduced to stop, and act as a means to circumvent the penalties for faction hopping. whole guilds/groups pushing each other up the leader board then switch and farm the players they boosted, rinse and repeat, the system will become a joke

Ranger209

First off why are people so concerned about the score all of the sudden on an unlocked campaign. I thought the unlocked campaign was for people who have no interest in the score, just want to play with friends, and only want to find good fights. Am I sensing faction pride, or what is that? The reason it isn't an exploit is because it is an intention to get the second and third place teams to focus on the first place team. This does become problematic when flipping factions, but no moreso than painting a map one color and flipping factions and painting it another color. Nothing different will happen in this regard at certain times of day either way, except the amount of AP people can gain. Understand, on a faction flipping campaign this happens no matter what except instead of focusing on the first place team you focus on the color of the team that has last painted the map. Same end different means. Less AP.

However, it is a valid point, and since some are suddenly concerned with the score while they faction flip, I would say that being the case the scrolls, keeps, and resources could be excluded from this and just killing players could be an alternative. I would then suggest an AP bonus of 100% for killing players of the faction in the lead. This encourages PvP over PvDoor and satisfies as an incentive for the 2nd and 3rd place factions to focus the 1st place faction. If everyone leaves the 1st place faction to the 2nd and 3rd then there are no players to kill from that faction and no way to "exploit" the bonus.

MajBludd

I get what you are trying to do, I just think it will get exploited. You can purchase a new acct at a low cost and have alts for when it's time to gang up on the 1st place faction.

So, I'll just jump on my alt and go to DC or AD and those that choose to remain loyal to their faction, get screwed out of a possible camp win.

The reasons 2nd and 3rd don't generally gang up on 1st place is it's easier to pick on the weakest faction.
That's why you get AD, for example, attacking Roe when Ep is pushing Ales. It's looking for the easiest way to gain AP so they pick what they perceive as the easiest target.

That's why you get ppl saying things in zone like, "why are we attacking X while Y has emp?

Its ppl looking for easy AP and to avoid actual pvp.

Mr_Walker

MajBludd wrote: »

I'd say exploit by playing on one faction to get them in 1st place.
Then all jumping over to 2nd or 3rd place factions to reap the benefits of the 50% inc to ap bonus. Rinse and repeat.
I'm not sure if this is the exploit @idk meant but I can see this happening.

1) TBH most of the time every campaign but Kaal on Xbox is dead, so not really an issue.

2) There are easier and more time efficient ways to "boost".

idk

Mr_Walker wrote: »

MajBludd wrote: »

I'd say exploit by playing on one faction to get them in 1st place.
Then all jumping over to 2nd or 3rd place factions to reap the benefits of the 50% inc to ap bonus. Rinse and repeat.
I'm not sure if this is the exploit @idk meant but I can see this happening.

1) TBH most of the time every campaign but Kaal on Xbox is dead, so not really an issue.

2) There are easier and more time efficient ways to "boost".

It make no sense to even bring up low pop campaigns as this effects the busy campaigns as well. Totally pointless. heck, with your second point you are actually agreeing the idea in the OP can be exploited. Just making an excuse that there are other ways to "boost" regardless. Regardless if there is or not you are agreeing the idea is exploitable.

Ranger209

You are calling it an exploit because you don't like it. Not liking it doesn't make it an exploit. An exploit is doing something that goes against the way the game was intended to be played, like it or not. When it goes against the intended game design that is an exploit. Playing an alt account so that you can get around the faction lock ruleset, that is an exploit, like it or not it goes against game design intent. That is an exploit. What I am proposing is game design that is intended to give a bonus to AP for killing members of the alliance in first place. If you use a means to circumvent another design system and exploit that design intent to take advantage of this design intent, then the exploit that needs to be stopped is the faction hopping on a locked server via an alt account. That's the exploit.

MajBludd

@Ranger209 is it really an exploit to have a 2nd, 2rd, or 4th acct?
If it was wouldn't zos have taken action, as it is widely known, that players do buy multiple copies and have multiple accts?
I've known about 10 players that have at least 2 and some have had up 6+. Why, I haven't a clue.

I appreciate you trying to balance the server(s) and trying to think outside of the box, but I just dont see this going any other way then what I described.

Zos will not ban ppl for giving them more money, buying multiple accts, and I doubt they'd call it an exploit.
If they did call it an exploit and put some kind of measures in place to prevent the use of multiple accts, it would hurt their income. I just dont see them calling it exploit, but to zos it's just more profits.

Maybe that can be a thread, asking ZOS themselves if having multiple accts is indeed an exploit or not?

