Faction Lock? Really? Again?

InvictusApollo

When I first saw the faction lock threads I thought to myself: "don't worry - this idea is so bad that it will never be implemented".
And now ZOS is actually going to put faction lock? Again? It didn't work the first time!

Have faction lock advocates really ignored the obvious problems that this is going to introduce?

Faction lock will effectively delete almost two thirds of all pvp characters for everyone who prefers noCP! How?
There is going to be only one noCP campaign! This means that only one third of many peoples characters will be able to play in pvp.
I for example have 3 chars in AD, 3 in DC and 2 in EP. And I love playing them all in noCP campaign.

Do I hop between campaigns to be on the winning side?
No! Why would I? I play for fun - not some fleeting victory that I had no inluence on because of so many players involved.

Do I hop between campaings to troll, spy or grief?
No! Why would I? It's boring.

I have created characters on every alliance for two reasons:
1. Experience the three banners war from every side.
2. Play with all of my friends who happen to have only one or two chars that are pvp ready.

With the faction lock I will be able to play with only 3 of my characters every month. CP is far too laggy for me to be even playable so if I were forced to play it, I would just turn off ESO and go play some other game (Overwatch for example). Even if I had better ping and actually could play CP, then still two or three of my characters would be effectively deleted from Cyrodill pvp.

And now the faction lock will have the following negative effects on me and every other player like me:
2. Completely prevent us from playing around two thirds of our characters if we prefer the noCP or CP campaign only.
3. Completely prevent us from playing around one third of our characters if we do not have preference on CP.
4. Prevent us from playing with many of our friends who happen to have pvp ready characters in other alliances.
5. Increase queue time on CP campaings since many players from noCP campaings will go there to play some of their characters that are locked our from noCP campaign.
6. Increase hatred between players of different alliances since faction lock will enforce alliance identity.
7. Decreasing overall monthly transmute crystals yield from tier one rewards since not all characters will be able to get them.
8. Making Cyrodill literally unplayable for anyone who wants some challenge and finds himself in a faction that is dominating.
9. Almost completely preventing people from playing in their favourite campaing if it is at maximum population capacity. Now we can just queue on another character. With faction lock we will either have to wait an hour to play or leave the game completely and play sth else.
10. Making some factions have significant numbers advantage untill the end of campaing. If for some reason one faction happens to have significantly less people than the others then that faction will be in constant disadvantage untill the end of the campaing.
11. Guilds will be literally able to choose the winning side just by grouping up to all queue on one campaing and on the same side. Some guilds care only about APs and they will gladly work with other like minded guilds to choose the dominant alliance and farm as many AP and rewards as possible.

All of these problems and probably even more that I haven't thought of and for what?
To reduce trolling?
Trolls troll because they like to troll. Those that want to troll will still do it without even batting an eye on their impact on the alliance end score. They will just troll in their home campaigns.

To reduce spying?
People who do not care about the score will still spy for their friends.

PvP for many people is the endgame - the thing they do when they have finished every single trial and dungeons so many times that they are too bored to play them.
With faction lock many people will stop playing pvp. And that means less eso+ subscriptions -> lower playerbase -> less money for game content, development and improvement.

And we can't solve all these issues just by introducing more campaings. The more campaings there are the greater chance that some of them will be dead.

Aliyavana

I used to be one of the people that wanted a faction lock and had faction pride, but then I found out fighting for a faction isn't worth it as the rewards are trivial. The reality is that the majority of these faction loyalists are not going to want to play fairly and will want to go into a campaign where they can x v 1 lower population factions for instant gratification. the campaigns will turn into several one faction dominated ones.

Dissapointing, I would like a second no cp one with no faction lock

Morgul667

Im happy with faction lock

Sanctum74

Aliyavana wrote: »

I used to be one of the people that wanted a faction lock and had faction pride, but then I found out fighting for a faction isn't worth it as the rewards are trivial. The reality is that the majority of these faction loyalists are not going to want to play fairly and will want to go into a campaign where they can x v 1 lower population factions for instant gratification. the campaigns will turn into several one faction dominated ones.

