The district flags killed it. Before they were added, the arena was lit.

Imperial City used to be the most exciting zone in the entire game.

Back in the day when people had 500 less cp and before the IC mobs were nerfed you actually needed a group to take down most of the bosses making the content actually challenging. Even pulling too many elite mobs could kill you if you were solo.
There were also many other players from every faction that could help or kill you.
The telvar/key fragment/rare rewards were worth a lot and hakeijo used to only be found in IC if I remember correctly. I also got a really cool Soul Shriven skin from farming Molag Bal with my old guild a while back. I was the first in the guild to get it!
On top of all that if you died you would lose a lot of your tel var stones instead of just spawning at a wayshrine and running back which meant people actually cared about death.

All of these risks made the gameplay feel much more exciting than other areas of the game. It also encouraged group play much more than it does in it's current state. Ahhh I miss the epic guild fights over Molag Bal and just how alive the area used to feel.

Anyways, IC definitely needs some more/new incentives to get people going there more often. Maybe increasing trove/cunning scamps spawn frequency or adding transmute crystals as a drop somewhere.

To answer the question "So I ask, who is this zone designed for?"
IC was designed for group pvp/pve play and it used to be very good at providing that.
I can see how people think its just for gankers if they only do the content solo though.

There need to be way more rewards for playing in the City. The least they could do is let you buy jewelry mats with Tel Var.

I can't really vote on this poll.

The thing is? It's up to ZOS, really, at the end of the day. I could be entitled and say what I, personally, think should happen but it's them that has the data. The only reason I run polls is to highlight ideas for ZOS to look (housing prices/sizes) or to shine a light on the problems within the forum community itself (such as the hardcore not being willing to pay for anything, which I proved without a shed of doubt).

If it were me? I'd make the zone PvE. The reason I'd do this is because it's a cheap way to give more content to the largest group of players. It's basically another Craglorn. The group it's meant for simply isn't large enough and/or interested enough to make it worthwhile targeting it at them. So I'd make it a casual PvE zone to take advantage of the >90 per cent demographic that staffs the game.

I'd also take out duels.

For PvP players? I'd add a lot more battlegrounds. It's what they enjoy. I'd also add lots of duo battlegrounds as those are in demand. I'd wager that the majority of PvP players would prefer to duel in an instanced arena than just out in the streets where it tends to be a hassle to people. I'd suspect only a toxic minority of PvP players would ever support actively disrupting the play of others.

Instead of duels, I'd have an option to invite a player to a 1v1 battleground.

This is how I'd go about making things better for people who play PvP. The thing is is that they clearly don't like Cyrodiil and they'e made it obvious that what they want is more battlegrounds. So let's add a bunch of DLC battlegrounds for them. As a PvE player, exclusively, I'd be happy to subsidise the inclusion of some battlegrounds for them as -- in my observations -- they're a much bigger demographic than hardcore PvE players, they're likely willing to pay more (to try to look 'badass' with glowy mounts in PvP or whatnot), and they're underserved.

That's what I would do. Just as a suggestion. However, it isn't my game.

Frankly, I'm worried that people with poor reading comprehension are going to jump on this post after reading only what I'd do with the Cyrodiil zone and why. I don't hate PvP players (I just dislike them when they display narcissism enough to make Alexander the Great blush by selfishly hurting PvE with their nef threads), I want them to be able to have fun. I don't think Cyrodiil is how they have fun.

IC is good as it is, and it's not empty. Find another thing to complain about.

Imperial City needs a couple of things.

1) Make IC its own instance that can be queued directly into. The queue for Cyrodiil during peak hours is impossible and because it negatively influences Cyrodiil's population to go into IC, removing it from Cyrodiil would help fix some of that problem by allowing people that want to farm IC to go there without having to negatively affect their alliance and reduce the queue time for Cyrodiil in general.

2) Remove the Flag mechanic from IC. This was the single worst implementation ZOS has ever added and it outright KILLED IC for a lot of people. You could spend hours fighting in one district nonstop and have a blast doing it but now because of these stupid flags and their respawn blocking shenanigans, a good fight is impossible to have there since fighting the load screen boss, TWICE, kills the enjoyment.

3) Better Incentives. Right now, Tel Var is used primarily for crafting mats (mainly Hakeijos and Alchemy Satchels) and little else. The sets available are mostly meh leaving the only real incentive to be Vault Key Fragments and even that took a hit with SPC now being 2nd fiddle to Olorimes. Why not have Vaults drop Gold versions of Endurance/Willpower/Agility as well? You can buy Gold Jewelry for all other IC sets, why exclude these 3? Why not have the Sewer and City bosses drop random sets from IC instead of making them purchase only? RotW give out free versions of all sets that you can buy with AP so there's no reason not to do this for IC sets as well. As for Tel Var stone surplus, include refined Crafting Mats for Jewelry crafting to the Tel Var vendor, like all other crafting mats in IC or even have a merchant that you can exchange Tel Var for Vault Keys fragments.

