Improving the balance in Cyrodiil PVP

s3dulo

Maybe this is a bad idea (and an unoriginal one) but I figured I'd throw it out there and see what people think.

While there are several issues with Cyrodiil, one of the more glaring ones is the frequent imbalance between alliances. There's nothing more enjoyable for me in the game than participating in a large, hotly contested battle that ebbs and flows for 10-20 minutes. Unfortunately, those battles are far too rare.

Many times, I find I'm either:

• in a group swiftly taking territory with little resistance from a grossly outnumbered alliance, or

• I'm futilely trying to defend territory while in a grossly outnumbered alliance.

Neither of these scenarios are very fun.

I've noticed that when one alliance starts to struggle due to a lack of numbers, it tends to spiral downward. Players see that little help is coming to fight the enemy, they check and see their alliance only has two bars while the others are locked, so they leave to do other activities, worsening the imbalance. To address this, I propose a small change to keep the competition lively.

When an alliance becomes sufficiently outnumbered, Battle Spirit should turn into "Battle Rage" for that alliance, with the following effects:

1. Healing and health recovery are normalized.
2. Shield strength is normalized.
3. Resurrection time and camp cooldown times are halved.
4. Alliance Points are doubled.
5. Siege equipment reloads slightly faster.

These changes would encourage players in the outnumbered alliance to stay and fight. They would be better equipped to withstand the swarm and earn extra rewards for their efforts. As a result, their numbers would likely increase sooner, drawing others for the extra AP. Once the balance is restored, they would continue to stay because the competition becomes engaging again.

Perhaps this could happen gradually as the numbers change.

Battle Spirit > Battle Hardened > Battle Rage

Maybe those advantages are too much and there are better changes that could happen that I'm not thinking of. The idea is to always give the outnumbered alliance a fighting chance.

Ezhh

The danger here is that skilled/very experienced PvPers (solo or small groups) who have built specifically to fight outnumbered and already look for campaigns where their alliance is outnumbered, will also get a huge boost from this. Balancing it might be a lot more tricky than it first appears.

React

Having full value heals or wards in PVP as a even somewhat decent player would practically be cheating. You'd be completely untouchable, even by zergs of players.

s3dulo

Ezhh wrote: »

The danger here is that skilled/very experienced PvPers (solo or small groups) who have built specifically to fight outnumbered and already look for campaigns where their alliance is outnumbered, will also get a huge boost from this. Balancing it might be a lot more tricky than it first appears.

I thought about that and figured the other alliance would simply have to take their huge numbers and deal with it. It's certainly something to consider because those skilled players are tough enough as is.

s3dulo

React wrote: »

Having full value heals or wards in PVP as a even somewhat decent player would practically be cheating. You'd be completely untouchable, even by zergs of players.

True. I've been there trying to swarm down a skilled player. Maybe double AP and shorter rez is enough to incentivize other players to stay. Maybe there's something else I haven't thought of that would be better.

Aurielle

s3dulo wrote: »

When an alliance becomes sufficiently outnumbered, Battle Spirit should turn into "Battle Rage" for that alliance, with the following effects:

1. Healing and health recovery are normalized.
2. Shield strength is normalized.
3. Resurrection time and camp cooldown times are halved.
4. Alliance Points are doubled.
5. Siege equipment reloads slightly faster.

These changes would encourage players in the outnumbered alliance to stay and fight. They would be better equipped to withstand the swarm and earn extra rewards for their efforts. As a result, their numbers would likely increase sooner, drawing others for the extra AP. Once the balance is restored, they would continue to stay because the competition becomes engaging again.

It would be abused mercilessly to farm kills and farm AP.

s3dulo

Aurielle wrote: »

s3dulo wrote: »

When an alliance becomes sufficiently outnumbered, Battle Spirit should turn into "Battle Rage" for that alliance, with the following effects:

1. Healing and health recovery are normalized.
2. Shield strength is normalized.
3. Resurrection time and camp cooldown times are halved.
4. Alliance Points are doubled.
5. Siege equipment reloads slightly faster.

These changes would encourage players in the outnumbered alliance to stay and fight. They would be better equipped to withstand the swarm and earn extra rewards for their efforts. As a result, their numbers would likely increase sooner, drawing others for the extra AP. Once the balance is restored, they would continue to stay because the competition becomes engaging again.

It would be abused mercilessly to farm kills and farm AP.

mmKay. Better suggestion?

