Where are dynamic population limits for campagns?

Anethum

It's a typical situation at Vivek EU every morning 2 years+.

Always hordes of yellows, coming to solo or small scale blues or reds.
U can kill some of them, or many if your small scale is cool. but then even bigger zerg coming and X u.
No fun, no interest, and at the top of this trash they will teabag stupid nonzerger u.
This is not about Aldmery Dominion.
This is about system...
Competition...Where is the soul of competition in such system?
Why campagn allow to overpopulate one alliance, no matter how filled are others?
it's a simple system.
No entrance until other 2 alliances reached same small limit. Then same for next lvl of population lvl...
@ZOS_Wrobel, @ZOS_BrianWheeler Can we and when expect it?

Sharee

Don't hold your breath. Here's a thread i made 3.5 years ago:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/165699/dynamic-population-caps-are-needed/p1

VaranisArano

Why? Well, if you assume that everyone is a cross-faction player who can happily play on all three alliances, there's no reason to not lock populations until they are,roughly equal.

Problem is, some of us are still faction loyal. I'm loyal to EP, win or lose. So I dislike the idea that, short of actually hitting full poplock, I wouldnt be allowed to play for my faction until more players from the other teams logged on. Why should I be prevented from playing for my team because DC or AD players slept in that morning?

Sharee

VaranisArano wrote: »

Why? Well, if you assume that everyone is a cross-faction player who can happily play on all three alliances, there's no reason to not lock populations until they are,roughly equal.

Problem is, some of us are still faction loyal. I'm loyal to EP, win or lose. So I dislike the idea that, short of actually hitting full poplock, I wouldnt be allowed to play for my faction until more players from the other teams logged on. Why should I be prevented from playing for my team because DC or AD players slept in that morning?

I have 9/9 DC characters myself. And I don't think this will be a problem.

People don't stack on one faction because they are loyal, they stack because it gives them easy wins by outnumbering the enemies. Take away the ability to outnumber enemies, and they stop stacking.

White wabbit

Population unbalance is an issue as the player base decreases

p00tx

VaranisArano wrote: »

Why? Well, if you assume that everyone is a cross-faction player who can happily play on all three alliances, there's no reason to not lock populations until they are,roughly equal.

Problem is, some of us are still faction loyal. I'm loyal to EP, win or lose. So I dislike the idea that, short of actually hitting full poplock, I wouldnt be allowed to play for my faction until more players from the other teams logged on. Why should I be prevented from playing for my team because DC or AD players slept in that morning?

What is the actual point of playing if there is no one to play against? It sounds pretty boring. In Xbox NA, the reining zerg-pack is EP, with DC being the underdog population (surprise), so we (DC) always have someone to kill or a challenging objective to overturn. It sounds pretty lame to be one of 200 EP zerging a map against 20 DC, half of which are too busy doing some weird emote in their underpants at Northern Highrock to play (not to mention the constant drivel in chat about goats and grandmas and bodily fluids). This might help stop people from faction swapping to stack on one alliance and zerg the map for...whatever weird reason they have.

Anethum

I don't get it too, what is the interest to just overnumber someone. No skill etc. Overwhelming.
But part of players always abuse disbalanced, overpowered etc things. Like, dev added sloads - welcome sloads everywhere. Allowed overpop of alliance - we have such crap cyrodiil. Etc.
Small caps...

Anethum

Sharee wrote: »

Don't hold your breath. Here's a thread i made 3.5 years ago:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/165699/dynamic-population-caps-are-needed/p1

yeah, upped it, i think about this for a very long time, and wrote it many times to support for these years.
yesterday decided to up this topic here at forum (idk why didn't done this before) cause seems any other way to change the system

flubber77

maybe u shouild take a look at my picture from this night?

https://imgur.com/a/L8W0N3W

Anethum

flubber77 wrote: »

maybe u shouild take a look at my picture from this night?

https://imgur.com/a/L8W0N3W

it's the same issue, no matter what alliance, players should not have opportunity to overpopulate one certain alliance in campagn.
We need a pop caps in campagns to prevent this

@ZOS_Wrobel , @ZOS_JessicaFolsom please give attention to this question

Ranger209

Capping population like this would be promoting faction swapping and go against faction loyalty. It would be for the me, me, me, me, me crowd and I would be against that.

Sharee

Ranger209 wrote: »

Capping population like this would be promoting faction swapping and go against faction loyalty. It would be for the me, me, me, me, me crowd and I would be against that.

Absolutely not.

1, What promotes faction swapping is the fact stacking on one faction (i.e. swapping to it) leads to easy wins through complete outnumbering of the opposition. With caps: no outnumbering, no easy wins, no reason to swap.

