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[Column] Elder Scrolls Online: The Dos And Don'ts of Cyrodiil
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Anybody who's been around the MMO-space for very long realizes that there are lots of "do's and don't's" when it comes to PvP. In our latest Elder Scrolls Online column, we make a few suggestions to the team about things that should, and shouldn't, be in the game. Read on before adding your own list in the comments.
We know attacking castles and laying siege are already major parts of Cyrodiil, however the main reason this is a “Don’t” is because you cannot rely on this mechanic too heavily in your MMO. Keeps where the main focus of Dark Age of Camelot and worked well as objectives for the three factions to attack and take over. However, there was a point of boredom after a while when players were sick of knocking on a door. I get that keeps are a great objective, but they should not be the end all of PvP. This system worked great in DAOC, but failed horribly in Warhammer Online. The main issue going back to stalking the PvP zones for players, not just staring at them on a wall. We know keep sieges are in, they look cool from early footage, but they will not create a full experience for your hardcore PvP player... we want more.
Read more of Garrett Fuller's Elder Scrolls Online: The Dos And Don'ts of Cyrodiil.
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I fart in your general direction
Comments
Don't - have any kind of instanced pvp - it's what killed Warhammer for me.
If you want to have a successful pvp game - copy the best parts of EVE Online / Shadowbane and DAOC and you will make a game that people will play.
I feel like this article is something thrown together just to stir up talk. Nothing you said has any real information to it.
You claimed that DAOC got boring to people that played its PvP, well I will tell you that is a huge load. I can tell you several friends played the game for years and only quit once the Raid or Die mentality was introduced to the game.
I think what your missing about castle sieges is what awards are given to capturing the castle. Points of any sort are the wrong type of reward. The reward needs to include things in the game world. Content, Dungeons, and so forth actual game content. But this does not include overpowered items that are only achieved through those dungeons. The dungeons can be there because they have increased loot chances or increased resources but never something that can't be obtained through normal play.
What this allows is for those that just captured the castle to make a decision of 'do i protect the castle or do i go to the content we just unlocked'. Its a way to balance out competition because its self regulating. Less players are going to be trying to defend a point when they have a reason to be else were.
I'd say more than "open world opjectives" there needs to be "open world resources".
You need some reason to take and hold territory for a reason better than "because it's cool!" or "because we hate faction X". Make territory have value. That's something that EVE does that gives people a REASON to fight over territory. It's in their best interest to hold as much territory as possible.
That's why I'm waiting on CU. Their open world mines and territory control mechanics will give the RvR an extra layer that all current RvR games lack.
I can't speak for DAoC but the problem of keeps in Warhammer was "pride in ownership".
I daresay that the constant flipping of keeps was horrid. And then people would run off to do the next one.
They need to make it so that sieges don't take place "all the time".
I agree with flying dutchman, territory control has to have meaning. There must be resources and essentially things that others just can't get unless they have that territory.
Lineage 2 had awesome sieges. People would ally just to remove a group and benefit from that alliance.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
Keep Sieges – Don’t
Agreed, I spent my last year and a half playing DAoC within an 8 man "Gank Group" eschewing 99% of keep sieging. Also as a predominantly Melee player Keep Sieges are just down right boring, whereas the ranges are having fun picking off wall defenders or hanging back, we melee are sitting there smashing our axes against keep walls. BORRING!
Darkness Falls - Do
Again I agree. DF is the single greatest PvP innovation I've ever had the pleasure of playing.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Please for the love of MMO's do PvP right. A couple of things to consider.
1) Remember Thidranki, and how DAOC broke down PvP into 5 level gaps to allow your to learn various aspects of PvP, while having the ability to level, and even gain RR. Ya, that was awesome. No instances, use this type of pvp to 'train' people how to pvp, while also allowing everyone to quench their thirst of pixel blood while they level. Having to grind out 50 levels to be meaningful at PvP is no bueno.
2) Please bring DF back, or something very much like it. Logging off as a stealther when your realm controlled the dungeon was some of the most fun ever in a game. Going into the dungeon without a stealther was also some of the most fun in the game.
3) Make reasons to keep people out in the frontier. This means, have gathering nodes, have monsters to farm, have raid bosses that require groups of members to kill. Create hotspots. Make objectives in the frontier worthwhile. GW2 is not worthwhile, I never feel I am fighting for something. DAOC was amazing at this, instilling realm pride, and ownership. Losing an artifact made you want to come together as a realm and reclaim it.
4) If you can implement something where you have guild control over areas of the map, basically provinces, and the guild can control the type of defense through out the province. Something like, having patrols going through the province, to make if feel a bit more protected for people who wanted to get materials from mobs or nodes. Put them on a respawn timer, but everytime they respawn they cost money, in game money of course. The controlling guild gets to control the respawn rate, and maybe so far as how well equipped they are.
I could go on for a long time about ideas I have for video games, but I will stop here.
