Rewards for captured keeps and scrolls? Change them to balance campaigns!

Kas · April 2017

In my opinion, it's time to accept that the following thought does not really hold (except tf primetime and similar settings):

"If a faction controls most of the map, it will have to defend against both other factions and thus can make use of buffs"

For many campaign+time combinations ,this is simply not true. Instead, many players of the faction on their backfoot leave the campaign (for bed/farming/pve or another campaign) and essentially, there is a dominant faction, with buffs, outnumbering all opposition combined. This extends to the morning where nobody wants to be one of the first 5 getting farmed by emp+10 at their gates.

Imho, it would be much better if emp+scroll buffs worked differently:
1) Scrolls and keeps increase every AP you earn. By a large margin! Very worth wanting them, but now the catch:
2) Without your keeps / scrolls, you're buffed. Pretty much the other way round that it is now, possibly to a much larger extend (but extra HP + full scrolls is already pretty insane).
2) Still give the points you need to win the campaign - for those players who care. Having even more keeps/scrolls could increase progression more even more that proportionally.

This allows you to take back and gain some ground, even when outnumbered Moreover, if night falls and one faction outnumbers the others, they will still start gaining ground. But eventually, buffs may kick in and help the smaller factions to hold the line. This prevents furtehr exodus and people logging off in frustration 1-2hours before their time, thus making the gap smaller overall.

I can see how it seems a bit fishy to reward "losing" (keeps etc). But taking stuff has to be still worth it. And in between port-lines, winning the campaign (jk, who cares?) and AP buffs (you can basically tweak from minimal to stupidly huge and find a decent middle ground), I think it is absolutely possible that players will still want to take+hold keeps.

kuro-dono · April 2017

players are bit of lost cause here in eso. we have seen that so many times proven already.
what could sort some of the issues you trying to highlight> there is lots of ppl who dont care about campaigns. they should be in campaign which rewards kills only. then there is those who care about winning campaigns. they should be in campaign that rewards ap only when campaign finishes or at certain times of the campaign based on the status of your alliance. owning map is bit bizarre issue tho as we have proven many times during eso that those who can do capping vs near no resistance will utilize the chance. too many folks dont care about balance. but if we ever had opportunity to get healthy population for campaign without ap rewards from kills it could be very nice and healthy ava campaign.

Eweroun · April 2017

kuro-dono wrote: »

players are bit of lost cause here in eso. we have seen that so many times proven already.
what could sort some of the issues you trying to highlight> there is lots of ppl who dont care about campaigns. they should be in campaign which rewards kills only. then there is those who care about winning campaigns. they should be in campaign that rewards ap only when campaign finishes or at certain times of the campaign based on the status of your alliance. owning map is bit bizarre issue tho as we have proven many times during eso that those who can do capping vs near no resistance will utilize the chance. too many folks dont care about balance. but if we ever had opportunity to get healthy population for campaign without ap rewards from kills it could be very nice and healthy ava campaign.

...and then there's those who only care of AP... by flipping resources in Haderus...

Nermy · April 2017

Kas wrote: »

In my opinion, it's time to accept that the following thought does not really hold (except tf primetime and similar settings):

"If a faction controls most of the map, it will have to defend against both other factions and thus can make use of buffs"

For many campaign+time combinations ,this is simply not true. Instead, many players of the faction on their backfoot leave the campaign (for bed/farming/pve or another campaign) and essentially, there is a dominant faction, with buffs, outnumbering all opposition combined. This extends to the morning where nobody wants to be one of the first 5 getting farmed by emp+10 at their gates.

Imho, it would be much better if emp+scroll buffs worked differently:
1) Scrolls and keeps increase every AP you earn. By a large margin! Very worth wanting them, but now the catch:
2) Without your keeps / scrolls, you're buffed. Pretty much the other way round that it is now, possibly to a much larger extend (but extra HP + full scrolls is already pretty insane).
2) Still give the points you need to win the campaign - for those players who care. Having even more keeps/scrolls could increase progression more even more that proportionally.

This allows you to take back and gain some ground, even when outnumbered Moreover, if night falls and one faction outnumbers the others, they will still start gaining ground. But eventually, buffs may kick in and help the smaller factions to hold the line. This prevents furtehr exodus and people logging off in frustration 1-2hours before their time, thus making the gap smaller overall.

I can see how it seems a bit fishy to reward "losing" (keeps etc). But taking stuff has to be still worth it. And in between port-lines, winning the campaign (jk, who cares?) and AP buffs (you can basically tweak from minimal to stupidly huge and find a decent middle ground), I think it is absolutely possible that players will still want to take+hold keeps.

In a weird way, this is actually a good idea.

I've always said once the pact holds Bleakers/ Dragon, Sej/ Drake and our scrolls we just defend. Maybe Arrius/ Aleswell but to push anymore angers the other Alliance and they push back. Better to defend what we have then lose it pushing back AD and DC. If we're getting more points each evaluation.

