Another Campaign FAILURE on PS4

GoodFella146

Hey everyone,

The purpose of this thread is to document how uncompetitive the main campaign on PS4 is. This trend has been ongoing for a couple years now, and I've quit Cyrodiil for the most part because of it (and also AD has only won one campaign since the Elsweyr chapter, so it's always either EP or DC running away with it every month).

Basically the plan is to post a picture here every month showing a lopsided scoreboard. If we can rack up enough months, perhaps we can bring this issue to light and inspire ZOS to do something about it.

My solution to fixing this issue is to fix how AP is awarded. If one faction is in first place, you get a lot more AP for attacking them (and less AP for attacking other factions). The whole point of having three factions is for balance, if one faction has too many and is overtaking everything, then they are supposed to have the weight of two factions attacking them and things will eventually even out. While a good idea, it does not actually work like this unless if both factions are basically gated.

Consider an example: One faction has 3 bars (and is in first place), and the other two factions have 2 bars. You might think "oh the first place faction is outnumbered 4 bars to 3 and will have to defend." That just doesn't happen most of the time. Instead what really happens is that players on both factions know going up against 3 bars means playing outnumbered, so the majority instead attack the other faction that has 2 bars so the fights are more fair. This then leaves the majority of the team that has the most players to run over everything, leading to these uncompetitive and lopsided scores every month. Additionally, players see that one faction is running over everything and immediately choose that alliance to play on for the month as most people tend to gravitate towards easily rewarding scenarios (what if people knew that playing something other than the winning team got them more AP? hmmmmm....). Then there are the rest of the players with non-first place alliance toons that are completely discouraged from even playing in a campaign like this. Sure there are little things like more AP for low populations and whatnot, but they clearly don't do anything to balance the overall picture.

Maybe my idea won't fix the problem but the current state of campaigns is the worst it's ever been. An update every month will show that. It's time to try something different to make campaigns balanced again.

September 2021:

[img][/img] upload

TequilaFire

Probably because AD is on PS4 busy gating EP and DC on Blackreach everyday.

GoodFella146

Also, does this happen on xbox & pc? I'd imagine it does. Perhaps people from there can post a monthly screenshot as well.

GoodFella146

TequilaFire wrote: »

Probably because AD is on PS4 busy gating EP and DC on Blackreach everyday.

Perhaps if those players knew they could get more AP in Grey Host, they'd play it more (thus helping to balance it)?

TequilaFire

No they seem to enjoy painting the map yellow in the wee hours of the morning and holding it all day.
You should try being DC who is hammered by EP and AD.
Everybody wants to be EP or AD because - Skyrim.
Besides AD controlled the campaigns for years when a certain bomber controlled AD on PS4.

Jameson18

GoodFella146 wrote: »

Also, does this happen on xbox & pc? I'd imagine it does. Perhaps people from there can post a monthly screenshot as well.

Has looked similar on Xbox in recent months as well.

Although, there's a couple DC and AD crews that aren't even pvping anymore since Flames or so.

GoodFella146

TequilaFire wrote: »

No they seem to enjoy painting the map yellow in the wee hours of the morning and holding it all day.
You should try being DC who is hammered by EP and AD.
Everybody wants to be EP or AD because - Skyrim.
Besides AD controlled the campaigns for years when a certain bomber controlled AD on PS4.

Ok but the point of my thread is to point out how there is always one faction dominating. It may switch to which it is, but everyone always stacks one which is the heart of the problem.

GoodFella146

Jameson18 wrote: »

GoodFella146 wrote: »

Also, does this happen on xbox & pc? I'd imagine it does. Perhaps people from there can post a monthly screenshot as well.

Has looked similar on Xbox in recent months as well.

Although, there's a couple DC and AD crews that aren't even pvping anymore since Flames or so.

Can you take a picture of the main campaign on xbox and post it? The more evidence the better!

Dalsinthus

GoodFella146 wrote: »

Also, does this happen on xbox & pc? I'd imagine it does. Perhaps people from there can post a monthly screenshot as well.

