Population inbalances in Azura

Zyle

Observant wrote: »

Weberda wrote: »

Observant wrote: »

Scoreboards showed EP in third last night, but the map said otherwise.

Need Moar DC!
btw Ash is your home keep too, why slam your heads against the Chal brick wall over and over? Isn't that demoralizing?

I played my DC toon over the weekend on Azura and there appears to be some kind of mystic magnetism involved with certain areas of the map for DC. If they hold Glade then it's Chalman much like it is Sejanus for AD and EP. If Glade is red or yellow then it's the area from Rayles mine to Glade mine. It's just constant ebb and flow. It was fun for a while as I got to try different setups but in the end it was pretty pointless with regards to the actual campaign.

It was alright in terms of AP, but with only 2 EP guilds (3 if you include GSCH) it was just a constant mount simulator between Chal and Arrius defending flagged keeps. Ample time to snake Ash, hell I think they even had Nikel

Where was NPK at?! @NPK Daniel

Edit: Why can't I tag someones @name in a post without quotations skewing the link?

To solve the Ash mystery, we have had incredible bad luck with that keep. So much that players simply refuse to go to Ash. AD has been defending Ash quite well. OR! Like last night, we try to get Ash after slamming our heads against Chal, and an EP team shows up hahah. DC on Azuras absolutely hates Ash xD

Crown

For the record, from my perspective, Sunday's Azura went somewhat like this:

• Late morning, I came on to find the map about half red, half blue, and yellow owning BB/BM/Fare. I wrangled some randoms (pugs/randoms/whateveryouwanttocallthem) and got 4 of my own into a group to crown miss L. Miss L is the new main of a player whois one of my crew, and that I've known running with other guilds such as one whose name has something to do with death, another related to the volume of sound. He had his wisdom teeth removed, and was very out of it - to the point that I'm not sure he even enjoyed being emperor as much as he should have. As soon as he was dethroned, he collapsed and I believe he's still not quite back to normal. There's no way he would have been able to maintain leaderboard in that condition - thus the morning-cap.
• AD proceeded to take all of our opponents scrolls, and I went to see the new Jurassic movie. It was very very awesome (dinosaurs eating people - how can you go wrong?), though how the heck do you keep the same high heels on while running in the jungle?
• I came back in after supper and led my crew (we ranged from 16 to 24) for a few hours of death and destruction. I don't recall when it was, though for a solid hour I had one single healer for a group of 16, and we couldn't get much accomplished.
• We farmed Aleswell Farm for about a half hour (I finally hit Alliance Rank 36) and got a lot of hate whispers from blues. I can understand the hate - though I don't understand why some people just keep coming back and throwing themselves at a group that has wiped them a few times. AD does it all the time when red (emp) groups or people in white take the second floor of the barn behind Fare, or Alessia farm - and no matter how much I yell for them to leave them alone, they just keep going. Some even said that we were lagging them out, though my understanding was that lag was universal - everyone of all factions in one place feels it, or the lag is not player related. The blue got a nice 7k offensive tick when we finally wiped, so at least that was nice for them.
• The rest of the evening was spent fighting reds. While I held the reigns of my group, I ensured to the best of my ability that we were not in the same place as a yellow 3-letter guild who often runs with 50 people. The have some good players, though their numbers make it tough to get anything accomplished (or make any points) when we're close together. We ended up in the same place once (I believe it was BRK), and ping spiked to over 1k.
• My crew started to dwindle around 8pm, and most logged around 9pm (Game of Thrones spoilers in zone made me ashamed of my faction). After that I ran solo a bit, joined another group of about 15 (what do you do with a shovel) for a half hour Alessia defense, and a different group (Italians with trench coats, big hats, and firearms) for a bit before finally running solo again for an bit and logging for the night.
• The highlight of the evening was the red emp's first attempt to take Brindle after being crowned, and his group wiping to more oil than.. I don't have a good PG13 joke here (though a lot of non-PG13 jokes come to mind).. Following that another group (synonymous with forcefulness) joined up with them and.. our 20 random defenders couldn't stop a red zerg of two very good guilds.
• I believe that there needs to be a few more insulting emotes. I find it hilarious when I get 20 people tea bagging me at the same time - to the point that I'm laughing out loud and my wife pops over to see what's so funny.
• To the person who kept dropping oils in the middle of the (flat) ground where we wanted to put siege for defending Brindle, why the hell would you do this? All it accomplishes is to help the opposing teams (who had 3 times our numbers when we weren't even a single organized group anyway), and to get people upset with you as an individual. If you ever want or need help with anything in future, you're very unlikely to get it. It's sometimes funny to do something like that in a small scale, but dropping 10+ troll siege and effectively ruining any chance we had to defend ruins the play for everyone else.

