What is the current amount of players allowed per alliance in campaigns?

TheTruestKing

What is the current max pop and how much will the max pop increase by? There's a lot of misinformation out there. A lot of us would like to know what's under the hood. I think it would be awesome if the bars had a number in them to specify how many people are in cyrodiil. Will the divines enlighten us with the specifics?

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_BrianWheeler

CameraBeardThePirate

A little transparency from the devs on this subject would be great, especially with the pop cap tests coming up.

finehair

I doubt even the devs know it. I doubt it is the same for all alliances. I doubt it is a certain number which doesn't change. Feels more like each alliance has different population caps, like 50v200v100 since sometimes fighting a locked pop ad feels like a nice walk in the park while we are on 2 bars. Or can't find any friendly players when your own faction is pop locked

ValarMorghulis1896

60-80 per alliance. most people in cyro-chat agree on that.

CrazyKitty

ValarMorghulis1896 wrote: »

60-80 per alliance. most people in cyro-chat agree on that.

The current pop caps are about what you say. But they used to be much, much higher. Caps used to be closer to or in excess of 250/faction. Then housing, companions, ToT and a bunch of other non combat related stuff was introduced and instead of adding more server resources for the new systems they reduced cyrodiil population caps.

Mayrael

It's a mistery. Why? Beacause reasons... /s ZOS hides this number from the very begining, maybe because it's not constant and it changes when it suits them? We only have our estimations.

reazea

Mayrael wrote: »

It's a mistery. Why? Beacause reasons... /s ZOS hides this number from the very begining, maybe because it's not constant and it changes when it suits them? We only have our estimations.

They used to tell us what the pop cap was. When released, they told us the pop cap was 600 players/faction. Now we know it's clear down to right about 80/faction. Maybe that's why they refuse to tell us such basic information.

Necrotech_Master

there were old FAQ documents on their website which suggested the population cap was around 1800 players (~600/faction)

but in recent days it is much lower

they did temporarily increase the pop caps during their stress test, but we dont know what they increased the caps to, or really any of the insights or results of what they were testing, but after the test they lowered the caps again back to the current amount

EmEm_Oh

ZOS needs to look at having a completely separate server for PVP. I'd even pay a few extra $$ per month to access it. That way, only those who truly love PVP would be using it.

Duke_Falcon

You can test it to figure it out. Let me know what you all find out, I'm genuinely curious. I play on the PlayStation and these are my finding from years of game play.

Wait for the campaign to end and the next one to begin. The campaigns must be population locked for this test to work.

While its population locked go into Cyrodiil in the first hour of the campaign. It must be in the first hour of the campaign for the test to work as well.

Go into Cyrodiil and put one repair kit into any keep that's not going to get any defense ticks. That should give you less than 100 AP. Then wait for the first hourly score tick to go off. Make sure you don't earn any more AP, you want to be last in the rankings.

Then go to your journal and see what your rank in Cyrodiil is by how much AP you have earned, you should have the lowest AP of all the players on your alliance. From the over 8ish tests I've done, I'm always around 130ish in the rankings.

Take 130 divided by 3 bars and your at 43.33 players per bar. Now that seems like a weird number of players to have per bar, so I suspect its actually 40 players per bar, and the other 9 players account for those that have come and gone within that first hour.

I also suspect that each alliance starts out population locked at 120 people and then it scales up as more and more people want to participate in Cyrodiil. Similar to how the re-spawn timers work on world bosses in Imperial City. The higher the population of players in Imperial City, the faster the world bosses re-spawn as you make the circle around IC farming them.

SaffronCitrusflower

Duke_Falcon wrote: »

You can test it to figure it out. Let me know what you all find out, I'm genuinely curious. I play on the PlayStation and these are my finding from years of game play.

Wait for the campaign to end and the next one to begin. The campaigns must be population locked for this test to work.

While its population locked go into Cyrodiil in the first hour of the campaign. It must be in the first hour of the campaign for the test to work as well.

Go into Cyrodiil and put one repair kit into any keep that's not going to get any defense ticks. That should give you less than 100 AP. Then wait for the first hourly score tick to go off. Make sure you don't earn any more AP, you want to be last in the rankings.

Then go to your journal and see what your rank in Cyrodiil is by how much AP you have earned, you should have the lowest AP of all the players on your alliance. From the over 8ish tests I've done, I'm always around 130ish in the rankings.

Take 130 divided by 3 bars and your at 43.33 players per bar. Now that seems like a weird number of players to have per bar, so I suspect its actually 40 players per bar, and the other 9 players account for those that have come and gone within that first hour.

I also suspect that each alliance starts out population locked at 120 people and then it scales up as more and more people want to participate in Cyrodiil. Similar to how the re-spawn timers work on world bosses in Imperial City. The higher the population of players in Imperial City, the faster the world bosses re-spawn as you make the circle around IC farming them.

This system will only tell you how many players have earned AP in that hour. It won't relate to what the pop caps are in any way as players will log on and off during that hour, giving an erroneously high number of players.

As another posters have stated, the pop caps are right about 80/faction now. The original pop cap was 600/faction. In other words, each bar of population is 20 players. (locked pop = 4 bars of players)

Darethran

80 Per faction is abysmal. Guild Wars 2 back in 2012 had 100 per faction.

SeaGtGruff

EmEm_Oh wrote: »

ZOS needs to look at having a completely separate server for PVP. I'd even pay a few extra $$ per month to access it. That way, only those who truly love PVP would be using it.

Only if our characters can log in on either, because I wouldn't want to have to create, level, and gear a brand new character on a brand new server just so I could PvP.

