Bosses drop less telvar the more people you bring. So it's antithetical to the rest of the game and you get penalized for bringing friends.

Even if ZOS fixed the reward incentive so that bringing friends becomes beneficial, the power creep of comped groups is going to drive away solo and small scale and cause cartels to form. I mean, cartels have existed but it would be even worse with the gear imbalance and casuals will ultimately stay away. So there's really no fixing the area until group buff sets are brought in line. Stuff like vicious death, rush of agony need to go. Dying because of a random newbie standing next to me is an anti-grouping and anti-social mechanic.

FluffyDoom wrote: »

IC used to be a fun a very long long time ago. It's still a fantastic area visually and the story questline is pretty good. Gankers and trolls (tanks with no damage/unkillable without a large group that keep you in combat to prevent you from leaving) have made it a no-go for years now sadly.

Players that want to explore the zone, do the questline/daily quests, farm the telvar, pvp fairly are targets of gankers/trolls who do not risk any telvar loss because they almost always carry no telvar themselves! No risk - all reward for gankers who really do nothing but ruin the gameplay of others - yeah yeah yeah, it's a pvp zone but how is it fair that gankers can steal 50% of a players telvar but if you do kill the ganker you get zero?

Would love to see a system where you can't take more telvar than you are carry. Seems like a good suggestion for ZOS to consider:

https://elderscrollsonline-feedback.featureupvote.com/suggestions/724230/imperial-city-ic-telvar-rewards-for-a-player-kill-limited-by-the-amount-of-telva

I've been saying this for years but the PvPers will whine to not have their lambs for easy slaughter.

Gagoimaliu wrote: »

OsUfi wrote: »

Gagoimaliu wrote: »

(Or at least, the last part of the Planemeld questline) and locking it behind PVP is such a weird choice

I agree... And also disagree. It was odd making it a PvP zone, but I feel the combination of meaner mobs, PvP, ganking, the running you initially do between buildings do the story and quest, never knowing who or what you'll run in to. Even the wandering bosses and those vicious banner bearers in the sewers. It all combined to create an fantastic and unique atmosphere of a desperate city, at the center of the three banner war, while also being assaulted by Molag Bal.

It's such a unique experience that I just don't think could be replicated in a PvE only zone. And if you make it a PvE only zone, then the story and atmosphere would suffer.

I get what they were going for, and if they invested in the zone nowadays I think it might even be a great idea, I just think most people who aren't PVPers won't want or care to do it because they think they'll need an entire build just to do the zone story.

I know that's definitely one reason I haven't done IC yet, and I've done every DLC up to Summerset except IC, maybe when I finally get my PVP toon ready I'll give it a shot

If you're just talking about the story, skyshards, and lorebooks, you don't really need a PvP build. The main quest is quite short, there are no side quests, and you can grab all the skyshards and lorebooks in no-cp during off-peak hours in an hour or so.

If anything, you'd be better off grabbing some basic sneaky gear, or using a Nightblade/subclass-Shadow line for invisibility and just running your usual PvE build.

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

It's a direct result of Tel Var greed by the limit changes. What's more important, YOU having more Tel Var or EVERYONE having more people to play with? Everyone can see the results of it. I finished everything in there before it happened and I'm never going back. They need to stop catering to the smallest minority population in the entire game. Nerfs to our characters are the same thing only much worse. Now that you've made the WWs quit, and probably many of the DKs, who do you expect to fill that population? Even GH and BG. My Warden is nerfed beyond belief. If my Warden isn't going, neither am I. If it's Subclassing junk, im not doing it either. All of these negative changes take away from not just the PvP population but the entire game.

Absolute cope. Queuing out to save yourself from losing telvar was an unintended consequence of them removing IC from cyrodiil and making it into it's own instance. It was genuinely an exploit that undermined the entire system IC operates on, that has now been fixed. They shouldn't have waited so long to do it, because it just resulted in a ton of people like yourself who feel entitled to continue abusing this exploit.

Now, I do think it's fair to say the solution they came up with was not good. You should be able to queue out with up to 1k telvar on you, the limit of 100 is far too low. You also should be able to queue out from any safe area (I.e, after going through a door, sitting in a district spawn, or being in your sewer base), and the cost of the imperial retreat sigils should be reduced to 1k AP. This would probably go a long way to reducing the friction some people are experiencing, who weren't the people purposefully abusing the queue to farm risk-free and to escape from better players attacking them in general.

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

I remember when the changes were made to prevent queuing out from IC. People swore left and right that IC was going to become this PVP paradise where people could be challenged.

Look at it now. Ghost town most of the time. All the people who said it was going to be great disappeared.

As long as the classes remain poorly balanced and combat in general is bad, combined with the lower performance of the client in the recent patches, I don't think that anyone wants to go there except if you have a class with an escape tool like Cloak or Streak.

Otherwise, just going to be food when someone attacks and you're fighting a PvE boss. Which, while historically used to make sense when it was populated, is now done exclusively to grief players and they don't come back.

