I had an epiphany... Faction lock will achieve very little for hardcore players

UnseenCat

Faction lock is supposed to ensure that dedicated Alliance War players will be kept in the faction for the duration of the campaign. It's supposed to put a damper on spying and coordinated Emp-flipping, and all the other miseries in Cyrodiil. But...

It might not work out like anyone hoped.

Why?

Spying and coordinated cross-Alliance scheming will never be stopped as long as players can communicate out-of-band from game chat with Discord and other tools.

And if someone wants to play in the other alliance in the same locked campaign, all they need is another account. Speed-grinding to level a new character is the only bar to entry, and sadly, it's not all that high. As the next month or two go on, we'll have cross-faction players who've leveled up to CP max on alt toons on alt accounts causing the same old shenanigans. Let's face it, they'll spend money in the Crown store to buy riding skills scrolls, too. (Actually, I'll guess that some have probably been preparing and doing it all along ever since faction lock was first announced.)

Which means that for dedicated Alliance War players, the same drama and pain points will continue as before, even in faction locked campaigns.

The only players who are fenced in by faction lock are going to be ones like me, who just go to Cyrodiil occasionally to have fun. No secondary accounts, no personal legion of PvP alts in all factions to pick-and-choose from based on the current state of the map.

But in the end, a lot of more casual Cyrodiil players stay down in the 7-day campaigns anyway since they're less overcrowded and laggy... and those aren't faction locked. So... overall, nothing changes. Maybe a speed-bump for a month or two, but probably not much more than that, I'm afraid.

I hope I'm wrong, actually. But from what I've seen in the 7-day campaigns, and from what I'm hearing out of the 30-day ones, it seems like the same old stuff, different day.

LeifErickson

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

yodased

LeifErickson wrote: »

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

Converseley we can paint all your rock running tryhards with the same brush and say you don't care about the game's health or it's playerbase, only how many people you can 1vX to make yourself feel better.

There is no reason to be a ***.

JadonSky

Since day one I have always been DC for life. All my toons are DC and both PVP guilds I am that are hard core guilds are DC only and kicked anyone who faction swapped.

I find most people who faction swap (not all) only did so because they wanted to be on the winning team just to get more AP. This became worse when they allowed AP to be stored and transferred between characters.

WoppaBoem

LeifErickson wrote: »

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

I am so happy to be a bad player and a lot of horrible things in your eyes and many others just to see your saltiness.

ZOS creates a massive map with a designed gameplay while open to anything people can think off, everybody who plays according to the design is a horrible player the logic in that is so funny

WoppaBoem

yodased wrote: »

LeifErickson wrote: »

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

Converseley we can paint all your rock running tryhards with the same brush and say you don't care about the game's health or it's playerbase, only how many people you can 1vX to make yourself feel better.

There is no reason to be a ***.

Nice one, yes all those ''good players'' just love making out with trees and rocks.

usmcjdking

yodased wrote: »

LeifErickson wrote: »

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

Converseley we can paint all your rock running tryhards with the same brush and say you don't care about the game's health or it's playerbase, only how many people you can 1vX to make yourself feel better.

There is no reason to be a ***.

Not really.

I only care to be able to PVP with more than half my toons on the only active PVP server.

Firstmep

Sadly the 7 day campaigns are pretty dead.
Most guilds have no reason to swap over since they dont care about pvdoor, and without players to fight theres little incentive.

yodased

usmcjdking wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

LeifErickson wrote: »

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

Converseley we can paint all your rock running tryhards with the same brush and say you don't care about the game's health or it's playerbase, only how many people you can 1vX to make yourself feel better.

There is no reason to be a ***.

Not really.

I only care to be able to PVP with more than half my toons on the only active PVP server.

I didn't actullay MEAN that @usmcjdking I was trying to make a point you don't have to paint people with such large brushes, nor do you have to insult people to make a point.

Derra

yodased wrote: »

LeifErickson wrote: »

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

Converseley we can paint all your rock running tryhards with the same brush and say you don't care about the game's health or it's playerbase, only how many people you can 1vX to make yourself feel better.

There is no reason to be a ***.

What about the people that played multiple factions BECAUSE they cared about the games health though? Those that did what zos intended and played for underpopulated factions.

yodased

Derra wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

LeifErickson wrote: »

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

Converseley we can paint all your rock running tryhards with the same brush and say you don't care about the game's health or it's playerbase, only how many people you can 1vX to make yourself feel better.

