Alliance switchers/traitors

Raudgrani

Been playing in Cyrodiil a lot more than I used to do, and it have opened my eyes to some problems that has to do with really poor game design.

In my opinion, we shouldn't be able to play in the same campaign with different alliance characters. Yes, I know this has probably been gone through and is a well known probalem. But seriously? WTF?
I won't go on with other problems, like obvious traitors - and people cooperating across alliances. Like, if you are in sneak and spot about 10 enemies, and suddenly realize there's an "ally" standing among them in all friendliness. Suddenly this "ally" starts firing arrows at you, and the enemies comes looking for you. Or, the same kind of constellations taking flags back and forth in Imperial City, or cooperating in low populated campaigns to gain emperor title and what not. I was actually threatened and insulted by some french guys a couple of weekends ago, because I was part of putting an end to their emperor endeavors in Shor.
Nor will I rant about the people taking scrolls, and running it to the enemy - because they are really on their side. I and several other's have reported what they do several times, but ZOS doesn't care. And no, it shouldn't be seen as "roleplaying" or "part of the game". In real life you can kill traitors. The fact that you can't kill allies is very frustrating in these cases.

But I do rant about this. I mean, over the last few days I've had the "pleasure" to see top players from other alliances walking among my own, just passively to gain some AP's instead of getting their a**es kicked all the time. They don't help fighting, resurrect or anything else, just wait for "the tick" while taking keeps etc. (of course they are telling their friends everything that's going on, where certain enemy players are etc.). Sure these people lack any kind of honor and pride, but that's not a crime. The problem is poor thinking, when allowing people to actually be in the same campaign with different alliance characters. As soon as their friends come online, or when the tide simply turns - they switch back to their other character. Fix this. It's stupid, and shouldn't be possible.

Furthermore, this leads to a lot of unnecessary conflicts between actual people. People get hate massages, are called out as traitors in zone chat and so on. It causes a quite harsh and unfriendly jagon that scares quite some people away from PVP. Some people are actually bullied, because they switched alliance and what not. Maybe rightfully so (if bullying can ever be "right"), but you could still easily avoid all this, by limiting your participation in Cyrodiil to one alliance per campaign. At the end of every campaign, you'd be free to switch to whatever alliance when you enter the new one. As simple as that.

Scamh

Raudgrani wrote: »

People get hate massages

well that doesn't sound so bad

Alpheu5

Anybody that PvPs on more than 3 max level characters would run out of campaigns to home on. Then what?

Turelus

Alpheu5 wrote: »

Anybody that PvPs on more than 3 max level characters would run out of campaigns to home on. Then what?

Just lock accounts to a faction per campaign. You join Vivec for a season as DC, have to pay the switch cost in AP or wait for the season end to be an EP/AD player on that campaign.
Your guest campaign can however be a different alliance.

Probably a nightmare for them to code, but would solve most of the issues we see now.

IcyDeadPeople

Raudgrani wrote: »

In my opinion, we shouldn't be able to play in the same campaign with different alliance characters.

On PC NA, there is only one campaign that is fairly active. Considering you get transmute crystals from every character, you are going to see a lot more people spending at least a little time in PVP on all their characters in Vivec.

No other place to go and if you mainly PVP on one faction, there is no way to switch those other characters to your main faction.

zyk

Turelus wrote: »

Alpheu5 wrote: »

Anybody that PvPs on more than 3 max level characters would run out of campaigns to home on. Then what?

Just lock accounts to a faction per campaign. You join Vivec for a season as DC, have to pay the switch cost in AP or wait for the season end to be an EP/AD player on that campaign.
Your guest campaign can however be a different alliance.

Probably a nightmare for them to code, but would solve most of the issues we see now.

It would be rudimentary to code and implement something like this.

Merlin13KAGL

Alpheu5 wrote: »

Anybody that PvPs on more than 3 max level characters would run out of campaigns to home on. Then what?

They'd simply have a common home campaign. That is, all your DC alts would be in DC only campaigns (as far as your account is concerned), your AD in AD only, etc.

It doesn't mean you could have two different characters of the same Alliance restricted from PvP.

Turelus

zyk wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Alpheu5 wrote: »

Anybody that PvPs on more than 3 max level characters would run out of campaigns to home on. Then what?

