The problem with Alliance Locking...

Alienoutlaw

Rianai wrote: »

The unlocked campaign doesn't solve any of those issues i mentioned. Nobody wants to play on an unlocked campaign just for the sake of having no locks.

but thats what was asked for, remove the lock so ppl could play with their friends/guilds and thats what has been delivered, either the reasons the faction lock being removed were false and as alot of us pro-faction lock suspected its just a case that players wanted to hop to the winning side on the busiest campaign.

its not ZOS's fault players refuse to populate a campaign they were asked for and provided...........thats on you!

Royaji

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

Rianai wrote: »

The unlocked campaign doesn't solve any of those issues i mentioned. Nobody wants to play on an unlocked campaign just for the sake of having no locks.

but thats what was asked for, remove the lock so ppl could play with their friends/guilds and thats what has been delivered, either the reasons the faction lock being removed were false and as alot of us pro-faction lock suspected its just a case that players wanted to hop to the winning side on the busiest campaign.

its not ZOS's fault players refuse to populate a campaign they were asked for and provided...........thats on you!

Swap the lock around without changing anything else and see which campaign will be populated. Hint: it's actually not about the lock at all.

Alienoutlaw

sharquez wrote: »

My regular PVP group just changed alliances and with alliance lock I'm expected to pay over a million in gold or alliance points to be able to play with them. That's not okay. This isn't a high stakes e-sport. There is literally no defensible reason for alliance lock to exist or ever have. Play how you want my foot. I'm quite frustrated with this situation.

i would question the motives for the change personally, maybe they cant win in their current faction and they have jumped to the "winning" side

Heatnix90

Unlocked campaign was designed to fail from the beginning. Plenty of people, including several at each of the live meetups made good points regarding the removal of locks (myself included) and ZOS did the very bare minimum which was:

-throw the campaign up nearly 2 patch cycles after shoving faction lock down our throats
-not actually calling attention to it
-the day it was implemented they didn't bother to do a full reset of all campaigns and offer free changes

Granted it could have been worse, they could have just laughed and ignored all of us, but this honestly feels like a bigger slap in the face than just admitting "guys we messed up we'll revert locks"

sharquez

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

sharquez wrote: »

My regular PVP group just changed alliances and with alliance lock I'm expected to pay over a million in gold or alliance points to be able to play with them. That's not okay. This isn't a high stakes e-sport. There is literally no defensible reason for alliance lock to exist or ever have. Play how you want my foot. I'm quite frustrated with this situation.

i would question the motives for the change personally, maybe they cant win in their current faction and they have jumped to the "winning" side

There are reasons that I'm not going to go into mainly because it's irrelevant. But our guild has never played the map unless it was necessary to get a fight. Most if not all of us couldn't care less about the campaign or its rewards, it's simply a matter of finding better fights.

What is relevant is how the current system is prohibitive to the "mass exodus to non locked" that isn't going to happen because of reasons mentioned prior. All alliance lock has done is add an extra layer of grief to the game, and actually prevented people from playing the way they want.

What is the people who are pro locks stake in this? Nothing would change for them on a personal level were the locks to vanish tomorrow, where as currently I cannot play, and have missed weeks of raid nights due to not being allowed to play on the server where everyone else has moved to.

Rianai

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

Rianai wrote: »

The unlocked campaign doesn't solve any of those issues i mentioned. Nobody wants to play on an unlocked campaign just for the sake of having no locks.

but thats what was asked for, remove the lock so ppl could play with their friends/guilds and thats what has been delivered, either the reasons the faction lock being removed were false and as alot of us pro-faction lock suspected its just a case that players wanted to hop to the winning side on the busiest campaign.

its not ZOS's fault players refuse to populate a campaign they were asked for and provided...........thats on you!

Players want locks to be removed because they want to play with their friends/all their chars on an active campaign. And ZOS did everything to make swapping to the new unlocked campaign as inconvenient as possible. It is simply not possible to populate it under those circumstances and with the current population numbers, because again - players do not want an unlocked campaign just for the sake of having no locks.

Btw faction locks don't stop players from joining the winning side if they really want to. But it punishes those that mainly play for the fights and try to help the weaker factions - because that's where you usually get the better fights.

Alienoutlaw

how is clicking non faction lock campaign and entering so difficult for some ppl?

