The problem with faction lock for the veteran PvP players

ks888 · March 2019

Like many of the folks I play with on a daily basis, we have been here since launch. Over the past almost 5 years, many of us have made friends on all 3 factions, especially since One Tamriel. After one has been playing a game for 5 years, fighting the same groups day in and day out, presents little challenge. There are also times of the day or certain days of the week, where the populations in Cyrodiil are grossly imbalanced. So you have players, like myself, who will swap to our other faction toons because we prefer to not be a part of the zerg trains. Example: it's Monday night and EP has a queue of 70+, but I want to play in Cyrodiil. I don't have over an hour to waste sitting in a ridiculous queue, so I choose to gather a few friends from my guilds to play on AD or DC where the queues are shorter or where more balance might be needed. Because honestly, how fun is it to constantly be on the side who is on the larger side of a 30 v 5 fight? Where is the challenge in that? That's not PvP, that's giving the opponent no chance at all.

There has always been a tinfoil hat brigade that is under the assumption that griefing or spying is prevalent, when in fact, it hasn't been a problem in 4 years. The few that do, will find a way to be trolls regardless of the changes ZOS makes. Because the conspiracy theorists shout the loudest, those of us who have friends across all 3 sides, are now forced to choose to essentially retire multiple toons or go to dead campaigns. We no longer have any flexibility to enjoy the game with whomever we like. We no longer have the option to go to the losing side when large groups are mowing over entire maps (which is quite frankly boring and what is truly ruining Cyrodiil). We no longer have the option to play the toons we poured hours of work into without being penalized. We no longer have the option to engage in interesting fights against new opponents.

Faction locking serves no purpose other than to ostracize a large portion of the veteran PvP community. I'm not alone in saying this will probably be the end of my subscription. I know many who have said the same. That's $180/year ZOS will no longer see from me and it will also influence my decision to purchase new content. With no resolution to performance issues in sight, and now this, why would I?

The proposed changes are further evidence that ZOS doesn't actually understand the actual problems with Cyrodiil and just wants to slap a bandaid on it, again, to appease some players, but give the rest of us another reason to jump ship the minute an even slightly better game comes along. Many of us inch closer to that ledge every day we log in.

NirnStorm · March 2019

I couldn't have worded it better myself.

Let's all take a moment to remember faction lock has existed in ESO before, and it was taken down after the playerbase protested. Must we really do that again?

My organized PvP guild consists of EP, DC and AD mains. If faction lock gets to live, this might be the end of the guild, or any fun playing with it, since we will have to play on dead campaigns.

Joy_Division · March 2019

NirnStorm wrote: »

I couldn't have worded it better myself.

Let's all take a moment to remember faction lock has existed in ESO before, and it was taken down after the playerbase protested. Must we really do that again?

My organized PvP guild consists of EP, DC and AD mains. If faction lock gets to live, this might be the end of the guild, or any fun playing with it, since we will have to play on dead campaigns.

Yes. The people who wanted locks were by far the most vocal and better at presenting their case. ZOS believes they will get more subs than they'll lose.

ManwithBeard9 · March 2019

NirnStorm wrote: »

I couldn't have worded it better myself.

Let's all take a moment to remember faction lock has existed in ESO before, and it was taken down after the playerbase protested. Must we really do that again?

My organized PvP guild consists of EP, DC and AD mains. If faction lock gets to live, this might be the end of the guild, or any fun playing with it, since we will have to play on dead campaigns.

Dead campaigns? Devs stated a 30 day no CP, a 30 day CP (both locked) and I think two 7 days, not locked, the 2 IC campaigns, and the lowbie one How will there be dead campaigns?

Ranger209 · March 2019

If there are as many people into this faction swapping side of things as some say there are, then the new 7 day server should have plenty of people on it. Meanwhile, those that prefer the factions to be locked will now also have a place to play. They stated they are blowing up the current servers and starting with 4 fresh new ones so everyone will have to pick a new server to begin with. Now there will be a choice so that those that faction loyalty means something can play on a server where that is a thing, and those that don't care a thing for faction loyalty can play on a server where that is a thing. Sounds like win-win.

