Cyrodiil Population Recomendation

Eweejy

Noticed lately that EP's population compared to DC & AD has significantly risen to the point cyrodiil is no longer competitive (PSna GH).

EP is literally poplocked 24/7 and pvdoors the map until the other factions can muster enough people to do anything during primetime. That being said, recently during prime time DC & AD are dropping down to 1 bar each still fighting a 3 bar pop locked EP. How can you justify a fair competition when EP has literally over 2x the population of the other two factions combined?? Any attempt to retake a keep is met by 40+ thirsty EP zerglings.. sad..

Recomendation: set the population cap to scale based on the lowest pop faction at a given time. Ex: if faction #1 had 1 bar of population, then the max pop at that time would be 2 bars for the other factions. Once faction #1 reached 2 bars, the pop cap would move to 3 bars. This would keep Cyrodiil competitive.

And before people contest this with "dont limit the people who want to play" - well maybe it would be a good way to push people to switch factions and rebalance the game. Too many players on one side makes Cyrodiil awful - make the change.

Thoragaal

Sooo.. let's say some people decide to log off.
Do you want the server to randomly kick players from the opposing factions in order to keep it balanced?

xylena_lazarow

An ugly solution would be to randomize the factions at the start of each campaign like BGs.

It would be brutally effective in balancing the population, but too many players would revolt.

AuraNebula

I don't think this is a good idea. Incentives need to be created to bring smaller groups over to lower populated factions. Low pop is nice but they could extend it so that the rewards last longer for underpopulated factions. Or decreass the amount of AP made from factions with the largest amount of players online.

Amottica

It seems Cyrodiil was not designed to be truly competitive because it is set up so one alliance can outnumber the other alliances. Even looking at the number of campaigns we have it is clear that we have more campaigns than players filling them even on the busiest of nights. I also find it hard to believe that any alliance is pop-locked 24/7.

Going to the lower population campaigns, they are often lop-sided and from what I understand it has been this way since the dawn of the game making it very clear that population controls to balance out each campaign is not something Zenimax is interested in. If they were they would have eliminated the extra campaigns long ago.

I would never suggest kicking players from the game just because other players are not interested in playing.

Amottica

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

An ugly solution would be to randomize the factions at the start of each campaign like BGs.

It would be brutally effective in balancing the population, but too many players would revolt.

It would not necessarily balance out the populations since different players play at different times.

But yes, it would be the final nail in the coffin for Cyrodiil since players would simply play a different game because Cyrodiil kept preventing them from playing with their friends. Good thing Zenimax went with a better design on this aspect.

danthemann5

A better solution would be to scale player damage and mitigation based on the population imbalance.

If all populations are more or less the same, everyone is on equal footing. If one faction massively outnumbers the other two, the players of the overpopulated faction do less damage and take more damage. The underpopulated factions do more damage and take less. It should be a sliding scale based on the magnitude of the imbalance.

I wouldn't expect anything nuanced from people who would perform surgery with an axe.

Amottica

danthemann5 wrote: »

A better solution would be to scale player damage and mitigation based on the population imbalance.

If all populations are more or less the same, everyone is on equal footing. If one faction massively outnumbers the other two, the players of the overpopulated faction do less damage and take more damage. The underpopulated factions do more damage and take less. It should be a sliding scale based on the magnitude of the imbalance.

I wouldn't expect anything nuanced from people who would perform surgery with an axe.

Scaling a player's damage based on faction populations would require players in lower pop factions to group. It would also put more strain on the servers than the original suggestion in this thread.

danthemann5

Amottica wrote: »

danthemann5 wrote: »

A better solution would be to scale player damage and mitigation based on the population imbalance.

If all populations are more or less the same, everyone is on equal footing. If one faction massively outnumbers the other two, the players of the overpopulated faction do less damage and take more damage. The underpopulated factions do more damage and take less. It should be a sliding scale based on the magnitude of the imbalance.

I wouldn't expect anything nuanced from people who would perform surgery with an axe.

Scaling a player's damage based on faction populations would require players in lower pop factions to group. It would also put more strain on the servers than the original suggestion in this thread.

How would that require players to group? Whether a faction works together as a team or not is a completely different issue and a different discussion.

I can't imagine it would cost that much more in the way of server resources. They already monitor how many people are in each faction for queues, low pop bonuses, etc. How hard could it be to scale Battle Spirit based on the differences?

