Cyrodiil keep defense AP nerfed or broken?

InvitationNotFound · August 2018

jaws343 wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

It takes 64,000,000 plus ap to reach max AR rank so ap rewards should be scaled to match as that shouldn't take longer than the lifetime of the game.

There are plenty of AR 50 players around (even without role playing).

jaws343 wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

anadandy wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

anadandy wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

anadandy wrote: »

Frankly, I would rather have the D ticks be "too high" (and they weren't in my experience) than have defending a keep be worthless. There was zero incentive to defend keeps before that change - and maybe I'm looking at AW all wrong - but that seems contrary to the point of it. Sure, you might have boosting but the alternative is mindless flipping which is pretty much the same thing.

How about killing the attackers? Not rewarding enough? Isn't pvp meant for fighting?

I don't know about you - but I do kill attackers when defending a keep. It's not mutually exclusive. (sorry that sounded snarkier than I intended)

My question was if it isn't enough rewarding just killing the enemies as you wrote it will be worthless defending a keep without it, which isn't the case. Again, it is the goal of PvP (AvA), right? So why do you think you need a 5-7 time multiplier? It would simply be enough just getting a little bit more (if at all, but that's another discussion - it should just align with offensive ticks, which it doesn't).

Maybe not 5-7x (again, I must be playing wrong I never got that much!) but I would rather the scoring err on the side of more AP rather than making keep defense tick less AP than you'd get for mindlessly flipping a resource or town against NPCs. What that magic formula should be I don't know - but I do think that this change with the resources is a mistake - it's not going to change the gameplay in the way I think they are expecting it to.

I think where we might be getting hung up is where I said "zero incentive". I was speaking in general - not meaning it had zero incentive for me - but as someone said players follow the AP and if the defense AP isn't that great, they won't bother.

Well, it will reduce the ticks in all likelihood, which is a good thing. It might be too harsh and it still doesn't prevent exploitation. But i prefer reduced def ticks in comparison to what it was.

Just an example tick (this wasn't during the AP event, it was closely after the Summerset release):

It was an insanely high tick for the amount spent there. Anyway, I do not know the exact number of the multiplicator and as far as I heard it depends on the type of fight (2way vs 3way). Somewhere in the forums I've read about a 7x multiplicator. I'm not sure if that's correct, but x5 should be possible at a level 5 resource or keep. And that is my problem with all of this. I do not see a reason why I should get that much more AP. I probably would be fine if they had doubled it. But the current amount is just ridiculous.

Offense and Defense Ticks should be balanced such as that both are worth going for. Yet, when one wants to get AP and have to attack an enemy level 5 keep or would have to defend a level 5 keep (respectively level 2 now), for most players in most cases the defense would make sense, which exactly leads to faction stacking on that keep. Which is exactly what ZOS didn't recommend and leads to a huge zerging.

But I guess our opinions differ here.

The only way you get big defensive tics (pre-wolfhunter) when you are faction stacking a keep is if the enemy force is huge and the fight lasts a while. So at that point, the enemy is already zerging your keep. What do you expect defenders to do if it is a home keep? Just roll over and not send more people to defend because oh no, we don't want to faction stack our keep that is being zerged.

If the enemy force is like 20 people and you are faction stacking the keep for defense, whoopdee doo, you just got a 400AP tick when you wipe them. If the enemy is 50+, you either have to stack defenders or lose the keep. And if that 50+ grows and the fight takes an hour, why shouldn't you be rewarded well for the defense? In that same hour, you could have probably taken 6 undefended keeps and lost all of your home keeps in the process to the zerg. Good job.

This is not correct. There is no need for zerging to get huge ticks.
E.g. if you are alone and kill 5 guys => ~10k for the kills, 50k+ for the tick. (If you attack a keep it would get you 16k against the 5 guys (including the offence tick). Do you think risk / reward is balanced between offence / defense? I don't think so).

If a fight takes longer and there are plenty of enemies you would get decent AP anyway. I'd have been absolutely fine with getting a 15-30k tick instead of the 120k in the screenshot for the fight we had there. There was plenty of AP in the fight anyway.

And that is exactly the issue with these high ticks, it attracts everyone and it doesn't matter if the people are needed or not. Zerging is what the result is.

You are trying to say that zerging and faction stacking is only happening because of the defensive ticks. You are wrong. That was happening pre-summerset anyways. The only difference was, unless it was an emp keep or a home keep, no-one defended anything. At least now, players are defending keeps all over the map. It isn't the defenders fault that the zerg decides it must have Chalman or BRK. And my point was to show that faction stacking a keep that is not being hit with a large force results in very little AP, because a smaller tic is spread out among more players.

