Has anyone else noticed?

RinaldoGandolphi · December 2016

Recently a friend and myself were talking about how we missed the days where there were fights all over the map in Cyrodiil.

At launch, it was estimated that each faction was allowed to have around 1,000 players each, which if you look back at some of the early Angry Joe Army videos this makes sense as he had zergs that was easily 10 times as large as any zerg you would see in the game today.

Then they started reducing the Population Caps after the Lighting Patch fiasco

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/142667/cyrodiil-performance-population-cap-adjustments

This present two unique problems for Cyrodiil:

1. The map itself was designed for around 900 players per faction give or take
2. the map being as large as it is, and there being about 200 player per alliance now means there are not enough people to fight all over the map like there was in 2014-early 2015

These problems really started to become apparent with the Thieves Guild Patch.

So you look at the map at primetime on a Friday or Saturday night and you will see one large crossed sword at some keep on the map, and maybe one smaller crossed sword elsewhere and thats pretty much it....whereas before it was common to see 4-5 crossed swords on the map at any given time in 2014....

That map is so large, but there are so few people that it literally funnels all the fights into 1-2 areas.

Best example, you take a resource with you and 3-4 friends, and 30+ people show up at the resource to kill you. Why does this happen:

It happens because there is literally NOTHING else going on anywhere. These people who come to zerg you have two choices...either fight at a laggy keep fight, or go to the resource you just took....because that huge map doesn't have enough people to create enough fights to give them something else to do. ....in 2014 you could get a good 10-15 minutes of 5v7 or 5v9 or something similar and it was fun, because there was more fights going on in Cyrodiil, now since there is literally nothing else going on anywhere except a laggy keep fight, folks just scramble to that resource thinking they are going to get some action, but 30 other people thought the same thing..because they are dying for a fight that is anything but a laggy keep fight.

Im not sure what they can do at this point to fix it. even with a Que on DC, Cyrodiil seems very empty compared to what it was in 2014 - early 2015...population caps are too low, I understand that performance issues are a problem, but if they don't figure out some way to allow more people into campaigns without making it more laggy, and soon, there may not be much of a Cyrodiil left. nearly 90% of the map is dead 90% of the time, that can't be good for the overall game

ZOS, allowing another 100-150 people per alliance into these campaigns would probably help breath some new life into the game, but you have to figure out the performance issues first, or alter the map to accommodate 600 people instead of 2500-3000 it was in 2014....that's a huge difference in people....right now 90% of Cyrodiil is wasted space because there isn't enough players in each campaign to create fights in more then 1 maybe 2 places at the same time...

i'd love to see you make Cyrodiil great again like it was in 2014....where crossed swords were everywhere...people even fighting in ruins out in the middle of nowhere not even near any objectives...there was so many more people allowed in campaigns back then....thats what got me hooked in the 1st place....you gotta find a way allow more people in....there just isn't enough people per alliance anymore like used to be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUL2kpEkSrU

Sallington · December 2016

I try to remind people of this every time they suggest lowering the population even further to try and fix the lag.The zone is just to big to keep lowering the pops.

FleetwoodSmack · December 2016

I think Alcast and Fengrush both made a video about this. To roughly sum them up if you haven't seen them (or others);

There's no incentive to play the map. AP is pretty much a farming sport now, rather than something more objective oriented. I forget which one suggested that the removal of AP or just having AP gains from captures would organize things a little more into that mentality of actually PLAYING the map.

I didn't make it fully through both of their videos (when I hear talk about PvP, it makes me wanna go), but I also think that there's a few other things that should be considered. There needs to be more incentives for ALL communities to participate in the Alliance War. I've had too many heated discussions about it. Some have begun to realize it, that you don't have to PvP in order to help out with things. Repairing walls and even defending/repairing sieges and forward camps are a thing. So are healers. Rezzers. In RP guilds I've been in, I coaxed a few to try it and they legitimately liked it. They were surprised. Aside from the lag, it wasn't what the majority of people against it was saying.

The other incentive that I thought about was something like the Cyrodiil benefits outside of Cyrodiil. Instead of having something unbalanced like damage/health/resource bonuses, something like exp/gold boosts/ and gear drop chances would be plenty of incentives. It'd help with the loot grinds in dungeons (I've been farming for a specific staff for a WEEK now in CoH in normal/vet I and II and I got 3/4 of the ones I want). Could that last part happen? Probably not. One can dream though.