Planchard

Thanks for ruining my fun Saturday morning @Crown . The few DC we had on just wanted to get Glade back but your group ruined our fun at capping it. We had I think a total of 4 total attacking Glade. After that we lost Rayles and our scroll. I followed the group of AD all the way back to Blackboot and made about 10k AP total on the way down there(including the 4k gate tick we got).

I wish I would've played more this weekend but my cousins and I were having too much fun on PS4 on the non vet campaigns.

Crown

@Planchard There really needs to be something done about balance, though unfortunately I don't have a good suggestion (in the extremely unlikely event that the devs actually listened to me).

The main issues as I see them are:

• Once someone is homed on a campaign they want leader board rewards, so if they are at risk of losing top 2% or top 10%, then regardless of population or viability of points they'll stay where they can get points towards said rewards or the emp race. Personally having been emp many times and being on the long road to Legate, I'd rather make 75k AP per hour non-home than 5k AP per hour in home. Most people don't share that opinion.
• We group leaders can only manage our own group. While we do communicate with each other and have a guild dedicated to this, more often than not suggestions or requests are ignored. When people see swords on the map, they come to them in the hopes of making points.
• Groups tend to have regular hours, and while groups with the same schedules tend to head to different campaigns, there is an hour or three at times (7pm-10pm eastern) where we overlap and are seen to be zergs.
• The definitions for "zerging" are varied. I tend towards the opinion that a zerg is anything more than one full group excluding uncontrolled pugs. Others say that anything more than 12 or 16 is a zerg. It always comes back to the point that if ZOS didn't want groups up to 24 to run, they would have decreased the max group size.
• There is a lot of actual HATE between the factions. There should be opponents, honoured opponents, and people who you dislike / don't want to play with, though hate as an emotion wastes too much energy for a game that is supposed to be fun. As @Zavus or @Methuselah can tell you, there are times when I'll know that my crew are not able to take his out, though we'll keep coming back for the learning experience, trying to get more people to run optimized builds and to follow split second calls in TS. There are other times when we'll wipe them a few times in a row, and they'll go elsewhere (they may feel that they don't need as much training as my group does at times or just recognize that our group composition is better at that moment in time). The advantage they (and a few others) seem to have is a more consistent team who run together all the time, whereas my group tends to vary in people and composition way too often.

Most of these challenges are based on people, and not on technology. People don't often change, and the technology available to mitigate this isn't always simple or even feasible.

CN_Daniel

I stayed up all night Saturday night - Sunday morning holding off da banana. Then, at like 7am EST, magically 50 non Azura banana arrive and took everything.

I challenged them to come out when the big boys/girls play....sadly they lacked the 'biceps' to reply.

FENGRUSH

They must have seen The Lord depart with their spies at our home base. FENGRUSH punished them throughout the night.

Telel

There was an interesting 3 way fight at ASh on Sunday night. Telel made it a highlight on their twtich feed if anyone wants to see how it looked from the perspective of a khajiit who most definitely did very little of note in that fight.

Sadly the DC just couldn't seem to keep it up, and when the pressure got to bad, they had to pull out early otherwise they might have ALSO taken ash during that last little tussle.