Just lock accounts to a faction per campaign. You join Vivec for a season as DC, have to pay the switch cost in AP or wait for the season end to be an EP/AD player on that campaign.
Your guest campaign can however be a different alliance.

Probably a nightmare for them to code, but would solve most of the issues we see now.

It would be rudimentary to code and implement something like this.

But, we don't know what the ZOS code looks like or how much work it would be to do this.

Gilvoth

your account should be one campaign. people should not be allowed to campaign multiple.

Qbiken

I´ve never seen the problem with alliance swapping. It´s not like it´s ruining the overall PvP experience anyway.

Turelus

Qbiken wrote: »

I´ve never seen the problem with alliance swapping. It´s not like it´s ruining the overall PvP experience anyway.

Personally I felt Cyrodiil was a better place when it was locked. Yes there was a work around for it, but at least you didn't get rewards on every character and every faction.

People chose a side and battled for it, the issue of population balance was the number of campaigns and people claiming one for each faction, not the being unable to switch sides/characters.

Agrippa_Invisus

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Raudgrani wrote: »

In my opinion, we shouldn't be able to play in the same campaign with different alliance characters.

On PC NA, there is only one campaign that is fairly active. Considering you get transmute crystals from every character, you are going to see a lot more people spending at least a little time in PVP on all their characters in Vivec.

No other place to go and if you mainly PVP on one faction, there is no way to switch those other characters to your main faction.

Log on with one toon, earn a bunch of bags.

Wait until you have time, then swap between each toon on your account and open a single bag each. You're guaranteed crystals out of the first bag every toon opens this way.

Has worked without fail for me so far. Don't need multiple PVP capable toons for this to work.

NyassaV

Less QQ more pew pew

Alpheu5

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Alpheu5 wrote: »

Anybody that PvPs on more than 3 max level characters would run out of campaigns to home on. Then what?

They'd simply have a common home campaign. That is, all your DC alts would be in DC only campaigns (as far as your account is concerned), your AD in AD only, etc.

It doesn't mean you could have two different characters of the same Alliance restricted from PvP.

Then one of your characters would inevitably be forced to home on a non-CP campaign. For some, that'd mean an alliance with no home campaign.

Dreyloch

There is almost no such thing as "Faction loyalty" with this game. Personally, I only play one faction in PvP. I know/knew plenty of people that play toons on other factions besides my own. It can be fun to meet them in battle as long as some of the stupid stuff like running scrolls to other factions isn't happening. It can also be healthy for the campaign. If EP(for example) is just overwhelming the other 2 factions with numbers, sometimes a guild will flip factions to make things a little more even. It's happened a few times.

I was in a guild that came from another faction and made all new toons on my faction. Some of this stems from power players that just want good...even...fights, and let the best group win. I've been away for awhile cause that guild group broke up. PvP in this game has too many technical and balance issues and many people just needed a break from the daily campaign grind.Best thing I can tell you OP is to try and set your emotions aside. I used to get crazy mad about alot of these things your bringing up. Have to take a breath, realize it's a game, and ZoS just isn't good enough to change it, and honestly, I don't think they really want to. PvP in ESO is never going to "Git Gud".

Montayva

Not gonna lie, me and my friends swap all the time. But we play in Shor. The population is very hit and miss. It’s no fun pvdooring while there is another organised raid on your faction, and zero opposition. So we switch to find fun fights. There has also been several attempts at groups taking a keep, and leaving it open to trade with the enemy. If we didn’t have the ability to swap to another faction to thwart the cheaters, who knows how much ap they would have racked up in their keep swapping.

I understand that people may use the faction swapping for bad intentions. But there’s also those that use it with good intentions.

Rickter

I personally do not like faction swapping. However, I agree with the points both Dreyloch and Montayva presented.

ultimately, and this is bare metal bottom line we're talking, I think the game would be much healthier locking factions. And even though there are a lot that have done good with it, the current system leaves too much room for abuse. In fact, 1 out of the 3 remaining campaigns, Sotha Sil, is completely and utterly out of control.

So we have an entire campaign, controlled by one guild, swapping back and forth, controlling emperor (because who cares about emperor anymore, right!?? /sarcasm), and literally running off the competition that dont want to have anything to do with it anymore.

