Allow Groups To Queue in Together Against All Other Alliances

NegativeVibes · December 2021

Many players, myself included, often find themselves stuck on the faction with the highest population, even with alliance changes being an option. This not only makes it hard to find fights, but kills campaigns as a whole when one faction ultimately outnumbers the others drastically. This makes most nights where my friends and I want to PvP very boring and we end up getting off and playing something else. Because we want the open world PvP experience without being limited on the number of people we can fight, I propose the following solution:

Groups, up to 6, should be able to queue in by themselves and be able to fight every other player in Cyrodiil, regardless of faction. Maybe let these players respawn at the many bandit forts around the map or similar locations that could function as spawn points for unaligned players who are not fighting for EP, AD, or DC.

In essence, everyone not in your group would be a potential combatant. This would allow smaller groups to actually find fights no matter what faction their character is on and not have a huge impact of the population of the server.

VaranisArano · December 2021

As a player who prefers to fight for my faction, I have some pretty serious qualms about the trolling potential for these groups.

1. Can your groups capture Alliance objectives? Small group PVP can be enormously disruptive to transit via campaign resources or even outposts. With entrenched enemy groups, we can usually force them to give up by hitting their back lines. With bandits...do we just have to dig in and kill them? Bandits won't even lose points on the scoreboard, but the alliances will, right?

2. Can your group pick up Elder Scrolls? Scroll farming is common enough with alliance groups, yet they also have certain incentives to carry the Scrolls safely back to their own alliances. Since Bandits don't, is this just an invitation to small group scroll trolling?

3. Do Bandits count against the population cap? In an AvAvA realm that frequently plays like A v A+A, I'm sure you can see the difference between:

33% v 66%
And
25% v 75%

The latter is what happens if Bandits start filling up their portion of the queue. Meanwhile alliance players (like me) have to defend the same territory with less players against more enemies. How is that supposed to sound like a good deal with the players who stick with the alliances?

4. How can you balance Bandits as a faction? As we know, Cyrodill has many times where two weaker alliances are supposed to gang up on the stronger alliance (emperorship, etc.) We also know loads of times when 1st and 2nd place gang up to pound 3rd place into Oblivion, let's be honest here. You cannot guarantee that Bandits will fight for the underdog. In fact, the history of players swapping factions suggests that many are very likely to side with the big dogs to smash the underdog. Sorry, we can say that "Bandits just want good fights" but plenty of the tower farmers I see want plenty of weak fighters trickling in until a decent group shows up and clears them out. Sorry, but I see even small groups join in the shark feeding frenzy when it's time to gang up on a weakened alliance.

5. What incentives do Bandits have to actually play Cyrodiil properly as opposed to trolling? As I see it, they don't have a score. They don't have objectives. There's no way to force them back on the defensive by attacking their home camps or something. There's no reason for them not to act like a plague of locusts.

Thing is, you can already play like a bandit under the color of your own alliance. There are certain costs to that playstyle that intentionally balance it out- things like if too many people do what they want, your alliance won't have enough attackers or defenders. Things like if too many people troll with Scrolls, your alliance won't benefit.

There's no downside to that behavior with bandits. It's all "good fights for me, I don't care about thee" as a playstyle. All the costs get offloaded to the alliance players.

Now, maybe these are features, not problems, for people who want to play bandits who don't give a darn about the campaign or the alliance war.

For me, who plays EP and who wouldn't stop, I'm left scratching my head thinking, "But this makes gameplay worse for the vast majority of players playing on an alliance."

xylena_lazarow · December 2021

Add a fourth "black" faction flavored as pirates, mercs, bandits, Legion Zero, etc. They would be able to fight against all 3 factions, would be able to capture and hold keeps, but would not be able to pick up scrolls or crown emp, would not have any score or be part of the campaign competition, and players would not be eligible for any leaderboards or end-of-campaign rewards.

