Factions Dominating Campaigns Month After Month

Heruthema

@ZOS_GinaBruno, @ZOS_MattFiror
Please look into ways to limit the ability for a single faction to dominate a campaign consistently. For example Trueflame (PC/NA) has been dominated by DC for months now and I am talking about 1000+ points above even second place. If you want PVP that is truly balanced you can not let that continue. I do not have answers or I would state them here, but this is not a way to get new players excited about PVP unless they play that faction. You stated that this year you are devoting time to making PVP better, please start with this problem.

Heruthema

Wanted to add that I play mainly EP and have no problem with making it more difficult to dominate a campaign if EP had done so the last campaign. I do not feel ANY faction should have the ability to dominate the same campaign consistently.

kyle.wilson

DC has won the last several times in TF, because they gained a large Japanese guild that was zerging Azura all night.
EP doesn't help the cause when the majority of their large guilds always attack south before west.
DC is in the lead and EP is attacking Allesia and Bloodmayne. When EP practices some kind of intelligent fighting; the score stays tight till the end.
The last cycle it was attack AD all day, this helped DC keep a solid 7k lead at the end.

Carpe-Veritatem

I couldn't agree more that this is a VERY serious problem that needs to be addressed in some way. ZOS should have recognized that human nature being what it is, faction stacking and massive zerging were inevitable unless some built in controls were in place to limit it. Why should a campaigns outcome be determined by which faction is lucky enough to have Asian guilds populating it? Asia comprises 2/3rds of the worlds population, and if they faction stack there is little anyone can do to stop it. Perhaps adding some STRONG bonuses to low population factions could help? I'm talking mutantly tough guards at keeps, maybe player offense and defense bonuses, zerg penalties to skills, etc. Currently people just log into their Blue toons on TF when the Aseanics are running wild and just reap the AP. They crown Emp literally every day, and many times multiple times per day. It's not fun and it's killing PvP on TF. Faction locking accounts on a campaign by campaign basis would help some...but I think adding the suggestions I've listed could also be useful in mitigating this problem.

kyle.wilson

Yesterday was the first time I played during DC zerg time in a few weeks.
EP is responsible for the crowning of the emp. Ep was 2bars, AD 3, and DC pop locked.
All DC needed to emp was Allesia and BRK. So where does EP attack? Allesia of course.
So we were split fighting the 2 bar EP and Pop locked DC. Allesia was zerg flipped and brk fell about 5 mins later.

Heruthema

When the only thing you are fighting for is second place month after month after month you stop caring. Guilds leave or switch sides, player relegate themselves to only taking resources or bridge fights and the whole atmosphere degrades. I do bot have the answers but something needs to change.

t3hdubzy

Honestly on ps4 there is only one half decent campaign right now. Skull is pretty close, but the population is pretty low. Most people use it to farm imperial city.

Azuras is an emp farming campaign with 3 small groups fighting for emp. Sometimes not even fighting for it. Pvdoor for the win.

Scourge is ugh atrocious.

Haderus is red gating 24/7, during prime time good fights, but night capping by red put us so far ahead its not even fun.


Not sure what the best fix is we all have ideas, but id just like to see something fundamentally change. More AP was a good start but long time pvpers dont need AP.

alephthiago

I disagree with you.
DC is winning campaigns due to numbers and organization, having groups and guilds active during most of the time and going for objectives.
EP has a good presence too with pact running daily, sometimes i see invictus and haxus day in and day out.
Now AD guilds have been scarce, not running as much and not communicating with each other, also the corridor Alessia-Sej/ Sej-BRK is always busy with pugs going back and forth with no object in mind other than just fighting, its the faction with the biggest quantity of aimless pugs shooting bows in the air.
I see some groups (not saying all names here) forming and minutes later you just dont see any action other than the bridge and/or sej > brk / nikel > ash corridor instead of hitting inner keeps or diluting the numbers of other factions.

