Caltrops negating siege damge - getting oiled? No worries, pop caltrops! People sieging an open breach? No worries, pop caltrops! This was a huge bug that made RvR PvP incredibly difficult for quite some time and was not fixed for a number of weeks.

FPS Bug - Play in Cyrodiil for more than a couple of hours? FPS crashes down to less than 5. Again, this bug continued for quite some time and was in fact one of the biggest reasons a number of well known PvPers left the game. It simply took too long to fix.

Game Crashes - Sometime after the FPS bug, we experienced issues (particularly in groups) of individuals in that group crashing.

Bugged sieges - popping sieges (even outside of lag) to find they do not work at all. This still happens in lag now and there are also issues with the siege not aiming correctly. In the earlier stages of the game, there was a bug where siege could not be placed as you would receive the "terrain" error message even on flat ground.

Postern door bug - this didn't get fixed for 9 months+. Sometimes people just couldn't use postern doors on keeps, and this often meant death if you picked the wrong door when entering a sieged keep!

Camp bug - for quite some time some forward camps would bug out and you would not be able to use them. You would have to wait for them to decay (which took quite some time!) before a new one could be placed. This could often destroy sieges / defences.

Shield and fall damage bug - if you shielded immediately after taking fall damage, your game would crash.

Stuck in combat bug - we all know about this one, and it persists even now.

Endless and lengthy loading screens - the latter of which remains a problem.

Health bar bug / alliance war indicators - after a game crash or logging out of the game, you could not see enemy health bar bugs or alliance indicators.

PURGE BUG - we all know about the dmg ground effects would do after purging! This was a game destroyer, as it meant you couldn't remove the heal debuffs that could stack to 100%



Most of these bugs have all been fixed (although some occasionally rear their ugly head) and so you may wonder why I bother mentioning them. I bring them up because I want to draw attention to the fact that PvP really, really needs some love and has very obviously been neglected this past year. When serious, game breaking issues are not fixed for quite some time one really wonders if Zenimax are truly dedicated to achieving their goal of epic PvP as stated in their marketing material.



This lack of developer attention is most noticeable since the advent of 1.6. While we face severe lag problems across virtually every campaign, we have seen changes introduced that require very little effort from a development point of view (increased siege damage, special siege weapons on dolmens and the AP buff in dungeons). To me, this indicates two things. Evidently PvP development is far down on the list of priorities for Zenimax and secondly the resource dedicated to PvP is minimal at best. I think it is time that ZOS dedicates more resource to PvP or at the very least be honest with us in regard to their PvP priorities.



This brings me on to the next stages of my discussion, a look at the recent changes on sieges and why I believe they were a ill thought out solution to the "zergblob" and corresponding lag problem.



Siege Changes



The changes to siege encourage zerging. This is the central point of my discussion relating to sieges and I strongly believe that this is the case. With that said, it should become evident that I do not agree with the siege changes and below I will explain why.



The changes to siege were introduced in an apparent effort to get people to spread out which in turn was supposed to have reduced server strain and lag. This does not work, in fact - the lag is simply aggravated by the change because it encourages people to move in very large groups.



The insane siege damage results in people being forced to run in larger groups. If you choose to run in a smaller group you find that you lack the heals and purges required to adequately defend yourselves in a situation where you encounter larger groups who utilise siege, particular in the open field. In introducing the changes to siege ZOS have destroyed the viability of smaller groups. When a group of 8 - 12 meet a group of even 15+ it becomes difficult to attempt to fight because as soon as you demonstrate that your group is able to sustain itself the opposing (larger) group will pop siege because they have the numbers on you. Prior to siege changes, this confrontation would have been decided by the skill of the two groups that clash but now it is decided by how many sieges the bigger group can pop.



I know that you will say "spam heals / shields / purge" and yes, we could do that, but in smaller groups sacrificing even one individual who isn't a designated support player / healer to be hitting purge constantly or having group members rely on self sustainability means your DPS drops massively and if you aren't killing anything you quickly run out of stamina (no repentance) and get overrun.



From a general PvP perspective I am finding that pugs and "part-time PvPers" are more likely to seek safety in numbers than ever before. While they might not blob up (I will come to this) like the bomb groups, they will move in one giant zerg because they know that in smaller numbers they will wipe when hit by even one siege. If you want to play a damage build, you are forced to run with the mass of your alliance to ensure you are on the receiving end of heals and purges.



