On PS4 we've got a serious problem with overpopulation on AD in Cyrodiil

dotme

I'm not sure there are many EP guilds left at this point. I've been playing EP PvP since launch and I've watched several guilds disintegrate as players left for other games, not other campaigns. I'm worried I'm seeing the same thing happen right now with a guild that used to run 2-3 groups at once. Some evenings lately we're lucky to have 8 PvP players online and EP zone chat is constantly full of unanswered "LFG"s which tells me any organized guilds that are on seem reluctant to add new members.

Population imbalance is probably a factor in why people either swap to another faction, or leave the game. I don't know how to fix that. They could certainly change Cyrodiil to be like Battlegrounds (where you're purple, green or orange) and when you queue up, you're tossed into the team with the lowest population but that would blow apart guilds and friends playing with friends. Are there other MMOs with 3-faction PvP large scale 30 day battles? If there are, have they figured out how to balance population?

D0ntevenL1ft

It's because everyone switches to the winning side; if you couldn't join the same campaign on two opposing faction characters this wouldn't be a problem.

KrishakPanettier

With Champion Points, builds, armor, weapons, and Campaigns, there needs to be a true BALANCE. Most players gravitate toward the BEST unbeatable choice. then we have lopsided battles. With three factions, we need ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS type selections. If you choose this, you cannot choose that. If you choose this, that can be the other, and the other can be this.

With Cyrodiil, balance the crowd or incentivize the crowd until there is balance. Punishing one faction with large load times is is a negative reinforcement and should not be considered 'incentifization.' I for one do not agree with alliance swap. I prefer it be removed from game. But, in order to play as you want with your friends, incentivization to fight the good fight on unbalanced side needs incentives.

Champion system should be about choices -- choose this and you cannot choose those two.

Campaign needs to separate Sewer population from overland Cyrodiil so those actually in the campaign are benefiting the campaign.

No one weapon or armor set should be unbeatable like we see right now with unlimited resource tanks.

Koolio

As an EP loyal player with a group of about 7 who almost exclusively fought AD in scourge for about 8 months I can tell you it's gotten a little out of hand. We would do the same ordeal almost every day. Skip the damn bridge fight and head to other keeps to make a difference. We would take resources and kill lots and lots of AD. Now it's extremely difficult due to sheer numbers. For about the last 4-6 weeks in there we would just take 1 resource and try and pull large groups away from the main fight. Hoping the main Zerg can kill if the 20 extra people weren't there. Now this almost can't be done without a group of people wearing the cheesiest sets for just tanking people. We take that resource and literally 30 yellows show up. Not 1 or 2 until they call help. Straight up 30 no questions asked. Sometimes we still wipe them depending on the group setup. If we have the right tank/fighters/bomb ratio. But not everyone wants to have the same 20-30 v 6 everyday all day. It doesn't help that people switch alliances based on the map. Or does it help that when EP finally makes some progress the 15 man blue squad with multiple great players sit on the bridge literally ALL DAY.

I would wake up Saturday morning gate locked by AD. We would kill hundreds make a little progress on the map here and there until we at least had our home keeps to chalman and BRK. So after all day fight AD we would all sign off. Only to wake up back in our gates again. It sickening after 4 months of this.

On a side note forward camps need to be removed again. 24 man groups show up and occasionally we would kill them 3/10 times. Only for 1 guy to put a camp up and have all 24 destro ult the 5 people. Doesn't matter what strategy you use to kill them if it takes the 6 more than 5 minutes to wipe that group. They are immediately back. Over and over again.

Takes-No-Prisoner

The_Duke wrote: »

I never understood why madden gets all the hate he does. Hes always pushing objectives and trying to coordinate groups. Cali hets hate as well. To be honest Ive never grouped with madden so I don't know him personally. I stay away from large groups and focus on resources and drawing more small scale action.

As a Yellow looking at this, least from my perspective, possibly jealousy? Hard to say without being a Blue and being, 'in-the-know'.