Why should AD win any campaign in this current state anyway?
We dont deserve to win unless the old united AD comes back and we have more leaders to lead.

kyle.wilson

Tonight happened exactly like I said it would.

Katahdin

kyle.wilson wrote: »

Tonight happened exactly like I said it would.

That was early on. How about 4-5 hours later when DC only had Warden, and Glade most of the time. DC kept flipping Rayles and Ash with AD and Ales with EP.

There were times this past week or so with AD owning all center keeps except Chalman, which EP defends tooth and nail.

DC has a strong daytime presence which helps them too.

It doesn't help when the entire faction all goes to the same one or two places while the enemy attacks your back keeps.

It also doesn't help when a faction logs off for the night every other night or for a couple of nights. Can't win if you arent there.

The scores are pretty close right now. AD led early on then fell when people logged out for a couple of days. EP came close to taking over once or twice.

Lumsdenml

Ok, just throwing this out there, but how about some sort of scaling cap on pop. Once one alliance exceeds another by 20% (or whatever) that alliance is pop locked.... Regardless if the actual numbers.

efster

I play Oceanic and I can set my watch by DC zerging down the entire map, always doing the same thing every night -- it's like AvA against a computer because it's so predictable. They take the map, and then any attempt to retake a single home resource by 2-3 AD is met with 10-15 blue "defenders". Sure, AD has a strong NA primetime presence, but 6-8 hours a day with 0-3 keeps, of course we're gonna keep losing the campaign.

Turelus

I don't think it's up to ZOS to fix the organisation of other factions.

Start an alliance, reach out to guilds and speak with them about working together, recruitment drives to get more members for your guilds and get your numbers up.

Find who your unemployed/night shift/students are and have them run alarm clock ops to guard during early hours.

Make sure you're training all members to be good small group and 1vX not just mindless sheep who follow a crown and die.

Get raid leaders who understand the wider side of Cyrodiil combat and understand sometimes taking an empty keep the other side of the map will be better than wiping at Chalman again.

xericdx

I agree with @Turelus ... it is not for ZOS to fix by adding op stats to the loosing side.

The only thing I could see is to change the incentives on winning a campaign. Increase the incentive to win (better loot, etc.) and make it so that winning more campaign consecutively will reduce the benefits. This will 1) increase the incentive for the loosing side to fight better, 2) avoid players switching side to participate in the winner table

At the moment, there is not much incentives, a part role-playing, to win a campaign, the most important thing is the leaderboard and for that bridge fight against pugs is not that bad...

ps: am AD on TF/EU and we have been dominating for months, starting to be boring.

Turelus

xericdx wrote: »

The only thing I could see is to change the incentives on winning a campaign. Increase the incentive to win (better loot, etc.) and make it so that winning more campaign consecutively will reduce the benefits. This will 1) increase the incentive for the loosing side to fight better, 2) avoid players switching side to participate in the winner table

I somewhat agree but also worry that penalising the winning side for winning too much doesn't help.

The problem is right now it's far better for a player to assign one character of each faction to a campaign, unlock tier 3 rewards on each then go play AD and try to be in the top 3% for the gold items.

They've done a bit better with closing campaigns and consolidating players into campaigns but the fact everyone is now unrestricted to home rival factions within the same campaign has somewhat made it more of a farming mechanic than an actual war.

visionality

Seriously guys, I don't understand why anybody cares about campaign victories. As stated by the OP, the game is not balancing player numbers, player skills etc at all (and how should it?), and even if you're a hardcore PVPer you can't possibly play 24/7 on you campaign - especially not when a campaign lasts a full month. Just forget about those campaign points and enjoy you're own PVP-experience while you're online. The rest is out of your hands.

Blud

alephthiago wrote: »

We dont deserve to win unless the old united AD comes back and we have more leaders to lead.

