The "Casual PvP Problem" (For Tomes and Exp) and Possible Fixes

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Originally Posted by weighty

So your happy to lose just to receive a few eso tomes rather then working towards your mounts, more wolf marks and more exp for coming first? At least people would strive to get first if they made the tomes only for first place.

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Well as myself as casual im not happy with any loose at all, but eso reward compensate it, and have no hard feelings.
I dont care about mount, marks or exp, though if got them by just accumulation is fine.
So no eso for just participation will mean i will no participate at all and same if the eso goes down and becomes worst than running dungs for same time.

Im ok just participating and following directions given, though if direction is going into a suicide mission, go ahead and ill watch your back.

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Originally Posted by Zorlinta

Well without a good explain, a good plan, and good leaders we casual players are just cannon fodder.

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This is true, but it's the hesitation that kills people.

The problem is that there really is only TWO strategies to this game mode. Cap nodes and defend, or full assault. The thing is, most PvP'ers go for the option that is more obvious. They go for the closest node, cap it, and try to dig in. The problem with this is that there is not a single character class in this game that is not built for some variety of assault. You can't form a shield wall. You can't erect barriers or defenses (ground aoes are pitiful for those of you thinking that's a defense). There's no real way to actually "dig in." The only strength a team has is in numbers and concentrated efforts. When people realize that, it's pretty easy to see that you're only real option is to attack.Even defense strategies require an attack at some point, in order to capture nodes (unless you are totally blessed by RnGsus and just get them without any fighting).

The problem is that people chicken out and fall back on camping the nodes because it's "safe." They don't realize that it's only safe until you get attacked and find out you have no real means of holding back the attackers. Worse yet, people are constantly torn between what they should do. You get the aggressive people wanting to attack. You get the cowards wanting to sit back and avoid fighting at all costs. and then you get the people caught in the middle unsure of where to go or what to do. This leads to divided forces, and the strays get picked off when they don't have the full force of their team behind them.

It happens a lot. You're not alone in this. It's not just a "casual" pvp'ers problem. It's a problem born of bad communication and people not really getting how this game mode should be played. Experienced PvP'ers can usually direct their team in a smart way, and more skilled players make the fighting go easier, but, as it is now, the experienced pvp'ers are dramatically outnumbered by the casual players who only yell one thing in the chat box: "Defend!" As if that word will somehow make defense more possible when you have your players scattered around the map and unsure of where to go or what to do.

For your controller, try the circle jerk method. I do it all the time and it works fine. Some tips are, try to keep the target you want to hit in the centre of your screen. Adjust camera as necessary, and learn to be quick with your fingers. Circle, X circle, X, find your target and pounce. It takes some practice, but you can get pretty quick at it. The only time this method doesn't work, and I'd recommend trying to find a way to work your sofa for a keyboard and mouse, is if you're healing. You can't really circle jerk your target marker to your own team mates. =/

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Originally Posted by Februs

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The worst anyone can do is to performed halfassed attacks. Either be full in or don't attack at all. The only reason halfassed attacks works sometimes is because the defending team are either total noobs or chicken out. At times I tend to trust people to be all in, just to discover 5 seconds later half the team have chickened out.

There are also times it is stupid to attack. For example: Your team grabs 3 nodes close to each other, and there is a node far off. Attacking now would be stupid. But some people do it anyway, while your team gets sandwiched by the 2 other GCs. In this case it may actually be wise to give one up, depending on the sandwich situation. Hell, you might even want to just defend the center one if both teams goes full out on the edges.

Yeah, less PvE rewards; fewer casual PvPers. I don't know how healthy it would be to remove it though in its current state.

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Originally Posted by Februs

There' s a limited amount of eso you can even get, and weekly cap is easily reached just by running your day to day roulette's... WHY THE HECK SHOULD PVP'ER SYMPATHIZE WITH YOUR LAZINESS?!

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I feel ya but there are peoples that focus heavily on both PvE and PvP, im one of them and tomes from pvp is godsend as i really REALLY dont what to run roulettes because there is high propability of getting shit group. Instead SE should have made it that winning gives you 20 2nd place gives 10 and 3rd place gives 5, that way you still get something while encouraging to go for a win if you want to cap tomes faster.

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Originally Posted by Zorlinta

Well without a good explain, a good plan, and good leaders we casual players are just cannon fodder.

