Deterring faction stacking during off peak hours

Mr_Walker

dtsharples wrote: »

I just don't understand how anyone can find a map that is one colour to be enjoyable? Please enlighten me anyone if you can Thx.

A lot of us don't. We just can't change to different faction characters to do anything about it now. That's why the map no longer moves.

Nowadays, you either gate, or get gated, and if you're gated you usually get stomped as soon as you try to do anything, so people are switching off.

dtsharples wrote: »

I hold ZOS responsible because people will always take the easiest route - and faction stacking an empty map is easy.

You should also blame faction lock (zos again). The numbers are that small in off peak that any and all imbalances are magnified. It's also getting worse as the pops have definitely dropped in the off peak hours. Oh, wait, IIRC you think faction lock is a great thing, yes?

I'm reminded of the old adage 'Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true.'....

lostcloud

There is one colour I despise seeing the map and that is yellow! Being an exclusively AD player seeing a map yellow just makes me go do something else why compound a problem by being on an uncompetitive map and unfortunately it seems to be happening more and more. Yes, there are some nights when the map is competitive in off-peak hours and its fun with the back and forth.

But as I said things change all factions have been dominant at times in off-peak hours it will no doubt swing around again ep or dc will rise to dominate again. I already know of one group that is planning to swap to dc for the next campaign so perhaps there will be better fights and a more balanced outcome. Here is hoping.

Derra

Ahtu wrote: »

Ultimately it's up to players to balance out the factions and until they decide to spread out across all three factions we will continue to see one alliance dominating the map during the night.

How do you balance out factions if you´re only allowed to play one?

dsalter

i wish they would just lower how much AP keeps and players give if they are not together. meaning players give less AP outside of keeps and keeps give less AP if they dont have at least 10 players who own it in range.

likewise another thing that would cripple the whole off hour timing crap would be to just lower how many siege engines one player can use, currently if your fast enough 1 player can man 4-5 sieges ALONE. thats some seriously broken crap.

make it so siege engines only reload while manned and i can see the night capping being crippled heavily.

Ranger209

dsalter wrote: »

i wish they would just lower how much AP keeps and players give if they are not together. meaning players give less AP outside of keeps and keeps give less AP if they dont have at least 10 players who own it in range.

likewise another thing that would cripple the whole off hour timing crap would be to just lower how many siege engines one player can use, currently if your fast enough 1 player can man 4-5 sieges ALONE. thats some seriously broken crap.

make it so siege engines only reload while manned and i can see the night capping being crippled heavily.

I like it, I mean how many of those things can you fit in your pocket anyway.

dtsharples

Yes, correct I'm OK with faction locks. I re-made 2 of my characters in the image of older ones that were the 'wrong' faction for me, only took a couple of days to get them to where I needed them.
I still have one in each of the other factions, in the event that my usual faction goes the route of the night cap heroes and ruins my playtime.
The issue we face at the moment is the same one as we faced before faction lock though, everyone and his mother stacking into one night-cap faction. Currently when it hits midnight its Pop-locked v 2 of 1 bar.

And I fully agree and understand that before lock people could have swapped over to a low pop faction, but pre-lock that didn't happen enough to make any difference anyhow. Adding 4 more people to the 5 online doesn't go too far versus the 100+ in the locked faction unfortunately.
People with any sense would try to spread out across the factions in order to have a genuine and decent PVP experience each night, instead of what is essentially PVEing for transmute stones.

I have always been a firm believer that whilst ZOS give us very little reason to have any faith in them, ultimately the majority of issues are caused by the players themselves. This is just one example of many that the community could have solved themselves.

KingExecration

I’d be alright with locks if the player base on Xbox NA could handle it. But it really can’t.

Poor ad never has a queue and most of my characters never get booted from Cyro. Prime time on the weekend is the only time the 7day sees any action or balance on our side.
It’s back to the old days when faction lock was a thing and dc and ep traded blows while ad waits at the bridge. The only difference is we have lost an incredible amount and can’t play anywhere else.

JamilaRaj

dtsharples wrote: »

I have always been a firm believer that whilst ZOS give us very little reason to have any faith in them, ultimately the majority of issues are caused by the players themselves. This is just one example of many that the community could have solved themselves.

Look, this is like expecting passengers on a ship to spread out so the ship does not capsize, which, unless the ship is very, very small with only a handful of passengers, is impractical way to keep the ship afloat, to the point of being stupid and inevitably ineffectual.
This must be solved on design level. Even kids on playground, who can be reasonably expected to work it out among themselves, do not balance teams by letting each kid join whatever team it wants, because that would yield results markedly similar to ESO's, but e.g. by naming team captains who then take turns at selecting team members. Then there is not only the same number of players in both teams, but also roughly the same number of skilled players.
There are countless more or less intricate variants of this that could be implemented in ESO, but in any case, players would declare preferences, rather than directly select campaign/faction, and would be, upon entering Cyro, assigned somewhere automatically by team balancing algorithm, which would consider players's prefences, such as faction or friends, and which teams need to be reinforced.
Not that literally balancing teams is the only way. Even better and more desirable is to make sure the game is playable and _fun_ (because that is the single most important incentive, not some designated REWARDs) even when it enters imbalanced state. ESO is remarkably badly designed in that regard, because when one side starts winning, for example because it has more players, each further gain is not harder than the previous, not even the same as the previous in terms of difficulty, but actually easier, because the game stacks advantages on the winning side; as if it was not enough that faction had more players, it gets also an emperor, buffs from the scrolls, the artifact, extensive fast travel network and on top of all this, when weaker factions prove unable to defend their last keeps (after all, the last keep is as easy to overrun as the first, or rather easier, because knowing this, potential defenders log off), they are supposed to _attack_ these same keeps they were not able to defend. Insane.