Should ZOS lower the population cap on campaigns?

zyk

No, keep it the way it is and wait 5 more years for the fix that may never come.

A map the size of Cyrodiil with the number of objectives it has would be completely ridiculous with a lower cap. It would kill the game of AvA more effectively than lag is.

If you don't care about map play and objectives and just want 'good fights', then all like-minded players should agree to play in IC on a low pop server.. Why hasn't this happened yet?

NBrookus

zyk wrote: »

If you don't care about map play and objectives and just want 'good fights', then all like-minded players should agree to play in IC on a low pop server.. Why hasn't this happened yet?

There are events where players get together for just this kind of thing. But people have different schedules and time zones. Open world cyro offers the chance to play on YOUR schedule. Well Vivec does. Shor can be pretty empty outside of weekends.

I miss the all night 3-way brawls in IC. I think people just got bored of the same old fights. Just like it's possible to be bored of Chalman Mine or Roe Farm or Alessia Bridge.

zyk

No, keep it the way it is and wait 5 more years for the fix that may never come.

NBrookus wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

If you don't care about map play and objectives and just want 'good fights', then all like-minded players should agree to play in IC on a low pop server.. Why hasn't this happened yet?

There are events where players get together for just this kind of thing. But people have different schedules and time zones. Open world cyro offers the chance to play on YOUR schedule. Well Vivec does. Shor can be pretty empty outside of weekends.

I miss the all night 3-way brawls in IC. I think people just got bored of the same old fights. Just like it's possible to be bored of Chalman Mine or Roe Farm or Alessia Bridge.

I'm not talking about events. If all small scalers who only care about fights just went to IC outside of any kind of events, they'd easily find each other to fight in a lag-free environment.

Whatever the case may be, the population cap shouldn't be lowered further. Though it's designed to facilitate a wide variety of play, the core gameplay of Cyrodiil is obviously AvA.

DeadlyRecluse

No, keep it the way it is and wait 5 more years for the fix that may never come.

SkysOutThizeOut wrote: »

@DeadlyRecluse what if different campaigns offered different rewards that appealed to pvers? Do people play vivec because it’s 30days?

@SkysOutThizeOut

I honestly think people/the community consciously or subconsciously identifies a "main" campaign and wants to play there.

Big guilds, I'm sure, partially prefer the 30 day because if they're only raiding 1-2 nights a week, they don't really have an impact on a 7 day but feel like they do on a 30.

I'm absolutely on board with the idea of spreading people into more campaigns--I think 2-3 bar pop PvP is the sweet spot for the PvP I enjoy, for instance--but clearly most people like stacking in one campaign.

Different rewards for each camp could be interesting. Or maybe allowing people to earn a gladiator's proof once in each campaign (which wouldn't work with how they're currently distributed, but could with a rework).

gepe87

Yes, reduce campaign caps to force population to disperse to other campaigns while ZOS looks for a fix. Also, temporarily increase rewards (double/ triple maybe) for staying in shor for a month.

And open a 2nd campaign for vivec and SS. Low pop to half.

Hochstapler

Yes, reduce campaign caps to force population to disperse to other campaigns while ZOS looks for a fix. Also, temporarily increase rewards (double/ triple maybe) for staying in shor for a month.

What's the pop cap in Cyrodiil currently?

Defilted

No problems in Shor XBOX NA.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought Vivec is 300 per alliance and Shor is 150. Because even the few times shor has been full there is a huge difference between the delay/lag with Vivec and Shor.

Vivec has constant issues with abilities not firing. No issues like this in Shor for me.

Anyway... I do not think lower the cap is going to help Vivec. There appears to be routing and server side network issues that need to be worked out.

technohic

Yes, reduce campaign caps to force population to disperse to other campaigns while ZOS looks for a fix. Also, temporarily increase rewards (double/ triple maybe) for staying in shor for a month.

Been thinking about it more. Lowering the lock wont help. In the past when we had a lot of people PVPing, you'd have people wait in horrendous long queues and still wouldn't go to the other campaigns.

If you make the rewards good enough; you'll only move the problem to Shor.

