Fix for map capping low pop hours

Ranger209

Looking at this under the premise that reinforcements arrive from each factions base camp, that the keeps/forts/castles would auto flip back to their home alliance after a certain amount of time has elapsed. For instance the 2 keeps closest to the home base of each alliance would have the outer npcs flip back after 30 minute and the inner npcs after 60. The next keep would do so after 60 minutes on the outer and 90 minutes on the inner, and the inner triangle keeps after 90 minute the outer and 120 minutes the inner npcs would flip. This would make it so that in order to hold the map at low population times there would at least still be some effort required to hold the keeps. The closer the keeps are to the base camps the more difficult they would be to hold. Once the inner npcs flip back to the home alliance the keep would revert back to the home alliance. The opposing factions could ride out and kill the outer npcs after they flip, but before the inner npcs flip to maintain control of the keep, or in some instances they could transit there for keeps that are in their loop.

Turelus

This wouldn't fix the issue you have though.

If they have the players to take the keeps, they have the players to go back every hour and kill some NPC's.

Sharee

I still think the best solution is to just remove any rewards for nightcapping.

Make it so that at a significant population disparity, scoring ticks stop, emperors cannot be crowned, scrolls cannot be picked up, and capturing structures does not give any AP.

They can still cap the whole map unopposed, it just won't help them to win the campaign anymore because the above will stay in effect until there actually is opposition present, at which point they will have already lost all the ill-gotten gains.

Ranger209

Turelus wrote: »

This wouldn't fix the issue you have though.

If they have the players to take the keeps, they have the players to go back every hour and kill some NPC's.

Well that depends how you look at it. Could a faction still cap the map? Yes, but not without constant work and upkeep to do so. They would continually have to retake any keeps that autoflipped. Also keeps are easier to defend than they are to take, so autoflipping them could help a small group of players on an underpopulated faction have some chance of defending those keeps. It gives the lower population a chance to at least travel out deeper into the map, as other keeps more toward the center of the map autoflip, and defend against all out capping. And if absolutely no one is on or too few to make a difference the map will eventually return toward the mean over time as far as which factions control which territory.

Lord_Hev

The only fix for "map capping low pop hours" is to foster and encourage a healthy around-the-clock world wide population to play on a given server.

MaximillianDiE

Lord_Hev wrote: »

The only fix for "map capping low pop hours" is to foster and encourage a healthy around-the-clock world wide population to play on a given server.

This ^

IcyDeadPeople

Lord_Hev wrote: »

The only fix for "map capping low pop hours" is to foster and encourage a healthy around-the-clock world wide population to play on a given server.

Exactly this. People simply live in different areas, have different schedules, play at all different times.

If you feel like your faction doesn't have enough people late at night, instead of requesting some arbritrary mechanic to penalize night owls, why not simply make a guild and recruit more Oceanic and PST players?

kuro-dono

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Lord_Hev wrote: »

The only fix for "map capping low pop hours" is to foster and encourage a healthy around-the-clock world wide population to play on a given server.

Exactly this. People simply live in different areas, have different schedules, play at all different times.

If you feel like your faction doesn't have enough people late at night, instead of requesting some arbritrary mechanic to penalize night owls, why not simply make a guild and recruit more Oceanic and PST players?

that sort of selfish and entitled attitude is why so many ppl turn away from pvp and why we feel we being neclected by zenimax. its very bothersome to help us when we act like *** and abuse game mechanics/exploit and harash/grief and troll people 24/7 7 day a week. not everyone does, but ppl seems to be lacking common sense and BADLY.

this is similar problem to that where ppl aswell think its OKAY when its not> i go out to pub with my 3 friend, we chat bit, then suddenly everyone except me has their phone out and they roam facebook and taking pictures of themselfs and maybe one group photo. so much fun.... NOT.

Ranger209

Lord_Hev wrote: »

The only fix for "map capping low pop hours" is to foster and encourage a healthy around-the-clock world wide population to play on a given server.

