Distribution of Players between Alliances.

carljokl · April 2018

In the anniversary notice there were some statistics given out about the most popular alliance.

It was given as Ebonhart Pact at 36% approx.

I wonder how this statistic is measured as it might be skewed.

For example I have 15 characters with 5 in each alliance. This would be an equal 33% split just based on characters. Yet just because I have equal characters in each alliance doesn't mean I play on them equally.

Is 36% based on a snapshot of currently playing characters at a given point. Does it vary much between PvP and PvE? Does this statistic vary much between PC & Mac vs PS4 / Xbox?

We should be able to deduce that if the biggest faction Ebonhart Pact is 36% then the bigger of the two runners up can be no more than 36% so say 35%. This would give a maximum split of say 36% EP, 35% AD and 28% DC. I am purely guessing that DC is smallest from my impression that it seems like the least popular alliance but I could be wrong.

This did make me wonder that this game has managed to stay reasonably balanced between alliances. I mean what is stopping the game getting skewed so much that half or more players are on one alliance? ZOS don't force anyone into different alliances to balance things out.

Only really the campaigns put a cap on the number of players per alliance so that one alliance can become full. That doesn't stop one alliance being far more populated than another.

Would player culture be skewed such that they would rather play with the most heavily populated alliance because then it is easier to win? This could cause a positive feedback loop where the more people play on one alliance the more people want to also play on it.

Perhaps the counter limiting factor in this is if one alliance dominates so much that they have taken the whole map then their progress stagnates. There are no more places to conquer so it becomes difficult to earn more AP. Kept resources may generate some AP but it may get boring just waiting around in case something gets attacked. For the other alliances, everything is up for grabs so flipping a campaign could earn a lot of AP.

There are lots of factors involved in keeping the game balanced. Is it working well in practice? I am curious what others think. It seems interesting how things balance out when players have the freedom to play whatever alliance they want.

geonsocal · April 2018

holy cow @carljokl - I thought I was crazy keeping 10 characters (4 DC, 3 AD, 3 EP) active in cyrodiil...

15 characters - that is definitely hardcore

right now on our platform/server (ps4/na) it's hard to tell exactly which faction has the largest player base - in part, because of what you pointed out in that a lot of players have multiple characters on different alliances...

if I was to guess though - I'd say EP has the most (spread out over the different maps), followed by AD, and, then DC (whom have seen their numbers drop quite a bit over the last year or so)...

carljokl · April 2018

Creating 15 characters is easy. Skilling them up so they are actually useful to play is not. That was the subject of another thread.

Your point makes me think of natural uncontrolled behaviour in balancing players:
If numbers of DC players drop off will this cause a negative feedback loop? People drop off so it is harder to play that alliance. This causes more people to drop off, making it harder to play etc. In theory it could keep going until one alliance is practically dead.

Somehow a level of balance seems to be maintained. It isn't always just about biggest numbers. I have heard it said from DC PvP guilds that they know they have fewer people therefore have to compensate by making sure their players play better. Tight strategy can overcome superior numbers.

Is there some balancing because some PvP players enjoy the challenge of being the underdog?