Night Capping and Score Modification

Ranger209

One simple way to reduce the impact that night capping has on the score in Cyrodiil would be to make the objectives worth 10 points a piece instead of 1 point a piece.
They would be worth this amount of points when all factions were pop locked. Every bar under all 3 being pop locked would reduce the value by 10 %.
So we will say all 3 pop locked has a value of 12 bars (4 bars per faction) and no one on has a value of 3 bars (1 bar per faction).
Scoring weight would be thus
12 bars 100%
11 bars 90%
10 bars 80%
9 bars 70%
8 bars 60%
7 bars 50%
6 bars 40%
5 bars 30%
4 bars 20%
3 bars 10%
While it would not stop night capping it would reduce the effect of night capping on the score.

VaranisArano

What you call night-capping, some people call day-time play. Given that, say, the PC/NA servers serve players at all times of the day, "night-capping" is simply a fact of life when people can play at any time of the day. I've logged onto PC/NA Trueflame at 1:00 AM for me in the middle of night and found a group picking up PUGs and having good fights.

On the less populated servers like Shor, its always been a matter of which faction has the most people on at any given time, which the specific time of day or night has little to do with correcting a population imbalance.

A different question might be: why should the servers favor the most populated time zones?

IxSTALKERxI

Yeah I agree with your proposed solution, it was a topic that was discussed in the Cyrodiil feedback group. Another way would be modifying the score evaluation timer.

Lock pop - score evaluates every 15 minutes.
1 bar pop - score evaluates every 60 minutes.

Sever would simply check the server pop at each score evaluation and adjust the time for the next score evaluation accordingly.

VaranisArano wrote: »

What you call night-capping, some people call day-time play. Given that, say, the PC/NA servers serve players at all times of the day, "night-capping" is simply a fact of life when people can play at any time of the day. I've logged onto PC/NA Trueflame at 1:00 AM for me in the middle of night and found a group picking up PUGs and having good fights.

On the less populated servers like Shor, its always been a matter of which faction has the most people on at any given time, which the specific time of day or night has little to do with correcting a population imbalance.

A different question might be: why should the servers favor the most populated time zones?

'Night capping' was a poor choice of words by the OP. Best to look past the whole time zone/nightcap debate thing and just view it as a way to balance during times when the server is less populated.

The reason why this is a good idea is the general trend is: The less populated a campaign becomes, the more imbalanced it becomes.

Kram8ion

is night capping the same as flat earthing?

geonsocal

Kram8ion wrote: »

is night capping the same as flat earthing?

brilliant

Vilestride

I have to disagree. In essence you're saying the work people do in 'just not American prime time' is worth less than it is during.

I understand the issues around imbalance but this is not the fix.

It would be better to have it based off how even the bars are rather than how many all around. But the current low pop bonus already kind of does this and does not work.

SirAndy

How do you know it's not pop-locked when you're asleep?

You do realize that your night is someone else's prime time, yes?

IxSTALKERxI

Vilestride wrote: »

I have to disagree. In essence you're saying the work people do in 'just not American prime time' is worth less than it is during.

I understand the issues around imbalance but this is not the fix.

It would be better to have it based off how even the bars are rather than how many all around. But the current low pop bonus already kind of does this and does not work.

Yeah true - would be good to do it based on how even the bars are. I don't like how the current low pop bonus functions and I think it should be replaced, it doesn't even do anything half the time, and when it does it just makes everything worse. I would like to see more AP rewarded for outnumbered side to. The current AP bonus has the same problem, it doesn't work very well.

Gilliamtherogue

I don't think tethering it to the overall activity of the map is the best idea. Population doesn't mean good fights can't go on. 40 players fighting between a keep doesn't mean a campaign is pop locked, but a good fight is still happening. Instead of tethering the score system to campaign population, why not have scoring be adjusted by the number of active players engaged in PvP combat when objectives are met?

Take a keep with pure PvDoor? Only 50% of the points, sorry!

Take a keep with ~5 combating players? 100%!

Take a keep with 10v10+, 150% (bonus modifiers to larger scale fights, you fought through lag, you deserve a pat on the back for stomaching that [snip]).

