Imperial City PvP may be Flawed !

Phantax · July 2014

I've been watching the video/comments made by Zenimax on the new Imperial City PvP zone and unless I'm mistaken (please point out if I've missed something) I think I've seen what could be a flaw in the design of it.

As I understand it, ownership of the city depends on a faction owning and controlling towers/keeps etc in Cyrodiil. That's fine... all factions fight it out and the winner (most keeps) gets ownership of the city.

•That in some ways is similar to WoW's Wintergrasp PvP zone. The factions fought it out and the winner got to own Wintergrasp for a couple of hours, have access to its traders and the dungeons within•

However this is where I see the flaw in Imperial City... there is no set time for ownership. Your faction wins the city and everybody is going to want to go in there. After all Zenimax have put so many cool things in there of course people will want in. BUT... now all of your faction is inside, not outside winning/controlling keeps and you immediately lose control of the city ! ? That's going to give people no time to do anything, no time to use crafting stations or enjoy any of the benefits of owning the city. Hell if either of the other two factions are remotely organised you could end up owning the city for just a matter of minutes !
And in the long term it's no better for the other factions because they will have the same troubles ! Win-it, go in, Lose-it, get kicked out, rinse-repeat.

The only way I can see around the problem is to use a timer (or countdown) on ownership -

•example -

12.00 o'clock whichever faction owns the majority of keeps gets the Imperial City !
14.00 (insert your timezone) Whichever faction now owns the most keeps takes control of the Imperial City.
16.00 repeat
18.00 ...... (and so on)

At least this way players of the winning faction get to enjoy the benefits of the city. Every faction has equal chance of owning the city, the current owners still have to defend/fight in Cyrodiil IF they want to keep the city.

Just imagine the alternative !
You win the City and 10 mins later you lose it. Chat is going to be full of flamers with bruised epeens...lol
"#@%* idiots, you lost us the city"
"@#*&% noobs, why was no fecker defending"
"I fought for 5 hours and we only held the %#@*$ city for 10 mins"

:O

We've waited ages for this, The Imperial City looks fantastic and has so much in it. The Devs have obviously gone all out making this something special. I just don't want to see it turn into a sh*t storm and ruin it for everybody !

Tavore1138 · July 2014

My understanding was that some form of keep ownership unlocks access, but that could just be owning any of the 6 ring keeps.

After that you have to make it in thru the sewers and the fight to control each district.

Thats what I took away anyway.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO · July 2014

well we'd better jump conclusion on this as fast as possible, considering we saw vague details on this for all of 5 or 10 minutes.

Csub · July 2014

Well, I guess anyone can enter, why else would they have mentioned big PvPs in the system?

I think anyone can enter, capturing the castles is only for Emperorship I guess.

Phantax · July 2014

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

My understanding was that some form of keep ownership unlocks access, but that could just be owning any of the 6 ring keeps.

After that you have to make it in thru the sewers and the fight to control each district.

Thats what I took away anyway.

Yeah pretty much how I understood it. But you can see my point, who is going to want to wait outside to defend keeps when they could be moving inside the city ! ?

Durham · July 2014

Actually more like DAoC not WoW...

Jaxom · July 2014

Phantax wrote: »

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

My understanding was that some form of keep ownership unlocks access, but that could just be owning any of the 6 ring keeps.

After that you have to make it in thru the sewers and the fight to control each district.

Thats what I took away anyway.

Yeah pretty much how I understood it. But you can see my point, who is going to want to wait outside to defend keeps when they could be moving inside the city ! ?

This is actually brilliant. This gives incentive to defend and adds strategy to Cyrodiil. Do you want to continue to push into the city, or make sure you dont lose those "inner ring" keeps? My guess is that if you lose a single keep, you dont lose the city, similar to how Emperorship works. You would need to lose all 6 keeps (assumption).

So instead of having everyone balled up together defending the inner ring, you will be spread out with some defending and some pushing deeper into the Imperial City.

Worst case is that, each faction will have 1 server where they own the city to gain it's benefits and continue to guest into Wabba.

moxiesauce · July 2014

Jaxom wrote: »

Phantax wrote: »

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

My understanding was that some form of keep ownership unlocks access, but that could just be owning any of the 6 ring keeps.

After that you have to make it in thru the sewers and the fight to control each district.

Thats what I took away anyway.

Yeah pretty much how I understood it. But you can see my point, who is going to want to wait outside to defend keeps when they could be moving inside the city ! ?

This is actually brilliant. This gives incentive to defend and adds strategy to Cyrodiil. Do you want to continue to push into the city, or make sure you dont lose those "inner ring" keeps? My guess is that if you lose a single keep, you dont lose the city, similar to how Emperorship works. You would need to lose all 6 keeps (assumption).

