Spreading the PvP Population (PC/NA)

Turtl3Lov3 · February 2017

As we all know, especially those that have played since early launch, there has always been a problem with distributing the PvP population across the various servers. Typically in the past this has resulted in a campaign(s) dominated by specific guilds to use as a playground, one in which the quality of PvP is desolate or plentiful depending on the day of the week, and campaign dedicated to high latency and zergs (Wabbajack, Azuras, Thornblade, now Trueflame).

Since the new servers have been released (Post: Chrysamere, Bloodthorn, Dawnbreaker, Aurel's Bow, Bow of Shadows, Wabbajack) it has been condensed down to three servers (excluding non-vet); Trueflame, Haderus, and Azuras. I think we all can agree that the majority of the PvP community chooses to play on the CP campaigns, Trueflame and Haderus.

Now I'll get to my main point. The PvP population within the main servers is extremely disportionate. For a game that claims to support large scale PvP across one zone, it does a pretty bad job at it. Trueflame is unbearable for most players, yet it has more consistent action than the other campaigns due to the immense population. You rarely see players waiting in a queue of 50+ across all factions on Haderus nowadays, yet people will gladly wait to lag to death in Trueflame.

In order to solve the problem of choosing between scarce and plentiful PvP simply based on the lag that is induced I would like to propose a variety of changes to the servers themselves in hopes that others will weigh in on this incumbent issue in order to create a better PvP experience for everyone.

Remove the Current Campaign Cycles

Another reason people choose to play on Trueflame is for the 30 Day campaign rewards since it is much easier to gain AP in a campaign ridden with zergs and potatoes alike. Seperate the AP leaderboard into two seperate sections, Emperor (7 days) and Rewards (14 days). This will allow dedicated players to have an opportunity to push for emperor every week (like Haderus) while providing adequate time to accumulate AP for rewards for the more casual players.

Lower the Population Caps

The current caps allow players to stack multiple raids against the opposition and players to wait for a queue to get in. If ZoSe lowered it by a significant percentage people would be less inclined to wait for a 150+ queue and spread to other servers. This would also create a less laggy environment while simultaneously making map play more strategic since you won't be able to have multiple zergs spread across the map.
*Note* If this change is implemented it may require additional servers.

Rebranding the Servers

In addition to one or both of the above changes, a simple "rebrand" much like the transition from the original servers would allow players to find their way instead of immediately flocking to a campaign that they already know fighting the same players over and over.

React · February 2017

And I'm over here just wanting to be able to see the scoring in my guest campaign.

I agree with everything aside from the cap decrease. I do not believe that limiting the large scale pvp that some enjoy will better pvp, and I think that lowering the caps would significantly increase que time as well.

IcyDeadPeople · February 2017

Simply increase Haderus duration to 30 days and there will be 2 high pop CP campaigns instead of one.

Minno · February 2017

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Simply increase Haderus duration to 30 days and there will be 2 high pop CP campaigns instead of one.

I'm not a fan of lowering pop levels. Mostly because:

- cyro is still filled with open world pvp, IC pops, dueling/solo PvE.
- lowering pop cap means less players to maintain the health of the campaign.
- lowering this pop means less players in IC, which could impact pvp in that area.
- huge que wait times

PandaIsAPotato · February 2017

I am a simple man, I see Turtle. I agree.

Turtl3Lov3 · February 2017

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Simply increase Haderus duration to 30 days and there will be 2 high pop CP campaigns instead of one.

Smh my head

IcyDeadPeople · February 2017

Turtl3Lov3 wrote: »

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Simply increase Haderus duration to 30 days and there will be 2 high pop CP campaigns instead of one.

Smh my head

Why not, what's so great about 7 days? Increasing Haderus to 30 would also likely eliminate emperor farming.

Turtl3Lov3 · February 2017

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Turtl3Lov3 wrote: »

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Simply increase Haderus duration to 30 days and there will be 2 high pop CP campaigns instead of one.

Smh my head

Why not, what's so great about 7 days? Increasing Haderus to 30 would also likely eliminate emperor farming.

Yes, it would eliminate emp farming for the most part, but for those players whom don't always have time to legitimately make use of emperor unless they take time off of work; it makes it extremely difficult for them. Anyone on TF knows that all you have to do is get a big enough lead and any mildly casual player is screwed for the week. You kind of have to cater to all player bases in this game to get anything changed.

Claire · February 2017

It's an interesting challenge to think through. Change one variable in one campaign and hundreds of independent actors make adjustments to how and where they play.