Numbers are obviously subject to balancing, but this diminishes scoring to people who intentionally avoid real PvP combat (which could fall under OP's cries of "night capping"), while also incentivizing real fights between factions, and even multiple factions fighting at once.

Also capping the bonus modifier to a hard limit that is ~50 players (in total) would help incentivize zergs spreading around to maximize on their faction's score, instead of all fighting at the same keep for one massive bonus.

[Edited to remove profanity]

gabriebe

Every faction has an equal opportunity to play at night...

fastolfv_ESO

hes calling primetime the largest populated time and nightcapping based on the servers time chill aussies lol his proposed score changes would effect population imbalances not your time to effect the map unless you play at a time only your side has a presence. If theres a time where 2 sides are 1 bar and ones 3-locked then yes it should effect scoring less, why bother coming out if every day you look at the score and see its impossible to compete because of population imbalances during non peak hours

Maryal

Although there are alliance objectives to play in Cyrodiil, whether or not this actually happens on any given day (or even time of the day) depends on how many people prefer to farm AP at the bridge. Sometimes alliance objectives aren't played (or only given token attention) because there has been a cross-faction agreement between guilds involved in emperorship farming.

Even when enough people in your alliance are playing the objectives and your faction is finally making progress, you just never know when one of those rather large emperorship pushing guilds will drop in out of nowhere and change the color of the map in less than an hour.

emperorship farming/pushing - see spoiler

emperorship farming is 2-fold ... it includes helping someone farm enough AP points to rank 1st place, and once this has been accomplished, then there is a concentrated effort to turn the necessary keeps so the person can be crowned.

Wouldn't a cross-faction agreement to 'not interfere' be rather obvious?
Not always. The members of the guild that agreed to not oppose or minimally oppose the other could do things like:
--> park toon in keep ... takes up space /helps to pop lock their faction's campaign
--> divert their own faction's forces to seize a 'non-objective' keep ... this minimizes the rest of the faction's ability to defend objective keeps that come under attack
--> encourage AP farming at the bridge (diverts attention)

I'm NOT saying that these things are always done to covertly help the other side, just that they can be. Sometimes you park your toon because you need to eat, answer the phone, etc., Sometimes you decide to take a non-objective keep to divert the opposing side's forces, making it easier for your own faction to seize an 'objective' keep. Sometimes you farm AP at the bridge because a.) it's good AP, and b.) there's nothing much else going on, and c.) there are times when it can actually be a lot of fun.

** objective keeps = keeps in the emperor circle + keeps pertinent to scroll gates opening/closing

emperorship pushing is when the person getting help already has the AP lead in their faction... the help is in the form of a 'push' ... a concentrated effort to turn all the necessary keeps as quickly as possible. You generally don't have cross-faction agreements going on in an emperorship push. These 'pushes' typically include a rather large group of players working together, therefore, their appearance in Cyrodiil often occurs when their faction's campaign is not pop locked.

Qbiken

SirAndy wrote: »

How do you know it's not pop-locked when you're asleep?

You do realize that your night is someone else's prime time, yes?

Thank you, someone finally said it

Maryal

SirAndy wrote: »

How do you know it's not pop-locked when you're asleep?

You do realize that your night is someone else's prime time, yes?

LOL yes! I work at night (10pm to 6 am) and sleep during the day .. making 12 noon "in the middle of the night" for people like me.

Vapirko

I think a population based score evaluation is a great idea. Doesn’t matter if you win by one point or 5k pts, so theoretically that would be a way for everyone to help no matter what time of day while still controlling night caps takeovers. Good idea.

Ranger209

SirAndy wrote: »

How do you know it's not pop-locked when you're asleep?

You do realize that your night is someone else's prime time, yes?

