Absurd Population Disparities

ArcVelarian

For several months now DC on PC-NA has been pop locked and yet there is an immense population disparity compared to the other factions. EP, for example, is able to field several zergs at once and for some reason DC doesn't have the same numbers to be found ANYWHERE. What's going here? Is there some exploit or bug that's causing it to be 150 vs. 600 at all times here?

@ZOS_Wrobel

TheUndeadAmulet

Maybe all the DC players are solo players

Sheezabeast

Have you looked around Chalman? At any given time on PC NA Vivec you can find DC lurking the mile gate, flinging themselves at Chal Mine, or puttering around at Bruma.

kargen27

I know of two DC guilds that run events in Imperial City several times a week. That takes some of the spots.

Also DC in Vivec is suffering from a lot of in faction fighting. A few caustic individuals are causing grief that has resulted in large PvP guilds refusing to help each other and some PuG groups going out of their way to annoy one or another of the caustic individuals.

DC never did work well together compared to the other factions. Now they not only don't work together but go out of their way to make each other miserable.

FloppyTouch

They are hiding under the bridge

idk

ArcVelarian wrote: »

For several months now DC on PC-NA has been pop locked and yet there is an immense population disparity compared to the other factions. EP, for example, is able to field several zergs at once and for some reason DC doesn't have the same numbers to be found ANYWHERE. What's going here? Is there some exploit or bug that's causing it to be 150 vs. 600 at all times here?

@ZOS_Wrobel

I would expect disorganized vs organized plays a big role. Have seen it where no one could work together and groups going after targets that offer minimal strategic benefit and keep going after a target time and again even though they fail each time.

Not sure if Wrobel can do anything about that.

Narvuntien

The DC players seem to be online in Australian time (late night early morning). I have heard people say it is because they are popular with the Japanese, which also means communication problems.

Dark_Lord_Kuro

Narvuntien wrote: »

The DC players seem to be online in Australian time (late night early morning). I have heard people say it is because they are popular with the Japanese, which also means communication problems.

Dc is also really popular to the western Europe (france, England,etc...) probably because it is inpired by medieval europe

Dojohoda

They are fishing.

T4T2FR34K

The grass is always...BS, purple...is a HUGE problem on PC, NA, Vivic...cry me a river your pop issues and get on the green team for once!

Radinyn

DC lacks "taste", it's too normal so many players choose other factions.

monktoasty

This is an issue that can't be fixed by zos..it's just preference and there will always be one faction unpopular

MasterLenman

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Narvuntien wrote: »

The DC players seem to be online in Australian time (late night early morning). I have heard people say it is because they are popular with the Japanese, which also means communication problems.

Dc is also really popular to the eastern Europe (france, England,etc...) probably because it is inpired by medieval europe

Where are you located that you consider France and England to be "eastern Europe"? as viewn from Portugal maybe?

jssriot

Seriously? If it's pop-locked you must be talking about Vivec. Just a couple days ago DC was zerging the f out of Vivec. The whole AD home portion of the map was crawling with DC. They got both of AD's scrolls--when I logged off last night at 11 PM PST they still had one of the AD's scrolls--and are in the lead in Vivec, ffs.

I'm so tired of this "Only AD zergs--DC and EP don't zerg" BS. All the factions zerg. I know, because I've run with zergs in each faction several times. DC definitely zergs. It's just when the major guilds get their bleep together and do it.

T4T2FR34K

You got 99 problems, but pop aint 1...

Dark_Lord_Kuro

MasterLenman wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Narvuntien wrote: »

The DC players seem to be online in Australian time (late night early morning). I have heard people say it is because they are popular with the Japanese, which also means communication problems.

Dc is also really popular to the eastern Europe (france, England,etc...) probably because it is inpired by medieval europe

Where are you located that you consider France and England to be "eastern Europe"? as viewn from Portugal maybe?

Western sorry that what you got when you dont sleep enough
It will be edited

Jade1986

The same thing is happening in Sotha Sil PC EU. People are sheeping to EP in droves, and they still cant beat out a 2 bar AD or 2 bar DC xD. But their numbers are downright annoying.

Jade1986

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Narvuntien wrote: »

The DC players seem to be online in Australian time (late night early morning). I have heard people say it is because they are popular with the Japanese, which also means communication problems.

Dc is also really popular to the western Europe (france, England,etc...) probably because it is inpired by medieval europe

The only DC race that is european is the Bretons, and they are more french. Orcs are more Central Africa Tribal, and Redguards are obviously middle eastern / northern Africa. The only thing across the DC that is universally European is the lion.

I would honestly think AD is more European. Altmer are obvious is obvious England, Bosmer are Tribal Germania and Khajiit are Spanish / Portugese.

Nords are obviously Norsk, Argonians....I have no fracking idea. Maybe Native Central / South American ( Aztec etc ) , and Dunmer are clearly ancient Asian influenced.

