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PvP Campaign Design Issues

michael_bimson
michael_bimson
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I believe that there are two 'levels' of issues in PvP, the first being existing bugs which are covered by a number of other threads, and the second being what I perceive as a failure of game design which I wish to discuss here.

It seems to me (in EU) that the current set up is a failure, competition is killed off by players and campaigns used as 'buff' providers. E.g. AD have had an emperor on Haderus for nearly two weeks. The campaign needs to be put out of its misery. I think Chillrend in EU is DC controlled and Thornblade is AD controlled (again, I think). Only Azura's Star actually has PvP.

I think that there are three major culprits in this: 1) human nature, i.e. players following the easiest path to success. 2) Over and under populations. 3) Night capping de-motivating peak-time players.

I am keen to hear what could be done to address these issues and also if people think that there are additional failures of game design that need addressing (not bugs although these too need addressing e.g. 8/10 players crashing during a siege and the attackers taking the now undefended keep).

To address 1) ZOS need to incentivise competitive PvP play with buffs and alliance points. Human nature will always take the easiest path and therefore the easiest path needs to be good, competitive PvP. More alliance points need to be given for alliance objectives (taking/defending keeps and scrolls). I hope that this would encourage players to fight harder at objectives rather than farm AP points at suicide spots or by camping a resource tower.

2) when there is a significant population difference, the low population alliance(s) needs to be buffed exponentially to be competitive, as an extreme example when one alliance is locked and the other two are on one bar, direct hits from siege engines could be fatal. Hopefully this would draw in players to imbalanced campaigns, hopefully returning the campaign population to a better balance.

3) it is demoralising and frustrating that evenly matched alliances can make hard fought gains during high population times that are completely undone during low population time. Linking back in with 1) these low-pop players don't seem to choose different alliances to compete with each other as it is easier to faceroll PvDoor as a same alliance group.

My solution, although this is partially diagnostic in order to ascertain if night capping really makes that big a deal, would be to double the number of campaigns but time lock these campaigns. E.g. Haderus would become Haderus AM and Haderus PM. If you generally play between Midday and Midnight, home on the PM campaign and at Midnight the campaign "saves" and closes with players being moved to Haderus AM which opens from Midnight to Midday.

You are automatically a guest of your sister campaign and AP gains count for your home campaign score so you can start earlier or finish later if you wish too with no penalty to your score or chance of becoming Emperor. This, I hope, would create more of a campaign ownership for regular PvPers as they have more of an influence over their chosen campaign and are not forced to concede victory or accept defeat because they cannot play 24 hrs a day.
  • AllPlayAndNoWork
    AllPlayAndNoWork
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    Aion had a good system to combat the dominance of one particular faction and that was to introduce an NPC faction that also took keeps and stuff...... An Imperial faction of NPC's could do the same here.

    If a server is dominated by one faction for too long or the numbers are too far in one favour then they could be introduced to keep it more even and spice it up a bit.

    I also am of the opinion that if you choose a server you should stick to it. This server hopping is a royal PiTA.
  • Phinix1
    Phinix1
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    ZOS is their own worst enemy.

    They have repeatedly refused to deal with the campaign-hopping guest-exploiting, AP-farming problems by siting the "its important that players can group up" dogma.

    Well, time you guys get real and join the rest of the industry and realize that if you set up a system that can be exploited, it WILL be exploited. Humans are selfish, egocentric creatures, and you CANNOT count on them to behave properly. You have to sacrifice a little convenience to prevent the game from going to pot when selfish egocentric d-bags inevitably game the system you basically hand them on a plate.
    • Eliminate the guest system altogether. Either join a campaign or don't. Figure out where you want to play with your guild cronies before making a commitment or deal with the consequences. Such is life, and ZOS shouldn't tolerate the blatant farming that is happening because you can't plan ahead.
    • Eliminate Emperor buffs following you outside of your campaign. That is right, no Emperor buffs in PVE. Have these buffs only apply while you are in your home campaign in Cyrodiil or remove them altogether. Hard mode PVE content should not be balanced under the assumption that your "elite" guild hop a bunch of people to a buff server to give themselves an edge. That is cheap and encourages the sort of farming/exploiting zerg-balling BS that ruins legit play.
    • Punish cross-faction farmers (people that have a bunch of their friends log into characters on the opposing faction and let themselves be killed over and over) by putting checks on the frequency a particular player is killed by a particular player, and flag them for review if it is happening over and over. Ban these cheating losers as it removes the incentive to actually play competitively with dedication when some fapping prick is sitting there killing his buddies all day for points.

    When even the most active and skilled players on a campaign only have around 30k AP within the first hours of a new campaign cycle and these cheating/friend-farming d-bags already have 200k, you realize that there is absolutely no chance legitimate players will ever get Emperor.

    This completely removes the incentive to actually participate in serious play.
    Edited by Phinix1 on September 30, 2014 12:19PM
  • michael_bimson
    michael_bimson
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    Aion had a good system to combat the dominance of one particular faction and that was to introduce an NPC faction that also took keeps and stuff...... An Imperial faction of NPC's could do the same here.

