callen4492 wrote: »

CYRODIIL MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO DIE!!!

I love the the PvP found in Cyrodiil more than any other game I have ever played. It's my build vs your build, my skill vs your skill, my group vs your group and my alliance vs your alliance. The thrill of overcoming your enemies to have a dance/teabag party over their dead bodies is amazing. I'm sure that many of you love Cyrodiil just as much as I do and desperately want it to thrive into the future.

That being said, I believe there's a consensus among the player base that something needs to change in Cyrodiil to bring back its edge. Most people suggest changes to the mechanics of certain abilities but what I think will bring the most effective and lasting improvement is a change to the Campaign Scoring, AP and End of Campaign Reward System. I have a series of (mostly) simple ideas that, if implemented, I believe will REDUCE THE AMOUNT AND EFFECTIVENESS OF MASSIVE ZERGS AND INCENTIVIZE HIGHLY-SKILLED, SMALL-GROUP PLAY. If you love Cyrodiil, please read on and comment.

1) The more allies in your immediate area, the less AP you get for combat and captures.
For example:
10+ allies nearby = 25% reduction in AP earned
20+ allies nearby = 50% reduction
30+ allies nearby = 75% reduction
40+ allies nearby = 90% reduction

It even makes sense to get more AP when not part of a zerg because it is harder to get kills and captures with the help of fewer allies.


2) Keeps/resources reward exponentially higher "campaign points" to your alliance (with a specific ceiling) the longer they are held without being captured by another alliance AND campaign points tick more often (every 10 minutes instead of every hour)
For example:
At the tick, keeps reward:
Held for less than 10 min- 0 pts
Held for 10 to 20 min - 1 pt
Held for 20 to 30 min - 2 pts
and so on...
Held for 60+ min - 6 pts


3) The longer it has been since a resource/keep was captured, the more AP you get from capturing it
For example:
Keep held for less than 10 min = 3,000 AP reward
Keep held for more than 10 min but less than 30 min = 6,000 AP reward
Keep held for more than 30 min but less than an hour = 12,000 AP reward
Keep held for more than an hour = 18,000 AP reward
- The reward for capturing resources could be similar, just scaled down


4) Scrolls reward more Campaign Score than keeps and keeps reward more Campaign Score than resources.
-This almost seems like common sense and I know the community has asked for this. Not sure why this hasn't changed already.


5) While defending a keep/resource you earn 100% more AP than at other times (from combat and from the "successful defense" tick) to help prevent it from becoming like Domination in Battlegrounds where the most successful teams avoid contact with the enemy and just capture unguarded flags
- If needed, there could be a better system for alerting everyone when a keep is under attack to prevent too many keeps/resources from falling with no defense.


6) All-Star Royale:
Every hour, the top 45 AP earners during the past hour (top 15 from each alliance) are transported to a 5 minute battleground style fight and the winners get:
- Campaign Score for their Alliance
- A large combat bonus for the next 20 minutes
- A large AP tick (which doesn't count toward the next hours All-Star Royale)

- This would make it so that the best and most committed players can affect their alliance's score more than your average joe and most importantly, it balances the scale toward the alliance with a lower population because only the top 15 players from each alliance can contribute.

I even have an idea for what the arena could look like - Imagine PUBG where the alliance with the last man standing wins...

While I realize proposition #6 would be a large effort for the developers, it doesn't seem like the previous changes would be too cumbersome of a task. Maybe you're wondering how some of these changes would affect Cyrodiil. Well, before I continue with my final proposed change, I would like to explain how the previous changes would affect Cyrodiil.

Reasons why this would change Cyrodiil:

1) Players (especially the "most committed players"; read: zerg ball leaders) would have incentive to fight in smaller groups. When fighting with a zerg, you would still have the benefit of being a more effective combat unit and getting kills/captures faster, but you would have the drawback of less AP earned per kill/capture. This means BALANCE!

2) The areas where most of the action is occurring would constantly be shifting around the map. Right now, the bulk of the action in Cyrodiil occurs in the same 3 corridors with massive zerg balls going back and forth. With my changes, players would be less likely to attack the same keep after it was just captured because it offers fewer AP reward and is accumulating less Campaign Score. Combat would shift elsewhere until the keep offered greater incentive, at which time, players would be more likely to attack there.

To better explain I'm going to list the advantages of attacking a keep deep behind enemy lines which hasn't been captured in a while versus the advantages of attacking a keep in the center of the map which was recently captured:

Center keep, recently captured:
- It's close and won't take very long to get there or get reinforcements/more allies
- You'll gain a spawn point to strike deeper in enemy territory while removing an enemy spawn point
- They're important for emperorship reasons

Enemy home keep, last captured over an hour ago:
- More AP gained upon capture
- Taking an enemy keep which was allocating a high amount of points.
- Cutting off enemy travel routes

There are good reasons to attack both types of keeps instead of the same one over and over, which again, means BALANCE!

3) A small group would actually make a difference in taking a keep deep behind enemy lines because you would reset the points gained from that keep/resource. It would also be important to defend those keeps/resources instead of just letting a zerg gobble them back up later on. On top of that, if you gave greater AP combat rewards to defenders, it would encourage some players to defend rather than just go take a keep deep behind enemy lines at the same time yours is being taken. Again, this means BALANCE!

If this Campaign Scoring/AP plan already exists to some degree, it should be significantly increased to have a greater influence. To my final proposed change to Cyrodiil.

7) HUGE rewards for winning your campaign. The reward for winning really needs to increase. On top of that, if the alliance with a smaller population wins, they should get an even greater reward.
I even have a formula for this:
End of Campaign Reward = (Standard campaign reward for winning)* (1/(1 - Avg pct. of full population during campaign for your alliance below average of other two campaigns))*(Multiplier for added difficulty of having less people in alliance; Ex. 1.3)
For example:
If AD had an average population of 50% full throughout the campaign, while EP and DC were and average of 60% full combined, AD would get 144% the standard campaign reward for winning while DC or EP would only get 91% of the standard campaign reward. With a large enough reward, this would entice players to balance between alliances over time.

Note: I am an EP player and have only ever been an EP player.

- This would give players incentive to fight for the alliance with the least players in it (Aldmeri)
- Only receive campaign reward for highest AP earning character per account
- If your character isn't in the top 25% of AP earners, you only get 50% of the reward
- For this to be feasible, the End of Campaign Reward would have to be given in either AP, gold or valuable raw mats.

If you read all, or even a fraction of that, you have my admiration and thanks. Let me know what you think of them and hope you enjoyed. Maybe someone from ZoS uses ideas on the forums to make their game better.

Gt: ThePhatLard
Xbox NA server
Ebonheart Pact
Moderately talented "try-hard randy" PvP'er