I love to fight against other Players but i really hate the way almost all open world PvP ends up in big zergfests, circling through all the points/keeps.

While there is and always will be a "strength in numbers", i see that most RvR/AvA rulesets just encurage the "mindless" zerg.
As long as just running/staying with the zerg gives the best reward (capture exp/lootbags/realmpoints) for minimal risk, people will stay with the zerg.
As long as defending and fighting itself gives less rewards then capturing points, enemy-zergs will sometimes be evaded for fighting is "wasted" time, better used to take over undefended keeps/points.

ESO will need a reward-system that actually encurages fighting/defending and discurages taking over undefended keeps with large amounts of players.
When running with the "mindless zerg" gives better rewards then taking risks, players will stick to that behavior.

The big problem i see is encouraging massive warfare (large scale battles) while discouraging the "mindless" zerg circling through keeps at the same time

While in most RvR-Rulessets there are a lot of loopholes and problems, the biggest 2 encouraging "mindless" zergs are the following:

1. best rewards for "capturing"
2. almost no rewards for "defending"

We need systems to balance risk/reward a lot better, so capturing an undefended keep with 200+ Players gives minimal rewards, for there was minimal risk!!

Encouraging defending Keeps/Points is a tough one as long as capturing brings good rewards.
Raising a call to arms for defense are ignored most of the time, for running the the zerg and RE-TAKING the keep 5 minutes later gives better reward with no risk at all!! So why wasting time with defense?

Any Ideas to help making AvA in ESO long term fun with good and large scale battles without ending up in 3 zergs running in circles taking keep after keep without actually "fighting" each other?

Some kind of defense bonus is very necessary indeed.

Perhaps the longer you hold certain places, they start to reward your faction more and more over time (to a point). Haven't heard any details on this.

The number of keeps and/or capturables held by a faction will likely cumulate toward some kind of overall faction bonus. If they didn't occur right away and you had to hold the capturable for a certain amount of time before getting the full benefit, perhaps that would encourage the defense. Also, it wouldn't be hard to reward players with defense bonuses for killing enemies while in the area of their own captured point, kinda like Battlefield.

This. Rewards for kills (or 'assists') in the process of capturing or defending, and reward-over-time for *holding* the place over time. Nothing for just taking the fort, other than it's now in your possession and contributing cumulative bonuses over time to your side.

I don't know if this'll stop the zerging itself, but it should at least deter the whole "keep-trading ftw" approach.

A later addition to WAR online was defensive ticks, every few mins you got RP (realm points - akin to Alliance points) depending on the amount of people attacking the keep you were in.

Turned out to be a very effective method of getting people to stand in the keeps being attacked

Rewards for taking over Keeps/Points should be more balanced in terms of personal reward (exp, loot) vs. faction reward (strategic things like travel points, faction-points, faction ressources).
As long as taking points gains personal reward and defending points only gains faction reward, people will attack way more then defend.
The average player does not care for faction-pride and faction-reward, he cares about advancing his character first! And actually there is nothing wrong with that, its natural....

Maybe a time-based solution is a first step in solving the problem.
How about giving personal rewards not instantly, but timer based?
So taking over the Keep gives you no/minimal exp/loot, but STILL owning the keep after 1 hour gives you greater exp/loot? STILL owning the keep after 6/12/24 hours gives you even bigger exp/loot!!
Maybe a system like that would result in a greater response to defensive calls to arms

Plus this would stop zergs from "mindlessly" circling thouth the map for simply taking points (and loosing them 20 minutes later to the enemy zerg) gives no personal reward!
Strategic zergs will still be effective for the faction-rewards can still be instant and strategic quick capturing of important keeps will help your faction in setting up quicktravel points etc..... just no instant personal reward to discourage "mindless" zergs.

The problem is see here is that defending brings "faction-reward" but attacking brings "personal-reward" (see my post above) and most players actually don t care about faction reward while they are still developing their char and personal reward is much more valuable to them.