It was also when the populations seemed to be relatively even on the menu. Though with the pacters tendency to run a majority of their pop in one mass it may look like they had more involved this one does not think they did. In this fight at least.

Crown

Last night (Monday) was rather imbalanced against AD, so it's not always one faction that takes the hit. The red emp group of 24 and two others rolled my group of 18 for a good few hours to the point that most left the campaign. We were only making about 20k AP per hour, which either wasn't enough - or people got discouraged. We also only had one other organized group (16 players) on the map - excluding the random disorganized individuals. It was a lot of good fighting, though we had no chance to take either of the large red groups with the resources/players available.

It was rather odd late evening when blue came on and took half the map (literally split down the middle with blue owning Drake and Bleakers), then camped Blackboot while red camped Bloodmayne. For a solid two hours there were no red/blue swords on the map, though no yellows could get more than tick range from either keep without running into a 20 person group of either opposing faction. There were people on the walls of both keeps /yell'ing to others to go out and die so the d-ticks will be larger. That.... really bothered me.

The "Cyrodiil Fishing Extravaganza" of 18 people, the RP guild of 40 who were in PvE areas completing their quests (why the heck can't they go to a campaign that isn't under heavy combat), and the group of what seemed to be another 20 who went anywhere there was fighting to throw continuous Rapid Regens and refused to contribute otherwise didn't help much either. Someone seems to have told people that you can make AP by running around spamming Rapid Regen, and much of our population last night seems to have been taken up by people who would not contribute to the fighting.

Note that this isn't a complaint, it's a statement regarding the play last night - indicative of it not always being one faction who dominates the map. It doesn't matter how good you are, if there are multiple times your numbers, you will probably lose.

Agrippa_Invisus

Azura's was so slow last night Vehemence stepped off the field around 8pm EST instead of push DC needlessly off the map or gatecamp. At least while I was on AD regained Bloodmayne with minimal effort spent to retain it, closing at least one gate (can't speak to what happened after I left).

We were mindboggled as to where the AD three bar population it showed were. We couldn't find them, and were talking about checking delves and and quest hubs. When the scrolls got taken from the AD scroll temples, the pop dropped a bar and we knew it was done. We took Altadoon and there were fewer than 10 defenders total from the gate to the the temple.

I think we may be at the beginning of the end (of PC side ESO) if this level of activity becomes the new normal.

FENGRUSH

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Azura's was so slow last night Vehemence stepped off the field around 8pm EST instead of push DC needlessly off the map or gatecamp. At least while I was on AD regained Bloodmayne with minimal effort spent to retain it, closing at least one gate (can't speak to what happened after I left).

We were mindboggled as to where the AD three bar population it showed were. We couldn't find them, and were talking about checking delves and and quest hubs. When the scrolls got taken from the AD scroll temples, the pop dropped a bar and we knew it was done. We took Altadoon and there were fewer than 10 defenders total from the gate to the the temple.

I think we may be at the beginning of the end (of PC side ESO) if this level of activity becomes the new normal.

The Lord FENGRUSH placed himself between the 2 factions battling to siphon off AP gains to indirectly strike at the EP forces.

All in all, AD said they didnt have enough to fight EP/methusela emp. Time for Meth to begin emp trading with DC.

Telel

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Azura's was so slow last night Vehemence stepped off the field around 8pm EST instead of push DC needlessly off the map or gatecamp. At least while I was on AD regained Bloodmayne with minimal effort spent to retain it, closing at least one gate (can't speak to what happened after I left).

We were mindboggled as to where the AD three bar population it showed were. We couldn't find them, and were talking about checking delves and and quest hubs. When the scrolls got taken from the AD scroll temples, the pop dropped a bar and we knew it was done. We took Altadoon and there were fewer than 10 defenders total from the gate to the the temple.

I think we may be at the beginning of the end (of PC side ESO) if this level of activity becomes the new normal.

Remember when an unimportant, but very wise, khajiit said most of AD's server space is getting sucked up by leeches?