Dissapointing, I would like a second no cp one with no faction lock

Interesting, you're describing exactly what is already going on with no faction lock in place. If you don't care about the score then there is no harm in trying out the change since what you're complaining about is already happening. Let's give it a shot.

Minno

I'm fine with the changes. Whatever gets players to home to other areas to improve performance during primetime lol.

Gilvoth

making a 30 day choice has consequences, both good and bad.
but that's the way it should be, no one should be able to alter their faction choice until after the campaign has ended, the results of your choice may have been good or may have been bad, none the less it was a choice and should be stayed with untill the 30 days has expired.

DisgracefulMind

Gilvoth wrote: »

making a 30 day choice has consequences, both good and bad.
but that's the way it should be, no one should be able to alter their faction choice until after the campaign has ended, the results of your choice may have been good or may have been bad, none the less it was a choice and should be stayed with untill the 30 days has expired.

Except the PvP population is small on PC/NA especially in oceanic hours and now we're screwed and can't go find fights if our faction is zerging the map because that's what faction rp pugs do.

So our option is to sit on a dead campaign?

People are delusional if they think that people are going to actually home more than the 30-day, people want the fights, that's that.

Instead you're all stealing how some of us want to play. What's the ESO motto again? Right...

Also it's an absolute rip-off from a customer POV. I've spent good money race-changing and other things for my other faction characters, and now I can't play them because I'm not playing in a dead campaign during oceanic, which barely holds any pop as is in the current 30-day. What makes you all think it's going to magically go up? There's only just enough pop in the 30-day in off-hours, barely any in oceanic, and massive lag zergs in primetime. So, tell me, besides rare times on the weekends, where the PvP gonna be? The main camp, obviously.

Nah faction rpers are the most selfish PvPers in this game. Good job, all.

Vapirko

You can play on any faction in Shor or either of the IC campaigns, problem solved. You don’t need to experience the alliance war on every faction every campaign, spoiler alert it’s the same every time. Besides if you’re just jumping between alliances you’re not really experiencing a tri faction war.

Minyassa

Agreed. I have 15 toons spanning all three alliances, and I have friends and guild members in all three. So this is basically saying I have to pick a specific group to play with and can't join any spur of the moment groups that decide to go play, or people who finally have the time to play when their schedule might make that limited, or any other reason that we make the decision of a night where to play and with which toon. So much for the social aspect of MMOs. If you take away "playing with friends" what the hell is left as motivation besides the crap that makes people toxic?

Beardimus

Vapirko wrote: »

You can play on any faction in Shor or either of the IC campaigns, problem solved. You don’t need to experience the alliance war on every faction every campaign, spoiler alert it’s the same every time. Besides if you’re just jumping between alliances you’re not really experiencing a tri faction war.

Spot on.
I'm up for faction lock for sure, and whilst folks like the OP who play legit assume the rest do, sadly they don't and itd the boosters & cheats that wrecked it for you. But you still have Shor.

The only oddity i see is it feels reverse id have thought locking Kyne, Shor & Sotha makes sense (or adding a locked 7 day noCP) as the less pop campaigns have the biggest issues. But i can see what they are trying to do, which is healthy spread out of players

As per quote above For those that care, this is great. Those that don't, you have shor.

ManwithBeard9

Minyassa wrote: »

Agreed. I have 15 toons spanning all three alliances, and I have friends and guild members in all three. So this is basically saying I have to pick a specific group to play with and can't join any spur of the moment groups that decide to go play, or people who finally have the time to play when their schedule might make that limited, or any other reason that we make the decision of a night where to play and with which toon. So much for the social aspect of MMOs. If you take away "playing with friends" what the hell is left as motivation besides the crap that makes people toxic?

You're only limited on 2 campaigns, the 30 day campaigns. The 7 day guest ones are not locked. Nor the IC ones. Nor the lowbie.

DisgracefulMind

Vapirko wrote: »

You can play on any faction in Shor or either of the IC campaigns, problem solved. You don’t need to experience the alliance war on every faction every campaign, spoiler alert it’s the same every time. Besides if you’re just jumping between alliances you’re not really experiencing a tri faction war.

