One of many reasons why PvP isn't popular

ArchMikem · January 25

This is a reason why Camps get dead. This is why PvP has bad player retention. I log on for the evening and decide to waste time in PvP after doing my Endeavors and all I do is bash my head against a wall because there are just no Reds, ANYWHERE. But DC is fielding large groups, AD has META 1vXer Builds roaming, every night lately I look at Cyrodiil and DC has the entire map with no one logged in to fight them. The few Pact players that do, especially low levels get curbed and farmed. An ENTIRE Faction either logging off to not deal with this, or what I think is worse, logging onto their Alts to join the problem, making people like me, who has all red characters, have just a horrible time tonight and it makes me not want to touch Cyrodiil or the Imp City ever again.

If Scribing ends up hurting PvP this year I won't shed a tear. With the way this game handles combat mechanics PvP has been a complete lost cause. But hey if you're one of those META Builds 1vXing all over the place without even trying you're still having fun, right? That is until you run out of players to steamroll, cause PvP isn't fun for them.

SeaGtGruff · January 25

Ha! I feel for you, because when I decide to go to Cyrodiil it's usually red, red, everywhere!

CameraBeardThePirate · January 25

Many PvPers want faction lock gone for this reason. If your alliance starts to snowball and completely cover the map, it'd be a lot more fun to hop on a different faction and start to push back. With faction lock, if your alliance starts to dominate, the PvP just sort of ends.

JerBearESO · January 25

I think the solution here is kinda complex. We basically need systems for handling power distribution according to the amount of players logged in to an alliance. Fewer logged in means more buffs to them, more guards for them, their flags are harder to flip. That sort of thing, so as to keep the fight feeling somewhat equal despite difference in numbers.

RaikaNA · January 25

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Many PvPers want faction lock gone for this reason. If your alliance starts to snowball and completely cover the map, it'd be a lot more fun to hop on a different faction and start to push back. With faction lock, if your alliance starts to dominate, the PvP just sort of ends.

No not everyone will do that... if the faction lock goes away... it will encourage people to hop on over to the winning side.

reazea · January 25

The problem is the pop caps are way, way too low now. Each faction simply can't field enough players to keep the fights balanced. ZOS is continuing to lower the pop caps too.

The solution is for ZOS to give a hoot about PvP and dedicate more server capacity and raise the pop caps. These issues of one faction owning the whole map due to time zone differences never were a problem when the pop cap was over 125. Now the pop cap is 1/2 that. It's also getting way more toxic in Cyrodiil because the only people bothering to log in now are the same small number of people always fighting each other, making it personal rather than a team vs. team vs. team experience.

KiltMaster · January 25

Yeah gating hurts Cyrodiil. I get that it's the mechanic to flip keeps to get more points, but I've been zerged down trying to take a tri keep resource before - let alone even trying to take the keep!

As for IC, do people defend the flags as hard there? Usually when I'm down there I'm just farming tel var or running thru the dailies, so the flag mech doesn't matter as much to me.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · January 25

This is why I keep advocating for having the Imperials ‘rebel’ once a given faction reaches a certain threshold of keeps and take a few over. It would take pressure off of the losing factions and give the winning side something to do. These sorts of maps aren’t fun for the winning side either, because there are no fights!

RaikaNA wrote: »

No not everyone will do that... if the faction lock goes away... it will encourage people to hop on over to the winning side.

Agree with this. Back when I still played Planetside 2 it was a problem there as well. Faction lock doesn’t stop desertions but it at least keeps people from turning on their own side. Without it, the people who can’t or won’t switch sides get screwed.

Necrotech_Master · January 25

for cyrodiil population imbalances are definitely the biggest problem i see

i dont necessarily think faction locks are the problem, because this happens in both grey host and blackreach, 1 camp with locks and 1 camp without

if there was something like planetside 2 which has a "faction balance queue" that gets imposed on a faction thats too much population over the others it might help that a bit (though if not implemented correctly could cause its own problems)

for IC, the biggest problem there is honestly the fact that surface respawns are tied to district ownership, because usually i still see a lot of various factions going around in there regardless what the district flag colors are

the respawns tied to flags just makes things more annoying if your trying to get dailies done, and happen to die, then you either are forced to respawn in the district on the opposite side from the one you need, or you get forced back downstairs and have to sit through extra load screens

ArchMikem · January 25

After a night's sleep and waking up to replies, you guys are humbling me. I anticipated mocking backlash cause I mainly chose to start a thread to vent, not actually civil rebuttal and discussion about a problem everyone agrees exists, but I may be getting a tad too worked up over.