In your example, what most likely happened is you were the only player there (or one of a few) to get the tick. If the keep was faction stacked, as you claim is what is happening, your tick would have been like 2K AP or more likely less. The 100K or even 50K+ ticks are not the normal ticks, they are outliers. You cannot burn the whole system to the ground because of outliers. Most faction stacked ticks from fights that are over quickly are around 4K. And the ones that last 30M+ sit around 20-30K AP. Those are all reasonable numbers.

I have no idea how people come up with such low ticks. Playing on low level campaigns where ap gain is reduced?

Certainly, def ticks aren't the only reason for zerging. Yet, they encourage it. Regarding the keep defense you mentioned, idk, but that might be platform / campaign specific. I still don't see many keeps under siege at the same time. Usually I see one keep that gets all defenders.

If you refer to the 120k tick in the screenshot? No, there were many players around. Our group had approximately 10 players and there were like 25-40 others around.
I guess your numbers are quite off a bit.

Let's make a few examples and compare offense vs defense:

Example #1: AD fights EP. AD has 40 players, EP has 20 players. In this example AD will win.
In total 40 players die (20 AD and 20 EP). If they all give full AP this means that 80k AP are generated. 40k going to AD, 40k going to EP.
Now on the offense: The 40 players are going to take the keep and get 6k for winning 2k for the action (80k / 40 players). So the tick will be 8k and depending on who killed whom and so on some additional AP, but we are looking at ticks now, right?
Now on the defense (level 5): The defense tick will be around 10k each of the 40 players (2k each multiplied with the multiplicand (x5))

Example #2: AD fights again EP. AD has 50 players and EP has 50 players.
All of them wipe once in our example, which will generate 200k AP (2k each player).
On the offense: 6k for taking the keep + 4k (200k / 50 players) => 10k offense tick.
On the defense: 20k defense tick (200k / 50 players * multiplicand)

Example #3: Now lets say it is a long battle again with 50 players on each side. 500k AP will be generated.
On the Offense: 6k for taking the keep + 10k (500k / 50 players) = 16k
On the Defense: 50k defense tick (500k / 50 players * multiplicand)

And so on. And here you see the issue I'm trying to describe. In your 2-4k examples you were either on a low level campaign, defending a low level keep or zerging down a handful of players with the whole faction. Otherwise these low numbers aren't possible.

Furthermore you see that a defense can give a huge amount of AP very fast. In all the examples the defense could be over very fast (doesn't have to, but it is possible). Yet a successful offense often take longer. So you don't even have the time aspect in the calculations above.

The ticks simply were ridiculous. Nothing else. And again, don't get me wrong, pre-summerset def ticks weren't that great and buffing them is okay, but not in the way the did. Offense and defense ticks should align more.

TequilaFire wrote: »

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

It takes 64,000,000 plus ap to reach max AR rank so ap rewards should be scaled to match as that shouldn't take longer than the lifetime of the game.

There are plenty of AR 50 players around (even without role playing).

There didn't use to be as ap rewards were set too low, most have no desire to return to that.
Your extreme examples are just that extreme and double ap isn't in effect but once a year.
Now if you had to walk 20 miles back in the day, oh well...

All examples were without double AP including the screenshot. These examples (including the examples above) aren't extreme. They are quite common.

AP got already buffed before summerset, which was okay (implementation and role playing wasn't). Yet I even agree that buffing def ticks in general is okay, but not in this way.

Edit: Typo

You are overestimating player AP. Players only get max AP if the player they killed hadn't died in a while. Not every player is worth 2K AP, some are worth 0, some are worth 500. it depends on how long they have been alive for.

But regardless of that, you really have zero idea what you are talking about regarding defensive ticks. I have seen Arrius defenses net only 1K AP on the tick in Vivec on a level 5 keep because there were too many defenders to split the tick. This is after wiping 50 players or so. I have also seen hour long fights only net 30K AP after the tick. This is in Vivec, not some low level campaign to fit your uninformed arguments.

You simply might have missed the tick (visually or registered for another keep)
Do the calculations. Let's say there were 50 players. you got 1k tick => 200 without multiplicand (or less). so we had 10k to be shared with 50 players => calculating again with 2k you will get 5 enemies. you see that there is something off pretty much.