Finally and in respect to the zerg blob, the siege changes have done absolutely nothing to discourage this type of behaviour. We definitely saw a decrease in the number of blobs immediately after 1.6 but I believe this was due to the fact that people were altering their builds and getting used to the new playstyle that 1.6 demanded. As people have established new builds the zerg blob has returned and sieging them does little to impact them - they can outheal and purge the damage due to their superior numbers while at the same time dealing considerable damage.



In summary then I believe the siege changes have failed to achieve the purpose for which they were implemented (spreading people out and in turn reducing lag) and therefore I strongly believe that the current siege damage should be altered. Ideally I think we should be looking at either

A 50% reduction in damage but to compensate this additional negative effects from sieges such as new and inventive debuffs aimed at countering the zerg. For instance, reducing ultimate generation by 50% if the siege hits 8 or more people, or something similar. If the above is not possible or faces too much opposition (and I fear it will) then please make it so that sieges can be used in the vicinity of keeps and outposts only. You removed ground oil from the game but popping a fire ballista in an open field is the new equivalent.

The buff to siege is excessive and undoubtedly discourages smaller scale play. If you have any better suggestions for changes please feel free to post them and I will add them here.



I feel compelled to provide at least one counter to the point I know some people are going to make in this thread regarding siege and that is something along the lines of "IN REAL LIFE SIEGE HIT HARD". Please don't bother with the 'real life' argument. Because real siege weapons took TIME to construct, often had to be brought to the battlefield by horse and cart and were often operated by 2 or more people. This is a GAME. Realism doesn't come into it and should not have anything to do with changes that are made to the game, particularly if it compromises balance.



I also know that a ton of people will come in to defend these changes because they enjoy the fact they can get a number of kills simply by spamming sieges all over the place and that "siege actually does something now!". If the changes I suggest are implemented then siege will still do something, but it won't be the deciding factor in a fight. People should be multiskilled in PvP. Siege in its current meta removes skill from the game and mindlessly defending it for what it is only strengthens my argument because it becomes clear that it is only encouraging mindless gameplay.



Forward Camps



Moving on and directly related to the "spreading out" issue that Zenimax has highlighted and siege changes failed to resolve. I strongly believe that the reintroduction of Forward Camps will help to spread people out in Cyrodiil. I know that a lot of people will be against this change, but before I go into detail I ask you to think back to before forward camps were removed and think about the number of fights that were spread across the map. I genuinely believe that the removal of forward camps has meant that fights are forced into corridors which results in the zerg type behaviour.



Take for instance TB EU. There are rarely more than two large fight markers on the map and this is genuinely in the corridor between the keeps of two opposing factions.



The main argument against forward camps is that they will mean lots of people spawn in one place but I think the opposite is true. By reintroducing forward camps you are increasing the number of viable spawn points across the map which means people are more likely to spread out. For instance, that one group of 24 might choose to take a keep in the emperor ring while the rest of their faction are elsewhere. The removal of camps means it is only really viable to fight in one place - their reintroduction would mean creating fights in different locations and, more importantly, maintaining those battles once they have been created.



When the 'issue' of forward camps was discussed several excellent suggestions were proposed as solutions to the problem. These included creating transitus shrines outside of the normal network that could be captured and defending, increasing the spawn points across Cyrodiil through to making it so you could only spawn if you died within the radius of a camp. Personally, I am all for the return of camps in their original form however I understand that would meet a lot of opposition and therefore I am very open to suggestions for alternatives.



Above all, ZOS promised us quite some time ago when camps were removed in 1.4 that they would be reintroduced in a different format. We are now quite some way down the line and nothing has been delivered. I believe it is high time something is introduced, as we have tolerated the lag - and other issues (see above!) for quite some time now.



Groups



Cyrodiil group sizes should be reduced to a maximum of 12. Why? Because this is going to encourage people to move in smaller groups and therefore move around the map to separate objectives. Pug raids for instance will keep recruiting until they are full - by halving the size the pug raids twinned with the forward camp changes I mention above, I strongly believe you will encourage people to spread out more.



In regard to the lag blobs, very obviously they will simply form multiple groups of 12 and run in the same TS however there are benefits to this reduction that might make people think twice about zerg blobbing:



Coordination will be marginally more difficult and countering them will become slightly easier as a result. AP gain will be impacted as the AP earned will be reduced either because your group of 12 didn't tag the players your fellow 12 man group hit OR if both groups tag them, AP rate is decreased regardless.

