3 realms isn't any better than 2 or 4 or 6 etc. The two 'underdogs' will still gank each other given half a chance. DAOC showed this clearly (The switch servers deal was put in to try to 'help' solve it).

And point #4 is a non-starter. If you make it better to defend than attack, well, that's what people will do.... until very few people are attacking because everyone doesn't want to miss out on the 'bonus defense'... thus making defense worth less because so few attackers are attacking.... people revert to trading keeps because it's faster/better loot/xp because defending is too slow...

Originally posted by eric_w66

3 realms isn't any better than 2 or 4 or 6 etc. The two 'underdogs' will still gank each other given half a chance. DAOC showed this clearly (The switch servers deal was put in to try to 'help' solve it).

 

And point #4 is a non-starter. If you make it better to defend than attack, well, that's what people will do.... until very few people are attacking because everyone doesn't want to miss out on the 'bonus defense'... thus making defense worth less because so few attackers are attacking.... people revert to trading keeps because it's faster/better loot/xp because defending is too slow...

 

 

You need something to defend. So people will attack and defend, see how that works?

Originally posted by eric_w66
That's just it, one of the two will be worth 'more' and that's what people will do. If you make just standing around in a keep worth more xp/loot than actual fighting, people will stand around in their keeps. It's just human nature.

 

I am sure the devs are not that dumb. We come a long way since people Qing for WoW battlegrounds and standing AFK and getting rewarded. 

Originally posted by Artean
Make it open world and an inherent part of the game. We don't need more games in games.

Yeah..lets take a hugh IP and make it for the smallest group of players....

Great article:  

A good idea to stop the keep swapping would be to increase the realm (alliance) bonuses, the longer the keep (s) are held.  Not only does that help the pvp players, but it also benefits the pve community.  It can really help to create a better realm (alliance) pride amongst the pvp players and the pve players.  And by increase, i mean the more time an alliance holds a certain keep, more alliance bonuses or perks are added to the mix.  

Some examples are: if your alliance holds Gold Keep, they receive 5% magicka damage. But if they continue to hold the Gold Keep, a new bonus of 5 %  Magicka pool increase.  

If  your alliance holds Red keep, they receive 5 % physical damage increase. If they hold for the next time increment, they receive 5 % more experience per kill. 

So each keep should have different incremental bonuses.  These are just random examples. 

A well though out article and  I hope the ESO dev's take these into considersation, I really, REALLY do! ( Im playing skyrim on my  second moinitor and as I write this, and Elder scroll's have been a big part of my gaming life since the begining.)

I get excited for many games by my very soul NEED's ESO to succeed!

Kudo's to Bill Murphy, he seems to be on a roll;  we've seen a lot of good content from him the last few weeks. Keep it up sir

They could also learn from games that tired open world pvp and failed miserably. Like the game engine not being able to handle more than 10 characters on the screen without giving you 5 fps. (hello SWTOR!).  Other things that I think are important:

- You can never have too many objectives. The more you spread out the Zerg the better the game will be. Have your final keep push if you must, but devs should focus their energy on making small groups the center of open world pvp. When your small group (5-10) can turn the tide by taking an objective or killing an important enemy then you know you got this feel right.  Heck even two or three players should be able to make a difference if they are smart enough. Lots of objectives, spread out, all working towards a larger objective.

-  Rewards for owning territory and not taking territory should be your way  to solve the keep swapping problem.  Reward players for owning stuff.  For example, every player gets a tax from all keeps held, say once per three hours or something.  The more keeps you own, or the more objectives you own, the more rewards you get with coin and or special currency.  So taking or holding a keep rewards you the same.  However, holding a keep should be much easier to do against much larger forces. Thus holding a keep should always be the better option because it should give a substantial defense bonus. 

- Kills should be their own reward. Killing a player puts them out of the fight. That's your reward. Your objective should then be easier to take, and as a consequence the gaining of that objective is your reward. This will prevent kill swapping and other nonsense.

Just a few more ideas...

