Cyrodiil alliance balance

Gargath · May 2023

Actual map:

Actual log in waiting time 1 m, high pop for DC, low pop AD and EP, but it's the ADs who must wait for a place.

Why anyone should await to be able to join AD or EP and play as cannon fodder, when it looks like even most of available player slots are taken by DC.

Necrotech_Master · May 2023

the queue is per faction, there is X amount of people as the limit per faction

just because dc is poplocked doesnt mean AD or EP has to wait for a slot

that "estimated wait" is commonly known to be extremely inaccurate lol

xylena_lazarow · May 2023

As of this post this is the "main" campaign on PC/NA... just gets worse every year.

Necrotech_Master · May 2023

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

As of this post this is the "main" campaign on PC/NA... just gets worse every year.

thats about what PC NA blackreach looked like yesterday around 6 pm est (except it was EP that was poplocked with the other 2 faction 1 bar), but within 2 hours all factions were poplocked lol

Marcus684 · May 2023

I was pretty shocked when I logged in and saw that only DC was pop-locked in GH, and wondered if I had accidentally logged into Blackreach.

What's funny is that for the first maybe 3 years, DC always had the lowest population overall. There was a website that tracked this and someone regularly posted screenshots, and DC was typically 10-20% lower than the other 2.

As for where EP and AD were that morning, who knows? Maybe they all have better things to do IRL. They paid DC back by Team Oranging us to our gates over the weekend.

ZOS needs to figure out why PvP populations keep dropping if they want to continue to advertise ESO's massive PvP battles as a selling point. I guess they could just give up and make Cyrodiil another PvE zone as some have begged for. I have other things I could spend my time and subscription dollars on if they did, but I'd definitely miss it.

Necrotech_Master · May 2023

Marcus684 wrote: »

I was pretty shocked when I logged in and saw that only DC was pop-locked in GH, and wondered if I had accidentally logged into Blackreach.

What's funny is that for the first maybe 3 years, DC always had the lowest population overall. There was a website that tracked this and someone regularly posted screenshots, and DC was typically 10-20% lower than the other 2.

As for where EP and AD were that morning, who knows? Maybe they all have better things to do IRL. They paid DC back by Team Oranging us to our gates over the weekend.

ZOS needs to figure out why PvP populations keep dropping if they want to continue to advertise ESO's massive PvP battles as a selling point. I guess they could just give up and make Cyrodiil another PvE zone as some have begged for. I have other things I could spend my time and subscription dollars on if they did, but I'd definitely miss it.

i know for me personally i needed a break from the pvp from the event burnout (i made ~7 mil ap in the 12 day event)

pvping for 6-14 hours a day for 12 days takes a lot out of you lol

Theignson · June 2023

I enjoy the cooperative play of large scale AvA. 40-50 people on each side cooperating to defend or take a keep-- lots of fun.

Nowadays when I log on (1030 pm PST) my faction almost always has 1-2 bars and DC poplocked.

No cooperation can help when its 10 EP vs 70 dc. It isn't fun.

There is no solution but I've had a few ideas with many drawbacks, eg randomly assign people to one of the the 3 factions to keep the population balanced. This would hurt guild play, but there's hardly any guilds on EP anyways.

It would force people to work together to attain alliance goals. It wouldn't hurt single RSS trolls. It would prevent, however, small man teams and guild zergs. But it might be worth it to restore game play to an approximate balance.

For now however Im just logging on less and less and I let my subscription lapse for the first time, I think, since 2014

Amottica · June 2023

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the queue is per faction, there is X amount of people as the limit per faction

just because dc is poplocked doesnt mean AD or EP has to wait for a slot

that "estimated wait" is commonly known to be extremely inaccurate lol

This.

I can only assume the image is not from prime time. Any AvA design would have an imbalance during off peak hours.

Or the other question is, why are there fewer players from AD and EP interested in the war?

Marcus684 · June 2023

Amottica wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the queue is per faction, there is X amount of people as the limit per faction

just because dc is poplocked doesnt mean AD or EP has to wait for a slot

that "estimated wait" is commonly known to be extremely inaccurate lol

This.

