Zerg flag flipping

Malveria · October 2014

As it stands, 50 people can flip a flag with sheer numbers, even though 5 people can hold them off and stay alive.

So we're faced with no AOE ability to kill 50 people fast enough to defend a flag when they can simply flip the flag in the interim.

Can we have a flag capture cap, please? To make the fight even? So people can't just out-zerg a defending force and flip the flag with brute force.

Asgari · October 2014

Many in my guild have decided to play other games in the mean time until issues like this are addressed. It occurs on a daily basis in the NA Thornblade server and most times no one is dying and the flag flips with all of the NPC on the flag still as well.

Rylana · October 2014

I am pretty sure a dev mentioned the flag cap is six. If it is not working this way that needs to be addressed.

Malveria · October 2014

Even if it is capped, they are able to flip the flag solely because you can't kill them fast enough on a flag and they flip it through sheer numbers.

If you have five people on the flag, the flag is lost even if those people stay alive. So what's the point?

Rune_Relic · October 2014

Quake aoe.
All players in area are knocked down and dazed for 2 seconds.
Alas...by necessity works both ways. lol

Sypher · October 2014

In my opinion.

The flag shouldn't flip if there is a person on top of the flag defending it.

If they have more numbers than you the flag will flip even if the flag guards are alive. Then the enemy guards spawn and it's game over.

If 5 people can hold off a Zerg on the flag. Then that flag should not flip until either side gets wiped out.

Ezareth · October 2014

Sypherpkub17_ESO wrote: »

In my opinion.

The flag shouldn't flip if there is a person on top of the flag defending it.

If they have more numbers than you the flag will flip even if the flag guards are alive. Then the enemy guards spawn and it's game over.

If 5 people can hold off a Zerg on the flag. Then that flag should not flip until either side gets wiped out.

I think the number should be 2 defenders. It is too easy for people to just keep sending in solo suicides to delay a capture otherwise.

krim · October 2014

Yep should just be as long as someone is alive on the flag it shouldnt flip

Sypher · October 2014

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

Sypherpkub17_ESO wrote: »

In my opinion.

The flag shouldn't flip if there is a person on top of the flag defending it.

If they have more numbers than you the flag will flip even if the flag guards are alive. Then the enemy guards spawn and it's game over.

If 5 people can hold off a Zerg on the flag. Then that flag should not flip until either side gets wiped out.

I think the number should be 2 defenders. It is too easy for people to just keep sending in solo suicides to delay a capture otherwise.

Hmm, well the speed at which the flag flips is extremely quick when the flag has reached the 6/6 speed rate of flipping. So it would take some serious timing on the suicides to even cause a delay.

By the way, even though Wheeler said that the max amount of people who can affect a flag flip is 6. I feel like if there are 6 defenders on the flag, but 12 attackers, the flag will still flip at the 6/6 rate because the attackers cancel out the defenders.

Braidas · October 2014

i was thinking the same thing yesterday fighting with a couple of guys on a flag against a large amount of ad, and it just turning regardless that we were slowly killing them. ***

Asgari · October 2014

This happens all night long once the pop bars are locked on thorn and doesn't end until the early morning.

MiyaTheUnbroken · October 2014

I think the entire mechanic for taking a keep should be changed. You shouldn't be able to take a keep when there are 50 defenders in it just because you stood near a flag. That's stupid. I think there should be more to taking a keep. Maybe you need 2/3 resources and the flags, maybe you should have kill/chase off the majority of the defenders in the keep when the inner wall comes down. Something. Anything. As it is, it's way too easy to take a keep, and requires almost no skill once you get the walls down.

JamilaRaj · October 2014

MiyaTheUnbroken wrote: »

I think the entire mechanic for taking a keep should be changed. You shouldn't be able to take a keep when there are 50 defenders in it just because you stood near a flag. That's stupid.

Not at all. If that 50 people can't come to flag to actually, uh, defend (what the !@#$^ are they doing there?), they deserve to lose it.

MiyaTheUnbroken · October 2014

JamilaRaj wrote: »

MiyaTheUnbroken wrote: »

I think the entire mechanic for taking a keep should be changed. You shouldn't be able to take a keep when there are 50 defenders in it just because you stood near a flag. That's stupid.

Not at all. If that 50 people can't come to flag to actually, uh, defend (what the !@#$^ are they doing there?), they deserve to lose it.

I don't really know how to reply to that since it doesn't really make sense to me. How is being in the keep and fighting not defending the keep? How is killing opponents not defending the keep? You could kill 100 invaders inside the keep, but if they aren't the ones standing on the flag it doesn't matter. My point is that it should. There should be more to taking a keep than where you stand inside it.