2, Faction loyalty will be boosted, since players no longer have a reason to switch sides (no more easy wins through outnumbering, so no point switching). The huge pile that used to dominate will spread out, and stay that way.

montjie

Ranger209 wrote: »

Capping population like this would be promoting faction swapping and go against faction loyalty. It would be for the me, me, me, me, me crowd and I would be against that.

This is a pretty popular PoV ive seen coming by which is amazing since its as illogical as can be.
In cyro's current state when 2 factions have 1-2 bars and the 3rd is pop locked with queue time, players still choose to get in queue to play for the 3rd faction. Where is the faction swapping there?
The only difference between current situations and if a dynamic pop cap would be introduced is:
The zergfactions queue would be longer, if they indeed are faction loyalists which i doubt in most of those cases.

And talking about faction loyalty. Funny that it seems to be a trend alot of those "faction loyalists" suddenly cant login to fight when theres decent resistances on the other sides. I didnt know loyalty ment showing up only when you have little to no resistance

VaranisArano

montjie wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

Capping population like this would be promoting faction swapping and go against faction loyalty. It would be for the me, me, me, me, me crowd and I would be against that.

This is a pretty popular PoV ive seen coming by which is amazing since its as illogical as can be.
In cyro's current state when 2 factions have 1-2 bars and the 3rd is pop locked with queue time, players still choose to get in queue to play for the 3rd faction. Where is the faction swapping there?
The only difference between current situations and if a dynamic pop cap would be introduced is:
The zergfactions queue would be longer, if they indeed are faction loyalists which i doubt in most of those cases.

And talking about faction loyalty. Funny that it seems to be a trend alot of those "faction loyalists" suddenly cant login to fight when theres decent resistances on the other sides. I didnt know loyalty ment showing up only when you have little to no resistance

Well, my thought is this.

If you lock the populations to the lowest one, then anyone who wants to play cross faction PVP will probably log in on the lower pop factions. Right? That's the whole idea, that people will balance out the lower population factions in order to be able to play? No matter which population is locked out due to higher pop, anyone wilking to play cross faction can always play.

The people left out in that situation are the faction loyalists, who play for their faction, win or lose. Because they won't go play for a different faction when its their faction that has high pop, they essentially get locked out of PVP until more enemies log on. Again, that'd be me, since I only PVP for EP, win or lose.

And that may be fine for you, if your overriding goal is balanced population. My concern is people being able to play when they want to.


As for your jab about when people login, the point I'm trying to make is that if I log in on EP the mornings, I want to be able to play. I want to play whether I'm the low pop faction and outnumbered or whether I'm the high pop faction outnumbering someone else. More to the point, I want everyone who wants to play to be able to play even if their faction happens to have the high population at the moment.

I will accept unbalanced populations as the cost of letting everyone play on the faction they want to play on. You seem to prefer putting balance above letting players play how and when they want to.

montjie

@VaranisArano
I think the idea is to have fair playing conditions for everyone, which includes a somewhat balanced population across the board. Now does this mean locking pop to the lowest faction? No. But if 2 factions combined still are being outnumbered by 1 I would call that quite the population imbalance and then I do believe the highest factions numbers should be limited to match those of the other 2 factions. Personally I'm no fan of cross faction play anyway despite it being a method to help balance population but thats just me.

Regarding faction loyalists like you. The status quo really wouldnt change that much like I said in my previous post. Only your queue time would be longer in the worst case scenario.
Your concern is already challenged today with pop caps already in play so I really dont get the fuss youre trying to make about how implementing dyn pop caps would cripple your freedom to play.
Atm you already get locked out of cyro (not PvP because theres BG) when your faction is pop locked so in what way is that significantly different than being locked out of a campaign because your faction reached dynamic pop lock?

"I want everyone who wants to play to be able to play"
Interesting youre saying this.
Okay lets flip the script.
Lets say you are in the 1-2 bar faction going up against a fully pop locked faction. You log on in the morning to find your scrolls are lost, your faction pushed back to scroll gates.
Discouraged as that already has made you, you push on and give one of your home keeps a go and you get obliterated by at least 3 times more enemies. Several attempts at other locations have the same outcome. Then you try an outpost. Same result. A town perhaps? Nope same result. You keep getting zerged down no matter what you do, no matter where you go.
Now you tell me mr i-want-everyone-who-wants-to-play-to-be-able-to-play, how can you consider this playable? Sure you can physically play but can you REALLY play?

I leave you with 1 last question:
Are you really advocating freedom to play for all or do you just dont want anyone touching your dominant position?