While I understand what you are saying there are times when there just isn't anyone on or very, very few. Prime time goes thru time zones where there are not and never will be any players. Right now as I write this Vivec is 2 bars all factions and Sotha Sil is 1 bar all factions. It is 6 am cst. The score right now in Sotha Sil is roughly 10000 to 5000 to 4000. In favor of DC. I play DC exclusively and do not see this disparity as a good thing at all even though my faction is winning. It is an example of how a snowflake becomes an avalanche. This score deters the other 2 factions from even wanting to get on and this is only a week into the campaign. A large part of this score disparity is from night capping. The other thing is that when you own the entire map there is really nothing to do. If keeps autoflipped back there would always be something to do, some keep to attack at any rate, a way to gain AP, until there was enough of a population on to actually pvp.

AverageJo3Gam3r

For two home keeps, if there is enough of a pop discrepancy, why not have a "warlord" or "general" npc spawn that is a trial-like enemy to defend the two home keeps flags.

Derra

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Lord_Hev wrote: »

The only fix for "map capping low pop hours" is to foster and encourage a healthy around-the-clock world wide population to play on a given server.

Exactly this. People simply live in different areas, have different schedules, play at all different times.

If you feel like your faction doesn't have enough people late at night, instead of requesting some arbritrary mechanic to penalize night owls, why not simply make a guild and recruit more Oceanic and PST players?

Which is bullcrap to begin with.

People simply join the winning team on a unicoloured map. There are not enough people on DC and EP combined on Vivec EU to contest the completely yellow map up until ~5pm most of the days.

The same happens for red on sotha sil.

If people were actually interested in fighting other players at all (not roflstomping them 20 v 3) - reds from sotha could go pvp against yellows on vivec on either campaign. They don´t do that because they prefert "winning the campaign" by pvdoor and defending spawnpoint keeps.
They do this because they win most fights that way.

This behavior won´t end unless it gets punished by zos. You cant provide enough incentive for these kinds of players to join a loosing battle (apart from rerolling being a chore to begin with).
Winning tastes o such much sweeter than loosing but getting a cookie for showing up.

Punishment is the only behavioral modification that works (quick enough - because at this point pvp isn´t healthy anymore) in those situations.

Sandman929

I'm still amazed that there are people who think "night" for them is universal.

Agrippa_Invisus

As I've advocated for, literally, years now -- Dynamic population caps is the way to fix this.

Forcing player behavior so that they spread evenly amongst the various factions is how you disabuse the wild pendulum swings due to off hours faction stacking.

When the most populous faction is only allowed a handful more players than the least by hard coded design, then you'll see people starting to reroll and swap factions outside of the sporadic guild.

We've played and known how this game works well enough by this point to know that there's no disincentive for stacking off hours. In fact, ZOS rewards it in its current state with map control, large point gains, etc. The extra points for low population take too long to activate in most cases for it to matter as the population evens out by that point, leaving the faction with the least off hours presence deep in a hole.

Yes, dynamic population caps would be unfun in a way. Some people who really want to play with their friends won't be able to get into their chose faction, often for some time. But until players are forced into the corrective behavior (switching to the less populated factions to even out the numbers), they're not going to take it.

Sharee

Sandman929 wrote: »

I'm still amazed that there are people who think "night" for them is universal.

Nobody here thinks that night is universal. You seem to think that the complaint is "nobody should play when it is nighttime for me". That's not the case.

I'm all for people playing at nighttime. It is good even, because it can create a different, more small-scale playing environment compared to the primetime zergs.

But not when the majority of the "nighttime" players piles up on the same side for easy wins. That's not a better play environment, that's just killing the campaign. That is the complaint, and that is what ZOS should prevent from happening, either by providing strong incentives for balanced teams( for ex. double AP for killing the overpopulated faction players), forcing them in some way(capping the populations of all sides at the lowest faction's population), or simply removing all rewards for doing the nightcapping(this wont prevent people from doing it, but at least it wont kill campaign scoring)

Sandman929

Sharee wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

I'm still amazed that there are people who think "night" for them is universal.

Nobody here thinks that night is universal. You seem to think that the complaint is "nobody should play when it is nighttime for me". That's not the case.

I'm all for people playing at nighttime. It is good even, because it can create a different, more small-scale playing environment compared to the primetime zergs.

But not when the majority of the "nighttime" players piles up on the same side for easy wins. That's not a better play environment, that's just killing the campaign. That is the complaint, and that is what ZOS should prevent from happening, either by providing strong incentives for balanced teams( for ex. double AP for killing the overpopulated faction players), forcing them in some way(capping the populations of all sides at the lowest faction's population), or simply removing all rewards for doing the nightcapping(this wont prevent people from doing it, but at least it wont kill campaign scoring)

So I play DC, and DC only. Are you then suggesting that I'm forced to be multi-faction if I play during the "night"?