That leaves Vivec and Shor. And Shor is a grab bag of beyond hit or miss. Ive heard it has gotten better but EP, as usual, is having a field day over there. And no i dont mean your group, Montayva. I meant the "new" EP.

Publius_Scipio

geonsocal

i'm a faction hopper...i have no desire to play my characters on dead campaigns, i want everyone on a 30 day map - cuz, it gives me time to rotate all 10 characters through the campaign and reach 100k AP (tier 3 rewards) for all...that's my playstyle...

however - if we did have faction locks per campaign, and, i was forced to go to 2 other maps - everyone else would also be forced to go to other maps - so - maybe those maps wouldn't be so dead...

although to be honest, with decreasing player pops - i think diluting the player pool is not such a good idea...that's from the perspective though of someone who likes larger AvAvA fights...

dotme

geonsocal wrote: »

i'm a faction hopper...i have no desire to play my characters on dead campaigns, i want everyone on a 30 day map - cuz, it gives me time to rotate all 10 characters through the campaign and reach 100k AP (tier 3 rewards) for all...that's my playstyle...

Perhaps it's time to toss out the "lore" book and change the colors in Cyrodiil.

So many threads about faction hopping and population imbalance... One-sided campaigns and hate-filled chats are not welcoming to at all for new PvP-ers. So maybe ZoS needs to drop the faction approach and go with Battlegrounds-style teams instead.

Pit Daemons (Green) Fire Drakes (Orange) or Storm Lords (Purple) would be the new colors in Cyrodiil.

You pick your color at the start of a campaign. All your alts are also that color when you PvP (until the campaign ends, of course). Guildmasters can post MOTDs about which team their guild will be playing for so their loyal members know in advance which color to select at the start of the new campaign. Of course, you'd have to have a full map reset and kick at the end of each campaign.

This probably (lol - definitely?) has drawbacks I haven't thought of, but is it a possible way forward with dwindling populations and campaigns? It would be a way to play every character in a 30 day campaign while still not allowing faction-hopping.

Now if there was also a fix for the population imbalance, PvP might actually be fun again...

jaws343

Raudgrani wrote: »

Nor will I rant about the people taking scrolls, and running it to the enemy - because they are really on their side. I and several other's have reported what they do several times, but ZOS doesn't care. And no, it shouldn't be seen as "roleplaying" or "part of the game". In real life you can kill traitors. The fact that you can't kill allies is very frustrating in these cases.

In all fairness, this is a sound strategy. Enemy scrolls in your home keeps are targets and objectives for that enemy. One of the best ways to avoid defending home keeps and remain on the offensive is to run a scroll to an enemies territory and force the other two factions to fight over it.

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

your account should be one campaign. people should not be allowed to campaign multiple.

Unless you don't have the any race any alliance add-on and want to play as different races. You cannot lock factions because not all players have this and it severely limits the amount of PVP a player could do or the availability of variety in character creation. Not everyone wants to be forced to choose between only 3 races because their account is now locked to a single faction.

Vilestride

Faction loyalty should be encouraged and incentivised but cannot be forced. Balance will always take precident. To many, faction loyalty would mean taking pride in seeing their faction push the others back to their gates all night while they dominate the score board. This is exponentially worse for the health of the game than a few 'traitors' here and there.

Agrippa_Invisus

Vilestride wrote: »

Faction loyalty should be encouraged and incentivised but cannot be forced. Balance will always take precident. To many, faction loyalty would mean taking pride in seeing their faction push the others back to their gates all night while they dominate the score board. This is exponentially worse for the health of the game than a few 'traitors' here and there.

Right now faction loyalty is only incentivized through the 3.3K gold reward for campaign loyalty and getting at least some play in every month in the same campaign with the same character.

It's pretty paltry and none of the campaign reward gold rewards have kept pace with the rate of inflation in game.

A little under 30K gold per month? Really? That's pocket change at this point in the game. There are plenty of players who have millions upon millions of gold now.

And the garbage that comes in RFTW hasn't been worth selling for more than pennies in a long time. I break most of it down because the mats are more valuable.

Gilvoth

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

this is good stuff, i would pay gold to see this used for faction multiple people who turncoat.

