ZOS, will you address population caps?

ghengis_dhan

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

[*] Altering Cyrodiil's landscape

I think this is a great idea if you mean each campaign will have a different landscape. I'm sure that after playing any map long enough, most players will want to try something different.

The solution to population imbalance is simple but the implementation isn't. Make Cyrodiil incredibly fun. If most ESO players can't get enough time in Cyrodiil, most of the factions in all the campaigns will be population locked.

Each player has their own likes and dislikes, so accomplishing this feat will be daunting. For me, it was playing with an organized group using TeamSpeak while we had Forward Camps. I'm no fan of blood porting, but Cyrodiil stopped being fun the moment the camps were gone. So, I just PvE now.

The arguments for my example belong to another thread. My case is that we need to find ways to make Cyrodiil fun for more players. More players will mean more population locked campaigns which will mean more balance campaigns.

Xupacabra

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

...Most of the community I speak to would like to see the 'Massive battles' we experienced on launch that occurred with little lag all we see now are 30-40 people not the 100-200 most of cyro feels empty...

This is very important, most of my friends ask me how are the pvp battles now, and i have to say the truth, nothing compared by the beta and start times of eso, and they just lost interest in come back.

Komma

Just do like they have already talked about and combine the scores for all campaigns together for one final score. The campaigns are already gonna be messed up when it goes btp anyway. Let people move around freely to help other campaigns that aren't doing very well. This could help bring people from other campaigns over to help in off hours. Build loyalty to an alliance which is greatly missing in ESO.

Also add creatable chat rooms that people can start with passwords so we can create a community without the fear of spies or trolls. Without everyone being in the same channels it makes it harder to communicate. Let people build or ruin their own reputation and have there be consequences for bad behavior. This could also help with the issue of having a 500 person guild limit. Whole guilds could communicate across the game.

Please stop just talking about making the changes needed and try something new. We are ok with it as long as we can see that you guys are trying!

Kragorn

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We cannot give specific numbers as to population caps and what each bar means, however here is a graph of Thornblade's (US) recent population which echos the statement above regarding the populations of each Alliance within that campaign:

Please clarify cannot ... do you mean you can't because you don't know or won't because, well, I assume you have something to hide?

Roechacca

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We cannot give specific numbers as to population caps and what each bar means, however here is a graph of Thornblade's (US) recent population which echos the statement above regarding the populations of each Alliance within that campaign:

According to this graph there's 3 brief moments DC was able to meet the same population as EP and never a time where DC's population ever out numbers the other faction . Wish I knew the time line this graph represents .

Roechacca

Erock25

Wow. ZOS gotta give some incentive to roll DC or playing on the losing side or that graph is just gonna keep getting worse.

Roechacca

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We cannot give specific numbers as to population caps and what each bar means, however here is a graph of Thornblade's (US) recent population which echos the statement above regarding the populations of each Alliance within that campaign:

Also ,


Go home Rainbow ... You're drunk .

Weberda

I would like to see a the graph that combines the numbers on all campaigns. I bet that would be rather interesting....

frozywozy

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

tonemd wrote: »

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

The scoring system accomplishes nothing..It has one goal, and that's to show who the best faction is..and it fails at that in every way as the best faction is never shown to win..only the one that logs on when everyone is asleep.

I'm coming at this from a DC-Thornblade-NA perspective.

Until recently, your examples did not stop people from trying to win. I was in guilds where they would use the score and enemy action as a rallying cry to get pve'rs into the campaign for a couple of hours. It is only now (Past couple of months) that DCs spirit has been broken and the futility of it all has finally set in.

Your last example shows that people DO care about the scores. Whether they want easy victories or not is another thing. I don't think the players on Thornblade would care about nightcapping/daycapping if it didn't put factions ahead by thousands of points. If it maybe gave them a couple hundred point lead after a 8 hours of owning every keep, no one would care because it's not insurmountable.

The fact that the score does not represent the "best" faction is why I would suggest a change in how the score is determined. As it is, it only reflects who has the largest, around-the-clock playerbase.

Please, anyone sane who's played on DC since launch knows the futility of it. both AD and EP have night capped since Launch and its allowed them to win since launch, hence why no one cares about the score...Saying "If we only allow them a couple hundred point lead after 8 hours of owning keeps no one would care" is silly..Because A. it'll never happen because you'll have people who actually play during the day upset they're not valued as much as someone plays during primetime, and B...those points will add up..it'll always come down to who had population during those times.

Trying to push a point system designed around equal populations in a game that will always have unequal populations is downright dumb... It doesn't work, and nothing they can change will make it work. If you want a esport scoring system, play an esport.

