Some changes are needed in Cyrodil to curb Toxic behavior

BXR_Lonestar

The PVP event is almost over and IDK what others have experienced, but for the past 3-4 days, I've witnessed some really toxic behavior that could be easily curbed with a few common-sense changes.

Firstly, I play PVP pretty regularly - usually once or twice a week. I'm not an avid PVPer by any means, but I definitely enjoy the large scale battles. I play blue primarily, but I do have characters of other colors that I take into PVP just to unlock the passives. And I'm homed in Blackreach, which is the server where I witnessed some of the most toxic behavior I've seen in nearly 4 years of playing PVP over the course of the last 3-4 days.

What was this toxic behavior?

1. Players on my own "team" (other blues) unseating scrolls and carrying them down to the enemy players;

2. Players on my own "team" getting the hammer and intentionally running down to the other team to give it to them;

3. A blue player standing near keeps we were trying to seige, not doing anything to help, and was clearly directing the other team to our covenant forward camps;

I'm sure you get the idea. Basically, players on your own team who are clearly playing for the OTHER teams. I'm sure this happens for all the alliances, but it was really prevalent in Blackreach, at least during the hours that I was playing. The kicker? Blue is losing badly this campaign. Has been from the beginning. There was just simply no need to do any of this other than spite, and its really just frustrating for those of us who are trying to play a clean game so to speak.

Now I know there is only so much that Zos can do to curb this behavior, but I think there are a couple of common-sense things that Zos should do in order to make it more difficult to engage in some of this behavior. For instance:

1. Scrolls should only be able to be unseated by enemy teams. Meaning if your blue and you capture a scroll, once you seat it at a keep, its stuck there until a Yellow or a Red picks it up. This would prevent other blue players carrying scrolls to the other team.

2. The hammer should be changed so that when someone dies with it, the hammer just disappears, rather than falls on the ground so anyone can pick it up. There may need to be some other balancing changes done here, but they could easily make it so that there is only one hammer in play, and if a team screws it up, the other team doesn't get a windfall by getting it. It's not a perfect system, but it would certainly curb toxic behavior in regards to something that can have a drastic impact on how the campaign is going, especially in close campaigns.

Those were just some of my thoughts anyways.

Indigogo

Blackreach is some wild west show. Alliance lock curbs this stuff a lot (Not totally) but alas, GH comes with the most lag and q times.

On point 1, that is already the case. You can't pick up your owned scrolls once placed. Go and try it yourself.
So something else is happening...

Treeshka

The scrolls that your alliance controls can not be moved to any other keep by your alliance once they secured in a home castle. So your first suggestion is already in game.

For the second i think they need to make hammer spawn in the designated spots which is guarded by a few mobs in the Cyrodiil, but as far as i know it only spawns in six or seven locations and three of them are behind the gates of each alliance. This is either a bug or this is the intended way.

RisenEclipse

Treeshka wrote: »

For the second i think they need to make hammer spawn in the designated spots which is guarded by a few mobs in the Cyrodiil, but as far as i know it only spawns in six or seven locations and three of them are behind the gates of each alliance. This is either a bug or this is the intended way.

I have no idea what you are talking about here. I have seen that hammer spawn in any one of the over 20 spawn locations across Cyrodiil. Just yesterday the hammer decided to keep spawning in the middle of nowhere in different alliance territories at various times. Nowhere near a gate. It is completely random.

duagloth

sounds like how a real war would be, traitors exist.

FluffWit

I only seem to see it pop out in a few spots too but I don't pay much attention.

If you're worried about loyalty you may want to switch Grey Host.

runa_gate

FluffWit wrote: »

I only seem to see it pop out in a few spots too but I don't pay much attention.

If you're worried about loyalty you may want to switch Grey Host.

Where AD instantly hands the hammer to another faction not through bad intentions but through ineptitude.
Or tries to hold and "farm" with a scroll and almost immediately loses it.

I say this mostly to say that the intention behind some actions is sometimes hard to read if you don't know the people involved. I do try to talk them out of the above things, but people are stubborn.

