ZOS: suggestion to balance faction access to Cyrodiil

AlanTheStarLord

ZOS had a plan to boost interest in PvP with the Midyear Mayhem event. I imagine it worked pretty well. I didn't have any interest before, whereas now I do. It was great! But I've noticed something. At various times there seems to be quite an imbalance with faction numbers. I jump into Cyrodiil at night with my AD character and I see DC owns the map because there's no AD or EP players around. I don't know why there's this cycle, but it's quite frustrating.

Currently there's no point doing PvP at all during these conditions. Since there's few AD players, there's no point playing an AD or EP character because I'll just get killed all the time with the hundreds of DC players running around (during my peak AU time). There's no chance of decent AP gain. And if I was to play a DC character, there's still no chance of any decent AP gain because they already own everything and there's no AD or EP players around to fight or take keeps from. So there's simply no point playing in Cyrodiil under these conditions, which is reflected by people just not worrying about it when one faction dominates this way.

I've asked people about it.

"It's the cycle. It's always been like this. It's the way things are."

I don't accept that. Things are always changing, and I think there needs to be change to this too. So I have a suggestion.

Implement load balancing based on the faction with the smallest number of participants with maybe a 50% allowance. E.g. If there's only 20 AD players on, then only 30 DC or EP players can be on too - the other 200 DC players go into a queue to wait for when they can enter too . When the smallest faction/s gets more players logging in, the load balancing will allow the bigger faction to get more logging in too.

This would encourage players to have PvP characters in multiple factions. It would allow players to experience more PvP fights and achievements. It would create a fairer, more balanced approach to PvP that would allow better and more interesting campaigns at any time of the day, regardless of timezone. It would prevent the current boring and unfair cycles of one faction dominating Cyrodiil simply because there's 500 of them vs 20. It would make PvP more interesting for more people.

I don't know which ZOS representatives to tag in this discussion to get them to see and consider this suggestion, so maybe someone else could do that for me? Thanks

Malic

A universal truism I have been loath to accept but recently have had too is, apathy always wins.

Anlace

I'd love to see this happen. Single-color maps suck for everybody. Players have suggested this very solution before, but I've never seen a response. I get the sense they don't understand quite how their own system works and aren't excited to tinker with it.

disintegr8

I've been loathe to advocate for anything that restricts my access to PVP when I want to play. This is because I am in Australia, playing on the NA server, so usually it is well after midnight in t he US that I get to play. I do not want to be told I can't go into PVP, or have to queue, simply because most players in the US are sleeping.

Unfortunately I witnessed what you described too frequently during this event and it does make playing PVP very frustrating. Two campaigns I played in were each 'owned' by different alliances and any attempt to try and take their keeps or defend your remaining keeps simply gets wiped out.

Even if you are on the alliance that owns the map, there is no fun knowing that you are going to take whatever you try and take purely because you outnumber the opposition. Sure, there is good AP and people like winning, but where is the fun or the challenge?

I like the 'simplicity' of your balancing proposal, you should not be stopped from having more players than the other factions, just stopped from having too many more. If they had more bars on the population meters, it could be that no faction could have something like only 1 bar more than their nearest populated alliance.

AlanTheStarLord

It might be 'simple' as a proposal, but I wonder how simple it would be to implement. It'd be awesome if they could

mook-eb16_ESO

If keeps had fixed offensive tick based on the number of actual players defending; the amount of ap could be balanced in favour of gaining more reward for taking a keep with less players. while this is pretty much already the case for defensive rewards this isn't the case for offensive rewards and would go along way to breaking up zerg behaviour in favour of more balanced play.

disintegr8

mook-eb16_ESO wrote: »

If keeps had fixed offensive tick based on the number of actual players defending; the amount of ap could be balanced in favour of gaining more reward for taking a keep with less players. while this is pretty much already the case for defensive rewards this isn't the case for offensive rewards and would go along way to breaking up zerg behaviour in favour of more balanced play.

This gives the defending side the option of deserting keeps they know are coming under attack to manipulate how much AP people get.

Increasing/decreasing AP gain based on alliance population could be fairer, so that if you had a population that could defend a keep and chose not to do so, you would be penalized instead of the attackers. They would have to do something to exclude people in IC.

I'd like to see changes made to encourage defending keeps/resources rather than the constant 'flipping' we see today.

dem0n1k

If the whole map is one colour.. then you gotsta go guerrilla. Take a resource then move away from it... when the zerg rolls up let them take it back then gank any stragglers after the zerg has left. Then retake or move to another.

It seems like a good idea to lock faction populations till it's you that are locked out of your home campaign. Especially if there is like 10 of each enemy faction playing & 20 of your faction standing around in your bases examining their navel lint.

kargen27

dem0n1k wrote: »

If the whole map is one colour.. then you gotsta go guerrilla. Take a resource then move away from it... when the zerg rolls up let them take it back then gank any stragglers after the zerg has left. Then retake or move to another.

It seems like a good idea to lock faction populations till it's you that are locked out of your home campaign. Especially if there is like 10 of each enemy faction playing & 20 of your faction standing around in your bases examining their navel lint.

Also have to throw into the mix what happens when things are balanced then a guild decides they are finished for the night and hop off. Do you kick players to make things even? Speaking of guilds PvP guilds usually have set times and days for when they do their organized PvPing. The big guilds pretty much know when the others are likely to be on. Sometimes events are planned around this be it trying to push Emp, spoiling another guilds push for Emp or just farming a choke point.

Also need to consider the sewers and the city are counted in the population numbers. A mid-sized to large group pushing to the center of the sewers would really wreck the balance.

And most of us know if this were put in place there are guilds out there that would abuse it (easily) when wanting to crown an Emp.

I agree with dem0n1k not such a good idea when you start looking at the consequences of locking population based on balance.

AlanTheStarLord

I would think that if there's a sudden drop in a single faction's numbers, there wouldn't be any need to suddenly kick out players in other factions. It's just that the load balancing wouldn't allow new players to join until attrition allows that

AlanTheStarLord

I'd still like to tag ZOS representatives for this discussion. Does anyone have any suggestions on who should see this?