Solving Population Imbalance in Cyrodiil

dotme

A few weeks ago I ran a non-scientific poll (link below) and the general result seems to be that most players PvP for fun - rewards are often not a major consideration.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/345183/regular-pvp-ers-whats-the-biggest-reason-you-run-in-cyrodiil

There are a lot of threads about population imbalance, with several requests for the return of campaign locking and/or dynamic caps. With my poll, I wanted to try and get an understanding of why players PvP to see if there may be other, more agreeable solutions.

When you're part of the population underdog and getting rolled all the time, it's discouraging to continue playing for that faction and very tempting to try "easy mode" by piling onto the winning side, which only exacerbates the problem.

I've given it a lot of thought and I'm not convinced that restricting players to a faction (again) is the right way to address this. A few folks have suggested incentives to play for the weaker alliance, and given the poll results above (which put faction loyalty way down on the list of reasons people play) I'm starting to think this is the way forward.

My understanding is that ZOS may "count" heads in Cyrodiil currently by exits and entries, rather than doing a sweep-count every 5 minutes or so on a timer.

So... How hard would it be to implement some kind of overland zone head-count on a timer that's hidden (to avoid exploiting) in short intervals so the server knows in almost realtime how many players are online in each faction?

If that could be done, it would fix the queue exploit AND it would then be possible to introduce incentives that would make playing for the underdog a bit more inviting. For example:

• NPCs on underdog-owned properties could be much stronger to help fight against invading forces
• Underdog faction players could get considerably more gold in rewards for the worthy and a decent chance at purple gear (or maybe better PvP traits) in those email rewards
• High population players could earn less AP for kills, taking keeps and resources, or get a percentage reduction in all "buffs" from home keeps, enemy keeps, scrolls and emperor are reduced if the faction outnumbers opposing factions.

If you could address the perceived population imbalance with incentives rather than restrictions, what ideas would you have?

geonsocal

@dotme that's some really good stuff...

I think you nailed it on all three of your suggestions:

dotme wrote: »

For example:

• NPCs on underdog-owned properties could be much stronger to help fight against invading forces
• Underdog faction players could get considerably more gold in rewards for the worthy and a decent chance at purple gear (or maybe better PvP traits) in those email rewards
• High population players could earn less AP for kills, taking keeps and resources, or get a percentage reduction in all "buffs" from home keeps, enemy keeps, scrolls and emperor are reduced if the faction outnumbers opposing factions.

i'll give it some more thought - but, i believe those adjustments you mentioned could really help balance map pops...

Sabbathius

That would be a good start. I especially always liked the last point, where rewards scale up or down with the numbers. But the caveat is that these numbers have to be dynamic. If a faction has a high presence in primetime, but is extinct the rest of the day, the devs should not take the "average hospital temperature" and declare everyone is healthy (because body temps of corpses in the hospital morgue cancel out those dying from high fever).

At the same time, they have to come down hard on exploiting. Often it feels like one faction is non-existent. It shows as population capped, but there are no warm bodies doing anything on the map. Maybe go as far as make it a deserter debuff of sorts, not just an AFK check. Because sometimes it feels like opposing faction may be using alts to create dead weight on the side they're tying to push.

I would also like to see account faction locks per campaign. This is a bit controversial, but they can do it on a trial basis and see if that improves things. At the very least, it would cut down on trading and other exploiting, no longer requiring the new 5 min timer they just added.

Juli'St

Cyrodiil need lock the possibility to change side (30 or 60 minutes penalty to relog in another faction). Less TROLLs run with destros and troll's build's (need nerf).

people are tired about be farmed for trolls!

End!

Aisle9

First of all, it would be awesome if there was some sort of underdog mechanic, because, right now, recovering from a nightcap is hard, doing so against greater numbers even more so.

That said

Higher numbers SHOULD have an advantage, they are more people.

Stronger NPCs or making the higher population earn less, they're not effective. Even earning more AP if you're on the underdog side is just meh, skilled players would move to one side or the other depending on the pop and just farm the zergs of scrubs for AP.

What we would really need would be an underdog mechanic.

Give you an example.

The Secret World has a persistent warzone. When one of the faction has no objectives they could be granted access to a giant robot for a short period of time. This robot has a healing aura, hundreds of thousands HP, and does massive damage. It only lasts 20 minutes, so it must be used wisely, but can help lower pops to get at least one objective.

For Honor's Revenge Mode, gives you a timed boost you can activate once you've been on the defensive enough (it requires you to parry/dodge, ofc) which can help greatly when outnumbered.

There are more, but these are the two that come to mind.

An underdog mechanic has to be something on a timer, you can't just have a passive bonus as long as you're at a disadvantage, but it has to be something good enough to give you the means to create a counterattack.

Then again, nothing can beat skill. If you can't properly take advantage of the mechanic, well...

Juli'St

Solving: find a job.

lol

Mr_Nobody

DAoC had a simple, kind of effective way to deal with cross-factioning in PvP.