It would be nice if you could get rewards and progress for any campaign you do without forfeiting and if they made each campaign all one reward system. Then make each campaign have different rules or map layouts to where you can chose based on what you feel like doing.

frozywozy

Yes, reduce campaign caps to force population to disperse to other campaigns while ZOS looks for a fix. Also, temporarily increase rewards (double/ triple maybe) for staying in shor for a month.

I have been a strong supporter of lowering the population cap for a very long time now. I believe this is one of the only option to help the server performances at this point, in line with assigning specific max group sizes to specific campaigns, if not all of them (8-12-16). I would like the population cap to be reduced by 20%, what 3bars actually is.

Alot of you guys in this thread have a very flawed vision of actual facts. Claiming that you don't want the population reduced because Shor is dead is like comparing apples with oranges. Shor is dead during the day, but when the population catch up at primetime and go to 3bars for all factions, it is amazing.

Just like Vivec is during the day when all factions are at 3 bars. Amazing performances and several places to fight on the map. I will agree that it would be better the way it is now, but it simply does not work.

We have to adopt the same reasoning as the issue with people running in huge groups of 2-3 raids. Zenimax is not going to bring any major code / optimization change to help server performances anytime soon. This is not happening.

At this point we have to go with simple fixes or with changes in players behaviors. In my book there are 2 very efficient ways to help Cyrodiil get better that would not cost much for Zenimax.

1) Change the max group size to 12 or 16 (maybe a different cap for different campaigns)

Some people like to say that even if the max group size is changed, people will still stack with multiple raids on top of each other, just like they do right now with multiple 24men groups. I totally agree. The difference is that they won't be able to do it as effectively as they can right now. First of all, it requires multiple leaders. Believe it or not, this is a very hard task to find a leader for a group even if the player only has to move around without giving any direction. People are very scared in general to lead a group. Secondly, it remove the arrows on top of people in other groups.

As a result, AOEs heals and damage don't stack as efficiently and it helps server performances in the end.

2) Reduce the population cap by 20% (what 3bars actually is)

Even if the cap has always been reduced in the past and we are still experiencing issues, it does not mean that the change is useless. It simply means that patch after patch, Zenimax has brought new features in the game, new bugs on top of old bugs that drastically slowed down the server and as a result of their incompetence and inability to do anything complex, I believe that we should go with very simple and cheap ($) changes that would go along way.

Somebody in the thread said that reducing the population cap have never encouraged people to play in another campaign. This is simply not true for multiple reasons. First of all, it happened several times the past 2 years that we would see all campaigns max pop for all factions at primetime. I admit it has not happened in a while but still. Secondly, one of the reason why lowering the population cap does not seem to incentive players to spread evenly across multiple campaigns is because the amount of players pvping as a whole is constantly dropping aswell.

If they would have dropped the population cap drastically a few years ago to really force all major guilds to spread across multiple campaigns and commit, it would have been the best. Right now it's risky but I still believe it would make our quality of life much better since Zenimax obviously can't and don't want to invest to optimize the code or start from fresh.

Mureel

SkysOutThizeOut wrote: »

Everyone that complains about lag the most plays in vivec. The main issue we can identify is that their servers really start to struggle when each faction exceeds 3 bar populations. Reduce the population cap to effectively max out at the start of 4 bars and ZOS publicly acknowledge that the player base can help to mitigate lag by dispersing while they search for a fix...

Yes and if they DO, more campaigns please!

I hate this 'force everyone into few campaigns, then pop lock them so we cannot play' thing

BaylorCorvette

Yes, reduce campaign caps to force population to disperse to other campaigns while ZOS looks for a fix. Also, temporarily increase rewards (double/ triple maybe) for staying in shor for a month.

Vivec is a dumpster fire of performance and Shor is (on PC NA) pretty underpopulated. Two weeks ago, to be on the top 2% of AD leaderboards you had to be in the top 7. IDK if lowering the pop of Vivec we force more people into Shor or not, so I'm unsure if that is the answer.

Another option, but this would require more work on ZoS part so I highly doubt that would happen, especially since it is PvP related. But make Shor a reduced map, maybe 2/3 the size or possibly even 50%. Reduce the number of keeps respectively. The smaller map will force engagements and make getting to and from keeps easier. In this instance you probably want the campaign population cap to be less than Vivec otherwise performance will be really really bad.