There is no reason to be a ***.

What about the people that played multiple factions BECAUSE they cared about the games health though? Those that did what zos intended and played for underpopulated factions.

Again, it was a point to illustrate the attack, not really to be taken as a serious point. Sure there are all kinds of people who don't like or want faction lock, just like there are all kinds of people who do.

Painting either of those groups as "good" or "bad" is just stupid.

VaranisArano

To the OP, I think that if your standard for success for faction locking is 100% reduction of trolling, zone spies, and other problems that faction lock enthusiasts pointed out, then of course its going to be a failure.

Dedicated trolls are gonna troll. I think we all know that.

Faction lock won't make trolling and other problem behaviors impossible. It does make it harder. It means it takes a lot more dedication to lock oneself out of the factions you like playing for a month in order to troll a faction, you don't like. Or it takes a lot more effort and money to play mutlifaction on new accounts with new characters as you yourself described - aomething that most average players won't do. And when ZOS makes it harder to troll, to emp swap, to bandwagon, to spy, to AP farm...we see less of those problem behaviors and more players playing for their faction for a month, win or lose.

Faction lock isnt perfect. But I don't think anyone who suported it or who convinced ZOS to give it another try was expecting 100% reduction of all problem behaviors. That's unrealistic. What's realistic is seeing a noticable improvement in those areas...and its only been a month. It'll take a while to see if this shakes out how ZOS wants it to. I Didnt ask for faction lock, but I've been pretty pleased with the PC/NA 30 day so far, but like I said, it'll take time to see.

LukosCreyden

I mostly agree with the idea faction locks. However, it does suck for those guilds and players that would consciously switch to losing alliances to get a challenge and even the numbers a bit.

AD winning so everyone logs their bananas? Yawn.

EP getting hammered so people log their strawberries to even the playing field? Good stuff.

Frankly, I don't particularly care one way or the other, all my characters have always been reds. As long as I get to fight people, then I'm good.

zyk

LeifErickson wrote: »

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

This is as wrong as the people who believe all cross-faction players are self-serving cheating spies. The party that deserves your daggers is ZOS for making this change after allowing multi-faction cultures to develop by removing faction locks for more than three years.

The pros and cons of locked factions has been debated for every RvR game I am aware of. It was intended to be a feature at launch because it is intuitive to many fans of RvR games. From what I understand, it is something that continues to be debated for Camelot Unchained.

In the first couple of years of AvA, while it was still sort of popular by ESO standards, the best guilds that played the map all had lots of players who also played solo and small scale.

And honestly, no one cares who king sheet of turd mountain is. Some players considered good in ESO PVP probably wouldn't be if it was an actually popular game.

LeifErickson

yodased wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

LeifErickson wrote: »

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

Converseley we can paint all your rock running tryhards with the same brush and say you don't care about the game's health or it's playerbase, only how many people you can 1vX to make yourself feel better.

There is no reason to be a ***.

What about the people that played multiple factions BECAUSE they cared about the games health though? Those that did what zos intended and played for underpopulated factions.

Again, it was a point to illustrate the attack, not really to be taken as a serious point. Sure there are all kinds of people who don't like or want faction lock, just like there are all kinds of people who do.

Painting either of those groups as "good" or "bad" is just stupid.

Except I have never met a good player in this game who cares about the alliance war or likes faction locks so in this case you really can paint people with large brushes or whatever you said.

VaranisArano

LeifErickson wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

LeifErickson wrote: »

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

Converseley we can paint all your rock running tryhards with the same brush and say you don't care about the game's health or it's playerbase, only how many people you can 1vX to make yourself feel better.

There is no reason to be a ***.

What about the people that played multiple factions BECAUSE they cared about the games health though? Those that did what zos intended and played for underpopulated factions.

Again, it was a point to illustrate the attack, not really to be taken as a serious point. Sure there are all kinds of people who don't like or want faction lock, just like there are all kinds of people who do.

Painting either of those groups as "good" or "bad" is just stupid.

Except I have never met a good player in this game who cares about the alliance war or likes faction locks so in this case you really can paint people with large brushes or whatever you said.

This is one of those arguments who's convincing-ness or lack thereof relies entirely on how many players you know and whether or not the players you know are truly representive of the PVPers in Cyrodiil.