Sharee

VaranisArano wrote: »

The people left out in that situation are the faction loyalists, who play for their faction, win or lose. Because they won't go play for a different faction when its their faction that has high pop, they essentially get locked out of PVP until more enemies log on. Again, that'd be me, since I only PVP for EP, win or lose.

This won't be an issue. Think about it.

1, people can no longer stack on one side to massively outnumber the opposition ->
2, they no longer have a reason to stack on one side ->
3, they will be spread out across all factions (more or less) evenly at all times.

You won't have to wait long before you can play, regardless whether you are a loyalist or not, because there will always be people waiting to play against you on the other side(s).

The only way there would still be a problem is if:
A, the majority of players are loyalists and
B, an overwhelming number of them chose to play one faction

neither of which i believe to be true (and the latter was in fact shown to be not true by the various faction polls since the game was released - the players were always divided pretty evenly between the three)

VaranisArano

montjie wrote: »

@VaranisArano
I think the idea is to have fair playing conditions for everyone, which includes a somewhat balanced population across the board. Now does this mean locking pop to the lowest faction? No. But if 2 factions combined still are being outnumbered by 1 I would call that quite the population imbalance and then I do believe the highest factions numbers should be limited to match those of the other 2 factions. Personally I'm no fan of cross faction play anyway despite it being a method to help balance population but thats just me.

Regarding faction loyalists like you. The status quo really wouldnt change that much like I said in my previous post. Only your queue time would be longer in the worst case scenario.
Your concern is already challenged today with pop caps already in play so I really dont get the fuss youre trying to make about how implementing dyn pop caps would cripple your freedom to play.
Atm you already get locked out of cyro (not PvP because theres BG) when your faction is pop locked so in what way is that significantly different than being locked out of a campaign because your faction reached dynamic pop lock?

"I want everyone who wants to play to be able to play"
Interesting youre saying this.
Okay lets flip the script.
Lets say you are in the 1-2 bar faction going up against a fully pop locked faction. You log on in the morning to find your scrolls are lost, your faction pushed back to scroll gates.
Discouraged as that already has made you, you push on and give one of your home keeps a go and you get obliterated by at least 3 times more enemies. Several attempts at other locations have the same outcome. Then you try an outpost. Same result. A town perhaps? Nope same result. You keep getting zerged down no matter what you do, no matter where you go.
Now you tell me mr i-want-everyone-who-wants-to-play-to-be-able-to-play, how can you consider this playable? Sure you can physically play but can you REALLY play?

I leave you with 1 last question:
Are you really advocating freedom to play for all or do you just dont want anyone touching your dominant position?

So first off, I don't think that getting locked out of Cyrodiil when the campaign is full of players on my faction (the current poplock) is the same as getting locked out merely because there aremy enough enemy players who have logged in yet. I'm find with waiting in queue when my faction is full -that's a server limitation. I'm not fine with being prevented from playing in Cyrodiil when the campaign limits would allow, but the enemy hasn't decided to log in that morning enough to trigger whatever level the dynamic poplock comes on at or whatever reason they have low pop.

And no, Battlegrounds is not a sufficient replacement for Cyrodiil, in my opinion, and anyways, we're talking about Cyrodiil in this thread.

Second, you persist in doubting what I mean when I say I play EP, win or lose. Yes, I would play in that losing situation you describe. I have played in that very situation. I would rather that everyone can play, including those enemies that are overwhelming me.

Or in other words, since I want to play at anytime short of full poplock, I am absolutely willing to give that same privilege to my enemies and continue to play in that situation.

If we are going to continue this conversation, I'd prefer that be clear. I'm rather tired of the "you just wanna dominate the map" stuff. No, I just want to be able to log on and play for my faction at any time, win or lose, with the only limitations being the server capabilities. And since I want that for myself, I'm fine with my enemies having that when I'm outnumbered.

Sharee

VaranisArano wrote: »

So first off, I don't think that getting locked out of Cyrodiil when the campaign is full of players on my faction (the current poplock) is the same as getting locked out merely because there aremy enough enemy players who have logged in yet. I'm find with waiting in queue when my faction is full -that's a server limitation. I'm not fine with being prevented from playing in Cyrodiil when the campaign limits would allow, but the enemy hasn't decided to log in that morning enough to trigger whatever level the dynamic poplock comes on at or whatever reason they have low pop.

The reason why they have low pop NOW is that all the available morning players are playing on your faction. That won't be the case anymore.

With dynamic pop caps, all available players will be distributed evenly across all the factions, which means that either you will be able to log in right away, or only after a short wait.