I can only assume the image is not from prime time. Any AvA design would have an imbalance during off peak hours.

Or the other question is, why are there fewer players from AD and EP interested in the war?

This was most likely in the morning when I also logged in. DC had an overwhelming numbers advantage all morning but lost it and ended up being gated later that day.

I've assumed that DC has a population advantage these days because they have won the majority of campaigns lately and casuals like to flock to the winning team. DC zone chat is also the most welcoming in my opinion, although I haven't played the main campaign on EP or AD in at least 2 years. Don't get me wrong, we have our share of zone trolls, but they're amateurs compared to what I've experienced on AD and EP in the past.

ProudMary · June 2023

Again today AD moved from third place to second on the low pop bonus alone.

The pop caps are just so low that these bonuses are practically sanctioned exploits at this point. With pop caps this low and so many PvP players moving on from ESO the populations swing wildly. People can predict when to log on and off based on a single guild raid that ends at the same time every day.

amadeus001 · June 2023

I have asked time and time again for Devs to produce populations played or hours played per factoin for some kind of fairness. DC have steamed rolled GH for over a year now. Current campaign they are up 5000 points. I have seen them over 12ooo. Dear Developers you have failed out community. For this love of this game, make the war two faction and cause some balance.

Amottica · June 2023

Marcus684 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the queue is per faction, there is X amount of people as the limit per faction

just because dc is poplocked doesnt mean AD or EP has to wait for a slot

that "estimated wait" is commonly known to be extremely inaccurate lol

This.

I can only assume the image is not from prime time. Any AvA design would have an imbalance during off peak hours.

Or the other question is, why are there fewer players from AD and EP interested in the war?

This was most likely in the morning when I also logged in. DC had an overwhelming numbers advantage all morning but lost it and ended up being gated later that day.

I've assumed that DC has a population advantage these days because they have won the majority of campaigns lately and casuals like to flock to the winning team. DC zone chat is also the most welcoming in my opinion, although I haven't played the main campaign on EP or AD in at least 2 years. Don't get me wrong, we have our share of zone trolls, but they're amateurs compared to what I've experienced on AD and EP in the past.

Thanks for that observation. Populations will vary and be imbalanced throughout the day until all three pop caps are met.

This is life with this type of PvP. It is not designed to be balanced or truly competitive. It is intended to be fun and that is pretty much it. Any attempt to make it appear truly balanced will be nothing but smoke and mirrors.

xylena_lazarow · June 2023

Amottica wrote: »

It is not designed to be balanced or truly competitive. It is intended to be fun and that is pretty much it. Any attempt to make it appear truly balanced will be nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Usually "fun" and "balance" go hand-in-hand in PvP games. Abusing imbalance to your advantage appeals to some competitive gamers, but the average casual here just wants to play their own way and not get utterly destroyed for it.

Amottica · June 2023

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

It is not designed to be balanced or truly competitive. It is intended to be fun and that is pretty much it. Any attempt to make it appear truly balanced will be nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Usually "fun" and "balance" go hand-in-hand in PvP games. Abusing imbalance to your advantage appeals to some competitive gamers, but the average casual here just wants to play their own way and not get utterly destroyed for it.

Rally friends and guild mates to counter the other alliance during low population times. That is what some in the other alliance have done and why they are winning the hour during those less busy times. No reason why the one alliance is the only one that can rally the troops.

Kamchuk · June 2023

If you go back through the forums, (as far back as May 2014), you will find that population imbalances have ALWAYS been a complaint. There have been SO MANY discussion threads and solutions offered to ZOS but after 9 years it is still the same. It is predictable when one faction is pop locked and the others are sparsely populated. A couple of days ago, at around 2:00 PM EDT, EP was at 2 bars while DC was pop locked, and of course owned the entire map. But our 2 bars didn’t indicate how many players were really active. I did a roll call to get a head count of active players and there were only 14 of us. That is pretty indicative of EP at that time of day, each weekday. We formed a mob of solo players and captured SEJ but around 30 plus DC showed up to retake it. We at least had a great fight for about 15-20 minutes before we were overwhelmed. Unfortunately, that is the way it is in PC/NA GH. EP owns the map in the mornings, DC in the afternoon, and AD…

I took a year off from ESO because my frustrations were out of balance for something as simple as a computer game. I came back a couple of weeks ago and things are the same. For those that are interested in playing for the score and the bragging rights to winning the GH campaign, then the only thing we can do as a player base is have some “unwritten rules”. We cannot depend on ZOS to make changes. A simple rule being something like: the 2nd and 3rd place factions ALWAYS team up against the 1st place faction. When faction place positions change, so do the teaming arrangements.

