Thornblade - the most competitive NA campaign?

Poxheart

LonePirate wrote: »

Braidas wrote: »

ep nightcaps map, claims skill

Hmmm... I logged in this morning for mail and AD grabbed a fourth scroll and the final emperor keep. What is this EP nightcapping of which you speak? A typo perhaps?

There is only 1 day left in the campaign. At this point AD could paint the map yellow and EP would still win.

Lord_Draevan

Another victory for Red Team!



CHEESE FOR EVERYONE!

Winnamine

LonePirate wrote: »

Braidas wrote: »

ep nightcaps map, claims skill

Hmmm... I logged in this morning for mail and AD grabbed a fourth scroll and the final emperor keep. What is this EP nightcapping of which you speak? A typo perhaps?

If we're going to have a serious conversation, EP players need to stop claiming they don't nightcap and/or are not over-populated.
You do and you are.
The fact that every now and then another faction does it to you, particularly at the very end of a campaign when everyone is pushing for that last minute emp/reward tier before the leaderboards reset and all their hard work goes poof, does not change the fact that EP nightcaps religiously.

On another note, some of the more serious EP pvpers are rerolling or making AD or DC alts because they want more competitive pvp rather than easy victories.
Most EP won't change factions, leveling alts takes more time and work than a lot of people have or are willing to put into it, and of course, many players and guilds just want to play on the winning side, but maybe enough will to make a difference?

Lord_Draevan

There's no denying we EP nightcap. To do so is like denying the sky is blue...
but there's nothing wrong with nightcaping. Some people are in different time zones or have different schedules here in North America. Midnight in Eastern time is 8pm in Pacific, prime time for some. And that's just in North America, let alone the rest of the world.

Is it frustrating? Yes it is, to log in and see your previous day's work undone is very annoying. I know how it feels, we EP had the exact same thing happen to us on Auriel's Bow back at launch.

I know it's very fashionable to claim it's some big conspiracy, that guilds organise all of this on purpose, to think that hundreds of people modify their entire schedule just to annoy you, but it's most likely not. It's just people playing at different times.

But sure, go ahead and believe it's all a nefarious plot to annoy you.



Whatever makes you feel special and validated.

Roechacca

Just stop ... I'm up to my hip waders in it already .

Columba

Lol. Hilarious that EP is deluded enough to think that they are ever outnumbered on Thorne. Congrats, lag spammers. This win is such an accomplishment!

Winnamine

Lord_Draevan wrote: »

There's no denying we EP nightcap. To do so is like denying the sky is blue...
but there's nothing wrong with nightcaping. Some people are in different time zones or have different schedules here in North America. Midnight in Eastern time is 8pm in Pacific, prime time for some. And that's just in North America, let alone the rest of the world.

Is it frustrating? Yes it is, to log in and see your previous day's work undone is very annoying. I know how it feels, we EP had the exact same thing happen to us on Auriel's Bow back at launch.


Note: this was back when pop lock=600 players.

But that's what happens when people from anywhere in the world can play on a North American or European server.

I know it's very fashionable to claim it's some big conspiracy, that guilds organise all of this on purpose, to think that hundreds of people modify their entire schedule just to annoy you, but it's most likely not. It's just people playing at different times.

That's my view, anyways. Go ahead and believe it's all a nefarious plot to annoy you if it makes you feel special.

I understand why people need to play according to their time zone or schedule.
However, I still have a problem with nightcapping.
First, at least on Thorn, it's not really oceanic players, it's the same players who play during prime time, taking the entire map once the major guilds from the opposing factions have logged off, say around 4-9 am. Now, I wouldn't call that a conspiracy, exactly, but it is something.
Second, regardless of who's doing it, taking an almost completely undefended map every morning isn't pvp. I don't understand how that's even fun, or how the players who do it don't see that they're hurting the campaign.
For players who need to play at that time, there are other options, play on a less populated campaign, there won't be all that many AD or DC there either, but at least you won't be greatly outnumbering them, so maybe you can still have competitive pvp. Or make an alt on a less populated faction, that would work too.
Lastly, it's more than just "frustrating" to log on every night and see yesterday's work completely undone. If EP takes the map every morning, and holds it all day until the other factions get on in the evening and can take things back, how can AD or DC ever win a campaign? We can't. You make too many points holding the map the entire day for us to make it up in the evenings when we're on, even if we could manage to take the map ourselves and hold it throughout the night, still, wouldn't be enough.
Also, I feel your pain with Azura's Star. I'm AD, but I spent the first 90 days on Bloodthorn. It was painful.

Lord_Draevan

Winnamine wrote: »

Second, regardless of who's doing it, taking an almost completely undefended map every morning isn't pvp. I don't understand how that's even fun, or how the players who do it don't see that they're hurting the campaign.