Originally posted by mythran7

 

They could also learn from games that tired open world pvp and failed miserably. Like the game engine not being able to handle more than 10 characters on the screen without giving you 5 fps. (hello SWTOR!).  Other things that I think are important:

 

- You can never have too many objectives. The more you spread out the Zerg the better the game will be. Have your final keep push if you must, but devs should focus their energy on making small groups the center of open world pvp. When your small group (5-10) can turn the tide by taking an objective or killing an important enemy then you know you got this feel right.  Heck even two or three players should be able to make a difference if they are smart enough. Lots of objectives, spread out, all working towards a larger objective.

 

-  Rewards for owning territory and not taking territory should be your way  to solve the keep swapping problem.  Reward players for owning stuff.  For example, every player gets a tax from all keeps held, say once per three hours or something.  The more keeps you own, or the more objectives you own, the more rewards you get with coin and or special currency.  So taking or holding a keep rewards you the same.  However, holding a keep should be much easier to do against much larger forces. Thus holding a keep should always be the better option because it should give a substantial defense bonus. 

 

- Kills should be their own reward. Killing a player puts them out of the fight. That's your reward. Your objective should then be easier to take, and as a consequence the gaining of that objective is your reward. This will prevent kill swapping and other nonsense.

 

Just a few more ideas...

 

 

 

Agreed.

I have some concerns that the "Mega server" or whatever is going to end up a fancy name for repackaged GW-1 style instancing. ( While I didnt mind it in GW-1 many people couldnt stomach it as its not a true, open world or whatever.) I hope they take a long look  this issue, it could make or break this game imo.

Originally posted by bobm111

its just not true what Bill is implying here. What we really have are a few devs pushing back to the good old DAOC days. And it is a pipe dream.

In fact there are 100 to 1 people who play mmos not for pvp and especially not for DAOC type pvp but instead for good old open world exploration and questing as well as missioning. This includes housing.

Just because a few devs are trying to bring back realm vs realm pvp as the only real way. It is not going to happen other then a little nisch of dedicated people who have a pipedream that this is the future.

In reality they are doomed to fail and die.

Sorry if i dissappoint your pipe dreams.

And once again ffxiv will shine compared to these DAOC clones in moderen dressing. And making the morrowwind world into a DAOC clone is gonna fail big time of all because the people who actually want to play the came (that is the overwhelming majority) would prefer and open endless seamless world to explore craft etc.

Bobm111

Opinions: everybody has them, and they aren't facts.  So get off your high-horse and the idea that you're ruining 'pipe dreams'

There are plenty of PvE games out there.  In fact, the majority of games are PvE.  And look no further than WoW for the type of game you are apparently in favor of.

However, for me and many other, 3 realm pvp would be awesome.  The best game I ever played, by far, was DAoC.  Rogues climbing keeps was awesome.  And having pvp battles actually mean something to the rest of the realm ala Darkness Falls was one of the best features any game has ever implemented.  In my opinion.

This columnist really has no diea what hes talking about sadly.

5.) Races and Factions Should Have AvA Strengths

And lastly, this one is sort of supplementary to the others, but each race and faction should have things they’re good at in the ever ongoing battle of rock, paper, scissors.  For example, let’s say Orcs are good at a certain type of siege equipment. Maybe Elves are good at sneaking behind enemy lines, while Britons excel at magical wards around encampments.  Elder Scrolls already has a strong sense of making racial choice matter in character development, and that should carry through to AvA.

This is the worst and most terrible idea ever heard in human written history. Thuis breaks balance and makes game not good in a single feature, stuff like racials is BAD BAD they should be at most cosmetic, making thema  whole balancing deal for pvp is bad.

Originally posted by Alakor

This columnist really has no diea what hes talking about sadly.

 

5.) Races and Factions Should Have AvA Strengths

And lastly, this one is sort of supplementary to the others, but each race and faction should have things they’re good at in the ever ongoing battle of rock, paper, scissors.  For example, let’s say Orcs are good at a certain type of siege equipment. Maybe Elves are good at sneaking behind enemy lines, while Britons excel at magical wards around encampments.  Elder Scrolls already has a strong sense of making racial choice matter in character development, and that should carry through to AvA.