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Casual or not it should only take match or two to understand how seal rock works, you can easily impliment basic irl war startegy in there like flanking low defece targets(tomeliths)or take notes from MOBA/RTS/FPS games and apply them in here. Like ignoring tome that has less than 20% left(if its close and theres no defece, then ofc you go and cap it even if you only get few ticks), pre-scouting new spawns so you can insta cap them when they spawn. I always get mad when peeps starts to whine that we lose because there is no leader, you dont need a leader just use commonsense and minimap thats all you really need in here.

PS: Sometimes these so called "leaders" just plain suck and dont even know how seize is supposed to be played(seize is pretty much adapting a changing situations on the fly, thanks to tome spawn RNG)or their "commads" are announced waaaayyyy too late. Sure there are good leaders but its still best to know everything by yourself so you dont need to be babysitted.

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Originally Posted by Synestra

Casual or not it should only take match or two to understand how seal rock works, you can easily impliment basic irl war startegy in there like flanking low defece targets(tomeliths)or take notes from MOBA/RTS/FPS games and apply them in here.

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Not true, for me took me like 5 match to understand the mechanics and how those nodes appear, also never been really interested in other pvp games.

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Originally Posted by Synestra

just use commonsense and minimap thats all you really need in here.

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Common sense tells me not move and run away/hide from battle to stay alive.

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Originally Posted by Synestra

Still best to know everything by yourself so you dont need to be babysitted.

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The only thing in wich i agree with you.

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Originally Posted by weighty

So your happy to lose just to receive a few eso tomes rather then working towards your mounts, more wolf marks and more exp for coming first? At least people would strive to get first if they made the tomes only for first place. Seriously I won't be surprised if SE changes the ADS mount from 200 wins to 200 loses! Seems to be what they do for pve players so they can feel like special snow flakes

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Speak for yourself; I have my mounts a la running Frontlines (Slaughter)(Secure) and still enjoyed getting my tomes outside boring Ex roulette. PvP allowed me to gear for FCoB. I don't enjoy losing like i don't enjoy getting words put in my mouth per se ^^, but i'd seriously offing hate it if the loss cost me my tomes also.

Adders on Behemoth (Primal) are doing pretty well at least when I am playing. There is a lot of teaming up with Mael and Flames trying to jack us...LOL.
Loving PvP and can't wait to get in tonight and Fell Cleave someone's as$.

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Originally Posted by Zorlinta

also never been really interested in other pvp games.

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Well this explains alot then, if you havent done any pvp in any game then its not suprise and that is totally understandable. All you need is practice when it comes to pvp in general so you understand how it works, and this is what i meant by having a common sense. Also there is no need to be afraid to die in pvp, it happens for multiple reasons now and then and no matter how good you are you cannot solo whole alliance without support. Just play smart and try to avoid death as much as possible while still playing the mode as it is supposed to be played(there are times when its best just to defend and times when you and your allies need to push hard on objective even if it ends full team/alliance wipe, atleast you tried and that is what matters most).

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Originally Posted by Guesswhat

The worst anyone can do is to performed halfassed attacks. Either be full in or don't attack at all. The only reason halfassed attacks works sometimes is because the defending team are either total noobs or chicken out. At times I tend to trust people to be all in, just to discover 5 seconds later half the team have chickened out.

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I know exactly what you mean. I find it's particularly troublesome with the day crowd. A few people start to trickle in for an attack, get to the edge of the node, and then poof, everyone is gone. They all bailed out and left the few brave souls to try and fend off a squad of angry enemies. It's infuriating.

As for defending, the only time I usually recommend defense is if A) the enemy is trickling in (chickens or non-committal), or B) they aren't coming at all, because they are too focused on the other GC to pay attention to you. Otherwise, I don't usually find defense preferable to offense, even when defending. Take your example. If you have 2-3 nodes, it is definitely not wise to charge out for a fourth (unless doing the Death Train strat, but that's another story.) and defending 3 is certainly hard. It spreads you too thin. Abandon one. I agree. However, even across 2, your defense is still thin, especially if the enemy throws their entire GC at you. 8-16 people cannot defend against 24, unless those 24 really suck. The better plan is to consolidate your ENTIRE team into a spear and cut through the enemy that attacks you first, or has the most points to steal. Go full offense on that team, even at the expense of defending your second node. Sure, the other GC might back cap it on you, but who cares? You will have more than made up the point difference on whatever they got off of your node by carving it out of the bodies of your attackers. Also, by riding out and completely eliminating one force of attackers as quickly as possible, you just opened up a escape route and gave yourself time; so, if the 3rd GC is really greedy and comes for your last node, you can either fight them off or bail out without getting hit in the rear.