Cooldowns on Alliance changes.

So generally, if you logged out on Alliance A in Cyrodiil or right after leaving Cyrodiil, and tried to log in an Alliance B/C, you would receive a 10 minute cooldown before you can join it (you can go back to Alliance A, but the cooldown would reset).

it wouldnt stop all of the cross realming, but it would be damn annoying. Also, you wouldnt see scenarios of DC getting an EMP with 40 ppl against 10 EP during the last keep fight; and then 5 minutes later theres me and some other random DC's on against 60EP. lul.

Juli'St

"So generally, if you logged out on Alliance A in Cyrodiil or right after leaving Cyrodiil, and tried to log in an Alliance B/C, you would receive a 10 minute cooldown before you can join it (you can go back to Alliance A, but the cooldown would reset)."

- 15 or 30 minutes its a good deal.

Joy_Division

dotme wrote: »

If you could address the perceived population imbalance with incentives rather than restrictions, what ideas would you have?

• Balance the classes so each of them have various builds and styles that are competitive
• Tone done proc sets such that I fight people rather than armor sets
• Invest time and add improvements / changes in the map of Cyrodiil such that players have an incentive to do something in the 85% that never see any action
• Fix performance so sound loss, load screens, high latency are not common "features" of primetime gameplay
• Remove CP from the game entirely and return that power to the base classes. Find another end-game progression that does not hand out ridiculously high and generic flat power boosts.
• Give us timely balance updates when problems are identified rather than waiting half a year to address obvious issues.
• If I do happen to win a campaign, I'd like to be rewarded with something more than a gold ring of a set I;ll never use that I can't even sell because nobody wants it either.
• A single campaign choice that did not have a 94 que would be ideal
• Evidence the development team actually is aware PvP exists, to say nothing of playing it and caring about it, would go a long way.

Doing this will solve population imbalance because so many people would want to play there would always be enough competition.

Agrippa_Invisus

Dynamic population locks, preventing one side from flooding the server against the other two.

Force some of those over populous groups from faction stacking during a particular time zone. Makes them split amongst the three evenly to get in.

Nutshotz

Population balance will never be balanced. When u have factions queueing into other factions to prevent that faction from actually gaining ground. Im not gonna name or shame the guilds who do it or the players. You fix that and you will see more balance than people can imagine. 150 alliance A vs 85 alliance B vs 110 alliance C. Those are just random numbers but that also shows when 2 factions have large queues when 1 faction has little to no queue during prime time.

Doomsdire

Lots of great ideas....

It certainly is unbalanced. I'm still new to pve and my experience has not been enjoyable. At all.... I try to have fun but it's hard when one faction is getting owned by two factions that almost seem like they are working as one. There is definitely cross guilds and faction alliances working together that really messes the competition feel of Cyrodiil. Its really hard for newcomers when your faction has almost given up and the players that do join only care about farming ap and could care less about taking keeps. They just don't have the will for it anymore they have been tag teamed for so long.

It's really a shame because Cyrodiil can be very promising and I feel for the members of my faction that actually do want to take keeps when the other half just tells them to stfu in chat as they continue to farm ap. It's sad really and I think I'm ready to turn over to the overworld and step out for awhile until it gets fixed.

Kay1

It's a waste of time OP, people have been asking this since 2014 and not a single response from Zenimax.

Taonnor

dotme wrote: »

A few weeks ago I ran a non-scientific poll (link below) and the general result seems to be that most players PvP for fun - rewards are often not a major consideration.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/345183/regular-pvp-ers-whats-the-biggest-reason-you-run-in-cyrodiil

There are a lot of threads about population imbalance, with several requests for the return of campaign locking and/or dynamic caps. With my poll, I wanted to try and get an understanding of why players PvP to see if there may be other, more agreeable solutions.

When you're part of the population underdog and getting rolled all the time, it's discouraging to continue playing for that faction and very tempting to try "easy mode" by piling onto the winning side, which only exacerbates the problem.

I've given it a lot of thought and I'm not convinced that restricting players to a faction (again) is the right way to address this. A few folks have suggested incentives to play for the weaker alliance, and given the poll results above (which put faction loyalty way down on the list of reasons people play) I'm starting to think this is the way forward.

My understanding is that ZOS may "count" heads in Cyrodiil currently by exits and entries, rather than doing a sweep-count every 5 minutes or so on a timer.

So... How hard would it be to implement some kind of overland zone head-count on a timer that's hidden (to avoid exploiting) in short intervals so the server knows in almost realtime how many players are online in each faction?

If that could be done, it would fix the queue exploit AND it would then be possible to introduce incentives that would make playing for the underdog a bit more inviting. For example:

• NPCs on underdog-owned properties could be much stronger to help fight against invading forces
• Underdog faction players could get considerably more gold in rewards for the worthy and a decent chance at purple gear (or maybe better PvP traits) in those email rewards
• High population players could earn less AP for kills, taking keeps and resources, or get a percentage reduction in all "buffs" from home keeps, enemy keeps, scrolls and emperor are reduced if the faction outnumbers opposing factions.

