Lowering the number of campaigns is a band-aid fix. That will inspire people who don't want to face these kinds of mega faction servers (where their numbers are huge around the clock) to just sit in queues for the other competitive servers instead.

What really needs to occur is a dynamic population cap system. The intent of a 3 way combat system is when one side is dominate the other two would team up against them. This needs to be accomplished with two primary goals:

1. Attacking the dominate faction in a campaign numerically is worth more AP and XP. This will help direct the players on the other two factions to attack that side since they will be worth more AP.

2. Dynamic population caps. Essentially there needs to be a balancing system that enforces dynamic population caps. So lets say we start with 100 soft cap population for Cyrodill. Ebon pact immediately hits 100. DC has 30 and AD has 50. There'd need to be another 20 DC or AD to enter the campaign before the soft cap raises up to 150. When it raises to 150, Ebon immediately fills up but now it needs to wait on 50 more DC and AD to enter total.

This would keep the populations relatively balanced because as players stay and join the caps would raise with a reasonable amount of forces for them to fight. The queues would also inspire people to possibly look for a more competitive campaign for their numbers.

Yeah I agree with giving buffs to the side that is both underpopulated and has their keeps/scrolls stolen. Right now its just too easy for the side that zergs to maintain control of the entire map.

Tanthul wrote: »

Ok. I love Cyrodiil. I lead a PVP guild with top players and we currently "lve" in Cyrodiil. The only problem with it is population balance. Since the first days the issues were apparent but as of yesterday the situation got ridiculous.

It is impossible to do anything when you have 35-40 players vs 100+. Currently on Scourge the Pact is zerging everything. We are Dominion and we've managed to pull defenses for 4 hours of 3 vs 30 on keeps, with successful results. But there's nothing to do when we're being hit with a wave of 30 player bands from multiple sides simultaneously that even have no real strategy than just swarming us. The Covenant felt this very very early as they have the worst numbers available. They've been destroyed since day 1.

Population balancing is what was destroying similar open world faction PVP systems from their day of conception (eg DAoC, Warhammer) and one would think that with experience from these games there would be some mechanisms in motion to nullify the benefit of overpopulation yet to my surprise there are none.

What can be done about it? A few quick ideas:

a) For example. Do not allow joining campaign Scourge in Dominion alliance when Dominion alliance is overpopulated. If you're part of a guild that operates on Scourge and you want to join with them, then you would enter a queue system that would place you on Scourge when the numbers allow it. For the mean time you would be able to play on your Guest campaign.

b) Current overpopulation on a Cyrodiil map, would bestow debuffs upon you. Currently the situation is working entirely the opposite than it should. Overpopulation allows you to easily steal keeps, resources and even scrolls, that give you even further buff hence making your zerg entirely unstoppable. Firstly nullify buffs according to how overpopulating one side is (eg when you are at double numbers of the enemy nullify half your buffs, when triple nullify all of them) and then place further debuffs when overpopulation goes on for days. For example if you're a week with double the numbers, then apply a 5% penalty on stats (that is just an arbitrary number for example's sake..you know the metrics best so you know how high it should be). You can also apply buffs and debuffs accordingly to castle walls/doors etc.

Beshaba Tanthul, Scourge Dominion (Dark Moon Guild)

I understand your pain, but I think it's far too early to jump into conclusions about what's needed to be done, if anything, about your situation.
Also, it's too early to cater for the needs of one server.
It's just your server, not all servers, things like that might balance themselves out on the go. Also, if the zerg of 100 is as not organized as you claim and your 30 guildies top players as you claim, then you should have a very significant chance to beat them actually using tactics and terrain. Unless you are not as top players as you say.

Seriously, learn the mechanics. I'm not necessarily directing this at the OP, just everyone on this forum who is complaining about things in AvA being broken, because y'all mostly have no idea how the game works.

For instance, in this thread, multiple people are talking about how an overpopulated side should get debuffs and the underpopulated side buffs... Losing alliances already get buffs, pretty hefty buffs actually, right this very second.

