I made about 2400 stones in a short duration in the sewers from killing other players farming them (was able to bank them). I stalked a group, killed a couple here and there but I wasn't fully able to wipe them out until they decided to engage a sweeper. Looting telvar stones and the possibility of losing them is very exciting, however I do see losing 100% when you got last hit by a player when engaging a boss is extremely punishing. I think if PvE is involved when you die a PvP death the amount you loss should be relative to the amount of damage the other player did to you. If a mob does 50% of the work, the player should only get 50% of your stones. It's also punishing to the ganker if they did most of the work and a mob just happens to get the last hit on the other player... So this would be a great compromise if you didn't have to last hit the player and got rewarded for the amount of work you did. I also think there should be a minimum loss if PvP is involved at all (at least 35%). Seeing players and running into a group of mobs on purpose to preserve stones shouldn't be rewarded. If you die 1v1 in PvP combat you deserve to lose 100% of your stones btw.

MissBizz wrote: »

Well, been playing for about 40 minutes now... and I can't get past the bottom of my little safe area trying to do the quest.. oh, I've been killed MANY times and didn't have stones.. even after I killed a monster successfully on my own.

Oh, but, when killing another mob, I did get ganked from behind by somebody, and when I revived in my little safe tower... it popped up that I gained my first 3 telvar stones! I thought I was supposed to lose them? :S Going to keep trying though.

Update from my previous experience... went to try a dungeon (let's not talk about that ) and then headed back out. This time, there was not a massive amount of enemies just waiting to kill me, and there was quite a few of my own alliance. I still havn't found my way into the arena, but I gained quite a few stones, and we even had a couple enemy players show up.. but there was enough of us to take them down. It was fun. I gained quite a few tel var stones (over 100) so I wanted to bank them.. I entered a sewer entrance.. and snuck around killing a couple scamps.. I got lost in the sewers. I have no idea how to get out of imperial city I guess haha. Anyways, came to a bigger guy and was fighting him, an enemy player came up but thank goodness the mob killed me. Came alive in Cyrodiil with 172 stones (banked them)

I continued to play for another hour (a little more actually).. never got the arena finished... wandered off to other districts... left with 0 stones. Long story short, unless luck is on my side, it appears I will normally not get any due to the 100% law and it disheartens me. Even to walk out with a couple more would be good.

kaithuzar wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

I am not a fan of losing Tel Var Stones. There are going to be players who just sit on spawn points and farm TV stones from people. Maybe they just take a certain percentage from you instead of all of them.

How many did you lose on the PTS today, @OtarTheMad? And to how many enemy alliance players? Any additional details you could provide about your specific personal experience?

I probably lost a couple hundred. While Normal mode dungeons were not very difficult to 2 man, the hard mode veteran versions were impossible to complete with a full group. We wiped numerous times on the first bosses of both dungeons & feel losing Tel Var stones while you are learning the mechanics to be too much. Yes we could have placed our stones in the bank before hand but we had no idea we would be losing them after fighting in a PVE dungeon!

@kaithuzar You don't really lose Tel Var stones in the dungeons. Your death recap tells you that, and once I noticed I took note of my TV count, and after I died, I checked again, and still had the same amount. As mentioned in ESO live you don't gain or lose stones in the dungeons, but I really hope the UI for the recap gets fixed so it doesn't make you think you are anymore.

So, my experience today:

Finally logged in and got everything ready. Finding a mix between a PvP bar and PvE bar was so exciting! My little group headed in with stars in our eyes, our goal was to get to all the crafting stations.

Station One: In EP zone, which is my alliance, required 9 traits to craft and was rather underwhelming. I was disheartened because I haven't learned nirn on my crafter yet though and thought I was going to be locked out of all the new sets. We exit via the balcony and stealth up, onwards to DC we go!

Station Two: Dead. Very, very dead. A group of about six DC were stealthing and ganking at the door to the crafting station. You stand when you go to use a door, standing puts you out of stealth, they attack, you are in combat, you can no longer open door to safety, you die. My scared and horrid at PvP self left my group to die and cloaked to safety. I whispered a few of the DCs and they were nice enough to offer to not attack if they saw me, but they couldn't speak for the others. For me it was just enough to get inside. The set, imo, was better than the first and only cost 5 traits.... Well then... That makes no sense... Balcony, stealth, pray and go! We had one more to find.

