Cyrodiil Server (Head Count) [ PC - N/A ] "Population"

chaz

Hello and greetings everyone.

So, I was searching the forums for this answer and other than "head count" , "population count" , "pvp counter" I could not really find answer to my question.

Alright, so I'm searching all my in game settings and then help pages to find this option to show me just how many people are actually in the Cyrodiil server for each alliance. All I see , whether I'm using KB&M or the controller set up is these three alliance icons that each have 3 bars. Where in the settings might I be able to turn on actual numbers that show me just how many players are active in the server for each alliance?

Also, thinking ahead about this question so that if there is no option, why hasn't one been implemented? Has anyone asked to have this function? It should not be difficult at all to place the number of people under each alliance icons with the 3 bars. So if and when the pvp Cyrodiil server is actually pop locked, we , I mean everyone can have a fair assessment as to why and just how many players are in the server.

I think this would also help anyone and everyone provide better feed back when it seems one alliance has just like 10 people running around while another alliance seems to have 50 to 70 people running around in a massive zergball.

That, and I have always been curious to know just how many people are actually playing and enjoying Cyrodiil as much as myself. However yet again thinking ahead about my question and if there were such a feature would it be able to distinguish players of each alliance in Cyrodiil from the players in Imperial City and or its sewers? I only assume that Cyrodiil, IC, and ICS are all using the same server node.

Thanks.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

There is no numerical count of players in cyro. The population bars are just indicators.
There is also no differentiation between players in IC / at the home base / on the map.

Reverb

They have been notoriously close lipped about the actual population limit in Cyrodiil, and how each bar on the population indicator correlates to player numbers.

Commonly held belief is that each bar currently represents < 26 players, but there's no confirmation from Zeni, and no data anywhere to back that up.

If true, it would mean 1 bar of pop is between 1-25 players on that faction, 2 bars is 26-50, 3 is 51-75 and lock is 76-100+.

We do know that the population limit is greatly reduced from what it was at launch, in an effort to reduce lag.

Agrippa_Invisus

Pops are about 120-125 per factions in Cyrodiil from what I've been lead to believe.

So that means 360-375 players are in a full Cyrodiil campaign at any one time.

When it's said that pvp is a small percentage of the playerbase, well, considering the amount of active accounts vs how many could be possibly playing in Cyrodiil on most days, yeah... it's tiny.

Joy_Division

If Miat's add on could count the number of unique @ names in a given area, couldn't an add-on be developed to count the people in Cyrodiil?

DeadlyRecluse

The closest I think we've come to "knowing" what the population cap currently is was when the campaign reset during the bleakers bonanza on EU.

One of the flipping factions was poplocked over the rest with 84 people on the leaderboard after first score check (I might be off about the number, but it was below 100). Obviously that doesn't count those in the campaign that have it guested or got group queued in, but it does show pretty conclusively that the cap is AT LEAST 84.

visionality

Population bars are ZOS's way to hide huge imbalances in player bases , so they will never agree to publish real numbers. Moreover, if you knew that your 6 people are facing 50 players of a different alliance (which happens regularily during morningcaps), wouldn't you just logout and start raging in forums about the lack of low-pop-bonuses?

Most people assume that the three bars represent "thirds" of maximum population, but this is outright wrong. From my personal experience, bars are activating at approx. those numbers:

1 bar: 0 players (I have never seen an empty campaign, not even after a server crash, so assuming that one bar ist just always up seems pretty save)
2 bars: 10-15 players
3 bars 30-45 players
poplock: 70 players (Poplock is a rather fluid thing in Cyrodiil. At early primetime, you often can enter a "poplocked" campaign with a 12-man-group without queueing at all. That symbol definitely lightens up a good stretch before the campaign is truly full.)

This is, ofc, only an educated guess based on the active players I can see and there might always be the rare loner who is sneaking from Southern High Rock to Alessia farm to do a scout report. But I'm pretty sure the 2 bars hit at extreme low numbers already. I'm also pretty sure ZOS is doing a bit of "cosmetics" to keep population bars at similar levels when the real numbers are far apart from each other.

A very vivid example about the non-reliability of population bars was the population of EP last weekend, when no player could login for full 12 hours in Vivec, EU. Even when there hadn't been any red activity on the map for more than one hour already (including IC), their population bar was still standing at 2.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Joy_Division wrote: »

If Miat's add on could count the number of unique @ names in a given area, couldn't an add-on be developed to count the people in Cyrodiil?

Not easily due to the way the map is divided up (I believe). Also Miats is no longer able to accurately provide numbers unfortunately. For example people who have not engaged you in combat are not counted afaik

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

DeadlyRecluse wrote: »

The closest I think we've come to "knowing" what the population cap currently is was when the campaign reset during the bleakers bonanza on EU.

