I think the nerf is too much, but I'm glad to see the AP requirements reduced. It is currently excessive. And it's petty to resent the change because you had to gain ranks when it was hard. Am I supposed to resent everyone who leveled Enchanting to 50 after it was nerfed because I did it beforehand? Should I cry foul to every ESO+ subscriber getting a 10% research bonus because most of my research was done before this change? I didn't enjoy those grinds, I did them because I had no choice. I'm very happy it's now easier for my alts to advance. Analogies aside, it's only taken me a month to earn Proxy Det. And this is now, when the huge 40k+ ticks are gone, forward camps are gone, numerous AP exploits are gone. Resentment, envy, jealousy because an odious task you had to perform is removed is petty and immature. It's like resenting your indoor plumbing because you used to have an outhouse.

THIS?

OR THIS?

I also believe that your Alliance Rank should be account wide, though the Skill Line should be separate for each character.

________
Cross post from the other thread:

For those complaining that new players and alts will have more ult generation from kills and faster rez, why should they have to play for months in order to get the same bonuses that experienced players or older toons have?

They'll play and learn for a week or two, the same as any PvP player will play and learn doing dungeons for undaunted achievement runs. The difference is for undaunted, the PvP player is going to spend an hour per day for two weeks. The PvE player in Cyrodiil is going to spend 8 hours per day for two weeks.

This change makes sense to get new players interested and keep players playing and rolling alts in PvP.

It also lowers the barrier to entry for quality players in small groups, as you will want everyone to have all the passives to be as powerful a group as possible. Training up a new player takes a month before they can really pull their weight, so this way they'll be able to contribute to the group similarly to an old-timer once they're trained up. Now, new players who show skill and promise can have what they need to perform at the same level as the old timers (many of whom simply have the passives as they've been around long enough and not because they are particularly amazing players) in a week or two of play. Potentially in a day or two if they farm AP well.

Again, I don't see the negative, other than the emotional response of having put a LOT of effort into it, and others getting it easy mode - though that's a NORMAL thing in MMOs that happens after a time for almost anything. Look at undaunted - earlier in the game timeline you had to do achievements, which a lot of people couldn't get groups for. Now almost anyone can do the dailies (scaled down if need be) to get their skill line up.

Personally, this gives me incentive to spend 7-8 days (of /played time) levelling up my templar and doing the quests for skill points, leveling up both morphs of all his skills, and getting all the sky shards as I know he'll be able to perform in PvP after a day or two of play. I'm sure I'll learn more about the game playing as a templar - and won't feel less effective or that I *should* swap to another toon because I don't have the passives that give so much power (weapon/spell damage, regen, ult, range, rez speed) when in combat.

@ZOS_GinaBruno It would be nice to know the ZOS reason(s) for this change - is what I wrote above close to the mark?

I personally dont really care. I understand why many do, as many people (including me) have already went thru the current AP requirement to get all of the skills in the alliance war skill lines, and many see it as unfair that otherswould be able to get the skills in 1/10th the time it took the ones that went thru the original requirement. . but at the same time, its not going to kill PvP to let newer people get essential skills like purge, vigor, and magicka detonation quicker.

Plus there are people like me who like to play on alts a lot, and being able to get those skills quicker will make it easier to play on an alt. My only major desires for PvP right now is improvements on the lag and the return of softcaps, I personally dont mind if ZOS makes the time to get the alliance war abilities shorter.

and not everyone earns 200-500K AP a day, even when I did nothing but PvP for 90% of my free time, I never earned more than perhaps 100Kish AP over a few days. it took me a very long time to get vigor, and im not going to be mad because newer people will earn it faster, because I will be able to get those abilities faster as well on my alts:)

670k AP to max the 2 skill lines is pretty much a joke and cheapens the achievement. They are doubling AP gains from kills, so this is really like 350k AP in Cyrodil today. Even for a very casual player, you can get 15k-ish AP in an hour or so. For a very casual player to max out the skill line for what was supposed the largest time-sink in the game, in a month or two, is a bit TOO easy. Anyone spending real time in Cyrodil or knows what they're doing will max it in a week.

I'd be fine with them either lowering it by a little bit, or making AvA gains account wide, but this change is a bit much.

Will we need 90% less lore books for Rank 10 in the Mages guild? Will we need to run less dungeons for Undated ranks?

RIP servers when every single player is running caltrops and proxy det.

I don't care. But if ppl want it, it's not gonna affect me if they have the skills unlocked faster or not, so I say it's a good change.

Not a fan of this much of a reduction. I will very much benefit from this in that I will be insta-maxed on most of my alts. But it really cheapens the feel of the skill line. It's one of the reason's I PvP. It will basically be pointless once this comes into effect because I'll have maxed the skill line on my characters. If the goal is to drive players to other parts of the game, then they will succeed.

Without actually playing extensively on PTS it's hard to say if the change is to big or not. Especially considering other changes in Cyrodiil. On paper at least I think it's a bit too much.

But at least I will be able to max out pretty quickly now. A month or two per character would be pretty cool.

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

I never called you out by name so you making personal attacks on me is somewhat humorous.

I'm not trying to make personal attacks on you, just responding to your repeated comments about 'elitists', ap farming, lag, vet guilds, terrible without cp advantage, aoe spam etc. a lot of which I disagree with.