Sharee

Sandman929 wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

I'm still amazed that there are people who think "night" for them is universal.

Nobody here thinks that night is universal. You seem to think that the complaint is "nobody should play when it is nighttime for me". That's not the case.

I'm all for people playing at nighttime. It is good even, because it can create a different, more small-scale playing environment compared to the primetime zergs.

But not when the majority of the "nighttime" players piles up on the same side for easy wins. That's not a better play environment, that's just killing the campaign. That is the complaint, and that is what ZOS should prevent from happening, either by providing strong incentives for balanced teams( for ex. double AP for killing the overpopulated faction players), forcing them in some way(capping the populations of all sides at the lowest faction's population), or simply removing all rewards for doing the nightcapping(this wont prevent people from doing it, but at least it wont kill campaign scoring)

So I play DC, and DC only. Are you then suggesting that I'm forced to be multi-faction if I play during the "night"?

Forced? No. Instead, you should be encouraged to switch by giving you twice the AP for killing DC players (assuming they are the overpopulated side). Encouraged by not making you wait in a DC queue when there are no enemy players to oppose you on the other factions. And finally, discouraged by not giving you any PvP rewards for, well, not-PvPing against doors and NPC's.

Sandman929

Sharee wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

I'm still amazed that there are people who think "night" for them is universal.

Nobody here thinks that night is universal. You seem to think that the complaint is "nobody should play when it is nighttime for me". That's not the case.

I'm all for people playing at nighttime. It is good even, because it can create a different, more small-scale playing environment compared to the primetime zergs.

But not when the majority of the "nighttime" players piles up on the same side for easy wins. That's not a better play environment, that's just killing the campaign. That is the complaint, and that is what ZOS should prevent from happening, either by providing strong incentives for balanced teams( for ex. double AP for killing the overpopulated faction players), forcing them in some way(capping the populations of all sides at the lowest faction's population), or simply removing all rewards for doing the nightcapping(this wont prevent people from doing it, but at least it wont kill campaign scoring)

So I play DC, and DC only. Are you then suggesting that I'm forced to be multi-faction if I play during the "night"?

Forced? No. Instead, you should be encouraged to switch by giving you twice the AP for killing DC players (assuming they are the overpopulated side). Encouraged by not making you wait in a DC queue when there are no enemy players to oppose you on the other factions. And finally, discouraged by not giving you any PvP rewards for, well, not-PvPing against doors and NPC's.

Hmm...understandable. Thanks for elaborating.

Agrippa_Invisus

Sharee wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

I'm still amazed that there are people who think "night" for them is universal.

Nobody here thinks that night is universal. You seem to think that the complaint is "nobody should play when it is nighttime for me". That's not the case.

I'm all for people playing at nighttime. It is good even, because it can create a different, more small-scale playing environment compared to the primetime zergs.

But not when the majority of the "nighttime" players piles up on the same side for easy wins. That's not a better play environment, that's just killing the campaign. That is the complaint, and that is what ZOS should prevent from happening, either by providing strong incentives for balanced teams( for ex. double AP for killing the overpopulated faction players), forcing them in some way(capping the populations of all sides at the lowest faction's population), or simply removing all rewards for doing the nightcapping(this wont prevent people from doing it, but at least it wont kill campaign scoring)

So I play DC, and DC only. Are you then suggesting that I'm forced to be multi-faction if I play during the "night"?

Forced? No. Instead, you should be encouraged to switch by giving you twice the AP for killing DC players (assuming they are the overpopulated side). Encouraged by not making you wait in a DC queue when there are no enemy players to oppose you on the other factions. And finally, discouraged by not giving you any PvP rewards for, well, not-PvPing against doors and NPC's.

Exactly.

And if that DC player still, after all that, wants to play DC... they can. They just have to wait their turn.