4) Improve the IC sets. This goes hand in hand with Better Incentive but the IC sets are all of questionable appeal that improving them would really go a long way by itself. Powerful Assault sees some play with Tanks but the rest are really in need of some love to be made more relevant. My suggestion would be to add a PvP version of Minor Slayer/Aegis to some of them so they at least get considered for PvP builds while others just get a general buff overall. Meritorious Service and Powerful Assault should both be upgraded to affect 6 players minimum since they're intended for group play but have a limit on them designed mainly for 4 man groups, which honestly can't do much in PvP in the grand scheme of things and the buff they offer is fairly weak as is that making them affect 2 more players really isn't going to instantly make them OP in any way. You added Major Courage to the game, why not have these sets offer Minor Courage?

I don't think I'm asking for much but if IC is ever going to be seen as anything more than a flunky DLC, then ZOS needs to buckle down and work on it properly.

It was a very fun PVP zone when it was packed full of people all the time, back a couple years ago, or during the IC anniversary events.

The problem is simply not enough players and IMO this is primarily due to

• lack of incentive to earn tel var (although somewhat improved after adding tel var storage coffers and there was brief bump in population when these were added)
• lost novelty after couple years
• link to Cyrodiil campaign means if you enter IC you are not helping with alliance war objectives
• inconvenient to enter, must first go to cyrodiil, then travel to entrance

I believe some relatively small tweaks could result in a lot more people participating in the IC content:

• add "double tel var" weekend once per month
• add new NPC vendor similar to Golden Vendor who sells different monster helms and gold jewelry or other valuable items in exchange for Tel Var stones
• possibly allow purchase of player houses with tel var stones
• separate IC-only PVP campaign with no keeps at all, just spawn directly in your faction sewer base. Might have no score, or entirely different scoring system like leaderboards for AP or tel var accumulation etc
• remove tel var penalty for dying to NPCs, but keep penalty for dying to players
• add some interesting rewards for IC daily quests

Think the zone does need some updating, like some rare things you can get there. Or adding some more related items to the telvar merchant.

Something for us to go there.....Can remember the days of Willpower farming for those bone shards....*sigh*

firedrgn wrote: »

I see to possiblity change to pve . Or change incentives. Probably remove the lose of telvar for players and u will see more people in there.

If the dailies gave a little better reward also would help.

Imperial City and the associated sewers are the only places where dying has consequences. That is what makes it fun. It offers a unique blend of PvE and PvP not found anywhere else in the game. I think it was more fun when we had huge battles by the spawn points but it is still a fun place to visit as is.

Leave Imperial City alone. There are plenty of other zones that offer pure PvE with no penalty when you die. If that is what you are looking for you can enjoy one of those zones.

Wing wrote: »

all it needs is its own instance separate from the normal overland queue, it should be its own separate thing.

-cyrodil
-battlegrounds
-IC

/fin

I push for this from a very long time...
Separate leaderboards from cyro with nice rewards can help the popolation increase.
You can make even a pve leaderboard of some sort, it cant be this difficult.

If they make it pve i'd go there.. Until they do i wont go there, pretty simple.

While I appreciate what ZOS attempted to do with IC, they should not have scrapped the key mechanic that IC was built around. We were told of this mechanic during beta, but before the mechanic was actually 'turned on' as a feature, before players could actually experience it 'first-hand', it was scrapped as a result of all the pressure from the hyperbole qq train on the forums.

IC was built around this key mechanic - scrapping it entirely and replacing it with nothing left a void and that void was the beginning of the downfall of IC (IMO).

IC is broken and cannot be easily fixed. It's too late to implement the feature now, too much has happened, including how pvp is experienced in Cyrodiil (now compared to back then). To 'fix' IC, to give it some semblance of what it could have been, the devs would really need to create two different instances of IC - a pve instance, and a pvp instance. The pve instance would need little re-work, but the pvp instance would need to undergo a major overhaul in order for it to be a viable alternative to pvp'ers in Cyrodiil (it would have to be reworked so that pvp'ing in IC would be 'more fun' or a 'more enjoyable experience' than pvp'ing in Cyrodiil).

Take away the stupid flags and let everyone respawn at their base entrance again. Used to be a great place for fast paced PvP without the horse simulator but now you get a sewer crawl when you die unless your faction owns the flag.