NirnStorm · March 2019

ManwithBeard9 wrote: »

Dead campaigns? Devs stated a 30 day no CP, a 30 day CP (both locked) and I think two 7 days, not locked, the 2 IC campaigns, and the lowbie one How will there be dead campaigns?

Because if you don't play primetime nowadays every campaign other than Vivec is 100% dead, except for the occasional PvDoor group. If the pop is split, believe me, the 7 days campaign will have no one in them until primetime, and even then, maybe 2 bars at most.

Joy_Division wrote: »

Yes. The people who wanted locks were by far the most vocal and better at presenting their case. ZOS believes they will get more subs than they'll lose.

Alright then, time to make some noise Joy

Gilvoth · March 2019

making a 30 day choice has consequences, both good and bad.
but that's the way it should be, no one should be able to alter their faction choice until after the campaign has ended, the results of your choice may have been good or may have been bad, none the less it was a choice and should be stayed with untill the 30 days has expired.

Gilvoth · March 2019

NirnStorm wrote: »

show previous quotes

ManwithBeard9 wrote: »

Dead campaigns? Devs stated a 30 day no CP, a 30 day CP (both locked) and I think two 7 days, not locked, the 2 IC campaigns, and the lowbie one How will there be dead campaigns?

Because if you don't play primetime nowadays every campaign other than Vivec is 100% dead, except for the occasional PvDoor group. If the pop is split, believe me, the 7 days campaign will have no one in them until primetime, and even then, maybe 2 bars at most.

show previous quotes

Joy_Division wrote: »

Yes. The people who wanted locks were by far the most vocal and better at presenting their case. ZOS believes they will get more subs than they'll lose.

Alright then, time to make some noise Joy

the bolded part is exactly the reason many of us believe the class rep program is biased and unfair.
if only a few are able to make choices and agendas pushed with the developers then the game is unfair for everyone!

JackAshes · March 2019

Normally I would have a very strong opinion about something like this. But this one could be a very interesting and possibility positive change. They are finally investing time and resources in to PVP. Golf clap for sure! With the introduction of artifacts, the separation of IC and the new class coming out it is going to be one of the best expansions to date. Based on the live feed they were treating it as a test with the possibility of change. That is the right attitude to go in it with. Like when they converted BGs to cp and later changed it back. I think we need to give it a chance and then voice our opinions. Like the race changes it may turn out much better than expected.

There will always be Shor to swap factions on and I think this will greatly increase its population with everyone wanting to get hands on the new artifact.

Gilvoth · March 2019

ManwithBeard9 wrote: »

show previous quotes

NirnStorm wrote: »

I couldn't have worded it better myself.

Let's all take a moment to remember faction lock has existed in ESO before, and it was taken down after the playerbase protested. Must we really do that again?

My organized PvP guild consists of EP, DC and AD mains. If faction lock gets to live, this might be the end of the guild, or any fun playing with it, since we will have to play on dead campaigns.

Dead campaigns? Devs stated a 30 day no CP, a 30 day CP (both locked) and I think two 7 days, not locked, the 2 IC campaigns, and the lowbie one How will there be dead campaigns?

this ^

zyk · March 2019

ZOS is essentially letting the players decide which they prefer by offering locked and unlocked servers.

Jules · March 2019

zyk wrote: »

ZOS is essentially letting the players decide which they prefer by offering locked and unlocked servers.

Yeah, except the campaigns everyone plays are locked and the ghost towns are unlocked. Super fair.

Yirmeyahu · March 2019

Not only is "Faction Lock" Back to the Future for those of us that have been playing since launch (well, really, even just anyone who played before One Tamriel) and makes little sense in that regard, it also makes very little sense to have "no ETA", or even a mention, really, of being able "faction change" characters if this is something ZeniMax Online Studios and/or Zenimax and/or Bethesda is actually dead set on doing. In essence, if you're going to "lock" players in to one faction after years of encouraging them to "play their way", then it stands to reason that they should be allowed to move characters where they want them with the very same update, not even a single DLC later.

By far, the only people I've seen who actually support this measure have not been playing the game long enough to know that it used to work this way previously. (Having to spend a lot of AP to "re-home" mid-campaign, etc.) The majority of players who actually are a problem (hopping entire guilds from one faction to another on the daily to attempt to influence the campaign score as they see fit) have multiple accounts. So, it's actually pretty laughable to think that the proposed change would stop that type of specific behavior anyway.

