What's the point of the hammer?

Kwoung

I am assuming at inception, it was designed to give the losing faction a quick boost by allowing them to blow through/capture keeps like a hot knife through butter and catch up? Now it seems more like a groan fest when it spawns, for more reasons than need to be mentioned. Is this thing still needed or wanted in Cyrodiil? Just wondering, as I don't see any real benefit or extra fun it brings to the alliance war.

Ackwalan

It was supposed to mix things up. If an alliance was doing an emp push or scroll run and the hammer spawned, it would cause people to immediately adapt. Thats if the campaign is mostly balanced when it spawns, if it is unbalanced, the low pop side tends to just leave for an hour.

Kordai

I think people dislike it for the rapid map change possible. A decent group with hammer can steamroll other groups. Along with the sheer speed of breaking down walls rendering whatever time and effort was made to get there in the first place means it can be very frustrating to play against. With lower pops it can basically be a map wiper. I think the record I've seen is an ep group awhile back taking 6 keeps with it. In 25ish mins, dc lost every keep and both scrolls. That was with all factions at 2 bars. It took dc an hour to take back trikeeps, and most ep weren't even gate camping. There just were around 6 dc on at that point.

You know that 50 minute defense you did to hold X keep? Well 10 mins later it fell in 3 and that wasn't even that bad of a defense.

Factions will hold it behind a gate because often they don't want the very real risk of losing everything.

forztr2

It was never needed or wanted. It really is an example the devs not really knowing what to do with Cyrodiil so they threw it into the mix so they could say at least they've added something new.

They really need to sit down and come up with a clear vision for the zone. With the recent changes to limiting friendly abilities to group only it feels like they're just making it up as they go along. Which is sad because it was once my favourite activity in game and now it seems like every time they touch it they make it a little worse.

techyeshic

Its purpose is to gather entire factions at one spot to determine who has the most massive zerg or most ball groups to further bolster their strength even further while causing massive lag.