Joy_Division

Raudgrani wrote: »

People get hate massages, are called out as traitors in zone chat and so on. It causes a quite harsh and unfriendly jagon that scares quite some people away from PVP. Some people are actually bullied, because they switched alliance and what not. Maybe rightfully so (if bullying can ever be "right"), but you could still easily avoid all this, by limiting your participation in Cyrodiil to one alliance per campaign. At the end of every campaign, you'd be free to switch to whatever alliance when you enter the new one. As simple as that.

No. Just no.

Bullying is always always always unacceptable. Just by using the words "traitor" is more than tolerating this ugly behavior.
It's a game. Not real life. Not real war. The are no real stakes here to use such words, let alone countenance bullying.

I do nothing of the trash you are talking about and neither do most people who play multiple factions. Newsflash: your faction diehards are sitting on those walls waiting for the tick just like everyone else. And you can lock the factions all you want, players who have come to resepct each other who play different factions aren't all of a sudden going to start zerging each other down because that's what you think PvP should be all about.

The only people who think that people are multiple faction are bandwagon hoppers who jump to the winning side are people such as yourself who don't have a clue why we play different factions in the first place.

Here are some pictures so I can explain it so anyone who is 5 can understand:



This childish behavior of spamming forward camps was done was a diehard EP faction loyalist in an attempt to sabotage another diehard EP faction loyalist who was emperor. And you have the audacity to claim that crap like this happens because of people like myself can switch factions? No, this nonsense is done by the fanatics who see this game as real life war, who call people out as traitors and deem it acceptable to bully others simply because they do not share their fanaticism. I have ZERO desire to partake in such childish behavior. So once I saw what was happening I immediately logged off my EP character and onto my DC to help put an end to this crap and restore the campaign to some semblance of normalcy. If you lock factions, I'd have to log out and not even play because there are no other active campaigns.

And then there's this crap:



Not content to night cap emperor, EP sought to gate-camp DC and proceeded to do so.

And the "opposition"?



Pitiful. It was NOT the faction hoppers who were responsible for this. Oh, no. It was the EP die-hard faction loyalists who cheered and called loudly to roll DC back to the gates and take their scrolls to pay them back for some perceived "green alliance" nonsense. We multi-faction payers are not the problem. The die-hard fanatics who interpret every move by the other alliances as collusion caused by "traitors" and must be avenged are. We log off EP and to fight those fanatics who lustily cheer pushing an outnumbered faction to their gates, even though they'll deny it on these forums.

Before you point fingers and type up unsubstantiated nonsense about how people like myself are ruining the PvP experience, why don;t you take a look at the very people you are championing as paragons of what PvP ought to be all about.

Cadbury

Maybe they co

Joy_Division wrote: »

Raudgrani wrote: »

People get hate massages, are called out as traitors in zone chat and so on. It causes a quite harsh and unfriendly jagon that scares quite some people away from PVP. Some people are actually bullied, because they switched alliance and what not. Maybe rightfully so (if bullying can ever be "right"), but you could still easily avoid all this, by limiting your participation in Cyrodiil to one alliance per campaign. At the end of every campaign, you'd be free to switch to whatever alliance when you enter the new one. As simple as that.

No. Just no.

Bullying is always always always unacceptable. Just by using the words "traitor" is more than tolerating this ugly behavior.
It's a game. Not real life. Not real war. The are no real stakes here to use such words, let alone countenance bullying.

I do nothing of the trash you are talking about and neither do most people who play multiple factions. Newsflash: your faction diehards are sitting on those walls waiting for the tick just like everyone else. And you can lock the factions all you want, players who have come to resepct each other who play different factions aren't all of a sudden going to start zerging each other down because that's what you think PvP should be all about.

The only people who think that people are multiple faction are bandwagon hoppers who jump to the winning side are ignorant people such as yourself who don't have a clue why we play different factions in the first place.

Here are some pictures so I can explain it so anyone who is 5 can understand:



This childish behavior of spamming forward camps was done was a diehard EP faction loyalist in an attempt to sabotage another diehard EP faction loyalist who was emperor. And you have the audacity to claim that crap like this happens because of people like myself can switch factions? No, this nonsense is done by the fanatics who see this game as real life war, who call people out as traitors and deem it acceptable to bully others simply because they do not share their fanaticism. I have ZERO desire to partake in such childish behavior. So once I saw what was happening I immediately logged off my EP character and onto my DC to help put an end to this crap and restore the campaign to some semblance of normalcy. If you lock factions, I'd have to log out and not even play because there are no other active campaigns.