Aurielle

s3dulo wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

s3dulo wrote: »

When an alliance becomes sufficiently outnumbered, Battle Spirit should turn into "Battle Rage" for that alliance, with the following effects:

1. Healing and health recovery are normalized.
2. Shield strength is normalized.
3. Resurrection time and camp cooldown times are halved.
4. Alliance Points are doubled.
5. Siege equipment reloads slightly faster.

These changes would encourage players in the outnumbered alliance to stay and fight. They would be better equipped to withstand the swarm and earn extra rewards for their efforts. As a result, their numbers would likely increase sooner, drawing others for the extra AP. Once the balance is restored, they would continue to stay because the competition becomes engaging again.

It would be abused mercilessly to farm kills and farm AP.

mmKay. Better suggestion?

Take away the path of least resistance (i.e. the underpopulated campaigns). Look at the scores on PC NA. EP is dominating GH, AD is dominating BR, DC is dominating Ravenwatch. Three campaigns, three alliances, zero impetus to stay in a campaign your alliance is losing when you can just go to another campaign. Consolidate the campaigns into one faction-locked campaign, increase the population caps, increase rewards for coming in first place, and decrease campaign length to one week to reduce the “I can’t play with my friends in faction locked campaigns” complaint. That’s all ZOS needs to do to ensure that the campaign is competitive and to reduce those times when you’re fighting outnumbered. People whine in the forums about EP “night capping” Gray Host, when AD is doing the exact same thing in Blackreach, and DC is doing the exact same thing in Ravenwatch. Take away players’ CHOICE to do that, and you’ll be left with players who actually care about the quality of the PVP and the outcome of the campaign.

CameraBeardThePirate

React wrote: »

Having full value heals or wards in PVP as a even somewhat decent player would practically be cheating. You'd be completely untouchable, even by zergs of players.

Nah don't worry about it, allow my Necro shielder to spam 80k shields on my whole group. Surely that wouldn't be unbalanced

Artim_X

That would not be a fair/balanced system and it would most likely not be able to account for a rapid shift in population.

Just_Attivi

Aurielle wrote: »

s3dulo wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

s3dulo wrote: »

When an alliance becomes sufficiently outnumbered, Battle Spirit should turn into "Battle Rage" for that alliance, with the following effects:

1. Healing and health recovery are normalized.
2. Shield strength is normalized.
3. Resurrection time and camp cooldown times are halved.
4. Alliance Points are doubled.
5. Siege equipment reloads slightly faster.

These changes would encourage players in the outnumbered alliance to stay and fight. They would be better equipped to withstand the swarm and earn extra rewards for their efforts. As a result, their numbers would likely increase sooner, drawing others for the extra AP. Once the balance is restored, they would continue to stay because the competition becomes engaging again.

It would be abused mercilessly to farm kills and farm AP.

mmKay. Better suggestion?

Take away the path of least resistance (i.e. the underpopulated campaigns). Look at the scores on PC NA. EP is dominating GH, AD is dominating BR, DC is dominating Ravenwatch. Three campaigns, three alliances, zero impetus to stay in a campaign your alliance is losing when you can just go to another campaign. Consolidate the campaigns into one faction-locked campaign, increase the population caps, increase rewards for coming in first place, and decrease campaign length to one week to reduce the “I can’t play with my friends in faction locked campaigns” complaint. That’s all ZOS needs to do to ensure that the campaign is competitive and to reduce those times when you’re fighting outnumbered. People whine in the forums about EP “night capping” Gray Host, when AD is doing the exact same thing in Blackreach, and DC is doing the exact same thing in Ravenwatch. Take away players’ CHOICE to do that, and you’ll be left with players who actually care about the quality of the PVP and the outcome of the campaign.

Honestly, I'd love this. Shorter campaigns alone makes it easier to coordinate with the faction locked friends thing, and with the underwhelming populations in off hours outside GH, this would keep all pvp'ers engaged. pop caps would need increasing for sure, and I think a dynamic pop cap would help tremendously (conversation sake lets say theres 2 bars DC, 1 bar AD 1 bar EP, whenever DC would cross into the 3 bar threshold, they get a pop lock queue instead until AD/EP get to 2 bars. something of that nature would be really beneficial to 'balancing' the zerging and night capping people complain about etc. while keeping a pvp campaign alive and healthy.) shorter campaigns means you can still play your alt-faction toons relatively soon.

