PC NA - The Kaal campaign is ending in a week, its time for the migration to Laatvulon (non-locked).

Shanehere

For weeks the forums were riddled with complaints of the implementation of alliance-locked campaigns and when one was finally implemented (a 30-day one, at that) nobody showed up.

A lot of the hardcore faction loyalists feel like they've had their points proven with this, but I honestly think this new campaign being so dead is a result of it being introduced in the middle of a campaign in Kaal, people were afraid of making the switch, losing AP, and it ending up not being as populated. It was safer to stay in Kaal and observe the population and switch afterwards.

Now, the campaign is ending and I think if a bunch of people don't migrate over that campaign will remain dead. The time is now. Can we all collectively agree to spark some life into this campaign? All of the Faction loyalists can stay in Kaal, because that's what you prefer (which is totally fine).

But for the people who were constantly complaining of not being able to play all of their characters in Cyrodiil anymore, all of the people saying they won't ever be able to play with some of their friends anymore, and all of the people complaining that being stuck on a stacked alliance won't allow them to find as many fights, or be able to switch to another faction to help out the under dog, make the switch and try it out. We all need to move collectively as a group to make this happen. This is literally what people were asking for, and if it turns into a forever dead campaign, the people complaining about faction locks are just clowns, because this was absolutely made for the people complaining about it.

A lot of people play because they care about the alliance war, a lot of people play just to get good fights, and most everyone will play where the most people are playing. If a good chunk of players don't make the switch at the same time, nobody ever will.

It's a group effort, so if you are someone who likes not having alliance locks, and are only playing in Kaal because the standard is dead: talk to your friends, guilds, whatever, and make the switch.

If this is ends up working by the way, spreading out the population might also help with the abysmal lag.

EDIT: I made a poll asking PvPers why they play in Kaal, my hypothesis was that people give up their preferences of no-CP and no faction locks to play in a campaign with better population: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/504167/pvpers-who-play-in-kaalgrontiid-faction-locked-30-day-cp-campaign

It's interesting to see that a lot of players would prefer to play in Laatvulon, but they are deterred because it is dead and Kaal has consistent population. More people want to make the switch than some might think, might be cool if numbers began migrating over there and players were able to play somewhere they wanted to.

Delphinia

Very well said @Shanehere ... I do however, have doubts that AD has enough active players anymore these days (who are able to play during the times when the other factions seem to be on in force) to be able to afford to spread themselves across two camps.. I really hope I am wrong.

NBrookus

Won't work unless we all go. Afternoon, weekend, bad weather across most of the US... Kaal isn't even pop locked and AD is still at two bars. Map is boring. Where are all these players to fill both these campaigns?

LarsS

Think it will stay as dead as its now who cares about the campaign drops, but good luck.

Telel

Khajiit's pack will be staying on kaalgrontiid. The 1 or 2 bars of AD that are supposedly on during our playtimes seem to be quite the threat to the often pop locked other teams. Who are always thousands of points ahead of the guys with 1/4 thewir numbers...

Because that'd be the only reason you'd need thirty people to play bodyguard for an emperor. Plus the assistance from a troll group from the blue tream.....

For a resource....

At a scroll keep that no longer has a scroll to guard....

While the DC scrolls remain firmly ensconced at Farragut and Drakelowe, again....

But hey 40 DC just took vlastrus so they're all winners in their own book....

Which are an odd mishmash of pop ups and finger painting...

Not to mention the poor poor people in the top 10 of AD's leaderboards. You know, the ones who just can't seem to scrape together enough AP for a single ballista, or some repair kits....

If khajiit and his pack were to abandon the server all those 'good' players might have to do something insane. You know, like being as useful as some random sub CP player. Possibly one who just finished the tutorial and now knows how quick slots work.

So sadly Telel will be remaining on Kaalgrontiid and at the early afternoon times they've been running for quite some time now.

After all it gives this one quite the chuckle.

olsborg

cant play in lagg

Nyteshade

I agree OP. The forums are full of complaints, followed by complaints that ZOS never listens to the players.

Well, here it is! They listened and gave those folks exactly what they wanted. So far, it appears they are vastly in the minority. If not, now is the time to switch.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. At least ZOS shut down one complaint, whether the players actually switch or not.

xylena_lazarow

People with any sort of strong feelings towards faction lock are vastly in the minority.

The majority doesn't know, doesn't care, and will continue clicking on whatever is listed first.

TBois

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

People with any sort of strong feelings towards faction lock are vastly in the minority.

The majority doesn't know, doesn't care, and will continue clicking on whatever is listed first.

Also people are considering where their friends, guilds, and competition are playing. My main pvp guild wanted to switch but one ball group against an empty map leads to no fun for anyone. Adding an additional layer of necessary coordination between guilds complicates it even further than just individual coordination between freinds.

Delsskia

If we home on the unlocked campaign, we can still play on the locked one if it gets slow. I encourage any players and guilds who disagree with faction locks to hit the new unlocked campaign when the current one ends.