Also, dynamic pop cap does not necessarily mean the enemy has to have exactly the same numbers as you - ~10% leeway would be fine, which would likely take care of short-term imbalances(you would be able to log in right away more often).

Ranger209

Sharee wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

Capping population like this would be promoting faction swapping and go against faction loyalty. It would be for the me, me, me, me, me crowd and I would be against that.

Absolutely not.

1, What promotes faction swapping is the fact stacking on one faction (i.e. swapping to it) leads to easy wins through complete outnumbering of the opposition. With caps: no outnumbering, no easy wins, no reason to swap.

2, Faction loyalty will be boosted, since players no longer have a reason to switch sides (no more easy wins through outnumbering, so no point switching). The huge pile that used to dominate will spread out, and stay that way.

What do you mean they would no longer have a reason to switch sides? They will be forced to switch sides if they want to get into cyrodiil. They will spread out by jumping to which ever faction they can get on because the one they are loyal to is locked. There is absolutely no way that capping population plays into loyalty. As a loyalist with 11 toons that are all of the same faction this also potentially prohibits my ability to get into cyrodiil at all when my faction is capped and others are not.

What promotes faction swapping is the simple fact that it is allowed. Capping it will do nothing but encourage people to just jump on any toon they can get into Cyrodiil regardless of faction.

Ranger209

Sharee wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

So first off, I don't think that getting locked out of Cyrodiil when the campaign is full of players on my faction (the current poplock) is the same as getting locked out merely because there aremy enough enemy players who have logged in yet. I'm find with waiting in queue when my faction is full -that's a server limitation. I'm not fine with being prevented from playing in Cyrodiil when the campaign limits would allow, but the enemy hasn't decided to log in that morning enough to trigger whatever level the dynamic poplock comes on at or whatever reason they have low pop.

The reason why they have low pop NOW is that all the available morning players are playing on your faction. That won't be the case anymore.

With dynamic pop caps, all available players will be distributed evenly across all the factions, which means that either you will be able to log in right away, or only after a short wait.

Also, dynamic pop cap does not necessarily mean the enemy has to have exactly the same numbers as you - ~10% leeway would be fine, which would likely take care of short-term imbalances(you would be able to log in right away more often).

And this is accomplished by having no faction loyalty whats so ever, but rather by joining whatever side is not locked at the current moment. No!! There are better ways to fix what goes on during non peak population hours that do not promote faction swapping.

Sharee

Ranger209 wrote: »

There is absolutely no way that capping population plays into loyalty.

Don't you see it?

The major reason why there are so few faction loyal players is the huge reward they can reap by abandoning their original faction and playing for the overpopulated side instead.

Remove that reward (no more easy wins by overwhelming enemy with numbers), and players will naturally spread out to factions they actually like, and as all polls to date have shown, the popularity of the three factions is roughly equal, within a few percent.

Anethum

Sharee wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

There is absolutely no way that capping population plays into loyalty.

Don't you see it?

The major reason why there are so few faction loyal players is the huge reward they can reap by abandoning their original faction and playing for the overpopulated side instead.

Remove that reward (no more easy wins by overwhelming enemy with numbers), and players will naturally spread out to factions they actually like, and as all polls to date have shown, the popularity of the three factions is roughly equal, within a few percent.

absolutly agree

Ranger209

Sharee wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

There is absolutely no way that capping population plays into loyalty.

Don't you see it?

The major reason why there are so few faction loyal players is the huge reward they can reap by abandoning their original faction and playing for the overpopulated side instead.

Remove that reward (no more easy wins by overwhelming enemy with numbers), and players will naturally spread out to factions they actually like, and as all polls to date have shown, the popularity of the three factions is roughly equal, within a few percent.

I don't know that there are any fewer faction loyal players than there are faction swappers, but the faction swappers have much more influence over the quality of the experience. The polls that I have seen would indicate more support for faction locked campaign(s) than people against it.

I will say it again the main reason there is faction swapping is because it is allowed, and there are selfish personal advantages to doing it. ZOS could simply make it so that for every 100k AP you earn you get the same rewards that you get for the first 100k. That would be a different way to remove that reward, even drop it to every next 90k AP earned so that you incentivize staying on one character.

Let me ask you this. What happens at prime time when all 3 factions are locked, and then go beyond prime time when the population starts to dwindle. Let's say 1 faction is still locked and the other 2 are down to 1 and 2 bars. Are you going to randomly start booting people off of the locked faction to get them down to balance the population out? If not then this changes nothing as the imbalance still exists, and booting players to achieve balance is just not the way to go.

redspecter23

How about an alternate solution that can emulate population caps?

