Low Score Bonus not activating despite 10k+ score gap on PC/NA/GH

xylena_lazarow

There's supposed to be a Low Score Bonus that buffs campaign points and AP gain for the low score factions, similar to the Low Pop Bonus. Can't remember whether it's supposed to activate at a 5k gap or 10k gap, but with the gap definitely above 10k now, the two low score factions really deserve some more incentive here.



Edit: was told it functions off percentage and did activate earlier this year, so if it's not bugged then it needs to be updated for the current version of the game's scoring system.

adirondack

Any idea what that percentage would be?

Desiato

The EP nightcap crew are outdoing themselves this cycle. All while chilling in twitch talking about what brave warriors they are.

Stridig

Keeps, resources, and guards all need to be buffed relative to population. If you are night capping with 3x the population, the things you are attacking should have 3x the health (not other players, just the things you are PvDooring).

xylena_lazarow

Stridig wrote: »

Keeps, resources, and guards all need to be buffed relative to population. If you are night capping with 3x the population, the things you are attacking should have 3x the health (not other players, just the things you are PvDooring).

Maybe scale score to server pop. Play against 1/3 your pop, earn 1/3 your normal points. And before someone says something about time zones, no there is no reason an entire time zone needs to only play EP. Faction tokens exist.

darvaria

I've only seen it with low pop bonus.

Kartalin

I think the second and third place factions have to _both_ be at around 50% or less than the lead faction. Not just one but both, which is insane.

Desiato

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Maybe scale score to server pop. Play against 1/3 your pop, earn 1/3 your normal points. And before someone says something about time zones, no there is no reason an entire time zone needs to only play EP. Faction tokens exist.

This game has always had a pvp culture skewed towards pvdoor, farming and easy AP.

Before faction locking, there was a large percentage of players who would switch factions throughout the day based on which one provided the easiest surf.

I've grouped with a lot of the EP in question via random dungeons and they have alts on other factions. Many of them started with other factions. They play on EP when they do because it's easy. In general, EP has the largest establishment of mid-tier regular players, which is attractive to anyone looking for the easiest ride, regardless of the time zone.

This is all from a PC/NA pov of course.

darvaria

I found some older information that said the score had to be half .. so yes the 50%.

I understand the lack of motivation. Do you think a one week campaign would more fit today's target pvp player base? Having to go 10 days with almost no chance to win is bad for all 3 factions, even the one in the lead.

Kartalin

It doesn’t really happen in GH, but I saw it in Ravenwatch multiple times both before and after it became no proc. One faction has to absolutely dominate the map to the detriment of both other factions, even in the face of their (likely) low pop bonuses.

Much more likely to happen early in campaigns too as it’s easier to double up the score of both opposing factions before the numbers get too big. This is something to watch for in the added midyear campaigns too. Double AP & low pop & low score is about an 8x multiplier which is ridiculous. Take a halfway decent group in there and rack up the AP.

Ostonoha

There are also those who want to play on the low pop faction but they are locked. Wish there was a mercenary faction that could jump into any faction anytime there was a pop imbalance for pvp. (Even if we could not emp. Pick up scrolls. Ext to prevent greifing)

xylena_lazarow

Ostonoha wrote: »

There are also those who want to play on the low pop faction but they are locked. Wish there was a mercenary faction that could jump into any faction anytime there was a pop imbalance for pvp. (Even if we could not emp. Pick up scrolls. Ext to prevent greifing)

WTB this. Pirate/merc/bandit faction. Attacks all 3 factions and can hold keeps, but no leaderboard, no emp, no scroll pickups, reduced AP gain, purely there for the PvP. Also access to all 3 zone chats.

Ostonoha

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Ostonoha wrote: »

There are also those who want to play on the low pop faction but they are locked. Wish there was a mercenary faction that could jump into any faction anytime there was a pop imbalance for pvp. (Even if we could not emp. Pick up scrolls. Ext to prevent greifing)

WTB this. Pirate/merc/bandit faction. Attacks all 3 factions and can hold keeps, but no leaderboard, no emp, no scroll pickups, reduced AP gain, purely there for the PvP. Also access to all 3 zone chats.

I can only dream of this ever happening.

TechMaybeHic

I feel like there are less that want to be on the lo score than there are that want to be on the high score faction.

For a while there, DC was winning often PCNA Gray Host and we knew to queue early near the end of the campaign as there were people who wait until the campaign is in hand to log in and get their tiers ranked up.

Out of curiosity; I wonder if the unlocked campaigns are close at all right now as well. Haven't looked for a while but seemed to always be even more lopsided than Gray Host

And I wonder what happened. Seemed a few months ago, tge scores were running pretty close. Couple thousand rather than 10 thousand points.

Quackery

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I feel like there are less that want to be on the lo score than there are that want to be on the high score faction.

For a while there, DC was winning often PCNA Gray Host and we knew to queue early near the end of the campaign as there were people who wait until the campaign is in hand to log in and get their tiers ranked up.

