Should cyrodiil be scaled down in size due to population cap reductions?

gariondavey

Cyrodiil used to have population caps of around 600 players a side. Now it is around 60-80. You sometimes have to ride for 10 minutes or more to find a fight, which turns what could be fast paced combat into a riding simulator.

Panderbander

No (please explain why)

The scale of Cyrodiil plays into the strategy of taking and defending the map. There are still (and will continue to be) pockets of excitement but at its core Cyrodiil is meant to be played as a tactical pvp environment.

Want to take a keep? Just remove the inhabitants and hold the flags for a time, you have two deaths to accomplish that. Want to defend it? Well you and everyone else defending it has two deaths to accomplish that; the run back serves to gate how fast players can return to the fray after exhausting their local respawns. If you remove that by reducing the scale of the place you remove the ability to root out an entrenched faction or repel an invasion, removing the ability to play the map strategically.

There's more nuance than that, but that's the general gist of why there's such large distances between locations.

If you are looking for a brawl or just straight up head to head fights this is what IC and BGs accomplish. There's little to no time gating and the objectives are designed to be completed very quickly and flip often. No population? Sure, that's a real problem, but that's more a result of a lack of incentive to engage in those activities compared to Cyrodiil.

colossalvoids

No (please explain why)

Scale of Cyrodiil is the entire point of it. I'd be more happy if there would be one-two fine tuned Cyro campaigns overall and some new, smaller in scale zone (just couple keeps, still sieges etc.) for more fast action but not being just a bigger BG.

gariondavey

Yes

I have tried for years to get ic reworked to improve population (spawn at any flag, can only take stones equal to that which you hold, anyone outside your group is an enemy to you)
And also for years to get bgs reworked (2 teams for objective modes or fewer objectives to fight over, an actual separate queue for deathmatch and other modes, a lobby for premade teams to be able to fight each other).

Myself and many other have asked for YEARS For these things and they haven't even been acknowledged by community managers despite many people tagging those community managers and senior developers.

I play a ton of ic and a ton of bgs, but often have to travel way too far in cyro to get good action. This wasn't the case when I started in 2017 and the population was 10x what it is now. Cyro feels like a ghost town due to its size comparative to a population a tenth of what it was designed to hold.

CameraBeardThePirate

No (please explain why)

Scaling down the size of Cyrodiil would likely take almost as much time as designing an entirely new zone. It's not as simple as "change the slider from 100% to 60%". They could theoretically cut the corners off the map, but that wouldn't change much and would probably just lead to other balance issues with backcapping scrolls etc.

I'd rather if they were going to invest that much time into reworking Cyrodiil that they instead invest the time into a new and engaging open world PvP system.

gariondavey

Yes

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Scaling down the size of Cyrodiil would likely take almost as much time as designing an entirely new zone. It's not as simple as "change the slider from 100% to 60%". They could theoretically cut the corners off the map, but that wouldn't change much and would probably just lead to other balance issues with backcapping scrolls etc.

I'd rather if they were going to invest that much time into reworking Cyrodiil that they instead invest the time into a new and engaging open world PvP system.

Hey, if they want to make a good open world PvP system I'm here for that. But it's 2024 and cyro population has been decimated compared to when I started the game in 2017.

CameraBeardThePirate

No (please explain why)

gariondavey wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Scaling down the size of Cyrodiil would likely take almost as much time as designing an entirely new zone. It's not as simple as "change the slider from 100% to 60%". They could theoretically cut the corners off the map, but that wouldn't change much and would probably just lead to other balance issues with backcapping scrolls etc.

I'd rather if they were going to invest that much time into reworking Cyrodiil that they instead invest the time into a new and engaging open world PvP system.

Hey, if they want to make a good open world PvP system I'm here for that. But it's 2024 and cyro population has been decimated compared to when I started the game in 2017.

