Cyrodiil keep defense AP nerfed or broken?

jaws343 · August 2018

Thrain wrote: »

Yeah sure, when 20+ enemys are in our keep i will go outside to get our resources back...NOT

Shouldnt the def tick scale with the duration and size of the siege?
I mean who would go outside when 20+ enemies are siegeing a wall or maingate just to get the resources back?

i guess now ppl dont even want to def anymore...leave it behind and retake it would bring more ap then i guess

Btw wouldnt the wall bug be more important to fix than than the def tick?

Or even worse, the needed reinforcements stop at the resources while the inner keep is being flipped instead of pushing to the keep and flanking the attackers or holding the flags.

mb10 · August 2018

I wonder why they change things without speaking to the community who play the game for hours everyday?

What a ridiculous idea...

Freddycruz89 · August 2018

I like this change in theory. It makes sense if you remove the "rush in" mentality that clogs FPS and leads to crashes when too many players crowd together.

Main thing I see people complaining about is leaving the keep to defend resources. This is can be used to your advantage as well. Send a 4-5 strongman group to cap resources and the enemy will have to spare some of their troops as well to counter the defensive capture.

Does it spread troops around keep? Yes. Is it a bad thing? Not necessarily; a smart general will use it as bait to distract the front door zerg, reduce their numbers and push out at the right time.

...And before ya'll start grilling me for having an opinion. I have not had a chance to experience the change yet since I am a console player. We will see how it goes once it's live for the rest of the community.

NBrookus · August 2018

technohic wrote: »

DocFrost72 wrote: »

To the point that sending a small man out during a siege is suicide, I think the angle ZOS was going for was to rush the resource as a first line of defense.

Lose at the resource? Spawn back at the keep. Lose at the outer? Fall back to the inner.

It has kind of become standard fare to see a resource under attack and think "whatever". That isn't good. I don't have an opinion on the change (need to play more) but it is aimed at a real issue.

The reason its standard fare to see the resource under attack and thing "whatever" is because it usually is a small man group, the very people they said they wanted to be able to have an effect on the war, as its great bait for outnumbered videos. What this will do will not help the small man group. In stead of drawing out a few; the faction zergs are going to respond.

Whether it's tower jockeys or worried a keep is going to come under attack, the result will be encouraging resources to be zerged, not small-manned. That, or it's a large group doing their capture 9 resource quests who will run at the first sign of actual pvp and race to the next resource which they can flip faster than you.

Meanwhile there is zero possibility a small group is going to leave a keep under siege -- when the attackers already have the upper hand with siege placement and probably numbers as well -- to go spend 3-4 minutes flipping a resource. Because if you go, the keep is not going to be defended successfully anyway; keeps flip too fast.

So now you get more AP for just being present at a pvdoored keep with a huge zerg than you get for defending your home keeps. Playing PVE resource merry-go-round is annoying enough, I'm not sure why adding PVE flipping emp ring keeps would be an improvement.

EvilAutoTech · August 2018

Qbiken wrote: »

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

Didn't they already address this by varying your defense tick based on how much you actually defended?

I remember reading about that change but never bothered to verify that it was implemented.

Anyway, I can't think of a solution that I like other than reverting the latest change. I mean, I could see adding a door and a second flag to the tower, but that would probably keep me from being able to solo resources even in CP campaigns. The amount of time a solo player would have to spend would make it almost certain that enemies will show up before you're done.

Heimpai · August 2018

So from what I’ve gathered is don’t bother defending, just take another keep at the same time..or just do battlegrounds if you want AP

VaranisArano · August 2018

EvilAutoTech wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

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

Didn't they already address this by varying your defense tick based on how much you actually defended?

I remember reading about that change but never bothered to verify that it was implemented.

Anyway, I can't think of a solution that I like other than reverting the latest change. I mean, I could see adding a door and a second flag to the tower, but that would probably keep me from being able to solo resources even in CP campaigns. The amount of time a solo player would have to spend would make it almost certain that enemies will show up before you're done.

Sorta kinda. If you did anything at all to contribute to the defense beyond just showing up, you got the full tick.

RMerlin · August 2018

Like everyone else is saying... I understand what ZOS is trying to do by making resources more meaningful, but in reality, it simply doesn't work the way you expect it to. Nobody is going to send 4-6 persons to retake resources while there's a huge zerg of 40 people hitting your keep walls, or when there's a group of 10+ tower huggers hiding in the resource tower, just waiting to bomb the 4-5 players trying to retake a resource. Or when "only" 20 of those 40 will peel off the siege, come zerg the resource and flip it within 45-60 seconds, and go back to resume their assault.

