Concept for a solution to alliance population problems.

JerBearESO

The problem:
Outside of peak hours, we see a trend where one alliance will have more players than the others, and so they push for ownership of the map with little real contest. This discourages the other alliance players, so many begin logging off, thus snowballing the problem. So we often see one alliance at a time with many players actively taking the map while the other alliances have merely half or less the active player count, creating an environment which feels unrewarding for the winning side, and overly punishing for the losing sides. During these situations, it can hardly be called PvP, since that is often avoided entirely; it's more like...PvG(player versus guards)....

---

Solution concept:
Implement a new type of buff system which grants buffs which are distributed, or divided, between all ACTIVE alliance members; AFK players would not be considered active. With the buffs being divided between active members within each alliance, a player on an alliance with plenty of active members would see little impact, while a player on an alliance with few members would see more impact, thus evening things out a bit.

For example, say the buffs are +100% damage dealt, -50% damage received, +50% movespeed, and +500% AP earned. This sounds crazy! But wait, this is all divided up, so it's actually pretty unnoticeable on average and only serves to help players on low population alliances. Results would be:
For a player on an alliance with say 50 active members: +2% damage dealt, -1% damage received, +1% movespeed, and +10% AP earned.
For a player on an alliance with say 10 active members: +10% damage dealt, -5% damage received, +5% movespeed, and +50% AP earned.

Notably, these buffs and their rates are merely as an example of the concept. Also, it would be important to cap the rates a player can actually get so as to avoid seeing god mode players in the case that only a few were active on an alliance; we want players to feel they can still achieve something despite low population on their alliance, but we don't want them to roll over the other alliances 1v50 from overly high stats, so a max values and balance are key here.

KuroyukiESO

An even easier solution is to just get rid of alliance lock.

Amottica

KuroyukiESO wrote: »

An even easier solution is to just get rid of alliance lock.

While it may or may not change the nighttime grab of the map it would make it easier to muster up the means to take it back.

This brings me to the first issue OP brings up: some people just give up and quit when they see another alliance has taken the map. Instead, they should muster the troops. Get their guilds into action to take the map back. That is the real answer but those who just leave Cyrodiil instantly are probably not into PvP that much or leave thinking not many in their alliance are logged into the campaign.

That is the real issue

As to the "solution", we first need to consider that Cyrodiil is not designed to be a competitive PvP environment. This is clear from its design which does nothing to balance out the population.

Granted, OP is trying to balance out the population by adding a lot of work to the server to keep track of how many people are in Cyrodiil and divide this buff between them, which is a constant load on the servers that cannot handle the current load to begin with. Right there makes this a no-go.

Zenimax has stated that will limit adding new systems until they remedy server performance. This presents the biggest hurdle for such a suggestion. Considering Cyrdoiil has the biggest issues with server performance I expect they will be extremely cautious about adding new systems specific to Cyrodiil even after server performance is more acceptable.

I will close by thanking OP for presenting their suggestion. It takes a lot to put one's idea out there for feedback and thought.

JerBearESO

KuroyukiESO wrote: »

An even easier solution is to just get rid of alliance lock.

So you can play on the alliance with more members, correct? At which point you have no enemy. That's anti fun, and not a solution my friend.
As someone who plays on NA DC Blackreach, trust me when I say I face this situation often. It's a real problem and therefor needs a real solution.

JerBearESO

Amottica wrote: »

KuroyukiESO wrote: »

An even easier solution is to just get rid of alliance lock.

Granted, OP is trying to balance out the population by adding a lot of work to the server to keep track of how many people are in Cyrodiil and divide this buff between them, which is a constant load on the servers that cannot handle the current load to begin with. Right there makes this a no-go.

This is actually false. A reasonable concern, but false. I've done enough programming and design for hobby projects to know that this system would not require constant calculations. The server only need periodically check for active players, not constantly by any means. Such checks can be accomplished with minimal, and I mean entirely unnoticeable, impact by performing the check every, for example, 60 seconds, then allow the miniscule workload involved to be spread across that timeframe. The stats from the buffs would only need to be recalculated when there is a change in active player count, and would likely fit into pre existing values so as to prevent recalculation per damage instance (hard to explain what I mean there, but trust me).