Fighting on 2 fronts is almost never a good idea. The main difference between defending the two nodes (letting the enemy come to you and hit you until you either fend them off or the node is dry) vs attacking your attackers (riding out and crushing one group that threatens your node) is that one stands to gain you points, while the other potentially bleeds them. Defense seems like the plan that would save you points, but, if you really pay attention to the scoreboard, your gains off of the nodes you have are being dramatically reduced because you're losing points for every team mate that stand and dies trying to keep the node. The longer the assault, the more points you stand to lose. Offense gains you points by murdering your attackers. You willfully give up nodes, but you gain the difference by stealing the points from another GC.

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Originally Posted by Synestra

I feel ya but there are peoples that focus heavily on both PvE and PvP, im one of them and tomes from pvp is godsend as i really REALLY dont what to run roulettes because there is high propability of getting shit group. Instead SE should have made it that winning gives you 20 2nd place gives 10 and 3rd place gives 5, that way you still get something while encouraging to go for a win if you want to cap tomes faster.

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I get where you're coming from, but I don't agree. I do a lot of PvE. I'd say that I do more PvE than PvP. I'm the resident tank of my FC. So I am called upon by anyone and everyone to run just about everything, and I don't find splitting my attention has been a problem. I'm at rank 40 now, capping my tomes, and getting all my alex gear and my 3 different Hive weapons. It's not an issue to split my time.

Also, I'm sorry, but not wanting to run PvE because you might get a crappy group is no different than running PvP. You might get a crappy group. It happens. This is a social game. Sometimes you get a good group. Sometimes you get a crap one. Not wanting to do roulette's because of the odds of getting some crummy players is the same as saying you pretty much don't want to play the game at all. Even if you have a phobia of running with randoms, or something, you always have the option of running with a pre-made. Get your FC in on it. Between that and weekly Alexander loot runs, your gonna cap your Eso's in no time. The only reason to want to get them out of PvP is to cap them faster... which is just laziness. There's really no gentle way of putting it. PvP Tome bonuses are just a way for PvE'ers to get rewards quickly and with no effort, and that is still WILDLY unfair to PvP'ers who have to grind out hours upon hours of content just to get the meager rewards they're offered.

I do admit that ex roulette is getting stale. I, personally, am getting very tired of Nevereap, but that's still no reason to demand eso's from pvp. For one, Ex roll gets updated every major patch. PvP gets updated... almost never. It think PvE'ers have the advantage in terms of not getting bored with content, because they are given new content ALL THE TIME. PvP'ers are starved of new content, by comparison.

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Originally Posted by Februs

Get your FC in on it.

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Well my FC is extremely small, and by small i mean besides raid nights im usually onlyone online. But anyway, even after hitting r50 and capping a tomes for the week i still que alot in pvp because i enjoy it. When i go there for tomes after reset it doesnt mean i just go afk there(unless you get seize slaughter)i always aim for the win, and win alone as i dont care about 3rd and 2nd place. I could totally live without FL giving tomes but luckily it does give them atm, all it needs is balance like i mentioned before to encourage winning instead /care.

PvP queuing time has been improved a lot with the introduction of tomes which is the fix that we have been waiting for in a long time. However, this also introduced another problem where players who are only concerned about tomes ruining the game by not performing according to objectives. The root to this issue is the fact that you aren't rewarded for good plays neither penalized for bad plays and thus players who are after tomes will usually try to satisfy their own glory by getting greedy and going solo to obtain kills.

Similar to what many people suggested in this thread, I believe it is better to link rewards on performance. The current tomes reward can be the basic reward that you get whether you win or lose and then additional rewards are added according to performance. For instance, every 20k damage or 100k heals you do will reward you additional 5 tomes where every 3 deaths will remove one reward. Also getting 1st place will reward you 5 more tomes.

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Originally Posted by Februs

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Agreed, focus on 1 point is the best strat when "defending" as you said (your idea of defending is pretty much the same as mine). But then there is the problem with people disagreeing, people not listening etc. In meta I 100% agree, but achieving meta is hard with this "casual" problem. If you know your team is not 100% with you, you may want to use alt strats. AKA def strats if you will. Worst thing is to spread out on the map, some attacking north, some attacking west, some defending east etc. When I see this kinda behavior I quickly lose interest to do anything. Last game we got something like 200 pts in total. The exact thing I mentioned above happened. I lost interest as I saw the team obviously were too unorganized.