 

 

This is the worst and most terrible idea ever heard in human written history. Thuis breaks balance and makes game not good in a single feature, stuff like racials is BAD BAD they should be at most cosmetic, making thema  whole balancing deal for pvp is bad.

I have to disagree with you on this one. I believe that having racial differences is something that should make a comeback. They should be meaningful and are very much in line with Elder Scroll lore. In Skyrim, I loved playing an Argonian and breathing underwater. Things like this add a little unexpected variety to the race/class combinations and can have some amazing results.

"Now, with the success of Guild Wars 2 and its own take on three-faction warfare"

I just had to lol for the three-faction warfare called out in GW2. Total joke!

I did on the other hand enjoy the references to Warhammer as someone who didnt get on DaoC train in time. If the game is  designed with true RvR in mind there is no problem. Sadly, I expect the transition from single player RPG to MMOPVPRPG to be a painful one. I hope that I am wrong!!!! I would imagine for me personally Skyrim ala RvR with three weak sauce factions rushed to release to be a painful experience, one from which I shall never again recover lol...

I have absolutely no faith in todays community. I played DAoC during its prime and then sometime after. I didn't need any more reasons to defend my homeland, other than realm pride, and I wasn't even a real PvPer. The xp for taking a tower, and especially a keep was really good. It was also hard to take towers and keeps, since the other side would ardently defend them. 

Needless to say, I don't have a list of things ESO will need to have good RvR. I think the problem lies with the community. They're lazy and will always take the path of least resistance, including changing realms to be on the stronger side. If you can flip the keeps, they'll do so. GW2's recent example shows this. 

My only hope is with the subset of people within the community of each game that I normally gravitate towards. That's the older MMORPG crowd that's been around well before WoW came out and have a different perspective on gaming than the mainstream audience.

Of course, that's all assuming ESO will be a good game. I personally don't plan on buying it, since it bastardized the TES name.

4) There should be aleast a slight advantage to defending a keep. GW2 is a prime example of how not to do things. It's is easier to AE from outside a keep than from inside due to line of sight issues and people can be pulled down from walls but not up. People stopped defending because it puts you at great disadvantage in that game.

The biggest thing for me will be stealth and run speed. There need to be sufficient counters for these. Being able to choose their fights and flee whenever you want makes for great imbalance. Also it makes people flock to a class that has this advantage. These things tend not to get fixed either because although 1/2 your players are trying to tell you it's imbalanced , the other 1/2 are playing these classes and dont want to lose there advantage , so they tell you everything is fine.

DaoC probably had the best balance for this and still I wouldn't say it was very good, stealth and run speed characters were still the most popular. I'd rather games just didn't have these 2 things.

Could we add please:

6. Strategy

I loved DaoC and had high hopes for WAR (both games with a mix of PvE and a hefty portion of RvR), but what most annoyed me was the lack of gameplay requiring something like "longer term strategy". First of all, the game did not require the players to think about meaningful deployment of their troops, you portalled from map to map if there was a hot spot, back and forth, rinse repeat and it gets boring very quickly. I would wish for a system where a realm could deploy their troops in strategic ways, i.e. getting a zerg to a certain spot in the battlefield, moving with their Sieg to an objective, having a bunch of stealthers attacking an important target and if the other realms do not foresee this move and move relevant units against it, then tough luck and good on you for the realm that thinks strategically. So a gamemechanic that prevents players portalling all over the battlefields in a flash and slows down movement of units would be my first request.

Also, what got boring in WAR extremely quickly was when the big price of capturing the enemy capital was made completely trivial by removing the forward Fortresses. Hey it even came to the point that both realms took turns to capture the other city once, twice, even thrice a day..yawn. So my second request would be to have a big price as the target of RvR, such as becoming Emperor, capturing the capital , but that this would only be achieveable after continued excelence in strategic planning on the side of the winning realm over several days or weeks even.

..and yes, geez DF  !!

3 Factions largely prevents keep trading since if 2 are swapping the 3rd will take eveything