PLEASE fix population disparity already!

PlagueMonk

Getting very tired of being mowed over late at night by certain factions *cough* AD *cough* with a population lock while others are at 1-2 bars. Makes playing during these periods not even worth the effort since all you do is lose, lose, lose to the zerg.

This happened last night......at 2am MST, AD had a full pop while both DC and EP had only 2 bars......This basically gave AD full reign to sweep the board, crown an Emp, take their scroll and one of each of EP and DC's (guess they were being nice and didn't take them all or did we manage to retake one?) Regardless it is beyond stupid that immediate balance does not happen. I'm not talking about checking once every 24 hrs or even 12 hours.....it needs to be checked EVERY DAMN HOUR or even 30 mins. I'm also not talking about a point bonus which does little good for the individual players who have no chance to defend let alone go on the offensive against the zerg. If I can't go out and make decent AP at least defending, I don't want to PvP.

If EPs pop drops to 2 bars, they should get a bonus to a pop locked faction. What that means is boosting defenses to make it MUCH more difficult to do a board sweep and allow lesser pops to have an equal chance at defending, even against a locked faction.

To summarize:

- Check at least hourly
- Bonus point help for lesser factions not enough
- Give lesser factions much higher defenses (and even offense like increased damage across the board while in keeps)

FluffiestOne

ZoS doesn't care. Just convert to impulse / aoe build and kill 50 AD before they kill you.

Komma

Really no different than when everyone is full pop and ep and dc both hit ad. Some do whine but most just go with the flow and fight back. We started last night with no keeps and 1 scroll.

Arowe_eso

Komma wrote: »

Really no different than when everyone is full pop and ep and dc both hit ad. Some do whine but most just go with the flow and fight back. We started last night with no keeps and 1 scroll.

when someone logs into a yellow map for the 60th day in a row, who do you think they're going to attack?

Komma

Other than last night that hasn't been happening very often. I don't blame ep or dc for hitting us. Im not even saying yall are working together. If I was yall I would be hitting us too. Its what helps the balance issues and it helps keep the more powerful forces in check.

Columba

I'm not really sure what they can do....honestly. Perhaps give bigger underdog bonuses?

PlagueMonk

Komma wrote: »

Really no different than when everyone is full pop and ep and dc both hit ad. Some do whine but most just go with the flow and fight back. We started last night with no keeps and 1 scroll.

you are kidding me, right?

While this is how it, "should" work, instead DC decides to hit EP instead like a bunch of ********. They would rather settle for helping screw over the underdog than to grow a pair and fight the top dog. In fact it's happening as we speak.....DC took Chal from EP instead of hitting AD.

Also happened last night........DC just gave up trying to retake even one keep from the Emp circle but the moment AD got Emp they just swooped in and took 2 EP keeps while AD was busy taking EP scrolls. Really pathetic.

And considering AD is nearly always at locked pop, you have ZERO room to speak here since you are always on the winning side with your easy street zerg tactics. So QQ some more about being hit by both factions when you know FULL well that's what will happen when you take all the damn keeps on the board.

PlagueMonk

Columba wrote: »

I'm not really sure what they can do....honestly. Perhaps give bigger underdog bonuses?

As I said, the "bonuses" are meaningless for the actual players. When they work they just keep the point totals close.

Simply put the game revolves around keep taking and defense so they just boost keep defenses and attacker offense while in/near keeps and resources by an amount that will balance out the disparity. I admit to not knowing where those numbers should be exactly but when you are at half the pop of the other faction your keeps should probably have twice the defense (including NPCs) and offense boost should be say 35% (both for guards and players).

It needs to be a challenge for a zerg to take keeps from factions with less population, not a total run over like it is now.

Komma

PlagueMonk wrote: »

Komma wrote: »

Really no different than when everyone is full pop and ep and dc both hit ad. Some do whine but most just go with the flow and fight back. We started last night with no keeps and 1 scroll.

you are kidding me, right?

While this is how it, "should" work, instead DC decides to hit EP instead like a bunch of ********. They would rather settle for helping screw over the underdog than to grow a pair and fight the top dog. In fact it's happening as we speak.....DC took Chal from EP instead of hitting AD.

Also happened last night........DC just gave up trying to retake even one keep from the Emp circle but the moment AD got Emp they just swooped in and took 2 EP keeps while AD was busy taking EP scrolls. Really pathetic.

