Cyrodiil keep defense AP nerfed or broken?

DonRavello · August 2018

It seems to me the new keep / resources levels have decreased the defenders' AP significantly, e.g. defending Blue Road Keep in a long battle (outer and inner breached) with about 20 ppl. on both sides yielded 10K to 50K AP prior to today's patch (and during midyear's mayham crazy amounts up to 200K). This evening it was just 1.9K AP. And other keeps similarly. Seriously?

Was that intended, making defending keeps unattractive again? Or is it just broken?

Can other PvP players confirm / correct my observation?

ZOS_BrianWheeler · August 2018

With update 19 the Keep Resource levels will degrade if you don't defend and/or recapture the Resources. The bonus to Defensive ticks are dependent on the level of Resources within the Keep. A Keep with all level 2 Resource levels will give the highest D-tick bonus compared to a D-tick in Update 18 with level 5 Resource levels. This also resulted in adjusting the bonus a level 1 Keep gives to be much higher than in Update 18.

This is all tied to the update we did for sharing Keep/Resource Defensive ticks within the superstructure of a Keep and it's Resources. The best defense ticks possible from a Keep will rely on having a max level Keep and defended Resources.

DonRavello · August 2018

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

...This also resulted in adjusting the bonus a level 1 Keep gives to be much higher than in Update 18.

Hi Brian,

thanks a lot for the quick response. I will take some notes during my next Cyrodiil journey, because I think in Update 18 it was impossible to get < 2K AP for a real keep defense (inner and outer breached, dozens of ppl killed on each side), even of a lvl 1 keep. Now, with Update 19 it seems possible. I did not pay attention to the resources, though.

I could imagine, if all resources are turned by the enemy, they will provide no bonus at all, so overall AP for the keep defense (keep lvl 1) will be much less than in Update 18 (keep lvl 1), where resources did not matter for keep defense AP. Correct?

Cheers,
Don

ZOS_BrianWheeler · August 2018

A level 0 Keep will still have the same D tick as it did in Update 18. A now level 1 Keep (the lowest resource level within a Keep determines the bonus applied to the D tick) will have around the same level of bonus as a level 3 from Update 18.

DonRavello · August 2018

Thanks for clarification.

JamieAubrey · August 2018

Will get a bit getting used to but after a time you wont really notice

Dextail · August 2018

Honestly I feel this discourages defences again. It’s highly unlikely you will ever get a significant defence tick as people are prone to turtling rather than defending resources while defending MG for example.

Your not gonna get solo players near resources with 30+ players hammering the keep. And your at limited time to regain control.

Realistically this is a nerf to defence ticks and thus players interest in defending them. People will go back to pvD

Side note: yes there is a chance people play defence on resource and keep but realistically probably 1-5% of the time will you finish a 10-30minutes defence with a max level keep defence. Unless the attackers are blind

*My Reasoning*
On a big defence or attack of say 50 v 50 drawn out on 10+ minutes with max siege. Realistically defence is turtling and attackers have all resources.

The fight is waiting for one thing a mistake or more people. As a defender if you push out you increase your teams chances of loosing. You want the attackers to actively push into your siege, loose 10-20% of its players then make a counter push

If you choose to make the first push as a defender one of 3 things happens.

1) you push out win and wipe them
2) you push out the opening, loose your players and wipe have to travel or be on camp, realistically attackers have pushed now and are in inner or flags
3) you push out the side and sweep side lines. In which the attackers can push the opening and now your having to push into your own keep

Yes these are “limited outcomes” but the most common. Realistically pushing on defence before attackers are lower numbers results in a bad outcome more times than not unless your structured. Therefore no resources and small ticks

Mister_DMC · August 2018

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Hi Wheels is there an idiots guy to Cyrodiil? After all these years of playing this is all still Greek to me.

So I should always try to recapture the resources? Is there a time limit?

fatmanatcomp · August 2018

And the lag and poor performance ? Or is that still on the ignore list ? Selective answering ftw !

geonsocal · August 2018

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · August 2018

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Any progress on the Cyro loading players/objects crash? Basically in large fights before the patch you couldn't go take or defend a resource without risking a crash on returning towards the keep due to these loading crashes.