As for the rest of your post, it gave me the feels. I wasn't here in 2014, but from what I experienced? When the IC first launched, there was fights everywhere. And earlier just this year there was always a fight in the Arboretum that lasted for HOURS. First we (DC) would pick on EP. AD would join in. Then we'd pick on AD. Then they'd both pick on us. It went back and forth. It was a blast. When districts was implemented? I haven't seen it since. Not like that at least. With Cyrodiil? Back when Nirnroiding was a thing, I remember Chalamo being hit over and over and over again. Now? 10 minutes of map simulator followed by the loading screen boss, followed by the horse simulator, followed by door simulator. By the time the server gets responsive enough for me to actually DO anything, it's either at the tail end or so much is going on that it'll lead me right back to the login.

To be honest, lowering the population is killing Cyrodiil. It's a band-aid and how they don't see this is completely absurd. It's like killing all of the deer in Cyrodiil because of the lighting patch. We all know how that panned out. If they'd actually listen to the more reasonable PvP guilds (and even PvE guilds) about the state of Cyrodiil and not turncoat, make excuses, or not show up to threads they're supposed to be discussing in; things would be so much better.

#GiveCyrodiilIncentivesAgain

starlizard70ub17_ESO · December 2016

They should just turn Cyrodiil into PvE and be done with it already. I can go into NA TF at any time and do quests there and never be bothered. Except for a few obvious chock points, I'll never see any players on 90% of the map. This wasn't possible a year ago. A year or so ago, to complete all the town quests in Cryodiil was a major achievement. Now it's just something to do when you want to take a break from grinding in the rest of Tamriel. Yesterday, I grinded for loot in Cracked Wood Cave for an hour and a half, (until I couldn't carry anymore loot). Last year that would have been unthinkable, you'd have to fight your way through enemy players just to get to the first boss. You know it's bad when you're actively looking for opposing players to kill you so you don't have to spend time riding back to base, and still end up riding back because there's no one around.

My advice is to drop all the campaigns leaving only 1, and raise the population of that campaign. Right now we have 2 dead campaigns, 1 buff campaign and 1 campaign people sort of fight over.

bosmern_ESO · December 2016

Cyrodiil has been in the need of a revamp for a very long time, but that requires ZoS to actually give a damn about PvP and make changes rather than saying they do.

Minno · December 2016

@RinaldoGandolphi I agree

.

AzuraKin · December 2016

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

Recently a friend and myself were talking about how we missed the days where there were fights all over the map in Cyrodiil.

At launch, it was estimated that each faction was allowed to have around 1,000 players each, which if you look back at some of the early Angry Joe Army videos this makes sense as he had zergs that was easily 10 times as large as any zerg you would see in the game today.

Then they started reducing the Population Caps after the Lighting Patch fiasco

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/142667/cyrodiil-performance-population-cap-adjustments

This present two unique problems for Cyrodiil:

1. The map itself was designed for around 900 players per faction give or take
2. the map being as large as it is, and there being about 200 player per alliance now means there are not enough people to fight all over the map like there was in 2014-early 2015

These problems really started to become apparent with the Thieves Guild Patch.

So you look at the map at primetime on a Friday or Saturday night and you will see one large crossed sword at some keep on the map, and maybe one smaller crossed sword elsewhere and thats pretty much it....whereas before it was common to see 4-5 crossed swords on the map at any given time in 2014....

That map is so large, but there are so few people that it literally funnels all the fights into 1-2 areas.

Best example, you take a resource with you and 3-4 friends, and 30+ people show up at the resource to kill you. Why does this happen:

It happens because there is literally NOTHING else going on anywhere. These people who come to zerg you have two choices...either fight at a laggy keep fight, or go to the resource you just took....because that huge map doesn't have enough people to create enough fights to give them something else to do. ....in 2014 you could get a good 10-15 minutes of 5v7 or 5v9 or something similar and it was fun, because there was more fights going on in Cyrodiil, now since there is literally nothing else going on anywhere except a laggy keep fight, folks just scramble to that resource thinking they are going to get some action, but 30 other people thought the same thing..because they are dying for a fight that is anything but a laggy keep fight.