But I like your idea that it becomes a debuff you have to fight against if you hold to much. Nice.

Turelus · April 2017

kuro-dono wrote: »

players are bit of lost cause here in eso. we have seen that so many times proven already.
what could sort some of the issues you trying to highlight> there is lots of ppl who dont care about campaigns. they should be in campaign which rewards kills only. then there is those who care about winning campaigns. they should be in campaign that rewards ap only when campaign finishes or at certain times of the campaign based on the status of your alliance. owning map is bit bizarre issue tho as we have proven many times during eso that those who can do capping vs near no resistance will utilize the chance. too many folks dont care about balance. but if we ever had opportunity to get healthy population for campaign without ap rewards from kills it could be very nice and healthy ava campaign.

Personally I wish we could have one Cyrodiil per server and have the control bonuses back in PvE with the exception of leaderboard content.

Then bring the games difficulty up just enough that the bonuses feel good to have. They need to make the wider population care about who is winning the campaign and have one campaign for focus.

However this is a dream we'll never see.

Kas · April 2017

Turelus wrote: »

kuro-dono wrote: »

players are bit of lost cause here in eso. we have seen that so many times proven already.
what could sort some of the issues you trying to highlight> there is lots of ppl who dont care about campaigns. they should be in campaign which rewards kills only. then there is those who care about winning campaigns. they should be in campaign that rewards ap only when campaign finishes or at certain times of the campaign based on the status of your alliance. owning map is bit bizarre issue tho as we have proven many times during eso that those who can do capping vs near no resistance will utilize the chance. too many folks dont care about balance. but if we ever had opportunity to get healthy population for campaign without ap rewards from kills it could be very nice and healthy ava campaign.

Personally I wish we could have one Cyrodiil per server and have the control bonuses back in PvE with the exception of leaderboard content.

Then bring the games difficulty up just enough that the bonuses feel good to have. They need to make the wider population care about who is winning the campaign and have one campaign for focus.

However this is a dream we'll never see.

I agree with that wish, but now that you can do pve with chars from any faction, this is very problematic in practice and would probably just lead to a dangerous development from "oh let's log our red chars today" --> "if you want to play with us, it's best to have a red char" --> "all most pve guilds raid on reds, new players should make such a char" --> map is always red.
ofc red/blue/yellow could be interchanged here. But imho the impact of pve buffs can be very dangerous nowadays (where you can make an endgame char in a few hours and 3days if you included undaunted + pvp passives)

Biro123 · April 2017

Good ideas - makes perfect sense.

I've always disliked the way progression impacts PVP in MMO's.. One faction/group/player farms the BiS stuff first/is more co-ordinated/is more skillful/has more numbers (ie an advantage already) - wins and gets rewarded with stuff to give them even more advantages.. Losing side progresses much more slowly creating a spiral whereby those already at the top get further and further ahead until you end up in a situation where its inaccessible for those players/groups/factions not at that stage. Its like the opposite of a Golf handicap.

I mean ESO isn't too bad in this respect terms of gear and CP's compared to some other games.. but it gets it wrong in terms of campaign rewards.

Will be interesting to see what (if any) battleground rewards are given and what (if any) impact it has on this.

Neoauspex · April 2017

I like your idea, but I do think the issue is a symptom of a more fundamental problem in Cyrodiil: it's equally as easy to take a keep as it is to defend it and it doesn't take very many resources nor a significant amount of time. This means that the map begins to reflect population imbalance very quickly.

One of the reasons for this is the way siege works, and I would love to see that revisited. Siege weapons are infinitely available. We pop them out like candy and one person can operate 3 or 4 at a time.

In reality building a trebuchet and transporting it to an enemy location would take an immense amount of time and resources. The advantage of defending a keep would be that those types of weapons are already present and available. Yet in ESO they're equally available for an invasion force and if you don't use one for 30 seconds it poof disappears whether your in your own keep or a million gallops from friendly territory.

Combine that with the fact that there's no incentive for anyone to remain in a keep that's not under attack, that makes element of surprise and travel time the main factors in keep flipping. Nobody has to starve out an enemy over a long siege, and if a prolonged fight does occur it's probably detrimental to your alliance. Its often more efficient to let a keep fall and attack something else and then take it back as soon as everybody is gone.

So, personally, I'd like to see siege weapons cost a lot more (or even require a multiplayer quest to even acquire? and I think siege should remain until destroyed by an enemy if it's in a keep. And there should be more incentive to guarding a keep while it's not the subject of an assault. Make it a quest hub for the guild that claims it or make the farm and resources actually matter, etc.

Subversus · April 2017

The idea regarding keeps giving out AP bonuses is actually really good, especially for those playing to win the campaign. That would pretty much 'revive' the map (at least on TF and maybe Azura's) to a certain extent....