Reverse Population Balancing

Stikato

Originally, one of the functions of Imperial City was to serve as a population balance mechanism. If it had retained its gated design, the idea was that the "winning" alliance, having opened IC for it's members, would see its population decrease as players headed into IC.

Meanwhile, the "losing" alliances now have a more even playing field, against a weaker opponent.

With IC being open access, is the reverse happening?

It seems that, as an alliance starts to win in Cyrodiil, more and more members of that alliance show up to get in on the action.

Meanwhile, the "losing" side says "screw this" and heads back to the sewers.

As a result, the population balance, in terms of people actually in Cyrodiil, is worse than before. It can cycle between the alliances, as far as who is winning, but the times where the population is relatively even seem to be few and far between.

Agree / Disagree?

SleepyTroll

When I log in and the hole map is one color or it seems like no one is even in cyrodill, I'll admit I go strategy to farm sewers.

Sharee

All campaigns need to have gated access, and dying a PvP death inside IC while your side does not have access has to respawn you outside of IC.

Only then will IC have some population balancing effect.

Stikato

SleepyTroll wrote: »

When I log in and the hole map is one color or it seems like no one is even in cyrodill, I'll admit I go strategy to farm sewers.

Yeah, my group had the same reaction tonight. We stayed anyway and stuck it out, but it seemed like our pop went to IC.

Can't blame anyone for making that decision either.

Just curious what other people thought.

Stikato

Sharee wrote: »

All campaigns need to have gated access, and dying a PvP death inside IC while your side does not have access has to respawn you outside of IC.

Only then will IC have some population balancing effect.

Completely agree. Just thought it was interesting that it seems to be having the opposite effect than as originally intended.