1.) Populations are not controlled. Whoever zergs harder and more often wins. Inspired design.

2.) Playing the map does not promote or reward skillful play.

3.) There is very little incentive to playing the map or winning a campaign.

Of course it doesn’t matter. It always amuses me how seriously some zone chat generals take the alliance war, especially when it’s on the current ebonheart pact who has maintained a several thousand point lead for months. Demonstrating why campaigns don’t matter.

I've been PvPing since the game was released. For a long while I cared a lot about campaign scoring, faction loyalty and the ever important "Alliance War".
But almost every long lasting PvPer realizes at one point or another that the score doesn't truly matter other than very few rewards and that the players on every faction are generally the same. The only difference that determines who wins is which faction can keep the map overpopulated during more hours of the day.

At this point after too many years, I don't care one bit about faction scoring and honestly not even AP. The only thing that matters to me and keeps me in the game is skillful outnumbered PvP, which is has no ingame rewards and isn't considered important to the score, but is the only way to feel you need to be good individually to win and not just zerg marked locations.

The last campaign I cared for was Thornblade 2016.

The only incentive I can think of to get anybody to care is vastly improved campaign rewards in an all-or-nothing scenario, where only the winning faction gets those rewards. Of course this brings up the problem with faction swapping and changing sides mid-campaign, but it'd hit massive ball groups hard in that all the AP they're farming in one spot won't mean anything if they don't defend multiple objectives at once from the multiple smaller groups.

The rewards for 30 days of work are weak, and ZOS hasn't figured out how to provide a level playing field (balanced populations)

Why would I? Apart from helping to take/defend a friend's emp I have zero incentive to care about the state of the map or it's scoring. Most of the people that are hardcore faction loyalists are incredibly cringe in zone chat or on the forums as well.

yes in that I get sick of the same side always winning...

no because I have characters on all three sides - so, I'm always first, second and third...

Spoon finds that people who say they have no ambition in Cyrodiil are like those friends you take out for some nice ice cream, and you say now what flavor do you want, and they say "I don't care."


Everyone likes ice cream. Don't lie.


Granted scoring evaluations over the entirety of a campaign don't really reflect the strength of a given faction. And people can twist winning or not winning into "proving" things about their rival factions that are just pure conjecture.


But there's no nuance in a poll like this. And the very people who object to a faction taking it's home keeps back, or getting it's scrolls back, or pushing for the de-emp of a rival.... are the very first people to log out in the face of a gate camp because "they'd have to ride to far to get a good fight." (How dare you siege a keep, you should only be out here fighting.....We have no keeps? Going to Vivec, bye.) Seriously, these things get said by the same people.

So Yes, you can shrug when one side takes the #1 and runs away with it, and still get excited when you log on and there's a de-emp on the menu. And people want you to say No, as a prelude to agreeing not to show up when they want to 1vX Front Door Guards. After a ram accidentally fell out of someone's pocket.

URMERGUD!! AD showed up to defend Brindle!! So uncool that …. they … care... about... campaign!!

Sort of, kind of, not really. Meh PC-NA-V.

zyk wrote: »

I don't really care who wins that much, but I chose a team based game with objectives for a reason. I find combat outside of the context of objectives to be boring. I've never enjoyed deathmatch only games.

So while I'm not that invested in the campaign score because scoring is so broken in many ways, I'll always care about the map. If I didn't, I'd move on to a better game. AvA is what makes ESO PVP interesting.

This is pretty much my thoughts as well (despite voting differently). I don't really care about end of campaign scores, but I generally try to at least help out with my faction's presence on the map until we can push out to at least the two home emp keeps.

The main reason is that a stagnant map tends to push mobs towards a few set points of combat. That leads to a zergs, lag, and DCs. Combat isn't even that fun in those fights. I find open world to be a lot more fun when the map is more dynamic.

Yes I think the scoring is important. It gives the game meaning. Playing only for AP is pretty boring and its a "just give me the money" mentality. Playing deathmatch in BG's is a better way to go if its only AP your interested in. To me its about being a part of something bigger than myself instead of just being self-serving. If you want just an open sandbox with no objectives, no points to earn and just want to fight small scale pvp, then Cyrodiil is not for you. I mean just remove all the keeps then and have everyone roam the country looking for fights that mean nothing but your own pride.