Im not sure what they can do at this point to fix it. even with a Que on DC, Cyrodiil seems very empty compared to what it was in 2014 - early 2015...population caps are too low, I understand that performance issues are a problem, but if they don't figure out some way to allow more people into campaigns without making it more laggy, and soon, there may not be much of a Cyrodiil left. nearly 90% of the map is dead 90% of the time, that can't be good for the overall game

ZOS, allowing another 100-150 people per alliance into these campaigns would probably help breath some new life into the game, but you have to figure out the performance issues first, or alter the map to accommodate 600 people instead of 2500-3000 it was in 2014....that's a huge difference in people....right now 90% of Cyrodiil is wasted space because there isn't enough players in each campaign to create fights in more then 1 maybe 2 places at the same time...

i'd love to see you make Cyrodiil great again like it was in 2014....where crossed swords were everywhere...people even fighting in ruins out in the middle of nowhere not even near any objectives...there was so many more people allowed in campaigns back then....thats what got me hooked in the 1st place....you gotta find a way allow more people in....there just isn't enough people per alliance anymore like used to be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUL2kpEkSrU

PIPE DREAM, YOU COULDNT GET 2 BARS IF POP FOR EACH WAS 1K PLAYERS.

bikerangelo · December 2016

The first time I set foot in Cyrodiil after taking a break for a few months, I got stuck in combat, feared into a rock, lagged out and booted from the campaign.

We've asked for bug fixes and received more bugs, ZOS even banned players for exploiting the bug fixes that we said were easily exploitable on the PTS.
We also asked for more objectives and incentives around the map. We got flags that have absolutely nothing to do with campaign scoring, and there isn't any AP to be had because nobody cares about them.
We've asked for pvp specific ESO Live epsiodes since dev / player communication would significantly increase our understanding of what the devs want to do, and their understanding of what the players want. They stopped the ESO Live episodes out cold.

I've stopped hoping for changes to Cyrodiil, because either the dev team is hard at work on battlegrounds (which could potentially be the last nail in the coffin for Cyrodiil's population), or they're all focused on the impossible task of addressing the thousands of bugs that have driven so many players away. If you want pvp to be as good as it once was, it's never going to happen. After the 1st quarter balance patch, It'll either be slightly less miserable or incredibly worse from here on out, that's been the pattern ever since IC and champion points.

AhPook_Is_Here · December 2016

"I don't know about all over the map", but i remember low lag play while 200 people were fighting at a single castle and equal sized cross swords were on 2 other fronts so if you were solid at on front you could move to another. I haven't played for a month or two but last time I was around it seemed like most fighting was at one point either sej or chal/bleakers, with some small skirmishes going on around nickel.

I think there is a demand for this kind of game, a RvRvR, I just think a lot of people are waiting for something new with better combat mechanics and servers that work more consistently.

Anazasi · December 2016

A. remove IC from Cryodill or make it impact the WAR in a more positive way. (do not complain about pve quest lines they exist outside of IC as well. It has always been PVE at your own peril. I should add that more than likely its the 2 dungeons in IC that are causing the PVP locks. The number of player you are jumping into WGT and ICP are probably huge. Yeah we all want to think they are instanced but guess what I am sure ZOS messed that up. They need to fix IC by removing or actually incorporating it. But the 4 man dungeons need to go. regardless.)

b. Add dynamic population locks. Make it so no faction can be out of balance +/- 15 players.

c. Add more objective. All the towns should act as the first three they added and each town should be worth 1 pt per flag.

d. Add to each keep a cap on AP awards just like IC boss in center. First 24 get AP everyone else gets 0. Might be harsh but hey you want to stack raids to take stuff you should be willing to get nothing in return.

Easy fixes goals accomplished.

Thelon · December 2016

Brian has created a top-quality product; the envy of the genre. Him and his team should be proud of their efforts and their final product, and the developers of other games should look to ESO as the epitome of RvRvR combat.

Delimber · December 2016

I was surprised to get AP from doing the Fighters Guild bounty quest.