Kalante

ArcVelarian wrote: »

For several months now DC on PC-NA has been pop locked and yet there is an immense population disparity compared to the other factions. EP, for example, is able to field several zergs at once and for some reason DC doesn't have the same numbers to be found ANYWHERE. What's going here? Is there some exploit or bug that's causing it to be 150 vs. 600 at all times here?

@ZOS_Wrobel

lol that's funny because on ps4 na is the opposite

Nerouyn

ArcVelarian wrote: »

What's going here?

This one is easy to answer.

When the game released, if you didn't pre-order then your race options were limited to 3 per faction. By that time many MMO players had been badly burned by other MMO developers' outrageous lies and were wary of pre-ordering anything. Plus ESO was definitely not Skyrim (eg. it having classes, limited skill points etc.).

Even putting aside personal preferences, unlike the majority of other online games, race matters in ESO. DC's passives weren't awesome and they still don't have any thief ones. You want thief passives, you gotta go AD.... who also have very nice mage and decent tank passives.

Back then you couldn't play with members of other factions so it made sense to have most / all of your characters in a single faction. Even now it kind of does because of pvp. If you're going to pvp even moderately seriously that's going to be easier as part of a group and sticking to one faction simplifies that. So if you wanted even one thief character with good thief passives and to have all your characters in one faction, AD was your only option.

AD has the added advantage of elves and kitties being popular. Also of Valenwood being a never before seen part of Tamriel and it delving into Bosmeri culture.

EP has the enormous Skyrim and Morrowind advantage.

DC is very vanilla with bleh races and passives and generic fantasy setting.

I started playing ESO with plans to run a guild and DC would definitely have been a better fit for it thematically but I didn't pre-order, never play humans if there's any alternative and orcs don't appeal to me, so eventually I decided to go AD.

teiselaise

It's quite simple, argonians

tplink3r1

Jade1986 wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Narvuntien wrote: »

The DC players seem to be online in Australian time (late night early morning). I have heard people say it is because they are popular with the Japanese, which also means communication problems.

Dc is also really popular to the western Europe (france, England,etc...) probably because it is inpired by medieval europe

The only DC race that is european is the Bretons, and they are more french. Orcs are more Central Africa Tribal, and Redguards are obviously middle eastern / northern Africa. The only thing across the DC that is universally European is the lion.

I would honestly think AD is more European. Altmer are obvious is obvious England, Bosmer are Tribal Germania and Khajiit are Spanish / Portugese.

Nords are obviously Norsk, Argonians....I have no fracking idea. Maybe Native Central / South American ( Aztec etc ) , and Dunmer are clearly ancient Asian influenced.

Khajiits are clearly more similar to Persians.

duendology

kargen27 wrote: »

I know of two DC guilds that run events in Imperial City several times a week. That takes some of the spots.

Also DC in Vivec is suffering from a lot of in faction fighting. A few caustic individuals are causing grief that has resulted in large PvP guilds refusing to help each other and some PuG groups going out of their way to annoy one or another of the caustic individuals.

DC never did work well together compared to the other factions. Now they not only don't work together but go out of their way to make each other miserable.

Am I the only one seeing how ridiculous it is? Guilds within DC at war with each other? I don't know whether it's sad or hilarious. Probably a little of both...but mostly disappointing if you ask me. Disappointing and infantile...damn!

Also, I am fairly new to PVP and did not realise some alliances deem themselves better than others...Mehhb..Bleh...disappointing as well.

VaranisArano

duendology wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I know of two DC guilds that run events in Imperial City several times a week. That takes some of the spots.

Also DC in Vivec is suffering from a lot of in faction fighting. A few caustic individuals are causing grief that has resulted in large PvP guilds refusing to help each other and some PuG groups going out of their way to annoy one or another of the caustic individuals.

DC never did work well together compared to the other factions. Now they not only don't work together but go out of their way to make each other miserable.

Am I the only one seeing how ridiculous it is? Guilds within DC at war with each other? I don't know whether it's sad or hilarious. Probably a little of both...but mostly disappointing if you ask me. Disappointing and infantile...damn!

Also, I am fairly new to PVP and did not realise some alliances deem themselves better than others...Mehhb..Bleh...disappointing as well.

You have to realize that getting PVP players to work together on anything but the most obvious attacks and defenses is like herding cats. It can be done, but there are claws and teeth involved in the process.

phairdon

duendology wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I know of two DC guilds that run events in Imperial City several times a week. That takes some of the spots.

Also DC in Vivec is suffering from a lot of in faction fighting. A few caustic individuals are causing grief that has resulted in large PvP guilds refusing to help each other and some PuG groups going out of their way to annoy one or another of the caustic individuals.

DC never did work well together compared to the other factions. Now they not only don't work together but go out of their way to make each other miserable.

Am I the only one seeing how ridiculous it is? Guilds within DC at war with each other? I don't know whether it's sad or hilarious. Probably a little of both...but mostly disappointing if you ask me. Disappointing and infantile...damn!

Also, I am fairly new to PVP and did not realise some alliances deem themselves better than others...Mehhb..Bleh...disappointing as well.

Always lots of in fighting in the alliance war. EP was no different, at least last time I spent time in Cyrodiil.

