Question 1: First and foremost, could you describe your vision for what you would like Imperial City PvP to be? Do you envision it as some zone where pvpers go with the sole purpose of killing other players for their stones, or do you see providing consistent small scale fights as a major goal of the dlc?

Question 2: What are your plans for the future in regards to district capture and how it affects alliances inside of the IC?

Question 3: Are there any future plans on somehow connecting IC to the rest of Cyrodiil or having what's going on inside of the IC affect Cyrodiil in some way?

Have you considered something similar to a forward camp but that you can buy with TV stones and works in the IC districts?

That would help with the fact that we can no longer spawn in the districts if we don't own the flag and then suffer through two loading screens.

IC is terrible concept. It's a mash up of PVP/PVE/questing/AvAvA ... It's a place were people can go to find out the don't want to be there because of the other people. IC is High School. Its jocks, and nerds, and emo, and hip-hop, and country, and Christians, atheists, and they're all forced to be there. But unlike high school no one is forced to be in IC so it's pretty much empty.

IC is a PVE zone. The PVP is completely worthless. Creating a AvAvA objective in a PVE zone is just a terrible concept. I assume that's the reason the quest zones in cyrodiil are not inside of keeps. You don't have to take the keep to do the quest or lose out on doing the quest because your faction is losing. IC was going to be locked to some based on Cyrodiil ... now ZOS is locking districts based on who's group is stronger promoting pretty much the same style of zerg friendly game play? What really is the difference of Cyro and IC? Venue?

PVP in IC doesn't even really make sense. There's a bunch of daedra around. Why would I gank a guy trying to save Nirn? I mean when a country is attacked the political parties with in that country usually unite to fight off the larger threat. Seriously. If aliens invaded you think Israelis and Palestinians, etc. will just keep fighting? I think they'd see the bigger picture. The mash up of PVP and PVE is just a terrible concept there. In any other zone in the game it would make sense. Invading armies marching on Mournhold, or Elden Root ... makes sense though it may not be welcome by the majority of players.

PVP in IC could make sense ... If it's just another plot of land. But didn't you just make a smaller version of Cyrodiil complete with long travel times after death? Only now you have obvious pinch points to gank/zerg incoming players. The BEST thing about IC was the quick spawn in the districts. What stunk was that fact there was only one place to re-spawn per faction which made for it frustrating to look down at a sea of enemies chomping at the bit to zerg/gank you.

So IC either needs to be a Join Forces to Fight the (PVE) Deadra or remove the daedra and make it another location to fight over. But what's special about that? And doesn't it just take away from the population in Cyro effectively jeopardizing the sustainability of fighting there?

Why are IC and Cyrodiil linked anyways? It a totally different instance. I mean the Mages Guilds could have gained access some how, some way and opened a portal.

IC is were arenas should happen.
Each district should have a population cap and a que. You're team is dropped in at one of severalspawn points (at least 3 per faction per district) ... then they compete. After each death a player will re-spawn at a random spawn point. This would ensure skirmishes can be "won" and spawn points couldn't just be camped.

Each district could be a different objectives or maybe 2 zones per objectives type.
* Capture the Flag.
* Team Death Match. (Most kills in set amount of time)
* Every man for himself. (Solo Death Match)
... etc.

*All districts will have a time limit (15-20 mins). After the time expires the Arena will reset.
*Each districts should have a que and people will only be able to join if there are members of the other faction to join as well so that the #s are always even.
* Players should be able to que into any faction they are a "Hero" of, meaning if they have completed Silver and Gold they can play any of the 3 factions in the arena. If they haven't completed any they'll only be able to que as their home faction.
* Rewards would be AP/TV/gold per kill (killing a player with less CP or under Alliance rank 10 should yield less rewards) and Rewards of the Worthy type system.
* There could also be a wager system, were teams could bet on themselves to win.
* Leader Boards can be done on an Average score per arena (each arena with its own leader board) allowing casuals the chance at rewards. People should be recognized for their ability to play, not the time they have.

At this point in the game, with dwindling Cyro populations (how many campaigns are left?) there should be a PVE campaign so people can sky shard hunt and quest with out taking away from the PVP population. Keeps already have guards. Remove the '"flag flipping," add a Boss or 2 to each keep and ramp up the guards a little bit to offset the difficulty. There are already quest to take keeps, resources, kill guards, etc. Then remove factions so anyone can group with anyone.

IC could be spit up similarly. You could have IC the PVE area (Adventure Zones as we were once told), were players of all factions unite in an effort to save Nirn (Cold Harbor could be similar, and should battle scale players) ... and the PVP arenas where players go to avoid the zergy AvAvA style PVP and long travel travel times post death, etc.

ZOS could probably charge for PVE only Cyrodiil.

ZOS already required people to pay for IC Arenas so I don't think you can charge for it. However you could have monthly tournaments for prizes with a buy in.

Would you consider changing the CC abilities that the flag NPCs use? I think it's fine for them to have some CC, but theirs seem to be incredibly buggy and often ignore the immunity timer. This is super frustrating when you are fighting the NPCs and players at the same time. Additionally, they continually cause my character abilities/animations to behave sporadically and often do not fire (Biting Jabs is affected most for me). Note that this is also a problem with flag NPCs in Cyrodiil proper.

About seige ...

Siege should hit all people in its AOE. Not just enemy players. It can be argued the the skill of a the caster can avoid hitting his fellow player. I don't think there is any logical argument that says a player would miss his own allies when using siege.

I HATE siege. There is nothing worse then fighting 3-20 players and actually surviving and doing some damage and then siege lands on top of all of you ... but only you die. It's BS.

It's also BS that after 2 years this game has no better option than "PVP ... Take or leave it." I'm can't wait for Arena PVP but at the same time I dread seen how much ZOS messes them up. Hopefully they actually acknowledge Battle Spirit before then.

Additionally, this isn't specific to this necessarily but the game overall. Do staff members routine play/spectate in elements of the game on live server across platforms? Do the people making decisions regarding gameplay actually play in the live environment? Basically, are ZOS employees and combat/gameplay staff members playing live in IC right now to experience the game that their customers are?

What is the design intent for Upper Cyro and Imperial City?

How do the changes you want to implement stimulate pvp gameplay?

How do towns fit in with the general design intent for pvp cyrodill?

What expectation do you have of the pvp community and its role within the dev/player relationship?

bikerangelo wrote: »

Is the 1 flag district capture the cherry on top of IC that you were expecting it to be, or are you planning on adding more mechanics and improvements that don't just encourage zergs and farmers?

Have you thought about disconnecting IC from Cyrodiil altogether and using each district for instanced groups to fight each other? For example, a group of 3 to 5 queue into IC to fight another random group of equal numbers. You could include multiple capturable objectives or just something else aside from 1 flag that a group of 20 can sit on and defend with ease. If this game had small scale fights with even numbers, it'd be so much better than the lagfest, siege-fest, horse simulator in Cyrodiil.

This would basically make it a 5v5 arena. I don't think that is what they were aiming for when they released it