VaranisArano wrote: »

It's all "good fights for me, I don't care about thee" as a playstyle

Yes that's part of the point, it would offload these players somewhere lore-appropriate where they can do their thing without undermining or trolling their supposed allies who are merely trying to play for their faction. Win/win/win.

AJones43865 · December 2021

This is not a good idea at all.

We already have a dedicated, cross faction group that never plays the map, but run around together every day while on different factions and they do nothing except try to be a spoiler for those trying to play the game "normally". They have no faction loyalty, they just live to troll anyone trying to achieve an in game objective.

Between these trolls, the broken low pop bonus, and poor performance that somehow manages to keep declining, Cyrodiil just isn't fun anymore.

VaranisArano · December 2021

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Add a fourth "black" faction flavored as pirates, mercs, bandits, Legion Zero, etc. They would be able to fight against all 3 factions, would be able to capture and hold keeps, but would not be able to pick up scrolls or crown emp, would not have any score or be part of the campaign competition, and players would not be eligible for any leaderboards or end-of-campaign rewards.

VaranisArano wrote: »

It's all "good fights for me, I don't care about thee" as a playstyle

Yes that's part of the point, it would offload these players somewhere lore-appropriate where they can do their thing without undermining or trolling their supposed allies who are merely trying to play for their faction. Win/win/win.

But everything they'd be doing would still be actively undermining the experience of players who remain on the three factions.

The alliance players have to defend their territory with less players against more enemies, and worse, against enemies who have no reason to not play as trollishly as possible.

"Good fights for me, I don't care about thee," doesn't sound at all appealing from the perspective of someone who'd be dealing with trying to root a Legion Zero ball group out of the top floor of my home keep. At least if they were members of an Alliance, I can punish them by taking their keeps in return.

biminirwb17_ESO · January 2022

This old chestnut again. No NO and No

One dominant faction does make the game boring, especially when they are allowed to faction stack defend. But the "bandit" option does nothing to fix this, it just introduces toxic gameplay.

xylena_lazarow · January 2022

biminirwb17_ESO wrote: »

it just introduces toxic gameplay.

I'd argue that it would alleviate toxicity, as any troll players on the bandit faction would no longer be bringing toxicity to faction zone chat or undermining their faction by refusing to run back scrolls or whatever. The toxic gameplay you're referring to already happens all the time, I believe it would be much less toxic if those players were allowed to separate themselves from faction play (which they are not interested in anyway).

Kwoung · January 2022

A couple of things.... What stops the "bandits" from helping their pop-locked / winning faction anyways, thus making the the issue worst? But more to the point, the queues aren't just there to keep things even, they are there because the servers can't even handle the population already there from the three factions, so adding a fourth would just make it that much worst.

VaranisArano · January 2022

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

biminirwb17_ESO wrote: »

it just introduces toxic gameplay.

I'd argue that it would alleviate toxicity, as any troll players on the bandit faction would no longer be bringing toxicity to faction zone chat or undermining their faction by refusing to run back scrolls or whatever. The toxic gameplay you're referring to already happens all the time, I believe it would be much less toxic if those players were allowed to separate themselves from faction play (which they are not interested in anyway).

Can they be actually separate from faction play, as in, they get their own campaign to run around in?

Because when they battle alliance players at alliance objections, interfering with alliance battles, and taking away alliance players from the total population cap...I'm sorry, but that's not separate from faction play. That's interfering with faction play, and taking away the normal options that faction players have to deal with enemies.

That's not even substantially less toxic. I can fix zone chat with a few mutes, and a bandit faction stands to interfere a lot worse than an "allied" group who's not playing how I think they ought.

Every way I look at it, this suggestion makes faction play for 75% of the players in Cyrodiil worse in order to cater to 25% who don't care to begin with.

I'd be down for these bandits getting their own campaign that doesn't have factions to interfere with. No Faction Cyrodiil? Sure, give it a try! If we're gonna cater to players who don't care about factions, let's go the whole way: no factions and no faction play to interfere with.