the only detractor that I personally see from this idea, is the players who want to avoid pvp at all costs and intentionally go to unpopulated campaigns to get rewards/fight doors will clog up the population worse than now if there was only 1 campaign, and we already have 20-30 AFK'ers at home bases for extended periods of time in prime time on AD. the other issue being those that want to farm dailies on all 3 alliance toons, or just enjoy the variety of builds across their multi-alliance toons and now cant play them. Maybe alliance locks should just be tossed and you choose an alliance at the start of each campaign (but that would lose that sweet sweet alliance change token cashflow, so we can likely scratch that)

YandereGirlfriend

In this thread I am mostly reading a defense of the status quo, which is weird. Because Cyrodiil is all about the richer getting richer and the poor getting poorer, which is like objectively anti-balance.

Your side controls the Scrolls -> combat is easier, you have Emp -> combat is easier, you own all of the keeps -> you make more AP than everyone else. Literally EVERY game incentive points to zerg-surfing on the currently dominant side vs. sticking around to resist on the losing side(s).

At the very least, there should be massive AP scaling for the outnumbered faction(s). As it is, the outnumbered sides lack the keep bonus AP multipliers and so are already making less AP for the same objective captures and kills vs. bandwagoners simply surfing the faction with the highest population.

Additionally, outnumbered defenders are much less likely to benefit from d-ticks or o-ticks, because, due to being outnumbered, they will likely lose those fights. Again, this incentivizes hopping on the side doing the zerging.

Ultimately, it comes down to respecting the time of the players in Cyrodiil. Which is why people log out when they see that one side has the entire map, Emp, Scrolls, etc. because it simply isn't worth their time to contest that situation given the meager rewards and the knowledge that they will ultimately lose most fights.

But... it doesn't need to be that way. It exists in this form because ZOS has implemented win-harder or rich-get-richer mechanics when they should be doing the opposite.

SaffronCitrusflower

The single most out of balance thing in PvP right now is Rush of Agony set.

How has ZOS not done anything to balance this set yet? It's not like there isn't a ton of feedback on the problems with this set already.

tomofhyrule

They really need to fix the bonus system if they want the non-GH campaigns to survive.

Cyro is in this weird state where there are simultaneously too many people and too few to do anything. Too many since the pop cap of Grey Host doesn't allow everyone in and there are multi-hour queues at prime time. But... why are all of those people preferring to sit in the GH queue instead of going to one of the other campaigns? Because nobody's there.

It really does feel totally unbalanced. And I'll go back to the scores for that. Current standings in Blackreach, PCNA:

There is no excuse for the scores to be this unbalanced. And look, despite one alliance having literally less than half the score of the other two, it's not getting a low score bonus at all. There is one alliance which does have a low-pop bonus though... despite all three alliances having only one bar...

I'd make the low-pop bonus much more dynamic and quicker to recalculate: as soon as the pop of one alliance is within range, the bonus cuts off. That way we don't have one alliance holding that bonus for ages. The one that needs to stick around though is the low score one, and that bonus really only seems to activate when one alliance is stomping the other two (and not when one alliance is getting stomped). That'd help to encourage people to come in on the underdog alliances, especially in an unlocked campaign, and hopefully take some of the pressure off of Grey Host.

As it stands, in cases like this it is shutting off a third of the potential PvP playerbase since they can't even go to cap a resource at their home keep without getting absolutely wrecked by two alliance zergs against one single new player. That'll surely bring people into PvP if that continues...

darvaria

They just have to balance the numbers. Reduce the size of the map (take out towns and those 3 extra outposts) and make the que size equal. So what if ppl have to wait in que? Maybe some players will hit the other campaign.

Part of this balance party are the factions. You will see a faction in last place on GH, yet they are on the 2 other campaigns, running the map completely yellow.

Changing stats will NOT work. Blizzard tried that in WOTLK and used the multiplier called "Tenacity". The outrage on the forums made them change in about 2 months.

Aurielle

Just_Attivi wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

s3dulo wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

s3dulo wrote: »

When an alliance becomes sufficiently outnumbered, Battle Spirit should turn into "Battle Rage" for that alliance, with the following effects:

1. Healing and health recovery are normalized.
2. Shield strength is normalized.
3. Resurrection time and camp cooldown times are halved.
4. Alliance Points are doubled.
5. Siege equipment reloads slightly faster.

