Cyrodiil Population Balancing

Randomixx

Daggerfall Covenant did this to the Chrysamere campaign too, it's a massive pain in the behind. I thought that the campaigns were meant to lock when a certain faction started outnumbering the others, not when they hit the absolutely cap. Things were fine in beta where everyone was pretty evenly distributed between a handful of servers, but right now there are maybe two capped campaigns that are working 'properly' while all the others are just dominated by a single faction.

EDIT: Should have clarified I meant US. I keep forgetting that EU don't have their own separate forums...

Kingslayer

Randomixx wrote: »

Daggerfall Covenant did this to the Chrysamere campaign too, it's a massive pain in the behind. I thought that the campaigns were meant to lock when a certain faction started outnumbering the others, not when they hit the absolutely cap. Things were fine in beta where everyone was pretty evenly distributed between a handful of servers, but right now there are maybe two capped campaigns that are working 'properly' while all the others are just dominated by a single faction.

Chrysamere eu or NA? Because Eu is dominated by AD, I am on chrysamere eu in DC and me and my guild made a push for Dc last night and did well but 3/4 of the points are with AD, keeps and scrolls etc all AD and this is because lots of AD joined it outright. What should be done is only a few campaigns at a time open up let them fill then open another. Open them as needed they stated that they have balance limits in place obviously those limits fell through the door.

Emily

jinxcat wrote: »

Our AD guild took over Goldbrand campaign. It was a ball of 20-30 Pact players vs us as a guild of 13 with vent. We stopped them from getting Emperor for a day so they all quit pvp or changed campaigns I'm guessing , we own almost everything and there have been no Daggerfall or Pact players in pvp since yesterday.

Now AD sits there, and when they lose a keep they take siege weapons and spawn camp the main base where everyone joins in. Hmm..

Charkat

jinxcat wrote: »

Our AD guild took over Goldbrand campaign. It was a ball of 20-30 Pact players vs us as a guild of 13 with vent. We stopped them from getting Emperor for a day so they all quit pvp or changed campaigns I'm guessing , we own almost everything and there have been no Daggerfall or Pact players in pvp since yesterday.

About 10 people from my DC guild were PvPing on Goldbrand last night. We were organized with some people from a few other guilds as well. We retook Fort Warden after capturing the resources, then pushed on to reclaim Fort Rayles. We captured the resources at Rayles and were attacking the inner keep door when the AD reinforcements started rolling in. (There was a small but determined group of AD defending Rayles when we first got there.) We were eventually pushed back out and fell back to Warden when AD started an assault on our only held keep!

In the end we had to abandon Rayles and focus on holding Warden. We had some hilariously good fun defending the farm at Warden. One of our guys was making PvP *** with his trebuchet. Even managed to take out the Emperor in the process! Eventually the AD numbers grew so large that we just couldn't hold. The resources, and inevitably the keep, were reclaimed by AD.

A few observations from our little campaign:

1. The alliance point gain you receive when another faction dominates the map is ridiculous. They were literally pouring in.

2. Almost no one on Goldbrand DC is PvPing yet. How do I know? Last night was my first time playing in Cyrodiil outside of doing the intro quest and I was ranked #8 on the DC side by the end of our short night.

3. The AD players are itching for some action! However, their zeal for actual combat might be getting the best of them. Once they reclaimed the last keep and had us outnumbered, our forces dwindled and it all came to an end.

4. Even when you're outnumbered, the PvP in this game is just downright fun. We were easy to overcome because we were only one group focusing on one area of the map. Add a few more skirmish groups to the map and spread them around, then AD will have to start making choices. (They'll probably appreciate the action as well!)

Hopefully things slowly change. My guild will continue to come back for more because we're having a good time battling the odds. However, we did see plenty of people in zone chat getting discouraged and leaving Cyrodiil because of the all yellow map.

On AD's side of things, I actually think it might be in their best interest to allow DC and EP to take back some of their home keeps, simply to entice more people on those sides into the fray. They can easily do this while still maintaining majority control of the map.

Anyway, see you on the field!

wOOOOt_of_SD

EU Chryshemere is way off balance. Aldmeri has taken everything, and the 2 other factions just seem like they have given up.

