The State of AvAvA in PC NA (Vivec primarily)

Agrippa_Invisus

Welp, for some inextricable reason, we need a new place to talk about how things are going in AvAvA for PC/NA suddently.

Let's talk about things in a little more detached manner going forward. Keep things cooler.

How can we make it better? What can ZOS do to help, if anything?

What changes should be made vs what should be the same?

Do you feel this is a bump in the road due to the Summerset drop coming very soon?

Speak up, but be analytical about it if you can be.

VaranisArano

I think its a bump in the road due to Summerset. I hope so, anyways, because I like having solid DC and AC competition. We just had a hard-fought campaign that AD won - I dont think that the current campaign is a reason to declare the sky is falling, not yet.

When I play, Primetime doesn't feel that much different than at other campaign cycles. Plenty of good fights and contested objectives.

I'm a loyalist EP player, playing EP through thick and thin, winning or losing. I'm not going to faction swap whether for "good fights" or to "balance the campaign."

Anazasi

I'm reading the temperature the same way. Summerset, PTS, time of the year and a general real life time period. I'm more concerned with the PTS release week and then another Mid Year Mayhem event that will flood the servers with long que's and lag. As much as I would love to scream about the current state; (Iskra's got that handled by the way) I don't think this is unexpected for what is happening overall. If I was to offer advice, just try and be civil, have fun, and look ahead to next week. It's a crazy time for everyone I think.

Minno

Have fun. When zerged, join a BG.

Rohamad_Ali

Prepping for Summerset has kept me and some friends from active PvP on Vivec for weeks now . Personally speaking , I believe after we get through the new chapter launch , things will balance back out again . This could be a rough month for Vivec ahead . Players looking for competition may want to swap around for a month to make things more balanced until we get back . It's just the way it goes with new content ...

zyk

ZOS could use rewards to shape the population distribution in a way that makes it unprofitable for competitive players to stack on one or two factions.

In such a system, PC/NA/AD in its current state would be attractive to competitive players because they would have less competition for rewards.

The current reward system is very primitive, but even if gold rewards were attractive -- with Master weapons, for example -- that alone would encourage the top 2% of players to spread out and even out the factions.

But that alone isn't enough. I'm against giving devs specific ideas or writing manifestos. To me, that's like someone who enjoys driving designing a car without any engineering expertise. ZOS needs to assign talented game designers to the task with the time and resources to come up with a really good system.

As it is now, AP is the most profitable reward and that promotes activities that are toxic to good gameplay such as the most effective players seeking out the least effective players for the greatest payout and PvDoor for oticks in objective conflicts that feature no PVP.

RinaldoGandolphi

Minno wrote: »

Have fun. When zerged, join a BG.

Indeed!

PenguinInACan

How can we make it better?
I don't think any amount of community development is going to put a dent in the current decline in PvP. The population is seemingly in the process of finishing the transition from consistent competitive contributions to largely social and casual encounters. Guild rivalries exist mostly through hate instead of mutual competitive drive. All of this is having a negative impact on newer players as the vets are burnt out to the point of toxicity and driving away what little population growth is happening.

What can ZOS do to help?
Create incentives for "winning" a scenario-based AvAvA campaign that doesn't include something you can just get from crafting upgrades next patch. We need a reason to PvP other than social aspects. If the main reason the larger guilds are still PvP-ing is because they just want to stick together as a guild, ZOS has failed in maintaining a captivating experience. I have heard a lot of people default to "well there isn't anything else out yet" and "I only really log in to hang out with the friends I've made there." At this point it sounds like a glorified avatar based chatroom that happens to have buggy PvP.

What changes should be made vs what should stay the same?
That is a very difficult question without some context. Changes to the game? I'm sure everything that the PvP community wants to get changed has been beaten into these forums enough. Changes to the community? It just needs to grow. It's too small and too familiar in the context of harboring competitive attitudes or engaging experiences.