I'd be surprised if it worked, though, because it seems to me that the bandits need faction players fighting for faction objectives to prey off of so they get their good fights. They kinda have to interfere with faction play, like we see with scroll farming, or with resource tower farms, or farming the top floor of keeps. I really doubt that bandits could sustain quality play on their own.

Which leaves us back at the point of making faction play worse for 75% of players in order to cater to 25%. Exiling the toxic players to a different faction doesn't actually mean they can't still be toxic to faction play, especially when the whole point of bandit play is to interfere with faction players.

As a faction player, why would I want that?

Necrotech_Master · January 2022

how about instead of "unaligned players" fighting everyone, it would be better to just allow queueing in as whatever faction you please

stops to prevent trolling would be anytime you queued as a faction other than your characters, you could not gain points on the leaderboard or contribute to end of campaign rewards (or even an AP cost similar to if you set a new home campaign)

planetside 2 does something similar to this with the NS faction they added, basically an "unaligned faction" that when you load in gets dumped on whatever faction has the lowest population automatically to try to balance populations out (personally i think how planetside 2 does the tri-faction population handling is overall a lot better than ESO lol)

VaranisArano · January 2022

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

how about instead of "unaligned players" fighting everyone, it would be better to just allow queueing in as whatever faction you please

There's already two unlocked campaigns though where they can do that, right?

Necrotech_Master · January 2022

VaranisArano wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

how about instead of "unaligned players" fighting everyone, it would be better to just allow queueing in as whatever faction you please

There's already two unlocked campaigns though where they can do that, right?

technically not on the same character though, they would have to change characters, i was assuming from the point of your current character only (say if you wanted to work on alliance ranks on a particular toon, those are individual and not acct wide like cp)

VaranisArano · January 2022

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

how about instead of "unaligned players" fighting everyone, it would be better to just allow queueing in as whatever faction you please

There's already two unlocked campaigns though where they can do that, right?

technically not on the same character though, they would have to change characters, i was assuming from the point of your current character only (say if you wanted to work on alliance ranks on a particular toon, those are individual and not acct wide like cp)

Ah. I see what you mean now.

Unfortunately, ZOS sells faction change tokens, so I'm not sure I see them making it free to swap factions on the same character.

Necrotech_Master · January 2022

VaranisArano wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

how about instead of "unaligned players" fighting everyone, it would be better to just allow queueing in as whatever faction you please

There's already two unlocked campaigns though where they can do that, right?

technically not on the same character though, they would have to change characters, i was assuming from the point of your current character only (say if you wanted to work on alliance ranks on a particular toon, those are individual and not acct wide like cp)

Ah. I see what you mean now.

Unfortunately, ZOS sells faction change tokens, so I'm not sure I see them making it free to swap factions on the same character.

agreed, maybe down the road they might change something since faction change tokens (and similar any race/any alliance acct upgrade) are 100% pointless outside of cyro and IC (BG already dont care what faction you are)

edit: i also wanted to be clear that the idea i had in mind wasnt necessarily a full on faction change, just to allow you to queue into cyro as any "faction" (as i noted about battlegrounds earlier, that is a pvp environment that is NOT faction-locked like cyro and IC and you can have a red, a blue, and yellow faction on the same team)

xylena_lazarow · January 2022

VaranisArano wrote: »

like we see with scroll farming... As a faction player, why would I want that?

If bandits weren't allowed to pick up scrolls, it could help deal with that particular toxic behavior.

hafgood · January 2022

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

If bandits weren't allowed to pick up scrolls, it could help deal with that particular toxic behavior.

Not really, they would just collude with someone on one of the alliances to steal them, I'm already thinking ways it can be done, I guarantee you within an hour of this going live there would be forum posts about the bandits farming scrolls with help from one of the alliances

VaranisArano · January 2022

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

like we see with scroll farming... As a faction player, why would I want that?