Rianai

how is reading and understanding posts so difficult for some ppl?

raasdal

I don't see how pro-lockers don't see the very obvious problem

I have 3 AD and 3 EP. I want to play no-cp. There is only one no-cp campaign. So for 30 days, i am locked to playing with just 3 out of 6 characters.

That is the opposite of play-how-you-want, and is down right prohibitive.

Then we can discuss from here till doomsday wether the lock has an effect on the issues it was meant to, and / or wether or not one should migrate. Above remains. On PC-EU, there is only one (1) no-cp campaign. I have nowhere else to play, unless i go to IC (which is empty) or BG's (which can take 30 min to load a game).

TheFM

raasdal wrote: »

I don't see how pro-lockers don't see the very obvious problem

I have 3 AD and 3 EP. I want to play no-cp. There is only one no-cp campaign. So for 30 days, i am locked to playing with just 3 out of 6 characters.

That is the opposite of play-how-you-want, and is down right prohibitive.

Then we can discuss from here till doomsday wether the lock has an effect on the issues it was meant to, and / or wether or not one should migrate. Above remains. On PC-EU, there is only one (1) no-cp campaign. I have nowhere else to play, unless i go to IC (which is empty) or BG's (which can take 30 min to load a game).

Well you should maybe communicate with your buddies and all go to the same campaign for the duration. You literally have a non locked campaign. You have a choice atm, if you took away locks, we would not have a choice. Dont be selfish.

Kartalin

It’s funny how the one campaign that most people complained about people getting emp on multiple factions, switching factions to pvdoor for one color at a time, the pvdoor emp farming campaign...this is the campaign that was selected to be removed and replaced with the new unlocked campaign rather than making it the sole faction locked campaign.

ZOS didn’t have the guts to make Kaal the unlocked campaign.

sharquez

TheFM wrote: »

raasdal wrote: »

I don't see how pro-lockers don't see the very obvious problem

I have 3 AD and 3 EP. I want to play no-cp. There is only one no-cp campaign. So for 30 days, i am locked to playing with just 3 out of 6 characters.

That is the opposite of play-how-you-want, and is down right prohibitive.

Then we can discuss from here till doomsday wether the lock has an effect on the issues it was meant to, and / or wether or not one should migrate. Above remains. On PC-EU, there is only one (1) no-cp campaign. I have nowhere else to play, unless i go to IC (which is empty) or BG's (which can take 30 min to load a game).

Well you should maybe communicate with your buddies and all go to the same campaign for the duration. You literally have a non locked campaign. You have a choice atm, if you took away locks, we would not have a choice. Dont be selfish.

Except it will cost the player above 300,000 whatevers to play the campaign and it cannot be switched on their own time. No one should have to check the calendar and make plans so they can move all their characters off a campaign on some arbitrary day. It's a game that you should be able to pick up and play how you want when you want.

We do not have a choice. No one is going to go through the currency hoops to change campaigns especially when they have a dozen characters. It doesn't make sense, Altoholics like me put alot of time and money into the game, likely more than someone who just plays one or two character and isn't affected by faction locks regardless. Why are we being punished for investing more time and money in the game?

If the next time campaigns reset they swapped which 30 day was locked and which one wasn't I doubt the populations would change much if at all. If there was a server wide exodus to the locked campaign, then nothing changes for the pro lockers and the Antilockers can eat crow. If there isn't it wasn't anything anyone wanted anyway and then YOU can go to the dead server and play on an imbalanced campaign PVdooring for whatever reason.

Gatdangmayne

The one thing i haven't seen any pro-lock people address is the cost of homing/unhoming from a campaign.

Again ill say, if we absolutely must have locks then get rid of the asinine cost. It has literally stopped me (and likely others) from playing the game.

I say this as someone who, not counting base game or expansion purchases, has (im ashamed to admit) put somewhere around $1000 into this game, along with an even more embarrassing amount of time.

There are many things that are contributing to the overall negative attitude towards eso/zos, and besides lag and performance issues, this faction lock thing is probably the #1 reason why the pvp population struggles to fill even one campaign anytime besides 5est-midnight.

Alright im not going in circles on the forums over this anymore, not like it makes a difference anyway.