Shoot, I was doing one such quest in a cave and a low level DC vampire hit me a few times and I didn't even bother to kill him, we just ran through it and both got the achieve for killing the bosses. Then the vampire pm'd me and thanked me for the run lol. (I'm a bit of a softie when it comes to folks questing in Cyrodiil)

I love the siege battles, and the big open field fights. But most of it happens around the keeps that circle the IC.

And the few times it happens at Brndle, Dragon Claw or Drakelowe it usually turns into a 30 v 5...

Magus · December 2016

The time you speak of is when there was forward camps you could rez unlimited at and from anywhere. Bloodport into a new fight across the map. When those were in play, there were fights everywhere on the map. When forward camps were removed, that's was the height of ganking since everyone had to ride everywhere, there was a a lot of open field fights on reinforcement lines. Now, everyone just faction stacks in in a handful of places. If you go off by yourself to take a resource to make your own fight, you will either have no one respond or have 30+ respond. So, most people don't bother to ride deep into enemy lines anymore.

Joy_Division · December 2016

The OP is right.

A lot of people keep just mindlessly advocating reducing the population cap. But that has been paradoxically counterproductive because it reduces the number of fights across the map and forces us to concentrate in such as small area to see any decent action.

AbraXuSeXile · December 2016

No one cares about campaigns since a long long time, It was guilds mainly that went across the map riding from glade to arrius or whatever dropped a camp and created a fight elsewhere.

With people not caring and guilds can't be bothered going anywhere else except in between enemy lines no more fights will elsewhere will occur.

I like AP farming scrubs but it was more fun when i was trying to win campaigns when it felt like it mattered we would ride all over the map and get our own fights, Nowa days since i came back we just ride to the other side of the map and go between 2 enemies which is just joining onto another fight.

The Cyrodiil map is a pathetic easy design, To win you just need to keep one shape and it can't be penetrated unless many guilds groups attack.

Unfortuntely it's too late to make people care unless they do a total revamp of it all which will not happen. On top of that with this mentality of 'if your in a group your a zerg' is not helping, It's the guilds groups who actually spread people out when they do care, but more and more guild groups have bad behaviour now and will run along with their pugs. I really don't mind if people wanna run in a 24 man guild group aslong as they go to other side of the map and create a fight.

Magus · December 2016

AbraXuSeXile wrote: »

No one cares about campaigns since a long long time, It was guilds mainly that went across the map riding from glade to arrius or whatever dropped a camp and created a fight elsewhere.

With people not caring and guilds can't be bothered going anywhere else except in between enemy lines no more fights will elsewhere will occur.

I like AP farming scrubs but it was more fun when i was trying to win campaigns when it felt like it mattered we would ride all over the map and get our own fights, Nowa days since i came back we just ride to the other side of the map and go between 2 enemies which is just joining onto another fight.

The Cyrodiil map is a pathetic easy design, To win you just need to keep one shape and it can't be penetrated unless many guilds groups attack.

Unfortuntely it's too late to make people care unless they do a total revamp of it all which will not happen. On top of that with this mentality of 'if your in a group your a zerg' is not helping, It's the guilds groups who actually spread people out when they do care, but more and more guild groups have bad behaviour now and will run along with their pugs. I really don't mind if people wanna run in a 24 man guild group aslong as they go to other side of the map and create a fight.

Agree 100%. Less guilds left in the game that go create their own fights and are more than happy to just stack in one place instead. When you take a large group to a resource or outpost or far off keep and you do a slow siege and set up a farm, you can pull aggro and hold the attention of 40+ people for a while, gives some space to everyone else to hit a target where the enemy had previously just turtled up in.

Nutshotz · December 2016

That's the thing. No one is willing to create the fights anymore. It's all about bleaks, bridge, mile gate, chal, or sej and a rare occasion nikel.

Whom ever stated the 24 man AP thing like IC middle boss is a genius!

That would spread out fights a Lil bit cuz it would start to agitate people cuz they're not getting AP.

As for the bandaid fix's they just need to get off there bums, put the donuts down wipe off there dusty keyboards and get to work on fixing things. Otherwise once star citizen or CU pops the pvp community will be gone and I'm sure half of the pve community as well since the devs won't listen to what we experience on a daily basis and have been dealing with since beta!