How do you know you don't crap your bed when you're asleep? You check in the morning and if you don't find a turd you're ok.
I have played round the clock and have seen what it is like at all hours of the day. You can see trends shall we say. I played both Vivec and Sotha Sil up until 2 months ago where I have gone strictly Vivec. I am straight up DC no faction swapping. The reason I quit playing Sotha Sil was the crazy score imbalance that DC, yes my DC, was able to achieve by running the table every night when they were unopposed. Things like that ruin Cyrodiil for anyone who cares about the alliance war in Cyrodill and doesn't see it as some theme park pvp playground. I now see this happening on Vivec to a lesser degree.

Prime time is not a term that is individual based, it is a term that is collectively based on the population. Prime time TV for instance is the time slot that the most viewers watch TV, not the time that you or I or some other individual watches. In this game, however, I will give you that if there are multiple windows of time that are pop locked, separated by windows of time which are not, then there could be more than 1 prime time.

Ranger209

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

I don't think tethering it to the overall activity of the map is the best idea. Population doesn't mean good fights can't go on. 40 players fighting between a keep doesn't mean a campaign is pop locked, but a good fight is still happening. Instead of tethering the score system to campaign population, why not have scoring be adjusted by the number of active players engaged in PvP combat when objectives are met?

Take a keep with pure PvDoor? Only 50% of the points, sorry!

Take a keep with ~5 combating players? 100%!

Take a keep with 10v10+, 150% (bonus modifiers to larger scale fights, you fought through lag, you deserve a pat on the back for stomaching that [snip]).

Numbers are obviously subject to balancing, but this diminishes scoring to people who intentionally avoid real PvP combat (which could fall under OP's cries of "night capping"), while also incentivizing real fights between factions, and even multiple factions fighting at once.

Also capping the bonus modifier to a hard limit that is ~50 players (in total) would help incentivize zergs spreading around to maximize on their faction's score, instead of all fighting at the same keep for one massive bonus.

This is a great idea for how AP could work on a microcosmic level as pertains to individual battles. I love it. Unfortunately how it relates to the hourly tick and the overall score is marginalized as 3 people could come in right behind you and drop down 9 siege to pvdoor that keep down in 10 minutes to make the tick. From the standpoint of the scoring system your honorable victory has been wiped clean by 3 guys and their siege equipment. Keeps flip way too fast in the Cyrodiil's current state, but that's another story.

The less population there is the more pvdooring there is. If all 3 factions have 2 bars of population, then technically that is balanced. Unfortunately there are more keeps unattended than if all 3 were balanced and pop locked so more pvdooring occurs. If 1 faction is at 3 bars and the other 2 factions are at 2 bars it could still be a struggle for the 1 faction to advance if the other 2 factions ignore each other and focus on the pop locked faction. If they decide to engage each other, which will probably then include some pvdooring, then the more populated faction is at an advantage. If it is 2 v 1 v 1, or 3 v 1 v 1 pvdooring will be rampant as there just isn't enough population to prevent it.

[Edited for quote]

Ranger209

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

Also capping the bonus modifier to a hard limit that is ~50 players (in total) would help incentivize zergs spreading around to maximize on their faction's score, instead of all fighting at the same keep for one massive bonus.

Just really like this idea, and want to add to it that you could go as far as that once it exceeds that limit the reward would degrade at twice the rate. So it peaks at 50 but having 60 or 30 would be the same reward 70 or 10 would be the same reward. This would doubly incentivize zergs to spread out. Might have to have faction limits rather than overall though to even numbers up if doing it this way.

VaranisArano

Playing in Cyrodiil is like herding cats. There are many objectives and each player being a zone general unto him/herself has different ideas about when to push different objectives.

Now is the moment for an emp push! No, now we should focus on score! No, I want AP! No, play the map, you fools! Get the home keeps back! Capture the scrolls! Defend the scrolls! Farm Alessia Bridge!

Abandon all hope to spreading out the zergs, folks. The zerg goes to whatever objective makes the most sense to it at the time.

As for the low population thing, I can't figure out a solution that doesn't punish people for playing at a time when there are simply less people on. Why should a coordinated group that happens to be the only large force on the map get punished by having their campaign contributions diminished just because the other one or two factions don't have enough players on to stop them? There are tactics small groups can use to run rings around those large groups or go resource capping to make back points - I've done both.