Vizirith

Bring back dynamic ulting, change the meaningless low pop bonus into something useful, make siege scale with the amount of players hit, etc.

Anything that increases small scale viability would help pop imabalances.

Thoragaal

AuraNebula wrote: »

I don't think this is a good idea. Incentives need to be created to bring smaller groups over to lower populated factions. Low pop is nice but they could extend it so that the rewards last longer for underpopulated factions. Or decreass the amount of AP made from factions with the largest amount of players online.

Unfortunately a lot of long time players don't care about AP. They have enough as it is and get more than enough from just playing like they usually do.
Rewards only work as a good incentive to solve short time issues. Over all, rewards are not very effective to increase people's satisfaction/enjoyment.

xDeusEJRx

But FTP. blood for the pact am I right guys?

Jokes aside, I'm gonna spew out a point that's been done a million times. Kill cross healing again. Was a bad idea to even turn it on again, it's dumb how an entire faction can move keep to keep and keep each other alive. Makes faction stacking way too OP and faction stacking is really op right now when stacking dark convergence on top of dark convergence.

Sure it might encourage these zergs to ride together and face tank more since they can't heal each other, at least convergence will reliably kill groups like it's meant to, as they won't be able to heal each other and them stacking on each other will just cause each zerg to go boom. Then dark convergence might actually become SLIGHTLY more worth it than it currently is. slightly

Flangdoodle

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

An ugly solution would be to randomize the factions at the start of each campaign like BGs.

It would be brutally effective in balancing the population, but too many players would revolt.

That's actually an interesting idea. I think it would require too much revamping though: so at the beginning of a campaign guilds would just be randomly tossed into a faction? How could that be balanced? Guild size? Would guilds have to register as pvp guilds first? I like the idea but it's probably too complicated - and you're right, people would scream bloody murder.

Amottica

danthemann5 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

danthemann5 wrote: »

A better solution would be to scale player damage and mitigation based on the population imbalance.

If all populations are more or less the same, everyone is on equal footing. If one faction massively outnumbers the other two, the players of the overpopulated faction do less damage and take more damage. The underpopulated factions do more damage and take less. It should be a sliding scale based on the magnitude of the imbalance.

I wouldn't expect anything nuanced from people who would perform surgery with an axe.

Scaling a player's damage based on faction populations would require players in lower pop factions to group. It would also put more strain on the servers than the original suggestion in this thread.

How would that require players to group? Whether a faction works together as a team or not is a completely different issue and a different discussion.

I can't imagine it would cost that much more in the way of server resources. They already monitor how many people are in each faction for queues, low pop bonuses, etc. How hard could it be to scale Battle Spirit based on the differences?

The suggestion made in what I quoted was to scale player damage based and mitigation based on the population imbalance.
That is specifically suggesting that players in factions with higher populations have their damage done nerfed and to increase the damage they do.

As such it is obvious that the greater the imbalance the more of a weakling they will become which obviously is a greater problem for solo and small-scale players.

If it does not drive them to group with others or it will drive them from Cyrodiil. I would certainly leave if the game nerfed me just because other alliances lacked players.

I think it is better to realize Cyrodiil was never intended to be competitive by design. After all, the design not being competitive is why think thread was created. BGs is what they designed for more competitive PvP.

LeHarrt91

I feel that Faction Lock also comes into play, when DC use to have the whole map i would swap so it wasn't totally boring.

Alchimiste1

just remove faction lock

Syrusthevirus187

Faction lock on the main populated campaign and not the dead ones was always a bad idea

EF321

With cost of changing faction of first character equal to ~20eur+30eur, and then 30eur for each subsequent character, I can't see anything changing. Good job monetizing color of minimap icons.

Jaraal

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

An ugly solution would be to randomize the factions at the start of each campaign like BGs.

It would be brutally effective in balancing the population, but too many players would revolt.

Yeah, that won't work. Too much bad blood between factions. Get teabagged and hate-telled by one player, then next time you log in you're supposed to work with them to defend a keep? Not happening.

Also, you can't punish people simply because they are playing in a poplocked faction. You have to incentivise those who are in the lower pop faction. Why not send a system message to faction locked accounts like, "(Your faction) has a low population bonus for the next (x amount of time)", so if you're crafting, questing, or whatnot, can answer the call to arms and help and benefit at the same time? And make low pop bonuses actually last, not these weird 5 minute bonuses, or 2 hour bonuses after your pop has gone way up.

biminirwb17_ESO

The scroll and keep benefits were originally designed to carry over to PVE, this was removed after a few years of "buff campaigns" but the buffs were unchanged.

