Cyrodil Low Population Bonus

stanger_than

So we have population bars in Cyrodil showing roughly how many players are in an instance



And we have a Low population bonus



I would have thought they would be connected in some way
(the above image were taken within seconds of each other)

EP on 1 bar with but no low pop bonus and AD pop locked

Why have one part of the tell us 1 thing, whilst another tells us something different

Tommy_The_Gun

Low pop bonus does not seem to work.

Yesterday on GH PC EU, later in the evening, DC was locked & they were zerging entire map, up to the other alliances gates & even home bases (also they have 1st place in scoreboards). Both AD & EP were on 2 bars with AD being at 1 bar at some point. None of them got underdog bonus. And it is not like there was some delay & they got the bonus later. They got literally nothing.

The whole idea of low pop bonus (especially to AP) is to motivate players to play, despite being outnumbered. So that they would at least try to do something, like go behind enemy lines & flip resources.

But it seems that the only alternative was to either get farmed by multiple ball groups (it seems that on PC EU almost every pvp guild mained DC) or get zerged by overwhelming amount of players. AD was a bit smarter than EP as they just stopped playing it seems, since there was no viable alternative.

Jaraal

Just to show you how bugged this is, here's a screenshot I took last night. Who can tell me what's wrong with this picture?

EdjeSwift

I don't see anything wrong with any of those posts.

From my research/experience Population Bonus isn't constantly calculated, which is good because would probably mean even more stuff on the backend that would cause potential issues. I'd say population bonuses are triggered probably every 30-60 minutes, still don't have a concrete number. What tends to happen is when a low pop bonus is granted it's like Paul Revere and someone goes screaming to the discords/teamspeaks/mumbles/ventrilos and calls the PvPers to arms and people swarm in to take advantage of the AP and sweep the map. People say a certain faction makes better use of this than others but that's neither here nor there.

As for the one bar argument, I personally believe that not all 1 bars are equal. Looking at Op's screenshot that's EP Blackreach and EP Blackreach generally doesn't get it because they don't meet the requirements for Low Pop.

Let's say Pop Lock is... 100 for easy maths.
1 Bar would be 0-30 players.
2 Bar would be 31-61 players
3 Bar would be 62-99 players
and Pop lock out be 100+ queue.

Low Pop, as we know, doesn't automatically trigger at 1 bar or else everyone would always have it in the lower population campaigns. It probably takes some calculation of current players/combined opposing players = Sum and if sum ≤ 10% then low pop bonus. So if we take this calculation into account and we have pop locked Blue and Yellow and red is at 1 bar, we'd need for EP to have less than 20 players on to trigger low pop. Maths: 21/200 = 10.5% which is > 10% but at 20 it would ≤ 10% and it would trigger.

Sure, it might be nicer if population and bonuses were constantly calculated, but that might be too much to ask.

Keep in mind this is just conjecture and theory based upon personal experience with low pop bonus and such.

Jaraal

EdjeSwift wrote: »

I don't see anything wrong with any of those posts.

The fact that DC owns most of the map and still has the low pop bonus is not surprising. However, in all my years of playing in Cyrodiil I have never seen multiple factions have the low pop bonus at the same time. And it wasn't a UI error. Closing and refreshing the stat screen didn't change it.

EdjeSwift

Jaraal wrote: »

EdjeSwift wrote: »

I don't see anything wrong with any of those posts.

The fact that DC owns most of the map and still has the low pop bonus is not surprising. However, in all my years of playing in Cyrodiil I have never seen multiple factions have the low pop bonus at the same time. And it wasn't a UI error. Closing and refreshing the stat screen didn't change it.

It's clearly one of the 7 day campaigns based on the scores and if my calculations are close to what the requirements are, it IS feasible.

Poplocked AD would be 100+10 of either faction would be: 10/110 which would be .09 which would be under the 10% threshold for both sides(not actual calculations just example calculaitons) which for a 7 day campaign would be feasible. Wouldnt be surprised if big guilds waiting for GH were sending scouts to the various 7 days to find low pop or easily AP farmable maps and sending in the hordes.