On Xbox NA, the main campaign had been quite competitive this year, with different factions winning month to month. Blackreach has been extremely heavily dominated by DC for a long time now.

One thing to keep in mind: I quit pvp about a month and a half ago after getting fed up with the lag. My sense of things is a bit out of date; I was playing for several hours per day prior to that.

GoodFella146

Dalsinthus wrote: »

GoodFella146 wrote: »

Also, does this happen on xbox & pc? I'd imagine it does. Perhaps people from there can post a monthly screenshot as well.

On Xbox NA, the main campaign had been quite competitive this year, with different factions winning month to month. Blackreach has been extremely heavily dominated by DC for a long time now.

One thing to keep in mind: I quit pvp about a month and a half ago after getting fed up with the lag. My sense of things is a bit out of date; I was playing for several hours per day prior to that.

It's not about the same faction winning every month it's about whoever does win is always waaaaaaay ahead (i.e. faction stacking).

ceiron

PS4 EU.

https://i.ibb.co/SxcMy8t/16323443640356580841657662168903.jpg

AuraStorm43

As a PS4 AD player i can tell you its simply because red never sleeps and we don’t have people on 24/7, if i ever log on during the day, Masher’s got his full zerg on wiping and taking all our stuff every single day

I dunno what the solution is but its damn frustrating with all the raw numbers EP has, its a losing battle every day

lillybit

There's always one faction way ahead because people like to win. There's enough people who wait til the campaign is underway and join on the leading faction to make it that way more often or not. I don't think your suggestion would help that much because earning a lot of AP isn't the same as winning. It would just make people angry because they just won the campaign but earned half what the bottom team earned.

I don't think it's enough of a carrot either. If you're constantly losing against a bigger team you aren't earning any AP anyway. So yellows and reds fight each other while blues run away with it (or whoever) because it's nice to get a win.

Probably the only way around alliance switching is if you had to commit to the alliance you use in the next campaign before the last one ends, but especially on console that would probably just lead to everyone having a couple of alts so they can still choose who they want to play.

FluffWit

-Pretty sure you won Grey Host by roughly the same margin EP is currently winning by less then 2 months ago. Was that really your only win in the last 27 months?
-no, you're not getting ganged up on, and no, DC arent attacking you instead of us because we're stronger. Everyone thinks their team is the one that gets ganged up on, in reality its seldom the case.
-campaigns are basically won and lost by night/morning capping.
-we have population caps, they're not particularly high. EP getting flooded with all the casuals who don't have very good builds isn't really much of an advantage. We face an hour plus queue 8 hours a day right now, it's a pain.

Indigogo

Some good points have been made.

It also looks like you guys aren't emping and dropping for the next person. Let me tell you, emping new people is a HUGE motivation to rally a faction.
That's where EP is truly shining at the moment. It sure ain't skilled players and organised groups, just a bunch of enthusiastic solos who want to emp their next red bud.
You can see a campaign die when one or two people hold that top spot for too long and both AD and DC currently have this problem.
Massive demotivator.

AuraStorm43

FluffWit wrote: »

-Pretty sure you won Grey Host by roughly the same margin EP is currently winning by less then 2 months ago. Was that really your only win in the last 27 months?
-no, you're not getting ganged up on, and no, DC arent attacking you instead of us because we're stronger. Everyone thinks their team is the one that gets ganged up on, in reality its seldom the case.
-campaigns are basically won and lost by night/morning capping.
-we have population caps, they're not particularly high. EP getting flooded with all the casuals who don't have very good builds isn't really much of an advantage. We face an hour plus queue 8 hours a day right now, it's a pain.

Oh how sad, you actually have enough people to have a que regularly, tell Masher and his zerg to log off and you might not have such bad ques

Yes, that was our only win in the past several years

GoodFella146

Remember the point of the thread is whoever wins does it by a large margin, making the campaign just simply not competitive. The thread is not about one faction winning or losing all of the time.

Syrusthevirus187

Faction lock solved everything.

SkadiMZ

GoodFella146 wrote: »

Also, does this happen on xbox & pc? I'd imagine it does. Perhaps people from there can post a monthly screenshot as well.

