ZOS, will you address population caps?

riverdragon72 · February 2015

All of this means nothing to me until server performance is fixed. I won't log back into say, Thornblade to sit in que to experience the crap performance, lag, losing siege function and everything else that goes with it. I don't care what is done to the scoring, rewards or otherwise if it is unplayable.

Bouvin · February 2015

I'd like to know what ZOS is doing about exploiters in PvP.

We have people jumping gates to ninja scrolls.

There's a known hack that allows you to see people who are stealthed or invisible.

Dark Flare stacking is rampant.

As is perma stun combo rampant.

People are abusing all of the above and ZOS seems to be turning a blind eye to the problem. For me this is much worse than the pop cap.

Also, insane lag during keep fights..ya no fun.

WraithAzraiel · February 2015

How about as a solution you just make 2 campaigns?

1 Vet 30 day
1 Non Vet however many day

No buff servers, no nonsense, just action, wherever and whenever. That would put all the players of all the different factions who play at different times of the day on the same server at the same time.

No more crying about "So-and-So faction nightcaps!" "Blahblahblah Faction DayCAPS!" "They lagblob the servers so we lose!"

Everyone's only got 1 place to go. The real action can begin. Cannibalize the old servers and put their hardware into the new servers. Daisy-chain them together if you have to.

I'm sure someone can crunch the numbers to see if this is a viable solution for the lag problems, the population imbalance problems and the rest of the problems plaguing PvP.

If not, then oh well. I gave my 2 cents.

Djeriko · February 2015

I want you to know about an exploit that Ebonhart Pact players are doing in the North American servers. Ebonhart Pact players are openly and actively taking over every server from any other alliance. They do this while saying they dont want any other alliance to have a "buff server". This in fact makes it so that they are the only alliance with a buff server. This presents a problem because from the way I see it EP has the highest population by far. This puts all other players not playing EP in a severely unfair disadvantage. I present a solution and you can see if it is doable. Get rid of the Guest server! This makes it so that everyone has to choose one home server to play on. What happens is EP picks one then plays on the others as a guest, not to gain boosts but to mess with everyone else. Another solution would be to get rid of the multi-faction players. Players in guilds for EP have been openly spying on other alliances. They create several EP main characters and then get one DC or AD character to sign on in cyrodiil just to listen to the zone chat and send messages to their guildmates. This is a form a cheating that cannot be allowed. A solutiion would be to make everyone choose an alliance and any toons not on that alliance gets deleted! I play for DC and all of my toons are DC because I'm a fair player. Unfortunately NOT ALL MMO PLAYERS ARE! please stop letting EP ruin your alliance war game!

WraithAzraiel · February 2015

Djeriko wrote: »

I want you to know about an exploit that Ebonhart Pact players are doing in the North American servers. Ebonhart Pact players are openly and actively taking over every server from any other alliance. They do this while saying they dont want any other alliance to have a "buff server". This in fact makes it so that they are the only alliance with a buff server. This presents a problem because from the way I see it EP has the highest population by far. This puts all other players not playing EP in a severely unfair disadvantage. I present a solution and you can see if it is doable. Get rid of the Guest server! This makes it so that everyone has to choose one home server to play on. What happens is EP picks one then plays on the others as a guest, not to gain boosts but to mess with everyone else. Another solution would be to get rid of the multi-faction players. Players in guilds for EP have been openly spying on other alliances. They create several EP main characters and then get one DC or AD character to sign on in cyrodiil just to listen to the zone chat and send messages to their guildmates. This is a form a cheating that cannot be allowed. A solutiion would be to make everyone choose an alliance and any toons not on that alliance gets deleted! I play for DC and all of my toons are DC because I'm a fair player. Unfortunately NOT ALL MMO PLAYERS ARE! please stop letting EP ruin your alliance war game!

OR

Get rid of PvP buffs outside of Cyrodiil all together. Make the buffs reliant on Guilds or achievements or something.

The allowance of 'buff servers' takes away from the point of having AvAvA.

The sheer existence of more than 1 main campaign makes it possible for a faction to stoop to this level of d-bag behavior.

RoamingRiverElk · February 2015

Whatever you do, please consider that many of us like to do small-scale PvP *without zergs*! Do not limit the campaigns available to only two! Five is the absolute limit, I wish there were two more campaigns. (I play on EU).

Anazasi · February 2015

I would just like to know if AD is locked on NA Thornblade most of the nights why does it seem like those in the zone are all hiding. I mean WTF if we AD and EP are locked then how is it we cant match the numbers when fighting? I'm just baffled by this feeling. I'm beginning to think EP players are at the public library logging on multiple accounts just to lock out AD so they can have more numbers in the fights.
Yeah I know its not true but something just seems wrong with this overall observation on many levels. Thornblade simply is an EP AP Farm at this point.