Ranger209

The reason faction locks were brought back is so that an individual would have to pick a faction on that campaign and play for that faction for the duration. If players are using alt accounts to work around this and this is acceptable, then ZOS should just lock all campaigns so people have to buy multiple accounts to do this. Or there is no point in a faction lock. Are there lots of people currently exploiting faction lock by doing this? It's hard to tell as a player. Still an exploit. Do they need to go a step further and lock it by i.p. address? If it becomes a common knowledge issue and offends the same people that fought for faction lock to the same degree it will be brought up.

So without naming names, do you know for a fact that these 10 people are switching accounts on the locked servers to exploit the faction lock system? Or do they just have multiple accounts, but don't exploit the system with them? They created a server where that is just fine to do that is not locked. If they are doing it on the locked server, that is exploiting the intention of the rule set.

Rianai

Circumventing a mechanic and exploiting are not the same thing.

Sanctum74

Sounds great in theory, but it would just be abused and people still will not help with the score. They will just resource farm and pvdoor and not keep anything for eval.

Personally I think getting too much ap is the problem, so people have no incentive to hold keeps or resources. I’d be for an increased ap incentive, but make it so they only get it at eval if it’s defended. If not you get nothing.

Miss the days when people still fought each other and took occupied keeps for a challenge.

MajBludd

@Ranger209 I cant confirm the frequency of the use of the alt accts, but I know they have used them.

If they currently are using them, I really dont know because most have different @names for each acct, obviously.

The reason I know this is a fact because I've been told or I'd get a pm saying, "hey this is so and so and this is my alt acct. Add me to friends list etc."

I can tell you it has been done since U50 camp was Blackwater blade and it was faction locked.

Ranger209

The more I think about this, the more I come to believe that this would not have much of an impact in the ways that people are concerned with. Being that this bonus now solely focuses on killing enemies of the faction leading on the scoreboard and no bonus is applied to taking keeps or resources this changes things quite a bit. Let's break it down situationally from a population perspective.

1. Times when all factions have 3 bars or more of population.
During these times the player base is fairly evenly dispersed with peak times being impossible to switch factions without a queue. PvDoor is less prevalent, but not entirely gone. It is done for strategic reasons almost as often as it is done for easy AP. This is the most important time for the leading faction to be focused upon. It is during this time that the 2 trailing factions can work together to try and make up the difference for all of the map painting that happens during situation 3 when 2 or more factions are at 1 bar of population. This is the time when switching factions makes the most sense, but becomes more difficult to do. When a faction overextends and runs out of easy PvDoor keeps, finally the XP bonus for killing the leaders may become the faster way to gain AP.

Kaal spends about 6-8 hours or 25-33% of the day in this situation, 2pm EST to 2am EST. The other campaigns rarely or never get to this point. During this time the AP bonus for killing leading faction players helps balance out PvDooring when it comes to chasing AP. PvDooring is still the faster way to gain AP, but the opportunities to do so become much more limited.

2. Times when all factions have 3 bars or less of population.
During these times population can vary from somewhat balanced between the factions to not very balanced at all. PvDooring is still very prevalent, but painting the map becomes more difficult to do. This is the easiest time to switch factions and also actually be able to take advantage of the AP bonus for killing players of the faction in the lead. However, PvDooring will still be the easier, faster way to gain AP. Chances are, though it will not always be so, that the faction in the lead is also the faction PvDooring the map. There will be times as well when all 3 factions are PvDooring the map and not actually fighting each other all that much, except the few people that actually defend a keep at this time. In those situations where the faction leading on the scoreboard is PvDooring, the AP bonus for killing them may help pull the other factions off of their own PvDoor missions and actually defend keeps.

Kaal spends 8-12 hours or 33-50% of the day on and off over the 24 hour cycle in this situation. All of the other servers spend 25% or less of the day in this situation.

3. Times when 2 factions or more have 1 bar of population.
During these times the majority of the player base is on 1 faction painting the map one color or another because that is still the fastest way to gain AP, and it is really all there is to do. Also there will be very few or no players to kill from the leading faction, or everyone will be on the leading faction painting the map. There really is no way or reason to try to take advantage of the bonus during these times. People will chase the color of the map regardless of who is in the lead. they will simply be on a faction that tries to paint it a different color than what it currently is.

On all but 1 campaign 75% or more of each day is spent in situation 3. They don't have the population required to begin to take advantage of an AP bonus for killing players on the faction in first. On Kaal probably 25-33% of the time is spent in situation 3. 6-8 hours would be my guess as to how much time is spent with 2 factions having 1 bar of population. From 2am EST to 2pm EST I would guess 6-8 hours are spent under these conditions. If anyone who plays during that time has better, more reliable info I am all ears, and would love to know.

So the question is, do you want people chasing AP in a way that makes big insurmountable leads to the scoreboard early on in a campaign by PvDooring, or do you want people chasing AP in a way that closes the gap on the scoreboard by focusing the leaders and PvPing. Either way many people will chase the easiest, fastest way to gain AP. Should it be tied into trying to win the campaign and balance the score, or should it be tied into solely trying to avoid conflict. There will always be both, but what will help balance the scales?