The current AP gain from keep defense makes it next to pointless because of these new changes.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler , come spend one night on PC Vivec to see first hand how unpractical these recent ideas are in the current PvP context.

DrSweetazz · August 2018

Carbonised wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

Don't get me wrong here, I also like AP. But if you are honest to yourself, the system implemented with the last update is just ridiculous.

I disagree. I PvP'ed almost all day around during the Midyear event, and went to defend lots of keeps in that time. In many of the scenarios the defense was wiped, sometimes after a long time of defense, plus the riding back and forth, and you got 0 AP in defense ticks. Defending is already a risky business, and with largely diminished AP gains, why even bother riding all the way back to defend a keep, with a significant risk of getting 0 AP, or a chance to get a small D-tick.

I led a lot of groups under the event, and noticed that people generally don't really care about defending keeps, it takes a coordinated group to call for a defense of a keep, and with this change, the incentive to do so is heavily diminished.

Had plenty of defense ticks during the event. Randomly popping up ticks for 30-50k for a few minutes of fighting or just wiping a handful of players. Sorry, but this is ridiculous...

Even if you reduce the ticks to 15-25k for just two or three minutes, it is still ridiculous.

No you didn't get 50k just for wiping a handful of players, that's either exaggeration or lies. What could have happened was that someone else defended the keep for a long while against more people, before you arrived, and then you got lucky and shared that AP pool when the tick came.

Or like me, you can be unlucky and defend a keep for 20-30 minutes, then freeze out of the game, spend 10 minutes trying to get back, and when you finally do, the fight is over and the tick is long gone. Happened to me and others much more times than I care for.

The best way to get AP during the event was to flip flags in IC, secondarily to flip resources with no defense. That should tell you something about where the AP is found. Bombblades and elite people farming resources for scrubs is also a good AP generator, as well as coordinated zerg trains.
D-ticks for keep defense is very poor time vs. gains when it comes to AP generation.

He's not lying about this. Its how stupid people cheat the leaderboard. A level 5 keep gives a ridiculous AP boost.

My friend got his legitimate emporer run snagged away from him by one guy who had 4 friends of a different faction run to a level 5 keep to die, so he could solo get a defense tick, and they'd repeat it over and over to send him soaring up the leaderboard in a short amount of time. My buddy would play all day and get a respectable amount of AP, then this guy (who is still ep emporer on xb1 na sotha sil) would run his buddies to whatever keep to boost him to the top.

But thats a separate issue to this thread... why the "combat team" decided to complicate the flow of combat over fixing ridiculous exploits in boosting ap is beyond me.... the above is still doable with the change.

technohic · August 2018

NBrookus wrote: »

technohic wrote: »

DocFrost72 wrote: »

To the point that sending a small man out during a siege is suicide, I think the angle ZOS was going for was to rush the resource as a first line of defense.

Lose at the resource? Spawn back at the keep. Lose at the outer? Fall back to the inner.

It has kind of become standard fare to see a resource under attack and think "whatever". That isn't good. I don't have an opinion on the change (need to play more) but it is aimed at a real issue.

The reason its standard fare to see the resource under attack and thing "whatever" is because it usually is a small man group, the very people they said they wanted to be able to have an effect on the war, as its great bait for outnumbered videos. What this will do will not help the small man group. In stead of drawing out a few; the faction zergs are going to respond.

Whether it's tower jockeys or worried a keep is going to come under attack, the result will be encouraging resources to be zerged, not small-manned. That, or it's a large group doing their capture 9 resource quests who will run at the first sign of actual pvp and race to the next resource which they can flip faster than you.

Meanwhile there is zero possibility a small group is going to leave a keep under siege -- when the attackers already have the upper hand with siege placement and probably numbers as well -- to go spend 3-4 minutes flipping a resource. Because if you go, the keep is not going to be defended successfully anyway; keeps flip too fast.

So now you get more AP for just being present at a pvdoored keep with a huge zerg than you get for defending your home keeps. Playing PVE resource merry-go-round is annoying enough, I'm not sure why adding PVE flipping emp ring keeps would be an improvement.