LonePirate · February 2015

Anazasi wrote: »

I would just like to know if AD is locked on NA Thornblade most of the nights why does it seem like those in the zone are all hiding. I mean WTF if we AD and EP are locked then how is it we cant match the numbers when fighting? I'm just baffled by this feeling. I'm beginning to think EP players are at the public library logging on multiple accounts just to lock out AD so they can have more numbers in the fights.

I will try to dissuade the masses of unemployed EP players from visiting their local library and logging in as AD players if you will persuade the masses of unemployed AD players sitting beside them to stop logging in as EP role players thus preventing Cyrodiil's true warriors from reaching the battlefield. We stumbled across a couple dozen of them yesterday during one of our siege runs.

EP would be much more effective if everyone logged in on our side was truly committed to winning the war.

LazyLewis · February 2015

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

roechacca wrote: »

Also I like your ideas Mr Wheeler . I like the first idea best .

The first idea (Limiting population per alliance to match the lowest or median population of the lowest population) sounds good in practice, but there are some inherent problems with it. Let's say you're in a campaign where the lowest-population alliance has only 11 people on (this actually happens). That means the other two alliances would also be limited to 11 people, and no one is having fun at that point.

I agree Jess but people playing through the day against populations that out number 3 or 4 to 1 is also no fun ether. Its a hard topic to speculate about and an even harder problem to solve.

Weberda · February 2015

There simply is not a big enough player base in PVP to support all the campaigns.

Aliniel · February 2015

In my opinion, we don't even need so many campaigns. For instance, if you applied solution #1 and lock all other campaigns until the first one is at least half full, it would ensure at least a partly balance. As the campaign becomes full another one is unlocked. As soon as a certain campaign is being emptied, a message will be sent to all its players that it's going to lock. The problem is that the progress could be lost. It can be saved but then we lose the sense of accomplishment for those who stayed in it.

Slightly altered solution #1 could be applied as well. As long as 2 factions are interested in a certain campaign, there will be fight between them and none should be able to completely dominate whole map. The 3rd faction is at loss then, but they can be offered some bonuses as mentioned in some other solutions.

Another problem:
One thing I noticed as a member of PvE guild is, people join campaign ONLY to gain the PvP buffs. This is not fair. They don't do anything in that certain campaign yet they gain full benefit of domination in it. A condition of earning certain amount of AP weekly would ensure every person who wants those buffs will have to contribute.

LonePirate · February 2015

Weberda wrote: »

There simply is not a big enough player base in PVP to support all the campaigns.

Wait 36 days and let's revisit things as pop numbers will likely increase noticeably then. With the exception of Azura's, all of the campaigns usually have at least two factions hit two bars during prime time. It's the prime time numbers that should determine the number of campaigns. Consolidating campaigns will only lengthen queues on Thorn or create the them on the other campaigns.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with having a lightly populated campaign. Azura's crowned an emperor from all three factions over this past weekend which didn't happen on some of the other campaigns.

WebBull · February 2015

The 'Wells" in Cryodiil. Add more, stronger buffs, and spawn more frequently. Make them only usable by the underdog alliances and only spawn when an alliance is down by 1 bar or more.

Could also be done as a "fountain" inside keeps. Again only usable to the underdog alliances.

c0rp · February 2015

WraithAzraiel wrote: »

How about as a solution you just make 2 campaigns?

1 Vet 30 day
1 Non Vet however many day

No buff servers, no nonsense, just action, wherever and whenever. That would put all the players of all the different factions who play at different times of the day on the same server at the same time.

No more crying about "So-and-So faction nightcaps!" "Blahblahblah Faction DayCAPS!" "They lagblob the servers so we lose!"

Everyone's only got 1 place to go. The real action can begin. Cannibalize the old servers and put their hardware into the new servers. Daisy-chain them together if you have to.

I'm sure someone can crunch the numbers to see if this is a viable solution for the lag problems, the population imbalance problems and the rest of the problems plaguing PvP.

If not, then oh well. I gave my 2 cents.

This would be the best solution IF...and that is a HUUUUUGE IF the server structure was able to handle the high pop caps that the campaign would need to have. Never gonna happen on ESOs potato servers.

Suru · February 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We have looked at population imbalances throughout the release of the game and have seen it change from campaign to campaign, month to month with Ebonheart, Aldmeri and Daggerfall all taking top population spots. As a snap shot, the past three days show the following:
Haderus has swapped highest population between all three alliances.