TBois

Delsskia wrote: »

If we home on the unlocked campaign, we can still play on the locked one if it gets slow. I encourage any players and guilds who disagree with faction locks to hit the new unlocked campaign when the current one ends.

I'll be doing this. At this point though I'm more worried about pvp population retention than faction lock. It's been performance that has been by far the most critical issue compared to anything else, including faction lock, for ESO PvP.

Reverb

There are enough players on any faction for there to be 2 active campaigns.

Mr_Walker

Reverb wrote: »

There are enough players on any faction for there to be 2 active campaigns.

There really isn't.

BaiterOfZergs

They put the unlocked campaign all the way at the bottom , I doubt it’ll get a decent pop when people join the first campaign or ic they see.

Kadoin

Reverb wrote: »

There are enough players on any faction for there to be 2 active campaigns.

Only at the beginning of a campaign cycle, after that there is no point when a faction has a 10-20-30K lead in score.

MipMip

Shanehere wrote: »

It's a group effort, so if you are someone who likes not having alliance locks, and are only playing in Kaal because the standard is dead: talk to your friends, guilds, whatever, and make the switch.

I agree and hope that we can get some good action going there! In fact I have seen a bit of small scale action in the unlocked campaign - so, yes it is not well populated, but no, it is not completely dead, and hopefully will improve gradually

Kagukan

I will stay with Kaal and I think most others will also. Splitting an already low PvP population is a recipe for disaster.

Reverb

Mr_Walker wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

There are enough players on any faction for there to be 2 active campaigns.

There really isn't.

You’re right. I meant to say there aren’t enough players to support multiple campaigns. My post was an unfortunate typo/auto-correct.

The only consistently active campaign is only at peak pop for an hour most nights. Even the under 50 campaign, which used to be the second-most populated campaign, is mostly dead.

Most of us who’ve been around remember long queues in prime time, and being able to find high pop and good fights in your guest campaign while you waited in the queue. Those days are long behind us, and aren’t likely to return given the game’s continued crap performance.

JadonSky

Reverb wrote: »

Mr_Walker wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

There are enough players on any faction for there to be 2 active campaigns.

There really isn't.

You’re right. I meant to say there aren’t enough players to support multiple campaigns. My post was an unfortunate typo/auto-correct.

The only consistently active campaign is only at peak pop for an hour most nights. Even the under 50 campaign, which used to be the second-most populated campaign, is mostly dead.

Most of us who’ve been around remember long queues in prime time, and being able to find high pop and good fights in your guest campaign while you waited in the queue. Those days are long behind us, and aren’t likely to return given the game’s continued crap performance.

Agree sadly a lot of players have left because ZOS just hasn't made performance a priority. They now have a schedule out but its 3 years too late. It should of been a number 1 from the start and they have just left it hanging to long and sadly killing what is an amazing game in my opinion but ruined do to lack of support when it comes to fixing bugs and performance. Instead they put the effort in making money, which I get from a business stand point but how about hiring an entire team dedicated to performance at the same time with all that extra money they are making.

Vapirko

Kagukan wrote: »

I will stay with Kaal and I think most others will also. Splitting an already low PvP population is a recipe for disaster.

Although I don’t care either way since all my toons are DC, I do believe that by far, the majority of people that I’ve seen asking for an unlocked 30 day are YTers and notorious small scalers or 1vXers. I do believe that they’ll end up trying to far each other more than anything. Most people don’t care about faction lock or enjoy it. Guarantee it.

karekiz

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

People with any sort of strong feelings towards faction lock are vastly in the minority.

The majority doesn't know, doesn't care, and will continue clicking on whatever is listed first.

Correction based on a newbie:

I click on what the most popular. If it shows population and I see 1/1/2 vs 3/2/3 bars I would probably go to the one with the most. If anything if you removed player count the word "Standard" would gather more recognition by name as it would funnel in new players who would figure "Standard" is just where everyone is and Faction lock is some kind of RP PvP thing.

Shanehere

Delphinia wrote: »

Very well said @Shanehere ... I do however, have doubts that AD has enough active players anymore these days (who are able to play during the times when the other factions seem to be on in force) to be able to afford to spread themselves across two camps.. I really hope I am wrong.

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

People with any sort of strong feelings towards faction lock are vastly in the minority.

The majority doesn't know, doesn't care, and will continue clicking on whatever is listed first.

I agree to both of your points, and I believe it goes both ways. If the standard campaign became the new Kaal, and the alliance-locked campaigns were dead, a lot of people would move to standard.

However, I think people who hate faction locks are the ones who care less about the alliance war and just want to PvP. So realistically they would rather deal with faction locks in a populated campaign than go to a dead campaign without faction locks. Factions loyalists however are more likely to stay even if their campaigns become less populated.

Shanehere

NBrookus wrote: »

Won't work unless we all go. Afternoon, weekend, bad weather across most of the US... Kaal isn't even pop locked and AD is still at two bars. Map is boring. Where are all these players to fill both these campaigns?