Lets say a campaign has a 100 player population cap for sake of argument.

EP is at 100
AD is at 50
DC is at 1

EP players function normally. No change as they are the dominant population.

AD are at half population compared to EP. To compensate, each AD player has a 2 times multiplier to damage, resistance, AP gained, XP gained, etc.

DC is 100 times less populated than EP. Each DC player (in this case, just one person) will get a 100x multiplier to damage, resistance, AP gained, XP gained, etc.

Of course these numbers push extremes but would something like this be preferable to locking players out until more opponents show up? It's a similar incentive. Your underpopulated opponents gain advantages to level out population imbalances. In the case of extreme bonuses, the system should, in theory, balance itself as players would be massively encouraged to jump into a campaign with huge multipliers which will balance the population and therefore equalize the low population bonus as it happens.

Anethum

redspecter23 wrote: »

How about an alternate solution that can emulate population caps?

Lets say a campaign has a 100 player population cap for sake of argument.

EP is at 100
AD is at 50
DC is at 1

EP players function normally. No change as they are the dominant population.

AD are at half population compared to EP. To compensate, each AD player has a 2 times multiplier to damage, resistance, AP gained, XP gained, etc.

DC is 100 times less populated than EP. Each DC player (in this case, just one person) will get a 100x multiplier to damage, resistance, AP gained, XP gained, etc.

Of course these numbers push extremes but would something like this be preferable to locking players out until more opponents show up? It's a similar incentive. Your underpopulated opponents gain advantages to level out population imbalances. In the case of extreme bonuses, the system should, in theory, balance itself as players would be massively encouraged to jump into a campaign with huge multipliers which will balance the population and therefore equalize the low population bonus as it happens.

nice joke but unhealthy for the gameplay af:)
something should encourage people to balance the populations in addition to dynamic caps, but idk what it can be now

redspecter23

Anethum wrote: »

redspecter23 wrote: »

How about an alternate solution that can emulate population caps?

Lets say a campaign has a 100 player population cap for sake of argument.

EP is at 100
AD is at 50
DC is at 1

EP players function normally. No change as they are the dominant population.

AD are at half population compared to EP. To compensate, each AD player has a 2 times multiplier to damage, resistance, AP gained, XP gained, etc.

DC is 100 times less populated than EP. Each DC player (in this case, just one person) will get a 100x multiplier to damage, resistance, AP gained, XP gained, etc.

Of course these numbers push extremes but would something like this be preferable to locking players out until more opponents show up? It's a similar incentive. Your underpopulated opponents gain advantages to level out population imbalances. In the case of extreme bonuses, the system should, in theory, balance itself as players would be massively encouraged to jump into a campaign with huge multipliers which will balance the population and therefore equalize the low population bonus as it happens.

nice joke but unhealthy for the gameplay af:)
something should encourage people to balance the populations in addition to dynamic caps, but idk what it can be now

Oh for sure. I chose an extreme example on purpose. A very minor version of this is already in game. The low score/low pop bonus to AP. I'm not sure it's working properly and even if it was, it's just not enough incentive. Perhaps some middle ground between my crazy suggestion and what is currently implemented.

DeadlyRecluse

It's in the recycling bin, with other ideas that seem good on paper but in reality would just lock people out of playing and thus increase frustration in order to bring some semblance of competitiveness to a game not designed around actual competition.

Sharee

Ranger209 wrote: »

Let me ask you this. What happens at prime time when all 3 factions are locked, and then go beyond prime time when the population starts to dwindle. Let's say 1 faction is still locked and the other 2 are down to 1 and 2 bars. Are you going to randomly start booting people off of the locked faction to get them down to balance the population out? If not then this changes nothing as the imbalance still exists, and booting players to achieve balance is just not the way to go.

The faction who is still locked isn't that way because their players never sleep, but because they still have more players queueing in that the other factions.

It is not necessary to boot players. Individual players log in and log out naturally all the time, on all sides. All you need to do is prevent new ones from joining (if doing so would create or reinforce a population imbalance). The natural player turnout will take care of the rest, and the populations will gradually even out.

Larisse

Tbh I just kind of accept these kinds of imbalances as a matter of course, but I'd love to see something like this happen even if they only did it for a little while to see if it'd help. I'd be ok with a little bit of a wait if it'd mean we had more even fights. Maybe not a real long wait though and it's hard to know what kind of wait times we'd see.

montjie

VaranisArano wrote: »

montjie wrote: »

@VaranisArano
I think the idea is to have fair playing conditions for everyone, which includes a somewhat balanced population across the board. Now does this mean locking pop to the lowest faction? No. But if 2 factions combined still are being outnumbered by 1 I would call that quite the population imbalance and then I do believe the highest factions numbers should be limited to match those of the other 2 factions. Personally I'm no fan of cross faction play anyway despite it being a method to help balance population but thats just me.

