Brian Wheeler, the lead PvP (player vs. player) designer for the upcoming MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online, participated in a lengthy Q&A session with fans of the game a couple of days back. Fielding questions from the forum denizens of the ElitistJerks forum, Wheeler talked about collision detection, PvP skill, faction capping and balancing, and addressed a host of other PvP-oriented issues.
Though not the first of its kind (Dark Age of Camelot did it first), The Elder Scrolls Online is set to feature three-sided player vs. player gameplay with support for hundreds of players on screen at once in an open world fight for the dominion of Cyrodiil. On the field, players can besiege and take control of massive strongholds, using siege weapons to destroy fortress walls and smash through fortified gates.
Here’s what Wheeler had to say:
Collision Detection
Having worked on games with player collision in PVP before, we found that it was far more valuable to offer players larger battles with better server and client performance than smaller battles with player collision due to the hit servers and clients take when implementing such a feature. That’s not to say we didn’t consider it at one time and while it is always interesting to put collision in a PVP game, when you’re dealing with masses of players it becomes more of a frustration point than a tactical advantage (speaking from personal experience trying to setup a shield wall behind a Keep door then watching players still find ways through it).
PvP Skill
Skill is a tricky thing to measure as when most people talk about skill in Elder Scrolls it's referring to headshots with a bow, blocking, power attacks or dodging at the right time. In Elder Scrolls Online we have many opportunities for players to show their skill as we also have blocking, roll dodging, and sneaking up on enemy players without getting detected. There are opportunities to block power attacks which knock your enemy off balance, opening them up for a power attack of your own! That being said we do have to account for network latency so while it's not pinpoint, there is some wiggle room for dodging that we've found to work quite nice in our Cyrodiil battles!
Alliances Communication
Players from each Alliance within Cyrodiil can still use emotes and see the other players doing them for sure. The comprehension of public messages however between players will be blocked between Alliances (it just gets flat out suppressed and enemy Alliances don't see public messages or zone chat from the enemy).
Organized Teams vs Zerg, Guild Emblems, and Guild PvP
We have had several Beta's so far with large PVP oriented guilds getting invited and they've worked out great. Hang in there for the invites as they'll come in time, but also more to the question about small groups vs. large groups. We've been working diligently to find those sweet spot ratios and abilities to make it so small groups (4 players or so) can have the opportunity to take out larger groups (8-12 or more depending on the group make up) but it is a tough balance point to strike. I can say from roaming around in small groups during our internal tests and Betas, that 2-4 player well coordinated groups have picked apart larger groups of players but then I've also been steamrolled in the exact same situation so it's a matter of who you're up against at the time and the players on the other side of the internet that determines a battle victor!
Cyrodiil Geography
Cyrodiil in our timeline will look very familiar to Oblivion, however much more spread out. To the question of Jungles in Cyrodiil and the question of Tiber Septim changing the climate, we have a book in the game for you to find for more details about that hiding in Cyrodiil itself 😉
Faction Capping and Balancing
Currently we have a cap per Alliance within Cyrodiil Campaigns but it does not dynamically scale. We are aware of population and scoring imbalances and currently we offer a scoring imbalance benefit to the two "underdog" Alliances. Simply put, if one Alliance has more Campaign points than the other two Alliances combined, the lower scoring Alliances get bonuses to their score against the higher scoring Alliance. If Daggerfall and Aldmeri were losing to Ebonheart for example, both Daggerfall and Aldmeri will get more points when they capture keeps, resources and Elder Scrolls native to Ebonheart, but also more points for holding their natively owned keeps.
PvP Ranking and Display
Every other Alliance War Rank will confer a new rank Symbol to the player target frame to indicate what Rank that player is. The player him or herself will not visually be different or have an extended title attached to their nameplate other than the symbol. There also are some very cool looking light, medium and heavy armor sets available in Cyrodiil that have an appearance that should be very familiar to Elder Scrolls players.
Emperor Status and Skills
The system itself makes it quite difficult to "Trade" Emperorship as the only way to gain Emperorship is to capture all 6 keeps surrounding Imperial City and the only way to lose it, is to have all 6 of those keeps lost to the enemy. To swap down ownership of the Emperor status in the example noted, you would need a guild willing to participate on an enemy alliance, and also keep the third Alliance from interfering. In our tests internally and in Betas, we've seen once an Alliance gets an Emperor, they really….really don't want to let go of it.
Elder Scrolls can only exist in Cyrodiil "proper" so if you tried to exit the area by going into a Cave or leaving the zone, the scroll would drop. In the pure sense of "sneaking", you can't while carrying a scroll nor mount. Also note that scroll positions are always shown on the Cyrodiil map so as you move carrying the scroll, so does the scroll position on the map.
Some Emperor and Alliance War abilities are useful in standard zones as well as Cyrodiil. Some are very specialized however which prevent Siege damage so obviously, that one isn't useful where Siege isn't being used.
When players first enter Cyrodiil in our Beta's, safety in numbers is the way they go…to start. After a few nights, their tactics evolve and they learn that smaller groups are indeed quite effective in the war not only tactically, but also for fighting other players in the open field. This was mentioned in another question earlier and while small groups can take on larger groups, finding that balance point is something we've been working on for quite some time to give starting players and veteran players they have the option to play how they want to at any given time and have fun. We've seen these smaller groups come out after players get their feet wet and familiar with the game and tactics, and I'm happy to report that I've seen a group of 6-8 players hold off waves of 40 or more at upper levels of Keeps which is exactly what they were designed to do. Eventually they lost, but it proved that small groups can win if coordinated…it just takes a bit of time to develop those tactics.