I think healers deserve something for the work that they do, definitely. At least a reward title or something, they're saving our asses out there haha. Also it's kinda lame someone can be destroying a player and someone comes along and casts a ruin and gets the kill shot and credit. Lazy dev work? As for the GC topic, I'm with adders and 100 wins from about 500 matches, its lightning fast queue though :D

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Originally Posted by Synestra

i always aim for the win, and win alone as i dont care about 3rd and 2nd place. I could totally live without FL giving tomes but luckily it does give them atm, all it needs is balance like i mentioned before to encourage winning instead /care.

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Totally agree. I do not understand the players who go in aiming for 2nd (and yes, I've had players actively encourage the team to go for second place. It was baffling). I aim for the win.

I would be able to live with reduced tomes for failure. It would be a decent compromise, and I'm pretty sure it would yield the exact same effect as completely eliminating tomes entirely. If casual players saw that they were not going to be able to cap their tomes simply by queing for Seize and then sitting around and picking their noses during the match, only scoring a measly 5 tomes for a 3rd place loss for example, I'm pretty sure that those players would simply get pissed off that they can't be lazy anymore and go back to PvE. So This is a solution that I would be willing to see put into effect.

Also, any little adjustments that improve the competitive aspects of the game are welcome. SE doesn't seem to get (made obvious by their ranking system and almost useless PvP customization options) that PvP is a game mode that is for competition, and competitively minded players. Give them a reason to continue competing and those competitions will heat up. It in our nature to work harder when we have something to work for. It's something that every PvP oriented game I've played has utilized to get the players to get into it, but SE just doesn't seem to get it.

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Originally Posted by Guesswhat

I lost interest as I saw the team obviously were too unorganized.

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I know what you mean. It's gets really deflating to see that your team is utterly useless, completely disorganized, and has almost no chance of winning. I find this is the case, on my server, with the day crowd. I don't put in nearly as much effort at winning during the day, because I know the teams are heavily populated with casual players that don't care, don't follow instructions, and commit fatal errors like spreading out or losing sight of the objectives. Trying to get them to organize or focus is something of a nightmare too. It's like trying to control a class of pre-schoolers. So, during the day, I usually just go with the flow or handle my PvE jobs and wait for the night crowd, who I know will at least be a bit more competitive.

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Originally Posted by Februs

Totally agree. I do not understand the players who go in aiming for 2nd (and yes, I've had players actively encourage the team to go for second place. It was baffling). I aim for the win.

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If second place counted for ADS mount, I wouldn't mind it too much. Honestly, the wolf mark and PvP rewards for placing aren't too that far apart to matter, but everything related to achievements requires first place. Which is an utter pain for 3-way objective fights, especially for large scale ones like 24v24v24.

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Originally Posted by AbandonHopeTD

I think healers deserve something for the work that they do, definitely. At least a reward title or something, they're saving our asses out there haha. Also it's kinda lame someone can be destroying a player and someone comes along and casts a ruin and gets the kill shot and credit. Lazy dev work? As for the GC topic, I'm with adders and 100 wins from about 500 matches, its lightning fast queue though :D

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Healers ABSOLUTELY need more incentives to play PvP. There's a achievement for killing. Why is there no achievement for healing?? They need some special rewards for healers to get them in the game, because it is supremely difficult to win a match when you have no healers in your group. It's a huge handicap. You can't cut loose in combat. You're constantly ducking out of battle to avoid dying and bleeding points, and you can't sustain any long assaults or defense when you have no healers to supply you with the backbone needed for doing so. Defense, in particular, is just a giant bleed of points without healers. SE needs to put something in the game to encourage some healer que's.

Kill sniping is a different issue. It sucks when it happens to you, obviously, but I kind of see the need for it. For one, it encourages the entire team to work together to score a kill. If the kill were based on who dealt the most dmg, for example, players might try to more actively solo dps targets to get the kill credit and work up to a battle high. That would be chaos, and almost nothing would die. This game mode relies upon focusing down targets to be an effective team. I'm willing to keep it the way it is because it encourages this kind of behavior... besides, sniping is pretty much the only reason tanks and healers get kills in the first place. Given that tanks and healers are the snares that allow targets to stand still long enough to get ganked (Being bait targets that use sleeps, binds and stuns) I feel like it's fair that they also have at least a small chance in scoring the final hit.