NBrookus

Hochstapler wrote: »

What's the pop cap in Cyrodiil currently?

I don't think that information is officially out there, but it's something like ~120 per faction.

Mrsinister2

No, keep it the way it is and wait 5 more years for the fix that may never come.

It seems fine as is but I honestly do not experience the horrible lag so many people complain about.

Ruckly

Other, list suggestion below.

Reset scrolls at the start of prime-time. Reset emp at the start of prime-time and keep it locked that way for 1 hour. With those two out of the way it is simply a matter of penalizing a faction or its players for putting too many players in one location. People can't play the game in good faith so laws(rules) have to be implemented to herd them into less lagy scenarios. Lowering the population cap will create lines and make ball groups more prominent.

Doing something with IC to make it relevant to cyrodill proper in someway and making access to IC home bases easier might also aid the problem. There is opportunity for some kind of TDM/6 flag cap 12 man group style play in IC that impacts cyrodill proper with an alliance point multiplier or buffs or vendor discounts or buying special siege with tel var stones or even affecting the point tally in some way or all of the above. There might be a reluctance to implement this because battles would be more often and likely less laggy in IC and there would be a greater chance of burn out or getting bored. However with cyrodill the way it is and with the lag it has people getting burnt out or bored might not be so bad.

IC has a lot of buildings to line of sight people so if it was relevant it would be a hot spot for 1vx players to fight other 1vx players in ultimate combat.

usmcjdking

No.

ZOS needs to incorporate an actual, meaningful, low population bonus. One that boosts stats, AP gain, and whatever else when playing on a faction that is weaker than the most populated faction.

Their flat refusal to do so ends up in lopsided populations throughout the day, and leaving those who day play underpopulated factions at any given time as being non-influential on the map.

This is a basic population balancing metric. There is almost no incentive to play a faction that is underrepresented. It even manages to get WORSE with greater disparity.

Vapirko

Yes, reduce campaign caps to force population to disperse to other campaigns while ZOS looks for a fix. Also, temporarily increase rewards (double/ triple maybe) for staying in shor for a month.

Mureel wrote: »

SkysOutThizeOut wrote: »

Everyone that complains about lag the most plays in vivec. The main issue we can identify is that their servers really start to struggle when each faction exceeds 3 bar populations. Reduce the population cap to effectively max out at the start of 4 bars and ZOS publicly acknowledge that the player base can help to mitigate lag by dispersing while they search for a fix...

Yes and if they DO, more campaigns please!

I hate this 'force everyone into few campaigns, then pop lock them so we cannot play' thing

No more campaigns. There is always space enough in one of the three. There definitely isn’t the population to support a new one.

usmcjdking wrote: »

No.

ZOS needs to incorporate an actual, meaningful, low population bonus. One that boosts stats, AP gain, and whatever else when playing on a faction that is weaker than the most populated faction.

Their flat refusal to do so ends up in lopsided populations throughout the day, and leaving those who day play underpopulated factions at any given time as being non-influential on the map.

This is a basic population balancing metric. There is almost no incentive to play a faction that is underrepresented. It even manages to get WORSE with greater disparity.

Why do you say no and then your counter argument brings up a different discussion altogether? This isn’t about pop imbalanace. It’s about one over crowded campaign and two campaigns that are dead for most of the day. Adding a better low pop bonus might be good but it’s not gonna get people out of vivec.

idk

No, keep it the way it is and wait 5 more years for the fix that may never come.

Vapirko wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

No.

ZOS needs to incorporate an actual, meaningful, low population bonus. One that boosts stats, AP gain, and whatever else when playing on a faction that is weaker than the most populated faction.

Their flat refusal to do so ends up in lopsided populations throughout the day, and leaving those who day play underpopulated factions at any given time as being non-influential on the map.

This is a basic population balancing metric. There is almost no incentive to play a faction that is underrepresented. It even manages to get WORSE with greater disparity.

Why do you say no and then your counter argument brings up a different discussion altogether? This isn’t about pop imbalanace. It’s about one over crowded campaign and two campaigns that are dead for most of the day. Adding a better low pop bonus might be good but it’s not gonna get people out of vivec.