By commenting about the AP per player you're simply missing the point. I'm well aware of how much AP they can give and when. That's not the point. The point is that the bigger the AP pool to share gets, the more the (level 5) defense tick matters and the correlation between offense and defense tick aren't appropriate anymore. Hence chances to make better AP for most players will simply be to go for defending a level 5 keep / resource.

Kind of hard to miss the tick when you are there for the entire fight. And it isn't like this is a single occurrence. Small ticks on stacked defenses happen alll the time. These 50K+ ticks are not a normal thing that is always happening. Even 20-30K ticks are rare.

I do not consider those ticks as that rare (and getting 10k in one minute isn't bad as well). And besides, getting many small ticks isn't bad either and has the same result in the end. What do you get during offense? Nothing, but the defenders will get a part of the AP as defense tick (if no one dies during 1 minute in range).

Besides there might even be a bug where someone doesn't get a tick (happened to a few guild members during the ap event).

Regarding the edit:

And the point of increasing the defensive ticks was to force people to defend more. Because if you remember, pre-summerset, zero people defended unless it was an emp keep. And you cannot make offensive and defensive ticks equal either. Because attacking an empty keep is still easier than defending and players will just Pvdoor again.

Again, this might be a matter of perspective and maybe campaign / platform. I regularly saw defenses before summerset.

Edit: Besides pvdoor was still a thing with summerset.
Furthermore, it is certainly possible to better adjust the tick ranges and effort that has to be spent.

JumpmanLane · August 2018

On PC NA EP basically seems to capture a certain amount of the map then defend that portion to ensure winning the campaign (Vivec).

Freddycruz89 wrote: »

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.

EP PC NA Vivec doesn’t have “generals”. We don’t Zerg! Hehehehe

JumpmanLane · August 2018

Yeah why defend anything now. Let them have it and get a real tick taking it back. Or just take and keep enough of the map to win the campaign. Push out a keep or two beyond that. Let them have the extra keep. And keep taking it back lol.

Hawco10 · August 2018

Confirming I have no plans to defend a keep for a 2k tic. Be better off running around grabbing resources etc. leave the defending to the zerglords.

geonsocal · August 2018

Hawco10 wrote: »

Confirming I have no plans to defend a keep for a 2k tic. Be better off running around grabbing resources etc. leave the defending to the zerglords.

the purpose of zerging - is to earn AP...

it's already a pretty lonely feeling defending keeps...

the only folks now who'll be defending are those clueless souls whom have no idea about how earning AP works, and, the occasional afk'er who's off eating dinner...

this ain't gonna end well

JumpmanLane · August 2018

geonsocal wrote: »

Hawco10 wrote: »

Confirming I have no plans to defend a keep for a 2k tic. Be better off running around grabbing resources etc. leave the defending to the zerglords.

the purpose of zerging - is to earn AP...

it's already a pretty lonely feeling defending keeps...

the only folks now who'll be defending are those clueless souls whom have no idea about how earning AP works, and, the occasional afk'er who's off eating dinner...

this ain't gonna end well

I’ll defend a keep if I hate the Zerglings trying to take it or if someone on my Kill on Sight list is out there; but only long enough to locate someone I dislike and kill them kamikaze-style if I have too. Zergs suck!

EvilAutoTech · August 2018

Ouroboros on the Emp ring. Red chasing yellow chasing blue chasing red chasing...

You get the idea. No more PVP in Cyrodiil, just killing NPCs and flipping flags.

Sounds fun.

Not.

(Shows his age).

shaielzafine · August 2018

Starshadw wrote: »

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.

Amen. Plus sprint bug, rubberbanding & sliding across the floor after getting meteored or templar javelined, we could go on and on. They did not need to make new changes, before they even FIX WHAT IS ALREADY THERE AND IS CURRENTLY NOT WORKING. I think I'm saltiest about the invisible wall exploit, watching zergs or guilds of people walk through walls is just incredibly poor spaghetti design.

Vivecc · August 2018

the only folks now who'll be defending are those clueless souls whom have no idea about how earning AP works,

that describes pretty much the state of PvP as it is now played, thanks to bad design and [censored] players that are all for AP and nothing else.

G1Countdown · August 2018

Well it seems the majority of players who commented on this thread think that Cyrodiil keep defense AP is nerfed and broken in its current state.

Vivecc wrote: »

the only folks now who'll be defending are those clueless souls whom have no idea about how earning AP works,

that describes pretty much the state of PvP as it is now played, thanks to bad design and [censored] players that are all for AP and nothing else.

There's nothing wrong with defending a keep for 10 minutes or longer and wanting a fair amount of AP for that. I think its more bad design than it's the players that are all for AP and nothing else as you put it.