These changes would encourage players in the outnumbered alliance to stay and fight. They would be better equipped to withstand the swarm and earn extra rewards for their efforts. As a result, their numbers would likely increase sooner, drawing others for the extra AP. Once the balance is restored, they would continue to stay because the competition becomes engaging again.

It would be abused mercilessly to farm kills and farm AP.

mmKay. Better suggestion?

Take away the path of least resistance (i.e. the underpopulated campaigns). Look at the scores on PC NA. EP is dominating GH, AD is dominating BR, DC is dominating Ravenwatch. Three campaigns, three alliances, zero impetus to stay in a campaign your alliance is losing when you can just go to another campaign. Consolidate the campaigns into one faction-locked campaign, increase the population caps, increase rewards for coming in first place, and decrease campaign length to one week to reduce the “I can’t play with my friends in faction locked campaigns” complaint. That’s all ZOS needs to do to ensure that the campaign is competitive and to reduce those times when you’re fighting outnumbered. People whine in the forums about EP “night capping” Gray Host, when AD is doing the exact same thing in Blackreach, and DC is doing the exact same thing in Ravenwatch. Take away players’ CHOICE to do that, and you’ll be left with players who actually care about the quality of the PVP and the outcome of the campaign.

Honestly, I'd love this. Shorter campaigns alone makes it easier to coordinate with the faction locked friends thing, and with the underwhelming populations in off hours outside GH, this would keep all pvp'ers engaged. pop caps would need increasing for sure, and I think a dynamic pop cap would help tremendously (conversation sake lets say theres 2 bars DC, 1 bar AD 1 bar EP, whenever DC would cross into the 3 bar threshold, they get a pop lock queue instead until AD/EP get to 2 bars. something of that nature would be really beneficial to 'balancing' the zerging and night capping people complain about etc. while keeping a pvp campaign alive and healthy.) shorter campaigns means you can still play your alt-faction toons relatively soon.

the only detractor that I personally see from this idea, is the players who want to avoid pvp at all costs and intentionally go to unpopulated campaigns to get rewards/fight doors will clog up the population worse than now if there was only 1 campaign, and we already have 20-30 AFK'ers at home bases for extended periods of time in prime time on AD. the other issue being those that want to farm dailies on all 3 alliance toons, or just enjoy the variety of builds across their multi-alliance toons and now cant play them. Maybe alliance locks should just be tossed and you choose an alliance at the start of each campaign (but that would lose that sweet sweet alliance change token cashflow, so we can likely scratch that)

I think dynamic pop caps would be an interesting idea, but I think they could also be subject to abuse with a shorter campaign. Imagine, for instance, half of a guild logging into a faction they hate for a week, then sitting at the home gate that entire time to prevent others in that alliance from logging in, while the rest of their guild (on their preferred alliance) takes large sections of the map with little opposition. It would be a lot harder for one or two guilds to manipulate the population caps in that way without dynamic pop caps.

I also agree that it would be frustrating to have to share limited population slots with PVEers who have no intention of PVPing. Perhaps the solution to that problem is to get rid of the town PVE quests once and for all, and instead stick with dailies that are purely PVP-related. They complain enough as it is about being “forced” to go into a PVP zone to do quests there for completion’s sake, so getting rid of those quests would solve two problems simultaneously.

As for being able to choose an alliance at the start of a campaign, do you mean selecting one alliance at the start of the campaign, and all your characters default to that alliance for the week? I’d be all for that, as it would completely eliminate the usual complaints against faction locks while still ensuring that players couldn’t just flip factions back and forth to paint the map different colors at different times of the day and farm AP (see, for instance, what happens on Blackreach right now). I think you’re right, though — the fact that it would cut into ZOS’s profits with alliance change tokens means it’s unlikely to happen, even though it would be a sensible solution.

edward_frigidhands

s3dulo wrote: »

Maybe this is a bad idea (and an unoriginal one) but I figured I'd throw it out there and see what people think.

While there are several issues with Cyrodiil, one of the more glaring ones is the frequent imbalance between alliances. There's nothing more enjoyable for me in the game than participating in a large, hotly contested battle that ebbs and flows for 10-20 minutes. Unfortunately, those battles are far too rare.

Many times, I find I'm either:

• in a group swiftly taking territory with little resistance from a grossly outnumbered alliance, or

• I'm futilely trying to defend territory while in a grossly outnumbered alliance.

Neither of these scenarios are very fun.

