Zos featured a lengthy segment on PVP changes in update 18 in the recent ESO Live. You can view that episode on their Twitch channel, but here I’ll discuss a first take on the changes that are coming in June.


Overall

Update 18 should enhance the Cyrodiil PVP experience via (very) modest updates, but overall the announcement seems underwhelming to this PVPer, who was kinda hoping for some more impressive enhancements.


Change 1: We’re addressing lag! (No, really).

Let me say I’m not as hard on the game as some regarding the lag issues. I think it's working pretty well. But it must be expansion season because we had someone come onto ESO Live to read the same old cue card. “We’re making fixes, they’re hard to explain, we don’t want to change too much and we can’t roll out anything new until we fix this.”

In a game that is four years old, these talking points are getting a bit stale. I had hoped for a broad update to Cyrodiil in this expansion because it needs to be refreshed. The fact that we didn’t get much is, honestly, pretty disappointing.


Change 2: Altering the keep credit system

When a fight occurs on a property, there’s a lump of AP that goes into a bucket for the offensive/defensive teams. If I'm the only AD player at a resource and I kill an interloping red, I get 1.9k AP for the kill and then 1.9k goes into the bucket to be awarded 1-2 minutes later when the system clears the battle. If there are two AD on property, we split the AP for 950 each. If there are five, we get about 400 each.

In update 18, players will need to actively participate to go onto the tick reward list. You have to hit an enemy, or heal someone, or repair a wall. Note that this does NOT apply to the capture tick. The base reward for a keep or resource capture will still be offered to players arriving at the last moment. They just won’t share in the battle AP if they don't participate.

The good: This is a great change. It rewards players who are more actively participating, and stops awarding defense AP to people parked for bathroom breaks at the wayshrine. I am always very aware that like 20 people on the reward list are doing nothing, and I'm aware that people park when they're not playing to earn AP off my efforts. (Lame).

The bad: Will this encourage zerging and discourage legitimate support activities? If a small force attacks my keep and I see that there are defenders, I like to mount and run around the perimeter to make sure there isn’t a second undiscovered siege force, which there often is. With these changes, I might be discouraged from this sort of scouting because I might then miss my defense AP. But I should make that up ten times over by not paying AP leeches.


Change 3: Enhanced AP credit lists

This is hard to explain if you’ve never PVP’d, but right now you lose your defense/offense AP ticks if you step off property. In update 18 you get to remain on the list for the last property you battled at **OF EACH TYPE**. Type is key here. If I defend Blue Road, I go on that AP list. I can then travel to each of the three resources and battle there and stay on the BRK list. The BRK resources are three different types, so I could now be on four total lists. I might then travel down to Sejanus and battle there - as an outpost it’s a different type, so I’m on that list as well.

You are taken off a list as soon as you step onto property for another objective of that type. So if I finished at BRK and ported to Drake, I’d come off the Blue Road AP list. Keep in mind, the AP rewards are supposed to pay out within 60 seconds of a battle ending…so there shouldn’t be too many cases where someone would get removed from a list unfairly. In most cases a battle closes out and pays out long before you get to another objective of the same type.

The good: this is a good change. It will help teams move along a bit faster. It will also allow players to go defend those resources without being paranoid that they’re going to miss a big tick…great change.


Change 4: Keep AP values adjusted depending on ‘quality’.

If a keep has more higher level resources, it becomes a more valuable objective. AP values not announced.

The good: overall I like this change. It makes sense, and should help reinforce the idea of battlefronts…rear positions being more important than forward.

The bad: The town system puts two towns in southern AD territory, which offers quick access to five keeps. So it’s become a practice to send a small force to take a town, then the whole server dead ports in to go after AD back keeps. This change could exacerbate this behavior, and towns may need to limit the ability to port there.


Change 5: SIEGE SIEGE SIEGE

- Defenders can place 30 siege on property to make a keep easier to defend. The offensive limit of 20 remains.
- Ballista now focused on being siege destroyers - increased damage to siege, decreased to players.
- Catapults now “poison” an area for longer with ongoing DOTs/debuffs. They'll create an area somewhat like caltrops, that damages you as you stand it in then stops if you step out.

I’m mixed here. I siege a lot, so a few notes.

- If players enjoy using ballista as anti-player siege, the dev team should accept that players have found a better use for their mechanics than they have. The changes aren’t huge, but they’re unnecessary. They should have done the opposite - make ballista a true anti-zerg tool. It’s high risk to put those up, there should be a decent reward, and button mashing at the laughably invincible enemy siege isn’t a good reward.
- I’m optimistic about the catapult changes. Creating lines that really sting is a good idea.The question is how strong they'll be. We were promised great things with stacking caltrops, and...wah wah (sad trombone). I'd like to see a mechanic where if you stack three or more hits in an area it becomes pretty darn lethal to stand there.
- It’s not clear why siege have been left so invincible, or why the keep doors haven’t been buffed. It’s too quick and easy to take a keep, which remains a fundamental problem that could have been addressed before the other silly ballista changes.


Change 6: Nerf EVERYONE!

Sort of. NPCs in overland Cyrodill in all CP campaign (ONLY CP CAMPS) are getting a buff. The goal is to make them more difficult, slowing down resource captures and things like that. I can support the change…the NPCs all got pretty squishy with the power creep. Their union was probably pushing for this.

Note - Imperial City NPCs will NOT be buffed. Only overland Cyro.


Change 7: Con-Quests! Conquest quests? Conquestadors?

There will be a new daily quest line akin to the five available at HQ. The new quests will rotate through objectives that are more general than the existing ones. For example, you might receive “kill 40 players” or “capture 3 keeps.” This allows players to earn some of these rewards even when the other quest objectives are hard.


Closing

Overall these changes should be good for Cyrodiil PVP. But they feel like very modest alterations, when the game is due for some significant overhauls. The line that we have to wait for lag to be fixed before getting anything new here is getting tiresome and annoying.

But Cyro PVP is still my favorite aspect of ESO, and I expect that it’ll continue to be so after this update.


My wish list (Yes, I dream big)

- I'd like Cyrodiil to get some landscaping, meaning I'd like to see 3+ new play sets dropped in there into some of the empty zones. Maybe this should be a revamp of the town system...move them around a bit, or upgrade the town game somehow.

- move the canyon that's south of Drake. Yeah, it's a weird item for the list, lol. There's this canyon between Drake and the easternmost AD delve that would make an amazing play set if it were in an active zone. I've always felt that AD territory is too flat and easy to cross. I'd love to see the canyon moved there...maybe just north of Fare?

- I really want to see the keep capture system totally revamped. Like Blue Sky it. Leave them where they are, but totally modify the layouts and how the captures work. Whether this would be a good change depends on what the team comes up with, but the exact same game four years later is a bit stale.

- Rain of hamsters. I don't know what this would be, but let's make it happen.