You also might just want to wait until you get used to how strategies work in Cyrodiil when you're outnumbered. There is literally no way 100 players can control a large portion of the map against 30-40 from one other alliance. Consider guerilla tactics. If they have a force of 100 hunkering down on one of your keeps, leave a small group there just to keep that 100 busy. Prop up a whole bunch of siege that you don't actually have the manpower to run just to confuse the enemies about how many are defending. Meanwhile, run multiple groups around to other keeps along the supply line to take resources from those keeps. Your enemies will no longer be able to spawn near your keep unless they decide to use forward camps. If they use forward camps, they're not bothering with the resources that your other groups are taking, allowing you to continue on and possibly even take some keeps. If they don't use forward camps, it means they're coming to take those resources back or defend, but since you're taking them from multiple locations, they necessarily have to split up. You don't want to actually defend those resources, you just want to cause havoc in their organization and waste their time running around trying to keep everything in their color. Hell, you can even send a group deep into your enemy's territory to do the same. Sure, you might not take back your keeps, but you'll sure make it hell for them to advance any further, hopefully buying you enough time until more players log in on your alliance.

Really, let's get creative here. This is war and there's more than one way to do it.

Edit: Syntax.

a) It is not just our campaign. We hear the same thing from almost every campaign. Our reports say that all campaigns that are not hitting the max have the same problem.

b) The overpopulation issue will not fix itself because the Pact seems to always be in higher numbers in general game population. Maybe more players prefer playing Dunmer and Nord? I don't know, but that's what we hear from players on other campaigns.

c) We actually know strategy and we know exactly how Cyrodiil works. Proof of that is that yesterday we crowned our Emperor Sylen Larethian against the massive Pact zerg. But that is only because the Pact did not think of strategy and acted as a massive swarm and after they swarmed everything they could they went back to PVE in which time we pushed the two remaining castles.
The strategic argument, though, has nothing to do with what I am talking about here. You never should assume that your opponents will not use strategy and tactics against you. When we are talking about an overpopulation problem, we assume same level of skill on both sides. If we managed to beat an unorganized and strategy lacking opponent, it does not change the fact that if they actually utilized clever strategy and tactics it would be impossible to defeat them. You can not use the lack of the opponent's skill as an argument.

@johnisanonymous: We are doing already everything you are suggesting (and much more) that is why we're winning when we are outnumbered by a reasonable amount. A small force can not hold back the zerg. You can hold up to 25-30 players max with a group of 5-6 very good players but certainly not more and certainly not when they opponent has a clue+alliance buffs. But there is just one point when 50 hostiles just run in the inner keep and swarm everything. They lose 80% in the process but they still get the keep because there are nearly not enough defenders. There is a threshold that depends partly on how quickly the NPCs can be burst down. As I said we have defended 3 vs 30 for 4 hours and won. And today we defended 10 vs 40 and still won. But that was only after peak time. Before that we were just getting swarmed no matter what strategy we followed. And like I already said, on Scourge, we're doing fine. The Covenant on the other hand is broken and destroyed. They don't even try to fight back 99% of the time they are always pushed right to their gates. For this reason we avoid hitting them (some small groups won't listen to us though and try to steal empty castles from them). We want them strong and in the game. But they also don't seem to take a hint either as when we were pushing the Pact hard, what they did was hit fort Ash instead of joining us against the Pact that has them locked to their gates for days..

Currently there is no disadvantage at all to fighting 3:1. Also your statement that the losing alliances get buffs is 2000% wrong. There is no buff whatsoever for the losing side. All the buffs available are for holding enemy territory and scrolls (besides Emperor). So you may want to examine the Cyrodiil system a bit more yourself.

Also.

mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/821/feature/8237/page/2:

"There currently is a scoring imbalance check, where if one alliance gets about double the amount of points that the other two alliances own, then the other two alliances get bonuses against that alliance. So, if Ebonheart has 2000 points and Aldmeri and Daggerfall have less than a thousand each, they each get bonuses against that alliance when they take keeps from them. They don’t get it against themselves, but against the enemy that has the most, as well as for holding onto their own. So it’s a little bit of incentive to make sure you hang onto your territory as well as take territory from the “big bully” who has the most Alliance Points."

I guess I overstated what you get, but you at least get something when losing.