I've noticed that when one alliance starts to struggle due to a lack of numbers, it tends to spiral downward. Players see that little help is coming to fight the enemy, they check and see their alliance only has two bars while the others are locked, so they leave to do other activities, worsening the imbalance. To address this, I propose a small change to keep the competition lively.

When an alliance becomes sufficiently outnumbered, Battle Spirit should turn into "Battle Rage" for that alliance, with the following effects:

1. Healing and health recovery are normalized.
2. Shield strength is normalized.
3. Resurrection time and camp cooldown times are halved.
4. Alliance Points are doubled.
5. Siege equipment reloads slightly faster.

These changes would encourage players in the outnumbered alliance to stay and fight. They would be better equipped to withstand the swarm and earn extra rewards for their efforts. As a result, their numbers would likely increase sooner, drawing others for the extra AP. Once the balance is restored, they would continue to stay because the competition becomes engaging again.

Perhaps this could happen gradually as the numbers change.

Battle Spirit > Battle Hardened > Battle Rage

Maybe those advantages are too much and there are better changes that could happen that I'm not thinking of. The idea is to always give the outnumbered alliance a fighting chance.

These ideas are....horrible.

The balancing act should be to incentivize more people to que for the losing faction...not make the losing faction mathematically overpowered.

s3dulo

Here's another idea:

If your alliance is outnumbered, your alliance guards increase significantly in strength and numbers. Also, they spawn siege equipment of their own and start using it. Right now the guards are basically useless aside from alerting people when they die.

Aurielle

s3dulo wrote: »

Here's another idea:

If your alliance is outnumbered, your alliance guards increase significantly in strength and numbers. Also, they spawn siege equipment of their own and start using it. Right now the guards are basically useless aside from alerting people when they die.

Giving any kind of bonus to the outnumbered faction is always something that can be abused. The only viable solution is to reduce the likelihood that any alliance will be outnumbered. Right now, it’s the existence of multiple campaigns and the low population cap that contributes most profoundly to population imbalances. Fix that problem, and you naturally solve the problem of being outnumbered without having to rely on unbalanced gimmicks like double AP, better healing, stronger guards, etc.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

I'd probably revamp how Cyrodiil is handled whole-cloth at this point; I think there are a lot of good ideas in it but they're half-baked partly because of the playerbase's unwillingness to engage, and partly because of design decisions I actually agree with in principle but have unforeseen effects.

One thing that may get more 'troops mobilized for the war' is faction-wide buffs that apply overland in general. Not necessarily combat buffs, but things like "when the Covenant is winning in <headline campaign this week>, Covenant characters get 10% more gold when they find gold in the world" or something like that. IDK; right now it's too easy to just ignore the alliance war from an overland/pve/in-character roleplay perspective and it doesn't really feel like the nations are on a 'war footing'...

... so Cyrodiil becomes an afterthought.

There's a lot more I could write here (about needing bigger pop caps and fewer total servers, for example; or how we should allow players to be 'allianceless' on some characters, who have to gain AP through the other pvp arenas like battlegrounds etc. Then, we can see how many players actually CARE about the Alliance War as a storyline... and and and...)

edward_frigidhands

Aurielle wrote: »

s3dulo wrote: »

Here's another idea:

If your alliance is outnumbered, your alliance guards increase significantly in strength and numbers. Also, they spawn siege equipment of their own and start using it. Right now the guards are basically useless aside from alerting people when they die.

Giving any kind of bonus to the outnumbered faction is always something that can be abused. The only viable solution is to reduce the likelihood that any alliance will be outnumbered. Right now, it’s the existence of multiple campaigns and the low population cap that contributes most profoundly to population imbalances. Fix that problem, and you naturally solve the problem of being outnumbered without having to rely on unbalanced gimmicks like double AP, better healing, stronger guards, etc.

Could not agree more.

Incentive is the ultimate balancing act for these situations.

SkaraMinoc

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

The single most out of balance thing in PvP right now is Rush of Agony set.

How has ZOS not done anything to balance this set yet?

They tried balancing the set by adding a 0.8s delay to give players time to block the pull. But that just made the set stronger because you can now cast an ability before the pull like Contingency, Negate, etc. You can even time Dawnbreaker perfectly.

YandereGirlfriend

Aurielle wrote: »

s3dulo wrote: »

Here's another idea:

If your alliance is outnumbered, your alliance guards increase significantly in strength and numbers. Also, they spawn siege equipment of their own and start using it. Right now the guards are basically useless aside from alerting people when they die.

