PvP right now is a mess. It's not truly fun for even many of the people that play it often. I think I may have stumbled onto a very simply tweak that would have a great impact on several fronts.

I'd like to begin with what I think open world PvP should be;

1) Competitive
No side should enjoy complete domination and even in the face of overwhelming numbers, a smaller force should have some chance at making advances if utilizing unique or at least dynamic strategies. By dynamic I mean changing in reaction to the environment. Always going from keep A to B to C is not as much fun as it could be in the best of time...and when the map is dominated it becomes next to impossible.

2) Fun for Small Groups
Some people hate running in large or zerg groups. These are sometimes really good and talented players and the game needs to reward their individual or small group efforts.

3) Fun for Large Groups
Some people really enjoy running with a large group. The game needs to provide a reason to group and provide a reward for doing so, beyond the simple farming of AP.

4) Fostering a Sense of Community Within the Alliance
There should be some sense of community between the guilds and players within an alliance instead of the constant bickering and appendage measuring.

5) As Lag Free as Possible and Profitable for Zos
Zos has already "tweaked" the game in many different ways to try to reduce performance loss. I think this would be another such tweak.


MY PROPOSAL: All keeps other than the 3 home keeps of an alliance CANNOT be ported to nor revived at under any circumstances. This would include the ring of keeps around the Imperial City and the 3 distant keeps of Brindle, Dragonclaw, and Drakelowe.

Shocking yet simple. Please allow me to explain and justify this position.

The biggest problem currently facing PvP in ESO is the domination of each campaign by a specific faction. This domination, if not permanent, at least lasts for a significant portion of the campaign duration, if not much longer. These servers become buff servers and the population dwindle even among the winning faction.

This begs a question. Why if the population of the winning side is reduced is it so difficult for another side to regain any ground? The answer is that the faction in control is never more than 1-2 min away. This results in a PvP environment where there is often almost no action whatsoever until the other side is finally alerted to your presence or finally begins to care and then they smash the resistance with overwhelming force.

1) What I propose would increase the competitive nature of the game by;
a ) requiring more effort the further your forces advance (like real life) which would discourage things like gate-camping.
b ) increase the risk and need for careful tactics the further your forces advance.

1.2) The flip side of discouraging careless rushing to the other end of the map would be to ENCOURAGE the alliance with lower population at the time to strike out with bold and inspired attacks where the rewards are greater.

This leads me to points 2 and 3 from above. The change would help both large and small groups in the following ways.

2) By decreasing the time that it takes for enemy players to get to UNEXPECTED attacks, small groups willing to ride far and risk much with highly coordinated attacks and strategies would have a chance to change the conditions on the map before being crushed.

3) The battles on the front lines would change less drastically. The closer to the middle of the map the more static and massive the battles would be because they would represent the balance of risk and reward. It would be slightly riskier than now, so players would need to be more careful and more apt to give revives rather than ride back, but it's still close enough (perhaps 5 min ride instead of 2 min ride) that reviving at a home keep is not such a horrible ordeal. I think we can also agree that people are more likely to get revives when grouped (than from non grouped alliance members).

I think this would interestingly be an incentive for people to play how they like. Those inclined to run in large groups would certainly see this as increasing the needs to do so. I believe those who like smaller groups or solo play would also see this as decreasing their need to run in a large group. This leads me to point 4.

I have noticed that often individual groups and guilds will purposefully stay quiet in zone chat when a keep is under attack or when a big attack is being carried out because they desire fewer players and less competition for alliance points. These groups are competing for rewards and they benefit from having fewer players outside of their chosen number at the engagement. Less competition for rewards and bigger shares of AP because it's divided among fewer players.

The reason this works is because they are almost always 2 min away from riding back. So, the risk from wiping is very small, and the reward from keeping others from the fight for AP is very large.

4) This change would cause groups to share their plans (at least current positioning upon attack and defend) with the zone because the cost of failure is greater. Zone chat would perhaps evolve from a nonsensical stream of arguing, flaming, and attention seeking into a place of actual strategy discussion and communication about the status of the realm.

4.2) This change would be likely to influence more players to give use soul gems for revival on the field of battle.

4.3) In general, I think this change would increase community within the alliance because the "war front" would be slower moving and give each alliance more of a sense of owning 1/3 of the map instead of owning the entire map 1/3 of the time. It would encourage communication between groups and guilds. It would encourage grouping (both large and small) and encourage teamwork and revives within those groups, etc.

Finally, if a decent percentage of the community found this agreeable, Zos should consider this proposal for the following reasons.

5) Zos has already tried to "spread out" the population by doing things like removing forward camps, increasing siege damage, and giving bonuses for Cyrodiil delves. But they have not tried to SLOW DOWN the population. Zos was on the right track when they set aside certain portions of the map that an enemy couldn't port to under any circumstances, however instead of having that be only the furthest 1/4 of the map...it should have been everything except the closest 1/4 of the map.

5.1) I can only imagine but this could also help with the future Imperial City expansion by making it more central in terms of control to match it's central physical location.

5.2) Zos I think has been open that they didn't expect people to complete content as quickly as they did. PvP isn't exactly content, but slowing down the progress within a campaign can't be bad for the longevity of the game. Additionally there is actual PvE content (and some of the best content) within Cyrodiil and it would slow down the exploration of that content.

5.3) The increased use of soul gems would be beneficial by increasing the number sold in the crown store and/or serving as a gold sink (it doesn't have to actually be gold) in the game by taking resources out of the economy.

NOTE 1: This would undeniably increase the minimum time spent riding mounts in Cyrodiil. However, please consider that with the current conditions of the servers at least 1 alliance (if not 2) already have to often ride MUCH FURTHER to find any fight. Where each alliance might have to regularly ride two keeps away, this would decrease the riding for alliances that are having to ride from their gates across the entire map to find a fight.

NOTE 2: If you think PvP is great the way it is and needs no changes, and certainly not this change, please feel free to say so, but ALSO remember this when the conditions in your server change (if they do) and you find yourself frustrated at that time.

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Thanks for your time and attention in reading this. Considering it's length I hope I didn't make too many errors. If I did, please don't let them detract from my proposal.