KiltMaster wrote: »

Yeah gating hurts Cyrodiil. I get that it's the mechanic to flip keeps to get more points, but I've been zerged down trying to take a tri keep resource before - let alone even trying to take the keep!

As for IC, do people defend the flags as hard there? Usually when I'm down there I'm just farming tel var or running thru the dailies, so the flag mech doesn't matter as much to me.

There's also the problem of the majority of one Faction purposefully focusing attention on another's Gates, ignoring the third. Combine that with a population imbalance and that gated Faction will never break out as long as they're being farmed. As much as people claim to support the 3-way of ESO, they almost always act like it's just 2-way PvP.

And in Imp City, not really. All the flags do for those players is give them a respawn point within the District, so they can get back into the fight faster. They don't care about Tel-Var, the Patrolling Horrors are a side attraction. All they care about is hunting down other players. Really it's not even encouraged to try capturing a Flag as it just turns into a big "Here I am!" sign on the map.

SeaGtGruff · January 25

I don't know if my reply was the "mocking backlash," but I was being totally serious when I said I feel for you. I know exactly how you feel because I've been there (but on a different alliance), and I know how frustrating and discouraging it is to try to help my chosen alliance recover even a single keep when one of the other alliances is completely dominating the map and is able to nearly instantly show up in force at any keep, anywhere on the map, to quickly stop either of the other two alliances from their attempts to reclaim a keep. Oh, we managed to reclaim a few resources? Quickly captured back again by the side that's got the entire map. We took one of the flag cities? Gone again, toot sweet.

The only thing I find amusing about these sorts of complaints is that they usually seem to be aimed at DC, and my experience as a DC player is the opposite-- that it's usually EP, and occasionally AD, who is dominating the map. I'm sure that's explained by two things-- that it's human nature for each alliance to see itself as the victim and never the bully; and that it could be due to the specific server, campaign, and time of day when I decide to go to Cyrodiil.

Frankly, on the few occasions when I go to Cyrodiil for an endeavor and DC does happen to have most of the map, I generally don't hang around for long because there's nothing for me to do. The only real exception is when the endeavor is to complete a daily quest in a specific town and the town is conveniently under DC control-- except it's usually a lot more fun for me to try to complete a quest for Cropsford when the town and most of the map are controlled by one or both of the other alliances, because it's more interesting and challenging to have to ride across nearly the entire breadth of Cyrodiil, cautiously sneak up to the quest giver near the flags, sneak around some more while completing the quest, and then cautiously sneak back to the quest giver to turn it in.

ArchMikem · January 25

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

and that it could be due to the specific server, campaign, and time of day when I decide to go to Cyrodiil.

It's most likely that, yeah. From all the stories I've heard on here, every Campaign and Server has their own version of the "Team Whatever Color" and "This Faction always Dominates". It does end up funny when you're so accustomed to one situation but someone else complains about the Faction you play for being the problem you experience, all because a difference in Camp.

And nah, I didn't take your remark as mocking.

opethmaniac · January 26

ArchMikem wrote: »

And in Imp City, not really. All the flags do for those players is give them a respawn point within the District, so they can get back into the fight faster. They don't care about Tel-Var, the Patrolling Horrors are a side attraction. All they care about is hunting down other players. Really it's not even encouraged to try capturing a Flag as it just turns into a big "Here I am!" sign on the map.

Capturing a flag also gives you a strong buff for 10 minutes, which is very helpful if you're looking to do PVP and not just farm Tel Var.

Galeriano · January 26

RaikaNA wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Many PvPers want faction lock gone for this reason. If your alliance starts to snowball and completely cover the map, it'd be a lot more fun to hop on a different faction and start to push back. With faction lock, if your alliance starts to dominate, the PvP just sort of ends.