Bump in the road?
More like a bridge that's been falling apart to the point of near collapse. It started out pretty grand. A big, shiny, exciting new bridge that looked like it would lead us to this amazing PvP experience. But every time they add things to the bridge they forget that a bridge doesn't need to be longer, so they add length and take away width. Whenever a piece starts falling off the bridge they reassure us that the bridge is fine, and they take pieces from places we can't see and patch the ones we can. All the while people are turning around and leaving the bridge, falling off the bridge, or just plain getting stuck in traffic. I'm afraid this time, when they add to the bridge with Summerset, we've gone too far for anyone just hopping on to see the decrepit state of what's at the end. To those of us who can see the greener fields of what PvP should be, Summerset is just the bridge getting longer and most likely more narrow.

Although I can say that this population dip for the past week is by design as I know at least a few AD guilds are on a break for a couple weeks.

DHale

Dracarys re-rolls to yellow, Case closed. As a consolation prize EP can keep their three keeps in the top right hand corner.

Agrippa_Invisus

DHale wrote: »

Dracarys re-rolls to yellow, Case closed. As a consolation prize EP can keep their three keeps in the top right hand corner.

Snarkiness aside, it's not AD that needs a top end guild atm. They have Omni, which have a very good track record, with Fantasia right behind them. AD needs some more numbers and more of the mid tier quality to pad out their ranks.

It's DC that has naught for top end guilds at the moment, with only several up and coming or subpar guilds to draw upon.

If the top three guilds on PC/NA were distributed between these factions evenly, then we'd get one heck of a fight.

Vilestride

Yeah but to be fair. DC is uhhhh how do you say.. undesirable?

And also we just have a lot of players who already had AD toons as they came from there to start with.

Agrippa_Invisus

Vilestride wrote: »

Yeah but to be fair. DC is uhhhh how do you say.. undesirable?

I've loathed blue with a passion since Bloodthorn. Preaching to the choir.

I'm speaking from an 'in a perfect world' standpoint.

Satiar

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

DHale wrote: »

Dracarys re-rolls to yellow, Case closed. As a consolation prize EP can keep their three keeps in the top right hand corner.

Snarkiness aside, it's not AD that needs a top end guild atm. They have Omni, which have a very good track record, with Fantasia right behind them. AD needs some more numbers and more of the mid tier quality to pad out their ranks.

It's DC that has naught for top end guilds at the moment, with only several up and coming or subpar guilds to draw upon.

If the top three guilds on PC/NA were distributed between these factions evenly, then we'd get one heck of a fight.

I don`t think having more top guilds or fewer top guilds really matters at this junction.

zyk

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

DHale wrote: »

Dracarys re-rolls to yellow, Case closed. As a consolation prize EP can keep their three keeps in the top right hand corner.

Snarkiness aside, it's not AD that needs a top end guild atm. They have Omni, which have a very good track record, with Fantasia right behind them. AD needs some more numbers and more of the mid tier quality to pad out their ranks.

It's DC that has naught for top end guilds at the moment, with only several up and coming or subpar guilds to draw upon.

If the top three guilds on PC/NA were distributed between these factions evenly, then we'd get one heck of a fight.

Up until the last time I was active in Cyrodiil, which was a couple of months ago, AD really lacked talented small and medium groups. EP seemed to have a lot of small to medium groups that were too small for full raids to want to deal with, so randoms were frequently left on their own to be farmed by them. DC has more small groups as well, but in my experience they prefer less populated servers -- although they play on Vivec more often as their preferred campaigns are frequently completely dead.

Contrary to what these small groups will admit to, they surf a lot. There's no true shame in surfing, but there is a stigma to it.

These groups are very punishing to AD randoms. AD could use more groups like that willing to engage opposition small groups and help the less effective randoms out.

Karm1cOne

Changing the end of campaign rewards won't help the current campaign dynamics. Most pvpers won't see them. Zos needs to encourage filling up losing factions. Add better low pop bonus, such as reevaluating every 10 minutes instead of hours or 10% additional ap bonus per bar difference for lower pop factions.

Anazasi

let's assume than that multi faction is the way to play. what mechanic is in place to balance the population? We can deduce from the current populations that the majority of players are casual and the minority is organized. Is there a way to regulate the balance? Aside from discussing which guilds will fight on what sides is there another more reliable way? Drac proposed a rewards lock. While this may incentivize faction or player loyalty, the reality is it won't actually regulate the population. I am not suggesting campaign locks but rather asking everyone to think about what could be used to balance the numbers. I've suggested actually showing the numbers as a way to allow players to make an informed choice that could go either way but at least it would be a way to maybe balance.