Are you saying that if the 50 people defending the keep don't all stand in the same spot they deserve to lose the keep? If so then you are entitled to that opinion, but I clearly disagree.

JamilaRaj · October 2014

MiyaTheUnbroken wrote: »

JamilaRaj wrote: »

MiyaTheUnbroken wrote: »

I think the entire mechanic for taking a keep should be changed. You shouldn't be able to take a keep when there are 50 defenders in it just because you stood near a flag. That's stupid.

Not at all. If that 50 people can't come to flag to actually, uh, defend (what the !@#$^ are they doing there?), they deserve to lose it.

I don't really know how to reply to that since it doesn't really make sense to me. How is being in the keep and fighting not defending the keep? How is killing opponents not defending the keep? You could kill 100 invaders inside the keep, but if they aren't the ones standing on the flag it doesn't matter. My point is that it should. There should be more to taking a keep than where you stand inside it.

Are you saying that if the 50 people defending the keep don't all stand in the same spot they deserve to lose the keep? If so then you are entitled to that opinion, but I clearly disagree.

It's not defending the keep because they lost track of what is the goal and what is a mean. The goal is to prevent being outnumbered at the flag by means of killing enemies. Inside, outside, along the way, but point is still to prevent them reach the flag. If they give priority to killing enemies everywhere else but at the flag to the extent there is 50 people doing so, they are not defending, period.

MiyaTheUnbroken · October 2014

JamilaRaj wrote: »

MiyaTheUnbroken wrote: »

JamilaRaj wrote: »

MiyaTheUnbroken wrote: »

I think the entire mechanic for taking a keep should be changed. You shouldn't be able to take a keep when there are 50 defenders in it just because you stood near a flag. That's stupid.

Not at all. If that 50 people can't come to flag to actually, uh, defend (what the !@#$^ are they doing there?), they deserve to lose it.

I don't really know how to reply to that since it doesn't really make sense to me. How is being in the keep and fighting not defending the keep? How is killing opponents not defending the keep? You could kill 100 invaders inside the keep, but if they aren't the ones standing on the flag it doesn't matter. My point is that it should. There should be more to taking a keep than where you stand inside it.

Are you saying that if the 50 people defending the keep don't all stand in the same spot they deserve to lose the keep? If so then you are entitled to that opinion, but I clearly disagree.

It's not defending the keep because they lost track of what is the goal and what is a mean. The goal is to prevent being outnumbered at the flag by means of killing enemies. Inside, outside, along the way, but point is still to prevent them reach the flag. If they give priority to killing enemies everywhere else but at the flag to the extent there is 50 people doing so, they are not defending, period.

Well this is exactly my point. Standing on a flag should not be the priority. There should be more to taking a keep than simply standing in one spot the longest. This is supposed to be a war of alliances, not a game of capture the flag. If they want the point to be capturing flags and nothing else, that's fine, but don't tell me I get to participate in a massive war, and then give me a child's game.

JamilaRaj · October 2014

I am not sure what your point is. You say there should be more to it, yet at the same give example of 50 people failing to keep in mind even simple objective, as though they should be awarded keep just because they fragged some equally clueless enemies in general vicinity.

Anyway, back to the topic: if the defenders actually had upper hand despite outnumbered, they would have eventually killed attackers and flipped the flag back, so I do not see any problem here.

Rune_Relic · October 2014

MiyaTheUnbroken wrote: »

JamilaRaj wrote: »

MiyaTheUnbroken wrote: »

JamilaRaj wrote: »

MiyaTheUnbroken wrote: »

I think the entire mechanic for taking a keep should be changed. You shouldn't be able to take a keep when there are 50 defenders in it just because you stood near a flag. That's stupid.

Not at all. If that 50 people can't come to flag to actually, uh, defend (what the !@#$^ are they doing there?), they deserve to lose it.

I don't really know how to reply to that since it doesn't really make sense to me. How is being in the keep and fighting not defending the keep? How is killing opponents not defending the keep? You could kill 100 invaders inside the keep, but if they aren't the ones standing on the flag it doesn't matter. My point is that it should. There should be more to taking a keep than where you stand inside it.

Are you saying that if the 50 people defending the keep don't all stand in the same spot they deserve to lose the keep? If so then you are entitled to that opinion, but I clearly disagree.

It's not defending the keep because they lost track of what is the goal and what is a mean. The goal is to prevent being outnumbered at the flag by means of killing enemies. Inside, outside, along the way, but point is still to prevent them reach the flag. If they give priority to killing enemies everywhere else but at the flag to the extent there is 50 people doing so, they are not defending, period.