Openly admitting that "AD and EP have been night capping since launch and its allowed them to win since launch" prouves that you haven't been playing since launch or that you missed several months of playtime. Both AD and EP won at least 4-5 campaigns with almost no night capping at all.

Yes night capping is a problem but it's tiring to hear people bashing on all the hard work we have done as a faction to win a campaign sometimes. Stop saying that the only reason why we win is because of night capping. We would have won several of them without it anyway.

jrkhan

roechacca wrote: »

Wish I knew the time line this graph represents .

I'd put money on:
1/31/15 - 2/4/15

It looks like this is the seasonality you would expect of a roughly 5 day span. Presumably EP and AD are pop capped during peak hours, DC is rarely capped (so this is somewhat recent), and there was likely a restart at the end of the second day (all pops fall dramatically to X axis).
So that tells us our third day was 8AM EST on a Monday. On top of that, there was a blip that Monday that would indicate a relatively sharp drop midway through peak time: initially I was looking for reports of the game crashing, but I think the Monday night PvP with the devs event is at least somewhat plausible. So deductive reasoning suggests:
1/31/15 - 2/4/15

How'd I do @ZOS_BrianWheeler‌ ?

Xsorus

frozywozy wrote: »

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

tonemd wrote: »

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

The scoring system accomplishes nothing..It has one goal, and that's to show who the best faction is..and it fails at that in every way as the best faction is never shown to win..only the one that logs on when everyone is asleep.

I'm coming at this from a DC-Thornblade-NA perspective.

Until recently, your examples did not stop people from trying to win. I was in guilds where they would use the score and enemy action as a rallying cry to get pve'rs into the campaign for a couple of hours. It is only now (Past couple of months) that DCs spirit has been broken and the futility of it all has finally set in.

Your last example shows that people DO care about the scores. Whether they want easy victories or not is another thing. I don't think the players on Thornblade would care about nightcapping/daycapping if it didn't put factions ahead by thousands of points. If it maybe gave them a couple hundred point lead after a 8 hours of owning every keep, no one would care because it's not insurmountable.

The fact that the score does not represent the "best" faction is why I would suggest a change in how the score is determined. As it is, it only reflects who has the largest, around-the-clock playerbase.

Please, anyone sane who's played on DC since launch knows the futility of it. both AD and EP have night capped since Launch and its allowed them to win since launch, hence why no one cares about the score...Saying "If we only allow them a couple hundred point lead after 8 hours of owning keeps no one would care" is silly..Because A. it'll never happen because you'll have people who actually play during the day upset they're not valued as much as someone plays during primetime, and B...those points will add up..it'll always come down to who had population during those times.

Trying to push a point system designed around equal populations in a game that will always have unequal populations is downright dumb... It doesn't work, and nothing they can change will make it work. If you want a esport scoring system, play an esport.

Openly admitting that "AD and EP have been night capping since launch and its allowed them to win since launch" prouves that you haven't been playing since launch or that you missed several months of playtime. Both AD and EP won at least 4-5 campaigns with almost no night capping at all.

Yes night capping is a problem but it's tiring to hear people bashing on all the hard work we have done as a faction to win a campaign sometimes. Stop saying that the only reason why we win is because of night capping. We would have won several of them without it anyway.

I've yet to see you not win without Nightcapping, Everytime DC would come close to winning I'd recall you guys taking everything at night right before patch day gaining a huge amount of points. Now of course EP just started recently with it, and it was AD winning with night capping before that..But now you're winning cause of it..

Also not playing since launch? I have videos of pretty much every patch cycle on my youtube page since launch.

Please..You might not want to admit how you're winning..But that's how you're winning.

Oughash

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We cannot give specific numbers as to population caps and what each bar means, however here is a graph of Thornblade's (US) recent population which echos the statement above regarding the populations of each Alliance within that campaign:

DC has between 1/4 to 1/2 the numbers of both AD and EP for 75% of the day. DC can meet AD/EP pop for what, 1-4 hours per day?

While we don't have the absolute y-axis values, I think that is proof enough of what the player base has been saying for months.

GorraShatan

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We cannot give specific numbers as to population caps and what each bar means, however here is a graph of Thornblade's (US) recent population which echos the statement above regarding the populations of each Alliance within that campaign:

Thanks for that graphic. Maybe I suggest as a solution a bump to the amount of gold/xp/ap earned when your population is below the others?

Perhaps something like Adjusted AP Rate = (Normal AP Rate) * ((2*Your Faction Population ) / (Opposing Faction 1 + Opposing Faction 2))^0.5

Or something along those lines. The function above would mean if you have half the population of the other factions (on average) you'd get ~40% more AP/XP/Gold. Presumably this would only apply to ticks and not quest xp. Could tweak it as necessary.