Other than that, we can only try to just have fun and find the great fights.

Marcus684 · June 2023

Kamchuk wrote: »

If you go back through the forums, (as far back as May 2014), you will find that population imbalances have ALWAYS been a complaint. There have been SO MANY discussion threads and solutions offered to ZOS but after 9 years it is still the same. It is predictable when one faction is pop locked and the others are sparsely populated. A couple of days ago, at around 2:00 PM EDT, EP was at 2 bars while DC was pop locked, and of course owned the entire map. But our 2 bars didn’t indicate how many players were really active. I did a roll call to get a head count of active players and there were only 14 of us. That is pretty indicative of EP at that time of day, each weekday. We formed a mob of solo players and captured SEJ but around 30 plus DC showed up to retake it. We at least had a great fight for about 15-20 minutes before we were overwhelmed. Unfortunately, that is the way it is in PC/NA GH. EP owns the map in the mornings, DC in the afternoon, and AD…

I took a year off from ESO because my frustrations were out of balance for something as simple as a computer game. I came back a couple of weeks ago and things are the same. For those that are interested in playing for the score and the bragging rights to winning the GH campaign, then the only thing we can do as a player base is have some “unwritten rules”. We cannot depend on ZOS to make changes. A simple rule being something like: the 2nd and 3rd place factions ALWAYS team up against the 1st place faction. When faction place positions change, so do the teaming arrangements.

Other than that, we can only try to just have fun and find the great fights.

I take ZOS' continuing silence and lack of action as an indication that they don't see population imbalances as a problem. To be frank, it's really only a problem in faction-locked campaigns, as in the others you can simply swap to the faction that suits your desires.

UnabashedlyHonest · June 2023

Kamchuk wrote: »

If you go back through the forums, (as far back as May 2014), you will find that population imbalances have ALWAYS been a complaint. There have been SO MANY discussion threads and solutions offered to ZOS but after 9 years it is still the same. It is predictable when one faction is pop locked and the others are sparsely populated. A couple of days ago, at around 2:00 PM EDT, EP was at 2 bars while DC was pop locked, and of course owned the entire map. But our 2 bars didn’t indicate how many players were really active. I did a roll call to get a head count of active players and there were only 14 of us. That is pretty indicative of EP at that time of day, each weekday. We formed a mob of solo players and captured SEJ but around 30 plus DC showed up to retake it. We at least had a great fight for about 15-20 minutes before we were overwhelmed. Unfortunately, that is the way it is in PC/NA GH. EP owns the map in the mornings, DC in the afternoon, and AD…

I took a year off from ESO because my frustrations were out of balance for something as simple as a computer game. I came back a couple of weeks ago and things are the same. For those that are interested in playing for the score and the bragging rights to winning the GH campaign, then the only thing we can do as a player base is have some “unwritten rules”. We cannot depend on ZOS to make changes. A simple rule being something like: the 2nd and 3rd place factions ALWAYS team up against the 1st place faction. When faction place positions change, so do the teaming arrangements.

Other than that, we can only try to just have fun and find the great fights.

I've been playing since 2014 and pop imbalance has never been this bad. The imbalance is directly related to the crazy low population caps. If one guild logs off it changes the balance enough to dramatically change the map in less than an hour. This happens every day at 11am EST on PC NA Grey Host.

Kamchuk · June 2023

Marcus684 - I agree. I always considered the faction locked campaign - GH, to be the only one where a lot of the players played for the score.