Also Monday's are Telel's physical gaming night and so they are not on as they might be other days. And since they're not on then their guild tends to focus on leveling up so they stand more of a chance against the blob squads we're often getting over run by.

Pchela

Crown wrote: »

Last night (Monday) was rather imbalanced against AD, so it's not always one faction that takes the hit. The red emp group of 24 and two others rolled my group of 18 for a good few hours to the point that most left the campaign. We were only making about 20k AP per hour, which either wasn't enough - or people got discouraged. We also only had one other organized group (16 players) on the map - excluding the random disorganized individuals. It was a lot of good fighting, though we had no chance to take either of the large red groups with the resources/players available.

It was rather odd late evening when blue came on and took half the map (literally split down the middle with blue owning Drake and Bleakers), then camped Blackboot while red camped Bloodmayne. For a solid two hours there were no red/blue swords on the map, though no yellows could get more than tick range from either keep without running into a 20 person group of either opposing faction. There were people on the walls of both keeps /yell'ing to others to go out and die so the d-ticks will be larger. That.... really bothered me.

The "Cyrodiil Fishing Extravaganza" of 18 people, the RP guild of 40 who were in PvE areas completing their quests (why the heck can't they go to a campaign that isn't under heavy combat), and the group of what seemed to be another 20 who went anywhere there was fighting to throw continuous Rapid Regens and refused to contribute otherwise didn't help much either. Someone seems to have told people that you can make AP by running around spamming Rapid Regen, and much of our population last night seems to have been taken up by people who would not contribute to the fighting.

Note that this isn't a complaint, it's a statement regarding the play last night - indicative of it not always being one faction who dominates the map. It doesn't matter how good you are, if there are multiple times your numbers, you will probably lose.

Oh my word, the AD actually WERE pve'ing? I had joked that they probably were, but... haha.. I logged out early to watch some TV because I was tired of looking for the mysterious AD 3bar. Also, I was part of the 8-10 man EP group earlier that afternoon who was at BB, was nice to see you with a small group too

AhPook_Is_Here

Telel wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Azura's was so slow last night Vehemence stepped off the field around 8pm EST instead of push DC needlessly off the map or gatecamp. At least while I was on AD regained Bloodmayne with minimal effort spent to retain it, closing at least one gate (can't speak to what happened after I left).

We were mindboggled as to where the AD three bar population it showed were. We couldn't find them, and were talking about checking delves and and quest hubs. When the scrolls got taken from the AD scroll temples, the pop dropped a bar and we knew it was done. We took Altadoon and there were fewer than 10 defenders total from the gate to the the temple.

I think we may be at the beginning of the end (of PC side ESO) if this level of activity becomes the new normal.

Remember when an unimportant, but very wise, khajiit said most of AD's server space is getting sucked up by leeches?

Also Monday's are Telel's physical gaming night and so they are not on as they might be other days. And since they're not on then their guild tends to focus on leveling up so they stand more of a chance against the blob squads we're often getting over run by.

It always happens on buff servers. they are the mineralization collecting at the bottom of your water heater.

Agrippa_Invisus

Telel wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Azura's was so slow last night Vehemence stepped off the field around 8pm EST instead of push DC needlessly off the map or gatecamp. At least while I was on AD regained Bloodmayne with minimal effort spent to retain it, closing at least one gate (can't speak to what happened after I left).

We were mindboggled as to where the AD three bar population it showed were. We couldn't find them, and were talking about checking delves and and quest hubs. When the scrolls got taken from the AD scroll temples, the pop dropped a bar and we knew it was done. We took Altadoon and there were fewer than 10 defenders total from the gate to the the temple.

I think we may be at the beginning of the end (of PC side ESO) if this level of activity becomes the new normal.

Remember when an unimportant, but very wise, khajiit said most of AD's server space is getting sucked up by leeches?