There's not enough pop in oceanic to do that. Are you magically going to make oceanic pop? pls

Do you play on PC/NA? There's barely any pop for most of the day besides primetime except specifically on some weekend days.

Elong

Vapirko wrote: »

You can play on any faction in Shor or either of the IC campaigns, problem solved. You don’t need to experience the alliance war on every faction every campaign, spoiler alert it’s the same every time. Besides if you’re just jumping between alliances you’re not really experiencing a tri faction war.

Why don't you go to Shor instead of us?

Elong

Beardimus wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

You can play on any faction in Shor or either of the IC campaigns, problem solved. You don’t need to experience the alliance war on every faction every campaign, spoiler alert it’s the same every time. Besides if you’re just jumping between alliances you’re not really experiencing a tri faction war.

Spot on.
I'm up for faction lock for sure, and whilst folks like the OP who play legit assume the rest do, sadly they don't and itd the boosters & cheats that wrecked it for you. But you still have Shor.

The only oddity i see is it feels reverse id have thought locking Kyne, Shor & Sotha makes sense (or adding a locked 7 day noCP) as the less pop campaigns have the biggest issues. But i can see what they are trying to do, which is healthy spread out of players

As per quote above For those that care, this is great. Those that don't, you have shor.

Again, why don't you move to Shor?

Minyassa

ManwithBeard9 wrote: »

Minyassa wrote: »

Agreed. I have 15 toons spanning all three alliances, and I have friends and guild members in all three. So this is basically saying I have to pick a specific group to play with and can't join any spur of the moment groups that decide to go play, or people who finally have the time to play when their schedule might make that limited, or any other reason that we make the decision of a night where to play and with which toon. So much for the social aspect of MMOs. If you take away "playing with friends" what the hell is left as motivation besides the crap that makes people toxic?

You're only limited on 2 campaigns, the 30 day campaigns. The 7 day guest ones are not locked. Nor the IC ones. Nor the lowbie.

Thank you, I was told otherwise. This is a relief to know. I just want the freedom to play with whoever of my friends are playing at a given time.

FleetwoodSmack

Minno wrote: »

I'm fine with the changes. Whatever gets players to home to other areas to improve performance during primetime lol.

That along with the broken siege. That needs to come back too. 30 damage increase? Pshaw. HITS LIKE A WET NOODLE.

Enkil

Silliness... faction lock Shor instead and we will gladly go there!

@Elong most of us wanted and advocated for a new 7-day locked campaign (or to lock one of the 7-days). The devs decided what to lock and not lock so point your ire in their direction rather than toward specific individual players here please.

We just want one locked campaign to call home.. is that really so far beyond comprehension for people? Maybe get a clue and look past your own selfish desires to realize not all players want what you want or play how you play...

DisgracefulMind

Enkil wrote: »

Silliness...

@Elong most of us wanted and advocated for a new 7-day locked campaign (or to lock one of the 7-days). The devs decided what to lock and not lock so point your ire in their direction rather than toward specific individual players please.

And people who play different time zones than primetime are telling all the faction rpers why it's bad for oceanic and off-hours. There isn't the population to play the 7-day during oceanic. So, yes, the faction locks should be on the less played campaigns.

I thought ESO was play how you want? So all the faction rpers are basically telling us we aren't allowed to play with our friends except during primetime? Which a lot of us can't play/aren't in that time zone.

It's selfish.

Enkil

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Enkil wrote: »

Silliness...

@Elong most of us wanted and advocated for a new 7-day locked campaign (or to lock one of the 7-days). The devs decided what to lock and not lock so point your ire in their direction rather than toward specific individual players please.

And people who play different time zones than primetime are telling all the faction rpers why it's bad for oceanic and off-hours. There isn't the population to play the 7-day during oceanic. So, yes, the faction locks should be on the less played campaigns.

I thought ESO was play how you want? So all the faction rpers are basically telling us we aren't allowed to play with our friends except during primetime? Which a lot of us can't play/aren't in that time zone.

It's selfish.

My point is y’all are barking up the wrong tree. We just want one faction locked campaign. I’d prefer it to be a 7-day rather than Vivec. Make your case to the devs.