Regarding faction loyalists like you. The status quo really wouldnt change that much like I said in my previous post. Only your queue time would be longer in the worst case scenario.
Your concern is already challenged today with pop caps already in play so I really dont get the fuss youre trying to make about how implementing dyn pop caps would cripple your freedom to play.
Atm you already get locked out of cyro (not PvP because theres BG) when your faction is pop locked so in what way is that significantly different than being locked out of a campaign because your faction reached dynamic pop lock?

"I want everyone who wants to play to be able to play"
Interesting youre saying this.
Okay lets flip the script.
Lets say you are in the 1-2 bar faction going up against a fully pop locked faction. You log on in the morning to find your scrolls are lost, your faction pushed back to scroll gates.
Discouraged as that already has made you, you push on and give one of your home keeps a go and you get obliterated by at least 3 times more enemies. Several attempts at other locations have the same outcome. Then you try an outpost. Same result. A town perhaps? Nope same result. You keep getting zerged down no matter what you do, no matter where you go.
Now you tell me mr i-want-everyone-who-wants-to-play-to-be-able-to-play, how can you consider this playable? Sure you can physically play but can you REALLY play?

I leave you with 1 last question:
Are you really advocating freedom to play for all or do you just dont want anyone touching your dominant position?

So first off, I don't think that getting locked out of Cyrodiil when the campaign is full of players on my faction (the current poplock) is the same as getting locked out merely because there aremy enough enemy players who have logged in yet. I'm find with waiting in queue when my faction is full -that's a server limitation. I'm not fine with being prevented from playing in Cyrodiil when the campaign limits would allow, but the enemy hasn't decided to log in that morning enough to trigger whatever level the dynamic poplock comes on at or whatever reason they have low pop.

And no, Battlegrounds is not a sufficient replacement for Cyrodiil, in my opinion, and anyways, we're talking about Cyrodiil in this thread.

Second, you persist in doubting what I mean when I say I play EP, win or lose. Yes, I would play in that losing situation you describe. I have played in that very situation. I would rather that everyone can play, including those enemies that are overwhelming me.

Or in other words, since I want to play at anytime short of full poplock, I am absolutely willing to give that same privilege to my enemies and continue to play in that situation.

If we are going to continue this conversation, I'd prefer that be clear. I'm rather tired of the "you just wanna dominate the map" stuff. No, I just want to be able to log on and play for my faction at any time, win or lose, with the only limitations being the server capabilities. And since I want that for myself, I'm fine with my enemies having that when I'm outnumbered.

Id like to point out youve completely ignored my first paragraph. But fine

I didnt say the two were the same, i stated the differences between them are very minimal.
"I'm find with waiting in queue when my faction is full -that's a server limitation. I'm not fine with being prevented from playing in Cyrodiil when the campaign limits would allow"
Interesting. So youre good with one thing thats being dictated because..reasons. But youre not good with another thing (almost the same thing) being dictaded because..different reasons? You do realize that in a situation where dyn pop caps are a thing, said thing becomes part of the campaign and thus part of the campaign limits. So saying not being fine with being prevented from playing when the campaign limits would allow gameplay isnt really saying anything about the dyn pop cap in play. If the campaign limits would allow more players then that faction wouldnt have reached dyn pop cap yet. You catch my drift?

I believe you misunderstood. Im just asking if what seems to be the most logical explanation for your stance, is indeed truth.
And youve also missed the point i was trying to make. You can physically drive/steer a car with your feet but you cant REALLY drive/steer a car with your feet you see where im getting at?
Now apply the same train of thought on our pvp situation here. I wasnt asking you if you would keep on fighting under those conditions, I was painting a picture in which the odds are skewed so much in your enemies favor you effectively are rendered hopelessly without a chance. And whats the point of playing if you have zero chance.Thats the unplayable I was and am talking about.
With that in mind to hear someone state he wants everyone to be able to play when he/she wants to play it is kinda confusing to hear that same person say its completely fine for 1 faction (coincidentally his faction) to dominate a campaign so hard it renders the other TWO factions useless.
Kinda hypocritical dont you think?