    I like this idea - in one of the trailers Mannimarco has an undead/daedric army at his disposal, if there is a dominant faction perhaps this could be unleashed?
    I also am of the opinion that if you choose a server you should stick to it. This server hopping is a royal PiTA.

    There does need to be some possibility of moving campaign, but you're right that it happens to easily. Perhaps campaign choice should be semi-permanent and require a customer service ticket to move campaign.

    Edit: Alien Diplomat - I agree with everything you've said.
    Edited by michael_bimson on September 30, 2014 12:17PM
  • Rune_Relic
    Rune_Relic
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    As above...
    1. NPC faction or Supplementary NPC mercs to boost the low population factions.
    2. Campaigns can only be moved when they are finished... and remove guest campaigns.
    Anything that can be exploited will be exploited
  • Garion
    Garion
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    @AlienDiplomat‌

    I agree with some of your points in principle, but I would like to offer some dissenting opinions or potential problems that could arise from the changes that you suggest. It is important to consider the impact any changes could have - because it could well be that in attempting to solve one problem, you create new ones.
    • Eliminate the guest system altogether. Either join a campaign or don't. Figure out where you want to play with your guild cronies before making a commitment or deal with the consequences. Such is life, and ZOS shouldn't tolerate the blatant farming that is happening because you can't plan ahead.

    I think this is a short sighted view that may exclude a great many people from PvP. Take for instance my first experience with PvP - I joined Auriel's Bow as a noob and then joined a guild. The guild I joined happened to be playing on Dawnbreaker. Had I not been able to guest there, or travel to player, I would not have been able to play with them.

    Another example - when the new campaigns were introduced I started PvPing on Chillrend and I kept it as my home campaign for the duration (14 days). However after the first campaign it become a DC buff campaign with most of the fighting centred around the gates which the blues camped killing poor nubs who were trying to get out into Cyrodiil.

    If you eliminated the ability to swap campaigns it would leave people stranded in a home campaign and unless they have the AP to change they would have to wait until the campaign changes (or try earn that AP). To me 15k AP is a drop in the ocean now, but when I started PvPing that was alot particularly because I was regularly buying siege and camps, etc.

    My point is that before you lock campaigns in this way, you must absolutely address the other issues that impact Cyrodiil at the moment - that being imbalance in population, buff campaigns etc etc.
    • Eliminate Emperor buffs following you outside of your campaign. That is right, no Emperor buffs in PVE. Have these buffs only apply while you are in your home campaign in Cyrodiil or remove them altogether. Hard mode PVE content should not be balanced under the assumption that your "elite" guild hop a bunch of people to a buff server to give themselves an edge. That is cheap and encourages the sort of farming/exploiting zerg-balling BS that ruins legit play.

    I agree entirely, and it would go some way to minimising some of the behaviour I mentioned above.
    • Punish cross-faction farmers (people that have a bunch of their friends log into characters on the opposing faction and let themselves be killed over and over) by putting checks on the frequency a particular player is killed by a particular player, and flag them for review if it is happening over and over. Ban these cheating losers as it removes the incentive to actually play competitively with dedication when some fapping prick is sitting there killing his buddies all day for points.
    When even the most active and skilled players on a campaign only have around 30k AP within the first hours of a new campaign cycle and these cheating/friend-farming d-bags already have 200k, you realize that there is absolutely no chance legitimate players will ever get Emperor.

    This completely removes the incentive to actually participate in serious play.

    I agree absolutely that people who exploit the game, notably by killing friends on alt accounts over and over, should be punished accordingly. Having said that, I would like to point out a couple of things.

    1. It is very easy to get 200k within a few hours, particularly on a new campaign where a lot of players log in with an effort to establish themselves on the leaderboard. If you play as a duo, or small scale group, and do so effectively, 200k can be made in to time at all. The assumption that these points are earned via exploiting the game is not correct at all. I am not saying it doesn't happen, but I am saying it most likely does not happen quite as often as you might suspect.
    2. You get diminishing returns when killing players over and over. This is easily tested. If a player has died repeatedly without killing many others / dishing out much damage, their AP value will drop to negligible amounts. I've seen the value of a kill go down as low as 7 AP. This is a measure that is already in place that prevents the farming you refer to. Of course there may be ways to reset this (such as relog) but that does slow down progress.
    3. Your point on checking how many times a player has killed another player is one I am cautious of for two reasons. My first reason is that I have concerns on how this might impact server performance (it's more information for the servers to digest) but that's almost irrelevant in the scheme of things. Secondly, I would be concerned with the impact this could have on innocent players. For instance, last night my group wiped a DC group over and over and over as they kept coming to cap a resource. None of us died. On their tenth wipe or so they gave up. Does that mean I should be flagged and banned? Human error is alarmingly common in these situations, particularly where there may be numerous 'flags' to check. I would want to see reassurances that this would not be the case before anything like this was implemented.
    Lastobeth - VR16 Sorc - PvP Rank 41 (AD)
    Lastoblyat - VR16 Templar - PvP Rank 14 (AD)
    Ninja Pete - VR16 NB - PvP Rank 10 (AD)
    Labo the Banana Slayer - VR14 Sorc - PvP Rank 12 (EP)

    Member of Banana Squad | Officer of Arena
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