And considering AD is nearly always at locked pop, you have ZERO room to speak here since you are always on the winning side with your easy street zerg tactics. So QQ some more about being hit by both factions when you know FULL well that's what will happen when you take all the damn keeps on the board.

I wasn't "qq'ing". I was trying to say that the balance issue can be somewhat taken care of by the AvAvA system. The best you can hope for is an even fight but in almost all cases someone will be getting double teamed. If you guys aren't working together during the times when population is unbalanced then that is something you should do. Watch tonight and see how far AD gets pushed back. Wont hear me crying.

Agrippa_Invisus

They really need to implement sliding scale population locks. This makes it fair for every side. The underdogs don't get swarmed by over double their numbers, and the overpopulated side doesn't have to be double teamed during prime time to make the scoreboard even reasonably close.

At one point last night, it was Locked AD population (four bars equivalent) to 2 bars of EP and 1 bar of DC. That means they had one bar beyond what the two additional factions had combined. There were so few DC on they could only take empty keeps when AD basically didn't care. When AD decided they wanted a DC scroll, they plowed Glademist easily.

At one point EP had 30+ AD attacking Chim and about 50+ at Ghartok AND there were sufficient AD that they fended multiple DC attacks off Ash and Brindle. This was all around 3-4am Central US time. Many of the defenders suffered massive sleep deprivation to give us a chance of even holding one scroll.

As it is, the hopelessness is getting endemic on the underdog's side. We have numerous people who just go 'screw it' and log when it gets too bad. That type of situation should not be developing. That's a bad thing for a video game where the frustration makes you quit due to the imbalance in numbers.

Modern Military shooters and their deathmatches try their hardest to keep teams balanced in numbers. Why? Because anything less would be deeply unfair. All things being equal, most players are about the same skill level, but when one team has more guilds, more numbers, and keeps those numbers deeper into the night has them earlier in the day it's sheer statistics and probability that they will always win out in the end.

Try running a Team Fortress 2 map where one side gets 6 players an the other 9, but the terrain is relatively balanced, like Cyrodiil. Run that map 1000 times and then average the win / loss ratio. I guarantee that the 9 man team takes it the vast majority of the time.

If EP and DC are guaranteed losses every. single. time. the campaign cycles in Cyrodiil, what's the point of playing?

Why should I pay this company $15 a month for a game I can't win?

Once enough EP/DC decide the answer is 'I shouldn't', then AD gets to truly lose for good. They get empty Cyrodiils that no one gives a poop about and they get to unsub, too, as they're bored.

Save the game. Reroll EP/DC until ZOS implements population controls.

WraithAzraiel

FluffiestOne wrote: »

ZoS doesn't care. Just convert to impulse / aoe build and kill 50 AD before they kill you.

And AD are the Impulse Spam monkeys...

Or here's another suggestion


Get rid of all the extra campaigns and just make it 1 30 day long PvP campaign. Consolidate all the server power into that one campaign and give the hardware the best attention.

Problems solved: Buff servers. Possibly PvDoor or whatever the hell it's called, population imbalance(hopefully), high max population would lead to less queue time. Whining (though people will go out of their way to cry about something, it's inevitable).

Make is so there's no where else to run if you're losing in PvP. No more "Screw these guys, lets go to "insert campaign name here" and take over the whole map to show how 00ber l22t we are. YEA WE'RE HARDCORE. No more try-hards claiming lordship and godhood because no enemies exist in their campaign to challenge their epeens.

1 Cyrodiil, MASSIVE daisy-chained SERVERS, top-end hardware = epic fights and closer population balance.

FluffiestOne

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

They really need to implement sliding scale population locks. This makes it fair for every side. The underdogs don't get swarmed by over double their numbers, and the overpopulated side doesn't have to be double teamed during prime time to make the scoreboard even reasonably close.

At one point last night, it was Locked AD population (four bars equivalent) to 2 bars of EP and 1 bar of DC. That means they had one bar beyond what the two additional factions had combined. There were so few DC on they could only take empty keeps when AD basically didn't care. When AD decided they wanted a DC scroll, they plowed Glademist easily.

At one point EP had 30+ AD attacking Chim and about 50+ at Ghartok AND there were sufficient AD that they fended multiple DC attacks off Ash and Brindle. This was all around 3-4am Central US time. Many of the defenders suffered massive sleep deprivation to give us a chance of even holding one scroll.

As it is, the hopelessness is getting endemic on the underdog's side. We have numerous people who just go 'screw it' and log when it gets too bad. That type of situation should not be developing. That's a bad thing for a video game where the frustration makes you quit due to the imbalance in numbers.