As far as 'rallying more troops to the cause', that makes sense as an extravert's semi-solution, sure, but throws the introverted solo player right out and shows little concern for the true nature of the problem. Your experience in any PvP environment, even a casual one, should not depend almost entirely upon what others decide to do; you should be able to have personal impact.

Amottica

JerBearESO wrote: »

KuroyukiESO wrote: »

An even easier solution is to just get rid of alliance lock.

So you can play on the alliance with more members, correct? At which point you have no enemy. That's anti fun, and not a solution my friend.
As someone who plays on NA DC Blackreach, trust me when I say I face this situation often. It's a real problem and therefor needs a real solution.

You can also choose to go to the struggling side and balance out the fight or have a bigger challenge. That is fun and a solution.

Amottica

JerBearESO wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

KuroyukiESO wrote: »

An even easier solution is to just get rid of alliance lock.

Granted, OP is trying to balance out the population by adding a lot of work to the server to keep track of how many people are in Cyrodiil and divide this buff between them, which is a constant load on the servers that cannot handle the current load to begin with. Right there makes this a no-go.

This is actually false. A reasonable concern, but false. I've done enough programming and design for hobby projects to know that this system would not require constant calculations. The server only need periodically check for active players, not constantly by any means. Such checks can be accomplished with minimal, and I mean entirely unnoticeable, impact by performing the check every, for example, 60 seconds, then allow the miniscule workload involved to be spread across that timeframe. The stats from the buffs would only need to be recalculated when there is a change in active player count, and would likely fit into pre existing values so as to prevent recalculation per damage instance (hard to explain what I mean there, but trust me).

As far as 'rallying more troops to the cause', that makes sense as an extravert's semi-solution, sure, but throws the introverted solo player right out and shows little concern for the true nature of the problem. Your experience in any PvP environment, even a casual one, should not depend almost entirely upon what others decide to do; you should be able to have personal impact.

If the check and balance are set to every 60 seconds, that is once a minute, the servers lag heavily, and that is unacceptable per the comment about Zenimax's stance on adding new systems that you edited out of my comment. Thank you for proving my point is accurate.

Considering we have more campaigns open that get filled during prime time it is clear that even a heavy imbalance is acceptable to Zenimax. Open-world PvP is always open to an imbalance which is heavily determined by what others decide to do from what alliance they play on to when they will play. Anyone who does not like that needs to do BGs or similar types of PvP.

JerBearESO

Amottica wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

KuroyukiESO wrote: »

An even easier solution is to just get rid of alliance lock.

So you can play on the alliance with more members, correct? At which point you have no enemy. That's anti fun, and not a solution my friend.
As someone who plays on NA DC Blackreach, trust me when I say I face this situation often. It's a real problem and therefor needs a real solution.

You can also choose to go to the struggling side and balance out the fight or have a bigger challenge. That is fun and a solution.

Hey I'm down for logic, trust me, and if everyone thought exactly this every time they went to Cyro, we would see balance. Unfortunately, queue human nature.... We see chaos. Just because people CAN coordinate this way doesn't mean they will; they in fact will not. We therefor need a viable solution such as originally presented since, very unfortunately, human nature rules out coordination as a viable solution. Though I do agree it would be easier if things worked that way, and far more pleasant

SaffronCitrusflower

The biggest population problem is the cap is 75/faction or so when it should be a bare minimum of 150/faction.

KuroyukiESO

JerBearESO wrote: »

KuroyukiESO wrote: »

An even easier solution is to just get rid of alliance lock.

So you can play on the alliance with more members, correct? At which point you have no enemy. That's anti fun, and not a solution my friend.
As someone who plays on NA DC Blackreach, trust me when I say I face this situation often. It's a real problem and therefor needs a real solution.

Um, no. Not at all. The complete opposite. I hate logging in to PvP just to see that my faction is dominating the map because it means I am not going to be able to find any fun fights at all. I would like to be able to whatever faction is lowest pop ideally, so I have more people to go and fight.

disintegr8

This discussion has been going on for years, people bleating about wanting the map locked down somehow so they can get some sleep without losing it.