So instead of having everyone balled up together defending the inner ring, you will be spread out with some defending and some pushing deeper into the Imperial City.

Worst case is that, each faction will have 1 server where they own the city to gain it's benefits and continue to guest into Wabba.

They are changing all the campaigns in update 3, there will only be 5 and new restrictions for each, like only vets, only non-vets. A faction that controls all the keeps gains emperor and access to IC, once inside you PvE fight to control districts. When another faction takes all the keeps between the 1v1 left outside of IC that faction can barge in on the 1st faction to control it, needing to wipe them out and retake districts. It's not so cut and dry like wintergrasp. There will be epic battles in the streets of IC.

Jaxom · July 2014

moxiesauce wrote: »

Jaxom wrote: »

Phantax wrote: »

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

My understanding was that some form of keep ownership unlocks access, but that could just be owning any of the 6 ring keeps.

After that you have to make it in thru the sewers and the fight to control each district.

Thats what I took away anyway.

Yeah pretty much how I understood it. But you can see my point, who is going to want to wait outside to defend keeps when they could be moving inside the city ! ?

This is actually brilliant. This gives incentive to defend and adds strategy to Cyrodiil. Do you want to continue to push into the city, or make sure you dont lose those "inner ring" keeps? My guess is that if you lose a single keep, you dont lose the city, similar to how Emperorship works. You would need to lose all 6 keeps (assumption).

So instead of having everyone balled up together defending the inner ring, you will be spread out with some defending and some pushing deeper into the Imperial City.

Worst case is that, each faction will have 1 server where they own the city to gain it's benefits and continue to guest into Wabba.

They are changing all the campaigns in update 3, there will only be 5 and new restrictions for each, like only vets, only non-vets. A faction that controls all the keeps gains emperor and access to IC, once inside you PvE fight to control districts. When another faction takes all the keeps between the 1v1 left outside of IC that faction can barge in on the 1st faction to control it, needing to wipe them out and retake districts. It's not so cut and dry like wintergrasp. There will be epic battles in the streets of IC.

Sounds like a lot of fun

bertenburnyb16_ESO · July 2014

weel I thought you could only enter when you had the 6 keeps, but once you lose it and for example another alliance gets acces, everyone of your alliance who is in stays in, and you can respawn in "zones" of the city your alliance controls, but dont know if its still possible if another alliance has the keeps

Phantax · July 2014

bertenburnyb16_ESO wrote: »

weel I thought you could only enter when you had the 6 keeps, but once you lose it and for example another alliance gets acces, everyone of your alliance who is in stays in, and you can respawn in "zones" of the city your alliance controls, but dont know if its still possible if another alliance has the keeps

In that case then I just hope it's not a case of each faction just getting their own 6 keeps and forgetting about everything else. Still going to be great fun inside the city, but Cyrodiil could be dead if everybody just ignores it and concentrates on what's happening inside the city !

kitsinni · July 2014

Phantax wrote: »

bertenburnyb16_ESO wrote: »

weel I thought you could only enter when you had the 6 keeps, but once you lose it and for example another alliance gets acces, everyone of your alliance who is in stays in, and you can respawn in "zones" of the city your alliance controls, but dont know if its still possible if another alliance has the keeps

In that case then I just hope it's not a case of each faction just getting their own 6 keeps and forgetting about everything else. Still going to be great fun inside the city, but Cyrodiil could be dead if everybody just ignores it and concentrates on what's happening inside the city !

Why would cryodil be dead? A huge portion of cyrodil never leave the zone to do PvE anyway why would it be any different after this?

Sighlynce · July 2014

moxiesauce wrote: »

Jaxom wrote: »

Phantax wrote: »

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

My understanding was that some form of keep ownership unlocks access, but that could just be owning any of the 6 ring keeps.

After that you have to make it in thru the sewers and the fight to control each district.

Thats what I took away anyway.

Yeah pretty much how I understood it. But you can see my point, who is going to want to wait outside to defend keeps when they could be moving inside the city ! ?

This is actually brilliant. This gives incentive to defend and adds strategy to Cyrodiil. Do you want to continue to push into the city, or make sure you dont lose those "inner ring" keeps? My guess is that if you lose a single keep, you dont lose the city, similar to how Emperorship works. You would need to lose all 6 keeps (assumption).

So instead of having everyone balled up together defending the inner ring, you will be spread out with some defending and some pushing deeper into the Imperial City.

Worst case is that, each faction will have 1 server where they own the city to gain it's benefits and continue to guest into Wabba.