Giving any kind of bonus to the outnumbered faction is always something that can be abused. The only viable solution is to reduce the likelihood that any alliance will be outnumbered. Right now, it’s the existence of multiple campaigns and the low population cap that contributes most profoundly to population imbalances. Fix that problem, and you naturally solve the problem of being outnumbered without having to rely on unbalanced gimmicks like double AP, better healing, stronger guards, etc.

Why would you care about how much AP someone else is making? That has zero gameplay effect in Cyrodiil.

And if it serves the purpose of getting people to stick around longer on the outnumbered sides... I am really not seeing a problem.

Aurielle

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

s3dulo wrote: »

Here's another idea:

If your alliance is outnumbered, your alliance guards increase significantly in strength and numbers. Also, they spawn siege equipment of their own and start using it. Right now the guards are basically useless aside from alerting people when they die.

Giving any kind of bonus to the outnumbered faction is always something that can be abused. The only viable solution is to reduce the likelihood that any alliance will be outnumbered. Right now, it’s the existence of multiple campaigns and the low population cap that contributes most profoundly to population imbalances. Fix that problem, and you naturally solve the problem of being outnumbered without having to rely on unbalanced gimmicks like double AP, better healing, stronger guards, etc.

Why would you care about how much AP someone else is making? That has zero gameplay effect in Cyrodiil.

And if it serves the purpose of getting people to stick around longer on the outnumbered sides... I am really not seeing a problem.

Actually, it would have a gameplay effect. If PVPers get double AP for fighting outnumbered, they will (drumroll) seek to fight outnumbered and orchestrate situations to fight outnumbered. They will campaign-hop until they can find one where they are at a population disadvantage and farm AP there, to the detriment of gameplay on other campaigns. The whole point of OP’s proposition is to AVOID situations where you’re fighting outnumbered or fighting without opposition, but if you incentivize fighting outnumbered by providing double AP, then it will not have the intended effect.

darvaria

Just leave this alone. Even the low pop bonus messes up things. I remember about 2 years ago, when EP won with the low pop bonus. I mean seriously rewarding players for "not playing"

YandereGirlfriend

Aurielle wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

s3dulo wrote: »

Here's another idea:

If your alliance is outnumbered, your alliance guards increase significantly in strength and numbers. Also, they spawn siege equipment of their own and start using it. Right now the guards are basically useless aside from alerting people when they die.

Giving any kind of bonus to the outnumbered faction is always something that can be abused. The only viable solution is to reduce the likelihood that any alliance will be outnumbered. Right now, it’s the existence of multiple campaigns and the low population cap that contributes most profoundly to population imbalances. Fix that problem, and you naturally solve the problem of being outnumbered without having to rely on unbalanced gimmicks like double AP, better healing, stronger guards, etc.

Why would you care about how much AP someone else is making? That has zero gameplay effect in Cyrodiil.

And if it serves the purpose of getting people to stick around longer on the outnumbered sides... I am really not seeing a problem.

Actually, it would have a gameplay effect. If PVPers get double AP for fighting outnumbered, they will (drumroll) seek to fight outnumbered and orchestrate situations to fight outnumbered. They will campaign-hop until they can find one where they are at a population disadvantage and farm AP there, to the detriment of gameplay on other campaigns. The whole point of OP’s proposition is to AVOID situations where you’re fighting outnumbered or fighting without opposition, but if you incentivize fighting outnumbered by providing double AP, then it will not have the intended effect.

That would lead to self-balancing of the campaigns, if players from an overpopulated alliance instead opt to play elsewhere where they are outnumbered. The population of that outnumbered faction would rise, evening the odds. And the population of the faction that they left would decrease, evening the odds. What am I missing here?

Also, the universe of players who would be that sweaty to micro-manage which campaigns they play in (once that you can't even receive end-of-campaign rewards in...) simply for AP purposes is very small. Most people would continue to play in their current campaigns. The goal is to give an incentive for under-populated sides to stick around even when they're getting rolled on the map by a zerg.

Aurielle

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

s3dulo wrote: »

Here's another idea:

If your alliance is outnumbered, your alliance guards increase significantly in strength and numbers. Also, they spawn siege equipment of their own and start using it. Right now the guards are basically useless aside from alerting people when they die.

