How would you encourage players to spread out?

badmojo · May 2015

It's pretty obvious by now that ZOS does not want to enforce any type of limits on us when it comes to the campaigns we can get into. Even if you home in one campaign, you can easily get into the others using the guest feature, or easier yet just travel to another player. It's nice that they've left it so open and accessible, it prevents annoying situations where one person can't play with the group because of imposed restrictions.

Of course, with freedom comes problems. The populations are never equal across all the campaigns. Players tend to flock to one or two campaigns, leaving the others to mostly sit empty. This causes a domino effect, where other players get bored of their empty campaign, and move to the populated ones. Which ends up flooding a campaign, which ends up lagging the server, which ends up frustrating everybody who is just trying to have fun playing a video game.

Obviously, the community and the game would benefit from all the campaigns being equally populated. The question is how does ZOS accomplish that without removing the freedom we've gotten accustomed to? I'm interested in what you guys think they should do? Maybe someone will come up with a great idea and ZOS will do it, it's better than sitting here complaining, hoping ZOS will fix it themselves. I'm sure ZOS would be more than happy to implement a great idea, we just have to come up with it.

tldr: How would you encourage players to spread out across all the pvp campaigns, without sacrificing the freedom we currently have?

bosmern_ESO · May 2015

Right now all the campaigns all have a good population (I see all campaigns have about 2-3 bars for all alliances across the board during prime time). but later into the night/morning/day the populations become in balanced.

what could fix the problem would be having populations no longer be static, have the pop caps vary depending on how imbalanced a campaign population while keeping an overall pop cap.

For Example, EP has a population of 300 players, AD and DC have 100. EP would be capped at that 300 but AD and DC can still join easy. Over time AD and DC get up to 290 so the EP pop cap goes to 320.

Cody · May 2015

one would get no AP in guest campaigns

there

Ifthir_ESO · May 2015

ap bonus for not being in significant range of any allies

Tintinabula · May 2015

place a hidden buff on the grid during battles that gives extra damage and extra defense but only available if 25 or more people are in the vicinity. If you step on the magic square BAM your buffed. They could call it the blessing of Talos!!

ToRelax · May 2015

Cody wrote: »

one would get no AP in guest campaigns

there

That would make players spread out less.
You sign up for a campaign were you can have fun the most often and where your friends play. Depending on how much you play you'll want a campaign that is active around the clock. Guilds will stay on one campaign, and if you want to organize together with other guilds, they better play on the same campaign.

Valnas · May 2015

make the sweet spot for group xp bonus 8. dminshing down to -300% at 24 man. 4-8 max xp/ap.

AhPook_Is_Here · May 2015

have money rain everywhere. then people will have to run in different directions to pick it all up, if they just stick with the stack they won't get nearly as much as the player with his rock on soloing the rain. That's who the Dosh elves love, hustlers that run for the $$$$.

Derra · May 2015

I´ve been playing daoc for a good 9 years after it´s release. Main reason to spread out for zergs was aoe-cc in combination with aoe-dmg actually being a threat to a group of players (for example: you stand in the bright manabomb flash for two seconds? - you dead mate). Also no stupid dmg dropoffs.

AoE dmg in eso is so pitiful that it´s only worth using when the number of players using it reaches the critical mass to one or twoshot enemys standing in it. It´s vaible for the blob with 24 ppl but not for the 8 ppl trying to fight them.

I´d make every pbaoe available a hardcast of about 1.5 seconds - tripple the dmg and rework some of the cc skills to be short duration aoe ccs (actual aoe cc without target cap).
Also i´d add interrupt functionality to most of the "spam" skills to make the stronger aoes not vaible in small scale single target combat.
You could also extend this to all heavy hitting abilities in the game but well that would require immense balancing efforts.

Obviously this is not going to happen due to pve balancing problems and the game having to appeal to casual players (whom have changed quite a bit over the years too - nobody wants to think anymore) that "just want to play"...

Edit: I´d also reduce grp size to 12ppl (there IS no reason for 24 atm) and limit defensive skills like purge and barrier to that amount. I´d also change the functionality of purge to only work against dmging abilities not against CC or projectiles (who thought it was smart for projectiles to be dispellable debuffs in the first place - fire that guy).

Teargrants · May 2015

Want players to spread out? Best solution:

Joy_Division · May 2015

Teargrants wrote: »

Want players to spread out? Best solution:

redspecter23 · May 2015

Create mechanics that help factions with both offense and defense when in combat at keeps closer to their gates. For example, say DC is pushed back to their gates and EP controls Rayles. When DC attacks Rayles to take it back, they receive a +X% bonus to damage and extra defense. As well, they can occasionally channel the power of the divines to call down massive AoE damage against the opposing faction if too many of them are grouped together. The closer you are to your own gates, the stronger the damage is. If close enough to your gates, it could add other effects like CC, dot's, etc.

This creates a situation where it becomes harder for someone to control the entire map as it becomes harder to hold the keeps furthest from their own gates. It also creates a blob busting mechanism at these furthest keeps and surrounding areas which again makes it harder for one faction to spread out across the entire map. It's basically a diminishing returns system that gives bonuses to the underdog and makes it harder for the aggressor.

ItsRejectz · May 2015

Honestly question... Why should we spread out?
The games first trailers all advertised immense battles with hundreds of players on screen. Now they're saying spread out because the servers/game can't handle it, what a load of ****.

End of the day it comes down to one simple fact, they are not able to pull off a stable state of PvP with everything they promised. If they could, PvP wouldn't of had all these issues from day one. Yes at times it's felt a little better, but the lag and latency issues have ALWAYS been there and imo always will be.

With the size of cyrodiil they can't even reduce the players caps, because if they did it would feel like a baron wasteland. Even now it feels empty unless you go to specific parts of the map at specific times

eliisra · May 2015

Doesn't matters if everyone spreads outs, not when 99% of the player-base is using Meteor as their main ulti.
This is one of the reasons why the non-vet campaign is smooth, no one is Mage's Guild level 10 yet.

Lag and bung-jumps is unavoidable when you have 30-50 people dropping Meteor as soon as their ulti is ready. It doesn't matter if everyone is nuking from max range. Yet those 30-50 guys dropping Meteors will naturally blame that 20-man train running around with Barrier and PBAoE for the lag. The train will naturally blame the guys dropping Meteors.

We should probably blame ZoS for bad performance instead of raging over specific skills or playstyles. Than again we blamed them for over a year, cried and complained, nothing changed. Instead it got worse. Maybe hating each other is more constructive, at least you get some answerers that way

Cody · May 2015

ToRelax wrote: »

Cody wrote: »

one would get no AP in guest campaigns

there

That would make players spread out less.
You sign up for a campaign were you can have fun the most often and where your friends play. Depending on how much you play you'll want a campaign that is active around the clock. Guilds will stay on one campaign, and if you want to organize together with other guilds, they better play on the same campaign.

then people need to start making their campaigns their homes and stop hoping around as soon as their team starts losing.