Sure, but my point is that the time it'd take would be the same as making an entirely new PvP Zone, so just do that if they're going to spend the time on PvP.

gariondavey

Yes

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Scaling down the size of Cyrodiil would likely take almost as much time as designing an entirely new zone. It's not as simple as "change the slider from 100% to 60%". They could theoretically cut the corners off the map, but that wouldn't change much and would probably just lead to other balance issues with backcapping scrolls etc.

I'd rather if they were going to invest that much time into reworking Cyrodiil that they instead invest the time into a new and engaging open world PvP system.

Hey, if they want to make a good open world PvP system I'm here for that. But it's 2024 and cyro population has been decimated compared to when I started the game in 2017.

Sure, but my point is that the time it'd take would be the same as making an entirely new PvP Zone, so just do that if they're going to spend the time on PvP.

If it splits the pvp population into even smaller sections I'd rather fix what we have if possible, especially if fixes could be fairly quick.

freespirit

No (please explain why)

I voted no, the riding really doesn't bother me and I like having time to gather my thoughts and make decisions. 🙂

As for open world PVP absolutely not!!

Back in 2016 they cancelled the second part of the Justice System, where we could have become Guards/Bounty Hunters and gone after "criminal" players with bounties.

The reasons were never fully explained but in part it was realised that this could/would inevitably lead to trolling and griefing in EVERY zone and that would drive players away.

Back then I was actually a bit disappointed but knowing what I know now about PVP in ESO it likely would've been a nightmare.

I was really lucky way back, my first experiences in Cyrodiil were with people who had big sense of humours..... they taught me dying is fine and hate whispers mean you are doing well and should be laughed at, not everyone is that lucky!!

I still play with those people to this day! 💕

Durham

No (please explain why)

Np:
I want to be able to get behind the larger battles on the map to get away from the lag and ball groups. If there is a ball group my smaller group will move somewhere else.

Jaimeh

No (please explain why)

No, if you just want to find fights do BGs or go duel in Stormhaven, part of the appeal in Cyro is strategically playing for the map, and hitting things where the enemy will take longer to get to is one of such strategies (plus, recall stones exist if you absolutely want to hurry somewhere).

gariondavey

Yes

Jaimeh wrote: »

No, if you just want to find fights do BGs or go duel in Stormhaven, part of the appeal in Cyro is strategically playing for the map, and hitting things where the enemy will take longer to get to is one of such strategies (plus, recall stones exist if you absolutely want to hurry somewhere).

Surely you can understand that cyrodiil was designed with a much larger population. This would be like if a soccer team got reduced to 3 people a side but they won't shrink the field in relation to that.

SaffronCitrusflower

No (please explain why)

No, ZOS should raise the population cap. If they have to lease more servers to do it, then that's what they should do.

gariondavey

Yes

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

No, ZOS should raise the population cap. If they have to lease more servers to do it, then that's what they should do.

Hey, I'd love if they did that too. But over the years they have indicated with their actions that they won't do that. This is simply a poll to see what people think about a potential solution.

StaticWave

Yes

I would increase the population cap if they aren't willing to scale down Cyro

Durham

No (please explain why)

No because I do not want to engage the broke game play of ball groups. Pull sets over performing, healing out of control, and player movement out of control. CC multiple times. Omg so much work is needed in cyrodil. So no I do not want to be forced into a small map. I prefer smaller scale resource fights.

Sahidom

gariondavey wrote: »

Cyrodiil used to have population caps of around 600 players a side. Now it is around 60-80. You sometimes have to ride for 10 minutes or more to find a fight, which turns what could be fast paced combat into a riding simulator.

I would have to go digging for the old media clip that ZOS released to show the performance scaling to handle the player load in Cyrodiil . This was back before the initial release where the PVP campaign was one of the main features of the game. That promotional video was released to demonstrate the server performance to handle 100s of players on the map simultaneously: This was an important prerequisite to recreate the massive "one map" power struggle for control. For anyone whose played DOA, having massive battles was very fun, challenging and consistently evolving. This "vision" statement from ZOS has been set aside for too long.

There should be ONE map for everyone going to Cyrodiil.