No not everyone will do that... if the faction lock goes away... it will encourage people to hop on over to the winning side.

It will encourage both behaviours. Thing is that when one side is already winning by a noticable margin it really won't change much if people from other alliances log to join winning side but something can change if people from winning allionce log on to other alliances. Also it's not like everyone from loosing alliances can log into the winning one since population cap won;t let that happen and very often when one side is winning it's close to cap anyway. Me personally I never visited gray host again after it became alliance locked and I would hop on it right away after lock would be lifted.

xylena_lazarow · January 26

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

CameraBeardThePirate · January 26

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

But that would be a good thing, no? If the hard-core pvpers go to the losing faction it'd balance out the campaign

CrazyKitty · January 26

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

But that would be a good thing, no? If the hard-core pvpers go to the losing faction it'd balance out the campaign

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

I don't see the kind of noble behavior being described happening. It didn't happen with any kind of regularity prior to faction lock, and it's unlikely to happen if they remove faction lock. At least one of the people I'm quoting has recently switched to the winning faction from the losing faction.

Necrotech_Master · January 26

opethmaniac wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

And in Imp City, not really. All the flags do for those players is give them a respawn point within the District, so they can get back into the fight faster. They don't care about Tel-Var, the Patrolling Horrors are a side attraction. All they care about is hunting down other players. Really it's not even encouraged to try capturing a Flag as it just turns into a big "Here I am!" sign on the map.

Capturing a flag also gives you a strong buff for 10 minutes, which is very helpful if you're looking to do PVP and not just farm Tel Var.

while i would agree with this, i would also support the "avoid the flag" method as the flag capture is ridiculously slow and does end up acting like a giant target on your back for doing so

its very annoying that the flag capture speed in IC is capped to the speed of 1 person, while flags in cyro are capped to a speed of 6 people (so it takes seconds to flip instead of minutes if you have 6 people on the flag)

Kartalin · January 26

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

its very annoying that the flag capture speed in IC is capped to the speed of 1 person, while flags in cyro are capped to a speed of 6 people (so it takes seconds to flip instead of minutes if you have 6 people on the flag)

This is absolutely an annoyance. Not saying it has to scale to 6 people like cyro, but if the IC flags could flip faster on having up to 3 or even 2 people, that would definitely be a QOL improvement.

Joy_Division · January 26

CrazyKitty wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

But that would be a good thing, no? If the hard-core pvpers go to the losing faction it'd balance out the campaign

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

I don't see the kind of noble behavior being described happening. It didn't happen with any kind of regularity prior to faction lock, and it's unlikely to happen if they remove faction lock. At least one of the people I'm quoting has recently switched to the winning faction from the losing faction.

It's got nothing to do with being noble. It has everything to do with being competitive and the desire to test those limits.

Xylena is exactly right; the people who do switch over are doing it precisely for the challenge and because they constantly challenge themselves, they are going to be the better players. By definition, the people who take the easy way, the bandwagon hoppers, do not test their limits, do not reach their potential, and not as well practiced and are inferior players.

RealLoveBVB · January 27

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Many PvPers want faction lock gone for this reason. If your alliance starts to snowball and completely cover the map, it'd be a lot more fun to hop on a different faction and start to push back. With faction lock, if your alliance starts to dominate, the PvP just sort of ends.

It's the whole difference. Blackreach for example doesn't have faction lock, yet it's all day blue or red too.

And instead of changing factions to make it even again, players prefer to join the dominating team.

SeaGtGruff · January 27

CrazyKitty wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

But that would be a good thing, no? If the hard-core pvpers go to the losing faction it'd balance out the campaign

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

I don't see the kind of noble behavior being described happening. It didn't happen with any kind of regularity prior to faction lock, and it's unlikely to happen if they remove faction lock. At least one of the people I'm quoting has recently switched to the winning faction from the losing faction.

I don't know about anyone you quoted, but I can't think of anyone who's switched from a winning alliance to a losing alliance. True, I'm not very active in PvP and don't know a huge number of PvPers, but I've been in a PvP guild for several years and have watched a number of PvP streamers. I remember crafting gear for some of the members of the PvP guild back when they fought for the same alliance as me, and now they play for one of the other alliances and have killed me. And some of the streamers who used to play for the same alliance as me now play for one of the other alliances.

