Cyrodiil needs changes

CatoUnchained · February 19

Cyrodiil needs performance improvements. That's all. The players can do the rest. There has always been and always will be meta builds, but some balancing to make more builds viable would help a ton too.

But by far and away the biggest problem is ZOS has squashed the population caps so low that Cyrodiil is likely not sustainable anymore. For Cyrodiil to work as intended it has to have a higher population than what ZOS is willing to support.

SneaK · February 19

Wup_sa wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

aetherix8 wrote: »

I agree that Cyro needs changes, mostly related to balance, but also how the scoring system works. But the situation you describe, nightcaps then morning caps, and gating the map all day long, I would rather attribute to population imbalance than player toxicity.

So for me it all goes back to the devs - too little attention was given to PvP, too many bad changes stayed for too long, and current issues are still waiting for a solution. Too many players have left.

The map would play different if populations were healthy, but they are only balanced for a few hours prime time, and the rest of the time there just aren’t enough players on all factions. We need more players, so at any given time there are enough players to defend, retake and generally slow down PvDoor enthusiasts.

Devs need to fix the balance in order to attract more players, new and returning, and with healthy population maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to change how scoring works.

Agree with most of this. But the OP does have a point on player behavior however it’s aimed incorrectly. Players are making it worse, but it’s not the Zergs that make it worse, it’s the constant back cappers and trolls. On Xbox NA, ADs been PvDooring every night but it’s to the point of revenge cause all Red/Blue do is push BM and BB trying to farm AD pugs during core hours. So, when those folks log off, you bet those AD pugs are gonna run the map cause they just spent 5 hours going from home keep to home keep trying to “do their part”.

Balance is the biggest problem though, those troll groups are overpowered and the pugs can’t kill them.

They also need to increase the camp cooldown, or change the radius or decrease the limit I dunno, camps are huge problem though.

And wouldn't a map reset give a fighting chance for those who get gated all the time? It would give everyone their scrolls and home keeps back like every 4 hours.

That’s honestly a really bad idea. There would be less incentive to play the objectives cause they’d just reset frequently. There’s a reason the 30day camps have been more popular than the short ones.

xylena · February 19

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

If more people played around the clock

That is the goal, because the AvAvA doesn't function without persistent action. But there's a million reasons people don't, metagame problems aside, I'm definitely pushed away from the game by faction locks, especially when I'm locked to the high pop faction doing the PvDoor, like being locked to AD and logging into a solid yellow map is the worst, instant log out.

SneaK · February 19

aetherix8 wrote: »

@SneaK
Player’s behavior does make things worse, I agree, but what can be done about it? Not that long ago, someone opened a thread asking vet PvPers to stop using meta builds for the sake of the game’s health. Nobody volunteered. You can’t just ask trolls to become decent people all of a sudden, this is why IRL we have laws and law enforcement - because asking ppl to respect some norms is pointless if there are no consequences for crossing the line. And those morning cappers aren’t even trolls, they’re just guildies PvDooring together. That’s why I’m saying it all goes back to ZOS - fix the balance so populations recover, and only then see if anything else has to change.

I was pretty much agreeing with you. But your statements above aren’t really factual. It’s not guildies PvDooring together that’s a problem. It’s troll squads picking apart below average defenders in homekeeps. The players trying to defend against this are the ones that get a bad taste in their mouth about Cyrodiil and it’s a large reason why PvP population is low. It does come down to balance, yes.

And there really needs to be more incentive to fight in the ring aside from emp. Rank/AP is all anyone cares about now, make offensive AP gain inside the ring count for more maybe, make emp faction defense AP count for more, I dunno.

YandereGirlfriend · February 19

It's been said a million times but rewarding the already dominant/overpopulated side with additional buffs never made ANY sense from a game design point of view. That needs to be abolished and then replaced with buffs for the losing/underpopulated sides. IIRC, the devs have (finally) made comments about intending to do just that.

And as much as my heart goes out to all of the night-cappers in Australia flipping the map uncontested with their 5-mans while the rest of North America sleeps... their points objectively should not count the same as controlling objectives when more players are logged-in. This should be fairly common sense. Dynamic points scoring based upon total server population would indeed be a good compromise between the current utterly broken scoring system that rewards uncontested PvDooring during off-hours and heavy-handed forced resets of objectives.

Katahdin · 1:56AM

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

No. Just stating that the map doesn't need to reset every four hours because that suits you. Others fought hard to take the map. If you want a fresh map when you log in that's too bad.

PVDooring every keep on the map is really hard work.....
So much so I need a cup of coffee just to stay awake.