Could be things he's done or said in the past honestly. A lot of folks playing PvP, if you give a little inch, they take miles upon miles of territory. Whether it be literally taking objectives or figuratively speaking in social cliques.

Despite that, Allmadden has my respect. As I've said several times in the past on here. Cause he's focused on the goal, not the social/political aspect of PvP. Cause lets face it, it is an action oriented PvP. Ain't no one got time to sit around for tea time when the enemy is using a ram on your front door.

PhxOldGamer68

The-Baconator wrote: »

PhxOldGamer68 wrote: »

During prime time, EP can dominate with only 2 bars so EP has good guilds and players, but EP cannot sustain competitively when prime time players drop off for the night.

Vivec will be the new Scourge, except it will be pop locked 24/7 by all alliances. All the Haderus and Skull guilds and groups will join Vivec if they want CP.

EP doesn't "dominate" in any context without stacking every single guild they have up and marching in one direction only to have the whole blob alternate between fronts as one once they own the ales\alessia corridors, just like AD is doing right now. The difference is AD guilds don't rage quit the second they're outnumbered and go hide in a buff campaign.

I know you played EP for awhile, but the only rage-quitters are the ones who have not played Scourge for as long as many. Ok I won't say "dominate" but EP does very well with 2 bars during prime time.

PhxOldGamer68

The_Duke wrote: »

I never understood why madden gets all the hate he does. Hes always pushing objectives and trying to coordinate groups. Cali hets hate as well. To be honest Ive never grouped with madden so I don't know him personally. I stay away from large groups and focus on resources and drawing more small scale action.

Yeah I don't understand it either. Allmadden is always asking if anyone needs a group and rarely responds to any negative chat. I'll have to accept one of his requests one day and see how he operates.

PhxOldGamer68

There's one thing that AD and DC do a lot better than EP is that there are more AD and DC players that continually ask if anyone needs a group. I don't see that in EP, which is why all the solo players that stream into a keep get wiped by smaller organized groups.

The_Duke

The one good thing about people being able to switch is I get to kill Gooch now that he is yellow. I have a whole Gooch slayer build. 5 heartland 5 lekis, quick cloak and CP Im at 85% aoe damage reduction plus points into elemental defender. His EotS and sap essence 1 trick pony hits like a feather.

geonsocal

The_Duke wrote: »

The one good thing about people being able to switch is I get to kill Gooch now that he is yellow. I have a whole Gooch slayer build. 5 heartland 5 lekis, quick cloak and CP Im at 85% aoe damage reduction plus points into elemental defender. His EotS and sap essence 1 trick pony hits like a feather.

howdy @TaCoSlurpY ...this might be a possible answer to your question...

geonsocal

man, them first couple of days in the campaign were glorious...last week or so has kinda sucked though...

I'm sure once AD puts the campaign away in the next week or so - the final week of the campaign might be better balanced again...

geonsocal

reiverx wrote: »

Flip flop flip flop.

People want to be on a winner. People also like to get tier 3 rewards on all their characters.

AD went from March to December last year without a win. I remember DC dominating Scourge by over 20k on several occasions. It was pretty bad being on AD but I stuck with it.

Now that AD is popular, the balance has shifted sharply the other way and I don't like it either. However, there won't be a happy medium with the current setup. Allowing people to switch alliances on a given campaign, on a whim, was damaging and very short-sighted.

hmmmm, i kinda resemble that comment

actually, i still haven't jumped on my AD characters yet - i'm gonna wait until the AD folks put away the campaign and then clear out before i play on them...

yeah, it definitely used to suck when DC would dominate month after month and turn and keep the map blue all the time...hmmmmm, kinda like it sucks now to be sitting at one of the high rock gates with no where to fast travel to...

i remember though how enjoyable it was to play on AD where they consistently would come in third...a lot of camaraderie, really cool people and a true sense of fighting the "good" fight and being an underdog...

i keep waiting and thinking that same vibe will shift over to EP - but, just hasn't happened yet???