Alienoutlaw

this is hilarious, the excuses i've read on this thread as to why you "cant" do something are outrageous, its very very simple those that want to play non lock simply click on the campaign and enter IF all of the non lock players do the same it will be populated, the im not going 1st mentality is laughable, failing that simply admit that the majority of the player base is actually very happy with the faction lock grab a box of tissues and suck it up

sharquez

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

this is hilarious, the excuses i've read on this thread as to why you "cant" do something are outrageous, its very very simple those that want to play non lock simply click on the campaign and enter IF all of the non lock players do the same it will be populated, the im not going 1st mentality is laughable, failing that simply admit that the majority of the player base is actually very happy with the faction lock grab a box of tissues and suck it up

You are happy to have drama on the forum that you can eat popcorn to and stir the pot. Faction lock wouldn't affect you in any meaningful way if it went away tomorrow. For too many others it prevents them from playing the game. That's not good for Zenimax, that's not good for the players, and it's not good PVP.

Ackwalan

Gatdangmayne wrote: »

The one thing i haven't seen any pro-lock people address is the cost of homing/unhoming from a campaign.

Again ill say, if we absolutely must have locks then get rid of the asinine cost. It has literally stopped me (and likely others) from playing the game.

I say this as someone who, not counting base game or expansion purchases, has (im ashamed to admit) put somewhere around $1000 into this game, along with an even more embarrassing amount of time.

There are many things that are contributing to the overall negative attitude towards eso/zos, and besides lag and performance issues, this faction lock thing is probably the #1 reason why the pvp population struggles to fill even one campaign anytime besides 5est-midnight.

Alright im not going in circles on the forums over this anymore, not like it makes a difference anyway.

What's to address? Homing a new campaign is free as long as you select, home when campaign ends.

Alienoutlaw

sharquez wrote: »

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

this is hilarious, the excuses i've read on this thread as to why you "cant" do something are outrageous, its very very simple those that want to play non lock simply click on the campaign and enter IF all of the non lock players do the same it will be populated, the im not going 1st mentality is laughable, failing that simply admit that the majority of the player base is actually very happy with the faction lock grab a box of tissues and suck it up

You are happy to have drama on the forum that you can eat popcorn to and stir the pot. Faction lock wouldn't affect you in any meaningful way if it went away tomorrow. For too many others it prevents them from playing the game. That's not good for Zenimax, that's not good for the players, and it's not good PVP.

How? how does it "prevent" you playing the game? explain? there is a non lock campaign you fail to populate yet moan and groan here about faction lock this and that, if its so bad take yourself and the "friends" you cant play with now and simply play there, ppl complain the faction lock is "dead" and PvP is dying so i fail to see where the issue is other than you got what you asked for but still want more ie: the non lock campaign to be made the main campaign because the SMALL number of ppl that wanted non lock cant click on anything else other than the 1st option they see...........have i missed anything out?

just a footnote how many campaigns have we had now? how many chances to go to the non lock campaign for free have there been? as for not having to check your calendar to see when a campaign ends is just lazy on the players part, you seriously expect ZOS to do EVERYTHING for you?

Derra

Royaji wrote: »

Karm1cOne wrote: »

There exist no locked campaigns. The problem is getting population there. A lot of casuals like locked. That forces a lot of 1vX and small man to stay in locked. Unless there is a player coordinated mass eso dr us to nonlocked, locked will be the defacto "main" campaign.

Convince a dozen people to swap to unlocked. Be the change you want to see in the game.

Incorrect. The casual majority does not care either way. They just click on the first campaign on the list. Which happens to be the locked one. Put the unlocked one at the top of the first page and see locked become a ghost town. There isn't enough players to fill two campaigns. Unless it's PC EU and look how well it is running...

It also didn´t help that the locked campaign stayed in place and was running for a week when the unlocked campaign got introduced...

sharquez

Ackwalan wrote: »

What's to address? Homing a new campaign is free as long as you select, home when campaign ends.

It's not free when you have multiple characters to remove from a campaign before you can enter it. I cannot play on my DC or AD character to join with my guild that swapped factions after i was away on break, with out paying over a million gold. The campaign just changed and i still cannot get around this pay wall. So I'd rather not play then be broke.

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

*Troll noises*

I'm not going to try and convince you anymore, hell I want even trying to convincing you in the first place, it's clear where you stand, and that's standing with the people who think that not being able to play the characters you want to play in the content you want to play in is somehow in anyway a good thing. Not only that judging by your comment history you just like being a troll. Do me a favor and put me on ignore and I'll do the same for you then we can both exist in our little bubbles.

vamp_emily

Why don't players/guilds hold events in the unlocked campaign to get people to move over? I've heard under level 50 campaign is a ghost town but they are currently holding an event.

Maybe an event will get the "I play as I want" players out of real campaign. I would definitely donate to a good cause.