However not sure how resetting the map every 4 hours would help. The overpopulated faction would still be overpopulated and would just retake it all again anyway, giving them even more AP

Katahdin · 2:03AM

Wup_sa wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Wup_sa wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

aetherix8 wrote: »

I agree that Cyro needs changes, mostly related to balance, but also how the scoring system works. But the situation you describe, nightcaps then morning caps, and gating the map all day long, I would rather attribute to population imbalance than player toxicity.

So for me it all goes back to the devs - too little attention was given to PvP, too many bad changes stayed for too long, and current issues are still waiting for a solution. Too many players have left.

The map would play different if populations were healthy, but they are only balanced for a few hours prime time, and the rest of the time there just aren’t enough players on all factions. We need more players, so at any given time there are enough players to defend, retake and generally slow down PvDoor enthusiasts.

Devs need to fix the balance in order to attract more players, new and returning, and with healthy population maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to change how scoring works.

Agree with most of this. But the OP does have a point on player behavior however it’s aimed incorrectly. Players are making it worse, but it’s not the Zergs that make it worse, it’s the constant back cappers and trolls. On Xbox NA, ADs been PvDooring every night but it’s to the point of revenge cause all Red/Blue do is push BM and BB trying to farm AD pugs during core hours. So, when those folks log off, you bet those AD pugs are gonna run the map cause they just spent 5 hours going from home keep to home keep trying to “do their part”.

Balance is the biggest problem though, those troll groups are overpowered and the pugs can’t kill them.

They also need to increase the camp cooldown, or change the radius or decrease the limit I dunno, camps are huge problem though.

And wouldn't a map reset give a fighting chance for those who get gated all the time? It would give everyone their scrolls and home keeps back like every 4 hours.

No. It would just give the dominant faction more AP.

This comment makes no sense, since the dominant faction already has the most score regardless.
It would only be a temporary solution to make the pvp more enjoyable until the devs start speding resources on balancing the scoring and imbalance.
And calling it to only suit "my" needs is fully ignorant. Posts about morning capping and score pushing has been made ever since 2014 by thousands of players, so it has been a massive issue for pvp always.

Every time you take a keep, you get a minimum of 6K AP. Resetting the entire map every 4 hours will allow the already overpopulated faction to just take them back again, giving them more AP and more things to do (ie retake the map).

It will not solve the problem of one faction taking the entire map. The only thing that will do that is dynamic population balancing where no one faction can have more than 10% (or whatever percent you want to choose) above the next populated faction or 20% above the lowest.

aetherix8 · 6:12AM

SneaK wrote: »

aetherix8 wrote: »

@SneaK
Player’s behavior does make things worse, I agree, but what can be done about it? Not that long ago, someone opened a thread asking vet PvPers to stop using meta builds for the sake of the game’s health. Nobody volunteered. You can’t just ask trolls to become decent people all of a sudden, this is why IRL we have laws and law enforcement - because asking ppl to respect some norms is pointless if there are no consequences for crossing the line. And those morning cappers aren’t even trolls, they’re just guildies PvDooring together. That’s why I’m saying it all goes back to ZOS - fix the balance so populations recover, and only then see if anything else has to change.

I was pretty much agreeing with you. But your statements above aren’t really factual. It’s not guildies PvDooring together that’s a problem. It’s troll squads picking apart below average defenders in homekeeps. The players trying to defend against this are the ones that get a bad taste in their mouth about Cyrodiil and it’s a large reason why PvP population is low. It does come down to balance, yes.

And there really needs to be more incentive to fight in the ring aside from emp. Rank/AP is all anyone cares about now, make offensive AP gain inside the ring count for more maybe, make emp faction defense AP count for more, I dunno.

My point was that if we leave it to the players, the game will turn into one toxic exploits haven - it’s on the devs to design their product in a way that reduces such behavior to a minimum.

I can’t see your signature on my phone, but I think we don’t play on the same server. I used to play a lot in the morning hours (some regular 9res etc for breakfast), and what I saw most often in terms of PvD was some AD guilds rushing to flip it all before PvPers wake up. So my statement is factual - on PC EU RW, it’s just guildies playing together, they are really bad at PvP, and they log off the moment doors start fighting back.