And then there's this crap:



Not content to night cap emperor, EP sought to gate-camp DC and proceeded to do so.

And the "opposition"?



Pitiful. It was NOT the faction hoppers who were responsible for this. Oh, no. It was the EP die-hard faction loyalists who cheered and called loudly to roll DC back to the gates and take their scrolls to pay them back for some perceived "green alliance" nonsense. We multi-faction payers are not the problem. The die-hard fanatics who interpret every move by the other alliances as collusion caused by "traitors" and must be avenged are. We log off EP and to fight those fanatics who lustily cheer pushing an outnumbered faction to their gates, even though they'll deny it on these forums.

Before you point fingers and type up unsubstantiated nonsense about how people like myself are ruining the PvP experience, why don;t you take a look at the very people you are championing as paragons of what PvP ought to be all about.

Vilestride

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

Faction loyalty should be encouraged and incentivised but cannot be forced. Balance will always take precident. To many, faction loyalty would mean taking pride in seeing their faction push the others back to their gates all night while they dominate the score board. This is exponentially worse for the health of the game than a few 'traitors' here and there.

Right now faction loyalty is only incentivized through the 3.3K gold reward for campaign loyalty and getting at least some play in every month in the same campaign with the same character.

It's pretty paltry and none of the campaign reward gold rewards have kept pace with the rate of inflation in game.

A little under 30K gold per month? Really? That's pocket change at this point in the game. There are plenty of players who have millions upon millions of gold now.

And the garbage that comes in RFTW hasn't been worth selling for more than pennies in a long time. I break most of it down because the mats are more valuable.

Yeah I feel you. And that's what I am getting at. The reward system would definitely have to change for this incentive to be worthwhile.

Also everything Joy said is pretty much on point.

Derra

Turelus wrote: »

Alpheu5 wrote: »

Anybody that PvPs on more than 3 max level characters would run out of campaigns to home on. Then what?

Just lock accounts to a faction per campaign. You join Vivec for a season as DC, have to pay the switch cost in AP or wait for the season end to be an EP/AD player on that campaign.
Your guest campaign can however be a different alliance.

Probably a nightmare for them to code, but would solve most of the issues we see now.

Not longer possible since the pvp population is too small to support enough campaigns. It´s just how it is now.

To be honest i think the 1 faction diehards are a lot worse for this games pvp health than faction hoppers are. Factions hoppers are not the reason why we see unicoloured maps even on vivec more and more these days.

Agrippa_Invisus

Vilestride wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

Faction loyalty should be encouraged and incentivised but cannot be forced. Balance will always take precident. To many, faction loyalty would mean taking pride in seeing their faction push the others back to their gates all night while they dominate the score board. This is exponentially worse for the health of the game than a few 'traitors' here and there.

Right now faction loyalty is only incentivized through the 3.3K gold reward for campaign loyalty and getting at least some play in every month in the same campaign with the same character.

It's pretty paltry and none of the campaign reward gold rewards have kept pace with the rate of inflation in game.

A little under 30K gold per month? Really? That's pocket change at this point in the game. There are plenty of players who have millions upon millions of gold now.

And the garbage that comes in RFTW hasn't been worth selling for more than pennies in a long time. I break most of it down because the mats are more valuable.

Yeah I feel you. And that's what I am getting at. The reward system would definitely have to change for this incentive to be worthwhile.

Also everything Joy said is pretty much on point.

Another thing to point out is that the player base is so small it's naturally become incestuous by very necessity.

In the past two months I've grouped with former VE members, former Decibel members, both Drac and Invictus members, ZDM and Just Chill (which define cross faction), and so on and so forth.

Because they're decent folk, happen to be playing red at the time, and life is too short to hate people in a video game (with a few very notable exceptions).

Remember, this is coming from Agrippa, faction loyalist extraordinaire.

(And, frankly, placing those tents to screw with the Sorc of Doom's emperorship was hilarious. I've also seen cross faction guys trying to screw with Frozn by dropping tons of oils at a keep he was trying to siege to get emp... it goes both ways).