Finally, not all PVDooring is done on empty campaigns. Think about it. On a busy campaign like Vivec, does it make more sense to fight on a keep you know is well-defended, or to focus on a strategic keep that faction didn't defend? If you do it right, you've taken the keep before the enemy shows up to defend - and that's just smart tactics.

Beardimus

They problem is as others have said its a global, Round the clock game. Whilst you feel its a devious enemy night calling it could be an australian guild just play that alliance. What can they do.

That said DC on Xbox EU love a night cap on Scourge ;p

LarsS

The point is that anyones effort should have equal impact on the campaign. Lets take PC EU Vivec which is the most populated server on PC in Europe. In the morning all are at one bars but there is more AD around caping the map. When more peoples come on the balance is restored, but the campaign is won during the time when few are online. That is not fair to those who fight when the population is high and it scares people avay from pvp. Thus the campaign points should be weighted by the number of players online, like suggested in this thread.

VaranisArano

LarsS wrote: »

The point is that anyones effort should have equal impact on the campaign. Lets take PC EU Vivec which is the most populated server on PC in Europe. In the morning all are at one bars but there is more AD around caping the map. When more peoples come on the balance is restored, but the campaign is won during the time when few are online. That is not fair to those who fight when the population is high and it scares people avay from pvp. Thus the campaign points should be weighted by the number of players online, like suggested in this thread.

Or, everyone should have equal impact on the campaign. Players who play when there are few people online should not have their efforts for the faction diminished simply because they don't live in the most populated time zones or can't play at the same time as the majority of the faction.

Do you really see people playing the game when they can and making gains for their faction when fewer players are on overall as somehow unfair to people who can only play when the majority of their faction can play?

Currently, everyone's contributions at any time of the day are equal. The servers don't turn off after NA or EU primetime is done. Gameplay continues for 24 hrs and everyone's contributions, whether made at 12 AM or 12PM, counts for exactly the same.

The campaigns run 24 hrs over 7 to 30 days. If your faction can muster a prime time population, a reasonable daytime population, and not very much at night...there's your problem. Its your faction population, not the fact that the enemy actually has players on the field at all times of day.

LarsS

No the contribution are not equal as it is today. Those few who can play early on Vivec has a much bigger impact on the outcome than those who play when the server is full. Try to cap the map when all alliances are locked you cant. I have done some stats on Vivec while the server is locked and it shows that the point gain is very simmilar for all alliances at that time. Each campaign on Vivec has for more than a year been won due to which alliance have most people online early during the day. Typically the winning alliance have perhaps 10-20 online most mornings while you may find perhaps 5-10 in the next biggest alliance. Thus those 10-20 can cap the map and win the campaign, that is not fair to the rest of the players and will in the long run kill pvp. I understand that some only can play at those times thats ok, but the campaign outcome should be based on all players efforts.

pzschrek

VaranisArano wrote: »

A different question might be: why should the servers favor the most populated time zones?

Because that's the time zones where I play!

Seriously though, you watch these big oceanic zerg balls roll in right as you are getting ready to log off and go to bed and it's depressing.

I've seen that on Shor in my limited experience. Depending on the time of day the map is all one or all the other color.

LarsS wrote: »

the campaign is won during the time when few are online.

YES. This is true even on Vivec I think, if you read "few" as "times when everyone isn't pop locked"



Also, that low pop bonus. It sucks to play Sotha's mostly yellow map...EP still has pop to resist a bit, but since hardly any DC show up to fight, they pull ahead simply by doing nothing due to low pop score bonus.

pzschrek

Edit: double post

VaranisArano

Contribution is equal. Same amount of points for resources, keeps, and scrolls no matter what time of day you log on.

Now, do they have a bigger impact simply because the other factions have less players? Yeah. Have you ever seen what happens when a PC/NA Vivec guild drops into a less-populated campaign like Shor? That guild starts taking the map, because they have more players and only some effective opposition.

A Cyrodiil campaign is a three-way tug-of-war. At prime time, all factions have roughly equal numbers, so the score doesn't move much one way or another. Over "night", the population drops, so the faction that has more people on is going to get a higher score. In a lower population, each person makes a greater difference. We agree on that much.