The game is global, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Why should others be punished because when they can play, you don't or can't, so they get slugged with penalties?

It you've lost everything while not playing, at least you have something to do when you next play. Wouldn't PVP be even more boring than it already is if you logged on and your faction still owned the whole map?

DrSlaughtr

disintegr8 wrote: »

This discussion has been going on for years, people bleating about wanting the map locked down somehow so they can get some sleep without losing it.

The game is global, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Why should others be punished because when they can play, you don't or can't, so they get slugged with penalties?

It you've lost everything while not playing, at least you have something to do when you next play. Wouldn't PVP be even more boring than it already is if you logged on and your faction still owned the whole map?

Devil's advocate, I think people get annoyed that a group of Aussies can decide the fate of a campaign while the rest of us have to recharge.

I don't particularly care who wins a campaign, so it doesn't matter to me. I do think a reasonable concession would be to increase or decrease scoring evaluation based on population. For example, let's say blue and yellow have zero bars, but red has 1+ and have control of the entire map. A simple modifier adjusts the total score about to be earned, lowering it a smidge. Likewise, when it's 3 bars across the board, the scoring is buffed. None of this would affect player AP, and it would still give whichever alliance has the strongest off hours group the advantage, but it would be lessened.

JerBearESO

[snip]

1. Population limitation isn't what's being discussed here, but it is worth noting that more isn't in fact better. The more players you have in an area, even disregarding performance issues, the more we see a loss of mechanical play; everything devolves into damage/healing spewing. Some people do enjoy this, and we hope to see much larger scale gameplay as technology rapidly evolves to handle it, but it DOES have a negative effect on mechanical play.

2. Once again I say, players logging into the lower population alliances to balance things out is unrealistic expectation of human behavior. It simply does not happen enough to actually cause balance. If you actually do this, you are indeed rare beyond all measure. Just this morning when i tried to play my campaign, I was one of a handful on, and we were outnumbered easily ten to one. My only course of counterplay was to indeed log off.... This is very common; and thus I seek a reliable solution.

3. I'm not asking for campaign locking. I have outlined a system which would help the players to have a sense of personal impact on their campaign during periods of lower population, this by using balanced power distribution to help mitigate the offset of overall power we see from difference in population.

4. And lastly, the modifier you suggest, ninjagank, is actually a pretty nice idea. It would help balance out the outcome of the campaign. It would not, however, have any effect on a player's ability to viably play in a low population situation; they would still have no personal impact on the campaign. But it is a nice idea

[edited for baiting]

JerBearESO

Amottica wrote: »

If the check and balance are set to every 60 seconds, that is once a minute, the servers lag heavily, and that is unacceptable per the comment about Zenimax's stance on adding new systems that you edited out of my comment. Thank you for proving my point is accurate.

I understand your concern, but to the best of my understanding, we would not be dealing with anything remotely close to causing added lag. The calculations involved would be very underwhelming, would not need to happen constantly, but could be scheduled, such as once a minute, and even then you can have this work span over a duration. All this guarantees unnoticeable performance cost.

It's like worrying that if you spend a penny a month on something, THAT will make you go broke THIS MONTH. Just doesn't work that way.

godchucknzilla

Plz make a low pop bonus that works and encourages not logging off.

JerBearESO

Gameplay Report, DC blackreach cyrodiil, 10/22/2022

been playing DC blackreach cyro for a few hours tonight. consistently outnumbered about 6 to 1, at times upwards of 20 to 1. We have had 0-3 keeps all day with no hope of any change. People are joining, making a group effort, then leaving after a few pointless attempts at taking a keep.

this happens all the time....

I did get a semi decent 1vX, and an ok but ultimately failed 2vX. I would MUCH rather my experience for the night not boil down to "I almost won that fight though, kinda...."

Amottica

JerBearESO wrote: »

Gameplay Report, DC blackreach cyrodiil, 10/22/2022

been playing DC blackreach cyro for a few hours tonight. consistently outnumbered about 6 to 1, at times upwards of 20 to 1. We have had 0-3 keeps all day with no hope of any change. People are joining, making a group effort, then leaving after a few pointless attempts at taking a keep.

this happens all the time....