This is a simple change that could have some hugely positive repercussions. If you want people to spread out, this is most definitely a viable way of doing this without drastically altering the actual combat meta game.



AP Gain



Closely related to the above, I believe it is important to take a look at how AP is earned both in groups and from offensive and defensive ticks. A common argument is that AP gain in the larger groups should be significantly reduced and if group sizes remain at 24 then I believe AP gain for groups of 12+ should be at least halved from the current amounts. This again is a simple change that would encourage people to spread out and move away from the lagblob meta.



If however group sizes are reduced to 12, as I think they should be, I believe that AP gain should be buffed for smaller groups as opposed to reduced in larger groups.



So for instance for each kill:

Average solo kill = 1000 AP Duo kill = 600 AP Groups of 4 or less = 400 AP Groups of 5 - 8 = 300 AP Groups of 9 - 12 = 200 AP

This is a very basic example and I don't want to go into too much detail as I am already conscious about thread length, but I think you get the idea. You are rewarding players for playing in smaller groups and in smaller scale PvP which will encourage people to player in smaller groups rather than the blobs they are currently attracted to.



I also think a minor change to defensive ticks is in order. This one is very simple and has been discussed numerous times - if you have contributed to a fight the tick you receive should 'scale' off of your contribution (i.e. the number of people you were involved in killing / the length of time you were defending) and this tick should follow you after you leave the keep. Currently you have people hanging around keeps and waiting for the tick and once it is received they all run off together in one blob. If you are going to receive the tick regardless of whether you wait or not - this is just a simple tactic to keep people moving.



Cyrodiil and AvA Objectives



I will touch only briefly on this because I honestly don't believe Zenimax are in a position to be able to deliver on changes as drastic as this. However, I think (at the very least) Zenimax need to consider implementing these kinds of changes in the longer term. These include things such as:

Increasing the number of environmental features in areas that currently lack them (i.e. the corridor between Roebeck and Nikel, for instance). This means things such as villages, ruins and rocky terrain. This breaks up the environment and therefore the battles that take place in those regions. Providing increased rewards when taking smaller objectives such as resources. Add flags to gates and bridges at key locations (i.e. the infamous Alessia bridge) that do not interrupt transitus but do spawn NPCs and offer modest benefits to scoring.

Summary / Conclusion



In summary I think it has become very clear that PvP has been neglected since ESO launched. ZOS evidently does not see that PvP offers them enough of a return to consider investing considerable time and resource. Their solution to the lag has been some very poor attempts at introducing alternatives to the current zerg meta which are simply not enough to change the game as it currently stands. In an ideal world, Zenimax would heavily invest in development and quickly bring us the Imperial City and additionally change the Cyrodiil map quite dramatically with the introduction of new objectives.



However it has become quite obvious this will not happen and therefore we are evidently stuck with minor changes to gameplay. The suggestions I make above should not be too difficult to implement, but I do believe they will go quite some way to improve the current situation in Cyrodiil. I urge ZOS to consider them and I welcome everyone's opinions on these matters and any others they believe are relevant!



Thank you for taking the time for reading and please accept my apologies for any spelling or grammatical errors. This has taken me quite some time to write and I am rather tired at the time of writing after a full day at work!