Gatdangmayne

@Alienoutlaw @Ackwalan

So you guys wanna lend me 1mil ap/gold every time a campaign ends and i wanna swap over my characters?

How about just 500k so i can actually earn the end of campaign rewards for the current campaign that i can't even afford to home my characters in?

It is not free.

Every time you unhome, or ''abandon" as its called in game, it is 100k ap or gold, for every character.

Every time you select a campaign as your home campaign, it is 100k ap or gold.

Here I'll give you a literal example since this concept is apparently so hard to grasp.

When locks were first introduced, (as others pointed out) there was already a campaign in progress. The new campaigns coincided with a massive update (Elsweyr? IDR tbh).

There were no specific instructions on how the lock would function btw. Before i logged the last time, i had all of my characters (4 ep, 4 ad) in the 'main' campaign.

My crafter/max inventory character is ep. This means i log into him first, especially if it's been a few days since i played last (such as when an update needs downloaded).

After clearing my mail and whatnot, i attempted to go pvp on my ad characters, as those are my "main" pvp characters. However, when i attempted to do that, i was met with a message saying nope you can't do that while <ep character> is assigned to kaal.

"Well that's annoying," i thought to myself while logging back into my crafter, "but whatever. I'll just go abandon it real quick..."

Long story short, it cost me 400k ap just to be able to enter kaal on my ad characters, because i logged into my ep first. Then, in order to not just play in Kaal on my ad, but to actually get the transmute stones, it was another 100k ap, per character. So, that was another 400k.

Luckily i had that much ap saved up.

So my very first day dealing with this asinine faction lock cost me 800k ap, for literally nothing. I haven't been playing nearly as much lately, for various reasons, so as of today i probably have <250k ap on my whole account.

TL;DR:I had to spend literal days worth of AP because a few people swapped alliances to troll and a bunch of emotionally stunted adults couldn't deal so they whined until they got their way.

Idk how i can explain it any clearer than that. Again, i would prefer no lock at all, but at the very least the totally unnecessary cost to abandon and assign characters needs removed.

sharquez

Gatdangmayne wrote: »

@Alienoutlaw @Ackwalan

So you guys wanna lend me 1mil ap/gold every time a campaign ends and i wanna swap over my characters?

How about just 500k so i can actually earn the end of campaign rewards for the current campaign that i can't even afford to home my characters in?

It is not free.

Every time you unhome, or ''abandon" as its called in game, it is 100k ap or gold, for every character.

Every time you select a campaign as your home campaign, it is 100k ap or gold.

Here I'll give you a literal example since this concept is apparently so hard to grasp.

When locks were first introduced, (as others pointed out) there was already a campaign in progress. The new campaigns coincided with a massive update (Elsweyr? IDR tbh).

There were no specific instructions on how the lock would function btw. Before i logged the last time, i had all of my characters (4 ep, 4 ad) in the 'main' campaign.

My crafter/max inventory character is ep. This means i log into him first, especially if it's been a few days since i played last (such as when an update needs downloaded).

After clearing my mail and whatnot, i attempted to go pvp on my ad characters, as those are my "main" pvp characters. However, when i attempted to do that, i was met with a message saying nope you can't do that while <ep character> is assigned to kaal.

"Well that's annoying," i thought to myself while logging back into my crafter, "but whatever. I'll just go abandon it real quick..."

Long story short, it cost me 400k ap just to be able to enter kaal on my ad characters, because i logged into my ep first. Then, in order to not just play in Kaal on my ad, but to actually get the transmute stones, it was another 100k ap, per character. So, that was another 400k.

Luckily i had that much ap saved up.

So my very first day dealing with this asinine faction lock cost me 800k ap, for literally nothing. I haven't been playing nearly as much lately, for various reasons, so as of today i probably have <250k ap on my whole account.

TL;DR:I had to spend literal days worth of AP because a few people swapped alliances to troll and a bunch of emotionally stunted adults couldn't deal so they whined until they got their way.

Idk how i can explain it any clearer than that. Again, i would prefer no lock at all, but at the very least the totally unnecessary cost to abandon and assign characters needs removed.

Absolutely the cost to swap per character is the most immediate problem. If that were no longer there then maybe alliance lock could be tolerable but as it is right now I cannot afford to play.