Giving any kind of bonus to the outnumbered faction is always something that can be abused. The only viable solution is to reduce the likelihood that any alliance will be outnumbered. Right now, it’s the existence of multiple campaigns and the low population cap that contributes most profoundly to population imbalances. Fix that problem, and you naturally solve the problem of being outnumbered without having to rely on unbalanced gimmicks like double AP, better healing, stronger guards, etc.

Why would you care about how much AP someone else is making? That has zero gameplay effect in Cyrodiil.

And if it serves the purpose of getting people to stick around longer on the outnumbered sides... I am really not seeing a problem.

Actually, it would have a gameplay effect. If PVPers get double AP for fighting outnumbered, they will (drumroll) seek to fight outnumbered and orchestrate situations to fight outnumbered. They will campaign-hop until they can find one where they are at a population disadvantage and farm AP there, to the detriment of gameplay on other campaigns. The whole point of OP’s proposition is to AVOID situations where you’re fighting outnumbered or fighting without opposition, but if you incentivize fighting outnumbered by providing double AP, then it will not have the intended effect.

That would lead to self-balancing of the campaigns, if players from an overpopulated alliance instead opt to play elsewhere where they are outnumbered. The population of that outnumbered faction would rise, evening the odds. And the population of the faction that they left would decrease, evening the odds. What am I missing here?

Also, the universe of players who would be that sweaty to micro-manage which campaigns they play in (once that you can't even receive end-of-campaign rewards in...) simply for AP purposes is very small. Most people would continue to play in their current campaigns. The goal is to give an incentive for under-populated sides to stick around even when they're getting rolled on the map by a zerg.

It wouldn’t self-balance, though? If you really think many people wouldn’t abuse the ever-loving snot out of double AP rewards for fighting outnumbered, then you haven’t been playing in Cyrodiil long enough. If we got double AP for fighting outnumbered, we’d end up with what we have today: three imbalanced campaigns at off-peak hours — except people would be striving to play on the least populated campaign for their alliance, rather than the most-populated. Few would care about winning the campaign, because the focus would shift towards earning as much double AP as possible.

tomofhyrule

I think part of the issue with the "low Pop" bonus that leads to this idea of gaming the system is that the bonus seems to be applied at a specific time and sticks around for a set amount of time instead of being dynamically applied and removed.

We've all heard the stories of "Oh, [insert enemy alliance here] is cheating since there's a coordinated effort that they all log off/go into a delve/leave Cyro/etc. right before the time so they end up with a really low population and then they get awarded the bonus, and then they all come back and change the whole map [color]." While I can't believe that works exactly like that (come on, has anyone ever tried to get an entire group of people do coordinate that heavily?), we have plainly seen enough times that one alliance has the low pop bonus despite having the same or more bars than others in the campaign.

We already know AP drops can be dynamic - have you ever taken a keep and got a capture tick, then captured another one right afterwards but noticed that your tick was less because someone took one of the edge keeps at some point inbetween? They should do that with the low pop bonus, and as soon as the populations are stabilized, then the bonus gets removed. No possibility to game that one - you either are low population and get a bonus, or you aren't.

Again, I think the score bonus should be a bit more present though. If one alliance basically has no presence in a campaign, then there absolutely should be a bonus to people playing that alliance to encourage the underdog to even out the scores. Even if we want to argue that some people prefer to fight in the open (thereby not getting capture ticks or score), not having keeps means not having AP boosts or being able to move easily around the map. More keeps = easier to get to the fights = can do more PvP... even if you have to PvD to get it.

SugaComa

The simplest solution is to change the times of the campaigns and the scoring,

4 hour campaigns first to emp wins, or highest points at the end of four hours

katanagirl1

I understand the frustration, I have been there many times.

I am not sure there is a solution to this other than enough people logging in and winning back the map.

It’s going to happen more in the campaigns that are not Gray Host because they are much less populated. At least in Gray Host when players faction hop they get tired of winning all the time and will switch back for a challenge, I think.

Ostonoha

Allow players from higher pop factions to join the low pop faction so we can fight on the side that is losing.

It also sucks that its expensive to move toons across factions. (multiple toons) I understand you dont want people swapping every campaign to the over pop but it becomes cost restrictive to players who want to be outnumbered and support the losing faction.

But if we had a way to join the lowest pop faction at the time there would be people that would do it. Dont allow them to emp, grab scrolls, or hammer, no rewards. Make it so they have to be actively fighting and earning AP of some sort to stay in so it cant be abused.