When youre on the winning side its quite easy to come with hypotheticals claiming that, were you on the losing side, youd be fine with whatever conditions the losing side is forced coping with. Its kind of a hollow statement. Just sayin

I think you should stop being so selfcentered and entitled regarding this matter and start viewing this with a more inclusive point of view because youre basically saying. *** everybody thats drawing the short straw here, I dont care about your horrible game experience. I can (almost) play whenever I want so you all should just stfu.

VaranisArano

montjie wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

montjie wrote: »

@VaranisArano
I think the idea is to have fair playing conditions for everyone, which includes a somewhat balanced population across the board. Now does this mean locking pop to the lowest faction? No. But if 2 factions combined still are being outnumbered by 1 I would call that quite the population imbalance and then I do believe the highest factions numbers should be limited to match those of the other 2 factions. Personally I'm no fan of cross faction play anyway despite it being a method to help balance population but thats just me.

Regarding faction loyalists like you. The status quo really wouldnt change that much like I said in my previous post. Only your queue time would be longer in the worst case scenario.
Your concern is already challenged today with pop caps already in play so I really dont get the fuss youre trying to make about how implementing dyn pop caps would cripple your freedom to play.
Atm you already get locked out of cyro (not PvP because theres BG) when your faction is pop locked so in what way is that significantly different than being locked out of a campaign because your faction reached dynamic pop lock?

"I want everyone who wants to play to be able to play"
Interesting youre saying this.
Okay lets flip the script.
Lets say you are in the 1-2 bar faction going up against a fully pop locked faction. You log on in the morning to find your scrolls are lost, your faction pushed back to scroll gates.
Discouraged as that already has made you, you push on and give one of your home keeps a go and you get obliterated by at least 3 times more enemies. Several attempts at other locations have the same outcome. Then you try an outpost. Same result. A town perhaps? Nope same result. You keep getting zerged down no matter what you do, no matter where you go.
Now you tell me mr i-want-everyone-who-wants-to-play-to-be-able-to-play, how can you consider this playable? Sure you can physically play but can you REALLY play?

I leave you with 1 last question:
Are you really advocating freedom to play for all or do you just dont want anyone touching your dominant position?

So first off, I don't think that getting locked out of Cyrodiil when the campaign is full of players on my faction (the current poplock) is the same as getting locked out merely because there aremy enough enemy players who have logged in yet. I'm find with waiting in queue when my faction is full -that's a server limitation. I'm not fine with being prevented from playing in Cyrodiil when the campaign limits would allow, but the enemy hasn't decided to log in that morning enough to trigger whatever level the dynamic poplock comes on at or whatever reason they have low pop.

And no, Battlegrounds is not a sufficient replacement for Cyrodiil, in my opinion, and anyways, we're talking about Cyrodiil in this thread.

Second, you persist in doubting what I mean when I say I play EP, win or lose. Yes, I would play in that losing situation you describe. I have played in that very situation. I would rather that everyone can play, including those enemies that are overwhelming me.

Or in other words, since I want to play at anytime short of full poplock, I am absolutely willing to give that same privilege to my enemies and continue to play in that situation.

If we are going to continue this conversation, I'd prefer that be clear. I'm rather tired of the "you just wanna dominate the map" stuff. No, I just want to be able to log on and play for my faction at any time, win or lose, with the only limitations being the server capabilities. And since I want that for myself, I'm fine with my enemies having that when I'm outnumbered.

Id like to point out youve completely ignored my first paragraph. But fine

I didnt say the two were the same, i stated the differences between them are very minimal.
"I'm find with waiting in queue when my faction is full -that's a server limitation. I'm not fine with being prevented from playing in Cyrodiil when the campaign limits would allow"
Interesting. So youre good with one thing thats being dictated because..reasons. But youre not good with another thing (almost the same thing) being dictaded because..different reasons? You do realize that in a situation where dyn pop caps are a thing, said thing becomes part of the campaign and thus part of the campaign limits. So saying not being fine with being prevented from playing when the campaign limits would allow gameplay isnt really saying anything about the dyn pop cap in play. If the campaign limits would allow more players then that faction wouldnt have reached dyn pop cap yet. You catch my drift?

I believe you misunderstood. Im just asking if what seems to be the most logical explanation for your stance, is indeed truth.
And youve also missed the point i was trying to make. You can physically drive/steer a car with your feet but you cant REALLY drive/steer a car with your feet you see where im getting at?
Now apply the same train of thought on our pvp situation here. I wasnt asking you if you would keep on fighting under those conditions, I was painting a picture in which the odds are skewed so much in your enemies favor you effectively are rendered hopelessly without a chance. And whats the point of playing if you have zero chance.Thats the unplayable I was and am talking about.
With that in mind to hear someone state he wants everyone to be able to play when he/she wants to play it is kinda confusing to hear that same person say its completely fine for 1 faction (coincidentally his faction) to dominate a campaign so hard it renders the other TWO factions useless.
Kinda hypocritical dont you think?