Azura has a steady stream of Aldmeri and Ebonheart, but not much Daggerfall.

Blackwater has mainly Ebonheart with the highest with Aldmeri slightly behind and again, Daggerfall the lowest.

Chillrend has Daggerfall with the highest population and Aldmeri/Ebonheart around the same

Thornblade has Aldmeri and Ebonheart with roughly the same population with a slight edge towards Ebonheart, and Daggerfall trailing.

There are ongoing discussions about how to address population imbalances in the campaigns. Some of the possible solutions include the following:
Limiting population per alliance to match the lowest or median population of the lowest population.

Giving more XP/AP than we currently do

Giving alternate siege weapons to the underdog\low-population alliance(s) that do more damage while they have the underdog\low pop bonus.

Altering Cyrodiil's landscape

Changing/removing scoring and showing that other campaigns have underdog/low-population bonuses on the Campaign Selection UI

Doing away with Home and Guest campaign options, so Campaign Reward tiers roll with a character instead of being tied to a campaign so you can play in any campaign you want.

All of these have their pros and cons, some of which may not be immediately apparent but we still have to consider. The last one, for example, would result in all the campaigns having the same duration (so people can't earn tier 3 then hop to a short campaign and get a reward when it ends), and scoring and would be better suited as a meta-score across all campaigns. We would also need to remove the limitation on the accounts which don't let players have characters from opposing alliances in the same campaign (and yes I know that "jump to buddy" circumvents this rule already).

I agree there are many solutions we can explore, and that population imbalances are always a challenge for PVP games in which battles are not instanced to launch on demand. Thanks again for your continued patience in this and many other matters that the PVP community and myself care about deeply

Now condescending and disrespectful players on here can stfu for a while.

Tankqull · February 2015

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

Tankqull wrote: »

WebBull wrote: »

It needs to be a combination of several ideas. Not just one solution will work.

Also, it has been thrown around that limited/modified forward camps may return. Perhaps they return as a tool for the low pop alliance. Limited forward camps can only be deployed by an underdog alliance when the population imbalance between top and bottom exceeds xx%. Fast reinforcements would certainly go a long way to help even the sides.

that would be an idea increase the mobility for outnumbered realms.
sth like down/behind by:
one bar - 25% increased horse speed.
two bars - keeps are portable as longs as atleast one resource is held.
three bars - foward camps are placeable

combine that with a strength increasement of guards and "antisiege" equipment would help alot to hold your ground while beeing outnumbered.

so you want those with higher pop to be even stronger than those with lower pop?

nope if your realm is 3 bars behind the most populated realm you have access to tents. that does not favor the strongest realm. mea culpa if my wording wasn´t clear enough

Grim13 · February 2015

Suru wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We have looked at population imbalances throughout the release of the game and have seen it change from campaign to campaign, month to month with Ebonheart, Aldmeri and Daggerfall all taking top population spots. As a snap shot, the past three days show the following:
Haderus has swapped highest population between all three alliances.

Azura has a steady stream of Aldmeri and Ebonheart, but not much Daggerfall.

Blackwater has mainly Ebonheart with the highest with Aldmeri slightly behind and again, Daggerfall the lowest.

Chillrend has Daggerfall with the highest population and Aldmeri/Ebonheart around the same

Thornblade has Aldmeri and Ebonheart with roughly the same population with a slight edge towards Ebonheart, and Daggerfall trailing.

There are ongoing discussions about how to address population imbalances in the campaigns. Some of the possible solutions include the following:
Limiting population per alliance to match the lowest or median population of the lowest population.

Giving more XP/AP than we currently do

Giving alternate siege weapons to the underdog\low-population alliance(s) that do more damage while they have the underdog\low pop bonus.

Altering Cyrodiil's landscape

Changing/removing scoring and showing that other campaigns have underdog/low-population bonuses on the Campaign Selection UI

Doing away with Home and Guest campaign options, so Campaign Reward tiers roll with a character instead of being tied to a campaign so you can play in any campaign you want.

All of these have their pros and cons, some of which may not be immediately apparent but we still have to consider. The last one, for example, would result in all the campaigns having the same duration (so people can't earn tier 3 then hop to a short campaign and get a reward when it ends), and scoring and would be better suited as a meta-score across all campaigns. We would also need to remove the limitation on the accounts which don't let players have characters from opposing alliances in the same campaign (and yes I know that "jump to buddy" circumvents this rule already).

I agree there are many solutions we can explore, and that population imbalances are always a challenge for PVP games in which battles are not instanced to launch on demand. Thanks again for your continued patience in this and many other matters that the PVP community and myself care about deeply

Now condescending and disrespectful players on here can stfu for a while.