Vizier

In the years that I've played this game I've noticed there is a distinct difference in the types of players that gravitate to one alliance or another. The alliances, in terms of character demographics, don't appear to be cookie cutter images of one another and I believe that lends to what we on PC NA Vivec see at any given time. I could be wrong but my impression is that DC has a disproportionate number of players that run solo or in very small groups. EP WTF Zergs with their entire faction and AD is kind of a mix of the two. They way each faction is played and the overall strategies employed can be very different from one another. It kind of amazes me DC does as well as it does point-wise in the campaign.

Nerouyn

Jade1986 wrote: »

I would honestly think AD is more European. Altmer are obvious is obvious England, Bosmer are Tribal Germania and Khajiit are Spanish / Portugese.

Altmer are more obviously like Tolkien's elves. As have been most incarnations of elves since his books. The only real world correlate I see is *** Germany. There's an eagle in both their emblems and there's the Thalmor with their racial purity.

Jade1986 wrote: »

Nords are obviously Norsk, Argonians....I have no fracking idea. Maybe Native Central / South American ( Aztec etc ) , and Dunmer are clearly ancient Asian influenced.

Argonians definitely have some South American influences with their clothing and architecture but their hyphenated names are more like ancient Egyptian than anything else I'm aware of. Though I'm not a linguist. Maybe someone else knows better.

tplink3r1 wrote: »

Khajiits are clearly more similar to Persians.

That's also how I see it but I don't know Spanish or Portuguese culture terribly well. You might both be right. Cultures spread and influence each other.

I think that the Maltese are genetically Middle Eastern so I'm guessing the darker skinned folk of southern Europe - including Spain and Portugal - might be too. And the holy language of ancient Persia, avestan, is closely related to sanskrit so it may also have influenced the religions and philosophies of India, Tibet, China etc.

f047ys3v3n

The population disparities as well as the purple faction have to do with the history of PVP. At the start of the game AD probably had 3x the players of any other faction and EP had nobody. There were a lot of reasons for this. The EP questline was thin, the AD quests had some highly paid celebrity voice actors, AD had the best balance of races, there was no cross grouping for PVE so it made sense for all raid guilds to be in the same alliance, and your power in PVE was greatly impacted by your PVP alliance as there were big character power buffs (like 12% of dps) dependent on PVP campaigns.

During this AD dominant time a lot of ties were formed between EP and DC members in order to prevent the wasting of life between the two and fight the big baddie AD. Many of these ties remain making Purple forces attacking yellow still common and red on blue fights relatively uncommon to the point that many nights you can go hours without a single keep flip on the red blue border.

Because of the AD dominance and the lack of noobs to kill in DC and EP, a few big PVP guilds decided to go to the lowliest faction (EP) in order to farm the noobs in the AD. This was easy to do in small organized groups because AOE caps and some abilities like bat swarm made small balls of well organized players effectively un-killable. These PVP guilds did very will and got AP at many many times the AD rate. They did so well that lots of noobs followed them. The noobs were a bit slow though and as they really added up many of the PVP players switched to DC. This leaves the state today where DC has fewer but much more rock ribbed players (they especially seem to specialize in small group tactics players), AD has a high population with both noobs and real PVPers and EP has had most of it's toughest PVP players depart leaving a high population of relative squishies. Your complaint about DC not zerging is probably due to the high number of small group tactics players. These guys grew up in the kills is the only road to AP times and the smaller the group the less people to split the kill with. They are have always been very AP focused and have switched from alliance to alliance with similar focus. Frankly, many are more than happy to farm AP most of the day forget the map just to nightcap it and end up ahead in campaign anyway.

I might add that with town captures ZOS stuck what amounts to two enemy spawn points in AD's back field with only one between DC and EP that is in neither's back field. This has also lead to a departure from AD as it has significantly weakened the ability of AD to maintain a front line with all the fires in the back field that it has caused.

How all this will play out in the future I am not sure as player movement is slow due to the extremely long PVP leveling process and reluctance to abandon a high ranked toon. I do expect DC to gain noobs in the future as they have success just as EP did and I do expect that the town capture thing will continue to decimate AD. I know I would roll DC if I were rolling today and never roll an alliance with a structural disadvantage (or two.) I am not sure if this will eventually lead to a breakdown of the purple alliance or not as yellow finishes campaign after campaign as a non-factor.

kargen27

"The population disparities as well as the purple faction have to do with the history of PVP. At the start of the game AD probably had 3x the players of any other faction and EP had nobody. There were a lot of reasons for this. The EP questline was thin, the AD quests had some highly paid celebrity voice actors, AD had the best balance of races, there was no cross grouping for PVE so it made sense for all raid guilds to be in the same alliance, and your power in PVE was greatly impacted by your PVP alliance as there were big character power buffs (like 12% of dps) dependent on PVP campaigns."

AD is also the default alliance for players that can choose any race and faction.

Pele

EP numbers look large because AD is always with them. Look closely next time you see an EP player. You'll see they have an AD player stuck to their ass.