The PVP was brilliant in the beta, and now it sucks.
So it needs 2 things:

1. Remove some campaigns in the bottom. Leave only 4, and when the 4 are at high, then add 1 at a time.
2. Some kind of forced faction balance. Or no set home campaign, but free choise. Let us play them all!

And then reset this season. Too many campaigns are totally dominated by 1 faction, and thus ruining the fun for all.

Alierion_ESO

If they reset keeps but not points I'd be ok with it.

Seneschel

The balancing is an issue but some campaigns are dead because everyone wants in on the campaigns like Auriels Bow(which was awesome).
DC on the EU Volendrung is dead. I joined for two hours and I'm already rank 14 in the leaderboards and top of DC by 13k AP.

I've been having a blast though as AD have been taking DC keeps and Elder Scrolls and I've been a one man defence. I think they might hate me after their quick and easy victory turned into a slightly longer victory with a fair few unexpected and annoying(I can only assume!) deaths included.
Well anyway back to defending the last keep and Elder Scroll. I'm sure they'll be back in a minute.

Alierion_ESO

Honestly though they need to figure out a way how to move people without messing up the leaderboard. I'll give this about 2 more weeks and if it doesn't re-balance on its own they need to step in and some how mix things up.

Randomixx

Yeah, things do need to be rebalanced somehow, even if it means locking certain factions from even setting a certain campaign as home/guest until the other ones start getting some population in said campaign!

I mean this is just downright ridiculous. My guild on Chrysamere US has managed to rally the Dominion to finally fight back against DC, but because EP is all but non-existent the map is now just an endless cycle of "DC caps everything because they're the only faction with an Oceanic guild > AD recaptures their things > twelve hour stalemate between Fort Ash and Nickel Outpost until everyone logs off > repeat". I've guested into Auriel's Bow a few times and it felt like the beta again, but I want to enjoy my guild's home campaign too and that isn't going to happen while it remains a 1v1...

Ticare

DC is the least played faction in every campaign in EU at the moment and really struggling. Every campaign i've been to they are losing and the campaign finder shows that they always have 1 bar less amount of players than the other factions. I guess this is what always happens in a zerg based pvp system though, it will never be balanced.

michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO

There's nothing to encourage players to stick around and fight. On Scourge, you have completely yellow maps every time you log on. And even if you do get a group together to fight against Aldmeri, you lose players quickly to the terrible respawn system.

Over 7,000 for a forward tent? Is that some kind of joke?

Why would anybody want to travel these distances more than a couple times?

Ridiculous.

It's just a game. So why not let people get to the battlefield and fight? Why torture them with these ultra-marathon runs?

Easier to just log off and let Aldmeri have their way. There is zero incentive to stay and fight. Aldmeri will eventually bore themselves to death waiting for the war that never came.

Hessen

Ticare wrote: »

DC is the least played faction in every campaign in EU at the moment and really struggling. Every campaign i've been to they are losing and the campaign finder shows that they always have 1 bar less amount of players than the other factions. I guess this is what always happens in a zerg based pvp system though, it will never be balanced.

You might want to check out Hopesfire - DC own everything.

Kodiak

All of these views on balance were strongly expressed during beta and largely dismissed because surely if one side was dominate everyone would team up against them.

The problem I said then and continue to say is that the problem is when one faction so completely outnumbers the other two then the other two factions still won't even be enough. All that's doing is causing the people who are overwhelming numbers to be bored and people who can't find a good campaign to be annoyed cause they can't find a fight that isn't camped to their base.

Really what needs to happen is dynamic caps need to be placed on Cyrodill. So to start there's 100 soft cap on all 3 sides. AD reaches 100, DC has 30, EP has 50. Until the total of DC and EP reaches 100 combined, AD is locked. When that opens up it goes up by another 50 (150) and they must face a combined 150 for it to unlock again. This would go for any faction. This way there's a chance for both sides to team up against the third and overly populated factions get inspired to spread out more amongst the servers instead of just piling onto specific campaigns and dominating them.

Imperator_Clydus

Kodiak wrote: »

All of these views on balance were strongly expressed during beta and largely dismissed because surely if one side was dominate everyone would team up against them.