Station Three: Port into the zone with the station, and right into a group of ADs fighting some mobs. We walked by them and they were of the mind to let us even after they were done killing. Good guy AD for the win. Some more stealth magic and we are there. Oh, this one is 7 traits? ZOS, is there ...what? This makes no sense...

Alright, now to find this Arena thing. Go to balcony, stealth....crash. No big deal, it is PTS, just log back in. The guys had ran ahead, found some actual PvP and were crying about how tab-locking was changed and 'whyyy'. I just shrugged, stealthed up, and ninja'd my way to them. I get there and actually get into a fight. Which I promptly begin to lose, because I am miserable at PvP. I stealth up and start running while screaming desperately for help as I had almost 100 TV stones. The boys were headed my way, I was going to be....crash. Oh no. Log back in, fingers crossed, praying for the mercy of AlmSiVi. They had none. I was dead, a pile of TV stone-less ash. I do however get a rez and am excited to get back into the fray. This sneaky healer was on duty and no one was going to die on her...crash. Oh my, these are coming more rapidly now. Ok, breathe, log in, and dead again. At least I didn't lost TV stones this time. Ok, take a step towards the boys...crash. Well, maybe I needed another Dr. Pepper after all.

I finally get back into the game and notice something is amiss. The loading screen says Deshaan. That doesn't seem like the right way to spell Imperial City. Maybe the loading screen was having an off day, has happened before. Oh, no, this is Mournhold, and laggy. Well then, let me go stand on the rock of doom and just queue into Haderus...for nearly an hour...

In the end we gave up and ran the dungeons. I gained no TV stones. Well I gained them, but lost them because you don't automatically log out when you crash so people can still kill you. Happens to me all the time in Cyrodiil as is, but now it isn't just an inconvenient walk back to where I was. This NB is sad face, because cloaking and leaving my friends behind isn't the nice thing to do when you are the healer. At least I am a NB though and have a way to escape.

TL:DR - 100% loss is not okay. Lag, crashes, PvE mobs, all factor into the experience. Losing my stones because I got cocky and thought I could PvP, fine. Losing them because the game is a game, not so fine.

Addendum to my prior post. After reading some I have found a lot of people in threads hoping the loss of TV stones will be addressed by having the ability to lock other alliances out of the city. For me, that is the worst option, and even though I know we will get to test it I am not eager for it. I love the rush of not knowing what was around the next corner and seeing people from other alliances just as scared as you skittering about. I think the suggestions here are worth looking at and considering for keeping access to IC open to all factions to at least some degree.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

I am not a fan of losing Tel Var Stones. There are going to be players who just sit on spawn points and farm TV stones from people. Maybe they just take a certain percentage from you instead of all of them.

How many did you lose on the PTS today, @OtarTheMad? And to how many enemy alliance players? Any additional details you could provide about your specific personal experience?

Nothing but a huge grp of AD gankers running around. I have lost a lot and never made it back to a safe zone. If I had to guess, so far it hase benn a couple hundred, but I have only played in the PTS for about 1 hour... and I am already ready to quit.

Played for roughly 3 hours or so inside of IC .. made over 2k stones but didn't get to keep any since i crashed an died haha .. but it is far too easy to camp an entrance or exit and spawn trap any faction coming it.

Something needs to be done to make it clear where safety is to get your stones back safe and no one should die when entering in right away from spawn camps.

Played 3 or 4 hours with small group(4), ended up with around 500 stones banked and lost another 500ish. Stones came pretty quickly when actually focused on gettign them, about equal between monsters and players but mostly focused on PVP. Had alot of fun, group sizes in Imperial City were pretty good with the larger ones being 8-10 players.

IMO the loss rate should really be higher then 10% when killed by an NPC, that's encouraging players to "blood port" back to their base and bank the other 90% of the stones. Around 30% loss to npc deaths feels right. In the case of players dying to player and NPC damage IMO 50% of the stones should be lost and go to the victorious player.

Spawn points within each district are too close together to really encourage the "hunt or be hunted" feeling as much as the devs seem to want though. At the very least, spawn points for each faction should be on opposite sides of each district - preferrably players could take over district control and force the other two factions to invade through the sewers (this would remove the ladder to that district from enemy bases). This being said, never felt like I was being spawn camped or trapped in spawn, but it did feel defeated enemy players were back way too quickly.

The system is perfect because we don't need them.

Teargrants wrote: »

The Tel Var Stone system will be a complete and utter joke that will only contribute to getting more ppl to quit the game if IC lags on live the way it's lagging on PTS currently. Even small scale combat is full of unresponsive 5+ sec delays on all actions, abilities not animating, constant crashes, ect.