Apoxsee · December 2016

I personally would be interested in try out a flip in AP gains scheme. Since Haderus is currently setup to reflect resources as its point source it would make sense to try this idea there. So to my idea...

Have your large AP gains come from resources, town and keep flips while player kills generate small ap gains like what is currently alotted by capturing resource now. This would idealy would spread people out and reduce zerging except for keep capture. Keep on the server the points for the campaign at resources. Now the amounts of AP that would be alotted for a capture and for a kill is up to balancing for ZOS based on their data for current AP gain amounts on the servers.

I think this would make it more about objectives vs AP farming.

KisoValley · December 2016

If there are no incentives to play the map then no matter what the pop cap people will funnel into bridge/milegates to farm ap lol

Joy_Division · December 2016

Apoxsee wrote: »

I personally would be interested in try out a flip in AP gains scheme. Since Haderus is currently setup to reflect resources as its point source it would make sense to try this idea there. So to my idea...

Have your large AP gains come from resources, town and keep flips while player kills generate small ap gains like what is currently alotted by capturing resource now. This would idealy would spread people out and reduce zerging except for keep capture. Keep on the server the points for the campaign at resources. Now the amounts of AP that would be alotted for a capture and for a kill is up to balancing for ZOS based on their data for current AP gain amounts on the servers.

I think this would make it more about objectives vs AP farming.

Maybe I'm weird, but I give zero [SNIP] about how many AvAvA points capturing Aleswell farm nets my alliance. And for all the fuss about AP farming, I don't particularly care about that either. I will *never* be Emperor and have over 30 million AP rotting away on my characters because it is a worthless currency. The only reason I stay for defesnive ticks is out of princple. If I partake in an AP farm, it's simply because I enjoy listening to my kill counter go crazy.

In short, I don't think any alterations of the Cyrodiil score or AP reward shenanigans will stop players from bridge farms, concentratng on the Emp ring, or destroying the stairs to the 3rd floor in keeps.

Drummerx04 · December 2016

I wouldn't say that no one starts their own battles outside of the typical places. Just yesterday I took my raid to Arrius lumber just to pick a fight with EP at a new location. We battled at the lumber with around 30v30+ until eventually we pushed into the keep, blew up a bunch of EP and eventually got overwhelmed with siege and numbers. We camped at the lumber and more than half my raid got stuck in a long load screen and died at the camp spawn point completely able to defend themselves.

I guess what I'm trying to say... cyro would be way more fun if you could actually run a large group successfully. What am I supposed to do if every movement my group makes gets delayed because > 20% of the group is crashing/loading? They crash out of cyro then get stuck in a 70 man queue at 11pm on a Saturday?!

Maybe 1 out of 20 times my guild needs to quickly mobilize to defend, can we actually form up and move out as a group. Every other time we have healers, tanks, even the crown and BACKUP leader!!! stuck in load screens or crashing.

Not sure how this turned into a rant, but please fix the load screens. They murder group play.

geonsocal · December 2016

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

You know it's bad when you're actively looking for opposing players to kill you so you don't have to spend time riding back to base, and still end up riding back because there's no one around.

Too funny

...more than once I've looked around to try to find some npc's to do me in...unfortunately (?) that can almost take as long as riding back somewhere...best bet - find some slaughterfish if you can...

Edit: great posts on this thread...

PainfulFAFA · December 2016

-Remove lighting patch and aoe caps for PvP
-Bring back softcaps
-Fix proc sets then balance
-Increase pop caps and throw another money winner sweepstakes for PvP.. Doesnt have to be 1mil it, it can be $10 idc

-Fire Wrobel...
ESO PvP Glory restored

Because at this point, theres more fun looking for a trials group than pvp lol

Dakrana_Thrazvoth · December 2016

I'd like to understand, if zenimax know exactly wich patch cause these issues in cyrodiil, why they don't delete it instead of let pvp and cyrodiil dying ?

kevlarto_ESO · December 2016

@RinaldoGandolphi I agree

This is on of the first mmo's I have ever seen in all my years of playing mmo's that has got worse since beta and took so many steps backwards.

