Other games I've played that had factions allowed you to choose Neutral.

No, it is perfect as it is.

StaticWave wrote: »

Dojohoda wrote: »

While it's an interesting idea, it sounds complicated.

For one thing, there is no base for a mercenary. The base provides two important functions- a spawn point and transportation out of pvp areas to overland.

Also, there are no tools for mercenaries. How would you interact with the keeps, the other players. Who would see what you type in zone chat?

I can understand that a mercenary might want to explore Cyrodiil and be untouchable but that seems like using the area in an untended way.

I believe a mercenary would spawn with the faction they decided to work for during that particular session, so no need to create anything new.

I was responding to this part of the idea: "maybe continue as a new fourth faction."

Personally, I think that could present some interesting possibilities for the less populated campaigns but, it probably wouldn't be worth the effort.

For Mercenary, instead of allowing the player to pick a faction and a server for the session I would suggest having the server itself pick and toss you in a group with other Mercenaries automatically.

The server could use the Mercenary players to cut into population imbalances.

You could also use an Imperial Legion Faction to do something similar.

Right now, you have Imperial Camps dotting all over Cyrodiil that don't really do much. You could allow players that are Imperial to queue for the Alliance War on the Imperial Side. When you had a sufficient number of players in queue and a campaign with an imbalance and an expected lack of population you could dump the players in to an Imperial Camp in the backfield of the dominant faction. If they lose the camps the Imperials will be wiped out once they die if they haven't captured anything else until the next time the Campaign triggers Imperial Legion activity. This will incentivize beating the Imperial Legion quickly to avoid them becoming a lasting threat.

One could also potentially offer a Daedric variant where you can get a drop in rare circumstances that allows you and your group to align with the Daedra and be sent in via Dark Anchor and you'd get to attempt to take over Cyrodiil for Molag Bal.

A mercenary faction cant exist because mercenarys are by definition not loyal to a faction but fight for whoever pays them the most money. Characters playing for the „mercenary“ faction wouldnt be mercenarys because they are loyal/bound to that faction. Mercenarys would be hired by the faction of the 3 factions with the most money. And what faction has the most money? Assuming that all 3 factions have the same income,
(from taxes from their own provinces) the faction with the least regular soldiers to pay would have the most money left to hire mercenarys. This way mercenarys would help balance the campaigns.
You could just choose the campaign then queue as mercenary for another faction. Dont know why it would be so problematic if you can already use alts on another faction or change faction of your char.

From a lore standpoint it would be fun to have a neutral alliance and even a fifth Imperial loyalist alliance but from a gameplay mechanics standpoint I can’t see it making much sense in Cyrodil.