How to ACTUALLY Fix Cyrodiil

arena25 · March 25

first of all, let me start by saying the following - if you were hoping to reduce latency with this test, Zeni - well, back to the drawing board. Don't let the fact I've gotten 10 kills on my main fool ya - half of those were down to dumb luck and on regular Cyrodiil I'd be lucky to get a kill or even an assist in a 4v1 - me on the team of 4! It was a noble effort, though, and I'd love to see this kind of thing be an event in the future - maybe with next WSM?

But if you want to actually fix Cyrodiil, slowing or even stopping the latency/combat bugs alone won't cut it. You actually need to deal with the toxicity. The amount of times I've had to go offline cos of "fan mail" from PvPers over the past week or two is STAGGERING. I had 3 people today alone slide into my whispers - or even publicly air in zone chat - calling me "high", a "child beater", and worse. My crime? I recognized we lost the keep an opposing zerg was sieging (both flags flipped, wiping up stragglers) and decided to - carefully - try to go set up a forward camp nearby, allowing defenders at the keep they would head to next a few moments to set up, rather than stick around and die with the rest of the stragglers (also, on an unrelated side note, I am a firm believer that the people throwing child/woman beater accusations so carefree because they don't like someone or someone angered them slightly is why so many people don't believe actual survivors of abuse when they share their story - but that's banter for a completely different forum, though).

While fixing the latency is a noble goal and should be undertaken, if we really want to fix Cyrodiil, we need to start slamming the banhammer on folks who are taking Cyrodiil too seriously - serious enough that they slide into the DMs or whispers of people who upset them even slightly. Sure, competitiveness is good, but taking PvP super seriously - when this game could shut down tomorrow and no one is going to give a fetch about the fact you were Emperor for 6 months straight - is why there is almost no effort as far as developing stuff for PvPers in MMOs nowadays.

I'll be back later when I can be bothered.

baltic1284 · March 25

If you want to fix Cyrodiil then having it as anyone can enter with no protection to those that just want to the Skyshards and armor and such for collection purposes doesn't help either, little lone the bulling, harassment, life threats, and so forth and so on wasn't an issue but having performance issues on top of that and no regulation at all is also harming the PvP zone itself.
Pretty much don't play the game except for maybe check see what up and that's it anymore due to the mentioned list that is where they need to start cleaning it up and have accountability in place at all times and no tolerance given at all, then start working on performance instead of just throwing whatever and seeing if it works.
It is even getting into Imperial City at this point which is sad suffering just like the rest of the PvP zones in the game which just makes it even worse where you have no where to go to get away from it and spend more time either not playing the game or reporting players for it if that even does anything now days unfortunately.

sshogrin · March 25

Unfortunately, PVP is toxic in general. It doesn't matter which game it is, PVP is just plain toxic.
When you're in Cyro, the zone chat is full of toxic people that complain and talk crap about others, and seem to not be participating in combat, they're just constantly talking crap in zone chat while complaining that nobody is doing anything.
Those are people that I honestly believe have logged in on a faction that their group/guild isn't on so they can spy and talk crap to distract, or they aren't PVPers at all and just want to be toxic a-holes.
I've found that you either ignore the toxic players by blocking them, or you call them out for their BS. There was a player talking all types of crap for 10 minutes about how nobody was doing anything and that people that "x up" or type "LFG" in chat are losers. I called him out about not contributing since all he was doing was typing crap in chat, and that x-ing up or looking for group is something that's done in PVP, and if he doesn't know that then he's not really a PVP player. Amazing how he decided to shut up after other people in zone agreed with me. I haven't seen that player in the campaign I run since then. I'm not a PVPer either, just an ESO player that plays all areas of the game.

Hypertionb14_ESO · March 25

i mean latency is fine for me.. seems more likely a personal internet connection issue.

toxic behavior is common in any pvp situation, its an absolute factor of any competitive gameplay. just look at some of the guild names on any given day in cyrodills keeps, ZOS doesn't really care about it.

i do think the whole "spy" situation is both overblown and something that should have been addressed back in year one.. would be easy to simply lock an entire accounts characters to a single faction for pvp.

i do find certain strategies particular destructive to the experience. ball groups, scroll farming, boosting need to be permanently addressed and removed, vengeance is showing how much of a impact those methods have on overall gameplay.

overall Cyrodil is simply what it is.. report and block the toxic behavior and move on.

said no one ever · March 25

i have a suggestion for you. turn on the kill notices and text will fly so fast up the screen you wont be able to see any toxicity. They are on by default so if you turned them off, turn them back on. Problem solved.