Where we don't agree is that the people who log on at "primetime" are somehow more important or less important to the faction than the few who still compete in the emptier hours. Does it suck to have your amazing accomplishments during primetime feel like they count for nothing because of players playing when you were sleeping or working? Yeah, sometimes it does. What's the solution though - tell them to stop playing or have their contributions count for less because you and your faction buddies couldn't play ball?

Campaigns aren't won or lost in primetime, I agree. The problem I have with the solutions I see here are that all of them penalize players who play at times of less population in order to "equalize" contributions. Primetime is 3-4 hours a day in a 24-hr, 7 to 30 day campaign. Why should those 3-4 hours get any more weight in the campaign than the other 20 hrs when there are players playing, though not in massive numbers?

Rickter

i dont mind oceanic guilds pvping at oceanic prime time. thats totally understandable, reasonable and expected.

I just wish my faction had an oceanic timezone guild too

LarsS

Let me give you some numbers then, regarding PC EU Vivec. In the morning a few mostly AD players, produce an advantage for their alliance of some 80+ points per hour, this lasts for 3-4 hours perhaps. At prime time you get statistically more like 5 points per hour. Dont think that is fair! The real problem is however that most player who try pvp soon give up and leave, since they realises that they cant influence the outcome.

Defilted

OP I do not understand

You play during the "Day" in your time zone. Another person is playing during the "Day" in their time zone. Because these time zones can be drastically different. You are purposing that those people are penalized?


Please stop and think about what you are asking.

SirAndy

Ranger209 wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

How do you know it's not pop-locked when you're asleep?
You do realize that your night is someone else's prime time, yes?

How do you know you don't crap your bed when you're asleep? You check in the morning and if you don't find a turd you're ok.
I have played round the clock and have seen what it is like at all hours of the day. You can see trends shall we say. I played both Vivec and Sotha Sil up until 2 months ago where I have gone strictly Vivec. I am straight up DC no faction swapping. The reason I quit playing Sotha Sil was the crazy score imbalance that DC, yes my DC, was able to achieve by running the table every night when they were unopposed. Things like that ruin Cyrodiil for anyone who cares about the alliance war in Cyrodill and doesn't see it as some theme park pvp playground. I now see this happening on Vivec to a lesser degree.

Prime time is not a term that is individual based, it is a term that is collectively based on the population. Prime time TV for instance is the time slot that the most viewers watch TV, not the time that you or I or some other individual watches. In this game, however, I will give you that if there are multiple windows of time that are pop locked, separated by windows of time which are not, then there could be more than 1 prime time.

TL:DR
You want nobody else to play on your campaign when you're asleep because it wouldn't be fair to you. Got it!

VaranisArano

LarsS wrote: »

Let me give you some numbers then, regarding PC EU Vivec. In the morning a few mostly AD players, produce an advantage for their alliance of some 80+ points per hour, this lasts for 3-4 hours perhaps. At prime time you get statistically more like 5 points per hour. Dont think that is fair! The real problem is however that most player who try pvp soon give up and leave, since they realises that they cant influence the outcome.

So, those AD players who are able to do that much because EP and DC can't scrounge up enough players to stop them should be penalized for the lack of EP and DC?

Whereas the AD players during primetime who can't accomplish so much because those EP and DC players do have the numbers to stop them should get brownie points for facing a lot of enemy players?

Basically, you want the contributions of primetime players to count for more despite the fact that primetime players are playing for less time. And you want the contributions of players during low-pop times to count for less, even those are more hours on the servers. That's not equal at all. You just want certain things to count for more - grading Cyrodiil on a curve, as it were.

Finally, I don't know about you, but I play PVP in Cyrodiil for fun first, my group second, and the faction third...and the campaign score fourth. Its hard to worry about the campaign score on a day-to-day basis in a 30-day campaign, and I realize that the campaign score is my entire faction, low-pop-time players included, not just my totally amazing and definitely crucial efforts for the faction during the few hours that I play every week.