They are changing all the campaigns in update 3, there will only be 5 and new restrictions for each, like only vets, only non-vets. A faction that controls all the keeps gains emperor and access to IC, once inside you PvE fight to control districts. When another faction takes all the keeps between the 1v1 left outside of IC that faction can barge in on the 1st faction to control it, needing to wipe them out and retake districts. It's not so cut and dry like wintergrasp. There will be epic battles in the streets of IC.

This sounds amazing ! I got away from pvp because of all the crap but this is a reason to go back

... Thanks

dietlime · July 2014

Phantax wrote: »

We've waited ages for this,

I HAVE BEEN WAITING SO LONG FOR THIS

I FEEL LIKE MY ENTIRE LIFE HAS BEEN SPENT WAITING FOR THIS ESO FEETURE

Akula · July 2014

Getting emperprship is not an easy process. So once you have it, having another faction take it will not be within minutes. You may lose a keep or two within a few minutes, but you still have controll of IC until someone else gets all six central keeps. This will make gaining IC a rare event and not a constant flip flop all day long. So when it's gained, I see a large majority of players stopping what their doing and rushing to IC to kick the old faction out and start enjoying IC.

At least that's my take, and that's sorta how DFs worked in DAoC which is what they used as inspiration.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO · July 2014

Akula wrote: »

Getting emperprship is not an easy process. So once you have it, having another faction take it will not be within minutes. You may lose a keep or two within a few minutes, but you still have controll of IC until someone else gets all six central keeps. This will make gaining IC a rare event and not a constant flip flop all day long. So when it's gained, I see a large majority of players stopping what their doing and rushing to IC to kick the old faction out and start enjoying IC.

At least that's my take, and that's sorta how DFs worked in DAoC which is what they used as inspiration.

actually it is fairly easy, hence the river of former emperors you have to wade through in cyrodiil.

Holycannoli · July 2014

Phantax wrote: »

However this is where I see the flaw in Imperial City... there is no set time for ownership. Your faction wins the city and everybody is going to want to go in there. After all Zenimax have put so many cool things in there of course people will want in. BUT... now all of your faction is inside, not outside winning/controlling keeps and you immediately lose control of the city ! ? That's going to give people no time to do anything, no time to use crafting stations or enjoy any of the benefits of owning the city. Hell if either of the other two factions are remotely organised you could end up owning the city for just a matter of minutes !

That's pretty much how it was in DAOC. Whoever owned Darkness Falls wouldn't be out in the frontiers taking or defending keeps. Sometimes DF would change hands frequently in a short period of time as the other two factions tried to capture the most keeps.

I'm used to the system, I enjoy the system, and I think it will be fun here.

I think it might be deeper than DAOC too. There was no respawning in DF, so if your faction lost the entrance and you died you were out. I think you might be able to respawn in IC even if you don't have the entrance. It could make things very interesting.

kitsinni · July 2014

It was a lot of fun when DF changed hands you could stay in stealth then wipe groups when they had big pulls!

Azarul · July 2014

I see no flaw only good in the current Imperial City plans. If you take the 6 keeps you get access. You do not defend them you lose it, seems straight forward to me. When another faction takes it it doesnt kick you out till you die so you can still craft and adventure, just gets alittle more exciting to do so.

Darkness Falls was outstanding. Cant wait to camp the sewer entrances.

Samadhi · July 2014

I thought ownership of the Imperial City meant that alliance could respawn inside of it, but that other alliances were still able to enter and engage in PvP via the sewer system.
I'll have to go back and rewatch that portion of the video.

Akula · July 2014

smeeprocketnub19_ESO wrote: »

Akula wrote: »

Getting emperprship is not an easy process. So once you have it, having another faction take it will not be within minutes. You may lose a keep or two within a few minutes, but you still have controll of IC until someone else gets all six central keeps. This will make gaining IC a rare event and not a constant flip flop all day long. So when it's gained, I see a large majority of players stopping what their doing and rushing to IC to kick the old faction out and start enjoying IC.

At least that's my take, and that's sorta how DFs worked in DAoC which is what they used as inspiration.

actually it is fairly easy, hence the river of former emperors you have to wade through in cyrodiil.

Fairly easy or not easy is relative. My point being that its not going to flip-flop every 5 minutes.

Phantax · July 2014

Azarul wrote: »

I see no flaw only good in the current Imperial City plans. If you take the 6 keeps you get access. You do not defend them you lose it, seems straight forward to me. When another faction takes it it doesnt kick you out till you die so you can still craft and adventure, just gets alittle more exciting to do so.

Darkness Falls was outstanding. Cant wait to camp the sewer entrances.