Coggo · August 2018

G1Countdown wrote: »

Well it seems the majority of players who commented on this thread think that Cyrodiil keep defense AP is nerfed and broken in its current state..

I agree. The consensus on this thread is overwhelming against the Wolfhunter changes to defensive ticks.

The "Ouroboros on the Emp ring." image earlier in the thread really captures the shift in gameplay which is incentivized now, as opposed to the exciting & meaningful emphasis on keep defense last patch.

It'll be great if ZOS & the developers take heed of this thread's concerns sooner rather than later.

#editted cos I made a dog's dinner trying to quote others!

xxthir13enxx · August 2018

EvilAutoTech wrote: »

Ouroboros on the Emp ring. Red chasing yellow chasing blue chasing red chasing...
You get the idea. No more PVP in Cyrodiil, just killing NPCs and flipping flags.
Sounds fun.
Not.
(Shows his age).

This is exactly right...it’ll go back to year1 when everyone just stopped repairing n just running over the Npcs to get the flip and move on...
First time I ever saw a keep with absolutely no doors or walls left standing...such fun....

JumpmanLane · August 2018

xxthir13enxx wrote: »

EvilAutoTech wrote: »

Ouroboros on the Emp ring. Red chasing yellow chasing blue chasing red chasing...
You get the idea. No more PVP in Cyrodiil, just killing NPCs and flipping flags.
Sounds fun.
Not.
(Shows his age).

This is exactly right...it’ll go back to year1 when everyone just stopped repairing n just running over the Npcs to get the flip and move on...
First time I ever saw a keep with absolutely no doors or walls left standing...such fun....

Yup. How it was last night in Shor. A pal went Emp. I just wanted AP really as I’m close to ranking up. Otherwise I’d have just flipped resources in Vivec.

We ran around capping keeps and leaving them wide open til my pal got crowned. Then we grabbed a couple of scrolls. Only excitement was this one salty spamblade who chased us halfway across Cyrodiil lol. It was like playing on the PTS.

Vrany69 · August 2018

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

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.

"around the same level" wtf means around you are the developer give us exact numbers for gods sake

TequilaFire · August 2018

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

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.

So the bonus for a max level keep has been reduced even if you manage to hold all resources.

Sandman929 · August 2018

Ok...If defending a resource during a siege still means I'm also defending the keep and will get both defense ticks should we win, that's great. But, what incentive is there to bring fights to those resources? A larger offensive tick if you take all resources? I don't know that anyone really cares about the "strength" of a keep when the alternative is popping it before the real defenders show up rather than telegraphing the attack by hitting resources.

Starshadw · August 2018

Another thing to add to the list of "Please for the love of the gods fix this" @ZOS_BrianWheeler is that this new keep "upgrade" system is also broken. We're sieging and watching walls/doors fluctuate up and down in health over and over and over, apparently because the game is now unable to even decide what health the walls/doors are at now on a reliable basis.

shaielzafine wrote: »

Amen. Plus sprint bug, rubberbanding & sliding across the floor after getting meteored or templar javelined, we could go on and on. They did not need to make new changes, before they even FIX WHAT IS ALREADY THERE AND IS CURRENTLY NOT WORKING. I think I'm saltiest about the invisible wall exploit, watching zergs or guilds of people walk through walls is just incredibly poor spaghetti design.

Can't believe I forgot to include the sprint bug. Oh, and the Rapids bug is a fun one as well, when for some reason you cannot use Rapids while mounted. You have to dismount to get rid of the bug (which, if you're in the midst of a retreat, will likely get you killed).

I also forgot to include the old bug of being forever locked in combat and thus unable to mount (even when you are not, in fact, in combat) has returned. It's just so much fun have to literally run across half the map on foot because you can't get on your mount.

Lieblingsjunge · August 2018

I like this change. It was just plain stupid to get 25k AP for killing a couple of people on a lv5 keep.

Although, to prevent the "Lets just recapture it"-attitude, lower attack ticks to 3k, and outposts to 1,5k again. That should make people at least think twice before letting keeps go, instead of being all "Ye, let's get the 6k ap when we flip it back again". :^

Heimpai · August 2018

Lieblingsjunge wrote: »

I like this change. It was just plain stupid to get 25k AP for killing a couple of people on a lv5 keep.