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

finding the breaking points of the PvP meta and "forcing" all other factions to use it as well or get farmed. Once someone brings a grenade to a knife fight, no one goes back to knives.

I partly agree with this. That's how meta's work in every MMO. You need to come up with a new meta to counter the previous etc. The problem though is that the current meta of large ball groups has no counter. Luckily, this is being addressed next patch in 2.3. I don't support the ball group meta or a game which has no counters.

The hopesfire bleakers events were from a different patch and different meta so, the playstyle used was very different, despite using aoe abilities. It had counters, just people weren't as skilled or organised as those AD. They were very smart and individually skilled players who were well ahead of the meta at the very start of the game.

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

Me learning to play is not going to change the tactics of many people who continue to never play the map and just see cyrodiil as an AP farming, e-peen measuring contest.

I can't speak for other people, but I personally play the map 90% of the time on Blackwater Blade. I'm always helping AD in zone chat the best I can. I also lose about 500k AP everytime I play on Blackwater Blade. The last campaign I played on BWB, I earned 1.2 million AP, however I actually spent 1.7 million AP on siege and repair kits whilst playing the objective and helping AD as much as possible to win the campaign. I stopped caring about AP about 12-18 months ago. Generally I find that players will care a lot about AP for the first 12 months of PvP, but after which they get very bored and just play to have fun. I notice this when newer players join a guild they are always eager to get the d ticks and make AP where as the people who have been playing for a long time really couldn't care less and just want a fun fight in a location/scenario they haven't fought in before.

On vet pvp I don't play the map as much as I used to due to lag & crap meta etc. I don't farm AP either though, I normally try to create a fun fight that I havn't experienced before, like take a scroll and run it a strange way home or something different and random.

As for the e-peen measuring contest, one of the reasons AD is strong in vet PvP atm is because of our ability to put e-peen's aside and work together as a faction. All current guilds on AD work together regardless of skill. There are many experienced players that take their time to help the newer guilds improve and play better at the game. I've never seen AD co-operate this well as a faction before when playing the objective, not sure why this is, maybe it's because no one really cares about AP anymore.

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

but to build to the greatest advantage and use the hottest, most broken builds and mechanics, but this type of gameplay is bad for the game in the long run, and has been shown to cause lag.

Lag is caused by a large volume of players from all factions in one location on the map. An individual's build doesn't cause lag. I'm also yet to experience server lag on blackwater blade. I'd actually argue that it helps balance the game in the long run (though, zos seem to have a hard time with balancing their game.)

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

Blackwater blade was different. It was mostly lag free, and broken-build free until this last iteration of the Battle Leveling changes which has encouraged more and more organized Vet guilds with high CP toons to come over and farm newer, less organized players.

As far as I'm aware, no AD vet guilds play on blackwater blade as a guild. Only individual vet players. I know that a handful of players from Rage have played on Blackwater Blade, and often not online at the same time and run around solo. Usually they are just there to have fun or they are leveling up a new toon for vet pvp. Not to farm players... You talk about it like as if Vet guilds are running around blackwater blade with 16 man ball groups. I've grouped up with maybe 4 people from my vet guild before when pushing the emperor keeps, alongside a couple of bwb regulars. The big groups you see are just the usual non-vet guilds. And yes vet players have CP, but so do a lot of people in blackwater blade. There are people in BWB who have high CP who have never set foot in vet pvp. They got CP on a vet toon in pve or whatever and they just constantly re-roll in bwb lol. You would be amazed how many players in BWB have a few hundred CP. CP will be removed from BWB next patch which will be a much needed change, one that everyone supports.

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

Just because blobspam beats single target play 9 times out of 10, doesn't make it more skillful, just easier.

AoE is only more effective if their are multiple targets close to each other, otherwise single target is better. Correctly using AoE does require skill, just as much as single target or any other ability. Ball groups are different story though, moving around as an AoE ball isn't as skillful, so in that regard you are right. Again, ball groups are being addressed next patch.

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

Everyone running around with prox det in BWB will make it terrible.

I agree with you here, and share the same concerns. I unlocked prox det in blackwater blade once just for lols, but would never do it again as it is far too difficult and time consuming. This upcoming patch is a large nerf to players who group up, and even pugs and not just because of prox det. You can no longer purge players outside of your group so every pug will instantly melt at the breach. It will be impossible to capture a defended keep as you lose rapid if you attempt to heal or purge anyone, so so long as there is enough dps + snares on a breach no one will make it through. People are gonna be in for a shock, it's going to be quite amusing.

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

I just hope that the removal of champion points will cause them to leave. They are terrible when they don't have a huge advantage over other people.

When the update comes I presume people will be playing in vet with the new changes as it will change the game quite significantly. After a few months though, I'm sure I'll come look to see what is happening on bwb. Removing CP won't cause people to leave though, if anything that will make it more fun. People don't play on BWB because of CP advantages. Experienced players know how to play without CP. For example the majority of my game time has been before CP system was added.

I know we will probably disagree on a lot of things, some of the things you say I actually do agree with, I just ask that you take off the tinfoil hat and be a bit more open-minded when discussing peoples play style instead of labelling people as elitists who spam aoe and cause lag.