Modern Military shooters and their deathmatches try their hardest to keep teams balanced in numbers. Why? Because anything less would be deeply unfair. All things being equal, most players are about the same skill level, but when one team has more guilds, more numbers, and keeps those numbers deeper into the night has them earlier in the day it's sheer statistics and probability that they will always win out in the end.

Try running a Team Fortress 2 map where one side gets 6 players an the other 9, but the terrain is relatively balanced, like Cyrodiil. Run that map 1000 times and then average the win / loss ratio. I guarantee that the 9 man team takes it the vast majority of the time.

If EP and DC are guaranteed losses every. single. time. the campaign cycles in Cyrodiil, what's the point of playing?

Why should I pay this company $15 a month for a game I can't win?

Once enough EP/DC decide the answer is 'I shouldn't', then AD gets to truly lose for good. They get empty Cyrodiils that no one gives a poop about and they get to unsub, too, as they're bored.

Save the game. Reroll EP/DC until ZOS implements population controls.

No offense but crummy idea. All the buff servers would be blue if so.

PlagueMonk

Komma wrote: »

I wasn't "qq'ing". I was trying to say that the balance issue can be somewhat taken care of by the AvAvA system. The best you can hope for is an even fight but in almost all cases someone will be getting double teamed. If you guys aren't working together during the times when population is unbalanced then that is something you should do. Watch tonight and see how far AD gets pushed back. Wont hear me crying.

You would think but it's not happening. DC players seem to have the, "help pick on the little guy" mentality, playing the bully's sidekick, rather than being their own entity. The situation wouldn't be quite so dire if EP and DC didn't attack one another when they are both underpopulated but I don't see it. And I'm not saying be pals either, just when both pops combined don't equal AD, they have to stop attacking one another and focus on AD. Could this mean helping? Yes and it might go a long ways to nurture some sort of alliance (at least late at night) but I'm not holding my breath.

DC needs to stop settling for AD's scraps. period.

Fillem_Fulla

Why not just get rid of the smaller campaigns and combining the scores of 30 days so have 1 overall winner. This way it wouldnt matter what server ur on ur still helping ur faction.

kijima

Arowe_eso wrote: »

when someone logs into a yellow map for the 60th day in a row, who do you think they're going to attack?

If something had been bothering you for 60 days and you've done nothing about, like....ooohhhh, I don't know... pick another campaign! then... I'm at a loss for words.


[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Rude and Insulting comments]

Tintinabula

Its a vicious cycle of attrition that has gotten worse to the point that I don't believe they can fix it themselves now. They're( ZOS) relying on entire guilds to re roll a new faction which IMHO is just sad that paying customers have to step in and clean up their mess.

If they had addressed the problem early on and recognized buff servers for what they are and went ahead and admitted that the average player would flock to the lowest common denominator(a winning faction); we wouldn't have the lopsided faction problems we have now.

At this point one server and make their remaining clientele deal with cues is about the only light I see at the end of this proverbial tunnel.

Rylana

halve the pop cap of thornblade until the pop spreads out to other campaigns.

queues of 300+? People will move.

Honfold

Rylana wrote: »

halve the pop cap of thornblade until the pop spreads out to other campaigns.

queues of 300+? People will move.

Considering AD's pop, they could probably dominate multiple campaigns if DC and EP had to spread out as well. I don't think AD pop at one time is a huge issue, other than for AD, it is the consistent AD pop throughout the day compared to the meager oceanic presence of DC and EP that gets people frustrated.

Insurrektion

We need these dynamic pop locks asap. until then pvp is a bloody joke since all gains made during prime time are lost overnight and held until prime time the next day. there is no sense of accomplishment when you know your hard-earned gains are going to be literally robbed while you sleep. all the purpose of pvp now is for the fun of it. nothing serious, no sense of gain no sense of accomplishment. just kill people and lol. why even bother taking a keep? there is no alliance "war" lets just meet up at a random location in thornblade and beat eachother's heads in.

Ezareth

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Why should I pay this company $15 a month for a game I can't win?

I used to think like this. Then I realized my definition of winning was wrong. There is no tangible benefit to winning a campaign. A few thousand extra gold is nothing. The items are awarded for overall performance, and the *underdogs* have the AP advantage in any campaign. What would you rather have, a much higher chance at several gold and Master's items or a few thousand extra gold?