The_Duke

geonsocal wrote: »

The_Duke wrote: »

The one good thing about people being able to switch is I get to kill Gooch now that he is yellow. I have a whole Gooch slayer build. 5 heartland 5 lekis, quick cloak and CP Im at 85% aoe damage reduction plus points into elemental defender. His EotS and sap essence 1 trick pony hits like a feather.

howdy @TaCoSlurpY ...this might be a possible answer to your question...

What's the question?

TequilaFire

geonsocal wrote: »

reiverx wrote: »

Flip flop flip flop.

People want to be on a winner. People also like to get tier 3 rewards on all their characters.

AD went from March to December last year without a win. I remember DC dominating Scourge by over 20k on several occasions. It was pretty bad being on AD but I stuck with it.

Now that AD is popular, the balance has shifted sharply the other way and I don't like it either. However, there won't be a happy medium with the current setup. Allowing people to switch alliances on a given campaign, on a whim, was damaging and very short-sighted.

hmmmm, i kinda resemble that comment

actually, i still haven't jumped on my AD characters yet - i'm gonna wait until the AD folks put away the campaign and then clear out before i play on them...

yeah, it definitely used to suck when DC would dominate month after month and turn and keep the map blue all the time...hmmmmm, kinda like it sucks now to be sitting at one of the high rock gates with no where to fast travel to...

i remember though how enjoyable it was to play on AD where they consistently would come in third...a lot of camaraderie, really cool people and a true sense of fighting the "good" fight and being an underdog...

i keep waiting and thinking that same vibe will shift over to EP - but, just hasn't happened yet???

Nah you guys can keep gooch!

KingJ

The route cause of the issue is simple stop gating factions it ruin that campaign and make people leave.If you don't want competition to leave have them believe their hope. If my faction gated and I see no reason to go to that campaign. We have the same issue on Xbox but we have people on Xbox who brag about having 2-3 bars and morning cap the campaign.

geonsocal

The_Duke wrote: »

geonsocal wrote: »

The_Duke wrote: »

The one good thing about people being able to switch is I get to kill Gooch now that he is yellow. I have a whole Gooch slayer build. 5 heartland 5 lekis, quick cloak and CP Im at 85% aoe damage reduction plus points into elemental defender. His EotS and sap essence 1 trick pony hits like a feather.

howdy @TaCoSlurpY ...this might be a possible answer to your question...

What's the question?

Howdy @The_Duke ... @TaCoSlurpY had posted a situation on another thread: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/345041/health-regeneration#latest a question regarding bolstering their defensive capabilities with their dragonknight...

TaCoSlurpY wrote: »

I was going for a build 5 peice Green Pact, 5 peice fury (4 when 2h sword) yellow food the buffs health and recovory for all 3. 2 peice engine gaurd. 7 heavy, 2h sword, and back bar s&b. (Orc) 30k resistances and 3k vrit resistance. Roughly 2300 weapon damage.

The object was to take a beating letting fury stack up then burst someone down (3400 weapon damage is what ive been up to) bit i'm literally getting melted constantly. Any help of suggestions?

i had kinda figured it might be related to the destro ult ball groups melting everything around them - leki's focus set and the bastion of the heartland set is a brilliant solution to that particular problem...

geonsocal

KingJ wrote: »

The route cause of the issue is simple stop gating factions it ruin that campaign and make people leave.If you don't want competition to leave have them believe their hope. If my faction gated and I see no reason to go to that campaign. We have the same issue on Xbox but we have people on Xbox who brag about having 2-3 bars and morning cap the campaign.

i remember back in the day when i started out in pvp you could only have one alliance character per campaign.. i already had one character (DC) in backwater ( ) blade - so i had to move my (AD) character (level 10) to thornblade...man, i don't think i made it past faregyl too many times...

most the time there would literally be enemy players waiting on the other side of the wall at the eastern elswyr gate...

after a while it just seemed natural - as soon as i could though i got the heck out of that campaign...consistently being gated sucks...