The problem I said then and continue to say is that the problem is when one faction so completely outnumbers the other two then the other two factions still won't even be enough. All that's doing is causing the people who are overwhelming numbers to be bored and people who can't find a good campaign to be annoyed cause they can't find a fight that isn't camped to their base.

Really what needs to happen is dynamic caps need to be placed on Cyrodill. So to start there's 100 soft cap on all 3 sides. AD reaches 100, DC has 30, EP has 50. Until the total of DC and EP reaches 100 combined, AD is locked. When that opens up it goes up by another 50 (150) and they must face a combined 150 for it to unlock again. This would go for any faction. This way there's a chance for both sides to team up against the third and overly populated factions get inspired to spread out more amongst the servers instead of just piling onto specific campaigns and dominating them.

This is a good point and honestly ZOS was more or less suggesting this is what they would do. Population imbalance was an issue brought up a long time ago to ZOS and they stated they would actively look to balance populations and have systems in place to prevent these lopsided campaigns.

Clearly, this is not the case currently and we are having a scenario where super guilds/alliances are campaign-hopping squashing all opposition, and causing the low populated campaigns to leave further exacerbating the problem. What we need is for ZOS to intervene, prevent players from flooding campaigns in large numbers, implement soft caps to slowly scale AvA numbers, and overall force the player base to play fairly.

Especially with the significant benefits an alliance can gain from dominating the entire map of Cyrodiil, it's not just an issue for PvPers, but for everyone in the game as all players are affected. Due to the fact that AvA is the premier feature of ESO, I am confident and hopeful ZOS will address this issue and not allow the minority in the community to ruin the experience for the majority.

steveb16_ESO46

jinxcat wrote: »

Our AD guild took over Goldbrand campaign. It was a ball of 20-30 Pact players vs us as a guild of 13 with vent. We stopped them from getting Emperor for a day so they all quit pvp or changed campaigns I'm guessing , we own almost everything and there have been no Daggerfall or Pact players in pvp since yesterday.

Is there a second Goldbrand because that is simply not how it went down. 13 AD - don't make me laugh.

AD tactics appear to be to wait until the EU players turn in and then sweep the board unopposed. I'm guessing you're all from non EU time zones.

steveb16_ESO46

double post. deleted.

steveb16_ESO46

Kodiak wrote: »

All of these views on balance were strongly expressed during beta and largely dismissed because surely if one side was dominate everyone would team up against them.

The problem I said then and continue to say is that the problem is when one faction so completely outnumbers the other two then the other two factions still won't even be enough.

The problem is also going to bed to a 3 colour map and waking to a single colour map. It's easy for a guild to sweep the board for their faction if most of Europe is asleep.

But no-one expects PvP to be fair - it's up to the 'losing' factions to get their acts together and fight back. i'm firmly opposed to guilds quitting campaigns because they are losing.

Don't get mad, get organised.

The AD we encountered were skilled and well-organised. Kudos to them for that.

Aemesh23

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

jinxcat wrote: »

Our AD guild took over Goldbrand campaign. It was a ball of 20-30 Pact players vs us as a guild of 13 with vent. We stopped them from getting Emperor for a day so they all quit pvp or changed campaigns I'm guessing , we own almost everything and there have been no Daggerfall or Pact players in pvp since yesterday.

Is there a second Goldbrand because that is simply not how it went down. 13 AD - don't make me laugh.

AD tactics appear to be to wait until the EU players turn in and then sweep the board unopposed. I'm guessing you're all from non EU time zones.

well, to be fair, he didn't say there were only 13 AD in the server, there were a bunch of players on both teams. He was speaking about one of the smaller groups "makin it happen". EP came to attack us at ashe with 20-25 players, while we had 10 people on D - at times as few as 4. We held for four hours. Sounds like you were there too. AD won emperorship because of a few people who played hard, and on day 3, people looking to join pvp picked our server, and like in every server, they chose to join in on the winning side (sigh) and when the tide turned on day 5 and EP showed up with 80 players mostly level 30+ (and quite a few vets), they quit AD to go to some other server (probably somewhere AD was winning). Or they just quit pvping (good riddance)