If bandits weren't allowed to pick up scrolls, it could help deal with that particular toxic behavior.

Bandits kinda have to interfere with faction play, like we see with scroll farming, or with resource tower farms, or farming the top floor of keeps. Or at outposts, fighting at Alessia Bridge, Chalman Milegate, towns...you know, anywhere where Alliance players are going to fight for their faction objectives and bandits are hoping to get their "good fights" at the expense of the factions.

But this already happens with bandit-like alliance players, right?

No, there's a significant difference. Alliance players can engage in faction play versus bandit-like players who are members of enemy alliances. They don't have to kill them.

Do note that alliance players have no recourse for how to deal with these bandits except to kill them and hope they don't come back. There's literally no reason for the bandits to not come right back from whereever their nearest spawn point is. It's not like regular faction play where if a ball group loses, they can move on to a keep their alliance mates captured. It's not like regular faction play where faction players can discourage enemy faction behavior by hitting their objectives.

Faction players can't capture bandit objectives. There are none.
Faction players can't hurt the bandit score.
There isn't one.
Faction Players can't even use the time honored method of expressing extreme displeasure with a factions behavior: gating them.
Bandits don't have gates, or indeed, any reason to care about anything except interfering with others.

Moreover, every moment spent fighting bandits is a moment that takes away from the faction play that Cyrodiil is actually designed for.

This is an incredibly one-sided idea.

And you aren't actually offloading anyone. You are just concentrating players who don't care about faction play onto one faction, and then giving them free rein to attack the faction players who do with absolutely no downsides for the bandits.

All the downsides are born by the 75% of players who will still be fighting for their faction.

Why on earth would I, a faction player, want this?

xylena_lazarow · January 2022

VaranisArano wrote: »

Why on earth would I, a faction player, want this?

Yea I think you're right. Some toxic behaviors would go away but new ones would develop in their place. I hope ZOS someday does something about it. Non-objective "pug farming" still awards a lot of AP, maybe they could start there.

Kwoung · January 2022

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Why on earth would I, a faction player, want this?

Yea I think you're right. Some toxic behaviors would go away but new ones would develop in their place. I hope ZOS someday does something about it. Non-objective "pug farming" still awards a lot of AP, maybe they could start there.

IDK, those dumdum PUG's will chase a group all day around their back keep while we capture all their others. It seems very objective based to me. I bet they even cheer when they finally bring down that group... well at least until they open their map and realize they are standing in the only keep they still own.

divnyi · January 2022

Please do it for IC. It's insanely hard to gather a group of casual players because alliances never match. I don't care if we have to fight all others at this point.

NerfSeige · January 2022

divnyi wrote: »

Please do it for IC. It's insanely hard to gather a group of casual players because alliances never match. I don't care if we have to fight all others at this point.

This got me thinking about no alliance on IC:

-you go in solo = everyone is your enemy, great for looking fights, and never worry about your faction’s domination
-you go in a group = everyone in your group is your alliance, everyone outside is an enemy

What will happen:

-solo players can 1vX everyone
-GROUP DUELS
-zerg is limited to 12-man

Though I don’t know what will happen on the flag system/district captures, maybe ramping up rewards on how long you can hold it?

xylena_lazarow · January 2022

Kwoung wrote: »

IDK, those dumdum PUG's will chase a group all day around their back keep while we capture all their others.

It sometimes goes that way, but let's not be disingenuous, that's not why they're doing it, and they're just as likely to allow their own faction's scroll to reset to an enemy keep. It should be no surprise that after almost 8 years of tryhards "farming pugs" the pugs would eventually leave and never return, look how badly Cyro pop has dropped this past year.

Kwoung · January 2022

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

IDK, those dumdum PUG's will chase a group all day around their back keep while we capture all their others.