And you'd be happy stuck outside defending keeps in Cyrodiil, while the majority of your alliance was in the Imperial City doing the quests, crafting new gear etc? You have to admit, honestly speaking the majority of players won't give a toss about defending, they'll just storm into the city and forget about Cyrodiil.

Paske · July 2014

I think we should fight and argue over this mechanic we have no knowledge about, apart of a short flick, with great joy in our hearts !

The mechanic, that does not exist, is flawed for content that also doe not exist.
So they should change it all!

Empirical evidence can not be denied.

Jaxom · July 2014

Samadhi wrote: »

I thought ownership of the Imperial City meant that alliance could respawn inside of it, but that other alliances were still able to enter and engage in PvP via the sewer system.
I'll have to go back and rewatch that portion of the video.

omg, I hope this is true.

Xnemesis · July 2014

I really hope they come out with a way for us to test this. There is no way to test anything PvP ATM

Kewljag_66_ESO · July 2014

Phantax wrote: »

I've been watching the video/comments made by Zenimax on the new Imperial City PvP zone and unless I'm mistaken (please point out if I've missed something) I think I've seen what could be a flaw in the design of it.

As I understand it, ownership of the city depends on a faction owning and controlling towers/keeps etc in Cyrodiil. That's fine... all factions fight it out and the winner (most keeps) gets ownership of the city.

•That in some ways is similar to WoW's Wintergrasp PvP zone. The factions fought it out and the winner got to own Wintergrasp for a couple of hours, have access to its traders and the dungeons within•

However this is where I see the flaw in Imperial City... there is no set time for ownership. Your faction wins the city and everybody is going to want to go in there. After all Zenimax have put so many cool things in there of course people will want in. BUT... now all of your faction is inside, not outside winning/controlling keeps and you immediately lose control of the city ! ? That's going to give people no time to do anything, no time to use crafting stations or enjoy any of the benefits of owning the city. Hell if either of the other two factions are remotely organised you could end up owning the city for just a matter of minutes !
And in the long term it's no better for the other factions because they will have the same troubles ! Win-it, go in, Lose-it, get kicked out, rinse-repeat.

The only way I can see around the problem is to use a timer (or countdown) on ownership -

•example -

12.00 o'clock whichever faction owns the majority of keeps gets the Imperial City !
14.00 (insert your timezone) Whichever faction now owns the most keeps takes control of the Imperial City.
16.00 repeat
18.00 ...... (and so on)

At least this way players of the winning faction get to enjoy the benefits of the city. Every faction has equal chance of owning the city, the current owners still have to defend/fight in Cyrodiil IF they want to keep the city.

Just imagine the alternative !
You win the City and 10 mins later you lose it. Chat is going to be full of flamers with bruised epeens...lol
"#@%* idiots, you lost us the city"
"@#*&% noobs, why was no fecker defending"
"I fought for 5 hours and we only held the %#@*$ city for 10 mins"

:O

We've waited ages for this, The Imperial City looks fantastic and has so much in it. The Devs have obviously gone all out making this something special. I just don't want to see it turn into a sh*t storm and ruin it for everybody !

This is the exact same system that they use in Darkage of Camelot. It is called Darkness Falls. It was introduced about 12 years ago. Alot of people like myself think it was one of the best PVP ./ PVE mixed MMO Systems. It was done very well and its system created great balance on the battle field. It gave a big goal and even brought PVE players into PVP just to obtain it. After your side gained control alot of your population did go to the new area. Alot just went to kill the enemy players then came back but alot would also stay for the PVE.

When your side won control of it on the battle field that basically ment your side was winning the map. When a large chunk of your player base went there to reap the rewards of controlling it, it kinda worked like balance on the war map as yoru side lost players and the other sides could now have a chance to to start winning on the map and eventually take control of Darkness falls (imperial city)

As for your comment " we only held teh city for 10 minutes" generally it was always much longer. And even if your side lost control you were not kicked out, you still had time to do things before the enemy could amass a large force and push deep inside to kill you. There were many times i remember my alliance defense holding inside Darkness Falls for hours and hours after we lost control.

basically the system worked very well and created some epic scenerios and fights as well as helping with balance on teh war map

Ifthir_ESO · July 2014

moxiesauce wrote: »

There will be epic battles in the streets of IC.

QFT

Phantax · July 2014

Kewljag_66_ESO wrote: »

Phantax wrote: »

I've been watching the video/comments made by Zenimax on the new Imperial City PvP zone and unless I'm mistaken (please point out if I've missed something) I think I've seen what could be a flaw in the design of it.