What you need to do is loose sight of the "big picture" and focus on the here and now. Set a small (achievable) goal and accomplish it. Take a keep. Defend a keep. Earn 50K AP/hour for 8 hours. Be #1 in AP on the campaign. Maintain a 50/1 K/D ratio. Whatever it is you fancy but ensure that your direct contribution is capable of influencing the outcome.

Winning/losing the campaigns is something no one should set much store in. I've lost too many campaigns I should have won and won too many campaigns I should have lost to care about them any more.

Ezareth

Hopefully with the impulse nerf and the impulse graphic change the latency you experience should be minimized.

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO

They could fix this problem very fast. Set the two 30 day campaigns to different active times. By active I don't mean that the server shut down but outside the active time you cannot gain points or take scrolls.

Thornblade would be active from 3 PM EST until midnight PST, and then Haderus would be active from Midnight PST until 3 PM EST.

That way ausies can play on Haderus and US can play on Thornblade.

Ezareth

Most of the the night time players aren't aussies. I don't play much during the day, I prefer the times after midnight(EST) because there is less lag.

jnjdun_ESO

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

Most of the the night time players aren't aussies. I don't play much during the day, I prefer the times after midnight(EST) because there is less lag.

And there are some of us in the eastern time zone that actually can't play until after midnight due to work schedules and such. It's definitely not all aussies in the wee hours of the morning.

Komma

Unless what I was reading in chat last night was wrong I guess DiE has rerolled to ep. If this is infact true I wish ZEN would just allow a one time alliance change. They did great things for AD and I actually liked some of them but if it is true that they are now fighting against us I don't want them to ever come back to AD. Could have at least waited till the end of a very close campaign.

Agrippa_Invisus

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Why should I pay this company $15 a month for a game I can't win?

I used to think like this. Then I realized my definition of winning was wrong. There is no tangible benefit to winning a campaign. A few thousand extra gold is nothing. The items are awarded for overall performance, and the *underdogs* have the AP advantage in any campaign. What would you rather have, a much higher chance at several gold and Master's items or a few thousand extra gold?

What you need to do is loose sight of the "big picture" and focus on the here and now. Set a small (achievable) goal and accomplish it. Take a keep. Defend a keep. Earn 50K AP/hour for 8 hours. Be #1 in AP on the campaign. Maintain a 50/1 K/D ratio. Whatever it is you fancy but ensure that your direct contribution is capable of influencing the outcome.

Winning/losing the campaigns is something no one should set much store in. I've lost too many campaigns I should have won and won too many campaigns I should have lost to care about them any more.

You shouldn't have to "not care" about objectives to enjoy the game. That you have to ignore the objectives of the game to have fun speak to a fundamental failure of how ZOS has handled the objectives of the game.

Vilestride

Agripa has got it. How are sliding pop locks not the fairest way to do this? Just make there a small window in which one factions pop can be allowed higher than anothers. Just an example. say there are 40 EP in a server. Then dont allow DC or AD to have more than say 50. Or whatever it may be. that way as more come in on the lower pop faction, more are slowly allowed in on the higher ones.

As wraith said also, this would be muhc better system if there were still fewer campaigns. I think You will Find ZOS, that when buff servers go, you are gonna have near no gameplay in anywhere but 1-2 campaigns You simple overestimate your player base if you think otherwise.

And Komma, DiE Re-Rolling EP is one of the healthiest things any guild has done for this PvP. How can you resent that? You'll still outnumber the other 2 factions during Ocianic Times 2-1 or more so you have a good 6 hours of full map control like the night agrippa spoke of to keep you up there on the score board.

Ezareth

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Why should I pay this company $15 a month for a game I can't win?

I used to think like this. Then I realized my definition of winning was wrong. There is no tangible benefit to winning a campaign. A few thousand extra gold is nothing. The items are awarded for overall performance, and the *underdogs* have the AP advantage in any campaign. What would you rather have, a much higher chance at several gold and Master's items or a few thousand extra gold?

What you need to do is loose sight of the "big picture" and focus on the here and now. Set a small (achievable) goal and accomplish it. Take a keep. Defend a keep. Earn 50K AP/hour for 8 hours. Be #1 in AP on the campaign. Maintain a 50/1 K/D ratio. Whatever it is you fancy but ensure that your direct contribution is capable of influencing the outcome.

Winning/losing the campaigns is something no one should set much store in. I've lost too many campaigns I should have won and won too many campaigns I should have lost to care about them any more.