The more you own the more powerful you get, this should be reversed. Lose your offensive scroll your opponent loses a % of damage. etc

Have lots of keeps, you lose ap %

Want to take the map? Beware the wrath of the tower farmer or the Cropsford militia.

Joy_Division

Invest in PVP and make it appealing so people will actually want to play.

Population problems solved.

Tiphis

Jaraal wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

An ugly solution would be to randomize the factions at the start of each campaign like BGs.

It would be brutally effective in balancing the population, but too many players would revolt.

Yeah, that won't work. Too much bad blood between factions. Get teabagged and hate-telled by one player, then next time you log in you're supposed to work with them to defend a keep? Not happening.

Also, you can't punish people simply because they are playing in a poplocked faction. You have to incentivise those who are in the lower pop faction. Why not send a system message to faction locked accounts like, "(Your faction) has a low population bonus for the next (x amount of time)", so if you're crafting, questing, or whatnot, can answer the call to arms and help and benefit at the same time? And make low pop bonuses actually last, not these weird 5 minute bonuses, or 2 hour bonuses after your pop has gone way up.

Yeah but to be fair alot of people are unlikely to stay on for awhile against a significant number difference, only so many times you can get zerged.

Joy_Division wrote: »

Invest in PVP and make it appealing so people will actually want to play.

Population problems solved.

Yeah but the issue is that if less people pvp, and the money doesn't change; it will be unlikely to be fixed.

Sandman929

I wouldn't hold out any hope for something to fix this. As long as there's something to fight, even if it's a landslide win, some players enjoy it.
Kill them with boredom and some might switch factions.

AJones43865

Tiphis wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

An ugly solution would be to randomize the factions at the start of each campaign like BGs.

It would be brutally effective in balancing the population, but too many players would revolt.

Yeah, that won't work. Too much bad blood between factions. Get teabagged and hate-telled by one player, then next time you log in you're supposed to work with them to defend a keep? Not happening.

Also, you can't punish people simply because they are playing in a poplocked faction. You have to incentivise those who are in the lower pop faction. Why not send a system message to faction locked accounts like, "(Your faction) has a low population bonus for the next (x amount of time)", so if you're crafting, questing, or whatnot, can answer the call to arms and help and benefit at the same time? And make low pop bonuses actually last, not these weird 5 minute bonuses, or 2 hour bonuses after your pop has gone way up.

Yeah but to be fair alot of people are unlikely to stay on for awhile against a significant number difference, only so many times you can get zerged.

Joy_Division wrote: »

Invest in PVP and make it appealing so people will actually want to play.

Population problems solved.

Yeah but the issue is that if less people pvp, and the money doesn't change; it will be unlikely to be fixed.

PvP'rs invest more into ESO than most PvE'rs. If you think about it, they have to in order to get the latest/greatest meta gear sets. The problem is the way ZOS budgets their money. (as in, they don't reinvest enough of the dues paid to insure a smoothly running game, and never have)

xylena_lazarow

Joy_Division wrote: »

Invest in PVP

Their recent investments in PvP have been destructible bridgegates, the hammer, and Dark Convergence. Three things that nobody asked for, three things that make the game's problems with lag and faction stacking even worse. At this point I'd rather them revert PvP to its state at launch and never touch it again.

wotevah

An idea I chucked out there a while ago, which could make Cyro relevant again to many players..

Make claiming keeps for your guild a revenue generator for the guild. Even have some of the trader slots in the Faction capitals tied to who owns particular keeps in Cyrodiil.

Imagine trade guilds trying to hold keeps for profit in cyro and even more profit via the top trade spots in Mournhold, Wayrest and Elden Root. Something like this would liven it up quite a bit.

techyeshic

Amottica wrote: »

danthemann5 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

danthemann5 wrote: »

A better solution would be to scale player damage and mitigation based on the population imbalance.

If all populations are more or less the same, everyone is on equal footing. If one faction massively outnumbers the other two, the players of the overpopulated faction do less damage and take more damage. The underpopulated factions do more damage and take less. It should be a sliding scale based on the magnitude of the imbalance.

I wouldn't expect anything nuanced from people who would perform surgery with an axe.

Scaling a player's damage based on faction populations would require players in lower pop factions to group. It would also put more strain on the servers than the original suggestion in this thread.