DrSweetazz · August 2018

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

I truly question the honesty behind you guys claiming to play your own game beyond logging in to see how the new reskinned mounts and costumes work.... Seriously nearly no defenses manage to keep all 3 resources through the whole fight. And you cant come back with "this will encourage you to defend the resources...."

Play your game and youll see that there isnt time to respond to a resource being taken. They flip too quickly and your load screens are too long IF you manage to see them being attacked.

If you guys played regularly, you'd know the most common scenario is "closest resource to front door is capped and forward camp is put up, keep is pushed on."

Correct me if im wrong on this by all means, but you HAVE to understand that you're putting so much importance on resources that have too little time to respond to in a 3 way fight. And if people know theyre ruining a defence tick by capping all 3 resources, what do you think is gonna happen?

jaws343 · August 2018

If resources had walls and a door that needed to be knocked down, defending resources would be a viable option. But now, if a resources is flipped and the keep is flagged, you'd be crazy to leave the keep to retake a resource. Most of the time you will takr the resource and then the enemy will immediately take it back. And if you stay on the resource to defend you will die and you won't be at the keep where the actual important battle is taking place.

This change gaurantees 100% I stop keep defense unless it is the last emp or a home keep.

SunRaider · August 2018

It was good how it was , this new change ruins a good defense imo.

Same goes for keep levels.

If a team is wining you dont change the players... the wait it was beford this new patch was perfect.

Lylith · August 2018

so what change causes the posterns to intermittently vanish/reappear and the wall health to fluctuate between 66pct and 100pct?

this is with all resources captured, btw. happened at fare for quite some time, today.

interesting 'feature.'

G1Countdown · August 2018

This seems like a bad move.

What I see in pvp now is 2-3 players turtling the resources with insane survivability. Meanwhile 8 to 15 players circle around the resource up and down stairs for 10 minutes like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. At no point during a real seige of a keep can you spare 8 to 15 players to gallivant around the resources. And, if you decide to take them back with less people, then the turtles just take the resource after you leave (if they don't kill you). To me, this just seems to be a nerf on handing out AP.

Does anyone else see this, or am I alone in seeing this?

geonsocal · August 2018

yeah man, stop being so stingy with the AP...

Aliyavana · August 2018

this change was unessarary. holding resources isn't possible against faction stacks. Try going outside your keep to retake a resource without being zerged down.

Marabornwingrion · August 2018

DonRavello wrote: »

This evening it was just 1.9K AP. And other keeps similarly. Seriously?

Just wow. Less than 2k for a keep? Then what's the point of defending them at all? You get more AP from damn quest board.
Do they want to keep us in BGs, when we have 7-14K AP for a match?

DrSweetazz · August 2018

What is so disheartening is that we already know how this will play out too.

Right here, you're getting feedback on your game and we're not gonna see resolution for at best, 3 months but likely longer.

Part of what makes pvp so enjoyable and gives more meaning to some of the great defense battles is the carrot on the stick in the form of the potential defense tick. If your "improvements" take away the reward, how does that improve your game.

I'm on console and just hearing the OP's experience and the official reaponse makes you think "what the heck wefe you guys thinking?"

Like i can't even pretend to tell myself "wait and see, it might not be that bad." Thats just full on a terrible design change that you guys didnt fully think out....

But hey....DLC money ftw at ZOS

geonsocal · August 2018

while we are all at it, i'd just like to say - the change to the ayleid well bonus system totally stinks too...

Aliyavana · August 2018

Astrid_V wrote: »

DonRavello wrote: »

This evening it was just 1.9K AP. And other keeps similarly. Seriously?

Just wow. Less than 2k for a keep? Then what's the point of defending them at all? You get more AP from damn quest board.
Do they want to keep us in BGs, when we have 7-14K AP for a match?

we defended a keep that was lvl 0 for 30ish minutes, got 10k for my time. Not sure how much a lvl 0 keep would have given last patch

Aliyavana · August 2018

geonsocal wrote: »

while we are all at it, i'd just like to say - the change to the ayleid well bonus system totally stinks too...

what change?

geonsocal · August 2018

Aliyavana wrote: »

geonsocal wrote: »

while we are all at it, i'd just like to say - the change to the ayleid well bonus system totally stinks too...

what change?

the bonus used to be 10% health increase for 10 minutes...if you died, no big deal - you still got the full 10 minutes...I'm not sure exactly how many people can use the well... think the well's were on a 15 minute "respawn"(?)...

now, you still get the 10% boost for 30 minutes, but, if you die you lose it, and - the well's are on like a 30 minute timer now...