Fun fact for other alliances: almost as soon as you see AD move against one alliance you'll see another group do so against the other, far away, just because they're so contrary they don't want to do what the others are doing. Which is probably for the best as I'm not sure the server could handle 150 bow-wielding gankers all firing from roofs at once.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

duagloth wrote: »

sounds like how a real war would be, traitors exist.

A real war would let us try, imprison, and possibly execute said traitors though.

FluffWit

runa_gate wrote: »

FluffWit wrote: »

I only seem to see it pop out in a few spots too but I don't pay much attention.

If you're worried about loyalty you may want to switch Grey Host.

Where AD instantly hands the hammer to another faction not through bad intentions but through ineptitude.
Or tries to hold and "farm" with a scroll and almost immediately loses it.

I say this mostly to say that the intention behind some actions is sometimes hard to read if you don't know the people involved. I do try to talk them out of the above things, but people are stubborn.

Fun fact for other alliances: almost as soon as you see AD move against one alliance you'll see another group do so against the other, far away, just because they're so contrary they don't want to do what the others are doing. Which is probably for the best as I'm not sure the server could handle 150 bow-wielding gankers all firing from roofs at once.

I dunno what server you're on man but I play on two and.... I can't really argue with what you said about the state of AD in Grey Host on either of them based on what I've seen.

I'd feel sorry for them but for 2 years on PS4 NA they were so damn dominant I just can't feel bad for them about the state they're in now.

katanagirl1

I have on one occasion seen one player pick up another faction’s scroll from a keep when it was placed in a very undesirable location and move it, that was maybe a year ago or more. So that could happen at least back then.

I have also seen words come up on screen when someone in my faction took one of the Elder Scrolls from our temple maybe a year ago. So it was possible at least back then. Everyone in zone chat shamed him until he put it back. I guess he was hoping no one noticed.

I have also only seen the hammer spawn at the gates and I play every day.

I agree with OP and I’m on Gray Host as home. Just today someone took the hammer and hand delivered it to about 50 reds at ales. So many spies, you can’t do call outs in zone chat because before you can get there 50 guys are suddenly at the keep you were going to take and standing out front. Other times the game says we have 3 bars yet we are gated and hardly anyone is at the one or two keeps we still have.

Then you have your guys who rez you, but if you watch closely they drop back and don’t do any fighting. They’ll even keep rezzing you so their buddies on another faction can keep farming you. Like you said, we are in last place and will surely lose this campaign, yet this still happens.

Today was one of those days too. You just have to log out and hope it’s better next time, there is nothing you can do about these “friendly” players.

drsalvation

I'm cool with traitors being a thing, but I do think there should be some way to punish them, problem is it's too hard for a game mechanic to determine if you're betraying or not.

Think of it as a game dev, how can you determine that a player willingly brought the hammer to enemies, against a noob hammer wielder failing to stomp an enemy ball group?

Maybe a "report as traitor" feature that when voted on, players would be marked as traitors and be open for attacks, that would be interesting, but I also feel this would be abused.

hafgood

It's not toxic behaviour. You may not like it but it's not toxic.

Stop trying to control other players, they play the game their way, and just because its not how you choose to play doesn't make it toxic, just different.

Travestynox

duagloth wrote: »

sounds like how a real war would be, traitors exist.

Mark them as traitors then, and make them targetable as enemies
Also, apart from having teams, Cyrodiil isn't a real war. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble.

hafgood wrote: »

It's not toxic behaviour. You may not like it but it's not toxic.

Stop trying to control other players, they play the game their way, and just because its not how you choose to play doesn't make it toxic, just different.

Games are played for fun. When 'play the game their way' ruins fun for mostly eveyone else, is it viable? I doubt very much players roleplay being a traitor in Cyrodiil . It's just about being an annoyance for *** and giggles. Do try to convince me otherwise.
Besides, Cyrodiil is teamplay, with factions. You wouldn't like players to 'play their own way' in dungeons right? If they deliberately act against the team goal, they can be kicked.

