Low population bonus bug in Trueflame

EIGHTS · October 2016

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

As for the undepopulation/scoring bonuses, unfortunately we do not have a fix for this currently, but we are still investigating why/how the bonuses are being applied to verify the bug.

You know they don't need to have the bonus. They still have points if they are in the second place.
That additional points keeps them on the top.

I don't think that's a bug.

God_flakes · October 2016

Manoekin wrote: »

God_flakes wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Most people don't read the forums, yes. From the responses I've heard they either don't care, or they think the forums are toxic. I think the majority of the players on here don't know what they're talking about in most situations. That's not a bad thing as this is a place for discussion, but the toxicity and repulsiveness comes from how these players react to information. Why would a smart, gifted player come here to help others when they can come into a thread with 100% backed up proof of something and still get swarmed with arguments as to why they're wrong? That person would rather just play the game and leave those people to their own devices. The exceptions are either the ones with an ungodly amount of patience to deal with the rabble, or those who come because they enjoy the forum pvp.

Super rich coming from someone who comes here and calls people stupid, dense and mongoloid. You're probably the most immature person I've met in this game. Spare us all your lectures about toxicity.

I only say those things to people who simply refuse to listen. I'll be the first to admit I'm low on patience. Look back on my previous post you quoted for reasons why some people don't want to come to these forums. Immature yeah? From our single in-game interaction that went horribly wrong for you, for me coming to the defense of my friend in a thread where you were attacking her, or for me just not agreeing with you? It's not like I choose to disagree with you either, you just say a lot of things that are not right and some of them happen to be posted in threads I decided to look at.

LoL horribly wrong for me? Think again. Your conduct is on you, not me.

God_flakes · October 2016

ataggs wrote: »

God_flakes wrote: »

fastolfv_ESO wrote: »

if your accidentally given a million gold would you be upset if the hotfix took it away? having something you didnt earn taken away isnt exactly a punishment or really much of a loss

Right now TF is wall to wall carpeted a pukey yellow. Meanwhile Haderus has exactly 3 ad running around. Just as I predicted the balance has been totally upset with the scourge of AD. Some AD need to return to Haddy.

Noooooooo! We don't have the population for both, ergo low pop bonus. Had is terrible, you are free to go if you want, but I don't see why AD would want to.

Right because AD can't stand challenging fights. Haderus is a great campaign for ad and DC looking for fights right now as Ep is maintaining a consistent force there and simply needs to be challenged. God forbid AD stay where there is a challenge. Oh wait I forgot-they came in dead last there because DC only beat them with a low pop bonus. <eyeroll>

_Chaos · October 2016

I'm thankful we all have @God_flakes on these forums, her posts are nothing short of entertaining and seem to make time in the office fly by.

Celas_Dranacea · October 2016

_Chaos wrote: »

I'm thankful we all have @God_flakes on these forums, her posts are nothing short of entertaining and seem to make time in the office fly by.

I second that, in addition to entertainment, without her AD wouldn't know which server is the correct one to play on, what to eat for breakfast and when to take a dump.

ZOS_BrianWheeler · October 2016

@Crown You are correct that the population and scoring bonuses used to calculate every 60 minutes on the score ticks, however this was changed to every 30 minutes. We did this to get more accurate polling which results in shorter duration for the bonuses to be applied, however in this particular case, we are still investigating the population numbers as a whole at the time of the initial report.

Also note that population does not poll just the current population because, as you've noted, it would be easily exploitable by everyone logging out for an hour to get the zero population bonus. The population and scoring bonus takes all the samples it's collected over a period of time and then on each evaluation period, measures the current score vs. the average of the prior samples, then applies bonuses as needed.

ThePonzzz · October 2016

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

@Crown You are correct that the population and scoring bonuses used to calculate every 60 minutes on the score ticks, however this was changed to every 30 minutes. We did this to get more accurate polling which results in shorter duration for the bonuses to be applied, however in this particular case, we are still investigating the population numbers as a whole at the time of the initial report.

Also note that population does not poll just the current population because, as you've noted, it would be easily exploitable by everyone logging out for an hour to get the zero population bonus. The population and scoring bonus takes all the samples it's collected over a period of time and then on each evaluation period, measures the current score vs. the average of the prior samples, then applies bonuses as needed.

Brian, I think there are people (i.e. guilds) who are figuring out the math behind this and exploiting it. It seems far to coincidental that this is happening on Haderus and Trueflamme with AD. TF is far worse from the screenshots. But last campaign in Haderus, AD was pop locked and getting the low population bonus for awhile.

ZOS_BrianWheeler · October 2016

@ThePonzzz That's what we're looking into

ThePonzzz · October 2016

That's for the clarification. It's appreciated.

Celas_Dranacea · October 2016

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

@Crown You are correct that the population and scoring bonuses used to calculate every 60 minutes on the score ticks, however this was changed to every 30 minutes. We did this to get more accurate polling which results in shorter duration for the bonuses to be applied, however in this particular case, we are still investigating the population numbers as a whole at the time of the initial report.

Also note that population does not poll just the current population because, as you've noted, it would be easily exploitable by everyone logging out for an hour to get the zero population bonus. The population and scoring bonus takes all the samples it's collected over a period of time and then on each evaluation period, measures the current score vs. the average of the prior samples, then applies bonuses as needed.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler we all really appreciate you taking time to look into this on what must be a crazy week. Good job man. Everyone especially AD wants the campaign to be fair for all sides... We don't want to win by some accident or be accused of cheating.

My hunch is that there was just like a perfect storm where for several days AD lost a lot of population during NA late night periods - A lot of AD guilds are on a similar schedule, and after a long evening of pvp several groups might have just called it a night as red and blue groups picked up steam and started pushing us back.