And that's what i have a problem with; guesting campaigns, and team size limits. pick any competitive game out there; football, soccer, call of duty, whatever. How lame would football be when one team has 30 players? Its not even a game anymore, its a slaughter. When you can guest to a campaign, you can bolster resources you didn't earn on a level playing field (hypothetically) but moreover, any team that's on an even footing can call for reinforcements that are over the top, that will eventually turn the balance of the game on its head. The game doesn't allow you to switch home campaigns without cost, so why should it allow guesting for free? The reason for the cost of campaign change is - i assume - to prevent people from jumping ship the moment they start losing, and/or to prevent a massive guild from porting to a new campaign and therein to upset what fragile balance might exist elsewhere. So why give them a freebie like guest campaigns? Moreover, teams should all have a cap that's a lot lower than it is. Mass combat's nice and all, but only when its mass vs mass, not when its mass vs not-so-many.

I know, verbose, even redundant. But true. Imperator is correct. If Zen doesn't step in to curb those power surges it's gonna cause a short.

Kewljag_66_ESO

thefreezingvoid wrote: »

I'd imagine a lot of people are still leveling their toons. The XP in cyrodil is quite horrid. Wait a week or two, once a lot more people start hitting 50 they will more than likely start joining cyrodil.

Right now what you are seeing in terms of pops is likely the hard core pvpers. I will admit it is a bit strange that most of these players ended up choosing campaigns where their Alliance was completely dominant though.

I fail to see the point. PvP is about winning, sure. However its also about losing. If their is no chance of losing, where is the excitement. Maybe it doesn't translate so much into a game like ESO where the matches last 90 days, however some of the best pvp matches are the ones where everyone is on pretty much even grounds, where their is no clear victor until the final few moments when one sides clinches the win or the other chokes.

****

A perfect RvR example of this comes from GW2, first Round of their fall tournament. Jade Quarry vs Black Gate vs Sea Of Sorrows. A 7 day match up, and at the end of day 6 the difference between the top faction and the bottom faction was only 5% which could easily change if one side screws up or slacks off. The bottom faction did end up taking third, but they were closing the gap when one of the guilds rage quitted (Guild was called "Rage N Quit", how fitting) and basically cost their faction almost half of their income per tick for several hours. At which point that faction was down and out.
Was a very fun match up to a part of. Was IMO one of the best match ups I experienced in over 6 months of WvW. Most match ups in GW2 were usually decided by the 3 or 4th day (With no chance for the other factions to change their positions) if not sooner.

****

I do wish their was a cap on how much one faction can dominate the other. Sure it might mean long queues for one or two factions, but would more enjoyable.

---

This system works very different than GW2's WvW. yes people would give up after a day or 2 because there side fell too far behind and then they would just wait for the match reset. In ESO it doesn't work like that, there actually is no map reset, just the leader boards and score board reset. In GW2 the goal and rewards was winning the match.
In ESO its really not, winning the campaign is more like a secondary bonus. the real goal and rewards come from controlling the map at that time for its bonuses just like in Darkage of Camelot. So there really is no reason to ever give up and no reset to even wait for. Even if your side fall way behind in the campaign score with no possibility of winning it you can still win where it matters on controlling the map and benefitting from those bonuses.
While right now the balance of population is causeing problems with the self balancing map I am sure it will change. eventually with someone close alliance populations you will start to see maps neutral with each alliance controlling their home territory. You will see one side being stronger and pushing but you will see the power change hands many times just as it did in DAOC.

joshisanonymous

I don't know about y'all, but my one character is level 20 and I had a 5 day early access pass and I had played in weekend betas since November (so I already knew how things worked). I guarantee you the vast majority of players are still leveling and not worrying about PvP. Relax and wait.

Koensol

EU Wabbajack. EP spawncamping the gates. Or there is no one at all. Like others have said: The game needs dynamic caps!

JeffKnight

NA Auriel's Bow - EP and AD are content to fight it out amongst each other over 2-3 keeps, but if DC ever shows up and tries to take anything outside of their corner, both EP and AD drop everything and smack DC back to the corner... population balance is lopsided at best... during most nights, AD and EP has at least 3 full groups for every 1 that we do.