Out of curiosity; I wonder if the unlocked campaigns are close at all right now as well. Haven't looked for a while but seemed to always be even more lopsided than Gray Host

And I wonder what happened. Seemed a few months ago, tge scores were running pretty close. Couple thousand rather than 10 thousand points.

People are tired of the EP night cap, so they've stopped logging in during these hours. It's the same thing day after day, with EP having the enemy scrolls for half a day along with emperor. I've stopped caring about points or winning the campaign as a DC player, the "suspense" is deader than dead can be. The rewards are too worthless to bother with trying to win a campaign. The whole thing is designed weirdly.

Desiato

Quackery wrote: »

People are tired of the EP night cap, so they've stopped logging in during these hours. It's the same thing day after day, with EP having the enemy scrolls for half a day along with emperor. I've stopped caring about points or winning the campaign as a DC player, the "suspense" is deader than dead can be. The rewards are too worthless to bother with trying to win a campaign. The whole thing is designed weirdly.

Not just during these hours.

The word toxic gets thrown around a lot these days, but doing this night after night, week after week, month after month when they've already strangled the campaign is literally toxic to the health of the game.

I honestly can't even imagine what they get out of it. I mean, they nolife a pvp game when the pvp is at its worst and there's no competition.

xylena_lazarow

Desiato wrote: »

I honestly can't even imagine what they get out of it.

PvE

M1SHAAN

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Out of curiosity; I wonder if the unlocked campaigns are close at all right now as well. Haven't looked for a while but seemed to always be even more lopsided than Gray Host

Well, PC-NA Ravenwatch looked like this as of yesterday:

... it'll be a good campaign for farming AP during Mayhem at least!

Desiato

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

I honestly can't even imagine what they get out of it.

PvE

I think it goes deeper than that -- you could say "even deeper" -- but unfortunately the moderation policies of these forums prevent further open speculation.

When I played Rust I saw the same kind of behaviour from the same kind of players. 5 AM "offliners" who would raid the bases of other players when they were offline and the server was dead so there was little or no risk of counters. They're not interested in PVP or PVE. They get something else out of it which some would say isn't healthy.

Kartalin

M1SHAAN wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Out of curiosity; I wonder if the unlocked campaigns are close at all right now as well. Haven't looked for a while but seemed to always be even more lopsided than Gray Host

Well, PC-NA Ravenwatch looked like this as of yesterday:

... it'll be a good campaign for farming AP during Mayhem at least!

Nice, same thing happened in February: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8052475/#Comment_8052475

Iriidius

Low score bonus is only provided when the weaker 2 alliances have lower score combined than the strongest alliance.
In campaigns with unbalanced population and nightcapping that happens regulary.
10k difference is not that much and relative balanced compared to what is normal, close races for campaign victory are exception nowadays, one of the weaker factions could still win if they hold whole map for 40 hours(*280=11200points), for example because a group of weaker faction takes map at night and defends it until next evening for a few days.

Tiphis

They really should reduce the gap needed to trigger low score as it's pretty pointless and even more of an incentive for the dominant faction to gate camp. Ideally it makes it more likely for the losing factions to be able to come back when the pop is balanced.

Like right now on NA GH, DC is 2nd behind EP by 12k points but even though DC is getting low pop bonus as EP is poplocked and DC and AD are at 1 bar apiece, DC is getting 6 points. AD will soon be in the same place after EP rolls them and holds the map for the next few hours except right now AD is 15k behind 1st and that will soon be much more.

DC and AD don't really have much of a chance to recoup anywhere near the amount of points that EP gets by nightcapping making for the most part the campaign pointless. Even if you don't care about the points, the sheer numbers means that taking a resource invites 20+ EP along with the possibility of their ball groups showing up to mow you down.

And of course hammer makes defending pointless and so it's better to just do something else and not bother trying to resist as you stand about as much a chance as the poor daedra in alik'r dolmens do in double xp events.

At least give the losing pops a chance when pops are even remotely even.

xylena_lazarow

Tiphis wrote: »

They really should reduce the gap needed to trigger low score as it's pretty pointless

Even just an AP bonus for a faction that is more than 5k down would be huge for evening pops.

Desiato

I'm not in favor of low score bonuses, but think players should be disincentivized to roll over low pop factions.

This could be implemented in the form of an AP reward formula that factors in the total players of the attacking and defending factions.

So if a player from faction A that is poplocked captures the objective of faction B that has 2 bars, there is a reduction in the AP earned.

I would even go as far as to say they should remove pve oticks for capturing opposition inner keeps that are undefended by players and in low pop scenarios.

dcrush

Right now the only reason EP is winning campaigns on PCNA GH is that for a large part of the day they are poplocked or at 3 bars vs 1 bar AD and 1 bar DC. If you try to take anything during that period you will get zerged down, and potentially disconnected because that happens a lot when the EP zerg gets close. If I’m at a keep and suddenly my ping goes up by a few hundred then I know EP is near. This never happens with DC for some reason. So if they didn’t already outnumber the other faction 10:1 they will after people get disconnected during the fight.