Players are going to follow whatever path has the least resistance they can find. I think it's safe to say that's human nature. What can be done to hold a balance long term (30 Days) in order to have a healthy community. This is a polarizing conversation. Players don't want to be told they can't play as they like. I don't want to tell anyone they can't play as they like. But here we are with such an imbalance that something has to be done. Luckily we have a few months to find a solution and according to ZOS they are aware of this issue. I don't know what the answer is and I am pretty sure no one does at this point.

CyrusArya

Anazasi wrote: »

Players are going to follow whatever path has the least resistance they can find. I think it's safe to say that's human nature.

While that may be universally true for something like, say, the flow of water, its not always so for humans. If it were, gyms across the world would lay barren and players in eso would all prefer to be zerglings in ball groups.

The path of greater resistance often offers greater rewards.

Vilestride

Resist the balls.

Anrose

I do like the thought of a rewards lock, I’ve even suggested so on these forums, but the rewards NEED to be worth it. If the only things I’m able to get are Alessian pauldrons and Rings of the Swift, then I’m not exactly incentivized to play for those rewards.

Winning the campaign needs to be worth it, as well. Changes to scoring and measures on the back end to help keep things somewhat competitive can go a long way here. I remember fighting to win campaigns, and it was a lot of fun. But at this point, there’s no reason to spend the energy.

With the Summerset patch a week away, I’m hoping that ZOS pulls something good out of their sleeves, and that we haven’t seen the end of the Cyrodiil changes for this patch.

In the meantime, maybe we should look at multifaction play as a way to balance things. I’m not going to suggest rerolling guilds because that will cause more chaos in the short term. But rather, use your solo/small man/pug time to help out the side that’s getting whooped on. No one likes to log in after a day of work to one side with all 6 scrolls, 12-13 keeps, and an emp group rolling over all the pugs who even think about recapturing a resource. If ZOS won’t help balance populations, it might be up to us to do it ourselves.

Amongst the guilds, there’s a lot of rivalry and a lot of salt, but there’s also a lot of respect (though it often goes unspoken). Let’s make sure we’re all around to fight each other and there’s something to fight over every night.

Vilestride

Anrose wrote: »

I do like the thought of a rewards lock, I’ve even suggested so on these forums, but the rewards NEED to be worth it. If the only things I’m able to get are Alessian pauldrons and Rings of the Swift, then I’m not exactly incentivized to play for those rewards.

Winning the campaign needs to be worth it, as well. Changes to scoring and measures on the back end to help keep things somewhat competitive can go a long way here. I remember fighting to win campaigns, and it was a lot of fun. But at this point, there’s no reason to spend the energy.

With the Summerset patch a week away, I’m hoping that ZOS pulls something good out of their sleeves, and that we haven’t seen the end of the Cyrodiil changes for this patch.

In the meantime, maybe we should look at multifaction play as a way to balance things. I’m not going to suggest rerolling guilds because that will cause more chaos in the short term. But rather, use your solo/small man/pug time to help out the side that’s getting whooped on. No one likes to log in after a day of work to one side with all 6 scrolls, 12-13 keeps, and an emp group rolling over all the pugs who even think about recapturing a resource. If ZOS won’t help balance populations, it might be up to us to do it ourselves.

Amongst the guilds, there’s a lot of rivalry and a lot of salt, but there’s also a lot of respect (though it often goes unspoken). Let’s make sure we’re all around to fight each other and there’s something to fight over every night.

The biggest issue with making the rewards for WINNING the campaign really significant is that it actually has the potential to even further cascade the effect of people rerolling to the winning faction. Even if it is locked out until the next campaign cycle. If a faction is in a period where they are winning back to back campaigns.

I think it's better to distribute worthwhile daily rewards to the faction that was able to score the most points during a given day for example. In doing this you also mitigate some of the negative impact on a faction that is falling behind and it gives them more cause to come back and fight hard every day even if they are 2000 points behind with 1 day left on the cycle.