Putok

Population should just be capped so that one faction cannot have more players than the other two combined. I thought that's what they were planning to do, cap population to maintain balance, but I guess not.

steveb16_ESO46

I think it is a mistake to let non-EU players onto the EU server. I keep seeing it - your team finally crawls to bed to get a few hours sleep. The map is balanced. Next morning one faction owns every single part of it because they had players who are either from a different time zone or don't have jobs or something.

Either way it's just not fun and it is just going to encourage campaign hopping.

I'd stop the guesting all together and I'd not permit characters on both mega-servers. And I'd reset the campaigns after the 90 days.

But something has to be done. Losing a campaign is one thing. Losing it because your life has regular hours is another.

Orchish

I have been playing DC on Auriel's bow EU, during peak time it is fairly balanced with all 3 factions being full. However, before and after peak hours, EP outnumber DC and AD combined, every night and morning the map pretty much turns red.

Genev

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

I think it is a mistake to let non-EU players onto the EU server. I keep seeing it - your team finally crawls to bed to get a few hours sleep. The map is balanced. Next morning one faction owns every single part of it because they had players who are either from a different time zone or don't have jobs or something.

Either way it's just not fun and it is just going to encourage campaign hopping.

I'd stop the guesting all together and I'd not permit characters on both mega-servers. And I'd reset the campaigns after the 90 days.

But something has to be done. Losing a campaign is one thing. Losing it because your life has regular hours is another.

Please don't start with the "only active during peak hours" arguements that were in GW2 as well.
I'm European and have spent time in AvA until 6 am one night, so even if you restrict people playing with their friends by not allowing non-Europeans on the EU servers there's still a good chance for imbalance with no-lifers like me.

On top of that, who would be allowed in? Would the Russians count as EU? The same Russians that took Blacktide to nr 1 by getting up at 6 am their time (2 am our time) to start the "morning swarm", which they then managed to keep up until the EU guilds activated?
In most games which have NA/EU split, they're on our side, like the Oceanics tend to be on NA.

I'm on Auriel's Bow EU btw, EP (which should come as no surprise to the poster right above me )

steveb16_ESO46

Genev wrote: »

Please don't start with the "only active during peak hours" arguements that were in GW2 as well.
I'm European and have spent time in AvA until 6 am one night, so even if you restrict people playing with their friends by not allowing non-Europeans on the EU servers there's still a good chance for imbalance with no-lifers like me.

On top of that, who would be allowed in? Would the Russians count as EU? The same Russians that took Blacktide to nr 1 by getting up at 6 am their time (2 am our time) to start the "morning swarm", which they then managed to keep up until the EU guilds activated?
In most games which have NA/EU split, they're on our side, like the Oceanics tend to be on NA.

I'm on Auriel's Bow EU btw, EP (which should come as no surprise to the poster right above me )

I'll start with whatever I like thanks. Moscow are 3 hours ahead of the UK and part of the European server I guess.

And I find it funny that the 'no-lifers' all seem to be one faction per campaign. It just looks like an organised attempt to zerg a map unopposed.

In practice it's going to hurt the game to have victory go to the faction that can organise a mass out of hours Zerg to swarm from campaign to campaign. The rest of us are going to conclude we're wasting our time once we figure out that each campaign is the same.

I don't know what the answer is but stopping guesting and limiting people to one server per account would be a start.

malais

So many assumptions and WAGs in this thread.

Off hours Zerg to win?
No lifers?

Wow is this the new "if I can't win I'll take my ball and go home?"

savak

I heard the same things in GW2 and for me and my PvP friends we stopped playing after a month once we saw how pointless it was to try and then just get zerged off peak. I understand different peeps play after different times but when there are less players, perhaps more NPCs or harder to kill NPCs on the low pop sides? Basically a gameplay feature that makes it harder for a group yo go around without opposition. The easier something is the less worthwhile and boring it is.

Zintair

The campaigns are a complete disaster. COMPLETE DISASTER.

How on earth you could release this game without dynamic population caps is BEYOND me.

There have been several MMOS who have done this how did you at ZoS miss this? I know you did your homework you have DAOC developers in your studio.

Get it together as of now people are just burning AP swapping around and many are just flocking to the winning side. This is not working as intended.