Most of these bugs have all been fixed (although some occasionally rear their ugly head) and so you may wonder why I bother mentioning them. I bring them up because I want to draw attention to the fact that PvP really, needs some love and has very obviously been neglected this past year. When serious, game breaking issues are not fixed for quite some time one really wonders if Zenimax are truly dedicated to achieving their goal of epic PvP as stated in their marketing material. This lack of developer attention is most noticeable since the advent of 1.6. While we face severe lag problems across virtually every campaign, we have seen changes introduced that require very little effort from a development point of view (increased siege damage, special siege weapons on dolmens and the AP buff in dungeons). To me, this indicates two things. Evidently PvP development is far down on the list of priorities for Zenimax and secondly the resource dedicated to PvP is minimal at best. I think it is time that ZOS dedicates more resource to PvP or at the very least be honest with us in regard to their PvP priorities. This brings me on to the next stages of my discussion, a look at the recent changes on sieges and why I believe they were a ill thought out solution to the "zergblob" and corresponding lag problem. The changes to siege encourage zerging. This is the central point of my discussion relating to sieges and I strongly believe that this is the case. With that said, it should become evident that I do not agree with the siege changes and below I will explain why. The changes to siege were introduced in an apparent effort to get people to spread out which in turn was supposed to have reduced server strain and lag. This does not work, in fact - the lag is simply aggravated by the change because it encourages people to move in very large groups. The insane siege damage results in people being forced to run in larger groups. If you choose to run in a smaller group you find that you lack the heals and purges required to adequately defend yourselves in a situation where you encounter larger groups who utilise siege, particular in the open field. In introducing the changes to siege ZOS have destroyed the viability of smaller groups. When a group of 8 - 12 meet a group of even 15+ it becomes difficult to attempt to fight because as soon as you demonstrate that your group is able to sustain itself the opposing (larger) group will pop siege because they have the numbers on you. Prior to siege changes, this confrontation would have been decided by the skill of the two groups that clash but now it is decided by how many sieges the bigger group can pop. I know that you will say "spam heals / shields / purge" and yes, we could do that, but in smaller groups sacrificing even one individual who isn't a designated support player / healer to be hitting purge constantly or having group members rely on self sustainability means your DPS drops and if you aren't killing anything you quickly run out of stamina (no repentance) and get overrun. From a general PvP perspective I am finding that pugs and "part-time PvPers" are more likely to seek safety in numbers than ever before. While they might not blob up (I will come to this) like the bomb groups, they will move in one giant zerg because they know that in smaller numbers they will wipe when hit by even one siege. If you want to play a damage build, you are forced to run with the mass of your alliance to ensure you are on the receiving end of heals and purges. Finally and in respect to the zerg blob, the siege changes have done absolutely nothing to discourage this type of behaviour. We definitely saw a decrease in the number of blobs immediately after 1.6 but I believe this was due to the fact that people were altering their builds and getting used to the new playstyle that 1.6 demanded. As people have established new builds the zerg blob has returned and sieging them does little to impact them - they can outheal and purge the damage due to their superior numbers while at the same time dealing considerable damage. In summary then I believe the siege changes have failed to achieve the purpose for which they were implemented (spreading people out and in turn reducing lag) and therefore I strongly believe that the current siege damage should be altered. Ideally I think we should be looking at The buff to siege is excessive and undoubtedly discourages smaller scale play. If you have any better suggestions for changes please feel free to post them and I will add them here. I feel compelled to provide at least one counter to the point I know some people are going to make in this thread regarding siege and that is something along the lines of "IN REAL LIFE SIEGE HIT HARD". Please don't bother with the 'real life' argument. Because real siege weapons took TIME to construct, often had to be brought to the battlefield by horse and cart and were often operated by 2 or more people. This is a GAME. Realism doesn't come into it and should not have anything to do with changes that are made to the game, particularly if it compromises balance. I also know that a ton of people will come in to defend these changes because they enjoy the fact they can get a number of kills simply by spamming sieges all over the place and that "siege actually does something now!". If the changes I suggest are implemented then siege will still do something, but it won't be the deciding factor in a fight. People should be multiskilled in PvP. Siege in its current meta removes skill from the game and mindlessly defending it for what it is only strengthens my argument because it becomes clear that it is only encouraging mindless gameplay. Moving on and directly related to the "spreading out" issue that Zenimax has highlighted and siege changes failed to resolve. I strongly believe that the reintroduction of Forward Camps will help to spread people out in Cyrodiil. I know that a lot of people will be against this change, but before I go into detail I ask you to think back to forward camps were removed and think about the number of fights that were spread across the map. I genuinely believe that the removal of forward camps has meant that fights are forced into corridors which results in the zerg type behaviour. Take for instance TB EU. There are rarely more than two large fight markers on the map and this is genuinely in the corridor between the keeps of two opposing factions. The main argument against forward camps is that they will mean lots of people spawn in one place but I think the opposite is true. By reintroducing forward camps you are increasing the number of viable spawn