As I understand it, ownership of the city depends on a faction owning and controlling towers/keeps etc in Cyrodiil. That's fine... all factions fight it out and the winner (most keeps) gets ownership of the city.

•That in some ways is similar to WoW's Wintergrasp PvP zone. The factions fought it out and the winner got to own Wintergrasp for a couple of hours, have access to its traders and the dungeons within•

However this is where I see the flaw in Imperial City... there is no set time for ownership. Your faction wins the city and everybody is going to want to go in there. After all Zenimax have put so many cool things in there of course people will want in. BUT... now all of your faction is inside, not outside winning/controlling keeps and you immediately lose control of the city ! ? That's going to give people no time to do anything, no time to use crafting stations or enjoy any of the benefits of owning the city. Hell if either of the other two factions are remotely organised you could end up owning the city for just a matter of minutes !
And in the long term it's no better for the other factions because they will have the same troubles ! Win-it, go in, Lose-it, get kicked out, rinse-repeat.

The only way I can see around the problem is to use a timer (or countdown) on ownership -

•example -

12.00 o'clock whichever faction owns the majority of keeps gets the Imperial City !
14.00 (insert your timezone) Whichever faction now owns the most keeps takes control of the Imperial City.
16.00 repeat
18.00 ...... (and so on)

At least this way players of the winning faction get to enjoy the benefits of the city. Every faction has equal chance of owning the city, the current owners still have to defend/fight in Cyrodiil IF they want to keep the city.

Just imagine the alternative !
You win the City and 10 mins later you lose it. Chat is going to be full of flamers with bruised epeens...lol
"#@%* idiots, you lost us the city"
"@#*&% noobs, why was no fecker defending"
"I fought for 5 hours and we only held the %#@*$ city for 10 mins"

:O

We've waited ages for this, The Imperial City looks fantastic and has so much in it. The Devs have obviously gone all out making this something special. I just don't want to see it turn into a sh*t storm and ruin it for everybody !

This is the exact same system that they use in Darkage of Camelot. It is called Darkness Falls. It was introduced about 12 years ago. Alot of people like myself think it was one of the best PVP ./ PVE mixed MMO Systems. It was done very well and its system created great balance on the battle field. It gave a big goal and even brought PVE players into PVP just to obtain it. After your side gained control alot of your population did go to the new area. Alot just went to kill the enemy players then came back but alot would also stay for the PVE.

When your side won control of it on the battle field that basically ment your side was winning the map. When a large chunk of your player base went there to reap the rewards of controlling it, it kinda worked like balance on the war map as yoru side lost players and the other sides could now have a chance to to start winning on the map and eventually take control of Darkness falls (imperial city)

As for your comment " we only held teh city for 10 minutes" generally it was always much longer. And even if your side lost control you were not kicked out, you still had time to do things before the enemy could amass a large force and push deep inside to kill you. There were many times i remember my alliance defense holding inside Darkness Falls for hours and hours after we lost control.

basically the system worked very well and created some epic scenerios and fights as well as helping with balance on teh war map

Well if it turns out to be anything a good as that sounds then we'll be a happy bunch of players !

Holycannoli · July 2014

Phantax wrote: »

Well if it turns out to be anything a good as that sounds then we'll be a happy bunch of players !

It might even be better. If you died in DF you were kicked out. If your faction owned entry you could just reenter but if they didn't, like if you were killed by the faction that just took control, you couldn't reenter and had to go to the frontier to capture keeps and get it back.

With IC we might be able to respawn in parts of the city controlled by our alliance, regardless of whether or not we control entry. I don't know for sure though.

Even if we can't respawn when we don't control entry it will be fun. DF was a great mechanic in DAOC, and there was no level scaling in DF like there will be in IC (I assume anyway since it's still Cyrodiil). You have a very real chance of fighting back the alliance that controls entry even if you are lower level, unlike in DF where if a level 50 group decides to roll through and kick out the previous faction's lower level players there's no chance of them failing.

Anvos · July 2014

The way I understood/thought it worked was that owning at least 1 Emperorship keep unlocked access for your alliance to cross to the island and then enter your alliance's sewer entrance.

From your sewer base you then have to cross through a contested zone to find the entrance to a district.

Once in a district you then have to fight off both the deadra and other alliances to claim a district.

With a district controlled your alliance can use it as a spawn point in the city and do the quests and such in that district.

From there I would guess that losing all your emperor keeps causes any districts you own to act like a keep without resources and beyond that their is likely other ways to make a district be undersiege,which would also cause the deadra to return as well.

WraithAzraiel · July 2014

So it's Cyrodill within Cyrodiil while your Cyrodiiling.

Cyrodception!