I’m not a faction RPer, have toons and friends on all 3, and I’m intimately familiar with the time zone issues having played mostly from Hawaii which is far more isolated than any other time zone on the planet.

You are judging the future changes based on current population dynamics which makes very little sense. Once Shor becomes the default FFA unlocked campaign, things will change as players migrate to servers that fit their play style and it may be that Shor will take the place of Vivec population-wise.

ellahellabella

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Gilvoth wrote: »

making a 30 day choice has consequences, both good and bad.
but that's the way it should be, no one should be able to alter their faction choice until after the campaign has ended, the results of your choice may have been good or may have been bad, none the less it was a choice and should be stayed with untill the 30 days has expired.

Except the PvP population is small on PC/NA especially in oceanic hours and now we're screwed and can't go find fights if our faction is zerging the map because that's what faction rp pugs do.

So our option is to sit on a dead campaign?

Also it's an absolute rip-off from a customer POV. I've spent good money race-changing and other things for my other faction characters, and now I can't play them because I'm not playing in a dead campaign during oceanic, which barely holds any pop as is in the current 30-day. What makes you all think it's going to magically go up? There's only just enough pop in the 30-day in off-hours, barely any in oceanic, and massive lag zergs in primetime. So, tell me, besides rare times on the weekends, where the PvP gonna be? The main camp, obviously.

Nah faction rpers are the most selfish PvPers in this game. Good job, all.

^^^ALL THE BOLD^^^ Oceanic is a thing you Rping Americans! Get off my throat please

Qbiken

Finally, I can now roleplay as a true faction traitor and bring the scroll to my enemies and feeling it truly means something.

WrathOfInnos

Some people take the alliance war way too seriously. Freedom is good, who cares about loyalty to fictional rulers. Faction locks are a concept that has already failed once, because it is an obstacle for people who want to play the game. It will fail again, because ZoS wants people to play this game.

Drako_Ei

I hope they add an alliance change token...

Alucardo

I like it.

Beardimus

Elong wrote: »

Beardimus wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

You can play on any faction in Shor or either of the IC campaigns, problem solved. You don’t need to experience the alliance war on every faction every campaign, spoiler alert it’s the same every time. Besides if you’re just jumping between alliances you’re not really experiencing a tri faction war.

Spot on.
I'm up for faction lock for sure, and whilst folks like the OP who play legit assume the rest do, sadly they don't and itd the boosters & cheats that wrecked it for you. But you still have Shor.

The only oddity i see is it feels reverse id have thought locking Kyne, Shor & Sotha makes sense (or adding a locked 7 day noCP) as the less pop campaigns have the biggest issues. But i can see what they are trying to do, which is healthy spread out of players

As per quote above For those that care, this is great. Those that don't, you have shor.

Again, why don't you move to Shor?

Clearly you didn't read my post above....

Move to Shor - Happily, i rarely play vivec. It's filled with zergs and is the only place that lags. My want for faction lock (as above) is primarily for shor/sotha/kyne as that's where the behavior is worse. I'd be very happy for just those to be locked and leave the boosting & zergs in vivec

But clearly ZOS have looked at the data, and how people behave and made the right call, which i appreciate rather than listen to those detracting from the debate that switching sides in the middle of a game/sport is ever going to help competition..........!

zyk

This has nothing to do with roleplaying, so trying to insult players who prefer faction locks by calling them RPers is just disrespectful to actual roleplayers for no good reason and makes you look uninformed while doing it.

The vast majority of players who advocate for faction locks do so because in their experiences faction hopping has negatively impacted the AvA gameplay they enjoy.

There is no right or wrong here, it's purely a matter of preference. There are reasonable pros and cons to both approaches.

I say this as someone who prefers faction locks in games like this, but have not advocated for one in ESO AvA. At least not for years.

WoppaBoem

Really good thing. At Xbox EU we fight team green and this change will I hope make it more a balanced fight.

MipMip

InvictusApollo wrote: »

When I first saw the faction lock threads I thought to myself: "don't worry - this idea is so bad that it will never be implemented".

