Faction recognition by locked campaigns

Ranger209

People have been suggesting that it would be nice that when they home a locked campaign that all of their characters regardless of their actual respective factions could all fight for the faction that they home for. It has been said that doing this would be a potential programming nightmare due to main story lines and other issues. However, I believe this is more of an issue regarding permanent faction changing. I believe there are already ways programmed into the game for battlegrounds that allow people to team up together regardless of faction and fight against people that may or may not be of the same faction as them.

I propose that they do something similar with locked campaigns whereby only that campaign when homed will see all of the characters on the same account as fighting for that faction. Doing so in this way would not involve a permanent faction change, but rather only an override mechanism that causes a homed, locked campaign to view all characters on an account as loyal to the faction chosen when locking that account to a particular faction. Outside of that locked campaign the rest of the game would view each character as the proper faction that it is, but inside that campaign it would view that character as the faction that was chosen when homed. So a character could have a faction=EP but also have a factionvivec=AD when AD is homed in a locked campaign. In this way the game would see this character as EP everywhere in game except in Vivec, or insert new campaign name.

I have 13/13 DC characters so am really not affected by this, but people that are spread among factions with their characters are being denied use of their off faction characters unless they take them to another campaign. I see this as a possible solution to that dilemma.

Edirt_seliv

Better idea: no faction locks.

Gilvoth

sounds fair

Vietfox

Edirt_seliv wrote: »

Better idea: no faction locks.

Even better idea: faction locks

Enkil

Good post.. I think we will be discussing things like this more once they lock them.

MipMip

Edirt_seliv wrote: »

Better idea: no faction locks.

Agree.

InvictusApollo

I'd prefer no faction locks but OPs idea would at least solve some problems of implementing a faction lock.

Joy_Division

Ranger209 wrote: »

People have been suggesting that it would be nice that when they home a locked campaign that all of their characters regardless of their actual respective factions could all fight for the faction that they home for. It has been said that doing this would be a potential programming nightmare due to main story lines and other issues. However, I believe this is more of an issue regarding permanent faction changing. I believe there are already ways programmed into the game for battlegrounds that allow people to team up together regardless of faction and fight against people that may or may not be of the same faction as them.

I propose that they do something similar with locked campaigns whereby only that campaign when homed will see all of the characters on the same account as fighting for that faction. Doing so in this way would not involve a permanent faction change, but rather only an override mechanism that causes a homed, locked campaign to view all characters on an account as loyal to the faction chosen when locking that account to a particular faction. Outside of that locked campaign the rest of the game would view each character as the proper faction that it is, but inside that campaign it would view that character as the faction that was chosen when homed. So a character could have a faction=EP but also have a factionvivec=AD when AD is homed in a locked campaign. In this way the game would see this character as EP everywhere in game except in Vivec, or insert new campaign name.

I have 13/13 DC characters so am really not affected by this, but people that are spread among factions with their characters are being denied use of their off faction characters unless they take them to another campaign. I see this as a possible solution to that dilemma.

Since I wear the Alliance War outfit, I might be able to share some light here.

Joining a Battleground does not remove your alliance. It merely puts all the members on your team into one of the three alliances. What I mean is I'm wearing the EP shirt, be put onto the Stormlords, and then be wearing the DC shirt. It only teams players up by putting them onto one of the alliances in an separate instance. It doesn't seem to me a step toward a general "overide" as you put it into a non-instanced open-world Cyrodiil.

Also, even if ZOS could do such a thing, If I understand what you are proposing, it doesn't address the main complain that people who dislike the faction-locks have: being forced to play on an overpopulated alliance.

Ranger209

Joy_Division wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

People have been suggesting that it would be nice that when they home a locked campaign that all of their characters regardless of their actual respective factions could all fight for the faction that they home for. It has been said that doing this would be a potential programming nightmare due to main story lines and other issues. However, I believe this is more of an issue regarding permanent faction changing. I believe there are already ways programmed into the game for battlegrounds that allow people to team up together regardless of faction and fight against people that may or may not be of the same faction as them.

I propose that they do something similar with locked campaigns whereby only that campaign when homed will see all of the characters on the same account as fighting for that faction. Doing so in this way would not involve a permanent faction change, but rather only an override mechanism that causes a homed, locked campaign to view all characters on an account as loyal to the faction chosen when locking that account to a particular faction. Outside of that locked campaign the rest of the game would view each character as the proper faction that it is, but inside that campaign it would view that character as the faction that was chosen when homed. So a character could have a faction=EP but also have a factionvivec=AD when AD is homed in a locked campaign. In this way the game would see this character as EP everywhere in game except in Vivec, or insert new campaign name.

I have 13/13 DC characters so am really not affected by this, but people that are spread among factions with their characters are being denied use of their off faction characters unless they take them to another campaign. I see this as a possible solution to that dilemma.

Since I wear the Alliance War outfit, I might be able to share some light here.

Joining a Battleground does not remove your alliance. It merely puts all the members on your team into one of the three alliances. What I mean is I'm wearing the EP shirt, be put onto the Stormlords, and then be wearing the DC shirt. It only teams players up by putting them onto one of the alliances in an separate instance. It doesn't seem to me a step toward a general "overide" as you put it into a non-instanced open-world Cyrodiil.