Prob because at one point it appeared OP seemed to be more interested in spreading out the population into other campaigns so the low pop campaigns were not so empty.

Vapirko

Yes, reduce campaign caps to force population to disperse to other campaigns while ZOS looks for a fix. Also, temporarily increase rewards (double/ triple maybe) for staying in shor for a month.

idk wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

No.

ZOS needs to incorporate an actual, meaningful, low population bonus. One that boosts stats, AP gain, and whatever else when playing on a faction that is weaker than the most populated faction.

Their flat refusal to do so ends up in lopsided populations throughout the day, and leaving those who day play underpopulated factions at any given time as being non-influential on the map.

This is a basic population balancing metric. There is almost no incentive to play a faction that is underrepresented. It even manages to get WORSE with greater disparity.

Why do you say no and then your counter argument brings up a different discussion altogether? This isn’t about pop imbalanace. It’s about one over crowded campaign and two campaigns that are dead for most of the day. Adding a better low pop bonus might be good but it’s not gonna get people out of vivec.

Prob because at one point it appeared OP seemed to be more interested in spreading out the population into other campaigns so the low pop campaigns were not so empty.

And? A low pop bonus doesn’t help a dead campaign. You can get a bonus if there’s nothing to do.

idk

No, keep it the way it is and wait 5 more years for the fix that may never come.

Vapirko wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

No.

ZOS needs to incorporate an actual, meaningful, low population bonus. One that boosts stats, AP gain, and whatever else when playing on a faction that is weaker than the most populated faction.

Their flat refusal to do so ends up in lopsided populations throughout the day, and leaving those who day play underpopulated factions at any given time as being non-influential on the map.

This is a basic population balancing metric. There is almost no incentive to play a faction that is underrepresented. It even manages to get WORSE with greater disparity.

Why do you say no and then your counter argument brings up a different discussion altogether? This isn’t about pop imbalanace. It’s about one over crowded campaign and two campaigns that are dead for most of the day. Adding a better low pop bonus might be good but it’s not gonna get people out of vivec.

Prob because at one point it appeared OP seemed to be more interested in spreading out the population into other campaigns so the low pop campaigns were not so empty.

And? A low pop bonus doesn’t help a dead campaign. You can get a bonus if there’s nothing to do.

It could get some people to go to those campaigns. More importantly, forcing players out of the campaign the want to play in is not the answer. That seems to be what the OP is really all about.

Mureel

Vapirko wrote: »

Mureel wrote: »

SkysOutThizeOut wrote: »

Everyone that complains about lag the most plays in vivec. The main issue we can identify is that their servers really start to struggle when each faction exceeds 3 bar populations. Reduce the population cap to effectively max out at the start of 4 bars and ZOS publicly acknowledge that the player base can help to mitigate lag by dispersing while they search for a fix...

Yes and if they DO, more campaigns please!

I hate this 'force everyone into few campaigns, then pop lock them so we cannot play' thing

No more campaigns. There is always space enough in one of the three. There definitely isn’t the population to support a new one.

usmcjdking wrote: »

No.

ZOS needs to incorporate an actual, meaningful, low population bonus. One that boosts stats, AP gain, and whatever else when playing on a faction that is weaker than the most populated faction.

Their flat refusal to do so ends up in lopsided populations throughout the day, and leaving those who day play underpopulated factions at any given time as being non-influential on the map.

This is a basic population balancing metric. There is almost no incentive to play a faction that is underrepresented. It even manages to get WORSE with greater disparity.

Why do you say no and then your counter argument brings up a different discussion altogether? This isn’t about pop imbalanace. It’s about one over crowded campaign and two campaigns that are dead for most of the day. Adding a better low pop bonus might be good but it’s not gonna get people out of vivec.

Omg it is because it is the only CP monthly.

I don’t want to be forced to go play weekly, or in sub 50 or in no cp. I just quit pvping if I repeatedly cannot get in.

This is why as I said: add another!

technohic

Yes, reduce campaign caps to force population to disperse to other campaigns while ZOS looks for a fix. Also, temporarily increase rewards (double/ triple maybe) for staying in shor for a month.