points across the map which means people are more likely to spread out. For instance, that one group of 24 might choose to take a keep in the emperor ring while the rest of their faction are elsewhere. The removal of camps means it is only really viable to fight in one place - their reintroduction would mean creating fights in different locations and, more importantly, maintaining those battles once they have been created. When the 'issue' of forward camps was discussed several excellent suggestions were proposed as solutions to the problem. These included creating transitus shrines outside of the normal network that could be captured and defending, increasing the spawn points across Cyrodiil through to making it so you could only spawn if you died within the radius of a camp. Personally, I am all for the return of camps in their original form however I understand that would meet a lot of opposition and therefore I am very open to suggestions for alternatives. Above all, ZOS promised us quite some time ago when camps were removed in 1.4 that they would be reintroduced in a different format. We are now quite some way down the line and nothing has been delivered. I believe it is high time something is introduced, as we have tolerated the lag - and other issues (see above!) for quite some time now. Cyrodiil group sizes should be reduced to a maximum of 12. Why? Because this is going to encourage people to move in smaller groups and therefore move around the map to separate objectives. Pug raids for instance will keep recruiting until they are full - by halving the size the pug raids This is a simple change that could have some hugely positive repercussions. If you want people to spread out, this is most definitely a viable way of doing this without drastically altering the actual combat meta game. Closely related to the above, I believe it is important to take a look at how AP is earned both in groups and from offensive and defensive ticks. A common argument is that AP gain in the larger groups should be significantly reduced and if group sizes remain at 24 then I believe AP gain for groups of 12+ should be at least halved from the current amounts. This again is a simple change that would encourage people to spread out and move away from the lagblob meta. If however group sizes are reduced to 12, as I think they should be, I believe that AP gain should be buffed for smaller groups as opposed to reduced in larger groups. So for instance for each kill: This is a very basic example and I don't want to go into too much detail as I am already conscious about thread length, but I think you get the idea. You are rewarding players for playing in smaller groups and in smaller scale PvP which will encourage people to player in smaller groups rather than the blobs they are currently attracted to. I also think a minor change to defensive ticks is in order. This one is very simple and has been discussed numerous times - if you have contributed to a fight the tick you receive should 'scale' off of your contribution (i.e. the number of people you were involved in killing / the length of time you were defending) and this tick should follow you after you leave the keep. Currently you have people hanging around keeps and waiting for the tick and once it is received they all run off together in one blob. If you are going to receive the tick regardless of whether you wait or not - this is just a simple tactic to keep people moving. I will touch only briefly on this because I honestly don't believe Zenimax are in a position to be able to deliver on changes as drastic as this. However, I think (at the very least) Zenimax need to consider implementing these kinds of changes in the longer term. These include things such as: In summary I think it has become very clear that PvP has been neglected since ESO launched. ZOS evidently does not see that PvP offers them enough of a return to consider investing considerable time and resource. Their solution to the lag has been some very poor attempts at introducing alternatives to the current zerg meta which are simply not enough to change the game as it currently stands. In an ideal world, Zenimax would heavily invest in development and quickly bring us the Imperial City and additionally change the Cyrodiil map quite dramatically with the introduction of new objectives. However it has become quite obvious this will not happen and therefore we are evidently stuck with minor changes to gameplay. The suggestions I make above should not be too difficult to implement, but I do believe they will go quite some way to improve the current situation in Cyrodiil. I urge ZOS to consider them and I welcome everyone's opinions on these matters and any others they believe are relevant! Thank you for taking the time for reading and please accept my apologies for any spelling or grammatical errors. This has taken me quite some time to write and I am rather tired at the time of writing after a full day at work!

This is a long thread! However I would be grateful if PvPers could take the time to read it and contribute to the discussion, because I very strongly believe that Zenimax needs to start actively listening to the PvP community if we are going to continue to see active and enjoyable PvP in the coming months.To open I would like to explain that I am a virtually exclusive PvPer, who plays with individuals considered amongst the better PvPers on the European server (EU). I also speak regularly with individuals across all factions and therefore the opinions herein are an indication of both my opinions and those of the individuals I speak to.Since 1.6 (and indeed before) PvP has suffered a wealth of issues that are simply not acceptable from the perspective of a paying customer. This is why I have removed my ESO Plus subscription. I will continue to play but I will not give money to a game that is failing to deliver on very basic aspects of gameplay and has provided nothing but problem after problem for the dedicated PvPer.This discussion will focus almost entirely on gameplay and features of the alliance war as a whole (i.e. the aspects managed by @ZOS_BrianWheeler and team) rather than combat and combat mechanics, although this will be touched on. I would therefore ask that people do not use this discussion as a QQ thread about skills and discuss the points that are made and indeed, any additional points that they believe may be valid.I will first touch on some of the problems we as PvPers have experienced historically, to give some context to my points regarding the considerable amount of game breaking bugs we have experienced and carried on with regardless.