Many things you said in your OP are spot on for the Blackreach campaign on Xbox. Nearly 3 bars for DC at all times, players switching alliances to DC daily, and just a generally unfun situation compounded by recent set additions.

Indigogo

You solve it by not quitting. The start of the campaign was very tight.

So what happened? Did they leave to join the zerg train on another campaign?
AD are winning in BR and RW.

Are they addicted to low pop so they've got in the habit of mass logging?
Do they not support the people at the top of the leaderboard so they stopped trying?
Have you got too many troll groups who are running around farming AP instead of helping the map?

There's just a lot going on and certainly in this current campaign, it's more about other alliances failing within, rather than 1 alliance being OP.

GoodFella146

Indigogo wrote: »

You solve it by not quitting. The start of the campaign was very tight.

So what happened? Did they leave to join the zerg train on another campaign?
AD are winning in BR and RW.

Are they addicted to low pop so they've got in the habit of mass logging?
Do they not support the people at the top of the leaderboard so they stopped trying?
Have you got too many troll groups who are running around farming AP instead of helping the map?

There's just a lot going on and certainly in this current campaign, it's more about other alliances failing within, rather than 1 alliance being OP.

It's not about one alliance being OP, it's about people's behavior. An alliance isn't inherently OP for just being that alliance, and "not quitting" isn't going to do anything when you're going to lose every battle due to unfair teams and no incentive structure for the available players to even the odds. If say you're on a team with the second most players, those players would rather beat up the third place team rather than fight a losing battle against the top team. If you don't believe me, look at the available evidence in the screenshots (and hopefully more to come).

As it stands there's no real incentive to play anything but the faction running away with the campaign. In fact there's incentive to JOIN the team with the most players and avoid the two the have the least. Incentives include everything from getting more AP to not having to suffer getting repeatedly zerged out by unfair teams.

trackdemon5512

Indigogo wrote: »

You solve it by not quitting. The start of the campaign was very tight.

So what happened? Did they leave to join the zerg train on another campaign?
AD are winning in BR and RW.

Are they addicted to low pop so they've got in the habit of mass logging?
Do they not support the people at the top of the leaderboard so they stopped trying?
Have you got too many troll groups who are running around farming AP instead of helping the map?

There's just a lot going on and certainly in this current campaign, it's more about other alliances failing within, rather than 1 alliance being OP.

Except the problem is an extreme long-standing one: Campaign Imbalances. This goes well beyond a faction playing a certain way in order to succeed. Rather in any other game such score blowouts, as exemplified by @SkadiMZ or @GoodFella146 are the kinds of things allowable in short matches but not long play.

Short multiplayer matches like BGs in ESO and firefights in Call of Duty can have such score disparities but that’s due to random team unbalancing, small populations for matches, and fast games. Larger matches, games, and leagues all have rules in place to prevent this though as it’s an extreme turn off. People don’t want to watch nor players don’t want to engage in a long-term losing scenario.

In the real world we see things like Wild Card seeds in tournaments to level this field. There is still a chance for a team to comeback with help from the league.

ESO doesn’t have a system of doing so and where campaigns last for 30 days it’s problematic. Only the truly hardcore can play for that amount of time and many of those individuals basically live work day lives inside of Cyrodiil. But when a faction is losing by so much the other groups just quit. What incentive is there for them to play? You see the same thing constantly in BGs with imbalances causing players to just drop matches rather than play to the end.

Cyrodiil needs a competitive rule/scoring fix. Volendrung’s Hammer was a step in the right direction, giving a faction a fair chance to change up the map in their favor. However the hammer has more of an effect on 7-day campaigns than the 30-day ones.

Cyrodiil could do with low population faction score boosters the same way players get an AP boost. The low pop boosts were initially designed to get one faction in action but it’s broken these days, either not fairly applied to factions despite clear population imbalances or unable to be used due to a faction with a large population just shutting down the taking of keeps by a smaller faction.

