NA Thornblade has the same issue, AD has the highest population and were also receiving the low population bonus. At the time we (DC) had 1 bar population to their 2 bars, took Altadoon scroll and most of the keeps and couldn't out score AD.

Something very fishy is going on here.

Is this bonus coded, or is it at the discretion of a game master?

yes its clearly working as intended

ZOS_TristanK wrote: »

Thank you for staying patient, all. We have looked into the population bonus and everything seems to be working as designed. To give you a bit more insight into the mechanic, the population bonus is applied and dissolved over time and not immediately. Because of the gradual application, there isn't really a way for players to log in and out to raise or lower the bonus in a consistent way.

We can say after looking at the campaigns from the back end that the battles are often pretty close! That said, we will continue monitoring the campaigns to see if the population bonus needs to be tweaked.

Although you say it cannot be manipulated by players logging out and that it is applied gradually over time. The simple fact that the formula is based off population means that in fact it can be manipulated.

Let's say the bonus points are calculated every hour. After 55 minutes of play have your entire group (24) log off for a larger bonus point gain.

If it's calculated every 30 minutes, set your timer for 25 minutes.

As much as you would like us to believe it's an algorithm based off population for a given time period over hours or even days, I'm not buying those wolf tickets.

Even if this was the case what if the calculation is happening during lag fests where people are getting disconnected left and right?

Guys please stop raging its working as intended

NO ITS NOT PLEASE FIX THIS *** what do we have in PVP???

1LAG
2 *** UP SCORES
3 MORE LAG
4 MORE LAG
What do we get if we post it? Working as intended yeah f...... you

there are these little bars beside the scoring indicating a low-pop Bonus. I know they are there a Long time now. But what strikes me is the fact that there were never a "Bonus" to be seen. But since this last round of campaign there is a actual bonus - and he is (howeversummarized) bigger than a score of total Domination (all keeps, scrolls etc)
Something is NOT working as intended (imho)

The thing is that DC is also low populated outside of prime time on Azura star EU and AD wasn't low populated this week end (and in general DC is also the less populated in prime time like in the screen shot above).
The dominant faction in number is EP , since that it's always AD who has the buff, something is not working there.

The thing I wanted to know is, if their algorythm take in count all the people in the server or only the player whom are in their main campaign , wich could give a start to an explanation .

Its been seen to apply to DC on other servers too but yes DC rarely gets to join #TheGoldenAlliance

Ryllana is correct that according to what Zenimax have said the fact that at any particular time a side can be higher population but be getting the bonus they earned at an earlier lower population time.

The thing is that I've been watching the population bars while playing for a long time - you need to when you are generally lower population than the other two factions. Just yesterday we were all day a low population faction either equal with AD or lower (EP was higher all day) until the evening when for a couple of hours we were all locked. This is fairly typical. But we never get a bonus and the AD do. Although I am not online between 3 and 8 am faction friends who have been have said there is no population difference in our favour at that time that shows on the population bars. So we cannot attack AD if their population is lower than ours or we trigger a bonus for them, but they can attack us when we are lower population and we do not get any bonus. What it looks like is a special Protect the AD mechanism.

Rylana wrote: »

I am pretty sure the devs flat out said it was a 4 hour refresh.

To my knowledge they have not flat out said anything on how it works. There is the post in this thread saying it's calculated over several hours but no indication of how many hours, how much lower the population has to be, is it bases on keeps lost/captured.

We know very little of the mechanic other than, if one faction is lower for a while, when they come back they can receive an insane number of points.

It seems like the divisor in the equation is based on the total reward eligible population of the faction receiving it. Maybe if the divisor was changed to the the faction with the lowest number of reward eligible players the equation would be fair to everyone instead of "more-fair" for the one with the largest total population.

That's the bit that confuses many of us Nermy, because on Thornblade EU, it's generally the DC that are lower pop if anyone is but I don't think we've ever got a bonus.

It is noticeable that no-one has had a bonus in the last few days - I'm wondering if they've quietly turned the mechanism off...

I understand the intention behind the low pop bonus to be something like keeping a faction from getting so far behind they wouldn't want to get back into it.

The FAQ states that rewards and the end of the tier are given in 1st 2nd and 3rd place. It's not like 1st place wins all. So a faction that doesn't do as much work as the others get a lower reward but get one nonetheless.

So is this to give a faction that doesn't do work a better chance to try to maintain a position over time that will allow them a chance to sprint to the finish line and what, give them hope that they could still go from like last to first place?

On one hand I think, well if I loved PvP and I was in a faction that didn't I should have a deceent shot at getting a reward for my time else why bother? But I think the system does that by providing rewards for faction rankings as well.

But rewarding a faction that generally doesn't do "as much" work as others via a welfare system really has to be done right.

@ZOS_TristanK The way you describe it is that it is calculated or distributed over time... So low pop factions are getting a bonus for when they WERE low popped even while they are high popped and doing work and that is combining to SHOW A HUGE SCORE?

This is going to be perceived as being totally out of whack or like something is being exploited. Maybe it is maybe it isn't. But without revealing or even better explaining how this works, you are putting yourself in a position to turn off players regardless of how awesome your balancing algorithms are.

And if those people, regardless of right or wrong, get turned off, that's going to ultimately result in dropped subs.

Might be a good idea to better explain this mysterious pop bonus to the users, maybe even a simple chart or video, in a little more detail than a one liner.

Or figure out a way to add pop bonus when pop is actually low. Or some way to seperate it out so it is more clear.

As it stands, it's sure does seem like it's upsetting a lot of peeps. And the way it's designed and displayed I can see why people are reporting it as a bug. The code might be solid but the implementation with an explanation is lacking!

RensDG wrote: »

The system shouln't be for placing a faction from 3th place to 1st place with 600-1000 buff points. It's killing the feeling of competition if you know the game has decided for you that you can't win.

This is exactly the feeling for myself and my entire guild.