I did get a semi decent 1vX, and an ok but ultimately failed 2vX. I would MUCH rather my experience for the night not boil down to "I almost won that fight though, kinda...."

Going into Blackreach on PC/NA is the problems that is a low population campaign. Going into such a campaign is asking for an imbalance.

Go into Gray Host if you are interested in a more balanced alliance match during prime time. Much more PvP goes on there.

Zenimax can and probably should close all but one low pop campaign to funnel the low pop campaign players into a more robust secondary campaign. That is a much better solution.

DrSlaughtr

If GH was unlocked, I don't think it would suffer the issue that BR does. Low population is not a fair test. GH on every platform is active 99% of the day, and most of the day even on console every alliance has 2+ bars. The problem you get in BR is the population is so low, that 1 or less bars can hold an entire map because there simply isn't anyone on to challenge. I think it would be interesting to see them test unlocked GH for a campaign to see what happens.

The elephant in the room is that alliances are taken entirely too seriously by players, and some get almost xenophobic about it to the point it makes me feel a little uneasy hearing people talk about players on other factions. Of course this has been fostered by the game, and charging $25 to change alliances is absurd. And of course because they charge money for it, the likelihood of them doing anything about toxic loyalty to a fake army is nill.

Necrotech_Master

my best experiences in cyrodiil are always when the populations are reasonably balanced, and no one faction is dominating the map (for pvp experiences)

if i wanted to say do town dailies or anything else, i want there to be as low population as possible of enemy factions

JerBearESO

had a thought about my concept presented in relation to the idea of people choosing the lowest population alliance with locking disabled. basically, my system exceedingly incentivizes this kind of balance, because it is very common for people to want to have as much personal power as they can, and the purposed concept gives you the most power by choosing the lowest population alliance.

interesting, isn't it

Amottica

JerBearESO wrote: »

had a thought about my concept presented in relation to the idea of people choosing the lowest population alliance with locking disabled. basically, my system exceedingly incentivizes this kind of balance, because it is very common for people to want to have as much personal power as they can, and the purposed concept gives you the most power by choosing the lowest population alliance.

interesting, isn't it

The best solution for anyone interested in a campaign that is more balanced between factions during prime time is to enter the campaign that has the best population which in turn means they have the more robust PvP action. On PC/NA that is Gray Host which even now, very early evening/late afternoon, is at 3 bars across the board. Soon Gray Host will be pop locked across the board and full of PvP action. That compares to only one bar for each faction in the significantly less popular campaigns of Ravenwatch and Blackreach.

It makes no sense that a player can defeat another player, one on one, merely because the game made one player ten times stronger than another. That is the reason why Zenimax would not consider such a suggestion.

Vulkunne

JerBearESO wrote: »

The problem:
Outside of peak hours, we see a trend where one alliance will have more players than the others, and so they push for ownership of the map with little real contest. This discourages the other alliance players, so many begin logging off, thus snowballing the problem. So we often see one alliance at a time with many players actively taking the map while the other alliances have merely half or less the active player count, creating an environment which feels unrewarding for the winning side, and overly punishing for the losing sides. During these situations, it can hardly be called PvP, since that is often avoided entirely; it's more like...PvG(player versus guards)....

---

Solution concept:
Implement a new type of buff system which grants buffs which are distributed, or divided, between all ACTIVE alliance members; AFK players would not be considered active. With the buffs being divided between active members within each alliance, a player on an alliance with plenty of active members would see little impact, while a player on an alliance with few members would see more impact, thus evening things out a bit.

For example, say the buffs are +100% damage dealt, -50% damage received, +50% movespeed, and +500% AP earned. This sounds crazy! But wait, this is all divided up, so it's actually pretty unnoticeable on average and only serves to help players on low population alliances. Results would be:
For a player on an alliance with say 50 active members: +2% damage dealt, -1% damage received, +1% movespeed, and +10% AP earned.
For a player on an alliance with say 10 active members: +10% damage dealt, -5% damage received, +5% movespeed, and +50% AP earned.

Notably, these buffs and their rates are merely as an example of the concept. Also, it would be important to cap the rates a player can actually get so as to avoid seeing god mode players in the case that only a few were active on an alliance; we want players to feel they can still achieve something despite low population on their alliance, but we don't want them to roll over the other alliances 1v50 from overly high stats, so a max values and balance are key here.