I think the best way to handle this is more bonuses for keeping multiple keeps, with the longer you hold you gain bonuses and when it is maxed there is a random chance to add double bonuses such as double buffs etc for a short period of time and penalties for losing keeps in your faction area.

holding multiple keeps assumes you have more than 1 keep. You cannot create a system which would not equally benefit an underdog. Lets say you are on the losing realm and have 2 keeps. gl defending them both to earn the increased rewards

But does the average player in the zerg care about the bonusses and buffs?
Why stop running with the zerg and defend if you can run with the zerg and retake the lost keep in 30 minutes after you took the keep you are attacking 200 vs 1 right now? Loose 2 times capturing rewards for faction buffs noone really cares about?
I don t think faction rewards can solve anything here.....

The benefit of getting a keep should come from holding it rather than capturing it. Perhaps you can gather special resources from the mine nearby but only when you hold the keep. That sort of stuff. Said mine would also be the reason to capture the keep in the first place. Of course there needs to be stuff you want at the enemy keeps so you don't just sit on the keeps you have and never attack.

Wintergrasp had a bonus like this, I doubt it will be anything but dead though.

With the megaserver involved, i dont think we will need to worry about being unbalanced on each side. tbh

from my understanding the megaserver wont really help as you are most likely to being repeatedly placed in the same 2000 man campaign

1)Really reallylarge maps that are N O T quickly/easily traversed is critical. This makes zerging counter productive since you leave so much of the fighting territory undefended when you concentrate your forces
2)Making keeps more easily defended. Then when a zerg forms...the zegs concentration of players in one place and not able to get back to easily defend will reduce the inducement to zerg.
3) choke points that allow a smaller force to delay movement of an enemy zerg from one place to another
4)countless smaller objective that will be an indicement for smaller groups to form and try to thake them
5)Making the reward for holding or not holding keeps truely impactful on the whole alliance
6) providing a news system so even in pve arreas you can hear how the war is going...or you are about to look key real estate.
7)providing special rewards for fighting in AVA
8)providing some key crafting resources in the AVA zone
9) having a website recognition page which shows the contribution of outstanding players and guilds to the war effort
10) having great pve quests in the war zone
11) having great war zone communications so members in the war zone can ask for help...report enemy action etc
12) have rewards given to players(lets call them alliance points) that players can earn and spend to enhance their character.These can only be earned by successfully fightingoffensively..or defensively
13) guild banners appear on objectives taken be guilds
14)Great guild symbols that can be worn on a cape to foster guild identity

To be honest, I'm absolutely no fan of too many rewards. But I think its the only option to bait them for defending.
1. Rewards for defense should be higher than or equal to capturing a tower/base/camp/mine/whatever.
2. Rewards for killing a mass of players (Remember: Its still PvP-content) while being completely outnumbered should be rewarded better than outnumbering enemies. It encourages the underdog on the battlefield too.

Zergs get organized sometimes. Like in GuildWars 2, where it is just possible by having a commander. Its a cool thing but it requires coordination. At least it looks cool and gives kinda faction pride. I'm not a huge fan of mindless zerging in GuildWars 2 because every skill is just based on AoE effect. Even autoattack.

A lot of TESOs skills should be singletarget-based instead of AoE-based. At least singletarget skills should be more useful.

A way to combat the zergs is to place holds around the main keeps which needs to be captured or defended, this will force players to spread out and we will have more group vs group then mass zerg vs mass zerg.

Main issue with this idea is in most games, players are not being rewarded for defending or attack the little holds around the big keeps, because of this most of the time they will join the main zerg, instead of defending the little holds.

I think the reward for killing while defending needs to be bigger than the reward for killing while attacking. That way, you can't just hit and run on a keep for easy points, you'll have to actually work together to take the keep if you want the big points while on the offensive. If you're worried about smaller groups and single players not having an offensive role in PvP, don't worry, they can always focus on smaller targets like farms, caravans, and set up ambushes on transiting players.

I am not a fan at all of large scale pvp. Having just played WvW in GW2 a few hours ago, I was part of a 20+ man group attacking a 'gate' to get into a castle. Sorry but that isn't 'epic', its boring. The enemy could see this via the map and had a 40-50+ zerg incoming. Sure enough they steamrolled us, I just happened to be tab targeted and killed within about 1 maybe 2 seconds. Again, thats not 'epic', its not 'strategic', its boring. Zenimax Online go on and on about having 200 players on screen, pfft. Give me 1v1, 2v2, 5v5, 10v10 or 20v20 smaller scale pvp fights any day of the week. I 'hate' zerg MMO combat, it just doesn't work and I'd be very surprised if their AvAvA combat is any different.