People have stated their concerns about abusing the AP bonus given to killing players of the leading faction, when in fact the bonus is merely a counter measure to gaining AP by PvDooring. It is an incentive to PvP instead of PvDoor and is intended as such. PvDooring can not be stopped, it can only hope to be contained. This is an attempt to do that in a way that will lead to more interesting scoreboards, maybe even scoreboards where the lead changes hands several times during a campaign. That would be much more refreshing than watching the same faction run away with another 10000 point victory in my mind. I'm just weird that way.

Mr_Walker

idk wrote: »

Mr_Walker wrote: »

MajBludd wrote: »

I'd say exploit by playing on one faction to get them in 1st place.
Then all jumping over to 2nd or 3rd place factions to reap the benefits of the 50% inc to ap bonus. Rinse and repeat.
I'm not sure if this is the exploit @idk meant but I can see this happening.

1) TBH most of the time every campaign but Kaal on Xbox is dead, so not really an issue.

2) There are easier and more time efficient ways to "boost".

It make no sense to even bring up low pop campaigns as this effects the busy campaigns as well. Totally pointless. heck, with your second point you are actually agreeing the idea in the OP can be exploited. Just making an excuse that there are other ways to "boost" regardless. Regardless if there is or not you are agreeing the idea is exploitable.

wtf are you on about? In Kaal, you can't swap factions to "exploit" this, Laat is unlocked, but dead 20 hours a day, and No-CP is dead 24 hours a day, so irrelevant.

Regardless, if you want to exploit the AP system, constantly swapping between characters to get a buff from pvdooring is not the way. I've watched folk on the leaderboard gain 300K AP in an hour, in a dead campaign where the map didn't move.

ArchMikem

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

Firstly i'll start by saying NO

why punish a dedicated player and put a target on their heads so the lazy players can benefit from their hard work?

I guess boosting = hard work.

Ranger209

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

Firstly i'll start by saying NO

why punish a dedicated player and put a target on their heads so the lazy players can benefit from their hard work?
Secondly, it will only encourage the bad practises that faction lock was re-introduced to stop, and act as a means to circumvent the penalties for faction hopping. whole guilds/groups pushing each other up the leader board then switch and farm the players they boosted, rinse and repeat, the system will become a joke

Whole guilds groups are already doing that on unlocked campaigns and will continue to do so whether this alternative to that is in the game or not. This is one of the reasons why, to me, those campaigns are a joke, or at least not my cup of tea.

Faulgor

idk wrote: »

Besides creating a more volatile scoring system it also seems open to exploit without a faction lock. As such the idea should not be considered.

Maybe only enable it in campaigns with faction lock?

Alienoutlaw

Rianai wrote: »

Circumventing a mechanic and exploiting are not the same thing.

yes they are

Alienoutlaw

ArchMikem wrote: »

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

Firstly i'll start by saying NO

why punish a dedicated player and put a target on their heads so the lazy players can benefit from their hard work?

I guess boosting = hard work.

not everyone that plays cheats

Tommy_The_Gun

Ranger209 wrote: »

Exploit how?

It will encaurage ppl more than anything to re-log to 2nd or 3rd faction to farm more AP and abandon winning alliance. Total oposite of what zos was trying to achive with the implementaion of the faction lock.

If something could be done to make scoring more "fair" is to reduce / eliminate the impact night / morning capping has on the scoreboards. Because now PvP campaigns are won mostly by PvDooring / PvE empty keeps late at night / early morning. Making potenial points gain to scale with the population (state of population during capturing enemy objective) should work. So for example faction A has 3 bars, faction B had 1. Faction A captures faction B objectives (keeps, outposts etc.) Depending on the differences in population, faction A would get 2x, 3x, 5x, 10x less points. In the worst case (0 ppl from faction B and locked population in faction A), faction A would get 10x times less potenial points for each objective, so in order to have 1 point, they will have to capture 10 faction B objectives. In order to reset this, faction A would have to lose an objective and re-take it when populations are eaqual.

Note: This will not affect AP gain for capturing objectives, only potenial points

Ranger209

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

Exploit how?

It will encaurage ppl more than anything to re-log to 2nd or 3rd faction to farm more AP and abandon winning alliance. Total oposite of what zos was trying to achive with the implementaion of the faction lock.

They can only do this on unlocked campaigns which faction lock was not supposed to impact. You can't do this in the locked campaign. So now there is a choice on why to swap in an unlocked campaign, to paint the map a different color, or to focus the team in the lead. As far as AP gain goes map painting still wins unless they would give a much larger bonus than I am implying for focusing the leading team.