It sometimes goes that way, but let's not be disingenuous, that's not why they're doing it, and they're just as likely to allow their own faction's scroll to reset to an enemy keep. It should be no surprise that after almost 8 years of tryhards "farming pugs" the pugs would eventually leave and never return, look how badly Cyro pop has dropped this past year.

Everyone has their own reasons for playing and rarely in my experience is it to support their faction... unless that results in some sort of personal and immediate gain as well. My friends and I only play DC and would we like to win occasionally, sure... do we play to that end, not really. We play for fun, to make AP, to have some fun fights, and to generally mix it up and see how well we can do... and for each others company, as we are generally cracking up the whole time we are out there.

As for the huge drop in players, to suggest that anything but ZOS's complete disregard for PVP, the ridiculous proc sets they add, the abysmal performance in Cyrodiil and their continual lowering of pop caps to try and slow the issue had something to do with it, is kind of stretching it.

xylena_lazarow · January 2022

Kwoung wrote: »

As for the huge drop in players, to suggest that anything but ZOS's complete disregard for PVP

Their disregard for PvP has many consequences, including player behavior, so sure you can broadly trace it back to that. I'm hoping they'll look at the way campaign score and AP gain works, and improve it.

Kwoung · January 2022

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

As for the huge drop in players, to suggest that anything but ZOS's complete disregard for PVP

Their disregard for PvP has many consequences, including player behavior, so sure you can broadly trace it back to that. I'm hoping they'll look at the way campaign score and AP gain works, and improve it.

Fixing performance would help in those areas... having reduced the number of players allowed in and giving even those a lag filled experience is pretty much the largest issue. Get rid of the performance issues and many will come back, and having 1200 folks running around instead of 180 goes a long ways towards evening things up, as small groups then have a much smaller overall effect on the campaign.

MipMip · January 2022

Having an option to play as a group independent of the factions would indeed be so good!

biminirwb17_ESO · January 2022

Today in GH PCNA a DC ballgroup was in Blackboot for about an hour, after 30 mins they picked up the DC scroll that was there and ran around the roof with it, meanwhile EP took almost all their factions keeps leaving them with 3 as the AD who were not in BB took Ash as well, DC missed out on 20 points because the ball group kept farming the scroll while evaluation passed.

So lets forget the "doing it for the faction" stuff or the "we are tying up a bazillion pugs" because obviously they were not. In fact DC lost every evaluation that occurred while the ball group was logged on.

Necrotech_Master · January 2022

NerfSeige wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

Please do it for IC. It's insanely hard to gather a group of casual players because alliances never match. I don't care if we have to fight all others at this point.

This got me thinking about no alliance on IC:

-you go in solo = everyone is your enemy, great for looking fights, and never worry about your faction’s domination
-you go in a group = everyone in your group is your alliance, everyone outside is an enemy

What will happen:

-solo players can 1vX everyone
-GROUP DUELS
-zerg is limited to 12-man

Though I don’t know what will happen on the flag system/district captures, maybe ramping up rewards on how long you can hold it?

how would that work for the safe areas that are specifically split between alliances? (mainly the sewer section of IC)

on the surface it wouldnt really be too hard since there isnt like a primary base, just faction respawn areas

there sure would be a lot of griefing in the alliance bases if you could kill your own alliance players that arent grouped

even if the free for all was enabled only outside of the bases, it wouldnt be any better than during an IC even with 20 combative players camping right outside of the sewer base nailing anyone who comes out that forgot to deposit tel var

not even to mention the toxic alliance zone chat that would happen when you got ganked by someone of your own alliance (which would cause a headache for zos due to all the player reports that would go through "my own alliance member killed me, they must be cheating!" lol)

DrSlaughtr · January 2022

This seems like a complicated solution to a problem that can be solved by having characters on other alliances in BR or if they would just lower alliance change to a more reasonable price. It shouldn't cost more than 1k crowns OR (even better) let you do a quest in game that let's you switch.

AuraNebula · January 2022

An imperial faction would be welcome and would definitely shake things up in cyrodiil.