When this happens on live over and over and over, and you lose all your stones because you died from invisible attacks while your heals failed to cast - after spending $$ to get in, mind you - this game will lose players, fast.

Man that's strange, I honestly haven't had any latency lag all day. I would say it if I did. I saw another poster talk about lag too. I thought they were just one of those troll complainer types.

Now the crashes... I've crashed like 10 times.

Unfortunately between crashes, and conducting a whole ton of different experiments to see if it made any difference to the crashing, I have not had much chance to earn any stones - I think in my best lucky streak I got about 11 before crashing and logging back in to a death recap!

Not many in my guilds have been on so far, but I am looking forward to (once the crashing issue is addressed) going in as a group. I can see it being a good guild event to go to the IC to earn the stones, even for more casual guilds.

The main problem (in my view) is the length of time it can take for a group to go through a load screen or into a new area, some turn up before others, and if there are enemy players camped at that spot they have the definite advantage over people who are still waiting on some of their group to load in. An area of immunity around those load points (not immunity against death, but immunity against losing all your stones) may make them less of a focus and set the action more in the districts and a bit more tactical rather than camping and hoping to catch someone who loads into an area half a second before the rest of their group.

Derra wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

I am not a fan of losing Tel Var Stones. There are going to be players who just sit on spawn points and farm TV stones from people. Maybe they just take a certain percentage from you instead of all of them.

How many did you lose on the PTS today, @OtarTheMad? And to how many enemy alliance players? Any additional details you could provide about your specific personal experience?

We´ve already encountered a potential problem in our first brief test.

A groupmate lost all of his tel var stones after getting hit by !1! lightattack from an enemy player with everything else being npc dmg. With a system that instantly tags you for enemy player death this is going to encourage stealth griefing oh so much.

Yep that is the other problem I see happening in my brief forays between CTDs.
It could be fixed by a combination of a) have the enemy players that attack you also aggro the NPC mobs, rather than the NPC mobs resetting and ignoring the other alliance players, and b) making it so that enemy players have to do a clear majority of damage to your health bar (relative to damage from NPCs) to take your stones (or at least nothing disproportionate to the amount of damage they actually caused to you), so if NPCs get you to low health an enemy player does not benefit by getting everything for hanging around and just getting in the killing blow.

ewhite106b16_ESO wrote: »

Pirhana7_ESO wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Pirhana7_ESO wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

I am not a fan of losing Tel Var Stones. There are going to be players who just sit on spawn points and farm TV stones from people. Maybe they just take a certain percentage from you instead of all of them.

And those people will eventually get ran over and die and lose everything as well.

Very true but unless I was one of them who helped then it's still a problem because the stones aren't mine anymore. I get why they put them in, it's a good idea. I am just thinking of guilds who are going to have a group of 10 or whatever camping certain points to destroy players.

This is why i think they really need to go with a system of alliances gaining control of IP, like owning your home keeps+ 1 enemy. This way you can cut off access to enemy alliances. yes your side may not always have access but when they do it will be alot safer for that side, when your sides loses access then you know to rush to the bank

I totally disagree with this - cutting off enemy alliances just turns the Imperial City into a mindless PVE farm. Did a couple of solo runs myself so far and REALLY liking it. Finding so far that imperial city broken terrain + mob spawns make it much easier to evade large enemy groups then in Cyrodil as a whole, the risk of actually losing your stones in PVP makes going out and getting back much more of a thrill.

Ran into a group of 10-12 EP players, broke LOS around a corner hid on top floor of a house for a while. Ganked one of them who wandered behind a building - went after another player got interrupted by incoming daedra. Headed back to base successfully after that.

I agree that a mindless PvE farm is a bad idea, so any access involving majority keeps would not work, but I think some sort of safety net would be good. Say for example, just the home keeps. Then in a completely balanced campaign, everyone has access, but if you want a bit of a safety net, go and cap a couple of enemy keeps in Cyrodiil to lock them out and give your alliance a bit of breathing room. They'll take them back soon enough, but it may give people enough time to get a few more TV stones with a bit of relative safety.

TheBull wrote: »

100% Is fine. You can gain them fast.

And lose them faster...

I like the hardcore stuff, but I can definitely see that it would be off-putting to some. 100% is good with me, but I could also see 50% being a reasonable solution, that still allows for profitable ganks, while providing "insurance" for adamant PvE'ers.

Right now, the problem is it is too new and fun to leave the battlefield.