I see people in the thread talking about it's all about AP, farm AP, why ? you have a big map lots of things to do if you play the map support the faction AP will come naturally, I just don't see the need to limit my game play to just farming, rank means nothing in this game. I am always in the top 2% at the end of the campaign when I play regular, my small group does not go out of our way to farm, we try to support the faction take keeps scrolls what ever is going on, we have great battles all over the place, just not that many of us doing things like this it is sad really. We have a great big sandbox called Cyrodiil where pvp could happen anywhere but for some reason people chose to play in just one corner of it /sigh

This is putting aside all the known issue in cyrodiil, we all know what those are.

Manoekin · December 2016

Aerin wrote: »

I'd like to understand, if zenimax know exactly wich patch cause these issues in cyrodiil, why they don't delete it instead of let pvp and cyrodiil dying ?

Because they don't believe the lighting patch is the issue. ZOS believes there was a single eureka moment where a good portion of players became aware of how to play the game in an effective way and this put a lot of strain on the servers that wasn't anticipated. It surely couldn't be that god awful patch that made cyro unplayable for around 2 weeks, and which we still haven't recovered the levels of fps/ping we had just before the patch.

Minno · December 2016

Manoekin wrote: »

Aerin wrote: »

I'd like to understand, if zenimax know exactly wich patch cause these issues in cyrodiil, why they don't delete it instead of let pvp and cyrodiil dying ?

Because they don't believe the lighting patch is the issue. ZOS believes there was a single eureka moment where a good portion of players became aware of how to play the game in an effective way and this put a lot of strain on the servers that wasn't anticipated. It surely couldn't be that god awful patch that made cyro unplayable for around 2 weeks, and which we still haven't recovered the levels of fps/ping we had just before the patch.

It's scary to think that all the changes up to now we're all bandaids fixes just to avoid touching/rerolling that lighting patch. It's even scarier to think of what got attached to that lighting patch that they can't simply reverse from.

IxSTALKERxI · December 2016

Minno wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Aerin wrote: »

I'd like to understand, if zenimax know exactly wich patch cause these issues in cyrodiil, why they don't delete it instead of let pvp and cyrodiil dying ?

Because they don't believe the lighting patch is the issue. ZOS believes there was a single eureka moment where a good portion of players became aware of how to play the game in an effective way and this put a lot of strain on the servers that wasn't anticipated. It surely couldn't be that god awful patch that made cyro unplayable for around 2 weeks, and which we still haven't recovered the levels of fps/ping we had just before the patch.

It's scary to think that all the changes up to now we're all bandaids fixes just to avoid touching/rerolling that lighting patch. It's even scarier to think of what got attached to that lighting patch that they can't simply reverse from.

I think they had anti-bot code or whatever added at the same patch didn't they? Which is a subject devs don't discuss to avoid botters gaining knowledge of how their system works to find ways to bypass it. Before that patch there were bots everywhere in zone chat and sprinting across the sky and through terrain collecting nodes.

PainfulFAFA · December 2016

Minno wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Aerin wrote: »

I'd like to understand, if zenimax know exactly wich patch cause these issues in cyrodiil, why they don't delete it instead of let pvp and cyrodiil dying ?

Because they don't believe the lighting patch is the issue. ZOS believes there was a single eureka moment where a good portion of players became aware of how to play the game in an effective way and this put a lot of strain on the servers that wasn't anticipated. It surely couldn't be that god awful patch that made cyro unplayable for around 2 weeks, and which we still haven't recovered the levels of fps/ping we had just before the patch.

It's scary to think that all the changes up to now we're all bandaids fixes just to avoid touching/rerolling that lighting patch. It's even scarier to think of what got attached to that lighting patch that they can't simply reverse from.

i believe thats exactly what happened....zos implemented that anti-bot with the Lightning patch and are to this day still trying to cover it up because if they actually wanted to fix the game, it would bring back the botters, PvE would be a mess, and PvE economy would be ruined. Any way you look at it, that cheat engine fiasco still showed how weak zos systems are

LegacyDM · December 2016

Great post OP. Zos doesn't care. Their money revenue comes from pve. If pvp was s priority they would have fixed it a long time ago.

JDar · December 2016

Must be nice that there is a game that makes you care so much about it that people spend so much time complaining about it how bad it is.