Official Discussion Thread, "Whitestrake’s Mayhem PvP Event"

GooGa592 · February 22

For those of us who want to play in the faction locked campaign because we main that campaign this is not good, to say the least. All three factions pop locked at 10am EST or earlier today, and can be expected to stay pop locked until 1am EST. We can expect queues of 1 hour, at a minimum, and over 2 hours if we try to log in anywhere near prime time.

How can ZOS have a MYM event with pop caps this low? This 60 players/faction pop cap is simply way, way, way, way, way too low. This is the lowest pop cap in history for cyrodiil, and is quite literally 10% of what the original population cap was.

CrazyKitty · February 22

GooGa592 wrote: »

For those of us who want to play in the faction locked campaign because we main that campaign this is not good, to say the least. All three factions pop locked at 10am EST or earlier today, and can be expected to stay pop locked until 1am EST. We can expect queues of 1 hour, at a minimum, and over 2 hours if we try to log in anywhere near prime time.

How can ZOS have a MYM event with pop caps this low? This 60 players/faction pop cap is simply way, way, way, way, way too low. This is the lowest pop cap in history for cyrodiil, and is quite literally 10% of what the original population cap was.

This is sad for sure. It's noon and the queue is already over an hour, and this is a weekday when most are at work.

Stridig · February 22

Did they not open additional campaigns this year?

LunaFlora · February 22

Stridig wrote: »

Did they not open additional campaigns this year?

they did open additional campaigns.

LordDraw · February 22

First hours passed and already 2 DC bots reported.
I'll probably only do daily quests up to end of event and skip it. Waste of time to do any PvP in Cyrodiil.

reazea · February 23

I tried logging on at 04:10 this morning, and there was a que of 18 already. This is by far the worst PvP event experience in the history of Cyrodiil. In addition, I was disconnected twice during big fights, so the crazy low population cap isn't helping performance either.

At 04:00 two of three factions were pop locked and the third pop locked 15 minutes later. I'm on the west coast USA, but that means all three factions are pop locking at 07:00 EST now, before ZOS employees even have to be to work. This is how bad it is on a weekday work day, so it's going to be notably worse on the weekend.

This is really over the top unfair to the PvP community. Those of us that main in the faction locked campaign are really struggling to deal with these crazy low population caps.

@ZOS_Kevin
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_RichLambert
@ZOS_MattFiror

Please, we are begging you, we need a higher pop cap in cyrodiil. Please.

Stridig · February 23

So far this is the worst Cyrodiil performance I can ever remember during a mayhem event.

loosej · February 23

I haven't seen any performance issues so far, but agree that the pop caps really should be raised. I've entered the queue nearly an hour ago, and am still waiting.

And yes I know, there are additional campaigns during Mayhem, but I don't really care for them because of a thing called Home Campaign...

Jaraal · February 23

Stridig wrote: »

So far this is the worst Cyrodiil performance I can ever remember during a mayhem event.

Yes, lots of folks reporting being kicked and stuck in the "Lost Lobby Connection" loop. Happened to me a few times already.

Ingenon · February 23

Sorry to hear so many folks are unable to get into their Home Campaign. It would be good if ZOS could add some resources (like virtual machine) and increase population limit for Grey Host.

My event is going well, but I'm probably not the target audience. I'm doing 1 Cyrodiil PvE quest in the campaign with zero bar population, and 1 Imperial City PvE quest in the campaign with zero bar population, getting my 3 event tickets while avoiding all PvP, and then staying out of Cyrodiil/Imperial City for the rest of the day.

Necrotech_Master · February 23

i was enjoying cyro last night in the 7 day camps, everygloam (cp), and quagmire (no cp)

it was kind of fun in the quagmire camp because yellow had the low pop bonus on top of the event bonus, so we were getting like nearly 30k-40k ap for capping keeps lol

no lag or crashing issues while i was in cyro

Jaraal · February 23

I just logged in to a Gray Host queue of 148. Come on ZOS, you guys really need to raise the population caps to at least 1/4 of what they were when Cyrodiil first opened.

And no, I don't want to go play in another campaign. I'm trying to stay in the top 2% (around top 100ish) to get the best rewards at the end of the month.

Edit: I went outside to do some chores while waiting to get in, and got booted for inactivity before I could get back to the computer. Started the queue again, and it's at 172 now.

Groterdan · February 24

Items jewelry from golden. Still cost 500 . Shouldn't they been lower since the jewelry change?