PvP Campaigns
During Beta we have been using a 48 hour Campaign ruleset but standard Campaigns will last 3 months. We have the ability to make scoring changes and duration changes depending on player needs and we'll analyze how scoring goes to determine if we need alternate rulesets with different duration, scoring, but also if we need to add player level restricted Campaigns or not. There really is a great deal of flexibility with the Campaign system, and we will be paying close attention to what players ask for to determine which Campaign rules we add.
Guild Ownership
Guilds can claim 1 keep, farm, lumbermill, or mine at a time (only 1…not 1 of each). Claiming is simply done by talking with the Quartermaster at those locations
Framerate and Accessible Areas
Framerate is always a top concern and we are always (that includes as I write this) optimizing the game not only on your local installation but also on the servers you connect to. Besides that, there are many graphical options which can be adjusted to help get faster graphical performance.
Passive Abilities
Passives you purchase with skill points are always active regardless of where you are or what you have equipped unless they are armor or weapon specific passives. In that case, they are only active when you have that armor or weapon equipped.
PvP Builds and Gear
You can be effective with your weapons and armor and skills gained from anywhere in the world. I personally play with gear I've earned from Cyrodiil, quests and crafting!
PvP Realms
PVP in Elder Scrolls Online is focused purely against the Enemy Alliances within Cyrodiil.
PvP Gear
Weapons, Armor and Jewelry attained from dungeons, questing, crafting and PVP will be useful in Cyrodiil to you in combat. There will be sets available in PVP that aren't available elsewhere with a unique look to them and set bonuses, but they are not required to "win" in combat.
Emperor's Armor, Siege Equipment, and PvE in Cyrodiil
More Siege equipment will depend greatly on what is requested and seen as necessary through out the lifetime of Elder Scrolls Online and Cyrodiil. I always get asked about certain types of weapons and we will see what can be added in time. For now the standard weaponry and ammunition types within those weapons offer more than enough destruction and chaos.
While there are no direct influences on the war in Cyrodiil via doing quests in Bruma, Cheydinhal, Chorrol, Cropsford, Vlastarus and the caves, there are tons of weapons, armor and gold to be found by aiding the citizens of Cyrodiil. This gold and armor in return benefits your Alliance on a larger scale as you can buy weaponry to burn down the enemy or repair your own structures.
Cyrodiil is not simply about fighting over Keeps and killing the enemy. It's an economic war as well. When a wall is destroyed, it has to be rebuilt, and rebuilding it costs gold and time. Your hard earned gold and efforts come into play not only keeping your lands safe and establishing beach-heads in enemy territory, but also hitting the enemy in the wallet! Let's say you're a small group and not enough to take a keep over…you can setup some weapons and destroy wall sections that the enemy has to rebuild and spend gold or alliance points to do so!
Guild Stores and Perks
Guild stores in Keeps (and resources) are available when a guild claims a keep or resource (farm, lumbermill, mine). The Quartermaster will then show the Guild Store to anyone that interacts with him/her and players can purchase whatever the guild that owns the claim has posted in their Guild Store.
PvP Leaderboards
Leaderboards are available in the game itself which is quite awesome! These leaderboards update roughly every 10 minutes or so and can be filtered by specific Class, Alliance and Overall leaders within a Campaign.
Zerging and Queues
While the zerg is a legitimate tactic I've seen smaller groups hold off larger groups and win. These are tactics which develop over time and while I will say that while the zerg has it's place in the hallows of hatred for many players, the zerg is a safe haven for others that are not so adept at guerrilla warfare. This is why we love and hate it I believe. Some nights I like solo stealthing, other nights small group fighting, and then there really are nights when I just want to mindless zerg roam. We encourage all game play styles in Cyrodiil and the area is built to develop those tactics.
In our Betas where Cyrodiil has been available, it took about 30-36 hours for players to develop those higher level fighting tactics such as rooftop keep defense, tower defense, and open field battles ripping apart larger groups. That's not to say that 4 players can destroy a group of 24, but lower that number and add coordination vs. disorganization, and the chances of that do go up.
We intend to have many Campaigns available but not so many that population is sparse. Our population reporting is very accurate and we'll be able to tell if we need more or less campaigns available to players not only depending on concurrency of players online, but also over time. To give as much balance as we can per side we do have population caps per Alliance within Cyrodiil, but also offer Campaign Scoring differential bonuses which I noted in a post prior in these threads
Home Campaigns and Switching
We are still nailing down exactly how many Campaigns we will launch with, but you will be able to Switch your assigned campaign and Guest campaign status. Note that switching your Home Campaign will cost you Alliance Points to do so after your first freeby switch we give all players. Also note you can join other players in their Campaigns if you're in their group.
Assigned or "Home" Campaigns will determine where you get bonuses from in Cyrodiil.
Combat Style
Combat is very Elder Scrollsey (insert trademark here). It's mouse driven (on the PC/Mac) and you aim a reticule on top of the target you want to hit. Clicking the left mouse button will attack and right click will block. There is no "auto-attack" and combat is very rewarding because of that because it keeps you immersed in the world and actively fighting your target just like Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind and all the Elder Scrolls games.
Map Size
Cyrodiil is very very large! On foot it would take you roughly 20-30 minutes to cross it from north to south.
Guild vs Guild War
On message boards and outside of the game in a non-systematical white glove slap across the face way….sure! There is however no systematic in game method of declaring war against a specific player or guild except for being in the same Campaign.
AOE Effectiveness
I can say that Siege weaponry and the like have been adjusted to help make this a possibility (and in fact was proven as a legitimate tactic at Chalman Keep during Beta), and we are always balancing our abilities across the board to find the right population and skill ratio so small groups and large groups are effective in the open field. As Elder Scrolls Online will receive updates through out it's lifetime, there will be many passes at skills, weapons, armor and abilities that will benefit everyone both small and large, open field or not, in PvE and PVP.