As many have said in other threads before, Haderus is in pretty bad shape and may be in the most need of rule adjustments. Resources have always been a strategic objective. With the increase in AP, there is no reason to incentivize them further with campaign points.

These don't necessarily "play nicely" with OP's ideas, but here are a few additional, not-so-fully-formed ideas that could be incorporated into a larger strategy for improvements to PvP.

Change length of seven day campaign: I liked the old five day BwB duration, and the variety it brought. How about a 200 hour (8 1/3 day) campaign instead of seven? It would shake up the predictability of the weekly reset, as well as give our friends in the southern hemisphere a rotating advantage.

Remove IC from Trueflame: Just close the gates there and the IC population will move to Had and spread out the load.

Disable emperor mechanic on Haderus: There has been an absolutely silly amount of emp farming there lately, to the point that I've sat out on reset day to avoid the inevitable zerg influx of unknowns. Could add in better end-of-campaign rewards, and the points chase here might actually be fun.

Thanks for starting this one, Mr. Turtle.

asneakybanana · February 2017

I like the idea but personally think if you drop campaign pops by "a significant portion", especially enough to get queues to 150+ pvp will feel dead. As it is pop cap is only 120-150 people so if you want to increase the queue by 100 youre going to have 50 people fighting over the entirety of cyrodiil? PVP can already feel slow at times even with/against lock pop due to the sheer size of cyrodiil.

At first i thought this was a suggestion to remove the 7 day campaigns which i thought was a great idea but then I realized you want to get rid of 30 day camps which imo would ruin emp. As it is, you are lucky to be crowned more than 1-2 times on a 30 day unless your faction has a huge off hours presence. If players would only have 7 days to be crowned then even if they held first the entire time they would have ~33% chance of actually being crowned which is hardly an incentive to push for the ruby throne.

NBrookus · February 2017

Claire wrote: »

Disable emperor mechanic on Haderus: There has been an absolutely silly amount of emp farming there lately, to the point that I've sat out on reset day to avoid the inevitable zerg influx of unknowns. Could add in better end-of-campaign rewards, and the points chase here might actually be fun.

Why, there's something wrong with 4-5 different emps each day?

Or bringing multiple full raids from other campaigns to support an emp push for someone who has no intention of playing as emp?
Or having emps which afk at the gate making no attempt to defend their emp because they WANT to be dethroned so their guildie in the #2 spot can get his achieve, while the rest of the faction plaintively calls for help in zone chat?
Or as soon as a dethrone happens, watching said guild muster up in zone chat to flip the ring again?

I think switching Haderus to a 30 day campaign would stave off much of the emp farming, and might attract more permanent residents while simultaneously encouraging a couple of the guilds responsible for most of the emp swapping to move along.

It's a small change that could happen with minimal effort. And let's face it: until we know what the impact of battlegrounds is on the population of Cyrodiil, ZOS is unlikely to make any large structural changes -- so we are looking at the end of 2017 at the earliest.

Joy_Division · February 2017

Still coming up with scoring schemes to break the 3 years tried and true PvP pattern consistently demostrated by players.

Good luck with that.

Turtl3Lov3 · February 2017

Joy_Division wrote: »

Still coming up with scoring schemes to break the 3 years tried and true PvP pattern consistently demostrated by players.

Good luck with that.

Thanks dad

Joy_Division · February 2017

Turtl3Lov3 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Still coming up with scoring schemes to break the 3 years tried and true PvP pattern consistently demostrated by players.

Good luck with that.

Thanks dad

LOL. I was unnecessarily snarky so I deserved that, but it seems pretty clear that player PvP behavior is not going to be altered by changing the scoring system.

RinaldoGandolphi · February 2017

Joy_Division wrote: »

Turtl3Lov3 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Still coming up with scoring schemes to break the 3 years tried and true PvP pattern consistently demostrated by players.

Good luck with that.

Thanks dad

LOL. I was unnecessarily snarky so I deserved that, but it seems pretty clear that player PvP behavior is not going to be altered by changing the scoring system.

Agreed. There needs to be some incentives to get people to do other things, but yet not reward large groups doing it either. We don't want 48 on people on each side at Bruma anymore then we want 48 on each side people at Aleswell or Chalman.(Like towns were when they first started)

Im not sure how you could convince people to break into 10-12 man groups to do something yet get decent rewards for it, without rewarding zergs.

Its a tough situation all around.