Well there is an answer to this riddle. You have three factions. One of them is going to come out on top, one will be the runner up and the last one will probably be terrible.

That's usually how it goes. And even if you straightened everything out, that's probably how it will be still. Can't be changed.

biminirwb17_ESO

This scheme misses one important point - organisation.

I good small man group can easily take a keep especially in low pop times of day. There is no way to prevent this.

If faction x wants to play run around roebeck farm while their home keeps get taken its their fault not the small group that took them.

Then there is the issue of cross faction guilds fighting alongside each other, playing for the guild not the faction.

It is what it is because its a game played by people, no solution Im afraid.

xylena_lazarow

Maybe the campaigns are empty because the PvP itself is bad.

ProudMary

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Maybe the campaigns are empty because the PvP itself is bad.

With today's update PvP is unplayable, according to many posts in the general forum. Literally unplayable, not hyperbolic unplayable.

Scraelos

Firstly, ZOS could counter pvdoor players by giving immunity to home keeps when it's alliance has only 1 bar.
Secondly, ZOS could lower player limit for campaigns. On EU we have Grey Host full of zergs and empty Black Reach.

afkpro

trying to find the right coefficients will take a lot of time and will be a frustrating process. there's already unkillable tanks. a low pop alliance with unkillable tanks and this buff or a low pop alliance of nb's...?

i think scoring should just be turned off during late night. oceanic players and nightcappers can still play and pvp. they can still help their faction as the map won't be turned off. they can claim the entire map so that when scoring turns back on their faction gets a head start at a lot of points when the eval hits. this, obviously, replaces low pop bonus. keep low score bonus.

the current low pop bonus isn't really doing anything and non gray host camps are usually so ridiculously out of reach that the winning factions are 30,000 points or more ahead so they aren't worth playing in.

edit: still doesn't fix low pop during day time hours in non gray host camps, but i think it's a start.

edit2: now that i think of it, maybe allow for a second home campaign to encourage more people to play in non gray host camps as they can now get rewards for the time spent (while also getting their gray host rewards).

deejayvee

afkpro wrote: »

i think scoring should just be turned off during late night. oceanic players and nightcappers can still play and pvp. they can still help their faction as the map won't be turned off. they can claim the entire map so that when scoring turns back on their faction gets a head start at a lot of points when the eval hits. this, obviously, replaces low pop bonus. keep low score bonus.

No. We have no server of our own, have much bigger pings and all maintenance is done in our prime time. We don't need yet another feature to work against us thanks.

Delphinia

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

The biggest population problem is the cap is 75/faction or so when it should be a bare minimum of 150/faction.

Please no. I play PC NA GH and it’s maddening enough fighting back the blob of one faction and is made worse when they’re constantly holding hands with the other. Even if all pops were equal at 100 across the board, that’s still their 200 against our 100. This in itself would not be necessarily a bad thing if it was against a faction that was more dominant. However, we still find ourselves in this position even when we are in last place with no scrolls. Years ago, some considered it bad form to stack/zerg; they tried to spread out…but now, it seems one faction in particular lives by the quantity over quality gameplay. This, coupled with the quality of life issues of the game itself, have been the cause for some of my friends to leave. I keep hoping players will make the changes they can make for a more positive playing experience for everyone, and try to keep the fights fair with good sportsmanship…just like I still hold out hope one day we will be able to mount within 30 minutes of being out of combat.

DrSlaughtr

No alliance lock.

Lock factions when they have more than one bar than the others.

Let's do it. Time to break this weirdo fascination people have with colors. 😁😁😁

afkpro

deejayvee wrote: »

No. We have no server of our own, have much bigger pings and all maintenance is done in our prime time. We don't need yet another feature to work against us thanks.

in other words, no to making things fair lmao. you need and want the handicap advantage of logging into a cyrodiil where it is empty or your faction outnumbers the enemy 3 to 1 or higher for a chance at easy wins.

the fact that it's still fairly empty at those time slots should tell you why there isn't an oceanic megaserver lmao...