Northwold

drsalvation wrote: »

I'm cool with traitors being a thing, but I do think there should be some way to punish them, problem is it's too hard for a game mechanic to determine if you're betraying or not.

Think of it as a game dev, how can you determine that a player willingly brought the hammer to enemies, against a noob hammer wielder failing to stomp an enemy ball group?

Maybe a "report as traitor" feature that when voted on, players would be marked as traitors and be open for attacks, that would be interesting, but I also feel this would be abused.

I think given that it isn't possible to distinguish a vote for a traitor from a plain lynch mob of someone players don't like, the easiest thing would be to report traitors with video evidence and ban them from ever playing in Cyrodiil again as a member of that alliance.

In real life, traitors are realistic. But in real life they would also be executed the moment people figured it out. Since that cannot happen here, traitors really just need to be banned.

Perhaps the player, the next time they logged in, could get a nice animation of their head being cut off.

Bigmatt2

The issue with spy's in your faction can be easily curbed by ZOS introducing alliance locking for all campaigns.

The issue with the hammer can be curbed by eliminating the big notification that comes up on the screen: "volendrung seeks a wielder”.

Factions wait until that notification and then their spy's log off and log onto their other toons until is says: "volundrung has been reveled", which is almost always behind the gates. They then pick it up and take it to their leader.

Personally, I think the hammer is kind of silly (glad I don't deal with it in RavenWatch); but to slow down the spy's, ZOS just needs to eliminate the notifications. Let it spawn somewhere in Cyro and not tell the population. This way factions have to actively look for it at all the 15+ spawn locations or just accidentally stumble a crossed it like the Ayleid Wells.

Megatto

Just convert Cyrodiil to a PVE zone.

Arunei

hafgood wrote: »

It's not toxic behaviour. You may not like it but it's not toxic.

Stop trying to control other players, they play the game their way, and just because its not how you choose to play doesn't make it toxic, just different.

Sounds like an excuse to justify unsportsmanlike play. You don't see team sports irl where people decide they want to score for the other team because "that's how they want to play". Rules exist for a reason. If you want to grief your Alliance then you need to accept responsibility for it and not complain about people calling out that behavior. Purposefully sabotaging your Alliance IS toxic. If you want to play for a different Alliance then log onto a character whose in it.

BXR_Lonestar

Treeshka wrote: »

The scrolls that your alliance controls can not be moved to any other keep by your alliance once they secured in a home castle. So your first suggestion is already in game.

For the second i think they need to make hammer spawn in the designated spots which is guarded by a few mobs in the Cyrodiil, but as far as i know it only spawns in six or seven locations and three of them are behind the gates of each alliance. This is either a bug or this is the intended way.

If the scrolls can't be moved by your alliance once it is secured, then I'm not sure what happened, but I did see a player run a scroll from Rayles all the way down to yellow occupied territory where the player just stopped and let a group of yellows kill him and take the scroll. Perhaps someone used the exploit where you could get into the castle without seiging? But then I'm not sure why they wouldn't just run the scroll themselves.

TechMaybeHic

Locked campaigns help; but there are alt account sometimes blatantly named even in Gray Host. People are people. If you can prove it; all you can do is report even though you probably are wasting your time.

Mythgard1967

/shrug

Spies are going to spy....it is kind of the nature of the beast. It isn't just an ESO thing.

Cyro PVP is heavily reminiscent of Dark Age of Camelot PvP which also influenced Warhammer Online and Guild Wars 2 PVP play modes. I played a lot of this style of PVP in both Warhammer and GW2. It was part of the game...in GW2 it was very much part of the strategy. Having squads able to size up to around 50 people or so means that you have 50 people or so in coms together and you can spread disinformation to the spies to set up traps for the strategic opponents..and that was fun when it worked out....and it frequently did. The fun of cyro is not just about the PVP, its the campaign and strategy against another faction vs against a computer simulation.

Ahh I remember one of the spies entering in to discord with our squad. She didnt realize when the squad commander had given her voice permissions in channel and we got to listen to her reporting our movements outloud.....good times.