Perhaps some other AD guilds that usually run late at night after this earlier shift did not form groups for several days in a row - maybe the raid leaders were taking a break or something - which could have exacerbated the issue.

In this case, the population could have dropped quickly as AD pugs lost their will without larger groups to hold the map, and population stayed low for a long while. Perhaps then the low-pop bonus was warranted

On the other hand, this could have totally been some kind of bug in which case I hope points can be refunded to our Red and Blue chums.

Celas_Dranacea · October 2016

I'll add to my previous comment that - as others have already said - I'm highly doubtful that any AD guilds would be willfully manipulating the score this way.

COH for one would never ever even consider such a lame thing, we'd much rather lose. I can't think of any AD guild leaders that would put their reputation on the line by doing such a stupid thing - all those I have come across are honorable and want to win through fighting hard and legitimate strategery.

Roechacca · October 2016

Just get rid of the low pop bonus. This everyone gets a trophy attitude crap is old. You don't play you should lose.

Manoekin · October 2016

Celas_Dranacea wrote: »

I'll add to my previous comment that - as others have already said - I'm highly doubtful that any AD guilds would be willfully manipulating the score this way.

COH for one would never ever even consider such a lame thing, we'd much rather lose. I can't think of any AD guild leaders that would put their reputation on the line by doing such a stupid thing - all those I have come across are honorable and want to win through fighting hard and legitimate strategery.

I think more than any of that is the scale that would be required pretty much excludes this from being the case. If AD had a PM type guild it would be more believable, but in AD's current state it would take far too much organization/coordination. IMO.

Roechacca wrote: »

Just get rid of the low pop bonus. This everyone gets a trophy attitude crap is old. You don't play you should lose.

I don't think that works honestly. Ideally how the underpop scoring should work is to truly benefit the faction with the least amount of players. The problem with this game is you can't actually figure that out because you're not restricted to playing only one faction. In a perfect scenario you have team A with 100 players, B with 200, C with 250, and you give the bonus to team A. In ESO you have fluctuating populations based on time, and on whatever a lot of players feel like playing that day.

I don't see the point in punishing players because more people in their faction quit, or players in their faction left and play for a different faction now unbalancing it even more. In sports those people get replaced and there's no excuses, you're either better or you're not.

IMO there should be a running total of unique players per faction, and the low pop scoring bonus should be based on the peak of each faction at every tick. If in that hour the peak of the highest faction is 100, the 2nd is 90, and the 3rd is 70, then the 2nd pop faction would get a 10% bonus to that tick, and the 3rd would get a 30% bonus. Maybe don't count the players for the first 10 minutes each time so people can log off for the night and not count towards an eval they didn't contribute to? IDK. I wouldn't mind seeing it gone and brought back manually in the case one faction actually does become unable to support a main campaign.

Ackwalan · October 2016

Right now on NA Haderus, all alliances are at 1 population bar, yet AD is the only one getting a low population bonus. Ep took the added step of taking every single keep and resource.

Celas_Dranacea · October 2016

Roechacca wrote: »

Just get rid of the low pop bonus. This everyone gets a trophy attitude crap is old. You don't play you should lose.

Perhaps this is warranted, at least on Trueflame.

ganzaeso · October 2016

I'm a regular PvPer on Haderus NA.

I don't think this is a bug, but rather the result of under participation in the campaign from AD due to being pushed back to the gates so frequently.

With less AD scoring on the board, when the comparisons on numbers are made AD is far less than the other 2 alliances on Haderus.

Honestly I don't know why more AD don't jump at the chance to push back on a fully RED or BLUE map. It can be more fun and definitely provides more AP.

God_flakes · October 2016

ganzaeso wrote: »

I'm a regular PvPer on Haderus NA.

I don't think this is a bug, but rather the result of under participation in the campaign from AD due to being pushed back to the gates so frequently.

With less AD scoring on the board, when the comparisons on numbers are made AD is far less than the other 2 alliances on Haderus.

Honestly I don't know why more AD don't jump at the chance to push back on a fully RED or BLUE map. It can be more fun and definitely provides more AP.

Because AD have proven themselves to be cowards time and again. They really only prefer to fight the enemy when they vastly out number them.

Skyy · October 2016

ganzaeso wrote: »

I'm a regular PvPer on Haderus NA.

I don't think this is a bug, but rather the result of under participation in the campaign from AD due to being pushed back to the gates so frequently.

With less AD scoring on the board, when the comparisons on numbers are made AD is far less than the other 2 alliances on Haderus.

Honestly I don't know why more AD don't jump at the chance to push back on a fully RED or BLUE map. It can be more fun and definitely provides more AP.

Except this post was about Trueflame where AD were definitely not outnumbered.

dotme · December 2016

@ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_GinaBruno Sorry to resurrect this thread, but this is still a major issue and I figured it's better to post here than start a whole new one.

I played Scourge PS4 NA yesterday (12/13/2016) from 6pm-11pm Eastern and during those whole 5 hours, AD had "full" under their population indicator yet received a significant population bonus every 30 minutes the entire time I was playing.

By 11pm, they had moved from 3rd place to taking the campaign lead (with the most recent tick awarding them 199 points!).

While this was going on, AD were zerging hard and zone chat was full of complaints and good players logging out of Cyrodiil in disgust.

I don't blame players obviously, but the game was clearly awarding AD a bonus for 5+ hours that they didn't need and it totally changed the faction campaign leaderboard. It's tough to work hard to gain the lead and have it taken away by the "system" in a matter of hours while the faction benefiting is full and rolling across the map. Major morale-killer for the other factions.