The_Duke

geonsocal wrote: »

The_Duke wrote: »

geonsocal wrote: »

The_Duke wrote: »

The one good thing about people being able to switch is I get to kill Gooch now that he is yellow. I have a whole Gooch slayer build. 5 heartland 5 lekis, quick cloak and CP Im at 85% aoe damage reduction plus points into elemental defender. His EotS and sap essence 1 trick pony hits like a feather.

howdy @TaCoSlurpY ...this might be a possible answer to your question...

What's the question?

Howdy @The_Duke ... @TaCoSlurpY had posted a situation on another thread: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/345041/health-regeneration#latest a question regarding bolstering their defensive capabilities with their dragonknight...

TaCoSlurpY wrote: »

I was going for a build 5 peice Green Pact, 5 peice fury (4 when 2h sword) yellow food the buffs health and recovory for all 3. 2 peice engine gaurd. 7 heavy, 2h sword, and back bar s&b. (Orc) 30k resistances and 3k vrit resistance. Roughly 2300 weapon damage.

The object was to take a beating letting fury stack up then burst someone down (3400 weapon damage is what ive been up to) bit i'm literally getting melted constantly. Any help of suggestions?

i had kinda figured it might be related to the destro ult ball groups melting everything around them - leki's focus set and the bastion of the heartland set is a brilliant solution to that particular problem...

On my stam sorc I can sit in a ball group with crit surg and caltrops on and face tank the destro ult spammers. I run dual and S\B both lekis so I don't lose the 5 piece bonus when I weapon swap. Tumor scale to provide the burst and snare for the ult spammer. Because of the reduced AOE healing of lekis and not running 2h for rally Im reliant on crit surge, blood thirst, rending slashes, dark deal and the S\B reflect for heals.

Crom_CCCXVI

AD has won the psychological warfare battle.

By coming into EP chat and taunting, they have convinced many EP's that any group larger than 4 is a zerg, and the only honorable way to play is solo.
So we have 100 EP's running around by themselves, trying to shout out battle tactics in zone chat, LOL..

While the same AD who taunted EP about being zergers are rolling in big organized groups crushing our honorable solo players. I have tried relentlessy to explain that your sic solo skills aren't going to do much against a 60 person group with stacked ult's, dedicated healers and tanks, tactical poisons, efficient seige etc, but usually I just get hate mail because our group is trying to take keeps instead of hiding in 1 while the rest of the map is getting swept by multiple organized squads.

reiverx

geonsocal wrote: »

hmmmm, i kinda resemble that comment

actually, i still haven't jumped on my AD characters yet - i'm gonna wait until the AD folks put away the campaign and then clear out before i play on them...

yeah, it definitely used to suck when DC would dominate month after month and turn and keep the map blue all the time...hmmmmm, kinda like it sucks now to be sitting at one of the high rock gates with no where to fast travel to...

i remember though how enjoyable it was to play on AD where they consistently would come in third...a lot of camaraderie, really cool people and a true sense of fighting the "good" fight and being an underdog...

i keep waiting and thinking that same vibe will shift over to EP - but, just hasn't happened yet???

Oh man I did not like those days. It was virtually impossible just to push further than Faregyl. A lot of good players moved on to other games during that period.

The camaraderie was there though, in a curled up in a shallow bunker, heavily shelled World War One trench kind of way

GreenSoup2HoT

I'll speak as a blueberry about Allmadden. Hes a close friend of mine during my playtime in eso pvp. We played a lot together. He is a nice guy who plays usally group support builds on Dragon Knight, now Sorc i believe. Out of all the players i know, hes the most genuine kind hearted player who trys to have fun. He doesnt care about meta or what others think about him. Its the experience and conversations we have in group chat that i will remember most. He was very complimentary and hyping my name in group chat when i killed players. Just an overall joy to group with. Many DC players are like this.

Many of the OG players have really shifted to just having fun and connecting with the friends theyve made then caring about what others say about them.