How would that require players to group? Whether a faction works together as a team or not is a completely different issue and a different discussion.

I can't imagine it would cost that much more in the way of server resources. They already monitor how many people are in each faction for queues, low pop bonuses, etc. How hard could it be to scale Battle Spirit based on the differences?

The suggestion made in what I quoted was to scale player damage based and mitigation based on the population imbalance.
That is specifically suggesting that players in factions with higher populations have their damage done nerfed and to increase the damage they do.

As such it is obvious that the greater the imbalance the more of a weakling they will become which obviously is a greater problem for solo and small-scale players.

If it does not drive them to group with others or it will drive them from Cyrodiil. I would certainly leave if the game nerfed me just because other alliances lacked players.

I think it is better to realize Cyrodiil was never intended to be competitive by design. After all, the design not being competitive is why think thread was created. BGs is what they designed for more competitive PvP.

Then open up faction change so that they can move to the undermanned faction. If it's not meant to be competitive; then no need to worry about end campaign results and just provide a sandbox that encourages level fights.

Tiphis

AJones43865 wrote: »

Tiphis wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

An ugly solution would be to randomize the factions at the start of each campaign like BGs.

It would be brutally effective in balancing the population, but too many players would revolt.

Yeah, that won't work. Too much bad blood between factions. Get teabagged and hate-telled by one player, then next time you log in you're supposed to work with them to defend a keep? Not happening.

Also, you can't punish people simply because they are playing in a poplocked faction. You have to incentivise those who are in the lower pop faction. Why not send a system message to faction locked accounts like, "(Your faction) has a low population bonus for the next (x amount of time)", so if you're crafting, questing, or whatnot, can answer the call to arms and help and benefit at the same time? And make low pop bonuses actually last, not these weird 5 minute bonuses, or 2 hour bonuses after your pop has gone way up.

Yeah but to be fair alot of people are unlikely to stay on for awhile against a significant number difference, only so many times you can get zerged.

Joy_Division wrote: »

Invest in PVP and make it appealing so people will actually want to play.

Population problems solved.

Yeah but the issue is that if less people pvp, and the money doesn't change; it will be unlikely to be fixed.

PvP'rs invest more into ESO than most PvE'rs. If you think about it, they have to in order to get the latest/greatest meta gear sets. The problem is the way ZOS budgets their money. (as in, they don't reinvest enough of the dues paid to insure a smoothly running game, and never have)

But the populations are not even comparable. Right now there can be up to 1,440 concurrent players pvping in cyro/IC (presuming pop lock per faction is 80 in U-50 and IC). When was the last time that happened outside of midyear mayhem? In a given 24 hour period how many people do you think pvp in cyro/IC? I'm discounting bg's as people will do the daily and largely its issues are relatively isolated. I'd guess maybe 1k people per day, and that is being very generous, going more by spring populations rather than current.

Even presuming that the average pvper invest more money into eso than the average pve'r it still doesn't offset. Alot of money is made from deco/housing. And there are what, maybe 10 times more pver's than pvpers? And that is arguably skewed because we also have to pve it just isn't our main focus.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Invest in PVP

Their recent investments in PvP have been destructible bridgegates, the hammer, and Dark Convergence. Three things that nobody asked for, three things that make the game's problems with lag and faction stacking even worse. At this point I'd rather them revert PvP to its state at launch and never touch it again.

Unfortunately people did ask for these exact things. They just listened to the wrong people / didn't fully consider the impact of changes as has been the case for the entirety of pvp development in ESO for the most part.

neferpitou73

I've always thought they should just up the rewards, such as give a ridiculous number of gold mats to the faction that wins the campaign, etc. Which might incentivize more people to go in there. They'd have to balance the score by population.

techyeshic

neferpitou73 wrote: »

I've always thought they should just up the rewards, such as give a ridiculous number of gold mats to the faction that wins the campaign, etc. Which might incentivize more people to go in there. They'd have to balance the score by population.

I think that would incentivize players to wait to see the likely winner, and then pile on.

Anything done should be to encourage joining the underdogs. Right now; all the power goes to the faction in control and the "low pop bonus" does not help balance the odds and just goes away the more people join the underdog. I also realize it's easy for me to say as I have always been DC on PCNA and only maybe a couple of times have we had overwhelming numbers around the clock; so I have never been in a spot to consider a change of factions for the better of the game so I am not sure how well that would go over, but I do think they at least should drop the price completely. A campaign is faction locked or it isn't.