Anrose

Vilestride wrote: »

Anrose wrote: »

I do like the thought of a rewards lock, I’ve even suggested so on these forums, but the rewards NEED to be worth it. If the only things I’m able to get are Alessian pauldrons and Rings of the Swift, then I’m not exactly incentivized to play for those rewards.

Winning the campaign needs to be worth it, as well. Changes to scoring and measures on the back end to help keep things somewhat competitive can go a long way here. I remember fighting to win campaigns, and it was a lot of fun. But at this point, there’s no reason to spend the energy.

With the Summerset patch a week away, I’m hoping that ZOS pulls something good out of their sleeves, and that we haven’t seen the end of the Cyrodiil changes for this patch.

In the meantime, maybe we should look at multifaction play as a way to balance things. I’m not going to suggest rerolling guilds because that will cause more chaos in the short term. But rather, use your solo/small man/pug time to help out the side that’s getting whooped on. No one likes to log in after a day of work to one side with all 6 scrolls, 12-13 keeps, and an emp group rolling over all the pugs who even think about recapturing a resource. If ZOS won’t help balance populations, it might be up to us to do it ourselves.

Amongst the guilds, there’s a lot of rivalry and a lot of salt, but there’s also a lot of respect (though it often goes unspoken). Let’s make sure we’re all around to fight each other and there’s something to fight over every night.

The biggest issue with making the rewards for WINNING the campaign really significant is that it actually has the potential to even further cascade the effect of people rerolling to the winning faction. Even if it is locked out until the next campaign cycle. If a faction is in a period where they are winning back to back campaigns.

I think it's better to distribute worthwhile daily rewards to the faction that was able to score the most points during a given day for example. In doing this you also mitigate some of the negative impact on a faction that is falling behind and it gives them more cause to come back and fight hard every day even if they are 2000 points behind with 1 day left on the cycle.

Might we be looking at shorter campaign cycles then? That might lead to a faster paced sort of gameplay. In addition to some daily rewards, the cumulative campaign rewards would come sooner, possibly 14 days instead of 30. That way the losing faction isn’t going on for weeks without any hope.

We would get a hard reset sooner and start back up again.

Soul_Demon

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

DHale wrote: »

Dracarys re-rolls to yellow, Case closed. As a consolation prize EP can keep their three keeps in the top right hand corner.

Snarkiness aside, it's not AD that needs a top end guild atm. They have Omni, which have a very good track record, with Fantasia right behind them. AD needs some more numbers and more of the mid tier quality to pad out their ranks.

It's DC that has naught for top end guilds at the moment, with only several up and coming or subpar guilds to draw upon.

If the top three guilds on PC/NA were distributed between these factions evenly, then we'd get one heck of a fight.

I wouldn't worry about DC right now....several guilds have decided to change over factions from DC and EP to AD, but I wouldn't be too surprised to see some large EP move on over to DC to 'balance' the server. Discussion is already under way regarding this very thing.

ZOS_MattL

Hey there,
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Minno

Soul_Demon wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

DHale wrote: »

Dracarys re-rolls to yellow, Case closed. As a consolation prize EP can keep their three keeps in the top right hand corner.

Snarkiness aside, it's not AD that needs a top end guild atm. They have Omni, which have a very good track record, with Fantasia right behind them. AD needs some more numbers and more of the mid tier quality to pad out their ranks.

It's DC that has naught for top end guilds at the moment, with only several up and coming or subpar guilds to draw upon.

If the top three guilds on PC/NA were distributed between these factions evenly, then we'd get one heck of a fight.

I wouldn't worry about DC right now....several guilds have decided to change over factions from DC and EP to AD, but I wouldn't be too surprised to see some large EP move on over to DC to 'balance' the server. Discussion is already under way regarding this very thing.

Blood of Haxilitia?

frozywozy

Delete Cyrodiil. Open 8v8 to 24vs24 battlegrounds. Re-open large scale instances when we get more players.

pzschrek

Not just summerset, but it's the time of year when those of us with families end up having to do all sorts of outside crap, soccer games, school ending soon, vacations starting for some, etc. PVP tends to be an older crowd so that may be part of it.