Like yourself?

..because your comment was both condescending and disrespectful.

GorraShatan · February 2015

The only bonus I'd want to see for the low-pop is increased AP/XP gain. Honestly, the system is working well for AD and EP, just not well for DC. That's partly due to the feedback you get in the factional culture though - a small disadvantage becomes a large one over time as people get frustrated. I've noticed an uptick on DC population in the non-vet campaign, so maybe this will change going forward?

With an influx of new players coming in March, this might solve itself too. If people want quicker queues, they may opt for DC, and that could rebalance things.

If there's a long queue for Thorn, I do actually jump on my DC toon some times and port into the campaign. That's easier for me than some, since I have a VR14 toon on DC to begin with, but you can have a lot of fun in PvP without a max level toon. I'd encourage others to give it a shot some time too.

The_Death_Princess · February 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Thornblade has Aldmeri and Ebonheart with roughly the same population with a slight edge towards Ebonheart, and Daggerfall trailing.

Azura is my home campaign for buffs, Thornblade is my play campaign because it is the busiest. IT IS FACT that most days (yes I count weekdays I work weekends) EP is capped population, certainly 3 bars at 0900 PDT and all through the day until past 2000 hours. My bud who lives east and is up before me sees the same even before that time, so thats pretty near all day long as well as by the time he is own Thornblade is nearly completely red..

AD only sees Cap in the evening hours. DC close to the same, but their cap time is shorter and later starting.

The fact is the DK Fiasco has gone on so long that too many rerolled to DK EP (or sorc/temp) because they were tired of losing. This is the root of the issue, and may or may not change with 1.6.

The other factor is that I believer there is a LARGE contingent of European players in EP which means they are at cap against an empty server. You may have to take a hard line and shut down European IP's to the North American server.....

EDIT:

Ya, what next poster says - the dam exploiters of all kinds! \/ \/ \/

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on BASHING AND SLANDEROUS COMMENTS]

Columba · February 2015

population is less of an issue than is the intentional lagspamming exploits that are used by high pop servers to lag out the server.

Xiphyla · February 2015

The_Death_Princess wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Thornblade has Aldmeri and Ebonheart with roughly the same population with a slight edge towards Ebonheart, and Daggerfall trailing.

Azura is my home campaign for buffs, Thornblade is my play campaign because it is the busiest. IT IS FACT that most days (yes I count weekdays I work weekends) EP is capped population, certainly 3 bars at 0900 PDT and all through the day until past 2000 hours. My bud who lives east and is up before me sees the same even before that time, so thats pretty near all day long as well as by the time he is own Thornblade is nearly completely red..

AD only sees Cap in the evening hours. DC close to the same, but their cap time is shorter and later starting.

The fact is the DK Fiasco has gone on so long that too many rerolled to DK EP (or sorc/temp) because they were tired of losing. This is the root of the issue, and may or may not change with 1.6.

The other factor is that I believer there is a LARGE contingent of European players in EP which means they are at cap against an empty server. You may have to take a hard line and shut down European IP's to the North American server.....

EDIT:

Ya, what next poster says - the dam exploiters of all kinds! \/ \/ \/

Most of the NA are playing during european timezone , not necessary the europeans. Can't stop people not playing during that timezone but just stating facts about you saying large contingent of europeans.

[Moderator Note: Edited quote to match moderated version]

Roechacca · February 2015

Xiphyla wrote: »

The_Death_Princess wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Thornblade has Aldmeri and Ebonheart with roughly the same population with a slight edge towards Ebonheart, and Daggerfall trailing.

Azura is my home campaign for buffs, Thornblade is my play campaign because it is the busiest. IT IS FACT that most days (yes I count weekdays I work weekends) EP is capped population, certainly 3 bars at 0900 PDT and all through the day until past 2000 hours. My bud who lives east and is up before me sees the same even before that time, so thats pretty near all day long as well as by the time he is own Thornblade is nearly completely red..

AD only sees Cap in the evening hours. DC close to the same, but their cap time is shorter and later starting.

The fact is the DK Fiasco has gone on so long that too many rerolled to DK EP (or sorc/temp) because they were tired of losing. This is the root of the issue, and may or may not change with 1.6.

The other factor is that I believer there is a LARGE contingent of European players in EP which means they are at cap against an empty server. You may have to take a hard line and shut down European IP's to the North American server.....

EDIT:

Ya, what next poster says - the dam exploiters of all kinds! \/ \/ \/

Most of the NA are playing during european timezone , not necessary the europeans. Can't stop people not playing during that timezone but just stating facts about you saying large contingent of europeans.