Yeah I hate going to the resources because it usually is someone just flipping and moving on for the AP tick. Half the time you show up and see allies there but they just follow it around in a circle rather than try to hit the current burst resource. I wish the quest was never introduced to begin with.

anadandy · August 2018

RMerlin wrote: »

Like everyone else is saying... I understand what ZOS is trying to do by making resources more meaningful, but in reality, it simply doesn't work the way you expect it to. Nobody is going to send 4-6 persons to retake resources while there's a huge zerg of 40 people hitting your keep walls, or when there's a group of 10+ tower huggers hiding in the resource tower, just waiting to bomb the 4-5 players trying to retake a resource. Or when "only" 20 of those 40 will peel off the siege, come zerg the resource and flip it within 45-60 seconds, and go back to resume their assault.

The current AP gain from keep defense makes it next to pointless because of these new changes.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler , come spend one night on PC Vivec to see first hand how unpractical these recent ideas are in the current PvP context.

All of this. Emphasis mine.

Starshadw · August 2018

As expected, the changes to PvP this patch are lackluster at best, and damaging to the PvP game overall at worst.

Small groups and cancer build groups didn't need any more incentive to take resources - and factions with less population can't afford to send groups to deal with the problem. As others have pointed out, defenders of a keep cannot afford to attempt to leave the keep in order to re-take resources (particularly on the PC Vivec campaign, where certain factions do nothing except faction-stack and thus there is no safe way for people to leave a keep even if they wanted to), and the last thing we need is to have incoming reinforcements stopping to re-take resources before coming to the keep.

We also didn't need a buff to the damage of siege in CP campaigns. It was strong as it was pre-patch; now, it's overpowered, and buffing the defense from the one morph of Siege Shield was not enough to compensate, not when siege damage stacks and can be overlapped.

Please, Please @ZOS_BrianWheeler, please work on the REAL issues in PvP, and stop making changes that aren't needed and which are often even harmful. Here's just a partial list of things that desperately need fixing:

1. Bugged walls that allow people to walk into outposts and keeps without even sieging
2. The sorry, horrible, broken state of cc break and cc immunity. This has been an issue for years now.
3. The awful lagging and disconnects people experience.
4. The random load screens that occur when riding in EP territory.
3. Forward camps being allowed to be placed in locations that are supposed to be impossible according to their mechanics (ie, too close to enemy territory). (See this post for one image of such)
4. A return to only allowing players to play a single faction on a particular campaign server for the duration of a campaign. Allowing players to play multiple factions on the same campaign server encourages poor behavior and shady tactics - such as throwing down random forward camps to count against a faction's total, trolling scroll runs by taking a scroll further into enemy territory/letting it reset, etc.
3. Some sort of dynamic system that offers help for outnumbered factions. The current low-pop bonus is not the answer. What we need, especially in these days of massive faction-stacking, is a way for factions who have significantly fewer numbers logged into the campaign to receive some sort of defense bonus to help them be able to attempt to hold against those larger numbers.
4. A design thinking session on re-working Cyrodiil rewards would be most welcome. PvP currency (aka AP) as a reward in its current iteration is terrible. Why? Because instead of encouraging people to play the map and care about strategic objectives, it simply encourages doing whatever earns the most AP the fastest.
5. There are significant issues specifically related to AD territory. We are the only ones with two towns offering easy access to our backfield, in part because our territory is not as mountainous and treacherous as the two northern territories. Personally, I think the easiest solution would be to remove the towns as capturable objectives again. However, adding in more faction NPCs to "defend" the town to help slow how quickly they can be flipped would at least help the problem.

geonsocal · August 2018

all this coordination would be great- except for the fact that cyrodiil is 70 to 80 percent randoms running around trying to just figure out where to go next...

this generally isn't some "highly" coordinated trial stuff going on here...

heck, even if you have a group of 10 to 12 players - it's usually a minor miracle to keep everyone together...

unless of course all you're doing is a bunch of pvdooring - in which case, yeah people stay together for that...

I like defending - the vast majority of the keep defenses I'm involved in though consist of myself and maybe a few other randoms...

Arandear · August 2018

This is a terrible change IMO. Last patch Keep defense was working very well and you were encouraged to defend Keeps. Now it's terrible, shouldn't change something that isn't broken.

Coggo · August 2018

Prior to this patch, I'd been enjoying the anticipation attached to prolonged defences. D-ticks felt meaningful and reflective of effort.

These new changes devalue the scope of epic seiges and certainly are no incentive for the faction to send reinforcements when the cry for help goes out in zone.

I'm all for making resource capture relevant to the bigger picture stuff. Maybe, something like only assigning victory after the keep AND its 3 resources have all flipped?

That said, I'd prefer last patch's defensive evaluation be reinstated.

Lylith · August 2018

Qbiken wrote: »

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

while screwing everyone who actually DID the defense?

it's ***, sorry.