I know a couple guilds on AD I'm in or affiliated with that are on temporary hiatus until summerset or just before, and it's as much due to RL lack of availability as it is prepping for summerset.

Regarding factions, the bigger problem I see is AD players like to hug the keeps they own tight and will not push objectives on their own, to include taking back their own resources, forget mustering competent small mans to harass enemy resources.

EP has a very high general level of pug competence, when I play on EP I find I can generally count on the pug to my left and right most of the time, whereas on AD that's a recipe for a horsey ride. DC less so these days, but better than AD and has some very powerful small mans and when they get a zerg going, they're good at putting everyone in one spot.

AD just has some very competent guilds that aren't running for a large percentage of the time. I'd say EP has something like guild parity with AD at the top end, but the EP pugs are a great deal better. And the guilds that are a match for each other don't overlap for all that long.

Minno

frozywozy wrote: »

Delete Cyrodiil. Open 8v8 to 24vs24 battlegrounds. Re-open large scale instances when we get more players.

I completely agree 100%.

Just turn Cyro into a pve zone with IC as another PvP arena.

DeadlyRecluse

It's also been finals week at many universities (and nearing the end of the year for many high schools).

I'd let that play out, let midyear mayhem do it's thing, then reevaluate PvP "health," as it were.

zyk

Minno wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Delete Cyrodiil. Open 8v8 to 24vs24 battlegrounds. Re-open large scale instances when we get more players.

I completely agree 100%.

Just turn Cyro into a pve zone with IC as another PvP arena.

Uhh, no. If you guys have given up on AvA, super. Have fun in BGs. But let the remaining fans of AvA try to have productive discussions about how to improve it without useless input like this.

courier

Anrose wrote: »

I do like the thought of a rewards lock, I’ve even suggested so on these forums, but the rewards NEED to be worth it. If the only things I’m able to get are Alessian pauldrons and Rings of the Swift, then I’m not exactly incentivized to play for those rewards.

Winning the campaign needs to be worth it, as well. Changes to scoring and measures on the back end to help keep things somewhat competitive can go a long way here. I remember fighting to win campaigns, and it was a lot of fun. But at this point, there’s no reason to spend the energy.

With the Summerset patch a week away, I’m hoping that ZOS pulls something good out of their sleeves, and that we haven’t seen the end of the Cyrodiil changes for this patch.

In the meantime, maybe we should look at multifaction play as a way to balance things. I’m not going to suggest rerolling guilds because that will cause more chaos in the short term. But rather, use your solo/small man/pug time to help out the side that’s getting whooped on. No one likes to log in after a day of work to one side with all 6 scrolls, 12-13 keeps, and an emp group rolling over all the pugs who even think about recapturing a resource. If ZOS won’t help balance populations, it might be up to us to do it ourselves.

Amongst the guilds, there’s a lot of rivalry and a lot of salt, but there’s also a lot of respect (though it often goes unspoken). Let’s make sure we’re all around to fight each other and there’s something to fight over every night.

Exactly this, my wife and I are rolling AD toons at the moment, I know evening and weekends AD are a force to be reckoned with... But the day to day small skirmishes are less than optimal, I know a few other EP are going to offer some assistance and hopefully keep the scores a little more competitive.

Minno

zyk wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Delete Cyrodiil. Open 8v8 to 24vs24 battlegrounds. Re-open large scale instances when we get more players.

I completely agree 100%.

Just turn Cyro into a pve zone with IC as another PvP arena.

Uhh, no. If you guys have given up on AvA, super. Have fun in BGs. But let the remaining fans of AvA try to have productive discussions about how to improve it without useless input like this.

Except if you could have a 24v24 random que without lag and with interesting locations, which would you play?

I'm willing to bet a majority of open world players would rather play a stable, number controlled fight over riding a horse for 5 minutes to the bridge/1vx location for essential the same type of fight you'd get out of the large scale BG format.

Unless of course you can prove me wrong (or maybe I'm mistaken that players love to pvd instead of PvP?)