Some may complain about ball groups dominating the playfield; however, players use what's given to them by ZOS/developers and this fact, truth will not change. Similar to Trials, pre-made groups will always exist in PVP, so put them on one map than create a smaller, more favorable environment for these ball groups to dominate the zone on.

This ONE map should be no-CP and proc-Set allowed environment, and 30-day faction lock to offer players the option to switch factions. A compromise between no-CP and CP, and the same for no--Proc and Proc sets allowances.

The Battle Spirit should be revised to provide a trial equivalent challenge for anyone going into Cyrodiil. This may hurt solo players; however, even solo players eventually rally up with other players to participate in sieges, and what not. The point of Cyrodiil from the beginning was about team play and conquering objectives.

I would like to see ZOS revisit what they originally envisioned for Cyrodiil and bring the difficulty to trial ready environment.

Alchimiste1

Yes

I just highlighted some parts where there is almost never any action.
I voted yes but I'm honestly not so sure now. There are actually some good fighting spots in those areas but there is never any reason to be there.

Sahidom

Alchimiste1 wrote: »

I just highlighted some parts where there is almost never any action.
I voted yes but I'm honestly not so sure now. There are actually some good fighting spots in those areas but there is never any reason to be there.

Of course this is my opinion here: ZOS should consider implementing craft-able forward camp zones e.g. that create a sublet form of transit, respawn and quick-buy siege merchants. They can scatter them across Cyrodiil. This offers factions move control nodes and the transit could have a 60s delay before transiting (or transit reuse timer similar to the respawn delay) to the next location to distinguish the advantage between these forward camps and controlling keeps and outposts; BUT still allow players to build transit roads inland while they fight over Cyrodiil siege objectives.

The logic behind here is simple: Let players take a more active role on controlling segments of the map and more side objectives other players have to crush to flush out opposing factions from encroaching upon their controlled Cyrodiil keeps or outposts. Meanwhile, providing alternative means for factions to get into "hot spot" areas and closer respawn points that are controlled by their faction. It also would be alternative gameplay choices to defend these camps too.

StaticWave

Yes

Alchimiste1 wrote: »

I just highlighted some parts where there is almost never any action.
I voted yes but I'm honestly not so sure now. There are actually some good fighting spots in those areas but there is never any reason to be there.

There used to be action there when the population cap was larger and the population was big enough. You'd have multiple groups flagging the outer keeps and towns, which required traversing through those areas highlighted in your map. It's just not the case anymore unfortunately due to lower population. Arguably, the lower population is also caused by multiple factors such as poor combat balancing, poor server performance, etc.

keto3000

No (please explain why)

NO. There needs to be some added creativity onthe dev part to run weekends where there is incentive for low utilized areas--

so many options to do here!

one option:
could increase ap ona weekend event that accentuates capturing the 3 towns, & defending surrounding npc/pve side areas -- sectors one area per faction, to be fair to all 3

Turtle_Bot

No (please explain why)

I'm going to say no, but it's not that it would be the worst thing to happen, it's more that it won't actually do anything to solve the countless other issues plaguing cyrodiil that the reduction of pop caps has exposed, most notably ball groups and their effects on the map and server performance.

Imo, the best way to go about fixing the cyrodiil population problem is to simply increase the pop caps back to ~150 - 200 per faction.
The current pop caps are just far too small, not just for the size of the map, but also for the style of gameplay that cyro is supposed to represent. Making the map smaller won't fix this issue and will probably only compound it as it becomes so much faster to take the map.

To address the inevitable lag issues that increasing the pop caps will have, ZOS needs to address heal/mitigation stacking in PvP zones (well stacking of anything survival related in general).

Heal stacking in particular needs addressing because the calculations required to perform this function lasts infinitely longer, draining significantly more server resources than damage stacking does.
DoT stacking eventually kills the target removing the need to use server resources required to continue calculations on that target, where as HoT stacking is keeping the target alive indefinitely, requiring constant draining of server resources to keep calculating everything happening to that target.