So the odds they're unemployed Americans is stronger then having a large European and Australian player base ? Cause they were saying they had a lot of Euro players and it wasn't their US team mates playing at that time .

[Moderator Note: Edited quote to match moderated version]

The_Death_Princess · February 2015

To clarify the confusion brought on by the last two posters, when it is 5pm prime in london it is 9 am here for me. That means as the sun (and time) sweeps across Europe they have a jump on us as we sleep/go to work. Likewise we have the same jump on the Aussies.

It has nothing to do with unemployment or whatever. It does mean that I as an NA evening worker see the populations and what I print its fact. I am just saying not enough of the Europeans left to move over because they knew of this advantage.

This will always be an issue in MMO games, and they handle it passively with multiple servers and direction by geozone, or they have to do more active things (stronger gaurds, rolling pop caps, whatever) that stop the lame steam roll of NPC and the handful of early players that may be on.

SC0TY999 · February 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Ah yeah this is US population and not EU. And yup, server performance is always top priority.

Are you able to provide the current number quotas for each bar?

i.e. 1 bar = 24 players, 2 = 48 etc....

Kromus · February 2015

Part of solution would be to remove guards at keeps and resources for pop locked alliance, with 5-10 minutes Cyro-wide announce about it. Said alliance would need to spread their forces giving underdogs chance for more balanced encounters. Simple solutions are usually the most promising, as it would also have impact on less lag seeing that deers and torchbugs were removed for same reason (not that it works, tho).

Home/Guest system needs to go as it only makes issues for which I already posted here on forum month ago and still waiting answer from ZOS.

ZOS_BrianWheeler · February 2015

We cannot give specific numbers as to population caps and what each bar means, however here is a graph of Thornblade's (US) recent population which echos the statement above regarding the populations of each Alliance within that campaign:

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO · February 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We cannot give specific numbers as to population caps and what each bar means, however here is a graph of Thornblade's (US) recent population which echos the statement above regarding the populations of each Alliance within that campaign:

Well it looks to me like you have a serious problem in particular in off hours.

How do you get people to play DC side when they are already at such huge disadvantage? 10- or 20% ap bonus will have no effects what so ever, because AP has so little real value in the game.

If you had a realm point system like in DaoC then AP rewards would have had an effect but in ESO they wont.

There need to be some massive bonuses to the weak realm if you ever want things balanced. You should have made champ points realm locked and then made members of the weaker realm gain them a LOT faster. Now you can't use that method because cps gained on a DC char will also boost EP and AD chars on that account.

ghengis_dhan · February 2015

Djeriko wrote: »

... Another solution would be to get rid of the multi-faction players.... A solutiion would be to make everyone choose an alliance and any toons not on that alliance gets deleted! I play for DC and all of my toons are DC because I'm a fair player. Unfortunately NOT ALL MMO PLAYERS ARE! please stop letting EP ruin your alliance war game!

What do you do about players like me who have family and friends in each faction? One on my sons plays for the Covenant. My other son's wife plays for the Dominion. My grandson plays for the Pact. They all want to play with me.

Dreyloch · February 2015

Djeriko wrote: »

I want you to know about an exploit that Ebonhart Pact players are doing in the North American servers. Ebonhart Pact players are openly and actively taking over every server from any other alliance. They do this while saying they dont want any other alliance to have a "buff server". This in fact makes it so that they are the only alliance with a buff server. This presents a problem because from the way I see it EP has the highest population by far. This puts all other players not playing EP in a severely unfair disadvantage. I present a solution and you can see if it is doable. Get rid of the Guest server! This makes it so that everyone has to choose one home server to play on. What happens is EP picks one then plays on the others as a guest, not to gain boosts but to mess with everyone else. Another solution would be to get rid of the multi-faction players. Players in guilds for EP have been openly spying on other alliances. They create several EP main characters and then get one DC or AD character to sign on in cyrodiil just to listen to the zone chat and send messages to their guildmates. This is a form a cheating that cannot be allowed. A solutiion would be to make everyone choose an alliance and any toons not on that alliance gets deleted! I play for DC and all of my toons are DC because I'm a fair player. Unfortunately NOT ALL MMO PLAYERS ARE! please stop letting EP ruin your alliance war game!

Ya had me, then ya lost me....

While I agree with much of what your saying here, you don't seriously think ZoS would ever delete anyone's characters over this....do you? I layed out some ideas earlier in this thread which would work if the programming is doable.

(I'm also full DC player btw)

SoulScream · February 2015

Wow DC is low on that graph!