That's why I'm glad my schedule only lets me play on NA prime time: all 3 factions are high pop or pop-locked. Except on weekends, but I tend to PvE until the action picks up. As you say, uncontested maps are no fun.

EDIT: This is apparently an absurd thing to say... guess the lol-ers disagree with uncontested maps being no fun. Shame. :disagree:

Sile

This is like watching the people who talk big about getting Emperor on an empty server.


While it would be nice to see population balanced, there is something fun and enchanting about being the scrappy underdog.

What is depressing is seeing DC vets rerolling other factions because of the high burn-out rate of their comrades.

AFrostWolf

I beg to differ. Non-Vet Blackwater Blade is very competitive.

Xiphyla

Sile wrote: »

This is like watching the people who talk big about getting Emperor on an empty server.


While it would be nice to see population balanced, there is something fun and enchanting about being the scrappy underdog.

What is depressing is seeing DC vets rerolling other factions because of the high burn-out rate of their comrades.

Welcome back. Zyn miss you .

Scamandros

As someone pointed out to me (and I have come to agree with) those who are doing the night-capping tend to be the same few bigger names plus pugs, while I don't remember the last time I saw some other notable EP players push to fare and beyond in such a long time. If they are doing as I believe they are and purposefully drawing a line of where to stop the offensive push for the sake of pvp morale, then they are the unsung heroes of Cyrodil while copping alot of hate in game and on the forums for stuff they aren't really responsible for.

Although they don't aid in pushing us back to our home gates, they do show up to defend their emp keep ring. It sucks, but its a lesser evil. Fare mine to alessia farm is the new Alessia bridge and every push we are convinced will be the one that succeeds. And people still show up every night for it so it can't be that bad.

This campaign was real close until some major Guilds started guesting other servers, without that I think this campaign would still be a close battle. Maybe something happens once us Aussies go to bed, but still before american primetime that I am not aware of. Otherwise this is not comparable to the merciless camping of say Bloodthorn DC that I remember. There are good days and bad, but less bad days this cycle.

GorraShatan

Sypher wrote: »

EP has a bigger/consistent presence on the server compared to the other two alliances.

Can't blame them, it's up to ZOS to facilitate population/scoring to make it even. Not the players responsibility.

Frankly I think it's fine as is. AD player here, and I don't mind having to actually earn a win rather than getting pity points when we have fewer players.

Part of this is that Thornblade wasn't the most competitive NA campaign for the entire 30 days. With PvP spreading around between the campaigns more, each campaign was very competitive for at least part of the last month. Frankly I think that's a great change.

Aoe_Barbecue

Sile wrote: »

This is like watching the people who talk big about getting Emperor on an empty server.

While it would be nice to see population balanced, there is something fun and enchanting about being the scrappy underdog.

What is depressing is seeing DC vets rerolling other factions because of the high burn-out rate of their comrades.

Hory chet! It's been way too long man. We've needed you for so long lol. I'm still here too . I'll solo PvP as the last blue at Ni-Mohk gate if I have to.

RedTalon

AhPook_Is_Here wrote: »

Vorpan wrote: »

I have a feeling that when the game goes B2P new players will ask which alliance is more dominant in PVP, and just go there.

Then you will be lucky as you will have a lot of low hanging fruit to eat. I was hoping they'd mostly go AD. I'm not sure anyone can really say though what will happen.

I think that when this campaign was close it was at its most entertaining. DC could have made a stronger effort, and was actually #1 for a few days this campaign. DC had a good shot at 2nd until a week ago when they threw it away slamming against an EP beyond their reach to give all of their points up to AD for I don't know what, spite? I was saddened to see a whole faction put their self-interest aside for whatever reason that still eludes me.

AD also could have won if they would have kept their initial momentum. They have shown they can put up numbers as large as EPs and even larger on some days when they have tightened their ranks to do it.

I think what it is with EP is we really have taken ownership of Thornblade. The PVPers here don't care about Azura's or any of the buff servers, this is our core focus. When things are quiet on TB we might hop off to another server to say hi, but we don't stay long. I don't feel like AD or DC have taken ownership of Thornblade, their interests lie at their buff servers, and that is fine but it dilutes your population at the defacto "official server of serious business competition".

For me at-least when it became clear we where not going to win and kept getting pressued from both ad and ep, I decided to just focus on ap gains in the end and see what happens next cycle already got me rewards set so don't have to push just farm, and ep has the numbers to farm is what I think some in DC thought.