Lylith · August 2018

RMerlin wrote: »

Like everyone else is saying... I understand what ZOS is trying to do by making resources more meaningful, but in reality, it simply doesn't work the way you expect it to. Nobody is going to send 4-6 persons to retake resources while there's a huge zerg of 40 people hitting your keep walls, or when there's a group of 10+ tower huggers hiding in the resource tower, just waiting to bomb the 4-5 players trying to retake a resource. Or when "only" 20 of those 40 will peel off the siege, come zerg the resource and flip it within 45-60 seconds, and go back to resume their assault.

The current AP gain from keep defense makes it next to pointless because of these new changes.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler , come spend one night on PC Vivec to see first hand how unpractical these recent ideas are in the current PvP context.

some of the absolute worst changes made to pvp to date.

i'll say no more as 'bashing' is prohibited.

oh, and *** battlegrounds. not interested.

BRogueNZ · August 2018

GizmoX64 wrote: »

Here's a perspective from an outsider, I don't PvP, and never plan to. I enjoy PvE and wish the oblivion map had an option, like a white flag, or red cross, so one could just do the dailies there, but anyway.

The first thing I think of when sieging is the historical meaning of surrounding and causing the enemy to live off their supplies inside a fortified position, ie a castle.
So Siege =
A military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling the surrender of those inside.
"Verdun had withstood a siege of ten weeks" / synonyms: blockade, encirclement
"the siege of the fort lasted into the morning"

So why would you (Zos) change how its done by having a group of people rush out to defend a farm?
I can not think of any situation where, when a castle was under attack, the king / general orders the defenders to leave the safety of the walls to go save a few farms.

Now if the farms, mills, etc, the resources had a Motte-and-Bailey setup, then a small garrison could be assigned to defend the farm or resource inside. That even sounds a bit fun, in a game world.

It makes no sense, & I'm glad I do not PvP, as I'm not invested in it at all.

Camelot Unchained approaches siege like this from my very early understanding anyway. It involves transporting siege components(built by players).. transported via caravan (takes time- is vulnerable to attack- must be defended), construction of siege machinery (by players).. then..siege begins. I'm not plugging CU it will attract a different player than ESO imo, but to me it feels like ZoS are adding some additional layers to pretty stale gameplay and that's good, I just don't think they have it quite right.

It would take days (weeks, months) if the castle had stores for a missing farm to determine a siege. Unless they risked able bodied people getting bushwacked trying to get food for the already starving they typically just let people die rather than risk foraging or hunting outside of walls. Lumber and stone supplies would have an effect if the castle came under attack.

shrug

rumple9 · August 2018

I enjoy defending more than attacking. The big defence ticks last patch made it worthwhile. I won't bother defending when the new campaign starts now.

Why does zos keep messing with the game. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Instead fix the load screens and log outs

Vivecc · August 2018

agreed, it was good as it was and a common saying is " never change a running system". I can´t see the need for that change.

most common tactics was either cap 1 ressource, place a camp, siege maingate… siege inner maingate, done.

or alternate if you want to be sneaky , skip the ressource and just go for the maingate or wall.

The only difference now would be to mess with any potential D tick, by taking all ress before the siege is over. Spare some time after the keep is TAKEN ( and that´s the goal of a siege).
Imo its just more complicated than needed.
pls revert to old system

Marabornwingrion · August 2018

That system will not work in place where 90% of players are random pugs... So now let's wait 3 months until they revert this, I guess.

SunRaider · August 2018

Pvp is a big part of this game, it was good how it was beford, everybody seams against these new changes to www , why dont you listen to youre costumers? ( business rule number 1...)

RedTalon · August 2018

So you now get more ap from battlegrounds which can be quicker then defending a keep gee, I like playing siege defense but really there is no time while you have a zerg hititng to spare a few people to grab resources, its a turtle defense or you lose the keep cause the zerg more often then not grabs resources first and if you venture out you get slaughtered.

IThe PVP team may want to play the game more and the live version really to see how it works.

Beardimus · August 2018

On reflection the motive is clear.

To spread us out.

It's not about gameplay or tactics etc. It's to move some players out the main balls to the resources. They know balls = performance issues.

RedTalon · August 2018

Beardimus wrote: »

On reflection the motive is clear.

To spread us out.

It's not about gameplay or tactics etc. It's to move some players out the main balls to the resources. They know balls = performance issues.

Won't really solve the issue, you still will get the lag issues near the resources, when lag happens its everything in the keeps area resources and all for the big ball fights.