Anazasi

Turelus wrote: »

Alpheu5 wrote: »

Anybody that PvPs on more than 3 max level characters would run out of campaigns to home on. Then what?

Just lock accounts to a faction per campaign. You join Vivec for a season as DC, have to pay the switch cost in AP or wait for the season end to be an EP/AD player on that campaign.
Your guest campaign can however be a different alliance.

Probably a nightmare for them to code, but would solve most of the issues we see now.

It was coded this way in the beginning. If you had an AD toon on campaign A then you could not have a DC toon on the same campaign. There were work arounds that ZOS could never fix such as grouping tool that allows you to enter no matter what campaigns you are on or the UI string that allows you to enter campaigns. But the problem is one that ZOS should have invested the time and money to fix a long time ago before they just gave up and said let it be chaos.

Raudgrani

I understand that there are people switching between alliances without malicious intentions (i.e cooperating with their buddies of other alliances). But quite a few use this possibility in the wrong way. Like the guys I mentioned earlier, just passively following EP's around doing nothing. I had respected them a lot more, if they actually played the game and did something to help their current color out. But they don't. That's the definition of a parasite to me, and of loser at that.

Some do help though, for good or ill. Those we might call turncoats, or as I say: Switch [snip]. I mean, today or yesterday (who remembers) I was swarmed and worn down quickly by like 6 DC guys; suddenly and out of nowhere - one of these DC arch enemies of mine (now on a red) that I have lost against so many times, jumps in and whacks them all, teabags me and then resurrects me. I had to give him a "laugh emote" and then we carry on towards Bleakers, together. I respect that way more, even if I think it's basically so wrong. The guy wants a chance to do other than getting "zerged down" , so he switches to the leading one - and actually does the best he can. FIne. But it's really, really not good for game balance, but he plays the game like it's meant to be played.

I can't see how it's good for any "game balance" either, if people can just switch alliance like he did. Here in my example, the DC lost a really strong player, making the currently strongest alliance even stronger.

@Joy_Division obviously have very strong feelings for this. But I fail to see why he feels so strongly for hopping between alliances, like it's essential for the game experience? Why? He also miserably fails to understand me, when he seems to think I encourage bullying - while I in reality actually suggest this solution, to counter bullying and harassment.
In addition to that, no I don't believe in mankind. I am a misanthrope. If there's an easy way out, and if there's a possibility to cheat/gain favors, far to many will take advantage of that. It's just the way people are.
He gives examples of complicated intrigues that I don't even fully understand, and this really just proves my point. People are cheaters. So, we should limit the possibilities to do it. "Competing warlords" etc. etc. within the same alliance is one thing, it's even a historical thing you know. But traitors that you can't even hurt, that's not historical or realistic in any way.

Also, he calls me a "fanatic". Yes, I might be. But it's just a game, remember? I can sort of see through all that.
To see that "grand swine" on the field of battle, you forget about everyone else and just charge them no matter the consequences, your own death is well worth just taking him/her down. I LOVE those guys! Those are what makes me come back for more. Killing randoms I've never seen before, it's just AP to me. The real arch enemies, if they leave the game is boring.
If you think you don't agree, really think of it. "Yeah the map is all red now, and Imperial City is all red... Now what...". Boring. If xx, xx and xx was gone tomorrow (usually the top players of course), and we had no one to accuse of using cheat engine over our group chat (because they are probably just a lot better than us!), and no one to suspect of working together with the third alliance - there wouldn't even be a reason to go to Cyrodiil, other than to get skyshards, lorebooks and general PVE related content/achievements. If you are competitive, you know what I speak of.

So no, I am no "fanatic" who can't tell fiction from reality, or who hate people over a video game. As I said, I love them (for their part in the game).

I've told you what I dislike about the faction swapping possibility. Now I'd really like to hear what's so GREAT about it? What would ruin the whole game, if you could only participate within one alliance for every campaign over 30 days? Is the typical age of players too low for me to understand? Too used to getting what you want for free? I was raised to struggle for everything, I didn't expect any easy ways out - there were none. Your usual choice of alliance doesn't have a single keep today? Tough luck, go reclaim them, come back another day - or do something else and hope for better luck in the next campaign.