A guy literally fought me for an hour one day in IC over 120 Tel Var and spammed profanity because his "time was wasted". He told me to get a life. Jokes on him though because I was rolling on my exercise bike while playing the game and watching TV.

He was such a bore that I had to let him win so I could go to the bathroom and get some water after so much exercise, and yeah I mean my exercise bike and not my fingers on the keyboard. I just wanted to get some Tel Var in a PvE build to get Nunatak and encountered someone desperate for attention to the point they never let me leave the fight.

What that illustrated to me was the shifting value of the PvP community to do and act in any way to win and be superior. It's a toxic mindset that is present in all of ESO PvP, even on the forums. And you know what? It's exactly what is killing the game and why it won't recover.

If someone doesn't fight back, I'm not going to kill them unless they want a death port or otherwise actually pose a threat. Even in IC I am not the first to strike EVER, and I give opportunities for the opponent to leave.

But that's not everyone there. There's people there desperate to win and prove something, but should they lose the game was really unfair and it was a cheap shot and of course the excuse mill has to be open that day and firing at full capacity. That's if they don't spam things I dare not repeat on the forums since I have enough warnings.

React wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Make a PvE instance and most players will use it, leave any PvP element and very few will use it. Mixing PvP and PvE together in a zone was a mistake not to be repeated, as ZOS have previously acknowledged.

They'll use it as what? Another overland difficulty zone with world boss-difficulty bosses? We've got like 40 of those or something, meanwhile there is two (soon to be three) pvp zones.

In these dire times with layoffs, no crown sales and not much content on the horizon, reusing existing zones as both a PvE zone and as separate PvP zone seems like a good idea. Easier to create content than making whole new zones from scratch that appeals only to one part of the community, while the other withers away until new content is ready.

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

I remember when the changes were made to prevent queuing out from IC. People swore left and right that IC was going to become this PVP paradise where people could be challenged.

Look at it now. Ghost town most of the time. All the people who said it was going to be great disappeared.

I don't remember anyone being happy about the way they introduced this. A 'cannot leave when in combat' would have sufficed.

Yep, still need to do my fishing there, but probably aint gonna happen. I heard about a build that's like a tank that would help, but just have no desire to go there anymore. I am mostly pve, and used to have fun there with my guild during events, but no longer in those guilds. Definitely not a place to go solo.

The zone is great. It is the state of combat and class balancing that heavily sours small scale skirmishes and open world dueling. A select few options completely dominate the scene. And everyone who is too bored to run those is likely not going to run around as fodder for those who do for hours at a time.

And before someone mentions the usual drivel, the "don't balance around dueling" crowd can go rot in Oblivion for all I care. You can't build a house by starting with the second row of bricks and before laying the foundation.

What if Imperial City got some love after the Battlegrounds/Cyrodiil changes?

I could actually see Imperial City getting some attention once the Battlegrounds changes are live and the new Cyrodiil comes next year.

I really think IC needs some really good rewards that are worth fighting for. Not just “nice to have” rewards, but stuff that makes you think “yeah, I actually want to go in there and get this.” At the same time, Imperial City should keep its identity as a dangerous and hardcore open-world PvP zone.

Maybe proc sets could even be disabled there to get rid of some of the current balance issues.

We already get Battlegrounds events, so why not have an Imperial City event once a month?

For example:

* Free-for-all event where everyone is hostile to everyone
* Double Tel Var
* Maybe increased rewards from bosses and player kills
* Some unique rewards that are only obtainable during the event

Another idea: maybe remove one of the current campaigns, for example the No-CP campaign, and turn it into an instanced 12v12 mode.

One team would be the attackers and the other the defenders. Basically a small-scale siege battle where you actually have to use tactics and coordinate with your team.

And instead of Alliance Points, the main reward could be Tel Var Stones.

I think something like this could give Imperial City a reason to be played again without turning it into another Battlegrounds/Cyrodiil. It would still keep that “high risk, high reward” feeling that makes IC unique.

I know some people will probably say “just leave IC alone, it’s supposed to be brutal” — and I agree. I don’t want to make it safer or easier. I just think it needs more reasons for people to actually go there.

Eldovar wrote: »

React wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Make a PvE instance and most players will use it, leave any PvP element and very few will use it. Mixing PvP and PvE together in a zone was a mistake not to be repeated, as ZOS have previously acknowledged.

They'll use it as what? Another overland difficulty zone with world boss-difficulty bosses? We've got like 40 of those or something, meanwhile there is two (soon to be three) pvp zones.

In these dire times with layoffs, no crown sales and not much content on the horizon, reusing existing zones as both a PvE zone and as separate PvP zone seems like a good idea. Easier to create content than making whole new zones from scratch that appeals only to one part of the community, while the other withers away until new content is ready.

Yeah but I wouldn't want that city as a final point in the boring old molag bal/banners war story. Id want it as a fully great functioning city one can have interesting pve stories in. So it may as well stay as a pvp war zone.

That banners war needs to end. The game needs to move forward.