Kas

i've posted this already somewhere, but nvm...
if the map is X vs 0 vs 0 , all is lost. however, apart form the extreme case there is hope:

encourage!!! night capping (don't worry, there's a catch coming later) by the current off-ticks and also much more significant ap gains for kills depending on how much keeps your alliance holds.

now the catch: remove the per-player bonus from emp, remove the keep bonus stats except (the increase) extra ap. intrduce HUGE buffs if you have very few keeps. this way, small buffed-up groups would be able to hold/retake vs MUCH bigger masses. at the same time, the masses would earn decent AP for killing a few players. I accept that this may be hard to balance, but I think it may be possible and at least it is justified.

ideally, we'd end up with about roughly equally strong factions anyway. simply because this prevents a current problem: with late hours the losing faction faces some frustration and those players are more likely to log out earlier (or even worse to change factions), thus amplifying the issue. The changes could stop the frustration and thus stop said exodus. Teh same is true for retaking keeps: people would be mcuh more likely to start playing again if they didn't have to face 1) higher numbers with 2) significant buffs and 3) and emp running around farming people as 1vX for people with time rather than skill.

Derra

Kas wrote: »

i've posted this already somewhere, but nvm...
if the map is X vs 0 vs 0 , all is lost. however, apart form the extreme case there is hope:

encourage!!! night capping (don't worry, there's a catch coming later) by the current off-ticks and also much more significant ap gains for kills depending on how much keeps your alliance holds.

now the catch: remove the per-player bonus from emp, remove the keep bonus stats except (the increase) extra ap. intrduce HUGE buffs if you have very few keeps. this way, small buffed-up groups would be able to hold/retake vs MUCH bigger masses. at the same time, the masses would earn decent AP for killing a few players. I accept that this may be hard to balance, but I think it may be possible and at least it is justified.

ideally, we'd end up with about roughly equally strong factions anyway. simply because this prevents a current problem: with late hours the losing faction faces some frustration and those players are more likely to log out earlier (or even worse to change factions), thus amplifying the issue. The changes could stop the frustration and thus stop said exodus. Teh same is true for retaking keeps: people would be mcuh more likely to start playing again if they didn't have to face 1) higher numbers with 2) significant buffs and 3) and emp running around farming people as 1vX for people with time rather than skill.

As i´ve said earlier. Encouragement does not work.

Winning >>> loosing but getting sth.

What your system would encourage is groups of AP farmers not actually retaking any keeps but trying to kill the overwhelming numbers of the dominant faction due to said bonuses.
Bonuses don´t work because they only attract the players that want to play underdog anyways.

svartorn

Every time is prime time for someone else.

Agrippa_Invisus

svartorn wrote: »

Every time is prime time for someone else.

Exactly. It's not a matter of the time, it's a matter of getting people to unstack from a singular faction.

The clock doesn't matter. The populations do.

Ranger209

svartorn wrote: »

Every time is prime time for someone else.

Unfortunately some peoples prime time amounts to very few people online at some of those prime times.
When it's beer:30 in the middle of the pacific ocean there aren't many people participating.

Vapirko

Sharee wrote: »

I still think the best solution is to just remove any rewards for nightcapping.

Make it so that at a significant population disparity, scoring ticks stop, emperors cannot be crowned, scrolls cannot be picked up, and capturing structures does not give any AP.

They can still cap the whole map unopposed, it just won't help them to win the campaign anymore because the above will stay in effect until there actually is opposition present, at which point they will have already lost all the ill-gotten gains.

And kill pvp for players from AU and Asia?

Sharee

Vapirko wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

I still think the best solution is to just remove any rewards for nightcapping.

Make it so that at a significant population disparity, scoring ticks stop, emperors cannot be crowned, scrolls cannot be picked up, and capturing structures does not give any AP.

They can still cap the whole map unopposed, it just won't help them to win the campaign anymore because the above will stay in effect until there actually is opposition present, at which point they will have already lost all the ill-gotten gains.

And kill pvp for players from AU and Asia?

When all players are piled on the same side, there is no pvp to kill.

GeorgeBlack

@Ranger209
I like that you see the need to address downtime capping.
Can you address the issue of Campaign points?

GeorgeBlack

kuro-dono wrote: »

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Lord_Hev wrote: »

The only fix for "map capping low pop hours" is to foster and encourage a healthy around-the-clock world wide population to play on a given server.

Exactly this. People simply live in different areas, have different schedules, play at all different times.