Which is to say that its subjective. Very subjective.

TBois

It's heartening to see all the people calling out the assumptive *** being thrown out by people on both sides.

MrSinister213

Not only does faction lock do nothing for "hardcore" players it does nothing for the casual player as well.

What are the incentives to win the campaign? 1st place gets about 15k more gold than 3rd. 10 minutes of node grinding can make up that difference. Top 2% gets gold rewards (which are trash) regardless of alliance placement. Teir 1 gets everybody 50 crystals.

Every game caters to the casual as it should. Casuals make up the majority of the population and their presence allows the "hardcore" players to flourish. The problem with faction lock is it didn't provide a boost in casuals entering Cyrodil as many faction lockers used as a talking point. Most faction lock players only play during their raid time, usually 2 times a week for 2-3 hours.

Your average faction lock player only plays in Cyrodil 6~ hours a week. Sad ZOS decided to cater to these people who have little impact not only for alliance war score but overall health of the game.

VaranisArano

MrSinister213 wrote: »

Not only does faction lock do nothing for "hardcore" players it does nothing for the casual player as well.

What are the incentives to win the campaign? 1st place gets about 15k more gold than 3rd. 10 minutes of node grinding can make up that difference. Top 2% gets gold rewards (which are trash) regardless of alliance placement. Teir 1 gets everybody 50 crystals.

Every game caters to the casual as it should. Casuals make up the majority of the population and their presence allows the "hardcore" players to flourish. The problem with faction lock is it didn't provide a boost in casuals entering Cyrodil as many faction lockers used as a talking point. Most faction lock players only play during their raid time, usually 2 times a week for 2-3 hours.

Your average faction lock player only plays in Cyrodil 6~ hours a week. Sad ZOS decided to cater to these people who have little impact not only for alliance war score but overall health of the game.

Now I'm genuinely curious.

If you figure the average "hardcore" faction lock player only plays 6 hours a week with their raid...

How much do you think the average casual player plays in Cyrodiil?

MrSinister213

[quote="VaranisArano;c-6169212"
Now I'm genuinely curious.

If you figure the average "hardcore" faction lock player only plays 6 hours a week with their raid...

How much do you think the average casual player plays in Cyrodiil?[/quote]


Hardcore Pro faction lock players don't exist. Every PC NA pro faction lock player I have seen on these forums or in Cyrodil zone chat are the types who get farmed at resources. Maybe EU has a different culture.

Derra

yodased wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

LeifErickson wrote: »

The only people that like faction locks in this game are bad players who can pride themselves in their faction's success to make themselves feel better about how awful they are. There is no good player that exists in this game that likes faction locks or cares about the alliance war. So when you say things like hardcore players will do this or that, those players you talk about are terrible. Sadly it's those players zos caters this game for.

Converseley we can paint all your rock running tryhards with the same brush and say you don't care about the game's health or it's playerbase, only how many people you can 1vX to make yourself feel better.

There is no reason to be a ***.

What about the people that played multiple factions BECAUSE they cared about the games health though? Those that did what zos intended and played for underpopulated factions.

Again, it was a point to illustrate the attack, not really to be taken as a serious point. Sure there are all kinds of people who don't like or want faction lock, just like there are all kinds of people who do.

Painting either of those groups as "good" or "bad" is just stupid.

Oh but wouldn´t you agree that this is a scenario of:
It´s better to let 10 guilty run free than to incarcerate one innocent?

I know a lot of people that fought for the faction they logged in to. Now those are simply unable to play their chars bc of a few bad apples - and the trolls were really just a few relatively well known players imo.

So from my perspective it´s even worse.
ZOS is currently locking up 10 innocents rather than letting 1 guilty run free.

IMO it´s just excessive punishment for everyone who actually played how ZOS wanted them to play (on multiple factions - that´s what they encouraged people to do) by effectively locking them out of characters to play entirely for pvp.
That´s what it is.
During the majority of the day there is one active campaign and that means people that can only play during off hours do now have characters that they can not play anymore in pvp.
From my perspective this is not justifyable by any negative impact i have ever seen by some trolls.

ATomiX96

MrSinister213 wrote: »

Hardcore Pro faction lock players don't exist. Every PC NA pro faction lock player I have seen on these forums or in Cyrodil zone chat are the types who get farmed at resources. Maybe EU has a different culture.