Things need to change well beyond just combat to get more players into either Cyrodiil or BGs. The rules need to change.

madrab73

GoodFella146 wrote: »

Hey everyone,

The purpose of this thread is to document how uncompetitive the main campaign on PS4 is. This trend has been ongoing for a couple years now, and I've quit Cyrodiil for the most part because of it (and also AD has only won one campaign since the Elsweyr chapter, so it's always either EP or DC running away with it every month).

Basically the plan is to post a picture here every month showing a lopsided scoreboard. If we can rack up enough months, perhaps we can bring this issue to light and inspire ZOS to do something about it.

My solution to fixing this issue is to fix how AP is awarded. If one faction is in first place, you get a lot more AP for attacking them (and less AP for attacking other factions). The whole point of having three factions is for balance, if one faction has too many and is overtaking everything, then they are supposed to have the weight of two factions attacking them and things will eventually even out. While a good idea, it does not actually work like this unless if both factions are basically gated.

Consider an example: One faction has 3 bars (and is in first place), and the other two factions have 2 bars. You might think "oh the first place faction is outnumbered 4 bars to 3 and will have to defend." That just doesn't happen most of the time. Instead what really happens is that players on both factions know going up against 3 bars means playing outnumbered, so the majority instead attack the other faction that has 2 bars so the fights are more fair. This then leaves the majority of the team that has the most players to run over everything, leading to these uncompetitive and lopsided scores every month. Additionally, players see that one faction is running over everything and immediately choose that alliance to play on for the month as most people tend to gravitate towards easily rewarding scenarios (what if people knew that playing something other than the winning team got them more AP? hmmmmm....). Then there are the rest of the players with non-first place alliance toons that are completely discouraged from even playing in a campaign like this. Sure there are little things like more AP for low populations and whatnot, but they clearly don't do anything to balance the overall picture.

Maybe my idea won't fix the problem but the current state of campaigns is the worst it's ever been. An update every month will show that. It's time to try something different to make campaigns balanced again.

September 2021:

[img][/img] upload

Sorry, you need to take this up with the rest of your alliance/server. Last campaign AD players from NA were running at 3 bars on EU server against 0 EP and DC through the night while you were gated on NA. Not sure if due to a fall out between guilds or because they don't like fighting with equal numbers.

It doesn't seem to be that way this campaign but maybe they are in the other campaigns on NA as others have stated?

katanagirl1

I’m on PS4 NA Gray Host and that is how the score usually looks for me as DC.

I log in every day in the afternoon and we are usually missing both scrolls because either EP of AD pulled an all-nighter and took our scrolls. We sometimes manage to get them back in prime time just to have the same thing happen again overnight. There is no way we can get enough points to win this way.

Yes, I realize there is no official down time in the campaign but it is NA and most people are trying to get some sleep. I just wish sometimes that we could get more points for getting our scrolls back when there is a full battle going on (sometimes against both EP and AD at the keep with the scroll) compared to when EP or AD pvdoors us in the middle of the night with no one to defend.

Syrusthevirus187

You yanks have like 6 time zones it's always gonna be random. We oceanics try fit it when we can but maintenence takes a whole evening of play time away from us cos that's your "time to get some sleep".

GoodFella146

madrab73 wrote: »

GoodFella146 wrote: »

Sorry, you need to take this up with the rest of your alliance/server. Last campaign AD players from NA were running at 3 bars on EU server against 0 EP and DC through the night while you were gated on NA. Not sure if due to a fall out between guilds or because they don't like fighting with equal numbers.

It doesn't seem to be that way this campaign but maybe they are in the other campaigns on NA as others have stated?

Oh ok, I'll just personally message everyone on my server and ask them to balance all encounters. Excellent suggestion!

Jackey

You should specify that you're on PS NA.
Gray Host on PS EU is a bit different.
While what you're describing have absolutely happened before, it doesn't happen every campaign. And it's not always EP.

Call_of_Red_Mountain

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I’m on PS4 NA Gray Host and that is how the score usually looks for me as DC.

I log in every day in the afternoon and we are usually missing both scrolls because either EP of AD pulled an all-nighter and took our scrolls. We sometimes manage to get them back in prime time just to have the same thing happen again overnight. There is no way we can get enough points to win this way.