Also, even if ZOS could do such a thing, If I understand what you are proposing, it doesn't address the main complain that people who dislike the faction-locks have: being forced to play on an overpopulated alliance.

I guess I am looking at Pit Daemons, Storm Lords, and Fire Drakes as pseudo alliances that the game realizes for purposes of Battlegrounds. Regardless of what actual alliance you created your character as, when you enter battlegrounds this pseudo alliance takes precedence allowing characters of differing alliances to be on the same team and even fight against characters of the same actual alliance while on this battlegrounds team. Am I missing something in looking at battlegrounds in that way? If so please correct me.

I am thinking that the same approach could be used to each of the locked campaigns enabling all characters on an account regardless of the faction they were created under to fight for a pseudo alliance, in this case to the outside world of the same name as the original 3 alliances rather than Pit Daemons, etc. However this alliance name is recognized by the code to differentiate it from the actual born into alliance of the character upon character creation doesn't matter. It could be faction A, B, and C in the code for the locked Cyrodiil campaigns or campaignnameEP, campaignnameAD, etc. Something slightly different from how the game determines faction for story lines and pvp currently. There has to be a named variable in there that distinguishes the 3 from each other for those purposes.

Now maybe battlegrounds don't actually create new factions or team names to make that happen, I guess I don't know, just seemed like a logical way to make that happen. But regardless I think it is doable in a much easier way than allowing for actual faction changes that would wreak havoc on main story lines and things of that nature. Being there is only one way to enter Cyrodiil, and the way that it is done, I am not sure how much of a difference there is between the instanced battlegrounds and this non-instanced Cyrodiil. It kind of acts like one big long term instance for up to pop cap amount of people.

As to your second point, no it doesn't address that. It's more of a compensation for that. At least if this were done you would still have access to all of your characters for that locked campaign albeit to be used only for the faction that you enlist under for the duration of that campaign. If you switch alliances for the next campaign you would then again have access to all of your characters to fight for the new alliance that you chose. It also address a complaint people have had about wanting to play with a friend using a specific character that was not allied with a specific character that their friend wanted to play with. This situation would be a thing of the past as now you could pick the same campaign as your friend and all of your characters for you and your friend could fight for that alliance. You could use your AD character and your friend could use their EP character and you both could fight for DC or whichever alliance you both enlist under. I know its not perfect, but it is some compensation.

disintegr8

I think PVP (Cyrodiil and IC) is the last bastion of the original 3 Alliances concept and if you remove the character lock to an alliance, you might as well look at getting rid of alliances altogether.

Some people have all their character in one alliance because of pride. Others, like me, had them spread out (6/5/4 in my case), because they want the option of playing on any alliance. For me, it was a way to experience all zones and play with friends before One Tamriel.

Diundriel

and now you ll be just able to Play only one alliance and just a handful of your characters you have on that side. If you dont want to Play on that alliance as it is laggy you can go to an empty Campaign or quit for the evening as cyrodil is anyway just a huge lag mess especially on pc eu. i mean i live in Germany and got better ping on na and much less ping Spikes, even if i Play na prime time...

Ranger209

Bumping this for further discussion now that we have some minimal experience playing with faction locks.

bulbousb16_ESO

So, basically what you are asking, is they completely scrap the Cyrodiil code and re-write it?

Ranger209

No

bulbousb16_ESO

Ranger209 wrote: »

an override mechanism that causes a homed, locked campaign to view all characters on an account as loyal to the faction chosen when locking that account to a particular faction

And you think this is something they could just whip up, in a couple of hours, like baking a cake?

Besides the fact, our characters have a faction for a reason. They're not going to just start fighting for a different side arbitrarily and capriciously.

So, in summary, it would take a tremendous amount of development effort - which I am sure any dedicated Cyrodiil player would tell you they'd prefer was dedicated to peformance/lag reduction - and it doesn't make sense on its face.

Basically, a non-starter.

Ranger209

Pretty sure all the code already exists. Just needs to be applied in a different place and a different way. I'm not saying it is a 2 hour fix, but think it is doable similarly as to how battlegrounds allows characters from different factions to fight on the same team.

I am 100% for faction locks and believe the more people that get on board with it the more likely it stays. There is a lot of people who are against it because the feel they cannot use many of their characters to fight for the faction they choose. This would allow them to use all of their characters on whichever locked campaign they choose

idk

The solution is clear. Zos encouraged us to play in various faction when they removed faction lock and other changes with 1T. Now that that are bringing back faction locks Matt and Rich need to man up and do the work needed to bring us faction changes for a limited time.

They need to own their decisions and be responsible. Something that is heavily lacking with these decisions.

Ranger209

This isn't a ground up adjustment by any means. It's a change as to how the Cyrodiil campaigns view factions.

Mr_Walker

Doesn't address/solve the underlying issues that baked in population imabalances cause during off peak.

Ranger209

No, that's not it's purpose. Faction hopping never solved those problems either. That will take something entirely different, if it can ever be solved at all.