I rarely even bother checking on them now...

Kaartinen · August 2018

So, now when on the defense I shall opt to not defend the keep based on low AP rewards and a lack of viability to recapture resources while the keep is flagged.

When attacking I will leave 2-4 turtles on the resources, plant a forward camp, and send the rest to the keep to ensure that an AP worthy defense is not possible.

Qbiken · August 2018

I´m glad defensive ticks got some attention, was ridiculous how easy it was to farm AP just by showing up.

Beardimus · August 2018

First of all I think it's great you respond to these threads @ZOS_BrianWheeler that's actually really great.

Another question I had is how the lower pop battles generate AP. During the event we had a few keep takes on a quiet server around 15k AP, defending as a smallish group (5-7) against a similar size we got about 5-10k AP.

Near the end of the night I went to check Drakelowe solo as it was UA, two attackers which I killed and repaired the wall. I got like a 45k AP tick. I guess I couldn't get it straight in my head how the numbers work for defense.

Thunderclap · August 2018

This change is the greatest *** ever. No idea how this should work? Yesterday at prime time PC EU Vivec yellow has 3 keep and defend this keeps for 3 hour again the red and blue server. For example fare: no yellow can retake the mine during this fight because all reds coming from alessia or the farm because all blues coming from roe. You need all your resources do defend the keep with 2-3-4 holes in the wall. You can't not send out 10 players to retake your resource during this fight.

This change makes defending completely meaningless, because you are no longer rewarded for it!

I have no idea what kind of game you play Zeni, but not this one!

And the other big bug ist the disconnect when you go out you will never come back to the keep!

Mayrael · August 2018

Well solution is simple. Do the same for offensive ticks! Bind the guaranteed AP offensive tick with resources to, If attackers will have to spread through resources to get better offensive tick we will have more incentive to spread out on both sides. Right now only defenders are forced to spread while attackers can still stay in zerg.

Feanor · August 2018

ZOS said we might have to come off the walls to defend the resources. Just be sure you have the faction stack behind you when you meet the other faction stack at MG.

Frankly, the degradation system is hilarious. I don’t see why valuable coding time has gone into a feature nobody asked for instead of investing it into fixing already existing issues (hello invisible wall bug).

Carbonised · August 2018

I don't really think this change is in touch with how actually sieging and keep taking works.

I mean, with 40+ people swarming around your keep and front door and pelting it with siege, you do not have 5 people, or more, to go outside your keep and take back a lumber or mine. That would also be complete and utter suicide. The minute the resource shows "under attack", a swarm of enemies will come and wipe you.

At the moment, the only use resources have is a farming spot for 2-4 elite people who take the resource and then keeps farming the scrubs that come and try and wipe them.

I get that you want to make resources "more important" and all the "keep superstructure" and all that. But hey, look at the game man. There's a long way between a keep and its 3 resources, and in a large siege, that way is going to be filled with half the server's enemy population. Keeps can be defended, you put up counter siege and get them off your ground, with good defense, it takes a long time to breach through a keep, and then you have to get through inner as well.
A resource has no defense beside the NPCs standing there, which are easily wiped. It's nearly impossible to defend, outside going turtle inside the tower and rolling along the parapet to farm scrubs, but that doesn't really matter as the flag is down on the ground.

For your plan with "superstructure" to have even a remote chance of being a success, the resources need to be a lot mroe accessible during a siege, either by moving them a lot closer to the keep, or by there being some way to teleport from a keep to a resource and back. And also, the resources would need to be much more defendable than merely having 5 NPC standing on them. Like outposts they would need walls to be breached, so it was actually feasible to defend a resource, and took longer time to flip it.

Right now I feel that you do these changes based on how you think sieging "should" be, without thinking of how it's at all feasible within the current system. The fact of the matter is that under a huge siege you simply cannot spare several handful of people going on what would most likely be a suicide mission to stand like sitting ducks on a lumber flag while it flips.
I also foresee that the extremely diminished D-ticks will also mean that people will bother less to defend keeps. That's already a problem, many times keeps have little to no defense, and cutting the D-tick down by this much just means that noone will bother going back to defend their own keeps.