Also Monday's are Telel's physical gaming night and so they are not on as they might be other days. And since they're not on then their guild tends to focus on leveling up so they stand more of a chance against the blob squads we're often getting over run by.

It's rather pathetic that even with the gates open, they're still of no user.

Maybe tonight will be 'clear the PVE areas of bads' night.

PainfulFAFA

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Azura's was so slow last night Vehemence stepped off the field around 8pm EST instead of push DC needlessly off the map or gatecamp. At least while I was on AD regained Bloodmayne with minimal effort spent to retain it, closing at least one gate (can't speak to what happened after I left).

We were mindboggled as to where the AD three bar population it showed were. We couldn't find them, and were talking about checking delves and and quest hubs. When the scrolls got taken from the AD scroll temples, the pop dropped a bar and we knew it was done. We took Altadoon and there were fewer than 10 defenders total from the gate to the the temple.

I think we may be at the beginning of the end (of PC side ESO) if this level of activity becomes the new normal.

For a weekend, the bars on each campaign were really low and i have to agree that it is indeed the beginning
of the end for PC ESO.

CN_Daniel

Observant wrote: »

Weberda wrote: »

Observant wrote: »

Scoreboards showed EP in third last night, but the map said otherwise.

Need Moar DC!
btw Ash is your home keep too, why slam your heads against the Chal brick wall over and over? Isn't that demoralizing?

I played my DC toon over the weekend on Azura and there appears to be some kind of mystic magnetism involved with certain areas of the map for DC. If they hold Glade then it's Chalman much like it is Sejanus for AD and EP. If Glade is red or yellow then it's the area from Rayles mine to Glade mine. It's just constant ebb and flow. It was fun for a while as I got to try different setups but in the end it was pretty pointless with regards to the actual campaign.

It was alright in terms of AP, but with only 2 EP guilds (3 if you include GSCH) it was just a constant mount simulator between Chal and Arrius defending flagged keeps. Ample time to snake Ash, hell I think they even had Nikel

Where was NPK at?! @NPK Daniel

Edit: Why can't I tag someones @name in a post without quotations skewing the link?

Took one night off to help my friend who ported to PS4. Don't worry -- I'm back tonight.



FARM DA BANANA.

Crown

Pchela wrote: »

Oh my word, the AD actually WERE pve'ing? I had joked that they probably were, but... haha.. I logged out early to watch some TV because I was tired of looking for the mysterious AD 3bar. Also, I was part of the 8-10 man EP group earlier that afternoon who was at BB, was nice to see you with a small group too

The AD were Fishing, PvE'ing, and there was some really crazy role playing going on around the Trolls just north of Brindle (where the two long bridges meet). Incidentally that's one of my favourite duelling spots - boundaries set such that you and your opponent aren't allowed to leave the bridge, so two duels at a time are possible without too much steal / permadodging / running around insanely. Granted the insane movement duels are fun too, but 2H/Bow NBs tend to fare best in those (except for that damned sorc that I haven't managed to win vs more than 1 in the past 10 fights ;-)

It was nice to lead a 10 person group. Our composition was perfect with me in a support build, two healers, one disruptor, one magic DPS, and five stam DPS. Restricting group size to 16 would make PvP a lot better..

Pchela

Crown wrote: »

Pchela wrote: »

Oh my word, the AD actually WERE pve'ing? I had joked that they probably were, but... haha.. I logged out early to watch some TV because I was tired of looking for the mysterious AD 3bar. Also, I was part of the 8-10 man EP group earlier that afternoon who was at BB, was nice to see you with a small group too

The AD were Fishing, PvE'ing, and there was some really crazy role playing going on around the Trolls just north of Brindle (where the two long bridges meet). Incidentally that's one of my favourite duelling spots - boundaries set such that you and your opponent aren't allowed to leave the bridge, so two duels at a time are possible without too much steal / permadodging / running around insanely. Granted the insane movement duels are fun too, but 2H/Bow NBs tend to fare best in those (except for that damned sorc that I haven't managed to win vs more than 1 in the past 10 fights ;-)

It was nice to lead a 10 person group. Our composition was perfect with me in a support build, two healers, one disruptor, one magic DPS, and five stam DPS. Restricting group size to 16 would make PvP a lot better..

the early morning groups on azura's are the most fun for me, usually it's like maybe 10-15 AD vs same (if we're lucky) EP at a keep. Defenses are more strategic, siege is a must, and the longer battles from it are my favorite. I too am more of a support build but it's nice to put on the solo-target gank build and put an old nightblade back to his original use when our groups are that small.