SeaGtGruff · February 24

One thing I miss about the current event is the double drops inside the Cyrodiil quest reward coffers, as is usually done for the daily quest reward coffers in other zones when there's an event involving that zone. The double Tel Var is very nice, but it would have been awesome to get two pieces of Cyrodiil zone gear in each coffer instead of the usual one piece.

Regardless, I've been enjoying this event a lot, as I always do-- despite dying a lot, as I always do!

Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, double-drop Cyrodiil coffers probably would have been overkill, since we can earn a lot of those each day, unlike in zones where the daily quests are much more limited per day.

CrazyKitty · February 24

These highly unreasonably low pop caps have made it impossible for guilds that have scheduled guild raids to run their raids for the duration of the event. I tried to log in for guild raid today at 6:30am EST. The queue was already over 30 minutes. (that's 3:30am on the west coast) All three factions pop locked at 6am today. (that's 3am west coast time)

How on earth can anyone at ZOS think these ultra low pop caps are acceptable? For the duration of this event with pop caps this low PvP guilds are not going to be able to participate in their scheduled guild raids.

How it is possible that this situation has come to be? How can it be possible that ZOS has lowered the pop caps this low and didn't bother raising them for this event?

@ZOS_Kevin
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_RichLambert
@ZOS_MattFiror

How can players have any confidence in ZOS with management decisions like this?

TechMaybeHic · February 24

I might be alone in this, but I feel like the existing campaigns should be locked to player's that have earned tier 3 rewards when MYM starts near the end of the campaign. Completely destroys the purpose of competition when players who spent the majority of the month in a campaign are effectively blocked out from finishing

loosej · February 24

[18:23] Gray Host Queue Position: 77 (Solo)
...
[19:36] Gray Host Campaign Queue Ready (Solo)

SaffronCitrusflower · February 25

My PvP guild announced today that the daily scheduled guild runs are cancelled until this event is over. Nobody can get into the campaign to play. We also had a discussion of what game we might want to switch to that might be more reliable and respectful. We might end up dropping ESO and moving to a different game because of this.

tincanman · February 25

IC seems to be ok.

But having huge queues for cyrodiil is just not good at all - maybe create some new campaigns to hopefully alleviate the impact on the 'main' campaigns? Or increase the capacities or....something? Anything?

WhiteCoatSyndrome · February 25

tincanman wrote: »

But having huge queues for cyrodiil is just not good at all - maybe create some new campaigns to hopefully alleviate the impact on the 'main' campaigns? Or increase the capacities or....something? Anything?

They did, I’ve been rampaging around Cyrodiil in one of the new ones. No issues getting in, lots of fights so far.

SeaGtGruff · February 25

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I might be alone in this, but I feel like the existing campaigns should be locked to player's that have earned tier 3 rewards when MYM starts near the end of the campaign. Completely destroys the purpose of competition when players who spent the majority of the month in a campaign are effectively blocked out from finishing

I prefer to play on my home campaign, but I don't PvP often enough or seriously enough to get any sort of placement on the campaign leader board. I usually get a few Rewards for the Worthy, but I don't even know what the difference is between the various tiers or what you need to earn to qualify for each of them, so presumably I only ever get the lowest-tier rewards.

Anyway, I would be fine with being locked out of my home campaign during Mayhem if the campaign is pop-locked, because I usually join a different campaign that doesn't have a login queue, so being locked out of my home campaign wouldn't really make any difference to me.

However, I suspect that some of the "old guard" may keep an eye out for Mayhem so they can temporarily return to ESO to join in the PvP fun, and they might not like being locked out of their preferred campaign. I don't know why it should matter to them if they aren't around enough for their position on leader board to mean anything, but they still might prefer to play in the same campaign that their old friends are in.

Stridig · February 25

Crickets

RetPing · February 25

Best mayhem I have ever done. Top notch campaign with big popularions cap are a lot of fun. Very skilled gameplay also not relying on sets.
Now I see, as said by zos_kevin why combat team is very proud of what they done with pvp.

tincanman · February 25

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

tincanman wrote: »

But having huge queues for cyrodiil is just not good at all - maybe create some new campaigns to hopefully alleviate the impact on the 'main' campaigns? Or increase the capacities or....something? Anything?

They did, I’ve been rampaging around Cyrodiil in one of the new ones. No issues getting in, lots of fights so far.

I meant even more on top of the usual extra ones - but glad you're having fun.

KS_Amt38 · February 26

An entire map of Cyrodiil of just 60 Players per Faction is a joke. We saw in the pop cap testing, that PC can handle it at least (dont know about consoles) why do we still suffer by the very low cap?

I really miss the old Cyro mass Battles where every keep were on fire (sieged). As for today in a pop locked campaign we have times where not a single siege is going on.