Gilvoth

ArchMikem wrote: »

It becomes evident during prime time, and sometimes other hours when you'll notice things like players ignoring rezzes, players not attacking certain others, groups of enemy players focusing down a single person while friendly players just watch etc. And you start to recognize the same gamertags involved. One high Alliance Rank player in my Campaign even admitted in chat that he only plays with the "OG Pact" and craps on everyone else.

This feels exactly like the Trading Guild conspiracy. Like PvP has a fight club.

that hits the nail right on the head on Many issues that involve alliance swaping during campaigns, including Heavy cheating with scrolls and targetting and harrasing people they dont like with zone chat attacks and also pointing out stealthed players.
many other reasons involved that is quite lengthy and very annoying to just normal players was blaitently obvious during UNlocked campaigns previously.
including these guys playing all sides of other alliances at all times and effecting and destroying good gameplay for everyone and expecting the developers to SUPPORT that kind of play as if they were doing NOTHING wrong.
in addition to this:
it should be noted that there could be a message like this one:

"IF YOU WISH TO REMAIN IN THIS CAMPAIGN ALL YOUR GOLD AND YOUR ARMORS AND ALL YOU OWN ON YOUR CHARACTERS WILL BE REMOVED PERMANENTLY"

do you think people will stay there?
i bet they would leave, WHY?
because we would NOT want our gold and armors removed.


zenimax gives us a very clear message each campaign.

IF YOU WISH TO REMAIN IN THIS CAMPAIGN ALL YOUR CHARACTERS WILL BE LOCKED IN THIS ALLIANCE ONLY!

that is sending a very very clear message to us and at that time each person makes the decision if they want that.
OR if they want to go to a campaign that DOES NOT have locks and has instead allows for completely open that allows ALL of their characters to play instead of the locked campaign.
and you know what?

the people chose to STAY in the locked campaigns.
that is sending a very clear message that people want the locked campaign.

if they did NOT want that, they would not be there.

x48rph

tl;dr Seriously, there is an option to home a campaign when the current one ends. Literally all the anti-faction lock people need to do. But lets face it, your not going to be happy unless zos forces everyone back into the no lock campaign. Plenty of people are pro lock, they just don't bother coming here to speak about it cause they got what they want. Every knows the unhappy minority on any issue will always protest much louder while the happy people go about their business cause they have no need to post about it.

However they went about it, there is now a unlocked campaign for those who want it. Go out and recruit people for it , I'll stay in the locked one where people can't jump ship every 5 minutes or all switch to the winning side on a whim.

Gatdangmayne

@Gilvoth

Funny, the only time I've really seen people not rezzing someone, or harassing someone, is when the victim has characters on multiple alliances... Meaning its the pro lock people who are being toxic, not the other way around. I suspect thats what the person you're replying to meant as well.

@x48rph

Once again, the main issue is the cost associated with the lock.

Ackwalan

Gatdangmayne wrote: »

So you guys wanna lend me 1mil ap/gold every time a campaign ends and i wanna swap over my characters?

How about just 500k so i can actually earn the end of campaign rewards for the current campaign that i can't even afford to home my characters in?

It is not free.

I've changed campaigns lots of times and never paid. If you are paying, you are doing it wrong.

Alienoutlaw

at the end of every campaign you home resets you have 1hr you either stay in your current or move to another campaign there is no charge, so if you are constantly swapping during a locked campaign [snip]

[edited for non-constructive/baiting comment]

Plodeoca

Solution to all problems (yea lag too).
Make more campaigns, a lot more, and limit the PLAYERS NUMBER of any campaign at 108 players (36 per faction) . You then can make alliance locked ones, free ones, cp ones, non-cp ones, people will be happy because they will play wherever they want with 0 lag and a campaign with the right number of people.

ZOS_RogerJ

Greetings! We've removed some posts as they went against our community rules around bashing. We do not permit the bashing of individuals (including ZeniMax employees), groups, or other companies on our forums. We believe that doing so is neither constructive nor in spirit of our game and community. Please keep the thread civil and constructive.

Heatnix90

Plodeoca wrote: »

Solution to all problems (yea lag too).
Make more campaigns, a lot more, and limit the PLAYERS NUMBER of any campaign at 108 players (36 per faction) . You then can make alliance locked ones, free ones, cp ones, non-cp ones, people will be happy because they will play wherever they want with 0 lag and a campaign with the right number of people.

This will do nothing because people will still cram into the first campaign and end up dealing with queue times just to play there. Also, 36 per faction is literally like a guild and a half so uh yeah, enjoy the dead campaigns even more.

[Edit to remove bait]