I personally enjoy killing AD more then EP then again dislike high elves and the cat people, let my rp bleed into my pvp to much

Darklord_Tiberius

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Blud wrote: »

Suru wrote: »

Thorneblade Timeline (this cycle)

1. Begining is competitive to the best of AD, and DC's ability
2. DC lackluster since a relatively core group of DC players getting emperor, farming haderus carebears, and lack of tolerance for Thornblade Lag
3. DC tries their best
4. AD groups follow suit halfway through and get some players well deserved emperorships and to overall have more fun than on thornblade
5. Thornblade still competitive in points between AD and DC
6. AD as a whole doing the best they can to fight EP even tho we cannot match their numbers and maintaining second place

It is competitive, and we can try our best, its just unfortunate when you know you will be playing for second place, a week into the campaign. ZoS could do somthing about this, but overall it was the decision for many players to partake in a mass exodus to EP, as well which created an unforeseen pop imbalance which we can try and deal with in terms of organization. Already seeing new AD groups in thorn which I am excited about

Eventually some of the real pvpers in EP will get bored and re-roll to DC and AD to get more of a challenge.

A lot of the EP are AD lol

That is incorrect actually. A certain AD guild came over for a time and maybe only 10-15 stayed on EP. The top 5 PvP guilds on Pact have been playing EP since the start and never bounced around. There may be solo players that changed, but overall most EP are EP.

Aoe_Barbecue

Lol I'm sure you've taken a survey right? Whatever the case, EP outpopulates DC immensely and AD noticeably, and for longer hours. Without EP's dedication to night capping the scores on Thornblade would be far more competitive, if that's something people still care about.

Columba

Darklord_Tiberius wrote: »

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Blud wrote: »

Suru wrote: »

Thorneblade Timeline (this cycle)

1. Begining is competitive to the best of AD, and DC's ability
2. DC lackluster since a relatively core group of DC players getting emperor, farming haderus carebears, and lack of tolerance for Thornblade Lag
3. DC tries their best
4. AD groups follow suit halfway through and get some players well deserved emperorships and to overall have more fun than on thornblade
5. Thornblade still competitive in points between AD and DC
6. AD as a whole doing the best they can to fight EP even tho we cannot match their numbers and maintaining second place

It is competitive, and we can try our best, its just unfortunate when you know you will be playing for second place, a week into the campaign. ZoS could do somthing about this, but overall it was the decision for many players to partake in a mass exodus to EP, as well which created an unforeseen pop imbalance which we can try and deal with in terms of organization. Already seeing new AD groups in thorn which I am excited about

Eventually some of the real pvpers in EP will get bored and re-roll to DC and AD to get more of a challenge.

A lot of the EP are AD lol

That is incorrect actually. A certain AD guild came over for a time and maybe only 10-15 stayed on EP. The top 5 PvP guilds on Pact have been playing EP since the start and never bounced around. There may be solo players that changed, but overall most EP are EP.

Hmm. So the 20+ EP lag spammers we see every night that have names nearly identical to the AD lag spammers of 3 months ago just magically picked those AD names? Strains credulity.

Phaedrus

.

Aoe_Barbecue

Why shouldn't they?

Sallington

Phaedrus wrote: »

DC has one fatal flaw. They will ALWAYS push EP, no matter what the map looks like or situation is they will attack EP. It makes them predictable.

And AD should do the same. It should be a "whoever holds the most EP home keeps wins" campaign this time around.

Tripwyr

Phaedrus wrote: »

DC has one fatal flaw. They will ALWAYS push EP, no matter what the map looks like or situation is they will attack EP. It makes them predictable.

This is hilariously false.

Cody

thornblade is home to a bunch of egotistical jerks/guilds that take pride in impulse blobbing and "nightcapping" the map(looking at you EP)

It is filled with lag and impulse blobbing. I myself don't consider that fun. That to me, is boring.

thornblade being competitive? some don't consider it competitive due to all the "nightcapping" that goes on, or due to all the impulse blobbing.

It really is a matter of opinion. I myself don't consider it competitive, I consider it having the highest population.

Gooey

Darklord_Tiberius wrote: »

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Blud wrote: »

Suru wrote: »

Thorneblade Timeline (this cycle)

1. Begining is competitive to the best of AD, and DC's ability
2. DC lackluster since a relatively core group of DC players getting emperor, farming haderus carebears, and lack of tolerance for Thornblade Lag
3. DC tries their best
4. AD groups follow suit halfway through and get some players well deserved emperorships and to overall have more fun than on thornblade
5. Thornblade still competitive in points between AD and DC
6. AD as a whole doing the best they can to fight EP even tho we cannot match their numbers and maintaining second place

It is competitive, and we can try our best, its just unfortunate when you know you will be playing for second place, a week into the campaign. ZoS could do somthing about this, but overall it was the decision for many players to partake in a mass exodus to EP, as well which created an unforeseen pop imbalance which we can try and deal with in terms of organization. Already seeing new AD groups in thorn which I am excited about

Eventually some of the real pvpers in EP will get bored and re-roll to DC and AD to get more of a challenge.