When Morrowwind releases, Allmadden will probably be my go to player to get back into pvp. Then ill find NightRaid and give him either 69 or 420 gold.

kylewwefan

Yeah. I'm getting tired of scraping yellow scum off my boots. I'd much rather run around popping cherries. I don't know how to fix any of the population problems but I've been having a blast running around with maddens groups.

My PvE and Trials guilds have problems getting anyone that wants to go to Cyrodil on guild nights. When the double AP event was going on some time back we had the most players ever that wanted to go.

Maybe if there was some like AP enlightenment for double AP more would want to come out. That may be over the top for the Big PvP guilds, but most of my Dungeon buddies really just don't like going to Cyrodil as it's largely a waste of time for many.

geonsocal

GreenSoup2HoT wrote: »

I'll speak as a blueberry about Allmadden. Hes a close friend of mine during my playtime in eso pvp. We played a lot together. He is a nice guy who plays usally group support builds on Dragon Knight, now Sorc i believe. Out of all the players i know, hes the most genuine kind hearted player who trys to have fun. He doesnt care about meta or what others think about him. Its the experience and conversations we have in group chat that i will remember most. He was very complimentary and hyping my name in group chat when i killed players. Just an overall joy to group with. Many DC players are like this.

Many of the OG players have really shifted to just having fun and connecting with the friends theyve made then caring about what others say about them.

When Morrowwind releases, Allmadden will probably be my go to player to get back into pvp. Then ill find NightRaid and give him either 69 or 420 gold.

that's a vary cool thing to say about someone @GreenSoup2HoT ...sez something about you too, that you can appreciate someone like that...no question it's the cool folks we come across that's the best part of cyrodiil...

it was weird - ran into NightRaid about a week ago while playing EP over at chalman mine...didn't really recognize the name or anything - but, they spent almost 5 minutes bagging me...as i was watching i started to wonder if maybe we knew each or something (somebody from the forums maybe?)...

the reason it was weird was cuz i'm a solo player who doesn't gank very often - plus, more importantly - i'm not really all that great...

no one ever takes the time to bag me...on the very rare occasions it does happen it's usually some non vet noob doing one of those herky jerky uncoordinated looking teabagging moves...even that though is extremely rare...

during a lot of confrontations i'm more apt to spaz out, start spamming everything i got, gas out of resources and then die

this bagging was long and intentional - in all honesty - i was actually kind of happy that i may have annoyed someone enough to take the time and let me know they even knew who i was

geonsocal

kylewwefan wrote: »

Yeah. I'm getting tired of scraping yellow scum off my boots.

i don't know why - but, that "yellow scum" stuff just kills me - it's so visceral

read a good comment on chat the other day describing the dominance of AD as "swimming in a sea of pee"...

kylewwefan

So it turns out geonsocal is actually the gooch. Aghhhhhh!! We love to hate you

jarrandub17_ESO

Liam12548 wrote: »

Lol, AD is generally the underdog on XB NA, in every campaign.

"Generally", meh they always have full bars on Haderus and Scourge.

The_Duke

kylewwefan wrote: »

So it turns out geonsocal is actually the gooch. Aghhhhhh!! We love to hate you

No hes the same name in game lol

GreenSoup2HoT

@geonsocal Some people will bag until they respawn. Probably just one of those occurances.

geonsocal

kylewwefan wrote: »

So it turns out geonsocal is actually the gooch. Aghhhhhh!! We love to hate you

man - i wish for just 15 minutes i could play like that and go around dropping a half dozen different folks at a time

the only time i'm a serious threat is if you're afk and happen to be standing beneath the flaming oil i'm pouring...

GreenSoup2HoT wrote: »

@geonsocal Some people will bag until they respawn. Probably just one of those occurrences.

not entirely sure what was going on - but, it was different; and, as much time as i spend in cyro - different is generally a very positive thing...

love seeing a new tactic or type of build i'm not familiar with show up in cyro...as much as i enjoy the competition and pvping - a lot of the time it's kinda like "groundhog day"...

GreenSoup2HoT

@geonsocal When i come back Morrowwind. I'll forsure make sure you know who i am when im on your corpse