I think it's great to allow the playerbase to have a voice in the game we all play and love. But, I feel pretty strongly that, at this point, some of the loudest voices have had very detrimental ideas.

Ranger209 · March 2019

Jules wrote: »

show previous quotes

zyk wrote: »

ZOS is essentially letting the players decide which they prefer by offering locked and unlocked servers.

Yeah, except the campaigns everyone plays are locked and the ghost towns are unlocked. Super fair.

Do you foresee that being the case when the 4 new campaigns are introduced and everyone has to pick a fresh new server all over again? Will not all of the people that want to swap go to the campaign where that is allowed? For people who don't care about faction loyalty or campaign score what difference does the length of the campaign make, and why wouldn't they congregate there? Or aren't there enough people that enjoy swapping to fill a server along with geode farmers that swap toons as well?

ManwithBeard9 · March 2019

Jules wrote: »

show previous quotes

zyk wrote: »

ZOS is essentially letting the players decide which they prefer by offering locked and unlocked servers.

Yeah, except the campaigns everyone plays are locked and the ghost towns are unlocked. Super fair.

2 servers are locked, its your own damn fault if you wanna sit a 200 queue at peak times to get into the 30 day instead of just guesting into one of the 7 days.

Mudcrabber · March 2019

The 7 day campaigns are pretty dead now, but that might change when this goes live.

frozywozy · March 2019

Personally, I really like this change because it will force some people to play in other campaigns. Sure it is unfair for people who are truly trying to create some balance and get away from the dominating faction for the time being (myself included as you have seen me playing in AD quite alot in the past to counter the massive EP zerg) but I surely hope that it will strengthen Sotha Sil who has been doing really well lately and is almost as active as Vivec.

When the game starts getting action on two different 30 days campaign 24/7 outside of major events, it will be mission successful for me and a big step ahead in the right direction.

This being said, I don't believe that opening 4 additional campaigns is going to help whatsoever. I understand that ZOS is trying to give the choice to people to select exactly what they want but we simply don't have the population to spread people out that much. The main focus should be to populate an additional campaign (Sotha for the time being) and move from there. To achieve that, we need to restrict the amount of campaigns total as much as possible.

Glory · March 2019

Here's my breakdown of potential benefits/negatives of adding faction locks:

Benefits

Large groups of players can no longer influence the map from both sides
No spies?

Negatives

Can no longer easily play with friends
Are forced to wait during faction lock times or play in what will likely be dead campaigns
Faction balance will be at an all time low (join the zerg by force instead of playing on the weaker side
Those playing in non-prime time will often encounter dead campaigns

What is the data behind this decision?

CatchMeTrolling · March 2019

ManwithBeard9 wrote: »

show previous quotes

Jules wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

ZOS is essentially letting the players decide which they prefer by offering locked and unlocked servers.

Yeah, except the campaigns everyone plays are locked and the ghost towns are unlocked. Super fair.

2 servers are locked, its your own damn fault if you wanna sit a 200 queue at peak times to get into the 30 day instead of just guesting into one of the 7 days.

The problem is numbers wise it’s not enough players in pvp these days to support this change. This isn’t 2015 where like 5 campaigns was regularly pop locked. It further divides an already small pvp community. They didn’t think this one through enough.

DisgracefulMind · March 2019

One of my biggest concerns for the faction lock is the oceanic time frame. We see maybe 2 bar pops sometimes, but there are not enough people to "spread out" into different campaigns during oceanic. If one or more factions is dominating in oceanic time, hopping over to find the better fights is the only solution to find fights. As someone who's played oceanic for a long time now, I can confidently say that on PC/NA there are not enough people playing to encourage a faction lock.

Then you run into the issue Norri brings up, that during primetime waiting in ridiculous queues and not being able to go to the faction with the lower queues/lower pop is discouraging. And, no, people want to play the main 30-day because it's CP enabled and the 7-day campaign is literally dead almost all the time except the rare times on the weekend that it may or may not have more than 2 bars, but it barely ever keeps that pop. So people sit in queues because they want to PvP on a CP-enabled campaign. And, no, forcing people into no-CP isn't a solution either. People want to play where the fights are, not on a dead server that no one is ever going to populate because they never have and it has nothing to do with queues or factions; there just isn't population or desire to play in that campaign even on your main faction, there never has been on our server for the most part.