Warhammer online had the best blended PVE and PVP scenarios going for it though. PVE worked helped the PVP campaign and PVP helped the PVE campaign.

hafgood

Arunei wrote: »

Sounds like an excuse to justify unsportsmanlike play. You don't see team sports irl where people decide they want to score for the other team because "that's how they want to play". Rules exist for a reason. If you want to grief your Alliance then you need to accept responsibility for it and not complain about people calling out that behavior. Purposefully sabotaging your Alliance IS toxic. If you want to play for a different Alliance then log onto a character whose in it.

And what exactly are these rules you talk about? Please enlighten me, l'm genuinely interested as I thought Cyrodiil was a war zone and therefore the normal rules of society didn't apply.

You are making assumptions that (a) these players are doing what you are accusing them of, and (b) that it is against a set of rules that are not written down anywhere. The fact that they can do it should show you it's not against any rules, it may be unsposrtsmanlike but it isn't toxic. Trying to get players banned for doing things that go against the mythical rule book IS toxic.

shadyjane62

They should be banned. Immediately without hope of reversal. My team spent 45 mins taking the map so we could get our home scroll. The guy that picked it ran all over the place and finally dropped in a foreign territory.

Our entire effort was wasted but the betrayal really bites. I spend rest of time repairing and not participating.

It really bothered me so much I couldn't go back in to play.

How would I know who to trust.

The people that defend this behavior are probably the ones doing it.

Just another part of the game I am not willing to play.

Northwold

Mythgard1967 wrote: »

/shrug

Spies are going to spy....it is kind of the nature of the beast. It isn't just an ESO thing.

Cyro PVP is heavily reminiscent of Dark Age of Camelot PvP which also influenced Warhammer Online and Guild Wars 2 PVP play modes. I played a lot of this style of PVP in both Warhammer and GW2. It was part of the game...in GW2 it was very much part of the strategy. Having squads able to size up to around 50 people or so means that you have 50 people or so in coms together and you can spread disinformation to the spies to set up traps for the strategic opponents..and that was fun when it worked out....and it frequently did. The fun of cyro is not just about the PVP, its the campaign and strategy against another faction vs against a computer simulation.

Ahh I remember one of the spies entering in to discord with our squad. She didnt realize when the squad commander had given her voice permissions in channel and we got to listen to her reporting our movements outloud.....good times.

Warhammer online had the best blended PVE and PVP scenarios going for it though. PVE worked helped the PVP campaign and PVP helped the PVE campaign.

The problem is that it isn't really part of intended gameplay because if it were there would be a way to stop them, eg attacking and killing them. Instead, because it is not a part of intended gameplay, even though someone is obviously a traitor the game immunises them from attack.

That is not fair game. That is cheating.

Dem_kitkats1

hafgood wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Sounds like an excuse to justify unsportsmanlike play. You don't see team sports irl where people decide they want to score for the other team because "that's how they want to play". Rules exist for a reason. If you want to grief your Alliance then you need to accept responsibility for it and not complain about people calling out that behavior. Purposefully sabotaging your Alliance IS toxic. If you want to play for a different Alliance then log onto a character whose in it.

And what exactly are these rules you talk about? Please enlighten me, l'm genuinely interested as I thought Cyrodiil was a war zone and therefore the normal rules of society didn't apply.

You are making assumptions that (a) these players are doing what you are accusing them of, and (b) that it is against a set of rules that are not written down anywhere. The fact that they can do it should show you it's not against any rules, it may be unsposrtsmanlike but it isn't toxic. Trying to get players banned for doing things that go against the mythical rule book IS toxic.

No there are not rules written for situations like these, but as others have mentioned it was clearly not intended for the zone. If it was, there would be counters and penalties for "spies" or "traitorous" acts. Exploiting the loopholes and clearly overlooked aspects of the game is toxic, unsportsmanlike, and borderline cheating. Or, if you still want to justify it as a viable strategy for the game, then the only viable counter is to report because there is nothing else players can do, simple as that.

lronclaw

duagloth wrote: »

sounds like how a real war would be, traitors exist.