ZOS_BrianWheeler

That graph is the last 5 days unless the programming gremlins are fibbing.

TheBull

Introduce 4v4v4 Arena.

TheBull

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

That graph is the last 5 days unless the programming gremlins are fibbing.

Thanks for the graph. It's hard to imagine things being much more balanced. I bet if we saw the graph from last month it would be even closer.

There's no secret that a lot of DC has taken the month off because of the night capping. All it takes is 30-40 people going PvDoor everynight to really skew the score. More so than actual population night capping is the real culprit.

ZOS_BrianWheeler

In Chillrend the Daggerfall population is higher than the other Alliances (combined in some cases) interestingly enough.

KBKB

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

In Chillrend the Daggerfall population is higher than the other Alliances (combined in some cases) interestingly enough.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler‌

You still have a problem on your hands.

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

In Chillrend the Daggerfall population is higher than the other Alliances (combined in some cases) interestingly enough.

Most of the DC on Chilrend are not pvp players. They are there because it is the only way you can get xp solo at v14. Or it is pve players who want their buffs to compete for trial scoring.

Roechacca

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

In Chillrend the Daggerfall population is higher than the other Alliances (combined in some cases) interestingly enough.

Not really . It's a buff server populated with pvE players . The minute a rival pvp guild loads in with numbers most of this DC players log out . There's little desire for competition on Chilrend .

Salmonleap

WraithAzraiel wrote: »

How about as a solution you just make 2 campaigns?

1 Vet 30 day
1 Non Vet however many day

No buff servers, no nonsense, just action, wherever and whenever.

That would be my solution, but I'm not any sort of PvP expert. Also given the existing lag and server crashes in Thornblade, I kind of doubt the backend could support it.

How would one address spies and alt-jumping to be in the "winning" zerg? Lockouts? I see that as more an inconvenience than a real solution.

Gyudan

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

In Chillrend the Daggerfall population is higher than the other Alliances (combined in some cases) interestingly enough.

If this works the same way as EU, Chillrend is (or was) DC buff campaign, meaning that it is where DC players go when they want to get the various non-PVP achievements of Cyrodiil: skyshards, lorebooks, dungeons, quests and fishing.
At least in my case 90% of the time spent in Chillrend was for that type of content.

glak

WraithAzraiel wrote: »

How about as a solution you just make 2 campaigns?

1 Vet 30 day
1 Non Vet however many day

No buff servers, no nonsense, just action, wherever and whenever. That would put all the players of all the different factions who play at different times of the day on the same server at the same time.

No more crying about "So-and-So faction nightcaps!" "Blahblahblah Faction DayCAPS!" "They lagblob the servers so we lose!"

Everyone's only got 1 place to go. The real action can begin. Cannibalize the old servers and put their hardware into the new servers. Daisy-chain them together if you have to.

I'm sure someone can crunch the numbers to see if this is a viable solution for the lag problems, the population imbalance problems and the rest of the problems plaguing PvP.

If not, then oh well. I gave my 2 cents.

Don't forget the max-cap 30 day and not allowing max-cap into the normal Vet 30 day.

GorraShatan

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

In Chillrend the Daggerfall population is higher than the other Alliances (combined in some cases) interestingly enough.

My cat's breath smells like cat food.

Seriously though, that's DC's buff server. The PvErs maintain it too. It's good that DC can maintain that of course.

I've noticed DC is having a resurgence on the non vet campaign, so that's something at least.

ZOS_BrianWheeler

Oh I'm aware of what it's being used as... just noting the blue bar for that campaign was high is all

Roechacca

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Oh I'm aware of what it's being used as... just noting the blue bar for that campaign was high is all

Good mornin . I'm going door to door asking if people have accepted King Emeric as their Lord , King and Savior . Can I interest you in a flyer and perhaps rolling DC ?

technohic

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Oh I'm aware of what it's being used as... just noting the blue bar for that campaign was high is all

Would it be safe to assume that Chillrend is on the chopping block? Seems like the other campaigns have plenty of room for more DC.

Weberda

technohic wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Oh I'm aware of what it's being used as... just noting the blue bar for that campaign was high is all

Would it be safe to assume that Chillrend is on the chopping block? Seems like the other campaigns have plenty of room for more DC.

I think they should chop Azura's Star instead. Chill does get some decent PVP due to the EP guilds on that server.

ZOS_BrianWheeler

No Campaigns are on the chopping block until we change the current lock out mechanics keeping characters from different alliances on single accounts from being assigned to the same campaign.