A lot of the EP are AD lol

That is incorrect actually. A certain AD guild came over for a time and maybe only 10-15 stayed on EP. The top 5 PvP guilds on Pact have been playing EP since the start and never bounced around. There may be solo players that changed, but overall most EP are EP.

Lol, please name these five guilds. *gets popcorn*

Sile

Aoe_Barbecue wrote: »

Sile wrote: »

This is like watching the people who talk big about getting Emperor on an empty server.

While it would be nice to see population balanced, there is something fun and enchanting about being the scrappy underdog.

What is depressing is seeing DC vets rerolling other factions because of the high burn-out rate of their comrades.

Hory chet! It's been way too long man. We've needed you for so long lol. I'm still here too . I'll solo PvP as the last blue at Ni-Mohk gate if I have to.

You're alive! We were talking about you last night, along with Naw, Jones, and other cool cats. Talking about the DC glory days and where we're at now.

Blud

This is my experience. I roll with an Aussie guild in AD. so I have nothing against night-capping. We play when we can play.

Typically, we can get a group of us from 12-24. We go to a tower or keep, put a hole in the wall, then get zerged down by 50+ EP. Big d-tick for them. Go to another objective, rinse and repeat.

After a while, people get tired of feeding AP to the red zerg.

We do sometimes set up AP farms, but that can only work while the main zerg is somewhere else. As soon as they get whatever they were capping, they come down in numbers if they smell a little blood. That's how we know they must be bored. If there are 6 or 8 of us AP farming at a resource we can wind up getting zerged down by the 50+.

Our guild doesn't have any emps or former emps, so we don't farm as well as some of the EP crews. I've seen groups of four to six former emps (mostly DKs) and their groupies all holed up in a tower with their burning oils working a good old AP farm. That must be fun.

Anyway, the score says it all.

Edit: It's frustrating because the pvp in this game can be so fun. It's tactical as a team and it's also based on skill as an individual. One person can make a difference and team players can also have an impact. But it's discouraging when no matter how hard you fight, you get worn down by some Guild Wars 2 type of blob tactic.

Roechacca

DC looks to be down 60% from its original low population since TB's start . It's a guessed percentage . But it is so low I don't recognize but maybe 4-5 names anymore in Zone Chat . From when I could easily recognize between 30-40 player names in the past . number of groups I see recruiting , one or two tops now .

Is Thornblade competitive ? Not from this view . Not anymore . Soon you probably will have to request duels to see a DC player there . I said it would happen , it already has . AD will be next .

Blud

roechacca wrote: »

DC looks to be down 60% from its original low population since TB's start . It's a guessed percentage . But it is so low I don't recognize but maybe 4-5 names anymore in Zone Chat . From when I could easily recognize between 30-40 player names in the past . number of groups I see recruiting , one or two tops now .

Is Thornblade competitive ? Not from this view . Not anymore . Soon you probably will have to request duels to see a DC player there . I said it would happen , it already has . AD will be next .

It's happening to AD already. There are a few DC we see nightly , like 3-5 guys. They just hang out at the edges of EP/AD skirmishes and gank whoever. We miss DC. There are times when we try to hit EP and wish DC would do something up north but nothing, so those remaining AD are just us sometimes. It's our guild, maybe 8-12 of us on a normal night and 2-3 solo guys who follow along. We wind up taking the full brunt of the full red zerg. Sometimes on a busy night there is a second group going, but because of EPs zerg, we often have to work together to try to get anything done, and still we can't match their numbers o spread them out most times.

If we try to put up a distraction somewhere with a team of 4-6 guys, EP can still carry on with its main effort somewhere and respond with 20+ guys to our 4-6.

It would really be nice to have DC hitting them somewhere else.

Our zone chat is pretty quiet most nights.

I would love to see some red and blue crossed swords up north so we could get our stuff back in the the south and push EP a little. Now EP just responds and just in time and in large numbers.

Roechacca

EP by next month will have people sitting cue only to finally get in much later then before that there is hardly any fighting on the map . Time between fights will increase until they get bored with PvP all together till march . Much to their dismay in March , B2P won't fix the balance issues and new over whelmed players will take off twice as fast as the die hard's did . By July , people will have the option to move over to consol and try a whole new mega server away from this problematic PC one . Pvp will become a after thought here .

Roechacca

The first thing you'll see in March from the new players Is "Why am I fighting against all these Former Emperors?" Posts . They'll scream about how everyone already has them out leveled and starting Champion points . Just watch . I've seen this before so many times ... They won't stick around . Then ZOS will pull F2P next to try an save some people .