Traitors can be punished and prevented too if we are going to play real life simulator.

BXR_Lonestar

lronclaw wrote: »

duagloth wrote: »

sounds like how a real war would be, traitors exist.

Traitors can be punished and prevented too if we are going to play real life simulator.

Who are you kidding? Traitors don't get punished in real life, even when there's an overt amount of evidence of it. At least they don't in my country.

Elendir2am

hafgood wrote: »

And what exactly are these rules you talk about? Please enlighten me, l'm genuinely interested as I thought Cyrodiil was a war zone and therefore the normal rules of society didn't apply.

You are making assumptions that (a) these players are doing what you are accusing them of, and (b) that it is against a set of rules that are not written down anywhere. The fact that they can do it should show you it's not against any rules, it may be unsposrtsmanlike but it isn't toxic. Trying to get players banned for doing things that go against the mythical rule book IS toxic.

What about population cap. It look to me like pretty hard coded rule and yet, you can deploy group of "traitors" when your faction is pop-locked.
If there was spy, aka taking his real fraction pop-place, but looking like other aliance soldier, then it would be plaing spy without cheating.

xFocused

hafgood wrote: »

It's not toxic behaviour. You may not like it but it's not toxic.

Stop trying to control other players, they play the game their way, and just because its not how you choose to play doesn't make it toxic, just different.

What a awful mindset to have. It's absolutely toxic when your playstyle is ruining the game for others. You're telling me if I go to a game like Rainbow Six and team kill over and over then it's not toxic? Same thing applies here. If you're picking up scrolls and hammers and dropping them to enemies...that's ruining the game for others and kind of pathetic that some people get off on playing that way

SaffronCitrusflower

hafgood wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Sounds like an excuse to justify unsportsmanlike play. You don't see team sports irl where people decide they want to score for the other team because "that's how they want to play". Rules exist for a reason. If you want to grief your Alliance then you need to accept responsibility for it and not complain about people calling out that behavior. Purposefully sabotaging your Alliance IS toxic. If you want to play for a different Alliance then log onto a character whose in it.

And what exactly are these rules you talk about? Please enlighten me, l'm genuinely interested as I thought Cyrodiil was a war zone and therefore the normal rules of society didn't apply.

You are making assumptions that (a) these players are doing what you are accusing them of, and (b) that it is against a set of rules that are not written down anywhere. The fact that they can do it should show you it's not against any rules, it may be unsposrtsmanlike but it isn't toxic. Trying to get players banned for doing things that go against the mythical rule book IS toxic.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should or that it's right and proper to do it. This is the lesson Dr. Frankenstein had to learn the hard way and the lesson we are supposed to learn by reading the book.

Unsportsmanlike is the same thing as toxic. If you are undermining the faction you're playing on you are being toxic. It really is that simple.

geonsocal

shadyjane62 wrote: »

They should be banned. Immediately without hope of reversal. My team spent 45 mins taking the map so we could get our home scroll. The guy that picked it ran all over the place and finally dropped in a foreign territory.

Our entire effort was wasted but the betrayal really bites. I spend rest of time repairing and not participating.

It really bothered me so much I couldn't go back in to play.

How would I know who to trust.

The people that defend this behavior are probably the ones doing it.

Just another part of the game I am not willing to play.

ugh, you just gave me a flashback to the first time i saw someone from my own alliance run in the wrong direction after picking up our scroll...

that bugged me for weeks...some years later though - it still bugs the heck out of me

lronclaw

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

lronclaw wrote: »

duagloth wrote: »

sounds like how a real war would be, traitors exist.

Traitors can be punished and prevented too if we are going to play real life simulator.

Who are you kidding? Traitors don't get punished in real life, even when there's an overt amount of evidence of it. At least they don't in my country.

That is one reason I would like fairness and less real life in a game. Way more than enough BS is going on in real world and we are trying to escape that hellhole through playing a game we like. I like fairness and balance in the game I play, not molten cheese and bug sauce.