Mureel wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Mureel wrote: »

SkysOutThizeOut wrote: »

Everyone that complains about lag the most plays in vivec. The main issue we can identify is that their servers really start to struggle when each faction exceeds 3 bar populations. Reduce the population cap to effectively max out at the start of 4 bars and ZOS publicly acknowledge that the player base can help to mitigate lag by dispersing while they search for a fix...

Yes and if they DO, more campaigns please!

I hate this 'force everyone into few campaigns, then pop lock them so we cannot play' thing

No more campaigns. There is always space enough in one of the three. There definitely isn’t the population to support a new one.

usmcjdking wrote: »

No.

ZOS needs to incorporate an actual, meaningful, low population bonus. One that boosts stats, AP gain, and whatever else when playing on a faction that is weaker than the most populated faction.

Their flat refusal to do so ends up in lopsided populations throughout the day, and leaving those who day play underpopulated factions at any given time as being non-influential on the map.

This is a basic population balancing metric. There is almost no incentive to play a faction that is underrepresented. It even manages to get WORSE with greater disparity.

Why do you say no and then your counter argument brings up a different discussion altogether? This isn’t about pop imbalanace. It’s about one over crowded campaign and two campaigns that are dead for most of the day. Adding a better low pop bonus might be good but it’s not gonna get people out of vivec.

Omg it is because it is the only CP monthly.

I don’t want to be forced to go play weekly, or in sub 50 or in no cp. I just quit pvping if I repeatedly cannot get in.

This is why as I said: add another!

Problem is with the word "add." Just change Shor to 30 day if that's the preferred model. It's not doing any good as a 7 day other than as an excuse to not go there

Thoragaal

Other, list suggestion below.

SkysOutThizeOut wrote: »

Everyone that complains about lag the most plays in vivec. The main issue we can identify is that their servers really start to struggle when each faction exceeds 3 bar populations. Reduce the population cap to effectively max out at the start of 4 bars and ZOS publicly acknowledge that the player base can help to mitigate lag by dispersing while they search for a fix...

Atm a huge reason for the lag is because of the terrain looks, it's funneling people into the same small areas (milegates/bridge) to reach their objective. These objective at the same time are placed in a way that it's zerg friendly, because it's only 6 keeps around the map.
You can't change any of this because of lore reasons and how Cyrodiil actually looks.

But what Can be done is a completely different large area, that's not lore breaking, that has more objectives.
Think like this: Molag Bal (or some weird mage scholar w/e) opens some portal to his realm. We're now in his realm fighting AvsAvsA.
There's no need for it to be keeps anymore. There's no reason for crowing an emp.
With more objectives, without it being tied to 6 specific keeps, you could have 20 big objectives (land grab areas), and who ever controls the most amount of these areas recieves some buff (like the emp buff).. or not..
Imagine fighting in a Coldharbour-like enviornment with 20-30 objectives (which are worth equally much if you wanna get something from controlling the most amount of objectives)!

Irylia

Or shor turned into a 6 cap group size campaign with no objectives just terrain and open keeps/towns for pvping.
Maybe a couple random rotating flags that generate in a new location after 10 minutes. Groups can earn points for kills and extra ap while near the flag.

No factions

Delsskia

Other, list suggestion below.

ZOS already has lowered the population caps and here we are with performance as bad as or worse than it's ever been. Lowering it even more simply flies in the face of why so many of us bought the game in the first place, the promise of large scale PvP. You could argue that ZOS was overzealous in what they advertised and sold us as well as in their attempt to bring that to fruition, but you could also argue that they've been just as stubborn and conservative with their lack of communication and attempts to solve the obvious issues.

The underlying problem is that ZOS chose an outdated and underperforming game engine to build their game on. Then, shortly after release, they fired almost all of their programmers including the most experienced of them. For every DLC since, they've hired inexperienced and intern level coders to write the DLC's and patches then promptly gotten rid of them too. The result has been sparse, at best, documentation so that each new round of coders doesn't know exactly how all of the previous ones achieved the results they desired.

So now, 5 years in, rather than streamlined, efficient and optimized code we have to deal with a mish mash of spaghetti code that competes with earlier versions rather than enhancing earlier versions and introduces more bottlenecks and bugs than can be managed using bandaids. And all of this on top of an outdated and underperforming game engine. It's a train wreck and the train was carrying burning dumpsters on a track that didn't fit the train.