I guess I worded my post in a way that came across as a generalization. So just to clarify, I agree that trolling can definitely be an issue, and it was for several months some time ago on my former home campaign (RW), when a handful of players (a “troll squad” indeed) would keep the map mono colored 24/24. These were skilled PvPers, and once they stated in the zone “I want to remove all PvEers from Cyro”. That’s wrong and such attitude is definitely a part of the problem.

imPDA · 3:34PM

Wup_sa wrote: »

to discourage players from doing it

You can just turn off scoring when all factions are on low population. All factions 1 bar or 1/1/2 (so 4 in sum). Only if there are AT LEAST 2 factions with 2 bars, score can continue counting. The problem with the current state is that the map after nightcap stays the same color for a whole night and day, ~18-20 hours, and all this time points are counted toward the nightcapping faction, even if that faction loses all the other time. So, everything done during primetime (6-4 hours) ends up diminished. As a result, players feel diminished and stop playing, because all their time ends up unrewarded.

Easy example: EU Ravenwatch. Red capped it every night 2 years ago. I saw some group of players started to stay after primetime to face EP nightcappers and guess what? EP left that campaign, because they couldn't handle the resistance. The map started to be blue and was blue for a year probably, even if there were at most 2 bars of DC vs locks of yellows and reds during primetime. You can probably say the same for every current campaign: just start resisting against nightcappers and you will see how garbage they are. But most players are employed mature people so they can't afford playing all night :P

If you feel like this approach is bad, let me know, because I feel like it would be the only fair way to score Cyrodiil. I feel like it would remove the nightcap difference completely, so only scoring during primetime will matter, when there are active people. It will probably discourage or mostly discourage people from nightcapping at all. The other option - make score proportional to total population, so if we have scores like 200 100 100 during primetime, it will be 20 10 10 during night, then 100 50 50 closer to primetime and after primetime, and full scores at primetime. It should be time which affects scoring the most.

Thumbless_Bot · 7:10PM

xylena wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

If more people played around the clock

That is the goal, because the AvAvA doesn't function without persistent action. But there's a million reasons people don't, metagame problems aside, I'm definitely pushed away from the game by faction locks, especially when I'm locked to the high pop faction doing the PvDoor, like being locked to AD and logging into a solid yellow map is the worst, instant log out.

I am pushed away by irl problems like my family, job, touching grass, working out, mental health, eating, and most importantly sleeping. However. When I log in and see a sea of yellow, all I see is opportunity. I think that's the point, but I could see how some would fund that discouraging. Get a group together and start taking keeps.

All of this assumes toxic ball groups didnt exist, which, of course, they do. So, once they fix that I will be back in cyro no matter what. But it's not the map that discourages me, it's groups and players taking advantage of broken and imo toxic mechanics. This is very clearly a zos problem to fix and AFAIK they are trying.

MincMincMinc · 9:08PM

Even if they fixed performance and raised pop caps to match the map size. How do you expect players to return? PvP combat is hard tailored towards endgame group play only. It is by far not as friendly to the casual who wants to log in and pvp solo or play with friends. To top it off there is nothing to incentivize or earn for these players on a daily basis.

Even if you incentivize and get these people back into cyrodil you need things to do. Zos boiled the campaign down to pvdooring keeps. Resource nodes and towns and edge outposts are hardly a feature that is utilized fully. Resources could be far more impactful or necessary for keep seiges to force groups to split up before and after seiges or to attack from different angles. Outer outposts could be moved closer to the middle bridge/wall to incentivize flanking. The main point of having the towns and outposts is that with all the flags and terrain it is advantageous for solo and small groups to move up the map on their own and build up to taking the outpost. For instance in the map below, a guerilla EP group can work their way up through chey to crops to harlun.

SneaK · 9:27PM

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Even if they fixed performance and raised pop caps to match the map size. How do you expect players to return? PvP combat is hard tailored towards endgame group play only. It is by far not as friendly to the casual who wants to log in and pvp solo or play with friends. To top it off there is nothing to incentivize or earn for these players on a daily basis.

Even if you incentivize and get these people back into cyrodil you need things to do. Zos boiled the campaign down to pvdooring keeps. Resource nodes and towns and edge outposts are hardly a feature that is utilized fully. Resources could be far more impactful or necessary for keep seiges to force groups to split up before and after seiges or to attack from different angles. Outer outposts could be moved closer to the middle bridge/wall to incentivize flanking. The main point of having the towns and outposts is that with all the flags and terrain it is advantageous for solo and small groups to move up the map on their own and build up to taking the outpost. For instance in the map below, a guerilla EP group can work their way up through chey to crops to harlun.

The layout of the capture points like towns and the added outposts were a big miss by ZOS, WP feels pointless cause Bruma, Carm is 30 seconds from brindle, meanwhile Vlas has no gate or choke point and it’s free reign into the south without having to siege a single thing, just cap three flags.