I don't know about other servers, but I know 100% that PC/NA has a dying PvP population, and that the community is already small as is. Honestly, the "faction rpers" should be given the 7-day campaign for their lock, they can all club each other. Let the serious PvPers have the 30-day. That would still please all sides, wouldn't it? -_-

InvictusApollo · March 2019

There are many blatant problems with PvP.
Faction lock was one of them.
Now we will have it again.

Iskiab · April 2019

Well, in our campaign there’s a guy who followed our raid around. Whenever we went into stealth he’d stand on us and the opposing group would attack us and not him.

Maybe it is Tin Foil hat, but I wouldn’t underestimate how some people have no lives are prefer to grief others then play for themselves.

Heimpai · April 2019

ManwithBeard9 wrote: »

show previous quotes

NirnStorm wrote: »

I couldn't have worded it better myself.

Let's all take a moment to remember faction lock has existed in ESO before, and it was taken down after the playerbase protested. Must we really do that again?

My organized PvP guild consists of EP, DC and AD mains. If faction lock gets to live, this might be the end of the guild, or any fun playing with it, since we will have to play on dead campaigns.

Dead campaigns? Devs stated a 30 day no CP, a 30 day CP (both locked) and I think two 7 days, not locked, the 2 IC campaigns, and the lowbie one How will there be dead campaigns?

Not everyone gets to play at primetime and every campaign but vivec is dead outside of primetime weekdays

Enkil · April 2019

Mudcrabber wrote: »

The 7 day campaigns are pretty dead now, but that might change when this goes live.

^this

As one of the most vocal proponents of adding a new faction locked campaign, I think it’s important to keep in mind that with the update, campaigns will no longer ALL just be exclusively Free-For-All as is the case now. FFA is very unappealing for many of us that have likewise played since launch, but also counter-intuitive, and defies and shatters expectations for returning players and newcomers to the game.

I primarily advocated for adding or locking 1-2 7-days campaign(s) but the dev’s clearly see fit to lock both the 30 days and Kyne. They have all the info, data, and metrics, so maybe that’s what they see as a more sound path to take.

Once the change happens, this plethora of those that love to hop faction indiscriminately will be able to do so on 7-day Shor, which may be a better fit as campaign rewards (which seem to appeal to those types) are weekly instead of monthly. Shor might become the new Vivec population-wise with queues after the change. Who knows....

It’s very unwise to judge the change based on current population dynamics with every campaign being the same rule-set. Most solid PvP games offer various server/campaign types to appeal to, and be a home for, the many various types of PvP gamers out there.

Enkil · April 2019

Joy_Division wrote: »

show previous quotes

NirnStorm wrote: »

I couldn't have worded it better myself.

Let's all take a moment to remember faction lock has existed in ESO before, and it was taken down after the playerbase protested. Must we really do that again?

My organized PvP guild consists of EP, DC and AD mains. If faction lock gets to live, this might be the end of the guild, or any fun playing with it, since we will have to play on dead campaigns.

Yes. The people who wanted locks were by far the most vocal and better at presenting their case. ZOS believes they will get more subs than they'll lose.

Also, the case for it is much more sound logically. Easy to present. We wanted to just lock one or some of them while many others, yourself included, wanted to maintain every single campaign as FFA, disrespecting and discarding the wishes of a large segment of the current and potential PvP population. There will still be some FFA campaigns and the devs said this is experimental, hence it’s open to being adjusted. Perhaps some of those that want FFA will stop being so dismissive and maybe reassess the desire to horde every single campaign to cater to rampant faction hopping.

The vast majority of players have friends in all factions and aside from a few PvP guilds, most guilds are tri-faction or it isn’t even considered. Every player is in that same boat so...

OP @ks888 mentions a tinfoil hat brigade implying that people wanting a locked campaign to call home are part of some such clueless group. At the same time, some people already quite hastily surmise that locking one or some campaigns, while leaving others FFA is gonna be some stake to the heart of all ESO PvP period, full stop. Who is really jumping to ridiculous and downright silly tin-foil type conclusions here? And claiming victimhood and ostracization...? Really?!?