Its the same on EU, pro faction lock people are the ones that sit in LFG all day, only play 1 char (therefore not affected by lock) and get farmed 1v10 open field.

JadonSky wrote: »

both PVP guilds I am that are hard core guilds are DC only and kicked anyone who faction swapped.

Im certain its one of those "Hardcore PvP" guilds which run around with 16-24 man and do the same *** as the lfg zerg, but with discord.
And then demand stupid things on the forums and ragewhisper when they get farmed by a 4 man group.

KingExecration

ATomiX96 wrote: »

MrSinister213 wrote: »

Hardcore Pro faction lock players don't exist. Every PC NA pro faction lock player I have seen on these forums or in Cyrodil zone chat are the types who get farmed at resources. Maybe EU has a different culture.

Its the same on EU, pro faction lock people are the ones that sit in LFG all day, only play 1 char (therefore not affected by lock) and get farmed 1v10 open field.

JadonSky wrote: »

both PVP guilds I am that are hard core guilds are DC only and kicked anyone who faction swapped.

Im certain its one of those "Hardcore PvP" guilds which run around with 16-24 man and do the same *** as the lfg zerg, but with discord.
And then demand stupid things on the forums and ragewhisper when they get farmed by a 4 man group.

Same on Xbox NA, nothings changed. Except me feeling bad about watching 30 get farmed by 10 people, I now just sit and grin thinking these are the “elite” the forum warriors talk about rushing the resource for the o tick to get ulti dumped to rinse and repeat.

idk

UnseenCat wrote: »

Spying and coordinated cross-Alliance scheming will never be stopped as long as players can communicate out-of-band from game chat with Discord and other tools.

Yep. It has been there since day one, back when we had faction lock. Today the difference is more of us have alt accounts to use to do it directly ourselves.

Thing is, no one can tell if it is a spy or not by their @name. That is the beauty of it. That and it is not against ToS.

pcar944

you are looking at it wrong

its not just faction swapping people

its guilds

guilds used to be locked to an Alliance and if you were DC you couldn't join EP or AD guild

what you WILL see happen though, more so with in next couple campaigns, is dedicated to faction people are going to stay with their faction - these are people who organize and run in groups with dedicated roles - most of these guys are veteran ESO players, with characters on other alliances - if they start loosing lots of fights - they will switch Alliances after reset - or if they are good and only run couple nights a week - will stay and continue to dominate their time slot

rest of players - will not play in Campaigns at the moment - because their faction is constantly loosing in their designated time slot - so they will take time off, and level their favorite class on the other 2 Alliances

the ONLY thing Faction Lock did was create more of the 2nd

but if you think that its just players - you are dead wrong

One Tamriel killed whatever "competitive" thing this game had going for itself, not just from "any alliance on any race" standpoint, but allowing multi-faction same account, allowing multi-faction guilds - ofcourse this is strictly from PVP standpoint

PVE wise One Tamriel is best thing that ever happened to the game

UnseenCat

Faction-locking guilds now is probably not what ZOS wants, and not what a lot of players would really want.

For PvP-exclusive guilds, it makes sense. But ESO is about more than solely PvP. That kind of faction exclusivity is equally as likely to foster toxic, tribal behavior as it will faction unity. Guilds have grown beyond just PvP as a reason for being.

So no, faction locking guilds is probably risks being too much of a source of backlash for it to be a viable tool. The growth of PvE has outstripped the growth of factional PvP, for better or worse depending on your perspective. Battlegrounds drove that home even more -- it's PvP, but deliberately factionless by design.

The real problem is that players aren't finding enough meaningful benefit in factional play to stay engaged in it. Faction lock just seems to be feeding the resistance; too much stick and not enough carrot.

Derra

Guilds weren´t faction locked?

VaranisArano

Derra wrote: »

Guilds weren´t faction locked?

AFAIK, Guilds are still faction locked in terms of claiming Alliance War keeps and resources. One of my friends tried to claim a keep on his AD character for our IRL friends guild and couldn't because the guild was an EP guild.

But guilds aren't faction locked in the sense that they can only have players of one faction, unless the guild chooses to be or that they needed to stick with a single faction prior to the faction lock unless they choose to. Instead, we've often seen players play whatever faction their guild chooses. If the guild decided to play whatever the underdog faction is, that's what the players went with. Some guilds chose to be faction loyal, others chose to embrace multifaction play.