Although, to prevent the "Lets just recapture it"-attitude, lower attack ticks to 3k, and outposts to 1,5k again. That should make people at least think twice before letting keeps go, instead of being all "Ye, let's get the 6k ap when we flip it back again". :^

Or we can just remove AW and turn cyrodil into a pve zone

TequilaFire · August 2018

What is with you people that like low ap gain?
How does it really hurt for those that actually work the map get rewarded?
Four years ago it took forever to level AR rank so it didn't encourage people to even play PvP.
It isn't like there are other great rewards in PvP.

Let's also look at the ap cost of defending.
During an average defense I go through (2) siege at 1800 ap each, 1 oil at 800 ap and 1 forward camp at 20k ap.
So I end up spending 24K plus on a lengthy defense so one should make most of that back on successful defense.

G1Countdown · August 2018

Starshadw wrote: »

I also forgot to include the old bug of being forever locked in combat and thus unable to mount (even when you are not, in fact, in combat) has returned. It's just so much fun have to literally run across half the map on foot because you can't get on your mount.

This, this, and this. I'm under the impression that this bug strikes players randomly, with the exception of me - it seems to hit me every time. All enemy players in the area are dead, all my fellow alliance members are mounting up and moving on and I'm still on foot. Sometimes I can sneak and wait for the eye to close, but sometimes even that doesn't work. This bug is wildly annoying. But, not as much as hitting 4 loading screens while traveling from the inner keep door to the outer keep door.

technohic · August 2018

It’s really stupid. Walls just left unrepaired. In stead of defense of keeps, just head to the nearest next objective; even resources to flip.

If we want resources to matter; just make the resources and keep all one thing. No AP until you take the keep and all 3 resources. You run out to resources without repairing; you risk the keep. Small man groups can go do that while the zergs fight at the keeps. But I have a feeling most small man groups don’t care so much about that and more about setting up a farm at LOS choke points.

Salvas_Aren · August 2018

Heimpai wrote: »

Lieblingsjunge wrote: »

I like this change. It was just plain stupid to get 25k AP for killing a couple of people on a lv5 keep.

Although, to prevent the "Lets just recapture it"-attitude, lower attack ticks to 3k, and outposts to 1,5k again. That should make people at least think twice before letting keeps go, instead of being all "Ye, let's get the 6k ap when we flip it back again". :^

Or we can just remove AW and turn cyrodil into a pve zone

Or we remove APs from the system and let ppl play Cyro just4fun. They can flip keeps or defend them just for glory and maybe the title of the emperor.

efster · August 2018

This update to defensive AP gains is completely ridiculous. You've created a situation where players can defend a keep, outnumbered under heavy siege, for 40 minutes, and get LESS AP than letting the keep flip and then taking it back. (This just happened at Roe in Vivec NA).

The way defensive ticks worked prior to Update 19 was GOOD -- a slight penalty to defensive AP for not having resources already existed and generally folks would round up resources as soon as a defense ended. If ZOS wanted to encourage players to go out and take resources BEFORE a defense ended -- to reinforce failing walls/doors, etc, that's not necesarily a bad thing, but the way it was handled in this update is ham-fisted and completely out of touch with how Cyrodiil map play actually happens.

danno8 · August 2018

I'll add my voice to the "Please change it back" crowd.

Today I was in a huge battle defending Roe for 30 minutes. Wave after wave, lots of deaths on either side. Probably a 40 v 40 if I was to estimate the total numbers.Finally we managed to beat back the attackers.

Lost around 10 siege defending but only received a 5k tick. What?!

In those 30 minutes any other activity would have netted me 20-50k fairly easily. This makes me not want to bother defending, which is a bad thing.

Troneon · August 2018

Typical ZOS, nerf an area of the game that badly need some buffs and incentives lol...

GG

RMerlin · August 2018

TequilaFire wrote: »

Let's also look at the ap cost of defending.
During an average defense I go through (2) siege at 1800 ap each, 1 oil at 800 ap and 1 forward camp at 20k ap.
So I end up spending 24K plus on a lengthy defense so one should make most of that back on successful defense.

I was realizing the same thing last night. It's costing me more to defend a keep than I can earn during that defense, meaning eventually it simply will be too "expensive" to defend keeps effectively. With the average tick being 5K, and getting maybe 10-15K from kills, you can easily burn that with a few catapults, or with a single FC.

Keep defense need to be rewarding in terms for AP. I agree that last patch's ticks were a bit too high, but now they are way, way too low. My average AP/hour has dropped far below what it was 6 months ago (I'd say I make about 60-70% of what I used to make 6 months ago, before they had increased it).

Personally, this has greatly reduced my motivation in going to Cyrodiil since these latest changes, or when I do log, I spend much less time there than I used to.