One of the flipping factions was poplocked over the rest with 84 people on the leaderboard after first score check (I might be off about the number, but it was below 100). Obviously that doesn't count those in the campaign that have it guested or got group queued in, but it does show pretty conclusively that the cap is AT LEAST 84.

I believe different campaigns have different population limits based on popularity.

fastolfv_ESO

so zenimax said a few things right after release, the backlash was real and they went silent soon after. Heres what was said back then and i cannot confirm any of it has been in effect in the last 3 years+ or if any of it is even true since theres no way to test. First that pop caps were based on how many que up on a regular basis so your cap b4 a que was effectively different for each alliance, second thing was that during peak hours one alliance could have roughly 10% more players than the second largest pop assuming both were locked b4 a que would kick in. If all 3 were locked each alliance could be 10% different on pop until the server reached some predetermined cap when all 3 sides would be stuck with ques but numbers on all 3 sides would never be equal. Im not really sure whats true when it comes down to it but it has always felt like pops have never been equal

chaz

WOW!! ?? !! , Ummm, Thanks all. So it sounds like there is definitely no option to turn on to see actual numbers. And from what I've been piecing together showing those actual numbers would only ignite a forums war about who's faction (Alliance) is getting the numbers while others are simply out number 6 to 1.

Also those "numbers" speculated are pretty low. I just assumed that each bar represented 100 per bar, not 0-25 for bar 1.

Pop lock has been a problem and at random times of the day depending on various statistics when I'm personally in a queue I have had only 1 time where I was queue'd in at such a high number. If I recall it was something like 79 , 72 or 79 but I know I was in the 70's and waited a very long time. When I finally got in, and traveled from keep to keep I noticed there were a lot of players just standing inside AFK.

I had asked dozens and dozens of these people why weren't they fighting or how come they're AFK for so long when people are trying to get in, and of course naturally their response was less welcoming.

I just don't think it's fair that when people get in that want to fight we see dozens of random people just standing there nice and safe inside keeps AFK doing nothing but taking up space adding another number to the wait queue. I say this because I also think this should be fix. If your'e AFK you should be timed out and kicked from the PvP server so someone else that wants to be active can get in a lot quicker.

Back to the representation of each Bar. So we've heard it said a lot, and seen even YouTube videos of Alliances being massively outnumbered. ""If"" each bar only really points to 25 per bar and not 100 like I believed it were the case then there still must be something wrong. Well for example I took the time to watch someones Alliance video that was bashing my Alliance accusing DC of group queuing exploitation. Now, watching the video I'll admit it looked like there were a lot of DC attacking them, however that said and on a personal note I only see faction stacking from the other alliances. I'm always and for a long long time seeing EP faction stack and bringing in the numbers that's at most times overwhelming. I'm only now seeing AD do this to.

That said, I'm solo as I no longer run with guild groups. Mainly because ..... well it's DC. Thee most saltiest, disrespectful, uncaring, backstabbing Alliance anywhere. And if these people are going to form groups, they do so because they attract their own kind. And I could care less for back cutting another guild or leaving people for dead and not responding to a whisper to repeat in zone chat "rez someone at this location" or "plz place FC up at what ever fort or keep".

So I very rarely will see DC numbers get too big. But then again, I am solo and we all know trying to track an actual formed group is very difficult. I could be playing near ASH or Glade, meanwhile a DC group or groups could be attacking Roe or Kings crest on the other side of the map.

So all in all what it basically comes down to is in my opinion if the PvP server has maximum capacity as a whole, then it is unfair to all 3 Alliances if it's not based on Alliance Capacity. If it were based on Alliance capacity, and even if the numbers per bar were low, then pop lock should have only up to a ball park estimate of 75 players PER alliance. So we know a lot of facts, groups queuing, AFK's, logging in with 1 alliance toon then force quitting to quickly log in again with a different alliance toon, and the server itself being an overall Capacity as a whole dynamic we're probably never going to see a good fix for any of this nor will we see actual numbers of how many people are really in the area. Thanks for all the opinions expressed.

Alomar

It would be embarrassing for ZOS to show how large the population caps were at launch, 1800 (600 per faction), compared to how small it is now after several instances of reducing them with no noticeable impact on performance for the better. That launch cap was never openly stated as far as I can tell, but I saw a dev response post it in my beta forum section during the first ever Cyrodiil beta test the summer before the game released.

dennissomb16_ESO

The only MMO I played that gave actual numbers of players was Dark Age of Camelot. Every other MMO I have played over the years (Rift, GW2, Aion, WoW etc.) at best gave general information like server is light, medium, heavy, locked when it came to population numbers

chaz

Hmmm, alright. Since is may be unlikely we'll see numbers can we confirm whether the poplock is based on alliance as an individual or based on over all server capacity?