Improving and encouraging AvA in cyrodiil

miahq · January 2015

I was one of those people who was actually looking forward to the AvA system on such a huge scale in eso. I recognize that AvA is ultimately more about guild vs guild, group vs group, but it seems like in an attempt to appeal to everyone they ended up stacking all the rewards into an individual merit based system. Titles and emperor are both decided entirely by AP, and there really isn't much of an incentive to hold keeps-- though adding a guild store option is more than nothing.

Now that the upcoming imperial city will placate some of those who didn't like the large scale AvA (sorry folks, no arena yet), I'm wondering about people's ideas for encouraging more people to really get involved with the AvA, beyond just farming AP. Starting off with some of the ideas I've come up with through interacting on the boards here:

1) make the interior of the keeps upgradable like the walls, so the longer you hold one the more like a makeshift guild house it becomes. Not just one dude to sell everything, but a bit of diversity and maybe even a locked storage space. There's a lot you can do, and if guilds got something like that out of it, they'd be encouraged to hold on to that keep.

2) pay people. I mean... we are soldiers, aren't we? Why not weekly gold based on number of keeps your side holds and your time/contribution in cyrodiil. With bonuses for your guild owning a keep, and any towns or unique resources your side controls.

3) make the towns more interesting and worth holding. If you made the owners of whatever guild owned the keep associated with a certain town also the owners of that town. And put in a few more interesting things to see and do for PC so not every place is a burned out crap hole, then owning those keeps would become more valuable.

4) don't make emperor just whoever has the most AP, instead make it the leader of whatever guild caps the most keeps or controls the most territory. That not only would limit emperor turnover and keep it a more prized thing, but it might encourage more interesting infighting. Maybe someone breaks away from the emperors guild to try and unseat them, pulling away members.

5) don't worry about decreasing damage on AoE spells, instead just make them cost a lot more. Even if you tripled the costs, most would still be kicking butt as far as total damage/cost, but right now the ratio of damage to cost is absurdly higher than with single target spells. You'd still be able to use them, just not spam them like crazy as you'd run out of magicka after 2-3 shots.

6) make the choke points a little ore varied, so every battle doesn't feel the same. I mean right now we've these Inexplicable terrain choices that rise up for the sole purpose of creating artificial choke points, but it's way too obvious, and really makes the map look too unnatural. Both because of that and because of the forced shape though, it really becomes more of an obviously decorated stage and battles can all feel the same.

Roechacca · January 2015

All great ideas .

Also let a Guild controlled farms have access to food an potion ingredients instead of foraging . Same for wood at lumber mills and metals at mines . That's all I can think of right now .

Would bring more "life" to Cyrodiil .

Valnas · January 2015

you should get a loot bag for keep capture quests (once a day) with loot commeasurate with dailies.

if you want to make it diff equiv, make scroll quests gold.

miahq · January 2015

roechacca wrote: »

All great ideas .

Also let a Guild controlled farms have access to food an potion ingredients instead of foraging . Same for wood at lumber mills and metals at mines . That's all I can think of right now .

Would bring more "life" to Cyrodiil .

The farms and mines would be a nice way to diversify the rewards of ownership. Guilds that control town keeps might have extra gold deposited into their guild bank, where other keeps may have rich farms producing meats or grains, even some rare crops. Still others might be next to great mines that give rare minerals. That way different keeps come with different bonuses, and that actually encourages more pvp, as different guilds might be jealous of what someone else has. Are they going to come to their aid if they're attacked, or are they going to stand on the sidelines, wait until the keep falls and then try and take it for themselves?

Valnas wrote: »

you should get a loot bag for keep capture quests (once a day) with loot commeasurate with dailies.

if you want to make it diff equiv, make scroll quests gold.

The scroll quests I've not given a lot of thought, but I'm sure something could be done there as well. Gold bonuses for taking keeps would certainly be a nice incentive for the rank and file of any guild or group as well. And it would be a nice change to diversify it from just AP.

riverdragon72 · January 2015

Lag first, fluff last.

miahq · January 2015

riverdragon72 wrote: »

Lag first, fluff last.

The lag goes without saying really, I mean they promised a system that could handle hundreds of people on the map at once and have now cut down the total people allowed in cyrodiil from 600 per to around 200. And there's still lag.

Part of that was why I suggested just raising the cost of AoE skills like impulse, so they're still strong skills but not something you can just sit there and endlessly spam. But obviously that's not the only reason for lag. But what those other issues are, they aren't saying. Maybe it is something they did in an update, idk. But it's certainly something they need to fix, so they can raise the numbers back up. Especially if they're going to be introducing imperial city, because that's going to take a lot of people out of cyrodiil.

Regardless, even when they do fix the lag, they need to do something to better incentivize the AvA. It's already gotten dull for some, I imagine many others will fell the same way after a while. And if things like imperial city are their solution to keep it interesting, that's not going to appeal to a lot of those who were really interested in the AvA aspect.