If you feel like your faction doesn't have enough people late at night, instead of requesting some arbritrary mechanic to penalize night owls, why not simply make a guild and recruit more Oceanic and PST players?

that sort of selfish and entitled attitude is why so many ppl turn away from pvp and why we feel we being neclected by zenimax. its very bothersome to help us when we act like *** and abuse game mechanics/exploit and harash/grief and troll people 24/7 7 day a week. not everyone does, but ppl seems to be lacking common sense and BADLY.

this is similar problem to that where ppl aswell think its OKAY when its not> i go out to pub with my 3 friend, we chat bit, then suddenly everyone except me has their phone out and they roam facebook and taking pictures of themselfs and maybe one group photo. so much fun.... NOT.

Not sure about the pub scenario, but I think that you are against the selfish people that argue that it is fair to determine the Campaign winner by capping the map when there is no resistance. I don't play on a good timezone for either EU or NA. I don't think that my downtime guild should win the campaign. It's not fair to THE GAME

kuro-dono

Sharee wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

I still think the best solution is to just remove any rewards for nightcapping.

Make it so that at a significant population disparity, scoring ticks stop, emperors cannot be crowned, scrolls cannot be picked up, and capturing structures does not give any AP.

They can still cap the whole map unopposed, it just won't help them to win the campaign anymore because the above will stay in effect until there actually is opposition present, at which point they will have already lost all the ill-gotten gains.

And kill pvp for players from AU and Asia?

When all players are piled on the same side, there is no pvp to kill.

I FIND IT FUNNY, that players think pvp dies when you cant score for your faction or make emperors if there was no point gain or emperor making possibility. ppl clean map one color to get great benefits for themselfs. increased critical, increased dmg, more resistance. its just hidden agenda protecting when ppl claim pvp would die.

would pvp seriously ( lol ) die if scoring / emperor making got disabled when other factions have gone to sleep?

from PC EU point of view, we got 2 campaigns like that right now> one where bananas do that to other factions and one where covenant does this to other factions. its not fun when covenants are top of the leaderboard miles ahead of everyone else as i am covenant myself, i log in, i see map, i go "eww oh well i go roleplay then somewhere on tamriel."

doesnt really help either that there are certain type of raids that could dominate the whole map with ease on their own but instead they spend their time farming scrubs.

Ranger209

GeorgeBlack wrote: »

@Ranger209
I like that you see the need to address downtime capping.
Can you address the issue of Campaign points?

In keeping with the theme of night capping to gain ridiculous amounts of Campaign Points for doing nothing after map is capped they could rather than turn off certain things when population dwindles, as stated above, they could scale the points earned per hour based on something like pvp deaths per hour. This way when all 3 alliances are pop locked you are scoring at a rate of 100% of what we now have but as it slides into 3 bars, 2 bars, 1 bar your alliance is gaining an ever smaller percentage of that per hour. I like basing it on pvp kills per hour or minute rather than flat out population levels. As the more pvp there is, then the bigger the alliance point gains can be achieved. So if people are running around sky shard hunting or questing it doesn't really impact the scoring just by them being there. People would have to participate in pvp to raise the percentage.

disintegr8

I am usually on the PS4 NA server between the hours 2am and 10am New York time, which is 4pm to midnight my time. I would resent any changes that might restrict my ability to access PVP or gain AP during my gaming time.

Someone getting an opportunity to play at 8pm their time should not be penalized because it is 5am in the servers home location and the server is quiet. I definitely should not be getting fewer rewards simply because I cannot play when everyone else is on.

Fundamentally it is still only a game and people need to stop taking it so seriously.

GeorgeBlack

Ranger209 wrote: »

GeorgeBlack wrote: »

@Ranger209
I like that you see the need to address downtime capping.
Can you address the issue of Campaign points?

In keeping with the theme of night capping to gain ridiculous amounts of Campaign Points for doing nothing after map is capped they could rather than turn off certain things when population dwindles, as stated above, they could scale the points earned per hour based on something like pvp deaths per hour. This way when all 3 alliances are pop locked you are scoring at a rate of 100% of what we now have but as it slides into 3 bars, 2 bars, 1 bar your alliance is gaining an ever smaller percentage of that per hour. I like basing it on pvp kills per hour or minute rather than flat out population levels. As the more pvp there is, then the bigger the alliance point gains can be achieved. So if people are running around sky shard hunting or questing it doesn't really impact the scoring just by them being there. People would have to participate in pvp to raise the percentage.

Very good ideas