Well this is exactly my point. Standing on a flag should not be the priority. There should be more to taking a keep than simply standing in one spot the longest. This is supposed to be a war of alliances, not a game of capture the flag. If they want the point to be capturing flags and nothing else, that's fine, but don't tell me I get to participate in a massive war, and then give me a child's game.

I think one of the problem is people zergballing on a flag.
If the flag is not the prime objective you instantly remove the problem.
ie. If locking down a specific coordinate is the objective....people are going to pile on that objective.

You could change it so the flag is caged and you need to break 3 shards to access the cage. Those shards being in completely different places. But that was kind of why the flags were added in the 1st place.

How about physically activating beams/trap at the same time. So not only do you have to take multiple areas....you have to take multiple areas at "exactly the same time". This has to break up large forces into smaller groups, rather thna one large grouping rolling from objective a to objective b to objective c in series.

Would that help ?

Onviously need to isolate all areas so you cant roll from point a to point b after destroying all of point a defense. ie. 3 or more strike teams rather than 1 zergball

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/131646/the-new-keep-capture-strategy/p1

We also had to decide how attackers would claim a keep. We considered having a powerful NPC that invaders would need to defeat, but found that this took focus away from fighting enemy players—the assailants would group up and rush to the NPC, sometimes forgoing combat with other players in a mad dash to kill the keep’s lord and gain control. A few iterations later, we came to our current system, where the attackers need to bust into the keep and occupy two flagged locations for a period of time to gain control of it, all the while facing down the defenders trying to drive them out.

MiyaTheUnbroken · October 2014

We also had to decide how attackers would claim a keep. We considered having a powerful NPC that invaders would need to defeat, but found that this took focus away from fighting enemy players—the assailants would group up and rush to the NPC, sometimes forgoing combat with other players in a mad dash to kill the keep’s lord and gain control. A few iterations later, we came to our current system, where the attackers need to bust into the keep and occupy two flagged locations for a period of time to gain control of it, all the while facing down the defenders trying to drive them out.

No one ever tries to drive the defenders out, they just try to capture the flag, and essentially ignore every thing else.

serenenightmare · October 2014

MiyaTheUnbroken wrote: »

We also had to decide how attackers would claim a keep. We considered having a powerful NPC that invaders would need to defeat, but found that this took focus away from fighting enemy players—the assailants would group up and rush to the NPC, sometimes forgoing combat with other players in a mad dash to kill the keep’s lord and gain control. A few iterations later, we came to our current system, where the attackers need to bust into the keep and occupy two flagged locations for a period of time to gain control of it, all the while facing down the defenders trying to drive them out.

No one ever tries to drive the defenders out, they just try to capture the flag, and essentially ignore every thing else.

Pretty much this. ^

Malveria · October 2014

Keep takes against organised defenses can be largely strategy. One organised group sweeps the courtyard for camps, another holds the breaches open, and one or two more can take the flags.

There is, however, an inherent problem within keep taking, and it's not the flags. It's the mechanic around the flags.

1) The walls come down too quickly on a defending keep. The area of sieging vs the area of counter sieging has a huge discrepancy between it, meaning that defenders struggle to hold off 20/20 siege. For some keeps (Dragonclaw, Drake, Brindle), the flag time makes it impossible for defending forces to arrive on foot (necessitating blood porting). Either wall health needs to be increased, or they need to flag sooner. Or drop the damage of wall-damaging siege.

You should never be able to ninja a keep. Every single keep take should come with a fight.

2) Flags should not flip if there is a single defender on the flag. Inside the keep, at the front door, no, those don't count. But if ONE person can hold off a large group of people, and stay alive, and hold off the keep being flipped to buy time for an organised group to come in, it should be allowed to happen.

3) Camp radiuses work against people. Once a keep is flagged, sometimes the ONLY way to defend it is to spawn at the camp there. People don't like blood porting, and I get that, but when it is the ONLY way to save a keep, then the reason for it needs to be addressed. And this is a direct result of the walls coming down too easily.

Garion · October 2014

Yes. Please fix this. When I solo defend a keep / outpost / resource (or even with a couple of us) the flag will flip regardless and the appearance of NPCs effectively means insta-death. This should be a priority fix please Zenimax, on top of all the other priority fixes you should introduce (your to-do list is getting big, fast!)

Malveria · October 2014

Again, a few people managed to get to a flag, and were holding it and wiping the attackers, but because the attackers had superior numbers, the keep simply flipped.

It's already too easy to zerg down and flip a keep. Walls drop too easily and the flags are flipping despite the fact that there are defenders. And now we're gonna lose our oils?