IZZEFlameLash

Darethran wrote: »

80 Per faction is abysmal. Guild Wars 2 back in 2012 had 100 per faction.

And ESO struggles even with 80. Oh and not to mention the struggle to port in a PvE area that has less than 80 people. Doesn't even have to be event area. Given how their sister company is reacting to customer criticism, I kinda am not expecting this to change much.

Duke_Falcon

What proof do you have that its 80? I need something to go on, I'm not going to believe people just because they say so. Give me some measurable data and some logical reasoning to that conclusion.

Unfadingsilence

Duke_Falcon wrote: »

What proof do you have that its 80? I need something to go on, I'm not going to believe people just because they say so. Give me some measurable data and some logical reasoning to that conclusion.

I know that's a lie since I ended up getting a single bomb from my NB and his over 100+

Unfadingsilence

ValarMorghulis1896 wrote: »

60-80 per alliance. most people in cyro-chat agree on that.

Nah that's a lie I've done single bombs and have killed more than 100+

Zabagad

Unfadingsilence wrote: »

ValarMorghulis1896 wrote: »

60-80 per alliance. most people in cyro-chat agree on that.

Nah that's a lie I've done single bombs and have killed more than 100+

1) The posts are from 2023 - so you cannot prove it wrong in 09.2024
2) to call it a "lie" is [snip]
3) are you sure they were all(!) from the same alliance and not 50 from each....?
4) pics or it didn't...
5) if pics = gratz

FlopsyPrince

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

A little transparency from the devs on this subject would be great, especially with the pop cap tests coming up.

You really expect good communication (both ways)? Wow!

FlopsyPrince

I thought it was 200 per side now. That is still very low given that only 2 full CP campaigns are open at a time for most players.

Stamicka

A big guild leader or a streamer should host an event where they group queue one 12 man group at a time into a dead campaign like Icereach outside of prime time. All we would have to do is see when Cyrodiil becomes pop locked.

I guess it would be difficult to coordinate an 80+ people event like this, but I’ve seen bigger things organized.

loosej

Stamicka wrote: »

A big guild leader or a streamer should host an event where they group queue one 12 man group at a time into a dead campaign like Icereach outside of prime time. All we would have to do is see when Cyrodiil becomes pop locked.

I guess it would be difficult to coordinate an 80+ people event like this, but I’ve seen bigger things organized.

I think coordinating 80+ people would be easier than finding 80+ people who still care enough to do this test, especially since the only outcome would be a number that can prove certain people wrong on the forums. Even if you got that number, their next argument would be "well you can't prove it doesn't scale with time of day / pts cycles / wind direction / ...", so I'm going to pass on that experiment.

MEBengalsFan2001

CrazyKitty wrote: »

ValarMorghulis1896 wrote: »

60-80 per alliance. most people in cyro-chat agree on that.

The current pop caps are about what you say. But they used to be much, much higher. Caps used to be closer to or in excess of 250/faction. Then housing, companions, ToT and a bunch of other non combat related stuff was introduced and instead of adding more server resources for the new systems they reduced cyrodiil population caps.

It probably around 125 per an alliance. I sat my dead body down once and counted players of the other alliance as they left/teleported in for a total of two minutes and I had over 100 unique players.

reazea

MEBengalsFan2001 wrote: »

CrazyKitty wrote: »

ValarMorghulis1896 wrote: »

60-80 per alliance. most people in cyro-chat agree on that.

The current pop caps are about what you say. But they used to be much, much higher. Caps used to be closer to or in excess of 250/faction. Then housing, companions, ToT and a bunch of other non combat related stuff was introduced and instead of adding more server resources for the new systems they reduced cyrodiil population caps.

It probably around 125 per an alliance. I sat my dead body down once and counted players of the other alliance as they left/teleported in for a total of two minutes and I had over 100 unique players.

The pop cap in cyrodiil is 60-80/faction. It was 600/faction when ESO released. The flaw in your math is the game is counting everyone who entered cyrodiil in that time while some players left and other new players entered the zone and added to the count.

katorga

Peak times weekends both CP campaigns are pop locked for a few hours, so maybe 1200 total people max playing. Assuming 200 per faction.

Most of the time Greyhost is pop locked at prime time, every other campaign and IC is empty. May one faction 2 bars in IC if a guild is telvar farming.

Even midyear mayhem can't pop lock all of the campaigns since they add the event only campaigns.

It demonstrates just how small the pvp player base is in relation to the total ESO player base.

nbksaske

Only way to really know for sure is get a pop lock alliance to stand at the base for a minute and count? Unless an add on exists that does this?

Sluggy

nbksaske wrote: »

Only way to really know for sure is get a pop lock alliance to stand at the base for a minute and count? Unless an add on exists that does this?

Yeah, one of them counts unique players per faction on screen within a certain timeframe. That's generally how people come up with these numbers. They look around during 'huge' keep fights and the addon counts them all up. It's not perfect but it's probably not far off either.

Durham

Do ball groups count as 1 player?

xylena_lazarow

Durham wrote: »

Do ball groups count as 1 player?

In the wake of the great ball group privacy scandal of 2023, the tri faction shadow overlords of Cyrodiil declared in their ruling Ballgroups United that yes, a ball group is a person, their playstyle sacred and never to be nerfed or countered.

Duke_Falcon

Man I give up, I've already said several times how you can get the exact number of players on an alliance in a population locked campaign. Its already built into the game, go figure it out. lolol

Iriidius

A few month ago at noon there was a PuG with 12 players(I got invited, unusual that full PuGs exist in empty campaign) and about 3 randoms taking an outpost and another 4 players at base whith no action and probably no players anywhere else so 19 players and 1 bar. Shortly after it switched to 2 bars so it seems to be 20 players per bar.