The solution is to hire competent programmers, who document everything they do, to rewrite, streamline and optimize the code on top of a modern game engine that's actually suited to large scale PvP.

In the meantime, there are a few things that they can do almost immediately to improve performance.

1. Population balance. If one faction only has 1 bar of population then all 3 factions get locked at 1 bar until all 3 can field 2 bars, 3 bars and so on.

2. Use Battle Spirit to disable ALL proc sets in Cyrodiil. Trials and dungeons are tuned for proc sets and Cyrodiil just has to deal with them. Disabling proc sets would take away an immense amount of calculations that the servers and game engine have to deal with and improve performance tremendously.

3. Open a new CP enabled campaign that requires a minimum group size of (pick one... 8, 10, 12) to enter the campaign. This would give the organized/guild groups and ball groups a campaign of their own to compete against each other and ease the pressure on Vivec.

ZOS has the resources to actually solve all of the performance issues. Bandaids really only postpone that option.

Joy_Division

A large map with few players means that players have to concentrate together to achieve objectives and find fights.

Besides, 4 1/2 years of ESO history tells us this is not going to spread out the population (small as it is) to other campaigns as we have seen people wait through 100 Qs.

The Uninvited

Other, list suggestion below.

Again? Nah, it's the concentration of zergs in one spot combined with all the calculations of CP for all these players. Fix should be found in the CP calculations.

idk

No, keep it the way it is and wait 5 more years for the fix that may never come.

The Uninvited wrote: »

Again? Nah, it's the concentration of zergs in one spot combined with all the calculations of CP for all these players. Fix should be found in the CP calculations.

It has already been demonstrated CP does not affect lag. Zos did a test close to 2 years ago and removed all CP from all campaigns and lag still persisted.

I am surprised someone would still claim this is an issue after what seemed to be a decisive test.

SkysOutThizeOut

Yes, reduce campaign caps to force population to disperse to other campaigns while ZOS looks for a fix. Also, temporarily increase rewards (double/ triple maybe) for staying in shor for a month.

@Joy_Division has anyone been floating any other ideas or solutions in the rep meetings to generate increased improvement? I do have an idea that has nothing to do with campaigns. What about a debuff that gets worse the more players are grouped together, not significantly but enough to notice. Maybe a slight buff for the opposing players in the area who are outnumbered based off a ratio.
Debuff/Buff Criteria
1. How many players inside a certain radius to receive debuff?
2. How large is the radius that the number of players must fit to receive the debuff.
3. How many levels of debuff would there be?
3. Make he debuff based purely off what 1 side has, not a ratio to the other.
4. Provide a buff for an outnumbered faction that starts at a certain ratio and progressively gets stronger.
5. How many levels for the buff?
6. What values should be buffed and debuffed? How should they scale?

This would punish those who zerg big and reward you for spreading out. The idea of being a foot soldier or a hero.
Thoughts on this idea?

Delsskia

Other, list suggestion below.

@SkysOutThizeOut

It's a creative idea, but why punish groups when ZOS has always promoted groups in PvP? There is zero content in the game that requires 24 people. The only reason there is a 24 player limit to groups is because of Cyrodiil. That has been advertised and promoted since before launch as a benefit. Also, it's just asking already overloaded servers, game engine and shoddy coding to perform even more calculations.

It would create more problems and be completely counter to the original concept of Cyrodiil.

idk

No, keep it the way it is and wait 5 more years for the fix that may never come.

I would expect this discussion is outside the scope of class reps. I do not think they would have the experience and knowledge of the server design and more to have such discussion. This goers well beyond what they discuss according to the notes form class rep meetings.

The reality is Zos does not have a clue and testing ideas does not work in general as only the live server gives the needed feedback.

However, we do know they have worked with particles and other aspects to try to reduce lag so Zos has considered much of this if not all.

In the end, Zos has changed something since the lag did get worse after it go better. I have been in huge keep fights that probabaly had more than the current pop cap without significant lag. So it goes beyond populationas well.

We also had buffs and debuffs back then. We possibly have more of them since that was before Zos started homogenizing them.