Joy_Division wrote: »

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Ranger209 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

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Derra wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

But to the larger point. ESO PvP has always been dynamic, changing literally from hour to hour because of population and guild turnover or just from the natural flow of how the map plays. At 9:00 EP could have the entire North Red and trying to swarm Dc scrolls, but in just 30 minutes later be all the way back to just their three tri-keeps because of such over-extension. Snap shots are utterly misleading because the situation is going to be completely different in just a short while and Tuesday is going to be a very different story from Monday.

While somewhat true in general that eso map can be very volatile - i just wish this would actually translate into campaign results.

For vivec EU I can think of 3 campaign cycles AD did NOT win in the past 2 years. Something has to be done about mornincapping and imbalanced populations. Regardless of what faction it benefits.

We don't have a BigBoss here on NA. From what I hear, yeah, the EU isn't dynamic because of what he does. NA usually is. Even though EP probably has won about half the campaigns dating back to Launch and has taken more scrolls during non-primetimes than the other two factions, there have been many a night and many a campaigns in which Chalman has remained blue with 50 DC guarding it and EP has finished in last place.

@Ranger209 - What happened last night is not because people logged onto another faction because EP was taking a beating. Because the pop cap is much lower now than it was back in the day, organized guilds have a much stronger effect on how the map plays, particularly an experienced one. No Drac (EP's best guild) for EP and yes Omni (AD guild) is going to shift the balance a lot.

I'm not looking at emphasizing the 3 bar prime time DC population last night as looking at that as a consistent thing that has been happening over the last month or more. I see it as a bad tell of the state of the game. The overarching issues have led to a depleted player base. The ability to swap factions allows people to hop at any time that they think their faction is beyond winning.

The meaning of the score, the 3 banner war, and anything greater than ones own personal pvp experience falls apart with faction swapping. All of that stuff becomes irrelevant, and for people who enjoy that aspect of Cyrodiil it becomes disheartening and even frustrating at times to be a part of. I don't know I hope Vivec survives on its own and that they don't have to combine servers. It is the last server with any population of note, and that is now becoming less noteworthy. When one of the factions can't poplock during prime time consistently over a long period of time I get the feeling things are going the wrong direction.

And however wonderful the 3 banner war concept may be, it would be irrelevant because the game's poor performance and accompanying bugs plus balance changes frustrate people and prompt them to leave. That is why the game's PvP population does not grow despite the large influx of new players ZOS gets from update to update.

Ok i'll cave and make an EP toon so I can win too and play with a locked faction that outnumbers its opponent rather than always being outnumbered. Maybe the crow will let me join his herd.

Go ahead and waste your time. You're still going to get 50 transmute stones. Still going to get 5 keep repair kits. Still going to get 5 rings, 4 of which will be decon trash. You're not going to prevent Chalman from being blue when DC decides to faction stack it. And when Crow stacks 3 raids, it's still only going to be 72 (rather than 73) because you are simply replacing another EP who will be stuck in q, rather than adding another EP solider onto the field of play. You swapping over won;t make any difference whatsoever to your rewards or how AvA will play out.

but the game's performance will still be terrible.

First off that response of mine was sarcastic and spiteful. I will never play anything other than DC. However, it encapsulates the general idea of many faction swappers. They don't want to fight outnumbered all the time so they gravitate toward the stronger perceived faction. Look at various time slots throughout the 24 hour cycle and you will see windows of underpopulated time frames dominated by AD, then EP, then DC. What do all of these time frames have in common? They are dominated by one faction during each of them. Too many people will take the easier path and jump to the dominant faction. The other thing you get during low pop hours is the bunch of AP *** that turns the map one color and then swaps factions and turns it back another color. Don't see this as often, but it happens irregularly enough. You are now starting to see this manifest during NA prime time.

Your right none of that stuff matters, rewards for winning, and it can't as long as there is faction hopping, cause guess what? As soon as there are rewards that really do entice someone to win at all costs everyone will be jumping the moment the campaign has been determined. And if the rewards really do matter that will be about the halfway point of the campaign. Faction swapping and a competitive AvAvA environment can't co-exist. Faction swapping and a decent reward system can't co-exist.

No one is unaware that performance is the biggest bugaboo that hampers playing in cyrodiil by a long shot. ZOS apparently does not want to allocate the resources required to fix it. I won't say they can't fix it. I think anything can be fixed, programmatically, if you throw enough time and money at it. However, it seems the amount required is beyond their budget. Yeah they will try this or that maybe in a feeble attempt to help it along, but really it is a major, major undertaking to actually correct it, and they aren't into it. The dollars aren't there, and the manpower isn't there either.

That being said this is what we are left with, it is what it is. To ignore the negative impact that faction swapping has on a competitive AvAvA environment is just as foolish as ignoring the negative impact that poor performance has on it. Especially when the poor performance isn't going anywhere.

EP has a higher population not because it's perceived to be the strongest, but because so many people are attracted to the mystique of particular EP themes, those who their character in the vein of Ragnar or Dragonborn. The population disparities are there not so much because AD and DC have jumped ship, but because PvPing this patch has made many people want to throw their computer out the window, so they don;t play at all. With so few playing, their pops are only capped for a couple of hours during primetime.

Faction-swapping has become something of a boogieman to faction die-hards. Is it so impressive when those die-hards stick it out through the tough times when it's their faction is dominant? Oh, let me guess, they would *never* do such a thing and always log onto Sotha Sil to help out their beleaguered comrades on a different server. Riiiiiiiight, that's something only faction loyalists do, not faction-swappwers. Because it's only faction-swappers who take advantage of the low hanging AP.

The problems that have existed in ESO have been here since Day 1, during the good old days, when 99% of the playerbase had only one character on a single faction and ZOS did not allow faction swapping in a campaign. Here is a sampling of Forum complaints from the first few months of the game:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/88467/auriels-bow-na-rampant-cheating#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/92645/what-if-there-is-a-traitor-among-my-alliance-spy-wars#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/95784/merge-campaigns-the-spread-is-ruining-the-balance#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/95418/zos-you-need-to-just-make-1-campaign-at-this-point#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/92381/sick-of-zergfest-pvp#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/97011/suggestion-introduce-some-48-hour-total-reset-campaigns-now-for-the-non-exploiters#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/97633/please-remove-campaign-transfer#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/99597/nightcapping#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/100515/zos-wants-casuals-only#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/100773/ugh-so-frustrated-i-have-to-leave-pvp#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/109228/pathetic-celarus-emperor-farmers-got-shafted-yesterday-and-now-use-new-exploit-devs-beware#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/108789/ep-and-ad-are-trading-emp-on-celarus-calling-all-factions-to-help-put-a-stop-to-this#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/112812/cyrodiil-tactics-in-celarus-pvp-exploits-un-intended-functions#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/99632/auriels-bow-na-is-a-dead-campaign-due-to-population-imbalance/p1

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/93986/traitors-removing-scrolls-and-exploiting-we-need-action-now#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/108795/celarus-ad-and-ep-emperor-farming#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/115064/emperor-farming#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/118587/daggerfall-covenent-exploiting-and-cheating#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/122022/emperor-trading#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/128001/pvp-is-broken-exploit-city#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/129261/the-eso-pvp-system-is-failing#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/130404/thornblade-na-dead/p1

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/130642/naming-camp-placers-tired-of-losing-keeps-because-of-troll-camps#latest