If you could address the perceived population imbalance with incentives rather than restrictions, what ideas would you have?

I had written down nearly the same in german forum without knowing your thread...
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/de/discussion/comment/4216325#Comment_4216325

Taonnor wrote: »

Ich finde die Anzahl der Kampagnen aktuell ganz Ok. Ich würde aber die Verteilung anders sehen:

30 Tage CP
7 Tage CP

---

30 Tage no CP


Außerdem würde ich gerne haben, dass die Underpop Mechaniken agiler funktionieren. Es gibt ja 2 Mechaniken, die bei wenig Spielern einer Fraktion greifen:

- Mehr AP
- Mehr Kampagnienpunkte

Eine 15 minütige Aktualisierung wäre perfekt. Dabei sollte der Underpop Bonus bis zu 300% AP/Kampagnienpunkte liefern bei extremsten Fällen. Das würde bei unterlegenen Fraktionen zumindest ein Trostpflaster sein.


Was stört als Underpop aber am meisten?

Wir als Lux Dei haben, seit Release, immer auf einer Undperop Kampagnie gespielt. Am meisten hat uns genervt, dass man Abends einloggt und alles Rot oder Blau ist. Oder auch Tagsüber man zu viert gegen 20-30 ein Keep einnehmen oder deffen soll.... Suuuper...

Aus diesem Grund würde ich sogar noch einen dritten Faktor in den Underpop Bonus hinzufügen: "Verstärkung der Objektives".

Was heißt "Verstärkung der Objectives"?

Ganz einfach. Auch ein bis zu 300% Bonus auf Wachen NPC (DMG/HP/RESI) und Keepwälle/Tore (HP).


@ZOS_KaiSchober bitte als Suggestion weiterleiten.

Zusammengefasst

2 Schritte:

1. Kampagnien Anzahl so lassen, aber Gewichtung tauschen:

30 Tage CP
7 Tage CP

---

30 Tage no CP

1. Underpop Bonus neu gestalten:

• Underpop Bonus liefert 3 Boni an die unterlegene Fraktion.
• Underpop Bonus wird alle 15 Minuten aktualisiert.
• Underpop Bonus steigt dynamisch bis zu 300% an.
• Underpop Bonusfaktor berechnet sich aus Spielerzahl stärkster Fraktion (a) und Spielerzahl eigener Fraktion (b) -> 1- (b / a) * 300
• Die Underpop Boni sind
  1. Mehr AP (0-300%)
  2. Mehr Kampagnienpunkte (0-300%)
  3. Objective-Verstärkung, Wachen NPC (DMG/HP/RESI) und Keepwälle/Tore (HP), jeweils 0-300%

Mit so einem Underpop Bonus könnte ich es mir durchaus auch nicht mehr so frustrierend vorstellen als schwache Fraktion zu spielen. Dadurch gleicht sich das dann früher oder später auch aus, da dann eventuell WTJ auch underpop spielen wollen.

Important informations in en:

The underpop mechanics should work much more agile. At the moment there are 2 mechanics (as i know):

- More AP
- More campaign points

An update of the underpop bonus should be trigger all 15 minutes. This will be perfect. The underpop bonus should give till 300% ap/campaign points in extreme cases.


What is most disturbing on underpop?

We played with our guild very often as underpop fraction on campaigns. The mostly issue what nerved us was: You log in in the afternoon and the hole campaign is red or blue. At daytime you play with 4 peoples (extreme cases) against 20-30 enemies... Awesome....

About this issue iam for a third factor in the underpop bonus: "Empower the objectives"


What is "Empower the objectives"?

Pretty simple: A bonus to all guard NPC (DMG/HP/RES) and keepwalls/gates (HP)


In short

Adjust the underpop bonus and its mechanics:

• Underpop Bonus gives 3 unique bonusses to the underpop faction.
• Underpop Bonus will be updated all 15 minutes.
• Underpop Bonus will increase dynamically to 300% maximum.
• Underpop bonus factor will be calculated between active players of strongest faction (a) and your own faction (b) -> 1- (b / a) * 300
• Underpop bonusses are
  1. More AP (0-300%)
  2. More campaign points (0-300%)
  3. Empower the objectives, guards NPC (DMG/HP/RES) and keepwalls/gates (HP), all till maximum 0-300%

With this high dynamic underpop bonus it could be not so frustrating for the weak faction. Eventually the weak faction gets more players because of the AP bonus.

GeorgeBlack

*Make Cyrodill great...* period.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/355841/cyrodiil-zone-chat-and-zergs
Discuss.

Agrippa_Invisus

The most elegant solution is simply dynamic population caps.

Do not let realms exceed the least populous realm by X amount of players.

As the least gains more players, so can the most populous factions. This prevents 3am or mid day faction stacking, forcing players to split between the various factions if they want to play.