Some of them went to DC when EP was dominating every campaign.

biminirwb17_ESO

What is the point of winning a campaign if you already have all the yellow jewellery? When/If ZoS gives people a real reason to play the map then maybe people will care.

prootch

xericdx wrote: »

ps: am AD on TF/EU and we have been dominating for months, starting to be boring.

It's hardly domination: a bunch of pvdoor fighters recap the emp keeps between 6-9am, then the emp gets busted on prime time again and again. Let's just say the two other factions don't have enough off prime wood fighters.

Heruthema

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Ok, just throwing this out there, but how about some sort of scaling cap on pop. Once one alliance exceeds another by 20% (or whatever) that alliance is pop locked.... Regardless if the actual numbers.

I would like to see the actual numbers instead of bars. I do not believe that the numbers are balanced at all. So ZOS show the actual numbers each faction has.

Heruthema

prootch wrote: »

xericdx wrote: »

ps: am AD on TF/EU and we have been dominating for months, starting to be boring.

It's hardly domination: a bunch of pvdoor fighters recap the emp keeps between 6-9am, then the emp gets busted on prime time again and again. Let's just say the two other factions don't have enough off prime wood fighters.

It is dominance when a faction is 1000 or more above everyone else and the other are always left fighting for second place, month after month. Regardless of how that happens.

prootch

Dominance implies AvA efficiency, defending AD spawn keeps in prime time one day out of two, is not dominance at all. Words have a meaning ... it's just dominance vs wooden door and empty keeps when the campaign is empty

Koolio

Remove scroll bonuses from stats. Why should a faction like Ep PS4 NA haderus be stronger for having emp( that bonus should stay and maybe add scroll bonus to that) having scrolls and then gate locking another faction. They are stronger than the less populated faction? That just promotes more gate farming because you are stronger. However if your faction gets stronger the more they are pushed into their gates then both factions wouldn't be able to just overwhelm home keeps until everything is gone.
I wake up every weekend gate locked in scourge.
We push all day and make some ground. Wake up the next day gate locked.
Same goes for haderus. We gate lock that everyday now. Maybe this would help.

Another thing that would help is areas on the map having large incentives to travel there. Those empty spaces nobody travels too have better reasons to be there.

Heruthema

prootch wrote: »

Dominance implies AvA efficiency, defending AD spawn keeps in prime time one day out of two, is not dominance at all. Words have a meaning ... it's just dominance vs wooden door and empty keeps when the campaign is empty

Your meaning is not my meaning of Dominance. When a faction continuously holds first place by an overwhelming margin campaign after campaign, they are dominant.

prootch

Just say the scoring gets worthless when counting points for hours of pvedooring... then no one in orga groups cares for it anymore. Again, that's hardly domination of anything except capacity to fight doors of undefended keeps between 6-9am

runningtings

The points should be calculated in relation to how many players are online from the other factions, so in TF EU when AD captures completely undefended keeps they would get very little reward and conversely during primetime the points could be a lot more for EP and DC winning them back.

That would change the dynamic.

Heruthema

Those sentiments about first not being important usually follow complacency when first is no longer an option. For one I still feel first place is important as a faction if only for pride. The fact that EP in NA/TF on the PC is never in first is discouraging.

prootch

First with woodcap vs empty keep is essentially lame being proud of it is plain ridiculous.

Kram8ion

Yeah it's not really a battle when factions camp at home keeps during low pop times it's not even trolling gold like gate farm
I just leave cyro or log off let them have their 18 keeps with nothing to do

Heruthema

prootch wrote: »

First with woodcap vs empty keep is essentially lame being proud of it is plain ridiculous.

Then settle for third. I think that is lame to the max.

And if first is so lame why does DC fight so hard to keep it in TF and EP in haderus on na/pc?

prootch

Don't play on na pc, so not involved.

People do have a life ^^ and as far as EU is concerned getting up at 6am to woodcap is plain ridiculous ...
and wooden doors domination says so much... when they get burst in prime time