I understand-- after all, it's just a game, and we're supposed to have fun playing games. Fighting on the losing side isn't as fun as fighting on the winning side. But, yeah, that supposed scenario doesn't seem to occur in my experience.

Kartalin wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

its very annoying that the flag capture speed in IC is capped to the speed of 1 person, while flags in cyro are capped to a speed of 6 people (so it takes seconds to flip instead of minutes if you have 6 people on the flag)

This is absolutely an annoyance. Not saying it has to scale to 6 people like cyro, but if the IC flags could flip faster on having up to 3 or even 2 people, that would definitely be a QOL improvement.

Yes, even capping it at 2 players would be something of a help.

Galeriano · January 27

CrazyKitty wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

But that would be a good thing, no? If the hard-core pvpers go to the losing faction it'd balance out the campaign

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

I don't see the kind of noble behavior being described happening. It didn't happen with any kind of regularity prior to faction lock, and it's unlikely to happen if they remove faction lock. At least one of the people I'm quoting has recently switched to the winning faction from the losing faction.

It did happen regularly prior to faction lock. I was doing it on regular basis and so did many people I know. It have nothing to do with nobility, some people just don't find zerging everything down that fun and preffer to do a smallscale while defending objectives or takcling zergs. The moment one alliance started dominating in numbers I was logging onto alliance that was pushed back. Faction lock basically caused me to never come back to gray host.

Poss · January 27

The problem when the map looks like that is a lot of players, especially the casual player, will log in and head straight back to the wayshrine and leave. There needs to be an incentive for the struggling alliance to try and take back their home keeps.

Scrap the current scroll bonuses and change it to something else. There needs to be a purpose to still take scrolls just not sure what. Then give the struggling alliances an increase to wep/damage and resistances based on how many home keeps they don’t have.

Also when there’s no scrolls in the temples, disable the ability for the other alliances to gain ap from taking and defending the triangle home keeps. If one of the triangle home keeps is still capped by the other alliances after a certain period of time, the npcs turn back to their original faction and become immune like pve guards. Make it so there is zero incentive to holding a triangle home keep for farming purposes after the scrolls are taken and no incentive to keep a faction gated.

CameraBeardThePirate · January 28

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Many PvPers want faction lock gone for this reason. If your alliance starts to snowball and completely cover the map, it'd be a lot more fun to hop on a different faction and start to push back. With faction lock, if your alliance starts to dominate, the PvP just sort of ends.

It's the whole difference. Blackreach for example doesn't have faction lock, yet it's all day blue or red too.

And instead of changing factions to make it even again, players prefer to join the dominating team.

Zerglings and casual players will join the dominating team.

Most players that enjoy PvPing (not PvDooring) prefer actually fighting people and not just gating them with a zerg.

wazzz56 · January 29

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

CrazyKitty wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

But that would be a good thing, no? If the hard-core pvpers go to the losing faction it'd balance out the campaign

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

I don't see the kind of noble behavior being described happening. It didn't happen with any kind of regularity prior to faction lock, and it's unlikely to happen if they remove faction lock. At least one of the people I'm quoting has recently switched to the winning faction from the losing faction.

I don't know about anyone you quoted, but I can't think of anyone who's switched from a winning alliance to a losing alliance. True, I'm not very active in PvP and don't know a huge number of PvPers, but I've been in a PvP guild for several years and have watched a number of PvP streamers. I remember crafting gear for some of the members of the PvP guild back when they fought for the same alliance as me, and now they play for one of the other alliances and have killed me. And some of the streamers who used to play for the same alliance as me now play for one of the other alliances.

I understand-- after all, it's just a game, and we're supposed to have fun playing games. Fighting on the losing side isn't as fun as fighting on the winning side. But, yeah, that supposed scenario doesn't seem to occur in my experience.

Kartalin wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

its very annoying that the flag capture speed in IC is capped to the speed of 1 person, while flags in cyro are capped to a speed of 6 people (so it takes seconds to flip instead of minutes if you have 6 people on the flag)

This is absolutely an annoyance. Not saying it has to scale to 6 people like cyro, but if the IC flags could flip faster on having up to 3 or even 2 people, that would definitely be a QOL improvement.