When youre on the winning side its quite easy to come with hypotheticals claiming that, were you on the losing side, youd be fine with whatever conditions the losing side is forced coping with. Its kind of a hollow statement. Just sayin

I think you should stop being so selfcentered and entitled regarding this matter and start viewing this with a more inclusive point of view because youre basically saying. *** everybody thats drawing the short straw here, I dont care about your horrible game experience. I can (almost) play whenever I want so you all should just stfu.

First, I'm not talking about "campaign limitations" as in the rule of the campaign. I'm talking about server limitations as in "This is the maximum number of players on this faction that the server can handle" which is what full poplock is. Thing is, this is a game. A game for players. Players who want to play. I'm fine with hitting the max number the server will allow and then having to wait. That's sensible - obviously I want the server performance to be tolerable for everyone and at max population it makes sense for populations to be equal. I'm not fine with someone setting an arbitrary "Well, you can't have more players until the enemy team logs on more of their players, and when they do, then you can play." Sorry, I'd like to play, not waste my morning waiting for AD and DC players to wake up and log on.

You want to be all "Well, this is a game for players and games have more or less equal teams so everyone's happy."

Which is an argument I understand. But I'm still coming down on the side of "This is a game. A game for players who want to play. And sitting in queue being prevented from playing until the enemy players decide to log on is a sure-fire way to not play. Your solution contains a situation where I and other faction loyal players who won't switch to the low pop factions can't play. Therefore, your solution does not work for everyone because it winds up preventing faction loyal players from playing in certain situations and that's worth taking into consideration."

Yes, I'm defining "can play" as "can log into Cyrodiil." Not as you define it, which is something like "can log into Cyrodiil and have a decent chance of accomplishing something without being roflstomped." Because to me personally? I would take being able to log into Cyrodiil and being roflstomped over not being able to log into Cyrodiil at all. Not every player would take that bargain - the bargain of "I can log into Cyrodiil when my faction has a higher pop, therefore the enemy can do the same and roflstomp me." I will, because I want to be able to play in Cyrodiil for my faction if I'm winning and if I'm losing and even if I'm being roflstomped at every turn (been there, done that, came back for more). That shouldn't be surprising - its a game where I play for one faction, and I want to play, winning or losing or being roflstomped. Apparently, we have different standards of what "can play" and "unplayable" means, and that's okay. It does mean that we are unlikely to agree because our end goals are quite different.

Furthermore, while there are other problems with the whole idea, like how to deal with the evening population issues where one faction has their population linger over from primetime while the other factions log off (assuming that just kicking people from the server isn't an option), or convincing the segment of the PVP population that wants enforced faction loyalty to accept a solution that basically requires cross faction queues to work, I've chosen to focus on my situation that I can personally speak to, that being how this solution impacts faction loyal players like myself. My situation is such that my morning play would probably be impacted by a dynamic poplock if I log in early enough and because I'm faction loyal, I do not have the option to cross-faction queue to a different faction. Therefore, this creates a situation where I want to play, and I can't.

Now, you may decide, as it seems you have, that my situation does not matter and I should stfu in the name of balanced populations. Obviously, I'm going to have a different opinion on the matter. I would like the campaigns to become more balanced, but not at the expense of players being able to play when and how they want to. (My preferred pie-in-the-sky-at-this-point solution is that ZOS fixes the PVP performance issues making it possible for more players to PVP because a rising tide lifts all boats and maybe we'd have less practically empty campaigns...but the likelihood of ZOS fixing stuff is...not great, at this point. Which is unfortunate, because a higher overall population would certainly lead to more players on the lower pop factions and thus more competitive campaigns like we used to have, without needing to substantially change how the campaign rulesets work.)




Second, thank you for coming right out and calling me a hypocrite. I think we're done here, since you cannot seem to grasp that I actually mean it when I said: "I just want to be able to log on and play for my faction at any time, win or lose, with the only limitations being the server capabilities. And since I want that for myself, I'm fine with my enemies having that when I'm outnumbered." But I don't see the point in continuing a discussion where you don't think I'm arguing in good faith, as I believe I am. We're clearly not going to convince each other of our positions, and worse, its pointless to have this conversation if you don't think I actually mean what I say. So if you want to continue this conversation, please either accept that I'm arguing my position in good faith even though you don't agree with my viewpoint, or let's drop it because the insults aren't conducive to an actual conversation.