InvitationNotFound · August 2018

it is funny how people claim "don't fix something that isn't broken". Yet, the defense ticks, introduced with summerset, were broken af.

again, if you kill (solo) a player on a level 5 keep / resource you got approximately 2k for the kill and over 10k for the defense tick. seriously, why should the award be so high? a) it took no time (1 minute waiting at a resource equals 5 solo kills) b) a level 5 keep / resource is harder to take than a level 1 keep / resource, so why should it give a better reward?

All these ticks are only generating faction stacking on a single keep, nothing else. It would have been fine to increase the defense bonus but they highly overdid it.

Carbonised · August 2018

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

it is funny how people claim "don't fix something that isn't broken". Yet, the defense ticks, introduced with summerset, were broken af.

Except many of us don't think they were broken. Like I said earlier, the easiest way to earn AP was to flip flags in IC, secondarily to flip flags at resources. I defended loads of keep during the event, and I have yet to see those "broken" ticks you claim. Possibly because when you -did- get a D-tick, most likely all your resources or most would have been taken, and thus you got a small tick. D-tick abuse hasn't changed a thing with this, you can still abuse D-ticks at a remote keep without taking the resources and feed the main keep for ticks.
If that was what they wanted to target, then they should have targeted that exploit specifically, instead of just nerfing all D-ticks. Realisticly, in most larger sieges, you will always get a D-tick without the resources, since all 3 would have been lost during the siege.

Like many others have said, we're just back to the situation before Summerset with very low D-ticks, and people will just avoid defending altogether, and flip keeps back and forth instead. I agree that having your friends feed you AP in a "fake" siege and collect the D-ticks is an exploit, but it could easily have been adressed without nerfing D-ticks for the legit defenders.

Schore159 · August 2018

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

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.

and another "pro Zerg" patch because only a faction that has higher numbers will be able to defend Keep and hold all 3 ressources to get the highest possible ticks

tbh that is a bad Change it just buffs zerging even more

InvitationNotFound · August 2018

Schore159 wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

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.

and another "pro Zerg" patch because only a faction that has higher numbers will be able to defend Keep and hold all 3 ressources to get the highest possible ticks

tbh that is a bad Change it just buffs zerging even more

I disagree here. Since Summerset you could be sure that everyone is going to defend a level 5 keep. What else but zerging does this generate?

Carbonised wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

it is funny how people claim "don't fix something that isn't broken". Yet, the defense ticks, introduced with summerset, were broken af.

Except many of us don't think they were broken. Like I said earlier, the easiest way to earn AP was to flip flags in IC, secondarily to flip flags at resources. I defended loads of keep during the event, and I have yet to see those "broken" ticks you claim. Possibly because when you -did- get a D-tick, most likely all your resources or most would have been taken, and thus you got a small tick. D-tick abuse hasn't changed a thing with this, you can still abuse D-ticks at a remote keep without taking the resources and feed the main keep for ticks.
If that was what they wanted to target, then they should have targeted that exploit specifically, instead of just nerfing all D-ticks. Realisticly, in most larger sieges, you will always get a D-tick without the resources, since all 3 would have been lost during the siege.

Like many others have said, we're just back to the situation before Summerset with very low D-ticks, and people will just avoid defending altogether, and flip keeps back and forth instead. I agree that having your friends feed you AP in a "fake" siege and collect the D-ticks is an exploit, but it could easily have been adressed without nerfing D-ticks for the legit defenders.

Flipping a flag in IC gives 1.5k AP if I'm not wrong. If you do that alone (anyway, IC flags take even a long time with multiple players), it will take quite a while. Again, if you compare that with a multiplier of x5 to x7 on a keep / resource it is a joke and not worth the time. The defense ticks were so attractive that almost everyone was showing up on those keep defenses -> more zerging. "Oh see, someone is attacking a level 5 keep, huge ticks inc. Let us all go there instead attacking something."

I have no idea on which campaign / platform you are playing, but it wasn't really difficult to get 10m+ AP during the event with regularly getting huge defense ticks for quite a joke. Best tick I've heard of (even somewhere on the forums here) was around 300k+ AP.

Cyron74 · August 2018

I would just like to know, since Keeps and Resources have their own "influence" area which is used to to calculate ticks/loading/recallstone etc.., if I were to go with a small Group and retake Resources during a siege if we would be given defense tick for the keep as well?

We are after all defending the Keep according to ZoS, so if we don't get the Keep defense tick why not? This is assuming we don't even go near the keep but just retake and fight over Resources to help the Alliance out.