I think ZOS has never done anything about the imbalances because they cannot. They came up with the low pop bonus and that Hammer. But that has caused just as much frustration from the player base as all the other changes that they have introduced over the years.

Mansquito · June 2023

Lower an alliance's pop cap if they breach a certain score defecit e.g if DC are 7k ahead of second place then limit their numbers even further etc etc. I honestly don't know of any other solutions, maybe stop alliance swapping by fixing character alliance, as a lot of imbalance comes from this.

The servers can't handle 1 bar v 0 bar without unprecedented delay and lag, so you can only imagine when there's a faction stack of DC at Chal against 10 or so reds...it's carnage, nothing works and superior numbers become even more of an issue than it already is.

PvP element of the game is dead.

Delphinia · June 2023

I just recently came back after another long break from this mess. I took about 6 months away and close to a year before that. My husband took almost a year and has only played a few times upon returning. I keep hoping things will change, but they never do. The only thing that has changed, happened around 2015-2016 and has remained consistent since, is that DC used to be at their tri keeps a majority of the time and I always felt sorry for them. When other players would try and actually "gate" (and by that I mean, actually hold them hostage at their gates by killing anyone who tried to depart from there and ride toward a tri keep) DC or even EP, I always felt so bad, I would just leave. Who wants to log into that all of the time? Now, did they do that to AD later? Yes, absolutely they did. As someone pointed out earlier, they were lower pop initially in those first years. I certainly do not think any of us really want to see the map all one color all of the time, but as was also pointed out earlier in this thread, pop is dwindling (with exception of DC).

It seems that DC winning by a 5k or 10k point lead is not enough.

I think many of us want to see a good balance of players. We want true competition and some of us want good sportsmanship. Unfortunately, that is too much to expect.

I do think many players move to DC because they have been winning, albeit winning what exactly? As many have said, the rewards are not that impressive. I suppose trying that hard for bragging rights is what it is about?
They do seem to have more streamers I guess? I don't really know anymore.

It has not been easy for all three factions from time to time, but for anyone who has played on AD since at least around 2016, they know it is not easy mode. For that, I'm thankful. At least we have the challenge. However, it would be nice to see a bit more balance and not just have a faction take the map and the campaign through sheer numbers and resorting to logging into alt accounts. We may as well do away with faction locked, because it really has not restricted troll behavior much at all.

Above all of this, if I could just use my mount, that would be a huge quality of life improvement. But as I said, I keep hoping things will change, to just end up being disappointed time and time again.

Amottica · June 2023

UnabashedlyHonest wrote: »

Kamchuk wrote: »

If you go back through the forums, (as far back as May 2014), you will find that population imbalances have ALWAYS been a complaint. There have been SO MANY discussion threads and solutions offered to ZOS but after 9 years it is still the same. It is predictable when one faction is pop locked and the others are sparsely populated. A couple of days ago, at around 2:00 PM EDT, EP was at 2 bars while DC was pop locked, and of course owned the entire map. But our 2 bars didn’t indicate how many players were really active. I did a roll call to get a head count of active players and there were only 14 of us. That is pretty indicative of EP at that time of day, each weekday. We formed a mob of solo players and captured SEJ but around 30 plus DC showed up to retake it. We at least had a great fight for about 15-20 minutes before we were overwhelmed. Unfortunately, that is the way it is in PC/NA GH. EP owns the map in the mornings, DC in the afternoon, and AD…

I took a year off from ESO because my frustrations were out of balance for something as simple as a computer game. I came back a couple of weeks ago and things are the same. For those that are interested in playing for the score and the bragging rights to winning the GH campaign, then the only thing we can do as a player base is have some “unwritten rules”. We cannot depend on ZOS to make changes. A simple rule being something like: the 2nd and 3rd place factions ALWAYS team up against the 1st place faction. When faction place positions change, so do the teaming arrangements.

Other than that, we can only try to just have fun and find the great fights.

I've been playing since 2014 and pop imbalance has never been this bad. The imbalance is directly related to the crazy low population caps. If one guild logs off it changes the balance enough to dramatically change the map in less than an hour. This happens every day at 11am EST on PC NA Grey Host.

Very good point.