The result of this is a massive gap in the score that is impossible to close. There should be more incentive to play on factions that aren’t poplocked 24/7.

xylena_lazarow

dcrush wrote: »

The result of this is a massive gap in the score that is impossible to close. There should be more incentive to play on factions that aren’t poplocked 24/7.

Agreed, the 3 bar faction rolling an empty map still enjoys the rewards for "winning" despite facing no actual PvP opposition. They still get AP, reward mails, transmute crystals, and of course 1st place. Why is this behavior being rewarded by the game to begin with? Maybe improve the Low Pop/Score systems to reward their opponents properly.

Tiphis

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

dcrush wrote: »

The result of this is a massive gap in the score that is impossible to close. There should be more incentive to play on factions that aren’t poplocked 24/7.

Agreed, the 3 bar faction rolling an empty map still enjoys the rewards for "winning" despite facing no actual PvP opposition. They still get AP, reward mails, transmute crystals, and of course 1st place. Why is this behavior being rewarded by the game to begin with? Maybe improve the Low Pop/Score systems to reward their opponents properly.

And very few players actually swapped off the faction. I remember when NW dropped and EP outnumbered AD and DC by almost tenfold nearly 24/7. Camp after camp rolled by and very few ep faction changed, because it was easier for them to 10v1 then vice versa. Ep ball groups would target solos because there was nobody else playing and clearly they enjoyed it plenty.

Here we are years later and nothing has changed.

Necrotech_Master

Desiato wrote: »

I'm not in favor of low score bonuses, but think players should be disincentivized to roll over low pop factions.

This could be implemented in the form of an AP reward formula that factors in the total players of the attacking and defending factions.

So if a player from faction A that is poplocked captures the objective of faction B that has 2 bars, there is a reduction in the AP earned.

I would even go as far as to say they should remove pve oticks for capturing opposition inner keeps that are undefended by players and in low pop scenarios.

doing something like this would utterly kill the fun of cyrodiil if your going to be penalized just because your faction has more population, it would end up resulting in more people just not playing because why bother if theres no AP to gain

there should be incentives to log in on a faction thats behind, low score and low pop bonuses help, but the way they trigger is just really bad

low pop only triggers based on the previous some hours of population if its below a threshold, low score only triggers if both 2nd and 3rd place factions are under 50% of the first faction score

i would agree with xylena there should be some form of AP bonus for playing on a "losing" faction (something like a 2nd and 3rd place bonus) which would encourage more people to play those factions

Joy_Division

The biggest problem here is that ZOS doesn't care. And because they don't care, players such as myself also do not care. I don't. There isn't any reason to. I am utterly indifferent. Sorry, but that's just the reality of the situation. I don;t even take the time to read the emails that give me a whopping the "rewards" to purchase 1 plant for an entire month's investment in the campaign.

I get it, many people really do want to win these even if no record is kept, nobody will remember 3 months from now, there is no practical benefit for doing so, the scoring system is so open to abuse, etc., they still have a lot of pride and want to win. I feel bad. I really do. But no matter how much they may care, it doesn't make me or players who feel similarly to me or, importantly, ZOS care.

I once did care. I still remember over ten years ago the Ebonheart Pact won the very first 90 day campaign on PC NA (AD won the first Auriel's Bow). How many people playing this game can make such a claim? The game was fresh, the rewards were relatively impactful, ZOS had informed us an update to PvP was upcoming, PvP was the endgame, etc., in short, it seemed like they were invested and thus so was I. Relationships are two way streets. If only one party is investing and the other makes zero effort to reciprocate or even acknowledge the effort of the other party, that is an unacceptable situation that will only lead to disappointment.

This doesn't mean I don;t try. I absolutely do. In whatever fight I am involved in, I will do my best to win. I will go out of my way to pour oils to defend a front door. I rez PuGs who love to sit in siege and have no HoTs all the time. I do many of those things that some people just can't be bothered to do. But that's just me PvPing in the moment with zero regard for what happens at the end of the month because win or lose, nothing substantive will change or be recorded in ESO's annals when August 31th changes to September 1st.

xylena_lazarow

Joy_Division wrote: »

The biggest problem here is that ZOS doesn't care. And because they don't care, players such as myself also do not care.

If players care, then ZOS cares, even if the thing the players care about is complete nonsense (faction locks).

Joy_Division

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

The biggest problem here is that ZOS doesn't care. And because they don't care, players such as myself also do not care.

If players care, then ZOS cares, even if the thing the players care about is complete nonsense (faction locks).

Faction locks were introduced back in 2019. That's 5 years ago. What have they done since then and the hammer? Nothing. Last battleground map: update 21. They can't even be bothered to go through the data collected back 9 months ago for the population tests and communicate the result. People have been begging ZOS month after month, patch after patch for years now to do something with HoT stacking / organized groups. Silence. Low population and the strength of organized groups are by far the most complained about topics, and people have shown to be plenty passionate about it. And what's the response? The only PvP developer ZOS had went to combat lead back in 2018.

When I play, I see the same people on GreyHost every night. They care. They spend their money. They pour their emotions into the game. The passion on the part of players is there. It is not being reciprocated. No excuses, no benefit of the doubt.