You shouldn't have to "not care" about objectives to enjoy the game. That you have to ignore the objectives of the game to have fun speak to a fundamental failure of how ZOS has handled the objectives of the game.

Well if you're still enjoying the objectives in this game which haven't changed in over a year then I don't know what to tell you. Sure taking a keep from an opposing force can be fun and to some people it is still new and fresh and that's fine. The population imbalance isn't stopping people from taking keeps for the most part. It may be more difficult but you're also given much larger rewards for doing so.

As far as the "sliding scale" thing I've spent more time thinking about that than probably anyone. The only way it couldn't be exploitable is if you limited one side to having no more population than the other two sides combined. Otherwise a single side could artificially deflate their numbers in order to guarantee success for their side. Take Haderus for example...a single sliding scale would make it so that neither EP or AD could really participate.

Ultimately since this is a 3 way fight, the two weakest sides are supposed to gang up on the strongest side so this kind of scale makes more sense.

There also should be a "minimum" cap of say 20-30 players. If DC and EP late night people decide to collude and all log off to protect their keeps, they shouldn't be able to shut down the other sides by doing so.

Vilestride

Agreed. There would have to be a minimum. But depending on the difference allowed in populations ( which you will need for populations to ever get of 1 bar each) then you will always be able to have enough on if another faction decides to all Log off to keep playing.

and It is fully understandable that both factions are meant to gang up on the strongest to level the scores. BUT there have been many times AD outnumbers both combined. Not to mention that 2 smaller factions even if they equal the one larger, are still not going to be as strong because at the end of the day, they still have 2 different goals of winning the campaign for themselves.

The main Issue I see with it, though I do think it is still the best option so far, is that when a factions starts to loose its numbers. how do you, if at all, start kicking players from the faction with more? or should it be simply that no one is kicked. more simply can not enter. Though this would only half solve the issue, but would also protect the exploit of factions logging players off to bring down the others.

On top of this. There needs to be a pay to change option. at least a 1 time offer like with the cheap respecs, now that players and guilds have a feel for PvP. Allow AD players and guilds who spend to long in ques to come to EP and DC.

Davadin

Just FYI, last night, 26th late night EST/27th early AM.... EP is actually pop-locked and AD was 3 bars and DC was 2 bars.

AD then came down to 2 bars while EP still locked.

It was the first time ever I saw it in Thornblade NA that EP got most population... I even took a screenshot.


PS: EP *still* have issues in conquiring other keeps though... since we decided it's more fun to stay and defend... >_>

WraithAzraiel wrote: »

FluffiestOne wrote: »

ZoS doesn't care. Just convert to impulse / aoe build and kill 50 AD before they kill you.

And AD are the Impulse Spam monkeys...

Or here's another suggestion


Get rid of all the extra campaigns and just make it 1 30 day long PvP campaign. Consolidate all the server power into that one campaign and give the hardware the best attention.

Problems solved: Buff servers. Possibly PvDoor or whatever the hell it's called, population imbalance(hopefully), high max population would lead to less queue time. Whining (though people will go out of their way to cry about something, it's inevitable).

Make is so there's no where else to run if you're losing in PvP. No more "Screw these guys, lets go to "insert campaign name here" and take over the whole map to show how 00ber l22t we are. YEA WE'RE HARDCORE. No more try-hards claiming lordship and godhood because no enemies exist in their campaign to challenge their epeens.

1 Cyrodiil, MASSIVE daisy-chained SERVERS, top-end hardware = epic fights and closer population balance.

Not good for marketing.

"We're downsizing our servers"

Makes fence-sitters skipped the game fearing that it's losing subscribers.

Not happening.

Agrippa_Invisus

Giahh wrote: »

The main Issue I see with it, though I do think it is still the best option so far, is that when a factions starts to loose its numbers. how do you, if at all, start kicking players from the faction with more? or should it be simply that no one is kicked. more simply can not enter. Though this would only half solve the issue, but would also protect the exploit of factions logging players off to bring down the others.

You don't kick. It's called "attrition", and it's handled through the natural course of logging off that most players have. As your cap tightens due to the other factions losing population throughout an evening, the folks you have logging out do not get replaced. The queue does not let the first in line in, even though someone just left. It checks to make sure your population isn't above a threshold. If it is, no one enters.

yes, the queue times will be bad at times, but the game play will be better. If AD players rerolled, they'd get right in (both with current and proposed system).