DisgracefulMind · April 2019

Enkil wrote: »

show previous quotes

Mudcrabber wrote: »

The 7 day campaigns are pretty dead now, but that might change when this goes live.

As one of the most vocal proponents of adding a new faction locked campaign, I think it’s important to keep in mind that with the update, campaigns will not ALL just be total Free-For-All as is the case now. FFA is very unappealing for many of us that have also played since launch, but also counter-intuitive, and defies expectations for newcomers to the game.

I primarily advocated for adding or locking 1-2 7-days campaign(s) but the dev’s clearly see fit to lock both the 30 days and Kyne. They have all the info, data, and metrics, so maybe that’s what see a more sound path to take.

Once the change happens, this plethora of those that love to hop faction indiscriminately will be able to do so on 7-day Shor, which may be a better fit since campaign rewards which seem to appeal to those types are weekly instead of monthly. Shor might be the new Vivec population-wise with queues after the change. Who knows....

It’s very unwise to judge the change based on current population dynamics with every campaign being the same rule-set. Most solid PvP games offer various server/campaign types to appeal to, and be a home for, the many various types of PvP gamers out there.

It would make more sense for them to lock the 7-day than the 30-day, as the 7-day is dead all the time, particularly in oceanic. Why should we be doomed to just play dead servers during oceanic time?

LeifErickson · April 2019

How about fixing the real problem with pvp instead: the lag.

Edirt_seliv · April 2019

Jules wrote: »

show previous quotes

zyk wrote: »

ZOS is essentially letting the players decide which they prefer by offering locked and unlocked servers.

Yeah, except the campaigns everyone plays are locked and the ghost towns are unlocked. Super fair.

Well the idea is that if unlocked is something players want, they won't be ghost towns.

It's not a good idea, but that's the sentiment.

zyk · April 2019

Jules wrote: »

show previous quotes

zyk wrote: »

ZOS is essentially letting the players decide which they prefer by offering locked and unlocked servers.

Yeah, except the campaigns everyone plays are locked and the ghost towns are unlocked. Super fair.

If everyone chooses to play on a locked campaign, I would consider that to be a validation of this change.

I don't presume that outcome is certain though. I can imagine a variety of conceivable outcomes. An unlocked campaign may eventually be the 'main' campaign as a result of this change. That might be the most likely outcome if PVE players can still grind geodes in Cyrodiil.

I feel for the players who will be negatively impacted by this, but it's a compromise and both sides have a compelling case IMO.

We all have different observations. I notice faction hopping the most when one side is rolling the map -- lots of players switch to that side, causing more imbalance. Others believe faction hopping improves population balance. But only ZOS has the data to actually analyze this.

Qbiken · April 2019

Glory wrote: »

Here's my breakdown of potential benefits/negatives of adding faction locks:

Benefits
Large groups of players can no longer influence the map from both sides

No spies?

Negatives
Can no longer easily play with friends

Are forced to wait during faction lock times or play in what will likely be dead campaigns

Faction balance will be at an all time low (join the zerg by force instead of playing on the weaker side

Those playing in non-prime time will often encounter dead campaigns

What is the data behind this decision?

Not going to lie, but these changes makes me want to roleplay as alliance traitor even more, since now running with a scroll the the enemy faction might have a bigger impact.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · April 2019

NirnStorm wrote: »

I couldn't have worded it better myself.

Let's all take a moment to remember faction lock has existed in ESO before, and it was taken down after the playerbase protested. Must we really do that again?

My organized PvP guild consists of EP, DC and AD mains. If faction lock gets to live, this might be the end of the guild, or any fun playing with it, since we will have to play on dead campaigns.

ESO was never faction locked. It was soft locked. If you had friend on the other faction you could group queue with them to the campaign just not home it.

Tamriel unlimited encouraged people to expand onto other factions and did away with all locking mechanics (personally I think this was a bad change) but to go to a hard lock system after doing so is just stupid.

If the answer to "why is this being done" is simply "because they made the most noise" it's a sad day for ESO and PvP within it.

I would rather they made a seperate campaign as a tester so people could opt-in to this rule set to see how popular it actually is before forcing it on the active campaigns and saying "well play this dead campaign if you don't like it".