I have seen this stacking taken to the extreme in other games, infinite damage vs infinite healing (or infinite mitigation/death prevention) and those always end up with complete server crashes when healing/mitigation is allowed to stack indefinitely to prevent dying even to infinite damage, because of the strain placed on the servers to keep those calculations running indefinitely because the target never dies despite receiving what is essentially infinitely looping damage that causes the servers to need to perform infinitely looping calculations (something a select few ball groups were massively abusing to crash other players until the servers got upgraded a couple of years ago).

Note: when I say heal stacking, I don't mean cross healing, those are 2 completely different things.

James-Wayne

No (please explain why)

They need to end the 3 banners war and separate into 3 separate zones filled with PvE content.

A new war should be waged in the Oblivion realms that allows us to side with specific daedric gods.

This gives future content to PvE and provides new PvP content.

reazea

No (please explain why)

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

No, ZOS should raise the population cap. If they have to lease more servers to do it, then that's what they should do.

^ This.

ZOS just needs to do what they do and make Cyrodiil perform better with higher population caps. They can do it if they wanted to.

reazea

No (please explain why)

James-Wayne wrote: »

They need to end the 3 banners war and separate into 3 separate zones filled with PvE content.

A new war should be waged in the Oblivion realms that allows us to side with specific daedric gods.

This gives future content to PvE and provides new PvP content.

While at the same time creating a PvP option in every PvE zone, right?

xylena_lazarow

No (please explain why)

If you want a smaller PvP zone, play BGs?

gariondavey

Yes

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

If you want a smaller PvP zone, play BGs?

After the amount of effort you normally give on the forums I must admit I'm pretty disappointed with this as your response

Joy_Division

Think it would help if you explain by what you mean by "scale down."

Do you mean physically changing the Cyrodiil map so it's smaller, but keeping the same basic layout? That's my guess, but that sounds something quite time consuming.

Or do you mean something more radical, say removing a number of objectives in addition to making the map smaller? That potentially may be easier to do as it would involve removing/making inaccessible certain areas (as opposed to altering them). It's still would take quite a bit of resources.

Or something else?

Either way, "scale down" on its own isn't going to sound appealing to many people who enjoy the idea of Cyrodiil because there is a reason they wait in an hour que to go into Grey Host rather: it's the large scale that is appeals in the first place.

As it is, the distance between keeps kind of has to be long enough that it gives attackers a chance to take it before a response overwhelms them. The smaller the map, the less strategy there is as it becomes easier for people anywhere of who have been killed to quickly get into the fight.

I don;t mind riding my horse to get to a fight. I should have to ride my horse. Otherwise it's like the old IC city districts of infinite spawns. What bothers me is

1. ZOS has not provided us with anything meaningful to do aside from capture keeps
2. There is too often no fight to ride to. See all the people with their maps open at a keep.

My instinct to solve Cyrodiil's issues is more about "scaling up," i.e., more players on the map doing more meaningful activities.

gariondavey

Yes

@Joy_Division as said multiple times, I wish they would increase the population cap. I've seen it get reduced to 1/10th the original size. I long for a map full of people to fight.
That isn't happening. So this thread was a conversation starter on what a solution could be to remedy the situation we are now in.

StihlReign

No (please explain why)

No.

Fix Stuck in Combat. Fix heals (cross and stacking). Remove group bonuses. Increase group size to 24. Allocate additional server resources and raise the pop cap 600-900.

Bring back a new version of out of Cyro - Alliance Buffs. Institute a new Alliance loyalty Buff/Bonus system that rewards tenure.

LPapirius

No (please explain why)

gariondavey wrote: »

@Joy_Division as said multiple times, I wish they would increase the population cap. I've seen it get reduced to 1/10th the original size. I long for a map full of people to fight.
That isn't happening. So this thread was a conversation starter on what a solution could be to remedy the situation we are now in.

ZOS just needs to do whatever it takes to restore higher populations in Cyrodiil. They managed to make it work in the past, so there is no reason they can't do it today. That's the only conversation along these lines that anyone should be having.