You're Welcome!

El_Borracho · March 25

@Hypertionb14_ESO I agree with almost everything you posted. You will never eradicate the toxicity from ESO PVP. It exists in every PVP game, from GTA V to COD to even kids playing Fortnite. I don't engage in it, because its a game that I play for fun and my poor little DK dying has zero effect on my life. Sadly, that is not true for others, as seen in the game chat.

The one area I disagree is the spy situation. I think its a problem. To the point I have seen someone in EP set up a camp outside an AD keep, attack a resource nearby, then wait for EP players to arrive only to have a bunch of AD attack them, then call for help to get more to come for their AD bros to slaughter. Even better, I have seen that group get wiped out then cry that they were defeated by "zerglings." LOL.

Can it be fixed? Probably not. With discord and other chat options and guilds where there are members from all factions, there is no way to stop this. And as much as i dislike it, and find it to be pathetic KDR-type behavior, you can't allow someone to be reported for it as that will become the new tool to troll others with.

MasterSpatula · March 26

ZOS can never fix toxicity. That's on us, all of us, and you're never gonna get enough of us to agree with you to make it happen.

However, ZOS can do something to address toxicity by making a more balanced PVP environment that caters less to toxic behaviors. Over the years, they've done the opposite of this, driving many of the least toxic players out of PVP and leaving it dominated by the people who love an imbalanced experience. More players who enjoy a fair fight in Cyro means the PVP community in general could end up a bit less dominated by the worst of us.

Nathanbreakfast · March 26

Its INSANE how many of you are unable to handle "toxicity". Literally just ignore them LOL.

frogthroat · March 26

Wait, hatewhispers affect you negatively? Why? They are basically telling you that you are doing things that make them rage. You are playing the game so well that the opponents are losing their temper. That's a good sign. I love those kysses - it means I am doing something right.

I mean, recently I was on my standard basic MA+WV brawler build, nothing fancy. Killed a dude who then started to whisper he hates gankers like me. What a compliment! Love that! My burst combo on a basic brawler build starts to be good enough that people think I am a ganker! It's awesome!

El_Borracho · March 26

Nathanbreakfast wrote: »

Its INSANE how many of you are unable to handle "toxicity". Literally just ignore them LOL.

Completely with you. Responding or reporting only gives the trolls life. Ignoring kills them

valenwood_vegan · March 26

The game already has options to ignore people, turn off certain chats, play in offline mode, and report if warranted. But they can't force everyone to be friendly rays of sunshine all the time, or to never have emotions, or to not take pvp seriously. We're talking about other people, not npc's.

CatoUnchained · March 26

The fix is to balance a few of the most offending sets, like RoA and cap heals and shields to only one instance of each on a player at any given time. (cap heal and shield stacking)

The fix has nothing to do with zone chat behavior.

Rungar · March 27

they can fix it actually. In daoc you couldnt talk or whisper to an enemy. Not sure why enemy chat functions arent disabled in pvp. They should be.

jle30303 · March 28

I dunno. On one time in Imperial City, I was in enemy territory (DC in Pact territory) going after skyshards and world bosses... I spotted a couple of Pact people waiting for the respawn of the boss I needed to kill... I could have stayed in the background, tried to get a shot in (and get boss credit but be already dead by the time it was killed, and thus get nothing for it, because I'm decent at PVE but lousy at PVP)...

...But instead I checked their names, picked the one with the shortest name, and messaged them saying "hey, can we cooperate on this boss"...

...We ended up going through all four Pact zone bosses, and the AD zone ones too, carefully managing not to harm each other even though we were on opposite factions, and communicating via messages.

Then, of course, after the last AD boss went down, they immediately turned on me and murdered me. I fully expected it and had hit the button to disappear to Cyrodiil, but they got me before the teleport. Oh well, I got *half* of the Tel Var, and it was a decent amount. And they also got more Tel Var than they'd have got. And we all got credit for the WBs...

So sometimes being able to chat to the enemy DOES have a use.

In any case, guilds contain players of multiple factions - regardless of whether any given single player is locked to one faction across all their characters, or can switch faction by switching character - and people of the same guild but opposing factions can still communicate in guild chat, there's no way to stop that unless you ALSO only allow guilds to contain exclusively players and characters from only one faction.

And the game made the decision to get *away* from that situation, long ago.