I feel the same. Still having a hard time believing something like this is actually going to go live. What makes ESO special is how it offers (offered?) many ways to play.

(and no, having Shor, an often low population campaign even in prime time is not a replacement)

DisgracefulMind

Enkil wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Enkil wrote: »

Silliness...

@Elong most of us wanted and advocated for a new 7-day locked campaign (or to lock one of the 7-days). The devs decided what to lock and not lock so point your ire in their direction rather than toward specific individual players please.

And people who play different time zones than primetime are telling all the faction rpers why it's bad for oceanic and off-hours. There isn't the population to play the 7-day during oceanic. So, yes, the faction locks should be on the less played campaigns.

I thought ESO was play how you want? So all the faction rpers are basically telling us we aren't allowed to play with our friends except during primetime? Which a lot of us can't play/aren't in that time zone.

It's selfish.

My point is y’all are barking up the wrong tree. We just want one faction locked campaign. I’d prefer it to be a 7-day rather than Vivec. Make your case to the devs.

I’m not a faction RPer, have toons and friends on all 3, and I’m intimately familiar with the time zone issues having played mostly from Hawaii which is far more isolated than any other time zone on the planet.

You are judging the future changes based on current population dynamics which makes very little sense. Once Shor becomes the default FFA unlocked campaign, things will change as players migrate to servers that fit their play style and it may be that Shor will take the place of Vivec population-wise.

I'm stating that it is unfair for them to implement such a change and to make it the main, 30-day campaign, which most people want to play. What they're doing is not strengthening this PvP community, it is putting a huge divide in it.

To make a case, we must respond to multiple threads and other people's posts on forums. How else would you like us to go about it?? I can make a new forum thread every single day just like the faction loyalists, and I can get multiple people to do it as well, but that would be seen as trolling. So, instead, we must discuss it on the forums within well written threads. So, this is appealing to the devs.

The current population will still be the same population come faction lock. There is no magical number of people who are going to appear. So, yes, we need to judge the population based on now and it IS concerning that we're being expected to play in dead campaigns in oceanic.

It makes no sense that people are going to play in the 7-day because, let's be real, most people want to play the 30 day and still get their crystals at the end of it. They're not going to want to play the 7-day. They've NEVER wanted to play the 7-day.

DisgracefulMind

MipMip wrote: »

InvictusApollo wrote: »

When I first saw the faction lock threads I thought to myself: "don't worry - this idea is so bad that it will never be implemented".

I feel the same. Still having a hard time believing something like this is actually going to go live. What makes ESO special is how it offers (offered?) many ways to play.

(and no, having Shor, an often low population campaign even in prime time is not a replacement)

"Play how you want"
"Play how you want"
"Play how you want"
"Play how you want"
"Play how you want"
"Play how you want"
"Except you must be a faction loyalist"

DisgracefulMind

zyk wrote: »

This has nothing to do with roleplaying, so trying to insult players who prefer faction locks by calling them RPers is just disrespectful to actual roleplayers for no good reason and makes you look uninformed while doing it.

The vast majority of players who advocate for faction locks do so because in their experiences faction hopping has negatively impacted the AvA gameplay they enjoy.

There is no right or wrong here, it's purely a matter of preference. There are reasonable pros and cons to both approaches.

I say this as someone who prefers faction locks in games like this, but have not advocated for one in ESO AvA. At least not for years.

Sorry, *faction loyalists. (you can @ me next time you'd like to throw some shade, I'm fine with it, we can talk this out just an fyi)

It is preference, sure, but this game has allowed us to play how we want to (faction hopping to play with other friends and find more outnumbered fights included) for years now. To suddenly take it away isn't going to help anything in PvP. PvP, besides primetime, isn't exactly thriving. So what is this accomplishing?

I'm not saying people advocating for locks are terrible, and they deserve some sense of security as well, but locking people completely out of the 30-day campaigns is wrong. Make it so we can't home it on multiple alliances, sure, we won't reap the rewards, but we could still go and play other factions when our main one is zerging the map, or when our friends who main other alliances want to play with us.

This game's only good quality is community, and this is ripping that away from a lot of people.