Mr_Walker

Ranger209 wrote: »

No, that's not it's purpose. Faction hopping never solved those problems either. That will take something entirely different, if it can ever be solved at all.

Incorrect, when people swapped, or like me joined underpopulated factions, the map moved. Now, with pop. imbalances "locked in" that won't happen.

I don't mind being outnumbered, but when I'm getting gated and kerbstomped 6/7 against 1, I'm just switching to another game or off. Probably not zos' preferred outcome, but that's their problem.

Derra

Joy_Division wrote: »

Also, even if ZOS could do such a thing, If I understand what you are proposing, it doesn't address the main complain that people who dislike the faction-locks have: being forced to play on an overpopulated alliance.

It somewhat does if you could align with a non overpopulated alliance.

Ranger209

Derra wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Also, even if ZOS could do such a thing, If I understand what you are proposing, it doesn't address the main complain that people who dislike the faction-locks have: being forced to play on an overpopulated alliance.

It somewhat does if you could align with a non overpopulated alliance.

Every 30 days they will have the chance to switch to an underpopulated alliance

Miriel

Ranger209 wrote: »

No, that's not it's purpose. Faction hopping never solved those problems either. That will take something entirely different, if it can ever be solved at all.

the only way to solve pop unbalance off hour, is to merge EU and NA, and probably alternate between where the main server was hosted, then the elite NAs can play as the Aussies, with alittle bad ping...

Haashhtaag

idk wrote: »

The solution is clear. Zos encouraged us to play in various faction when they removed faction lock and other changes with 1T. Now that that are bringing back faction locks Matt and Rich need to man up and do the work needed to bring us faction changes for a limited time.

They need to own their decisions and be responsible. Something that is heavily lacking with these decisions.

I’d be okay with said scenario ONLY if the alliance change is FREE. If they add that and don’t allow you to change ALL your toons alliance for FREE I would not be on board with it. As it would just be another ZOS cash grab

Miriel

Haashhtaag wrote: »

idk wrote: »

The solution is clear. Zos encouraged us to play in various faction when they removed faction lock and other changes with 1T. Now that that are bringing back faction locks Matt and Rich need to man up and do the work needed to bring us faction changes for a limited time.

They need to own their decisions and be responsible. Something that is heavily lacking with these decisions.

I’d be okay with said scenario ONLY if the alliance change is FREE. If they add that and don’t allow you to change ALL your toons alliance for FREE I would not be on board with it. As it would just be another ZOS cash grab

Then ask for a diffrent server, i and others want to play with locks...

Ranger209

This is, I feel, also the best solution to allow players to use all of their characters for the same campaign while at the same time allowing for faction balance to be a thing once a campaign ends. What I mean by that is that if a faction swap were a permanent thing and the majority of people made all of their characters 1 alliance they would then be stuck playing for that alliance indefinitely. If too many people picked the same alliance the faction imbalance would be a permanent thing. By allowing all characters to play for the same alliance and making that choice only last for the duration of the campaign it still allows players to swap alliances and balance campaigns over time. This could not be done with permanent faction change tokens or something of that nature.

It also allows for networks of friends to be able to swap and play with each other at different intervals where permanently adhering to only one faction would not allow for this. Permanent faction changing would mean that some friends could be played with always and some never. I've never believed playing with friends should be a primary factor in the lock/no lock debate, but it shouldn't be ignored completely either.

DisgracefulMind

Haashhtaag wrote: »

idk wrote: »

The solution is clear. Zos encouraged us to play in various faction when they removed faction lock and other changes with 1T. Now that that are bringing back faction locks Matt and Rich need to man up and do the work needed to bring us faction changes for a limited time.

They need to own their decisions and be responsible. Something that is heavily lacking with these decisions.

I’d be okay with said scenario ONLY if the alliance change is FREE. If they add that and don’t allow you to change ALL your toons alliance for FREE I would not be on board with it. As it would just be another ZOS cash grab

What do you think the probable ultimate goal is? Make us pay for faction swaps once they figure out how to ungarble their code. xd

Derra

Ranger209 wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Also, even if ZOS could do such a thing, If I understand what you are proposing, it doesn't address the main complain that people who dislike the faction-locks have: being forced to play on an overpopulated alliance.

It somewhat does if you could align with a non overpopulated alliance.

Every 30 days they will have the chance to switch to an underpopulated alliance

Not if they want to play their characters on the overpopulated faction aswell...

Which if they have 7 ep and 2 ad chars they actively pvp with - nobody in their right mind will do.

Ranger209

Derra wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Also, even if ZOS could do such a thing, If I understand what you are proposing, it doesn't address the main complain that people who dislike the faction-locks have: being forced to play on an overpopulated alliance.

It somewhat does if you could align with a non overpopulated alliance.

Every 30 days they will have the chance to switch to an underpopulated alliance

Not if they want to play their characters on the overpopulated faction aswell...

Which if they have 7 ep and 2 ad chars they actively pvp with - nobody in their right mind will do.

Sure but if such a player is in a guild that wants to switch factions to help balance things out then they can play all 9 of their characters as AD with their guild.

ZOS_RikardD

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