OolongSnakeTea · February 26

Will an offical statement about not being able to earn the title/laurels this year be made since it is bugged due to the lack of the whitestrake scroll?

loosej · February 27

OolongSnakeTea wrote: »

Will an offical statement about not being able to earn the title/laurels this year be made since it is bugged due to the lack of the whitestrake scroll?

And a statement about cost of jewelry not being adjusted at the Golden?

And an explanation why the pop caps aren't adjusted for this event? The previous experiment with increased pop caps has shown that you are able to adjust the caps on the fly, why isn't this happening for the event?

ValarMorghulis1896 · February 27

I love this event, but i really dislike the low pop cap!

Kungfu · February 28

@ZOS_Kevin I'm sure you get tagged in too many posts. But I am hoping to prevent mine from getting buried here. I do not post often but I have been a fairly loyal account since the beginning of this game. And the following is very important to more people than just me. Please help us get heard?

TLDR;
This mayhem was underwhelming and a complete letdown due to population caps which limited the massive battles that used to happen often and increased queue times which have many of us not even bothering. Root cause must be the historic lack of attention to "fixing Cyrodiil".
Cyrodiil needs that attention. It is the ONLY activity in ESO that is truly unique to ESO.

Mayhem:
I LOVE mayhem and look forward to it so much that I have scheduled vacation time from work in the past. This year was the worst, most underwhelming version I can recall. I believe mostly due to the queue times and population caps. "Just go join another campaign" is not a solution - it's a workaround. And an insufficient one, at that. You simply cannot require players to "home" a campaign but then recommend they switch for special events.

That said, the root of our issue: server & code performance. I do not know the root causes of issues with large numbers of people on the map. But that's partially due to ZOS' habit of withholding information and choosing not to employ the crowd sourcing of actual professionals that you have available to you via your playerbase.

A little off-topic below.

Future of Cyro:
How can we cyro-lovers be heard? Cyrodiil's root issues have been largely ignored for years now.
Alliance wars should be the foundational focus of this game now. Because you have a good routine for developing new dungeon, story, trial, housing, and other PVE content. But PVE content is static. You absolutely have to come up with new & interesting material on very aggressive time tables just to keep those players interested. This results in burned out artists, story-tellers, and developers.

However, Cyrodiil is dynamic in nature. Players cause it to be so. And, when you have a fully functioning PVP experience like Cyrodiil, those players will continue to log in and play even during the worst of it. So the reverse is true, too: fix Cyrodiil and those players will brag & advertise ESO passionately.

The focus of this game should be to 'fix Cyrodiil' to the point that hundreds or even thousands of players could be on the same campaign at one time, doing things... no longer crashing when dozens clash.
What is/are the root cause(s) of the underlying issues that require population caps? TELL US, inform your user base. Employ us for free! We can help come up with solutions.

Is it base code that needs to be rewritten? That sucks. But let's approach reality for what it is. Solution: Spin up a stack of servers and commit a team to doing it. Surely someone in leadership is intelligent enough to see how it would pay off in the long run... right? It's a MASSIVE undertaking and crazy investment monetarily, right? But the original creators of the game took that risk. You can take it now and have less work to do for it. Hell, build a purchase-required expansion to help recover the money.

Is it hardware resrouces? Server count? I can't speak for many, but I'd pay a little extra for a functional Cyrodiil. I'd pay a little extra for myself and a few friends! Maybe an ESO+ only campaign? Surely you have smarter people than me that can come up with better solutions. And please stop listening to people who whine about "pay to play is bad" - those people clearly have no understanding how businesses function and paychecks get paid.

How & why you should shift your whole company's attitude toward Cyrodiil as the backbone of the game:
Run some data first.

For accounts that play fewer than 12-ish hours a week, see how many spend 20% or more of their time in Cyrodiil. These are very likely accounts like mine and my friends who get on, do (a ton of) dailies and then queue up for an hour or two. These accounts are the ones that keep your game populated and very commonly discuss your game with passion among their friends IRL.
Most of us have old friends that would love to come back to this game. But the first question we are asked is "did they fix Cyrodiil?"

I cannot WAIT for stackable siege and consolidated repair kits. But we're not stupid - we know we're just getting thrown a bone. We are & have been (for YEARS) begging for a healthy meal and this is us being handed a candy bar. Tasty, sure. Definitely not what our system needs though.

loosej · February 29

I don't expect a response anymore, it looks like they're too busy hyping the next chapter. Paying for marketing material to attract new players is apparently more profitable than keeping existing customers by having a quality product. Whatever, they say you should vote with your wallet, so that's what I'm going to do.