Agrippa_Invisus

Crown wrote: »

It was nice to lead a 10 person group. Our composition was perfect with me in a support build, two healers, one disruptor, one magic DPS, and five stam DPS. Restricting group size to 16 would make PvP a lot better..

Skill balance issues in a nutshell, folks.

Also, too, someone needs to kick the PVErs butts and make them work to help.

Telel

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Also, too, someone needs to kick the PVErs butts and make them work to help.

While telel would never actually tell someone to seek out and repeatedly murder those who inconvenience them, they are also of the mind that so long as one is not camping quest hubs and smacking folks as they talk to NPCs then it's no wrong thing to perhaps...pour some salt on the leeches.

Not that they would ever do such a thing themself of course. They most definitely are also not going to tell you to check the dolmens, cracked wood cave, and that other dungeon near Brindle and Ash in the hopes someone sends selfish people a message about not screwing over their own side....

After all Khajiit is one who wishes to win their campaign and one does not do this by purposely sending folks after the easiest AP in the server.

Very very easy AP.

Zyle

Currently on Azuras, there are EP attacking towards DC scrolls, they out number us, but somehow require the help of the emp. I now have zero respect for that emp.

FENGRUSH

bchulettub17_ESO wrote: »

Currently on Azuras, there are EP attacking towards DC scrolls, they out number us, but somehow require the help of the emp. I now have zero respect for that emp.

He also did not honor the emp trading that was claimed to have been occuring in one of the azura threads. How disappointing!

BossTuggles

Who we talking about? METHUZALEH? Lets see what happens to me.

Zyle

Right now:


Bleh. Was lag free until some select chillrend residents showed.

Telel

So khajiit slotted evil hunter one while fighting EP blob squads near Alessia.

Telel couldn't even see people after that. Just a big cloud of blue glow moving around like an amoeba. Which made for an easy target and some very fun caltrop tossing up until they decided to stop farming and start PVPing.

silentxthreat

the problem is when a whole guild "that shall not be named to obey tos" comes in with 60+ using the travel to player//que as grp exploit. this always lags the server to be near unplayable. zos needs to address this fast before every server is nothing but a buff server.

Telel

Obvious solution. Ban everyone who Telel dislikes fighting against, and everyone who dislikes Telel.

Give them their own server they can all go play on together. Dub it the kewl kids l33t box of rekting LOLZ server, and they won't even care they're now missing out on being in the midst of the greatest bad player in the game.

Of course at that point we'd then only need two servers....but omelets and dead mer yes?

God_flakes

bchulettub17_ESO wrote: »

Right now:


Bleh. Was lag free until some select chillrend residents showed.

I can't WAIT until EP are forced to stay in a campaign and aren't able to hop around!!! The QQ is going to drown the forums with salty salty tears!

Pchela

God_flakes wrote: »

bchulettub17_ESO wrote: »

Right now:


Bleh. Was lag free until some select chillrend residents showed.

I can't WAIT until EP are forced to stay in a campaign and aren't able to hop around!!! The QQ is going to drown the forums with salty salty tears!

Well I think I know where my guild is staying and we are okay with it.

Zyle

Status update: AD guild DIG is currently full group pvdooring everything on server. They may need about 10 more, 1 more DC showed, we're at a total of 4 now.

Another update: Upon talking with multiple AD players in that pvdoor group, they have made it very clear that they are avoiding players. It's too difficult for them. Doors are the key to success for them.