Yes, even capping it at 2 players would be something of a help.

Well, I can assure you, people would and have. This was the allure of playing in BR on Ps NA before it became a complete ghost town. Play AD while dc/ep was zerging the map down and when it switched to Dc when Ad was....Some people prefer to play on the losing and outnumbered side...there is a lot of AP to be had that way

Quackery · January 31

PC NA-campaign is as close as it gets points-wise. And pvp is smack full, nothing dying here.

JustLovely · January 31

Quackery wrote: »

PC NA-campaign is as close as it gets points-wise. And pvp is smack full, nothing dying here.

They just lowered the population cap again recently. DC is pop locking before noon EST on work days now.

CrazyKitty · February 1

Joy_Division wrote: »

CrazyKitty wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

But that would be a good thing, no? If the hard-core pvpers go to the losing faction it'd balance out the campaign

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

It will encourage both behaviours

While true, consider what sort of players are doing which. The hardcore players who can fight outnumbered leave the dominant faction to help the underdog, while the guys moving for easy wins tend to be easy targets.

I don't see the kind of noble behavior being described happening. It didn't happen with any kind of regularity prior to faction lock, and it's unlikely to happen if they remove faction lock. At least one of the people I'm quoting has recently switched to the winning faction from the losing faction.

It's got nothing to do with being noble. It has everything to do with being competitive and the desire to test those limits.

Xylena is exactly right; the people who do switch over are doing it precisely for the challenge and because they constantly challenge themselves, they are going to be the better players. By definition, the people who take the easy way, the bandwagon hoppers, do not test their limits, do not reach their potential, and not as well practiced and are inferior players.

It will be interesting to see if the couple people posting in this thread that were on the faction that won by a landslide will migrate from that faction to one of the other factions. I don't think it will happen, but we'll see by end of day today most likely.

xylena_lazarow · February 1

CrazyKitty wrote: »

It will be interesting to see if the couple people posting in this thread that were on the faction that won by a landslide will migrate from that faction to one of the other factions. I don't think it will happen, but we'll see by end of day today most likely.

DC winning by 2k is not a landslide. Whichever nightcap faction winning by 20k would be a landslide. We stopped that, the campaign was close, players actually cared and tried, PvP was great. You don't get "good fights" when all those faction players don't care and don't try, you get 40v4 zerging or straight PvDoor because nobody is showing up to fight.

I myself came back to this game last camp after a 6mo break to see that DC was in last place a week into the new camp, and my Cyro smallscale friends had already rerolled there. It was an easy decision. I chose to stay DC believing the new camp would be more balanced, and so far it is close, with EP in 1st and DC in 3rd, separated by only 250 points.

SmellyUnlimited · February 2

reazea wrote: »

The problem is the pop caps are way, way too low now. Each faction simply can't field enough players to keep the fights balanced. ZOS is continuing to lower the pop caps too.

The solution is for ZOS to give a hoot about PvP and dedicate more server capacity and raise the pop caps. These issues of one faction owning the whole map due to time zone differences never were a problem when the pop cap was over 125. Now the pop cap is 1/2 that. It's also getting way more toxic in Cyrodiil because the only people bothering to log in now are the same small number of people always fighting each other, making it personal rather than a team vs. team vs. team experience.

This is exactly right. Cyro is now the same players perpetually logged in fighting the same from the opposing sides, with new players finding it entirely overwhelming to try and learn. I remember playing when it was veteran ranks, and the non-vet ranked players got a significant boost in stats to allow them to participate. Now the gatekeeping into this world has reached absurd proportions. Barely anyone plays in non-CP campaigns, so those venturing forth into this Cyro are at the mercy of the niche microcosm of meta builds that obliterate all in their path. What new player wants to go up against swaths of Master DW/Proc sets and return for more unending death?

What’s worse is most players have a necessity to wade into this swamp, needing to unlock vigor, war horn, or caltrops (being the only source of major breach for Sorcs). The game is trying to keep PvE and PvP as complimentary to each other, but the opposite is true, so it’s time to separate these worlds for good.