Yes, I realize there is no official down time in the campaign but it is NA and most people are trying to get some sleep. I just wish sometimes that we could get more points for getting our scrolls back when there is a full battle going on (sometimes against both EP and AD at the keep with the scroll) compared to when EP or AD pvdoors us in the middle of the night with no one to defend.

Completely agree. I feel your pain. This is why I'm in pve these days. Mostly. Recently I checked GH NA in 5am. You know what? 3 bars EP. No scrolls. And AD ignored EP keeps and pushed DC keeps. People noticed that too. Sometimes I think they're working together. But it's nonsense.

ZoS, just add POPULATION LOCKED campaign please or change something in Cyrodiil. And I can say a lot of things about hammer issues, but I think you know what I mean. It's time for something new. Remove Wolendrung from pvp. Create relic for defence for example. And fix servers! At least you can try again. Cyrodiil on consoles simply unplayable sometimes.

Kel

For awhile AD was dominating the main campaign every month. Had someone going to every zone (can't name and shame) bragging about permanent AD dominance and how they couldn't be touched. It wasn't since Elsweyr, that's a bit of hyperbole, but if your chosen faction is having a hard time of it lately, I'm guessing it's because a few don't know how to win gracefully and perhaps people were tired of hearing nonsense from people who take this far too seriously.

🤷‍♂️

Hallothiel

Would be helpful if stated which server as PS4 EU very different!!

AuraStorm43

madrab73 wrote: »

GoodFella146 wrote: »

Hey everyone,

The purpose of this thread is to document how uncompetitive the main campaign on PS4 is. This trend has been ongoing for a couple years now, and I've quit Cyrodiil for the most part because of it (and also AD has only won one campaign since the Elsweyr chapter, so it's always either EP or DC running away with it every month).

Basically the plan is to post a picture here every month showing a lopsided scoreboard. If we can rack up enough months, perhaps we can bring this issue to light and inspire ZOS to do something about it.

My solution to fixing this issue is to fix how AP is awarded. If one faction is in first place, you get a lot more AP for attacking them (and less AP for attacking other factions). The whole point of having three factions is for balance, if one faction has too many and is overtaking everything, then they are supposed to have the weight of two factions attacking them and things will eventually even out. While a good idea, it does not actually work like this unless if both factions are basically gated.

Consider an example: One faction has 3 bars (and is in first place), and the other two factions have 2 bars. You might think "oh the first place faction is outnumbered 4 bars to 3 and will have to defend." That just doesn't happen most of the time. Instead what really happens is that players on both factions know going up against 3 bars means playing outnumbered, so the majority instead attack the other faction that has 2 bars so the fights are more fair. This then leaves the majority of the team that has the most players to run over everything, leading to these uncompetitive and lopsided scores every month. Additionally, players see that one faction is running over everything and immediately choose that alliance to play on for the month as most people tend to gravitate towards easily rewarding scenarios (what if people knew that playing something other than the winning team got them more AP? hmmmmm....). Then there are the rest of the players with non-first place alliance toons that are completely discouraged from even playing in a campaign like this. Sure there are little things like more AP for low populations and whatnot, but they clearly don't do anything to balance the overall picture.

Maybe my idea won't fix the problem but the current state of campaigns is the worst it's ever been. An update every month will show that. It's time to try something different to make campaigns balanced again.

September 2021:

[img][/img] upload

Sorry, you need to take this up with the rest of your alliance/server. Last campaign AD players from NA were running at 3 bars on EU server against 0 EP and DC through the night while you were gated on NA. Not sure if due to a fall out between guilds or because they don't like fighting with equal numbers.

It doesn't seem to be that way this campaign but maybe they are in the other campaigns on NA as others have stated?

I dunno if you’ve ever actually tried to organize group pvp, but getting people to actually use optimized builds is a pain in the ass

Some people will not bring full impen no matter how much you badger them, its “hurting their damage” not realizing a dead damage dealers doing no damage

I still see tons of people running Purify and Purge despite the existence of Plaguebreak, even if i messaged every person in my alliance to not run purging skills and get impen gear, most will refuse

So yeah “take it up with your alliance” ain’t a solution