Why not just take numbers and if the zerg is big enough, just give them the keep. What a joke.

Teargrants · October 2014

I would just like siege defense to be about counter sieging enemy siege down / sortieing to destroy enemy siege, rather than the wait until the inevitable breach and blob over it until one side runs out of negates.

One of the things that leads to this is that 20/20 defender siege can't take out 20/20 offense siege for several reasons:
- The wall will go down in minutes
- Defender siege can't be packed close to focus fire offense siege effectively compared to offense siege focus firing one bit of wall
- Defender siege gets no atk boost vs offense siege, it's already a given that Purge makes it impossible for defense siege to kill enemy siegers.

Improvements that can be made to make sieging less of a countdown to the offense blob standing on the flag as they lag the server out:
- Increase wall HP / decrease siege damage to walls
- Give defending siege an atk boost against enemy siege
- Reduce the "too close to friendly siege" BS radius to just the radius of the siege placement for defense siege placed on walls
- Maybe even increase the siege limit for defenders

Just, for the love of god don't increase NPC guard strength or add more. No one needs that crap.

And of course there's the obvious one that makes me wonder if the server hamsters weren't in charge of designing AvA mechanics too:
- Why the hell are attackers allowed to flip flags when there are defenders and NPCs still on it?!!?!?!

Sanct16 · October 2014

Sometimes it feels like they don't even have to be alive to flip the flag. Happened several times that we completly wiped a raid at some flag and they get NPCs although they are just dead.

Don't know if this is intended or maybe only my imagination, but if it really is like this, thats something they should really change for obvious reasons.

Malveria · October 2014

Once again, a zerg rushed the flag at Nikel. 5 defenders alive and wiping them, but the keep flipped regardless because of sheer numbers.

You're stripping this game of any ability to kill zergs.

Insurrektion · October 2014

Malveria wrote: »

As it stands, 50 people can flip a flag with sheer numbers, even though 5 people can hold them off and stay alive.

So we're faced with no AOE ability to kill 50 people fast enough to defend a flag when they can simply flip the flag in the interim.

Can we have a flag capture cap, please? To make the fight even? So people can't just out-zerg a defending force and flip the flag with brute force.

5 should not beat 50

Braidas · October 2014

Malveria wrote: »

Again, a few people managed to get to a flag, and were holding it and wiping the attackers, but because the attackers had superior numbers, the keep simply flipped.

It's already too easy to zerg down and flip a keep. Walls drop too easily and the flags are flipping despite the fact that there are defenders. And now we're gonna lose our oils?

Why not just take numbers and if the zerg is big enough, just give them the keep. What a joke.

Ya walls def need more hp; you can flip a keep in like a minute and a half 50/50 at this point. The oil change i agree is ridiculous, but hopefully they at least change them when they remove aoe caps.

The current system is awful...if you get enough people into a small enough place (where the flags happen to be), even ignoring the skill locking lag it creates, it's impossible to defend. Rlly should be at the top of ur list to change zeni. Yes, were willing to hold off on things like Wrothgar, Murkmire, spell crafting, and even the imperial city for an improved, working PvP experience.

Get. Your. Priorities. In. Order.

Then again, 95% of your customers prolly dont gaf about PvP so I guess ur priorities are in order....[snip]. WTB company tht cares about its game's PvP....CU out yet? no?....oh well...

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Cursing & Profanity]

Braidas · October 2014

Insurrektion wrote: »

Malveria wrote: »

As it stands, 50 people can flip a flag with sheer numbers, even though 5 people can hold them off and stay alive.

So we're faced with no AOE ability to kill 50 people fast enough to defend a flag when they can simply flip the flag in the interim.

Can we have a flag capture cap, please? To make the fight even? So people can't just out-zerg a defending force and flip the flag with brute force.

5 should not beat 50

If those 5 are some of the best players in the game (not saying they are, js as an example), and those 50 players suck....yes they should.

Joy_Division · October 2014

I agree that attackers should not be able to flip flags if there are defenders on it.

Sallington · October 2014

Insurrektion wrote: »

Malveria wrote: »

As it stands, 50 people can flip a flag with sheer numbers, even though 5 people can hold them off and stay alive.

So we're faced with no AOE ability to kill 50 people fast enough to defend a flag when they can simply flip the flag in the interim.

Can we have a flag capture cap, please? To make the fight even? So people can't just out-zerg a defending force and flip the flag with brute force.

5 should not beat 50

If those 5 are using oils well and the 50 are mindless idiots just standing on the flag, the absolutely should beat them.