PvP participation has been abysmal for many months, I agree. I believe there are many reasons for this: people getting bored with the game in general, people not liking the major buffs/nerfs ZOS is implementing to classes every new patch, and overall server performance is absolutely a big one.

I myself can only play in Cyrodiil during the day, I can never play past 5pm EST because my frames drop to the point where it is just a slideshow. It is super frustrating and I think a lot of people are in the same boat as me.

I mained the no-CP campaign almost exclusively, the population was decent and the servers were never as messy as CP, and it was really fun. The past few months all it took was one or two big Guilds to switch from no-CP to CP for that entire campaign to be dead.

There are people who are super serious about the faction war, and they'll probably stay in locked campaigns regardless. I think as many people have mentioned that people go where the action is ultimately, and if there is a shift to standard I think there will be a healthier spread in population across the two because of this.

Dreyloch

Here's how I see this going.
Yes, the new server will get some players. But one faction will dominate it. Kaal will have one faction domination, as well as the No-CP server. So, pick a faction, find the server for that faction=win. It's just going backwards into the emp trading again. I just don't see any promise of better lag in what they propose to do by Q2 next year. The game has too many moving parts now. On top of already crappy coding in many aspects.

In less than a year more decent MMO's will come out (among other genres..ARPG's, Space sims etc.), and ESO's pop will drop so much that we'll be on one server with IC re-instated on it, and the game for a great number of us will be just...done.

zyk

This is how you kill the faction locked campaign:

Everyone switch to DC on Kaal. Even if you don't play, lock yourself to DC. Let the campaign locked map stay perma-blue and then EP and AD players will feel more motivated switch servers.

There will be short term pain, but maybe it will save the game in the long run.

It's not about ideology or preferences anymore. I generally prefer the concept of locked factions. But the implementation here is poor and because of the already declining population, it has obviously caused more problems than it has solved.

Nevidyra

zyk wrote: »

This is how you kill PvP:

Fixed that for you, buddy.

Mayrael

zyk wrote: »

This is how you kill the faction locked campaign:

Everyone switch to DC on Kaal. Even if you don't play, lock yourself to DC. Let the campaign locked map stay perma-blue and then EP and AD players will feel more motivated switch servers.

There will be short term pain, but maybe it will save the game in the long run.

It's not about ideology or preferences anymore. I generally prefer the concept of locked factions. But the implementation here is poor and because of the already declining population, it has obviously caused more problems than it has solved.

Yeah... Like noCP campaign on PC EU was 3 side locked for almost whle evening. I'm sure you have hard evidance that population decline (it's worth to mention, it was noticeable even more outside of Cyrodiil and in general PvP - finding trail groups was harder than ever) that we experienced in the past was caused by faction lock per se, not by poor balance decissions, performance issues etc.

Go ahead switch campaigns. Do whatever you want, I don't care.

Mazbt

I think guilds/factions that find themselves playing against guards rather than players (and this varies depending on the time of day) should consider trying out the new camp and try balance out the campaigns when one faction is dominating the others.

NBrookus

Mazbt wrote: »

I think guilds/factions that find themselves playing against guards rather than players (and this varies depending on the time of day) should consider trying out the new camp and try balance out the campaigns when one faction is dominating the others.

But fighting NPCs and doors is much easier than players, and is richly rewarded with the pvp currency. This is a fundamental game design problem.

Joy_Division

Nyteshade wrote: »

I agree OP. The forums are full of complaints, followed by complaints that ZOS never listens to the players.

Well, here it is! They listened and gave those folks exactly what they wanted. So far, it appears they are vastly in the minority. If not, now is the time to switch.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. At least ZOS shut down one complaint, whether the players actually switch or not.

I don't know who are "those folks," but I can say for myself that ZOS most certainly did not give me what I was looking for and my complaint is not shut down in any way.

Mayrael

Joy_Division wrote: »

Nyteshade wrote: »

I agree OP. The forums are full of complaints, followed by complaints that ZOS never listens to the players.

Well, here it is! They listened and gave those folks exactly what they wanted. So far, it appears they are vastly in the minority. If not, now is the time to switch.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. At least ZOS shut down one complaint, whether the players actually switch or not.

I don't know who are "those folks," but I can say for myself that ZOS most certainly did not give me what I was looking for and my complaint is not shut down in any way.

You won't be happy till "Standard" campaign won't be the one most populated whatever means it would take (deleting all the other campaigns included). That's just selfish approach.

Few things. Currently on PC EU on nonlocked campaign disparity between 1st and last alliance is over 30k points - biggest of all 3 campaigns. It's the only campaign where AD and EP are constantly gated in prime time so I'm asking:

Where are all those white knights switching to the lower populated faction?
Where are all those players seeking some action against most populated faction?

Another thing. Currently most populated campaign on PC EU is noCP campaign which is second on the list, that's why I dare to doubt in claims that players are unable to look for preferred campaign. If they were able to choose second campaign, they are able to choose third one to.

These are facts which can be supported with screenshots or even empirically, not some conspiracy theories.

I wonder, what faction lock haters will come up with, when their campaign will stay as dead as it is in next cycle?