Objectives swapping - Don't
There is nothing more boring then the rinse repeat of "claim objective - teleport to other area of map - lose objective - teleport back - claim objective" and the next day....everything is reset and everybody is winning a prize. (hellooo GW2 and WAR, yes I'm talking about you)
Winning Condition - Do
See above. There must be long term strategy in the game, extend your territory, build and defend objectives, raise your stats, gather resources...and yes, after a few weeks one of the sides should be able to WIN, get a prize (title, fluff?) and only then the game is reset. (Hmm why does footie system of Premier league, First and Second division just cross my mind...)
or ....
For defenders, make it so that various sorties need to be sent out in order to weaken various important objectives or gain resources.
So (another lineage 2 example) the attacking group would have allies and those allies would put down a flag where they would spawn.
Our melee would go out, lure the enemy away and others would then attack those flags to cripple the enemy.
I don't see why the same can't be done in any game with sieging.
Additionally, why not have resources that the defenders need in order to shore up their defenses, perhaps even gain more "mmo" for ballista or just certain areas that help the defenders such as buffs.and when they are held by one side or other during a siege.
for the attackers make it so that they have to defend their resources. Also make it so they can still use ranged weapons so that they can at least help a bit. But otherwise once those gates are down they are the most effective groups inside the keeps.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
DONT If its a sort of arena where ther need to be 3 vs 3 or 6 vs 6 or X vs X before pvp start
... DANG its Paintball all over again and am out
and yet ... it worked.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
Allow for macros or other way to quickly emote while in battle. That would be big for me. I like my taunts.
Have the community build some of your pvp content.
Ok lets be honest here unless I missed it there is one thing this article completely skipped that makes all other criteria irrelevant if missed.
Population balance
Ask those responsible for war hammer what happens when that snowballs away from you
PvP is TESO?
Well 3 faction like gw2 that goes on 24/7 is already wrong in my opinion (FFA PVP is way to go). But ok lets try to work with that for the sake of this topic.
The one who earns most points in pvp becomes the emperor of your faction. Being emperor gives you alot of bonus abilities wich basicly turn you into an indestructable juggernaught or something.
So even if we go for it 100% like in gw2 and try to organize our whole faction. But if one nolife kid becomes emperor because he spents most time ingame then all randoms will just follow him where ever he goes. Like a retard gw2 commander only 10x worse cause being emperor means a whole lot more then in gw2. And worse of all... there is only 1 emperor per factions.
So if we do all that work 1 person can ruin it for us and our only hope for a change in emperor is if an even bigger nolifer get a higher ranking. And god only knows what kind of mongoloid retard that will be...
And this is their idea of pvp in TESO....
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Wow Suzie, did you ever play Warhammer Online?
Clearly, the answer is no.
Castle siege did not fail in WO, in fact, is was quite awesome. The reason that WO failed was largely due to making arena's provide quicker progression and faster rewards, RvR lake layout that allowed 'Yo-Yo'ing, and the complete lack of dungeons and non RvR content. By the time they started to wise up, it was too late, as they already lost the majority of their player base.
Shouldn't MMORPG force their columnists to actually play games and do some research on things that they are talking about in their articles? No, I guess not, par for course with MMORPG.com I guess.
Agree. I don't mind PvP but I do mind artificial barriers in a TES game only because it's devs wants to use TES lore and skin to peddle their Daoc clone. Hopefully this Daoc shite has been put to halt.
I honestly don't care, if there is no PvP in this title. In fact, I hope they focus on PvE and especially "the so-called end game" to make me want to play this for more than few months.
Don't take me the wrong way, I love PvP games. I just don't think this should be one of those titles that should focus on it.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
In a few things author missed the point. WAR did fail but this wasn't because of keep sieges (as author suggests). My experience from WAR is that ppl complained about everything (nothing to do except PvP as a whole, too big impact of scenarios, bugs and exploits). Everything BUT keep sieges. Someone liked to just go and kill randoms? On badly populated servers and tiers below tier 4 agreed. T4 on decently populated server was a different story but then this had nothing to do with keep sieges.
Open Zone objectives - WAR had them too. But something didn't work that well as ppl often ignored whole part called defending it (atleast pugs did). GW2 is also a bad example. I really hope that all issues with WvW there were fixed as I remember it being a bit too zerg dependent. Not saying hat zerging was everything that was required, just it was simply not that well balanced. Agreed that idea behing caravans and keep upgrades is fun but that's it. As a whole + objectives it is an example of "don't" rather than "do".
PvP rewards - definitely "don't" is to put system that benefits directly premades as for RBG in WoW. The real benefit of premade should be better cooperation and coordination and getting rewards faster THAT way with no other limits put to pug players.
And last thing is that I agree with some other ppl here. This art glorifies fluffs like titles (with an exception of rewards for obvious reasons). Such things are nice but won't keep any RvR going and would work better rather in some FFA game instead. On the other hand giving reasons as being criticised as "it worked in DAoC but failed in WAR".
Well I certainly loved lineage 2, and I wish it didnt fail because of exploiters. And thats the problem with a resource based game. It brings in the ai bot farming crowd and thats fun for no one.
If all these ideas worked in the past, why are those games dead? If they implemented your ideas it wouldnt be an elder scroll game. It would be a clone of other games. Pls ignore this poster ESO if your listening.