Rickter · February 2017

I keep referencing a suggestion from @Crispen_Longbow - they need to rework haderus completely. make it so emp isnt even an objective. create a different small scale promoting game objective (crispen used bridges as a suggestion).

i wonder how much of the current PC population has the emperor achievement. Would be a really insightful statistic @ZOS_BrianWheeler

PandaIsAPotato · February 2017

Rickter wrote: »

I keep referencing a suggestion from @Crispen_Longbow - they need to rework haderus completely. make it so emp isnt even an objective. create a different small scale promoting game objective (crispen used bridges as a suggestion).

i wonder how much of the current PC population has the emperor achievement. Would be a really insightful statistic @ZOS_BrianWheeler

If we don't include people that have never set foot into Cyrodiil I would assume around 30-40%, if we do include them then probably 15-20%.

IcyDeadPeople · February 2017

Minno wrote: »

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Simply increase Haderus duration to 30 days and there will be 2 high pop CP campaigns instead of one.

I'm not a fan of lowering pop levels. Mostly because:

- cyro is still filled with open world pvp, IC pops, dueling/solo PvE.
- lowering pop cap means less players to maintain the health of the campaign.
- lowering this pop means less players in IC, which could impact pvp in that area.
- huge que wait times

Yes, population caps have already been lowered a few times since launch. Don't recall the numbers, but they used to be much higher. Keep lowering it and eventually there may not be enough battles around the map to keep things exciting even on Trueflame.

There are a couple reasons most players are not interested in playing on Haderus: (1) the campaign is too short, so it seems like an less important, secondary campaign compared to Trueflame; and (2) it's usually dead. If Haderus had a lot of battles all the time, more would play on that campaign.

I suspect there are not currently enough players to sustain two full high population campaigns (plus Azura's and Blackwater Blade). If you want to increase Haderus population a bit, make it more attractive (for example, boosting campaign duration to 30 days) instead of lowering TF cap or penalizing anyone for playing on Trueflame.

Ultimately what's needed is simply more total players participating in PVP. At one time we had fun battles all over the map at all hours of the night, 7 days each week. Recently there have been lots more DC players in Trueflame during the period I play (late night Pacific), but most nights I have to ride around trying to find battles. And that's on TF, which has the highest population.

Hopefully some of those joining for next week's test who don't normally PVP will stick around.

Chuga_Rei · February 2017

Hopefully they find a way to encourage people to not want to run in max sized groups or even 16+ etc.

Unfortunately every time they make a change that hurts small groups or individual players and encourages you to stick with a larger group it exacerbates the problem.

Satiar · February 2017

Chuga_Rei wrote: »

Hopefully they find a way to encourage people to not want to run in max sized groups or even 16+ etc.

Unfortunately every time they make a change that hurts small groups or individual players and encourages you to stick with a larger group it exacerbates the problem.

And not to be a terrible casual, but having a big guild and running with a bunch of people is half the fun of MMOs for me.

Rohamad_Ali · February 2017

Paraphrasing what I was told by a friend that watched Wheeler on ESO Live , he wants us to Zerg like never before when he does the no cp testing . I understand that's just for the test but just wanted to mention it .

The op has his heart in the right place I think . Finding that golden balance in campaign performance has eluded us for years . I'm open to try anything in PVP once .

Karivaa · February 2017

I play on Xbox and we have noticed people taking resources more and keeps because of the new added ap. Is this not the case on PC?

NACtron · February 2017

Satiar wrote: »

Chuga_Rei wrote: »

Hopefully they find a way to encourage people to not want to run in max sized groups or even 16+ etc.

Unfortunately every time they make a change that hurts small groups or individual players and encourages you to stick with a larger group it exacerbates the problem.

And not to be a terrible casual, but having a big guild and running with a bunch of people is half the fun of MMOs for me.

Pact Militia raid 7 agrees with you.

IxSTALKERxI · February 2017

Pfft 7 days? Bring back 90 day campaigns! lol

ellahellabella · February 2017

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

Pfft 7 days? Bring back 90 day campaigns! lol

Bring Back Wabba!

*Remembers Wabbajack lag*

Wait nevermind...

PandaIsAPotato · February 2017

ellahellabella wrote: »

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

Pfft 7 days? Bring back 90 day campaigns! lol

Bring Back Wabba!

*Remembers Wabbajack lag*

Wait nevermind...

Bring back Axe of ***.

Alomar · February 2017

What PvP population?

Bilbo Baggins said it best; “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” - NA PC PvP Population

PandaIsAPotato · February 2017

Alomar wrote: »

What PvP population?

Bilbo Baggins said it best; “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” - NA PC PvP Population

Bilbro Swaggins*